choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

[protential]

[Hikaru carefully sets the paper plate on the floor, next to Touya's head.] And this one... [He nudges it a little bit closer, then takes his hand away.] It's supposed to have a raspberry filling. That's what the little sign said, anyway. [He doesn't know why he was drawn to this doughnut in particular, when he was standing down there in the lobby, squinting at the hotel's breakfast buffet. He could've easily chosen some pastries for himself and gone on with the rest of his day, his duties, instead of coming back up here.] I'm only giving you a few minutes before I eat it myself. [Just a minute ago, less than a minute ago, Touya was yelling at him to leave him alone--apparently, Touya isn't exactly what you'd call a morning person. But Hikaru mentioned the coffee (as black as black can be), and these doughnuts (stuffed with fruit spreads), and Touya has calmed down considerably, it seems. Even though he's still wrapped up in his blankets like a damn mummy.

This is a stupid waste of time, though. Stupid and frustrating. Stupid, frustrating, and distracting, he amends. Hikaru didn't even ask to room with Touya for the convention, and he didn't have the influence to get the arrangement changed. Last night was awkward as hell, with Touya trying and failing not to show his excitement, being this close to Hikaru... and this morning was just something else. He'd never heard Touya raise his voice like that, much less having him raise it in his direction. Touya was supposed to be a known quantity, few to no surprises, and easily dismissed for it. Touya's supposed to be another one of those silver-spooned, gifted-from-birth intellectuals who believe themselves to be more important than they are. Honestly, Hikaru doesn't know why he bothered to pick up breakfast for this impossible little weirdo. Just because Touya doesn't want to get out of bed doesn't give him the right to yell and make a fuss.

Hikaru tells himself he isn't relieved when Touya finally reaches for the coffee, and then the doughnut. It's very strange to see Touya like this: half-asleep, his hair kind of a disaster, the rest of him soft and unfocused, whatever. Touya's usually doing everything in his power to preen and pose in front of Hikaru, everything to be noticed, to get closer. Usually. So it's very strange to see Touya ignoring him in favor of the coffee. It makes him feel like he's responsible for filling the silence, when he never wanted to fill the silence in the first place.]

It's good, right?

[Even as Hikaru asks that, he looks away and sips from his own styrofoam cup of coffee. Prolonged exposure to Touya Akira is definitely bad for the nerves.]

Comments

[ashlar]

[Like a mummy might be apt. He's swaddled for the sake of the living—you hear horror stories about creatures like him crawling out of their crypts and terrorizing people. Disturbing his resting place could well unleash a curse. When his hand creeps over the edge of his futon, it gropes around the doughnut, eerie in its blindness. Then he makes landing on the sticky pastry, and pulls it into his bundle with him. A moment more passes, time heavy with the possibility of the mummy's curse. But Akira sits up, slowly, cross-legged—he's sitting with his coverlet draped about his shoulders, and his mouth is full while he reaches for his coffee. He's...]

Mmm.

[...still not in a great mood, even if this offering has satiated the bulk of his rage. That noise doesn't qualify even as a mumble; it's barely an acknowledgement. As far as he's concerned, Shindou's responsibilities include maintaining the silence, but at least the fury has waned out of his face. Every time Akira blinks, it's slow, always taking several seconds to open back up even halfway. Both hands are full, but he does use his wrist to push some of his hair away from his eyes. It's an instinctive, uncoordinated action, at odds with his overthinking of all other things. The doughnut, at least, has gotten him to unwind to some degree, with his shoulders no longer looking like fearsome knives. He chews with his eyes closed, finishing the whole thing, before giving a disgruntled sniff and taking the first sip of his coffee. He's not openly hostile about doing that, which should be answer enough to Shindou's question, is it good. Akira would make it known if not.

After that first taste, he downs his coffee in a quick series of gulps. It leaves him fluttering his eyelashes into a sigh, which just means that he's trying to properly open his eyes and look at the world around him. But then he's holding his hand out to Shindou, utterly expectant, not making a suggestion or even a demand so much as he's waiting for a simple truth.] Is that one black too? [That's what he's waiting for. Shindou's coffee.]

