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Silence is no stranger to Hikaru. In the last few years he’s had plenty of it, years of days of hours of moments of the kind of silence that only comes from being alone in all of the places he’d always had company before. It’s why he doesn’t think twice when Akira is scheduled for a three-day go exhibition down in Itoman—they’ve been living together for almost two months, so Hikaru’s actually kind of looking forward to some time alone in which he can laze around in his underpants and eat nothing but microwaved meals and get the chance to touch-up his roots without Akira complaining of the acrid smell of bleach.
The first night when Hikaru steps through the door and hollers “I’m home!” to receive only silence in return, it’s no big deal. It’s Tuesday night, so if it wasn’t for the go retreat then Akira’d be gone anyway off at the Tanemura estate teaching little Sachiko-chan not to swallow the stones, or whatever it is a five-year-old does in front of a goban. So it might as well be any other evening, and if Hikaru goes to bed a little early, what’s the harm?
His first night of freedom was kind of a waste, so Hikaru resolves to make the most of his second. He orders a pizza, bleaches his bangs, and ignores the chore list pinned to the fridge and very deliberately does not vacuum because he is a free man and can do what he likes and instead uses his time to go through the mountain of unread Shounen Jump weeklies he had piled in the closet.
When Hikaru lays out the futon to sleep, all he can smell is the lingering tang of the bleach in his hair. There’s something strange about it, something off, so he ends up in the washroom having the world’s quickest shower so he can scrub his hair thoroughly with shampoo and conditioner. He might have grabbed Akira’s instead of his own but whatever, it’s all the same, right?
It’s on the third night that Hikaru feels the weight of Akira’s absence pulling at him and dragging him down. It’s ridiculous: they’ve only been living together for two months, less than that, and they’ve spent most of their lives apart until now anyway. And maybe it's irrational for this anxiety to be creeping in the back of his mind now when he has everything he could want, but if loss has taught him one lesson it's that the things he thought he'd be able to rely upon forever can disappear in an instant with neither trace nor recompense.
Which is a morbid thought to be having right now, especially since Hikaru knows exactly where Akira is: he's in the Southern Beach Hotel and Resort in Itoman for the go retreat, and he's texted Hikaru twice already today.
Still, Hikaru runs the dishwasher and sanitizes the countertops and wipes the stove and mops the kitchen floor and vacuums all the rooms in the house. He takes out the garbage, does two loads of laundry, and even though it’s not his turn he goes ahead and does the ironing, too, even though Akira’s got six dress shirts and three pairs of trousers pending and Hikaru’s got almost nothing worth ironing. Then he does the dusting, and ends up going through the bookshelf of reference books Akira mentions periodically that he’s been wanting to sort ever since they moved in, and organizes them alphabetically. Then he remembers Akira’s weird thing about liking to sort them instead by publisher and publication date, so he goes back and re-does it, dutifully checking the publication information inside every single stupid book and Akira had better notice when he gets back or Hikaru’s just going to have to mess it up again and make him do it himself, the stupid ingrate.
Hikaru’s done every single task on the chore list, has even made up next week's menu and grocery list, and still he can't help the nervous energy that animates him.
The stones, he thinks. It's kind of a pain in the ass and he hates doing it, but he should wash the stones. It’s incredibly tedious to scrub and dry seven hundred and twenty-two glass stones, especially since he has to do it in two batches since Akira bitches if he mixes them. You’d think someone who spent his childhood in a go salon wouldn’t be so picky, but Hikaru knows from painful experience that if he mixes his 8.5 mm stones with Akira’s 10 mm stones that Akira will regard it as a transgression just short of matricide.
That sounds like just the distraction Hikaru needs right now, so he heads into their washitsu, kicking off his house slippers before he steps up onto the tatami mats.
Before Hikaru clicks on the overhead light, he notes that it’s started to get a little dark in here. The room catches the sunlight in the morning, which is why when they had come househunting that day at just past nine AM Akira had been enraptured by it, spending more time admiring the simple washitsu than inspecting any of the other rooms in the apartment, even the kitchen.
The apartment had been Akira’s top choice, and Hikaru knows it’s almost entirely due to the washitsu. The mornings are when Akira likes best to play; just after waking his mind is fresh and clear and unclouded by the day’s events and it’s then when he is at his most vibrant and inquisitive, playing lightly, daringly, driving their pace faster and faster with every stone he plays.
