madimpossibledreamer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
madimpossibledreamer) wrote2023-05-28 09:11 pm
madimpossibledreamer) wrote2023-05-28 09:11 pm
Entry tags:
Tear Down the Walls
Main Points:
Persona 2/Persona 4 crossover (Broken Hero)
Chapter Summary: Yosuke realizes he's being a jerk because he's projecting, and he wants some advice.
Word Count: 1062
Rating: Teen
tatsuya & souji do not appear in person
Warning: He's realizing it's wrong, but still a little homophobia/biphobia + some self-loathing
There’s also the whole Joker thing.
Yosuke gets it. Say he’d been convinced Saki-senpai had been murdered by Souji. He would definitely hold a grudge over that. Maybe he wouldn’t be as creative, but he would definitely take action over it.
That doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with the whole thing, though. But now that he’s trying out this whole new being honest thing with himself (and dammit, it hurts, there’s a reason he’d been avoiding it, hadn’t wanted to think about what a loser he was, but he’s got no excuse, not if those thoughts could actually turn up in the TV World and kill his friends, so he’s just to suck it up), a lot of it is that Kashihara-san doesn’t fit in with his general ideas of what manliness looks like, and he’s perfectly okay with that. In some cases, he might even be being provocative on purpose. It’s hard to say, and Kashihara-san would act completely clueless about anything he may or may not be doing, because as hard as he tries to hide it he’s got a serious mischievous streak, and Suou-san isn’t too much good at reining it in, because as much as he tries to hide it everyone sees that slight amused smirk.
Nah, he’s being unfair again. Kashihara-san will pull it back if anyone gets seriously uncomfortable, as long as it’s not people who deserve to be uncomfortable. Like Yosuke, really, unfortunately.
The thing is, if pushed to describe the perfect man, Yosuke would probably talk about someone like Suou-san. Stoic, strong, has his pick of the ladies, loved by everyone, can do anything he tries, doesn’t want for money, decisive, and when he talks his words mean a lot. Unlike Yosuke, who just babbles everywhere. (And if he thinks about it, that description of the perfect man matches Souji, too. He’s been trying not to think about it, but seeing how Suou-san hiding all his issues inside had nearly killed them all, again, Yosuke has no excuse trying to hide behind denial anymore.)
He’d noticed Amagi-chan’s crush, and it had hurt at first, because no matter what her Shadow said she didn’t seriously consider him in the contest for one of her Princes, and why the hell would she? She’d probably known his interest in her was as genuine as any of the other saps approaching her just wanting the bragging rights of completing the Amagi Challenge, even if they hadn’t been honest about that with themselves at the time, and with no future he was as stuck in this place as she was. Chie-chan would probably have a crush, too, if she wasn’t so focused on finding excuses to be suspicious of the two adults.
But it’s also…it had been a trip, and if he hadn’t been so focused on making sure that he didn’t lose anyone else he cared for, Yosuke might have had his panic attack right then and there. From Kashihara-san’s occasional glances in his direction, it’d been clear Yosuke wasn’t keeping his shit together as well as he hoped, but he still hadn’t been a burden. He could lose his mind later, after the older Persona-User was recovering in the hospital and no one had to deal directly with the fallout of him being unable to wrap his mind around something (haha, like that’s any surprise).
So, Suou-san liked dudes, but rather than hitting on them or being pushy if anything he was trying to keep them at arm’s length (like everyone, the brunet’s brain reminds him, but even after that point his behavior hadn’t changed). The scene in the park after graduation…well, while at the time it had him flipping out and trying not to let that get him off his game, after the fact, thinking about it, it’s a beautifully heartbreaking scene, and after seeing that all play out in front of his eyes, there’s no way he can insist that it wasn’t genuine. Even after all these years, they still obviously love each other. And they didn’t really treat it any differently than it would be if Kashihara-san was a cute girl instead.
Maybe, thinking about it—okay, sure, Yosuke was also an asshole who probably wasn’t worth keeping in touch with, but maybe he wasn’t the only one at fault when none of his friends from the big city stopped texting him. Maybe they were asses, too, and the brunet would be a marginally better person if he didn’t keep treating their words as the authority on everything.
So Yosuke has to put in the work to get over himself, and get over those words from his friends and the TV that were obviously wrong. And he’ll start with Suou-san, because he has to work up the courage to talk to Kashihara-san, because for stupid reasons Kashihara-san still scares him more because he doesn’t conform to what the brunet expects. Also, he’s pretty sure, because at worst Suou-san will glare at him or just refuse to answer his questions if he goes too far, and he has no idea how Kashihara-san will respond.
But more than that—and this makes Yosuke feel a little awful and pathetic—he’d actually been happy to hear about all the ways Suou-san wasn’t perfect. The man had managed to hide it, but he was—well, maybe not as much of a disaster as ‘Hana-chan’, but still. He hadn’t known what he was doing; still didn’t. He’d turned down love and was actually really awkward. He questioned himself a lot—maybe not as much as Yosuke, but that was kind of impossible. Suou-san gets it, in the way that maybe Kashihara-san doesn’t, so Yosuke feels more comfortable talking to him instead, and he knows it’s mostly just justification, but maybe he’s bored in the hospital. He might be lying to himself, but this time he knows it, and it’s the only way he can make himself even bother the older Persona-User, so he’d characterize the lie as a necessary evil, and maybe being aware of it is enough.
