---

Stretched out on Masahiro’s carpet, Tomoya yawns and basks in the sun that filters in through the window. There’s a sofa, that’s for sure, but in his attempts to get comfy he’d slipped off the cushions entirely and landed on the floor. Masahiro’s carpet is so soft and nice Tomoya can’t even say it’s uncomfortable, most especially with the ambient sounds of Masahiro in the kitchen making freshly squeezed orange juice.

It feels terribly domestic. Tomoya scratches his tummy and smiles.

“You look like a cat,” Masahiro says as he sits by Tomoya on the floor. He’s got a pitcher of juice with him, which he sets easily on the coffee table, and two glasses--one of them very lightly touches Tomoya’s forehead. “Not that I’m complaining, but if you drink like that you’re going to spill, and I’m going to kill you if you stain my carpet.”

Tomoya giggles, but he does take the glass with both hands and pull himself up to sitting. Masahiro fills it dutifully before filling his own, and with a little clink of their glasses together they both start to drink out of it.

“You can’t kill me,” is what Tomoya says, teasing and happy. “You’d miss me too much.”

Masahiro’s nose crinkles. “Is that first place win getting to your head now?” But given that Tomoya gets an orange-flavoured kiss to the lips after, he supposes Masahiro doesn’t really mind.

Land Snail Racing is going to be in the final race two weeks from now; in a miraculous turn of events, Tomoya, Shin, and Gonzo took up first, second, and third places respectively. They went drinking after, Aki pouting because he landed in fifth instead of fourth, but a good few rounds of karaoke had him smiling like a goof again, and everything was as everything should be.

Tomoya went home with Masahiro to no-one’s surprise, but all that teasing aside, they were both tired enough that all they did after was sleep, Masahiro’s chest to Tomoya’s back and their arms tangled together.

It’s a little past noon now and Tomoya’s hangover has essentially left him, but that might be because Masahiro fed him so many eggs for breakfast. In any case, Tomoya decides that today is a good day.

“Mm--what’d you want to do today?” Tomoya asks, licking the stray juice off his lips. “A movie? Anime? You still have my Doraemon collection, right?”

“Actually,” Masahiro starts, leaning back on one hand--the other swishes his juice around like fine wine, “I wanted to show you something.”

“Something,” Tomoya repeats, and cryptic meaning or not, he decides he wants to see. “Okay. Where?”

Masahiro grins at him, downs all his juice, and tugs Tomoya up to standing. Tomoya’s fingers curl around Masahiro’s, his free hand reaching out for the pitcher, and together they walk over the threshold and down the hall.

While he does expect to be shown a room in some vague, general sense, what he doesn’t expect is the stuff inside. Tomoya nearly drops the pitcher, too, and it’s only because Masahiro catches it in both of hands that it doesn’t spill juice all over his priceless carpet.

There’s a writing desk and a chair--papers strewn over the former like a graceful cliche--but with them are two guitars, a speaker system, and (upon closer inspection), a CD case resting over a player.

“Holy--”

“Kokubun-san told me to keep them,” Masahiro says easily, smoothly. “Said something about…” His brows screw up, hand gesturing absently. “I don’t know, getting the band back together?”

“You’re joking.”

“Boy, I wish I was.” Masahiro lifts the pitcher up and pours juice straight into his mouth. “I had to move a lot of boxes out of the room for this, you know.”

Tomoya walks in, careful not to step on any of the wires, and his first stop is the desk and its papers. He doesn’t expect to see compositions, nor does he expect to see the sprawling notes written into lines, nor does he expect to see old lyrics to songs he thought he’d forgotten. Pencilled up top are titles (The Course of Life, …as one, Under A Free Name) and under most of them is the same line: RE-ARRANGED BY TAICHI KOKUBUN. Tomoya thinks about it--remembers that night with the guitar and the beatbox, and the word re-arranged in Joshima’s mouth--and something he’d hidden away knocks on his door like an unforgettable memory.

“He said something about… figuring out what was wrong with your old stuff and turning it new again.” Masahiro shrugs his shoulders. “The Love You Only effect. Personally I don’t get any of it, but since I’ve been sitting on this since the day we went up to the beach, I’ve looked long enough to figure out some good beats for everything, and maybe if you give me a few weeks to learn how to do the drums then maybe I could--”

He’s interrupted by a faceful of Tomoya, hands on both Masahiro’s cheeks and a mouth pressed to his own. Masahiro doesn’t even bother murmuring, doesn’t try to speak again, and instead returns the kiss with his free arm looping around Tomoya’s waist and his hand tightening around the handle of his pitcher.

