Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Christmas is coming,” his mother reminds a six-year-old Tetsurou, passing a hand through his wild hair. She watches as he digs tire tracks on the faded cream of their living room carpet with his toy cars.

“Vroom," Tetsurou mimics under his breath, wholly absorbed in the difficult maneuver to get the red car back in front of the yellow one for the last leg of their race. In the background, the television drones with the frantic commentary of a competition no one in his household cares about. The noise is there to drown out other kinds of silences. 

“You should start thinking what gifts you want to ask Santa for.”

Tetsurou looks up at his mother. “Hot Wheels?”

She smiles and bops his nose, golden eyes crinkling at the corners. "Yes. If you behave. And if you promise to help Nana and your aunties when they come to stay for the holidays."

Tetsurou purses his mouth and looks back to his toy cars. He pushes the red one a bit farther, the hollow roll of motors in his ears. “Nana asks too many questions.”

His mother pushes her raven hair behind her shoulder and arches an eyebrow. “Remember what I said about behaving.”

Beyond his mother, the television suddenly roars, and it yanks Tetsurou attention. He doesn’t understand what the black and white flag means or why everyone on the screen is screaming. He only has eyes for the replay, and the replay of the replay, for the slow-mo, and then the replay again of the last fifteen seconds of the race.

Long, low, colorful cars with rumbling engines, sucking high speed out of their large tires. A man is climbing out of a red car, yanking back his helmet. Tetsurou stares in awe as the man on the screen thrusts his hands in the air, and a crowd of people wearing his same jerseys smothers him in a celebratory team hug. The man disappears, though the afterimage of fast cars on squeaky clean asphalt resonates long after his mother has changed program, bothered by the onslaught of noise.

:::

Nana does ask too many questions. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Tetsurou looks up from the peas he’s been swirling in his plate for the last five minutes. “I want to be a Formula One driver.”

Aunt Okonami laughs her hearty laugh, the one that sounds like she’s choking on an obstinate pigeon wedging itself down her throat. "He dreams of glory," she coughs, hilarity dancing in her eyes, half-swallowed by the wrinkled skin.

Nana leans forward to catch Tetsurou’s eye, the same golden color of her daughter’s and her nephew’s. “Not glory,” she says, her gnarled, bony hand reaching over the table to clasp Tetsurou’s. “Speed. My nephew dreams of speed.”

She squeezes his hand, and Tetsurou squeezes back.

***

Tetsurou is the first of his friends to get his license. They crow, they pump fists in the air, and ask him to drive them around Tokyo—on the rickety Subaru Takeshi’s granddad routinely loses the keys of, of all things. He complies, with the old man’s permission. The keys are nowhere to be found though, so he watches every video tutorial on hotwiring a car.

A week later, a faded red Subaru crankily rolls up in the school parking lot, with its bumper gnarled with rust and depolymerized plastic and its engine roaring deafeningly (it only has two settings: fighter jet and broken). It unloads its weight of monkeying kids in crumpled uniforms, three tall, overexcited boys who were pressed shoulder to shoulder in the backseat, disregarding the state of their suits.

Behind the wheel, Tetsurou grins, squeezing his hands around the burnt leather. Everyone is excited he has his driving license. No one asks why such a hurry.

:::

Tetsurou is almost seventeen when the first chance to tackle his dream knocks at his door. The old unused parking lot two streets down his road had finally been acquired. Tetsurou was there when the mayor announced they were going to build a race club in its stead.

His father reads down the dollop of papers Tetsurou thrust in his hands as soon as he came home. He already filled all his data, and his parents’ too. His mother’s signature sits proudly at the bottom of the page along his own, in the darkest ink he found in the house, because this—this is the application form to the race club, and you can’t really make a mess on the document that will open the gates to your dream because of a dry pen.

His father readjusts the thin wireframes on his long nose. “I’m not signing this.”

Tetsurou’s stomach drops through the floor.

His father sighs, long and disappointed, his plump form slumping on his bones. “Again with this nonsense, Tetsurou?” he asks in that calm tone that drives him up the wall every time. “I thought you grew sensible. Do you know how dangerous driving like that is?”

It’s only karts, Tetsurou wants to say, and you already let me take my license, but his face is on fire, and something is clutching his throat so hard that breathing is difficult. His mother stops on the threshold of the room, her knuckles white on the edges of the tea tray she was bringing inside the room. “What’s going on?”

Tetsurou’s father ignores her. “No family money shall ever be spent on this fantasy of yours, Tetsurou. Grow out of it.”

This is the moment Tetsurou grows out of it. And ‘it’ is not racing.

“You don’t get to talk about family money,” he spits, words he never spoke and always thought bubbling up in his mouth in a red tide that will lay waste to his house, “Every month of the last ten years I picked up the house phone and took messages thanking you for roses, incenses, earrings.”

The tea tray crashes to the ground. Nothing shatters. It's all inexpensive plastic because Tetsurou's father's cheap that way.

“You grow out of your fantasy,” he carries on, “Groping girls in their twenties won’t strip the years off your back. Is ‘grow out of it’ the same thing you tell them when you’re done?”

His mother touches his shoulder. “Tetsurou—” she says weakly.

“It’s alright, mom,” he answers, glowering at the thin line of his father’s mouth, “I’m done.” It’s not like she didn’t know about the other women. They were both there when the television was the only thing to drown the silence of a father gone for days at a time, and it’s statistically improbable that Tetsurou has been the only one to pick up the phone each time one of his father’s girlfriends called.

He shoulders past his mother, trampling cups and spilled tea.

“Tetsurou!” his father thunders, “Tetsurou! How dare you—”

He doesn’t look back, taking the stairs to his room two at a time.

“Leave,” he hears his mother say.

Tetsurou stomps upstairs to his room, and throws himself on the bed, hiding fat teardrops in his pillow.

Downstairs, the front door closes. Not hard enough to rattle the windows; not soft enough to promise a comeback at the end of the day. His father will never cross that threshold again.

The next day, he writes ‘Kuroo Tetsurou’ in his neatest handwriting on the first of the many job applications he sends out to pay for his driving lessons when he is of age.

***

Tetsurou is seventeen, and he's got more jobs under his belt than anyone he knows. Finding time to study was hard at first. Now he’s learned how to optimize time for maximum productivity. Sleep is a wild card, though. Sometimes he will close his eyes and catch a ten-minutes nap at the breakfast table as his mother finishes to brew her tea; or he will eat at school and then slump on his arms and breathe deeply enough to get into that trance space where you’re still conscious, but also gathering back your energies for the rest of the day. This is the time in which his untamed hair become infamous; the time when the black circles under his eyes start becoming the hot topic of the girls’ conversation. They give his eyes such a profound quality, they say, it’s like he’s looking right through you.

The reason why Tetsurou seems to see right through them is probably that he's not seeing them at all.

The calendar has become his saving grace these last few months; tearing off page after page is the highlight of his mornings, and watching it getting thinner and thinner is the only thing that keeps him sane.

That is because every effort he makes to save every yen of his salary is coming to an end. At this time a week from now, he will be eighteen, and he will pay his subscription to the race club with the money in his bank account.

***

Tetsurou doesn’t know if it’s because it’s the twelfth lesson, if it’s because he’s sitting in a room so similar to his classroom, or if it’s the old man who has been droning about shifting gears for the past half an hour, but he’s bored out of his skull. Only steely determination and the ghost of maximized productivity has kept the pen sliding on his notebook.

Nekomata-sensei is a fossil with creaking joints and eyes that disappear in the creases of skin at his temples, surmounted by bushy eyebrows with a life of their own. He is not particularly engaging in his lecture, especially since he has spent the last twenty minutes explaining car gear mechanisms with the depth of a luthier to a bunch of kids fresh out of driving school.

Unfortunately, he also tends to ask rhetorical questions, that, while rhetorical, he still demands answers to. “And where does a kart’s speed come from?”

Nekomata flexes a thin wooden rod between his thumbs. He often uses it to point out elements on the kart’s blowup picture hanging on the wall to his left. He also cracks it on the desk of anyone who gets remotely distracted. Tetsurou’s notebook is filled with random panicky straight lines departing from hurried kanji. His notes do kind of remind him of electrocardiograms.

Tetsurou feels the kid’s excitement without having to look over his shoulder. His weird rough voice fills every corner of space his personality doesn’t already. Tetsurou doesn’t know what’s about this kid. Maybe it’s just that he’s not used to people tall enough to look him in the eye, instead of staring in the general direction of his chin; or, more possibly so, it’s the wild black hair streaked with white all over (could be the other way around too).

But still, Bokuto Koutarou is his name, and he is going to be the death of Tetsurou.

In an all-boys high school like his own, Tetsurou got used to the amount of energy a kid in his prime can exude. He even managed to keep up with it when he wasn’t dead on his feet.

Well, you can’t probably find this much adrenaline in an emergency ward.

Nekomata-sensei swings between thunderous relief someone is trying to participate in the class and sheer exasperation that it’s always him, this dumb fella with pricey clothes and perpetually-wide eyes. He gestures with his stick in the general direction of Bokuto, giving him the floor.

Tetsurou struggles to write down every syllable out of the Bokuto’s mouth as he rattles off an entire vocabulary’s worth of words in thirty seconds. He’s learned by now that this kid knows his shit and often his answers are clearer than Nekomata-sensei’s. It still doesn’t condone the way he keeps distracting Tetsurou with his continuous heel-tapping, or pen-clicking, or just by being himself at his personal brand of I-broke-off-the-knob level, though.

Nekomata has apparently reached his maximum capacity of tolerance for today, it seems, because as soon as Bokuto finishes his answer, he’s shooing all five of his students out of the room.

