It wasn't often Seto Kaiba, President and CEO of Fortune's 15th ranked corporation, could be found lying full-length on oil-stained concrete, wearing a very untypical jeans and long-sleeve t-shirt. Only when he could steal the time to work on his Sprint, and this afternoon would be one of those times.

It really hadn't been that difficult to leave work early when Tristan had called with an offer of dinner in exchange for a closer look at the car. For all of the demands on his time and attention, one of the benefits of his station was the ability to reschedule and postpone, though truthfully there wasn't all that much he needed to rearrange.

Seto was immersed in checking the fitting on the tailpipe, he'd felt a subtle shimmy last time he'd run but couldn't see anything yet. Not having a lift in the garage, Seto was simply eyeballing what he could. All his attention was on the car, he'd left the door open trusting Tristan would figure out where to find him.

Tristan knew where Seto typically parked, and after several trips to the garage he had imprinted the location to memory and hadn't gotten lost in weeks.

He didn't leave work early either, in general. But with his pay raise at the shop, Tristan finally could bid farewell to the funny hours in the evenings and on Saturdays at the Phoenix. He only spent a few hours there in the afternoon, training the new help, which left his late afternoons and evenings totally free. It felt good to feel...alive for once at night, instead of dog tired.

Tristan saw the slab of golden light cutting a wedge across the entrance ramp, and knew Seto left the door open for him. Unsure of the other man's tastes, the bigger brunet took the midroad. He brought a pair of hot pastrami sandwiches and two styrofoam bowls of vegetable soup from the deli he occasionally visited on the way home.

"Taylor Catering," Tristan yodeled, setting the bag down just inside the door and turning back to find a manual button to close it behind him.

As the door rattled down Seto stood, unconsciously brushing barely-existant dirt off his clothes. "Corporate slogan: If you've got the car, we deliver?" he asked in dry amusement, leaning back against the trunk.

"...Better than what I had in mind," Tristan laughed, and bent with a grunt to pick up the rustling paper sack once more and carry it toward where Seto stood, "'Have your soup while we ogle your coupe' sounds like I'm asking for a restraining order. How's it going?"

The bag did not, of course, end up on the trunk lid. Tristan rolled the top of the sack down and held it gingerly under his arm while he stood a comfortable conversation distance away from Seto.

A small chuckle escaped Seto and he pushed away from the car, though his fingertips did trail along the length as he moved toward Tristan. "If I ever intend to sabotage the competition's ad department, would you be up for hire?" Seto took a sandwich from the bag and the soup with a plastic spoon (plastic, no less and how long had it been since Seto had a plastic spoon in his hands?) then looked around vaguely for a place to eat. "He's got the slightest vibration I'm trying to locate, though I think I'll have to get him up on a lift before I find it." Finally Seto settled for going over to a black Lincoln and setting the soup on the trunk of that car before starting in on the sandwich.

Tristan obediently held the bag out for Seto to get at, and afterward ambled behind him towards the Lincoln. He gently let the paper sack rest on the trunk and dug out his own half of dinner, and leaned there next to the other's elbow. "You still running a carbuerator or you switched to fuel injection?" He asked, prying the lid off of his own cup of soup. Steam curled up out of the thick red broth.

Seto stopped eating long enough to give Tristan a long, disbelieving look. Then he smiled, almost a smirk really. "You can see for yourself and would you like that tour as an appetizer or a desert?"

"Food first. Or you won't get back to it 'til it's cold," Tristan replied flippantly, and unbent enough to shoulder the older man. "Don't give me that look, dude. It pains some guys to think about switching over if it didn't come that way, stock."

"Cretins," Seto murmured, with only half his attention. There had been a warm, comfortable feeling in the physical contact that was entirely distracting. Precious little in Seto's life could be placed in the category of 'companionable' and he found himself reluctant to move.

The last two bites of his sandwich were somehow difficult to swallow.

Finally, he pulled the lid off his own soup, ignoring the spoon for the moment in favor of drinking the liquid portion. "Remind me to have a soda machine put in," he said.

