fandom: Initial D
title: defy.
pairing: Ryousuke + Keisuke
rating: pg-13
description – When Ryousuke gets into an accident, was it just a coincidence that he was in Keisuke's car?

Disclaimer – Initial D doesn't belong to me. I'm just totally smitten with Ryousuke's character.

defy.
By miyamoto yui

"What the hell were you thinking?!" I shouted without thinking of how loud my voice was or that I'd be disturbing him in his delicate state. All I could think about the amount of distress that was building from inside my heart and striking itself outside its walls, wanting to be let out like a caged animal, carnal and unpredictable.

I stepped through the hospital doors with this in mind. For once, I thought in advance of what I was going to do.

I ran up the emergency staircase to let out some steam. As I walked closer and closer towards the room, something grew immediately cold within me as if to say not to come in.
But of course, logic and my one-track mind couldn't get the image of the television set out of my head.

Today we have a special guest with us today. Representing Masuda Motors, Dr. Takahashi Ryousuke will race on the Suzuka Circuit in place of his brother, Takahashi Keisuke-

It kept on flashing in slow-motion.

As Takahashi takes the corner almost beauti-wait! Car number 6, driver Philippe Joly has bumped into Takahashi, but he could not recover in a split-second as he was going to turn the corner!

*The television shows flames over the familiar yellow FD.*

So, even as I held onto the handle and pushed the door open, I opened my mouth to shout, but absolutely nothing came out. Faced with more than I had imagined to be feeling at that moment, I stepped back a bit.

The usually calm and unagitated Takumi had his hands folded in front of him as if praying. He leaned his forehead on his fingertips and sat quietly in the seat by the window, appearing as if he'd cry if he were touched.

He didn't even bother to turn to where I was.

The tips of his hands lightly touched the hand of my bruised brother, poked with the IV and breathing in and out into an oxygen mask. His eyes were closed.

I shook violently.
"That's why you insisted for me to stay home with my 'injury'?" I found myself shouting and at this, Takumi looked up with an angry, devilish look. Hell was breaking out because of terror, hope, and aggravation. His eyes locked onto mine as if to say, "Don't say anything right now. Just NOT RIGHT NOW."
Defiantly, I said aloud, "I will say as I want, Takumi."
"Kei."

At the sound of my name, both of us breathless, looked at one another. I was walking towards him but he shook his head weakly. "Go."
"What?"
Takumi turned his eyes away and pressed them tightly shut, instantly calm again but also looking like he'd been holding back crying.

Going back to the time my brother ran away from home once, inside I was panicking. My angry voice disappeared into pure fear. "I can't leave. If-if I'm not here and-"

"Go home before they find you," Takumi finished in his usual apathetic voice, but when he opened his eyes and looked up at me, he pleaded in a way that I've never seen his pride do. He opened his hands to reveal a key, the one that he'd been keeping in between them as if he were praying earlier.
He cupped my hands in between his and nodded his head. "Go to his apartment and stay there until I call you."

There was no time to defy both of them. I showed the keys to Takumi one last time and clasped them tightly into my palm. Nodding my head, I left.

Now, there was even more confusion beating into my head. I put on a cd into the player of the car Aniki car gave me before he came to Tokyo to study.
I didn't understand the song, but it was a cd that he had given me along with this car. All of it was in Chinese, but there was one particular song that reminded me of him. Except for Aniki, I wasn't sentimental about anything.
But for this one song, I was moved by it every time I heard it, but it felt so heavy. I played it on repeat all the way to the apartment.

On an exhibition run, I'd come to Tokyo and that was the only time I'd been there. When I stepped inside to the simple and spotless living room, I stood there and took a deep breath. The curtains of the balcony were open and the moon shined onto the floor. I didn't even bother to turn on the light.

"Why did I make more time to see you?" I asked myself as tears started to come to my eyes.
I hated being a crybaby when it came to my older brother. I could do anything in this entire world, but…but…

I dragged myself to the couch. Covered my eyes, I pushed my palms lightly on them until I could see and feel nothing but black.

I held my breath.

/When my brother started racing, I was totally mad. It took him away and I didn't know what to do. What did he see in it that even I couldn't pull him away from it?

One day, he was there at home, peacefully reading a book on the couch. I briefly glanced at the whiteboard with something my mother wrote for us, but I ignored all the same.
My eyes went back to my brother on the couch. I watched him carefully. He was absorbed in reading so much that he didn't hear me come in when I greeted him from the genkan. At this, I went straight up to him, dropped my bag on the carpet and put my head on his lap. I folded my arms and made myself comfortable on the beige-colored couch.
"Oh, Keisuke." He blinked down at me and smiled. "Okaeri."