He leads them to a staircase going deeper into the ground and fishes a keyring out of his pocket. He clangs them around a bit, sadistically relishing in the squirming of the students behind him as they finally realize that this is it, this is the garage, the door to the karts.

Nekomata gets the keys in the lock not a second too early. He pushes the heavy metal door open.

This is the first time since that night in front of the television that Tetsurou got to experience his dream with all five senses.

Sight: check. The kart looks tiny at best, a hideous mishmash of green, yellow, and red that would have any color-theorist on the face of the earth claw their eyes out, with scuffed fenders that weave tales of hard knocks.

Smell: check. Rubber. Plastic. Gasoline. These are the three things that get him spinning in overdrive. Tetsurou settles behind the wheel. Nekomata dumps a grey jumpsuit in his lap. It smells of mothball.

Hearing: check. The other kids crow and whoop, Bokuto louder of them all. A long, overexcited screech, as he jumps around the kart he baptized as his own and touches everything in amazement. It’s obviously the ugliest clash of neon orange and deep purple. Tetsurou laughs. Bokuto raises his eyes and smiles, wide and unbridled.

Taste: check. Tetsurou refrains from biting on the leather of the wheel, of course. He does taste the tears in the back of his throat though, as he pictures himself sliding on the track, staying in control of this racehorse, crossing that finish line. He does taste the golden metal of a cup against his lips. He does taste the scorching heat of a kart engine launched at 160mph on sun-kissed asphalt.

Touch: check. This is the sense that Tetsurou relishes most of all. His hands curl around the steering wheel, his feet mold to the pedals. They feel weird. The good kind of weird, a whole different level than the old red Subaru’s. The dry leather crackles under his knuckles as he tightens his fists. Hard plastic on the sides of the kart, cracked stiff polyester making the seat of this kart.

His mind is the silent, placid blank that comes from walking two or three inches off the ground.

“Feels like you were born for this, innit?”

Tetsurou looks up. Bokuto’s eyes are golden, and aflame with the same light Tetsurou sees reflected in his own in the tv screen as he switches it off after watching a good race. “Kuroo Tetsurou,” he says, reaching over the suit in his lap to offer Bokuto his hand.

There is a split-second in which Bokuto doesn’t react at all, and his stare clouds with an eerie intensity that makes Tetsurou’s skin crawl. It’s gone as fast as it’s come. Bokuto jams his hand in Tetsurou’s and squeezes, hard enough to make his bones clack.

Tetsurou gives as good as he gets.

Bokuto repeats his own name, his wild streaked hair bobbing with the force of his handshake. Whatever he saw in Tetsurou’s eyes, he must have recognized him as one of his kind. He turns up his nose, a dopey grin on his wide mouth. "I take it I will see you on the streets."

Tetsurou snorts. How odd is it to recognize the typical brand of humor of a person you've just shaken hands with? "Pfft. You’ll only see my dust cloud.”

Bokuto laughs. “A rivalry between gentlemen, then,” he says, slapping the flank of the kart. He shakes his head, his wide grin contagious in the same way everything about him is. (Hair included. Tetsurou doesn’t feel so bad about his untamable bedhead anymore). “Man, I live for this shit.”

***

Sometime between the third and fourth upgraded license, Nekomata has started to pitch the drivers one against the other. “Winning’s easy when you’re on the track with someone who doesn’t know you, right?” he said one day. (Cue Bokuto nodding sagely). “Well, now I’m making it difficult.”

Tetsurou’s stomach is swimming with butterflies. On the track. With someone else. With someone who knows him, who has seen him compete for the past year and a half, and who cheered for him to pass his license exams.

Tetsurou shouldn’t have expected anything different, but he gets paired off with Bokuto. They are not particularly close, but Bokuto seems to have taken a shine on him since the first day. He keeps rattling off details about his life that Tetsurou’s didn’t pry for, and asks questions that would make lesser men lose their cool. Bokuto throws his massive arm on his shoulders as he listens intently to Nekomata explain the exercise for today. Tetsurou's got less than an inch on him, yet Bokuto's arm makes him hunch. He doesn't complain. He likes this sense of familiarity. The feeling that wherever he'll end up Bokuto will always find something to get excited about and drag him into it with him.

Nekomata got them to study every manual about moves, countermoves, and safety measures down to the last line; the kind of study that put even Tetsurou’s method to shame. Tetsurou loved every second of it.

But this, this is something different. Nekomata is right; it’s all peachy when driving a racing car means learning how to swerve without flipping over. But Tetsurou’s blood has been singing for more.

Bokuto thuds his back as Nekomata dismisses them to enter their own karts. “Let’s go.”

The first to go on the track are Fukunaga and Inuoka. They exchange a thumb up as they fit their helmets on and drive their karts to the mouth of the garage. Tetsurou and Bokuto follow them in the glare of the sun to cheer.

The karts stay at the starting line, engines rolling, as Nekomata crosses the track to reach his station.

Tetsurou himself isn’t driving, yet his stomach swoops all the same when the checkered flag falls, signaling the start. Inuoka pulls in front nice and easy, with the kind of easy maneuverability that made him infamous in the last six or seven competitions. He is not incredibly fast, but he’s got that unnerving ability to be where you don’t want him to be.

Fukunaga puts on not less of a battle. Around the last curve of the third round, he almost manages to swerve around Inuoka before the other driver does his irritating thing and saves his first place.

The next time, Fukunaga accomplished his goal. The roar of engines is deafening, but Tetsurou thinks he hears him hollering, loud and wild in the way that Fukunaga usually isn’t.

Next to him, Bokuto yodels and pumps his fists in the air, “HEY HEY HEEYYYYYYYYY!!! YOU GO, FUKUNAGAAAA!”

Tetsurou slides him a glance. “You’re cheering for him?”

Bokuto smiles up at him, “Man, I cheer for everyone who’s got them moves!”

“Alright.” Tetsurou grins, then cups his mouth with his hands. “YO, INUOKA, PUMP THAT GAS, WILLYA?”

Fukunaga shows him a high-speed middle finger next time he zooms past them, still first.

Tetsurou shakes his head, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “Road rage’s bad for your health,” he mutters following his trail.

In the end, Inuoka manages to snatch back the first place in the final round. It was a mistake on Fukunaga’s part, really, a curve just a tad too large, but it’s enough for the younger boy to slither in and in front.

Sixty meters later, it’s over.

Fukunaga climbs out of his kart, back to his old quiet self, and helps Inuoka out of his, clapping his shoulder hard.

“It was fun,” Inuoka says, getting his hair back under control.

Fukunaga nods.

Inuoka turns to Tetsurou then, and smiles that mischievous grin that every human with a child cousin has learned to fear, and says, “Thanks for cheering me on, Dad.”

Top five things I’ll never tell my dad, the sarcastic, rational part of him bites back, gripping hard and fast to the parts of him that are slipping down the drain. Tetsurou stiffens.

Inuoka must realize his misstep, even though he can’t know what triggered it, and grips Tetsurou’s bicep. Hard. “You still there, man?”

“Yeah,” Tetsurou says, ignoring the ice seeping through his chest, “yeah, I am.” It’s easy ignoring his father’s absence when home is not the house you grew up in. It’s too big a house, his mother had said, fiddling with the hasty bun on top of her head, years-old black reading glasses sliding down the straight slope of her nose. We don’t need that much space anyway. She hadn’t mentioned his father. Tetsurou had been quick to nod and slink upstairs to his bedroom, where he lay stomach-down on the floor and began dreaming about a new neighborhood, a new room—a new threshold that wasn’t tainted by abandonment and didn’t smell of dried fury tears.

In the end, none of those fantasies had come true. With only his mother's job as an editor supporting them and whatever money Tetsurou could contribute to pool, they hadn’t been able to afford anything more than a measly flat on the outskirts of the city, composed of two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room with kitchen appliances in the corner. The television had come with them from the old house. It had never stayed on long enough for them to lose focus in it. The time where it would only provide white noise to drown an awkward absence was over.

It was perfect.

However, it’s not so easy to escape the ghost of his father. Tetsurou is not self-oblivious: he knows he misses him, like crazy. He knows his mother misses him too. He’s proud of her for never going back on her decision to shut him and his lies out of her life.

Yet. The heart wants what it wants. And this means that stiffening under the kiss of a bright June sky when ‘Dad’ is mentioned, his shaking fingers around the steering wheel, the sour taste of loss at the back of his throat, and the pre-made arrangement of his face muscles in a constructed façade of calmness are all familiar to him.

“Kuroo-kun,” Nekomata says, approaching him, his stick from hell in his hand for some reason. “Are you not going to your kart?”

Tetsurou discovers soon enough the exact reason behind the rod's appearance when Nekomata cracks it against the back of his thigh as Tetsurou scrambles to his yellow-green-red monstrosity.

“You alright?” Bokuto asks, turning next to him on his way to the starting line. His helmet is still in his lap, his golden eyes full of concern and just a touch of calculation. 

Despite everything about him being over-the-top and over-excitable, Tetsurou vows to never take Bokuto lightly, in and out of the track because the kid’s smart as hell.

"I will be when I knock your ass off the podium," he retorts with a grin and revving his engine.

As always, the sole sound of the engine and the vibration of the wheel under his gloved hands are enough to steady his racing heart and melt the tension from his body.

Bokuto offers him his fist to bump. “May the best man win.”

Tetsurou complies, then glides to the starting line, side by side with his friend.

My friend. Tetsurou grins and tugs his helmet on. It squashes his hair, and he knows he'll look ridiculous when he takes it off. It doesn't matter. Bokuto's hair will be worse.

To the side of the starting line, Nekomata lays the stick down to grab the flag with one hand and the stopwatch with the other.

