Series: Bridges||Title: Hopeless Heart
Characters: Manjoume, Juudai||Romance: Manjoume x Juudai (one-sided)
Word Count: 500||Chapter Count: 1/1
Genre: Drama, Romance||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing, Bridge-verse, A75, fic that's not your OTP; GX Flash Bingo, #110, Manjoume x Juudai; Pairing Diversity Boot Camp, #7, regrets
Notes: This is the Bridges-universe. So, a few spoilers, but nothing end-game.
Summary: Manjoume learns things about Juudai and it hurts in ways he never thought it would.
It began with a lost duel.
Manjoume didn't even know it at the time. He'd called it hate. He called it rivalry. He called it the determination to beat Juudai one day, no matter what it took.
He didn't imagine - he couldn't have - how little it mattered in the end. How when it all came down to it, Juudai's heart - what heart he had - belonged to someone else entirely. That he'd never stood a chance.
That no matter what he did, none of it would have ever mattered.
If he'd beaten Juudai in a duel, with both of them at their full strength - the only way he would consider it to count - then he would've thought about inviting Juudai to one of the Manjoume family homes to spend a bit of time.
Not one that his brothers would be at, of course. He refused to let them into his life more than he had to. And he knew they wouldn't approve of Juudai anyway.
Not like he did. Not like he refused to until he'd established he was at the top of their pecking order.
He told himself he had a crush on Tenjoin-kun. He did. It wasn't a lie there. He told himself he liked her and only her and what he felt for Juudai was just hate. Rivalry. Friendship. Something totally different.
Whatever it was, it galvanized him to join Johan in searching for Juudai, led him to discover Ojama Country and more Ojamas than he'd thought existed - including one with wings, which led him right to thoughts of Juudai and Manjoume often wondered why he'd been cursed like this.
Finding out what Juudai did in the world he'd gone to dealt a blow that Manjoume had no idea of how to deal with. To see Juudai with no more masks, no more deceptions, no more illusions to hide his heart…
It took three days for Manjoume to want to eat anything more than the barest essentials and another four after that before he could sleep enough not to have dark circles under his eyes. He never told anyone what he saw on his travels alone, no more than Asuka or Kenzan or Fubuki-san spoke of what they saw.
He thought they knew. The look in their eyes made it clear. Juudai wasn't who they thought he'd been and it would take months to adjust to that. He didn't know if they had months. He didn't know if he could adjust in the first place. Juudai had been part of his life at Duel Academia since the very first day.
It was a lie, he told himself. A deception. He told himself that a thousand times and it still made little difference.
Love sucked.
The End
Notes: Manjoume will have a happy ending, eventually. Just not with Juudai.