I blinked at him and cleared my throat. All the jealousy of being ignored for a book just completely vanished. I gave him a wry face.

"Why are you giving me that face?" He put the book down on my stomach and leaned forward.

If only people knew that 'conceited and aloof Takahashi boy' was like this only with me, his little brother. Still, my heart beat a little faster all the time as I looked up to his face with his hair growing a little bit longer.

"You went off without me to race again."
In an almost condescending way, he answered bluntly. "It's very dangerous."
"Stupid reason." I turned to away from him and his book fell down onto the carpet.

How could I act like such a child in front of him? I was already fourteen.

"I don't do it so that I can separate from you," he said in a soft voice. He leaned down further and whispered into my ear, "I have my reasons."
My heart was beating all over the place and I felt so guilty, wanting something to happen that shouldn't have.

"Keisuke." Aniki said my name in many tones and with so much emotion, but today was the first time I heard him say it like that.

Not like he was my brother, but more than the name of any of all the girlfriends we ever had.

He said it wanting something and pushing back at the same time.

He placed his hand on my white uniform blouse, right over the stomach. I cringed but I didn't push him away as he pulled me closer towards him with a sadness that I couldn't ever read or touch.
It was a like a mirror. He could make you look at yourself and no matter how many reflections it had when put two of them together, you would never get inside.
You couldn't touch anything. Not his heart or his soul.

Even me. It hurt that even I couldn't do it.

I closed my eyes even more. "Then why do you do it? I can't reach you when you're there racing."

"Whenever you look at me when I come back, you give me that face that says, 'Why did you do such a thing? I wanted to ask you all these questions. Why would someone go that far for something that they know will kill them?'

Everyone knows what their limits are and they go by a small pretense that they will have luck on their side and that they are invincible, no matter what will happen, they will be okay.

But I am addicted to know how far I can go if I keep pushing forward. You don't know how it feels to want to push as far as I do because you are scared of dying, of being harmed in any way. But because I am scared, I am more aware of these things, but my need to know more exceeds this 'fear'.

The more I raced, the more I realized I was going to a place only a numbered few were able to go. I already knew I was 'different' from everyone ever since I was little, but I didn't know I would reach a consciousness that was beyond anything that anyone could ever feel. Maybe it was because of all the hormones going through my body, gushing my brain full of all these natural substances, but beyond dream and reality, there is a sense of suspended time that you can't feel with your body but with your mind.

It is like you can touch anything in the future and into the past.

It is dangerous and alluring.
But I wanted to know.

I wanted to be free more than I thought.

I no longer want to be told I am special for what I do. I wanted to believe in it for myself."

By the end of this, I found myself staring straight at him and that vulnerable expression that would only be revealed to me once in my life. He leaned down and kissed me between my ear and cheek, making it appear as if he were just picking up the book that dropped onto the floor.

I took a deep breath but he never looked at me again as I laid there feeling so much but not knowing what to do. I wanted to touch him, but I knew what his body said, "No. Don't."

On the other hand, because he rarely talked, I realized, his voice belonged to me and me alone./

Feeling the tears wanting to fall so badly, I went to his bedroom. Turning on the light, I went to his wooden desk with the familiar black laptop on top of it. I wanted to turn it on to figure out what was going on in the news about the incident and what Fujiwara meant by 'they'.

The ocean blue notebook distracted me.

Taking it into my hands, I plopped myself on the fluffy bed and turned over to the first page.
It had the date of when he first left Maebashi, our house in Gunma.

===That song. I wonder if it was too obvious for him.
I gave him a copy so casually, but through all the twelve tracks, I wonder which one he will like the best. I can just imagine which one, but will it be the one that blew me away?

It put me at odds with myself that I had to turn it off. It was so oppressive and yet I could feel something that I couldn't ever say to anyone:

Into a different dimension, I found myself living in between reality and my own world. It was like going through a time warp within your own life.
But deep inside, I felt a peace and an anger. A woman was screaming out all my fears and I was supposed to call this 'love'? Was passion supposed to be like this?

Was it all so transparent?

I found no meaning everyday in finding my own lessons and life things. If I could not share them without another person, then it was all meaningless.

I was still by myself…
Only I wanted to share them with him. I couldn't break him that way.

Yet that voice haunted me. I wanted to become more and yet remain the same. That made no sense. In life, it's impossible to be stagnant.

You either make things react around you or you react to the things put against you. These are you true choices in 'free will'.

Because I had figured out everything else, I kept on going back to what the world called 'love', the one thing that made every single sense to the ache inside of me but split my mind apart.

He was living on instinct and I was going through logic.