Which is fun, Hikaru has to admit, even if it does take his own mind a bit longer to perk up, leading Akira to win more of their morning games than he really should.
Hikaru likes their evening games better. In the evening he can draw Akira into slower, more thoughtful games unhurried by the need to be anywhere else, and they have the freedom to make and remake the board in their minds as many times as they have possibilities. Thursday nights are his favourite; since neither of them have to be anywhere before three the next day Hikaru can entice him into playing languorous games that last for hours.
Just last week they had one of the most beautiful games they’ve ever played, perfectly balanced with neither of them able to shift it to his favour by more than a single moku at once. They had played from sunset to almost five in the morning, and when faint hints of light had started to peek from the horizon that’s when the inevitability of the end of the game had finally hit him.
Hikaru hadn’t been able to stop himself from reaching forward and sweeping his hand across the board, sending the stones sliding and spilling down upon the tatami.
"What are you—" Akira had gasped.
"I don't want to know. I don't need to know. Play it with me over and over again," Hikaru had said, reaching forward and pulling Akira in for a messy kiss that ended with them tumbling down upon the tatami, collapsing together, hands and mouths finding the resolution that their stones did not, and they had made love next to the goban until the morning sky was bright with full sun.
Hikaru swallows hard against the memory, reaching down to adjust himself in suddenly too-tight briefs. It’s not like he hasn’t gotten off since Akira left but it’s different, unsatisfying, to be doing it alone. Last Thursday was really the last time they’d had time to really enjoy each other; Akira’d been so busy tying up loose ends and rescheduling appointments in the days before his trip that they had only gotten in a quickie before Akira had to dash off to the airport.
When Akira gets home, Hikaru’s going to be on him the second he steps into the genkan. Akira will be exhausted and probably cranky; the flight from Naha to Haneda is only about two and a half hours but Akira hates the fuss and bustle of airports. That’s fine; Hikaru will lead him into the living room and draw him down to sit on the couch as Hikaru falls to his knees on the floor in front of him.
Hikaru reaches down to reseat his burgeoning erection—or at least that’s his intention, but now that he’s touching himself he can’t think of a compelling reason to stop. He strokes himself through the front of his jeans, shutting his eyes and focusing on his fantasy.
So he’ll have Akira on the couch, legs spread, and Hikaru will unbutton his shirt so he can kiss his way down Akira’s torso. Akira will be too tired to do more than bat ineffectually at him when Hikaru stops to delve his tongue into the well of Akira’s navel so he’ll do it again.
Hikaru’s fingers unbutton and unzip his fly in real life as he imagines doing the same to Akira in his fantasy, and when he wraps his hand around his own cock he’s wrapping it around Akira’s, too.
And if Akira had been making token protests of being too tired or needing to take a shower or not being in the mood, now is when they would stop, Hikaru knows from experience. Hikaru will draw his cock out of his pants through his fly and lean forward to run his tongue along Akira’s length—and Hikaru was wrong before, this is going to be when Akira drops all of his resistance, when Hikaru takes his cock into his mouth and sucks. Akira will moan, and Hikaru will moan too because he loves this, loves Akira, loves to touch him and suck him and taste him especially at the end of a long day when his scent is deeper, richer, more himself now than at any other time.
Hikaru sinks to his knees on the tatami next to the goban and grips himself harder, stroking himself to a full erection.
Akira will be tired enough that his need will lead him to fist his hands in Hikaru’s hair and tug, holding him in place so Hikaru can’t pull back—as if he’d even want to, but when Akira’s tired he is at his most possessive and demanding. Akira will hold him in place, and as Hikaru strokes and licks and sucks him with increasing fervour so too will Akira’s hold on him intensify; Akira will have strands of Hikaru’s hair caught between his fingers and he’ll pull, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to say that Hikaru is his.
Hikaru slides the first two fingers of his free hand into his mouth, the taste of his skin bright against his tongue. It’s nothing like having Akira in his mouth, not nearly enough, but he needs something, anything, and Akira is on the other side of the country and this is all Hikaru has, his memories and his imagination and his need so sharp it cuts through him down to the marrow of his bones.
Then the stillness of the apartment is broken by the shrill, staticky trill of Hikaru’s ringtone and in his surprise he bites down on his fingers just as his phone vibrates in his back pocket, the stimulation so unexpectedly good that Hikaru lurches forward against his own hand, pre-come leaking from his dick onto his fingers.