[protential]

[Touya, left to munch on that doughnut, looks like he should be accompanied by narration. Really, it's like watching a nature documentary on TV: Here's the newly arisen Touya Akira, mostly unaware of his surroundings, concerned only with acquiring sustenance. Hikaru's brother liked to watch those long-winded things, especially later on, and Hikaru has to admit they could be pretty informative. Touya kind of reminds him of one those snakes or lizards, just something cold-blooded, that's all sluggish and stupid until it has gotten enough sunlight. Maybe Touya's annoying fans aren't too far off-base when they compare him to a dragon. That's almost like a snake or a lizard. Yeah. Hikaru takes another sip of his coffee, wishing he'd stop thinking about this crap.

It's the question that causes him to pause, and blink a few times, and wonder if he heard Touya right just then. He looks at the oustretched hand, too, and how it has the same cool poise as when Touya holds the stones. He has never admired Touya's posture or aura or anything, but the resemblance is uncanny.] You... [He knew Touya could be a pushy guy, but this is sorta pushing the limits here.] You're asking if you can have my coffee, too? [It's black, of course. His brother was the one who didn't like stronger flavors, preferring cream mixed in, enough cream to scandalize a cow... Hikaru holds the cup a smidge tighter.] Just how much coffee do you need to drink?

[Hikaru's voice is flat, and his expression is flat--his eyes are a flat grey color, too--and none of that should be confused for anger. Hikaru isn't angry at Touya Akira, even though people tend to assume that's the case, for whatever reason. He just doesn't give a shit about him, much like he doesn't give a shit about 99% of everything in this fake, fucked up world. Only the Divine Move feels the least bit real anymore.]

[ashlar]

[For the first time this morning, Akira's brow crinkles not with offense, but with confusion. Earlier, he wanted Shindou to "shut. up." and he made that very clear. This time, he isn't trying to mute Shindou completely, but he is finding it hard to make it through anything Shindou says. His questions aren't quick to register in the dense fog of Akira's brain. They're flat, and this seems to perplex Akira. He stares, confounded, grimacing through his bewilderment, even as he raises one hand to slowly suck the doughnut glaze from one of his fingers. With the face he's making, one might think it tastes bad, but it's Shindou's lack of livelihood that curdles in Akira's mouth.] Um, [Akira says, and not in the overzealous way that puts marbles in his mouth when he's vying for Shindou's attention. Outrageously, it's almost like he's trying to learn why Shindou isn't immediately acquiescing. He takes his finger out of his mouth, licks another one, and then scrubs at his eyes with his wrist. If the confusion isn't entitlement, it's exhaustion. In his face, his slowness of breath, Akira seems impossibly tired, at odds with the morning, almost as if he has been tending to a moonlight vigil; almost as if he has been restless for years and years and years and...

Inhaling, Akira lowers the reach of his hand. He squirms, unsteady, until he's resting on his knees, and then until he's kneeling. With every second, he's finding a little more of that poise. The rest of his body is becoming the boy who is Touya Meijin's son. Eventually, he has the bearing of ivory carved into an object of worship, enshrined... He kneels this way, always, before a goban, its face as an altar. And he kneels this way, now, his hands folded over his thighs, all this grace a requisite. This would be a seat of dignity if not for him all askew, too soft to be austere, too unfocused to dissect. His hair, kind of a disaster, can't hide the reluctant squint of his eyes. The angles of him are all elegant, but his tongue can only do so much:] Just like one more cup, if you please. [For all the habits of his refined speech, so like the old men surrounding him, he must still be a boy, in his sleep.]

[protential]

[Outrageous is the perfect word for this whole... this, uh... whatever this is. This display, maybe. This staggering entitlement on display, and how it belongs to the very spoiled child in front of him. But Hikaru is way too tired to muster even a spark of outrage in response. He feels like he didn't sleep at all last night--like he hasn't slept in years and years, always on the lookout for the next dire threat. Even when he does sleep, he'll have the weirdest fucking dreams and end up feeling worse than ever before. All he can convince himself to do is stare at Touya, and stare some more, until he feels his grip loosening on his cup of coffee. Just like one more cup, if he pleases. Whatever. It's fine. Touya's obviously the kind of guy who gets everything he's ever asked for, including a hapless colleague's cup of coffee. With the faintest sound, Hikaru sets down the coffee near the plate that once held the doughnut. He doesn't think about how slow and defenseless Touya looks right now, licking sugary glaze off of his fingers. Hikaru doesn't want to think about anything but the commentary he's scheduled to do later on...

