Work Text:
A month or so after Takahashi Ryousuke had asked Takumi to join his expeditionary racing team, Takumi found racing magazines with Ryousuke's face on them in his locker at work. There wasn't any note with them, and nobody said anything, so he didn't know who to thank. The reason he was hesitating on his answer to Ryousuke-san had nothing to do with Ryousuke himself (or Keisuke either), but learning more about them – it was like learning more about his 86, wasn't it? It could only be useful.
It wasn't.
The magazines were all at least a year or two old, so maybe that was why. But the Ryousuke in the articles didn't seem at all like the Ryousuke who had pulled over to the side of the road after their race, and laughed gently at Takumi's fumbling questions. The Ryousuke in the articles was some kind of god. And the Keisuke in the articles wasn't like the Keisuke who stared down Nakazato and told him exactly why he'd won, much less the Keisuke who'd waited for Takumi on Akina and challenged him to join Keisuke as a racing pro. The Keisuke in the articles wasn't a god, but he didn't seem like a real person, either, any more than Ryousuke. He was just the other half of the Rotary Brothers.
Once Takumi was finished reading the magazines, he put them back in his locker. Eventually they disappeared again.
*
The weirdest part about saying yes to the team – which had a name now, "Project.D" – wasn't the confused feelings of relief, determination and worry inside. He'd felt like that ever since he'd really become a street-racer, sometime in the mess that was his autumn. It wasn't even the scattered Red Suns who came over and shook his hand and introduced themselves: Takumi recognized several faces from over the summer, and he was going to be working with them. Although Kenta coming over and shaking his hand was definitely strange. Takumi was never going to understand why out-racing someone on the road somehow made them go from sneering and angry at him, to respectful and smiling.
Except Keisuke. Keisuke seemed to spend half his time around Takumi exasperated with him for some reason. Takumi knew he wasn't as educated about cars and racing as Keisuke seemed to think he should be, but he really was working on it. So he was startled when, after the Akagi race with Ryousuke, Keisuke clapped his hand on Takumi's shoulder and said in his ear, "Aniki and I are going out to the Danny's near the highway after this. Come with us."
"All right," Takumi said, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Keisuke smile before letting Takumi go and moving off again through the crowd.
He'd come with Itsuki, but Itsuki was more than willing to catch a ride home with Iketani instead (and didn't start either crying or yelling about how great Takumi was going to be, which was a relief – Itsuki could be really over the top sometimes). The restaurant wasn't that far away from Akagi, and anyway Takumi recognized Keisuke's bright yellow FD in the parking lot.
Keisuke and Ryousuke were waiting for him in a booth, along with a third person Takumi vaguely recognized, both from that afternoon and from other encounters with the Red Suns over the summer – he'd been the one who stepped forward and explained the rules, back when the Red Suns had challenged the Speed Stars last summer. Keisuke greeted Takumi casually, while Ryousuke and the third man – Fumihiro, according to Keisuke – continued talking about the Red Suns. Not practical, organization things, either. This was the kind of discussion Takumi had heard a lot of from Iketani and Kenji, even before he got into racing himself. Who'd gotten a new car recently, and thought it was going to improve his times without him having to change anything about the way he raced. Who'd stopped coming because he'd gotten hit by an idiot on the highway – the only harm done was to the car, but until he earned the money to fix it, he had to stay home. Who'd started driving on Akagi, and clearly had no idea about the unspoken rules of street racing.
"The green Silva?" Keisuke said, proving he'd been listening same as Takumi. "I remember seeing them a few days ago."
"Did they get in your way?" Ryosuke asked, looking over at his brother sharply. They were sitting next to each other, across from Takumi and Fumihiro.
"No. They've stayed out of our way."
"Are they any good?" Fumihiro asked.
For a moment, as the brothers exchanged a look, Takumi wondered how they would even know whether the unknown driver was any good without watching him drive. Then he remembered a few encounters of his own over the past months, where he'd been able to estimate how good a driver was just by looking at them, and kept his mouth shut.
"Not good enough to encourage," Keisuke said finally, and Fumihiro nodded as if that meant something more than just whether they'd talk to the unknown driver. Maybe it did.
"Do you encourage new drivers sometimes?"
