Hikaru no Go, Between Floors

Title: Between Floors [Touya/Shindou]
Rating/Warnings: PG for Pocky, Green tea
Summary: Touya is having doubts, and Shindou just wants to have lunch.
AN: why does this story keep going? comes after ‘This isn’t the Freaking Heian Era’ and ‘Claiming Territory’, but could stand alone. It really wasn’t my intention to write a bunch of these.

Between Floors

“Touya! Come o-on!”

Sighing, Touya tears himself away from contemplation of his pro match and gives his rival a glare as he stands. Shindou is bouncing a little on the balls of his feet and holding out Touya’s shoes.

“Shindou,” he reprimands, snatching his shoes back and tugging them on, “it isn’t very seemly for professional Go players to whine like third graders.”

“But if I don’t whine you sit there the whole lunch,” Shindou points out, starting towards the elevator, and Touya has to trot a little to catch up. “And i’m starving.”

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Touya points out, irritation and pleasure warring in his chest.

“Don’t be stupid,” Shindou presses the button for the ground floor, “I told Waya we’d meet him at the Burger World.”

“What?” Touya wrinkles his nose at the prospect of both fast food and the ex-Insei. “Shindou, I don’t want…”

But Shindou never hears what Touya doesn’t want, because as soon as the doors are completely closed, he pushes Touya back against the wall and kisses him soundly.

“God, that’s been driving me crazy,” Shindou murmurs a few seconds later. “Good thing I’m only playing Katsuya, or I’d have had to really concentrate.”

“Shindou!” Touya says, eyes going up to the numbers counting down above the elevator door.

“Oh, good idea,” Shindou says, reaching behind him to flip the ‘stop elevator’ switch, and Touya splutters because that was certainly not his idea. No protest actually gets lodged, however, because Shindou is kissing him again, and his brain freezes up just like the elevator counter, which is flickering between ‘2’ and ‘3’.

“What about lunch?” he asks dazedly when they break for air. Shindou is still close enough that trying to look at him directly is making Touya cross-eyed, so he closes his eyes.

“Lunch!” Shindou says derisively. “Are you made out of steel, it’s been three days!”

“Many people do manage to go more than three days without being sexually harrassed in an elevator,” Touya comments, even as he is blushing hotly at the thought of three days ago, which had started with a fight for the last stick of green tea pocky and gone downhill rapidly. Fortunately, his parents were still in China.

“Uh-huh,” Shindou replies. “But not people who wear this sweater, which you’re completely doing on purpose, you jerk.”

“My sweater?” Touya blinks his eyes open, and looks down at the blue sweater with the diamond pattern that he has worn probably several hundred times since he met Shindou. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” Shindou shrugs, “if you don’t mind this.” He leans forward and presses his teeth to Touya’s collarbone, which happens to be above the neckline of this particular sweater.

“Don’t, you’ll leave a mark!” is what Touya intends to say, but it really comes out more like “Oooh.”

“So you can see how that’s a problem,” Shindou says, running his tongue over the spot in question.

“Is this a new rule?” Touya asks, tilting his head back until it clunks against the wall as Shindou breathes against his neck, because of course they have rules. They’re good rules too, rules like ‘no seeing each other for purposes of Go or anything else for a week before we face each other in an official match’ and ‘no calling at 4 AM even if you did finally figure out how you could’ve beaten Ogata in that match last month’ and ‘no making out in the back room of Touya’s father’s Go salon even if everybody else is gone, because it is Touya’s father’s Go salon and that is Wrong’.

“I think so,” Shindou answers, and Touya sighs as he files away ‘no wearing the blue sweater of collarbone flaunting on co-match days.’ “What are you sighing about? That wasn’t the good sigh.”

“Don’t you think,” Touya reluctantly pushes Shindou back a step so he can straighten up and think, then winces when his hair snags on a bolt in the wall, “that if we have to make up all these rules, that maybe this isn’t a good idea?” Touya tugs the caught hair gently, but it doesn’t come loose.

“What are you saying?” Shindou asks, eyes narrowing.

“I’m saying,” Touya twists his head to try and see the problem, but his hair isn’t long enough and pulls again, making his eyes water a little, “that we’re in an elevator at the Go Institute, and if we get caught there’ll be a huge scandal, and with your record they could expel you…”

“My record?” Shindou snaps, and Touya instantly regrets bringing it up, or he would if he weren’t busy being bondaged by the elevator. “That happened like five years ago! What are you bringing that up for! You’re just scared!”

“Of COURSE I’m scared!” Touya bellows, fiddling at the bolt with blind fingers and having no success. “Do you know what’ll happen if I cause some huge Go scandal? Me? Go prodigy and son of Touya Meijin! What’ll I do if they kick me out! What’ll I do when i can’t play Go anymore!”

Shindou’s face softens suddenly, and he reaches forward.

“Will you let me do that,” he grumbles, putting arms around Touya’s neck and nudging his head to the side, out of the way. “He isn’t even the Meijin anymore, and no one knows. You’re not causing a scandal.”

There’s a pause as Shindou tugs at Touya’s hair, and suddenly it slides free of the bolt. As Shindou steps back, Touya hears him murmur, “You don’t have to kill yourself over it.”

“What,” Touya reaches back to smooth down the snarled hair, “what do you mean?”

“Hmm?” Shindou looks startled, then looks at the floor. “I just meant, you don’t have to get so worked up. If we…if you don’t want…” Shindou sighs without finishing and reaches over to start the elevator. Touya watches the ‘2’ blink fully on, then lunges forward to turn it off again.

“I didn’t say,” he licks his bottom lip nervously, “that I didn’t want.”

Shindou looks up, surprise and relief flushing across his cheeks. “Really?” Touya examines him for a moment, then nods once. Shindou’s shoulders relax, and that’s all the warning Touya gets before he is shoved against the wall again, but at least Shindou has the consideration to shove him against the wall several inches to the left of the offending bolt, which still has several of Touya’s hairs twisted around it.

“Good,” Shindou sighs against Touya’s mouth, and this time it is the good sigh, “because I want. I really, really want.”

If Shindou is about to make any other deep confessions, they are interrupted by the rumbling of his stomach, and Touya smiles at his sheepish shrug. Pushing Shindou back a few steps, Touya reaches around him to switch the elevator back on again. He is not surprised at all when Shindou steals a last kiss before the doors slide open on the ground floor.

Shindou grabs his wrist and dashes out of the elevator, and this isn’t seemly for a professional Go player either, but Touya can’t catch his breath long enough to scold him, and it feels good anyway, to run down the sidewalk with the early autumn sunshine warm on his face.

He sort of even forgets where they are headed until they dash through the glass doors and the smell of charred cow slaps Touya in the face.

“Shindou! Over here!”

Waya is waving them over to a circular booth in the corner, where he is sitting with Ochi and Isumi. Isumi gives Touya an amiable nod, and the other two eye him but make no overtly hostile moves. Shindou seems oblivious as he slides into the booth, and Touya follows suit.

“Here,” Waya shoves a tray towards them laden with brightly wrapped empty calories. “The line was too long, so I just got two of your usual. Hope Touya doesn’t…” Waya paused as he took a better look at Touya. “Touya, what happened to your hair? It looks like someone tried to hold you down and have their way with you.”

Shindou snickers into his soda as a blushing Touya stutters out an explanation about the bolt in the elevator, and then kicks Shindou under the table for good measure.