Rating: PG.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: None.
Notes: So, here it is. The not-very-long-at-all-awaited-sequel to "Impatience" and "Visiting Hours". Enjoy? (There's a little omake drabble at the end, too)
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Hikaru wiped a speck of dust off of his go board and smiled. Akira looked over at his board and raised an eyebrow. "Whose board are we actually going to put here?"
Furrowing his brow, Hikaru looked around the already-cramped apartment. "Um, in the bedroom?"
Akira shook his head and began unwrapping one of his goke. "I've already got my other board in there."
Hikaru smiled. "Great! Then we can have breakfast in bed and still play go!" He looked around for a moment, then grinned smugly. "We'll just keep both in here."
"There isn't enough room, Shindou."
Hikaru moved Akira's board closer to the wall and his own closer to Akira's. "There you go, Touya. Now there's room. And this way we can have people over to play, or we can study separately, or we can play two games at once!"
Akira raised an eyebrow at him and removed the other goke from the box that his mother had helped him pack. "Do you want to play a game now? Just one... We have to leave in a little while to go get another load of our belongings, but a single game couldn't hurt, right?"
Sliding across the tatami mats on his knees, Hikaru came to rest before Akira and wrapped his arms around him. "This is why you're the best boyfriend in the world." He looked nervous for a moment, then kissed Akira quickly before sliding back to the other side of the board. "Of course I'd like to play. Nigiri?"
Hikaru took black. Akira took white. After fuseki, they started talking. Hikaru began the conversation as he capped a formation. "How did your parents take it?"
Akira responded with a diagonal play. "My mother looked like she was going to cry, but I've talked to her about moving out before. About the, er, other thing? She made me wash my mouth out with soap and then say it again. I'm not sure what difference it made except that my tea tasted funny. But she helped me pack up and made me promise to come home at least once a week to get some food. She wants you to come with me if you can... at least the first time."
"And your father?" Hikaru connected to his komoku stone.
Laughing quietly, Akira looked at Hikaru and smiled. "He looked almost shocked when I told him, but not for the reasons I was expecting. He thought we'd been dating for a while and didn't say anything about it because he was glad to see me with a good go player. He was also expecting me to move out soon, so it wasn't a terrible situation -- just awkward... with really bad-tasting tea. How about your parents?" Akira used a furukami to great effect.
Hikaru made a face at Akira's move and responded with a hiraki. "My mom laughed and looked scared for a minute, then asked if I was serious. She accepted it, though, and has also invited you over for dinner whenever we get the chance. She was trying to give me money, but I couldn't take it. The place where Dad works hasn't been doing too well lately, so I've been sneaking money into her purse whenever I know she's going shopping. Dad... well, I haven't really talked to him a lot since I started playing go. I told him I was moving out and he looked... sad and a bit relieved. If nothing else, the electric bill will go down without me there. The water bill, too."
Akira looked concerned for a moment before he hardened his expression just a bit and placed a kikashi near Hikaru's hiraki. "Were you planning to move out even if I didn't agree?"
"I was..." Hikaru smiled weakly, using karami. He cleared his throat and looked at Akira again, "I've been planning it, yes. But I've been hinting this to you for over a year. When I made the decision to move out, I realized that things were going to change... a lot. I figured that one big change is a good time for all of the other big changes that need to happen... so I started hinting a bit more, and then coming out and saying some things, and... God, Touya! You're as dense as a go stone sometimes! I told you three weeks ago that you have beautiful eyes and you just put on a pair of sunglasses and kept on reading Weekly Go. I grabbed your ass in the elevator three days after that and you pretended not to notice. I gave you the onion in my ramen that was shaped like a heart!" He sat back and let out a sigh. "Sorry. That was getting to me."
Looking down at the formation on the board, Akira wasn't sure what to say or even what move to play. "I..." He thought back to the incidents and realized that he hadn't thought they were particularly unusual at all. He'd realized it when he'd been grabbed, but hadn't thought much about it. It usually happened at least once during every tournament he went to, so he had learned to ignore it. "Thank you, though, for this. And, although it isn't my place to do it, thank you for being a good son." He rubbed at a dull spot on the stone in his hand and smiled. "Thank you for... for everything, really."
"Even for that one time you thought I was eating ramen out of a goke and you went to slap me and I punched you in the stomach and you bit your lip really hard and bled on your purple shirt?"
