Growing Together: Omake

"Hikaru? Do you regret anything in your life?"

Hikaru leaned back in his chair. "I'm sure I don't know the meaning of the word."

"Come on. Nothing you wished you'd done differently?" Akira pressed, in a volume just above a whisper..

"Is this just because talking helps the pain, Akira?"

Akira rolled his head away from Hikaru on the pillow.

"Does it hurt, Akira?"

Akira closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the edge of the bedsheets. "Only as much as it ever has, Hikaru."

Because of their respective lifestyle habits, no one had expected to see Touya Akira go first. But when the stomach cancer became terminal in his 76th year, it was clear that those expectations were meaningless.

Akira had a dignity and grace that carried him through the trauma as elegantly as anyone could be, and even Hikaru had come to accept the inevitable.

"Don't get all poetic on me."

"Then answer the damned question, Shindou."

Hikaru sighed, probing his memory. "I regret fucking up your 28th birthday party."

Akira raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "I can't believe you even remember that, let alone regret it."

"You didn't speak to me for two days."

"Let it go, Hikaru, I don't care." He didn't, really.

"You did then, though. And those were two days that I didn't get to have you." He paused. "I'd give... anything for two more days..."

"Hikaru," Akira said, shaking his head, "I told you not to get like that."

"Sorry," he said, failing on his promise not to get emotional.

After a few minutes of tangling their fingers in silence, Hikaru asked again, "Does it hurt?"

"Stop asking that, Hikaru," he replied a little bitingly. "The answer is always yes, okay? It hurts. A lot. I just want you to keep talking to me."

Akira's breaths were calmly labored, his voice hoarse and quiet. "All I want is to keep talking."

"Can we talk about happy things, then, and none of this regret bullshit?"

"Sure, whatever you want."

"Remember the day I'd eaten at my 100th ramen shop?"

"Ugh. Do I ever."

"Come on! It was amazing!"

It made Akira smile, that love of the inane that made Hikaru glow.

"See. You thought it was awesome. You were totally jealous."

"As if, Shindou."

"What do you remember fondly, then?"

Akira closed his eyes and thought.

"Hmm. Remember that time we had sex in the salon after hours?"

"Oh, God, Akira, I was terrified."

"I know, but it was hot as hell."

"How can you even think about sex, you nasty old man?"

Akira laughed as much as he was able.

"Seriously, I has bruises from go stones in my back for a week."

Akira laughed a little more, a little too much, driving him to cough rather violently.

Hikaru jumped up a bit, eyes alight with terror as he waited for the seizing to pass.

"I'm...fine...Hikaru," Akira said, wincing to betray his words.

"Oh, God, Akira..." Hikaru said, pulling Akira's fist to his forehead with both hands. Akira cringed.

"I can't do it. I can't, Akira," he said, beginning to cry.

"Hikaru, no. No, please, don't do this... I need..." he trailed off, exhausted.

Hikaru hiccuped his sobs back quietly, fruitlessly.

"Tell me another happy memory, okay? Please?" Akira begged.

"That three day trip in Oki...nawa."

"That's it, Hikaru. Tell me..."

Hikaru sniffed. "You were so gorgeous..."

"But I was already 34."

"You looked so good, Akira. And we just ran around, doing whatever we wanted, kissing in the restaurant, holding hands in the shopping malls..."

"Not to mention what we did in that hot tub..." Akira added.

"I can't really remember why we picked that trip to forget that we were a gay couple, but it felt so good, loving you out in the open."

"It was wonderful, Hikaru." Akira smiled, remembering.

"I love you so much. I wish I had spent more time..." he trailed off, tears returning.

"Will you kiss me, Hikaru?"

The air grew still in the large, sunlit master bedroom of their home. It was the perfect picture of order, and Akira didn't know, couldn't know, that the rest of the house was in total chaos. It didn't matter, as long as the tiny, shrinking world he inhabited for his dying days was peaceful and well-kept. The two men looked at one another, with all the love they'd ever had for each other and more as the seconds ticked by.

"Even though I'm an ugly old man?" Hikaru whispered.

Akira only closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, awaiting Hikaru's fulfillment of the request.

"Hikaru," Akira said after the kiss ended.

"D...don't..." Hikaru stammered, alarmed by the tone of Akira's voice, something he had learned the nuances of from over fifty years of hearing it.

"Hikaru, I can't stand it much longer."

"Akira..."

"Please be strong, Hikaru, please. Let me go gently."

Hikaru was long gone in tears.

"Hikaru..."Akira said, "Please, Hikaru."

"I'm scared, Akira," he eked out in between sobs.

"I'm not, Hikaru."

He looked up, face red and wet.

"I'm not scared, Hikaru, so you shouldn't be either, okay?"

"Akira..."

"Lay with me, Hikaru. Please. One more time."

Hikaru wiped his eyes with his sleeves and crawled in next to his life long lover. Gently, he wrapped his wrinkled hands around him, shuddering hard when the full scope of Akira's lightness became apparent to him. It was as if he were already a ghost.

He lay there awake for about eight hours, hanging on desperately through Akira's shudders and quiet, inevitable sobs as the last throes of the disease wrenched his frail body. The phone rang a few hundred times, and the sun set. After a few moments of stillness, Hikaru fell asleep. He dreamed of Okinawa. Of celebrating Akira's fifth title. Of their first kiss. Even of that time in the salon, late at night. His brain bounced around in time, the two of them ageless throughout. When Akiko died. When Isumi won his first title. Their 50th aniiversary. Their 70th birthday. Akari's baby, Hikari. That rainy day when a raven haired eleven year old challenged a stupid ghost-haunted boy with loud shouts and no reservations. The day Hikaru promised "I'll tell you, and you alone, one day."

He knew the end was coming. Maybe it had already come. The Divine Move was never a thing to be reached on a physical go board, and if it was, they'd never reached it.

But if there was such a thing as the divine, Hikaru and Akira had known it. In one other's eyes, and kisses, and in every shudder they shared as Akira passed on from this world to the next.

~fin