[PART I] 🏍₊˚⊹ The Shadow Curve -- Moto Racer AU (Zaroth/Selkie)
"You're chasing a myth," the clerk warned.
Selkie smirked, visor pulled halfway up, chewing on a dried energy bar. "Then why'd you flinch when I said his name?"
The mechanic behind the counter scowled, muttering something about damn kids with death wishes, but Selkie just grinned like a man sprinting toward a cliff because he liked the fall.
Eventually, the clerk gave up trying to scare him off and finally gave him the lead. A location. Coordinates scrawled on oil-smudged paper.
"Off-grid. No active track. No sponsors. Just a garage and a ghost. Don't say I didn't warn ya."
Selkie took it with a mock salute, "I live off bad decisions."
It was sunset when he finally rolled up. Dust caked his boots. His hoverbike purred beneath him like a creature just barely tamed. The horizon bled orange into the dunes, nestled between two fractured ridged stood the place.
A half-sunken garage swallowed by sand and time. Rust on every bolt. Silence in every crevice.
But etched into the gate in barely-legible weld-scars was a single initial,
He stepped inside. It was dark and humming, low and alive. Under the dust, sleek black bikes under tarps. Trophy cases cracked with age. Rows of helmets like ancient relics. And there—lit only by flickering arc sparks—stood a figure bent over a custom engine.
Longer hair now. Rough. Burned at the ends. His silhouette cut from obsidian and lighting.
Zaroth turned. His eyes still burned. "... You're not lost."
Selkie grinned, all teeth and adrenaline. Like he already knew the outcome. "Nope. I found you on purpose."
Zaroth's grp didn't loosen on the wrench. He sighed, "Go away."
"I'll crash without one."
Selkie didn't back down. He never did.
"I know who you are. What you were. I watched every race. Built my rig from your specs. I know your cornering angle better than I know my own pulse."
Zaroth paused, just for a second. "... And?"
The kind that threatened to echo. Then Zaroth turned back to his work.
Selkie tilted his head, grin crooked. "Then teach me how to crash better."
Zaroth didn’t smile. But something in his stance shifted. The smallest twitch at the edge of his mouth.
The first time Zaroth said no, it was a stare that could've silenced thunder.
The second time, he hurled a rag at a pile of parts without even looking up.
The third time, it was 3am, and Selkie had alphabetized every bolt, wrench, and coil on the man's worktable. By type. With labels.
"You have three seconds before I staple your kneecaps."
And yet. Selkie came back.
Sometimes he just sat on an overturned crate, tossing tools in the air like a bored street rat, narrating every illegal circuit he'd run that month. Sometimes he watched Zaroth work without saying a word.
Once, he brought a cat. Just left it there like an offering.
Zaroth pretended not to notice. But the cat stayed. And so did Selkie.
One night, after a storm cracked across the dunes and blacked out the local grid, Zaroth returned to the garage, soaked to the bone—only to find Selkie already inside.
Mud on his boots. Blood on his knuckles. A cracked helmet in his lap and a look in his eyes that said he hadn’t blinked in hours.
"They said no one could drift the glass-edge turn," Selkie said quietly. "But I almost had it. Almost."
Zaroth didn't move. He stood in the doorway, shadow curling at his feet like a dog raised for war.
Selkie didn’t look up. "You gonna keep saying no?" he asked, voice thinner now. "Or are you just scared I’ll be better?"
Zaroth moved. Three strides and he was in front of him, grabbing the collar of Selkie's jacket and yanking him up to eye level. Sparks jumped from the live core behind them. Every hair on Selkie’s arms stood up.
"You think racing is just going fast until the wind likes you back? You think I disappeared because I got bored?"
Selkie held his gaze. Wild-eyed. Stupid. Stubborn.
"No. I think you disappeared because you're scared of what happens when someone actually sees you."
That silence? It was volcanic.
Then Zaroth dropped him. Turned away.
"Fix your helmet. And your posture. Your spine's pathetic."
Selkie blinked. Still breathless. "Wait—was that... a critique?"
Just tossed a small data-chip over his shoulder. Selkie caught it. The casing shimmered—encrypted maps, tuning logs, telemetry from long-lost races. Private data.
Stuff no one had seen in years.
"That’s a conditional if you stop talking for the next hour."
That night, Selkie didn’t stop smiling. Not even once.
Even when he curled up on the garage cot, helmet still cracked beside him, engine parts humming in the next room, and a shadow leaning over a desk just past the light—
Like something inside Zaroth had started waking up again. And this time, it wasn’t going to sleep quietly.
