[HnG] Getting to Know You, PG-13, humor/drama, ?/Hikaru
I keep forgetting to post blind_go stuff up after the reveal. For Round 5. Remind me to finish this, mmkay?
Originally posted here.
Getting to Know You
Hikaru no Go, ?/Hikaru, PG-13, 1988 words
Some things just aren't as funny when they happen outside of BL manga.
Getting to Know You
by meitachi
The first time it happens, Hikaru thinks it’s a mistake because, well, the subway is a crowded place during the morning rush and people can’t be held responsible if they accidentally invade other people’s personal space. Hikaru doesn’t exactly welcome the feeling of a hand sliding over his ass, gliding over the denim of his jeans, cupping lightly, but he thinks it’s somewhat excusable. Someone is probably just looking for handhold on the packed car, trying to keep balance.
Hikaru winces but keeps his mouth shut, ignoring the funny look Touya gives him. Instead, he tries to avoid inhaling the heavy scent of smoke on the air. Subways, he thinks unhappily.
He forgets about it by the time they get off at their stop.
--
The second time it happens, Hikaru is definitely more upset because it is harder to excuse a palm sliding across his bottom when he’s standing in a very public, very uncrowded line to buy a cup of coffee from the corner cafe.
“What!” he exclaims, whirling around after the hand draws away with a fond pat. He meets the startled gazes of surrounding customers, but no one looks guilty of fondling a nineteen-year-old Go player. Hikaru flushes, partly from embarrassment, partly from anger.
“Hey, Shindou,” says a familiar voice, and Hikaru looks up to see Kaga and Tsutsui at a nearby table.
Tsutsui looks bemused behind his glasses and Kaga’s grinning exactly the way Hikaru remembers from the first time they met. “What’s up?” he asks Hikaru. “Didn’t know you drank coffee.”
Hikaru sighs and edges up another inch in line, shoving his hand in his pockets. “I don’t. I’m running coffee errands for Ogata and some others.”
“Huh, I thought they would be the types to drink old-fashioned tea. You know, traditional and all…”
“They did until they discovered the perks of a caffeinated focus.” Hikaru shrugs. “They swear that it improves their game.” He personally doesn’t believe it but that could be his bias: he thinks coffee tastes horrible. Ogata calls him, in his most pitying voice, such a child, and Hikaru sometimes wants to punch him the face, but he still doesn’t like coffee, so whatever.
“Stop by for a sec,” Tsutsui tells him with a smile. “Chat for a little bit before you go back.”
So Hikaru talks to them after he’s placed four different coffee orders and catches up briefly on how they’ve been since the last time he saw them. He doesn’t forget about the inappropriate grope from earlier but he doesn’t mention it; Kaga and Tsutsui probably don’t care that much about his life. Or Kaga will care too much (he probably thinks Hikaru having stalker is hilarious), and Hikaru doesn’t want to deal with that either.
When Hikaru finally returns to the Go Institute, he’s no longer upset and tries to dismiss the incident as an unfortunate run-in with a crazy groupie. He passes out the coffee and can’t help but ask Touya if Go players even have crazy groupies, to which he receives another funny look.
“I hope the coffee aroma hasn’t affected your brain,” Touya tells him, “because I don’t want to lose a rival. Tell Ogata-san to get someone else to do his coffee runs for him in the future.”
--
The third time it happens, Hikaru is by himself, taking a nap in the back of the Touya Go salon because three weeks of intense tournament games have worn him out. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep but the warm atmosphere and familiar pachi pachi of Go stones clicking on Go boards lulls him into a doze. He slumps against the back of his chair, shirt hitching up.
It’s the brush of fingers against his thigh that wakes him up, but it’s the touch against his bare side, exposed by his shirt, that he first registers. But by the time he is lucid enough to open his eyes and raise his head, the phantom touch is gone. He swings his head from one side to the other, scanning the Go salon, but all seems normal, calm. He thinks he catches sight of a flash of red disappearing out the front doors, but he has no idea if it belongs to his mysterious stalker.
“What the hell,” Hikaru mutters to himself and shudders. He rubs his hand over his thigh, grimacing.