Bokuto turns towards him and revs his engine.

Tetsurou’s own firing up effectively drowns Nekomata’s yelling about show-offs.

The flag drops without warning, probably the old man’s petty revenge, and Tetsurou’s body falls into that familiar scheme Nekomata drilled in them from day two.

Off the brakes, down the gas, and Tetsurou is hurtling down the asphalt with a roar of his engine, gaining speed, speed.

Bokuto swerves around him and surpasses him.

Tetsurou growls under his breath, hand jerking compulsively the gearstick this way and that, as he maneuvers the kart around him to find an opening. It’s no use. Bokuto was born with a fucking wheel in hand, that kid.

The first bend arrives somewhat unexpected, and Tetsurou manages to keep his kart on track by sheer steel nerves.

Head outta your ass! Tetsurou slows down his breathing. It’s become quick enough to rival the frantic beats of his heart. Focus. His teeth twinge when he releases the tightness in his jaw.

In front of him, Bokuto rules the track, undisturbed, steady and fast on his course.

Tetsurou’s had enough of eating dust.

Another bend. Tetsurou presses a little harder on the gas pedal. He struggles to keep control of the kart.

They’re on the backstretch. Bokuto doesn’t stand a chance.

Tetsurou floors it. The kart shudders, the engine roars, and it hurtles all up Bokuto’s right side.

Bokuto tries to move in front of him, but Tetsurou has been pitched against Inuoka more times than he has against him, so he expects a maneuver like that. He jerks the wheels in the opposite direction. 

Bokuto can do nothing but watch.

Tetsurou cackles as he goes down the next bend and closes every opening. In front of him, the vast expanse of an empty race track opens under the relentless sun. Tetsurou has gone over this track almost every day for the last two years, has raced competitions on it and he's won them. He still can't get enough of the feel of speed. His lungs fill just like they did the first time he had unobstructed horizon around him.

He never shared this feeling with his father.

His hands stutter over the steering wheel.

:::

In the end, Bokuto crosses the line first. Tetsurou left his stomach in the middle of the track ten or twelve laps back. He couldn’t get it back before Bokuto closed those ten yards separating them; before Bokuto jumped up to his speed and wrestled him into a reckless tight curve that forced Tetsurou to let up the gas, and crank up the swearing. An admirable overtake, really.

It doesn’t make it sting any less.

Tetsurou parks behind Bokuto’s kart. The air in his helmet is stuffy, and he yanks it off his head. He breathes in the warm air in unsteady gulps, slumping against the seat. He closes his eyes to the glare of the sun and wrestles his heartbeat back in control. His stomach roils, threatening to empty on the track.

Bokuto is at his side in a flash. “Yo, man, are you alright?” he asks in that grating voice of his, squeezing his shoulder.

Tetsurou thought he was getting used to its sound. “I’m fine,” he heaves, running a hand through his hair. They’re matted to his head, soaked in the sweat of the last twelve laps.

Bokuto crouches next to him, a crease of worry rippling the skin between his eyebrows. “Well, you don’t look like it.”

Tetsurou shrugs Bokuto’s hand off, “I’m fine,” he growls and climbs out of the kart on his own, ignoring the others’ questioning gazes. He feels unsteady on his feet. He powers through.

“Are we done for today?” he asks Nekomata.

The old man nods.

Tetsurou enters the garage and beelines for the dressing room.

“It was a good race,” Nekomata says a while later sitting on the bench next to him as Tetsurou is fresh out of the shower and stuffing his jumpsuit back into his carry-on. “You fought well.”

A muscle in Tetsurou’s jaw jumps as he folds the suit and yanks the zip shut on it. Just not well enough.

:::

Tetsurou never pegged himself for a sore loser. And yet. The words on the page of his chemistry book blur in front of his eyes. He drove the Subaru straight home from the racing track. He suspects he abused the car’s gears a little too deliberately. He’ll think about it tomorrow. Bokuto’s hurt face elbows its way through the mass of things Tetsurou doesn’t want to acknowledge about right now.

He groans and abandons his head on the textbook. Get a grip.

The sun has long since left the sky, and his mother is out working. She had to pick up another retail job besides her editor’s salary, now that Tetsurou is not working anymore. He’d tried to split the weight between them, or at least to tap into his winnings, but she’d been irremovable. He had to focus on college and his dream. There would be no space for anything else.

Sometimes Tetsurou wishes his mother didn’t love him as much as she did.

But this evening is hopeless. His studying is unproductive, his heart is misplaced, and his head keeps going off tangents. There is no such a thing as relax tonight.

The Subaru’s keys jingle when he turns them into the ignition. He pats the wheel tenderly when the car comes alive with a pitiful groan.

:::

The Subaru’s headlights shine on the fence built all around the race club to separate it from the parking lot. He clambers out of the car. Beyond the metal net, the track is empty and looking well-oiled with a thin sheen of moisture that reflects the moonlight.

He’s got a foot up the fence when another pair of headlights shine on him, making his chest implode. He squints in the bright lights as the car veers off the road and parks right next to the Subaru.

Bokuto clambers out and slams his door shut. And stays there. He leans against the gleaming silver of his long-nosed Audi, or another German car of equal caliber, ankles and arms crisscrossed, wearing nothing but jeans, Converse, and a stupid t-shirt about owls Tetsurou would’ve given him shit for for years. His hair misses the gleaming sheen of wax of daytime-Bokuto, falling on his brow in messy waves instead.

Tetsurou jumps back to the ground. “What are you doing here?”

Bokuto tilts his head, boyishly. Tetsurou’s heart jumps in his chest.

“I thought I’d come here and clear my head a little,” he answers after a moment.

Tetsurou snorts ruefully. “What, you got a conscience to clean?” I’m the only one who’s got to say sorry.

It comes out so wrong.

“I beat you,” Bokuto states, straightening, “In a fair race.” He steps forward, fists clenching to his sides outlined by his headlights. “I’ve spent all afternoon wondering what could I have done wrong that could’ve set you off like that, and you know what I came up with? Nothing. Because I did everything right.”

Tetsurou’s breath catches. Bokuto doesn’t deserve this.

“And I came here,” Bokuto continues advancing, “because I hoped to find you and tell you you’ve raced a goddamn good match, and you can’t let me stopping you from racing again.”

He’s standing a foot away now, and Tetsurou doesn’t think he ever saw Bokuto as anything other than over-excited or dead-focused. It is a jarring experience.

“It wasn’t you,” he croaks out, “I—I was angry. And disappointed. I took it out on you.”

 Bokuto crosses his arms on his chest again, and only now Tetsurou notices the tremor shaking Bokuto’s shoulders. “Damn right, you did,” he says in the chill of the night. “You couldn’t have stopped that overtake, Kuroo. Nekomata didn’t teach you how. I took a page out of Dad’s book.”

Bokuto’s passion for Formula One doesn’t stem from a tv program. It runs in his blood. His father used to be a driver for Fukurodani. Those years were the highlight of the team’s history. Bokuto is a heavy name to carry on a race track.

Tetsurou snorts, swallowing back the bile. His own father won’t ever be a role model like that. Another knife in the back of his childhood. “It doesn’t make me feel any better. I should’ve just found a way if I want this to be my life.”

Bokuto reaches to squeeze his shoulder, harder than necessary because this kid can do nothing without being hardcore. “You can’t drive by heart, Kuroo. You drive by experience.” He shrugs. “It just happens I have more of that.”

If anyone else heard this conversation, they would think: what an asshole. They wouldn’t be wrong. The thing is, though, that this is the assholish attitude that characterizes whoever is good at things and knows it. In Bokuto’s case, it’s just hard facts.

“I respect you, man,” Bokuto says, “And right now, the best thing I can do to show you I do is treating you on the track like I would treat a real opponent. I’ll overtake you as many times as it takes for you to hone your skills.” Bokuto grins and squeezes his shoulder again. “Because man, you do have skills.”

Tetsurou is speechless. Parts of him wants to shred Bokuto’s pride in his claws and drag him down to his level; the other part wants him to set the bar for him and fucking watch him clear it.

Tetsurou wants him by his side, at the starting line, again.

“Please, keep driving,” Bokuto says, releasing his shoulder and massaging his own biceps to fight off the cold. “And talk to me out of the track.”

Tetsurou works his jaw, working out something clever to answer. “Alright,” he says, lamely.

He comes home with a new number in his phone contacts, and short a warm sweater.

***

Tetsurou is twenty-three when he stands in the middle of a circuit, a crowd on the stands cheering his name when it is called out on the loudspeakers.

Two years and two more licenses, and the cars now have the shape Tetsurou wants to drive for the rest of his life. Teams mill about in distinctive colored jumpsuits, talking with drivers, with engineers, with teachers.

This is Tetsurou’s first real big race. He doesn’t think his heart can take it.

Bokuto claps his hand hard against his shoulder, grinning ear to ear. “So? How does it feel?”

Tetsurou’s knees clack together. “Overwhelming.”

“Your mother’s there?”

“They gave her a family seat. What about your dad?” Two years, and Tetsurou doesn’t pay much attention anymore to that part of him that will always miss. Bokuto Hiroki kind of adopted him, anyway.

“Yeah, he’s around here, I’m sure,” Bokuto answers, looking over his shoulder. "I think he saw one of his old team at Fukurodani's, so he's catching up with him." 

Tetsurou snorts. “Fukurodani, eh?”

“Oya,” Bokuto answers warningly, a gleam in the eyes, “No insinuations. If they want me, they want me. If they don’t, I’ll steal ya seat somewhere else.”

Tetsurou smirks. “Oya-oya,” he threatens, slanting a glance towards him.

