Arcadia fic, Shindou/Touya, PG-13

[mirabella]

The stones click under his fingers like the patter of rain, falling into inevitable shapes on the board. Touya can feel his father's gaze on him, proud and watchful. Some part of him still wants to live up to the hopes his father once had for him; most of him is just happy that hope was purged from that gaze long ago, and that his father is proud of him now for what he is and not for what he could have been.

But it isn't his father's eyes that make his fingers a little unsteady on the stones. It's the memory of eyes as green as the sea under dark lashes and not as empty as he'd once believed. The game he's playing is frustrating: he starts to respond to moves that Shindou would make, only to find the stones somewhere else instead, the flow of the board not what it should be, and try as he might he can't find a way to fix it.

He wonders when Go became their private language, his and Shindou's.

His opponent gives a small, pointed huff. Touya smiles courteously up at him. He's new to Touya Meijin's study group, a six-dan whose single-minded arrogance has already caused Ogata-san to reach new heights of subtle (and unsubtle) rudeness and pains even the tolerant Ashiwara. Touya is beating him, and Ochi doesn't much like it.

"Is there something wrong, Touya-san?" Ochi asks snippily. "You seem to be playing a different game than I am."

"Well, whichever game you're playing, he's beating you at it by half a dozen moku," Ogata observes, lighting up a cigarette. Outside Ochi's line of sight, Ashiwara makes a stop-it-you're-awful face at Ogata.

Touya bows politely. "I'm sorry, Ochi-san. I was… a little distracted."

Immediately he sees that he's made things worse. Ochi is not accustomed to thinking of himself as the type of player who can be defeated with half one's attention on the board. The look of sullen petulance that settles over his face is really rather impressive.

"Ochi-san has just passed the third round of the Gosei tournament," Touya's father says mildly, smoothing over an awkward silence.

"Congratulations," Touya says, equally mildly, setting down a stone and shifting the game into yose.

"I'll take the title," Ochi says, not bragging but stating a fact. His tone is a little hostile nonetheless, as if he expects Touya not to believe him, and the look he shoots Touya from under salmon-colored bangs is wary. Touya wonders why it matters so much to Ochi that Touya think well of him. "Have you ever reconsidered your decision not to take the pro exam yourself, Touya-san?"

Touya's fingers pause in the goke as he remembers the last time he did – Shindou across from him, the long lines of his body softened by the lamplight, talking about Go and murder with equal ease. "Not… often," he says.

"Akira has other things on his mind," Ashiwara says fondly. "We all wish he'd gone pro, of course, but being the youngest field agent in fifty years is a little more impressive an accomplishment."

Ochi slaps down a stone in a spot that causes Touya a pang of exasperation. "You really should reconsider," he says, not taking the hint. "You'd have quite a bit of catch-up to do, with waiting this long to pass the test, but you'd be a great asset. There are very few people our age who are worth playing."

Touya plays a hane that within five moves will come back into play and cut Ochi entirely out of the lower left corner. "That isn't a great incentive to take the test," he points out.

Ochi pushes up his glasses and scowls. "But –"

"Akira, I meant to ask you," Ogata says, talking neatly over Ochi before he can get half a syllable out. "Are you assigned to that murder that was in the newspapers this weekend? The one in the warehouse?"

"No, not to that one," Touya tells him, grateful for the interruption. "It seems to be drug-related. Narcotics is taking it."

"I think your job must be so exciting," Ashiwara says loyally.

"Sometimes," Touya says.



Nearly a month passes with no sign of Shindou. Touya can't be sorry for that – no sign of Shindou means no dead women, after all – but he can't be entirely easy with it either; it's more likely to mean that Shindou has slipped under their radar than that he's decided to take a vacation from murder. The pile of newspapers and police bulletins on Touya's coffee table grows with every passing weekend. He spends more time than is healthy in his study, poring over walls covered in maps, crime scene photos, notes, newspaper articles, and the one surveillance photo of Shindou that he has. Nearly every detail of Shindou's life is on those walls, from his middle school report cards to the autopsy report of his most recent victim, and it still isn't enough to catch him.