...The not-complaint given with Seto's matter of fact delivery immediately reminded Tristan (with a touch of embarrassment) that he hadn't gotten everything they needed. "Sorry about that," he apologized with chagrin. So used to body contact that the teasing bump of shoulders didn't distract him at all, and so went quietly back to spooning up mouthfuls of hot soup. The Lincoln's trunk was low, which made for a little trouble eating. Out of frustration, Tristan eventually stood up, turned around and gingerly leaned his ass against the top of the fender, cradling his bowl in his hands. "You need a pickup truck if you're going to eat off it," he quipped, chin tipping sideways after a swallow to grin at Seto.

Seto looked slowly and pointedly around the mostly-empty garage. With the exception of the Lincoln and Seto's own Mustang, there were only two other cars on this level. He looked back at Tristan and said dryly, "I'll order one with the soda machine," the small quirk of his lips an offering to share the joke.

Deciding he was done, Seto gathered up the detrius of his meal and tossed it in the trash can by the door. Predictably, he walked back over not to where Tristan was still leaning but to the Sprint. In unconscious mirroring, Seto turned to face him, resting his hip against the trunk. "If you could own any one car, what would it be?"

If Tristan wasn't used to Seto's body language by this point, he would have been bewildered, or even put off. As it was...he simply gave the other man's movement away from him the equivalent of a mental shrug, and scraped at the dregs of his bowl before reaching back for his sandwich. Seto was already finished? Damn power luncher. Tristan was determined to drag this out for as long as he could, as the disappearance of the food and the hour or so he might spend crawling all over the car would mean he'd have no more excuse to stay.

He gave the other's question some thought, chewing on tough sourdough while he pondered it. "Mm." He held up one forefinger, asking for one second more while he swallowed when the right car came to him. "To drive? Hard to pick one. Either a Lamborghini Countach," Tristan said the name like a chocolate dessert, "...Or a 1969 GTO Judge. Wait. You know what? Wrong order. Goat first, then the Countach. What about you? Or did you already find your dream car?" He echoed the question with a teasing smirk.

Seto's hand dropped immediately and unconsciously to run across the smooth metal. Something about the juxtaposition of the words 'dream' and 'car' stirred a feeling of unease, which he ruthlessly ignored. "Yes, I suppose I have. Though I've always wondered if the Viper lives up to it's hype."

Seto ran his fingertips along the trunk, his immobile pacing gesture. The garage seemed... smaller somehow despite it's relative emptiness. He felt restless, not certain over what or why.

"Of course it does, it's a frigging Viper," Tristan retorted, tossing Seto a look of feigned shock, "I'm not much into them because I can't work on 'em. The engine block's so crammed into that teeny space under the hood that you can't even change the oil on your own."

Hazel eyes narrowed in consideration as Tristan watched the abrupt change in Seto. Had he said something wrong? He dusted his hands off, gave them a swipe on his jeans and turned to drop his odds and ends into the paper bag, and turned slowly to take the bundle to the trash barrel. "S'why I don't like these new carbon-copy sedans much, either. They all depend on the dealer too much."

Tristan rubbed his palms together and turned back, ignoring the cool air stubbornly as he swept his jacket off and tossed it negligently against one of the garage support pillars. "Okay. You promised."

Straightening immediately, Seto opened the driver's door to pop the hood latch. And... he had to restrain himself from stepping between Tristan and the car, suddenly defensive about letting someone else see what he'd poured so much of his time and energy into. He made himself remember how much he wanted to show off the car to someone who could truly understand and appreciate the modifications he'd made.

It wasn't that he was apprehensive exactly, but he found Tristan's opinion mattered. He was proud and nervous and absolutely none of that reflected in his face as he slowly moved around to the front of the Sprint to unlatch the hood. When he'd propped it up, Seto took one small step sideways.

'It's all yours,' or 'there you are' or even 'go ahead'. Any of them would have been an easy, appropriate thing to say. Absurdly, Seto found he couldn't speak, and settled for a nonchalant wave in lieu of words.