When Tomoya pulls away, he smiles. “Y’know, I was the only one in JURIA who couldn’t write lyrics.”

“Really?” Masahiro’s voice is a little faraway, kiss-swollen and taken, but he doesn’t seem to argue when Tomoya pulls away and plops down into the chair.

“Really,” Tomoya agrees, going through the sheets of compositions before finding one without a title. He sees his handwriting, sees his messy, pencilled-in notes, and finds himself unable to resist a smile at Taichi’s sentimentality.

The pitcher is set on the desk in the corner by the wall. Masahiro picks up the sheet Tomoya’s looking at. “This one doesn’t have any words on it besides ‘pitch up’.”

“I told you.” Tomoya laughs, elbow on the desk and cheek on his palm. “I couldn’t write lyrics.”

“Hm.” So Masahiro hands him the paper back, tells Tomoya to wait just a second, and leaves the room. Tomoya watches the doorway, a curious expression on his face, and tries not to look too obvious in how Masahiro’s return has him brightening up.

It looks like Masahiro’s got papers too, but they’re browned and aged and held together by a paperclip. These he sets down beside Tomoya’s sheet of wordless music, making the smallest gesture in the direction of his neat pile.

Tomoya reads the title of the poem out loud: “Low Speed.” The subtitle he reads with half a laugh. “By Masahiro Matsuoka, age 15.”

“If words were all you needed, then…” Masahiro ends this in a shrug, and while his arms cross over his chest in faux toughness, the smile on his mouth betrays him as it always does.

“You’d give me yours?” Tomoya can’t stop smiling.

“What, is that such a crime?” Masahiro bends, one hand on Tomoya’s shoulder while the other picks a pencil out of the cup on the desk. He looks at the composition sheet, absently scribbling lyrics in beneath each note, and Tomoya watches, mesmerised, as Masahiro hums every note he sees and writes an appropriate syllable beneath each of them.

“No, but…” And Tomoya would say more, but Masahiro’s kissing his cheek and resting his chin on his shoulder, and that’s more than enough for Tomoya to shut up for a long time.

Masahiro keeps on writing, meanwhile. “I told you--your voice is great. And if getting the band back together means I get to listen to more of it, then I’ll write as many words as you need.”

Tomoya’s heart quivers. Under Masahiro’s hand, his composition gains a little bit more than a few strums of the guitar.

So he says it: “I love you, ‘hiro.”

The pencil flies right off the page and clatters down by the desk. “Idiot,” Masahiro scoffs, but he grins stupidly even when he shakes his head and moves to pick it up off the floor. “I love you, too.”

---

“The other guy’s not here?”

Mariko comes in with a raised brow. Tomoya glances up from his mostly-disassembled bike, nods, and then chews the inside of his cheek as he tries to set everything up. Mariko lets out a ‘huh’, walking over to her side of the garage, and Tomoya watches out of the corner of his eye as she ties her hair up and gets to work.

He’s never actually spoken to Mariko, now that he thinks about it. Besides seeing her interact with Masahiro and learning of her long-standing choice of rejection against Shin, throughout the almost-year that he’s been racing, he’s not once gotten to know what she’s like. Part of Tomoya wants to reach out--to ask about her--but the way she holds screws in her teeth and works on Shin’s bike with a quick and expert touch tells him that one wrong move will have those screws lodged deep into his eyes.

And he really needs his eyes to see.

“Where is he?”

Snapped out of his reverie, Tomoya nearly drops his wrench, but quickly regains composure with a laugh. Looks like whatever worries he might have had were for nothing. “What?”

“Matsuoka,” Mariko says plainly. She pulls a screw from her teeth and puts it in. “He’s never missed a day of work.”

“Oh, well…” Tomoya’s nose crinkles up just a little, head cocking to the side. “He’s babysitting.”

“What?”

“Babysitting--we have a friend, and he has a daughter, and so…”

Mariko pauses, and when he peeks over at her Tomoya sees how she tries to digest the thought in her mind before finally rounding off with, “That’s unexpectedly cute.”

