"It's a three and a half moku win."
"It should have been only a half moku. I can't believe I couldn't see that hand you played over here." Hikaru pointed to the upper left of the board, at the clustering of black stones that had blocked off a critical gain of territory.
"Have you been sleeping well?" Touya did not smirk, and his tone was not smug; he didn't have to do either to make the hair at the back of Hikaru's neck prickle. "It's not like you to be so careless." His eyes were still scanning the goban, replaying the game in his mind to store it with the hundreds of others already there.
Hikaru kept focused on the board, rubbing a little at his chin instead of responding to Touya's taunt. "Ah!" he snapped his fingers and pointed again. "Before you placed here, I could have escaped over there, and avoided the whole problem. Damn it! I was too distracted by going on the aggressive here near the center to notice it!" He flopped back onto his rear to stretch out his legs and scrub a palm over his face. He didn't feel feverish, and he'd been sleeping fine... no, there wasn't a good excuse, except that he'd been human again.
When he pulled his hand away from his face, he saw Touya's eyes drop down to the board. "Are you going to just let that stand, then?" he asked mildly. There was a little twitch on the left side of his mouth that Hikaru knew meant he wanted to smile. Hikaru broke into a grin as he settled in front of the goban again, watching that flutter of muscle. Touya's face was easier to read than his hands by now, and Hikaru didn't need the real smile.
"Are you kidding me? Of course not." The twitch started at the other side, and Hikaru looked down to begin clearing the board before he could see it play out. The stones clattered softly into his hands, and then into their containers. When the sound across from him stopped, Hikaru looked up to begin the next game, and met Touya's eyes.
It was strange, he realized, that they'd spent all this time together, so many hours directly across from each other, and had really almost never looked each other in the eye. Usually he'd watch Touya's eyes as he played, following the movements across the board to try to read him and gauge a few hands ahead. Contact was fleeting, a second of two before he went to scan the game as well. That intensity in his eyes during the game seemed like it wasn't made for anything as small as another person.
But it seemed now that Touya had been looking at him for a while, and for that matter, he'd been looking back. Hikaru didn't blink and saw the challenge, caught the flicker of tension in Touya's brows and felt a particular twitch near the left side of his own mouth.
Touya blinked as he leaned forward, putting one hand on the goban, but Hikaru kept his eyes open as he rose onto his knees to meet him halfway. He could taste Touya's breath when they connected, and feel it on his face, but he couldn't see his eyes. His face was a blur, and his lips were dry, and some muscle in his thigh was starting to cramp. Touya's hand had to be leaving a print on the goban.
They pulled away in the same movement, just as they'd come together. Touya put the back of his hand to his mouth as Hikaru wiped the board clean with the corner of his sleeve.
"Do you want to play white this time?" Hikaru lifted the pot of stones to rest on the board and looked up to see the twitch at the left side of Touya's mouth when he dropped his hand away.
"Please."