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The thing about Shisui Uchiha was that he didn’t do break-ups.
Not the messy kind, at least. Not the kind that ended in slammed doors, or tears of devastation and throats gone raw from yelling.
Shisui broke up the way he did everything else— with a soft smile, a hand cupped against a cheek, and a quiet, “I think we both knew this was coming, didn’t we?”
Itachi hadn’t agreed to the breakup.
But he also hadn’t disagreed.
He had stood in the middle of Shisui’s suite the night before the race and watched the most loved man in Formula One press a kiss to his temple and tell him he wished him well, he really did, and that Itachi should get some sleep.
Itachi had not slept.
By 6AM, he was already in the hotel gym, running on a treadmill at a pace that had a personal trainer two machines over glancing at him like he was considering an intervention.
Itachi had ignored him.
The treadmill kept moving. So did everything else.
By 8AM, he was in the paddock with Sasuke, the Uchiha team’s reserve driver. He listened to his little brother debrief him about tire compounds and downforce trims that Itachi already, after years of chaperoning Sasuke, knew everything about.
He nodded at the right moments.
He looked engaged.
He had watched Shisui across the paddock talking to a press handler— laughing at something, head tilted back, the column of his throat exposed beneath the high collar of his fireproofs— and Itachi’s stomach had not turned over, because Itachi did not allow his stomach to turn over in public.
By 10AM, the lights went out, and the race began.
And by lap 19, Shisui was in the wall.
It wasn’t an awful crash. That was, thankfully, the first thing they announced over the broadcast.
“Not a bad crash, folks. Shisui’s out of the— well, he’s in the car still, but the suspension’s gone, looks like a clip from behind— car’s likely going to be retired—”
Itachi had stood in the Uchiha garage with his hand braced on the pit wall, watching the monitor, watching the front of the Uchiha car wedged at an ugly angle against the tire wall at turn nine.
The onboard feed was still live.
The cameras hadn’t cut. Of course they hadn’t— this was Shisui Uchiha, and Shisui Uchiha did not crash. The broadcast was going to milk every second of this.
For a beat, nothing happened. The car sat. The yellow flags waved.
Then Shisui’s gloved hands came down on the steering wheel.
It started as one strike.
It landed hard and flat, the steering wheel rocking in the column.
Then a second hit.
Then a third.
Then both fists, over and over, slamming down onto the wheel hard enough that the onboard camera shook on its mount and the strategist next to Itachi sucked in a breath through his teeth.
”…uh,” the broadcaster said. “That’s— that’s not great.”
Shisui ripped the steering wheel off its mount and hurled it.
It clattered off the inside of the cockpit and bounced into the gravel and the cameras moved— pivoting in their cradles, like starving vultures, all of them at once— and Itachi watched Shisui twist in the seat and start tearing at the headrest with both hands like he was going to take the car apart with his fingers if he had to.
The padding came loose.
He threw it.
He punched the side of the halo.
He punched it again.
The audio caught the dull thud-thud-thud of gloved knuckles on carbon fiber and didn’t bleep over it, because nobody in the broadcast booth had thought to put a finger on the censor button yet— nobody had ever needed to, for Shisui.
A marshal came running.
Shisui climbed out of the car on his own before the marshal got there.
He didn’t take the man’s hand.
He didn’t take anyone’s hand.
He vaulted out of the cockpit one-handed and dropped down onto the gravel and his helmet was already coming off, yanked off, the strap unbuckled with the kind of jerk that left red marks under a man’s chin.
He threw the helmet.
It bounced. Skidded. The cameras tracked it.
He threw his gloves after it.
The crowd in the grandstand opposite turn nine had gone very, very quiet— because twelve thousand people had just realized they were witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime historical event.
They were witnessing the kind of moment they’d be telling their friends about for the rest of their lives.
Phones were already up. Someone in the stands was filming on a shaking handheld. Itachi could only imagine how many of those phones were broadcasting live.
Shisui kicked the tire wall.
He kicked it again— hard, with the side of his boot, with the full weight of his body behind it— and then he turned and shouted something at the car, at the gravel, at the sky, that the broadcast finally found the presence of mind to bleep.
