It's been going on that long, this awkward joking-but-not flirting that Shindou is maddeningly good at and that makes Akira feel like he was raised by wolves instead of by Japan's foremost Go player. And now he's in the middle of it and he doesn't quite know what to do, how to respond when Shindou's fingers brush his on the goban, how to laugh and tease and lean just a little too close at just the right time. In a way, from a certain point of view, it's the first age-appropriate activity that Akira has ever engaged in, so it should really come as no surprise that he's horrible at it.
He doesn't want to be horrible at it. He wants to be good at it, wants to be brilliant at it, because he really doesn't want to do it at all. He doesn't want flirting. He wants Shindou, and he's horribly afraid that he can't have him, that all he'll ever have is this bewildering game that he doesn't want to play. It makes him want to kick something, and Akira is not in the habit of kicking things.
That is not to say, however, that Shindou's shins aren't occasionally a sore temptation. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" he demands, folding his arms and glaring.
"Are you serious?" Shindou asks, exasperated. "Touya, you're wearing argyle. To a photo shoot for a teen magazine."
And that's Shindou's fault too, because he laughed and bent close with the sun in his hair and before Akira knew what he was doing he'd agreed to come do this ridiculous photo shoot and the even more ridiculous interview that's sure to follow. No, he doesn't have a girlfriend. No, he doesn't have any hobbies. No, he hasn't seen any good movies lately. No, he can't describe the perfect woman, because frankly, while he deeply admires and respects women, he prefers to admire and respect them from a safe distance. "Well, it doesn't matter, anyway," he tells Shindou. "I didn't exactly bring a change of clothes, so I'll just have to "
"Change," Shindou says bluntly, reaching for his backpack. "I brought you some clothes."
"You did what?"
Shindou does not even have the grace to look embarrassed. "I brought you clothes, because I knew you were going to wear something like that. It was argyle or that fucking awful lavender suit "
"There is nothing wrong with that suit," Akira says between his teeth.
Shindou gives him a Look and rummages in his backpack. "Touya, there are so many things wrong with that suit that finding them all should unlock a secret level. When I get the Honinbou title I'm going to burn it as a present to myself."
"Remind me to keep that title away from you, then," Akira grouses, and is neatly cut off when a flying shirt hits him in the face. He catches it awkwardly and examines it.
"Bravo, Shindou," he says. "You hate my purple suit, so you brought me a purple shirt. I'm sure that made sense while it was still in the part of your brain that keeps getting bleach spilled on it."
Shindou rolls his eyes. "Number one, there is a huge difference between purple and lavender. Number two, that shirt's only sort of purple. It's more kind of blue-ish."
"It's purple," Akira tells him.
"Whatever," Shindou says in his humoring-Touya voice, and pushes an armful of clothes into Akira's arms. "Change."
"What, right here?"
"Touya," Shindou says with limitless patience. "This is a changing room."
"I notice they didn't say anything about actually changing."
"I think they might have been dropping hints!"
Akira makes an annoyed noise. He can't exactly argue that point, given the look on the photographer's face when he caught sight of Akira's sweater which there is nothing wrong with even if it is a little colorful. When you spent three years in a Kaio uniform looking like the third ghost from the left in a made-for-cable horror movie, you take all the color you can get. "Oh, all right," he grouses, then looks narrowly up at Shindou. "Are you just going to stand there and watch me?"
Shindou turns scarlet and looks much more flustered than the question really called for. "Jeez, Touya, you're such a girl. Look, I'll turn around, okay?"
This, Akira realizes, is where he should say one of those clever, amusing, and flirtatious things about how he is not in fact a girl, thank you, and Shindou is welcome to verify the truth of this for himself; but that would require him to be clever, amusing, and flirtatious while standing on one foot, and he really requires about six stones down and an auspicious tailwind. "Turn around, then."
Shindou does as he's told, not without rolling his eyes again.
Scowling, Akira pulls off his sweater and the Oxford shirt underneath it. "There is nothing wrong with my clothes," he mutters, and in a fit of annoyance flings shirt and sweater both at the back of Shindou's head. Shindou gives a strangled yelp and grabs for them, managing to catch them without turning around. Grimly satisfied, Akira throws his pants at Shindou too before pulling on the discomfitingly baggy pair that Shindou brought for him. After a moment's indulgence in deep misgivings about propriety, he pulls his boots back on and relaces them.