“Oya-oya-oya.”

They stand, side by side, looking around the hustling teams around them. People hurry this way and that, cars get tuned, and engineers make last-minute adjustments. Bokuto and Tetsurou already brought their cars for trial laps and released brief interviews in the press room.

They received the starting line-up not long ago. Tetsurou will start tenth. Bokuto, the asshole, fifth. Tetsurou’s stomach tightens with nerves.

“Your hair’s gonna look so ridiculous when you take off your helmet,” Bokuto mutters at some point.

Tetsurou bursts out laughing. A man in engineer suit looks back at them with worried eyes.

“Looks like Date Tech is not going to take you in; your ugly-ass choking laugh just scared off one of their engineers.”

And like that, the tension disappears. “It’s alright,” Tetsurou grins, “I’m aiming elsewhere.”

“Nekoma?”

Tetsurou glances to the stand a way back in its distinctive colors, under which talent scouts and technicians dash left and right. "Nekoma," he confirms. "I'd look dashing in red."

“I have to go,” Bokuto says then, when his father waves him over. “Dad’s done with his friend. See you on the streets?”

Tetsurou smirks. “Please, you’ll only see me on the podium, bro.”

Bokuto flips him off. “Try not to stare too hard at my lady’s backside, willya?” And with that last remark, he’s gone, husked away by his father and swallowed by the throng of people preparing for the race.

The race.

Tetsurou’s most important race. The place where you make it or break it. On the light grey asphalt of this track, his dreams can either take off to the sky or crash and burn. Tetsurou’s stomach is a riot. He hugs his middle, palms sweating.

A plastic bag dangles in front of his face.

Tetsurou blinks and takes it. It’s one of those bags they give you on the airplane to throw up in.

“Why—”

The boy in front of him shakes his head, loose bangs of badly-dyed blond hair escaped from his ponytail falling in front of his eyes. “You look like you need it more than me.”

Tetsurou gapes. He’s wearing the unmistakable red-and-black jumpsuit of Nekoma, though the top half hangs and billows to his hips where he tied the sleeves to his waist. Under it, he’s got a half-destroyed Iron Maiden t-shirt brutally refashioned in a tank top.

“Thanks—” Tetsurou answers, haggling for a name.

“You’re welcome,” the other says, oblivious, rummaging through his black backpack as he isn’t there. “Good luck I guess.”

“Luck’s got nothing on me,” Tetsurou blurts out. He contemplates bashing his head on whatever corner of his car is the sharpest and let death take him.

The boy meets his eyes for a second, stopping his digging, “Is that so?” he asks, and Tetsurou notices the engineer dog tags around his neck. “I guess we’ll see.” He salutes him with two fingers pushing off his brow, then strides off, his hand back into the pits of his backpack.

Tetsurou watches him disappear in the crowd, his own hand flexing on the plastic bag.

“Oh, I was going to give you one of those bags myself,” Nekomata says, clapping his back hard enough to bruise his lungs.

Tetsurou manages a wobbly smile.

“Are you ready for the race of your life?”

Tetsurou empties his stomach in the bag.

:::

Roughly twelve seconds of the race separate him from the finish line. Tetsurou is fourth. He can't believe it.

He has twelve seconds. One second goes shifting gears and pressing the gas pedal down. Two more are wasted on acceleration.

A fraction of another one goes calculating the course of this overtake.

Three seconds more are spent chasing the car in front of him, that is desperately maneuvering to keep him behind.

Another two seconds for Tetsurou to decide what damage he’s willing to take for third place.

One second to say, Your mama didn’t raise you to be reckless. Half of it to answer Fuck it.

One second to gun the engine and pick up speed when he’s already in view of the last bend of the race. Sixty yards from there, the checkered flag will drop.

Three seconds from the finish line, Tetsurou overtakes the car from the side, revving his engine when his wheels catch on the moss at the side of the track.

Two seconds from the end and the other car finally relents her third place.

One second to the end and Tetsurou pulls ahead.

Tetsurou bellows in his helmet. No one hears him. He doesn’t care. He’s run this race for himself, and no one else.

Bokuto digs him out of his seat when Tetsurou is still getting the helmet off his head. “HEY HEY HEEEEEEEEYYY!!” he yodels shaking him by the shoulders hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“HEY HEY HEEEEEEEEEYYY!!” Tetsurou howls back just as loud, digging his fingers into Bokuto’s biceps, and then he’s knocked over by ninety kilos of Formula One driver sobbing his weight in tears on his shoulder. Tetsurou catches two or three cameras going off on them.

“C’mon, big man,” Tetsurou says, extricating himself from the tangle of limbs and pushing Bokuto in Fukunaga’s hands, “Time to get on the podium.”

:::

Nekomata is waiting for them when they climb down the podium, hair matted to their heads with sweat and the champagne they’ve been trying to pour down each other’s jumpsuits. Next to him, Bokuto Hiroki mirrors the stupid grin on his son’s face before enveloping him in the bear hug Tetsurou has come to believe is trademarked Bokuto’s tradition. Tetsurou receives the same treatment a second later. On the other side of Nekomata, stand two men in their sixties in crisp suits with matching business-like lines to their mouths. Tetsurou’s eyes are drawn to the young engineer from before, almost hiding behind their shoulders. He zipped up his jumpsuit.

“Awesome job, boys,” Nekomata says, glowing with satisfaction, shaking both of their hands. “Awesome jobs. Bokuto, let me present you the CEO of the Fukurodani team,” he gestures towards Bokuto’s father and the old man next to him, “And to you, Kuroo, this is Nekoma’s head. They want to have a word with you.”

:::

Tetsurou stares at the contract in his hands. “A season? With you?” he asks, willing his fingers to stop shaking around the paper.

Nekoma-san nods, a poised smile on his face, “As a testing driver in preparation to the season, to begin with. More than one, if you prove to be the man of promise Kozume-kun tells me you are.”

Tetsurou smirks to the engineer, cocking his hip to the side. “Really?”

Kozume looks like he just bit in a lemon and found it acerbic.

When Tetsurou looks down to the contract in his hands, his vision swims with tears.

Nekoma-san claps his hand to his bicep. “Congratulations, Kuroo-kun. You made it.”

Chapter Text

Tetsurou followed Formula One obsessively as he prepared to become part of it. If he were home when the races were on, then he’d watch them with his mother, sitting on the floor in front of the kitchen table, popcorn and notes spread out between them. If he were out working, he’d coerce his band of fiery high school boyos to record the race and watch it with him later, with no less focus and just more snacks. He hooked them up on it.

Anyway, in all those seasons of circuits, the cameras never crossed the threshold of the boxes. 

So when he enters Nekoma’s for the first time, he’s unbearably short as to what to expect.

Even though Tetsurou doesn’t have expectations, Nekoma’s garage manages to surprise him. It’s a white, flat parallelepiped with little square windows carved high in the wall, contributing to the large outpouring of light from the mouth of the garage that opens right on the trial track. From the steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling hang glossy machinery and pulleys.

Workbenches line the sides of the room, buried deep under pieces of engines and gleaming metal. Projects, bullet lists, blueprints, and a colorful mess of sticky notes taped to the walls, making Tetsurou's eyes hurt.

The center of the box is a low platform on which stands the carbon-fiber skeleton of the prototype car. Tools are scattered on the ground around it.

“Do I need to pick your jaw off the ground or can you manage by yourself?” a short man calls, looking over the metal carcass he’s shoulder-deep in. He wipes his hands on a rag, covering the distance in uncomfortably long strides for someone his height.

“Yaku Morisuke, I’m the head engineer,” he introduces himself. He shakes Tetsurou’s hand hard enough to nearly dislocate his shoulder.

Another man emerges from the pit of the box, zipping his jumpsuit up, this one tall almost to Tetsurou’s chin, and looking twice calmer than Yaku. “You must be our new trial driver,” he says, “Just Kai. No fancy title.”

“Being an engineer for Nekoma is already a fancy a title enough,” Tetsurou answers, shaking his hand. It’s strong and callused, smelling definitely of hand lotion.

“Where’s Kenma?” Yaku asks Kai.

The other shrugs. “Late as usual.”

Yaku makes idle chat, surprisingly full of expletives for such a baby face, as he shows him around the garage. He's surprised to learn Tetsurou had a degree in Chemistry and specialized in fuels. "Might come in handy," he comments.

Everything in this box gleams with newness and possibilities, yet Yaku still hasn’t touched on the one thing that Tetsurou’s heart has been locked on. It tops Nekomata’s level of sadism.

“And this,” finally Yaku says, swiveling a wrench towards the car in the middle of the room, “is our lady.”

Tetsurou crouches by her side. The metal skeleton reflects the light and is cool to the touch, almost silky. Tetsurou knew that this had to be the texture of his dreams.

“Hands off,” a gray monotone voice snaps from the door.

And there stands Kozume in all his deadpan, badly-bleached glory.

Tetsurou rises to his feet and offers him his hand to shake. “Nice to see you again, Kozume-kun.”

“It’s Kenma,” the other says, weaving past his hand to the car to control if he messed up something. He flicks something with his index. “And I’m serious. You’re not touching the car until I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

Tetsurou’s eyebrow twitch. “Then teach me.”

Kenma cuts him a look. He’s not hostile. More like—defiant. Concerned. For Tetsurou’s safety or the car’s, he can’t tell.

Kenma hitches his thumb behind his shoulder. “Library in the back, third shelf, it’s big and blue.”

Tetsurou watches in disbelief as Kenma drops his backpack in a corner and sits on the ground next to the car, picking up a tire iron without even donning his jumpsuit.

And with that, the spell’s broken. Yaku ducks out of the way to go to a workbench and start working on his piece, while Kai buries himself back under the car’s belly.

