The first time Ogata tries to end it, he finds Shindou halfway started without him, a mess of sweaty limbs in Ogata's bed. His face is flushed and his upper lip is sweating and his eyelids are heavy. He's got one hand between his legs, fingers slick and buried between the globes of his ass, the other squeezing the base of his cock.
Ogata figures it's really, really impolite to break up with somebody under these circumstances, and so he unzips his pants and fucks Shindou hard enough make him shout and says, "Fuck, fuck, take it," and comes so hard he throws out his back and almost blacks out.
Later that week, when Shindou spends most of his time amusing himself over Ogata's Shindou-induced back injury, Ogata tries to break up with him for real. This is hard to do when one is in the undignified position of being prostrate on one's bed, incapable of moving or sitting up.
Shindou only says, "God, you overreact so much."
Ogata says, "I mean it."
Shindou rolls his eyes. "Whatever." He brightens. "Hey, we can use this opportunity to help you quit smoking!"
Fucking fuck fuck, Ogata thinks, this is my comeuppance for fucking the young.
The second time Ogata tries to break with Shindou, he makes sure that they're in a public place, only he's a moron and he's forgotten that the only public places they're ever together are the Touya Go Salon and the Go Institute. Touya Akira already spends most of his time simmering in fury with a side of homoerotic frustration.
As for the Go Institute, the very, very last thing that Ogata wants is that old fucker Kuwabara verifying his claim that Ogata's totally tapped that.
So what starts out as an effort to say, "This isn't working," turns into "This…is good," when Kuwabara walks past the doorway, blithe and irritating and ruining everything, throwing Ogata off of his rhythm.
"Yeah?" Shindou says, surprised, they're in one of the practice rooms, discussing Shindou's last game.
His eyes are really very pretty. Ogata almost kicks himself for thinking it.
"Yes, sure," Ogata bites out, annoyed with himself, digging through his pockets for the nicotine gum Shindou had bought him after he'd flushed all of Ogata's very expensive cigarettes.
When he looks back up, Shindou's eyes are even prettier, starry.
"We could play at your place," Shindou supplies, voice excited. "I didn't know you wanted to."
Go has always been about power and strategy and skill for Ogata, but now it is also about Shindou's fingers molesting his God damn fan in X-rated ways until Ogata says, "This isn't working," shoving the Go board out of his way, and attacking Shindou on his living room floor.
Several hours later, rubbing lotion into their rug burn, Ogata reflects that he's just total shit at this break-up thing.
For a few unsuccessful weeks, Ogata tries to make Shindou break up with him only to realize that Touya Akira had a point when he shouted at the top of his lungs that Shindou was the world's single densest person, that he never noticed anything.
Ogata tries fooling around, and he gets so far as getting friendly with his hands before he looses interest and gets distracted by a black and white poster on the wall that looks sort of like a kifu. He attempts brazen alcoholism, which is sometimes a turn off, but finds that Shindou likes having sex with Ogata, sloppy-drunk or not. Ogata should not find this thought endearing, but he does. Ogata attempts to develop some really deplorable personal habits, but gives up trying to force himself to throw his clothes on the floor when he remembers that Shindou is nineteen--that his kind is so messy, even science cannot conquer it.
It's some time after that Shindou disappears to Nigata for a tournament and Ogata realizes a full day after that he's supposed to be in attendance as well, so when he arrives at the hotel bar, tired, exhausted from the trip, and desperately in need of alcohol, he figures he should be grateful to see Touya Akira leaning into Shindou's personal space, pressing their dewy, trembling mouths together.
After all, it's Ogata's out. He's free. No messy break-up scene, and it'll be really novel to be the one dumped for once, Ogata thinks. Or, perhaps, Shindou will be too embarrassed to formally break up with Ogata and just send a packet of guilt money, which would be fine because Ogata was eyeing a new fishtank he saw in the Sharper Image catalogue a few days ago with great interest on the train.
But before any of this can happen, Ogata realizes that he's stormed over to the bar and jerked Shindou away by the back of his collar, and that when he meets the boy's eyes, Shindou is drunk and swaying but suddenly overjoyed, falls forward into Ogata's arms and says, "Hey!" and "You're here!" and "Touya said he was gonna tell me a secret--you wanna hear the secret?"
Ogata looks over Shindou's face, his starry eyes, his red cheeks and his dark hair. Touya looks hollow and tired and thinner than Ogata remembers--but more than that he looks guilty, and Ogata tightens his hand on Shindou's shirt. He pulls Shindou close to his chest, because maybe that's where the boy has been all along, since that first awkward fuck in the car and all the ones following--and all the ones yet to come.
Ogata thinks that maybe he's been looking at this all wrong.
"We're leaving," Ogata tells Touya, and when he nods jerkily, Ogata thinks he can almost feel sorry for him, to lose something so dear.
"Good night," Touya says, and in it Ogata hears "be good to him" and "let him keep his secrets" and "let him know all of yours."
Ogata has his own hotel room, partly due to seniority and partly because he had explained to the event planners he intended on having raunchy sex parties, and it would be unfortunate if his roommate could only watch and not participate. So when he pulls Shindou into his room it is dark and cool and the city glimmers just outside the window.
And when he lays Shindou down on the futon, gathers the blankets around him and watches the boy sleep, Ogata has to sit back and stare at the lines of Shindou's face, silvered by moonlight and think that if there are secrets still that lie between them, he loves them for how they have shaped Shindou and for how they have guided his beautiful, surprising Go.
Shindou wakes up with the worst hangover ever and makes feeble, sheep-noises, crying and bleating, pawing uselessly at the sheets and saying things like, "Take care of me!" and "You're terrible!" and "Oh my God, I'm dying," even as Ogata mops at his forehead with cool, damp cloths and fakes sympathy and everything.
"God, I don't remember anything after the tequila," Shindou moans.
Ogata makes a note to make sure Touya is picking up the tab. There's some sort of unspoken rule that attempted adulterers are obligated to pay for the drinks with which they ply their teetolling victims.
"You had sex with most of the people in the bar," Ogata tells him seriously. "If you're sore, it's only because you're a slut."
Shindou snorts and rolls over onto his side, covering his face with his arm. "I always knew I'd catch something from you."
Ogata allows Shindou to steal his sunglasses on the Shinkansai back to Tokyo later that day, and they're unlucky enough to be stuck in the same compartment as several Go enthusiasts, who come over to get Ogata's signature and find themselves gushing for two. Shindou half-smiles, and half-winces through all of it, though since all of his Go Weekly photographs are equally miserable, nobody is the wiser.
Ogata stares at Shindou's miserable, hung-over expression and realizes that he knows all of Shindou's prescriptions and how he likes his tea, what he's allergic to and what he refuses to admit to and how Shindou dreams sometimes, with such vivid sadness that he wets Ogata's pillow and Ogata doesn't even complain. If these are signs, Ogata thinks, then maybe they are signs that Shindou's black stones are encircling his own white pieces, that in the finite game of life he's reached an impasse, and to fight it any longer would be undignified, useless--messy.
Ogata thinks about resignation, and how it can have great dignity--
"I'm never drinking again," Shindou mourns, and sips hatefully at his barley tea.
"You've said that--"
"Shut up," Shindou snaps.
--and how sometimes, it's just inevitable, he thinks, wryly amused, and--taking Shindou's hand terribly indiscreetly into his own--he concedes the match.