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buckysleftbicep · 29 days ago

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just one race 𐙚 b.b

pairing: biker!bucky barnes x fem!biker!reader (modern au)

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, unprotected sex, rough sex, creampie, bathroom sex, light choking, illegal street racing, past hook-up, unresolved sexual tension

summary: two years ago, you fucked bucky and never called back. when he sees you again, he's not just racing for the win.

word count: 4.2k

author's note: hi my loves, i am such a huge fun of biker!bucky and i had this fic idea for a few weeks now, and i am posting it in hopes it won't flop! thank you for stopping by, i love you guys and stay safe out there!

The night was thick with heat—not warmth, not comfort—but something oppressive, electric, alive.

Humidity clung to your skin like sweat-slick silk, rising off the pavement in ghostly waves, curling around bare shoulders and whispered sins.

The air reeked of asphalt and adrenaline, burnt rubber and gasoline, all of it mixing into a cocktail so heady it made your lungs ache and your blood sing.

Beneath the overpass, under a patchwork canopy of shadows, steel girders, and flickering neon signs, the city’s underground pulse came to life.

Not the kind that tourists raved about or cops pretended didn’t exist—this was the real vein, the one that throbbed with danger and speed and sin.

Headlights cut through the dark like predator eyes. Red, white, electric blue—each beam a challenge, each growl of an engine a warning.

Music blared from somewhere in the chaos—low, dirty, aggressive.

A bassline so filthy it made bones rattle. The kind of rhythm that didn’t just pulse—it throbbed, deep and rhythmic like the start of something inevitable.

They called it Race Night.

And tonight, it had drawn every devil out of their hole.

Bikes lined the cracked concrete in a gleaming, growling row—vintage beasts and futuristic monsters, chrome and matte black armour, custom paint that caught the flicker of streetlight and made it scream.

Exhaust hissed like serpents, engines purred and snarled, pacing like wolves too long caged.

Men leaned against the machines with practiced indifference—leather jackets unzipped halfway down chests, heavy boots planted wide, arms crossed, smirks loaded.

Cigarettes dangled from lips or fingers, flicked to the ground and crushed under heels. The air swirled with smoke and sweat and sharp-edged testosterone.

Women danced to the beat, hips winding slow, lip gloss catching the neon. Some perched on the backs of bikes like queens on their thrones—dangerous, and entirely in control.

It wasn’t just a race. It was a ritual.

And you and Yelena were right on time.

The moment your engines growled into the lot, the crowd shifted. A ripple moved through the bodies—heads turning, eyes locking.

They felt you before they saw you.

Yelena swung off her bike first—combat boots hitting pavement with a steel-toed thud.

Her blonde hair was cropped and slicked back beneath the dull orange glow of the streetlamps.

She wore a blood-red tank, skin tight, under a cropped black leather jacket. Black jeans clung to her hips like a second skin, tucked into her boots, a chain hanging low on her thigh.

Fingerless gloves flexed as she reached up and loosened the strap of her helmet.

She looked like hell’s favourite riot.

You matched her step for step, the throb of your boots a slow echo behind hers. Your bike purred low behind you, engine cooling, metal ticking beneath the night air.

You were dressed to kill—and not just in speed.

Black, heeled boots that clicked sharp against the asphalt. A leather jacket worn open, the cut just sharp enough to flatter and flare.

Underneath—straps, black as sin, crossing your chest and wrapping around your ribcage like a harness meant to tempt more than protect. High-waisted jeans hugged your thighs with ruthless precision, their seams stitched for seduction.

A man muttered, breath caught in his throat—“Holy fuck.”

Yelena smirked without looking. “Let them stare, honey”.

“Don’t they always?” you murmured back, voice low and amused.

And they did. The crowd parted for you like water bending around fire. Necks craned. One guy’s eyes trailing down your frame like a prayer that turned blasphemous by the time it hit your hips.

But you didn’t slow. Didn’t even blink.

Because you felt it. That pulse. That electricity. That pull.

And then—you saw him.

Standing across the lot, against the black gleam of his bike like he was born from the smoke that rose off the street.

Bucky.

The last time you’d seen him, your back had been pressed against a bathroom mirror and his hand had been shoved under your skirt, voice all gravel and grit. You hadn’t forgotten that mouth.

That stare. Those fucking hands.

And by the looks of it, neither had he.

He stood with his arms crossed, weight cocked to one hip, that leather jacket worn open just enough to show the black tee beneath—tight, stretched across his chest, framing muscle like it was poured on.

His sleeves pushed up just far enough to expose his forearms, thick and veined, skin dusted with sweat and sin. His jeans hung low on his hips, his boots scuffed, heavy, like they’d hit the pavement too many times to count.

His dark hair was longer now—wilder, swept back from his face in waves that curled just slightly at the tips. That jaw could cut glass, and that damn smirk.

And his eyes— Those goddamn eyes.

Glacial blue, intense, focused. Like he hadn’t looked away since that night.

And fuck, he was looking at you now like he could still taste you on his tongue.

You didn’t even have to close your eyes to remember that night, two years ago.

The bass has been deafening.

It throbbed through the floors, pulsed through your bones—like a second heartbeat, slow and carnal.

Lights strobed in erratic bursts of violet and cobalt, casting fractured shadows across slick skin and open mouths. The place smelled like sex and tequila.

You were on your third drink, fingers wet from the condensation of the glass, tongue still tingling from the last shot.

The crowd swelled around you, the music drowning your thoughts, but your body was wired—aware. Hips swaying with each beat, the weight of your leather skirt hitching higher on your thighs with every deliberate roll.

And then you saw him. Across the floor. Like a sin you forgot to confess.

Bucky Barnes.

He stood with a beer in hand, barely touched, jaw sharp in the flashes of blacklight, hair mussed like he’d ridden there with his helmet off.

A leather jacket hung off his shoulders like it had no right not to be wrapped around yours instead.

The black tee underneath clung to his chest, sleeves rolled high enough to reveal the hard cut of his arms, veins thick, hands calloused. Tattoos peeked beneath the cuff of one sleeve—dark ink winding over muscle.

And he was staring. Right at you. No shame. No hesitation. Like he’d seen a challenge.

Like he knew exactly what you’d taste like. And you didn’t run.

You danced. You let the music slink up your spine, let your hands drag slow down your sides, ass grinding to the beat like a dare. You could feel him moving closer before you even turned around.

Then—contact.

His hands found your hips. Hot, heavy, possessive. And you didn’t stop him.

You pressed back, spine arching against his chest, your ass grinding into the unmistakable bulge in his jeans. A slow exhale left him, rough and low.

“Didn’t think an angel like you belonged somewhere like this,” he rasped, voice dark velvet at your ear.

You smiled. Slow. Sharp. “If you think I’m an angel,” you purred, “you haven’t been paying attention.”

That was all it took.

The kiss was brutal. No hesitation. No finesse. Just need.

Teeth and tongue, lips bruising, breath stolen. His hands gripped your waist like he’d waited years for it.

You felt him—fuck, you felt him—thick and hard, pressing into the curve of your ass through the denim. He rutted against you, hungry, and you gasped, letting him swallow it.

You were stumbling through the crowd, laughing into his mouth between kisses, the club melting around you like it no longer existed. Your hand was in his, fingers locked, his grip tight.

You didn’t even make it to the hallway.

He kicked open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind you, the echo swallowed by the thump of bass outside. The lights were harsh, the mirror already fogged from the sweat rolling off your bodies.

Then he was on you. Mouth crashing to yours. Hands everywhere.

Your back hit the counter. Hard. The marble dug into your spine. You didn’t care.

His fingers were already at your top, yanking it down, dragging your bra with it. His mouth latched onto your breast, sucking hard, his teeth scraping over your nipple with just enough pressure to make your knees buckle.

Your head fell back. You moaned loud and messy, fingers scrambling into his hair.

“Fuck—” you gasped, hips bucking.

He was feral.

Your skirt was shoved up, your panties torn at the seam with one sharp tug. He growled at the sight of your slick cunt already glistening, the heat of it radiating up at him.

“You that wet for me already?” he grunted, palming your thigh as he stepped between your legs.

Your legs wrapped around his hips before he could finish the question. He fumbled with his jeans, breath ragged, and his cock sprang free—thick, flushed, already leaking.

He rubbed the head through your folds, slow, teasing, gathering the slick there.

“Bucky—” you panted, hands gripping his shoulders.

“Say it again,” he gritted out.

“Bucky,” you moaned, almost begging now. “Please. I need—”

That was it.

He thrust into you in one hard stroke.

You cried out, hands flying to the edge of the sink to brace yourself as he bottomed out inside you. The stretch burned—in the best way. You were so full you couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

He didn’t give you a second to adjust.

He fucked you like a man possessed, hips pistoning forward, brutal and relentless.

His fingers dug into your thighs, bruising. The slap of skin echoed off tile. The mirror fogged with each ragged breath. You clenched around him and he groaned, low and wrecked, mouth moving to your neck.

“Goddamn, you feel good,” he muttered, biting your skin. “Tight little pussy takin’ me so good, baby.”

Your head rolled back. “Fuck, Bucky—yes, yes—don’t stop—”

His hand wrapped around your throat. Not hard. Just enough.

He pulled you forward, nose brushing yours, his breath hot and filthy. “Look at me when I make you cum.”

And fuck—you did.

Your orgasm hit hard. Sharp. Your back arched off the counter, pussy clenching so tight around his cock he groaned your name like a prayer he never should’ve learned.

He didn’t slow.

He pulled you closer, arms around your waist, fucking into you like he needed it to live.

You came again—a second wave crashing over you, messy and loud, your thighs trembling, nails scratching down his back hard enough to mark.

“Shit—fuck—” he cursed, hips stuttering. “You’re gonna make me—”

You tightened around him on purpose, voice a wicked little moan in his ear, “Do it. Fill me up, baby. I want it.”

And he did.

With a growl that tore from his chest, he came deep, hips snapping hard one last time before he stilled, cock pulsing, forehead resting against yours.

His breath was ragged. Yours was gone.

You stayed like that—panting, ruined—his arms still around you like he didn’t want to let go.

And then he kissed you.

Soft, this time. A little too sweet.

He gave you his number.

And you never called.

Bucky had thought about you for two years.

Every girl after you? A shadow. A placeholder.

None of them tasted like you. None of them looked at him like they knew exactly how far he’d go for another night with you.

Every time he rode—high-speed and reckless—he imagined it was your voice in his ear. Your nails on his back. Your legs around his waist.

And now?

You were back. And you looked better than the fucking memory.

He’s walking toward you now.

Hands tucked into the pockets of his dark jeans, his shoulders are loose—relaxed in the way only men who know they’re being watched ever are.

That cocky grin is already spreading across his stubbled jaw, slow and sure like a fuse catching fire.

His eyes are locked on you.

They don’t drift. They don’t flinch. They drink you in, head to toe—like he’s not just looking, he’s remembering.

The way your legs wrapped around him. The way you tasted on his tongue. The sound you made when he pushed into you so deep your fingers left marks on his back.

His voice, when it comes, is low and drawling, thick with that gravel-and-honey tone that had once made your thighs clench in a public restroom.

“Well, well,” Bucky says, eyes raking down your body with absolutely no shame. “Didn’t think I’d see you again. Thought I scared you off.”

You tilt your head, watching the way his smirk deepens at your reaction. Your smile is slow—unchallenged. Dangerous.

“Scared?” you echo, voice laced with sugar. “Honey, you were begging by the end of the night.”

He laughs.

And fuck, it’s hot.

That kind of laugh that vibrates in your chest, that spills easy from his lips but feels like it was pulled from somewhere deep.

It’s warm and rough and full of something between amusement and desire, like he enjoys the memory as much as he resents how good it still makes him feel.

“So someone misses me, huh?” you add, tongue in cheek, brow arched just slightly.

His gaze darkens, subtle but unmistakable. His smirk slips just a fraction—replaced with something hungrier, sharper.

“Wouldn’t go that far,” he lies, and you know it. “But you do make one hell of an impression, sweetheart.”

Yelena chuckles beside you, cocking a hip as she crosses her arms. “Oh god, here we go.”

And then—he says it.

“You and me. One race.”

The shift in your posture is instant. You straighten, eyes narrowing just enough to read him—to feel the weight behind the words.

It’s a challenge. A contract, if you say yes.

Your brows lift. “What’s in it for me?”

He jerks his chin toward the bike behind him—an obsidian beast gleaming under the floodlights like something conjured from a wet dream.

The custom rims shine like teeth. The jet-black pipes curl sleek and lethal. A gold-plated clutch glints near the handlebar, polished to perfection.

The entire thing hums like it’s alive, like it’s listening.

“You win,” he says, voice slick with pride, “she’s yours.”

You let out a low, appreciative whistle, gaze dragging over the machine. “That’s your baby, right?”

He nods once. “She’s never lost a race.” Then that wicked smile is back, more teeth this time, more heat. “Neither have I.”

You take a step closer, arms still loose at your sides, heart ticking a little harder beneath your chest.

“And if I lose?”

His boots close the distance. One more step and he's in your space—warm, towering, magnetic. His voice drops an octave, low enough to rumble straight through your bones.

“Then I get a date,” he says. “Just one.”

Your smirk curls slow, unapologetic. Bold. “Making up for lost time, Barnes?”

He leans in, that stubble brushing against your temple as he brings his mouth to your ear. His breath is warm, and it smells like mint and sin.

“I’ve had this real pretty girl on my mind for a while now,” he murmurs, voice like velvet. “Can’t help myself.”

Yelena barks a laugh behind you, rolling her eyes. “You must be outta your damn mind, babe.”

You glance over your shoulder with a wink, not missing the way Bucky watches the movement of your hips, his eyes tracking it like a man ready to break all his own rules. “You’re just jealous.” you joke playfully.

And you walk away, hips swaying deliberately, slow and smug.

Behind you, Bucky doesn’t move.

He just watches.

Watches the way your fingers slide across the seat of your bike. Watches the flick of your hair over your shoulder. Watches like you’re still in that bathroom, flushed and moaning, mouth against his jaw and nails in his back.

That familiar hunger stirs in his chest like a fire being stoked to life all over again.

And tonight?

He wasn’t letting you go again.

Not this time.

The news spread like smoke—fast, thick, and impossible to ignore.

One whispered challenge under the overpass was all it took. Someone overheard Bucky offer you a race. Someone else repeated it and then it caught like a lit match in a dry field.

By the time the clock ticked past midnight, the meet had tripled in size.

The back lot was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people and bikes. Every alley that bled into the main strip was clogged with more engines, more tension, more noise.

The air felt tighter. Louder. Alive.

Some came to race. Most came to watch.

But all of them came for one thing.

Someone was going to race Bucky Barnes. And that someone might actually win.

Engines howled in greeting like wolves baring teeth. Tires screeched across pavement in celebratory skids.

Streetlights above buzzed like dying stars, casting long, warped shadows that danced between the strobes of red brake light and leaking neon.

A truck stereo rumbled from somewhere in the center of the chaos—its remix so loud it shook the bones in your chest, bass vibrating in the soles of your boots.

A girl in leather hot pants climbed onto the hood of a matte black Camaro, her legs glinting with oil sheen under the light as she threw her head back and moved to the beat, heels clacking against the metal roof as women and men shouted beneath her.

Yelena lit a cigarette with a practiced flick, the flame cutting bright against the shadows. She took a drag, letting the smoke curl from her lips like she owned the air around her.

When a guy in a sleeveless denim vest stepped too close, eyes crawling up your chest, she didn’t even look—just flipped him off without breaking stride.

“You sure you want to do this, honey?” she asked through the haze, the grin on her lips crooked with mischief.

You tightened your gloves, leather creaking softly beneath your fingers. “You scared I’ll lose?”

“I’m scared he’ll flirt you off the road,” she muttered playfully, her gazing towards Bucky stood across the lot, laughing with Steve like he didn’t just challenge the only girl crazy enough to ride him into the ground.

You smirked, tongue pressed behind your teeth. “Then he’ll have to earn that date, won’t he?”

And across the lot, Bucky stood like the street belonged to him.

That jacket, the same damn one from the night in the club, hung open across his chest, framing a tight black tee stretched over a torso carved by what seemed like adonis himself.

His jeans were dark, fitted, hugging his hips, his boots were scuffed and scarred—clearly having kissed asphalt at least once—but they were planted wide, solid, like nothing could move him.

Steve stood beside him, broad, blonde, a silver bike helmet tucked under one arm as he leaned in and murmured something low.

Clint and Natasha stood beside them, relaxed and deadly in their own right.

Clint had his brows raised, the redhead beside him leaned against her cherry-red Ducati, arms crossed, smirking like she already knew how the night would end.

They weren’t just racers. They were practically legends.

The kind of names you whispered at the edge of circuits in other cities.

And all of them had lost to Bucky. Some more than once.

And tonight they looked curious.

They weren’t watching him. They were watching you.

Because tonight wasn’t just another street race.

Tonight was the first time someone had the balls—and the skill—to try and take the king.

Steve clapped Bucky on the shoulder, easy and loud, then tilted his chin toward you.

Bucky followed the look.

And when he saw you—standing there with your helmet tucked under one arm, fingers tracing the sleek frame of your bike like a lover, your mouth tilted in that slow smirk he hadn’t stopped thinking about—he smiled.

Not cocky. Not smug.

Like a man who knew.

The crowd started to shift, as if drawn by instinct, forming a loose barrier around the cracked stretch of asphalt that would be your track.

People climbed onto crates, dumpsters, the back ends of pickups. Someone mounted a tripod camera, already livestreaming, already narrating: “She’s gonna race Barnes. No fucking way.”

You adjusted your helmet strap, letting the tension roll down your shoulders. When you looked up, he was already walking toward you.

Swagger in his step.

Heat in his eyes.

His voice was low when he reached you—gravel-smooth and lazy as sin. “You sure you’re ready for this, sweetheart?”

You turned slow, eyes drifting down the line of his body. His hands. His boots. The unmistakable tension in his shoulders that said he lived for this kind of risk.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried.”

He chuckled, stepping close enough that you could feel the heat rolling off his chest. “I’m not. Just wondering if you’ll let me take you out win or lose.”

You tilted your head, meeting his eyes.

“You’ll have to earn it. And you better hope I don’t look better on your bike than you do.”

He gave a long, low whistle, his grin spreading wide. “God, I missed your mouth.”

You could feel it in your bones.

This was going to be good.

The crowd parted like the red sea as Steve stepped into the center, raising his arm. “Alright, alright, you crazy bastards. Line up.”

You swung one leg over your bike, the weight of it familiar beneath you—the rumble of the engine like a heartbeat syncing with your own. You flicked the ignition, and it growled awake, deep and hungry.

To your left, Bucky did the same.

You could feel him without looking. That shift in his body as he dropped into the zone. The predator beneath the leather. Hands flexing over the grips.

Someone in the crowd whistled. Another voice rose—cheering, shouting. A girl near the front screamed, “Let’s go, baby!”

Steve raised his hand.

“Three—”

Your heart synced to the thrum beneath you. Every muscle tensed. Your eyes locked forward.

“Two—”

Bucky looked at you.

And smiled.

“One—”

The air split open.

Tires screamed. Pavement blurred. And you were gone.

You launched forward, tucked low, your bike a sleek black bullet cutting through the night.

Wind clawed at your jacket, ripped through your hair. But your hands were steady. Every motion was muscle memory. Every turn was pure instinct.

Beside you, Bucky stayed even.

Neck and neck.

His bike snarled beside yours—an untamed monster of matte black steel and engine fury. It spit sparks, hissed threats, surged into your blind spot. But you didn’t flinch. You twisted the throttle harder, took the inside curve so tight the gravel kissed your boot.

The crowd warped into streaks. The lights dissolved.

Nothing existed but you. Him. The road.

You felt him beside you—not just the movement, but the heat. The electricity in the air. That same impossible pull from two years ago, now wrapped in adrenaline and exhaust.

The next curve came fast. S-shaped.

You didn’t brake. Neither did he.

You downshifted, leaned in—nearly horizontal—your knee skimming a hair’s width from the asphalt as your tires screamed across the bend.

He mirrored the motion flawlessly, and for a moment—just a moment—you swore you heard him laugh.

“You fucking love this,” you muttered under your breath, smiling wild.

It wasn’t just a race. It was foreplay.

The final stretch loomed—too soon, too fast. The finish line was drawn in chalk and headlights. A wall of sound waited on the other side.

You pushed harder.

And then—

He edged forward.

Inches. Just inches.

Enough to win.

Your tires screeched as you slowed, the roar of the engine dying as you coasted to a stop, lungs heaving, heart still hammering.

The crowd erupted behind you—screams, cheers, claps, someone lighting a firecracker that whistled into the sky and burst red above the lot.

You pulled off your helmet, hair tousled, lips parted in a breathless grin.

Bucky rolled to a stop beside you, his chest rising deep and even, his bike still purring beneath him like a satisfied animal. He took off his helmet slowly, deliberately, shaking out his hair like he knew what the hell he looked like.

Smug bastard.

“Fuck,” you laughed, voice wrecked and thrilled.