Not that it mattered. Everyone watching could read Shisui’s mouth just fine. The marshal who had run over took one look at Shisui’s face and stopped where he was. He held both palms up. He said something.
Shisui didn’t even look at him.
Shisui walked down the gravel trap.
Past the marshal.
Past the second marshal.
The cameras followed him in a long, lingering tracking shot, drinking it in, and Shisui did not look up at them.
He did not wave at the crowd and he did not smile— he walked off that track with his racing suit unzipped to the waist and his hair a sweat-darkened mess and his jaw set so tight that the muscle in his cheek was twitching from the curve of his earlobe down to his chin.
He flipped the cameras off.
He flipped them off twice, once with each hand, and he walked until he disappeared into the access tunnel.
The garage was dead silent.
Then, crackling through the open team radio that nobody had thought to mute— because nobody had ever needed to, for Shisui— came Obito’s voice as he came up to turn six.
”The hell’s going on out there?”
“Stay focused, Obito.”
“No, no, what was that. What’s the flag for?”
“Shisui’s out of the race.”
A beat.
”…Shisui’s what?”
“Out. He’s out, Obito, drive your car.”
A longer beat. The strategist next to Itachi had her hand hovering over the radio button like she wanted to mute it and didn’t quite dare.
“Wait. He’s out out? As in, he crashed?”
“Yes.”
“Shisui crashed.”
“Yes.”
“Shisui Uchiha. The Shisui Uchiha. Just crashed a car.”
“Obito—”
“How polite was he about it? Did he wave at the cameras? Did he apologize to the marshals? Did he do a little curtsy?”
“…Obito.”
”…why are you saying my name like that, Kagami.”
“He threw the steering wheel.”
There was, for the first time in the history of Obito Uchiha’s open team radio, a full and complete silence.
Three seconds of it.
Four.
Itachi could hear the engine note of his car through the audio. He could hear the gear changes as Obito took the long sweeping right at turn six on muscle memory alone, and there was no commentary over any of it.
”…he what.”
“He threw the steering wheel, Obito.”
“He threw the steering wheel.”
“Yes.”
“Out of the car?”
“Out of the car.”
“Onto… the ground?”
“Yes, Obito.”
“…oh my god.”
“Drive.”
“Oh my god.”
“Drive, Obito—”
“I’m driving, I’m driving. I just need a moment. Hold on. Give me a moment.”
The radio cut.
Itachi did not stay to hear what Obito said next. He turned on his heel, pulled his paddock pass from inside his jacket, and started walking.
Shisui’s room in the motorhome was small and immaculate.
In the four years that they had dated, Itachi had never entered the motorhome. They had done their best to keep their relationship private, which meant Itachi kept his distance wherever he could.
There was a fresh kit folded on the chair, an untouched bottle of electrolyte mix on the counter, and a single photograph stuck to the inside of the locker door— Sasuke and Shisui, after Sasuke’s first sim test, both grinning at the camera with that loose, easy joy that ran in the family right up until it didn’t.
Itachi sat on the edge of the small couch with his hands folded between his knees and waited.
He could hear the noise before Shisui got there.
The slam of the outer door of the motorhome, hard enough that something on a shelf nearby rattled.
The muffled, scrambling apology of someone trying to ask him a question.
A sharp, snarling, “Don’t.”
Just that.
Don’t.
Then footsteps came fast down the hall— uneven, heavy, the gait of a man who was still vibrating from his own anger and had nowhere to put it.
The door opened.
The door slammed.
Shisui didn’t see him at first. He was already mid-motion, already pulling at the front of his racing suit with both hands, ripping the zipper the rest of the way down— and when he saw movement in his peripheral vision, his entire body locked.
The look on his face was something Itachi had never seen.
His eyes were red, his hair plastered to his forehead in dark curls under a streak of dried sweat.
There was tire dust smeared down the side of his jaw like warpaint.
His chest was still heaving inside the soaked black fireproof undershirt. His knuckles, where the gloves had come off too fast after multiple punches, were raw.
