Funny Cars

Well, this started as a quirky little drabble thing on LJ. Someone challenged writers to pick the closest book to their person, flip to a random page, and write something Holic-y based on that page.

Not wanting to cheat, I did pick the nearest book. Which was my AP Physics textbook. Lo and behold, something about funny cars in the unit about kinematics and forces! Fun. And so, this was born.

I might turn this into a drabble/one-shot series, if the inspiration strikes. I've had a few Holic ideas floating around for a while now, but haven't really found the time to sit down and write those little buggers out. If I do, indeed, do that, it'll be well into next year. Grade 12 sucks some major...lollipops, and I'm not having fun at all right now.

Ah, well, enough of my whining. I hope you enjoy!

I disclaim.


Funny cars, he mused, half frantic and half mad with worry, couldn't have been more ironically named. In the cutthroat—sometimes quite literally, even though those who suffer that fate are usually found in pieces, never mind their throats—world of racing, "go big or go home" might has well have meant "succeed or die".

And many did. Die, he means. One of his better friends did, just a few months earlier. He could be the next to go, or maybe even sweet Himawari-chan, who really was too frail for this world of fumes and fires and crashes and death. Especially death.

He paced, more and more certain that the one behind that flimsy door, the door with the big, red—more importantly, lit—light declaring to the world that the one behind the door is clinging onto life. And he's sure he's 'clinging', the stubborn bastard. More than likely that the big blank oaf is merely walking along the path of life like he owned the place—he tried not to think about the other roads the other could be walking on—with that typical non-expression on his face.

"Do sit down. I'm sure the hospital isn't going to be pleased if they have to replace the floor tiles you are surely wearing away," came the ever composed voice of their employer, who operates the biggest chain of not-quite-legal racing events in their parts of the country.

He whipped around, and opened his mouth to scream at the woman, to let her know just how much her apathy irked him, how he's absolutely terrified that the other might not make it, how damned guilty he felt about how it could be that one gear he didn't check over carefully enough would have resulted in his death, how—how he wasn't sure how to go on if the other doesn't make it.

The doctor came by then, frazzled and worn, to tell them that he's going to be okay, but it really is getting a little tiresome to see one of them in here every other week.

It felt like, then and there, all his strength was drained, and replaced with the sheer relief of a man whose purpose in life was almost—almost, but just not quite by a hair's width—yanked away from him.

He collapsed into a chair closest to him, and laughed in the way only those who face the brink of despair one too many times could.

He was okay. Doumeki was okay. Their world was okay.


Haha, I was actually really tempted to turn this into a dramatic angst-fest and make Doumeki die a tragic death. But I didn't! Aren't you proud of me? :D

Actually, I'm just a huge sucker for happy endings. Trying to cure myself of that, but all I've managed to do is churn out an angsty piece with a semi-hopeful ending, instead of the heartbreaking tragedy I was going for. Ah well.

As always, I hope you had fun reading, and I would very much appreciate a review. I know grammar isn't my forte, so it'd be very nice if you could point out my mistakes.