"Do they fit?" Shindou asks in a voice rather higher than usual, dumping Akira's clothes unceremoniously into his own backpack. "I mean, I know you're about my size around but you're taller than me and frankly, Touya, you've got no ass at all, so I guess it's a good thing you're not gay because I don't think you could be on the bottom without breaking your pelvis "
"Shindou!" Akira yelps, pulling a white t-shirt hastily on over his head. Sadly, however, his first thought after oh my GOD did he really just go there is Who says I'm not? And really, Touya can either deal with Shindou-clothes and a photo shoot for a teen magazine or come out to his lifelong rival, but expecting him to do both is trying him a bit high.
"Um," Shindou says a bit frantically. "I wonder if Waya and Isumi are here yet. I mean, would they put them in another dressing room or just "
"I'm done," Akira said crankily as he pulls on the ridiculous purple overshirt, shelving the issue of his ass or lack thereof for another time.
Shindou turns around and falls abruptly and unnervingly silent, taking in Akira's clothes with the strange, still look in his eyes that does something uncomfortable to Akira's insides every time he sees it. "You look great," he says quietly.
Feeling horribly out of his depth, Akira looks down and plucks at the hem of his borrowed shirt. "I feel a little stupid. Doesn't it look like I'm trying too hard?"
Shindou moves closer. The dressing room isn't large, and three or four steps brings him right in front of Akira. "Trying too hard to do what?"
"I don't know. To be trendy. To look like someone who ought to be having his picture taken for a teen magazine instead of a Go pro who usually wears suits."
Slowly, as if he's giving Akira time to move away if he wants to, Shindou takes hold of the open front of Akira's overshirt and runs his fingertips down the edge. "You want to know a secret, Touya? These look great on you. It's the suits that make you look like you're trying too hard."
Akira frowns, but somehow the righteous indignation he's trying to muster can't quite gain a foothold against the more pressing issue of how Shindou's sleeveless shirt bares the lean curve of his biceps. "I like suits. They're appropriate. These are baggy in strange places."
Shindou takes hold of the front of his overshirt with both hands and leans in, close, closer, his eyes not leaving Akira's until he tilts his head to the side and comes to a stop with his mouth an inch from Akira's ear. "Stop. You look great," he whispers, then grins. "Smell good, too."
Akira swallows hard. Despite Shindou's casual tendency to invade personal space, he's never been quite this close, so close that Akira can see the pulse beating in his neck. Suddenly the temptation to lean forward, take Shindou's earlobe in his mouth, and tongue it until Shindou moans is overwhelming. "It's cologne," he hears himself breathing hoarsely. "My mother bought it for me."
"Does your mother buy you everything?" Shindou asks, tilting his head so that he's looking Akira in the eyes again from a distance that makes Akira go cross-eyed.
"Pretty much, yes," Akira answers honestly.
Shindou's eyes begin a slow trawl down Akira's body, making him feel like his skin is two sizes too small. "Maybe I should take you shopping and OH MY GOD TOUYA YOU TUCKED YOUR PANTS INTO YOUR BOOTS!"
Akira starts and rubs at the ear with the burst eardrum, glaring at Shindou. "So?" he snaps.
Shindou rolls his eyes, and suddenly things are back to normal, except that Shindou is still standing far too close and Akira's skin still doesn't fit very well. "So God, Touya, you don't tuck your pants into boots. You look like a giant dork."
"I thought you just said I looked great," Akira reminds him crossly.
"Yeah, that was before I got down below your knees. Look, just "
In what is possibly the single most most something moment of Akira's life thus far, Shindou drops to his knees in front of him, one hand still clutching Akira's overshirt. The next thing Akira knows, his back is slamming into the wall and he's yelping Shindou's name in a pitch his voice hasn't reached since his school uniform involved short pants.
"Hold still, dammit," Shindou snaps, scooting forward, and Akira thinks frantically of Kuwabara playing a title match naked. And even that scarring mental image isn't quite enough when Shindou unceremoniously pins Akira's hip to the wall with one hand and reaches for his pants with the other.
Of course, Waya chooses that moment to bound into the dressing room with Isumi in tow. "Hey, are you two " he begins, then takes in the situation and is suddenly frozen with horror. "I mean, sorry, we'll just oh my god Touya are your pants tucked into your boots?"