Tetsurou sighs and fetches the book Kenma recommended. It’s coming to a rougher start than he expected.  

***

For more than a month and a half, Kenma stays true to his word and doesn’t let Tetsurou two feet from the car unless he’s watching; and even then, no touching allowed. For the first month and a half of his salary, Tetsurou is confined to his workbench in the corner, studying book after book Kenma sends his way. He does feel like some kind of imposter. He trains his reflexes in simulators and in the cars from prior seasons, and he follows the harsh workout regime Nekoma pushes on him. 

There is no escaping it, any of it, because Nekoma has provided a bunker for him to stay, just outside the trial track, large enough to fit the flat he lived with his mother and his father. It is awfully quiet.

Bokuto came to hang out once. He’d marveled at the overall whiteness, at the sleek, strategically-placed red and black paint on the walls, at the leather couches, at the shining marble. He left not long after, since Fukurodani had a car to make him test. He is alright there, he says. They threw a welcoming party for him on his first day. Tetsurou didn’t mourn the lack of celebrations for him. Yaku, bossy as he was, would surely be no fun to get drunk with. He wouldn’t even let you get tipsy. He’d swap the alcohol in your glass with water after a single shot.

Tetsurou is going insane.

***

If Kenma is impressed when Tetsurou recites him the last book he studied cover to cover, he doesn't show it. Though now he does let him near the car. He allows him to watch over his shoulder as he works on it. He's far more relaxed than before, and responds to Tetsurou’s questions even when elbow-deep in car’s guts, explaining what he’s doing and why.

Tetsurou decides he likes Kenma. He’s short on words and temper, utterly averse to anything that implies a label – jumpsuit included, he works in jeans and concert or video games t-shirts stripped of their sleeves – and never once laughed in Tetsurou's presence. 

Still, Tetsurou finds himself sitting next to him more and more, asking questions only to get him to talk, to learn something new about the car, Kenma, whatever. To catch one of his elusive glances. The sure, precise way Kenma works on the car makes him feel like he is building Tetsurou’s dream bolt by bolt. He doesn’t want to miss a moment of it.

That day, Kenma and Kai are mounting the shell on the car’s skeleton.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kenma warns him as they roll the car to the starting line of the trial track. “This prototype is gonna suck.”

It does, in fact, suck.

***

“It’s heavy as hell.”

“It doesn’t swerve, it careens.”

“The side wings are slowing it down. I can feel them resisting.”

They are all reasons why the cars have to be taken down and rebuilt, and why Tetsurou’s dream seems farther than ever.

“It’s too slow,” Tetsurou says clambering out of the sixth version of this car.

Kenma crosses his arms on his Black Sabbath shirt. “What about everything that went right?”

Tetsurou presses his lips together. “It had a beautiful sound.”

Kenma sighs, tying back his hair. “I will get you on a winning car, Kuroo,” he says, and it’s the first time that he’s ever said his name aloud. “It’s a promise. But you have to trust me.”

Until now, the only person Tetsurou entrusted with his dream had been himself. Leaving it in the hands of someone else is like jumping off a bridge without straps, trusting the word of someone telling you there’s water at the bottom.

Kenma clenches his jaw, takes a deep breath. He stomps his foot on the ground, like he’s psyching himself up. “Let’s get back to work.”

***

Working every day alongside Kenma gives Tetsurou a unique insight into the boy's life. He doesn't speak much if it's not to answer Tetsurou's questions, but one day, sitting on the ground next to him, he realizes that he doesn't need to.

Two months side by side is long enough that Tetsurou starts to notice the growing tension in Kenma’s shoulders and darkening circles under his eyes, the grimmer and grimmer line of his thin mouth. He begins to notice that Kenma never talks about his family or his life outside the box. He notices that his favorite shirt is the black one with a picture of Link in hero pose saying ‘Zelda’s here to rule’. He notices the glimmer in Kenma’s eyes as he loses himself in explanation after explanation.

Tetsurou thinks that the longest conversation they ever had was when Kenma launched himself in a one-sided dissertation on the pro and cons of each alloy used in racing cars since 1873, turning points of the subject underlined by wild waving of whatever tool he held at the time. Tetsurou had laughed then, at the passion and utter abandon transpiring from Kenma’s face, free of hair and flushed with the exertion of talking a mile a minute and wrestling a bolt shut at the same time. Kenma had cut off then, and blushed so hard Tetsurou feared he’d killed that brilliant head of his. Tetsurou noticed that Kenma didn't believe him when he explained his reaction; he noticed how Kenma had tried since then to keep his explanations short and to the point, and had failed every time.

“You should stop asking questions if you don’t want to listen to over-detailed answers,” Kenma told him once. He had evaded Tetsurou’s eyes, so Tetsurou had to tilt to the side and peer up at him from under his blond bangs.

“Who said I didn’t want to hear them?”

Tetsurou likes to think that that was the moment Kenma realized that censoring himself was the last thing Tetsurou wanted from him. Kenma hummed, a thin smile pulling at his lips, and didn’t resume talking.

Tetsurou wonders if every time he watched another conversations starter fall in the void, Kenma had actually just been more comfortable with body language.

:::

Kenma cringes when Yaku claps his hands on his thighs, hard enough to boom in the echoing garage. “We have a month and a half to present the new car.”

Like Tetsurou hasn’t been counting days since he put foot in the box. Kai glances, wide-eyed, at the calendar hanging on the wall, and then back to the car, dismembered on the platform.

“And less than that for Kuroo and Tora to get used to it and drive it next season.”

Kuroo’s ears prick. “I thought I wouldn’t drive until—“

Yaku cuts him off with a swipe of his hands. “Tora has been out of commission too long to make him point this season. If we can put together this damn lady, you’ll be in the driving seat.”

Tetsurou’s heart punches right through his chest.

“I can’t do it,” Kenma says.

And then right down his stomach.

Kenma's hands fall in his lap as his knees rise to shield him. "I'm not good enough. Let's switch cars. I will work on Tora's, and you can have your go at Kuroo's."

Yaku shakes his head. “What the fuck nonsense is this. I know you can do it.”

Tetsurou turns to him. “I want you to work on it,” he says, “You’re the best engineer.”

“No offense taken,” Kai butts in, “Because it’s true.”

Kenma turns his head, his hair falling in front of his eyes. “I’m not a genius.”

“You asked me to trust you,” Tetsurou says, voice hard and eyes harder, “And I did.” His hands prickle with cold sweat.

Kenma bristles. “I said it before you began refusing perfectly fine cars.”

“My dream is on the line!”

Kenma shoots to his feet, wrench clattering to the floor. “And mine isn’t?”

Tetsurou fights to regain his composure. “You don’t get to rebuke that trust back in my face. You either uphold it by getting your shit together and building the damn car, or you pay for it by making your best effort at it!”

Kenma bares his teeth. “I am no genius.”

“Then teach yourself how to become one!”

Kenma slams the door on him.

Yaku turns his disbelieving stare on Tetsurou. “What the actual fucking flying fuck?”

Tetsurou growls, raking his hands through his hair and throwing them in the air. He stomps out of the box.

:::

“You did what?” Bokuto screeches in his ear.

“I screamed at the best engineer I’ve ever met because he was talking shit about himself.” Tetsurou stares up at the spotlights on the ceiling above his bed.

“Dude,” Bokuto answers after a moment. “When people talk shit about themselves, you usually join in.”

“I don’t do that. I’m always kind.”

Bokuto lets out a frankly ingenuine raucous laughter, and Tetsurou considers traveling across the country to kick his ass. 

“You don’t happen to have a crush, do you?”

Tetsurou is not self-oblivious. Like he knows he misses his father, even now, he knows that the reason why he spends every free hour of his routine in the garage doesn’t limit to the car anymore.

“Man, ya blew it,” Bokuto sighs.

Tetsurou inhales deeply. “I did.” 

:::

The perks of living inside the compound are that there are no fences to climb if you want to stroll barefoot on the race track at 3 am on a weekday. Tetsurou reasons that he could probably get punch drunk on the asphalt and suffer no harsher consequences than he would by merely staying sober and never take a car to the circuits because they weren't able to project one.

He’d be out of the door, in a second.

Kenma would suffer the same fate probably. And mine isn’t? Tetsurou never stopped to ask what Kenma’s dream is. Whether he has one. He regrets it with a passion. If he could go back in time, he’d punch his words and teeth right down his throat.

Tetsurou wouldn’t say that Kenma is more important than his dream. He wishes, though, that he could have both.

But now he has nothing.

:::

Tetsurou has carved the asphalt of the track four times already, and he's starting on his fifth when his eyes fall on the garage hatch. It is ajar.

Before he knows it, Tetsurou is hauling the gate open. Kai finally managed to oil the hinges. Tetsurou had had it with their hellish yowling.

Inside, the ceiling lights are off, and the gloom sheds a new light, a different sheen on the box. All tools sit in their place—no doubt Yaku’s doing. Everything is colder and quieter the way it is in the morning light, yet the air has a gnawing quality to it, as if it’s ready to swallow Tetsurou whole. The linoleum is icy under his bare feet, the song of sleeping machines muffled to his ears.

Tetsurou is wrong. There is one light still on. Its warm yellow glow outlines the sorry figure of the dismembered car in stark contrast. He walks up to it. His fingertips glide on the chilly metal of the skeleton, memorizing the feel of it, the shape, every hole for screws and bolts, every sharp edge.

He sighs, deep and wistful. “This is the end, then, uh.”

A hiccup startles Tetsurou out of his skin. He whirls on his feet, and there is Kenma, crouched on the floor with his back to the wall, one hand pressed to his mouth and the other wrapped around a vise grip.

