Fic: (HnG) Three Stones in an Empty Triangle
Title: Three Stones in an Empty Triangle
Author: corbeaun
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Disclaimer: Hikaru No Go belongs to Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi.
Pairing: Ogata/Akira/(Hikaru)
Rating: NC-17, mature audience only
Summary: All he has is the Go he plays. Lessons Ogata tries to teach Akira.
Author's Notes: This is my first time writing scenes this explicit…So feel free to point out any awkwardness. Also, probably the closest I’ll ever be to writing a ménage à trois. But I thought Ogata deserved a little more fictional action, poor guy. Not that he was easy: ask me sometime about all the permutations I had to go through just to get the stubborn man into bed. Inspired by oxoniensis’ Fourth Verse of the Porn Battle.
Linked at hikarunogo
Omiai: marriage meetings
Shidougo: tutoring game
Joseki: pattern of moves that benefits both sides
Three Stones in an Empty Triangle
Shindo Hikaru, the former Honinbou, wouldn’t play him.
He had excused himself from the preliminary rounds of the Meijin tournament, and also stopped coming to the Go salon.
On the day when they were scheduled against each other in the semi-finals of the Ouza tournament, Touya Meijin - the younger - sat staring down at the goban, not looking at the empty seat across from him.
Shindo forfeited that match also.
When the organizer came up and absolved him at the end of the timed session, Akira only nodded politely and walked out of the room, out of the building, and straight into the nearest bar where he ordered the cheapest sake on the menu. He drank without pleasure, but with the steadiness and determination of a man resolved not to see sobriety for a long time. It didn’t take that much; he was a lightweight.
o o o
He gasped, sputtering at the sudden shock of cold water doused upon him. He was sprawled in the corner of a shower stall, still fully dressed.
"Finally sober now, Akira-kun?"
He looked up to see Ogata standing over him with a smirk and an empty glass pitcher in one hand. He tossed Akira a towel and then continued dismissively, "Go clean yourself up. You smell like a whorehouse." Akira stared down at the wet floor. The bathroom door clicked shut.
The aftershock of being so suddenly brought back to sobriety trembled through him. His hands spasmed against the porcelain tiles of the shower stall - one he recognized as belonging to the bathroom of Ogata Seiji, 10-dan, Gosei’s high-rise apartment. He tried to breathe, and almost choked on the smell of himself.
Ogata was right - he stank, of beer and cigarettes and other men’s cologne. He ripped off his shirt, tossed it in a corner of the bathroom.
Blindly, he reached for the spigots.
When he finally exited the bathroom, he found Ogata waiting for him on the living room couch. He took a small breath, then looked the other man straight in the eyes, prepared to hear any recriminations. The older man held Akira’s half-defiant gaze as he took a deep drag of his cigarette. "You have become very common lately, Touya Akira. Getting drunk at bars, propositioning strange men."
At that, Akira turned away briefly. He had disjointed memories of pressing up against a man’s great wool overcoat, his hands tangling in rough hair. At the time, he’d been so intoxicated that he hadn’t recognized the man he was leaving with. The bar had been very close to the Go Institute, and he would be lucky if tonight’s incident didn’t get splashed across the pages of Weekly Go. He should care. He always had before.
"I hear you are going to omiai meetings at the suggestion of your mother," Ogata’s smoke-roughened voice drawled. "Worried about her son’s matrimonial prospects, hmm? I wonder, does she know about your...extracurricular activities?"
That wretched omiai...
His eyes shut, as if he could shut out the memory of Shindou’s wide, stricken gaze.
I don’t understand him, Akira thought bitterly, I don’t understand him at all.
He opened his eyes in time to catch the tail end of a lingering once-over of his body. He saw how Ogata’s gaze had dropped to his bare chest, still damp, and the top few buttons of the trousers that he had not bothered to do up. He knew he should care. But instead of shame, he only felt rising in him a cold, pre-meditated recklessness. His old family friend, he realized, was not unattractive.
"Ogata-san," he said clearly. "The offer still stands."
The other man’s fingers clenched around the smoldering cigarette. A small, vicious part of Akira was glad to see him discomforted. "I don’t fuck drunks," Ogata finally said, purposely being crude. "Or children."
"I am not drunk now," Akira replied with a small, hard smile. He could hear the excuse for what it was. "And I am certainly old enough to know what I want from you."
The older man’s face turned expressionless, before he calmly stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray. Then he rose from the couch in one smooth motion and walked straight into Akira’s personal space, backing him almost up against the wall. Akira did not flinch. He felt anticipation thrumming in his blood like the second before his opponent played a long-awaited hand.
