[fic] flowers and go (hikago, akira/hikaru) -- 2005.07.23
a lot more people ended up reading this than I ever expected, when I c&p'd it from notepad into semagic :D;;;;;;;

archived now for the public so innocent hikagoers will never again have to unwittingly friend me for fic only to leave strangely disappointed and with another name clogging up their flist... XD;


flowers and go




At twelve, all Hikaru knows about Touya Akira is that he's seriously weird. What kind of moron, after all, joins a competition he can totally crush just because he wants to play against Hikaru?

At thirteen, he's revised his opinion to really weird, but has a point, and somewhere in the back of his head, a little voice is constantly (irritatingly) saying: Touya, you're amazing. Can I really be like you, one day?

At some point, he adds the word bastard to his definition of Touya Akira, because only a bastard would be so friggin' rude all the time, as though his parents never taught him a thing. (And they have, Hikaru knows, because he can't imagine Touya Kouyou ever neglecting to educate his son, and besides, Touya's perfectly civil to everyone besides Hikaru. Which just isn't fair, and that's another thing entirely.)

He thinks Touya's the only person who's ever come close to finding out about Sai until the day he actually sits him down and tells him the story from start to end, over two cooling bowls of ramen in the place near the station he always gets off at for the Go Institute. Hikaru gets up to around the first shodan series part where Sai plays his last match against Touya-Meijin before the words stop coming because Hikaru doesn't know what to say.

The thing is, it's been ages, and Hikaru is over it by now, seriously. Except, in a way, maybe he's not really, and maybe he never really will be. "Well, anyway," he says haughtily, looking away and raising his chopsticks to his mouth, "I'm sure you don't believe me but--"

"Oh, I do," Touya says.

"What," says Hikaru.

"I mean, it's just," Touya says, smiling and folding his hands before him, "It's just that it all makes sense now. All your unexplained games, the way your play style changed, the ridiculous gap in level, and the net-go, too, that was you, of course."

Hikaru nods dumbly.

"I believe you," Touya says. Then, looking down at his still-untouched bowl of noodles, he adds, "I'm sorry for your loss."

Ultimately, it turns out over the course of the conversation, Touya Kouyou and Ogata-sensei have both had suspicions for years, or so claims Touya, and the revelation makes Hikaru fall out of his chair in total embarrassment. "But I thought we were being so careful! How could they possibly! That's TERRIBLE."

The floor is sticky, but Hikaru stays sprawled down there wiggling hysterically and holding his head in horror, because he's really that horrified.

"Stop wailing," says Touya. "You're being a child. And get up, the floor is disgusting."

Hikaru starts laughing when he sees Touya looking down his nose at him with a combination of stodgy disapproval and confusion, and then they have another big argument, over what, Hikaru isn't exactly sure. It might be the floor.


===


They're mid-discussion when the phone call comes. Komiya has lost to Isumi in a casual match at Waya's place. Waya's place, Touya admits in private to Hikaru after his first reluctant visit there, is really not so much a place as it is a closet that happens to have a futon and a goban.

Hikaru, in any case, is busy listening to Touya explain why 15-14 was the losing move. Komiya scratches his head sheepishly. "After Isumi-san played there, I had to defend, though," he says. "I had no choice."

"You did," Hikaru interrupts, and points to the upper-right. "You did this later, but if you'd played the tsuke here at that point, you'd have made an earlier connection and also threatened Isumi-san's control over this area. He would have had no choice but to respond. The best move for Isumi-san then would have been," and he points, "here. But enough damage would already have been done."

"That's right. If you read the conflict through to the end, Komiya-san gets a slight advantage in territory that would have outweighed the loss of these few stones in the lower-right." Touya points to both formations. "That would have evened the game out again, and the final outcome, in that case, would be uncertain. You may have lost anyway, but it's too difficult to say..."

Komiya stares from Touya to Hikaru and then makes a huge sighing noise of defeat. "I see now. I was too distracted by the play in this corner to read that deeply elsewhere on the board. You two are on a different level..."

"Komiya!" Waya joins the conversation with a roar of injured pride and throws his only pillow at the new pro. "You traitor! We can't admit defeat to these two losers!"

And Isumi laughs, "Waya," while Hikaru points indignantly, "Loser? Who's the loser, I-just-lost-three-games-in-a-row-Waya?" and at some point during the ensuing ruckus, the phone rings. When Waya finally hands the phone over to Touya, they already know it's not good news.

"My father had another heart attack," says Touya, handing the phone back to Waya and standing up quickly. "I have to go. Please excuse me."

