I fixed the formatting, damn ff dot net. I still can't believe I wrote genderswap - I swore I never would - but here it is, in all its glory. The fact that I just had a baby probably explains a lot. This was written for Blind Go all in one night, and I actually really like it, even if genderswap usually makes my skin crawl. Though I've seen some rare gems that are lovely exceptions... hopefully this is one of them.

Inevitable

It was inevitable, really. They've known each other since they were twelve, after all, and their intense rivalry meant they only saw each other. So it really isn't any big surprise when Hikaru finally figures it out and just kisses Touya, which in turn forces him to figure it out. Everyone else thinks they are rather slow individuals.

Having already wasted so much time, they sort of go straight from kissing to sex, once Hikaru is able convince prim and proper Touya that her breasts aren't a museum exhibit so touching is perfectly acceptable, and in fact, preferable even.

With Touya's hands on Hikaru's breasts, it is easy enough for her to pop the button on his hideous slacks and slip her hand inside, making him practically squeak and then groan, and it is a damn good thing they're alone because she doesn't think she'd be able to stop if she had to.

Touya pulls her shirt over her head and fumbles with her bra before she moves his hands and just undoes the thing herself, letting it fall to the floor. He stands back and looks at her, his eyes dark with lust, his pants undone and slipping off his waist, and she can feel herself getting wet just watching him look at her. She pulls him close and deftly unbuttons his ridiculous pink shirt, pushing it back over his shoulders. Touya reaches for Hikaru's naked breasts, running his thumbs over her nipples, making her squirm.

Hikaru pulls Touya with her, backing up until her legs hit the bed. She takes a moment to push his pants down before pulling him on top of her on the bed. She is wearing a skirt – not her usual fare, as she's a t-shirt and jeans girl all the way, but ever since they'd kissed, she's been hoping for this and showing off her legs seemed a good way to get what she wanted. She'd still ended up having to make the first move, not that it mattered now because Touya is on top of her and there is just a thin mini-skirt and a pair of white cotton panties between them and he is biting at her neck and he is reaching up her skirt and, oh god, he is pushing her panties aside and yesssss…

Touya doesn't know what he's doing, but Hikaru is slick and wet and hot, and he fingers her clit like it's a Go stone, and Hikaru thinks she might come just from that fact alone. As it is, she is arching backwards, her hands clutching the sheets, breathing hard as he worships her breasts and stomach with his tongue. "Touya…" she moans, "more…"

He pulls her panties off but leaves the skirt, pushing it up a little so he can dip his head between her thighs, nudging them further apart with his elbow, to lick experimentally at her moist folds. The sound Hikaru makes pulls a groan from Touya, and he slips two fingers inside of her, one on top of the other as if he were going to play a stone on her g-spot. Hikaru pulls her knees up a little higher, silently pleading for him to do more.

He licks her again, and then again, before establishing a rhythm and turning Hikaru into a writhing moaning mess, his fingers exploring her insides and his tongue working her clit, punctuated by occasionally using his lips to suckle at her.

She comes violently, shuddering hard enough to rattle the bed, and she wonders why anyone could ever think masturbating is a viable alternative for this, because it didn't even compare. Hikaru feels unbelievably good, pleasure throbbing through her entire body, but Touya is staring up at her with eyes filled with need, and she smirks, beckoning for him to move up her body with light touches to his biceps. He is all too eager to comply, and she claims his lips again, tasting the tang of her own juices on his tongue.

Touy'a cock is painfully hard and throbbing, but when he lines it up with her entrance, she says, "Wait."

He practically growls, but he stops and manages, "Wait?"

"Uhm… do you have a condom?"

"Fuck," is his reply, and Hikaru isn't sure whether to be shocked or pissed off that neither of them thought to carry condoms with them.

Hikaru thinks hard. She's just had her period, and so that means she should be okay, right? She bites her lip and says, "Just do it."

Touya hesitates, but he obviously wants to. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Yeah. Let's do this." Before he has a chance to protest, she wraps her legs around his waist and pulls.

