6. the space between dream and reality

Shindou was the only person Akira had ever metwho actually didn't wear a suit to a title match. He may have, for once, actually turned up early to it, but he appeared to be fully prepared to defend the Honinbou title from Touya Meijin in jeans and a T-shirt. Akira found him right outside the match room, sitting next to the door. He was humming tunelessly, absently playing with some stones. The few reporters who'd arrived as of then were looking at him askance, for both his behavior and his appearance, Akira was sure. Then again, one could hardly expect any better from the notoriously clueless genius of the Go world.

Akira cleared his throat to let Shindou know he'd arrived. Shindou looked up at him with bright eyes, filled with dangerous challenge. Akira inhaled sharply, feeling a stab of excitement, and almost had to steady his breathing. The first title match he and Shindou would play against each other, he realized, and Shindou wasn't frightened at all. Shindou was just sitting there in his 5-for-go shirt and glaring up at Akira with confidence.

Akira walked over and stood next to him, taking his place behind the other man. Shindou's fist slapped ominously shut, clenching violently. Akira leaned down and put his hand over Shindou's, meeting that hot gaze with the same electricity.Shindou breathed out and licked his lips. Akira pulled his pale, sweaty hand back and felt the warmth of Shindou's flushed skin brush against it. He helped Shindou up and felt Shindou's muscles snap into readiness.

"About time you finally got here," Shindou said, and in his grown face, Akira could still see the careless kid who'd challenged him with such determination in a school tournament.

You'd better take this seriously," Akira shot back.

"Of course," Shindou said. "You'll wish I'd gone easy on you.

Your last match was horrible," Akira said calmly, his will pushing against Shindou's, fingers still lightly touching. "Your end game was a mess."

"Only you would say that," Shindou groaned. "Say that again when you lose to me!" he snapped.

Akira stared into Shindou's eyes, captivated by them as ever, and felt a thrill that only playing this man gave him. His stomach felt weak from Shindou's eyes being on him, fixed on only him. He wasn't afraid, either. "That's why," Akira said coolly, "I don't intend to lose,"

He walked away into the bathroom and stared at his reflection, ready to win the first of the seven games. He moved his right hand experimentally. In his mind, the sweaty trace of Shindou's warmth still lingered there. Akira looked into the mirror with a predator's smile. He smiled with the certainty that everything he desired was right within his grasp.

Akira's heart shot out of his throat as his eyes opened to the morning's half-light. He'd fallen asleep on the latest issue of Weekly Go. Shindou's record, a string of forfeits, was the first thing he sawHis eyes felt suddenly as if they'd been stung. It's not like there's anything like a promise, after all.

"What do I want?" Akira whispered.

19. red and 23. candy

Akira waved goodbye to his mother and turned his back, too grown-up to actually watch her go. Father was out at a match that night, so he and his wife had already said their brief, understated goodbyes. Mother was going to visit her own family over the weekend, and she was dressed like she was a student again, the jeans she was wearing a rare sight in the Touya household. It was strange watching her kneel and bow to the threshold before she drove off. He could have been the parent and she the child.

He stood in his pajamas with his back to the doorand stared at the expanse of empty house. He breathed in and out, the morning air sweeping through and lightly touching his hands. He thought about the matches he'd played that month and shut the door, moving his shoes to a place no one could trip on them. He'd done that once and took pains never to do so again.

Akira waited a few minutes, which he spent standing in the kitchen, drinking clear spring water from a small bottle, thinking about go players before his mind fixed elsewhere- he remembered one of his students when he was younger, an older girl, flushing as she explained sex to him and he just stared at her uncomprehending. He thought of the heated glances he saw people give each other over go boards, which made him awkward. He tilted his head back, taking a long swig to finish off the cool, smooth liquid. He watched in the corner of his eye the stretch and curve of his neck reflected in the panes of glass.

He leaned up, yawned slowly, and his thoughts shot idly across thatsilken plain. He felt his face warm as a cool droplet traced down the sharpness of his mouth and landed in the delicate dulled blades of his collarbone He let his feet take him to the go room. His favorite board was withdrawn, the smooth, slender wood of the surface deceptively fragile as he lifted it to his chest. He walked to his own room and locked the door with a minuscule click.