He stared at Itachi.
Itachi stared back.
For one long second, neither of them moved.
Then Shisui said, very flatly, “Get out.”
Itachi swallowed. “No.”
“Itachi. Get the fuck out.”
“No.”
“I’m not doing this right now—”
“Yes,” Itachi said calmly. “You are.”
Shisui’s hand went to the door handle behind him. Not to open it— to brace against it, fingers curled white-knuckled around the metal, as if he needed something solid to keep himself upright.
“You broke up with me,” he hissed. “You broke up with me yesterday, Itachi, and now you’re— what? You’re sitting in my fucking motorhome like—?”
“You broke up with me.”
The correction was quiet. It landed anyway.
Shisui’s mouth opened. Closed. His chest hitched, and the anger in his face flickered— flickered— like a flame catching in a draft, threatening to gutter into something else entirely.
But Shisui couldn’t afford for it to.
Itachi saw him claw it back.
Itachi saw him set his jaw and shove the vulnerability down somewhere under his ribs where it couldn’t be reached.
“Don’t,” Shisui warned.
“Last night, I… I didn’t agree.”
“You didn’t disagree.”
“I didn’t know how to.”
“That’s not—” Shisui’s voice broke on the next word and he hated it, Itachi could see him hate it, see his throat work as he swallowed it down. “That’s not the same thing. That’s not even close to the same thing, Itachi—”
“I know.”
“You could have said something.”
“I know.”
“You could have said anything— you could have stopped me, you could have— you could have argued, fought me on it, you—”
“I know, Shisui.”
“Then why didn’t you!?”
The shout cracked through the small room.
Itachi did not flinch. He kept his hands folded between his knees. He kept his eyes on Shisui’s, on the wet rage in them, on the way his shoulders were trembling inside the tight black fireproofs.
“Because I thought,” Itachi said quietly, “that if you wanted to leave, I wasn’t going to be the thing that kept you.”
Silence.
Shisui’s hand came off the door handle.
He crossed the small room in two strides, and Itachi did flinch then, just barely— but Shisui didn’t swing.
Shisui grabbed the front of his jacket with both fists and hauled him up off the couch and shoved him back against the wall behind it hard enough that the framed driver photo above Itachi’s shoulder rattled on its hook.
“Don’t you dare,” Shisui breathed, inches from his face. “Don’t you dare be noble about this, Itachi, don’t you fucking dare—”
Itachi’s voice came out in a whisper. “I’m not being noble.”
“You’re being a coward.”
“…I know.”
“You’re being a— you’re being—” Shisui’s voice cracked again, harder this time, and he didn’t catch it before Itachi heard the wetness in it. “You think I wanted you to let me go? You think I said that to you so you’d just— just agree— Itachi, you have known me for— for—”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
Shisui made a sound. It came out half a laugh and half something else— ragged, choked, the kind of noise a man made when he had been holding everything in for a long time and could no longer afford to. His forehead dropped against Itachi’s. His fists, still bunched in the front of Itachi’s jacket, were shaking.
“I crashed,” he said. His words were a wreck. “I crashed because I couldn’t see, Itachi, I couldn’t— I couldn’t focus on anything, the whole formation lap I was thinking about—”
“I know.”
“I tore the steering wheel off.”
“I saw.”
“There’s going to be so many fines.”
“...yes.”
“My PR team is gonna quit.”
“Probably.”
Shisui huffed a wet, broken little laugh against his cheek, and Itachi felt the way his whole body softened against him— the rage running out of him all at once, the trembling shifting from fury to something rawer underneath.
Itachi’s hand came up to cup the back of Shisui’s neck, sticky with sweat, before his brain had a chance to ask his body for permission.
Shisui’s head turned.
His mouth caught the corner of Itachi’s jaw.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the skin there. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— I didn’t mean it, Itachi, I didn’t mean any of it, I was so tired of feeling like I was hurting you— I just— I did it for you, I thought you wanted—”
“Shisui.”
“—I thought you were getting tired of this— of us, of being a secret. I thought I was just saving us the—”
“Shisui.”
