The Best Path to You

by Kita Me

Summary: One-shot. Junjou Egoist. Hiro-san's POV. To those whom we love, the perfect words will never come to speak of our thanks. Don't bet on that when the literature professor's drunk. (Hiro recalls how he and Usagi never happened..and how he and Nowaki did.) [HirokiXNowaki]

The Best Path to You

Author's Note

Hey FF readers everywhere, Kita Me here. This is my first official stab at writing for anime and manga (and by official, I simply mean uploading it online and all). Otherwise, I've been writing fan fiction on and off for the last five to seven years, not counting the fours years it took to get my Creative Writing degree (which demanded a whole different type of writing).

I wrote this years back, around the time I got into yaoi through the sheer delight that is Junjou Romantica. That said...

Warnings

Explicit content. For those who aren't familiar with yaoi, this refers to a rather hot and steamy relationship between men. Yes, men. Please, if this isn't your cup of tea, you're welcome to move to the next story you find elsewhere. I respect your apprehension and to the extreme, your intolerance, because the fact stands that this genre is just not for everyone. Having said that, I hope you'll respect my right to write about what I like and respect the rights of others who delight in reading the same. To each his own, they say. Thank you.

Disclaimer

Junjou Romantica rightfully belongs to its manga-ka.

Language and Style

*I'm a maximalist by trade, and my sentences always seem to hum with song when I write passionately about anything. Yeah, my professors have commented that I ought to practice more restraint. Not go here though, haha, because that's missing the whole point.

**Alert on tenses too. (I shift in and out of the past a lot here so please bear with me).

***Italics, unless otherwise indicated, are thoughts.

Note

Readers, enjoy what you will. Please, no flames. If you must know, I wrote this entirely for the pleasure of writing it and reading it to myself as a guilty pleasure of some sort. The main reason why this story has been uploaded is due to my belief that others might want to enjoy it—err, if they find it enjoyable of course. Other than that, I mean to offend no one with this piece and hope you'll all understand that. If you don't like it, hey, no problem. If you do, well, glad to hear it. On another note, you're welcome to leave comments if you think it merits your time. No criticism please. Suggestions would be great. Hontou ni arigatou minna! (Thank you very much, everyone!)

Summary: One-shot. Junjou Egoist. Hiro-san's POV. To those whom we love, the perfect words will never come to speak of our thanks. Don't bet on that when the literature professor's drunk. (Hiro recalls how he and Usagi never happened..and how he and Nowaki did.) [HirokiXNowaki]

The Best Path to You

ooooOOOoooo

In my mind, I'm the one sitting on the bench in the park, crying my eyes out because the person I love will never love me back.

I'm the one, sitting in the park, all alone, no one bothering to care about me, no one bothering to tell me to stop.

Perhaps I'll always be that sad, sorry figure, forlorn and overcome with misery, my heart writhing in pain.

The world had taken too much from me—or rather, kept me from having what I truly wish would become mine.

Perhaps I'll always be that broken man in the park with no one to talk to, soliciting scandalous looks from the people that walk past as I wait, in vain, for someone to come. But I know he won't come. Not him. That would be totally senseless.

And affirming the validity of this thought crushes me even more.

I always knew that I wasn't praying for someone to come, no, not if it weren't him. I would never pray for company especially not now when it shone so clearly that he would never look at me the way I desperately wanted him to. Of course, I already knew that...but still...

Acceptance is always a separate matter.

I went to the park to be alone, away from the dark room that I always occupied, that room being my mind, but I guess I never would be free of it. It would always be this way. And I would always hurt.

I never felt the depth or the dampness of that cold leave me, and thus, knew that sunshine or grass or random children's laughter wouldn't be able to work its miracle here. And so I wondered what I thought I'd achieve by being a spectacle in front of people. But by then, my mind had been far lost in my memories, memories that I shared with him, memories that I jealously protected, memories that tore me apart.

Shredded. That was how I felt.

It was entirely like that.