"Yes," Shindou informs him, reaching forward again, only momentarily distracted from the apparently earth-shattering issue of Akira's clothing arrangement.
Akira dodges. "Never mind my pants," he orders. "You're supposed to tuck your pants into your boots. It's tidier that way."
"Touya," Shindou begins in a long-suffering voice.
"Hello, hello," the interviewer flutes, gliding in behind Isumi on a wave of perfume. "Are you oh. My goodness."
She looks a little horrified as well, and also disturbingly interested. Touya closes his eyes in despair, foreseeing tabloid headlines about gay sex romps behind the closed doors of the Go Institute.
"Touya stuffed his pants into his boots," Waya informs her solemnly. "He's just like that guy in Rain Man, except with Go instead of cards."
"He is not!" Shindou protests.
"Are you ready for us in the studio?" Isumi asks the interviewer with every appearance of deep and all-consuming interest in what her answer might be. Akira rather likes Isumi, though he would like him even more if Isumi could contrive to get Shindou up off the floor.
"Yes, yes, of course," the interviewer says happily, making a sort of spiraling hand gesture that seems to translate to "Will everyone currently in a position to do things to their eternal rival that said rival can't even think about right now because his mother will be reading this magazine please get up." Obediently, Shindou stands and brushes off the knees of his pants.
The light squeeze of his fingers against Akira's hip as he stood was probably just Akira's imagination. As overwrought as his imagination is right now, Akira counts himself lucky that he didn't actually hallucinate Shindou sucking a hickey onto his hipbone. Isumi is looking at him strangely, but that's all right. People have been looking at Akira strangely his entire life, though admittedly usually for reasons that do not involve public hormonal meltdowns, unless you count the time after the Wakajishi when Ogata wouldn't tell him about Shindou's game. Lifting his nose and gathering his dignity as best he can, he follows the interviewer out and down the hall to the studio.
It's large, airy, and full of light, obviously much better funded than any Go magazine Akira has ever been interviewed by. The photographer is overjoyed that Akira has changed clothes, though not so overjoyed that his pants are tucked into his boots. For a minute Akira thinks the photographer is actually going to bend down and pull them out before a low snarl right behind Akira's shoulder makes him jump and the photographer backpedal hastily. Incredulous, Akira turns to glare back at Shindou, who stares innocently back at him.
The photographer herds them onto a large bluish-white block that reminds Akira vaguely of perfume commercials from the 1980s and tells them to sit. They crowd in together, Akira and Shindou in front, Waya and Isumi in back, and half of Akira is thinking I will murder Shindou for this and half of him is busy pointing out to the rest of him that his and Shindou's legs are touching, his own shin lying along the line of Shindou's thigh, and that neither of them seems to be moving away. And that Shindou's hand is disturbingly close to Akira's knee. Close enough, in fact, that a small movement from either of them would
Flashes go off, blinding Akira, and as he's blinking he hears the interviewer chirp, "So, who has a girlfriend? Raise your hand!"
There is an embarrassing lack of hand-raising.
"Er," says the interviewer. "Well, you're probably all just too busy with your tournaments to have time to date right now, right?"
"Sure," Isumi says tactfully, even though qualifying rounds for the title leagues don't actually start for another month.
"Waya! Have any hobbies? What do you do in your spare time?" the interviewer asks, beginning to look a little frayed around the edges.
" I play Go a lot," Waya says. "And video games. I play video games. And Go on the internet, which is kind of both."
Akira nearly buries his face in his hands out of sheer mortification. Here they are the New Wave of Go, and they're about as exciting as unflavored ramen.
"I like snowboarding and motocross racing," Shindou volunteers, helpfully leaving out the fact that he likes them on the Playstation.
"Being a pro really does take up a lot of time," Isumi says apologetically.
Akira really doesn't think his life is boring. There's Go, and Shindou, and the fact that Shindou's leg is fascinatingly warm against his and still hasn't moved, though that isn't really something he wants to bring up to the interviewer. By the time the interview has sputtered to a halt, however, he's feeling rather like there is Go and there is People Who Do Not Play Go, and maybe it's not a good idea to try to explain the one to the other. At least the photographer seems happy. Maybe the article will just have a lot of pictures and a brief mention of Shindou's imaginary snowboarding.
