When you were young, sexy, and the underdog winner of the 91st Annual WRL Grand Prix, people gave you what you wanted - whether you knew you wanted it or not.

You had to admit, he was a very attractive boy. If you told him so he'd chalk it up to genetics, and then you'd have to admit that they made a pretty attractive family. They were great for newspaper splashes, WRL promo posters, you name it. But Speed was easily the shining star of the Racer family. He shone almost brightly enough to light up the dark spot in all the family photos where everyone knew that something was missing.

Yes, charming young Speed Racer had earned himself a place in the world. After the initial bout of cold milk jokes and needling about his relationship with a certain pixie-haired helicopter pilot (we're trying to keep that just between the two of us, he'd say to fend off questions, and he was so easy to love that it usually worked) it became all about the favors, the networking, the sheer inability to go out in public without someone gawking in bright-eyed awe. His smile was nice and white, and usually flashing it and signing a couple of autographs was all he needed to do to get people to leave him alone - he was too damn nice of a guy to hassle that much without feeling a little guilty.

Unless you didn't get guilty about that kind of thing, Speed Racer or no Speed Racer. Those were the ones he had to watch out for. A lot of the time, it was business favors - yes of course these parts are on the house, anything for the Grand Prix champ, and no, no, in our establishment you and your friends may dine for free. And sometimes, with the ambivalence he'd maintained about his relationship plans with Trixie, it was women: some mere girls shrieking their fannish devotion and plastering his sweet, smiling face all over the walls of their bedroom, and some who genuinely tried to seduce him, though predictably, they typically failed. Speed was far too upstanding to succumb to anything like that.

But the point of it all, the problem that Racer X was just having to come to grips with as of late, was that somewhere along the line Speed had kind of gotten used to it.

It had been Taejo's ideas, these twice-a-month dinners with just the three of them - or four, with Trixie, or five, with Horuko, or even six if he brought a date himself. The point was, X had really enjoyed the contact, especially because of what it meant that they all made time for it; regardless of who had what race coming up in however short an amount of time, or who had been behind the wheel all day and really just wanted to go home and sleep, they always made time for each other. Twice a month. Something about the Casa Cristo had bonded them all together, in ways that X wasn't even sure he, the most in-the-know member of their unstoppable three-man team, fully understood. The one thing about the dinners that was never consistent was the location. It wasn't the foods itself - Taejo was down with any place that would serve him the spiciest thing on the menu, and Speed would eat just about anything; none of them were picky eaters. No, it came from two things: at first, as to be expected, it was the Spritle-dodging, as he was bound to find them should they end up in some place that was easily accessible more than once. They'd ended up shifting to fancier, harder-to-find places after that. But then, that was about the time that Speed got the worst.

No restaurant was keen to have them back a second time because Speed, at first just politely accepting harmless offers, had started to take advantage of all the free service.

X didn't know what had happened to him - what had come over the usually considerate hometown boy that everyone was used to. It had started small, naturally, with drinks on the house or (this was the favorite for obvious reasons) free valet service. Speed didn't let anyone else behind the wheel of his car, but he would take the free drinks, and the free drinks would turn into free meals as soon as he managed to smile at a waitress. X just couldn't figure out when he'd started expecting the offers - or why. It wasn't as though he couldn't afford to pay for these things - and the fact of the matter was, it had been a while since his Grand Prix knockout, and some places were starting to stop believing in treating the champion. In fact, no place would do it twice.

When they entered the glossy Chinese cuisine establishment, X walked in first, and pulled the hostess off to the side brusquely.

"Excuse me, sir - "

"The man about to follow me into your restaurant is Speed Racer. He is going to be every manner of polite to you, until you inform him that he has to pay full price for his dinner. For some reason he expects you to give him his food for free."

"Oh, but sir, for such a celebrity, we would gladly - "

"No, damnit," X insisted. "Someone's got to do something to take him down a notch. You act just like it's on the house, but afterward Taejo Togokahn and I will pay you the whole tab, is that clear? After dinner I'm going to have a talk with our young hero."

"Y-yes, sir. That's quite all right."

Dinner went over without a hitch. Speed, ever the polite customer, didn't order alcohol or eat excessively. As usual, it was Taejo that was the life of the night, telling an outrageous story about a girl he'd bedded recently that could not possibly be true and then getting into a heated, very intellectual argument with Speed about the ethics of offensive and defensive modifications to racing cars within nearly the same breath. X, who enjoyed being a watcher, watched. He put in his opinions where he felt they needed to be put in but spent a bit more time with his fork in his mouth than the other two. He knew - all three of them knew - that his presence there was more than enough to keep their team dynamic solidified.

He appreciated that, because sometimes even just watching was almost too much for...well, too much.

But, depressingly true to form, Speed couldn't quite manage to act sheepish when the waitress offered to give them their meals free of charge. X smiled ever-so-slightly to himself; Speed had always been a horrible liar, even back when...well, always. While he was effortlessly charming her, X and Taejo exchanged a look, confirming the rest of the plan.

When they were safely outside of the restaurant and its customers' hearing distance, about to climb into their cars and head to their respective homes, Taejo split with a jaunty wave, but X caught Speed before he could do the same - first with a firm grip on his arm, and then with a tough fist to the jaw.

"Ow!" Speed yelped. "What was that for?"

"You need to get ahold of yourself, Speed Racer."

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't act dumb with me," X continued. "We have been to eight Asian joints in sixteen weeks because you are acting like an entitled brat. You. Need. To get ahold. Of. Yourself."

Speed reclined against the side of his car, still cradling his jaw but eyeing X more keenly. "I'm just trying to be polite."