Then he's sinking into her and all coherent thought vacates that isn't, "Oh." Hikaru's hands are clutching at his back and her legs are wrapped haphazardly around his waist and she's so tight around his cock that he almost comes before he's even all the way inside. He takes a minute to catch his breath before Hikaru gets impatient, giving a tiny little buck of her hips, and Touya thinks he might actually lose his mind.

He idly wonders if his rival would be the death of him someday before pumping in and out of her erratically, praying it feels good for her because, damn, he couldn't imagine it feeling any better on his end and he really really wants to share that with her. But then Hikaru is making noises that are going to make their first time very short, so he imagines whatever he's doing is okay, and then he's coming, and he doesn't know whether to be elated or embarrassed, but her nails are digging into his back and he kind of doesn't care about anything but the feel of her around him; her breasts pushed against his chest, her hands on his back, her legs pulling him inside the entrance that's currently squeezing him in a way that milks him dry.

He collapses against her, and, sated, they fall asleep, his sperm making its way to her egg.

And that is how everything starts.

"Are you sure?" Touya asks yet again, and Hikaru is just about ready to rip her hair out.

"I doubt six tests were all wrong, but on the miracle chance they are, I have an appointment with the doctor next week." She toys with the tuft of blond covering her forehead, sort of trying to avoid his eyes without looking like she was. "I was sort of hoping that maybe… uh, well, I mean, you don't have to but… would you… wouldyougowithme?" She finished all in a rush.

Touya thinks of his parents and his upbringing, and still has no idea what to do. "O-of course I will." Because it is the right thing to do, but also because he knows Hikaru must be as scared as he is, and he would never want to make her go through that alone.

"Okay. Alright. I made the appointment for Tuesday since neither of us has a game that day." Hikaru is subdued, and Touya misses the boisterousness that is Hikaru on a normal day, but in the light of their current situation, that's sort of an impossible thing to hope for. He finds he is almost as upset about this as he is over the prospect of being an impromptu father at only eighteen.

"It's going to be alright," Touya says inanely, because clearly it's not really okay. They aren't married and they'd only had sex the one time and they weren't even living together yet, and he's sure Hikaru is thinking all these things, too. But then he thinks about when they were twelve and how an obnoxiously adorable girl wandered into his father's Go salon one warm afternoon and completely changed his life. He can't help but wonder if their kid would be anything like Hikaru was back then. It fills him with an emotion he can't name and he pulls Hikaru to him and just holds her tight.

"I love you," he says, because they haven't even said that much yet, but he knows without a doubt that he does, that he loves her more than anything, even more than Go, and if God was cruel enough to make him choose between the two, he'd pick Hikaru every time without hesitation.

Hikaru wipes at her face and pulls back to look at him. She has tears in her eyes and Touya wants to take that pain away, but he's not really sure how, so he just kisses her softly, putting his feelings in the tender brush of lips. "Do you mean that?" Hikaru asks, and he nods so hard his head might come off in the process. "Me too," she sniffs, and he just holds her through sunset and well into the night.

The doctor is gentle, squeezing cold gel on her stomach. Touya is holding her hand, and they share an anxious look before watching the little monitor. At first, it just looks like weird white scribbles on a black surface, but then those white scribbles form… something.

The doctor points at the screen. "See this here? That's your baby." She smiles gently. "I'd say you are about eight weeks along."

Hikaru just stares at it. "That's a baby? It looks like a bunch of tiny circles connecting to a bigger circle."

The doctor laughs. "Yes, he or she is still tiny. It will be a while before you can tell the sex, if you want to know beforehand, but that is definitely a baby."

One of the tiny circles moves, and Akira realizes the tiny circles are its limbs. "Did it just punch you?"

"…I think it did." Hikaru can't feel it of course, but they can see it on the screen, squirming around. Squirming around inside Hikaru.

The doctor prints them some pictures and all of the sudden it's real, and it's terrifying and surprising and wonderful all at the same time.

They share a look that's so full of emotion that Akira thinks he might have proposed right there on the spot if he had a ring. But he doesn't, and so the moment passes.

They leave the doctor's office in a positive mood. They'll worry about telling their families later.

Hikaru feels terrible. She hasn't gained much weight yet so the only people who know are people she's told, which amounts to Waya and Isumi.

