Hikaru no Go, Adding to the Noise

Title: Adding to the Noise [Shindou/Touya]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for inappropriate use of a cafe restroom.
Summary: Shindou doesn’t like when things are too quiet.
AN: Bunny overtook me because of svz_insanity‘s icon and layout. who needs to study for Latin finals?

Adding to the Noise

Touya glances at his watch for the third time and wills the stupid subway to hurry up and get to his stop already. Nevermind that the Tokyo underground is one of the most efficient in the world, that doesn’t really help when you’re late to meet your rival before you even get on the thing.

Honestly, sometimes Touya thinks that Ogata delays him after study sessions on purpose, asking him questions that manage somehow to be entirely about Go and yet leave Touya blushing every time. And smirking about it too, the smug bastard. It’s a good thing Shindou has never caught him at it, or lord only knows what his boyf– lov– mutual blowjob partner would do about it.

Something violent, no doubt. It would probably involve that fan of Shindou’s.

“What are you smirking about, young man?” A wizened old woman peers at Touya suspiciously, and Touya flushes and drops his gaze to the ground, murmuring an apology. Fortunately, the next stop is his, and Touya dashes out onto the platform before the woman can offer any other comment on the state of Japanese youth.

Running up the stairs from the station leaves Touya panting for air–it isn’t like Go lends itself to supreme fitness–but he trots down the sidewalk as briskly as he can, glancing at his watch yet again. Finally the cafe Touya is headed for comes into view. It isn’t the ramen shop Shindou usually haunts, but they are actually there to study, and the ramen place can get a little loud.

Touya would chuckle if he had the breath to do so, because Shindou had gotten all flustered when he was asking Touya for help with his math, replying tartly to Touya’s teasing that he didn’t see Touya making any invitations that didn’t at least have the pretense of Go.

“Why Shindou,” Touya had smiled coyly, “are you asking me on a date?”

“No!” Shindou had snapped, turning bright red because he clearly was. “And at least I don’t refer to sex as ‘a three-dimensional tsuke’!”

Touya had replied by kicking Shindou under the goban and winning by four moku.

Shindou is already at the cafe, books spread out next to his coffee (or whatever carmel mocha concoction he is passing off as coffee). His headphones are on, loud enough that Touya can nearly make out the words as he approaches, and Shindou is bobbing his head in time with the music.

“Sorry I’m late,” Touya says, sliding into a chair, and when that has no effect, reaches over to tap Shindou on the back of the hand.

“Gah!” Shindou jumps, startled, then notices Touya and quickly pulls off the earphones. “What?”

“I said, sorry I’m late.” Touya waves a hand at the waitress, who is across the cafe patio, desperate for a glass of water.

“What are you panting like that for?” Shindou asks, peering at Touya’s flushed face and disheveled hair. “Did you run here?”

“I was late,” Touya snaps, rolling his eyes. “Maybe if your headphones weren’t turned up to a trillion decibels, you wouldn’t be deaf as well as crap at midgame.”

“You’re late like ten minutes, you freak,” Shindou retorts. “And just because you can’t appreciate the subtle art of the J-pop single…”

“Oh shut up,” Touya orders, pulling a face. “Just turn it off already, I can feel myself getting stupid just being near it. How can you possibly do homework while you have that on?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” Shindou shrugs as he pulls the mp3 player out of his pocket and clicks it off. He weighs it in his hand for a moment, staring down at it thoughtfully, and something about the twist of his smile makes Touya swallow his next retort.

“You must be used to it,” he says instead. “You do have it on all the time.”

“I don’t like it when my head is too quiet,” Shindou says, then shuts his mouth quickly, as if he hadn’t meant to speak out loud, and flicks a glance up at Touya.

The waitress arrives with Touya’s glass of water and takes his order–regular black coffee thank you very much–and Touya drains half the glass before she has barely taken half a dozen steps away. Once he stops feeling as though he might expire any second, Touya watches Shindou twiddle with his headphones and thinks about what he said as he takes a slower sip of water.