But that's a lie, and Touya knows it. What it's not enough to do, apparently, is convince Touya to arrest him instead of spending hours over the goban lost in the bright river of Shindou's Go, or more hours learning the planes and curves of his body.

When even he can't dwell on Shindou anymore, Touya picks up the latest Weekly Go and leafs through it. There's an interview with Ochi in it; idly curious, Touya leafs through to find it, wondering if Ochi comes across as poorly on paper as he does in person.

Q. You have a better record than anyone else of your age, notes the interviewer. Who do you consider to be your rivals?

Touya rolls his eyes. Weekly Go is an admirable publication in many ways, but they do tend toward the sensationalistic sometimes.

A. I can only think of a few, Ochi says, dismissive and curt. There's Isumi 5-dan, I suppose, though I can usually beat him because he lacks confidence in his game and falls apart under pressure. My main rival isn't even a pro player.

Q. Really? Who is it?

A. Touya Akira, the Meijin's son. I played him at a study session a couple of weeks ago and he seemed to enjoy it. I hope to convince him to pass the pro exam so that we can be proper rivals. He must miss the Go world.

Touya sits up slowly, cold in the pit of his stomach. As clearly as he sees the magazine in front of him, he sees a backpack with Weekly Go crammed in carelessly beside Shounen Jump.

Q. Well, I certainly wish you luck. Touya Akira's friends have been trying to convince him to pass the pro exam since he was twelve.

A. I think he'll come back, Ochi says, smug and single-minded. His talent is much too great to waste on criminals.

"Oh, shit," Touya whispers. "Ochi, what have you done?"



His first call is to his father, then to Ashiwara, then – finally – to Ochi's house. His grandfather is chatty and oblivious and Touya doesn't dare make it clear how urgent it is that he contact Ochi. After fending off invitations to dinner, brunch, and a yachting party, Touya finally discovers that Ochi is in Hokkaido playing in an exhibition match. Five minutes on Google and he has the address and telephone number of the hotel and the Hokkaido police department. He calls the hotel first.

The woman at the registration desk is polite but perplexed, and a little slow. He has to repeat who he's looking for twice, then has to explain the exhibition match to her and that, yes, Go is a board game. Rather desperately, he agrees that Go is indeed the same as Othello and asks her to please patch him through to Ochi's room. Then he sits on hold for a skin-crawlingly long time before she comes back on the line.

"I'm sorry, sir. No one by that name is registered at the hotel."

"Are you sure?" Touya asks, glancing down at his watch. Ochi should have arrived in Hokkaido late the night before. "Please check again. It's very important."

"I'm sorry, sir," she says after another brief holding period. Touya thanks her, hangs up, and dials the Hokkaido police department.

"A Go conference?" asks the homicide detective he's patched through to, dubiously.

"At the Sapporo Aspen," Touya says impatiently. "His name is Ochi Kosuke. He should have arrived last night –"

"Sir, you know we can't put out a missing persons until –"

"I am not asking you to put out a missing persons report," Touya says, dangerously quietly. "I am asking you to set up a dragnet for a serial killer. Do you see the difference there?"

There's silence for a minute on the other end of the line. "What makes you think that this guy's been targeted?"

On the other side of the room, Shindou's phone rings, neon keypad flashing in the twilight. Touya stares at it with a sinking heart.

"Never mind. It's too late," he says, and hangs up.



You have half an hour, Shindou said in a voice colder and quieter than Touya has ever heard from him. If anyone else is with you I'll kill him right here and be gone before you ever see me.

Touya yanks on his holster, sticks three more clips of ammunition into his pocket, and peels out of his driveway in the car he rarely uses. The address Shindou gave him is in a part of town Touya recognizes but has not been in for a very long time. It was well chosen – plenty of derelict houses and inhabitants who are unlikely to call the police under any circumstances, where screams in the middle of the night are not terribly uncommon. Doing ninety through empty streets, Touya reaches it in twenty minutes.