He looked over, mouth twitching. “Close one.”

You stepped off your bike, still catching your breath. “You got lucky.”

He tilted his head. “Rematch, sweetheart?”

You smiled, cocking your hip. “Take me on that date first, Barnes.”

That grin. It spread across his face like fire on oil. “Oh, I plan to. I’ve been planning to since the minute you walked into my goddamn life.”

And for once, you didn’t stop him when he leaned in.

Didn’t flinch when his fingers brushed your waist.

Didn’t pretend it wasn’t already happening.

Because the race was over. But the chase?

The real chase had only just begun.

a/n: thank you for reading! please consider leaving a comment or a reblog if you enjoyed this fic!

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cressidagrey · 2 months ago

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Girl at Home

Pairing: Andrea Kimi Antonelli x Chiara Battista (Original Character)

Summary: When Chiara finally kisses him back—and then really kisses him back—Kimi’s carefully calibrated emotional control vanishes faster than tire grip in Miami.

Notes: Part 2 of So High School. This was supposed to be an one shot y'know...

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Chiara had been pacing near the front window for exactly eleven minutes.

Not because she was nervous. She was just… adjusting her earrings. Repeatedly. And triple-checking that her dress wasn’t wrinkled. And definitely not panicking over the fact that Kimi Antonelli—yes, actual rookie F1 driver, technical prodigy, the boy who once asked her for a pencil and accidentally stole her heart—was picking her up for their first date.

At precisely 6:28 p.m., she heard it.

Not a knock. Not a doorbell.

An engine.

A loud one.

She peeked through the blinds—and then immediately pulled back, eyes wide. "Oh my god."

Outside, parked with the subtlety of a blockbuster premiere, was a matte blue Mercedes AMG GT63, low and sleek and aggressive, like something a Bond villain would drive.

Her father passed behind her with a cup of coffee and muttered, “If he drives that thing like he’s got something to prove, he won’t have a girlfriend by dessert.”

Chiara opened the door a second later, trying to school her face into polite composure. “You’re early.”

Kimi grinned from the driver's seat, one arm slung casually over the wheel like he hadn’t just pulled up in the most ridiculous car imaginable. “I was too nervous to wait at home.”

He jumped out and opened her door like a gentleman—a slightly sweaty, very overdressed gentleman. His hair was still damp from a too-hasty shower, and he smelled faintly like aftershave and leather car seats.

“You look—” he started, then paused, clearly panicking mid-compliment. “You look like you’re better at this than I am.”

Chiara laughed, climbing into the passenger seat. “Nice car. You brought that?”

Kimi shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, suddenly very interested in the gravel on her driveway. “It’s… new.”

“New as in you bought it, or new as in it was delivered with your F1 contract and a bow?”

He cleared his throat. “There may have been a bow.”

Chiara raised an eyebrow, amused. “Do I need a helmet?”

“Not tonight,” Kimi said, suddenly serious. “I’m on my best behavior.”

And he was.

He didn’t speed. He didn’t weave through traffic. He didn’t even rev the engine at a red light, which might have been a personal record.

In fact, he drove so politely that Chiara side-eyed him somewhere near the first roundabout and muttered, “Okay, who are you and what have you done with Andrea Kimi Antonelli?”

“I’m being respectful,” he said, with dignity. “You’re wearing a dress.”

“I’m wearing sneakers with the dress.”

“Same point.”

Dinner was at a quiet little trattoria tucked between two bookshops—his choice. Kimi, who usually lived off race-weekend catering and Ollie’s stolen granola bars, had somehow found the cutest restaurant in a three-mile radius and even remembered to make a reservation.

She noticed he didn’t touch his phone once.

Not when it buzzed in his pocket. Not when someone clearly recognized him near the front counter and whispered something excitedly to their friend. Not even when the waiter asked if they wanted a dessert menu and Chiara ordered the tiramisu and the panna cotta without shame.

He just looked at her, smiling like he couldn’t believe she was real.

(Chiara tried very hard not to notice.)

After dinner, they walked to the tiny movie theater two blocks away, the kind with velvet seats and too much charm, where the popcorn came in paper bags and there was always at least one older couple on a date night.

They saw a re-run of La La Land, which Kimi absolutely didn’t understand but watched attentively anyway, sitting so still she thought he might have stopped breathing during the planetarium scene.

Halfway through, their hands brushed on the armrest.

Chiara didn’t move hers away.

He glanced at her.

She didn’t look at him.

Their fingers curled together like it was muscle memory.

When he walked her to her front door, the silence between them was sweet, charged. Not awkward. Just… full.

The drive back to her house was quiet—but not in the awkward way.

It was that soft, sleepy kind of silence that settles after a good night. Streetlights passed in a golden blur outside the windows, the low hum of the AMG engine filling the spaces between their thoughts.

Kimi glanced at her at a red light.

She was leaning her head back against the seat, watching the city roll past like it belonged to her. Her hand was still in his, their fingers loosely tangled across the center console like neither of them quite wanted to let go.

“I had a really good time,” he said, voice low.

Chiara smiled without looking at him. “You were… alarmingly well-behaved.”

“I told you I could drive like a normal person.”

“You signaled at a roundabout, Kimi.”

“Romantic gestures come in many forms.”

She laughed, and his heart stuttered in the best way.

Outside her building, he parked with exaggerated care, triple-checked the handbrake, and turned to her with the nervous energy of someone trying to seem cooler than he felt.

He walked her to the door, hands shoved into his jacket pockets.

She stopped just before the steps and turned toward him. The porch light was casting a soft glow across her hair, and Kimi felt like he was looking at the sun.

“Well,” she said, a little teasing, “no near-death experiences. Good food. Minimal popcorn theft. You’ve passed.”

“I studied hard,” he said, smiling.

She stepped forward, closer now.

“I had a good time too,” she added. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

Kimi shifted slightly, suddenly nervous. “I mean, I didn’t know if this would be… weird. Like, going from worksheets to this.”

“It’s not weird,” she said, softly. “It’s… nice.”

They stood there for a beat. Close. Still.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said, voice softer now. “You were… incredibly well-behaved.”

Kimi let out a breathless laugh. “I practiced. Like… a lot. In my head.”

Chiara tilted her head. “And do you usually rehearse your goodnight lines too?”

Kimi opened his mouth. Closed it. “I had… three options. All of them sound stupid now.”

She smiled.

“You can just kiss me,” she said. “If you want.”

He looked at her like she’d just handed him a trophy he hadn’t dared dream about.

And then he leaned in.

No panic this time. No overthinking. Just warm fingers brushing her cheek and a kiss that was sweet and unhurried and full of all the quiet things he hadn’t known how to say.

Chiara’s hands curled into his jacket like she’d been waiting to do that for weeks.

He kissed her like he didn’t want to let her go.

And when they pulled apart, barely an inch between them, she was smiling—dizzy and flushed and completely gone.

“So,” she whispered, breath catching, “are you always this good at first dates?”

Kimi grinned, absolutely wrecked with happiness. “No. Just this one.”

She kissed him again.

When they finally pulled apart, her eyes fluttered open slowly, and he didn’t move far.

Then she stepped back toward her door, pausing just before slipping inside.

“Goodnight, Kimi.”

“Goodnight, Chiara.”

She lingered one second longer, smiling like she knew exactly what she was doing to him. Then the door closed behind her with a soft click.

Kimi just stood there on the porch, staring at the door like an idiot.

And whispered, “I’m so screwed.”

Then practically floated back to the car.

***

It was a sunny, sticky kind of morning—the kind where everyone moved slower, more tired than usual, as if spring had arrived just to make them sweat. The courtyard buzzed with the usual low-grade pre-class chaos: students lounging on the steps, trading last-minute homework corrections, someone blasting music faintly from their phone.

Chiara adjusted the strap of her backpack and turned to look over her shoulder, where Kimi was parking his scooter like he was auditioning for a car commercial. He took his helmet off, ruffled his curls, and jogged over to her like the day wasn’t already too hot to be that energetic.

“You remembered your math binder?” she asked as he caught up, teasing.

“I remembered you,” he replied, grabbing her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Chiara’s breath caught.

It wasn’t the first time they’d held hands. Not really. But it was the first time here. At school. In daylight. In full view of every student on campus, including the ones who hadn’t even known they spoke to each other outside class.

Her heart was doing this annoying fluttery thing again.

But she didn’t let go.

They walked toward the building together, his thumb brushing against the back of her hand, and Chiara didn’t look around until they were halfway to the main hall and she noticed something strange.

People were staring.

Not in a mean way. More like… blinking. Processing. A few whispered too loudly, and a girl from biology class actually did a double take so dramatic it nearly made her trip on the steps.

And then—

“Wait, wait, hold on,” came Giulia’s voice, slicing through the noise like a spoon through gelato.

Chiara turned just as Giulia stormed across the courtyard in wide strides, eyes huge, clementine nowhere in sight for once.

“Are you holding hands with Kimi Antonelli?”

Kimi raised their joined hands like it was evidence in court. “Confirmed.”

Giulia looked between them. Once. Twice. Her brain visibly short-circuited.

“But—I—what?”

Chiara arched an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

“No!” Giulia flailed slightly. “No. I mean, yes. I mean—how long has this been going on?”

Chiara smiled, just a little. “A while.”

Giulia looked personally offended. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“You said he was using me for worksheets.”

Kimi snorted, completely unbothered. “I would’ve failed three subjects just to keep talking to her.”

Giulia blinked. “I was trying to protect you!”

“I know,” Chiara said, gentle now. “But you were wrong.”

Kimi gave her a small squeeze. Their hands stayed together, warm and solid and completely obvious.

Giulia narrowed her eyes at him. “If you break her heart, I will break your face.”

“That’s fair,” Kimi said easily.

Chiara laughed. Giulia groaned and stomped off, muttering something about dramatic people and how she was never going to live this down.

Kimi leaned closer as they stepped into the hallway. “That went well.”

“I think she might be having a crisis.”

“She’s not the only one. Did you see Enrico’s face? I think he dropped his sandwich.”

“Your fault,” Chiara said, deadpan.

“I know,” Kimi replied, smiling sideways at her like he was still slightly in disbelief. “But I like the view from here.”

She rolled her eyes, cheeks warm.

But she didn’t let go of his hand.

Not even once.

***

The terminal was loud in that strange, hollow way airports always were—echoes of wheels on tile, distant boarding calls, someone’s baby crying three gates over. Kimi Antonelli had headphones around his neck, a hoodie pulled up over his curls, and a carry-on slung over his shoulder that was 30% race gear, 20% protein bars, and 50% badly folded hoodies.

He had time to kill before boarding.

Normally he would’ve scrolled through sector data. Or texted Ollie something unhinged about the last sprint weekend. Or found a quiet corner to panic about Miami corner exits.

But instead, he found himself drifting into one of those sleek little airport gift shops.

It wasn’t planned. It never was, with her.

He didn’t go in thinking I should buy Chiara something—it just happened. Like most things with her lately.

He walked past keychains and overpriced Toblerone bars and wandered toward the little glass case near the register, half-distracted, until something caught the corner of his eye.

A delicate silver necklace.

Simple chain. Tiny charm.

A star.

Small enough to fit on her collarbone. Soft enough that it didn’t scream anything too loud. Not flashy. Not cheesy. Just… her.

Something about it felt right. Like a thing she’d keep in her pencil case. Like a secret.

He stared at it for a long second.

Then waved down the cashier like a man on a mission.

“Can I see that one?” he asked, pointing. “The star.”

It came in a small navy box, matte and ribboned and stupidly elegant for something from a duty-free gift shop.

He paid in cash. Tucked the box carefully into the zippered inside pocket of his backpack. Patted it once, like a promise.

And when he texted her from the gate five minutes later—

Kimi A.: Boarding now. Will miss you for approximately all hours of the next five days.

—he didn’t say anything about the necklace.

Not yet.

He wanted to give it to her in person.

***

Ollie Bearman had barely taken a sip of his coffee before Kimi Antonelli flopped into the chair next to him with all the subtlety of a race restart in the rain.

“She kissed me,” Kimi said breathlessly, like he’d been holding it in since sunrise.

Ollie blinked, mid-sip. “…Good morning to you, too.”

“I’m serious. She kissed me,” Kimi repeated, eyes wide, hands flailing slightly like the words alone weren’t enough to contain the magnitude of the event. “Well, technically, I kissed her first. But then she said ‘do it again,’ and I did, and then her mom brought us biscotti, and I think I blacked out a little because I haven’t stopped smiling since Tuesday.”

Ollie set his cup down slowly and carefully, like he was worried the caffeine might accelerate the madness. “Okay. So we’re in love now?”

“Yes.”

“Like—mutually?”

Kimi nodded emphatically. “Yes.”

“Not just in your head?”

“She said it with her mouth, Ollie. Multiple times. There were words. And kissing.”

Ollie squinted at him. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Kimi said, grinning like a lunatic. “She made me tea. I love her.”

Ollie stared at him for a moment. Then said, very carefully, “Alright. That escalated.”

“We had a date,” Kimi went on, hands already gesturing again, like he was narrating a podium finish. “Like a real one. I picked her up, opened the car door like an actual gentleman, drove like a sane person—used my indicators, Ollie—and took her to this little restaurant my nonna likes.”

Ollie raised an eyebrow. “So you didn’t drift into the parking lot?”

“I parked. Backwards. Smooth. Perfectly aligned.”

“I’m genuinely terrified of who you’ve become.”

“And then,” Kimi continued, undeterred, “we went to a movie, and I bought popcorn even though we were full, and I waited a whole hour before trying to hold her hand because I’m a respectable man, and then at the end of the night she kissed me again.”

“You’re glowing,” Ollie said, deadpan, picking his coffee back up. “You look like a Disney princess.”

“I feel like one,” Kimi sighed, head falling back against the wall, a dreamy look on his face that made Ollie physically cringe.

“I hate you,” Ollie said mildly. “But also? Congratulations. You somehow fumbled your way into the softest, most romantic high school relationship in motorsport history.”

Kimi beamed. “I’m gonna marry her.”

“You’ve been dating for a week.”

“I’ve been in love for six months.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ollie muttered, staring into his coffee like it might offer him an exit strategy. “I’m putting a helmet on just to be near you.”

Kimi only grinned wider, the kind of grin that couldn’t be contained by race suits or track limits.

Love looked stupid on him.

But it also looked really, really good.

***

Toto Wolff was halfway through reading an engine temperature report, brow slightly furrowed and espresso cooling by his elbow, when Kimi Antonelli stormed into the Mercedes hospitality unit like a springtime thunderstorm wearing sunglasses and way too much emotional momentum.

“Toto.”

The teenager dropped into the seat across from him with all the coordination of a driver exiting the pit lane too hot—coffee nearly sloshed in its cup, data sheets rustled, and Toto didn’t even look up.

“Did you remember your math assignment?”

“No. Better.” Kimi leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice hushed like he was about to share state secrets. “She kissed me.”

That got his attention.

Toto blinked, lowering the report slowly. He peered over the top of his reading glasses like a man who regretted asking the question in the first place.

“Chiara?”

Kimi nodded, eyes bright, like he’d just won Monaco on foot. “Twice. Technically three times if you count the goodbye kiss, but the third was more of a soft-lean moment and her mom was in the hallway with biscotti, so it was kind of spiritual.”

Toto stared at him for a beat. Then exhaled and leaned back in his chair, expression caught somewhere between fond exasperation and something dangerously close to amusement.

“Alright,” he said. “Give me the briefing.”

“It was perfect,” Kimi declared immediately. “Like—quiet, private, just us working on the project and then boom, full emotional breakthrough. She thought I didn’t actually care. Can you believe that? Me!” He pointed at himself as if Toto had forgotten who he was. “I panicked and kissed her and she kissed me back and then asked me to do it again.”

“And did you?”

“Toto. I nearly cried.”

Toto pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to be completely useless this weekend, aren’t you?”

“I slept four hours last night because I kept replaying it in my head like onboard footage.”

“You do know there’s a sprint qualifying tomorrow.”

“I’m aware. I’ve never been more focused in my life. I’m in love. I’m unbeatable.”

Toto tried not to smile. He really, really tried.

“She called me brilliant,” Kimi added, like the word still echoed in his chest. “Not even about racing. She meant it in the human way. Like—brilliant, as a person. I didn’t even know what to do with that.”

Toto cleared his throat. “Well. That’s… very nice.”

“It’s life-altering,” Kimi said earnestly. “I brought her a necklace from the airport gift shop. It’s got a tiny charm. I saw it in the store and I just thought of her.”

Toto rubbed his temples. “Christ. He’s gone.”

“I asked if she wanted to come to the next race,” Kimi went on, now completely oblivious to the way Toto was slowly dying inside. “She said yes. We might hold hands. In public. I’m not okay.”

“No,” Toto agreed. “You are clearly not okay.”

Kimi looked like someone who had been struck by lightning and was thriving. His curls were a little too windswept. His hoodie collar was slightly askew. And his face was open, lit up, unguarded in a way Toto wasn’t used to seeing from boys who spent their lives measured in lap times and pressure compounds.

There was a pause.

Then Kimi beamed. “Do I seem different?”

“You seem delirious.”

“I think I’m glowing.”

“You need to hydrate.”

Kimi leaned forward, lower lip tugged between his teeth like he was holding in a full victory speech. “Toto, you were right.”

Toto sighed, already knowing what was coming. “I usually am.”

“Thank you for telling me to talk to her.”

Toto raised a hand, already done. “Don’t thank me. Just don’t crash during FP1.”

Kimi nodded solemnly. “I’ll win this whole weekend for her.”

Toto gave him a look that said God, please don’t try anything dramatic.

But Kimi was already halfway out of his chair, practically vibrating with joy.

As he bounced out of the room, sunglasses crooked and earbuds already in, Toto just stared after him and picked up his espresso.

He sipped it in silence.

“Teenagers,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Worse than tire degradation.”

*** Peter Bonnington had worked with world champions, legends, egos the size of pit walls, and drivers who wouldn’t say more than five words across a whole season.

He thought he’d seen everything.

Then he met Kimi Antonelli. Specifically: Kimi Antonelli in love.

“Okay, engine modes look good, tire temps are holding steady,” Bono said, flipping through his notes as he leaned against the garage wall. “We’ll run the new setup from FP1. Any questions?”

Kimi nodded, fully suited up, helmet tucked under one arm.

Then he hesitated.

“…Do you think it’s a stupid idea?” he asked.

Bono didn’t look up. “No, the rear wing adjustment is fine.”

“No, I mean the necklace.”

That made Bono look up.

“What necklace.”

“The one I got her. It’s got a little star on it. Like, subtle. Classy. Minimalist. From the airport gift shop but the expensive side.”

Bono exhaled, adjusting the tablet in his lap. “Kimi. We are literally in a pre-sprint quali run plan briefing.”

“I know,” Kimi replied, clearly in a state of romantic emergency, “but it’s burning a hole in my backpack. It’s wrapped and everything. I even kept the tiny tissue paper.”

Bono blinked. “Is this for the girl from school?”

“Chiara,” Kimi confirmed solemnly, like Bono should have memorized her name by now. “She likes green highlighters. And me, apparently.”

Bono closed his eyes for one long, prayerful second.

“We are about to go out for Sprint Qualifying,” he said, voice patient. “And you are asking me about jewelry?”

Kimi shrugged helplessly. “It’s not just jewelry. It’s meaningful.”

“To her?”

“I hope so.”

“To you?”

“She’s the only reason I passed Ethics.”

Bono sighed. “Look. If she likes you—and I cannot believe I’m saying this with a headset on and tire data in front of me—then it won’t matter where the necklace came from. If it’s thoughtful, she’ll love it.”

Kimi’s whole face lit up like he’d just put it on pole.

“You really think so?”

“I think,” Bono said, straightening up and pointing toward the car, “if you don’t get in that car right now, I’m going to call Toto and tell him you’re emotionally compromised.”

Kimi was already climbing in. “Too late,” he called. “I’ve been emotionally compromised since she kissed me next to a tray of biscotti.”

Bono muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “I worked with Hamilton and never had to deal with this much romance.”

The car fired up.

Bono checked his comms.

Kimi’s voice came through crystal clear.

“Bono?”

“Yeah, mate.”

“Thanks.”

Bono sighed again—louder this time.

“Go out and put it on pole, Romeo. Then maybe you can give her the whole jewelry section.”

“Copy that,” Kimi replied, voice back to full grin. “For Chiara.”

Bono sighed as he switched channels. “I miss the days when teenage drivers just worried about tire warm-up.”

***

She told herself she wasn’t going to check.

She’d promised herself that this weekend — just this one weekend — she’d let it go. She’d go for a walk, make tea, maybe do some revision like a normal person whose boyfriend wasn’t out there throwing a car into corners at 300 km/h in front of the entire world.

But by the time SQ3 started, Chiara was sat cross-legged on the couch, laptop open, live timing glowing like it held all her oxygen.

She told herself she just wanted to see how it went.

Just a peek.

Just a— “Oh my God,” she whispered, sitting straighter.

Sector 1: purple. Sector 2: purple. Sector 3—

“Are you kidding me,” she breathed, clutching a cushion to her chest.