So maybe, just maybe, that's why you had to show up. Maybe that's why you had to intentionally make your toy plane land at my feet. I vaguely remember the ground shaking beneath your footsteps as you ran towards me to retrieve it and you had to lie to have a reason for me to look at you, then talk to you and take in your smile, so you must've been content that I'd taken the bait.

I resented the fact that you had noticed me and had bothered to talk to me, to me of all the people that happened to be in the park that day. But you did, and I found myself completely resenting that happy, carefree energy that radiated from your body. I hated how you smiled at me, I hated how easy and free you showed me your spirit was, unburned and unscathed and totally insensitive to my own.

How the hell could you know what I was feeling then? And why the fuck would you even care? When did this whole damn charade start mattering to you? Nobody told you to play the hero. I wouldn't be the damsel you'd save from a burning tower, or in this case, a scratched, unyielding park bench. You'd better fuck off before I kill you !

That was what coursed through my veins. Pure hurt.

You must've come over expecting something, wanting something, needing something, the questions you were dying to ask making you itch so bad that you just had to burst into the picture to seek relief. No, I certainly took no pleasure in that attempt you called an innocent smile or that grace you called kindness in wandering over to perhaps take a chance and making things better. I did not want you there, I had never called out, never given so much as a glance in your direction—

You'd never make it all right! You aren't that person, you aren't him, you can never be that person, so why try and waste your energy on a stranger that won't hear what you have to say?

My heart had long left my body and I was vaguely worried that I would hurt you—

You can't help, so walk away, go now, or the darkness will spew out of my mouth and I know you won't like it, but the force will shatter the light in your face and I won't be able to put you back together again. Don't make me the sinner here, the villain without the heart, I've still got the smallest shadow of it left, damn you, I warned you, you're not a child and I will have to be ruthless and look as if I couldn't care less when you cry.

That was what raged in my mind at that point.

You were challenging me, weren't you? Waiting for me to see you, the target, waiting for me to shoot poison and have another good reason to do myself in and kill myself for hurting an innocent human being.

Wasn't it enough that I had hurt him by loving him and betraying his trust for my own selfish reasons? Wasn't it shameful enough that I had blindly egged myself on within a bond that only I knew existed? I was wrong to believe that my loving that person could ever be a gift that I could offer him. I was the one he confided in, not the one he would ever caress. I would listen to him, but he would never be able to hear what I had to say. I would be a thorn in his side...and he would be, in mine. So I knew, I knew, that I should've been grateful that he had never looked at me and seen me for the scum that I was.

Damn him for being the only person I loved and yet could never love. I'd be doomed to hurt in silence without him knowing or caring that it was because of the love of him that I suffered alone.

But...

The thing was, even if he did love me, I'd always feel the pain of wanting him, of wanting to consume all of him, of wanting to be consumed completely by him.

Damn him, damn my heart, damn it all, it could never be something I could undo. I'd never be satisfied.

And perhaps you, you in all your euphoria, in all the carefree splendor of your youth, your heart brave and unafraid, thirsting for some grand task, sensed in what danger I had put myself in. For isn't shame, and guilt, and hurt a prison from which many aren't lucky enough to escape? Isn't it where I was?

Baka.

Hadn't I locked myself in there knowingly...lovingly? Were you envious that I had loved so much? Were you envious or the least bit curious that I could love as much as I dared my life to?

Did you know I was like that when I gave a damn about someone?

Perhaps you had this twisted notion in your head that I'd be dazzled by your charm, won over by your appeal, smitten with your looks as well as I might with your hero's heart? Maybe you thought that if you tried to save me from my demons, I'd swoon at your feet, and utter mouthfuls, sworn statements of my love and loyalty, that I'd have eyes only for you and that my heart would find something, someone most worthy to beat for again?

I don't know.

Perhaps I'll always be that foolish, old man in the park with his head in his hands, cupping his tears to his face, whispering a name that isn't his to speak, remembering memories that are more sour than sweet but never blank nor bare and devoid of feeling.