Touya has brought her ramen, and she's trying really hard to eat it, but her morning sickness isn't too thrilled with this idea, and she wants to know why the hell it's called morning sickness if it never goes away.

Her mother is puttering around downstairs, and she tries to keep it quiet when she throws up, her delicious ramen going to waste, but she still feels kind of fuzzy because Touya is holding her hair and stroking her back and she kind of loves him even more now than ever before.

He leaves Hikaru to rinse her mouth and when she's done, he's sitting in front of the board, inviting her to play. She can't help but chuckle – only Touya would ask for a game right after she throws up – but she obliges, sitting across from him and grabbing the goke nearest to her.

When Hikaru opens it, she looks to check the color and freezes. Her eyes flick from the goke to Touya and back again. Then she reaches Go-callused fingers into the goke and retrieves the ring, and Touya is turning a little red, but he manages to say, "Shindou, marry me?"

Hikaru should point out that they've only been dating for a few months, that they haven't even discussed living together or told either of their parents that she was pregnant or hell, even had sex more than once. She's never even given him a blow job. But instead, she says, "If we're going to get married, you should probably start calling me Hikaru."

With shaky hands, he takes the ring from her and slips it over the blunt nail of her ring finger.

When Akira tells his parents, they are appropriately concerned and encouraging, offering to help finance the wedding and expressing excitement over having a grandchild on the way.

When Hikaru tells her mother, she asks an endless stream of questions – where will they live? How will they afford it? When is the wedding? Why didn't they practice safe sex? Didn't they know how dangerous that was?

Then she expresses her happiness over her future grandchild.

They rush the wedding – Hikaru wants to do it before she's too round – but still, when two of the nation's most promising young pros get married, people go out of their way to make it. A good portion of the Go world turns up, including such notables as Ogata Juudan and Kuwabara Houninbou, as well as all the younger pros and both of their families.

The ceremony starts normally, and Akira finds he can't take his eyes off of his beautiful soon-to-be wife. They exchange vows and rings, but when it comes time to kiss the bride, Hikaru grabs Akira and kisses him first.

She blurts out, "Holy shit, I'm a Touya now," in amazement, before she remembers the audience and blushes prettily. Akira is flushed, too, but he's also smiling, and Hikaru thinks nothing in the world could ever be wrong if only he'd smile like that forever. She kisses him again before he decides to just pick her up and carry her away – he couldn't let her have all the fun, after all.

It's their wedding night, and thankfully the morning sickness had started to wane, but Hikaru's stomach is still full of butterflies because it's only their second time having sex ever, but it's Akira and she wants him just as much as she ever did if not more, and the butterflies quickly turn to lust when he pulls her close and kisses her like they're the only two people on earth, and in that moment, she thinks that maybe they are.

They undress each other fully this time, and tumble onto the bed. Hikaru kisses down Akira's chest and stomach until his erection is in her face, and with a deep breath and a little courage, she takes him into her mouth, sucking lightly at the soft flesh. Akira groans, and that's all the encouragement she needs to work him further into her mouth and bob her head, running her tongue along the underside of his shaft.

She reaches to cup his balls, but he stops her with a quivering hand. "Stop, oh god, stop, or I'm going to come."

It hasn't been very long, but they are both still so new at this, and she can't help but grin at the idea that they'll have to practice this – a lot. She slides up his body, and she bites at his lower lip and uses her hand to guide him inside her. Hikaru arches back and begins to ride him, and all he can do is try to meet her halfway by thrusting up into her as she slams down on him.

Yet again, it's over rather quickly, Akira's hands roaming anywhere he can manage to touch, crying out her name and twitching lightly. She is still unsatisfied and he flips them over, making short work of her pent up frustration with his fingers. He decides watching her orgasm is probably the most fascinating thing in the world, her eyes heavy-lidded, a light sheen of sweat glistening on her temple, her lips puffy and wet.

They lay together for a while, just curled in each other's arms. Then Hikaru stirs. "You want to play a game?"

If there had ever been any doubts about why he married this woman, that question would have completely obliterated then. Their game sparks an argument that turns into another round of sex, and Akira thinks that this is possibly the greatest relationship that has ever existed in the entire history of the world.