“Shindou,” says Touya as he makes his way across the room from where he was playing a game. “Were you sleeping in public?” He frowns, disapproving, and Hikaru rolls his eyes because he’s irritable and Touya is wearing some hideous orange-and-red sweater that hurts to look at. “I ran into Waya-san and Kaga-san outside, earlier. They said they’d stop by to visit when they were done with their errands.”
Hikaru frowns. “I didn’t even know Waya and Kaga knew each other.”
Touya looks at him severely and sits down in the chair opposite him, setting down a manila folder on the table. “People are allowed to have friends you don’t know about, Shindou. The world doesn’t revolve around you.” He looks and sounds exasperated, which makes Hikaru want to annoy him all the more. Leaning over, Hikaru flicks Touya’s hair and grins annoyingly.
“You seem to think it does,” he singsongs.
“You’re so immature.” Touya frowns at him and pushes the folder across the table. “Ogata dropped off the new match schedules for next month. Apparently, there was something wrong with the last batch.”
Sitting back in his seat, Hikaru rubs absentmindedly at his thigh and takes the folder. He tries to shake off the lingering feeling of uneasiness. “Do I play Saeki-san? Ashiwara was bothering me about him again last week.”
--
The fourth time, Hikaru narrows down the groper to someone male and within the group of people he knows. The fourth time occurs, much to Hikaru’s distress, in a public bathhouse. He has nothing on but a towel around his waist and shampoo suds in his hair when a hand runs along his bare back, tracing beads of warm water down his spine and teasing the edge of his towel.
Hikaru jerks and swallows an outraged cry because this isn’t funny anymore-he feels violated, unclean-but by the time he wipes the back of his hands across his eyes and pries them open, there is nothing to see but a crowd of laughing, familiar faces, all seemingly disinterested in Hikaru washing his hair.
Hikaru eyes each of them suspiciously-there’s Touya, leaning calmly against the side of the bath, serene amidst the loud talking, mostly coming from Waya and Kaga (who apparently do know each other, Hikaru finds out). Fukui is chatting with Tsutsui, who looks odd without his glasses. Isumi is beside Hikaru, scrubbing at his arms with a bar of soap, and Ashiwara is laughing from the other end of the bath, his voice rising above the chatter. Next to him, Saeki smiles tolerantly and Ogata wears a vaguely cross expression, though that may just be boredom. Honda and Kurata are also there, but Hikaru dismisses them because Honda is red-faced and practically asleep against the bath, and, well, Hikaru hardly knows Kurata.
It’s one of you, Hikaru thinks with a mix of anger and horror. He tries to remember the touch, the size and shape of the hand in all those previous encounters, and swallows back his revulsion when he remembers the familiar ease of the touch, confident and reassuring on him every time. As if the person knows Hikaru.
Hikaru is positive that someone is trying to sabotage his Go. Or at least drive him insane. He’s afraid whoever it is might be succeeding.
--
The fifth time, Hikaru has a plan. He yawns loudly in front of his group of friends and complains about how tired he is and how he think he’ll take a nap in the Room of Profound Darkness since no one’s using it, right? Making sure he’s alone, he settles himself in the room and feigns sleep. He is sure someone will come for him eventually.
The door opens and Hikaru hears the rustle of clothing, triumphant. Through his lowered lashes, he again glimpses the color red, approaching slowly if the footsteps are any indication.
Hikaru almost hold his breath, almost forgets to continue to fake heavy, even breaths of sleep. Every nerve is tense and alive as the footsteps draw nearer.
Fingertips brush Hikaru’s hand and he acts, bolting upright and gripping the wrist of his elusive stalker at last. “Caught you,” he declares.
Touya stares at him as if he’s insane. “I thought you were sleeping,” he said. “I came to wake you up.”
Hikaru glares at him, unwilling to so easily dismiss his capture. “For what?” he asks. It’s possible that Touya is lying, making up an excuse because he’s been caught. Hikaru eyes his red polo shirt distrustfully, as part of him wonders if he will know if Touya is telling the truth.
“The others want to go to lunch,” Touya says stiffly. He pulls his wrist away from Hikaru and rubs it with a mildly reproachful look. “I thought you might want to go with them. Sorry for being considerate.”
“Shit,” says Hikaru and slaps his hands to his face with a long sigh. “Sorry, Touya.” Touya bites his lip and looks as unapproachable as ever, but Hikaru knows he’s forgiven. The look in Touya’s eyes has softened and his shoulders have relaxed a fraction. He’s really losing it, Hikaru thinks.