Like rain in the desert, I was trying to drink as much as I could.
I was unmoved except by the wind, only transposing what was there and making different shapes and positions, but I was always trying to find an answer inside the desert, trying to learn to be moved without appearing so.

To show him he is the one I love most in this world, I will give something else that he may not want me to…===

I kept on reading and reading. The Autumn night seemed so long, but read everything until the end. After the first entry, every other entry was marked with a date, title, and a song he was listening to at the time.
Unlike his fast, exacting typing, his writing was different. It was neat, but sometimes it was slanted. Sometimes it was cursive.

It seemed almost poetic.

But I came to the last entry. It was yesterday's:

===The door opened and I walked on as if disturbed in the room of silence. There was that person lying on the bed, but not alone. There was my rival next to the person I loved more dearly than myself. He sat back down in his chair.
It astounded me as I watched my own life at stake while I was perfectly healthy with all my faculties still functioning normally. I was the one that should have been in that bed, but he told me not to go there while all the memories came to me as a flood when a typhoon comes along with the landslide of emotions that pushed all the barriers that I could no longer keep track of. The thunderstorms were truly frightening though I pretended that nothing like that ever made me upset, someone so tranquil.

Yet, there he sleeps in that bed. And I'm watching the IV drip without reason.

The person next to him looks at me, only to keep me silent. Does my face show the things that my lips dared not to say, lest I blaspheme something that shouldn't come into existence?

I remembered what I had said at the shrine before I boarded the train, "Not him. Please…don't take him away from me. He is mine. For all the things I gave for the sake of my family name, I earned him. GIVE HIM TO ME. PLEASE. PLEASE, KAMISAMA."

Yet my precious one was in suspended animation, slowly, if barely, breathing.

If I could only give him what I myself do not value for myself.

That nightmare I had many years ago will finally come to existence tomorrow when the competing teams' jealousy will crowd their better judgment. But, I won't let them.===

It was at this moment that dawn's warm was touching me. I didn't even notice it was morning as I stared at the last few lines from a person that I loved but admired even more.

===Those people don't serve to be respected. No one is special enough to be better than the other. Humans have only one another.
That's just a damn lie if you think I'll step down to bow down to you. I only do the things I do for the challenge of it and to keep everyone happy.

To keep myself happy…

…I won't give him so easily to anyone.

I know what it means and I know what it costs. You haven't earned anything if your world is so fucking small to think you can ever intimidate or control me in any way.

Especially not in regards to him.
I'll defy anyone or anything that stands in my way to him!===

What was this? My brother was bleeding in paper and gasping for air in the hospital.

Fujiwara called.

Going through the front, I pushed through the chaos of cameras and microphones, and walked into the room in a straight, cold face. Even when the staff told me it wasn't visiting time, I bowed my head down instantly to the floor.

He did everything…
Everything he possibly could for me…

I wasn't going to give up here to get to you.

When I stepped into the room, Takumi took a break. But my brother, whose eyes were looking into mine, tried to push me away all over again.
That look was there once more. The one of confusion and shock that only I knew of whenever he was 'human', showing he wasn't so, as he termed it,

Unattainable.

I stepped forward and I nodded my head, telling him silently that I knew everything. All my life, it didn't matter who put me in place, but only this person had any control over it and me following this unspoken demand.

The dawn was gone and the sun was warming up the room, making it humid. I had just begun to comprehend everything beyond

Aniki and racing.

The feel of holding the steering wheel…the chase to become more than human, did that make you inhuman?

No, it made you aware of your own humility to life itself.

Taking up his left hand, the one free of the IV, I kissed it with my eyes closed. I took off your oxygen mask and leaned down to kiss you with all the years I had waited for you to touch me.
And I pulled away as you lifted your left hand to catch my blond hair so that you could pull me to whisper, "Now, you can go to battle."

I nodded as I put the mask back on. "And I'll claim my reward when I return."

I touched your cheek, and I saw you smirk, amused by me.

You were smiling though it wasn't fair to.

With a bold grin, I walked out ready to cause a massacre.

Owari.

Author's notes:

After talking to Seshat-sama about her views on Takahashi Ryousuke, one close friend gave me a song and instantly, this song reminded me of Ryousuke. I didn't understand it because it was in Chinese (I read only basic things and only understand some Mandarin) but the song really pulled me in and into Ryousuke's head.
So, for twenty days, I became obsessed with finding the time and materials to write this story to share with you. I wanted something dramatic both in scene and feelings.

This is dedicated to one of my fanfic goddess, Seshat-sama and Cloud, who pushed me into this title.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
miyamoto yui

9/28/2008 7:33:50 AM – LA
9/28/08 11:33 PM - Tokyo