It came out more awkwardly than it had sounded in Takumi's head. Fortunately, Keisuke just shrugged his shoulders and grimaced, and Ryousuke shook his head. "Not any more. The Red Suns were never that kind of group. Until Keisuke, I was always on my own."
"But we knew you were there," Fumihiro said. "It wasn't as unexpected as Fujiwara was, appearing out of nowhere."
"True," Ryousuke murmured, and Keisuke leaned across the table and said, "Which reminds me, Fujiwara: how long have you been driving?"
Takumi hesitated for a second. It wasn't something his dad had ever made a big deal about, the don't tell anyone you're driving illegally thing, but Takumi had still known better than to tell anyone, and it was hard to break the old habit of silence. But Keisuke and Ryousuke were different from telling Itsuki or Iketani, so Takumi admitted, "Since I was in seventh grade. My dad had me delivering the tofu every morning."
Fumihiro said, "Tofu?" under his breath, as if he didn't quite believe it. Keisuke sat back in his chair and smiled smugly, as if of course Takumi was more experienced as a driver than he should be, and Ryousuke hummed thoughtfully as he picked up his tea, eyes intent on Takumi as if waiting for more information.
Takumi smiled back involuntarily, and tried to find the words to explain what he'd learned and how. This, right here, was the weirdest part of having said yes: that he could talk to these men he barely knew, and feel like he was heard.
*
The weirdness didn't really go away with time. At the same time, Takumi felt like he knew the Takahashi brothers as well as Itsuki or Iketani, and yet he didn't know anything about them before they'd showed up on Akina last summer. There was what had been in the magazines, of course, but he'd already known those were useless. Besides, after some of the things Ryousuke had him do, he also knew that Ryousuke wasn't above mind games with his opponents – and the people who might read those magazines definitely counted.
If he wanted to know more, he had to just watch them. Keisuke was proud, not just as a racer but in general. When those bastards oiled the road so Keisuke would crash, and half of Project.D (including Takumi) had come to try to help rebuild Keisuke's FD, Keisuke had tried to protest, and finally agreed to the extra help only because while he was proud, he was also realistic. Ryousuke loved analyzing data, and talking about it, to the point where it was catching. The first time Takumi caught himself talking about the key points of Akagi's course to Matsumoto, who had been a Red Sun for years and probably knew Akagi as well as Takumi knew Akina, he stopped himself mid-sentence and apologized. Matsumoto had just grinned at him from around the side of the 86's hood. "It's from listening to Ryousuke-san," he said. "We all do it."
"Besides, you were right," Keisuke said, making Takumi jump – how long had he been listening? "And that's what aniki is trying to teach you, anyway."
"How to talk about the course?" Takumi muttered.
"How to understand the course," Keisuke said. "If you can talk about it, that just proves how well you understand it."
"I can't talk about Akina." And that was the pass he knew best, knew well enough to drive when he was three quarters asleep.
"Not yet," Keisuke said, and smirked at him, and went back to the FD.
Sometimes, though, the clue was more confusing. When one set of opponents called a gang in to avenge their loss, Ryousuke and Keisuke forced everyone into their car (Takumi) or one of the vans (everyone else). Then Ryousuke leaned up against the end of one of the vans, looking as casual as if he were waiting for a race to end, and Keisuke - Keisuke swung an enormous wrench up onto his shoulder and walked off to meet the gang members that were looming up out of the cars they'd parked to block the pass entrance.
Without the race to focus on and distract himself, Takumi could feel his hands shaking. Take care of yourself, they kept telling him, but Keisuke was just as important as he was. What was he thinking? What was Ryousuke thinking? There had to be a plan, some kind of trick that Takumi just didn't know yet.
Keisuke stopped only a few steps away from the guy dressed in purple who seemed to be the leader,, and lowered his wrench. This far away, Takumi couldn't hear what they were saying. But he could see the leader stop short and bow to Keisuke. Keisuke and the leader talked for a few minutes, each of them glancing over at the bastards who'd called the gang in. Then the leader turned around, and gestured as if directing his men back to the cars blocking the entrance to the pass. Keisuke turned around too, and headed back to Project.D.
