Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: None.
Notes: Impatience can be found in its entirety at a href"http/www.txq.nu/jumpyboys/viewstory.php?sid490"Jumpy Boys/a.
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Akira knelt in front of the grave and prayed under his breath. Hikaru was reverent next to him, holding his hands piously not toward the sky, but toward the grave.
On their honeymoon, only a year ago, Akira had finally found out who Sai was. It still seemed surreal. He remembered Hikaru pulling him to Innoshima and dragging him, without words, to Shuusaku's grave. "Akira... meet Sai."
There had been a lot of explaining, and a lot of Akira shaking his head and trying to come to terms with the fact that, really, it made everything make sense. They had ended up smiling and laughing at the gravesite. This year, they'd brought a picnic.
This year, shortly after they'd arrived, Hikaru had begun to clean the grave almost lovingly, and definitely with a practiced hand. Akira had watched him do it the year prior, but had been understandably preoccupied with his own thoughts. Now, he watched to understand the subtle nuances of Hikaru.
Things were much the same now as they had been then. They lived next to Waya. Isumi had recently moved in. They were playing in the same tournaments. They got to skip the preliminaries this time. Hikaru cooked and Akira cleaned. Their mothers fed them often enough that Hikaru started doing the laundry. They were happy. That hadn't changed at all.
After a bit of a media blitz, the go world quickly grew accustomed to the fact that it was, in fact, entirely possible for them to be lovers and rivals. Anyone who wasn't okay with it learned to keep their mouths shut as Hikaru and Akira turned into media darlings. Young girls came in droves to watch their go matches and usually knew better than to ask for tutoring when they only came to see real live yaoi-fied bishonen. (Some girls did take pictures, though, when Hikaru would lean over Akira's shoulder and whisper something into his ear.)
They were on their way to a happily ever after. The problem, then, came with the little things. Once Hikaru started doing the laundry, several of Akira's shirts disappeared. When Akira approached Hikaru about it, he was informed that a certain red shirt of Hikaru's had make it in with the whites, and since Hikaru wasn't sure which shirts were supposed to be pink, and which weren't, he just threw all of the pink ones away. "But I liked my pink shirt!" Akira had said as he straddled Hikaru on the floor while shaking a handful of clean socks at him.
Akira had given away three boxes worth of Hikaru's old issues of Weekly Shonen Jump. Hikaru had stopped speaking to Akira for nearly a week before he got tired of having to reach across the table for the salt instead of just asking. This was followed by a long talk about which objects weren't considered communal property (this including clothing and Akira's collection of murder mysteries).
Waya and Isumi had their own problems, and both couples regularly got together for dinner and a movie and a game of go. There was usually someone next door to talk to if one half of a couple made the other mad. Every now and again, though, they were bad neighbors. Their bedrooms were only a wall apart, and after a while both couples had a propensity toward getting frisky in the later parts of the evening. When one of the couples was too loud later on, the other would bang on the wall. After nearly four months of this, the wall crumbled as both Waya and Hikaru were banging on it. They had to split the cost of repairs, Waya and Hikaru needed medical treatment, and Isumi and Akira sighed in unison as they went to write checks for each.
For Hikaru and Akira, the sex only got better as time went on. They grew to know the places and things that made it best, from the spot at the base of Hikaru's neck where his heartbeat thrummed the strongest to the gentle way that Hikaru could coax Akira's legs enough wider to make things perfect.
Akira had grown out his hair at Hikaru's request. He kept it back in a neat ponytail with his bangs brushed off to one side. He hated it until Hikaru looked at him and brushed a strand of it back. That generally made him obsessed with his own hair for several days until the novelty wore off again.
Ashiwara and Nase had been engaged two weeks prior. Ogata had been released from prison, but had been stripped of his titles, and banned from playing professional go in Japan. Fukui had grown old enough to drink, had done so once, and had vowed never to do it again. He'd been nice enough to pay to replace the towels which had been sitting out in the bathroom.
And here they were, eating sandwiches in front of a gravesite. Hikaru had chosen to lay down with his head on Akira's lap. The sun was shining down on them, they had no plans for the rest of the weekend, and they were together. They would go home in a few days. They would start play in the Honinbou tournament. Hikaru would neglect to fold the clothes he took from the dryer so that Akira would have to iron them. But, that was life.
Life was the ins and the outs and the ups and the downs and, for them, it was being together and playing go and endlessly searching for more while knowing that if anyone could find it, it was them.
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Owari.