Hikaru whips his fingers out of his mouth, shaking out the pain while he lets go of his dick to scrabble into his back pocket for his phone, slick thumb sliding uselessly before he flicks it open with a flourish of his wrist. “Hello?” he asks breathlessly, racking his brain for some kind of household emergency that would explain his shortness of breath.
“Shindou.” And it’s Akira’s voice in his ear, and Hikaru lets himself slump down to lie back on the tatami and cradle the phone to his ear.
“Hey, you,” Hikaru says, closing his eyes. “How goes?”
“Well,” Akira says simply, and Hikaru loves him, absolutely does, but Akira is ridiculously bad at small talk and Hikaru’s brain is a little too scrambled to pick up the slack so they sit in silence for long seconds.
“So what did you do today?” Hikaru asks just as Akira says “I missed you,” and it’s so not what Hikaru would have expected to hear coming out of Akira’s mouth that he can’t help the grin that comes to his lips.
“I missed you too,” he says. “I was just thinking of you—” he says before thinking better of it, coughing to clear his throat and tacking on “Never mind.”
“Never mind?” Akira asks.
“So anyway!” Hikaru attempts to change the subject.
Akira’s voice is warmed by his obvious amusement. “And how much clothing was I wearing when you were thinking of me?”
“Um,” Hikaru says, caught. “All of it? C’mon, it wasn’t like that,” he lies shamelessly. “You know I love you for your go.”
“I don’t mind if you love me for other things,” Akira murmurs, voice husky, and he must have had the same thing in mind as Hikaru because normally Hikaru would have expected Akira to chide him a little more.
“I love you for everything,” Hikaru says, and since it doesn’t seem like Akira minds he swaps his phone to his left hand and lets his right trail down his chest to his still-hard cock. “Tell me what you did today,” he says, grasping himself and giving his cock a firm stroke.
“Oh, you’ll appreciate this,” Akira says. “I played Yashiro. Did you know he’s a 4-dan now?”
Hikaru huffs. “Man, I just can’t shake him off my ass, can I? How is he? I haven’t talked to him in like six months,” he says.
“He’s in the quarter-finals for the Kansai Ki-in Senshuken Tournament, so quite well indeed,” Akira says.
“Seriously?” he asks. “That’s awesome! Hey, if he makes it to the finals we should totally head over there for moral support or something.”
Akira makes a sound of warm amusement. “He had the same suggestion. He offered us the use of his spare bedroom.”
Which is nice of Yashiro, but in the milliseconds Hikaru’d had to spin out his little fantasy weekend-trip he’d thought he and Akira might maybe make a little vacation out of it, stay in a teensy little ryokan right in the heart of what was once Heian-kyou and maybe check out a temple or something in their spare time.
“That’s cool,” Hikaru says noncommittally. “Well, he’s gotta get there first, right? So how did the game go?”
“Mm. I think perhaps it might not have been the best example for the attendees as a commented exhibition game, but if anything it was interesting. He opened at ootakamoku,” Akira says, shifting to the brighter, more incisive tone he so often brings to his commentary.
“Seriously?” Hikaru snerks. “Man, too good to play star point or komoku, huh? So what did you do? Takamoku, or tenuki?”
And he knows what Akira’s going to say before he says it: “Takamoku,” Akira murmurs, voice rich with possibility. Of course he did; Akira would never, ever be able to turn down such an invitation.
Hikaru can just imagine the expression that goes with that tone of voice: Akira’s eyes must have narrowed, his mouth must have curved only ever-so slightly on the left. He’ll have his elbows on the table before him, fingers laced together in a temple shape. Akira will be beautiful and focused and dangerous, and the idea that someone else can draw this out of him will never cease to make Hikaru jealous.
“And then?” Hikaru asks. “Did he attach at the star point? Or did he—” and Akira steals the words from his mouth before he can say them.
“Pincer,” Akira says, his evident pleasure sending its consort through Hikaru’s already kindled senses.
“Tell me,” Hikaru says, biting his lower lip briefly as he gives his cock a quick stroke, letting the soft pads of his fingers glide over his tip. “Tell me the game.”
And Akira does, his voice lowering to a soft, silky murmur as he guides him through fuseki step by step, and Hikaru knows this voice, has heard it in his ear on countless nights as Akira had lain next to him, limbs wrapped around him and entangling with his, and it inspires the hand Hikaru has wrapped around his cock to move with greater urgency.
