A/N: This was written a year ago for the Hikago Fifthmus event. I wrote it after a group brainstorming with aiwritingfic and uminohikari, both who deserve many thanks for helping me with this. Please comment at your leisure.
Five Days In Which Hikaru Wears Akira's Pink Shirt
Monday: Hikaru Makes an Honest Mistake
The only excuse Hikaru had for his behavior was that it had started off as an honest mistake. What he chose to do afterwards, though, could only be explained by the workings of his own mind, which, as both Waya and Touya have informed him repeatedly, was unfathomable and completely lacking in any decent human logic. Personally, Hikaru felt that Touya of all people had no right to speak, and he glanced down at the result of their latest ill thought-out plan, who was still curled up in dreams.
Knowing Touya, it was probably about go.
Today was one of those rare days where Hikaru had his usual match at nine, but Touya didn't. Instead, he was leaving for Hiroshima in the afternoon for a go event that would span four days. Either way, it allowed Hikaru to persuade Touya to an overnight farewell go party with just them. They had played until the early morning light was shining through Hikaru's bedroom window before finally falling asleep in a tangle of limbs, go stones, and kifu.
In a moment of uncharacteristic exhaustion, Hikaru had stumbled out of Touya's warm embrace to turn off the beeping alarm that came far too soon, subsequently grabbing the first shirt and pants he saw on the floor. During this time Touya merely curled up tighter, a testament to how tired he was. Lucky for him, he had the luxury of sleeping in. Still bleary-eyed with sleep, Hikaru stepped into the bathroom, hoping cold water would be enough to wake him up. It was when he bent forward to wash his face that something caught his eye. He stopped, froze in fact, coming completely awake in a mix of horror and shock.
He was wearing Touya's shirt. More to the point, he was wearing Touya's pink dress shirt.
Hikaru fought the urge to rip the shirt off, forcing himself to look back into the mirror. At least his pants weren't purple, but his usual baggy jeans. Thank god he made a habit of checking himself in the mirror every morning, otherwise he could have gone to the Go Center dressed the way he was, causing horrified looks and…
… Wait.
He had once overheard Waya talking loudly to Isumi that Touya only won as many games as he did because his opponents were so blinded by the color clashing clothes that they were too distracted to concentrate. Only go players of enough caliber had the concentration to overcome that particular handicap.
Well, he could test that.
He looked thoughtfully in the direction of his room, where he knew a certain yellow and black tie was still lying neatly folded on the floor. After all, if he was to make a proper scientific experiment out of this, it would be best to go all the way. Touya would notice that his lavender pants were missing though, not to mention that he had only brought the one pair, which nixed that idea. Of course, he would notice if his tie went missing too, but a tie wasn't so important.
Still, Hikaru couldn't suppress a shudder at the thought of wearing the tie on top of the pink shirt. His hair already clashed horribly enough as it was. And it was the same colors as the tie. This realization, rather than comforting, was rather horrifying. But it will have to do. He wasn't willing to sacrifice everything for this, even if it was for the greater good.
His mother wouldn't stop giving him odd looks when he came down for breakfast, but she managed not to say anything about his clothes, merely asking when Touya would be waking up. Hikaru answered with a shrug, then left before he could catch more of his mother's nagging.
Tuesday: Hikaru Tries to Neutralize and Fails
The results of his experiment remained inconclusive. His opponent had been so weak Hikaru couldn't tell whether the pink shirt was the cause or not. The game was over before yose in a victory that was forgettable. Definitely not something he'd brag to anybody about.
During lunch, he had joined Waya and Isumi at MacDonald's, where Waya had promptly pretended to start throwing up, presumably because of the pink shirt. He had been amused at Waya's retching noises, but it was Isumi who had bothered to say anything about it.
"Shindou… is that Touya's shirt you're wearing?" he'd asked.
"Yeah." He'd then started explaining why, but the only reactions he'd gotten were Waya's eyes growing wider and wider.
"You're crazy."
"It's for the greater good!"
"What greater good?"
"Finding out if Touya's shirt can be neutralized of course!"
"Shindou," Waya had said in a pain-filled voice, "It can't. Now stop acting like an idiot and take the shirt off, please."