Akira took a deep breath and connected on the far side of the formation. "I had almost forgotten about that, but... yes. I hope you brought those bowls with you. They really did look like goke. Also, for your information, that shirt was lavender."
"The bowls are in the kitchen already. And, really... lavender? And you didn't know you were gay?"
Akira bristled and slammed another move onto the board.
Hikaru's eyes went wide. "You just went twice in a row."
"I did n-" But, as soon as Akira looked at the board, he knew that Hikaru was telling the truth. "Shindou, just kill me." He let his head fall forward and shook his head at what he'd done.
"It's okay. Just don't do it again. That just sort of scared me. We're pros. We don't do that kind of thing."
"What are we doing for dinner tonight, Shindou?"
"Um..." Hikaru looked at the mounds of unpacked boxes all around them. "Didn't you say your mother wanted us over for dinner?"
Akira smiled. "I think she was intending for that to be a bit later on, but let me give her a call and it can probably be arranged."
"Great. You keep telling me your mom is a great cook. I want to find out for myself. Then we can decide how often we'll go there for dinner."
Hikaru stood up and stretched out his arms over his head, yawning loudly. "I'm almost finished getting my stuff over here. I just have to bring in my books, really."
"You have books?" Akira looked curious.
"Well... mostly manga. But I have some Japanese classics and some go books and some stuff like that. It takes up maybe two-thirds of the little bookshelf that I have. I'll probably get rid of my desk since we don't have room. If nothing else, we can get a filing cabinet or something and work at the kitchen table."
"You've really thought all of this out, haven't you?" Akira smiled and put his hand on Hikaru's.
Hikaru turned his hand over to grasp Akira's. "Yeah. I have. For months now. I may even have gone so far as to pick the location."
"But I thought you said the people who lived here before us only moved out about a week ago?"
Laughing and reaching up with his free hand to rub his neck a bit, Hikaru smiled haphazardly. "Well, you see, it only takes some fake ghosts and practical jokes before some people just decide they don't want to live where they're living."
"I'm beginning to question whether this was a good idea."
Tightening his grip on Akira, Hikaru smiled. "You know it is or else you wouldn't be here. You're not that kind of guy."
Sighing deeply, Akira nodded slightly. "Okay, so I can tough this out at least a little while longer. But, never do anything like that again."
"Not even if I'm getting you a Christmas present and I see the perfect thing to get you and some snot-nosed little brat has just snapped up the last one and is attempting to drool on it?"
"Okay... maybe then. But, no more apartments!"
"Well, duh. We have one now, so it's no big deal. This was just one that I could afford on my own even if you had said no."
Akira dissolved into laughter again. "You had everything planned, right down to telling me about Sai, didn't you?"
Hikaru shrugged and ran his thumbs in small go-stone-sized circles on the back of Akira's hand. "Maybe."
"You're always one step ahead of me in reading the game, aren't you?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that."
Akira looked surprised. "Oh?"
"Yeah... after all, you kissed me first. I expected you to wait at least a week."
"Shindou... that wasn't a surprise move. That was honte."
"Honte?"
"The proper move."
Hikaru grinned and pelted Akira with a go stone. "See? This is why I need you around. I still don't know half of this stuff."
Akira picked up the thrown stone with a sniff and looked at it. "Careful, Shindou. These can get stuck in the oddest places." He smiled suddenly and threw it back at Hikaru. "Now hold on a minute and let me call my mother." He let go of Hikaru's hand slowly and made his way over to his jacket, retrieving his cell phone from his pocket.
Half-listening to Akira's conversation, Hikaru cleaned up the board and closed both goke. Things were changing, yes, but they were changing for the better, or at least the more comfortable. But his mind wandered at the same time, wondering where in the world Akira got gotten a go stone stuck. Really, the possibilities were endless.
-
Owari.
SPECIAL BONUS OMAKE:
-----How Akira Knows the Pain of Falling From A Sitting Position----- a drabble
When Akira was just a young boy of about 5 years old, he liked to watch his father play go. But his father's board was too tall for him to sit at like his father and his father's friends did. So Akira practiced in the night sometimes, dragging a shoe box over to the board and kneeling on it and trying to play across the whole board. On the third night that he tried, the shoe box caved in just as he was playing below the first hoshi. He fell forward and hit his forehead on the go board and cried loudly until his mother found him and took him to the hospital. It took five stitches to close. When Hikaru saw it many years later, he remarked that go really was ingrained into Akira's head. Akira, despite laughing, was not amused.