Ogata leaned in, putting his lips next to Akira’s ear. This close, the sharply sweet smell of the half-finished cigarette on his skin overcame the stale odor of past tobacco smoke in the room. "Tell me, Akira-kun." The warm mouth brushed his ear, sending a tingle of sensation that shuddered straight down to his groin. "Have you been with a man before?"
- Shindo Hikaru’s eyes on him, arm pinning him down on the goban -
"That is personal," Akira replied, proud of how cool and steady his voice was. "And beside the point." He stared determinedly at Ogata; this close, he could only focus on the pupil of one eye. "Don’t mistake me, Ogata-san. This is just sex."
The other man drew back a little to look more fully at him. He looked amused, but Akira knew not to trust that. "You surprise me, Akira-kun," he admitted gamely. "Do you always do this for fun? Is Go is no longer enough?"
Akira felt a flush of embarrassment at the gentle mockery. His hand balled into fists at his side but he didn’t back down from the other man’s scrutiny. "Nothing," he stated harshly, "is more fun than Go."
At that, Ogata tilted his head. Then he smiled and pulled the glasses off his nose. There was a strange glint in those suddenly bared eyes -
"Oh, I agree."
The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Akira’s stomach increased. He ignored it, reached out and tugged on the other man’s belt buckle. "Then let’s get onhnn- "
Ogata had grabbed the hand fumbling on his belt, a thumb rubbing the tendons between Akira’s fingers in slow, strong circles, sending tiny tremors down Akira’s spine. He stared transfixed, like a bird by a cobra, as Ogata slowly raised the hand to his mouth, still kneading the bones and muscles of his hand. Naked eyes, dark and incandescent with lust, remained fixed on Akira’s as a delicate tongue touched the long, sensitive strip of skin along his wrist.
Akira’s breath caught in his throat.
"I agree entirely," Ogata smirked. "So. Let’s play a game of shidougo, Akira-kun."
He rocked back with a thunderous scowl, his back hitting the wall - could feel his entire face flaming in humiliation - jerked his hand out of Ogata’s grasp and raised the other to push the older man away. "Ogata-san! Stop joking - I don-huhnn..."
A mouth pressed hard against his own, stoppering his half-voiced cry. He had been backed against the wall and the heavy weight of the older man’s body had him effectively pinned. The warm mouth pulled away, moved down his throat in slow open-mouthed kisses. As if from a distance, he heard himself begin to pant. A strong hand grasped his chin, then slid along his jaw in a caress that trailed down his throat, the dip of his collarbone, his breast cage, all the way down to the jut of his hipbone. His thoughts fluttered in confusion.
"...Ogata...this...isn’t nec-"
Strong fingers slid down the front of his pants, cupped his hardening erection through the thin cotton.
He gasped, all words fleeing in a sudden, head-dizzying need.
"Lesson one," a voice, amused and husky with desire, murmured in his ear. "Don’t rush the opening hand."
Akira dazedly noted the warmth of the skin pressed up against him.
His legs were nudged apart. A touch on the suddenly bared skin of his inner thigh. Brought him up on his toes, arching, thighs quivering in tension and need.
He wrapped his arms around the broad shoulders, pressing himself against the hard body in front of him.
"Now," he demanded, breathless. "Do it now."
"Touya Akira," Ogata laughed, sounding just a little breathless himself, "I’m not fucking you up against the wall. Now, the bedroom is just a few feet away. Do I have to carry you or - "
Akira scrambled out of Ogata’s arms, and, with as much dignity as he possessed, pulled up his pants and stalked into the dark bedroom.
There was enough light from the window showing the city’s brilliantly lit nightscape that Akira easily picked his way to the large bed sitting in the middle of the spartan room. He had never been in here before and, despite the circumstance, curiosity made him glance over the place very quickly - large, curtain-less windows, blank walls, a utilitarian set of drawers - that spoke of something lonely and a bit unfulfilled. The only hint of sybaritism Akira had always thought Ogata’s bedroom would be emblematic of was the large, custom-made bed.
The sight made him pause.
He turned to find Ogata watching him from the doorway. The bed stood between them, the distance suddenly a chasm that would not be crossed.
The older man was silent and his face reflected none of the breathless laughter a minute before. "Ogata-san..." he heard himself say. It was a question that he did not know how to finish.
But somehow, Ogata answered it anyway. "Know what you want, Akira."