Tetsurou glances at the blinking clock on the wall. 2:39. “What are you do—“ His eyes fall from the vise grip to the light shining directly on the naked side of the car that definitely had a shell on it this morning. “Oh my god,” he says walking over and crouching in front of him.

Kenma turns his head to the wall again, hiding the tears glistening at the corner of his eyes, shoulders wracking with another sob.

Tetsurou is having none of it. “How long have you been at it?” he asks crouching, one hand on Kenma’s shoulder. His fingers meet the soft texture of worn clothes. Any other time, Tetsurou would have gushed at Kenma working on his beloved car in his pajamas. 

Kenma shakes his hands off and swats at the tear tracks on his cheeks.

“I’m taking you home,” Tetsurou says, standing and offering Kenma his hand. He gets shucked off. He can’t really blame him, after what he told him this morning. Kenma smells definitely of tears, sweat, and nervous breakdowns, though he is steady on his feet as he walks to the last door at the end of the garage, the one that never opens.

Tetsurou stops on the threshold as Kenma flicks the light on and sits at the center of the unmade bed under the window.

Tetsurou stares in disbelief. This is no temporary cot for the occasional workaholic. This is an honest-to-god home. There is a threadbare russet rug, a kitchenette in the corner, a table cluttered with nothing related to food, shelves overflowing with boring-looking books, and blueprints, projects, sketches taped to the walls, their corners curled and wrinkled. Another shelf runs over the bed's head. On it sits a naked remote control car, gleaming under the neon lights.

“You can go,” Kenma says, voice rough, when Tetsurou doesn’t leave. “I’m home.” He doesn’t meet his eyes, and Tetsurou thinks it’s a small mercy to his crumbling heart. The light has stripped him of the illusion of Kenma not looking as stricken as he sounds—that there’s still something that Tetsurou hasn’t destroyed.

He swears under his breath. “Put your shoes on,” he says, “I’m not leaving you close to the damn car.”

Kenma snorts wetly. “Can’t really do much more damage than I already did.”

Since Kenma is being unreasonable, Tetsurou decides to do the same, and strides inside, uninvited. He bends down to retrieve Kenma’s battered Perry’s. He chucks them at his feet. “Shoes. On,” he spells out. “And I don’t fucking care about the car right now.”

Tetsurou’s stomach is a riot as he closes the door behind Kenma’s back. “Keep walking,” Tetsurou tells him as Kenma passes the racing car and slows down.

“Where are we going?” Kenma asks.

“First to my house,” Tetsurou says, starting across the race track towards his own apartment, “Then you have two choices. I either drive you somewhere where you can sleep away from this garage, or I drive you, period.”

Kenma's steps falter next to him, "You don't have to—" he trails off.

“No, I don’t,” Tetsurou says, “but I want to.”

Tetsurou doesn't bother to change out of his pajamas, fitting his bare feet inside his red Chucks by the door instead. The house keys jingle against the keys to the Subaru when he drops them in the pockets of his deformed track pants. As they pass the hallway mirror, Tetsurou snorts. They both look a mess. Tetsurou’s lips draw up in a rueful smile.

Kenma balks when they arrive at the Subaru, but doesn’t comment on its sorry state as he installs himself in the passenger’s seat.

"Your choice," Tetsurou says, turning the keys in the ignition. The Subaru gives a mighty roar—then chokes on it.

Kenma’s eyes narrow.

Tetsurou readjusts his foot on the clutch, then tries again. Mercifully, the Subaru sputters alive. Sitting on a warming engine, Tetsurou looks back at Kenma. He’s puffy-eyed from crying and miserably congested, exhausted, and desperately brokering the war going on between his hair and gravity. But at least he stopped sobbing.

“Your choice,” he repeats, sending the car in reverse and pushing out of the parking lot. The Subaru thunders when he shifts gears.

It almost drowns Kenma’s quiet drive.

Tetsurou glances at him from the corner of his eye. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

Kenma sniffles and shakes his head.

Tetsurou focuses on bringing this decrepit car on the highway. “I’m heading for the country, then,” he announces, “Too long since I saw the stars.”

Kenma doesn’t answer, opting instead to stare out of the window.

Tetsurou lets him and enjoys the feel of a car under him, no strings attached, and the empty road in front of him. The radio chatter, reduced to a whisper upon starting, flows into peaceful nighttime music programs, blessedly free of commercials. Tetsurou drives the Subaru out of the city with the quiet ease of someone who is both alert and elsewhere, his eyes on the dark patch of land on the edge of the horizon. The city slowly dissolves around them, so slow he almost doesn't notice the lengthening of road stretches between a lamppost and the next.

Kenma is watching him, he knows it. He tries to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, but as soon as they make contact, Kenma does that expert headshake of his that frees his hair from his half-ponytail and hides his eyes. Tetsurou glances at the clock on the dashboard. They’ve been driving for more than an hour.

“Do you want to go back?” he asks, voice rougher than he expects it.

Kenma shrugs, twining his hands in his lap. “No.”

A smile graces Tetsurou’s lips, small and unsurprised. After the first twenty minutes of silence, Kenma’s shoulders have lost the tension in them; his breath has evened out, his head reclined against the seat.

The Subaru has this kind of effect on people. It quietens the hearts, drowning them in its churning noises and perpetually-wheezing air conditioning.

“Don’t shift gears or the car dies.”

Tetsurou snorts. “No, it won’t,” he says, his hand on the gear. The car shudders and Tetsurou makes all those minuscule adjustments on gas and clutch that kept the Subaru on the road so long.

It doesn’t die.

Kenma’s eyes follow the line of Tetsurou’s, to the dirt off-ramp cutting through the dark fields. “No, no, no, the suspensions—“

The car groans and tilts, sputtering heart-wrenching noises as it takes on the road. Tetsurou relieves the pressure on the gas pedal for a moment before pressing back. He knows this car like the back of his hands. Every gasp and sputter, every quality of thunder, every smell. Tetsurou knows them all, and he's had over nine years of practice to move around them. This old lady loves to complain about aching joints and lost youth, but is every bit as bullheaded as Tetsurou is.

Kenma reaches for the dashboard, spreading his hands on it. Feeling the vibration. “I can’t believe you’re a Formula One pilot and you choose to drive a car like this.”

“Speed’s not all that there’s to driving, you know? Sometimes you just want a car—”

Kenma’s eyes gleam in the rearview mirror. “With no expectations.”

“That lulls you,” Tetsurou continues. He smiles. “Are expectations so bad?”

The road is empty and straight, so Tetsurou chances a straight look at Kenma. "Yes," Kenma answers, fingers twisting in his lap, "You exceed them once, and you're doomed. They will always ask more of you."

Tetsurou doesn’t think they’re still talking about the Subaru. “I think this old lady is doing alright.”

Kenma levels a look at him. “It could break down any moment, and you know it.”

“I know how to handle it so that it doesn’t.”

“You can’t drive a car with just your heart.”

The Subaru lurches on the rough terrain, wheels catching on the sand and rocks of the road. Tetsurou keeps a steady hand on the wheel, glancing to the side. “That’s why I got your brain to watch my back.”

Kenma turns towards him abruptly. “You want me to build a car that you can drive.” The faint light from the radio screen reflects in his wide eyes.

Tetsurou’s heart shoots out of his chest. He averts his eyes, returning to the road. “I want you to build a car you can be proud of.”

“I was proud of every car you discarded.”

“No, you weren’t,” Tetsurou counters and the last syllable gets swallowed in the sudden knot in his throat, at the thought that Kenma is talking to him, and his dream is on the line, and Kenma is right there. There is nothing outside the windshield to distract Tetsurou from the burning afterimage of Kenma’s golden eyes branded behind his eyelids, nothing to anchor the slamming of the heart in his chest. He’d gotten good at hiding it, ignoring it, during their time in the garage, when close quarters were a necessity and not a choice. When—

“The clutch!”

The Subaru flounders to a stop, engine chortling before dying down, heedless to Tetsurou’s stunned expression as he turns the key and no sudden rumble follows.

He revs the engine again. C’mon, baby. It stays dead.

Kenma breaks the sudden quiet, staring over the gearshift. “You knew how to handle the car. So that it wouldn’t die on you.”

Tetsurou’s tongue seems glued to the roof of his mouth. It’s been years since the last time the Subaru left him stranded on the side of the road. “I got distracted.”

Kenma stares, for a long, long minute, making Tetsurou’s skin crawl and his grip tighten uselessly on the steering wheel. Suddenly, he reaches for the handle and climbs out.

Tetsurou launches himself out the car as well, swearing softly. The country whispers softly in the dark, unmindful of the ten kinds of despair Tetsurou feels mounting behind his eyes.

“No signal,” Kenma calls from the side, knee deep in the dewy grass of the field around them and voice scratching at the sides of his throat. “How’s yours?”

Tetsurou doesn’t have to pat his pockets to know that his phone is beatifically charging on his nightstand. “Zero,” he answers, clearing his voice of the roughness of shock.

Kenma stalks over, looking thunderous as he slams his phone, torchlight on, on Tetsurou’s chest. He manages to grab it between his middle and ring finger on its way to the harsh ground as Kenma props the hood open.

Tetsurou shines the light on the engine with bated breath as Kenma surveys the situation. He waits for the verdict, oscillating between oh god, it can’t be that bad, and OH GOD fast enough to get whiplash.

Kenma squats down to peer closer. Tetsurou is still swinging between hope and abject horror when he sighs, “Shit.”

Tetsurou’s heart freezes in his chest. 

Kenma looks over his shoulder, disbelief warring on his thin features. “How old is this car?”