P1.

Kimi Antonelli. Pole. In Miami. Sprint Qualifying.

The commentators were yelling. The team radio crackled through her speakers. She could barely hear it over the sound of her own heart.

“YES, Kimi! That’s pole! Brilliant job, mate—brilliant lap!”

Chiara couldn’t stop smiling. It hit her like a wave, dizzy and warm and so full of pride she could barely sit still.

She watched the onboard feed as he crossed the line, saw the little fist pump, the boyish grin he tried to hide behind the visor. Then she saw him roll into parc fermé, helmet off, curls wild, smile stupidly wide.

And in that moment, it hit her all over again.

That was her person.

The boy who drank her tea, wore mismatched socks, asked her for French homework at midnight, and kissed her like she was gravity.

And now he’d put it on pole.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, flopping back onto the couch, half-laughing. “I’m gonna have to start watching every session.”

Her phone buzzed beside her.

Kimi A.:🏁✨🤯🏆😳 (i did the thing) you watching?

Chiara B.:Of course. I screamed. I may never recover.

Kimi A.:good. that one was for you.

She stared at the message for a second longer, then pressed her phone to her chest.

She wasn’t breathing properly. She wasn’t sure she cared.

***

She wasn’t expecting him until later.

So when the knock came just past seven, she was still in leggings and an oversized hoodie (his, technically), hair scraped into a bun, halfway through reorganizing her bookshelf. She padded barefoot to the door and opened it—

And there he was.

Kimi Antonelli, post-Miami, sun-touched and sleep-deprived, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair still messy from the flight, and looking at her like he hadn’t breathed properly in days.

“Hi,” he said softly.

Chiara blinked. “You’re early.”

“Couldn’t wait.”

She smiled before she could stop herself and stepped aside. He dropped his bag by the door and wrapped his arms around her like it was instinct. Like this was home.

They stood like that for a moment — just pressed close, no rush, no need for words.

Eventually, Kimi pulled back slightly, hands still warm on her waist.

“I got you something,” he said, suddenly shy.

Her brows lifted. “You didn’t have to—”

“I know. But I saw it before the flight and I thought of you. And then I panicked and bought it and kept it in my backpack all weekend and didn’t tell anyone because it felt… special.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny, crinkled paper bag. Unwrapped it carefully, fingers unusually gentle, until a delicate silver chain pooled in his palm. Hanging from it: a small star charm. Simple. Subtle. Perfect.

“It reminded me of you,” he said.

Chiara’s breath caught. “Kimi…”

“You don’t have to wear it,” he said quickly. “I just—I saw it and thought, that’s her. I know it’s not fancy or whatever. But it felt right.”

She looked at the necklace, then at him.

And smiled — slow and radiant and utterly undone.

“Put it on me?” she asked.

His fingers were careful at the clasp, brushing her neck, lingering just a second too long. When he sat back, the charm gleamed gently against her collarbone.

“It’s perfect,” she whispered.

Kimi looked at her like she’d just put him back together.

Then leaned forward, kissed her slow, and breathed the words into her skin:

“You’re my favorite part of coming home.”

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lazysoulwriter · 4 months ago

Text

just a little behind, okay? - jj maybank.

---

JJ wasn’t dumb.

He was reckless, impulsive, loud as hell, and a certified menace to society, sure. But he wasn’t dumb.

He could fix a boat engine blindfolded. Knew every street on the island like the back of his hand. Had survival instincts that would put a Navy SEAL to shame. And yet—yet—his friends, usually halfway to wasted, loved to throw around the word like it didn’t mean anything.

“Bro, you didn’t even know Vermont was a state.”

“Because I don’t care, John B!” he’d yell back, flipping him off with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other.

It was all jokes. Harmless. Mostly.

But tonight?

Tonight you were drunk and in love and ready to fight.

The group was huddled around a fire, laughter spilling into the humid night, bodies tangled across chairs and blankets, bottles clinking every five seconds. JJ had just tried to explain something (god knows what) about how birds definitely control the government, and Pope—sober enough to function, just drunk enough to be a little bold—laughed and said, “Bro, you are literally so dumb sometimes, it’s unreal.”

You froze mid-sip of your drink.

JJ laughed it off, shoulders shaking like it didn’t hit. But you saw the flicker in his eyes. That half-second of ow before he masked it with a grin.

And that? That pissed you off.

You stood, wobbled, pointed your finger at Pope with dramatic flair.

“Don’t.”

Everyone turned.

Pope blinked. “What?”

“Don’t call him dumb.” You hiccuped. “He’s not dumb. He’s just…he’s just…” You spun to face JJ, who looked confused and amused and maybe a little scared.

You pointed at him now. “You’re not dumb, baby.”

JJ, already grinning: “Thanks, mama.”

You whipped back to Pope, swaying like a palm tree in a hurricane. “He’s just a little behind sometimes. That’s different. That’s like... like when a computer freezes but it’s still a good computer, you know?”

John B choked on his drink.

“I’m a good computer,” JJ whispered proudly, eyes wide with adoration.

“Exactly!” you shouted, throwing your arms up like you’d just won a case in court. “My baby is a good computer! Sometimes he needs to, like, buffer! But he still got, like, all the tabs open in there. He just—he needs a second, okay?”

Kiara was howling.

Pope tried not to laugh. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just—”

“No!” you shouted. “He makes you laugh. He’s brave as fuck. He’d fight a bear for y’all. And he remembers my coffee order every single time, even when I forget it. That’s not dumb. That’s, like, boyfriend genius.”

JJ, completely smitten: “I am a boyfriend genius.”

“You are,” you nodded, stumbling over to him and practically flopping into his lap. “You’re my little genius baby.”

He wrapped his arms around you like it was second nature. “Say it again.”

“My. Little. Genius. Baby.”

“God, I love you,” he muttered into your neck.

You sat up straight, raising a finger again for dramatic emphasis. “And if anyone calls him dumb again, I’ll fight. I’ll fight all of you. I boxed for two weeks in middle school. Don’t test me.”

At that point, everyone was laughing too hard to respond. Even Pope threw his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay! He’s not dumb! He’s… buffering.”

JJ kissed your cheek. “Thanks for the antivirus, babe.”

You giggled, melting into him. “Anything for my high-speed internet boyfriend.”

And that was it. The conversation moved on, the fire crackled, the beers kept flowing—but JJ couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the night.

Because no one ever had his back like you.

---

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pucksandpower · 1 year ago

Text

Let the World Burn

Charles Leclerc x Ferrari driver!Reader

Summary: a brake failure sends Charles’ world spinning out of control

Warnings: crash, partial paralysis, brain injury, and plenty of angst (with a happy ending because I’m still me)

Based on this request

The paddock thrums with energy as you make your way to your car, adrenaline already coursing through your veins. Charles falls into step beside you, his presence as familiar and comforting as the roar of engines.

“Ready to show them how it’s done, mon amour?” His voice is a low rumble, eyes alight with competitive fire.

You grin, leaning in to press a swift kiss to his lips. “Always. You’ll be the one watching my rear wing this time.”

Charles laughs, the sound rich and warm. “We’ll see about that.” He squeezes your hand, calloused fingers intertwining with yours. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” The words carry the weight of a thousand unspoken promises, a vow as binding as the wedding bands you can’t yet wear.

All too soon, you’re parting ways, disappearing into the organized chaos of the garage. You slide into the snug confines of the cockpit, the car’s familiar lines an extension of your own body. A flurry of final checks, the high-pitched whine of the engine firing up, and then you’re rolling onto the grid, the tension crackling like static electricity.

The lights go out, and the world narrows to the scream of tires on tarmac, the high-pitched howl of the engine, and the razor-sharp focus that has carried you this far. You and Charles trade positions with every corner, locked in an exhilarating duel that has the crowd on its feet.

And then, without warning, your world fractures.

The pedal goes soft underfoot, your instincts screaming even before the telltale high-pitched whine cuts through the roar of the engine. You slam on the brakes, but the response is sickening— a bare fraction of the deceleration you need.

“Ricky?” Your voice is tight, the adrenaline surging as the implications crash over you in waves. “I’ve got a brake issue here. A big one.”

“Copy that.” Ricky’s tone is clipped, professional, even as your heart rabbits in your chest. “Okay, let’s try cycling the systems-”

You follow his instructions with mechanical precision, but the results are the same: negligible braking force, the car still hurtling forward at murderous speeds. A hairpin looms ahead, the barriers terrifyingly close, and you fight the wheel with everything you have, desperate to keep the bucking machine on track.

“Ricky, is this being broadcast?” The words tumble out in a breathless rush as the Turn looms closer, closer.

“Affirmative.” There’s a pause, the faintest tremor in Ricky’s voice. “It’s going out live.”

You exhale, a shuddering breath that shakes your entire frame. There’s only one person you need to reach now.

“Charles.” His name catches in your throat, thick with emotion. “If you’re listening to this-”

The tears come then, hot and blinding as you wrestle with the uncontrollable car. This can’t be how it ends, not like this, not when you’d imagined decades more by his side.

“In some other life, maybe we would have grown old together.” The words are torn from the depths of your soul, raw and wrenched free by the stark reality bearing down on you. “I wish I could have given you babies and watched our children grow up and lived a long life by your side like we always dreamed.”

Your vision blurs, the turn now a void of unforgiving concrete rushing up to meet you. You fight the wheel with everything you have, but there’s no stopping the inevitable now.

“You deserve every happiness, my love. If … if I don’t make it, please … please find someone else to love and cherish. Don't grieve forever. Be happy.” The brake pedal is useless under your foot, the barriers skimming past in a blur of terror. “Because you deserve all the love in this world and so much more.”

“I hope you’ll hear this,” you force out in a cracked whisper. "And I need you to know, my heart, that even if things end here … even if I don’t get to grow old with you … you have been the brightest light in my life these past five years. You made me happier than I ever dreamed. And I will never, ever stop loving you, Charles. Not in this life or the next. You are everything-”

The impact is a cosmic force, obliterating breath and thought and everything else in a blinding flare of darkness. But still, you cling to awareness, to the phantom thread of love that binds you to the one person who matters most.

“I’ll always-” The anguished vow catches, cut brutally short as oblivion rises to claim you. In those final heartbeats, a fleeting kaleidoscope of memories sparks behind your eyes: unmistakable laughter, stolen kisses, quiet moments wrapped in each other’s arms.

Five years of loving Charles, of being loved by him in a way you’d never dared dream possible.

It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

But it was everything.

“I love-”

Then, nothing.

***

The world fragments around Charles as his gaze locks onto the shattered remains of the familiar red car. One heartbeat — an endless, merciless instant suspended in time — and then his instincts take over with the force of a tidal wave.

“No … no, no, no!” The anguished words rip from his throat as he wrenches the steering wheel, the shriek of tires on tarmac drowned out by the roar of his own pulse thundering in his ears.

The race, the championship, every ambition and dream that has driven him to this point — it all fades into insignificance as he tears down the pitlane, desperation clawing at his throat. “Y/N! Hold on!”

Flames lick hungrily at the twisted wreckage as he sprints towards the mangled chassis, heedless of the searing heat or the choking smoke that burns his lungs. There’s only one thought, one driving need that propels him forward: reach you, get you out, pull you back from the precipice that has opened up beneath his feet.

“Y/N!”

Your name rips from his lips, a hoarse plea swallowed up by the crackle of fire. He skids to a halt beside the wreckage, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the warped metal that has become your cage, your tomb. “Talk to me, mon cœur! I’m here!”

Coherent thought fractures, replaced by blind panic and the soul-deep terror of losing the one light that guides him through this life.

Your eyes are closed, features lax and far too still against the vivid crimson that stains your skin. Charles’ breath catches in his throat, a raw, animal sound clawing its way free as his trembling hands reach for you, desperate to find a flutter of life, a spark of the brilliant fire he knows blazes within you.

“No, no, no … please, stay with me!” He cups your cheek, fingers smearing crimson as they search in vain for a pulse. “I can’t … I can’t lose you!”

Hands grasp at him then, voices raised in shouts he can’t comprehend. He wrestles against the restraints, a feral need to reach you overriding all reason. “Get off me! She needs help!”

But the marshals are insistent, pushing him back with grim determination until he can only watch, helpless, as they douse the ravenous flames.

It feels like an eternity, each gasping breath torn from a soul being flayed apart piece by torturous piece. And then, finally, they move in, the screech of metal and the hiss of hydraulics barely registering over the roar in Charles’ ears.

You’re so still as they work, pale and frighteningly fragile amidst the tangle of debris. A thin rivulet of red trails from the corner of your lips, each sluggish drip a struck match against the powder keg of Charles’ sanity. He takes a shuddering step forward, then another, his world narrowing to the trembling rise and fall of your chest.

“Please … please, stay with me,” he rasps, fingers closing around the rigid lines of the barrier as if it’s the only tether holding him to reality.

A marshal’s hand on his chest, forceful but lacking the strength to halt the unstoppable forward momentum of a man staring into the abyss. “Back off! Let them work!”

But how can he stand back? How can he simply watch as your life’s flame gutters and fades before his eyes? The words climb his throat, tangling into desperate pleas and vows that he’ll burn the world to keep you here, to keep you safe.

Except, no words come. There’s only the taste of ashes on his tongue and the sight of you, broken and bloodied on the unforgiving grass.

The medics arrive in a whirlwind of crisp efficiency, barking terse orders and assessments that slice into Charles with each clipped syllable. He’s dimly aware of the confirmation that you still live, that there’s a chance — but it’s a flicker, fleeting in the face of the reality unfolding before him.

“What are her chances?” The question rasps out, little more than a graveled whisper as he strains against the restraining hands.

You need an airlift, treatment beyond what can be rendered here on this blood-stained stage. Charles knows it, can see the franticness in the medics’ eyes as they work, but the knowledge brings no comfort.

Only an agonizing cycle of seconds hand-cranked like a Medieval torture device, each one stripping another layer of sanity as he watches you slip away.

“Just hang on, mon amour. I’m here … I’m right here.” His voice cracks, breaking on a devastated keen as they load you onto the backboard.

The whine of rotor blades cuts through the static in his head, a cold metallic slice that raises the hairs on the back of his neck. He sucks in a breath, lungs burning with the effort as the helicopter circles in a raucous descent.

“Please, let me go with her!” He wrenches against the hands with renewed desperation.

They’re taking you away.

He tries to follow, legs turned to lead weights, only to be held back once more by the wall of marshals. There’s shouting, words and pleas and anguished vows all tangled into an incomprehensible madness. “No! Y/N!”

And then, you’re gone.

Lifted skyward in a cloud of downdraft, growing smaller and more indistinct until the sleek lines of the helicopter grow razor-thin before disappearing completely.

“No … no, no, no!” Charles’ legs buckle, sending him crashing to his knees in the scorched swath of earth where you were just lying. His hands fist in the grass, heedless of the crimson that stains his fingers, his palms, every inch of shredded skin and broken soul.

The world has ended. His universe has imploded.

And all he can do is kneel in the ashes and scream your name into the uncaring void.

***

The deafening roar of engines fades to a dull thrum as Charles staggers away from the wreckage, his world reduced to a kaleidoscope of fractured images and white noise. He doesn’t register the shouts, the hands grasping at his shoulders as he stumbles blindly towards the track’s perimeter.

Racing. Championships. It all feels like a cruel cosmic joke in the face of what he’s just witnessed.

A chain-link fence looms ahead, the flimsy barrier doing nothing to impede his forward momentum. Figures materialize on the other side — fans, their faces twisted in shock and concern—and then hands are reaching through, steadying him as he clambers over the top with a desperation bordering on madness.

He has to get to you. Nothing else matters.

The parking lot stretches out before him, a maze of gleaming supercars and sleek team transporters. His feet move without conscious thought, propelled by a single-minded determination to reach his haven, his sole remaining tether in this swiftly unraveling realm.

Except, when he arrives at his Ferrari, chest heaving with exertion and the first tendrils of panic starting to set in, the awful truth crashes over him like a tsunami.

No keys.

A choking sound tears from his throat, part sob and part anguished growl of frustration. He can’t break down here, not now, not when every fiber of his being screams at him to keep moving, to fight, to-

“Charles!”

The familiar voice cuts through the din, offering a lifeline just as the darkness threatens to swell and consume him utterly. Andrea skids to a halt beside him, chest heaving and face flushed from his own desperate sprint across the paddock.

In his outstretched hand, the keys dangle and glint in the harsh sunlight.

“I had a feeling,” the trainer pants, thrusting the keys towards Charles with a knowing look.

No other words are needed. Charles snatches them with a terse nod, every agonizing second weighing like an eternity as the engine roars to life beneath his expert touch.

His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel as he wrenches the car into gear, jaw clenched to keep the scream of agony caged behind his teeth. Andrea hardly has time to slam the door before they’re peeling out of the lot in a spray of gravel and burnt rubber.

Except, the awful truth rears its head once more as the speedometer climbs past ludicrous speeds, the blur of the Italian countryside offering no reprieve from the maelstrom tearing him apart from the inside.

“Shit!” Charles’ palm cracks against the steering wheel, knuckles screaming in protest. “Where did they take her?”

Of course Andrea knows what he’s asking. The performance coach doesn’t even hesitate, already dialing his phone with the same razor-sharp focus that has guided Charles through so many battles over the years. “Fred? It’s Andrea. Where did they take Y/N?”

The next few seconds stretch into an eternity, each rattling breath searing Charles’ lungs. The line must still be ringing because Charles can’t make out any other voice, just the muffled hum of the connection and Andrea’s terse breathing. He casts a sidelong glance, jaw clenched so tightly he can feel the tendons straining beneath his skin.

Then, a response — clipped and authoritative even through the tinny speakerphone crackle. “They’ve airlifted her to the trauma center in Milan. She’s still en route.”

No other words are needed. The Ferrari leaps forward with a howl, devouring the asphalt as Charles whites out every other thought, every scrap of sense and reason. All that exists is the burning need to reach you before the unthinkable becomes reality.

Highway signs whip by in a blur, red taillights and shrill horns little more than background noise as he tears down the roads, uncaring of speed limits or lane markers or any of the trifling rules governing the everyday world he’s left behind. Just an animalistic need propelling him forward, the destination the only thing that matters.

Get to her. Don’t be too late. Please, god, don’t let me be too late ...

And then, finally, the looming skyline of Milan rears into view.

Tires squeal in protest as Charles wrenches the steering wheel, the Ferrari fishtailing wildly before rocketing down the street towards the distinctive profile of the hospital. He doesn’t even bother looking for a proper spot, swinging the car up over the curb and leaving it stranded halfway on the sidewalk in a blatant obstruction.

But he doesn’t care. Can’t care about anything beyond reaching you.

The chaos of the emergency room hits them in a crashing wave of noise and activity, but Charles forges ahead undeterred. Shouts and rebuffs part around him like a river around a boulder, falling away as staff recognize the wild-eyed visage barreling towards them.

It’s Italy. It’s the Grand Prix. Of course they know his face, the name that every tifoso here would sell their soul to claim as a native son. A path opens before them, whispers and pointing fingers trailing in their wake.

“Leclerc!”

“Did you hear what happened?”

“Code Red from the Autodromo ..”

The words slice at Charles, both too loud and too indistinct to comprehend beyond the implication that you’re here, somewhere through these endless, claustrophobic hallways. A nurse in seafoam scrubs appears at his side, ushering them with brisk efficiency. He follows without a word, legs fueled by pure desperation as they weave deeper into the sprawling facility.

At last, they’re led into a waiting room, the nurse pivoting to face them with a carefully composed expression. “The patient was brought in approximately thirty minutes ago with severe trauma from the crash. She’s currently in surgery, but there are no further updates I can provide right now.”

Surgery.

The weight of that single word hits like a sledgehammer, sending Charles reeling until his back slams against the nearest wall. He sucks in a ragged gasp, fingers tangling in his sweat-damp curls as the magnitude of what’s unfolding threatens to drag him under completely.

There are voices, murmurs of concern as figures materialize from the edges of his frayed vision. Hands grasp at him, trying in vain to offer comfort or reassurance or something, anything to tether him to this reality that has become his waking nightmare.

But there is no solace to be found.

With a shudder that wracks his entire frame, Charles slides down the wall, knees tucking up in a pitiful facsimile of the bright-eyed young man who had stood on that sunbaked grid only hours ago. His head drops into his upraised palms, fingers tightening in his hair until the pain is the only thing anchoring him against the relentless maelstrom of grief and terror threatening to sweep him away.

The rest of the world falls away until all that remains is the hollow ache in his chest and the silent pleas to someone — anyone — tumbling through his mind on an endless refrain.

A hand rests on his shoulder, grounding him, and he registers Andrea’s presence beside him, the other man’s face drawn in anguish. Tears track down the trainer’s cheeks, glittering in the harsh fluorescent light.

For a long moment, there is only the sound of their mingled breaths, of a silent understanding too profound for words.

Neither speaks. There are no more words to be said, no prayers to voice beyond the torrent of desperate pleas echoing through their fractured psyches.

All that remains is to wait, and steel themselves against the soul-shattering eventuality awaiting them no matter which way the scales of existence tip.