Tristan would never have asked for anything more than Seto wanted to give - he understood the protective attachment to a vehicle, though his relationship with his own had lessened somewhat to nostalgia. But he knew what it was like to watch someone else looking over your work, and your baby, though he largely missed the majority of Seto's motivations. Needless to say - even with Seto's features blank, his own good sense kept him at bay. He walked past Seto with the vague stomach flutter of a man reaching the altar of his own church, and rested the palms of his hands on the glossy finish just above the right headlight. Here, the answer to a much earlier question was obvious.

"You might want to flush the fuel injection," Tristan said, "Or at least check it. You said sh--" Pause. "The car shimmies a little?"

Seto nodded a little stiffly at Tristan's advice. He relaxed fractionally as he watched appreciation light the hazel eyes looking over the engine, until he was feeling more or less normal. "Right. It's the smallest... here, get in and you can feel for yourself."

Get in? But that was--oh hell. Tristan told himself firmly to relax, since Seto's response to him (as much as he was used to it) was seizing him up a little. He looked up at the older man, questioning him with his gaze, and then started for the driver's side, and stopped. "You start it. If it does it, I'll know."

Seto simply nodded again and moved around the car, going around the back rather than passing Tristan. His fingers did not trail along the car, in fact, his body didn't even come in contact with the frame until he reached out to open the door. Sliding into the drivers seat, Seto reached out to turn the key he'd left in the ignition.

As the engine thrummed to life under his feet, he fought down a sense of inevatiblity, of something unseen and unmovable. He was off and he knew it, wondering for the first time this evening if he should simply leave.

With an internal grimace of disgust at himself, Seto ruthlessly forced his mind to listen to the car. No... no... *there*, there it was. "Hear that?" he asked.

It was an almost imperceptible change in the otherwise impressive throaty purling of the engine. And what was more - the panels actually shook at intervals, though only enough to vibrate more obviously and add a metallic tang to the cough in the engine noise.

"Got it. You're definitely not hearing things," Tristan called over the reverberations bouncing around the garage from the idling engine. He listened quietly after that, listening for any pattern to the sudden shakes.

Leaving the motor running, Seto got out of the car, leaving the door open but turning to cross his arms against the roof. "I'm afraid last time we made a run I knocked something loose. I'll have to put him up on the lift at home before I can really tell, I suppose."

"Why do you call it a 'he'?" Tristan asked once the engine noise idled down to a purr, voice not teasing or demanding, but simply genuinely curious. He hurried to add to the question, lest he get a backlash for not explaining himself well enough. "Just that--you're not most people, obviously," Obviously, Tristan's inner cynic announced, and the brunet dropped his head with a smile that was quickly swallowed, before he looked up at Seto once again around the raised hood, "I know that. Most people call cars 'she.' I do it."

Seto was unaware of the hanging silence that stretched between them. He'd never considered the car as anything other than male. Every line, every inch of the chassis was nothing but power, pure and simple. For all his possessiveness, he didn't own the Sprint as much as it was his partner.

How did you put something like that in words? "Look at this car," he finally said, his voice somehow reflecting both amusement and challenge, "and tell me it's feminine."

On a deeper level, Seto acknowledged that this was one of the things he enjoyed about spending time with Tristan. Somehow the younger man had a way of challenging his ingrained views in a nonagressive way. Seto found himself thinking more than calculating which was a rare and precious thing indeed.

"Well...it..." Tristan trailed off, canting his head sideways at the long white side panels with their barely perceptible curves. It had a nose like an arrow. And the hood curved down at the nose - he knew it by memory, even with the hood up - the whole works looked like a roman-nosed horse.

He didn't evaluate by power. He was of the opinion that women were actually pretty powerful creatures, having been thoroughly messed up more than once by one. And he was so used to the feminine when referring to vehicles that it had long since lost its reasoning.

Tristan hadn't really *looked* at an automobile like that in a very long time. Somehow, Seto was capable of being brusque, businesslike and sober, and yet revealed a slice of bright imagination occasionally like a burst of unexpected light. He was forever causing Tristan to pay more attention, to be precise, rather than generalize.

