sparklefiction

It's not gay if it's Souji.
That's what Yosuke kept telling himself.
The first kiss wasn't gay. Souji's tongue in his mouth didn't make either of them gay. It was an experiment.
It wasn't until they were making out- in Souji's room, on Souji's couch- and Souji's hand slid up Yosuke's shirt and grazed his nipple that Yosuke sucked in a sharp breath and panted out his first objection.
"No."
"No?" Souji stopped cold, pulling away, pulling back, and Yosuke felt bereft.
"We're not like that," Yosuke mumbled, his face red. "You and me. We like girls."
"You like girls," Souji said quietly. "I know you do."
"So do you," Yosuke insisted. "Chie or Yukiko?"
This shit again. Souji's irritation was palpable, his pale brows furrowed stubbornly over his dark grey eyes. "Yosuke."
"That wasn't an option," Yosuke huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.
"It's the option I'm picking," Souji said flatly. "I don't like them like that. I like you like that."
"I'm not gay," Yosuke reminded him, his face feeling hot. "I don't like you like that."
"That's all you had to say," Souji said, sliding to the floor, his ears red, eye contact shot to hell. "I won't try it again."
"No, just-" Yosuke didn't like the sick clench that twisted his stomach at the prospect of Souji not kissing him again. He liked it even less than the idea of Souji liking him like that, though it was a slim margin. "Just listen to me. Hear me out."
"You don't like me like that," Souji reminded him, with a chilling lack of bitterness in his voice. "Understood. We don't need to drill it in."
"I like you," Yosuke said, "I'm just not- I'm not queer. I'm not."
"Okay. Fine." But it wasn't fine. The tension in Souji's jaw, the lack of eye contact, still- Yosuke felt the world falling out from under him. "I don't get you."
"You don't get- what's there not to get?" Yosuke slid down to the floor between the couch and the table, trying to get Souji to look at him again. "I'm not like that."
"Why is gay the worst thing you could be?" Souji demanded.
Yosuke growled softly, frustrated. "I don't. Like. Guys."
"Do you like me?" Souji asked him, just as aggressive. "Because you were acting like you did, all the times you kissed me back."
"I don't know," Yosuke said, instinctively, before he could say anything else, anything he couldn't take back. He found it rang true, and, thank God, it softened Souji's expression more than a little bit.
"You don't have to decide right away," Souji said quietly, in the same voice he'd used every time Yosuke had heard him assure one of their friends that everyone had dark thoughts. "We can make it up as we go."
"I like girls," Yosuke protested, but the fight was going out of his voice, his shoulders slumping into his usual slouch.
"So do I," Souji finally said, which made him feel a little better. "But not Chie. Not Yukiko, Marie, Yumi or Rise. Girls, generally, not those girls, specifically. And I like you. Not guys, generally- not Kanji, Kou, Daisuke or Teddie. I like Yosuke, specifically. Get it?"
Yosuke's bottom lip came out in a thoughtful pout.
Girls, generally. Guy, specifically.
"Is there even a word for that?"
"I don't care," Souji said, resolute as ever. Yosuke couldn't help how that stubbornness made him smile, even in spite of himself. "It's me. It's Souji. Is it you, that's what I'm asking. Am I an exception, or do we really need to stop?"
Yosuke looked back into Souji's eyes as they searched his.
"I don't like guys," he said after a long silence, and then, when Souji started to nod and pull away, he reached out and wove his fingers into the hair just behind Souji's ear, letting their foreheads rest together. "I might like you, though. Partner."
"It's a start," Souji muttered.