Everyone spilled back out onto the road, including Takumi, although he hung back, closer to Ryousuke, rather than bouncing around Keisuke like an anxious puppy. Fortunately, somebody else asked the question that Takumi wanted to know: what had happened? Why had the gang leader bowed to Keisuke and backed off? Did they somehow know each other?
Keisuke froze for a second, then winced and rubbed the back of his head as if embarrassed. "Uh, well, I guess he's an old acquaintance from when I was young and careless...my little brother back from when I was still a troublemaker."
That was enough. It had to be enough. Fumihiro went over to intimidate their opponents about the time trial (called off, due to Keisuke's car still being broken), and Kenta yelled up into the sky about their victory over all Saitama, and Takumi headed back to his car. Even if he was thinking about Keisuke's dyed, spiky hair, same as the gang members wore theirs, and the way Keisuke had handled that wrench, and even the way Keisuke called Ryousuke 'aniki' instead of 'nii-san' -- it wasn't any of his business and he shouldn't ask.
Ryousuke called off any expedition for the following week. Keisuke's FD was in the shop, and he wasn't worried (he said dryly) that Takumi was going to skip his own personal practice on Akina. Even given that hint, Takumi was surprised to see a familiar white car parked by the lake, and a familiar figure with blond hair leaning up against it.
"Aniki wanted me to bring you the course tape for the first race in Ibaraki," Keisuke explained, handing him the tape in question.
"Thank you," Takumi said, accepting it automatically. "I would have been willing to wait until practice."
"It was no problem at all. I got home late after dropping Kyoko-chan off."
"Kyoko-chan?" For a startled moment, Takumi thought Keisuke was talking about a girlfriend he'd somehow never mentioned before. Then he remembered the girl in the black FD who'd loaned Keisuke her car at the last minute. "Ah, from Northwest Saitama?"
"Yes. She's not up to our level yet, but I wanted…I drove Akagi with her, even if it was in aniki's FC instead of an FD." Keisuke's eyes were fixed firmly out on the lake.
"She deserves to be encouraged?" Takumi hadn't particularly noticed her, but he hadn't forgotten Keisuke's grumbles about racers who didn't deserve the encouragement.
"She deserved something. And I couldn't give her anything else."
Takumi murmured understanding, but Keisuke still wasn't looking at him. There was a moment of awkward silence, then Keisuke abruptly turned back from the lake, and bowed to Takumi. "Fujiwara Takumi, I apologize for those idiots on Saturday night. Suzuki didn't know who he'd been asked to deal with."
Takumi's mind blanked for what felt like a long moment. "The fault isn't yours," he said carefully. "If you want my forgiveness, of course you can have it. But…" But if it was anyone's fault, it was the fault of those guys in the Lan-Evos who decided a win was a win, even if they had to trick and lie and bash their way to it. Keisuke wouldn't take responsibility for them. From what that one guy had said, they were the ones who'd called in the gangsters in the first place. Suzuki must have been the lead gangster that Keisuke was talking to, the one who hadn't known that he'd been called in to beat up Project.D, the one who used to be Keisuke's 'little brother.' Was that why the apology?.
"Thank you," Keisuke said formally, and straightened up again. "But it is my responsibility. I used to run around with those guys. No – I used to lead them."
Oh. Takumi tried to avoid picturing Keisuke in bozuzoku leathers like those guys had been wearing, and failed miserably. It was all too easy to imagine Keisuke as the leader of a gang. "But you aren't with them any more," he said aloud.
"No," Keisuke said. This time, when he settled against a car, it was Takumi's 86 he was leaning against. "Aniki…nobody liked what I was doing. My father yelled at me, my mother yelled at me. Aniki didn't yell. He just drove me up to the top of Akagi, and told me it had to stop."
He paused. Takumi kept silent, partially because Keisuke didn't seem to be done and partially because he didn't know what to say. At last Keisuke went on, "I don't remember now what I said back. You don't have any brothers, do you, Fujiwara? Aniki's always been like he is, always the one who can do anything if he gets serious about it. Being with those guys, that was mine." Another pause, just a moment. "Then aniki laughed, the way he laughs when he likes you, not just mocking. He told me to get in the car, he had something to show me, and he took me down Akagi, full speed."