The house is dark at the front. Touya pulls out his gun, holds it at the ready, and slides the front door open carefully and silently. Slipping noiselessly inside, he finds himself in a hallway. Flickering orange light is spilling from a doorway at the end.

Shindou, don't do anything stupid, Touya thinks, and moves down the hall past rooms filled with dust and cardboard boxes, gun aimed in front of him, making no sound on the hardwood floor.

When he slams the door open, it takes him only a second to locate Shindou and point the gun straight at his head. Unfortunately, Shindou is standing behind Ochi, who is tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth, and when Touya levels the gun at him he already has a very large knife dug point-first into the underside of Ochi's chin.

"Ah-ah-ah," Shindou says. "Put the gun down, Touya."

Touya moves carefully to the side, sighting down the barrel, getting out of the doorway. "I've got more firepower than you do, Shindou. Who do you think will die faster – Ochi from a stab wound or you from a bullet to the head?"

Shindou digs the knife in a little harder and blood spills down Ochi's throat. Ochi makes an indignant noise behind the duct tape. "Either way, this guy will still be dead. Don't bullshit me, Touya, I know how you feel about that sort of thing."

He's wearing gloves, two layers of surgical latex with powder on the inside so they won't print when he sweats. A pair of heavier leather gloves and a coil of piano wire are sitting on top of his backpack. Touya knows what Shindou looks like when he's bluffing, and this isn't it. "Shindou, we can talk about this," he says, and his hands are slick with sweat on the metal of his gun the way they haven't been since he was a rookie.

"We'll talk. As soon as you put down the fucking gun."

"Show me some good faith here, Shindou," Touya says. "Put the knife down first. You're still in sente. Put it down."

"Go to hell."

"Put it down. Please. Then I'll put the gun down and you'll tell me what's gotten you so upset. We'll go somewhere else and talk about it as much as you need to, just the two of us." Blood is pooling between Ochi's collarbones. Touya measures the distance between himself and Shindou and finds it far too wide.

"Touya," Shindou says in a thin, strained voice, his knuckles whitening where he grips Ochi's hair. Ochi winces and mutters behind his gag. "You don't get it. The last woman I killed, did you see her when I was done with her? I didn't even know her. She'd never done anything to me. Ochi, here, he's trying to poach something that's mine. I've got a personal grudge against him. The only reason he's alive right now is that I want some goddamned answers, and I'm running out of patience, Touya, and I'm going to pop out his fucking eye if you don't put down the goddamned gun right fucking now."

Reluctantly, Touya lowers the gun.

"Good," Shindou says. "Set it on the ground and kick it over here."

Touya sets the gun on the ground and kicks it to the side, out of both their reach. "There. You're armed, I'm not. What's this about?"

"Take your jacket off too. I want to make sure you're not carrying another gun somewhere." Shindou smirks a little. "Besides, you're hot when you're disheveled."

Ochi makes a stiffly disapproving noise.

Touya slides his jacket off, watching Shindou's eyes trail down over his chest. "There," he says quietly. "No other guns. Let Ochi-san go and we'll talk."

Hurt flickers in Shindou's face, surprisingly deep. "So who is this guy, anyway?" he snaps, moving the knife to tap the blade on Ochi's shoulder in a distracted beat.

"He goes to my father's study group," Touya says. "I met him once a few weeks ago. We played a game."

"Did you win?"

"Yes. Shindou –"

"So you played Touya, huh?" Shindou asks Ochi, leaning on one elbow on the back of Ochi's chair. "Did he… did he say anything about me?"

Shindou sounds, and looks, like a little boy trying not to show that he's hurt. Ochi gives him a rather strange look and shakes his head.