“Yeah!” Tomoya chirps happily, immediate and quick in his response. “It is, isn’t it? I’ve been doing this stuff with Masahiro so long I figure he trusts me enough to do it on my own, so it’s no trouble at all.”

Mariko makes a pensive sound--one that Tomoya remembers Masahiro used to do when they’d first started talking--and he wonders if it’s a mechanic thing, if it’s passed down the ages and generations. He stands to pick a pipe up and fix it to his bike, both his cheeks puffed up, and Mariko keeps on tinkering with god knows what on her end.

“But today’s your final race.”

“Yeah… and?”

“You’d think a perfectionist like Matsuoka wouldn’t want to leave you alone for that.”

Tomoya pauses in the middle of turning his wrench, peering up over the bike to look at Mariko’s back. “What do you mea--”

“If you explode on track during your last race, that’d be horrible.”

“I wouldn’t--!” Tomoya squeaks in indignation, but the sight of Mariko’s shoulders shaking and the sound of her tiny peals of laughter quickly has him smiling instead. So he laughs too, getting back to work and putting Masahiro’s precious, lighter-than-average bolts into his precious Harley. “Say, Mariko-san, can I ask you something?”

Mariko whistles. “You just did.”

And Tomoya snickers, because now he gets what Shin must find so charming about her.

“Okay,” he acquiesces. The question forms itself in his mouth, simple and the slightest bit awkward, but no matter how many months have passed it seems he’s never quite been able to let it go. He reaches for a pipe and starts to clean it, dragging his teeth over his lip before asking, “Do you know why Masahiro left the MotoGP?”

Mariko nods. “Sure,” she says, easy as one-two-three. Tomoya’s in half-disbelief at the fact that he’s going to get an answer, in even more disbelief that all he really had to do was ask, but it doesn’t stop him from waiting dutifully.

“It’s because he wanted to go home.”

“Home…” Tomoya repeats this with his lips pursed, and his brows furrow as he looks up at Mariko’s back once more. On his end, he sees many things--sees a bike under his hands and the ocean at his side, sees guitar strings under his hands and wires connecting to speakers, sees Masahiro’s crooked teeth and his name safe in his mouth, sees a warm fire on a cold evening and five friends around a campfire--but he’s sure that none of those can be it for Masahiro, too. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, I’m just telling you what he told me,” she answers, standing from Shin’s bike and giving it a good once-over, gloved hands over metal and all. “It’s different for everyone, right? So for him, we can say it definitely wasn’t the pro leagues. And for me--” She nods to herself once she’s checked every nook and cranny, bending to put all her tools back into their box. “--it’s the girl I got waiting for me at home.”

Tomoya perks up. Mariko senses this enough to glance back at him and grin.

“You’re not the only one with a hot partner, Nagase,” she teases. Tomoya flushes a little, his head dipping and his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, but it’s not like she’s wrong. He expects at this point that Mariko’s going to leave--that seems to be the usual pattern for her: finish up quick and go--but he hears a chair being pulled and Mariko’s boots making noise against the concrete floor when she moves to sit on it.

When he looks back at her, she’s watching him intently, arms folded over the backrest and her lips in a friendly enough smile. “But what’s home to you?”

“Me?”

“Sure. I got time to kill.”

And Tomoya thinks about it, flicking through those initial images. He thinks about his old home of JURIA, his new home of Land Snail Racing, and his newer home of Masahiro. He thinks about music and races, and the feel of a mouth on his own--he thinks of friends and lovers, of failure and success. Which of these makes him up the most? Which of these says Tomoya Nagase the loudest? The word is ‘home’, but he wonders if home is a place or setting or set of people that you can come to at all.

He’s surprised when Mariko comes over and helps him put his bike back together, but she works so quickly he supposes he’s grateful for the help. Tomoya smiles sheepishly, mouths a ‘thank you’, and smiles even wider when she mouths ‘don’t mention it’ back at him.

In the end his answers ends up being, “I’m not sure.”

“That’s fair,” Mariko says in reply, neither enlightened nor disappointed.

“I don’t think I can choose just one thing,” Tomoya admits. “You know?”

And Mariko does know, because she grins and gives him a friendly punch to the arm. “Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

---

Masahiro pulls him away from prying eyes to kiss him. They’re blocked by the shade of a giant umbrella and the length of a thick pole, but given the fact that the race is about to start, it’s not like there’s anyone to hide from. Tomoya coos, smiling into it, and the feel of Masahiro’s thumb brushing his cheekbone almost has him losing his footing entirely.