Perhaps to you, I'll always be that wretched fellow, his tie undone, his shirt wrinkled, body slacking under the pressure of sobs forcefully quieted, mercilessly suppressed. I'll be the criminal—you'd be right to say that I'd proven you right. No man can blame another for being who he is by nature, for having a heart as honest and as selfless as yours. You couldn't say no to how you felt inside, how I made you wonder, worry, wish that I was okay. You wanted to know of the pain that made me sit and tremble on that park bench in the first place, you so desperately, so lovingly, gently wanted to set me free.

You wanted to unshackle those cruel chains that weighed me down.

I admit to being a fool: hadn't I broken down in a place, so publicly, so predictably, that I'd have someone, anyone, if not you, find me?

But it had to be you.

It had to be you, towering over my stooped figure, bulging with life, rippling with the laughter my body had forgotten to laugh since the world caved in.

It had to be you, brimming with a serenity that was irritating and annoying and irresistibly, delectably alluring.

It had to be you, with a wee lad's face, splendid, unassuming, innocent, a sweet lamb, a vision whose light would drown out the darkness in me...and would have me cease just because of its pure, patient light.

You had to come to me like this.

And yet still...

Even in all your humility, I know of your quiet, simple arrogance.

I know and detest that vile thing that you call your presence.

I hate that music that you call your voice—or whatever it is that you make of it to annoy me so.

I loathe those blue, blue eyes, brave, bold, beautiful—I hate the shade, the hue, the depth they conceal. I hate how unassuming they are, how they soften and relax as they alight upon me.

I hate them when they look so warm because I can only imagine what they see, and that infuriates me because I can't and I'd like to know how they get so soft and serene, so calm and peaceful even when the name of the person they belong to suggests an alarming, devastating tension, water, wind and weeping skies.

You knew I'd fall prey to the honey in your voice, sweet, but never sticky, sacred, sacrosanct as it would play with the notes that spelled out my name, a song that would find itself born only out of your mouth after being conceived in the kiln of your throat.

Oh you knew, you knew that there would be no force or pull that I'd go against what with the urgency your hands had shot into my heart. Not with the smell of your skin on mine, not with the fragrance of your hair on my pillow, lulling me to sleep, the death of me.

You knew you'd be Adonis, Apollo and Paris, Ganymede, Achilles, Agamemnon, even Hector to me and you stole my soul and slew it so that I'd always play servant to you. You knew my "no" would always be half-hearted, that it would be weak and worthless, a stick against your sword, a brittle defense, a decaying fortress, it would be no match for you. You'd swallow it up whole, forget it and I'd be underwater again, lost in the rapids, unable yet not wanting to surface for air.

You did all of that, despicable fiend. To the Chateau D'If must go you, to Alcatraz, to the burning lake, to the deepest level of hell for making my defenses laughable, for lowering my guard, for stealing the darkness that I never, I think I never, wanted to leave, for having me long for your touch, your taste in my mouth, your tongue tasting mine.

Selfish, thoughtless, evil, unforgivable—I wish I could throw at you all the curses that you deserve and all the other curses I could come to make with you in mind.

I wish I could tear you from my heart, tear you from my very soul as from my sight, because tearing you from me would be a torture, but I perhaps would succeed in the test, lest I become overcome with your being, overcome by all that you have ever become, and die by that same haunting, hallowed hand; the touch of which memory will never let me forget you.

I wish I could shoot your soul and have it vanish in smoke, disperse and then disappear in the air as perfume dies away after intoxicating.

I wish you would wither away, like flowers come fall.

I wish you would wash off like mud or dirt, and leave no trace behind.

I wish you go and not leave me to hear the sound of your footsteps, solid, distinct, and tender, in the ears of my mind.

I wish you had not made me long for you.

I wish that on that day, take me back to then, you had not seen me, that you were blind, literally or figuratively, or oblivious or cold-hearted, or that I blended right into the background, another blade of grass in the field.

I wish I had not been worthy of that moment...

...of that scene

...of that seat

...of that space

...of that something, whatever it is, that struck you and bade you come to me.

I wish I had been just another man in the park, with just another man's problems, with just another park bench beneath him, on just an ordinary day in an ordinary life.

Damn you, I wish I hadn't chosen to go to that park, even though I did.

I wish it had been another time, me sobbing piteously, poorly, without you there, with you never there, with you never being.