Shisui stopped. His breath fanned hot against Itachi’s mouth. His knuckles, where they were still wound up in Itachi’s jacket, finally loosened— and then his fingers were climbing, smoothing up the lapels, finding the side of Itachi’s neck, his jaw, the line of his cheekbone, like he was checking that all of it was still there.
“I should have fought you on it,” Itachi said.
“Don’t.”
“I should have, Shisui. And I didn’t, and I’m sorry. Tell me to leave, Shisui, and I’ll leave—”
“Don’t.”
Itachi didn’t get a chance to say another word.
Shisui’s mouth was already pressing his silent.
The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It couldn’t be— Shisui was still shaking, still half-furious, still half-undone, and the moment their mouths met he made a low, gutted sound and pressed Itachi right back into the wall like Shisui was trying to climb inside of him.
His hands fisted in Itachi’s hair.
His thigh slotted between Itachi’s.
The racing suit hung off his hips and the heat of his skin came through the thin black fireproofs like a furnace and Itachi gasped against his mouth and Shisui swallowed it.
“I’m sorry,” Shisui breathed into him— between kisses, between bites, his teeth catching Itachi’s lower lip and tugging hard. “I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so— I’m so sorry—”
“Shisui—”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please—”
“I know, Shisui.”
“You don’t know, you don’t— I almost lost you, I almost—”
“You didn’t.”
“I almost did.”
“You didn’t, Shisui.”
Shisui kissed him again, harder, and his hands were already shoving at Itachi’s jacket, peeling it down off his shoulders, the leather hitting the floor with a soft thud Itachi barely registered. His shirt was next. Shisui’s fingers were unsteady on the buttons, fumbling the first two before he gave up and just yanked, and Itachi heard one of them skitter across the floor.
He couldn’t bring himself to care.
“The couch,” Itachi managed.
“No. Bed.”
“You have a bed in here?”
“Through there— back, back, walk backwards, Itachi—”
Shisui was already steering him by the hips, walking him backwards through the small doorway into the inner cabin, never breaking the kiss, his hands hot and possessive on Itachi’s bare waist where his shirt had come open. The backs of Itachi’s calves hit the edge of the narrow built-in bed and he went down and Shisui came with him, came down on him, one knee on either side of his hips, and Itachi could feel him already hard through the layer of the fireproofs.
“Slow,” Itachi tried—
“No.”
“Shisui—”
“No, no, I’m not— I’m not going slow, Itachi, I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday, since the second I said it I wanted to take it back, I wanted to come find you, I wanted—”
“You’re still in your suit.”
That stopped him. Shisui sat up on his knees, looked down at himself, and made an exasperated sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob that made Itachi’s chest ache.
He started fighting with the rest of the zipper, with the layers underneath— Itachi sat up too, and reached for his hips, and helped.
Together they got the bottom half of the suit off.
Shisui’s undershirt followed.
His chest was flushed and damp and there was a fresh bruise blooming low on his ribs from where the harness had caught him in the crash, and Itachi pressed his mouth to it without thinking. Shisui’s breath stuttered.
“Itachi—”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
“Please, don’t leave.”
“Shisui.” Itachi looked up at him. He tilted his chin up so that Shisui had no choice but to meet his eyes. “I’m here.”
Shisui broke.
He went down with a quiet, devastating sound and pressed his mouth back to Itachi’s like he was apologizing with every motion of it— and maybe he was.
Shisui kissed him as he worked Itachi’s belt open with shaking fingers.
He kissed him as he kicked the rest of the fireproofs down past his own hips— as Itachi shoved his own slacks down.
As Shisui’s hand wrapped around both of them at once and pulled a sharp, broken sound out of Itachi’s chest that he hadn’t known he was capable of making in broad daylight.
“God, baby,” Shisui breathed against his mouth. “God, I missed you, I missed you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
Itachi’s breath stuttered. “You said that already.”
“I’ll say it as many times as it takes.”
“It’s taking less than you think.”