The ensuing argument was why Shindou was now standing in front of the mirror, trying to figure out a way to make Touya's shirt look good.
Neutral colors, like black and white, were probably a good start. A few minutes later he was back in front of the mirror with a black t-shirt underneath and jeans, with the pink shirt acting as a light jacket. As he expected, the combination severely neutralized the pink, even with his yellow bangs, but something still felt wrong.
It was cheating.
Touya would never dress the way he would. The point after all, was to see if he could neutralize something Touya would wear, and this definitely wasn't it.
So with a sigh, he went back to his room to find out where he had last put his khakis.
Later that day at the Go Center, in the middle of increasingly uncomfortable stares, Hikaru saw Waya, who had no hesitation when it came to telling him how bad he looked.
"You still look like crap."
"Oh shut up."
His opponent had been a little bit more challenging that day, but continued to make ridiculously stupid mistakes. The older man had also refused to look up at him, which could normally be explained by concentration, but so much concentration wouldn't have resulted in such crappy moves, and Hikaru refused to believe that a fellow pro could be so sloppy. He left the center that day wondering if perhaps Waya was right after all.
Wednesday: Hikaru Is Not In Love
Hikaru woke up that morning with the decision to end his experimentation on Touya's clothes still firmly on his mind. It therefore took an entire five minutes to register that he was once again unknowingly wearing the pink dress shirt when he saw his reflection in the glass doors of the Go Center.
"You know, you can stare at your image in the glass door all you want, it doesn't make Touya's shirt look any better."
"Do you have anything else to say?" Hikaru snapped, glaring at his friend.
"Yeah, you're blocking the doors."
"It's not like you can't walk around me," he grumbled, though he did decide to go in at that point, Waya walking alongside him. There were more people than usual on the ground floor that day, though Hikaru didn't know why. Sometimes it was because one of the more well known professionals was there, though the center also held classes and competitions. It wasn't something Hikaru cared about, so he had no interest in finding out. The looks he was garnering though were starting to make him irritated.
"So, I thought you were going to stop wearing Touya's shirt?"
"I wasn't planning to this morning, but I guess it's become reflex now."
"Shindou, how can something you did for only two days become reflex?"
"I don't know!" Hikaru said, wishing Waya would stop asking him stupid questions like this.
They stopped to wait for the elevator, but Waya was only getting warmed up.
"So how did you manage to get your hands on Touya's shirt anyway?"
"We were playing go in my room and sorta fell asleep while playing. The next morning I was tired and took his shirt by accident."
Waya opened his mouth, then abruptly shut it.
"Wait."
Hikaru felt a sudden uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.
"What?"
"So you played go all night."
"Yeah."
"And the next morning you unbuttoned and took Touya's shirt off by acci—"
"What? No! It was lying on the floor! I just grabbed the first shirt I saw okay? It was dark and everything looked either black or gray, how was I to know it's pink?"
Seeing the strange gleam in Waya's eyes, Hikaru had an inkling of what the other boy was thinking and hurriedly tried to circumvent the inevitable.
"Touya brought pajamas, okay? Just… just…"
But Waya was the cat that'd cornered its prey, with a wide, fierce grin to match.
"I never thought the two of you would be able to pull yourselves away from a game to change," he said in a far too casual manner.
"Well we can," Hikaru said, hoping that it ended the matter.
"Of course you can," the other boy agreed far too cheerfully.
His cheerfulness did nothing to ease Hikaru's sudden rise in panic. He was also fully aware that his mouth was opening and closing like an idiot, but Waya deserved a retort. It wasn't his fault that nothing was coming into his brain. Or rather it was, but Hikaru didn't have any control over it.
"Whatever it is that you're thinking, it isn't it," he finally said lamely.
"So it wasn't an evening of hot, lusty sex with Touya then?" Waya said, prudently taking a step back as he did so.
To his credit, Hikaru had expected that move, and he was already in the middle of whirling around to face his soon to be former friend; former, because when he was done strangling Waya the other pro would be satisfyingly dead. Fortunately for Waya, he never made it past two-thirds of the whirl.
"Oh no, that is an insult to Shindou and Touya-kun," an all too familiar cackling voice said.
Sensing an ally, Waya faced Kuwabara-sensei with a polite yet all too smug smile.