Touya takes a step closer, stopping as Shindou looks sharply at him, and keeps his voice level. "Shindou, be reasonable. What was I supposed to say about you?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about 'Sorry, you miserable little mushroom-head, the position of Touya Akira's Go rival is already spoken for'?"

"The subject didn't come up at the time."

Ochi lets out a squawk and thumps his chair legs on the floor, demanding attention. Shindou gives him a puzzled glance and rips the duct tape off his mouth.

"Is this him?" Ochi asks Touya resentfully. "This is who you were playing in your head the whole time you were supposed to be playing me?"

Shindou raises an eyebrow and looks back up at Touya.

Bless you, Ochi, you surly little gnome, Touya thinks, and moves a step closer. "Yes. I'm sorry. It was rude of me."

"But he's a criminal!" Ochi protests.

"Ochi-san," Touya says between his teeth.

Shindou moves with alarming speed and smashes an empty cardboard box out of the corner to hit Ochi's leg. The electric lantern on it crashes to the floor, sending odd shadows wavering over the room. "I'll tell you what," he tells Ochi tightly, reaching for his backpack. "I'll play you for him."

"What?" Ochi asks warily.

Shindou's knife hand flashes outward. Ochi yanks his hand away and examines it in alarm, but it isn't bleeding; the knife caught the rope binding his wrist to the chair with pinpoint precision. "I'll play you for him," Shindou repeats, opening up his backpack. His finger curls unconsciously around the piano wire and slides along it as if testing its length. "Even game. If you lose –"

"Shindou," Touya says.

Shindou looks up at him, his eyes dark in the shadows. They watch each other as seconds spin out between them, a silent battle of wills, both of them reading moves to what they hope will be the endgame.

"Shindou," Touya whispers. "Please."

A momentary flicker of uncertainty, and then Shindou takes a deep, shaky breath. Touya watches his fingers move back away from the piano wire and knows what his answer will be, and lets out an unsteady breath of his own.

"If you lose," Shindou says to Ochi, his gaze never leaving Touya's, "you stay away from him forever, and you walk away from here. Once. If you ever try to lay a claim on Touya again you won't even see me coming. If you win, you get to brag about him being your rival as much as you want."

Ochi glances up at Touya, who nods slightly. Maybe playing will calm Shindou down a little – or distract him long enough for Touya to knock him unconscious.

"I'll play you," Ochi says defiantly, his voice only wavering a little.

Shindou pulls his board and stones out of his backpack, sets them down on the box, pulls another chair out of the corner and straddles the back, then glances up at Touya, his eyes hard and shadowed. "Touya, get over here. Who do you think is going to win, huh?"

Touya looks back and forth between them, moves darting through his head. Shindou's game can be erratic and scattered and Ochi isn't a six-dan for nothing. But Ochi places too much emphasis on territory, he doesn't know how to use his thickness offensively, and he relaxes too soon, gets cocky if he's ahead when the endgame draws near. It's a bad enough mistake against Touya; against Shindou it will be a lethal blunder, unrecoverable. "I don't know," he says finally.

"What?" Ochi snaps, stung to the quick. "He's an amateur. I'm a six-dan. I won't lose to him."

"For these stakes?" Shindou says. "You'll lose. Nigiri."

Without moving his head, Touya glances toward his gun and curses silently. It skidded farther away than he meant it to on the slick hardwood floor.

"Think I'm stupid, Touya?" Shindou asks without looking up, slapping two black stones down as Ochi dumps a tremulous handful of white onto the board. "I can still get to him before you can get to me. Pick up your jacket and come over here."

Irritated, Touya does as he's told, reasoning that at least it will bring Shindou within his reach.

"Good. Now reach in your left pocket, get your handcuffs out, and put them on. Keep your hands in front of you. Looks like I'm playing black."

Touya hesitates for a few calculated beats, then snaps on his handcuffs. He doesn't see any need to tell Shindou that he learned years ago to fold his hands far enough to slip handcuffs off; Shindou will find out before the night is over, though Touya wishes he could have held that information in reserve a while longer.