Persona 2/Persona 4 crossover (Broken Hero)
Chapter Summary: Yosuke realizes he's being a jerk because he's projecting, and he wants some advice.
Word Count: 1062
Rating: Teen
tatsuya & souji do not appear in person
Warning: He's realizing it's wrong, but still a little homophobia/biphobia + some self-loathing
It’s nerve-wracking, approaching Suou-san, for entirely different reasons than it is approaching Kashihara-san. Kashihara-san seems more approachable, and he’s certainly easier to have a conversation with. Suou-san tends to just stare, and he has a bit of Dojima-san’s forbidding attitude, but it’s also much more obvious he’s willing to let things slide.
There’s also the whole Joker thing.
Yosuke gets it. Say he’d been convinced Saki-senpai had been murdered by Souji. He would definitely hold a grudge over that. Maybe he wouldn’t be as creative, but he would definitely take action over it.
That doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with the whole thing, though. But now that he’s trying out this whole new being honest thing with himself (and dammit, it hurts, there’s a reason he’d been avoiding it, hadn’t wanted to think about what a loser he was, but he’s got no excuse, not if those thoughts could actually turn up in the TV World and kill his friends, so he’s just to suck it up), a lot of it is that Kashihara-san doesn’t fit in with his general ideas of what manliness looks like, and he’s perfectly okay with that. In some cases, he might even be being provocative on purpose. It’s hard to say, and Kashihara-san would act completely clueless about anything he may or may not be doing, because as hard as he tries to hide it he’s got a serious mischievous streak, and Suou-san isn’t too much good at reining it in, because as much as he tries to hide it everyone sees that slight amused smirk.
Nah, he’s being unfair again. Kashihara-san will pull it back if anyone gets seriously uncomfortable, as long as it’s not people who deserve to be uncomfortable. Like Yosuke, really, unfortunately.
The thing is, if pushed to describe the perfect man, Yosuke would probably talk about someone like Suou-san. Stoic, strong, has his pick of the ladies, loved by everyone, can do anything he tries, doesn’t want for money, decisive, and when he talks his words mean a lot. Unlike Yosuke, who just babbles everywhere. (And if he thinks about it, that description of the perfect man matches Souji, too. He’s been trying not to think about it, but seeing how Suou-san hiding all his issues inside had nearly killed them all, again, Yosuke has no excuse trying to hide behind denial anymore.)
He’d noticed Amagi-chan’s crush, and it had hurt at first, because no matter what her Shadow said she didn’t seriously consider him in the contest for one of her Princes, and why the hell would she? She’d probably known his interest in her was as genuine as any of the other saps approaching her just wanting the bragging rights of completing the Amagi Challenge, even if they hadn’t been honest about that with themselves at the time, and with no future he was as stuck in this place as she was. Chie-chan would probably have a crush, too, if she wasn’t so focused on finding excuses to be suspicious of the two adults.
But it’s also…it had been a trip, and if he hadn’t been so focused on making sure that he didn’t lose anyone else he cared for, Yosuke might have had his panic attack right then and there. From Kashihara-san’s occasional glances in his direction, it’d been clear Yosuke wasn’t keeping his shit together as well as he hoped, but he still hadn’t been a burden. He could lose his mind later, after the older Persona-User was recovering in the hospital and no one had to deal directly with the fallout of him being unable to wrap his mind around something (haha, like that’s any surprise).
So, Suou-san liked dudes, but rather than hitting on them or being pushy if anything he was trying to keep them at arm’s length (like everyone, the brunet’s brain reminds him, but even after that point his behavior hadn’t changed). The scene in the park after graduation…well, while at the time it had him flipping out and trying not to let that get him off his game, after the fact, thinking about it, it’s a beautifully heartbreaking scene, and after seeing that all play out in front of his eyes, there’s no way he can insist that it wasn’t genuine. Even after all these years, they still obviously love each other. And they didn’t really treat it any differently than it would be if Kashihara-san was a cute girl instead.
Maybe, thinking about it—okay, sure, Yosuke was also an asshole who probably wasn’t worth keeping in touch with, but maybe he wasn’t the only one at fault when none of his friends from the big city stopped texting him. Maybe they were asses, too, and the brunet would be a marginally better person if he didn’t keep treating their words as the authority on everything.
So Yosuke has to put in the work to get over himself, and get over those words from his friends and the TV that were obviously wrong. And he’ll start with Suou-san, because he has to work up the courage to talk to Kashihara-san, because for stupid reasons Kashihara-san still scares him more because he doesn’t conform to what the brunet expects. Also, he’s pretty sure, because at worst Suou-san will glare at him or just refuse to answer his questions if he goes too far, and he has no idea how Kashihara-san will respond.
But more than that—and this makes Yosuke feel a little awful and pathetic—he’d actually been happy to hear about all the ways Suou-san wasn’t perfect. The man had managed to hide it, but he was—well, maybe not as much of a disaster as ‘Hana-chan’, but still. He hadn’t known what he was doing; still didn’t. He’d turned down love and was actually really awkward. He questioned himself a lot—maybe not as much as Yosuke, but that was kind of impossible. Suou-san gets it, in the way that maybe Kashihara-san doesn’t, so Yosuke feels more comfortable talking to him instead, and he knows it’s mostly just justification, but maybe he’s bored in the hospital. He might be lying to himself, but this time he knows it, and it’s the only way he can make himself even bother the older Persona-User, so he’d characterize the lie as a necessary evil, and maybe being aware of it is enough.