“Don’t say that— don’t make this easy for me, baby, don’t—”
Itachi’s hand came up and gripped the back of Shisui’s neck and pulled, and Shisui’s forehead dropped to his shoulder, and Shisui’s hand kept moving, slow and tight, the rhythm of it making Itachi’s hips kick up off the bed. Shisui caught the motion with his free hand and pinned him down by the hips.
“Slow,” he murmured into Itachi’s neck— the same word he wouldn’t accept just thirty seconds ago. “Slow, baby, I want to feel you—”
“Shisui—”
“Look at me.”
Itachi looked.
Shisui’s eyes were so dark and so wet and so full of something that Itachi could not bear to name, it made his throat close.
“I love you,” Shisui said. Flat. Like it cost him nothing.
Like it had cost him everything not to say it the night before.
“I love you,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have done it, I love you, please tell me you—”
“I love you too.”
“Itachi—”
“I love you, Shisui, I love you—”
Shisui pressed his mouth back to his and didn’t speak for a long time after that.
He had a small bottle of lube in the side compartment of the built-in bed. Itachi noticed in some distant, unhelpful part of his brain that it was the brand they used to keep at the apartment in Japan. He chose not to comment.
Shisui prepared him slowly. That he insisted on. Even with his hands still shaking, even with his mouth pressed against the inside of Itachi’s thigh and uttering a steady, half-mumbled stream of apologies into the skin there— I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry, you’re so good to me, I’m sorry, you’re so beautiful, I’m sorry— he worked him open with one careful finger, and then two, and then three, and Itachi lay back against the pillows of Shisui’s narrow motorhome bed with one forearm thrown across his eyes and tried to remember how to breathe.
“Look at me,” Shisui murmured.
“I can’t.”
“Itachi. Look at me.”
He looked.
Shisui was watching him with such open, naked devotion that Itachi felt his stomach turn over for the second time that day, and this time he let it.
“There you are,” Shisui breathed. He curled his fingers, and Itachi’s hips jerked, and the sound that came out of his mouth was nothing like a sound he would ever let himself make in public. “There’s my boy.”
“Shisui—”
“I’m here.”
“Shisui, please—”
“I know. I know, baby. I’ve got you.”
When Shisui finally pulled his fingers out and lined himself up, he didn’t rush. He pressed in slow— so slow that Itachi could feel every inch of it, could feel his own body remembering what it had spent twenty-four hours pretending it had forgotten.
Shisui’s hand was braced beside Itachi’s head, his other hand cupped against Itachi’s jaw, his thumb tracing the line of Itachi’s mouth like he was checking that it was still the same lips he had fallen in love with years ago.
“Oh— oh, baby—”
“Shisui—”
“You feel— you feel so good—”
“I know.”
Shisui laughed, wrecked and breathless and so full of relief it was almost embarrassing to witness. He bottomed out and stayed there for a long second with his forehead pressed to Itachi’s and his eyes closed.
Then he started to move.
It was not the slow, polite kind of motion he promised.
It was deep— it was the kind of thrusts that bent Itachi’s spine, and pushed the air out of his lungs in long, broken sounds— and Shisui kept his eyes open through every second of it, kept his face inches from Itachi’s, kept up the same low, ruined stream of words against his mouth like he couldn’t stop himself.
“I love you— I love you, Itachi— fuck, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I— baby—”
“Shisui—”
“Tell me— tell me again— please—”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you. I love you. Shisui, I love you—”
Shisui groaned into his mouth, and his rhythm faltered, and his hand slipped down off Itachi’s jaw to grip the back of his thigh.
He hitched Itachi’s leg higher around his waist.
The angle changed, and Itachi gasped— his hands found Shisui’s shoulders, his nails dragged down his back, and Shisui made a sound like he had been struck.
He slammed his hips home harder.
“There— there, baby, that’s— you take me so good, baby—”
“Shisui, I’m— I’m not going to last—”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, baby, you don’t have to.”
“You first—”
“Itachi—”
“You first,” Itachi insisted, voice cracking on it, because if there was one thing that mattered right now it was that Shisui go first. That Shisui be the one to let the pent up pressure out of his shaking body. “You first. Please, Shisui—”
Shisui’s eyes screwed shut.