"Don't go anywhere," Shindou tells Ochi, pushing his chair back to stand. Still holding the knife, he moves over to Touya and reaches out to take Touya's hand, brushes his fingertips in a soft line up Touya's palm, and ratchets the handcuff tighter around his wrist. Touya's fuming, and Shindou sees it, a dark flicker of humor changing his eyes for a moment. He tightens the other cuff and pulls Touya by the wrist across the room. There's a rusty metal wall sconce set high up behind and to the right of Ochi; Shindou loops the handcuffs over the curling metal, stretching Touya's arms up just this side of uncomfortably.

Shindou pulls on the handcuffs, testing the hold, then steps closer. The hand with the knife in it slides softly up Touya's back as he leans in, the lithe warmth of his body settles against Touya from the front, and Touya shivers.

"Not that I don't want you closer," Shindou breathes into Touya's ear. "But… you know."

Touya turns his head, and their mouths are almost brushing now, trading unsteady breath between them. "There are better games we could be playing right now, Shindou," he whispers.

"Mm," Shindou hums, nuzzling at Touya's chin, tilting his head up to brush his open lips over Touya's in a breeze-soft kiss that Ochi won't hear. "Business first."

His tongue darts out and flashes over Touya's lower lip and then he steps back, eyes cold and veiled. Touya wants to call after him and doesn't, because a misstep here will cost Ochi his life faster than Touya can get out of the handcuffs.

He can see the board from here, over Ochi's shoulder. Shindou sits back down, still clutching the knife, and gives that odd, convulsive glance over his right shoulder, as if he were trying to catch something moving out of the corner of his eye. Returning his attention to the board, he sets a stone down at 4-5.

"Play," he says. "We don't have all night."



Ochi is winning, barely. Touya honestly doesn't think he has enough self-preservation instinct to throw the game, and his mind is racing past the crystalline pain in his shoulders to play through a dozen outcomes to this situation. Too many of them end with Ochi dead.

When the mistake comes, Touya sees it first, then Shindou; then, too late, Ochi. But Ochi's good; he almost recovers, almost distracts Shindou with an assault on the lower left, almost manages to build his center back up, and might have succeeded if he hadn't forgotten about a stone Shindou set thirty moves ago. Watching Ochi with a predator's focus, Shindou extends, and suddenly that stone and its mate are an unbreachable bulwark, hemming Ochi into a formation that Shindou will be able to pick apart at his leisure. For a minute Ochi looks inclined to argue the point, to keep playing; and Touya wonders, frustrated, what Ochi sees on that board that is more important than his own life.

Shindou never said he'd let Ochi live if he won.

"I… resign," Ochi says finally, between his teeth.

Touya shifts his grip on the handcuffs. "Shindou?" he prompts.

Shindou taps the blade of the knife thoughtfully against his lips, evaluating the board to make sure that Ochi hasn't thrown the game. There's a reluctance in the lines of his posture that Touya can read full well: he wants Ochi dead, and his word is the only thing standing between him and what he wants. Touya is five steps away from the goban, and he's almost sure it's close enough but it's Ochi's life if he's wrong.

"I wouldn't have played that combination peep and extension," he says. Ochi gives him a sour look over his shoulder. "I'd have gone for the atari."

Shindou's frown takes on a slightly different quality and he tilts his head, still staring at the board. "You'd never have made it."

"Yes, I would have," Touya argues automatically. "Clear the board back to that point and play me instead. I'll show you."

Shindou looks up at Touya. For a moment he's surprised, and then a slow grin spreads over his face. "Touya. You're jealous."

"I…" Touya says, then looks away, his face hot. He is jealous; of Ochi, of Sai, of dead women. He can't afford to think about it right now. "Just clear the board, Shindou."

"Can I go now?" Ochi asks, unwisely.

