this is the experience from which you've felt exiled for so long.

[protential]

[Hikaru is going to win tomorrow.

That isn't a bout of overconfidence on his part. That isn't anything so mundane as an ego trip. He just knows he's going to win as surely as he knows the cool air he's breathing, or the plush carpeting spread under his hands. The move he sealed at the end of today--for the seventh game--in the sixty-third Honinbou title match--is going to win him the game tomorrow. He wonders if Akira has already figured it out. Other people, they probably have no idea, no fucking clue, and they don't matter a single whit; Akira has known him for long enough to know why he was smiling when he sealed that move. He wants to ask about it, though. They have rules about not talking to each other about Go the night before they play each other, but he's dying to tell Akira which move he sealed up. To confirm that he will, in fact, take away the title tomorrow. Akira should be able to read far enough ahead to see it, anyway, but Hikaru wants the confirmation.

Instead, he says,] You should come have breakfast with me.

[The tension is getting to be downright unbearable, stretching across his skin as heat and frustration and dehydration, even. They have rules about not seeing each other before a game, and it's driving him a little insane from deprivation, he thinks. At the moment, they're both sitting against the thin door that connects their hotel rooms, knowing they aren't supposed to touch the damn thing, much less open it up. They laid down all these rules years ago for their own benefit, to limit their distractions, because they really could distract each other all night if they wanted to. Hikaru, at least, could have his fingers buried in Akira's hair and his mouth on Akira's neck for hours and hours, definitely, definitely. The temptation would be far too great to make bruises out of their current position. He's done that before while playing casually.]

In my room. Room service. That way, we can avoid the cameras, and...

[He presses his head and shoulders against the door, trying to get comfortable, and his fingers curl against the carpet. Every time he closes his eyes, he can see so clearly the winning move he sealed not that long ago. By tomorrow, their record will stand at 4-3, and Shindou Hikaru, the dark horse of a challenger, merely twenty-one years old, will have won his first title from the perennially brilliant Touya Akira.]

I can make sure you're eating something.

[He wonders if Akira remembered to lock the connecting door.]

Comments

[ashlar]

[The move meets the board, and Akira exhales as if his beating heart will come out with it. His eyes raise to Hikaru's face, and the gleam in them says everything: all right, and beautiful, and I love you. I love you. Hikaru smiles at him, and Akira smiles back, and they play a game worthy of setting against the sky. Each of these stones deserves to point out a constellation. Akira can feel his throat grow tight, and he thinks, of all things, back to the first time he woke up in bed beside Hikaru. The determination of the night before, and the uncertainty simmering out into certainty. This game, this match, this passing of glory from himself to his rival, feels more like a consummation. It feels like what they were meant to do, what instinct drove them to do—it feels like a glimpse of all they have ahead of them. All the nights, all the certainty, and all the brilliant stones. When Akira resigns, it is because this game is already perfect. He raises his head from his bow, as if to revel in his own defeat, to see Hikaru searching behind himself. And Akira sighs, and it's an awfully long breath for someone so small, so much smaller than the past.

He lets Hikaru cry a bit, and then he lets Hikaru scream a bit, but he isn't going to let Hikaru die, so he gets up to his feet. The cameras are catching all the frames they can, all these shutters, and Akira turns himself to look at the reporters. He watches them for a long, thin, grey-eyed moment, until they realize he is observing them as one would observe the rotting of vegetation. Then he moves to hold on to Hikaru, and he tells everyone else to leave. They're stunned enough to do it.

Akira is wearing the most expensive suit he owns. He chose a suit over a kimono because this isn't a match for the sake of tradition in Japanese Go. Shindou Hikaru is fresh and outrageous, unaligned with many of Akira's sensibilities. Akira loves him for it. He wants today to be today, and not a thousand years ago. The suit is grey in the way the sea can sometimes be grey, and the shirt underneath it is a staunch black, and now there are damp patches on these clothes, at his shoulder, the curve of his arm, the line of his lap. Hikaru has wept and wept and wept on him. Akira hasn't said a word since banishing the crowd. Better, he thinks, to let sound dwindle, until it can be reborn.

And, of course, it comes to live again. Hikaru's voice is scrubbed pink, layers and layers taken away from it. Akira's hands neither still nor grow in strength. He runs his fingers through Hikaru's hair just as plainly as he has been.] Yes, [he says, and he doesn't bother to be faint, to be minimal. If there are any bystanders outside in the hallway, straining to hear any particular whisper or whimper, Akira doesn't care. He's got no thoughts to spare for anything but the lover in his lap. Hikaru's thoughts might be straying up into the stratosphere, looking for far away places where the cold might dwell, but Akira is what they call grounded. Or, he will be, in this. He continues to stroke Hikaru's hair. There's no particular pace to it, no notable quality in his touch, except that it's there. If he leaves the crown of Hikaru's head, it will only be to settle at his temple. The whole of him is solid. Don't forget that.

His back has been straight ever since he got Hikaru to rest against him. His body is accommodating—he's moved not once, not to shift his thighs, not to acknowledge the way last night lingers in all his muscles. But Hikaru's voice is always magnetic, and Akira leans lower, curving like a lily. Hikaru may not see this drawing of curtains, but in the dark, in the quiet, he can at least know the shifting sounds of Akira's hair as it slides over his shoulders. He is as the boughs of a willow tree, with Hikaru lying beneath him in shelter and shade. But, even now, when the leaves of him are cool and dewy, he means to draw Hikaru's heart right up into himself.]

Tell me.