+++

Souji's cock against his hip was pretty gay.
The kissing wasn't, the kissing was just kissing. They liked each other, okay, that was fine. That was- a thing that had happened. It wasn't as though it was a terrible crisis. Souji knew Yosuke loved him, would die for him if it came down to the wire.
There was still that hesitation, though. The looming spectre of Hanamura Yosuke's impending sexual identity crisis, belied by his reaction to Kanji's.
"Fuck!" he hissed when Souji ground into his hip, twitching back as though the searing heat of Souji's erection was enough to burn him.
"You're kidding me," Souji said from the floor where he ended up, after Yosuke's graceless twitch had dumped him off his own sofa.
"Sorry," Yosuke managed through gritted teeth.
"Maybe we should just be friends," Souji sighed, tucking a pillow under his head and then flopping over on his stomach to bury his face in it.
"I forgot for a second," Yosuke mumbled, his face hot.
"That I have a dick?" Souji's voice was muffled by the pillow.
"Yeah," Yosuke admitted, feeling about six inches tall. Which, if he thought about it- He didn't want to think about it.
There was a pause. The pillow bashed him in the head.
"If I didn't like you so much," Souji said, "I'd start to think Chie's right about you."
"That I'm a hopeless idiot?" Yosuke said glumly.
"Only sometimes," Souji sighed. "Done for today, then?"
"I think so," Yosuke said, cringing into his shoulders. "I kinda ruined it."
"You kinda did," Souji agreed.
It wasn't until Souji's sword-callused hand ruffled through his dyed hair that Yosuke began to unclench from his cringing.

+++

"I just don't understand why you feel the need to label everything," Souji was saying, not for the first time. Yosuke's head was in his lap, face up thank you very much, and he was petting Yosuke's hair.
"I like labels," Yosuke insisted. "They tell you what things are. They keep shit from being vague. Yes. No. Black. White. Gay. Straight. Stop. Go. They tell you what things mean. How you should react."
"What about shades of grey?" Souji asked, threading his fingers through the coarse brown strands. "Maybe. Bi. Slow down. Why does everything have to be one way or another?"
"We can't all be Naoto," Yosuke grumbled. "I don't like uncertainty."
"It's a fact of life," Souji disagreed. "Not everything can be carved in stone."
"Are you my boyfriend?" Yosuke asked him.
Souji paused, and Yosuke wasn't sure if he wanted to win this particular victory.
"Ersatz," he pronounced, and Yosuke rolled his eyes.
"Definition, please, valedictorian."
"Ersatz is the same as de facto. I am a guy, we're friends, we make out, you're not making out with anyone else, therefore, I'm probably your boyfriend."
"That's pretty queer," Yosuke grumbled, flushing.
"Being a guy with a boyfriend is ersatz queer," Souji agreed, sounding insufferably smug.
Yosuke sighed and rolled over to bury his face in Souji's flat stomach, breathing in the smell of him, resenting, a little, how comforting he found it.
"If I'm your boyfriend," Souji murmured, "That makes you my boyfriend."
"Shut up," Yosuke said, unsuccessfully hiding the smile that threatened the corners of his mouth as Souji's hand carded through his hair again.
"You like that," Souji noted. "Think about this, then. If I'm your boyfriend, I'm not anyone else's boyfriend."
Yosuke nuzzled into Souji's stomach. "That's really fucking gay," he sighed.
"We're struggling just getting to dry humping gay," Souji quipped. Yosuke punched him in the kidney- but not too hard. Not hard enough to keep him from laughing.

+++

Kanji figured it out first, and, because he was nothing if not classy, did not beat Yosuke's ass over it.
"Senpai, huh?" he said.
"Yeah," Yosuke sighed as Souji scored his third rebound basket of the game.
"So are you two-" Kanji asked, and Yosuke blushed hotly. "Hey, I'm not judging."
"You'd have every right to," Yosuke muttered, rubbing the beet-red back of his neck. "I'm sorry."
"Water, bridge," Kanji shrugged. "Kinda jealous, if I'm honest. He could pretty much have anybody in Inaba, and he goes for you? That's like, Rise-level."
"Heh, kinda," Yosuke considered. "There really isn't anybody who'd say no to him, is there?"
"Maybe Naoto," Kanji grinned. "But maybe not. You never know."