It's a girl. It's a girl, and now that they know that, it's time to talk names. When Hikaru asks him, half afraid, half hopeful, if they can name her Sai, Akira knows that now is the someday he's waited so long for.

And then she's telling him, and it's crazy and heart-breaking and completely unbelievable, and when she's done, he agrees to their child's name without question.

Of course he believes her, and Hikaru knows that he's the only person in the world who could ever understand.

Akira has no idea what he should be doing. He's holding Hikaru's hand, which she's completely crushing, and he feels sort of sick watching her fall in and out of pain like this, but all he can really do is be there for her, rub her, talk to her and try to walk her through this as best he can.

At first they talk Go to help keep her mind off the pain, but once the contractions start coming faster and lasting longer, she needs those precious moments to just breathe and rest, and Akira rubs her legs and her back and just hopes it will be over soon so Hikaru doesn't have to be in pain anymore.

A doctor appears and declares Hikaru fully dilated, and they get her situated to start pushing.

Hikaru is screaming, and it's an awful sound, and he's pretty sure she's rethinking the natural birth right about now because he sure is and he's not even the one in pain, though he's seriously getting concerned for his fingers. If she breaks them, he'll have a hell of a time holding stones.

Push push, breathe, push push, breathe, the doctors are saying something about crowning that Akira doesn't understand over Hikaru's desperate screams, and then there's the sound of a cry and suddenly there is a new Touya in the world, looking pink and purplish with a tuft of jet black hair. They're wrapping her up and putting her on Hikaru, and Hikaru is panting but smiling and as Akira stares at his wife and his baby – their baby – he finds that he can't help but cry from sheer amazement and wonder.

Outside of his wife, he's never seen anything more perfect than their little baby girl, and if he lives to be a hundred, he doesn't think that there could ever be anything to top this.

Sai learns to play Go at two, just like her father.

She looks a lot like Akira – something people love to point out – with her jet black hair that is silky and long, sharp eyes and slender figure. She has Hikaru's eye color, and to Hikaru's amusement and Akira's dismay, her mother's boisterous attitude. In fact, the only time Sai is quiet is when she is in front of a goban. At all other times, she is running around the house, giggling and squealing and talking a blue streak. She loves visitors and when people come to see her, she shows off whatever new thing she's learned – anything from songs to making mud pies – and generally the entire world thinks she is adorable, and she knows it, even at two.

Hikaru is delighted, and Akira is counting down the days until she's a teenager with a healthy amount of trepidation.

Akira makes sure that Sai does things other than Go, because though he does not regret anything in his life, he does realize that his absolute focus on Go robbed him of his childhood, and he does not want that for his daughter. She is so much like her mother that it's almost scary at times, but he wants to foster that natural vibrance, and spending a lifetime behind a Go board is not necessarily the way to go about that.

Akira doesn't have any idea what a normal childhood consists of, but Hikaru does, and she plans numerous outings for them, and Akira finds he loves this almost as much as he loves Go. Sai does, too, but she always asks for a game from her father before bed, and no matter how tired he might be, he could never refuse her, which was just one more thing that made her just like her mother.

Sai passes the pro exam when she is ten years old, effectively making her the youngest person to ever do so. She is still just a child, but she is following firmly in her parents' footsteps, joining them in the world of the pros.

She's still too young to be serious, so the photos in the paper show her laughing, her long black hair loose and dancing in the wind.

Hikaru offers to be her opponent for the Beginner Dan Series game, but she just laughs at her mother, saying she plays her every day, what would be the point of playing a title-holder if it's the same title-holder she always plays? Akira just smirks and lets her do as she pleases.

She comes frighteningly close to beating Ogata-Tengen, and Akira wonders if his father's former student is slipping.

Hikaru thinks it's ironic that the first time Sai says the word rival in relation to herself, she is twelve. The boy is also twelve, and he's everything an adorable twelve year old should be, plus he plays Go. He hasn't taken the pro exam yet, but he is more than capable of doing so, and Sai babbles happily about the boy she met at grandfather's Go salon and how she's going to drag him into the world of the pros so that she can play him for the rest of forever.

