@wirelies : “ how long will this go on before we admit we’re in love with each other? ” from kyouya .
they are drinking tea and playing chess. they do this a lot when byakuya’s father is home, which is to say that once every month byakuya closes the door on his piano and leads kyouya down a winding hallway to an ostentatious sitting room, gleaming with gold and pearl and lace. the chess set is always immaculate before they arrive and pennyworth is always smiling when he takes his leave. sometimes they talk and sometimes they don’t, and byakuya finds that this suits him just fine. silence is safer in the halls of a togami home.
he’s moving his knight to take kyouya’s rook when their comfortable quiet is broken, and his fingers tighten on the ivory. they are hand crafted and gorgeous and personalised, engraved on their underside with the progeny’s initials. he flips his piece upside down and traces the lettering with his fingernail absently, coolly. “i imagine we’ll play chess until you beat me, ootori.” his voice is calm, but there’s a colour climbing into his face that screams more than it shakes. he isn’t nervous, but he is paralysed.
it’s against the rules to put down a piece and choose another. byakuya takes the rook.
he can’t play stupid for too long. it’s unconvincing and uncomfortable. he rolls his eyes when he slips the chess piece into its slot by his wrist and picks up his cup of tea. he is stalling and he knows it.
two rooms over, one of the big brothers dislocated an elbow because he failed to turn around fast enough and catch himself as he fell. one of the younger sisters had pushed him. his father had disqualified them both on the spot.
“unless, of course, you mean something else. in which case, i imagine i will be doing it for the rest of my life.” he hasn’t taken a sip from his cup. instead, he peers over the rim of it with eyes that are blue but still burning. “if i know and you know, i see no sense in saying it out loud and making a mess of everything else. there’s no need to once again detail the responsibilities i, as a togami, was born to one day undertake, because i know you haven’t forgotten.” he does not blink. he does not look away. “would you be the first to step forward? to say something?”
it’s cold. he’s cold. maybe colder than he means to be, because he reaches over the table and brushes his fingers over the back of kyouya’s hand, slips them into the dip of his palm and lifts until the fellow youngest son’s nails are just touching the crown of the king. byakuya releases him from his grip, but not his gaze, and draws a neat line from kyouya’s king to his own across the checkered playing field.
it looks insultingly easy.
“your move,” he says.