"Polite? Being polite would be declining these offers, Speed."

"People...like to do stuff for me. I can't help it!"

"Actually, I'm pretty sure you can. You know what you're doing, don't you? You know whose system you're giving in to?"

"I - I know." Speed let out a hiss from between his perfectly white teeth, clearly aggravated. "Gosh, X, I just - it just got so easy, you know? My brothers and me, we never really got everything we wanted, growing up - " (if Speed noticed his own minute wince, he said nothing) - "but now...living in this world I'm living in now... It's just so easy to get stuff."

"No one gets everything they want, Speed," said X.

"I know, I know!" he continued, brow knit, about ready to throw up his hands. "And I don't expect everything. I still buy groceries for Ma and Pops and Spritle and me - get Chim-Chim bananas, and stuff. And I pay for gas, god knows that's an arm and a leg. And it's never anything other than just parts or our dinners. But I..." He trailed off.

"You what?"

"It's nothing. You'll call me stupid."

X scowled. "You're probably right, but I'd love to see you try and talk your way out of this one."

"It's just...all my life, I've felt like driving - like racing - was pretty much the only thing I could do. But now there's...this other thing."

"And what's that?"

"Making people happy." Speed sighed, shoulders slumping boyishly. "I told you it was dumb."

X frowned; it was so hard to stay angry with him when he pouted like that, in a way that was just so familiarly Speed. "You're right, it is stupid. But...but I guess I see where you're coming from." He made his voice firmer again, refusing to give in completely. "But you've stopped making people happy and started making them angry. They'll start thinking you're a jerk, Speed - just another celebrity that's let it go to his head. I know you're not like that." He paused, almost reluctant to say the next part. "You've stopped making me happy."

"And what'll that take?"

The response - and its accompanied change in mood - was so sudden that X didn't quite know what was going on. "What?" he managed.

"What will it take to keep you happy, X?" Speed wasn't angry, not at all. In fact, he was smiling from behind his bruising jaw, with those twinkling boyish eyes and those perfect small-town-boy teeth.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean," said Speed, talking a little more quickly than usual - like he was struggling a bit to get it out, to maintain his omnipresent confidence, "is that I have not seen you bring a date to any of our dinners in the past couple of months."

This was true.

"And that I've seen you, X, with the ever-so-slight ways you look at me sometimes."

This, to X's abject horror, was also true.

"And that I'm pretty sure Trixie's got a boyfriend."

To X's knowledge, this was not true. "What?"

"Think about it, X, we've known each other since the third grade. We've been as good as dating since the sixth. How many people really stay with their first love for the rest of their lives? She's moving on, I'm moving on, and it's all good. Pops may have married his best friend. I just don't think it's in the cards for me."

"Speed Racer, what the hell are you getting at?"

"I want to know what you might get from me - " and oh god, now it was slowly, deliberately, the brown eyes locked straight into his - "that might make you happy."

X didn't speak. He didn't know if he could. It was almost as though he'd been praying this moment - however unlikely it had been in his mind before - would never, ever come. Because X had to admit that he was a very attractive boy. And because now that he was confronted with it directly - now that charming, lovable Speed Racer was standing right before him, returning each other's gazes, listening to each other's breathing - X knew it would be much, much harder to tell himself that this was wrong.

Hard to tell himself. Impossible to tell Speed. Because Speed didn't know.

"You're being irrational," X told him, clinging as tenaciously as he knew how to resistance. "You're just reacting, you're not thinking."

"I have thought about this," Speed insisted. "And, look, okay, maybe I hadn't planned on throwing this all out there tonight, but...at the Casa Cristo...geez, do I even need to talk about what happened at the Casa Cristo?"

He didn't, really. X understood. That was about when it had started for him, too.

"Except for the Grand Prix, that was probably the craziest thing I've ever done. It might even be the craziest thing I've ever done." He made a noncommittal gesture, closer to X than X had realized he was. "There were ninjas, for crying out loud. But you...I mean, the weekend was about Taejo, but I was mostly in it for you."

The words ran through X's thoughts in perfect unison with Speed speaking them aloud. Because you're my - he told himself, unconvincing - not because I - but because you're -

"And the craziest part of it all is?" Speed said, still talking, still close, but his voice winding down to something softer and more pitiful, more piercing. "That was...that was kind of back when I still thought you were Rex. Geez, how creepy is that, X? What kind of creep gets a crush on their brother?"

"You're being irrational," X said again, to keep himself from saying you tell me.

Speed wasn't listening to him, though. "But then, that night afterward, when you took the mask off, I thought - isn't that great? I still wished you were Rex, mostly, but this little part of me, this tiny pathetic part of me, was saying to itself 'well, isn't that something.' It was still hard for me to come to grips with, but at least there was that much less in my way."

"You're not thinking," said X.

"And now here you are, and here Trixie's not, and here I am..." said Speed, way too close way too boyishly charming way too perfect Speed, "and I guess I'm just a little too used to getting what I want."

X kept telling himself that he hadn't noticed that Speed was about to kiss him, because surely it wasn't that he did know, was perfectly aware, and just allowed it to happen. It had to have taken him completely by surprise for Speed to have gotten away with it. Same with the hand on the back of his neck. Same with the persistent push of a hard lean racer's body backing him into the side of his own car. Same with...everything that followed. But after a while X knew that he wasn't fooling anyone, not even himself. Speed was going to get what he wanted, and who was he - with the one crucial piece of resistance being the one thing he'd sworn not to ever reveal - to stand in his way?

"Goodnight, Speed," he murmured when all was said and done, voice catching a little in his throat.

Speed was falling asleep next to him, barely conscious, obviously out of it. "G'night Rex."