So they wait. And Charles breaks.

***

The fluorescent lights hum a discordant drone, casting stark shadows that seem to leach the warmth from every surface. Charles stares unseeing at the scuffed linoleum tiles inches from his boots, the clinical smell of disinfectant burning his nostrils with each shallow breath.

Beside him, Andrea’s presence is a fixed point amidst the whirling currents of nurses, orderlies, and grim-faced family members that swirl through the waiting room. A bottle of water is pressed into Charles’ hand at some point, the plastic slick with condensation against his palm.

He doesn’t drink. Doesn’t move or speak or show any reaction to the flickering passage of time.

The flow of bodies ebbs and swells like the tide, more familiar faces appearing in scuttling clusters. First the Ferrari personnel, then other teams’ crew, and finally the drivers themselves, one by one. Gasps and muffled curses drift past as the scope of the situation sinks in. Whispers, a bitten-off sob from somewhere across the room.

Charles hears none of it.

He’s adrift in a sea of his own spiraling thoughts, each cresting wave dragging him deeper into the all-consuming torment. Memories mingle with fragments of overheard updates, snippets of frantic phone conversations from those trying to unravel the events of the race.

Blood, so much blood staining the grass, her lips, matting her hair in crimson streaks as she lay unmoving, unbreathing.

Internal bleeding, fractures, neural trauma.

Laughter muffled by the sheets, lazy mornings spent tangled in each other as the world continued its inexorable spin beyond their bedroom walls.

Code Red from the Autodromo ...

The last words she’d tried to force out, little more than a whispered breath over the roar of the racetrack: “I love-”

The purgatory crawls on, each sluggish second carved raw against his tattered nerves. Charles is vaguely aware of the others filtering in and out in shifts, some speaking to him in murmurs too soft to understand, others simply sitting in silence as the minutes bled together into hours.

Some indeterminable span of time later, a ripple works its way through the room, crystallizing into a gathered hush as figures in pale green scrubs appear. One steps forward — a man with graying hair and a craggy face lined by decades of triaging human lives.

The hush deepens to an utter stillness as every eye turns towards him, a held breath drawn taut to the breaking point. Charles lifts his head, forces his gaze to focus on the man’s lips as they part, the moment elongating like a length of rubber pulled to the edge of its tensile strength.

“The patient-” A pause as the surgeon’s eyes flick across the sea of apprehension before settling on Charles with deliberate weight. “-has been stabilized after undergoing extensive surgery to address the trauma sustained in the crash.”

A soft exhalation moves through the room, instinctive reactions barely bridled by the undercurrent of anxiety that keeps them taut, waiting.

“She suffered a severe brain bleed which resulted in significant swelling. In order to alleviate the pressure on her brain, we were forced to put her into a medically-induced coma.”

The words lance through Charles like jagged shards of ice, locking the breath in his lungs. Unconscious, unresponsive. Alive, but without any way of reaching out to reassure himself that the spark still flickers in those endlessly warm eyes. He swallows hard, the room swimming in and out of focus as the surgeon continues in a measured cadence.

“We’ve also had to repair multiple internal injuries and fractures, including her spine. The next forty-eight hours will be critical for monitoring her condition and responses.”

And there it is, the crux they’ve all been tensed in agonizing anticipation to receive. In two days, they’ll know if the fight — your fight — is over before it’s truly begun. The flip of a cosmic coin will determine whether Charles’ entire universe continues to spin … or falls into the black void opening up beneath his feet.

Peripherally, he’s aware of the questions starting, the anguished pleas for more details and reassurances as the others process the impassive surgeon’s words through their own lenses of experience. But Charles hears none of it, only the deafening rush of his own pulse echoing in his ears as the grains of sand in fate’s diabolical hourglass begin their insidious trek.

A blink, and the surgeon is gone, the rest of the somber scrub-clad figures dispersing back towards the swinging doors of the surgical ward. Just like that, they’re alone again, adrift in the limbo of both desperation and dread.

Charles sags, his tenuous grip on composure fracturing like a dam rupturing beneath the crushing weight of reality. A broken whimper rasps from deep within his chest, guttural and visceral and utterly devoid of anything resembling hope.

A hand finds his shoulder, grounding him enough to keep him tethered to the earth as the universe he knows compresses into the torturous rhythm of a mechanized ventilator breathing life into your battered form.

He can see you so clearly, even with his eyes screwed shut against the harsh fluorescents bleaching every surface to the same antiseptic pallor. Fragile, fighting, hooked up to the cold indifference of technology while it works to preserve what he knows to be the brightest, most brilliant soul ever breathed into existence.

The thought of those sparkling eyes, your eyes clouded with unresponsive stillness … it rips the last tattered shred of restraint from his unraveling core. A desolate wail tears free, strangled and raw and utterly devoid of resignation or peace.

He’s loved you for years, months, days, lifetimes — and still it will never be enough to prepare him for a world in which you don’t exist. A breath where he is forced to simply survive without the steady radiance of your presence illuminating every step along his path. Without living.

Andrea’s arms encircle him, a brotherly embrace that does little to quell the flood of anguish now pouring from him in heaving torrents. The others retreat with quiet steps, allowing themselves to fade into the shadows, mere ghosts slipping from the devastation of a man confronting the whispered dread that inhabits every driver’s subconscious.

A love and a life, both hanging suspended by whatever cosmic forces govern their fleeting existences.

You are his gravity, his sun, his guiding starlight.

If you burn out, his universe will go forever dark.

***

The antiseptic haze of the ICU feels like a vice around Charles’ chest as he follows the nurse down the sterile hallway. Each shuffling step is leaden, tinged with an unreality that weighs heavier with every closed door they pass.

Part of him doesn’t want to go through with this. Doesn’t want to face the reality that awaits on the other side of that threshold and shatter the tenuous equilibrium he’s managed to cling to since the moment everything disintegrated on the racetrack.

“She’s just through here.”

The nurse’s words are a wrench, jerking Charles from his reverie with a sobering lurch. Ahead, a nondescript door with a window barely cracked — the entrance to a realm he’s not sure his soul can withstand traversing.

“I’ll give you a few minutes.” Her voice has taken on that too-gentle lilt, the one that says she’s borne witness to too many lives fractured.

Charles nods automatically, not meeting her gaze as she retreats on soft-soled steps. Then it’s just him, alone in the dimly lit hallway with only the muffled noise of machines and murmured voices beyond the door to keep him tethered.

With a fortifying breath that does little to settle the jackhammer pounding in his chest, he grasps the handle and pushes through into your room.

And then … there you are.

Pale and hauntingly still against the sterile sheets, a sickly garden of tubes and wires cocooning your form. There’s barely a rise and fall of your chest, just the robotic ebb and flow of life being pumped through the mask clamped across your face. Dark crescents of bruising mar the fragile skin beneath your eyes, blossoming in vivid shades of yellow and violet across your cheekbones.

You’re so devastatingly still. As if all your vibrant essence has retreated inward, abandoning your corporeal shell in favor of waging an unseen war to simply continue existing.

Charles sucks in a shuddering breath, fingers spasming against his thigh as the first hairline fractures split through the dam he’s erected around his emotions. Part of him wants to flee, to escape back into the blissful naivete of the world before this became his reality. Another part is rooted to the spot with magnetic inevitability, drawn in helpless orbit around your pale, unmoving form.

Slowly, one foot drags in front of the other, carrying him across the room to hover beside your bedside. The blanket of tubes and wires prevents him from seeing much beyond your face and the barest suggestion of a shoulder through the loose neckline of the hospital gown. He reaches out, fingertips trembling as he ghosts them over the exposed skin just above the jutting notch of your collarbone.

You’re so still. And so, so cold.

That’s what breaks him.

His knees hit the tile with a dull thud, unheeded tears already streaking down his cheeks by the time he presses his forehead to the mattress edge. One hand finds yours, enveloping it in a desperate grasp as his entire being crumbles inward like a spent force of nature.

“No, no, no ...” The words are a mantra intermingled with broken gasps as the dam ruptures completely and the anguish pours free in ragged waves. “This can’t … you can’t ...”

Coherent thought deserts him, spiraling into the endless dark of a life without you at his side. These last few days have been a mere fleeting taste of that desolate actuality, uncomprehending glimpses into a reality too obliterating to fully process.

A universe without your light? Your radiance and warmth suffusing his world with color and texture and meaning? It feels like a black hole has opened its maw inside of his chest, hungry to devour everything until nothing remains.

“Please ...”

The plea rasps out in a guttural whisper, little more than carbon scoring the back of his throat. Head bowed, he crushes his brow to your knuckles, each etchings of bone an anchor weight lashing him to this merciless reality.

“Come back to me ...”

The words splinter apart, shredded into woeful gasps as the dam of his fragile composure ruptures. Great, racking sobs claw their way free, tearing through him from the center of his hollow core.

“Take everything else.” The words fracture anew, dissolving into heaving sobs as another piece of his soul splinters away. “Take every trophy, every podium, every championship I will ever win ...”

His voice cracks, seizing in his throat as he drags in a ragged breath, leaning his brow harder against the bedside to ground himself in some last anchor of solidity. Anything to keep from shattering into a million irretrievable pieces as he pours out the final offering, the ultimate sacrifice any driver or athlete can make against the cruel cosmic joke of mortality.

“Take my career, my records ... everything racing has ever meant to me ...” His fingers spasm around yours, clinging on with everything he has left as the darkness closes in. “Just ... please, let her wake up. Let me have more than just these memories of her smile and her laugh and the way she makes everything brighter just by existing.”

The sobs come harder now, racking his frame with deep shudders as his voice dissolves into jagged keening. Tears scald rivulets down his cheeks and drip from his chin to patter against the utilitarian sheets in glimmering droplets. He cries for the unfairness of it all, for the loss that is so brutally imminent it’s already written into his very bones, for the gaping hole that is soon to hollow out his very existence.

Eventually, the racking sobs subside into muted whimpers, the storm ebbing into a quieter desolation as he clings to the thin lifeline of your hand still cradled in his own. A bitter laugh claws its way up his throat, raw and devoid of any trace of humor.

“You’d probably kick my ass if you could see me making deals with the devil like this.”

The silence is deafening, broken only by the measured hiss-pause-exhale of the machines mercilessly keeping that precious flicker of life from extinguishing completely. Another laugh escapes, rough and graveled with the weight of a million shattered pieces of himself littering the floor around him.

“You’ve always been the stronger one between us, haven’t you?”

He angles his head, pressing his lips to your knuckles in a lingering kiss as a fresh deluge of tears gather in his eyes. “So wake up, mon cœur. Wake up and show me how to keep going ...”

The whisper hangs in the air, suspended in the limbo of waiting and dread as the machines continue their indifferent monotony. Charles lingers there, forehead pressed to your palm as the minutes drag onward and the final flickers of day fade from the window.

He’s here. He’ll always be right here.

No matter how many nights and days and eternities that ceaseless tide must crash over him until your eyes open once more.

The quiet is shattered by a stifled gasp at the threshold, a swell of fresh emotion that causes Charles to lift his head, scrubbing futilely at his eyes with the back of his free hand. Two figures have appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the dimmer light of the hallway beyond.

Footsteps, two sets. Familiar yet not, like ghosts drifting through the periphery of a dream. He knows instinctively who has stepped into the claustrophobic bubble of vigil, but cannot summon the energy to turn, to confront them.

There’s only you. Only you, and this carcass of shattered promises and devastation that he’s been reduced to by the simple fact of your absence.

Until …

Motions in the corner of his vision, the slide of fabric and muted footfalls amidst the monotonous cadence of technology. Then, a pair of weathered hands — hands he recognizes like the veins pulsing with life beneath his own skin — come into view, cupping his bowed head in a cradle of reassurance and shared infinitudes of anguish.

Your parents’ voices carry in the wake of their touch, whispers ragged with the same bone-deep desolation bleeding from Charles’ shattered core. Indistinct murmurs of comfort, of empathy, of that level of understanding that only those poised on the precipice can ever understand.

He doesn’t resist as they draw him into the circle of their arms, enveloping him until their shared warmth banishes some of the chill snaking through his soul. Hot tears streak down his cheeks again, but these aren’t solitary, bitter shed of a man abandoned in the void of loss.

Their mingled anguish binds them together on this fevered plane of suffering, a communion of the damned begging with whatever beneficent forces might hear their pleas.

Please.

Please give them back the spark of light they all crave with every fiber of their beings.

Please, because this ...

This is no life. Not without you.

***

The fluorescent lights seem to dim with every passing hour, the edges of reality blurring together into an indistinct smear. Time has lost all meaning amidst the monotonous cycle of machines and muffled hospital ambiance swirling through your room.

Charles is adrift in a wakeful dream state, his world compressed into the miniscule shifts across your features. The steady beep of the heart monitor, the almost imperceptible rise and fall of your chest, the flutter of your eyelids as your mind navigates whatever ethereal paths separate you from him.

He hasn’t left your bedside. Not for food or rest or even the most basic of human needs. It’s all he can do to simply exist in this liminal space with you, unwilling to surrender a single breath or blink to the cruelty of a reality in which your presence doesn’t illuminate every crevice.

His thumb traces idle circles over your knuckles, the motion as robotic as the whoosh of the ventilator forcing air in and out of your lungs. Voices drift through from the hallway, clinical and detached. More tests and updates being murmured without context or depth of feeling.

None of it matters. The only metric capable of penetrating the fog enshrouding Charles is the ghost of sensation where his calloused fingers brush your skin.

He’s acutely attuned to the details of your condition at any given moment, no matter how inconsequential it may seem to the professionals at their stations monitoring labs and scans. A slight spike in temperature or blood pressure, the faintest twitching muscle or brow-furrow. All of it feels magnified a thousandfold as he clings to every indication, every little shift that might signal a turn for the better.

Or … for the worse

The thought skitters away the instant it surfaces, instinctively repressed by the force of Charles’ sheer desperation. He’s been here, motionless and steadfast, as the forty-eight hour milestone stretched into seventy-two, ninety-six, a hundred and twenty. With each passing day, the doctors grew more optimistic, more positive in their assessments as the swelling in your brain gradually abated.

Until this morning. The preliminary preparations to rouse you from the protective shroud of the medically induced coma began. Rounds of testing, consults from specialists, hushed asides between the scrub-clad personnel that Charles couldn’t parse beyond the undercurrent of anticipation that rippled through the ward.

Now they wait. He and the contingent of nurses and doctors hovering at stations like sentries guarding the gateway to the only world that matters. Watching, observing, as your eyelids begin to stir and the heart monitor’s pattern shifts just slightly from its metronomic rhythm.

Charles holds his breath, fingers tightening around yours as his gaze fixes on your face, the first pinpricks of awareness flickering there. Your eyelids flutter, brow furrowing as if straining against unseen barriers holding you back. Flashes of animation, of unvoiced struggle, play out in rapid succession and his world constricts into that singular point of reality unwinding.

Your fingers twitch, a spasmodic shudder, before settling into a steady movement in his grasp. The change in pressure is minute, featherweight, but it’s enough to electrify every nerve in Charles’ body. His head whips toward the observation window, breath sawing from his lungs.

“She’s waking up!”

It’s little more than a raw exhalation, the spark that ignites the room into urgent, yet controlled, flurries of activity. A nurse slips inside, tapping briskly at monitors and checking lines with an instinctive flow of motion. Charles barely registers her presence, his world distilled down to that singular point of lifeline linking him to you as the fog of unconsciousness finally begins to lift.

Your first inhale tugs at something primal within him, hauls the breath from his lungs even as unfettered joy spills through his chest. There’s movement beneath the fluttering of your eyelids, the rustle of lashes and tiny furrows creasing the delicate skin around your eyes. The seconds stretch out like an eternity until finally ...

They open.

Slitted and hazy, but undeniably open and aware. For an endless heartbeat, Charles is frozen, hands still wrapped around your fingers as afraid to move as a cave explorer plunged into impermeable black.

Then the world rushes in with all the chaos and color he’s been robbed of for far too long. A desperate sound tears itself free of his throat, as his body releases the suspended tension flooding from every pore. He sways forward, bracing his other hand on the mattress edge to keep from utterly crumpling at your very first flutter of life.

“Oh god ...” The fractured keen catches with a gasping sob. “Dieu merci, I thought I-”

But the words fracture, tumble away into lost coherence as you shift, throat bobbing with visible effort before the slurred shape of words escapes past chapped lips.

“C-can’t … f-feel ...”

Charles freezes, the world contracting back into stark lines and hyper-focused clarity. You’re struggling, the effort of speech clear across features still slack with the vestiges of your ordeal.

Panic claws its way up his throat, instinct sounding the call to seek help, to rally every force of medicine at their disposal toward solving this new, horrifying complication. He turns, mouth already open in a shout toward the observation window-

Only to find the room already flooding with personnel, summoned by some unseen alert the moment you stirred. Voices begin filtering through the dissonance clogging his senses — clipped, professional directives lancing through the feedback loop skipping inside his skull.

“Keep her calm-”

“... signs of paralysis ...”

“... damage to the motor cortex ...”

The final phrase lands like a weighted punch, sending Charles reeling back a half-step as the implications unspool into his consciousness. Your face twists in distress, breath sawing as the tube mask fogs with each panicked exhalation.

“I … n-no ...” You try to move, to shift position, but whatever spinal injury incurred in the wreck limits you to feeble twitches and whimpers.

Charles is at your side in an instant, features etched in silent agony as he brushes back the hair feathering across your forehead. His other hand finds yours, solid and grounding as he wills every iota of strength into the contact.

“Shhh, it’s alright. It’ll be alright, just stay calm.”

A cursory glance over his shoulder confirms a flurry of activity unfolding behind the glass as neurologists and specialists filter in. Tests will be run, evaluations and diagnostics to chart out whatever neural trauma has wrought such devastating effects upon your mobility.

In this moment, none of it matters beyond the trembling whimpers parting your lips and the glimmer of tears streaking your cheeks to dampen the pillow beneath your head. Charles wants nothing more than to gather you into his arms, to shield you from this fresh cruelty that has robbed you of yet another piece of your spirit.

Instead, he leans in close, cradling your face in his palm as you struggle to latch onto his presence amidst the waves of fear and distress no doubt crashing through your psyche.

“F-feel my … can’t ....” The disjointed words catch in racking sobs, your eyes squeezing shut against a torrent of emotion he recognizes all too well.

“I know, I know ...” The platitudes feel hollow, meaningless verbal gestures against the enormity of the situation closing its grip around them. But Charles speaks them regardless, murmuring soft reassurances against your anguish.

“Just focus on me, mon cœur. Only me.” His thumb swipes the moisture from your cheekbones, smearing tear tracks through the pallor there as his voice drops to a soft rasp. “You’re still here, still fighting ...”

Your eyes open at that, lashes spiked and heavy with more saline that slips free to streak down your temples. Those depths are oceans of heartache, roiling with a tempest of emotion that momentarily banishes every scrap of reason or logic from Charles’ mind.

All that matters is easing your suffering. Doing anything to lift the veil of anguish smothering the radiant light that marked your essence, that wondrous spark responsible for thawing every one of his defenses and opening a pathway to the heart he’d resigned himself to never sharing.

“I’m here and I’m not leaving. Not ever.” The words scorch themselves into his very soul as he presses his brow to yours. The antiseptic smells of your surroundings fade, the two of you cocooned in the intimate embrace of making your entire world his, if only for these fleeting seconds.

“We’ll get through this together,” he murmurs against your hairline, drinking in the simple euphoria of your closeness, of being able to impart even an inkling of comfort through his presence alone. “I promise.”

The words hang there for a suspended eternity, no response beyond the quiet hiccup of your breathing evening out the tiniest bit. A sliver of solace in the storm to cling to, no matter how tenuous.

Then the retinue of doctors and nurses sweeps in, their voices raised in directives and instructions. It shatters the moment, the outside world crashing back into their reality with all its cold indifference and clinical calculation.

Charles is ushered back, stumbling on legs turned to rubber as he watches you drag your reddened gaze from his, focusing inward as the onslaught of testing begins. He wants to refuse, to dig in his heels and remain steadfastly at your side through whatever fresh torments this throws your way.

But that defiance dies before it can form, snuffed out by the fragility written in the slump of your shoulders and the dull, haunted glaze muting your formerly vibrant spirit. All of his instincts scream at him to protect you, to rally against any external forces bent on inflicting more cruelty upon your already overburdened existence.

Instead, with a leaden heart and bile burning the back of his throat, Charles can only slip from the room and let the white coats encircle you with their machines and sterile indifference.

It’s a wait that lasts an eternity condensed into seconds, the rubber soles of his sneakers tracing grooves into the linoleum as he paces the hallway with increasing franticness. Snatches of conversation drift out from behind the closed door — clinical assessments devoid of context or feeling.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the door sweeps open and a group of personnel file out, scribbling notations and conversing in terse murmurs. One of them, a woman with cropped silver hair and piercing eyes, breaks off to approach Charles. Her expression is carefully neutral, devoid of any emotional tells.