"I'll go too," says Hikaru. "See you next week, Waya, Isumi-san. Komiya-san."


===


"So late!" exclaims his mother the moment he enters the house. "Hikaru, you really need to call me when you plan on staying out late. We bought you a cell phone so that you could use it, Hikaru. Why can't you just remember to turn it on?" She turns with him as he shuffles towards the stairs. "Hikaru? Hikaru?"

"I'm going to bed." Hikaru looks up at the clock and stifles a yawn. "S'late."

"That's what I said, Hikaru."

"Touya's dad's in the hospital again. G'night, Mom."

"Hospital?" She watches Hikaru trundle up the staircase, and then wrings her dress worriedly. "I wonder if all mothers have such a hard time being a part of their children's lives."

It's only just after midnight, so Hikaru really shouldn't be that tired, but somehow accompanying Touya to the hospital turned into a meeting with a disturbingly weak-looking Touya-sensei turned into a sudden discussion about Sai turned into now three people knowing, and Hikaru thinks it'd probably be best if he just waltzed off and announced it to Amano-san so that he can publish it in Weekly Go and everyone can know, since apparently everyone believes in ghosts these days.

"Che," he sighs, and turns over on his bed.


===


In the morning, he goes to a sponsored event to play shidougo, finishes before lunch but wanders around until about the time school should end before leaving. Outside, he flips open his cell phone with the intention of calling Touya, or maybe Touya's mom, since he's never called Touya for anything besides go, and it might be weird to start now. Then again, it would be weird to call Touya's mom too.

Life is complicated, thinks Hikaru, walking into the station, just as a girl he thinks he recognizes from his middle school bumps into him with a squeak even he thinks sounds planned. He blinks suspiciously at her and wonders what she's doing here, if he had any classes with her, who the hell she is...

"Shindou-kun," she stammers, and pats down her skirt. "I, um, don't know if you remember my name..."

Ever since Sai's left, nobody's been around to hang all over Hikaru's head and remember names for him, so Hikaru just gives her a panicky look, which is probably not what she's been hoping for.

"Um, Maeda," she says quickly. "Maeda Yuka. Nice to meet you," she adds helplessly.

"Nice to meet you too," Hikaru says generously, and then glances down at his phone, which turns on with a flourish of Gundam theme music and announces in cheerful text, "5 5 igo!"

"I," says the girl, or well, rather, Maeda-san, who by this point is starting to show signs of self-doubt. She fidgets horribly and there's a crinkly bit of paper between her fingers. Maybe a card or a letter or something... oh god.

Hikaru can see where this is heading, so he puts a stop to it early.

"Um, sorry. If it's, you know." He's taller than her, so he's looking down at her, and he really does mean it when he says sorry, since she's rather pretty. He feels awfully sheepish all of a sudden, standing here. "I don't think, you know, it would work. Though you are really pretty!"

She seems to deflate, and Hikaru winces. "I mean, I've tried it before. It's just hard, like, to have time and stuff. And you'd probably be totally bored, and so." Maeda-san doesn't have any visible response to this so Hikaru sighs loudly. "Ok. Bye."

He thinks maybe it's a bad way to end the conversation about 5 steps too late, but turns back anyway and shouts at her even as she's walking away, "Listen, if you wanna play go sometime, I can do a game of shidougo. Are you in your school's go club or anything?"

She turns back and shakes her head, and for a moment, Hikaru thinks they understand each other perfectly. "Well," he says awkwardly. "See you, then."

"See you, then." She leaves.

"Now. Let's see," Hikaru mutters, and lets his thumb hover over the send button while he tries to decide whether to call Touya's house or his cell phone.

Life is really, really complicated.


===


In the end, Touya doesn't seem surprised that he called his cell phone to check up on his father, seems kind of grateful, really, so Hikaru lets the matter drop.

"In any case," says Touya over the phone, "I'm sorry about pushing the matter with Sai last night. It was rude of me."

"It's ok, it's ok, don't worry." Hikaru isn't actually sure what he feels about it yet besides surprised, but regardless, there's no need for an apology. Somehow, he feels Sai would have been gratified by Touya Kouyou's recognition of him. "Anyway, if he's doing all right, maybe I should-- or, well, are you going to go see him?"

In the end, Hikaru offers to meet him at school, since Touya needs to check something out from the library.

He ends up sitting on the banister of the stair outside the library for almost ten minutes, and has made up his mind to bitch about it just as he sees Touya come walking out of the library chatting amiably with a tall, attractive boy wearing glasses. They part ways, and Touya comes towards him with a nodded acknowledgment, "Shindou."

