Work Text:
Helmet under arm, Shuichi walked out onto the race track, tugging at the collar of his stuffy race suit. The general din of the hundreds of thousands of spectators grew louder as he stepped out into the sun, face now projected on the screens around the arena. He smiled at the camera before making his way over to where his car was being readied and his pit crew was gathered, waiting for him.
“Hey, Saihara! Almost done over here. You ready to go?” one of the crew asked upon his approach.
“Ready as I’m ever going to be,” he replied, excited smile rising to his face.
As the Ultimate Motorsport Champion and the youngest ever winner of Formula 1, Shuichi was always ready to get behind the wheel. He wasn’t really a thrill seeker by any means, but he stood by the fact that there was little more exciting than the rumble of an engine under your fingertips and the squealing of tires drifting across tarmac.
He pulled a balaclava out of his helmet and began stretching it, loosening the fabric, wishing, as always, that he didn’t have to wear it.
Waiting for the crew to be ready, he looked around at the familiar surroundings of the Fuji Speedway. He waved at one of the other competitors he was friendly with before turning his attention to the stands. Rows upon rows of animated fans, most having gathered and sat down, the race due to start soon. The large crowds always unnerved Shuichi before races, the expectant sea of faces there to watch what they wanted to be an exciting spectacle. But the butterflies battering around his stomach only became more frantic when he saw them.
Sat in one of the frontmost rows where the entirety of his class from Hope’s Peak. Once one of them caught him gawking at them they all began waving and shouting at him. He waved back meekly at his exuberant classmates, not having expected any of them to come to something like this. More than half of them were completely disinterested in motorsports.
The fact that th ey were there wasn’t really the unnerving thing though, it was what it meant that all of them were there. When he picked out the short, purple haired boy from the crowd he felt his heart leap into his throat.
He wasn’t sure that his nerves would melt away as usual once he slid behind the wheel if he knew that Kokichi Ouma, the boy he’d been secretly crushing on for the past year, was watching him.
“We’re all set now, Saihara!” someone from behind him called. Shuichi nodded and gulped, turning to climb into his race car.
Before dropping onto the seat, he took another look back at the stands, briefly watching the object of his affections waving enthusiastically and bouncing up and down like a lightning-charged pogo stick.
He sighed, trying to calm himself, before eventually getting into the vehicle.
Shuichi’s breath started coming easier as he ran his leather clad hands over the smooth wheel and flicked at the gear paddles, the sweet familiarity gradually displacing his unease with confidence. More and more as he got prepared, pulling the balaclava and helmet on, strapping in and being pushed to the starting line, he felt less like he was going to do something wrong in front of Kokichi, and more like he would impress him.
With Kokichi cheering him on, he could do nothing less than win.
Shuichi woke up feeling like a pile of bricks. Or, more accurately, like he’d been hit with one. His limbs were heavy and there was a faint ache throbbing throughout his body. As his mind grew clearer he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the garish light he began to realise was penetrating his eyelids, turning his head in a futile attempt to get out of it.
Through the groggy fog still laying low in his consciousness he could make out a multitude of sounds, but he didn’t react, staying still and sifting through his jumbled thoughts. His memory was hazy too, fading in and out of focus; the last he could remember was the race, but after the third lap it cut off. He could have sworn…
Very suddenly he snapped his eyes open and jolted off of the bed until he was sat upright, inhaling sharply, causing him to start choking on a foreign object down his throat.
Before he could do much aside from coughing harshly, the foreign object was being rapidly pulled out through his nose, sliding against his oesophagus and the back of his throat. Once it was gone though, air quickly began flowing into his lungs freely and he calmed down, clutching his hand to his chest.
He stared down wide-eyed at the hospital bed sheets, swallowing dryly, still shocked by the memories rapidly returning and flashing behind his eyes. Shaking out of his stupor, he quickly patted himself down, making sure he was still all there.
“Don’t worry, you’re in one piece,” someone above him said gently.
Shuichi quickly looked up and met concerned purple eyes. “Kokichi?”
“What?! No, it’s Rantarou! Silly little Shuichi, you must have hit your head harder than we thought.”
It was definitely Kokichi.
He was rocking on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed in the pockets of his white medical coat and swishing it around his legs playfully. Although he was smiling brightly, Shuichi could easily tell that he was worried, the smile not quite meeting his eyes, which was unusual for the Ultimate Paediatrician. He could mask emotions so well it was like he was a window painted black, so the worry lacing his grin had Shuichi knitting his brows together.
“What’s wrong?”
At once, the air of feigned cheerfulness dissipated, and exhaustion dropped on him like an anvil, shoulders slumping and forehead creasing. He tiredly ran his hands through his hair before collapsing onto the bed by Shuichi’s feet. “Just… just tired.”
Shuichi didn’t say anything but stared at him earnestly.
Kokichi chuckled mirthlessly before becoming angry. “It’s just that… There was nothing wrong with you. It was a miracle that you got away from a fiery mess like that with little more than a few scrapes. But… but some fuckwitt who can’t tell a toe from a liver thought you needed tramadol without checking previous medical history to see that you regularly take alprazolam … You were unconscious, you didn’t need fucking pain relief!” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “I stopped them, it’s fine… but that could have killed you. Dear fuck, a doctor who’s trained for twenty years should know more about this shit than a seventeen-year-old paediatrician.”
“For a paediatrician, you do swear quite a lot,” Shuichi pointed out quietly, not quite knowing why.
Inexplicably, Kokichi burst out into manic laughter, quickly loosing breath and banging his fist against his legs. After a while though, in his shock, Shuichi noticed that he wasn’t laughing anymore, but failing to hold back choked sobs.
Shuichi panicked and scrambled to comfort the other, but not really sure what to do he kind of held his hands up and tried to figure out if he should do something with them. Patting him on the back or shoulder would be too insincere, but surely anything more would be too intimate.
But before Shuichi managed to land on a resolution, Kokichi had turned and thrown his arms around Shuichi’s neck, holding on for dear life, fat tears staining his hospital gown.
“H-hey, hey, shh,” Shuichi tried, gingerly patting his back, too stunned to do much else.
“Don’t… don’t do that again,” he whimpered through sniffles and hiccoughs. Kokichi buried his face deeper into Shuichi’s shoulder and shook his head. “It was terrifying.” His voice was so small and muffled that Shuichi could barely hear it. “You almost died… twice. I-I don’t know… I don’t know what I would have done if…”
Kokichi instantly went still as a deer in the headlights when Shuichi wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight, heart scattered across the floor in too many pieces to really care about anything other than ‘this is my fault’.
“I didn’t, though. I’m fine. Everything’s fine so… please, please don’t cry. Please,” he begged.
A moment of morose silence later, Kokichi relaxed and leaned all his weight onto Shuichi, tired and sad. “I’m glad… that you’re okay,” he muttered, hands fiddling with the fabric of the hospital gown at Shuichi’s back.
Shuichi snorted softly, indulging in the sensation of Kokichi’s hair against his cheek. “Yeah, me too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see you again.”
Kokichi sat up then, looking away sheepishly but with the distinct ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You don’t mean that,” he stated, rolling his eyes.
“Of course, I do,” Shuichi insisted, putting his hand over Kokichi’s and squeezing it reassuringly. “And I promise, I’ll try not to do it again,” he said, starting to think that he probably would risk another crash if kokichi was waiting for him at the end of it again.