His brother was the kind of guy who got everything he ever asked for, too. Well. Almost everything. Everything minus one thing in particular. The one and only thing Sai asked for, but couldn't have... (A cure.) So, really, a cup of coffee is nothing in the grand scheme of things. And Hikaru's probably straddling the fine line between overcaffeinated and caffeine poisoning, anyway. He already deals with heartburn on a near-constant basis.]

If you want a third, you're gonna have to get it yourself. They're not paying me to be your valet.

[There's no scorn when he says that. Again, there's no anger. He's just stating facts. He's just pivoting away from Touya to reach for his overnight bag. His closed-off posture says this conversation (if it can even be called a conversation) is pretty much over and done with, and they should be going their separate ways soon enough. Usually, when he really wants to get away from Touya's nattering, he'll slide on his headphones and turn up the music's volume... But his fingers find the handle of a flat hairbrush, and he pulls that out of his backpack instead.

He looks elsewhere, as stiff as cordwood, while he brushes his hair for the second time this morning. It might mean he's willing to hear a reply.]

[ashlar]

[He doesn't say thank you when Shindou gives him that next cup, but he means it. When he brings it to his mouth, when he closes his eyes through that first drink, it means his gratitude. The flutter of his eyelashes should be demonstrative... Well, Touya Akira is not known for expressiveness, nor for communicating well with colleagues. He inhales through his nose just before he takes another drink, and after that, he can open up his eyes again. The coffee, and the smell of the coffee, and the encroachment of air cooler than his nighttime cocoon... Yes, he's thankful. His soft sigh should say that just as much.

When his eyes are open again, it's to catch Shindou's farewell of a silhouette. But there's more to it than that. Akira watches with his mouth fallen open just enough to see him mesmerized. Shindou, brushing his hair... Shindou's hand, those strokes, the bending of his wrist. If Shindou were to brush Akira's hair—look, he's not trying to sound crazy—if Shindou were to do that, he might say, "It's missing a tooth, let me get another one," and Akira might reply, "Leave it as it is; run it through my hair," and they would know, the both of them, that Akira desires the stroke of this comb, missing tooth and all, because the tortoiseshell comb, its lacquer, and the simple branch flowering across it were pressed into Akira's hands on a quiet night before Shindou was sent away from the capital for a fortnight. Akira waited, and prayed, and the night Shindou returned, he combed Akira's hair beneath the moonlight. Every moon that can look upon this comb in Shindou's hand is a good moon, a fortuitous moon, in Akira's blessed opinion. ...But that would be nonsense, and when Akira recognizes the mystified feeling in his own face, he breathes in and shuts his mouth—surely it was just for a few seconds. He couldn't have been agape for too long; his eyes couldn't have been so sparkly. The silence couldn't have billowed out of him like stretches of silk shining with embroidery. There were no plum blossoms blooming out of his quiet, open mouth.

His pin-straight hair works against him, in the morning. It stubbornly holds its shape, which means the left side of his hair is aggressively flattened against his head, and the right side is blown out as if having suffered a swell of wind. His bangs bob out like the plume of a rooster's tail. They bob a little more when he tilts his head, perplexed, and it's then that he realizes the state of himself—a lock of hair dipping into his line of sight, and then the feeling of being wholly rumpled, and then the feeling of being rumpled before the person to whom you want to shine in a specific way. Akira first claps his hand over his mouth, maybe to keep from saying something, before covering his mouth with the rim of Shindou's cup instead. Shindou, brushing his hair, dressed for the morning, probably smelling of toothpaste and something fresh—you know, sometimes, when he brisks by without looking at Akira, Akira catches the wake of him, that air current trailing behind him. It leaves Akira with just enough to wonder about Shindou's detergent, his soap, whatever deodorant, and...]

Good morning, [Akira blurts, horrified by it even as he says it. It's the first polite thing he's said thus far, and he bites the styrofoam rim of the cup in his surprise.] Oh—you're ready... [For the day, it looks like, generally. Akira makes a face, somewhere between bewildered and irritated, and he turns his face away. He presses the pad of his thumb to his lips—it's still sweet from what Shindou brought him. He's thinking; his eyes are moving left, then right, since he doesn't have stones before him to settle on. But he's definitely thinking.

He sets the cup down. Then he stands. He pats his hair down as best he can, which isn't very well, before he gives a quarter bow from his waist.] I am deeply sorry to have troubled you with such requests. Thank you very much for the accommodations. [The lingering sugar in his mouth doesn't help that rug burn quality to his voice. He straightens from the bow. Less deliberately formal,] ...You could have said no.