“Mr. Leclerc.” It’s not a question, but an acknowledgment of who he is … and what is owed to him. “Your … partner has suffered extensive trauma to her spinal cord and central nervous system in the crash. The amount of nerve damage we’re detecting suggests paralysis of both lower extremities.”

The words shatter into coherent syllables and empty static all at once. Charles nods numbly, awaiting the verdict he can feel looming above them all.

“We can’t say with any certainty whether this condition is temporary or … permanent.” There’s a pause, the ghost of empathy flickering across her hawkish features before the professional mask reasserts itself. “Only time will tell if there’s any chance of full recovery once the other injuries have mended and treatment can begin in earnest.”

The finality hangs in the air for a stretched tautness of heartbeats, crystalline and utterly devoid of warmth. Charles forces himself to meet her gaze, to hold her clinical detachment within his own eyes as the world drifts further and further away.

“Okay.” It’s little more than a whisper, but it feels like tearing out his own throat to give voice to the thing that shatters his heart for you. “Can I … see her?”

A dip of the woman’s chin, a wordless assent as she steps aside to allow Charles to pass. He manages only a few weighted strides before halting, hand braced against the doorframe as he ghosts his gaze over your prostrate form.

You’re crying, quiet and bereft as the blankets rise and fall in time with your shuddering breaths. Something animal and feral keens low in Charles’ chest at the sight, every scrap of resolve threatening to unravel in the wake of your desolation.

Before he can think of second-guess the impulse, he crosses the space in two strides and drops to his knees beside the mattress. You startle at the sudden motion, eyelids fluttering in shock before recognition blazes through the emptiness shrouding your features. It’s Charles’ undoing.

“No, no … no tears.” His voice cracks like splintered glass, adrift on waves of his own withheld emotion. “You’re still here. You’re still with me, mon amour.”

He finds your hand with his own, fingers dwarfed in his calloused grip as he brings them to his brow. Outside, the doctors and specialists confer in low murmurs, their indifference too jagged to apply to the wounds here in this sanctuary where only you exist.

“You’ll be okay.” The promise burns itself into the verse he’s scribed on his heart, a vow etched in trails of moisture searing his cheeks. “No matter what it takes.”

His lips find your forehead, brushing against the clammy skin there as you sag towards him, drawn together by the gravity of an understanding too profound for the empty hallways and clinical trappings circling them. For this stolen breath, it’s simply you and him in all your wounded radiance.

“I almost lost you.” The confession rattles free, sent skyward on exhaled plumes that stir the fine baby hairs framing your brow. “And I’ll fight like hell to keep you beside me for as long as this life will allow.”

Your eyes find his, fractured mirrors reflecting all the heartache and dashed hopes ricocheting between you. But there’s something else there too.

Hope. Defiance. That unquenchable spark that first lured Charles toward you like a moth begging for the flame’s obliterating caress.

He’ll cling to that inner fire. Pour every ounce of his being into nurturing the smoldering coals until they flare again, banishing the darkness fate has chosen to drape them in at every turn. They’ll get through this, finding whatever reserves the cruelest pockets of despair have yet to strip away to sustain them.

Paralysis, brain damage, unthinkable trauma ...

None of it matters.

Not as long as you’re still drawing those precious, rasping breaths beside him.

Not as long as that beautifully battered heart beats on, refusing to surrender to the abyss.

“Je t’aime.” The oath clings to his lips, pressed against your temple as he holds you close. “Always and forever. No matter what.”

***

The sleek, modern lines of the therapy center bisect the Monegasque sky, all glass and steel rising toward the blue expanse. Charles pauses a moment as he strides across the courtyard, drawing in a steadying breath of the crisp early-winter air before continuing on toward the entrance.

The motion-triggered doors sweep open with a whisper, ushering him into the pristine lobby adorned with the fixtures of understated elegance. Sunlight streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting everything in muted ambers and golds that warm the precision-engineered decor.

Charles crosses the space with economical purpose, gaze sweeping the sitting areas arranged with studied nonchalance until he pinpoints the familiar silhouette awaiting him. You’re positioned with your back angled toward him, the faint shudder of your shoulders visible as you shift position in the high-backed wheelchair.

For a heartbeat, the sight freezes him in place, the old swell of emotions threatening to spiral into rampant chaos until he can taste the acrid tang of panic curdling on his tongue.

Then the moment passes, brought up short by the instinctive reflex to compartmentalize that’s carried him through so many darknesses since the day his entire universe fragmented beyond repair. He shakes it off, squaring his shoulders as he resumes his trajectory, clearing the distance between you in a handful of strides.

You must sense his presence behind you because a tremor shivers across your frame a half-second before you begin to crane your neck towards the source of the approaching footfalls. Charles times his approach to intercept the motion, stepping neatly into your peripheral line of sight with a warm smile ghosting across his features.

“Mon amour.”

The endearment falls from his lips like silk across skin, the richly-textured syllables suffusing the air between you until it feels thick with emotion and the grounding sense of home. Of course, you react to the sound, lips already parting in anticipation of reply that has yet to fully manifest.

The struggle is still so pronounced, hewn into the furrows creasing your brow and the deliberate concentration sharpening the elegant lines of your profile as you wrestle with the disconnect between neural synapses and musculature. Each time Charles bears witness to these trials, it rekindles the enduring fury and heartache enough to steal the air from his lungs.

How cruel could fate be to hurt the brightest soul he’s ever known?

The questions circle endlessly, gnawing their way across his subconscious in a constant cycle of what-ifs and unvoiced anguish. So he clings to patience as your sole solace, willing every ounce of unspoken encouragement into the sliver of contact where his calloused fingers sit atop your knuckles.

“It’s-” The fragmented sound tugs his focus back to your profile in time to catch the flickering hint of frustration tightening the muscles along your jaw as the words elude their trajectory once more. He watches your chest rise and fall with the effort of measured breathing, sees the war being waged behind blown pupils as your nerves strive to reestablish an equilibrium so brutally ruptured by trauma.

And then … a breakthrough.

“I ...” Barely more than an exhale, shaped on the barest puff of air passing your lips. But the simple vowel ignites something beneath Charles’ breastbone, a frisson of hope and pride and a thousand other tangled emotions combining into unadulterated exhilaration.

“L-love ...” Another pause, infinitesimal in the grand cosmic span yet stretched endless as the consonants parse themselves into recognizable sounds. Your eyes find his, glimmering pinpricks of desperate adoration blazing through the sullen cloud of anguish that’s settled in their depths.

The final whisper crystallizes into the air with the reverent weight of an answered prayer, “... you.”

Charles is across the space in an instant, crashing to his knees before you with a breathless sound that parts his lips on a broken rasp. Trembling hands map along the delicate slopes of your cheeks, cradling your face as a single tear spills free to chart a glistening trail down his cheek.

“Oh god ...” The prayer shivers past his lips, half sob and half keening breath as he presses his brow to yours, drowning in your presence and surrounding himself with the singularity of your existence. “You did it. You said it ...”

He trails off, lost to the beautifully battered rhythm of your exhales gusting across his features. This close, you’re all he sees, all he needs to survive this moment of solace among the anguished trials you’ve endured to forge this path back toward him. With painstaking care, he leans in to dust trembling kisses across your brow, your temples, the feathered crescents of your eyelashes as they flutter shut beneath the reverent onslaught.

Until finally, his lips find yours in a searing confession of worship — no urgency or fire, just two souls colliding into the singularity that first kindled their union. Charles slants his mouth across your own, breathing you in deeply until his senses are awash in the familiar scent of your skin and the dizzying tranquility of becoming something so much more than the sum of fragmented parts.

It both is and isn’t a kiss, just the barest brush of sensitive flesh and shared breath. Yet all of Charles’ fortitude strains against the tidal surge of emotion crashing through his bones … devotion and heartache, fervent pride and the nauseating chaser of reality.

Because even as you persevere, rising like a phoenix from each trial along this endless road toward recovery, he knows the path ahead remains strewn with obstacles and shadowed pockets into which the darkness always lurks.

When he finally tears himself away, it’s with another shuddering breath and two crystalline trails of moisture etched into the hollows beneath his eyes. He drinks in your features with the starving desperation of one lost to the merciless desert of life, maps every nuanced shift of line and breath and expression to catalog the miracles unfolding before him.

“You incredible, impossible thing ...” The endearment slips free on a choked laugh, more for his sake than any lack of comprehension on your part. Even after everything, Charles knows you understand the timbre and shape of his words as deeply as if they were your own thoughts.

But before he can bask in the fleeting warmth of this tiny victory, you’re drawing him back in. Delicate fingertips brushing the moisture from his cheekbones as you struggle to translate thought into sound once more.

“This … isn’t ...” A pregnant pause, brow furrowing with the strain before the rest comes in a tumbling rush. “What you wanted. For us.”

The words land like craters against Charles’ ribs, disjointed bombs stripping away the last threads of cheerfulness with each syllable. He stills, mouth parting on a protest that never materializes as you forge onward in the wake of his stunned silence.

“Y-you gave up ...” Another tiny hesitation, your chest rising and falling as you suck in a fortifying breath, “... everything.”

A fresh sheen of moisture wells in your eyes, slick with too many fractured hopes and dreams to ever assemble into coherent utterances. Still, Charles recognizes each shred of meaning, every whispered subtext behind the fragments you offer up as if stilling him for the inevitable strike to come.

Except this time, the blow he expects never arrives. Instead, you lean in, fingertips trailing lightly across the sharp angles of his jaw as the rest of the thought emerges with painstaking care.

“It’s … okay. To find someone ...” Your voice cracks, throat bobbing against the torrent of naked vulnerability suffusing each word. “... new.”

For an endless instant, the world spins on its axis, that single, shattered confession shearing through all of Charles’ deeply-ingrained instincts and defenses. This is the thing he’s dreaded since the first moment fate’s vicious hand tore the very fabric of your radiance into parts — the inevitability of you shouldering the blame for what has unfolded.

Unacceptable.

Unthinkable.

His hands are on you again before he consciously wills them to move, palms cradling your face like he’s the one in constant danger of crumbling into a billion undone pieces. It’s both anchor and lifeline as he pulls you flush against him, mouth trembling for purchase against the rush of sentiment crashing through his veins.

“Never.” The oath has never felt so feather-light yet absolute all at once. He rasps it out like a scrap of prayer, the shape of the sound rippling through the air between them.

“This life? You are everything I want.” The words feel torn from some primal place he had thought cauterized in the aftermath of all that has transpired between them. But still, Charles lays himself bare in their wake, baring every shred of anguish and love and reverence bleeding from his heart.

“Not the career or the glory or any other pursuit I might have thrown myself toward ...�� He drags in a ragged inhale, feeling your quivering breaths ghosting across his lips like a light breeze stoked from embers. “Just you, mon cœur. All of you — from your brilliant mind to your determined spirit.”

His thumb traces the supple curve of your cheekbone, rough calluses snagging lightly against satin-smooth skin as his voice skips toward a halting rasp.

“I don’t know what the future holds.” This final mortal truth lingers in the thrall of hushed vulnerability shrouding them. “But I’m not leaving this existence without you by my side through every second of it. Not willingly.”

In the suspended heartbeats that follow, Charles watches the onslaught of emotion crest through the otherworldly depths of your eyes. He swallows hard, aching to fend off whatever final resistance lingers behind those storm-tossed features. Except his throat has grown too thick, too clogged with unshed tears to give voice to the hundreds upon thousands of fractured promises unspooling toward each other.

So he kisses you instead — harder this time, with the desperate exhilaration of a drowning man breaking surface to taste the first gasps of oxygen-rich air. He pours himself into the connection, igniting the spark that first smoldered between you years and lifetimes ago until his entire being resonates with the radiant warmth.

When at last he drags himself back, it’s with a swipe of his thumb to brush away the shimmering track of tears he’s unwittingly drawn to your cheek. “I love you,” he rumbles, the sound resonating from the depths of his core to embed in the very foundations of his soul. “Nothing else matters.”

And as if summoned by nothing more than the simmering weight of his epiphanies, you offer up one final exhalation shimmering with promise and budding hope.

“Race.” A broken sound, little more than a whispered caress against the tide of all that has gone unsaid. “Win for … f-for us.”

Charles’ lips part, trembling with too many half-born replies in that stretched moment of realization.

You’re right. Of course you’re right, focused as always upon rekindling the vibrant sparks threatening to gutter beneath his gaze. It’s yet more proof of why he resolved to kneel before you and bind his existence to your own — from now until the last glimmers of twilight.

He curls a hand behind your neck, prizing this beautiful connection above all the momentary triumphs and thrills his boyhood dreams ever convinced him to pursue. Red-painted carbon and shrieking downshifts, roars of acclaim and champagne spilled as if raining down from the heavens … none of it could ever hope to fill the sacred spaces you’ve already occupied with your quiet strength and luminous resilience.

“For you,” he murmurs against the shell of your ear, leaving goosebumps in its wake along the exposed column of your throat. “And only for you, mon ange. I’ll make the world itself hold its breath if that’s what you need.”

He seals the promise with a final brush of his mouth, lingering until every ounce of the sacred vow sears itself into your skin and memory alike.

By the time he draws back to drink in your features one more time, there’s a spark flickering through the storm clouds rimming your gaze. A dazzling flicker in the instant before it flares into something inextinguishable, something potent enough to blind out every shadow threatening to swallow him whole.

It sears through him like a lightning strike, melting every ounce of resolve into something more precious than any trophy or accolade his profession could ever bestow.

A vow you return with a simple promise. “I’ll be your ...” Your voice falters. But your eyes blaze with the words, with that same inevitable fire that forged those first fateful sparks between your souls, “... biggest fan.”

***

The grand hall seems to hum with the collective intake of a thousand bated breaths as Charles turns to face the gathering. Sunlight streams through towering windows in cascading sheets of amber warmth, gilding everything in honeyed refractions that lend an ethereal glow to the floral arrangements and pristine altar dominating the space.

He sucks in a steadying breath of his own, rolling his shoulders beneath the crisp lines of his tailored tuxedo. Anticipation thrums through every fiber of his being, vibrating in synchrony with the symphony of tremulous breaths rippling through their assembled friends and loved ones.

This moment has been too long in manifesting, too brutally tested by the cruelties of fate to be anything but utterly perfect in execution.

Behind him, the faint rustle of his groomsmen shifting into place provides the barest murmur of ambient sound. Joris, Andrea, Pierre, Arthur, and Lorenzo — all united by the gravity of this singular instance reshaping the trajectory of Charles’ existence. He chances the briefest glance over his shoulder, meeting their steadying nods of encouragement with a fleeting ghost of a smile.

It anchors him, draws together those final errant threads of composure in time for the first swell of the processional to filter through the sprawling chamber. The gentle symphony of strings and woven harmonies crashes over Charles in a physical caress, setting his nerves alight with anticipation as every eye tracks toward the grand archway dominating the far end of the hall.

He doesn’t immediately register the diminutive figure emerging in a sweep of ivory chiffon and pale lace. Only after the sharp inhalation of breath fluttering through the assembled does his gaze lock onto your silhouette, resplendent even through the sheer flutter of the veil haloing your shoulders.

He expects the wheelchair, the familiar sleek metallic lines and measured rolls ushering you towards him. Expects the sight that’s become so achingly you, even as it never fails to tighten every muscle in his body with the urge to shelter you in his arms from every cruelty the merciless universe has seen fit to inflict.

Except … there is no chair.

The shuddering breath that leaves his lips might as well have been torn from the depths of his very essence in that suspended heartbeat of dawning realization.

You’re walking.

With slow, tiny strides, flanked on either side by bridesmaids in burnished golds — but not supported or aided in any functional sense of the movements.

No, these halting footfalls are all your own. A monumental effort of sheer force of will and gritty determination honed across months of exhaustive perseverance through some of the darkest shadows ever spanning your shared existences.

Each trembling step, every inch traveled across that endless-seeming expanse of polished marble floor, is both defiant proof of your resilience and a blazing triumph over pain and hardship and loss echoed ten thousandfold.

Charles cannot breathe. Can barely remain upright as his entire world both manifests and dissolves around this singular progression unfolding before him in strangled increments. Others have begun to weep in earnest, muffled sobs billowing through the gathered assembly like ripples across a pond’s placid surface.

He’s vaguely aware of his groomsmen shifting behind him, of shocked gasps ghosting across their stunned features as they grasp the significance of what’s unfolding before their eyes. Andrea’s palm finds the small of Charles’ back, steadying his frame against the sudden influx of vertigo and exhilaration threatening to collapse his consciousness.

Because all that exists in this shuddering span of fractured instants is you. Nothing more, nothing less than the endless radiance of your soul as you stride toward him.

Toward your destiny.

Toward the culmination of all the strength and beauty and determination he’s revered with every ounce of his being since the first time he met you.

He’s crying in earnest now, can feel the streaking trails of moisture searing molten paths down his cheeks to dampen the crisp cotton stretched across his chest. Yet the tears hardly register as anything more than a bodily necessity to expel the rising tsunami of l elation cresting inside his core.

You’re within arm’s reach now, only a handful of quavering paces separating your joined paths. Charles’ hands tremble where they hang at his sides, fingers spasming around the desperation to move, to reach, to hold you against him and pour every ounce of adoration into you.

Willpower alone is what roots him in place, keeps him tethered until every shift and flex of muscle is committed to memory. Until your forward momentum carries you into his gravitational embrace in a sweeping collision of souls reunited.

He feels your hands first, slightly clammy where they land against his shoulders and chest in search of purchase. Then the subtlest hint of perfume, that floral-tinged elixir unique only to the slope of your neck and the crown of your hair when he dips to brush his lips across your brow in reverence.

The dam breaks and Charles crumples inward, folding himself around your form with only the vaguest cognition of the groomsmen forming a sheltering web around you both as he sinks to his knees in a thunderous impact of boneless limbs.

Words either fail him or escape articulation as the only sounds to pass his lips become a stream of fevered, jumbled endearments and throaty praises poured directly against the fevered warmth of your skin. His hands map every trembling plane in frantic sweeps, nails skirting intricate embroidery and dewy satin as each heated exhale shudders harsh against your neck, your cheeks, your brow ...

“Mon cœur ...” The title is prayer and confession, ground out from the friction of his entire belief system being forged anew around you. “You incredible thing ... dieu, look at you ...”

He silences the reflexive protests before they can rise by slanting his mouth across yours. There’s nothing carnal or profane in the gesture, simply the coming together of two souls.

You taste of elation and salt, of budding promise and fond tenacity. Of incandescent joy and the shredded velvet of nights spent paralleling the loneliest infinities as your fingers clutched each other like dual magnets anchored across the universe’s expanse.

“So strong … my warrior … perfect ...” The muted words ghost over your trembling form. Somewhere distant, a chorus of cheers and applause has erupted beyond the bubble forming around you.

But none of it truly registers, not when compared to this shattering merging of everything either of you has struggled and strained and wept to reach.

Nothing else matters in the sweeping catharsis cascading around you both. Not the hoarse prayers still shuddering past his lips, or the moisture from your own lashes streaking down his cheeks in silence.

It’s only when the dizzying euphoria begins to ebb that Charles slowly drags his gaze upwards to find yours — those beautiful depths drowning in reverence and bliss mirroring his own. The spark flickering there banishes all shadows in an instant, forging incandescence enough for a lifetime no matter what fresh trials fate might see fit to test your devotion.

He drinks you in, committing the flawless canvas of your features to permanence before reaching up to brush trembling fingertips across the sheer lace obscuring your radiance. The sweep of fabric pools around your shoulders and Charles finds himself very nearly undone again by the sight of your unveiled beauty.

“So ...” He swallows hard, fingers tracing the delicate curve of your jaw as words fail him for a what feels like an eternity. “... beautiful. Like the first dawn cutting through the blackest oblivion.”

A tremulous smile sweeps across your lips, the ghost of a promise he absorbs with every pore as you lean into the reverent sweep of his touch. He could stay like this forever, knees grinding against the ornate tile. Anything to capture how eternal he feels right here with you.

Charles drags in a rallying breath, forcing his widened gaze from yours just long enough to call his groomsmen to attention with a look. They rally behind him, steadying him as he rises on legs turned bowstring-taut with adrenaline.

And then, with every eye once more centered upon you two, Charles bends at the waist and sweeps you into his embrace, cradling your trembling frame against his chest with the paradoxical delicacy and unyielding reverence that lives so unbridled within his very bones. Your breath catches audibly, a soft hitch of sound that adorns the sacred silence as he turns away from the guests.

The officiant’s features are flushed and lined, rimed with moisture that glistens unabashedly as he gathers himself to proceed.

“Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc and Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N,” he begins. “You have been called here as an acknowledgment of the next chapter in your lives together ...”

The ceremony begins, the words spilling forth as you tuck your cheek against Charles’ thundering pulse, fingers curling into the lapel of his tuxedo in a white-knuckled embrace. He lives in the rise and fall of your mingling breaths, in the warmth of your form pressed seamlessly against the shelter of his body as you bear witness to the eternal scripture neither of you could have fathomed even existing upon first crossing paths.

Then, the officiant turns his attention towards Charles, chin dipped in grave deference. “You may recite your vows.”