Akira considers uprooting his family and moving to another country.

"Oh please," Hikaru laughs, rolling her eyes, "you remember what we were like when we were twelve."

He remembers thinking of nothing but Hikaru for days on end, which eventually turned to years, and in the end, never actually stopped, because of course, he's married to her now. He remembers practically stalking her with his intensely passionate feelings for her Go, which later carried over into their love life and became mind-blowing sex.

"Of course I remember. That's why I'm saying we should move."

Hikaru just laughs.

Sai really starts to blossom at fourteen. She is in that awkward place where she's not quite a child but also not yet an adult, and Akira thinks he will lose his mind completely when his little girl suddenly has curves in all the same places her mother does. This is made worse by the fact that she has picked up her own bastardized style of clothing – she wears argyle like her father, but in neon colors that Waya tells him is considered 'punk', and she's all knee-highs and plaid skirts and brightly colored ribbons, and Akira thinks maybe he should do something about this, but doesn't know what.

Matters are further complicated by the boy she considers her rival – he learns his name is Shouji – because he's passed the pro exam and now she's inviting him over for dinner and Hikaru practically has to restrain her husband when he notices the appreciative looks the boy is giving his daughter.

When Hikaru decides that it's time to give their daughter the sex talk, Akira breaks something for the first time in, well, ever.

Sai takes her first title when she is sixteen. That alone is unusual enough, but the fact that she takes it from her father makes it all the more extraordinary.

"I guess the Meijin title is destined to be in the hands of a Touya," Hikaru teases, and Akira is both filled with immense pride and complete and utter heartbreak at the same time.

His little girl is almost all grown up, and when he falls into Hikaru's arms, she holds him tight and tells him it's going to be okay. And it is, but when the time comes, he doesn't think he'll be able to let her go.

Shouji needs some time to catch up to Sai, but when he finally takes a title, she comes home all bright smiles and babbling words, holding up her hand to show everyone who cares to look her ring. She is twenty years old and she loves her parents dearly, but it's clear she doesn't need them anymore, and as she rambles on about wedding plans and affordable apartments, Akira thinks his entire world has shattered.

He smiles and nods and gives his approval – he would give her anything – but once she's finally asleep, he makes love to Hikaru with a desperation that says he might just be a little bit afraid that she'll disappear, and that's something Hikaru can understand on a very real level, so she just does her best to meet Akira's every need and show him that it really will be okay.

There is no need for words. They make love straight through the night for the first time since they were twenty.

Akira tries not to think of Shouji as the guy who is stealing his daughter, but it's pretty difficult, and he finds Hikaru laughing at him when he forgets to keep a polite look on his face.

He's a decent guy, and the current Ouza, so really, Akira has no good reason to disapprove, except for the fact that his daughter has talked about almost nothing but him since she was twelve years old, and he wonders not for the first time if this is how his parents had felt when he'd met Hikaru.

He is standing at the altar, dressed in an expensive western suit, his normally wild brown hair tamed for the ceremony. He is staring down the aisle, shifting from foot to foot, nervous, but with eyes only for his daughter. Akira is peeking out from behind the curtain, and something about that look on Shouji's face reminds him so much of himself when he'd married Hikaru that he can't help but accept this. Not that he has a choice, because the music is playing and the crowd is standing and Sai is holding out an elbow for him.

He takes a second to look at his daughter, to really look at his little girl. Her mass of hair has been curled and pulled back to fall artfully around her face. She is wearing make-up, but not as much as she did when she was a teenager. It looks natural, bringing out the beautiful green eyes she inherited from her mother. Her dress is white, and Akira can't help but hope that the symbol of purity was actually true. It's elegant and just a hint sexy, clinging on the top and swaying at the bottom.

Somewhere along the way, his little girl had become a woman.

He links his arm with hers and they make their way down the aisle, Shouji watching her like she is the only person in the entire world, and it makes it easier at the same time as it makes it harder, because he knows that look, he's had it for Hikaru for as long as he can remember, and it means that he will love her forever, and it also means that she is starting her own family apart from him.