"Just for tonight. Just sex. Nothing else." Akira swallowed, but continued on in a hard, clear voice, "And in the morning, it’ll be as if it never happened."
He could feel Ogata looking at him, and tension gathered as the silence stretched. Then, "Done," Ogata finally replied.
Akira nodded, feeling a bit numb, and quickly stripped out of his remaining clothes. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Ogata approach from across the room.
He let himself fall backwards onto the mattress.
A hand reached out and caressed his still half-hard erection. He bit back on a moan, waiting to see what else the other man would do. He felt a strangely gentle touch on the side of his face. Then the bed creaked and dipped as Ogata climbed onto the mattress beside him. Akira turned his head to see him better.
"We both have matches early tomorrow," Ogata said, asking a silent question with his raised eyebrow.
Akira didn’t even pause to think. "Yes," he agreed. Yes, don't waste any more time.
Ogata nodded perfunctorily. "Very well."
The hand on his erection brought him to full, aching, hardness with a few, efficient strokes. Then reached behind to the cleft of his ass. He let his leg fall to the side, giving Ogata better access. The sound of foil crinkling and the pop of the cap of a tube came from beyond his field of vision. Suddenly, he felt too exposed and vulnerable, and he fought to control the tension vibrating through his body.
This is what I want, he reminded himself.
He flinched at the familiar feeling of a lubed finger stretching him, teasing the numerous nerve endings there. He’d been so embarrassed the first time Hikaru had done this to him, and afterwards, the way his rival had laughed at his flushed, astounded face...
Sweat stung his eyes, and he blinked rapidly.
"Please, hurry up," he gritted out between clenched teeth.
Ogata leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Shh..." he chided. "This is necessary."
A few more fingers eased into him, making him twist and gasp. Something wet and hard pressed against his thigh. Hands on his hips lifted him, steadied him against a blunt pressure at his entrance. The first breach only stung a little, but Akira still fought to not tense up. The intrusion felt alien... bigger and more solid than he was used to.
He buried his face in Ogata’s shoulder, panting into the slick skin. He concentrated on relaxing as Ogata’s erection forced the rest of its way in. His own erection had softened with the pain of the intrusion - not prepped enough, but that was fine. He couldn’t have borne any more of the other man’s consideration. His closed fist struck the back of Ogata’s shoulders, to force him to move deeper, harder. He welcomed the pain, wanted it. The last half-inch slowly forced past protesting muscle, and suddenly Ogata was completely in.
For a moment they stared at each other, almost surprised. They were both panting now.
Then Ogata began to move, to thrust slowly, in and out.
The movement was slow and irregular to start with, as Akira strained up against the gentle rhythm Ogata had set. He shoved and twisted, breathless, wanting it faster, harder. He groaned at the languid pleasure shuddering through him. His hands clenched on the shoulders above him. He didn’t want this...torturous feeling of being slowly pulled apart - this kindness. But the strong hands on his hips pinned him back down on the bed. The body above him moved slowly and forcefully against him, in and out, again and again, until he was forced to acknowledge his own helplessness.
At last, Akira closed his eyes and gave up the struggle for control. He let himself fall back boneless on the bed, legs clasped loosely around Ogata’s waist, riding out the rhythm, which swelled and crested and swelled again like the waves of Innoshima that one spring night he’d gone with Hikaru...
His hands slid up the strong back, curved around the back of the head. His fingers caught in the short rough hair. A particularly powerful thrust - he gasped and tightened around him.
Yes...yes, he wanted this, this exquisite push and pull that moved inexorably from the goban to the bedroom like there was hardly any difference at all. Sometimes hard and fierce, sometimes slow and yearning, like...now...
Akira lifted his legs higher around his lover’s waist, deepening the angle of penetration. His muscles strained against the pull and pressure that teased every nerve ending in his body. A particularly forceful thrust set off tiny starbursts of conflagration shuddering down the length of his spine.
He threw back his head, mouth opening in a breathless cry, arched hard into the body above him.
The rhythm was breaking now, hips snapping quicker against him, as they pressed closer to the edge. Deeper, harder, again and again, driving him senseless until all he could feel was the throbbing heart in his throat and the slow, climbing pressure building at the base of his spine.
He gasped and surged abruptly upwards. The body above him went rigid.
Hikaru, he thought, and the world shuddered apart in a violence of white, hot pleasure.
. . .
The world came back in bits and pieces. He stared at the ceiling over Ogata’s shoulder, utterly drained. Trying to breathe, he lay there, feeling the staccato beat of the other man’s heart slow. At last, the heavy body on top of him stirred and moved off him. A wince as Ogata’s now flaccid penis pulled out of him, leaving a trickle of tepid liquid down his legs.