If I'd died from the misery, it would be glorious—me, in the loyal, though ill-fated service of the love I'd be destined to be vessel to—you, taking no part in the play. Me, yes me, another tragic hero, and oh what a tragic, tragic lover. Only then the crowd would say that I was the only one ever faithful, completely loyal to him, to his image, his name, the only one who gave up everything and lost everything willingly, graciously, ever so patiently so I could sacrifice all of myself to him.

They'd be jealous and in awe of my offering, but you, you would appear. You would will it happen.

Your pride wouldn't have it, you'd destroy me if you could, you'd possess me entirely and the most damage you'd inflict would be, that even when you'd leave me after taking control, hated parasite, invader, body snatcher, I'd still want you there.

You'd never forgive yourself if you walked away, unable to capture and own someone that craved to be allowed your love.

You'd never forgive yourself if you allowed me to be consumed by a past memory, by him, by his ghost, no, not when I could have you, warm, and wet and whole.

Your pride would not allow it—you would trick yourself into believing that that was your reason for living, that it was for the hunt, then the possession of me, only that you'd be the only one to think that I was worth having, that I was worth controlling, and owning, and completely overtaking.

And only perhaps you would. I myself wouldn't even have given it a thought. I'd only give you weakness, a shattered shadow, a far out look, a hand lost as it struggled to grope in the dark.

I'd then have you drink from my lips the bitterness that had been mined from my blood. I'd make you rue the day you chose me; I'd have you cry out from how powerful the salt of my resentment had become, how acrid my shame, how overpowering my guilt, how exhausting the heat of my rage, burning me without mercy, without end.

You will know the taste of love that is spoiled and polluted and it will make you choke.

But it will stop.

And that's because you'd die if I didn't give way, if I wouldn't be soft, if I would not realize that you were hurting and planned to go on sharing the hurt, which was mine the whole time, despite you playing no part whatsoever in the game.

But how do I stop you completely when you've grabbed your role with greed, and played your part well?

How, when, before I knew it, it was my turn to play into your hands?

You knew, was that it?

Had you known that I wouldn't struggle, that I wouldn't resist, that I wouldn't have to fight, that you wouldn't need to put up a fight to claim me?

Had you always known?

Had I...helped by being so easy?

Had I crept into your open, waiting hands, agreeing, my heart at rest, my gaze docile? Had I been so pathetic for expressing my wants so shamelessly?

Had I...

...wanted you all along?

You had had time to leave, to jump ship, change flights, get off at the nearest bus stop, return to the terminal, flag a new cab. I never told you to stay. I never told you not to waste your tickets since you had already bothered buying them.

Or perhaps like you, I had learned your art, that in the silence I had told you all I wanted to say and yes, only you needed to know all this.

Perhaps I had said "stay."

Perhaps all my stormy looks, all my frowns, scowls, bursts of impatience and annoyance and anger, they were much easier to show, but they were my winks, smiles, grins, chuckles, bursts of affection and fear and complete, utter desire.

Perhaps I wanted you to pay attention.

Perhaps I wanted you to look—look now!—because I've gotten used to you looking, staring, gazing, eying, watching me—so look damn it, because I want you to honor me by using your eyes to trace me, to outline where I start and where I end.

Perhaps I..albeit, resentfully, grew to look for you, and in the void between this and caring, grew to want you.

And this was maybe because you wanted what others hadn't seen, which what what really I wonder time and time again, but maybe you saw some worth in me?

And could it be...that because of that, then and there, I had started loving you?

Or perhaps because you had given me reasons to love you.

Perhaps when you smiled, I couldn't figure out what it was that made you do that, and maybe the mystery made it cute, although definitely juvenile, that at your age, you could crack such a simple, sure smile with the confidence that I wouldn't hit you and take out a few of your teeth.

Perhaps I liked your big hands and the lives they saved at the hospital and how they also saved my me, and made me scream with pleasure when they snaked down, down, down and found me, throbbing, thick, thundering, tense, tympanic against the slender curve of your fingers.