Hikaru can see the shapes sprawling out over his mind’s eye. Akira and Yashiro are both fearless, impatient players, and it doesn’t take long before the petty squabbles they’d started in the corners spill across the board in all-out warfare.
The fight turns bitter and violent and reckless. Yashiro invades on the right but Akira is ready for him, sacrificing three stones without hesitation to afford himself the opportunity to check him and then extend, pushing through and then breaking apart his incursion before throwing himself into a new offensive of his own.
Akira’s voice begins to betray just the faintest bit of strain and Hikaru knows how it must have driven Akira crazy to be pushed into playing these ungainly hands and forming these inelegant shapes. It’s so unlike his usual brutally precise control that Hikaru can’t picture it, can’t predict it; all he can do is bite his lip and listen to Akira whisper to him of dangerous shoulder-hits, of savage pincers, of—
Hikaru’s hand stills, squeezing tightly at the base of his shaft. “What?” he asks breathlessly, and he really, really hopes he didn’t just hear what he thinks he just heard because oh my God.
“And then I thrust up between to cross-cut his shoulder attachment,” Akira repeats, and he has no right, no right at all to sound so throaty and hoarse and self-satisfied because he should have known better, an insei would know better.
“No,” Hikaru says. “No, no, no. You didn’t,” he insists, because there is only one response to that and now Akira is trapped, those stones are completely cut off, and now Yashiro has him completely at his mercy, and Akira would never, could never do such a thing; it’s impossible, absolutely impossible.
“Ah...” Akira trails off, clearing his throat. “Excuse me?”
“You idiot!” Hikaru hisses. “What the hell were you thinking? How could you be so careless? Were you paying any attention at all?” he demands, not waiting for the answer before barrelling forth. “You’ve just started a capturing race you have no hope of winning, you don’t have a single ko threat, and you’ve left yourself wide open and now Yashiro can wedge in and break apart your entire shape there because you don’t even have two eyes; 15-6 is false, you idiot! I thought you were going to go for the pincer and then he’d have to respond which would let you finish building thickness over in your group to the left and then that would be settled but oh my God, you fell for it, you completely fell for it, and now all those stones are dead. Oh!” Hikaru interrupts himself, alternate possibilities flashing inside his mind’s eye as he frantically tries possibility after possibility to try and extricate Akira from this trap. “No,” he says slowly, biting his lip against the inevitability of Akira’s defeat. “He blocked instead, played at 17-10 to force you to connect and then oh my God, Touya, your group to the left, that’s it; he wanted your group to the left, didn’t he?”
“Are you talking about the game?” Akira asks, and Hikaru cannot seriously believe he actually fell in love with someone as incredibly oblivious as this.
“Of course! What else would I be talking about?” Hikaru asks.
Akira takes a moment before responding. “I had gotten the impression that... ah, that your attentions were elsewhere.”
“What?” Hikaru asks. “What is that supposed to mean? Of course I’m listening to you!” he protests, annoyed Akira could even accuse him of such a thing.
“You sounded as if you were—occupied,” Akira says lightly.
And he’s not making any more sense. “Huh?”
“I thought you were masturbating!” Akira grits out, huffing audibly into the receiver.
Hikaru chokes on the spit in the back of his mouth. “You could tell? I mean, um, no, I totally wasn’t—”
“You were!” Akira exclaims. “I know you; I know what you sound like. I just thought—that perhaps I could make things a bit more, ah, interesting for you.”
“Go is always interesting! Why would you even think that, you idiot?” Hikaru asks, turning it back on Akira so hopefully he doesn’t focus on the part where Hikaru was totally jerking off to his voice.
“Since I can’t be there with you right now, I thought that at the very least I could make it better for you while you touch yourself,” Akira says, and he’s found his surety again because his voice is low and throaty and it sends a sharp pang of need spidering through Hikaru’s synapses and makes Hikaru’s hand tighten around his throbbing dick.
“Um,” Hikaru begins faintly, stroking himself slowly. “I, um. Okay, so, then, tell me,” he says, taking a deep breath. “If you were here, what would you do?”
“Mm,” Akira says thoughtfully, and he’s got no right to sound so Goddamned composed when Hikaru has so little composure for himself. “You’re so hard, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice; I’ve heard you like this dozens of times, hundreds of times. You must be leaking pre-come; have you been letting it gather at the tip, or have you been drawing your fingers through it, rubbing it into your cock?”
