| Fourteen - Hikaru no Go, Sam Shindou, Private Five
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| I woke up and wondered why my bed felt wrong. Then I realized it was
because the bed I was in was actually comfortable.
That was enough to make me open my eyes. For a moment I couldn't remember where I was, but the room was huge and beautiful and flooded with light, and the sheets that I was lying on were black instead of stained and white and thin, and no cars were honking outside the window-- --I rolled over and he was there, curled up tight in a nest of black blankets, his white face still and composed in sleep, and then I remembered. I remembered his servants' worried welcoming smiles turning to expressions of shock as their employer stumbled out of his father's Ferrari wearing only my suit jacket for cover. I remembered how they looked at me, like I was something they'd scrape out of the rain gutters, like they wanted to tear me apart for doing this to him. I remembered him snapping at them, and suddenly it was all all right. Someone took the Ferrari and put it away somewhere, and I was sad to see it go. Someone fetched us both towels and fetched him a robe, and someone took my shoes to see if they could be salvaged. I remembered a hurried meal at the kitchen table that neither of us even tasted. I remembered an exhausted hunt for warm showers and clean clothes after that, one that ate all our attention, so that I barely looked at him and he barely looked at me. I remembered how he'd touched my shoulder every time we'd stumbled past each other in his huge bedroom. It was just a glancing touch. Every time it was enough to keep me moving. He hadn't slept in this bed for a year. Maybe more. But he collapsed into it like it was home. I guess it was. He took the side nearer to the sliding doors and I took the other, sliding between sheets so clean and fresh that I felt kind of guilty about touching them. I reached out to touch him. I remember that. I don't remember actually touching him, though, so I suspect I was asleep before my hand crossed the entire distance. I could touch him now, though. So I did. His face was a small white shape amidst the blackness of the sheets and the blackness of his hair, and so I touched that first, my hand on his cheek. He mumbled and shifted and burrowed into his sheets and I pushed some of that black hair back behind his ear. His eyes opened, about halfway. He smiled at me and at first it was a tiny and knowing little expression, one that made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. I swallowed and tried to resist the urge to grab him and tear off those Mandarin pajamas that he'd spent so much painful time finding, last night. And then his eyes opened the rest of the way and he saw me for real, and his smile changed. It was smaller now, more natural, more uncertain. I thought that all in all, I liked it better. Name's Shindou. Shindou Hikaru. I was a private five once, name of Sam Shindou. A lousy stinkin' go-shoe. Now I was just a human being, and the morning sun was yellow and full of promise. |
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