The bed creaked and shifted as the other man got up. Akira blinked at the ceiling and listened to the sound of feet padding to the bathroom. He heard the sound of water running across the hall. Clumsily, he rolled onto his side, pressing his cheek into the pillowcase. He tried to force back the prickling heat rising behind his closed eyes, tried to not think. But the voices...the voices whispered relentlessly in his head.
The mattress behind him dipped and shifted, and a thumb gently wiped away the wetness at a corner of his eye. "Akira-kun?" came the softly voiced inquiry. He remained silent. A hand touched his shoulder, and then moved to cup the back of his head.
After a moment, he could feel a calloused thumb stroking the nape of his neck in slow, repetitive movements, brushing the short hairs there the wrong way. The touch was soft and strangely compassionate. It felt nice. He leaned into it, into the surety of that warmth, and the hand stilled for a moment. Then he heard a soft, exhaled sigh behind him, and arms settled firmly around his waist.
"Sleep, Akira," a kind voice murmured, and so he did.
When Akira woke, it was to an empty bed and the glare of the mid-morning sun. He knew where he was instantly and was distantly surprised to find himself clean, and under the covers. Ogata-san must have toweled him off and put him to bed last night - like a child, he thought - and he tried to find some trace of embarrassment over that, but it paled beside everything else that had happened that night. He flinched away from the memory of kindness in those arms after...afterwards.
For a long while, he stared at the play of sunlight across the ceiling. Then he touched the rumpled sheets beside him. Ogata’s side of the bed was long cold. Recalling then the second round of the Kisei tournament at noon, he finally forced himself to move - his body obeying his commands in fits and starts. Slowly, and with much effort, he stripped the sheets from the mattress and bundled it with the rest of Ogata’s dirty laundry. He showered quickly, not bothering with shampoo, and dressed in the clothes he’d gone to the bar in. The heavy odor of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke clung to his clothes, making his head throb. As he turned to leave, he caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror - pale-cheeked and red-eyed.
His hand caught something in the pocket of his trousers. It was a note, written in Ogata’s smooth, elegant hand. He read it.
At the end, Akira closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the mirror. "I have made a mess of everything," he whispered to himself. Had clouded one of the oldest relationships in his life - irrevocably changed it, at the very least - and none of what had happened last night diminished the sickness he felt at the too vivid memory of Shindo Hikaru’s wide, furious, stricken eyes -
"What d’you mean, ‘It won’t change anything’? You think your wife won’t mind her husband going out to get screwed by his by-the side lover -"
"All we need is the Go we play. We’re eternal rivals, and that won’t change."
"And...everything else?"
"It’s just sex. Shindo...We’re no longer teenagers; appearances have to be kept. ...How long, anyway, did you think this arrangement would last?"
- Shindo Honinbou lost the league match miserably the next time they played, lost his coveted Honinbou title, and he just kept losing to him...
Akira remembered their last fight, a bitter, shouting match that finally died down to him pleading in a hoarse and desperate voice:
"What do you want from me, Shindo?"
And Hikaru’s face when he didn’t immediately reply. I don’t even know anymore, he had finally said.
- and when Hikaru didn’t appear in front of the goban...didn’t appear.
Their joseki was flawed. He had misread the pattern, Akira realized now, misread everything too badly.
His body ached. He felt a slow insidious pain begin to spread through his chest.
Akira read the note again, this time lips tightening, before he crumpled it in his fist. It landed unceremoniously in the wastebasket.
A moment later, the door to the apartment slammed shut.
‘Last lesson,’ the note had read, ‘Don’t resign before considering all possibilities.’ And in smaller characters underneath:
‘The Go that he plays is what he is. He will come back for you.’
.end.
* * * *
A short Go explanation of the title:
Empty triangles (three adjacent stones in the shape of 8o ) are usually bad moves. There are three general reasons:
1. They do not maximize the surrounding breathing spaces, i.e. empty points adjacent to a stone. Stones need breathing space - once the last of the breathing space is removed, the stones die. An empty triangle only has seven breathing spaces in isolation, as opposed to the eight breathing spaces if the stones had been placed in a straight three. The loss of a breathing space without any benefits, as in an empty triangle, can cost the game.
2. Two stones in a diagonal already make a strong connection. The addition of an extra stone in the empty triangle is wasted.