Hikaru bites his lip hard, squeezing his cock and milking it, drawing out a little more pre-come. “Both? I’ve been stroking with it, but I’ve got some now. What do you want me to do?” he asks, holding his breath in anticipation.
“I’d want to lick you clean, to taste you, but since I can’t you’re going to have to do it for me,” Akira murmurs. “Taste yourself.”
Hikaru rubs his fingertips along the head of his dick before drawing his hand upwards, pre-come stranding in a thin string between his cock and his hand before snapping. He runs the wet pads of his fingers over his tongue, startling his tastebuds with a sharp tang.
“It’s salty,” Hikaru says, throat tight. “And I—tell me, what do you want, what do you want me to do?” he asks, letting his fingers trail slowly down his chest, the sensation tantalizingly light through his favourite yellow t-shirt, the cotton well-worn and thin from countless washings.
“Grab your cock,” Akira says, and Hikaru can’t help the satisfied sigh that escapes his lips as he obeys.
“Harder,” Akira insists. Hikaru bites out a gasp, and Akira’s voice is throaty and thick when he murmurs “Harder than that.”
“Ohmigod,” Hikaru gasps, his cock throbbing in his trembling grip.
“Good. Now give yourself a long, slow stroke. Let your fingertips glide along your corona as you slide your hand; I love watching how that makes you shiver,” Akira says, the pace of his own breathing speeding up to match Hikaru’s.
“Okay,” Hikaru manages to acknowledge, and as he runs his fingertips just under the head of his cock he lets the pad of his thumb draw across his slit. “Oh, Akira—” he chokes out, arching his hips up into his hand.
“Hikaru,” Akira very nearly purrs. “You can speed your pace if you like.”
Hikaru can’t manage words, just a low, strangled sound of what he hopes is affirmation; he doesn’t know how Akira can do this, can break him apart any time he wants and remake him any way he likes.
It’s not enough, this echo of him without having him. He supposes he should at least be happy he has this; two days without Akira should make him grateful for the smallest token. And yet all it does is make him ache and want more; it only makes it even more obvious what Hikaru has been deprived. He wants Akira to be more than just a voice in his ear. He wants Akira to be a voice in the room. He wants Akira to be here with him where he belongs, where Hikaru can prove his existence with his hands and his mouth and his fingers and his lips over and over again.
Hikaru can’t have much right now, but he can have this. Carefully he slides his thumb along the keypad of the phone, identifying each button by shape, before he finds what he’s looking for and presses down. His phone makes a cheerful, affirmative beep, and when he looks down at the screen he sees the image of a speaker flash briefly before the screen fades back to black.
“What was that?” Akira asks, voice echoing off the walls, and with his eyes closed and just a bit of imagination Hikaru can ignore the slight tinniness imposed by the phone and pretend that Akira’s just on the other side of the goban.
“Oh, uh—” he starts, not expecting Akira to have noticed, but then again the phone did beep and maybe he thinks Hikaru’s hung up on him, whoops. “Nothing; I was just...” he trails off, because adding ‘switching it to speakerphone because I missed the sound of your voice’ would just be ridiculous.
“You sound different,” Akira notes. “Speakerphone?”
Caught. “Oh, yeah. Um, if it’s okay?” Hikaru asks, biting his tongue as he reaches down to tentatively take himself in hand once more, stroking himself slowly. “I kind, of, um. Missed you,” he admits in a rush.
“I miss you, too,” Akira responds, his voice soft. “Ah, but now you have a hand free,” he notes, his tone lowering to something markedly more sultry than speculative, and in an instant the possibilities for which that state of affairs now allows sends a bright spark of need glittering through his veins. “Are you in the bedroom?”
Hikaru stills his hand, the faintest hint of guilt creeping into the back of his head. “Um...” he trails off.
“Um?” Akira repeats, prompting him with just the slightest hint of amusement that isn’t quite sure if it shouldn’t be suspicion instead.
And this totally isn’t fair because it’s not like he’s got anything to feel guilty about; this is not anywhere close to the first carnal interlude this room’s borne witness to. “I’m in the washitsu,” he admits, running his fingertips lightly down his shaft.
“Ahh—” Akira breaks off, breath hitching. “You are?”
