Initial D, Ryousuke/Keisuke, testing the suspension
Midday, the day after another successful challenge, and he should have been resting, but Keisuke couldn't get to sleep. His nerves were jangling and he didn't quite know why, just that he felt at loose ends.
He let himself out of the van where everyone was trying to catch catnaps, sleeping what his brother called the sleep of the just, with the faintest of quirks to his lips. Aniki's humor was like that, there and gone again, like the flash of light on glass. Elusive. Hard to pin down.
That was Aniki all over, actually.
Keisuke ambled through their camp, irritated at not being able to sleep, at wanting something and not even knowing what that something was. It was a gorgeous day; the summer heat finally broken and the sky deep and blue over them, and he should have been sleeping, dead to the world and the splendors of autumn.
"You should be resting."
His brother's words echoed what he was thinking so closely that it took Keisuke a moment to register that they were coming from outside his head.
Aniki was leaning against his car, unmussed and impeccable even though he'd probably been up since the day before. Keisuke'd given up on figuring out how the man did it, even when they were on the road more often than not. He would have liked to have known what the trick was, especially for those days when they'd been driving for hours and he felt grimy just from sitting in his car for that long, breathing in the same recycled air over and over.
"So should you," Keisuke said, because it was the first thing that came into his head, and he was tired, and pissed off about being tired.
His temper didn't ruffle Aniki either. "I couldn't sleep," Aniki said, one shoulder rising a fraction above the other.
That punctured Keisuke's temper; he could feel it draining out of him. In its absence he felt even more tired, but his nerves were still crashing against each other. "Me either," he said. "Too much adrenaline, I guess. Beats the hell out of me how Fujiwara manages to sack out like he does."
Aniki smiled; just a faint ticking up of the corners of his mouth. "Fujiwara is exceptional," he murmured.
Rage stabbed through Keisuke at that, the way it nearly always did when Aniki looked like that, talked like that, about Fujiwara. Keisuke stifled it, like he always did. "Yeah."
Aniki looked at him. The camp was quiet, except for them and the breeze rustling the leaves over their heads. "Why don't you like Fujiwara?"
"I like Fujiwara just fine." Keisuke shrugged. "He's a good driver." A great driver, even, but that was something he couldn't bring himself to say out loud, just like he refused to admit that Fujiwara might have been better than him. That was something he could change, could fix, and Keisuke was fucking sure he would, sooner or later. It was just a matter of effort, that was all.
Aniki looked at him, reminding Keisuke, silently, that he'd always been shit at keeping secrets from his brother. Finally Aniki looked around their camp, and tipped his head at the car. "Come on," he said. "Let's go for a drive."
Keisuke wasn't stupid; he could tell that his brother had decided to pin him down about this. He wasn't an idiot, either, so he nodded and headed for the passenger side, because getting a chance to ride shotgun with Aniki wasn't something he was willing to pass up.