"It isn't, now that you mention it," Tristan admitted, looking up from his perusal with a wry expression.

As Seto felt a deep rush of satisfaction he slid back into the car to flip the ignition back off, mostly due to the smirk he couldn't keep from crawling across his face. He'd been around Tristan enough to realize that sometimes they misread each other and while it was enjoyable to cross swords with the other man, Seto wasn't really in the mood for their spark-and-stone dance tonight.

When the garage was silent again, he got out of the car feeling better than he had all evening. More generous. The motor had only been running a short while, not really long enough to be too hot to the touch if Tristan wanted to get hands-on with the engine.

"Go ahead," Seto said easily, "I'll let you look at whatever you want minus the annoying tour guide commentary."

The image of Seto as a bright-and-bubbly tour guide, handing out random factoids like candy, and the stubborn refusal of his mind to accept that image surprised Tristan into snickering with sympathy. He shook his head, and turned his gaze back down onto the engine block that ticked lightly now as the metal cooled.

The longer Tristan looked, the broader his smile grew. "Nice setup. Doesn't surprise me. Is this an original block or a kit?" It was hard to tell under the road grime, and the wiring and hoses were all new. Judging from the year and make of the car - he took a guess at the engine type, that it wasn't a 429. Parts would have been a bitch to find for that, anyway.

He was fascinated with the car. Yes. But...before Tristan could make a positive ID on the engine, his thoughts were sidetracking seriously. "Where'd you find him?" He asked, audibly stumbling over the last bit but trying anyway.

Seto was thinking of the hours he'd spent over that engine when Tristan's question slammed into him. The faint, nostalgic smile vanished around a world that seemed to suddenly contain less oxygen than it had moments before. His hands where they were splayed across the roof clenched, until the tips of his fingers whitened under the pressure.

"Vancouver," he said in a carefully neutral voice, his eyes fixed on the smooth expanse of metal before him. And because it was Tristan, and ONLY because it was Tristan, who had earned a measure of his trust and respect, he continued. "I'll tell you the story, but not here. And maybe not sober."

"The trailering was *that* bad?" Tristan replied with the kind of smile that a dog usually gives along with a hopeful wag. He held up a hand before Seto could possibly spontaneously combust. "Forgive me. That's okay, Seto. Whenever you want. Or not at all, if you'd rather. Wherever it came from, it's a beautiful car."

Tristan was bewildered by the other's sudden icing down, but knew that for all their familiar subjects, the older brunet was still mostly uncharted territory, and he'd probably run across a sharp turn every now and then for a long time to come.

Blinking once, Seto was startled into a laugh, a deep, rich sound that drained all the tension out of him like water. Shaking his head with a smile, he couldn't help but admire all over again the way Tristan had of so easily... it wasn't that he breached Seto's defenses as much as walked right through them as if they were nothing but smoke. smoke and mirrors, Seto thought,not without a trace of self-depreciating irony.

"I'd like to tell you, I think. Do you have time to come up to the house tonight? If nothing else, we could get the car up on the lift and give you the full tour," he added, the inducement offered in such an overdone sly tone he wished he had a handful of candy to offer like a streetcorner pusher.

Like he'd said. Sharp turns. What followed was a helpless, amused grin of concession. Tristan straightened and stepped back, and his hands lifted away from his sides and fell back with a similarly defeated shrug. "You got me. I don't have anything else planned tonight. And even if I did..." He trailed off with a shake of his head, implying that there was no resisting the siren call.

"Alright. Let's go then." Seto once again slid into the driver's seat. The passenger door was already unlocked since he hadn't known quite what Tristan was going to want to see, or from what angle.

Tristan reached up for the lip of the hood and brought it down slowly, dropping it into place with a solid, satisfying clang. He stood in front of the Mustang for three comical seconds, watching Seto and not sure if he was supposed to get *in* or follow.

Aw, fuck it. Tristan jogged around the opposite side of the car and when an experimental tug on the door handle popped it open, he slid quickly into the passenger seat.

---

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