"May I use the dressing room again for a few minutes?" he asks politely. "I need to change."
"Of course," says the interviewer, who is looking distinctly wilted.
"I'll go with you," says Shindou, who suddenly doesn't look quite as bored and gloomy. "I left my backpack in there anyway."
"Smooth, Shindou. What if you'd forgotten it?" Akira snipes.
"I wouldn't have forgotten it!"
"Just like you wouldn't forget your lunch, or your wallet, or "
"I forgot my wallet once!" Shindou says, which is such an outrageous lie that by the time Akira is done dissecting it in minute detail they're back in the changing room, door shut behind them.
" and furthermore, you always play atekomi too early," Akira informs him. "Now give me my clothes back."
Shindou's quiet for a minute, strangely, chewing on his lower lip as he gives Akira a long look that makes Akira's face heat a little. "Okay, okay," he says, sounding oddly wistful. He reaches into his pack and tosses Akira's clothes back to him.
Akira looks down at them, then looks back up at Shindou, who has turned his back to Akira. For a minute he feels like there's something he should say, something one of them should say, but he's suddenly not sure he'd trust himself to say anything at all with the memory of Shindou's leg pressed against his still burned into his skin.
He's alone with his rival, who has been flirting with him for months and looking like sin with whipped cream in those loose, trendy clothes for longer than that, and Akira's about to get undressed, and now that he's not distracted by annoyance that seems far more weighty and portentious than it probably actually is. Swallowing hard, he turns away from Shindou, sets his clothes down on a chair, and pulls off the overshirt and shirt he's wearing, folding them neatly before setting them down as well.
He's reaching for the button on his pants when a warm hand touches his left shoulder, freezing his hands in midair and his breath in his throat. There's a moment's strange, awkward silence, full of the electric awareness of Shindou's hand against his bare skin; and just as Akira begins to feel like he ought to say something, anything, Shindou's other hand slips onto his right shoulder, curving around. The flash of blond bangs in the corner of his vision is all the warning he gets before Shindou's mouth touches the curve of his neck, touches just behind his ear, whisper-soft. Akira closes his eyes and tries to think past the frantic hammering of his own pulse.
"Leave them on," Shindou whispers. "I like you in them."
There are a dozen retorts Akira could make and he can't wrap his brain around any of them, even the ones he wouldn't be embarrassed to say. All he knows, with sudden, crystalline clarity, is that if he lets this opening go by without playing a hand, even if it's a weak hand he has to play catch-up around later, it will be the same as resigning the game and going home. So before Shindou can move away, Akira turns around, takes hold of that ridiculous sleeveless shirt, and kisses him.
It's a little clumsy, not as strong a move as he would have liked, and his state of half-undress is a severe psychological drawback; but Shindou makes a small sound into his mouth and his hands move hesitantly on Akira's skin like stones skipping across water, and he's kissing back as if this were all he'd ever wanted, so Akira thinks this move will do for now. And for later, and for as long as it takes for Akira to get used to the taste of Shindou's mouth, to learn every joseki in this new game.
Or until Waya raps sharply on the door and yells "Man, Touya, how long does it take you to change?" and causes them to leap apart as if they'd been scalded, anyway.
"God," Shindou mutters, pressing a hand to his chest. Akira starts laughing and almost can't stop long enough to pull his borrowed shirt back on; this apparently makes Shindou feel obliged to help with the overshirt, but he soon gives up trying in favor of burying his face in Akira's neck and giggling helplessly. Outside, Waya demands to know what's so funny, but he either learned his lesson last time or Isumi has him in a headlock because the door stays mercifully closed.
"Hey," Shindou whispers, brushing warm breath across Akira's neck. "I wanna play Go. Come back to my place."
Akira is fairly sure that isn't how that line is supposed to go, but that's all right. He'll defer to Shindou's expertise for now. "Nigiri," he whispers back.
Without lifting his head, Shindou raises his fist and taps a knuckle rhythmically against Akira's chest, counting: "One, two "
Three and the fist has become two fingers, and Akira has seven fingers splayed against Shindou's chest. "Your move," Shindou says.
It's on the tip of Akira's tongue to say something about first-hand tengen. But he thinks he probably needs a little more practice and Waya is knocking on the door again, so he only smiles and saves the comment for later.