The command punches through him, sawing the breath from his lungs in a ragged exhalation that shivers across your crown. He swallows hard, blinks back the fresh deluge of tears that threatens to escape his faltering restraint. But when he opens his mouth, the words spill out like they were always meant to.

“I have dreamed of you since before the first moments of my existence.” The syllables echo across the hall, spiraling forth to caress every rapt attendee in their wake. “Of a love conceived in the heart of a collapsing star and given breath in our adjoined forms to shine forth into the darkness.”

His lips brush your hairline, absorbing the scent of your fragrance and feeling the thrumming rhythm of life radiating from your temples. Here, cocooned in the intimate heart of their unity, the world holds its breath along with the gathered witnesses.

“Nothing could have prepared my soul to be scoured by your brilliance, your resilience … let alone knitted together from the fraying remnants when our path shattered across the cruel stones of fate.” A tremulous inhale, steadying as his gaze flicks across the faces assembled before you — a sweep encompassing every expression of empathy and shared joy piercing back at him.

“Yet here we stand, mon amour ...” The endearment spills forth like rich velvet, textured and avowed as his mouth finds the top of your head once more, the taste of reverence sweet on his tongue. “United into something sacred, something woven from those endless nights clinging to each other across the desolate chasm that could so easily have swallowed us whole.”

He savors the simple elation of your response, of knowing his words resonate through every quivering fiber with the promise of finally reaching what you’ve been steadily ascending to all along.

So he breathes you in once more, chasing the familiar scent of your skin until his very lungs burn with the delight of your proximity. The depths of his gaze find yours again, irises rimmed in the faintest remnants dampness as one final promise takes shape.

“I will love you to the final molecule ...” Quieter now, a molten rasp uttered into the hollow between your brows as fingertips sift through the intricate sweeps of your tresses. “I will walk beside you through each breath and season, every triumph and shadow that marks this existence as uniquely ours. With all that I am, all that lingers when the inconsequential has stripped from my shell — I am yours. Until the last spark is extinguished from this universe and beyond.”

The promise hangs in the reverent stillness as he takes his first full breath after, filling his lungs with the ozone and wildflowers commingling from your respective scents until his senses reel. Only then does he draw back enough to drink in the sight before him — the ethereal swaths of your veil now skirting the contours of your features, the downy lashes beaded with moisture, the trembling swell of your lips as the first stuttered shapes of sound begin forming upon them.

Your reciprocation is a hushed, halting stream of sounds that carry all the solemn gravity of prayers finally granted voice. Each syllable pitches forward, low and overflowing with the fevered weight of their reverence until they resonate through Charles’ bei by like physical sensations trailing electricity along his nerves.

“In the beginning, there was nothing,” you breathe, fingers flexing restlessly against the solid plate of his chest as you struggle to channel the turbulent swell of emotion cascading through every aspect of your existence. “An endless and lightless oblivion that should have terrified me ...”

A faint smile blooms across Charles’ features as he watches the story of a lifetime together play out in miniature across your expression.

“Yet it didn’t.” The syllables part on a whisper of revelation, a new wave of tears flickering in the gleam of your eyes as you find his gaze. “Because I knew you even then.”

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wheelsgoroundincircles · 2 months ago

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1970 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28

The 1970 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 is one of the most iconic and revered muscle cars ever made, built to excel on both the street and the racetrack. Under the hood sat a high-revving 302 cubic inch V8 engine, designed specifically for Trans-Am racing, delivering a spirited 290 horsepower with a balanced combination of power and handling.

The Z/28 featured a sport-tuned suspension, heavy-duty front and rear sway bars, and a close-ratio 4-speed manual transmission, making it incredibly agile and responsive. Its aggressive styling—highlighted by racing stripes, a functional cowl induction hood, and bold front grille—gave it a commanding presence.

Inside, the Camaro Z/28 offered bucket seats and a driver-focused dashboard with rally gauges, emphasizing performance and control. Revered for its race-bred performance and timeless design, the 1970 Z/28 remains a symbol of Chevrolet’s muscle car mastery and a favorite among collectors and enthusiasts.

#Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 #camaro z28 #chevrolet camaro #chevrolet #car #cars #muscle car #american muscle #camaro #Z/28

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cheriecelestial · 2 months ago

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Thank you for the mini event!! Can I request a F1 Jason Todd x reader story?

Red Lights Pt.1

pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ F1 driver!Jason Todd x fem!reader

disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ angst. fluff. mild suggestive content. themes of mental health and depression. swearing. car accidents. injuries. mention of drug use. non-canon complacent. not proofread.

a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ I can't believe i got this request. Just the other day I was like I wanna write an F1 driver au for a character. Anon are you spying on me? Should I be concerned? Nonetheless this made me so so happy. Comment, Like and Reblog (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡ Comment to be added to taglist

Part 2

Jason Peter Todd was a man who, at the peak of his career, could effortlessly be regarded as the very embodiment of Formula 1 excellence. He was everything a driver dreamed of becoming—wealthy, young, impossibly gifted, and the adopted heir of none other than Bruce Wayne, the legendary “Dark Knight” of motorsport himself. A five-time world champion, Bruce in his prime had been a force of nature, drawing comparisons to icons like Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. And Jason? He was every bit his father's successor—perhaps even destined to surpass him.

Jason wasn't just successful; he was revolutionary. His meteoric rise shattered records with an almost casual ease. He wasn't just the youngest driver to ever compete in Formula 1—he was the youngest to win, and not just any race, but his very first. The accolades piled up faster than his rivals could keep track: most wins in a single season, most podium finishes, highest points tally ever recorded. The list seemed infinite, his potential boundless. The world adored him, idolizing him with near-religious fervor. Corporations fought tooth and nail for his endorsement, desperate to attach their brands to his golden image. Jason Todd—three-time world champion, impossibly handsome, and a marketing juggernaut—had single-handedly propelled Formula 1 into unprecedented popularity. Fans either wanted to stand beside him or become him.

There was no ceiling to what he could achieve. His future was a blinding horizon of endless possibility—until Bahrain.

The Sakhir Grand Prix unfolded under a scorching desert sun, the sky painted in hues of amber as dusk crept over the circuit. The air thrummed with the deafening roars of engines, the grandstands vibrating with the collective anticipation of thousands. The final laps loomed, tension thick enough to cut through. Jason Todd, the prodigy, the phenom, was locked in a relentless pursuit of history—his fourth Bahrain Grand Prix victory within grasp. His car screamed down the straights, tires dancing on the knife's edge of control. He was pushing beyond limits, chasing glory as always.

But as he himself had said once before “Speed is a relentless god. And sometimes, it demands sacrifice.”

Bahrain's Sakhir Circuit had always been a beast of a track—deceptive in its sweeping curves, punishing in its tire degradation, unforgiving to even the slightest misjudgment. Jason's tires were fading fast, the rubber screaming in protest with every high-speed corner. The team's warnings buzzed in his ear, urgent yet distant, drowned out by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Roy Harper, his closest friend and fiercest rival, loomed in his mirrors, a mere eight-tenths of a second behind—close enough to strike if Jason so much as blinked.

The radio crackled again, the voice of his engineer strained with concern: “Jason, watch the rear left—it's going off!”

But Jason Todd had never been one to yield. Not to his rivals. Not to the limits of physics. And certainly not to caution. He was five laps away from etching his name deeper into the history books, from claiming yet another record that would silence even his harshest critics. The thrill of the chase, the roar of the crowd, the intoxicating rush of speed—it all blurred into a singular, all-consuming obsession. He knew his car better than anyone alive. He had pushed it beyond its limits before and walked away victorious. Why would this time be any different?

At 200 miles per hour, the world narrowed to a tunnel of asphalt and adrenaline. The next turn approached—a brutal, high-speed corner that demanded precision. He braked hard, but the rear tires, worn to the cords, betrayed him. The car shuddered, the tail snapping out in a violent fishtail. For a heartbeat, his reflexes prevailed—his hands a blur as he wrestled the steering wheel, correcting the slide with the instincts of a champion.

And then—catastrophe.

A deafening bang ripped through the air as his left rear tire failed explosively. The car lurched sideways, spearing toward the barriers at a near-perpendicular angle. The carbon-fiber monocoque—a marvel of engineering designed to withstand brutal impacts—shattered like glass upon collision. The force of the crash sent debris flying in a lethal storm of shrapnel, scattering across the track in a grotesque spectacle. The wreckage rebounded violently, spinning back onto the racing line—just as Roy Harper's car, helpless to avoid the chaos, hurtled into the carnage.

A second impact. A sickening crunch of metal and carbon fiber.

Roy had no time to react. No time to swerve. His front wing speared through the mangled remains of Jason's cockpit like a blade. The halo device—the very piece of safety equipment designed to protect drivers from such horrors—held firm, but the sheer force of the collision tore the survival cell apart, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.

“Jason? Jason, can you hear me?”

The voice of Dick Grayson—Jason's brother, his race engineer and his unwavering support—crackled over the radio, raw with desperation. A silence followed, thick and suffocating, broken only by the distant wail of sirens.

And then, as if the universe itself sought to twist the knife deeper, fuel from Roy's ruptured tank spilled onto the scorched asphalt. A single spark—a fleeting, inevitable spark—ignited the fumes.

The world erupted in flames.

Marshals in fireproof suits charged forward, their extinguishers spraying thick plumes of retardant, but the devastation was absolute. The grandstands fell eerily silent, thousands of spectators frozen in horror. Mechanics, engineers, and rival team members stood motionless, hands clasped in prayer or pressed over mouths in disbelief. Roy Harper, miraculously conscious but dazed, was dragged from his ruined car with relative ease—his injuries severe but survivable.

But Jason Todd?

The reigning world champion was still trapped inside the inferno.

The fireproof material of his race suit glowed beneath the flames, his silhouette barely visible through the thick, black smoke. Over the team radio, Dick Grayson's voice cracked with increasing desperation, begging for any sign of life. “Jason, talk to me. Please, just say something—anything!” Only static answered.

The medical car arrived within seconds, but the violence of the crash had left almost no room for hope. The extraction was a nightmare—jaws of life prying apart twisted metal, paramedics shouting over the roar of the flames. When they finally pulled him free, his body was limp, his helmet scorched, his suit seared in places. The world blurred into chaos after that—screaming sirens, frantic radio calls, the paddock holding its breath.

Then, whispers spread through the garage like wildfire.

The hospital's initial prognosis was grim: incompatible with life. The injuries were catastrophic—internal bleeding, multiple fractures, third-degree burns covering nearly 40% of his body. At one point, his heart stopped entirely, flatlining for over a minute as Bruce Wayne, the legendary Dark Knight of motorsport, stood helpless outside the ICU, restraining a sobbing Dick Grayson from pounding on the glass in sheer despair.

Time of death: 20:45 hours.

The words hung in the air like a death knell.

But then—

A single, weak beep.

The head surgeon blinked, certain he had imagined it. Then another. And another. Jason's heart, stubborn as the man himself, refused to surrender. The news rocketed through the paddock, a shockwave of disbelief and cautious relief: Jason Peter Todd was alive. Barely. Clinging to life by the thinnest of threads, but alive.

What followed was a waking nightmare.

Roy Harper, consumed by guilt, retired from Formula 1 immediately, unable to bear the weight of what had happened. Months later, he was found half-dead in a hotel room, an empty bottle of pills beside him—another casualty of that cursed day. The FIA scrambled to implement new safety regulations, mandating stronger cockpit protections and stricter tire wear monitoring. The team, once dominant, floundered without their star driver.

And Jason?

He slept.

For six agonizing months, he remained in a coma, his body healing at a glacial pace. When he finally woke, the details were kept fiercely private—no press releases, no interviews, just a single, guarded statement confirming his consciousness. But those who saw him in those early days knew: the Jason Todd who emerged from the darkness was not the same man who had entered it.

The fire had taken more than just flesh.

It had taken a legend.

“I want to race.”

The words hit Bruce Wayne like a physical blow.

For a man who had stood unshaken in the face of countless crises—both as a five-time world champion and as the iron-willed owner of Wayne Racing—the sheer weight of that simple declaration brought the world to a staggering halt. His son's voice was barely more than a whisper, raw and fractured, yet burning with a desperation that cut deeper than any scream could have.

It had been two months since Jason Todd had woken from the abyss of his coma. Two months of slow, agonizing progress—of bandages being peeled away, of casts removed, of wounds grudgingly closing. The hospital had kept the worst of the scarring hidden beneath layers of sterile gauze, not just for medical reasons, but out of fear for his fragile psyche. The first days after his awakening had been a storm of rage and denial—violent outbursts that left nurses scrambling for sedatives, his own body betraying him as orderlies pinned him down to keep him from tearing at IV lines and heart monitor leads.

The crash had taken more than flesh and bone. The doctors had warned Bruce in hushed tones: PTSD. Depression. Nightmares that never end. Jason's body, though stable, was a battleground. His mind? A warzone.

“I understand, Jay, but—”

“No, you don't!” Jason's voice shattered like glass against steel. “You don't get it! These four walls, these fucking machines and tubes—they're driving me insane. I don't belong here!”

And he was right.

Jason Todd had never been meant for cages. He was wildfire in human form—meant to blaze across the rain-slicked straights of Interlagos, to carve through the golden-hour shadows of COTA's esses, to exist where the air smelled of scorched rubber and high-octane fuel, not antiseptic and despair. The hospital was a prison, and every second spent trapped inside it was another piece of him dying.

Bruce exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the floor rather than meeting his son's fever-bright eyes. “Jason,” he said, forcing calm into his voice, “you need to heal.”

Jason's hands clenched into fists, the heart rate monitor spiking beside him. “I have healed enough!”

The words weren't just defiance—they were a plea, a demand, a last stand. Because Jason Todd had spent his entire life pushing past limits, and this? This was no different.

Except it was.

And the crushing weight of that truth hung between them, suffocating and unspoken. Bruce, the man who had faced down the most ruthless competitors on the track, who had rebuilt entire teams from ashes, found himself paralyzed by the one battle he couldn't strategize his way out of. How do you make a force of nature understand it's been fractured?

Bruce didn't—couldn't—answer. The silence that followed was deafening, thick with everything left unsaid. The heart monitor's steady beep mocked them, a cruel reminder of time moving forward even when Jason's world had screeched to a halt.

Then, like a blade slicing through the tension, Jason spoke again, his voice stripped of its earlier fire, replaced by something colder. “Who did the seat go to?”

It was a logical question. The season hadn't ended with his crash. The circus marched on, the cars kept racing, and the world didn't stop turning just because Jason Todd had been ripped out of his cockpit.

“Tim got the seat.”

Tim Drake. The reigning F2 champion. Bruce's godson. The kid with a mind sharper than a scalpel and reflexes that bordered on preternatural. After his parents' tragic death, Bruce had taken him in, just as he had with Jason. And Jason knew—hated that he knew—Tim was good. Scary good. But potential didn't change the brutal arithmetic of Formula 1: seats were finite. Tim's promotion meant Jason's throne had been filled before he'd even left the ICU.

Before the crash, Jason's teammate had been Cassandra Cain. A prodigy in her own right, the only woman on the grid outside of Themyscira Formula One team—Diana Prince's all-female team, founded to shatter the sport's glass ceiling. Cass had been more than a teammate; she'd become family. Diana herself had tried to poach her, offering a coveted seat in her revolutionary outfit. But Cass had chosen Wayne Racing, loyalty outweighing opportunity. And Jason would sooner set himself on fire again than take her place.

“He's half-baked at best,” Jason spat, the words dripping with acid. His fingers dug into the sheets, knuckles whitening with the force of his grip. “I saw him at testing. He can't do shit.”

Tim Drake was brilliant. A prodigy by any measure, but raw talent wasn't enough in Formula 1 and brilliance didn't erase inexperience. Not when you were thrust into the spotlight mid-season, expected to fill the void left by a living legend. Not when every lap, every turn, every mistake was measured against the ghost of Jason Todd—the youngest champion, the record-breaker, the firebrand who had redefined what it meant to be fearless behind the wheel.

Tim wasn't just racing against the competition. He was racing against a memory. And right now, memory was winning.

Bruce exhaled, slow and measured. “But that doesn't change the fact that you're not ready yet.”

Jason's jaw clenched. “The season's coming to an end. I have plenty of time to train and get back in the game by the time next season rolls around.”

“Jason, but—”

“YOU DON'T GET TO TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!”

The roar tore through the room, raw and unfiltered. In a flash of movement, Jason's hand shot out, snatching the call remote from the side of his bed. Before Bruce could react, it was hurled through the air with enough force to shatter the fragile illusion of control Jason had been clinging to.

Bruce sidestepped on instinct, the remote clattering against the wall behind him. But when his gaze snapped back to his son—really looked at him for the first time since entering the room—something in him faltered.

A flinch.

Subtle, involuntary, but there.

Jason saw it. Saw the way Bruce's eyes flickered, the way his breath hitched for the barest fraction of a second. Saw the look in his father's gaze—not just concern, not just frustration, but something far worse.

Revulsion.

Or at least, that's what it felt like.

The realization hit Jason like a lightning. His chest tightened, the anger draining out of him as quickly as it had surged, leaving behind something hollow and brittle.

Bruce Wayne—the man who had faced down the most dangerous corners in the world without blinking, who had stared death in the eye more times than he could count—flinched at the sight of his own son.

And in that moment, Jason understood.

This wasn't just about whether he was ready to race again.

This was about whether he'd ever be seen the same way again.

“Boy Wonder No More?”“Crash Down Bahrain Lane: What It Means for the Champion Team”“Robin Fails to Fly”

The headlines screamed at him from every newsstand, every digital feed, every godforsaken screen in the hospital waiting room. Bold, black letters against stark white backgrounds, each one a dagger twisting deeper into the wound. And beneath them—always beneath them—the same grotesque images: his car wrapped around the barriers, the inferno licking at the sky, the thick plume of smoke staining the Bahraini horizon like an omen.

They had reduced his entire legacy to a single, catastrophic moment.

Three-time world champion. Youngest race winner in history. The driver who had redefined dominance. None of it mattered now. The trophies gathering dust in Wayne Manor's halls, the records that still bore his name, the races where he'd crossed the line with his fist raised in triumph—all of it was trumped by one mistake. One lapse in judgment. One turn taken a fraction too late.

Jason Todd: No longer the Boy Wonder. Now, forevermore, The One Who Died.

The irony wasn't lost on him. He had died—if only for a minute. Flatlined on the table, his heart stubbornly restarting as if to spite the universe itself. But the world didn't care about comebacks. It cared about spectacle. And what was more spectacular than the fall of a golden child?

He was Lucifer, wasn't he? God's most favored son, the brightest of angels, cast down from heaven for the sin of pride. Wings broken, flames licking at his heels as he plummeted into the abyss. Maybe it had always been inevitable. Maybe this was his divine punishment—for daring to believe he was untouchable, for thinking the throne was his by right.

Fall from grace. Fall from his throne. Fall from his rightful spot.

So he trained.

Day and night, through the pain that lanced up his spine with every movement, through the phantom screams of tires that echoed in his dreams. He pushed his body to the brink, then past it, his muscles screaming in protest as he forced them to remember what they'd once been capable of. The rage inside him was a living thing, coiled tight around his ribs, whispering in his ear: Prove them wrong. Make them regret it.

There were days when the fury was all-consuming, a black tide that drowned out reason. Days when he'd catch his reflection—the scars, the hollows under his eyes, the gauntness of a face that had once been called ridiculously pretty—and something inside him would snap. Mirrors shattered under his fists. Posters torn from walls, trophies hurled across rooms, their polished surfaces dented against the hardwood. The boy who had been worshiped now couldn't stand the sight of himself.

Bruce tried. He really did. He threw money at the media, buying silence where he could, burying stories of Jason's outbursts beneath layers of PR spin and legal threats. Staff members who looked at Jason with pity in their eyes found themselves abruptly unemployed. But none of it changed the truth: Bruce Wayne, for all his resources, all his power, didn't know how to fix this.

How do you mend a shattered reputation? How do you rebuild a ghost?

The world had already written Jason Todd's epitaph. Now he had to claw his way out of the grave.

The new season began with a quiet humiliation—Tim Drake, the temporary heir to Jason's throne, was demoted back to F2 with barely a whisper of protest. If anything, the young driver seemed relieved to return to the junior category, away from the suffocating expectations of filling Jason Todd's fireproof shoes.

Jason reclaimed his seat, but not his crown.

The first race back was... acceptable. Mediocre by his old standards, but passable for a man who'd crawled back from death's doorstep. The commentators tiptoed around his performance—“He's shaking off rust,” they said. “The speed will come,” they assured. But Jason heard the unspoken truth beneath their carefully chosen words: the fire that had once made him untouchable had dimmed to embers.

Heavens know how he tried. But no amount of willpower could stop his breath from shortening at corners that reminded him of that turn in Bahrain. No mental gymnastics could prevent his palms from sweating through his gloves when the pack bunched too close. The doctors had a name for it: PTSD-induced panic attacks. Jason had another word for it: weakness.

And weakness had no place in Formula 1.