Perhaps I liked how you were able to get me to look at you, not look through you, but at you, look at you in such a way that I'd be able to tell my fingers to explore the broad valley of your shoulders, the small, perk peaks of your breasts, travel down to the trim smoothness, that majestic plain, your belly, until my hand brushed against sandpaper and caressed all that was vibrant, giving and dutiful, all that was you, all that you would be as you'd take me away up until when I'd sink down, crying against your groin from the taste of your nectar, filling my mouth with all that I'd ever need in this life or in any other.

But it would never be enough.

I would always lust for more, for one more chance, one more try, one more round, and I'd have you fill my mouth again and I'd suck you hard, I'd suck you dry, I'd bite you and tease you and pull hard and suck agonizingly slow until you gave way and you'd come in my mouth, where you'd writhe and convulse in me and paradise would shudder on my tongue.

To get your revenge—but of course you would—you'd do the same, and sweet ecstasy would have me blacken out with pride. But I'd be glad to see you, hear you, feel you take me, punish me so ruthlessly that going mad would be the least of my worries as long as you'd do it again, and again and again.

And perhaps if you'd just kiss and then lick my lips, if you'd do that then crush me with the weight of you, taking the air out of my lungs forcibly, I'd gladly expire with or without you. I'd be happy, I'd be completely, immovably, intolerably, irrevocably happy that dying from it all would merit me dying at all.

You did this to me.

You made me addicted to you, so bear up, take it all, act like a man, my man, you deserve this pain, my panic that I might someday somehow unexplainably lose you.

You deserve my sobs, my whining, my ceaseless weeping, my joyous cries, relieved sighs, excited exclamations.

You deserve my shouts, my side glances, my needy touches.

So take it. Take it all and hold them in your hands and then store all of them away in your heart.

I have much, much more to give, but even I don't know when and in what amount, how or why or if I'd be able to will it to happen completely.

But I swear all of it will be only for you.

Each breath.

Each heartbeat.

Each synapse firing a message.

Each bit.

Everything.

Don't chastise me for being too comfortable or naïve or at peace with you—and don't you damn patronize me.

I don't ever think I'll be immune. Your viral strain will always be a strong one.

But you're the doctor and I'm the teacher. If it doesn't bother you, if you think I have no reason to worry that playing host to your love, however infectious, will never present a problem, that I'll survive and my days will not end, then make sure they continue, and that each night, we won't part.

I can make it on my own in the morning, but when the stars come out...I will need you.

Damn you for addicting me, damn you for having me rely on you. I'm now dependent

...on your breath for air

...on your gaze for light

—so damn you if you leave me, abandon me in the tunnel.

I'll hold on if I can and if I can't, I'll follow your scent to where you are and like it or not, but I will be home with you and I will share your bed after I take a swing at you for good measure.

But...

But when you're asleep, I'll kiss the place where my fist connected with your flesh.

I'll brush my lips over that little hill, that mark of my joy.

I'll praise it...

Adore it...

Bless it...

Honor it with age-old prayers and

...whisper my heart's deepest thanks...

Thank you.

Thank you for letting me navigate through the seas to find you waiting, careful and compassionate, and with perfect faith that my ship, after sailing leagues, will be able to dock and find solace in the cool shade of your shadow.

It will beckon me forward, your love, and my own will meet you half way.

And I will then finally come to understand...

...that sitting on a park bench, looking dejected and utterly defeated, was the best path to you.

Nowaki.

In literature, this is how we try. We try to make sense of the what keeps us in its grasp, we try to form words around them and we pray that they bear the weight of our meaning.

So don't smile, don't shake your head, don't call my name, don't breathe.

I'm done talking but not loving, so take the first step and drink it all down.

I'm going to make another try, harder, wilder, more relentless, more reckless and so I will begin with this:

Breathe deeply, I'm going in—and taking you with me.

Author's Note: Took me all of close to six house to type, edit and check stuff with this piece. Whew! Exhausted! I need a shower...after I roll on the floor a couple of times to get the tension out of my back, haha! Like I mentioned before, do review, drop your comments in the box and hand in your suggestions if it merits your time. Thank you very much for stopping by to read this. Jya nee! :)