On Another Path
Chapter Fourteen: Bruised
Hiroki stepped out of the cab. He rarely used taxi services, as it was expensive and he preferred to save his funds for the acquisition of texts. And this was just what he had been doing pretty much all day. He'd spent hours floating from used bookstore to used bookstore, until by the time he was through with his rounds, he was so weighted down with bags he knew it would be all but impossible to navigate any form of public transit.
As he had been searching, Hiroki had tried to still the whirlwind churning in his mind. Even now, just thinking about the events of the morning brought a humiliated flush to his cheeks.
God damn you, Akihiko.
Hiroki set his bags down on the curb and took out his phone. He turned it on for the first time since leaving Akihiko's apartment. The literature student was sadly pleased to see that there were twenty-six missed calls from Akihiko.
Good. So at least the ass knows I'm pissed, Hiroki thought. But in truth this was not all he was: his pride had been deeply, gravely, wounded.
After closing his phone, Hiroki put it back into his pocket. He took his jacket off, draped it over his arm, and picked up his bags, readying himself for the trip up the stairs to his apartment.
He would have taken the elevator, but by using the stairs he would be able to look down the walk to his doorway without being visible. This way, unlike the elevator, if Akihiko happened to be waiting outside his door again, he would be able to just turn around and leave without causing a scene.
As Hiroki climbed, his apprehension mounted. He had been thinking all day about what he might say to Akihiko if he saw him. Still, despite all his ruminations, the carefully planned conversations he'd carried on with himself, he was fearful.
He did not trust his own heart at this point… his love had made him weak. Lost in this musing he moved onto the last landing on his way to his floor, his body on automatic pilot.
A motion in front of Hiroki caught his eyes and pulled them back outwards. Looking up he was startled to see Akihiko waiting for him at the top of the stairs rather than at his apartment door and from the number of butts on the ground he had obviously been here, waiting, for quite some time.
Apparently, in some areas at least, Akihiko did seem to have a clear understanding of his friend.
The young author's expression was grave. Seeing this, despite his resolution, Hiroki's love for Akihiko tore at his heart. As it was, it had always been his best friend's deep pain, as well as his brilliance that had drawn Hiroki to Akihiko.
He recalled vowing to himself, when they were younger, that he would protect Usami Akihiko from any external force that might rise up against him. What he hadn't counted on, again, in his egotistical innocence, was that the biggest thing he actually needed to protect his beloved from was Akihiko himself.
Sensing his foolish heart weakening made Hiroki angry and he used this fury to shore up his defenses. He dropped his eyes and continued to move up the stairs, pushing past.
"Why haven't you been answering your phone? I was worried," Akihiko's soft voice behind him was as effective as a hand on his shoulder, physically stopping his ascent.
"I was busy," Hiroki muttered not moving, but not looking back either.
"Hiroki," in the utterance of his name Akihiko's tone offered a dozen different apologies.
Hiroki bent his head as though he could dodge the impact of his lover's voice.
He felt his fists tighten around the handles of the bags he was carrying. Damning himself, he felt his hands wanting to drop them, to take Akihiko's face between them. He wished to kiss him, to suck any memory of his name out of Akihiko's mouth because as long as Akihiko was able to say it, Hiroki knew he was lost.
"Honestly, Old Man, I really didn't think she would get there that early…" Akihiko sounded incredibly earnest.
Hiroki said nothing, he just shook his head. That small motion gave him the momentum to get his body going again.
Akihiko reached out physically this time, actually laying one of his hands Hiroki's shoulder.
"How would you have liked me to react, Hiroki? Mincing away, acting embarrassed, acting like I was ashamed of what we are? Of what we were doing?"
Hiroki shook Akihiko's hand off and continued climbing. He shouldered his way through the door and out onto the landing. Before this moment, the distance from there to his own door had never seemed so vast.
Akihiko reached for him again, but this time Hiroki whirled around to face him.
"You think I am ashamed of what I am or what we were doing, Akihiko?" Hiroki's normally fiery gaze had darkened wine-red with his anger. "I, who have so much more honestly owned myself in that way than you ever have?" Hiroki's rough voice was rendered almost hoarse with the strain of containing his emotion.