Tetsurou bats away the wetness at the corner of his eyes. “Thirty-five… thirty-six?” he clears his throat when his voice breaks, “But I replaced the engine.”

“In 2009! And it’s second-hand!”

“2007.”

Kenma looks one step away from banging his head on the Subaru’s metallic entrails. “How did you even—“

Tetsurou swallows, “I was careful.”

Kenma’s eyes make abundantly clear what he thinks of ‘careful’. He turns back to the hood. “Light.” 

Tetsurou obeys, as Kenma starts poking around, clanging noises shaking the still air from where he's elbow deep in the hood. Tetsurou waits as Kenma hisses and grunts, as he calls for light. He stares through the windshield at the cracked seats of the Subaru, instead – interiors the ugliest shade of mustard – looking back to that first ride in Tokyo city, giddy with pride and promise; to his first kiss, in the back seat with a girl two years older and still tasting of dashi; to the time when Bokuto puked his soul and his grandfather’s in the dashboard after a particularly wild party in Fukunaga’s basement (the kid was as innocent as a newborn, but could throw some nasty parties).

He looks back to all the times his father wasn’t there and the Subaru was, unreliable and capricious, always teetering on the edge of sudden departure, but slamming down every mile he asked of her, holding onto him just as much as he did to her.

Kenma snakes his chilled fingers around his arm, peering up into his eyes.

He must have called his name a few times already, Tetsurou realizes, shaking out of his revelry. “What?” he croaks, struggling to regain his composure.

Kenma swipes his thumb under his eye, and Tetsurou's heart shoots for the stars. Moonlight reflects in the droplets caught on his fingertips. "You love this car this much?"

Tetsurou’s throat catches, chest clenching. He nods, jerkily, finally aware of the tears drawing down his cheeks. Their tracks sting with the slight chill of a breeze lapping at the tall grass of the fields.

Kenma nods, looking back to the exposed metal guts. “I will put it back together,” he says, and Tetsurou sees the shift: his clinical eye going ‘that’s impossible’ and Kenma’s own golden fire taking over to grit out ‘watch me’.

Kenma gave up once, and maybe it burned him more than failing.

Tetsurou’s finds he can breathe easier. He nods. He doesn’t doubt.

:::

Kenma nearly dismantles the car piece by piece, but puts it back just in time for his phone battery to die.

They hotwire the car; it won't start otherwise. Tetsurou thinks back to old days, when keys were nowhere to be found, and old men and young boys alike climbed on chairs and squatted under sofas in futile search.

Kenma laughs when Tetsurou tells him the story of how the first time he got inside his car was with a crowbar, his eyes alight with the sun climbing the horizon and the high of an exhausting night of met expectations. Tetsurou’s and his own. Tetsurou doesn’t think there’s anyone quite as hard on Kenma as Kenma himself.

“I never asked what your dream is,” Tetsurou asks, eyes on the road as they speed down the highway towards the circuit.

Kenma pulls down the stained sleeves of an old hoodie Tetsurou had lying in the backseat – Nekoma colors – on his black-smattered hands, careful to keep them away from the tapestry.

“Building a car made for more than just driving,” he answers. “I thought that it could be yours. The racing car, I mean.”

Tetsurou shifts gears as they get down the off-ramp of an overpass, humming to himself. And you think mine isn’t? He feels he understands Kenma a little bit more.

“I guess I will have to find a new one,” Kenma adds, turning towards him. “I didn’t expect to fulfill it the way I did.”

Tetsurou’s heart shoots through the roof.

“Easy on the gas and eyes on the road,” Kenma instructs, but his eyes are smiling.

:::

Tetsurou sleeps no more than three hours when they get back to the circuit. He maneuvered the Subaru in a secluded spot in the parking lot, where she would rest undisturbed for the next two weeks at least, until Kenma managed to get ahold of all her replacements.

As they clambered out of the car, a sorry sight of two grown men in pajamas with awful stringy hair and motor oil up to their elbows, Tetsurou resisted the urge to cover those three strides that separated him from Kenma and thank him, hug him, kiss him senseless.

Instead, he’d followed Kenma to the garage, on which threshold he loitered as the other went inside, things he couldn’t put into words on the tip of his tongue. Kenma didn’t spare a glance at the skeleton car in the middle of the room.

“How old was the racing car you drove for your school?” he’d asked instead, his hand on the handle of the door to his home.

Tetsurou was taken aback. “Five, six years?” he asked.

Kenma nodded and bid him goodnight (or good morning?), though he lingered on his door until Tetsurou left.

Three hours later, at 8 am sharp, he’s sliding open the door to the garage, once again experiencing the bliss of not having his ears thoroughly tortured by its wailing hinges.

A distressed Yaku Morisuke waits on the other side. Before Tetsurou can even open the hatch all the way, Yaku yanks him backward and out of the box.

“What have you done to Kenma,” he hisses hysterically, and then because it’s Yaku, “You big fuck.”

Tetsurou glances down to the tiny engineer, his mind still muddled by sleep slowly processing his words. “What?” he asks, and shoulders past him to peer back inside the garage again.

The platform is empty. Gleaming metal, and no carbon-fiber skeleton around. Tetsurou’s heart begs for some slack. He’s too young to suffer this much.

 "Kai, I have less than two months to build a car from scratch," a voice Tetsurou branded on his own soul says, "Tell Johzenji to spit out those pieces in two weeks, or I'm calling Misaki and spilling a secret for every day of delay."

Tetsurou meets Kai’s wide eyes as he scuttles to his workbench, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder.

“What’s happening?” he asks as soon as Kenma appears, circles under his eyes but looking livelier than he did these last weeks, back in shredded concerts t-shirt and track pants, arms overflowing with rolled papers. Tetsurou wordlessly takes half and follows him to the big desk at the bottom of the room, where Kenma dumps them en masse.

“Where is the car?”

“Gone,” Kenma answers, retying his hair as he strides back to his room. He disappears inside. “It wasn’t right for you,” he explains coming back out with more books under his arm.

The thud of the books hitting the desktop echoes in the garage and in Tetsurou’s bones.

Kenma turns to watch him, one hand still resting on the pile of knowledge on his desk. “It didn’t have a heart.”

***

The start of the season finds Tetsurou leaning against the side of the bus, snapping open and closed the pressure button at the neck of his jumpsuit. Escaped from the throng of cameras and interviewers at the heart of the circuit, Tetsurou relishes the quietness of this spot, away from the hustle. Bokuto is still probably over there, showing off his biceps and trying to coax that pretty PR of his in sight of flashbulbs and hyper-sensitive mics.

 Tetsurou adjusts the jumpsuit around his shoulders. Deep red, with black and white inserts. He used to dream of wearing these colors, and now he is here. In the middle of a camp, setting up to race in the first round of his first Formula One circuit.

He dreamed of the grass, of the stark colors of paint on the asphalt, of the burning smell of rubber. Now he is living it.

A brown bag dangles in front of his eyes and Tetsurou catches it in midair.

“Thought you’d need this?” Kenma says, leaning half out of the bus window above his head.

Tetsurou smiles. “Not this time.”

“If you say something corny about trusting the car I made, I’m taking it away,” Kenma calls scuttling back inside, but Tetsurou knows him long enough to hear the smile in his monotone voice.

:::

Every car I built for you was a good car, Kenma had explained one evening, as Tetsurou had been turning the remote control car in his hands, sitting on Kenma’s bed. It had been unprompted, and Tetsurou had stopped playing with the toy car to turn his attention to Kenma, who was standing in his kitchenette stirring tea in a porcelain kettle with painted-on cats.

They’d have been perfect for Tora. Kenma had passed Yaku his designs, in fact. Taketora would indeed race in the fourth version of that car. They were good cars. Fast. Trustworthy.

Tetsurou had loathed them. Yes, they were all that Kenma said, and more. But they never felt right.

I had never stopped once to look at you, then, Kenma had considered, coming at the cleared corner of the table on which he had set two cups, embroidered with the same lovely kitties’ designs on the pot. Tetsurou had found them terribly endearing.

I told you once you couldn’t drive with just your heart, Kenma had resumed, pouring the tea. Tetsurou hadn’t touched his, too enthralled in Kenma’s words, in the timid way he powered through the blush setting on his hidden cheeks.

It was a stupid thing to say. I kept concocting the fastest car. Made for more than just driving. I kept giving them brains.

You forgot a car needed a heart, Tetsurou shifted on the bed so that he was looking directly towards Kenma, who was still desperately avoiding his eyes. His cheeks were ablaze, though he was determined to continue in his explanation.

He’d nodded. I forgot a car needed a heart. Kenma sipped from his cup. That it needed you.

Tetsurou had huffed in amusement, even as his stomach churned with Kenma’s words. You know, I don’t think I need that trophy after all.

Kenma had looked up sharply at that, frowning, his golden eyes reduced to slits.

When you telling me this feels roughly the same.

Kenma’s blushes are none of the cute things you read in the books: they don’t dust his cheeks. They set his face on fire, the fine hairs of his brows in stark contrast with the reddening skin and the pale hands he hides behind. He’s one of those people that blush with their whole head, whose ears seem to believe that since they can’t move, they need to shoehorn in in some other activity.

Tetsurou likes Kenma’s full-blown flushes better anyway.

***

“Are we risking a puking situation in your helmet?” Yaku asks in his comm.

Tetsurou adjusts in the car, heart beating like crazy as he surveys the last vehicles rolling at the starting line behind him. "Kiss my ass, I'm a professional."

Tetsurou overhears Kai going “Ah!” in the background. When exactly did the punk start sassing him? And why hasn’t Tetsurou gone about it yet?