“Someone is fucking creeping me out,” Hikaru mutters to his friends at lunch. They stop arguing about whether Koda Kumi is hotter than Hamasaki Ayumi and stare at him. Hikaru swirls his straw around in his soda and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Waya wants to know.
“Someone is randomly groping me and I don’t fucking know who!” Hikaru glances up in time to meet the confused expressions that slowly melt into skeptical disbelief as he describes what he’s been experiencing for the past two weeks. He finds himself growing more and more insistent as Isumi’s eyebrows shoot up and Tsutsui asks him if he’s been sleeping well recently.
“I’m not making this up,” Hikaru explodes when even Touya presses his lips together and looks at him in disappointment.
He gives up after a while, fuming, playing with his food in frustration. He stays silent as everyone finishes eating and heads back to the Institute. They chat around him, over him, because he has nothing he wants to say to them and they have nothing else to say about his overactive imagination.
“Shindou,” Touya tries as the others are saying goodbye to Kaga, who has to leave for his part-time job. Hikaru ignores him and stares instead at the motorcycle helmet tucked under Kaga’s arm, dark cherry red.
“Loitering in crowds in front of a door is terribly ill-mannered,” Ogata drawls as he steps out of the lobby of the Institute, adjusting the cuffs of his blood-red shirt.
Waya bows exaggeratedly, stepping out of his way, and his hair glints red in the afternoon sunlight.
Isumi has a red belt on and Tsutsui has a red jacket and everyone smells like smoke after too much time together. Hikaru’s head spins. A hand comes to rest on his ass again, squeezing none too gently and he shouts, “Stop that!” and whirls around.
Everyone stares at him.
“Shindou?” Waya sounds uncertain.
“Whoever the fuck you are, quit it out,” Hikaru yells because he can’t stand this anymore.
“Shindou,” Touya tries again, but Hikaru’s storming off down the sidewalk, away from the Go Institute, away from everyone who doubts him, away from this crazy groping stalker ruin of his life.
--
Hikaru wakes up two weeks later, heart racing and cold sweat lingering on his brow. “It’s him,” he gasps because he should have seen all along.
--
Started: 04.30.08
Finished: 05.04.08
Notes: Not Sai.
Originally posted here.
Getting to Know You
Hikaru no Go, ?/Hikaru, PG-13, 1988 words
Some things just aren't as funny when they happen outside of BL manga.
Getting to Know You
by meitachi
The first time it happens, Hikaru thinks it’s a mistake because, well, the subway is a crowded place during the morning rush and people can’t be held responsible if they accidentally invade other people’s personal space. Hikaru doesn’t exactly welcome the feeling of a hand sliding over his ass, gliding over the denim of his jeans, cupping lightly, but he thinks it’s somewhat excusable. Someone is probably just looking for handhold on the packed car, trying to keep balance.
Hikaru winces but keeps his mouth shut, ignoring the funny look Touya gives him. Instead, he tries to avoid inhaling the heavy scent of smoke on the air. Subways, he thinks unhappily.
He forgets about it by the time they get off at their stop.
--
The second time it happens, Hikaru is definitely more upset because it is harder to excuse a palm sliding across his bottom when he’s standing in a very public, very uncrowded line to buy a cup of coffee from the corner cafe.
“What!” he exclaims, whirling around after the hand draws away with a fond pat. He meets the startled gazes of surrounding customers, but no one looks guilty of fondling a nineteen-year-old Go player. Hikaru flushes, partly from embarrassment, partly from anger.
“Hey, Shindou,” says a familiar voice, and Hikaru looks up to see Kaga and Tsutsui at a nearby table.
Tsutsui looks bemused behind his glasses and Kaga’s grinning exactly the way Hikaru remembers from the first time they met. “What’s up?” he asks Hikaru. “Didn’t know you drank coffee.”
Hikaru sighs and edges up another inch in line, shoving his hand in his pockets. “I don’t. I’m running coffee errands for Ogata and some others.”
“Huh, I thought they would be the types to drink old-fashioned tea. You know, traditional and all…”
“They did until they discovered the perks of a caffeinated focus.” Hikaru shrugs. “They swear that it improves their game.” He personally doesn’t believe it but that could be his bias: he thinks coffee tastes horrible. Ogata calls him, in his most pitying voice, such a child, and Hikaru sometimes wants to punch him the face, but he still doesn’t like coffee, so whatever.