3. It’s an inefficient way to extend to the side.
But of course, there are always exceptions.
Author: corbeaun
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Disclaimer: Hikaru No Go belongs to Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi.
Pairing: Ogata/Akira/(Hikaru)
Rating: NC-17, mature audience only
Summary: All he has is the Go he plays. Lessons Ogata tries to teach Akira.
Author's Notes: This is my first time writing scenes this explicit…So feel free to point out any awkwardness. Also, probably the closest I’ll ever be to writing a ménage à trois. But I thought Ogata deserved a little more fictional action, poor guy. Not that he was easy: ask me sometime about all the permutations I had to go through just to get the stubborn man into bed. Inspired by oxoniensis’ Fourth Verse of the Porn Battle.
Linked at hikarunogo
Omiai: marriage meetings
Shidougo: tutoring game
Joseki: pattern of moves that benefits both sides
Three Stones in an Empty Triangle
Shindo Hikaru, the former Honinbou, wouldn’t play him.
He had excused himself from the preliminary rounds of the Meijin tournament, and also stopped coming to the Go salon.
On the day when they were scheduled against each other in the semi-finals of the Ouza tournament, Touya Meijin - the younger - sat staring down at the goban, not looking at the empty seat across from him.
Shindo forfeited that match also.
When the organizer came up and absolved him at the end of the timed session, Akira only nodded politely and walked out of the room, out of the building, and straight into the nearest bar where he ordered the cheapest sake on the menu. He drank without pleasure, but with the steadiness and determination of a man resolved not to see sobriety for a long time. It didn’t take that much; he was a lightweight.
o o o
He gasped, sputtering at the sudden shock of cold water doused upon him. He was sprawled in the corner of a shower stall, still fully dressed.
"Finally sober now, Akira-kun?"
He looked up to see Ogata standing over him with a smirk and an empty glass pitcher in one hand. He tossed Akira a towel and then continued dismissively, "Go clean yourself up. You smell like a whorehouse." Akira stared down at the wet floor. The bathroom door clicked shut.
The aftershock of being so suddenly brought back to sobriety trembled through him. His hands spasmed against the porcelain tiles of the shower stall - one he recognized as belonging to the bathroom of Ogata Seiji, 10-dan, Gosei’s high-rise apartment. He tried to breathe, and almost choked on the smell of himself.
Ogata was right - he stank, of beer and cigarettes and other men’s cologne. He ripped off his shirt, tossed it in a corner of the bathroom.
Blindly, he reached for the spigots.
When he finally exited the bathroom, he found Ogata waiting for him on the living room couch. He took a small breath, then looked the other man straight in the eyes, prepared to hear any recriminations. The older man held Akira’s half-defiant gaze as he took a deep drag of his cigarette. "You have become very common lately, Touya Akira. Getting drunk at bars, propositioning strange men."
At that, Akira turned away briefly. He had disjointed memories of pressing up against a man’s great wool overcoat, his hands tangling in rough hair. At the time, he’d been so intoxicated that he hadn’t recognized the man he was leaving with. The bar had been very close to the Go Institute, and he would be lucky if tonight’s incident didn’t get splashed across the pages of Weekly Go. He should care. He always had before.
"I hear you are going to omiai meetings at the suggestion of your mother," Ogata’s smoke-roughened voice drawled. "Worried about her son’s matrimonial prospects, hmm? I wonder, does she know about your...extracurricular activities?"
That wretched omiai...
His eyes shut, as if he could shut out the memory of Shindou’s wide, stricken gaze.
I don’t understand him, Akira thought bitterly, I don’t understand him at all.
He opened his eyes in time to catch the tail end of a lingering once-over of his body. He saw how Ogata’s gaze had dropped to his bare chest, still damp, and the top few buttons of the trousers that he had not bothered to do up. He knew he should care. But instead of shame, he only felt rising in him a cold, pre-meditated recklessness. His old family friend, he realized, was not unattractive.
"Ogata-san," he said clearly. "The offer still stands."
The other man’s fingers clenched around the smoldering cigarette. A small, vicious part of Akira was glad to see him discomforted. "I don’t fuck drunks," Ogata finally said, purposely being crude. "Or children."
"I am not drunk now," Akira replied with a small, hard smile. He could hear the excuse for what it was. "And I am certainly old enough to know what I want from you."
The older man’s face turned expressionless, before he calmly stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray. Then he rose from the couch in one smooth motion and walked straight into Akira’s personal space, backing him almost up against the wall. Akira did not flinch. He felt anticipation thrumming in his blood like the second before his opponent played a long-awaited hand.
