most of us don't have time to spend having the time of our lives.

I'm fine, Touya. [He said he was fine, didn't he? This has got to be the fifth or sixth time he's said it. Maybe the seventh. Every time he says so, the look on Touya's face seems to get more severe, all pinched and screwed up, like he he just swallowed a lemon or something. Hikaru leans against the wall with one hand, clutching his stomach with the other, and he tells himself he's fine because there's no way he isn't. I'm fine, I'm... It hurts, though. It's fine. It does hurt a lot. That crazy fucking bastard--he'd laugh about it, about the absurd awfulness of it, except it hurts a lot to breathe in, you know.

Watanabe-sensei was in a downright foul mood all morning, growling and snapping at everybody, but Hikaru never expected him to flip out like that. The exhibition hall is still a loud but dull roar of people trying to figure out what's going on, who's gotten hurt, and everything else. Watanabe grabbed a knife out of nowhere and just went to town on a bunch of random bystanders. The initial panic made it hard to react in any real way, but Hikaru knew exactly what to do soon as that knife-wielding maniac turned his attention to Touya.

Not that he should have cared as much as he did to do what he's done. Ah, god damn it. Pale in the face, feeling a little dizzy (or more than a little), Hikaru decides maybe he should be sitting down right now.] Seriously, I'm just... I'll be fine, so don't fre... freak out, or anything... [And trying to protest makes Touya all the more concerned and annoying for it. Hikaru slowly sits down with a groan, then takes his hand away from his stomach, and he isn't surprised to see blood smeared across it. Obviously, he got stabbed while defending Touya with his whole body. That's obvious. He felt the blade sink right into him, which hurt like a son of a bitch. Then somebody else tackled Watanabe out of the way, and the knife clattered to the floor, and there's a lot more blood than he was expecting. He just bought this fancy dress shirt like a week ago. Fuck.

All of the sudden, Touya is pressing his own hands to the wound. Maybe he's trying to staunch the blood before help arrives, but that's kind of unsanitary, you know. Hikaru wants to tell him that, but it's getting hard to center his thoughts on any one thing. It's getting hard to focus his eyes on Touya's face. He doesn't regret getting in between Touya and that loony fucker, but he would've preferred an aftermath that's less of a hassle than this. Anyway, he doesn’t really care about Touya beyond their next official match, and Touya can't sit down at the goban with a deep abdominal wound, right, so it's like...

It had to be this way, he thinks. It's always had to be this way. If Touya is in trouble, and Hikaru is in a position to do something about it, then that's what he's going to do. Though it began as a duty, a way to serve his nation faithfully, it goes way above and beyond that nowadays. He can't regret something as important as Touya's life.]

You're going to have to wash your hands, [he murmurs, his eyes all glassy and glazed, yet strangely dark at the same time.] You're getting your hands dirty, you stupid...

[It looks like Akira didn't even try to get under the covers, this time. He went straight into Hikaru's bedroom, where he paused only to shed his formal suit, search through Hikaru's closet for comfier, more casual replacements, and then collapse onto Hikaru's bed in a heap. Not even a breath later, he's completely dead to the world: all fifteen years of him, slightly curled inward, nose to pillow, unwieldy and stubborn. Hikaru sighs. Following after Akira, he also pauses to grab the light blue afghan he has sitting at the end of the bed. He unfolds it, and he tugs it up and over Akira's prone form until he's got him covered from the neck down. Like this, Akira's dark hair looks more like a splotch of ink on a watercolor of a bright, cloudless sky. A disruption. A bad omen, maybe. Like thunderheads or something.

Hikaru takes out his phone and sends an apologetic text to Waya. The fun evening in they were both planning, with pizza and movies and other trappings of adulthood, is going to have to wait. something important came up, he writes, wisely not mentioning the high schooler who's taken up refuge in his bed. sorry for the short notice. Then he goes around and picks up Akira's jacket, and his turtleneck, and his dress pants, and the one sock he managed to pull off en route to the bed. If Akira would just get more sleep at night, like before the start of his day, then he wouldn't have to do this kind of thing so often. He wouldn't have to look like he does now: the ink splotch, the disruption, the bad omen, the Go prodigy who's painfully sleep-deprived. Just looking at him is on this side of exhausting. Hikaru is twenty-four years old, a three-time title holder, in the prime of his competitive career--and he's having to babysit this one particular student of his yet again.

Well.

Maybe it's his fault for not setting any boundaries in the first place.]

You are so...

[He drags his fingers down his face, and he sighs, heavier this time, before he eases himself into bed beside Akira. It really is his fault for not setting any boundaries at all, given how he's getting under the afghan with Akira, too, like he would during a sleepover, when they were both much younger. It doesn't feel right to leave Akira alone when he looks so worn-out and vulnerable, which has to be ridiculous, just ridiculous, but that's just how it feels. Hikaru curses himself even as he tucks the blanket more securely around Akira's chin, and he curses himself further when Akira, as if on instinct, shifts in closer to him.]

You're a real nuisance, you know that, [he murmurs quietly, wearily, closing his eyes. He doesn't expect to fall asleep arranged like this, and then that's what happens, because he's just as guilty of working too hard and too long into the night in front of the goban.]