Rating: PG.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: None.
Notes: Part six of the "Impatience" arc... the story that I write on napkins and accidentally drop on wet pavement. Enjoy! (Find previous parts at a href"http/www.txq.nu/jumpyboys"Jumpy Boys/a)
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Hikaru came into the room with a stack of letters in his hand. "Mail call!"
Akira came in from the kitchen with a dishtowel still in hand. "Anything good?"
"You mean any game cards?" Hikaru stuck his tongue out at Akira. "Yes. We have three. There's one for me, one for you, and one for Waya which was delivered to us by mistake along with his- WOAH! Okay, Waya is officially a hentai. Babes in Bondage?"
"Do you suppose he's gotten any of our mail?"
Hikaru shrugged. "I'll ask when I go over there later on. Oh, hey, you're playing me." Hikaru blinked and grinned. "Er, I mean, I'm playing you? I was looking at your card instead of mine."
Akira smiled and headed back into the kitchen, calling out over his shoulder, "I suppose the preliminaries of the Honinbou tournament are starting again."
"It sucks that we're matched in the first round. I'm glad it's not a single elimination tournament for the prelims."
"If you get to the semi-finals, I'll..." Akira trailed off, no longer sure of what he was saying.
Hikaru recognized the awkwardness. "You'll let me give you cooking lessons?"
"Yes. Cooking lessons." Akira smiled weakly. "And... if you beat me in the prelims, I'll give you a goodnight kiss."
A sudden look of utter calm on his face, Hikaru gestured toward Akira with the game cards. "I'm holding you to that, Touya Akira."
Akira wasn't sure if the idea made him nervous in a good way, or a bad way.
Two weeks later, as the pair were walking down the street after their game, they were smiling and talking and mainly filling the void. But when they took a step into the apartment, Hikaru turned around toward Akira and bowed before gesturing him in. Akira laughed and wrinkled his brow. "Shindou? What are you doing?"
Hikaru closed the door and put up the latch. "I'm just acknowledging a good opponent and trying to make you feel more comfortable about tonight."
"It's just a kiss, Shindou. I give you kisses all the time."
"Never in bed, you don't. You'll kiss me when I'm busy and when I'm cooking and when I'm studying kifu by myself when you come home and sometimes when I come home when you've been here all day. But you've never kissed me even in our bedroom."
Akira swallowed deeply and took a deep breath. "It means that much to you?"
"You're the guy I love. Of course everything that you do means a lot to me. That's how this whole thing works!"
"Then you'll get your kiss."
After dinner and cleaning up, they played another game. It was a good game, much on the level of their earlier tournament game, but Akira stayed a step ahead of Hikaru and won by one and a half moku. It was certainly not his closest game, but he always felt a heady excitement in playing when he could feel his opponent practically breathing down his neck as Hikaru sometimes did during the night.
But after they brushed their teeth and changed into pajamas, Akira got really nervous. Hikaru was already tucked into his futon, reading Weekly Shonen Jump (something which, like his blonde bangs, he'd never outgrown), and Akira was standing in the hallway, his palms sweaty and his bottom lip trembling. But Akira was never one to break a promise, or be a sore loser, or to back down against tremendous opposition. So he took a deep breath and took the first step.
"Ah, Touya? I was beginning to wonder if you'd forgotten how to get from the bathroom to the bedroom. I know that with all four of these rooms, it's easy to become confused, especially since the other three rooms are the bathroom, kitchen, and living room, none of which look remotely like a bedroom." Hikaru had already set aside his Shonen Jump.
"Shut up, Shindou." Akira shut off the lights and stumbled toward his futon. "Are you still lying down?"
"Yes."
Akira felt for Hikaru's hair on the pillow and allowed that to lead him to the other man's face. He took a deep breath and bent down to kiss Hikaru. His eyes closed in the darkness and he felt his hair move as it touched against Hikaru's face. Hikaru was silent, but responded to the gentle pressure of Akira's kisses with a soft pursed kiss that send a wave of heady euphoria through Akira. He let out his breath in a gentle moan and suddenly pressed himself forward again, his fingers grasping at silken threads of Hikaru's hair and pulling the other man up from the pillow just enough to cup a hand around the back of his head and keep him close while he mouthed passionate nothings against Hikaru's skin and drew kisses from his lips.
"Touya," Hikaru muttered in a husky voice. "You don't... have to do all of this. This is going beyond a simple goodnight kiss."
Akira pulled back and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, panting softly. "Sorry. I got a bit carried away. It felt... good."
"Good," Hikaru muttered. "Now, go to bed. You're cranky in the mornings when you don't get enough sleep."
Chuckling to himself as he made his way into his futon, Akira caught a glimpse of Shindou's wide-open eyes in the moonlight that streamed through the cracks in the blinds. "Shindou?"
The other man's eyes shut. "Yes?"
"If you make it to the semi-finals... we'll go further."
He could hear Hikaru's breath stop for a moment. "Okay." He paused. "Let's have a game after breakfast tomorrow."
Touya smiled and closed his own eyes. Go after breakfast was always a nice thing to wake up to, no matter how "cranky" he might be.
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Owari.