"Hello Kuwabara-sensei."
"No indeed, the kind of true love that Shindou and Touya-kun hold for each other should not be maligned with ordinary, run-of-the-mill lust," the old man continued, laughing in that wheezing way Hikaru was now learning to hate.
"Listen you old fart Touya and I are NOT…!"
"Looooove," the giant bag of bones crooned, cackling wildly.
"You're right," Waya said. "Lust wouldn't explain someone wearing his lover's shirt three days in a row."
"Indeed. It is loooove. Love pure and sweet, only found between the truest of rivals. If only I could find such love myself, but Ogata-sensei is most uncooperative…"
The elevator doors mercifully opened.
Like a hunted rabbit, Hikaru darted in before the doors had fully opened, and desperately smashed at the "close" button. As the doors closed, he could hear Waya's hysterical laughter in between cries of begging Hikaru to open the door. As the elevator chimed to a close, he backed into the left corner, a hand on his face to soothe away the burning in his cheeks.
Waya appeared in the playing room a few minutes later, but made no move to go to him. For the rest of the day, Hikaru refused to speak to Waya.
Thursday: Hikaru Teaches Touya a Lesson
The morning Hikaru and Touya would play the deciding match for the challenger to the Gosei title couldn't have arrived sooner. After the teasing the day before a feeling of malicious anticipation had settled somewhere in the vicinity of his belly, and as he eyed the neatly folded pink shirt on his chair, he couldn't help but grin a little. Today, he fully intended Touya to finally understand how his horrible fashion habits affected everybody around him.
It was freshly laundered, his mother insisting the night before that if he was going to continue to wear the shirt for the rest of the week, that he at least allow her to clean it before his major match against Touya. The fact that his mother had known about the Gosei title had surprised him a bit, but on second thought, it was probably Touya who had told her. Hikaru, like other boys his age, never told his mother anything, but Touya was weird that way.
"Hikaru, are you sure you're okay, dressed like that?" his mother had asked him in a voice that was not quite choking when he came down for breakfast.
"I'm fine mom," he said though he frowned when he ran out of the house before. Something felt odd about the shirt, though it wasn't the colors, which properly clashed with his blue suit and gray tie.
He'd grown accustomed to the stares that accompanied him when he was on the train, and ignored the points and snickers when he got off and made his way to the Go Center. There, the people seemed to have grown resigned to his pink shirt, because while there were stares, they were no longer quite as intense as they had been on the first day.
Touya was waiting for him quietly in the corridor before the Room of Profound Darkness in his usual purple suit, though the shirt was no longer pink. Hikaru recognized the shirt as one of his own. His mother must have lent it to him when Hikaru had taken Akira's by mistake. At the sight of his rival, a grin spread across his face. Suddenly, everything in the world felt right, though judging by Touya's expression, his rival was feeling the exact opposite.
"Good morning Touya!"
A faint flush began to spread across Touya's face.
"How was Hiroshima?"
There was an odd sort of strangling noise now coming from Touya's throat, which was, at the moment, more satisfying than the idea of beating him in the game they were going to begin playing in the next half hour.
"Shi-Shindou…"
"Yes?" Hikaru said, practically bouncing in excitement. Touya's reaction was everything he'd hoped for, and now that he'd had a few minutes to digest Hikaru in his pink shirt, the reaction was predictable.
"Is there a reason why you're doing this?" Touya hissed, which wasn't a shout only because of where they were, though it was already too late. There were footsteps behind them, and Hikaru could pick out voices, one of whom belonged to Waya.
"I just wanted to know what it's like to be you, is all," Hikaru replied loudly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Touya said, no longer trying to hide his voice.
But Hikaru simply continued to grin at him in response.
"Pink… and blue?"
Ogata-sensei looked back from Touya's tense posture back to Hikaru's grinning face.
"Well, I didn't have a purple suit," Hikaru said matter-of-factly, "though I think my hair makes up for the black and yellow tie."
Behind Ogata, several reporters including Amano-san looked like they were struggling not to laugh. Waya though, had started coughing loudly. Next to him stood Isumi and Ochi.
Hikaru couldn't resist.
"Or should I have matched it with a diamond patterned sweater vest instead?" Hikaru added.
