(okay, i can't find a translation for this song, so you'll have to deal)

弾けろ鼓動に 燃え上がるユメ
誰にも 触れさせない CAN'T STOP GROWING THE DREAM
--Kamio Akira

"We've tied." Touya sits back on his heels and peers at the scatter of black.

"No, you're supposed to say 'I resign'," Shindou reports, flopped back against the pillows of the cheap hotel bed. The sheets are scratchy, but at least it's a double bed this time, unlike that dump in Hyoutei where Touya kicked Shindou out of bed in the middle of the night and he had to tell all his title match opponents that he'd hit his head on his door. "And besides, we can't tie, idiot, what about the half moku?"

"Forget about the damn komi!" Touya snaps, and Shindou lifts his head because it isn't like Touya to change the rules now after a decade of beating Shindou by the skin of his teeth. Touya is looking a bit strange as well, twiddling the marker restlessly between his fingers and staring at the game. He raises his eyes to meet Shindou's, and Shindou shivers a little at the look in them, but it isn't the same shiver he was giving when Touya was unzipping his cargo pants with his teeth. "Shindou, look at the game."

"Look at it!" Shindou hoists himself up on his elbows, grumbling and craning his neck. "I did just play it, you know! Are you that anxious to get to the part where I tell you how crap all your moves are?"

Touya has no response to that, but merely crosses his arms across his bare chest and eyes Shindou.

"Fine." Shindou lowers his eyes to the game again and points a finger at a cluster of black at random. "What about this corner here? What were you…when…" There is actually nothing wrong with that corner, Shindou realizes, the shape is smooth and efficient, pushing up against all his moves with exactly the right balance of aggression and defense. "Or this spot over here, where I…" Shindou lefts his hand fall back to the bed and chews on his lower lip, contemplating the whole game, the flow of the moves, the shape of the territories. "This whole game, it's…"

"Beautiful," Touya breathes, his eyes dark and glimmering like stones. "Look at this battle here, the strategy, the arc of the moves, the shape." Touya traces fingers along the corners of the shape, and Shindou squirms.

"Stoppit, it tickles!" he demands, flopping back against the pillows because curling his back to stare at the ink covering his torso is making his spine ache. Touya is twisting the cap of the marker on and off, and Shindou reaches over to knock it out of his hands in case he has any other brilliant ideas. His eyes slip closed and the game takes shape behind his eyelids, Touya's filled-in circles wrapping around his own empty ones, tangled in patterns that are new but familiar.

He adds up territory in his head half a dozen times before he gives up. "We are tied."

"That's not what I'm concerned about, Shindou." Irritation and wonder are warring in Touya's voice. "This battle here." the pads of his fingers skim just to the left of Shindou's navel, and in Shindou's mind each markered stone lights up as Touya presses each one briefly. "I thought you were extending too far, but now that I see the whole board…and here." Touya moves to the upper right, lingering on an early move, and Shindou does not regret for a second his suggestion that they make his nipples star points. "I felt myself being drawn much deeper than I wanted into your territory, but I couldn't stop myself."

Letting his eyes slide half-open, Shindou gazes at Touya while he continues, for once loathe to interrupt Touya's stiff post-game language, perfected in the hands of men three times his age. "Beautiful," he agrees, and Touya nods, apparently having no idea that Shindou also means the swing of Touya's hair as he leans over Shindou, the press of his teeth against his lower lip, the flush that hasn't faded from his pale shoulders yet. "Touya."

"Shindou, this game," Touya doesn't react when Shindou reaches to brush a thumb over Touya hip, hating the fact that Touya's been skipping meals to study again, but liking the way the bone presses into the pad of his finger, "our attacks, our shapes…it's like my Go and your Go are…blurring, or twisting, or…"

"No." Even in the wash of affection Shindou is feeling, he still has space enough to feel smug that Touya's Go-speak has failed him. It's no wonder; Shindou has always felt his Go from deep inside, rather than dealing in external discussion of technical merit. It's taken him nearly all this time to realize that this was Sai's best gift. "Our Gos are making love."

Touya stares at him, jaw dangling.

"You know," Shindou grins, boneless and saturated with one-upping Touya and how right he is, "getting it on? Bumping uglies? Doing the horizontal Tsuke?"

No rational person would ever understand what Shindou is blathering about, but that's why Shindou is secretly diddling the Meijin's son after all. And also because Touya feels so freaking good when he's throwing himself down to crush Shindou into the bed, even if the unusual choice of goban means there's no satisfying patter of stones flying in all directions this time.

When Touya murmurs "Our Go" into Shindou's ear, every synapse in his brain fires at once, leaving him a glorious, shuddering mess.

He's deeply involved in returning the favor when Touya shoves him away suddenly.

"The game!" Touya's eyes are wild, and he's got a bruise on his neck that Shindou's going to pay for later. "We've got to record it! The marker'll smudge!"

"Touya," Shindou eyes the bruise and figures he might as well make it count as he reaches to yank Touya back down, "if you tell me that every stone of this game isn't etched into your brain, I'm going to find a new rival to fuck."

"But…" Touya scrabbles at Shindou's shoulders, then digs his nails in when Shindou's teeth sink into the bruise.

A few hours later, Shindou shrieks and rushes out of the bathroom, clutching a towel around his hips and still very much a goban.

"It's not coming off!" he howls.

"Mmm?" Touya murmurs lazily from the bed, and Shindou will never understand how Touya can just lay there and marinate in their fluids like that. "What's not?"

"The marker! It's not coming off!" Shindou twitches in fury as Touya looks up and snickers. "What the fuck kind of marker did you use?!"

"It came out of your bag," Touya points out, beginning to pat down the bed in search of the marker. He finds it caught in a fold of the sheet way down by the end of the bed.

"Well, you're the one who said I should just stick the portable board in my suitcase!" Shindou snatches the marker out of Touya's hand and peers at it for a moment. "It's in English."

"Must be one of those foreign ones Akari brought you back from her vacation." Touya yawns and stretches back out on the bed. "What's it say?"

"You know I can't read English!" Shindou throws the marker at Touya's stupid head. Touya puts up a hand to protect himself and the marker clatters to the floor.

"Illiterate," Touya grumbles as he reaches over the side of the bed and disentangles the marker from the pile of discarded clothing its fallen into. "Sha-ru-pi-e. What's that mean?"

"How should I know!" Shindou flops onto the bed beside Touya, slapping his hand away when he reaches to tweak a star point.