Race after race, he watched helplessly as rivals streamed past—drivers he'd once dominated now leaving him in their wake. The unthinkable happened in Jeddah: Jason Todd, the boy wonder who'd podiumed here in his rookie year, finished outside the points for the first time since his debut.

The garage wrapped him in cotton-wool encouragement. “You'll get there, J.” “Just need more seat time.” Each well-meaning word landed like a scalpel, peeling back layers of pride to reveal the rot beneath—their pity, their disappointment, their fading belief in the myth of Jason Todd.

He wanted to scream. To tear the fucking garage apart. To make them all see—really see—what this was doing to him. But he stayed silent, letting their hollow encouragement wash over him like acid rain.

The truth was simple: Jason Todd wasn't back. He was just... there. Haunting his own career. And the worst part? He wasn't sure which was more unbearable—the idea that this might be permanent, or the terrifying possibility that the old Jason, the real Jason, had died in that Bahrain crash after all.

Jason leaned heavily against the balcony railing, a cigarette dangling carelessly between his fingers. Below him, the team party roared on—champagne corks popping, laughter ringing through the Wayne Racing hospitality suite. Cass had podiumed at their home race in Gotham, keeping the team's legacy alive where he had failed. He was proud of her. She'd earned this. But pride couldn't fill the hollow space in his chest where ambition used to live.

The nicotine burned his lungs in a way that felt almost comforting. The old Jason—the real Jason—had treated his body like a temple. No alcohol, no junk food, certainly no cigarettes. Every calorie counted, every heartbeat optimized for performance. But that man had died in Bahrain. This new version of him? This one didn't give a damn.

He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl into the Gotham night. It was funny, in a twisted way. Every drag brought him back to that moment—the acrid smell of burning carbon fiber, the taste of gasoline and fear. In a world where nothing felt familiar anymore, only the memory of his destruction remained vivid.

“I thought F1 drivers weren't allowed to smoke.”

The voice startled him. He turned to see a young woman swaying slightly, her cocktail sloshing precariously in her hand. She couldn't have been more than mid to early twenties, her designer dress wrinkled from dancing, her makeup smudged at the edges. Some sponsor's daughter, probably. Or a journalist's plus-one.

“You shouldn't be here,” Jason said flatly. “The bar's over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the party without looking at her.

“Smoking is bad for you,” she persisted, ignoring his dismissal. “You're the best of the best. You're supposed to—”

“I'm roadkill, sweetheart.” The words came out harsher than he intended, edged with something bitter. “All charred meat and bones. Ain't nothing special anymore.” He waved the cigarette absently, sending a lazy spiral of smoke her way. “They don't get rid of me ‘cause I've got too much on them to lose.”

For a second, she just blinked at him. Then, with a suddenness that almost made him laugh, she snatched the cigarette from his fingers and flicked it over the railing.

“Hey—!”

“You listen up,” she slurred, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You are Jason fucking Todd. You are literally the coolest.” Her words were drunken, but her conviction was startling. She said it like it was scripture. Like she truly believed it from the bottom of her heart.

“That was before the—”

“NO!”

Her voice cut through the night, sharp and unyielding, all traces of drunken slurring stripped away by sheer frustration. She stepped closer, invading his space, her finger jabbing into his chest with enough force to make him stagger back half a step. The scent of vodka and citrus clung to her breath, but her gaze was startlingly clear—burning with an intensity that pinned him in place.

“Don't you dare give me that.”

Her words struck like a hammer to glass.

“You're still him. It doesn't matter how deep you bury yourself in hate and self-pity, you're still the Jason I know.” Her voice cracked, raw with something that sounded too much like betrayal. “And honestly? You're the best out there is— snap the fuck out of it. And also don’t you dare talk smack about my idol. Because I will fight you for it.”

Normally, Jason would’ve had security drag her away by now. Normally, he wouldn’t tolerate some drunk stranger laying into him like this. But there was nothing normal about tonight.

Because she wasn’t tiptoeing around him. Wasn’t feeding him hollow platitudes or empty encouragement. She was the first person in months who looked at him and didn’t see a cautionary tale—just a man too stubborn to climb out of the hole he dug himself.

And damn if that didn’t terrify him.

Her hands flew to his shoulders, shaking him with a desperation that bordered on violence. “Why do you do this to yourself?” Her voice broke, and suddenly, the anger bled into something else entirely. Tears spilled over, streaking her mascara in inky rivers down her cheeks. The dam broke—great, heaving sobs wracked her frame, her words dissolving into incoherent hiccups.

Jason stood frozen, arms stiff at his sides, utterly unprepared for the emotional hurricane in front of him. He glanced toward the party, grateful the crowd was still oblivious, but the reprieve was short-lived.

Footsteps pounded against the terrace tiles.

Danny, one of his oldest friends, a race mechanic who’d known him since their karting days—burst onto the balcony, breathless and wide-eyed.

The woman whirled, launching herself at Danny with a wail. “Dan-Dan, he—” She jabbed a finger wildly at Jason, her words devolving into unintelligible sniffles.

Danny caught her, steadying her swaying frame. “He what?”

“He’s being mean.”

Jason’s hands flew up in surrender. “I didn’t do anything to her!”

Danny’s gaze flicked between them, bewildered. “To whom?”

“To himself!” she wailed, fresh tears erupting. “Tell him to stop!”

Realization dawned on Danny’s face, followed swiftly by mortification. He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling through his nose like a man praying for patience.

“Toddster, I am so sorry for her behavior,” he muttered, already maneuvering her toward the door. “Please forgive her.”

Jason barely had time to process before Danny hauled her away, her protests fading into the din of the party.

The balcony was silent again.

Jason stared at the empty space where they’d stood.

What the hell just happened?

The next race weekend arrived with an unexpected turn—Jason clawed his way past the midfield, securing a respectable finish that, while nowhere near his former glory, at least silenced the whispers of his inevitable decline. The garage hummed with cautious optimism, the tension easing just enough for Dick to crack a joke, for the engineers to clap him on the back without that lingering hesitation. It was progress.

But Jason's mind wasn't on the race.

It was on her.

That drunken, furious woman who'd screamed at him like he was worth the effort. Her words had burrowed under his skin, festering like a splinter he couldn't dig out. “You're still the Jason I know.” The worst part? She'd said it like she meant it. Like she'd seen him—really seen him—through the wreckage of Bahrain and still believed in whatever of himself remained.

He'd resigned himself to never seeing her again.

Until the broadcast screens flashed her face.

There she was—no smudged mascara, no vodka-induced haze—standing trackside with a microphone in hand, interviewing the podium finishers with effortless charm. The realization hit him like a missed gear shift: she wasn't just some random party crasher. She was one of the presenters. And now that he really looked, he did recognize her. Not just from the balcony, but from the periphery of his world for months. Lingering near Danny in the garage, passing through the paddock with a press badge. He'd been too consumed by his own spiral to notice.

His curiosity flared.

He watched her wrap up the interview, then slip toward the back of the garage—a restricted area for presenters. Equipment rooms weren't on the media tour. Even if she was connected to Danny, she had no business there.

For the sake of the company, Jason told himself, and followed.

The equipment room was dim, cluttered with spare parts and toolkits. She was already inside, rummaging through a duffel bag that looked suspiciously personal.

“Looking for something, miss?”

She whirled, clutching the bag to her chest like a shield. “I-I wasn't snooping, I swear! I just came to get my bag—”

“Yes, of course,” Jason said, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk. “And about that night on the terrace...”

Her face drained of color, lips parting slightly as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. “I'm so sorry, really,” she stammered, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. “I understand if you want to press charges, but just know I—”

“Actually,” Jason interrupted, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it, “I wanted to thank you.”

She blinked. Once. Twice. “What.”

It wasn't a question—it was pure, unfiltered disbelief, the kind that left her rooted to the spot, staring at him like he'd just spoken in tongues.

Jason exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck in a rare show of vulnerability. The movement was almost self-conscious, as if he wasn't entirely sure how to navigate this moment either. “You were right,” he admitted, the words rough but sincere. “About... all of it.”

His gaze lifted to hers, bracing for the pity he'd grown so accustomed to seeing in people's eyes. But it wasn't there. Instead, he found something far more disarming—wary confusion, yes, but beneath it, a flicker of something that might've been hope. Or maybe just surprise that he hadn't thrown her out of the garage yet.

Silence stretched between them, thick and charged.

Then, as if her brain had finally caught up with the absurdity of the situation, she blurted: “So... you're not gonna press charges? Or slap me with a lawsuit that would probably cost more than everything I own and land me in jail?” The words tumbled out in a rush, her hands gesturing wildly. “Because, honestly, I've been mentally preparing for that exact scenario for the past week, and—”

Jason laughed.

Not the hollow, humorless sound he'd been making for the past year, but a real, genuine laugh—the kind that caught even him off guard. It rumbled deep in his chest, startlingly warm in the dim light of the equipment room.

“Not today, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head. Then, with a smirk that was equal parts challenge and invitation: “But if you're feeling that guilty, you could make it up to me by keeping me company over dinner.”

The woman looked like she was about to faint.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “You—what?”

Jason arched a brow. “You heard me.”

“You're asking me to dinner?”

“Unless you'd prefer the lawsuit?”

She stared at him, torn between disbelief and the dawning realization that he was, in fact, serious. And then—slowly, hesitantly—the corners of her lips curled upward. “You're insane.”

Jason grinned. “Yeah. Thought you knew that already. So what's the verdict?”

She exhaled, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe her own answer. “...Fine. Better than a ruined career I suppose.”

“That's the spirit,” Jason said, pushing off the doorframe. “Now, you gonna tell me your name, or am I just supposed to keep calling you ‘the drunk girl who yelled at me’ in my head?”

“Oh my god,” She groaned, covering her face with her hands.

The moment Jason’s manager contacted her after their encounter in the equipment room, reality hit like a sudden downpour at a race—unexpected and impossible to ignore. A sleek car would arrive at her doorstep at 7 PM sharp, the message stated, its tone leaving no room for negotiation.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, caught between exhilaration and sheer terror.

What if this was all an elaborate trap?

The thought circled her mind like a vulture. Maybe Jason Todd had taken offense to her drunken tirade, and this dinner was simply a prelude to legal annihilation—a chance to personally serve her with a lawsuit that would bankrupt her and tarnish her fledgling career before it even took off. The possibilities were endless, and none of them comforting.

But beneath the anxiety, a traitorous spark of anticipation flickered.

Because it was Jason Todd.

Three-time world champion. The man whose posters had adorned her walls as a teenager. The driver whose career she’d followed with near-religious devotion long before she ever stepped foot in the paddock as a presenter. And now? Now she was supposed to sit across from him at a dinner table without combusting from sheer nerves.

Outfit crisis imminent.

As a presenter, her wardrobe was extensive—filled with sleek blazers, tailored dresses, and enough heels to make a fashion blogger weep. But suddenly, nothing felt sufficient. Too formal? Too casual? Too try-hard? She stood frozen in front of her closet, hands buried in her hair, as the existential dread mounted.

“Steph. Help.”

The phone call to Stephanie Brown—her closest friend and a rising star in the motorsports styling world—was nothing short of a distress signal.

“I have a very, very, very important dinner today, and I have nothing to wear. What do I do? Should I just die? God, I can’t do this. I—”

“Woah, woah, easy, girl,” Steph interrupted, her voice a calming anchor amidst the storm. “I caught ‘dinner,’ ‘important,’ and ‘nothing to wear’—that correct?” A muffled sound followed, then Steph’s sharp, “Tim, stop that—”

“Uh-huh,” she confirmed, nodding vigorously out of habit despite Steph’s inability to see her. “Also, tell Tim congratulations for his podium. I was going to catch up with you guys, but you’d already flown out.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Steph sighed. “Tim just couldn’t wait to get some ‘me time’ at home.” The unspoken eye roll was almost audible.

“That’s okay. It’s understandable.”

“See? Y/N gets it!” Tim’s voice chirped in the background, smug.

“Shut up, Timothy,” Steph snapped. “Ain’t nobody asked yo ass.” What followed was a familiar symphony of bickering— a dynamic so ingrained it nearly made her smile despite her panic.

“Steph! Dinner!” she interjected before the couple could fully derail.

“Oh, right.” Steph’s tone shifted back to business. “Let’s see—is this like a professional ‘don’t fuck with me’ dinner? Or a ‘I lowkey wanna bang you’ dinner? Or a ‘this could’ve been an email’ dinner?”

The blunt categorization forced a laugh out of her, but the truth was far more complicated. “It’s a ‘please don’t kill me and my career’ dinner,” she confessed, voice small.

A beat of silence. Then—

“Y/N,” Steph said slowly, “What did you do?”

“Fucked up big time.” The admission came out in a rush, followed by Tim’s audible “Ooh,” in the background.

“Shut up, Tim!” Both girls barked in unison, effectively silencing the young driver.

Steph’s sigh was long-suffering. “Alright. First, breathe. Second, we’re fixing this. But you owe me the full story later.”

Y/N had stood in the presence of racing legends before - interviewed world champions with champagne still dripping from their hair, exchanged banter with team principals who controlled billion-dollar empires, even moderated press conferences where the tension between rival drivers could have powered the entire paddock. Yet none of those experiences could compare to the visceral, gut-churning nerves currently twisting her stomach into knots as the luxury car glided toward the restaurant.

It was ironic really. She'd interacted with Jason Todd quite a few times in professional settings - the obligatory media day interviews, the post-race scrums where she'd lobbed softball questions about tire strategy and a couple more here and there. Those encounters should have made this easier. Familiarity should have bred comfort.

But this wasn't a media event with carefully scripted questions and PR handlers monitoring every word. This was dinner. Intimate. Unfiltered. Just two people and whatever uncomfortable truths might surface between the appetizer and dessert.

Before that disastrous night on the terrace, she would have sold her soul for this opportunity - a private audience with the man whose racing prowess had inspired her career path. Now? Now she fantasized about the floor opening up beneath her. The cruel twist of fate wasn't just that Jason Todd finally knew she existed - it was that he knew her as the drunken harpy who'd screamed at him like some deranged fangirl.

Her fingers plucked nervously at the burgundy tulle of her dress, the delicate fabric whispering with every fidget. Stephanie had insisted this was the perfect choice - “It says ‘I’m too sexy to kill, so please don't ruin my career’,” she'd declared while wrestling Y/N into the designer garment through the phone. The color was no accident either: Jason's signature shade, the one that adorned his helmet and racing suit. A subtle homage or a desperate plea for mercy? She wasn't sure anymore.

The car slowed as they approached their destination - one of those impossibly exclusive restaurants where the maître d' could spot an impostor from fifty paces. The kind of establishment where reservations required connections more than money, though God knew there'd be plenty of both behind these doors. Y/N had walked past places like this her whole life, never imagining she'd actually enter one - certainly not under these circumstances.

Through the tinted windows, the restaurant's facade glowed like some temple of the elite, its polished brass and artfully distressed oak radiating quiet money and old-world power. The sort of place where Bruce Wayne might hold court in a private dining room while discussing billion-dollar deals between courses.

Her throat went dry. Against the combined might of Wayne Enterprises and Jason Todd's racing fortune, she was utterly insignificant. A single ill-advised outburst could vaporize not just her career, but Danny's position at the team too. The weight of that realization settled over her like a lead apron as the car door opened, releasing her into the lion's den.

The maître d' didn't even check the reservation list. One glance at her and he was nodding deferentially. “Mr. Todd's guest. Right this way.”

Her heels clicked against the marble floor like a countdown to judgment. Somewhere in this temple of haute cuisine, Jason Todd waited and Y/N wasn't sure whether to beg for forgiveness or prepare for war. The ambient chatter of the elite patrons seemed to fade into a distant hum as her eyes scanned the dimly lit dining room, searching for the one face that had haunted her thoughts since that disastrous balcony confrontation.

And then she saw him.

Jason Todd sat bathed in the warm glow of an artfully placed spotlight, looking every bit the racing royalty he was. The crisp lines of his tailored shirt—a deep burgundy that matched her dress with embarrassing precision—stretched across his broad shoulders, the top button undone just enough to reveal the faintest glimpse of the scars that marred his collarbone and running up his neck. His dark hair was slightly tousled, as if he'd run his fingers through it one too many times in frustration and the ghost of a smirk played at the corner of his lips as he watched her approach.

“Wasn't aware there was a dress code,” he remarked dryly, his voice laced with amusement as his gaze flickered pointedly between her dress and his own shirt.

Y/N felt the heat rise to her cheeks, turning her face the same shade as the offending fabric. Goddammit, Stephanie.

“It's a coincidence,” she muttered, sliding into the plush chair opposite him with all the grace of a startled deer. Her eyes darted anywhere but at him—studying the intricate pattern of the tablecloth, the way the candlelight reflected off the polished silverware, the distant exit sign she was sorely tempted to bolt toward.

Jason chuckled lowly, the sound sending an unwelcome shiver down her spine. “I know I ain’t much to look at, but you don’t need to make it so obvious,” he teased, accepting the leather-bound menu from the waiter with a nod of thanks.

Her head snapped up at that, indignation momentarily overriding her embarrassment. “What? No! You're gorgeous—”

The words tumbled out unchecked, her filter obliterated by sheer panic.

Jason froze, the menu hovering mid-air as his eyebrows shot up in surprise. A slow, dangerously smug grin spread across his face. “I see,” he drawled, the teasing lilt in his voice making her want to vault over the table and strangle him—or maybe herself.

Mortified, Y/N yanked the menu up like a shield, pressing the cool leather against her burning face. You're so done, Y/N, her inner voice screamed at her, equal parts horrified and exasperated.

From behind her makeshift barricade, she heard Jason let out a huff that oddly sounded like a laugh—the kind that vibrated through his chest and made her traitorous stomach flip. “You planning to order from behind there or should I just guess what you want?”

She groaned, the sound muffled by the menu. It trembled slightly in Y/N's grip as she fought to regain control of her traitorous tongue. The embossed letters blurred before her eyes— foie gras, truffle-infused something, caviar that probably cost more than her monthly rent. None of it registered.

The candle between them cast flickering shadows across the sharp planes of his face, highlighting the faint scar that bisected his left eyebrow— a souvenir from his early racing days that no media outlet had ever gotten the full story on.

“It's a bold strategy,” Jason mused, leaning back in his chair with the effortless grace of someone completely at home in this world of white tablecloths and thousand-dollar bottles of wine. “First you scream at me drunk, now you're trying to suffocate yourself with the menu. I'm starting to think you've got a death wish, doll.”

Y/N finally dropped the menu with a defeated thud. “I was hoping for spontaneous combustion actually,” she admitted, reaching for her water glass with only the slightest tremor in her fingers. “Seems more dignified than whatever this is.”

Jason's laughter rang out, unfiltered and unguarded. It transformed his face completely - the harsh lines of trauma and exhaustion momentarily smoothed away, revealing the more of the boyish charmer who'd taken the racing world by storm years ago, almost making Y/N's heart stagger.

“But you know,” He said swirling the liquid in his glass with deliberate nonchalance, “most people who think I'm going to ruin their careers don't compliment me quite so... enthusiastically.”

The ice cubes clinked mockingly as he took a sip.

“I was being polite,” Y/N lied through clenched teeth, surrendering her menu shield to the hovering waiter.

“Polite would've been ‘you clean up nice.’ But ‘Gorgeous’?” He leaned forward slightly, the candlelight catching the gold flecks in his otherwise stormy eyes. “That's the kind of word that makes a man think dangerous thoughts.”

The waiter chose that moment to reappear with their first course - some delicate arrangement of edible flowers and microgreens that looked more like a museum installation than food. Y/N seized the distraction like a lifeline, stabbing at her plate with slightly more force than necessary.

“Careful,” Jason murmured, watching her assault on the defenseless appetizer. “That fork's not one of my sponsors.” Y/N shrugged and muttered something unintelligble before continuning with the same.

“Christ, you’re something else,” he said, shaking his head as he signaled the sommelier. When he turned back, his expression had shifted into something more contemplative. “Look, let's get one thing straight - you're not here because I'm planning to sue you into oblivion.”

The waiter arrived with the wine list before she could respond. Jason barely glanced at it. “The '89 Margaux,” he said automatically, then paused. “Unless you'd prefer something else?”

Y/N blinked. That particular Bordeaux cost more than what she made in a month. “The... the Margaux is perfect,” she managed, watching as Jason nodded dismissal to the waiter.

When they were alone again, he leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. The movement caused his shirt to pull tight across his shoulders, and Y/N suddenly found the stem of her water glass fascinating.

“I asked you here,” Jason continued, voice dropping into a more serious register, “because you were the first person in a year who didn't treat me like either a ticking time bomb or a broken trophy.” His fingers traced the rim of his glass absentmindedly.

The raw honesty in his words stole Y/N's breath. This wasn't the carefully curated media persona or the angry driver she'd confronted on the balcony. This was Jason Todd stripped bare— vulnerable in a way she'd never imagined seeing.

Her professional instincts warred with something far more personal. “I saw someone who needed to get his head out of his ass,” she said before she could stop herself, then immediately winced. “Sorry, that was-”

“No,” Jason interrupted, that ghost of a smile returning. “That's exactly it. It was... refreshing. Let's just say it helped me think differently.” His fingers tapped a restless rhythm against the tablecloth. “And I'd like to thank you for that.”

