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It was a strange idea, something that couldn’t have gone worse or better. If you wanted to race in M1, it was a good idea to not get trapped at the start. But if you were going to get trapped at the start, it was best to get three quali points and a fastest lap out of it anyway.
That was the mindset Red Eye had adopted in the hours after the fateful incident. After all was said and done there was nothing he or apparently anyone else could do about it, after all. In the crowd crush of the starting gate there was no hope of finding someone directly culpable, and the standards for an actual penalty were so high that nothing would happen if he played the blame game anyway. Bumble had knocked Bolt off the track last season- and in some strange butterfly effect, knocked the Thunderbolts out of M1 entirely- and it had been accepted with a shrug. Pointing fingers at Nereid or Cerulean would get him nowhere. And there was no need to worsen the downswing of his reputation amongst the other racers.
None of that deterred White Eye. He’d taken Red Eye’s anger in the moment forward in a kind of blistering formless anger that manifested in pacing across their hotel room carpet muttering half-coherently to himself about who the who and why and how of his revenge tour.
To Red Eye, the path forward was simple:
We beat the Hazers.
But to White Eye, it was something like-
“There’ll be a case against the JMA, obviously. For certifying and approving a flawed track.” His slippered footsteps scurrying across thin, dry carpet.
Yawn.
“And the M1 Board. They’ll answer for the decisions made. No safety marble, no penalty- no accountability!”
He rapped his knuckles against the handle of a nice old chair. It was as if he’d just discovered the old sacred rule of three.
“The Stars, too,” he gasped, filled with sudden relevation. “I’ll have a word with Ringo,” (it was never good when he had a word with anyone) “and we’ll see what kind of apology he can offer.”
From the lounge chair in the hotel apartment where he’d been watching the hum of impatient scheming, Red Eye unfurled himself out of the yogalike pose only a cat could take. Feline watching and listening was great, but it took a human to put his foot down. “White Eye,” he said, not Coach, because this was as personal as it was M1-related, “we don’t need to do any of that.”
White Eye stopped amidst a fresh lap of the sofa-to-sofa circuit. His cape took a second or two to catch up. “And why not?” he appealed. “Don’t tell me- you’ve had a revelation on how to proceed. Is there a better lead?”
Following a second yawn, Red Eye stretched and shook his head. “No. We’re giving up on the appeals entirely. It’s a track accident- we’ll get as far as the O’Rangers did last season, and then they’ll wave us out.” Their case was stronger than Aquamaring, yes, but just as pointless.
A flash of stunned surprise washed over White Eye’s face before he was able to recompose himself. “I see,” he said, absent of all the bravado he’d been washed in minutes ago. “Red. I’m looking out for you.”
“Do you think Red Eye needs to be looked out for?” he asked in return. “Coach,” he added, ebbing his language with the flow of the conversation, “winning the individual championship with a 20th place- there’ll never be another doubt thrown at me in my life.”
Red Eye watched White Eye’s face shift subtly underneath the shroud of perfect composure. Indulging his pride had only gone so far. “Very well,” he announced, but with the huffy sort of vulnerability that betrayed a hitch in his throat. “You’ll win with a weight around your legs. I like that.”
Did he? He didn’t even seem to know what he wanted out of his complaints.
Red Eye nodded and said nothing else, letting White Eye flounder until he made up his mind and skulked out of the room towards who-knew-where with a huff. Faint amusement cut through the frustration of being defended like a bullied child.
A practiced laugh- a regal ha- cut through the lingering heaviness of the air. Yellow Eye had been watching the whole time. Of course they were- watching White Eye huff and puff was better than any reality TV. This time, though, they hadn’t interfered.
Red Eye turned and drew closer. “What do you think?” he asked, eyebrows raised calculatedly up his brow.
Yellow Eye met his gaze evenly. “About what?” they asked.
“White Eye. Is he going to give up the ghost?”
In the bobbing of their throat, Red Eye saw the quashing of a half-formed laugh. “Ringo’ll be in witness protection by tomorrow,” Yellow Eye quipped, unfolding into the familiarity of Red Eye’s personal space. “Aren’t you lucky to have such a noble protector?”
Red Eye refused to dignify their teasing. “Aren’t I just,” he conceded, and let the unspoken weight fall gently and silently around them.