“Stop by for a sec,” Tsutsui tells him with a smile. “Chat for a little bit before you go back.”
So Hikaru talks to them after he’s placed four different coffee orders and catches up briefly on how they’ve been since the last time he saw them. He doesn’t forget about the inappropriate grope from earlier but he doesn’t mention it; Kaga and Tsutsui probably don’t care that much about his life. Or Kaga will care too much (he probably thinks Hikaru having stalker is hilarious), and Hikaru doesn’t want to deal with that either.
When Hikaru finally returns to the Go Institute, he’s no longer upset and tries to dismiss the incident as an unfortunate run-in with a crazy groupie. He passes out the coffee and can’t help but ask Touya if Go players even have crazy groupies, to which he receives another funny look.
“I hope the coffee aroma hasn’t affected your brain,” Touya tells him, “because I don’t want to lose a rival. Tell Ogata-san to get someone else to do his coffee runs for him in the future.”
--
The third time it happens, Hikaru is by himself, taking a nap in the back of the Touya Go salon because three weeks of intense tournament games have worn him out. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep but the warm atmosphere and familiar pachi pachi of Go stones clicking on Go boards lulls him into a doze. He slumps against the back of his chair, shirt hitching up.
It’s the brush of fingers against his thigh that wakes him up, but it’s the touch against his bare side, exposed by his shirt, that he first registers. But by the time he is lucid enough to open his eyes and raise his head, the phantom touch is gone. He swings his head from one side to the other, scanning the Go salon, but all seems normal, calm. He thinks he catches sight of a flash of red disappearing out the front doors, but he has no idea if it belongs to his mysterious stalker.
“What the hell,” Hikaru mutters to himself and shudders. He rubs his hand over his thigh, grimacing.
“Shindou,” says Touya as he makes his way across the room from where he was playing a game. “Were you sleeping in public?” He frowns, disapproving, and Hikaru rolls his eyes because he’s irritable and Touya is wearing some hideous orange-and-red sweater that hurts to look at. “I ran into Waya-san and Kaga-san outside, earlier. They said they’d stop by to visit when they were done with their errands.”
Hikaru frowns. “I didn’t even know Waya and Kaga knew each other.”
Touya looks at him severely and sits down in the chair opposite him, setting down a manila folder on the table. “People are allowed to have friends you don’t know about, Shindou. The world doesn’t revolve around you.” He looks and sounds exasperated, which makes Hikaru want to annoy him all the more. Leaning over, Hikaru flicks Touya’s hair and grins annoyingly.
“You seem to think it does,” he singsongs.
“You’re so immature.” Touya frowns at him and pushes the folder across the table. “Ogata dropped off the new match schedules for next month. Apparently, there was something wrong with the last batch.”
Sitting back in his seat, Hikaru rubs absentmindedly at his thigh and takes the folder. He tries to shake off the lingering feeling of uneasiness. “Do I play Saeki-san? Ashiwara was bothering me about him again last week.”
--
The fourth time, Hikaru narrows down the groper to someone male and within the group of people he knows. The fourth time occurs, much to Hikaru’s distress, in a public bathhouse. He has nothing on but a towel around his waist and shampoo suds in his hair when a hand runs along his bare back, tracing beads of warm water down his spine and teasing the edge of his towel.
Hikaru jerks and swallows an outraged cry because this isn’t funny anymore-he feels violated, unclean-but by the time he wipes the back of his hands across his eyes and pries them open, there is nothing to see but a crowd of laughing, familiar faces, all seemingly disinterested in Hikaru washing his hair.
Hikaru eyes each of them suspiciously-there’s Touya, leaning calmly against the side of the bath, serene amidst the loud talking, mostly coming from Waya and Kaga (who apparently do know each other, Hikaru finds out). Fukui is chatting with Tsutsui, who looks odd without his glasses. Isumi is beside Hikaru, scrubbing at his arms with a bar of soap, and Ashiwara is laughing from the other end of the bath, his voice rising above the chatter. Next to him, Saeki smiles tolerantly and Ogata wears a vaguely cross expression, though that may just be boredom. Honda and Kurata are also there, but Hikaru dismisses them because Honda is red-faced and practically asleep against the bath, and, well, Hikaru hardly knows Kurata.