It is true, he reflects, that Shindou likes to be surrounded by people, either out with Waya and Isumi, or in the bustling ramen shop, or even in the Touya salon starting arguements, and if all else fails, there’s always the headphones. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is…

“Why Go, then?” Touya asks, and when Shindou starts again and drops his headphones on the table, adds, “If you don’t like silence, I mean.”

“That’s different,” Shindou answers softly, scooping his headphones back up. Touya watches him run a callused fingertip over the curve of the earpiece. Then Shindou shakes himself a little. “Come on, pull your chair around, let’s just do this math.”

Touya slides his chair around the circular table until it isnext to Shindou’s, but, intrigued, refuses to give up the subject.

“Shindou, why don’t you like silence?”

“Touya,” Shindou blows his bangs out of his face in annoyance, “just drop it, okay?”

“Tell me why.” Touya knows he is prying mercilessly, but can’t seem to help himself.

“There isn’t any reason!”

“There has to be some reason!”

“There just isn’t!”

“Why won’t you just tell me?”

“Because it’s lonely, all right?!” Shindou finally explodes, slapping his headphones down onto his math book. He stares down at the table, refusing to meet Touya’s eyes. Streaks of pink appear across his cheekbones. “When there isn’t any noise, sometimes I feel like…like there’s only me here, and I…forget it.”

“But I’m here too,” Touya says without thinking, then flushes when Shindou snaps his head up to stare at him, mouth open a little. “I mean, I used to spend hours sitting in my father’s salon by myself, and there wasn’t anyone except adults to talk to or play against, and I wasn’t an Insei and I didn’t go to tournaments…before you, it was always quiet.”

“Touya,” Shindou murmurs, and Touya can see the beginnings of the really dangerous smile starting, the smile that leads to missing buttons and underwear in the koi pond, and oh god they are in public and he hadn’t meant to say something deep and apparently affectionate, it had just been a statement of fact.

“Can we just do math?” Touya asks quickly, but Shindou says his name again in a way that should be illegal, and before Touya can do anything about it, leans over and kisses Touya firmly.

Oh god, Touya thinks as Shindou pulls away, someone must have seen and I’m going to be on the cover of Go Weekly and the headline will read TOUYA MEIJIN’S SON FAILS AT GIRLS.

A breathless second passes before Touya realizes that nobody is looking at him but Shindou, whose expression clearly says that if there were a koi pond nearby, Touya’s underwear would be in it right now.

The waitress comes and goes while Touya is trying to put himself back together, and he regrets ordering the coffee, because he feels like if he has any caffeine, the top of his head may blow off. Shindou, who seems perfectly calm, asks if he wants to look at the homework now.

“YES!” Touya says, too loudly, “math!”

Shindou snickers at Touya, and his smirk is all Ogata, and that brings Touya back to earth fast. Vowing revenge, he leans close enough to Shindou’s ear to murmur,

“If we get this out of the way, we can do something that involves you making as much noise as possible.”

Shindou splutters and tries to look indignant rather than shamelessly interested, and Touya grins at his dismal failure before leaning over the math book and beginning to explain. He’s halfway through the second example when he feels Shindou’s ankle rub against his, and when he looks up, Shindou’s green eyes are dark with something that is definitely not Geometry.

“No no, keep going,” he says, “I’m anxious to get to the part where you’re making as much noise as possible.”

“Why wait?” Touya says brazenly, because really, a nineteen-year-old has his limits. “I’m sure there’s a bathroom inside someplace.”

Shindou’s nostrils flare, and the next thing Touya knows he is being yanked out of his chair and pulled towards the inside of the cafe.

“Wait!” he calls, laughing as Shindou bumps them into patrons and tables before they make into into the dim hallway where the restrooms are. “You left your headphones on the table, someone might steal them!”

“Let ’em,” Shindou growls, shoving Touya into the men’s room and kicking the door shut behind them before pushing Touya up against it. “I don’t think I’ll need ’em for a while.”