-
White Eye loathed a retreat, but there was nowhere better to retreat than his quarters. Already the rather generous room in the ex-palatial hotel everyone had been put up in was a snug and familiar dark little den of his personal intrigue. Notes and pictures plastered each wall, his laptop screen cutting through the enforced dimness and beckoning him forward. Even on sunny and pleasant Isle Hyu, gloom and intrigue followed White Eye like fleas to rats.
His file on the Stars was rather small. Shunned from M1 and usually confined to the Showdown, Ringo’s team rarely crossed paths with the CCE. Small did not mean empty. Small could always get bigger.
Ringo was the obvious starting point. He was no stranger to the public eye thanks to his inglorious years as a famous musician, the least prestigious of a world-renowned band that met an acrimonious end. Every ugly secret of his from back then had been aired so thoroughly that it was unremarkable. White Eye tapped past that dusty catalogue to the criminal violations file he’d pulled from the Bright Hyu records preemptively but never gotten around to looking at. It was at least more recent than the standard worn-out celebrity gossip that got passed around.
White Eye tensed. Yes, there was something, but not much of something- poor Ringo was a bad driver. His record was scarred with speeding tickets and parking infractions gone by, but he’d always skirted the edge of criminality and never gotten his license removed. Nothing had been added in the last few years. Maybe it was hypocritical for him to coach a racing team if he couldn’t put pedal to metal day-to-day- yet hypocrisy itself was not a crime. The entirety of M1 was built on beautiful hypocrisy. White Eye himself wasn’t exempt from it, loathe as he was to admit a personal flaw.
Everything else recent had been scrubbed from the internet. No unflattering photos, no indecencies, no infractions against waitstaff or hotel staff. It wasn’t like with Quickly, such a notorious crank that her thorny attitude no longer merited discussion. Ringo was a saint- or his PR team were- and no amount of furtive clicking as the sun sank through the gaps in the drawn-shut curtains helped White Eye’s efforts.
Indie was just as clean, if not cleaner. A captain of Red Eye’s caliber she wasn’t, and yet nobody had a bad word to say about her character and her standing- all the rumour mill had spat out was chatter about her potential involvement with Starry. Nobody could fault her for that.
Then there was Diego- Diego, his last hope- because per his own investigations, he’d heard a few promising rumours that Diego was-
The doorhandle turned and hallway light flooded in. White Eye unfurled himself from his shrimplike pose and peered over the laptop screen just a little too late to evade Red Eye.
“Coach,” he interjected softly, “you know that hunching over that thing is bad for your back.”
Just as he was making progress, White Eye’s investigation was scuppered yet again. Red Eye watched him with an eerie fixedness until he straightened out his spine and shut the lid obediently.
Red Eye continued. “Are you going to cause trouble with the Stars?” he asked quietly, irritatingly perceptive as always.
White Eye drew inward and did not respond.
“Take it easy on them, coach. It’s their first time hosting anything.”
The part of White Eye’s brain that twisted and schemed and spat acid reared and writhed, tense with righteous indignation- I’m defending you, aren’t you grateful?- but Red Eye held court too well. White Eye sat and waited and felt like a child the whole time.
Red Eye’s pose loosened once he sensed agreement, however hesitant. “I hear you. Let’s go to dinner, coach.”
-
Their palatial hotel played neighbour to an equally upscale restaurant, serving the usually relaxed local cuisine with all the tedious trappings of dining in Accellaise. Red Eye took any opportunity to get dressy, showing up at the door in a sleek suit that combined Bracish tailoring with Felynian motifs. White Eye’s usual cloak-and-long-sleeves combination left something to be desired standing next to him. Both skipped the winding line outside by intervention of the staff anyway.
“We couldn’t find a Felynian restaurant?” White Eye muttered in objection, apathetic to the free salt bread and settling for water to drink.
Red Eye’s expression softened against the childishness. “I thought it might be nice to try something new,” he said, and passed the menu over to his coach. It was brief and characteristic of the region.
White Eye didn’t dignify it with a glance-over. “You can order for me,” he replied with a sniff, “but nothing that’ll make me lose my appetite. I’ll have room service if I can’t eat here.”
And you can enjoy some Hyuvian food there too, Red Eye thought but didn’t say. When the waiter came round next he ordered the same for them both- lest he lose his own meal to White Eye- and a side of savoury fried pastry to (ideally) split.