His next thrust was uneven.
The one after that stuttered.
His hand on Itachi’s thigh tightened to the point of bruising, and his mouth dropped open against Itachi’s and he came with a low, ragged sound that Itachi felt all the way through his ribs.
Itachi watched Shisui’s face the whole time, watched the way his eyebrows drew together and his mouth went slack and his entire expression broke, like a wave coming apart against a shore.
That was what finished him.
Itachi came with Shisui still inside him, with Shisui’s mouth against his temple, with Shisui whispering I love you, I love you, I love you into his hair like a prayer.
For a long time after that, neither of them moved.
Shisui had collapsed half on top of him, his face buried in the crook of Itachi’s neck, one arm slung heavy across Itachi’s chest. He was still breathing too fast. Itachi could feel his heart hammering through the press of his ribs against Itachi’s side.
Itachi ran his hand slowly up and down Shisui’s back.
Over the bumps of his spine.
Over the slight knot of muscle at his shoulder.
Over the place between his shoulder blades where Itachi had pressed his mouth a thousand times before.
“I’m still sorry,” Shisui mumbled into his neck.
“I know.”
“I’m going to keep being sorry.”
“I know.”
“Probably for like, a week.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“…maybe two.”
Itachi huffed a small breath against his hair. “Two seems excessive.”
“It’s not. I was a dick.”
“You were a dick.”
“And I crashed the car.”
“Mm. You crashed the car.”
“I threw the steering wheel.”
“And the headrest.”
“…how much of that did the cameras get?”
“All of it, Shisui.”
Shisui groaned into his neck.
Itachi let his hand drift up into Shisui’s damp curls, and he closed his eyes, and he let himself feel— for the first time in twenty-four hours— what it was to breathe without a stone sitting on his chest.
“You should shower,” Itachi murmured eventually.
“Mm.”
“There are going to be stewards looking for you.”
“Mm.”
“And media.”
“Don’t care.”
“Shisui.”
Shisui whined. “Don’t.”
Itachi smiled, very faintly. He pressed a kiss to the crown of Shisui’s head.
“Come back to the hotel tonight,” Shisui mumbled against his collarbone.
“I will.”
“Get on the jet with me tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Come to Monaco for me.”
Itachi bit back his smile. “Shisui.”
“Just— say yes, please.”
“Yes.”
“Yes to all of them?”
“Yes to all of them.”
Shisui sighed. Long and slow and settled, like he had spent twenty-four hours holding his breath.
When Itachi finally peeled himself away from the bed and started looking for his clothes, Shisui watched him from the pillows with an expression that was half-asleep and half-shameless.
His curls were still a disaster.
There was a bruise already coming up on his collarbone where Itachi’s mouth had been. He looked entirely, comprehensively wrecked— and entirely, comprehensively his— and Itachi turned away to button his shirt because his hands were starting to shake at the mere sight of him.
“You missed a button,” Shisui called sleepily from the bed.
“I didn’t.”
“You did. Third from the top.”
“…it’s missing, Shisui. You tore it off.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Shisui groaned as he pulled himself up from the bed. He reached over to his locker, and grabbed the first t-shirt he could get his hands on— a soft worn thing with the Uchiha fan fading on its front.
Itachi gladly took it.
The hallway was empty…
For about three seconds.
Then a door two down from Shisui's opened, and Kakashi Hatake stepped out into the hallway with his hands in his pockets and a hoodie pulled half up over his hair.
He was not in team kit. He hadn't been in team kit in over two years— not since the crash at Suzuka that had ended his Formula One career in the space of one hard impact with the barrier on an inside corner, a flip, and one carbon-fiber tub sheared in half against the barrier in a way that no human spine was meant to survive.
He still walked with the slight favor in his left side that he was always going to walk with. Itachi noticed. Itachi always noticed.
Kakashi looked him up and down— the open jacket, the borrowed shirt, the soft worn Uchiha fan faded across the chest— and his eyes visibly crinkled.
"Itachi."
"Kakashi."
"Hi."
"…hi."