"Who the hell was that?" Hikaru hops off the railing and rubs at his sore bum, shoots a questioning glare at Touya.

Touya seems caught off-guard by the question. "A classmate," he says, then adds, when Hikaru fails to stop glaring, "We're doing a research project."

"Oh. Ok. Well. As long as you're not, you know." Hikaru's not sure, himself, what he's talking about.

Now Touya is giving him a weird look, and Hikaru hates it when people give him weird looks, especially the dissecting kind of weird look that Touya is wearing right now, so he laughs loudly and says, "Ok, let's go."

They're on the subway before he remembers he meant to complain about his butt hurting from sitting on the railing and that sends him into a bad mood, because now it's too late to bring it up.

He's still feeling crappy when they enter the elevator, and crappier still when he suddenly has to excuse himself and sprint back downstairs to buy something because he just remembered the pile of gifts he'd seen the last time he'd come to visit Touya Kouyou in the hospital. Touya trails him all the way down voicing confusion until he realizes they're in a flower shop across the street and Hikaru is muttering, "Which one, which one?"

After much hemming and hawing, Hikaru picks a bouquet at random, then borrows money from Touya to pay for it, and they don't make it to the actual hospital room until thirty minutes after they said they'd be there.

Aside from thanking him for his thoughtfulness, Touya Kouyou totally ignores the bouquet, which makes Hikaru kind of regret buying it in the first place. "Tell me," he says instead, "More about Sai." From the expression on his face, Hikaru thinks, you'd never be able to tell the man just had a heart attack yesterday.

"Someone save me," Hikaru mutters. "I'm stuck in a room with two stalkers."

Touya elbows Hikaru sharply, but his father doesn't seem to notice.


===


"I'm tired," Hikaru announces, and stands up from the goban.

"You mean you resign."

Hikaru gives Touya a look that dares him to contest the statement.

While they clean up the game, Hikaru talks off the top of his head. How the go stones at Touya's house are particularly nice (they are, really; Hikaru played white today, and the set they used is ancient like history, fingernail indents worn shiny and smooth into the powdery white clamshell), how Touya's dad seems to be doing ok, which is really really good, how Touya ought to learn some manners, the curious incident with Maeda-san earlier today.

"Oh," says Touya, looking flushed and surprised. "Does that happen to you too?"

"What do you mean, does that happen to me too?" Hikaru turns on him in indignation. "Are you trying to imply you're more attractive than I am?" He puts a finger to his chin and continues, with a hint of glee, "Actually, now that I think of it, that's actually happened to you before?"

Touya ignores the jibe, places the goke back on the goban and then leans back and surveys Hikaru with an uncharacteristic calm.

"What is it?"

"You were upset today, about my ... talking with Saitou-san. From the library. You asked--"

Hikaru cuts him off with a laugh. God, if Touya thinks that that was actually important... because it totally, totally wasn't -- "If you mean I was upset about your associating with normal people, well, yeah, if by upset, you mean really really surprised."

"Shindou."

"Touya, what are you getting at?" Touya's expression is closed and calculating; he's eyeing Hikaru like he's a secret Touya's itching to reveal, and Hikaru might not know what the secret is, but he really, really doesn't want to know, either. "Stop looking at me like that, Touya. I need to go home."

He gets up and sprints in the direction of the front door. From behind him, he can hear the sound of Touya scrambling to his feet to follow him. "Wait, Shindou! Sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... imply anything. I'm sorry. It's my fault. Please."

Hikaru's already halfway out the door when he turns around to see Touya bowing so low he might as well be kissing the floor, his hair in a messy curtain over his face. "Touya?" Now he's at a loss for what to do -- leaving Touya there bowing ridiculously at him seems to be kind of rude. "Um. Look, it's ok, you don't need to apologize, or anything. Just, like... stand up straight again ok? And, heh, don't forget to feed yourself or whatever while your parents aren't home. I'm going..."

The realization hits him like a stone, the moment Touya looks up at him, face flushed pink and eyes dilated with regret, that maybe there's more than one secret in this room, after all. "Touya?"

He doesn't stop running till he gets on the subway, at which point he realizes he probably left at a really bad time.


===


He calls his grandpa, because his grandpa usually knows a lot of stuff, about well, life, and that sort of thing, but the old geezer is completely unhelpful and just keeps telling him to buy flowers for Akari-chan.

"No, Grandpa," he shouts into the phone. "Not Akari. I don't want to buy flowers. And I couldn't even if I wanted to, I owe them money for flowers ANYWAY. You're totally missing the point here! This is an emergency!"