The rush of red running through Ochi's face was beautiful.
"Don't think this is going to change anything," Touya said fiercely.
"It's not?" Hikaru said, allowing a hint of dismay into his voice.
A deathly glare was the only reaction he got before Touya went into the Room of Profound Darkness at a speed that was not quite fleeing.
That evening, Hikaru became the challenger to the Gosei title after Touya lost spectacularly with a difference of 3.5 moku. The only explanation Amano-san had written down for the article to be written the next day was that "Touya Akira-sensei had seemed a bit more distracted than usual."
Friday: Hikaru Becomes Infected
Friday morning was greeted by storm clouds, which was a rather huge contrast to Hikaru's victory the night before. Touya had left in a hurry, refusing to even talk to him afterwards, which, if Hikaru was going to be honest with himself, hurt a little, though not enough to go chasing after him.
He glanced at the pink shirt draped over the chair. It was over. Technically, he no longer needed to wear it, and yet…
Sighing, Hikaru surveyed the pink shirt he wore along with the black t-shirt underneath. Really, it wasn't so bad after all, though there was still something off about it that he couldn't quite put a finger on. It still had the scent of clean laundry from the wash it got two days before. In fact, that was when Hikaru started feeling that there was something wrong with the shirt.
It wasn't until he bumped into Touya at the Go Center that he finally figured it out. His rival was looking positively subdued, dressed in a plain white dress shirt and gray slacks.
"Shindou, why?" he said tiredly.
"I've grown to like it," Hikaru said. "You're still wearing my white shirt." Then he brightened. "We can switch shirts in the bathroom."
Touya coughed.
"I'd rather not."
"Why not?
"It hasn't been washed yet."
"You wore my shirt for five days in a row and you never bothered to wash it?"
Touya flashed him an irritated glare.
"I'll wash it tonight."
"You better, it probably stinks now and…" Hikaru paused, and took a step forward. Then before he knew it he was pressing his face against Touya's and taking a deep breath. It smelled like the aftershave Touya used, along with the smell of ancient wood, and stones, all mixed with an additional scent that could only be described as distinctly Touya.
The hard slam against his head left him feeling a bit dizzy, but it couldn't take away his feeling of triumph.
"That's what's wrong with it!" he said, ignoring the bump on the right side of his head.
"What's wrong is you suddenly sniffing me!" Touya shouted, his body stiff from trying to cover up near hysteria. "What was that for?"
"I knew I shouldn't have let mom wash it," Hikaru said. "Touya, don't wash my shirt."
Touya was giving him a look of utmost concern.
"Shindou, are you okay?"
"I will be if you give me my shirt back."
"Now?!"
"Okay, not now. How about later, at your father's go salon?"
"I can't."
"Why not?"
A look of painful embarrassment appeared on his rival's face.
"I'm going shopping," he said.
Perhaps it was because of the continued throbbing from the place where Touya had hit him, because it took a few minutes for it to sink in.
"So that's why you're dressed so…"
"Yes," Touya snapped. "You made your point quite clearly yesterday."
"But I like your pink shirt Touya." He was greeted with a look of disbelief. "I mean, I liked your pink shirt until mom washed it, and then it felt wrong because."
One elegant eyebrow lifted on Touya's face.
"Because."
"Just because," Hikaru said, starting to sweat. He would never admit in a million years the real reason. Especially not to his rival.
Touya sighed.
"Shindou, if you like the way I smell, just say so."
"I did not say that!" Hikaru shouted.
"You made it quite obvious," his rival responded dryly. Then he straightened, as if preparing himself for something. "Look, I'll give you back your shirt, if you'll give me another one of yours."
This was not a move Hikaru expected. There was a moment of silence as Hikaru thought this over.
"What about the pink shirt?"
"You can keep it." At Hikaru's further questioning look, Touya said, "Since you like it that much, you might as well."
Feeling like they've reached some sort of new understanding, Hikaru felt his hands reach out for Touya's, and met the firm grip of his rivals, the calluses on his fingertips rubbing roughly across the back of his hand.
"Let's go shopping together after our matches."
"I'm not wearing anything with a five."
"That's all right," Hikaru said. "But I'll need to buy something that'll match with pink."