fandom: Hikaru no Go
pairing: Touya/Shindou
title: Deliberately Coincidental
rating: work safe
disclaimer: so not mine that it hurts.
for: ficondemand

Shindou, Touya mused, was drunk again.

He could tell because Shindou had been out with Kuwabara-sensei and the stench of sake could probably kill the rat they'd acquired in their kitchen better than the flimsy homemade traps Shindou had pieced together with old issues of Shounen Jump, a clothes hanger, and some Easy Cheese. Touya still wanted his clothes hanger back, but more urgently, wished Shindou would stop getting wasted with clever old men, while Touya was left at home.

Not that Touya was waiting up for him. He just happened to be sitting here, deliberately and completely coincidentally.

Shindou didn't seem to mind, as he crawled onto the couch and tried to burrow his way into Touya's chest pocket, murmuring about how Touya's mid-game brought all the boys to the Go Parlor. Touya folded his hands in his lap and refused to admit he found this strange, unintelligible creature attractive.

"Your breath smells abominable," Touya told him unhelpfully.

Reaching around Touya, Shindou pawed for the glass of water on the side table, as if he knew Touya had left it there for him, and Touya very carefully did not watch Shindou's throat stretch and bob as he swallowed most of it down in one excruciatingly long gulp. He rubbed his thumb roughly against his palm and endured Shindou passing out on his shoulder and leaving a pool of drool against his collarbone.

Touya clenched his eyes shut when Shindou snuffled and rubbed his warm nose against Touya's neck in his sleep, and recounted every kifu printed in the latest Weekly Go, but couldn't stop his arm from wrapping around Shindou's waist.

The next morning, Touya pulled Shindou's bangs back with the horrifically trendy Naruto hair clips that Shindou had bought for just these occasions, while Shindou moaned and clung to the cool toilet bowl and swore he'd never drink again. Touya sat behind him and rubbed his back with more sympathy than someone who should have known better deserved, and told him that he loved him, utterly frank and opposing for such a long kept secret, reveled before noon on a Sunday.

But when a game was as absolutely, hopelessly lost as Touya was for Shindou, it was only proper to resign. Touya felt he was perhaps a few years too late for propriety's sake, but he'd always forsaken ceremony with Shindou anyway.

Shindou turned his head to look at him. His eyes were all screwed up and Touya thought maybe it was a little cruel to make Shindou try to think when he was puking up his brains. After all, Shindou didn't have much mental capacity to work with on the best of days.

"Yeah, me too," Shindou said slowly, as if he didn't quite know what to make of Touya, and Touya didn't care what Shindou made of him at his point, as long as he took him apart and put him back together a thousand different ways before he was done.

"Oh," Touya said softly, trying to clench down the embarrassingly intense rush of joy that came flooding through his lungs and pumped out from his heart to every vein and seeped in through every pore before he choked on it. He hesitated a moment before laying his head on Shindou's warm, warm back, and continued his soothing motions once he'd gotten his hands up Shindou's shirt and moved up and down his sides.

Shindou make an appreciative noise before a shiver snaked up his spine and he was bending over the toilet once more.

Touya sighed and pressed a kiss to the clammy back of Shindou's neck and wondered if any of their beginnings would ever start how they were supposed to.

He hoped not.