Kakashi tilted his head slightly. Not toward Shisui's door— he was too polite for that— but in a general, encompassing motion that took in the hallway, and the t-shirt, and the small fact that Itachi's hair was not in the neat low ponytail he'd worn into the paddock that morning.
"You look… settled," Kakashi said.
"I'm… leaving."
"Mm. From this end of the hallway, I see."
"…from the hallway."
"From this end of it, though."
"…Kakashi."
"I'm only making an observation."
Itachi closed his eyes briefly. He had spent enough time at race weekends, enough time orbiting the Uchiha garage at the edges of Sasuke's career to know exactly what kind of observations Kakashi Hatake made and exactly how much trouble they tended to cause downstream.
Kakashi was retired.
Kakashi was not, however, what anyone in the paddock would have called quiet.
"How was the race?" Itachi tried.
"Obito's still driving it."
"Ah."
"He's running second.” Kakashi took a moment to consider the possibilities, then nodded. “He'll hold it. He had a bad first stint and a recovery drive and now he's furious, which is generally when he's at his best." Kakashi's tone didn't shift— it was the same even, slightly amused register he used for everything— but his eyes softened a fraction at the word furious, and Itachi caught it. "He's been talking about Shisui on the radio for nine laps now."
"…talking about him how."
"Loudly."
"Ah."
"He wants the steering wheel."
"…the one Shisui—"
"Mm. He's going to ask the marshals to retrieve it from the gravel." Kakashi paused. "I think he means to put it above the fireplace."
Itachi didn’t have any words for that— he was too busy picturing the unbridled joy on Obito’s face.
"He's having the best afternoon of his life,” Kakashi went on. Then he motioned to the door he had come out of. “I came down to the motorhome to escape the screaming."
Itachi nodded, slowly. He could not quite think of what to say next, because the obvious thing to say— I'm sorry about earlier, or please don't say anything, or Shisui isn't usually like that— would have required acknowledging out loud what they were both, very obviously, already not acknowledging.
Thankfully, Kakashi made it easy on him.
He looked at Itachi for a long second— not with the smug glitter of a man who'd caught someone, but with something quieter underneath it. Something that knew.
The slight crook at the corner of his mouth was almost kind.
"He had a bad lap," Kakashi said.
"…he did."
"A lot of people are going to have a lot of opinions about that, in the next few days."
"Yes."
"Most of them are going to be wrong."
Itachi looked up at him.
Kakashi met his eyes, and held them, and didn't elaborate— and Itachi suddenly understood, very clearly, that Kakashi Hatake had stood on a podium or at a hospital gurney or on the wrong side of a paddock door more times than Itachi had.
Kakashi Hatake had spent years now watching the man he loved come apart in public over something the cameras could not see, and being asked— politely, professionally, repeatedly— to explain it.
That was why Kakashi was not going to ask Itachi to explain this.
"He'll be alright," Kakashi said. "Eventually."
"Yeah."
"Mm." A beat. "You will be too, Itachi."
Itachi's throat did something it didn't usually do in public. He swallowed it down, and adjusted the cuff of his jacket, and tried to keep his face very carefully blank.
"…thank you," Itachi managed eventually.
"For what."
"For not asking."
Kakashi inclined his head— a small, almost formal motion. "I wouldn't dream of it."
And then, because he was still Kakashi Hatake, and because there was a limit to how long he was willing to let a hallway be sincere—
"The shirt's a nice touch, though."
"Kakashi."
"Looks very soft. Is it his?"
"I'm leaving."
"You said that twelve seconds ago."
"I'm leaving now."
"Mm. He has good taste in loungewear. I always thought so."
"…please don't tell Obito."
"Itachi." Kakashi's hand came back out of his pocket and rested, briefly, lightly, against Itachi's shoulder— not a clap, not a squeeze, just a small steadying weight that was gone again before Itachi could decide whether to flinch from it. "I'm absolutely telling Obito."
"Kakashi—"
"He's earned it. He's been driving in second gear emotionally for nine laps. You can give him this."
"…fine."