Akira walked over to his computer and selected a particular playlist. A slow, languid tango began to saturate the perfectly sterile room, and the natural light shifted, leaf shadows intricately patterned across the paper doors outlining their contours in the most clever of inks. The go board was discarded on his futon and he crawled over to get under its support. There was a bit of fumbling before he pulled out a tiny, sticky box. Melting together in berry-like globs within its paper walls were chocolate-covered cherries, casting their own promising musky smell. Akira leaned back and breathed in to the rippling, prickly jumps of the Spanish guitar.

He knelt down and stretched his arms as far as they could go under the bed. They fell into something soft and enveloping, filling his hands with the sensation of having dragged his fingertips across the surface of a deep lake. He reached and pulled, and folds of silk brushed his sweaty palms. He pulled the kimono out, making the paper-thin sash move under his grip like human skin. It had belonged to his mother, but she'd never worn it or given it any mind, so it was unmarked, and his now.

He buried his face in the woundingly gentle material, closing his eyes and letting the liquid caress explore his mouth. His hair, pulled back from his face, left his neck small and naked. His nondescript house slippers were absently discarded. He felt his chest rise and fall beneath his fingertips as he unbuttoned his pajama top, sliding the green cotton off as he would slide a white stone across a board. The skin on the side of his hip was shockingly sensitive to the free air. The clarity of the solitude around him gave him confidence.

He sat down on his futon and pulled the kimono to him, folds trailing around each other as they slithered towards him. He twisted on his side and pushed his right arm into place. The sleeve was long, trailing past his soft knuckles to his sharply calloused fingertips. The rich red wrapped around his shoulders as he pulled the left sleeve on. Akira reached to draw the kimono around his body, savoring the intrusion of crimson-flavored ice.

Akira fell back and fiery dragons coiled around the muscles in his calves, releasing all control of his conscious thought. He fell back against the pillows as a game was placed on the board, realizing the furious ecstasy the music had abandoned itself to as his body's uncertain burning. He pushed the ancient, heavy wood top off the candy box and reached inside, hand withdrawing sticky with sugar and dark chocolate. Some of it almost dripped onto the kimono, so he pushed the sleeve off his left shoulder before raising his wet hand to his mouth and sinking his teeth into the tart, delicious fruit, the bittersweet pigments melting into his lungs. With the first attack of the game progressing, the sinful red poured stickily up his legs, he began to eat.

Akira stared at the lines of white and black, licking his lips clean, and played with the soft skin on the inside of his thighs. Licking the sharp teeth in the front of his mouth, staring at fireworks of genius shaped of stones, he tilted his head further back and imagined it against the shoulder of some ugly, trendy T-shirt as he buried his mouth into Shindou Hikaru's neck.

The silk taunted his stomach, vivid and bright against his dullness, and juice coated his mouth like saliva, stingingly wet. He had resigned at this point in the game, so the trail of stones abruptly stopped struggling, leaving a half-mounted stairway shoved into two dimensions. Akira imagined pushing his fingers into Shindou's head and reaching whatever mysteries crouched there, waiting to be released, as he was. He closed his eyes longingly, draped out raw and open, and felt like alcohol being finger-painted into a gaping, jagged wound. The impression of Shindou's face was carved behind his eyes with absolute surety, carelessly, brilliantly shining. If he could have dreamed, he would have liked to have done so in shades of gold.

You will never know me, Shindou, Akira thought. Never.

22. cradle

The sky was kind of ominous, with the dark clouds gathering in the right corner of the horizon, but that didn't stop the boys' lacrosse game. Akari knew from painful experience that few things could. Really, she thought, Hikaru shouldn't be goofing off like this when he has a match tomorrow. Well, he was right when he said he needed to blow off stress, but this game looked pretty stressful to her.

Hikaru scored a goal, and his team won, ending the game. He ran over to her, red-faced and laughing. "Did you see, Akari! I haven't lost my sports skills, after all!"

Akari looked funny with the look she had on her face. "Shouldn't you be practicing go, Hikaru?"

"You know I do that all the time," Hikaru said, tossing the ball up and down in his stick. "I need to take a break sometime, though." He could see the shadows of her memories of the time he'd tried to forget go creeping up on her face. She worried too much. He remembered his feelings at that time, too, but right now, there was nowhere else he'd rather be, the white sky, freshly-cut grass smell, and the stick sliding in his fingers. Atari, atari, he thought, and imagining winning a go game in this game's place.

"I'm building confidence," Hikaru said.

Akari tilted her head. "Huh," she said. "Neh, Hikaru, how do you keep the ball from falling out of your stick when you run?"

"It's a technique called cradling," Hikaru said. "You do it. I wouldn't expect a girl like you to know about it."