His mother walks into the room and frowns at him. "Can't you be a little more quiet? Are you talking to Grandpa?"

"Forget it," he wails, and practically throws the phone at her. "Here! You talk to him."

Hikaru sprints upstairs to the sound of his mother saying, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. What do you mean his best friend is in love with-- oh my. What?"

"This is stupid," he mutters, and kicks his desk in a sudden fit of anger. "That bastard. Who asked him?"


===


His next match is on Wednesday, and when he enters the match hall, Touya is sitting calm as you please before a goban, waiting for his opponent. Hikaru debates greeting him, but then figures Touya probably knows he's here already anyway, and if he's not going to say hi, then why should Hikaru bother?

His game finishes early, a mid-game resignation. His opponent, a third dan, is wiping perspiration off his brow when Hikaru caps the goke and pads quietly over to observe Touya's game. Touya seems distracted today, but he's still clearly winning. His opponent doesn't seem ready to give up yet, but Hikaru doesn't think there's going to be any question about the result. Touya murders at yose. Everything will be okay then, he decides. As long as Hikaru doesn't bring it up again, they can probably just go on like before. Maybe Touya just needs some time to pull himself together. He leaves.

On his way out, he phones Waya, and tells him he'll be showing up for the study group on Saturday after all. "Didn't you have a yelling session with Touya scheduled?" asks Waya, clearly disbelieving.

"It's cancelled this week. Uh, I think." Hikaru isn't sure Touya will appreciate his disappearance, but he's not sure showing up at the go salon after /that/ would be much better, either. This way, he figures, at least they won't have to be face to face. "Anyway, let me come over, ok? I'll bring food or whatever."

"Sure, I guess. Oh, Shindou."

"Huh?"

"Hope you have money, because we're eating sushi. And there's six of us, you included."

Hikaru hates Waya. With a passion.


===


Touya's a bastard, Hikaru has always known. His phone call comes in the middle of a game of speed go during the study session at Waya's apartment, with the special music that always accompanies his number (a heroic war theme that suddenly sends a shiver down Hikaru's back). "Your phone," says Waya, eyeballing him with typical Waya craftiness.

"It sounds like Touya," Nase adds helpfully.

"Uh, haha, excuse me." Hikaru scrambles to his feet sheepishly and flees outside, jabbing at his phone till he finally manages to hit the ok button.

"Um, hello?" he says.

"Shindou." Touya always manages to make his name sound so meaningful: a greeting, a threat, and a possessiveness all in one. Hikaru has always held it as a point of pride, that he's the only one Touya obsesses over to this degree. He's not exactly sure how he feels about it now, but he is glad to hear it. He doesn't know what he'd do if Touya stopped speaking to him. He tries to keep the relief from showing in his voice, but it's a little difficult. He's sort of terrified of what sort of turns this conversation might take.

"Oh, hi, Touya. How are you doing?"

He's hardly finished speaking when Touya cuts in, sharp as ever. "I'd like to apologize. I think we must have misunderstood each other. I'm sorry for any alarm I may have caused you."

"Oh!" says Hikaru, then hurries to reassure him. "It's ok, it's ok!" He can imagine Touya bowing his head in apology even with a phone in his hand, and the idea makes him wince. "I mean, don't worry about it. It's ok if you're, you know. I don't mind. Heh. It just makes you a little weirder than before, which is ok, since you're about as weird as they get, anyway." He trails off, sensing his logic is starting to derail itself.

"I," says Touya hesitantly. There's a long pause, then a short, humorless laugh. "I wanted to know if you were planning on coming to the go salon anymore."

A roar of laughter from within the apartment makes Hikaru look back over his shoulder to see Saeki-san throwing up his hands in cheerful defeat. It looks like Isumi-san won the game. "Of course I will," says Hikaru. "I mean. As long as you want me to."

"Please do."


===


He hangs around the block for an afternoon and corners Akari on her way home and asks her what she thinks about gay people.

She gives him a terrified look, then fidgets with her skirt and says, "I-I don't know, Hikaru. I've never thought about it. I don't think I know any."

"Hmm." Hikaru nods decisively. "I think I agree."

"You agree I don't know? Or you agree you don't know? Wait, Hikaru? Is there something you're trying to tell me, Hikaru?"

He leaves her calling plaintively after him in a long tradition of friendly neighborhood ignoring, and goes home to ponder the subject of Touya Akira with what he thinks is great impartiality, all the way up until his mother knocks on his door and asks him if there's something he'd like to tell her.

"What is it with everyone and thinking I want to tell them things?" Hikaru scoffs derisively, but it turns out his mother thinks he's gay, and Akari is waiting downstairs to make sure he doesn't decide to kill himself over it.