It’s one of you, Hikaru thinks with a mix of anger and horror. He tries to remember the touch, the size and shape of the hand in all those previous encounters, and swallows back his revulsion when he remembers the familiar ease of the touch, confident and reassuring on him every time. As if the person knows Hikaru.
Hikaru is positive that someone is trying to sabotage his Go. Or at least drive him insane. He’s afraid whoever it is might be succeeding.
--
The fifth time, Hikaru has a plan. He yawns loudly in front of his group of friends and complains about how tired he is and how he think he’ll take a nap in the Room of Profound Darkness since no one’s using it, right? Making sure he’s alone, he settles himself in the room and feigns sleep. He is sure someone will come for him eventually.
The door opens and Hikaru hears the rustle of clothing, triumphant. Through his lowered lashes, he again glimpses the color red, approaching slowly if the footsteps are any indication.
Hikaru almost hold his breath, almost forgets to continue to fake heavy, even breaths of sleep. Every nerve is tense and alive as the footsteps draw nearer.
Fingertips brush Hikaru’s hand and he acts, bolting upright and gripping the wrist of his elusive stalker at last. “Caught you,” he declares.
Touya stares at him as if he’s insane. “I thought you were sleeping,” he said. “I came to wake you up.”
Hikaru glares at him, unwilling to so easily dismiss his capture. “For what?” he asks. It’s possible that Touya is lying, making up an excuse because he’s been caught. Hikaru eyes his red polo shirt distrustfully, as part of him wonders if he will know if Touya is telling the truth.
“The others want to go to lunch,” Touya says stiffly. He pulls his wrist away from Hikaru and rubs it with a mildly reproachful look. “I thought you might want to go with them. Sorry for being considerate.”
“Shit,” says Hikaru and slaps his hands to his face with a long sigh. “Sorry, Touya.” Touya bites his lip and looks as unapproachable as ever, but Hikaru knows he’s forgiven. The look in Touya’s eyes has softened and his shoulders have relaxed a fraction. He’s really losing it, Hikaru thinks.
“Someone is fucking creeping me out,” Hikaru mutters to his friends at lunch. They stop arguing about whether Koda Kumi is hotter than Hamasaki Ayumi and stare at him. Hikaru swirls his straw around in his soda and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Waya wants to know.
“Someone is randomly groping me and I don’t fucking know who!” Hikaru glances up in time to meet the confused expressions that slowly melt into skeptical disbelief as he describes what he’s been experiencing for the past two weeks. He finds himself growing more and more insistent as Isumi’s eyebrows shoot up and Tsutsui asks him if he’s been sleeping well recently.
“I’m not making this up,” Hikaru explodes when even Touya presses his lips together and looks at him in disappointment.
He gives up after a while, fuming, playing with his food in frustration. He stays silent as everyone finishes eating and heads back to the Institute. They chat around him, over him, because he has nothing he wants to say to them and they have nothing else to say about his overactive imagination.
“Shindou,” Touya tries as the others are saying goodbye to Kaga, who has to leave for his part-time job. Hikaru ignores him and stares instead at the motorcycle helmet tucked under Kaga’s arm, dark cherry red.
“Loitering in crowds in front of a door is terribly ill-mannered,” Ogata drawls as he steps out of the lobby of the Institute, adjusting the cuffs of his blood-red shirt.
Waya bows exaggeratedly, stepping out of his way, and his hair glints red in the afternoon sunlight.
Isumi has a red belt on and Tsutsui has a red jacket and everyone smells like smoke after too much time together. Hikaru’s head spins. A hand comes to rest on his ass again, squeezing none too gently and he shouts, “Stop that!” and whirls around.
Everyone stares at him.
“Shindou?” Waya sounds uncertain.
“Whoever the fuck you are, quit it out,” Hikaru yells because he can’t stand this anymore.
“Shindou,” Touya tries again, but Hikaru’s storming off down the sidewalk, away from the Go Institute, away from everyone who doubts him, away from this crazy groping stalker ruin of his life.
--
Hikaru wakes up two weeks later, heart racing and cold sweat lingering on his brow. “It’s him,” he gasps because he should have seen all along.
--
Started: 04.30.08
Finished: 05.04.08
Notes: Not Sai.