When they make it to the front, Akira stares into Shouji's eyes, refusing to release his daughter just yet. "Promise me you'll take care of my little girl." His voice cracks like he's going through puberty, which is ridiculous for a thirty-eight year old man, but his gaze is steady.

"Daddy…" Sai whispers, her eyes misting over.

"I promise," Shouji replies, and Akira sees the truth in it. He hugs his daughter tight and lets her go.

His eyes seek Hikaru's and he's moving towards her, taking his seat and grabbing for her hand. She clutches, and together they cry as they lose a daughter at the same time as they gain a son.

Akira paces in the waiting room. Hikaru is in with Sai and Shouji, but this is one experience a father just cannot share with his daughter, and so he is making lines in the floor while a smattering of relatives and friends watch.

"She's going to be fine," Waya says, and Akira has done this once before with Hikaru, so he knows that in all likelihood, Waya is right.

That doesn't stop him from pacing, though.

It seems like hours go by, and maybe they do, and then finally, finally, Hikaru appears and says the magic words, "It's a girl!" and Akira is up and running to be by his daughter's side with so much determination that a charging rhino would have got out of his way.

Shouji is there, staring down at his little family in a way that takes him back twenty years and it's almost like history is repeating itself. Hikaru is suddenly there by his side, holding his hand tightly as he gazes at his granddaughter, and damn it all, he's crying again, and he's pretty sure he's cried more for his daughter than for everything else in his life combined.

He remembers thinking that if he lived to be a hundred he could never ask for anything more, so he feels ridiculously favored by the gods to have been given yet another thing he couldn't imagine his life without.

He knows he has a lot more to look forward to now, years of playing Go with his granddaughter, of discovering the beautiful young lady she is destined to become, and he realizes that he hasn't really lost anything. To connect the distant past with the distant future – he knows now that this is their part in that endless chain, and he is the luckiest man in the world.

Together with Hikaru, they really did create a universe all their own.

Deleted Scenes

"This can't be right." Her voice is flat, and she knows she's panicking and damn it, panicking is inot/i going to help her situation in the least.

"Try another one," Waya suggests, not really all that sympathetic but sort of trying, a little bit, but god, everyone knows you have to protect yourself if you don't want to get pregnant, and so she's just sort of standing there with her arms crossed over her perky breasts, waiting for Hikaru to realize that there just is no getting out of this one.

Hikaru goes through six pregnancy tests before she looks at Waya with wide eyes and says, "Holy shit, I'm pregnant."

Waya snorts in a very un-lady-like manner, tossing her short hair back before saying, "You think?"

Hikaru glares at her and her silly camouflage dress. "You can be such a bitch sometimes, you know that?"

She raises a make-up darkened eyebrow. "What's your point?"

Hikaru sighs. "What the hell am I going to tell Touya?"

"That idiots get what they deserve?"

"Waya!"

Waya held her hands up, plastic bracelets clacking together loudly. "I have no idea. I'm sure you'll figure it out. I'm late for a date with Isumi though, so you're on your own with that one."

"You're leaving me?" But Waya was already disappearing out the front door. Hikaru looked down at the most recent test stick and sighed. "Well, fuck."

Hikaru has the pleasure of watching her daughter grow up, but just as fascinating is watching her husband watch their daughter grow up. She truly shines now at eighteen, but it is clear to Hikaru that Akira still sees her as his little girl, and every step she takes towards independence breaks his heart.

She is sympathetic towards her husband's feelings, though she does not feel quite the same – she has had someone truly disappear from her life. Growing up and moving out is not the same thing, and so Hikaru is much more sedate about the matter.

When they were young, Hikaru had thought that nothing could make her love Akira more than she already did, but watching him become a father was something that brought her a joy she could have never imagined at eighteen, fumbling with discovering each other through their Go, and then with their bodies.

She, too, sees how Sai has fixated on Shouji, and she is happy that her daughter didn't have to go through the painful false starts that most children go through when trying to discover love. See sees quite plainly that she had found her Akira, and even if her husband couldn't yet accept it, she knew, in time, he would.

It is like watching her and Akira all over again, and honestly, she couldn't think of anything more wonderful than that.