"Good man." Kakashi's hand came off his shoulder. He turned, started down the hallway toward the paddock door— and then paused, halfway, and glanced back over his shoulder. "Itachi."
Itachi looked up.
"Get a snack or something before you go back to the garage," Kakashi said. "You look like you haven't eaten since yesterday."
He left before Itachi could answer.
By the time Itachi made it back to the garage, his phone had a text from Shisui— come back after, I’m not done with you— and one from Sasuke that just said ??? where did you go ??? in increasingly offended punctuation.
Itachi stepped in next to his little brother, and ignored the way Sasuke glanced down at the t-shirt Itachi had clearly not been wearing before.
On the big screen, Obito was crossing the line in second.
He climbed out of the car with the kind of speed that suggested he had stopped caring about post-race cooldowns sometime around lap 25. He waved at the team— minimal, perfunctory— and took to the cooldown room two steps at a time.
An interviewer, a young woman who had clearly not been briefed for this, laughed nervously as she caught up to him. "Obito, you just finished P2, can we—“
"Did anyone get the steering wheel? Did they retrieve it from the gravel? Where is it. I want it."
"Obito—“
"I'm going to mount it on my wall. I'm going to put it above my fireplace. I'm going to have it bronzed. Kagami, are you watching this?” He pointed directly at the camera as he walked. “Tell them I want the steering wheel."
The broadcast cut to the holding room camera as he disappeared inside.
And… the thing about the cooldown room camera was that it was always running.
The drivers knew this.
The drivers were supposed to behave accordingly.
Obito Uchiha did not, as a rule, behave accordingly.
The feed cut to the cooldown room just as Obito was peeling off his balaclava and dropping into the leather seat with his eyes already on the wall-mounted monitor.
P1 from the Senju team hadn’t come up yet— he was waiting to be interviewed, as protocol required.
P3 from Akatsuki was still doing his slow-down lap.
Obito had the room to himself, with one thing on his mind, and he leaned forward toward the camera operator stationed in the corner with the wide-eyed, delighted expression of a man who had been waiting for this moment his entire career.
“Hey. Hi. You. Put the replay on.”
The operator, off-camera, said something inaudible.
“The replay. Of the crash. Of the crash. Don’t play dumb with me, I know it’s queued up, every TV on the planet is showing it right now— put it on the screen, come on, I just drove for two hours, give me this—”
Another inaudible response.
“I’ll do the post-race interview shirtless. I’ll do it in three languages. I’ll say something nice about the Senju team principal on camera. Just put it on.”
The screen behind him changed.
Obito’s face lit up.
It was a slow build— a long, blooming, openly-televised grin that started at the corners of his mouth and spread until his whole face was in on it, scar and all, and he pressed both hands flat against his knees and leaned forward toward the monitor like a man settling in at a movie theater.
The broadcast helpfully cut to a picture-in-picture: Obito watching the screen, and on the screen, Shisui’s onboard camera footage in the moments just after the crash.
Both fists.
The steering wheel.
The ripping motion.
The headrest.
Obito cackled, delighted.
“Oh my god!”
The camera operator said something.
“Are you seeing this. Are you— is the audience seeing this? Is this live? Tell me this is live.”
The operator confirmed it was live.
“Oh, this is the best day of my life. This is the best day of my entire career. Look at him. Look at him. He’s kicking the tire wall. He kicked it twice— oh, he flipped off the cameras, did you all see that? He flipped them off with both hands— I have been waiting for this. I have been waiting eight years for this. Eight years!”
Obito stood up. He could not seem to sit still. He was pacing the small cooldown room with one hand braced on his hip and the other gesturing wildly at the monitor.
“You don’t understand. None of you understand. Shisui Uchiha has never— and I mean never— had a bad media day in his entire life. Do you know how infuriating that is? Do you know what it’s like to share a garage with a guy who responds to a $50,000 fine by thanking the steward for taking the time to explain it to him? Thanking him. With a smile. I have been waiting for him to crack since the day I met him.”
The replay cycled back to the beginning.
Obito sat down.
“Play it again.”
And from the garage, Itachi let himself smile.
Just a little.