Though, he’s far from calm and collected. While he’s sure he can keep his breakfast down, he might be feeling it cajoling for the whole sixty-eight rounds of the circuit. Not a pretty perspective.

“Hope so,” Yaku jokes as Kenma clears his voice in the intercom.

“Three minutes to the start,” he calls, quietly. “How’re things in there?”

Tetsurou rolls his shoulders. “I wouldn’t know, I’m still at the starting line.”

“I meant,” Kenma punctuates, “How are you doing.”

Tetsurou’s stomach does another flip. He doesn’t know whether to blame it on simple nerves. “Uhh—“

“You’ll be fine,” Kenma says, and there’s his confidence, the same that tinted his voice when he said ‘we have a car for you’. “You always are.”

Tetsurou doesn’t share his opinion, but appreciates the sentiment.

Kenma breathes in the intercom. “Meet me after?”

Tetsurou frowns, “Sure, but what—”

“One minute,” Yaku cuts in.

None of them dares to speak.

“Thirty seconds from starting mark,” Kai whispers.

Twenty-seven seconds after, “Good luck,” Kenma exhales, breath rasping on the mic.

“Luck’s got nothing on me,” Tetsurou answers, and the flag drops.

:::

Tetsurou weaves on the asphalt. The sounds of the race are muted to his ears, his heart the only noise drowning the screech of his engine, the shock to his arms the only tether to this moment; to the circuit.

“You’re halfway through,” Yaku calls, “How you holdin’ up, fucker?”

Tetsurou jerks the wheel back in position, teeth gritted as the car hits the green grass. He reconnects with the backstretch, eyes fixed on the dark green ass of the car that drove him off the asphalt. "I'm so gonna walk all over Daishou next turn."

Yaku sighs, “Please do. The guy’s been pestering Kenma to join his team since fucking college.”

Tetsurou smokes Daishou in the next four seconds.

“I think I had a heart attack right there,” Yaku says, after an extended pause.

Tetsurou grins, fierce and unbidden, in his helmet. “Hope I gave him one too.”

“Kuro,” Kenma calls, and his voice is weird, low, but not quite even. “You’re third.”

Tetsurou presses down on the gas. The car eats asphalt at the same speed Yaku reacts to height jokes. “Well, I’m not stopping at the lowest step this time.”

In front of him, loom two other cars. The first, total black, sleek in the way these cars usually aren't, with the outline of an orange crow tattoed on the axis, almost as garish as its driver. Second, at the head of the competition, Bokuto rules the court, with his high-speed turns and unpredictable gas pumping.

Tetsurou grits his teeth, as the Karasuno moves to the center of the track, holding him back.

The battle with the Karasuno goes on longer than he’d like. Hinata Shouyou is pocket-sized at best, fucking dwarfed by his car, and yet he takes the circuit and the stands as if he’s the biggest baddest bitch on the track.

But, Tetsurou knows, he is also not as experienced as he is. The real deal with Karasuno is the batshit shrewd navigator micromanaging Hinata’s race from his box. The press ate up the news of Hinata crossing the finish line in Miyagi on Kageyama’s orders with his eyes closed.

The problem of having a navigator, though, is that they rely on cameras and screens.

The only blind spot on the track is approaching fast, and Tetsurou knows how to use it.

No amount of talent can supply for a lifetime of professional experience, so when Tetsurou closes the view to the camera and hides Hinata's colors behind his own, he knows he’s got this.

Hinata reacts a fraction too late, maybe still relying on the disembodied voice in his comms.

It’s enough.

Kai and Yaku roar their approval in his ears, Yaku with significant more feeling.

 “Kiss’em fucking goodbye!” Tetsurou swears he hears quiet snickering in the background.

 “This car feels like you, Kenma,” he says, the tail ends of Bokuto’s car in his sights, and even he doesn’t know what he means exactly, but he doesn’t stop. “I wouldn’t want any other.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. On the backstretch, he eats asphalt until he’s mouth to tail with Bokuto. He’s hidden behind the seat, but Tetsurou is there and makes himself known.

The first time he attempts to overtake, Tetsurou leaves the track to cut short a curve, and Bokuto nudges his ride just a tad more to the right, limiting his leeway.

The second time, Tetsurou feints right and attacks left, and Bokuto manages to stay ahead by steel balls alone.

The third time, Tetsurou mutters ‘time for payback’, and pulls the move he’s been coveting from the start. He worked out the dynamics with Tora. He’s watched it on tape so many times he could draw it frame by frame. This is the first time he puts it in practice in a competition, and it is against the son of its inventor.

Tetsurou doesn’t believe he’ll make it until the mouth of his car pulls ahead, inches from Bokuto’s.

Tetsurou hollers in his helmet, and pumps his hand. In a show of sportsmanship and true friendship, Bokuto gives him a thumbs-up and throttles his gas.

For the last circuits on the track, fighting Bokuto for the pole position proves to be harder than it looks. Sweat plasters Tetsurou's suit to his body like a second skin, and still, he manages to block Bokuto's attacks by shutting down the space available, cutting corners where he can. His stomach churns, and the smell of gasoline and burnt rubber burns his nose, but when the trumpet sounds and the checkered flag goes down, there is only this: Tetsurou, in his car, slowing down to curb at the pit-stops, the crowd in delirium, and the biggest breath Tetsurou ever held released into the air.

Surprisingly, or not so much, it’s his mother who yanks him out of the seat, and god, Tetsurou loves her so, so much. She’s wetting his suit with tears, and he doesn’t care because he’s wetting her coat with his, and she kisses his hair, and then again, and then again.

“Thank you for not giving up on my dream,” he chokes, and she smiles so big, and so watery, and so like himself, that he almost breaks down in tears again.

“Thank you for not giving up on yourself," she says and presses his head to her shoulder just like she used to when the television in the living room did not murk the air with idle chatter.

His mother disentangles them when a boisterous OYA OYA resounds behind him.

And OYA OYA OYA Tetsurou answers before jumping into Bokuto’s vicious chest bump. He wiggles his eyebrows at Bokuto from where they’ve knocked each other on the ground. “Payback’s a bitch.”

Bokuto laughs, loud and boisterous. "Knew it'd come to bite me in the ass!"

"I'm sure you will have the opportunity for a rematch," a man says, walking over to get Bokuto off the ground. When he turns around—yeah, Tetsurou recognizes him. He's never seen him before, but ‘young, sophisticated, hot as fuck' is a dead giveaway. As is the PR badge clipped to his shirt and the way Bokuto’s eyes just sparkle at him.

Akaashi Keiji extends his hand to shake when Tetsurou regains his feet. “That was an admirable race, Kuroo-san,” he says amiably, “And I’d love to stick around to talk, but you’re requested on the podium.” His eyes soften when they land on Bokuto. “Both of you.”

Tetsurou claps Akaashi on the back and leaves before hearing what lovestruck shit Bokuto comes up with.

His own team cheers and whistles for him when his name is announced and he steps on the podium. They get thoroughly doused in champagne for their efforts. He winces when his mother glares to the wide stain of alcohol on her shoulder, one eyebrow cocked in contempt, but then he catches the mirth in her eyes as she catches his worry, and he laughs, ugly, and unbridled, and so, so happy.

:::

The circuit is still buzzing with activity—engineers, journalists, pilots going back and forth between boxes. Tetsurou has left explicit instructions to stay out of his way for the next couple hours, blaming an awful stress-related headache, but Bokuto catches his eye and winks. Someday he’s gonna sock that idiot.

The garage door is closed, but Kenma is inside. He doesn’t like crowds, Yaku told him to explain his absence at the prize-giving, and yeah, Tetsurou figured. So, he’s not miffed when he pushes the door open, and irritation is not the reason why his stomach hurts and his hands sweat.

“Kenma?” he calls, latching the door behind him.

“In here.”

Tetsurou skirts around Tora’s car, resting on a raised dais. He eyes the nasty scratch on its flank from where it careened into the barrier before he managed to wrestle it back on the course.

Deeper in the box, another platform props his own car up. Kenma is there, sitting on a long line of tool chests, feet swinging as he watches the car's red trimmings gleam in the penumbra. With the hatch closed, the only light comes from a high rectangular window to his right, casting his fair skin in the reddish glow of late afternoon that makes Tetsurou's chest clench. He's unzipped his jumpsuit that now billows around his waist, exposing a white tank top, blessedly void of decorations.

Tetsurou’s steps sound too loud as he rounds the stage and stops a safe distance away from Kenma. His golden eyes gaze at him in a way Tetsurou can’t interpret. It’s silent here, away from the crush, quiet but for the beating of Tetsurou’s heart. Quiet enough to make the tiny exhale of Kenma’s breath a hurricane before he reaches for the lapels of Tetsurou's jumpsuit and yanks him between his legs.

Tetsurou’s hands grip the counter outside of Kenma’s thighs, nearly slip, and he struggles to say something, anything, through the cotton in his mouth.

Kenma tilts his head back to meet his eyes. “So you wouldn’t want to race with any other,” he says, hands still twisted in his suit. His lashes flutter prettily when he blinks, and—and Tetsurou is done waiting.

His hands are on Kenma’s cheeks and his eyes set on his, and he’s never felt so nervous and elated at the same time, not the first time on the track, not the last. “No one but you,” and his breath doesn’t stutter.

When Kenma kisses him, it feels like every drop of sweat and every tear, every book page and every hour of missed sleep, every pulled muscle and every mile per hour over the speed limit has been to bring him to this place and moment, where Tetsurou’s has his lips on Kenma’s and the air in his lungs never seems enough.

Tetsurou loves his cars, but cars can’t love him back.

Except when an engineer puts his heart under the hood and hands him the keys.

When Tetsurou twists the keys, Kenma ignites.