Ogata leaned in, putting his lips next to Akira’s ear. This close, the sharply sweet smell of the half-finished cigarette on his skin overcame the stale odor of past tobacco smoke in the room. "Tell me, Akira-kun." The warm mouth brushed his ear, sending a tingle of sensation that shuddered straight down to his groin. "Have you been with a man before?"
- Shindo Hikaru’s eyes on him, arm pinning him down on the goban -
"That is personal," Akira replied, proud of how cool and steady his voice was. "And beside the point." He stared determinedly at Ogata; this close, he could only focus on the pupil of one eye. "Don’t mistake me, Ogata-san. This is just sex."
The other man drew back a little to look more fully at him. He looked amused, but Akira knew not to trust that. "You surprise me, Akira-kun," he admitted gamely. "Do you always do this for fun? Is Go is no longer enough?"
Akira felt a flush of embarrassment at the gentle mockery. His hand balled into fists at his side but he didn’t back down from the other man’s scrutiny. "Nothing," he stated harshly, "is more fun than Go."
At that, Ogata tilted his head. Then he smiled and pulled the glasses off his nose. There was a strange glint in those suddenly bared eyes -
"Oh, I agree."
The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Akira’s stomach increased. He ignored it, reached out and tugged on the other man’s belt buckle. "Then let’s get onhnn- "
Ogata had grabbed the hand fumbling on his belt, a thumb rubbing the tendons between Akira’s fingers in slow, strong circles, sending tiny tremors down Akira’s spine. He stared transfixed, like a bird by a cobra, as Ogata slowly raised the hand to his mouth, still kneading the bones and muscles of his hand. Naked eyes, dark and incandescent with lust, remained fixed on Akira’s as a delicate tongue touched the long, sensitive strip of skin along his wrist.
Akira’s breath caught in his throat.
"I agree entirely," Ogata smirked. "So. Let’s play a game of shidougo, Akira-kun."
He rocked back with a thunderous scowl, his back hitting the wall - could feel his entire face flaming in humiliation - jerked his hand out of Ogata’s grasp and raised the other to push the older man away. "Ogata-san! Stop joking - I don-huhnn..."
A mouth pressed hard against his own, stoppering his half-voiced cry. He had been backed against the wall and the heavy weight of the older man’s body had him effectively pinned. The warm mouth pulled away, moved down his throat in slow open-mouthed kisses. As if from a distance, he heard himself begin to pant. A strong hand grasped his chin, then slid along his jaw in a caress that trailed down his throat, the dip of his collarbone, his breast cage, all the way down to the jut of his hipbone. His thoughts fluttered in confusion.
"...Ogata...this...isn’t nec-"
Strong fingers slid down the front of his pants, cupped his hardening erection through the thin cotton.
He gasped, all words fleeing in a sudden, head-dizzying need.
"Lesson one," a voice, amused and husky with desire, murmured in his ear. "Don’t rush the opening hand."
Akira dazedly noted the warmth of the skin pressed up against him.
His legs were nudged apart. A touch on the suddenly bared skin of his inner thigh. Brought him up on his toes, arching, thighs quivering in tension and need.
He wrapped his arms around the broad shoulders, pressing himself against the hard body in front of him.
"Now," he demanded, breathless. "Do it now."
"Touya Akira," Ogata laughed, sounding just a little breathless himself, "I’m not fucking you up against the wall. Now, the bedroom is just a few feet away. Do I have to carry you or - "
Akira scrambled out of Ogata’s arms, and, with as much dignity as he possessed, pulled up his pants and stalked into the dark bedroom.
There was enough light from the window showing the city’s brilliantly lit nightscape that Akira easily picked his way to the large bed sitting in the middle of the spartan room. He had never been in here before and, despite the circumstance, curiosity made him glance over the place very quickly - large, curtain-less windows, blank walls, a utilitarian set of drawers - that spoke of something lonely and a bit unfulfilled. The only hint of sybaritism Akira had always thought Ogata’s bedroom would be emblematic of was the large, custom-made bed.
The sight made him pause.
He turned to find Ogata watching him from the doorway. The bed stood between them, the distance suddenly a chasm that would not be crossed.
The older man was silent and his face reflected none of the breathless laughter a minute before. "Ogata-san..." he heard himself say. It was a question that he did not know how to finish.
But somehow, Ogata answered it anyway. "Know what you want, Akira."
"Just for tonight. Just sex. Nothing else." Akira swallowed, but continued on in a hard, clear voice, "And in the morning, it’ll be as if it never happened."