"Even as debauched as you may have found my past behavior, I would have never done something so sordid!"
Hiroki's eyes dropped as did his voice. "What we were engaged in was meant to be a private act between two people, not a scenario acted out for the titillation of some third party.
"If that's what you want, then I suggest you start writing some of those fuck books your editor reads, but don't involve me in trying to act out you pair's fantasies!"
"Hiroki," Akihiko voice was soothingly tender, trying to call his friend back to him, but Hiroki wouldn't have it.
"And then that you continued… While she sat there in the next room!" Hiroki snarled, trying desperately to keep the tremor in his core from manifesting in his limbs.
"Wait a minute, Hiroki! I don't recall you really resisting," Akihiko voice growled, suddenly stern. He was fighting against the awful implications of what his lover and best friend was saying.
"You knew from before I had no leverage in that situation!" Hiroki spat. "Would you have liked me to have struggled, Akihiko? To have made a pitiful scene?" He raised his fury-dark eyes to meet a shocked lavender gaze.
"I understand why you did it, but…"
Akihiko eyes widened at these words, but Hiroki could see that the man still fully didn't comprehend what he was telling him.
Despite his anger, Akihiko's innocent ignorance made Hiroki's traitorous heart ache. He was amazed yet again at how the author could see so many things so clearly and still remain so blind to others.
"How long I have I been with you, Akihiko?" Hiroki asked his voice softening.
"Since that first day in our secret place," Akihiko whispered hesitantly, thrown off by the sudden shift in his lover's manner.
"Do you really think then, that after all this time, I don't know you?" Hiroki's low voice was laced with sorrow.
Akihiko stayed silent, his eyes searching as he waited for Hiroki to continue.
"Yesterday, the exchanges we made, the way you let me in with your body and your words…
"I understand how that would leave you feeling off balance, why you would feel the need to reassert yourself.
"And that talk last night of your mother…
"Akihiko, you told me before how it was for you to come upon her with her lovers. How it seemed at times like she was daring you to catch her. How proudly she flaunted her trysts in front of you."
Hiroki shook his head yet again, his neck ached and his arms had long grown tired from the weight of the books he was carrying, but he didn't dare set them down.
Seeing the stunned realization of the words he'd just said, the excruciating awareness dawning on Akihiko's face, Hiroki knew that if he laid down these burdens he would be moved to pick another one back up. He would embrace Akihiko and he couldn't bear that.
Not now. Not yet.
"How can you be so brilliant and so simultaneously stupid?" Hiroki's gruff voice was both tender and chiding, "You act like you're invincible, but you don't realize all the chinks you have in your armor. How clearly others see them."
Akihiko's normally stoic face crumbled at Hiroki's words. His brow furrowed as he turned away, struggling with the epiphanies that had just been forced upon him.
Hiroki turned and started to move rapidly down the walk to his door. He was vigilantly fighting to keep the tears that threatened his eyes from falling. He had not shed them back at the Akihiko's apartment. He would not shed them here either.
"Hiroki!" Akihiko called after him loudly, though he was not far behind.
The literature student did not look back but kept moving. It only took a few moments however for Akihiko's long legs to catch up.
"Hiroki…" Akihiko entreated, begging his best friend to look at him.
Hiroki refused.
I have already been too soft, said too much. I just need to keep it together until I get inside.
"Hiroki!" Akihiko grabbed Hiroki and slammed him back into the wall of the building just outside his apartment door.
"We're not finished here yet! I am not simply letting you walk away after what you just said!" Akihiko placed his hands on either side of Hiroki trapping him between them.
Hiroki fingers cried with relief as this jarring motion caused his overburdened bags to tear, sending books tumbling to the floor of the landing.
He turned sideways against the wall, trying to shield himself from the powerful emotion radiating from Akihiko. It was as if Akihiko was the moon pulling the tides of his heart irreversibly towards him no matter how he tried to resist.
"I love you Hiroki! I am not going to just leave things like this," Akihiko said roughly.