A sharp look burnt him from across the table. “And this won’t poison me?” inquired White Eye.
“It’s food,” Red Eye responded curtly. “I ordered the fish.”
White Eye let out a little unimpressed grunt. “Mm. Fish is fish, I suppose.”
He fished his phone from his pocket as they waited and foisted it in front of Red Eye’s face when he’d found what he wanted- a restaurant address, Casa Chat, proof that there was Felynian food as far flung as Isle Hyu.
“Tamiya, kofta, pigeon, pita, kebda, baklava,” White Eye read, a litany of delicacies they weren’t going to find where they were right now. Red Eye could’ve gone for any of them, except he didn’t need to.
“We’ve already ordered,” he countered.
“Donate it to the needy,” White Eye huffed. “Fine.”
Red Eye broke apart one perfectly round bread bun and split it between White Eye’s side plate and his. “I’ve given up on trying to get you to like different cuisines, I promise,” he announced, “but tonight, I’m paying.”
Withdrawing sharp and defensive, White Eye couldn’t help but bare his fangs. “Felynian food is the best in the world.”
“Who doesn’t say that about their home region? Well, maybe not the Bracish or the Glidavikians.”
White Eye went quiet again. “Do you see a Huazhen restaurant out here?”
“What?”
“I’m only saying,” White Eye continued, gesturing vaguely at nothing. “They couldn’t win. All the attention- they wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“No race talk until I’ve eaten,” Red Eye declared unilaterally. “Consider it an embargo. Talking results on an empty stomach is torture.”
His body’s nervous shifting betrayed White Eye’s urge to object. “Nothing? Not a word?”
“Afraid not. I suppose I can’t force you, though.”
As if on cue, the waiter returned with their starters, the same exact plate for both of them.
Hyuvian cuisine was hard to find outside of its home region, and Red Eye had carried a little spark of enthusiasm for his chance to try it ever since the track was announced. White Eye remained unimpressed, poking fork-first at the fried shrimp dumplings he’d been cajoled into trying like they’d crawled onto his plate and died there.
Maybe it was humbling to struggle like that, to be bested by a piece of dough, because White Eye had nothing to say about racing or points or scoring for the entire rest of the meal.
-
Red Eye didn’t go straight back to his own room after the dinner ended. Yellow Eye was still up, their room nicely perfumed and meticulously organised for him to crash lazily on the sofa and watch them go through their Kafkaesque nighttime beauty routine.
“How was your dinner with White Eye?” they asked between pumps and smears of smartly-packaged product. “And how are you?”
“Coach is coach,” Red Eye concluded, watching the loosening in Yellow Eye’s shoulders for their shared understanding of what that meant. “Defensive. Loud. Annoyed that he likes me enough to listen to me.”
Yellow Eye nodded, unsurprised, stilted by poise. They had their back turned, tail curling around the back of the vanity chair, so Red Eye had to watch their considered expression in the mirror.
“And I’m not injured. Even my ego has made a clean recovery.”
“You wouldn’t be you without it,” Yellow agreed. “Tell me- or don’t, I guess- how are you feeling?”
Red Eye yawned. “Spiritually? Bruised. Physically? It’s no Yellup. I suppose I should be grateful I never left the track.”
“Careful. Gratefulness and White Eye don’t mix.”
Only for me, Red eye thought. “I could have pulled a Raceforest,” he mused, “and really made everyone have it out for me.”
Yellow Eye tested the idea out on their tongue. “Red Eye’s Blue Flag. I hate it. Please never do that.”
Another yawn. “It wouldn’t have been sporting. Smoggy deserved it. Unfortunately.”
Something shifted in Yellow Eye’s expression. Their back straightened. “But we’re not losing.”
“Losing?” Red Eye laughed, half-confident. “I won’t DNF on every track. And I still have you.”
“Yes,” Yellow Eye agreed. “You always have me.”
Still lying on Yellow’s couch, Red Eye stared up at the ceiling. He hadn’t thought to look at it before- why would he? The hotel had been built centuries before the Stars were even a twinkle in Indie’s eye, and yet in the low light Red Eye saw when he looked above him inscriptions of constellations and star families the same as they were known today.
“Are you sleeping on my sofa tonight?”
“No,” Red Eye said. “Maybe.”