Work Text:
‘Don’t fall in love with me.’
It was a joked warning, so you thought at the time. He’d been laughing as he said it, the mood between the pair of you light and teasing as it always was when playing GO - a favorite game.
‘You’ll want to. But don’t.’
‘Not overly full of yourself at all, are you?’
You called his bluff but you could already feel the early traces of an attachment forming. A purely platonic love - you’d lied to yourself - the love between friends, between two people that knew the worst of one another and could see around it, through it. He was occasionally a first-rate asshole and you were sometimes a grade-A bitch. For whatever reason it worked as a friendship.
‘It’s a well documented pattern. Just trust me. Keep your guard up.’
‘My guard’s always up.’
‘Good. We won’t have any problems, then.’
‘None at all.’
He played the game like he drove, like he lived his life; fast but with purpose. Always demanded to play the black stones. Always gloated when he won. He hadn’t won that day. Ever the sore loser, he’d fallen sullen when you bested him, glaring between you and the board to try to figure out how it’d happened.
You’d simply smiled at him in return:
‘Care to go again?’
‘One day I”ll figure you out. Your strategy-’ he’d said as he leaned back in his chair, ‘and then it’ll be over.’
That was his tell, the signal he was done with your company for the day. When he tipped his head back, started looking down his nose at you, that’s when it was time to part ways.