Hikaru manages to pull himself together enough to come out of his room and shout, "What the hell?" at them both before locking himself back inside in a sudden rage.


===


Two weeks and five matches later, Hikaru admits to himself that after all, things do seem to have worked out all right. His mother finally seems to be beginning to believe him, Akari's not hanging around the house 24/7, and really, if he didn't know better, he'd think Touya was asexual.

He's cheerfully congratulating himself on a crisis well-averted when Touya's voice crisply interrupts his inner monologue. "Stop daydreaming. It's your turn."

He tears his gaze away from Touya's backyard back to Touya himself, who's not looking at him in that disturbing way he used to -- hasn't, in fact, for over a week. "Touya?" he says tentatively, feeling he's missing something important, knowing he's on shaky ground here, even asking a question that has nothing to do with go.

"Play, Shindou."

The way Touya says his name punches right through his gut, and suddenly, it all makes sense to him. "Oh," he says, and it's like for a second, Hikaru is twelve and seeing Touya again for the first time, and Touya is beautiful, his hands and eyes and voice and disgusting vest and the way he says Hikaru's name that puts knots in Hikaru's stomach, and Hikaru is just horrified. Just traumatized.

True to form, he knocks both goke and Touya over in his hurry to exit the house, and he's still breathing heavily when he gets home. He wants to blame this one on Touya too, but he's not sure even his logic can swing that.

"Seriously, I never wanted to know," he protests, but the mirror in the entrance hall only shows his own face looking back at him, and he can read every flutter in his stomach and catch in his throat in the crazy stare he has going on with his own reflection.


===


Hikaru comes to terms with things pretty quickly, and after twenty minutes of quietly or not so quietly freaking out, he decides that what he really wants to know is what mysterious and arcane methods Akari and his mother used to jump to conclusions two weeks ago. "Girls," he says, and puts as much disdain and confusion into his voice as he can manage. Somehow, he still sounds disturbingly admiring.

That train of thought is getting him nowhere, though, so he sucks in a deep breath, picks up the phone, and calls Touya, who picks up on the second ring with a curt, "This is Touya."

"Touya, I'm coming to your house. Right now."

There's a slight pause; Hikaru can almost hear Touya make the decision not to be deliberately scathing in his reply. "You just left."

"I know, I know. But don't go anywhere."

Touya sounds more exasperated than bemused when he says, "I wasn't planning on, anyway."


===


He stops in the park, but it's nothing but sand and grass that he can see, and he's really looking for something a little more colorful. Floral, you could say. It's getting dark when he finally exits the station, and when he reaches Touya's house, he sees the light is on only in the kitchen.

Touya won't begrudge him a few plants, he thinks, peering around in the gloom of Touya's front yard. Hikaru will just give him a little extra when he pays him back for the flowers he sent to his father, or something like that. There's something to his right that looks like it might be blue in the dim light of early evening, and blue reminds him of Touya, so he snags a handful of it and pulls it out, possibly by the roots, but details are unimportant, and strides into the house.

"Touya?"

Nobody answers, and he jumps, startled, when he notices he forgot to take off his shoes. "Oops, oops. My bad."

He toes them off and is tossing them outside haphazardly, hoping nobody notices the footprints, when he hears from behind him, "Shindou. What is that in your hand?"

"Touya!" He jumps again, and then clutches at his chest convulsively. "Why do you always scare me like that? You could have killed me!"

Touya ignores him, gestures at the bunch of weedy flowers Hikaru is still holding in one hand. It turns out, he did pull them up by the roots. Too late to worry about that now, though.

"Oh. Haha. These?" He looks at them and then smiles weakly. "Um, here. My grandpa said. You know."

He shoves the plants at Touya, who stares down at the spray of dirty color in his hands like he doesn't know what to make of it.

"Um."

"What is the meaning of this, Shindou?"

Hikaru suddenly wishes he'd gotten real flowers, or at least flowers not from Touya's own front yard, but it's kind of late to regret now, so he just scratches his head and says, "Flowers?"

He's beginning to think he'll have to spell it all out for Touya before they understand each other, and is gearing himself up for it with a hopeless sinking feeling when he hears the faint rustle of Touya dropping the flowers and closing the distance between them in two quick steps.

It's kind of sad, Hikaru thinks, that the first thing he notices is how Touya's fingers against his cheek are three and two, like he's reaching into a goke for a stone, and that the trembling reminds him of nothing so much as the first time they ever actually played against each other, in the third board match of the junior high go tournament.