And here it is, an opening, the first Akira’s offered to him since their conversation began. “Uh huh,” Hikaru confirms, mouth curving into a smile. “I was just thinking that it would be about this time of night that we’d be settling in for a game,” he says, voice gaining strength as he hears Akira’s breathing shudder.
“Good,” Akira says breathlessly. “It’s where you belong, where you should always be. I can picture you there sprawled out on the tatami next to the goban—” and here Akira breaks off, swallowing so hard Hikaru can hear it over the phone line fifteen hundred kilometres away.
“Yeah,” Hikaru says. “I was thinking about you, and how you should be here with me, playing me, right now.”
“No,” Akira says, and his voice is strangled but his tone is strong. “No. If I was there now, we wouldn’t be playing. We’d be fucking.”
And it’s not fair that Akira can wrest back control of the conversation with a single word; Hikaru’s cock twitches almost painfully in his hand, pre-come beading at the tip.
“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about fucking you over the goban?” Akira asks, his voice liquid and dark and very, very good, and oh God, even thinking about something so—so sacrilegious should not be making Hikaru’s dick ache like this.
‘What are you even saying’, Hikaru wants to say, but what comes out instead is “Oh my God.”
“I wonder why I haven’t,” Akira says almost musingly. “That will be the first thing I do when I get home tomorrow night: I’m going to strip you of all your clothes, you’re going to get on your knees for me, and then you’re going to bend over the goban.”
And oh, just the idea of it, just the thought of Akira, still fully dressed in his suit, looking down upon him and looking him over while Hikaru is bent over for him with his ass in the air, slams into him with an almost physical force; Hikaru grips his cock tightly by the base, swallowing hard against the drumbeat pounding inside his head. “Akira,” he says, because it’s the only word he has left. “Akira, please—”
“Get on your knees,” Akira instructs him. “Now. Do it,” he barks, and there’s no way Hikaru could possibly disobey that voice.
Hikaru pulls himself upright, wiping his sticky palms on the thighs of his gaping jeans before drawing himself over to his side of the board to where his zabuton would be. Drawing himself up on his knees, he has time for one single shaky breath before he leans forward, bracing his forearms against the surface of the board.
“Spread your knees,” Akira orders, and even though it’s far from the first time Akira has instructed him so, it still makes Hikaru burn with embarrassment.
“But—I mean, I’m already—I don’t need to—” Hikaru stammers.
“Do you think I don’t know the movements of your body as well as I do those of your hands?” Akira asks of him. “Do you think there's a moment we're together in which I'm not giving you my full attention? Spread your knees, Hikaru.”
And God, it always makes him ache to hear Akira say his given name; it’s taken them so long, taken them years, and every time Akira says it Hikaru knows he is well and truly caught.
One day in the future when Hikaru is Hon’inbou, Akira will be his challenger, and when the game is perfectly balanced between them all Akira will have to do is whisper “Hikaru”, and Hikaru will be utterly undone and have nothing left to him but to drop a fistful of stones upon the board and bow his head.
“Tomorrow,” Akira says, his voice low and full of promise, “you’re not going to be allowed to touch yourself. Tomorrow you’ll have to keep both hands on the board. But tonight it’s all right. Go ahead and grasp your cock.”
And it’s been just long enough that Hikaru had forgotten all of the details of what that feels like, of what it means, and when he wraps his hand around his cock and squeezes he has to gasp at the sharp spike of desire that floods his system.
“That’s my hand,” Akira tells him. “You’re going to be doing for me what I cannot. Tonight you’re going to stroke yourself. Lighten your grip.”
“But—” Hikaru protests, though his hand’s already begun to open just enough to lessen the pressure.
“I’m going to be using a light touch, because I don’t want you to come too soon,” Akira says, and here with his eyes closed and Akira’s voice echoing off the walls Hikaru can almost feel his presence in the room. “Lean forward. Press your head to the board.”
Hikaru does, the coolness of the pine almost unbearable against his flushed skin.
“At the angle you’re at, the view you’ll be giving me of your backside will be absolutely licentious,” Akira murmurs. “I love your ass: how round it is, how a single firm slap will redden your pale skin.”
Hikaru bites his lip hard against that mental image; spanking’s not really something they do, per se, but Akira has definitely smacked his ass on occasion, and now Hikaru knows that it actually kind of is a thing, that Akira likes it, he won’t ever be able to bare himself to Akira without wondering when the strike will come.