Iketani had passed out when Takumi did something similar. Itsuki screamed. Takumi bet that Keisuke hadn't done either.
"When we got down to the bottom," Keisuke said, "he turned off the car, and handed me the keys, and said, your turn. Take us back up."
"How old were you?"
"Seventeen," Keisuke said, then huffed a laugh. "Not as impressive as you!"
"It's not that kind of competition," Takumi protested, then, feeling like he needed to say something, "If you're taking responsibility, then you should take it for being the kind of person we needed. Even Ryousuke-san said it was surprising nobody had tried that kind of thing before."
"Thank you," Keisuke said, but he was smiling despite the formality.
*
Takumi was asked once, do you hang out with Takahashi Keisuke and go drive around - outside of going on the expedition races?
His answer, of course, was no. He didn't drive around aimlessly with Keisuke – or Ryousuke, or any of the Project.D guys - the way he might with Itsuki or his other friends from school. There were times at practice when he and Keisuke were sitting around, waiting for a tire change or for Matsumoto and Tomiguchi to work their magic on the 86 and FD, but Takumi wouldn't describe those times as 'hanging out.' Mostly they talked cars, or racing, or both, especially if (as usual) Ryousuke was there with them.
The exceptions to that rule…well, they weren't what Iketani had been asking about either. Those were Takumi's alone, and he didn't want to share them.
*
Shizuoka prefecture, in Chubu, and their opponents kept getting better. Project.D still hadn't lost, but Takumi had overheard more than a few nervous conversations trying to figure out what Ryousuke's master plan was. No one dared to ask him, though, or question any of what he was doing. They were still winning, after all. And it was Takahashi Ryousuke.
Then they ran into an opponent who had a grudge – something personal, something that had nothing to do with racing. Something against Ryousuke. What the something was, no one seemed to know. Fujimoto talked about the man's younger brother, who was the actual leader of the team they were racing, and about the man's racing record, but the reason why Hojo Rin was so determined to destroy Project.D and its creator remained a mystery.
After they'd defeated Sidewinder, Ryousuke vanished for a day or two. Nobody really had time to worry, because he was back at Akagi for the next scheduled practice, silent and watching, almost the same as usual. Except that Keisuke was being silent, too, which definitely wasn't as usual. When Tomiguchi asked him a question, it took him a moment too long to answer, like he wasn't listening. And he was watching – more like he was glaring at - his brother.
Most of the others were politely pretending they hadn't noticed anything. Kenta had made an abbreviated attempt to talk with Keisuke about their next target, but the next time Takumi saw him, he was helping tote tires and not even looking at Keisuke. Even Fujimoto, who had known Keisuke and Ryousuke the longest, found an excuse to be somewhere on the far end of the course from Ryousuke whenever Keisuke came back up from another run.
Takumi didn't. He stayed near his 86 as Matsumoto worked on tuning it, and watched Keisuke pace around his FD, while Ryousuke leaned silently against the fence. Takumi felt like he was waiting for something without even being sure what he was waiting for. It wasn't a new sensation around them.
The explosion finally came when he wasn't watching. He was coming back with a can of coffee to see if Matsumoto was finished with his latest tweaks to the 86's engine, when he heard Keisuke's voice. "—should have told us, aniki!"
"It didn't matter," Ryousuke said. His voice was quiet, almost too quiet for Takumi to hear. "It wasn't an official race, only tying up an old loose end."
"If it didn't matter, then you would have told us before you went, instead of afterwards." Keisuke wasn't quiet at all: he wasn't quite yelling, but close.
Takumi automatically ducked his head and looked away. Everyone else, even Matsumoto, was discreetly as far away as possible from the Takahashi brothers, and here he was almost on top of them. He wondered if he could sneak back to the 86 and pretend he'd never come over.
"—not just about you," Keisuke was saying angrily. "All of us are relying on you to be the one who knows everything, who plans everything."
"The point is for you to learn how to plan and know," Ryousuke said.
"Aniki…" Keisuke trailed off into a frustrated noise, and he turned around, finally spotting Takumi, still frozen in place. "Fujiwara! Come tell my brother he's wrong!"