He could feel Ogata looking at him, and tension gathered as the silence stretched. Then, "Done," Ogata finally replied.
Akira nodded, feeling a bit numb, and quickly stripped out of his remaining clothes. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Ogata approach from across the room.
He let himself fall backwards onto the mattress.
A hand reached out and caressed his still half-hard erection. He bit back on a moan, waiting to see what else the other man would do. He felt a strangely gentle touch on the side of his face. Then the bed creaked and dipped as Ogata climbed onto the mattress beside him. Akira turned his head to see him better.
"We both have matches early tomorrow," Ogata said, asking a silent question with his raised eyebrow.
Akira didn’t even pause to think. "Yes," he agreed. Yes, don't waste any more time.
Ogata nodded perfunctorily. "Very well."
The hand on his erection brought him to full, aching, hardness with a few, efficient strokes. Then reached behind to the cleft of his ass. He let his leg fall to the side, giving Ogata better access. The sound of foil crinkling and the pop of the cap of a tube came from beyond his field of vision. Suddenly, he felt too exposed and vulnerable, and he fought to control the tension vibrating through his body.
This is what I want, he reminded himself.
He flinched at the familiar feeling of a lubed finger stretching him, teasing the numerous nerve endings there. He’d been so embarrassed the first time Hikaru had done this to him, and afterwards, the way his rival had laughed at his flushed, astounded face...
Sweat stung his eyes, and he blinked rapidly.
"Please, hurry up," he gritted out between clenched teeth.
Ogata leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Shh..." he chided. "This is necessary."
A few more fingers eased into him, making him twist and gasp. Something wet and hard pressed against his thigh. Hands on his hips lifted him, steadied him against a blunt pressure at his entrance. The first breach only stung a little, but Akira still fought to not tense up. The intrusion felt alien... bigger and more solid than he was used to.
He buried his face in Ogata’s shoulder, panting into the slick skin. He concentrated on relaxing as Ogata’s erection forced the rest of its way in. His own erection had softened with the pain of the intrusion - not prepped enough, but that was fine. He couldn’t have borne any more of the other man’s consideration. His closed fist struck the back of Ogata’s shoulders, to force him to move deeper, harder. He welcomed the pain, wanted it. The last half-inch slowly forced past protesting muscle, and suddenly Ogata was completely in.
For a moment they stared at each other, almost surprised. They were both panting now.
Then Ogata began to move, to thrust slowly, in and out.
The movement was slow and irregular to start with, as Akira strained up against the gentle rhythm Ogata had set. He shoved and twisted, breathless, wanting it faster, harder. He groaned at the languid pleasure shuddering through him. His hands clenched on the shoulders above him. He didn’t want this...torturous feeling of being slowly pulled apart - this kindness. But the strong hands on his hips pinned him back down on the bed. The body above him moved slowly and forcefully against him, in and out, again and again, until he was forced to acknowledge his own helplessness.
At last, Akira closed his eyes and gave up the struggle for control. He let himself fall back boneless on the bed, legs clasped loosely around Ogata’s waist, riding out the rhythm, which swelled and crested and swelled again like the waves of Innoshima that one spring night he’d gone with Hikaru...
His hands slid up the strong back, curved around the back of the head. His fingers caught in the short rough hair. A particularly powerful thrust - he gasped and tightened around him.
Yes...yes, he wanted this, this exquisite push and pull that moved inexorably from the goban to the bedroom like there was hardly any difference at all. Sometimes hard and fierce, sometimes slow and yearning, like...now...
Akira lifted his legs higher around his lover’s waist, deepening the angle of penetration. His muscles strained against the pull and pressure that teased every nerve ending in his body. A particularly forceful thrust set off tiny starbursts of conflagration shuddering down the length of his spine.
He threw back his head, mouth opening in a breathless cry, arched hard into the body above him.
The rhythm was breaking now, hips snapping quicker against him, as they pressed closer to the edge. Deeper, harder, again and again, driving him senseless until all he could feel was the throbbing heart in his throat and the slow, climbing pressure building at the base of his spine.
He gasped and surged abruptly upwards. The body above him went rigid.
Hikaru, he thought, and the world shuddered apart in a violence of white, hot pleasure.
. . .
The world came back in bits and pieces. He stared at the ceiling over Ogata’s shoulder, utterly drained. Trying to breathe, he lay there, feeling the staccato beat of the other man’s heart slow. At last, the heavy body on top of him stirred and moved off him. A wince as Ogata’s now flaccid penis pulled out of him, leaving a trickle of tepid liquid down his legs.