“With your legs spread like that, you’ll be perfectly displayed for my attentions,” Akira continues, his voice growing rough and gravelly. “I can suck kisses on your thighs. I can lick the seam of your sac, can take your testes into my mouth and lave my tongue along them gently, just enough to make you squirm and moan. While my hand is stroking you, I can trail kisses across your skin, and when I tongue your hole you’re going to be so hard your cock will be dripping with your need.”
“Akira!” Hikaru protests; they might do it, but talking about something like that is just too much. But Akira’s right, Hikaru is, he’s dripping with it, he’s dripping pre-come all over his fingers.
“I love hearing you like this,” Akira says. “The way your voice is so strained like you’re so wrapped up in your desire that every single muscle in your body is whipcord-tight. You’re close, aren’t you?”
And Hikaru is, his hand a blur, his fist working his cock as hard and as fast as he can, and he manages to bite out a hoarse “Yes.”
“Not yet,” Akira says sharply. “I haven’t yet told you how I’m going to fuck you.”
“Oh God,” he bites out, rocking his hips in time with his strokes. “Tell me, tell me how you’re gonna fuck me—”
“I’m going to wait,” Akira says, and he can’t, he absolutely can’t because Hikaru needs it, needs him. “I’m going to wait until you are as you are now, desperate and panting and consumed with nothing but your own need. I’m going to wait until you can think of nothing else but me. I’m going to wait until you beg.”
“Please,” Hikaru sobs, panting openmouthed. “Please, Akira, fuck me, I want you to fuck me—”
“And I will,” Akira breathes. “I’m going to fuck you, Hikaru. I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to bear it; you’ll bite your lip and grip the goban so tightly your nails will dig in and leave marks so deep that every time we play you will see them and you’ll think of this, you’ll think of me. I’m going to fuck you until you can't take it anymore. I'm going to fuck you until you beg me to come. And only then will I come, and I'll fill you with my seed, and I'll watch it drip from your ass as I stroke you to completion.”
They have always, always done it with a condom and the thought of not using one, of having nothing at all coming between them, of being filled with Akira's come, is more than Hikaru can take and he comes with a sob, cock pulsing in his hand with every spurt of jism, and through his moans he can hear Akira’s panting break off in the ragged keen that Hikaru has long since learnt marks the hardest, most exhausting of Akira’s orgams.
He doesn’t know how long it takes for his breathing to slow, only that when it does, he can hear Akira’s panting slowing as well, and they come back to themselves together in wordless, companionable silence.
Hikaru gives himself one final stroke before tucking himself back in his underwear. Bracing himself with both hands, Hikaru opens his eyes as he raises himself up on his knees, and it’s only now that he’s looking at the goban that with a sense of vaguely tenebrous horror he realizes what he’s done.
“I just came on the goban,” Hikaru admits, voice cracking on the final word.
“Oh my God,” Akira says, his voice faint. “When I get home tomorrow evening, we’re going to make you do it again.”
Hikaru sinks back down in a loose, cross-legged sprawl. “Okay,” he says, and he’s too exhausted to blush.
A thought occurs to Hikaru. “You know, you still have to show me your actual game with Yashiro,” he points out.
Akira manages a tiny laugh. “You only love me for my go, don’t you?”
Hikaru looks down at his hands. “I love you for everything,” he says, and maybe he’s not completely exhausted, because his cheeks are feeling distinctly warm.
There is a soft click, then Akira’s voice is sharper and clearer than ever. “I love you, too. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow evening.”
“Me too. I miss you,” Hikaru says softly.
“Miss you, too,” Akira echoes quietly. “See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow,” Hikaru says, and only when his phone clicks again into true silence does he lean over and pick up the handset so he can snap it shut.
Inevitably his gaze falls upon the goban, its even grid of intersecting black lines now overlaid with irregular splatters of white. He’s not really even sure what would be the best way of cleaning it, but he’s got to do something before it stains the pine, and—
Hikaru whips his sock off his foot and wipes off his come as best he can, crumpling it on itself and giving the board another swipe for good measure.
Haunting a goban isn’t the worst way Hikaru could spend the afterlife, though he’d really prefer not to have to find out for himself. But if it’s his destiny then the least he can do for himself is to make sure he has company—and besides, Hikaru’s gone first.
Tomorrow is Akira’s turn.