"Er." Keisuke wanted him to do what? "Keisuke-san, I don't – "
"He went back and raced Sidewinder himself," Keisuke said, glaring at his brother again. "After we'd already beaten them."
"It wasn't the same driver," Ryousuke said.
"I'm not sure that's any better, Ryousuke-san," Takumi pointed out, when Keisuke's eyes narrowed and his mouth opened as if he meant to start yelling at his brother again. "If you lost, even to a different driver, then Project.D would still lose face, wouldn't they?"
For some reason, this made Ryousuke smile. Then he sighed, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. "You are both right," he said. "I chose to race Shinigami for my own personal reasons, without remembering that it's no longer only my own responsibility. I owe you both an apology."
Takumi drifted closer, as Keisuke reached out and clasped his brother's shoulder. "It isn't like you, aniki," he said. His voice was still gruff, but not angry any more.
"Not any more," Ryousuke said, and opened his eyes again. "I've told you – I've told you both that I envy the way you can race with your feelings, and still understand your car and the road. I've never been able to completely turn off, but once…"
His voice died off. Takumi looked back and forth between Keisuke and Ryousuke, hand tightening on his can of coffee. There was still the feeling of waiting. If anything, the feeling of pressure, like a rival right behind you ready to overtake you, was even stronger.
"Is this about that thing…" Keisuke grimaced at Ryousuke's raised eyebrow. "I knew something happened, something with a girl, when you went off to college. I'd heard about that even before I knew about the racing. But you would never say what happened."
Ryousuke grimaced. "It didn't reflect well on me, so I wanted no one to know." He hesitated a moment, then said abruptly, "I started racing when I was around Fujiwara's age. It wasn't about the purity of racing then, or about a theory of the fastest. I liked to win. And I did."
Takumi remembered the girls that still lined the courses to watch them race, and the magazines left in his locker, talking about a younger Ryousuke like he was a god. Maybe it hadn't just been mind games back then.
"I attracted attention – not just from fellow racers, but from other people. Even fellow students noticed, perhaps because I didn't spend much time with them. Rin-kun – Shinigami – was one of those students."
Another pause, long enough that Takumi ventured, "So he was jealous of you?"
"Like Sudoh?" Keisuke said, nodding as if he agreed with Takumi's theory.
"No," Ryousuke said. "If it were just racing, then we could have settled it on the touge, the way I settled it with Sudoh." A moment's pause, and then Ryousuke's voice dropped even more. "Hojo Rin was engaged to be married, an arranged marriage. I knew his fiancée, Kaori."
"She was in love with you?"
"She never confessed to me," Ryousuke said, which didn't actually answer Keisuke's question. "We were friends, nothing more."
"But something must have gone wrong," Takumi pointed out. "Or else he wouldn't have challenged you." And Ryousuke wouldn't have answered, and put Project.D at risk.
"Kaori committed suicide. Rin blamed me. The race…" Ryousuke shook his head. "He believed I'd forgotten her. The race wasn't about speed, or pride, or anything like what I want Project.D to be. It was a death match."
"You should have told us," Takumi said firmly. "Keisuke is right. Even for something like that."
"Especially for something like that," Keisuke grumbled. But he wasn't yelling it any more.
"It was more than just a dangerous race," Ryousuke said, frowning at both of them. "It would have meant telling you why."
"You already know our whys, Ryousuke-san," Takumi said, which wasn't entirely true – he hadn't told Keisuke and Ryosuke about what had driven him to Akagi to challenge Sudoh that first time. Not yet. But someday, probably, and that was true. "It's just…it's more than just racing between us. I mean, I know you both better because I've raced you, but it's not only about racing."
Ryousuke's frown had become a stare, as if he couldn't believe what Takumi had said. But Keisuke bumped Takumi's shoulder, careful of the coffee he still held, and grinned at him. "No fair saying it before I can," he said, then looked back at his brother. "Isn't that true, aniki?"
Ryousuke blinked, then bowed his head and laughed. "I see. Just when I think you two are done surprising me." He opened his eyes again, and it wasn't all gloom and stormclouds any more, just the usual stern look. "I apologize for not bringing you," he said. "Now go prove you understand our next course as well as you understand me.'
"Yes, sir!" Keisuke and Takumi said at the same time, and headed back to their cars.