The bed creaked and shifted as the other man got up. Akira blinked at the ceiling and listened to the sound of feet padding to the bathroom. He heard the sound of water running across the hall. Clumsily, he rolled onto his side, pressing his cheek into the pillowcase. He tried to force back the prickling heat rising behind his closed eyes, tried to not think. But the voices...the voices whispered relentlessly in his head.
The mattress behind him dipped and shifted, and a thumb gently wiped away the wetness at a corner of his eye. "Akira-kun?" came the softly voiced inquiry. He remained silent. A hand touched his shoulder, and then moved to cup the back of his head.
After a moment, he could feel a calloused thumb stroking the nape of his neck in slow, repetitive movements, brushing the short hairs there the wrong way. The touch was soft and strangely compassionate. It felt nice. He leaned into it, into the surety of that warmth, and the hand stilled for a moment. Then he heard a soft, exhaled sigh behind him, and arms settled firmly around his waist.
"Sleep, Akira," a kind voice murmured, and so he did.
When Akira woke, it was to an empty bed and the glare of the mid-morning sun. He knew where he was instantly and was distantly surprised to find himself clean, and under the covers. Ogata-san must have toweled him off and put him to bed last night - like a child, he thought - and he tried to find some trace of embarrassment over that, but it paled beside everything else that had happened that night. He flinched away from the memory of kindness in those arms after...afterwards.
For a long while, he stared at the play of sunlight across the ceiling. Then he touched the rumpled sheets beside him. Ogata’s side of the bed was long cold. Recalling then the second round of the Kisei tournament at noon, he finally forced himself to move - his body obeying his commands in fits and starts. Slowly, and with much effort, he stripped the sheets from the mattress and bundled it with the rest of Ogata’s dirty laundry. He showered quickly, not bothering with shampoo, and dressed in the clothes he’d gone to the bar in. The heavy odor of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke clung to his clothes, making his head throb. As he turned to leave, he caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror - pale-cheeked and red-eyed.
His hand caught something in the pocket of his trousers. It was a note, written in Ogata’s smooth, elegant hand. He read it.
At the end, Akira closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the mirror. "I have made a mess of everything," he whispered to himself. Had clouded one of the oldest relationships in his life - irrevocably changed it, at the very least - and none of what had happened last night diminished the sickness he felt at the too vivid memory of Shindo Hikaru’s wide, furious, stricken eyes -
"What d’you mean, ‘It won’t change anything’? You think your wife won’t mind her husband going out to get screwed by his by-the side lover -"
"All we need is the Go we play. We’re eternal rivals, and that won’t change."
"And...everything else?"
"It’s just sex. Shindo...We’re no longer teenagers; appearances have to be kept. ...How long, anyway, did you think this arrangement would last?"
- Shindo Honinbou lost the league match miserably the next time they played, lost his coveted Honinbou title, and he just kept losing to him...
Akira remembered their last fight, a bitter, shouting match that finally died down to him pleading in a hoarse and desperate voice:
"What do you want from me, Shindo?"
And Hikaru’s face when he didn’t immediately reply. I don’t even know anymore, he had finally said.
- and when Hikaru didn’t appear in front of the goban...didn’t appear.
Their joseki was flawed. He had misread the pattern, Akira realized now, misread everything too badly.
His body ached. He felt a slow insidious pain begin to spread through his chest.
Akira read the note again, this time lips tightening, before he crumpled it in his fist. It landed unceremoniously in the wastebasket.
A moment later, the door to the apartment slammed shut.
‘Last lesson,’ the note had read, ‘Don’t resign before considering all possibilities.’ And in smaller characters underneath:
‘The Go that he plays is what he is. He will come back for you.’
.end.
* * * *
A short Go explanation of the title:
Empty triangles (three adjacent stones in the shape of 8o ) are usually bad moves. There are three general reasons:
1. They do not maximize the surrounding breathing spaces, i.e. empty points adjacent to a stone. Stones need breathing space - once the last of the breathing space is removed, the stones die. An empty triangle only has seven breathing spaces in isolation, as opposed to the eight breathing spaces if the stones had been placed in a straight three. The loss of a breathing space without any benefits, as in an empty triangle, can cost the game.
2. Two stones in a diagonal already make a strong connection. The addition of an extra stone in the empty triangle is wasted.
3. It’s an inefficient way to extend to the side.
But of course, there are always exceptions.