"Stop yelling you stupid ass, I live here!" Hiroki shouted back.
As if to underscore this, both men turned: a door opened a few spaces down and an older woman with a very disapproving face peered out at them.
Her interruption gave Hiroki a chance to escape.
Akihiko withdrew his arms. Both youths gave a short bow of apology to the woman. She sniffed and haughtily withdrew, closing her door firmly behind her.
Hiroki bent down and began picking up his books.
Akihiko knelt to assist him.
"I used to watch you with Takahiro you know," Hiroki muttered softly, keeping his focus on his books. "You would have never done anything he didn't like. You treated him like something precious…"
Hiroki's eyes glanced up and met, once again, a shocked, lavender gaze.
"I am not a toy, Akihiko…"
"Hiroki…" Akihiko started to say something but was cut off by his own gasped breath. He had reached out and grasped Hiroki's wrist. It was then that he'd seen it.
Hiroki's folded coat he'd had draped over his arm had slipped to the ground as he'd picked up his books. He was wearing a short sleeved dress shirt. It was the only clean one he'd had left at Akihiko's that morning.
Akihiko saw clearly the deep purple bruise on his lover's forearm where Hiroki had bitten himself to keep from crying out after Aikawa had caught them that morning.
This more than anything Hiroki had said shattered him. His pale eyes filled with tears.
"Hiroki," Akihiko whispered brokenly.
Hiroki followed the gaze to the mark he'd made. He blushed furiously and forgot completely about his books. He stood quickly trying to pull his arm out of Akihiko's iron grasp as he fumbled for his apartment key in his pocket with his free hand.
Akihiko, still kneeling, refused to relinquish his arm.
Glancing back Hiroki's eyes widened, he had never seen such a look of pain.
He growled with embarrassment, and finally pulled his hand free. He opened the door and slipped in shutting it behind him. Then Hiroki collapsed back against the door, sliding down into a devastated heap at its base.
"Hiroki… do you hate me now?" Akihiko entreated from the other side of the door.
Hiroki knew Akihiko still had the key to his apartment. He pressed back against the door, praying that Akihiko didn't try to use it because as much as his answer should have been "yes," it was "no" and he knew that it would never be differently.
But if he saw Akihiko again in this instant, as he was, it would kill what little pride he had remaining.
And then where will I be?
"Please, Hiroki," Akihiko's voice was pleading. "Open the door and come back out, we need to talk about this more… "
In response, with shaking hands, Hiroki took Akihiko's key off his ring and slid it under the door.
He could hear Akihiko on the other side. Hiroki heard him strike the wood with his palms in frustration and could tell from the height of the vibrations that Akihiko was still kneeling. He could hear the gasping pants through the thin cheap door of his dwelling.
"Ah… Hiroki… I'm… I'm so sorry." Akihiko was crying.
Hiroki bit down again on his already bruised flesh to muffle his own sobs.
Akihiko continued to linger outside the door for what seemed an eternity.
Just please, hurry up and leave.
Every moment that Akihiko stayed drew the arm not clenched in Hiroki's teeth up further. Far too soon, his long fingers were wrapped around the knob, tensed to turn it.
Finally, Hiroki heard Akihiko rise. He felt a soft "thunk" overhead and had no difficulty reading it as Akihiko's forehead now pressed against his door as he stood on the other side.
"I understand, Hiroki," Akihiko's voice was exceedingly gentle, which just cut Hiroki deeper. "I understand… It's my turn to wait now."
"I will wait Hiroki, for as long as it takes… I promise."
Hiroki heard his friend leave at last. He released his jaws from his flesh with a deep, rasping gasp, drew his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his head in his undamaged arm.
His body trembled. Unconsciously rocking as he sat there, Hiroki could feel the blood welling in the wounds made by his teeth.
All the little punctures now released from the crushing pressure began redly weeping. The rest of Hiroki quickly followed.
Can you tell that I am completely captured by this pair? It feels so dangerous and so traitorous to my egoist love... but the charge and the passion of two creative intellectuals... as exciting as their hard flesh and the growling...
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