Shindou looks sharply back at him, his smile vanishing in an instant. "That isn't very nice," he says, his voice unsteady with barely controlled anger. "Weren't you all into Touya twelve hours ago? And now you're going to leave him here handcuffed to the wall with a knife-wielding serial killer."

"It isn't as if I could fight you off anyway," Ochi reminds him. "Touya-san knows what he's doing better than either of us do."

"Yeah?" Shindou says. His knife hand flickers out, snapping Ochi's ropes a strand at a time. "I bet I know what he's doing better than you do."

Carefully, Touya slips one wrist out of his handcuffs and shifts his hands a little to hide it. "Shindou," he says. "You promised me."

Shindou pauses, then draws his knife reluctantly back and pulls off Ochi's ropes. "I promised that he could walk out of here. Once," he says slowly, as if he's reminding himself.

"You've always kept your word to me," Touya says quietly.

Ochi is watching them both, looking from one to the other, puzzled and a little resentful still. Touya sees the beginnings of suspicion in his eyes and doesn't much like it. He's not stupid, and he might have seen more than Shindou meant him to.

"Yeah. I have." Shindou looks up at Touya. "But I never said I'd let you walk away, you know? He didn't even ask what was going to happen to you."

"He trusts me to know what I'm doing," Touya says. "And he knows when not to be a liability."

Shindou glances at Ochi, then does a tiny double-take, frowning. After a minute's thought, he stands, deliberately turns his back on Ochi, and moves to stand in front of Touya. "Do you know what you're doing?" he asks.

"Yes," Touya says, and slams the metal edge of the handcuffs into Shindou's temple.

Shindou drops like a rock, unconscious. Touya grabs Shindou's knife and darts across the room to rescue his gun. "Ochi-san, I'm going to call for reinforcements. Are you hurt?"

Ochi is struggling out of the rope, looking as if he wants to curse. He doesn't. "No. Just a little shaken up."

"Good." Touya rummages in Shindou's pockets and pulls out two cell phones. "Which of these is yours?"

"The white one."

"Don't wait for the reinforcements to get here. I don't know how long he'll be out. Here are my keys – take my car, go home, and wait for me to call."

"But shouldn't I –"

"Ochi-san. Go," Touya says, and Ochi disappears. Seconds later, Touya hears the front door slam open.

Shindou looks far too pale and still in the erratic lamplight. There's a trickle of blood running down his face.

"He's going to call the police the minute he's in the car," Touya says aloud, and isn't sure which of them he's telling.

He has handcuffs. He has his gun. He has Shindou's knife. The police will be here soon. Touya sits down, pulls Shindou's head into his lap, wipes the blood carefully off his skin, and sits patiently stroking his hair, watching the shadows where nothing moves.

Maybe it's the first dim wail of sirens that brings Shindou to, triggering alarms somewhere in his subconscious. He opens his eyes with a groggy moan, and the first thing his eyes focus on – two equally sized pupils, equally reactive to the dim light – is Touya. For a moment he smiles, unguarded and lovely; then he winces and clutches his head. "Ow," he says plaintively.

"They'll be here soon," Touya says, tracing his thumb over Shindou's cheekbone.

Shindou sits up, not without some difficulty, and leans in to rest his forehead in the curve of Touya's neck. "Yeah," he says.

One day, Touya thinks, this is going to end very, very badly. The sirens are louder now.

"I wouldn't have killed him," Shindou whispers. "I promised you."

"I know," Touya whispers back. Shindou didn't promise to let Ochi live in one piece either, and they both know that too. Touya tries not to expect any more from Shindou than Shindou can give. Usually it works.

"I… I want this to be ours. I don't want you to have this with anyone else, what you have with me."

Touya has to laugh, a little. "I don't think you have to worry about that."

Shindou lifts his head. "You haven't asked me what I want yet. You always ask."

"What do you want, Shindou?"

The sirens are close. Shindou leans in and kisses Touya, slowly and softly.



When Touya opens his eyes again, it's to flashlights and radios and a paramedic bending over him, and Shindou is long gone.