“Easy,” Masahiro breathes, tongue lightly touching the swell of Tomoya’s mouth and hands holding him steady. It’s a little embarrassing; Tomoya wishes he were more elegant about these things. But given that Masahiro pulls away in a tug of Tomoya’s lip with his teeth, he also supposes there’s no real reason to complain.

Tomoya’s arms loop over Masahiro’s shoulders, locking behind his neck with both wrists touching. “Can you believe how far we’ve gotten?”

“Us?” Masahiro punctuates this with a brush of his nose to Tomoya’s, and the gesture is so sweet Tomoya can’t help but kiss him again. “Or Land Snail Racing?”

“Both,” Tomoya says, his hands trailing up his neck and over the soft curves of Masahiro’s jaw. The way Masahiro turns his head and kisses his palm gets his heart fluttering again, but this time he’s held tight enough to keep from stumbling in the wake of it.

Masahiro smiles at him, obvious all the way to the crinkle of his eyes. “Yeah, I can believe it.”

“I can’t.”

“Then--“ Now Masahiro reaches up, pecking Tomoya’s forehead. “--I’ll believe enough for the both of us.”

“Masahiro…”

And Tomoya would say more, but from behind him comes, “Are we interrupting?”

A whole rush of thoughts comes into Tomoya’s mind just then: Have we been found out? Is that a reporter? Did they get pictures of me kissing Masahiro? Oh God, oh no, I can’t have a scandal for liking men, not now that we’re so close to winning, not now that—

But they’re all quelled when Masahiro pulls him closer and says, “Took you guys long enough.”

“Shige was trying to find ‘the perfect outfit’.” At that Tomoya turns, the sight of Joshima and Tatsuya coming up making his legs turn to jelly again. “Said something about how he wanted it to be ‘supportive of the snails’, so—“

Joshima spreads his arms wide, making a bit of a spin when he stops walking. “Leaf print!”

“What’re you doing here?” Tomoya walks just enough to leave Masahiro’s grip, but on instinct his hand reaches back and clasps onto Masahiro’s all the same. “You guys never come to my—“

“Matsuoka told us about it,” Tatsuya says, grinning. “Said it was your big day today, so…”

“So we came!” Joshima rounds off happily. His arm slings over Tatsuya’s shoulders, Tatsuya’s hand reaches up to ruffle Joshima’s hair, and Tomoya watches with wide eyes because he’s still in denial of what’s happening before him.

Then he glances at Masahiro. “You told them?”

“Hey.” Masahiro shrugs his shoulders. “I just thought you’d like your friends to be here for you.”

“But where’s Taichi-kun?”

“He couldn’t make it,” Joshima answers, but not without a comforting smile to ease the wash of disappointment that swells in Tomoya’s heart. “His wife had time off for lunch today, and what with him and Naomi-chan both at home…”

“Oh.” That, at least, Tomoya can understand.

“Don’t worry, though,” Tatsuya says, waving his hand dismissively. “Shige and Matsuoka and I, we’re gonna take a whole truckload of pictures, so Taichi won’t miss a thing.”

Tomoya laughs; Masahiro squeezes his hand, and Tomoya returns it without looking back. “You guys—“

Joshima chuckles. “Don’t make that face, Nagase. We’re JURIA, right? Either we all cheer for you or we don’t at all.”

“All or nothing,” Tatsuya adds, and when he brings his fist up for a bump, Tomoya blinks before moving on to punch it.

He remembers: the stolen moments before their performances, the days they had to record in the studio, the time before Taichi discovered them and they played out on the street. Everything they did, they decided to do together. Even disbanding was something they agreed on without regret. And the more he thinks about the friends that’d been there for him, the happier he gets, even as the faces shuffle beyond JURIA and to Land Snail Racing, instead.

Then he thinks of the compositions in Masahiro’s newly-converted music room, how Taichi had asked Masahiro specifically to do something for him. And that makes Tomoya lift his head.

He’s the one who pulls Masahiro closer this time, their hands clasped together tightly.

“Masahiro gave me lyrics,” he says.

“What?” Joshima replies.

A little flustered (more so when Masahiro calls his name in question), Tomoya repeats, “Masahiro gave me lyrics.”