Akari rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. "Tell me how!" she demanded.

"I can't tell you," Hikaru said, blinking. "It's more instinct. You just do it."

"Why doesn't the ball fall?" Touya asked Hikaru, some time later. The lightly sprinkling rain made darker trails in his hair.

"Because I'm cradling it," Hikaru said.

"That's the way you move your stick back and forth?" Touya asked. Hikaru nodded. Touya looked puzzled.

"Never played lacrosse before?" Hikaru asked. Touya shook his head.

"Is it hard to learn to cradle?" Touya asked.

"No," Hikaru said. "You just have to practice."

Touya nodded. "I get it, you use your experience. You learn by instinct, right? Like go."

Hikaru blinked. "Yeah, exactly," he said, and looked up.

A slight smile lit up Touya's face. "I think I'll watch you a little first, though."

26. if only I could make you mine

"I resign," said Shindou, and left.

Akira nodded. "Thank you for the game," he said back, and gathered up the pieces. After cleaning, he walked over to the table with the score records and marked his win. He watched Shindou's back disappear out of the corner of his eye. Only someone who know Akira inordinately well would have noticed the harsh way his teeth dug into his bottom lip, and the slightest way his hands were shaking.

Akira checked again that he'd put away everything properly before making his way towards the door. Several go reporters he recognized were waiting for him there with notepads open. He could see they had questions waiting behind their teeth. He stopped before them and shifted his bag, held in front of him with tense white fingers. Adrenaline rushed through his brain and coiled in his arms and legs. His right hand spasmed.

"Touya-kun, could I have a word?" one asked.

Akira gave the man the best polite smile he could and fidgeted in his immaculate blue suit before them. "I really need to go home and get some rest. This is a lot later than I'm accused to. If you call me later, I'd be very happy to answer all of your questions."

Before they could protest, Akira squeezed past them and darted into the bathroom. A few steps and he'd shut himself in a stall and hurriedly pushed the lock into place. No one else was there. The sky outside the bathroom's blurry window really was a pearly black.

Akira let out a deep breath like a moan as he finally let himself sag against the artificial plastic walls. Bright colors swam across his vision as he groaned, legs weak beneath him. His teeth were gritted together, painfully tight. Akira's fingers shook as he fumbledto get the clasp on the front of his dress pants undone. He cursed, nearly cutting his finger on the zipper, before he got them open.

He reached inside his boxers, pushing them down, and grabbed himself roughly, making a strangled noise in his throat at the sensations it brought his achingly sensitive flesh. He was so hard it hurt, exquisitely hurt, thighs soaked wet with pre-cum. His fingernails almost dug into flesh as he started to pull desperately. Each stroke made low hisses erupt out of his throat, eyesshut firmly.

This wasn't the first time he'd had to do this after a match with Shindou, and he was used to the ragged feelings of guilt and humiliation, used to the faint taste of blood in his mouth from how tightly his teeth were clenched over his mouth to keep himself from making noise. Sparks of pleasure shot behind his eyes like blows hitting him and a small whimper escaped despite his efforts. His head fell back, and he called to mind fantasy after fantasy.

Pictures in the shape of thoughts and feelings gripped his mind- reaching over the board to grab Shindou and smash his lips to the other boy's- Shindou pushing his own shirt up with careless hands- tanned stomach and dark nipples- Shindou sprawled across Akira's bed, laughing- Shindou pushing a stone forward- Shindou yelling a challenge at him- running his hands through Shindou's bleached hair- Shindou marking a win in the record book- sucking on Shindou's ear- Shindou's hand in his- Shindou saying something unbearably stupid- Shindou on his knees naked with his ass raised, spreading himself apart with his hands, begging- Shindou's hand on him- Shindou jerking off- Shindou hugging him- Shindou turning a bad move into a good move- Shindou covered with go stones, sliding a cool black one across his own skin- Shindou licking salt off his fingers- Shindou grinning at him- Shindou tilting his neck towards Touya- Shindou's eyes- Shindou's mouth forming the words "I like you"-

Touya spit on his fingers and pushed his index finger into his entrance. He gasped at the sudden pain, but pushed the finger further in and felt brilliantly painful pleasure explode inside him. He whimpered a little as he pushed a second finger in, the ache sharp like a needle or a slash as he stretched himself open, writhing around his hands, and pushed back against them. That was all it took.

Touya sighed, finally, and opened his eyes. A deep breath, and he was ready to go back home.

I wonder if you would understand.