The moment Tatsuya’s expression goes curious and Joshima’s goes warm, Tomoya wants so badly to explain what he means. But an announcement comes from the speakers around them for the start of the race, and before Tomoya realizes what’s happening he’s rushing to his bike to make it there.

---

Shin gathers them up one last time before they get on their bikes. They stand in a circle, arms around each other’s shoulders and heads ducked in.

“We made it this far, guys,” Shin says. “The final race.”

“I accept thanks in the form of checks,” Aki purrs, and as Tomoya and Gonzo laugh, Shin uses the toe of his boot to nudge him in the shin.

“That guy aside—my point is, I’m happy we got to race together.” Shin’s grip tightens where it’s curled around Tomoya’s shoulder and tightens around Gonzo’s frame as well. They return the warmth of it, the feelings incorporated, and where Aki stands between them, he receives the same treatment.

When Shin smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle. Tomoya thinks about it, and Shin might be the same age as Joshima. “I’m happy we could do our best.

“We don’t have to win now, and we don’t have to be the over-all champions. LSR is just a group of friends who like to ride--and I think we’ve all earned something just standing here today. What I want you guys to do is focus on having fun, and as long as you can agree to that, then we’ll have the best race ever, no matter the outcome.”

Tomoya nods hard. “I will!”

Aki grins. “I never take this stuff seriously, Shin.”

Gonzo bows. “I agree.”

“In that case—“ Shin dips his head lower. “—who’s the best team in Japan?”

The four of them shout Land Snail Racing at once.

Tomoya whispers, “And JURIA.” under his breath.

---

When he looks around him, immediately he sees his bike brothers. He sees each number and each name, listening to the rev of the each bine’s engine, and sees them hunched over just like Tomoya has been for a few seconds now. The announcer counts how many seconds ‘till the starter pistol is fired, and then it is. With that, everyone zooms away.

For a split-second, Tomoya sees JURIA in the crowd.

Then he sees the world rush around him and his engine roars to life.

---

There’s a lot still in store for him. There is more than riding a bike on a beach day, or jamming with your friends around a campfire, or karaoke where there is sing and dance and alcohol. And sometimes there’s no need to make any form of distinction, even when one place seems far too different to be part of the same universe as the rest.

In the end, Land Snail Racing hits second. Shin loses against another racer by a hair, but LSR is so busy picking Shin up and tossing him in the air they don’t quite realise he needs his space first.

They return to their area, arms around each other’s shoulders. When Tomoya sees JURIA there waiting for him, he brightens up like Christmas day.

At introductions, Shin decides he likes them. Joshima in turn gives his smile of approval.

And Tomoya can tell why, when kissing Masahiro as he comes forward has both leaders grinning at them.

In a way, Tomoya used to be worried. When the band tanked and he had to move to racing, when racing worked well and the music came back.

But home doesn’t have to move on and home doesn’t have to be new. Home doesn’t evolve to be different with him, and that’s why it feels like home. Not a place to live in all the time, but a place to come to when he’s lost.

His father was right, but so was his mother. To ride a bike is to be free, but so too is to make music. Tomoya tells himself he’s lucky to be able to do both.

In the end, JURIA doesn’t become JURIA. Taichi says something about how the brand belongs to a different set of men—how now that they have Masahiro joining the fray, they’ll need a new name entirely.

“Tokyo,” is what Masahiro suggests. “The best city in the world.”

“But we gotta make it more distinct, more Google-able!” Tomoya insists. “Maybe Tokio, like the good old days?”

“I liked the big letters,” Tatsuya offers.

So TOKIO they become.

Land Snail Racing continues, but with the next big race happening next year, they stick to drag races. It’s not nearly as luxurious, but it’s exciting, and when one day a new player joins their team with the name TTY on his back, Tomoya hugs Tatsuya tight and cheers about how happy he is.

Once a month, LSR comes together. Masahiro’s still their mechanic and still kisses Tomoya when no-one’s looking, and now that Tatsuya’s a member Joshima brings him lunch. Nobody is quite as loved as Naomi, though, and Tomoya half-suspects the only reason Taichi brings her over sometimes is because he’s got to rub it in everyone’s faces how his child is cuter than all of them.

Tomoya is the happiest he’s ever been.

---

Putting in the handlebars to his motorbike, Tomoya’s gaze shifts to where Masahiro’s deftly messing with the engine.

He asks, “How did you feel after leaving the Moto GP?”

Masahiro answers, “The happiest I’ve ever been.”