Y/N nodded slowly, taking a deliberate sip of her wine to buy time. The rich, oaky flavor bloomed across her tongue. “You're welcome, I suppose,” she murmured, the rim of the glass muffling her words slightly.

An awkward silence settled between them, punctuated only by the distant clink of silverware and the muted conversations of other diners. Jason's gaze drifted to the window where Gotham's skyline glittered against the night sky, his expression unreadable.

“You know,” he said suddenly, turning back to her with renewed focus, “you're free to make conversation with me. It's more entertaining than most people I talk to.”

The challenge in his tone sparked something in Y/N. She tilted her head, considering him for a long moment before asking, “So what do you do when you're not racing?”

It was a genuine question - one she'd always wondered about. In every interview she'd ever watched or conducted with Jason Todd, the conversation inevitably circled back to racing strategies, training regimens, or future competitions. His social media showed nothing but carefully curated content - podium finishes, sponsor events, the occasional vacation photo that still somehow related to racing. There was never any glimpse of who Jason Todd might be when he stepped away from the track.

Jason opened his mouth automatically. “Um, I usually train or go over my past races, analyze data, study tracks—”

“No,” Y/N interrupted gently but firmly. “I mean outside of racing. You've pretty much dedicated all of you to racing, but who is Jason Todd outside of that?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard. His fingers stilled against the tablecloth, and for the first time that evening, the ever-present confidence in his posture faltered slightly. The silence stretched between them, growing heavier with each passing second.

Jason's brow furrowed as he stared into his wine glass, as if the answer might be hidden in its depths. When he finally looked up, there was something unsettlingly vulnerable in his expression.

He paused, then continued with a soft huff of self-deprecating laughter, “I mean I used to read.” The admission came slowly, dragged up from some long-buried place in his memory. “Before races. History, mostly.” A faint, nostalgic smile touched his lips. “There was... there was something about empires rising and falling that put the whole 'will I qualify P1 or P2' thing in perspective.”

Y/N found herself leaning forward without realizing it. This was new territory - an actual glimpse behind the carefully constructed media persona. The Jason Todd of press conferences and interviews was all sharp edges and racing statistics, a human embodiment of competitive drive. This Jason? This one had layers.

“And now?” she asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper, afraid to break the fragile moment.

Jason's thumb traced slow circles around the base of his glass, his gaze distant. “Now I...” The sentence trailed off into silence, his brow furrowing deeper. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on a rougher edge, the words tinged with something like self-reproach. “Christ, you're right. There isn't a Jason Todd outside of racing. Hasn't been for a long time.”

Y/N could see the moment of realization hitting him, could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he confronted this truth about himself. The way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the slight narrowing of his eyes - she recognized the signs of someone spiraling inward with uncomfortable self-examination.

Seeking to lighten the mood before it turned too heavy, she quipped, “For someone who just admitted he has no life outside racing, you're doing a terrible job of convincing me to take this dinner seriously as a networking opportunity.”

The tension shattered as Jason barked out a surprised laugh that made the waiters look curiously. “Fuck you,” he shot back, but there was no real venom in it - just a warmth that softened the edges of his usual sharp demeanor. He speared a bite of his appetizer with more force than necessary, the action betraying his lingering discomfort with the direction of their conversation. “Fine. Next time I'll lie. Tell you I breed rare orchids or some shit.”

“Next time?” Y/N raised an eyebrow, her own fork hovering mid-air as she caught the implication.

Jason froze for a fraction of a second, then recovered with a shrug that was far too studied to be casual. “Figure of speech.” But the way his eyes darted briefly away, the slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, told a different story entirely.

Y/N deadpanned, “You just admitted your entire identity is wrapped up in going fast in circles. That means we've got our work cut out for us.”

“'We'?” Jason latched onto the word with surprising quickness, his tone dripping with exaggerated sarcasm though something in his eyes betrayed genuine curiosity. “As in you want to accompany me in this grand journey of self-discovery?” The question was framed as rhetorical, but there was an undercurrent of something more - a quiet hope that surprised even him.

Y/N smiled at his characteristic sarcastic flair, recognizing the defense mechanism for what it was. “That depends on you, Mr. Todd,” she replied, matching his tone but letting her amusement show through.

Jason regarded her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “I suppose it does,” he finally conceded, the words neither a confirmation nor denial, but something intriguingly in between.

The sleek black town car had glided through the city's rain-slicked streets in near silence, the hum of the engine the only sound as Jason’s chauffeur navigated the late-night traffic. Y/N had sat stiffly in the plush leather seat, fingers twisting in her lap, replaying every moment of the evening in her head. Jason had been... different than she expected. Not the brooding, closed-off champion the media painted him as, but someone sharper, wittier—someone who had actually laughed at her jokes.

When the car finally pulled up to her apartment building, she had thanked the driver with a polite smile, maintaining her composure right up until the moment her front door clicked shut behind her.

Then her knees gave out.

She slid down the length of the door until she hit the floor, back pressed against the wood, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. A giddy, disbelieving laugh bubbled up, followed immediately by a wave of sheer panic.

She needed to talk to someone. Now.

Stephanie picked up the video call on the second ring, her face already alight with curiosity. “Okay, so how did it go?”

Y/N opened her mouth—and promptly burst into tears. Stephanie’s eyes widened as Y/N devolved into a babbling, incoherent mess, words tumbling out between hiccuping sobs.

“I can’t understand shit,” Stephanie said, leaning closer to the screen. “Are these happy tears or sad?”

“Seems happy to me,” Tim chimed in from somewhere off-camera. “Happy?” Stephanie repeated, narrowing her eyes. “What the hell happened? You’re acting like Jason Todd took you on a date or something.”

Y/N froze.

Then, slowly, she looked up at Stephanie through her lashes, her lips quirking into a sheepish smile. “I mean—” A giggle escaped, high-pitched and entirely involuntary.

Stephanie’s expression morphed into pure shock. “Hol’up, bitch. What do you mean by ‘I mean’? Whatchu teehee’ing for?” she shrieked, loud enough that Y/N had to pull the phone away from her ear.

“Y/N went on a date with who now?” Tim’s voice floated into frame as he leaned over Stephanie’s shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“That’s why I just asked her, dipshit,” Stephanie snapped, shoving him away.

“It wasn’t a date,” Y/N insisted, though the way she twirled a strand of hair around her finger betrayed her. “I mean, it was one in my head, but that doesn’t matter.”

Stephanie’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

Y/N snapped out of her daze, straightening up as the full weight of the evening came crashing back. Words poured out of her in a frantic, breathless rush—Jason’s unexpected dinner invitation, the way he’d actually listened to her, the way his smirk had softened into something dangerously close to genuine amusement.

Stephanie’s reaction was instantaneous. “Jason FUCKING Todd? As in three-time world champion Jason Todd? The guy who hasn’t been seen in public outside of races for like a year? The same Jason Todd whose poster you had above your bed and wrote like a thousand fanfictions about in high school and college? The one who’s—”

“Steph! That was years ago!” Y/N’s face burned so hot she was surprised her phone didn’t melt.

From the background, Tim’s voice piped up again, smug. “Wait, Y/N had a crush on Ja—”

“TIMOTHY DRAKE, IF YOU DON’T SHUT YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD—”

A scuffle ensued, followed by a yelp and the sound of something—or someone—being forcibly silenced.

Y/N buried her face in her hands, groaning.

Then her phone chimed.

A text.

From an unknown number.

Her stomach dropped. With trembling fingers, she opened the message.

Unknown: So when do we start?

Y/N let out a strangled scream and threw her phone across the room like it had burned her.

“Y/N? HELLO? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” Stephanie’s voice screeched from the discarded device. Y/N scrambled to retrieve it, her voice pitching into hysterics. “H-he just texted me. What do I do? What do I DO?”

She collapsed back onto the floor, biting her fist to muffle another scream.

Y/N's phone continued to blare Stephanie's increasingly frantic voice from where it had landed face-up on the rug. She stared at it like it might explode, her entire body frozen in panic.

Jason Todd had her number.

Jason Todd had texted her.

Jason Todd was somehow already ruining her ability to function like a normal human being.

Stephanie's pixelated face twisted in exasperation on the screen. “Y/N, I swear to god if you don't pick up this phone right now—”

With trembling fingers, Y/N grabbed the device, her wide-eyed reflection staring back at her in the front camera. “Steph,” she whispered hoarsely. “What do I say?”

Stephanie opened her mouth—probably to deliver one of her famously unhinged pep talks—when Tim suddenly shouldered his way back into frame, his grin downright diabolical.

“Say yes, obviously.”

“TIM—”

“No, listen,” he barreled on, ignoring Stephanie's death grip on his arm. “Jason doesn't text people. Like, ever. Dick had to bribe him just to answer group chats. If he's reaching out first? That's basically a declaration of—”

Stephanie clamped a hand over his mouth. “What my handsome yet unburdened by intelligence boyfriend is trying to say is,” she said through gritted teeth, “that you should reply before you psych yourself out of it. Also, tim don't spout bull, she's plenty delulu as it is.”

Y/N's thumb hovered over the screen. The cursor blinked mockingly in the text box.

Unknown: So when do we start?

She swallowed hard.

This was Jason Todd. The same Jason Todd who had once flipped off an entire grandstand after a controversial penalty. The same Jason Todd whose post-race interviews were legendary for their sarcasm and barely-contained rage. The same Jason Todd who had just admitted he had no identity outside of racing—and was now asking her to help him find one.

Her fingers moved before she could overthink it.

Y/N: Depends. Are we starting with book recommendations or full-blown personality reconstruction with something more hands-on?

The reply came almost instantly.

Jason: Never been the one to back out from a challenge. So what's it gonna be doll?

Y/N's breath hitched. She could practically hear his voice in her head, that low, teasing drawl that had made her stomach flip more than once during dinner.

“Steph,” she blurted out, turning back to her still-active video call where Stephanie and Tim were watching this unfold with rapt attention. “Suggestions. Fast. Something I can take Jason to.”

Stephanie's grin was instantaneous. “Oh, I know you're not about to drag Jason Todd into one of your hyperfixation hobbies.”

“Good idea and that I absolutely will.”

Stephanie snorted. “Well, you could take him to that artisan ceramics workshop with the old Italian nonnas you're obsessed with. Or that dance class you signed up for in Barcelona last year.”

One thing about Y/N: she happened to be on the ADHD spectrum and every Grand Prix weekend in a new country had become an opportunity to dive headfirst into a new hobby. From pottery in Italy to flamenco dancing in Spain, her restless mind latching onto anything that could provide that sweet, sweet dopamine hit. It made her the perfect person to help Jason Todd find something—anything—that wasn't racing. Collecting herself, Y/N typed back with renewed determination:

Y/N: Give me a country, and I'll tell you what we're doing.

Jason: Race in Imola in two days.

Y/N: So Italy it is.

Excitement buzzed under Y/N's skin. Imola. The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. And now, the backdrop for whatever this was becoming.

Across the world, in a private jet en route to Italy, Jason found himself staring at his phone with an unfamiliar feeling in his chest. For the first time in years, he was looking forward to something that wasn't a race.

Their messages continued late into the night—Y/N enthusiastically listing every obscure Italian hobby she'd tried, Jason responding with dry humor that slowly melted into genuine interest. He didn't even realize when the tension in his shoulders began to ease, when the ever-present anger that had fueled him since his return started to fade, replaced by something lighter. Something like anticipation.

In just a span of two days, his phone was filled with ridiculous stickers, mostly consisting of a concerning number of cat memes and a plan for their first “non-racing activity.” His phone buzzed again—another meme from Y/N, this time a photoshopped image of Bruce Wayne with cat ears next to an actual grumpy Persian. Jason snorted, thumb hovering over the keyboard to reply, when a quiet voice interrupted.

“Jason, can we talk?”

Cass's voice cut through the controlled chaos of the garage, where mechanics buzzed around the car like worker bees. Jason slipped his phone into his pocket, though not before Cass caught a glimpse of his screen— the ridiculous meme Y/N had sent him.

“Sure, Cass. What's up?” he said, turning to face her.

Cass studied him for a long moment, her dark eyes perceptive as ever. “You've been... different.”

Jason stiffened. Different. Did that mean distracted? Unfocused? Cass was one of the few people who had never treated him like glass after the accident, never looked at him with pity. If she said he'd changed—

But then Cass's lips quirked. “You smile more.”

Jason blinked.

“And you keep checking your phone,” she added, nodding to his pocket, where another notification had just buzzed. “Whoever they are... I like them.”

Jason opened his mouth—to protest, to deflect—but found he didn't want to. Instead, a slow, unguarded smile spread across his face.

“Yeah,”

he admitted, pulling out his phone to see Y/N's latest message.

Y/N: Pack something you don't mind getting messy. We're starting with ceramics tomorrow.

“Me too.”

Jason stood frozen outside the unassuming ceramics studio, his boots scuffing against the worn cobblestones as he double-checked the address. The building looked like something out of a postcard—sun-bleached terracotta walls draped in lush ivy, the faint scent of lemon trees mingling with the earthy aroma of clay from the open windows. A hand-painted wooden sign swung gently in the breeze, its blue door chipped with age.

He glanced at his watch—10:02 AM. He was late.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. This wasn’t a race briefing or a sponsor meeting. Just... an odd detour into unfamiliar territory.

The street was blessedly empty, tucked away in the city’s historic district where tourists rarely wandered. Jason exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension coiled there. These days, being recognized outside the paddock meant one of two things—either starstruck fans shoving phones in his face, or pitying glances from those who remembered the crash. He hated both reactions equally.

His outfit felt foreign against his skin—a lightweight linen shirt layered over his usual thin turtleneck, loose trousers instead of fireproof racing gear, boots that had never touched a garage floor. The fabric moved differently, unrestrictive in ways his racing suits never were.

Jason raised his fist and knocked twice on the weathered blue door.

The door flew open before his knuckles could make contact a third time.

“Ah! Finalmente!”

A tiny, silver-haired woman—Nonna Gianna, he presumed—grabbed his wrist with surprising strength and yanked him inside before he could protest. The studio was cooler than the sunlit street, the air thick with the mineral scent of wet clay and something herbal—maybe thyme or rosemary from the small kitchen in the back.

“You are il ragazzo who knows nothing, sì?” Gianna declared, her dark eyes scanning him with the same intensity engineers used when inspecting a damaged chassis.

Jason opened his mouth to argue—he’d mastered the most complex racing circuits in the world, surely he could handle some clay—but she was already dragging him past shelves of glazed pottery, their surfaces catching the morning light filtering through the windows.

The back room was bathed in golden sunlight from the open roof and thin shades, the hum of a spinning pottery wheel filling the air. And there—

Y/N sat at the wheel, her hands buried in a mound of wet clay that spun hypnotically under her fingers. She’d traded her usual paddock attire for a linen shirt that matched his own—though hers was already streaked with earthy smudges—her hair tied back with a vibrant scarf. And a smudge of clay decorated her cheek.

“Wasn’t aware there was a dress code,” she quipped without looking up, her voice laced with amusement.

Jason blinked, momentarily thrown by the quip and the sight of her—so at ease here, so different from the polished presenter or the drunk socialite he saw earlier. But before he could respond, Gianna shoved him toward the empty wheel beside Y/N’s.

“Bello ma stupido,” the old woman muttered, patting his bicep approvingly before grabbing his hands to inspect them. “Strong hands,” she announced, turning them palm-up like a fortune teller. “Good for clay.” Her smile was slightly unnerving—the kind usually reserved for fresh meat in a lion’s den.

Jason, who had faced down the most intimidating team principals and aggressive reporters without flinching, felt an odd prickle of nerves under her scrutiny. “I’ll... try my best?”

Gianna snorted and slapped a wet lump of clay onto his wheel with a decisive thwap. “Non provare. Do it.”

For the next two hours, Jason Todd—three-time world champion, master of precision—was thoroughly humbled by a lump of wet earth.

His first attempt collapsed inward like a deflating balloon. His second wobbled violently before spiraling off-center. His third attempt earned him a sharp rap on the knuckles with Gianna’s wooden spoon when he gripped the clay too tightly.

“Troppa forza!” she scolded. “Clay is not enemy! You fight it, it fights back.”

Y/N muffled a laugh into her shoulder, her own wheel producing something suspiciously vase-shaped. “She’s right, you know,” she said, pushing back a stray strand from her forehead with her wrist. “It’s about listening, not controlling.”

Jason glared at his latest failed attempt, the clay stubbornly refusing to obey him the way his car always did. “I’m used to things responding immediately when I tell them what to do.”

Y/N’s grin was downright wicked. “Welcome to the real world, hotshot.”

He flicked a bit of clay at her. She gasped in mock outrage and retaliated by smearing a streak across his cheek, her fingers lingering just a second too long. Gianna threw her hands up and muttered something in rapid Italian before stomping off.

By the session’s end, his shirt was thoroughly ruined, patience exhausted and—against all odds—he’d somehow produced something vaguely cup-shaped.

“Non male,” Gianna conceded, examining his lopsided creation with a critical eye. “For first try.” She turned to Y/N and said something that made the younger woman nearly drop her perfectly formed vase.

Jason wiped his clay-caked hands on a towel. “What’d she say?”

Y/N refused to meet his eyes. “Nothing important.”

The warm afternoon sunlight streamed through the studio’s windows as Gianna’s cackling faded into the distance, leaving Jason and Y/N alone at their worktable. Jason found his gaze tracing the details of Y/N’s profile—the way her nose scrunched in concentration when examining their pottery, the smudge of clay drying along her collarbone that she’d missed when cleaning up. He noticed how her shoulders curved slightly forward when focused, the golden chain around her neck catching the light with each movement. A glimpse of ink at the base of her neck peeked through her hair—some tattoo he couldn’t quite make out, its meaning hidden just like so much about her still remained unknown to him.

It struck him then how rarely he noticed these small things about people. In the paddock, he saw drivers as competitors, engineers as problem-solvers, journalists as obstacles to navigate. But Y/N—he was seeing her in fragments, piece by unexpected piece, and each discovery left him strangely curious for more.

As Y/N carefully carried their creations to the kiln, Jason wiped his clay-streaked hands on a towel. The studio’s elderly owner reappeared at his side, moving with surprising stealth for someone who’d just been cackling moments before.

“Tu e Y/N,” Gianna began, her dark eyes twinkling with mischief. “Da quanto tempo vi frequentate?”

Jason blinked. “Pardon? Uh, signora um... non parlo italiano.”

Gianna’s wrinkled face scrunched in concentration as she searched for the right English words, then gave up with an exasperated wave of her hands. Instead, she brought her pinched fingers together in the universal sign for kissing.

Jason’s eyes widened comically. “No, no, me and Y/N—not like that,” he protested, waving his hands in denial.

“Non?” Gianna looked genuinely surprised. “Ma l’ultima volta che l’ho vista eri nello sfondo del suo telefono.”

Jason stared blankly, the rapid Italian washing over him without comprehension. Before he could respond, Y/N returned, immediately picking up on the tension.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked, tilting her head at Jason’s bewildered expression.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it,” Jason muttered, suddenly finding the clay remnants on the table fascinating.

Gianna said something rapid-fire to Y/N, who laughed and shook her head before turning back to Jason. “She said we can fix ourselves a meal in her kitchen if we want while the pots bake. What do you say?”

Jason automatically shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, but I have to strictly watch what I eat.”

Y/N groaned dramatically, throwing her head back. “Jay, look. It’s two weeks before the next race. One sandwich won’t destroy you.” She clasped her hands together in mock pleading. “And Gianna makes her own cheese! With goat milk from her nephew’s farm. Pretty please?”

The way she said it—the exaggerated pout, the way her eyes sparkled with challenge, the way she said his name—stirred something in Jason. He’d spent years following nutrition plans to the gram, never deviating, never indulging. But standing there, with clay under his nails and Y/N looking at him like that, the strict rules he’d lived by suddenly felt less important.

“Fine,” he conceded, holding up a warning finger. “One sandwich.”

Y/N’s triumphant grin was worth whatever lecture his nutritionist would give him later. As Gianna led them toward the small kitchen in the back, chattering away in Italian, Jason realized with startling clarity that for the first time in years, he wasn’t thinking about macros or race weight.

He was simply... enjoying himself.

The small kitchen was warm and fragrant, filled with the earthy scent of baking bread and the sharp tang of fresh herbs. Sunlight streamed through the lace curtains, casting delicate patterns across the worn wooden counter where Y/N stood, her hands deftly slicing into a crusty loaf of sourdough. The rhythmic sound of the knife against the cutting board filled the comfortable silence between them.

Jason leaned against the counter nearby, watching as she worked. There was something mesmerizing about the way she moved—practical yet graceful, her fingers sure and steady as she portioned the bread. The quiet domesticity of the moment felt foreign to him, like stepping into a scene from a life he’d never allowed himself to imagine.

Then Y/N glanced up, her eyes flickering briefly to the high collar of his turtleneck before meeting his gaze.

“I respect people’s fashion choices and all,” she began, her tone light but curious, “but if you don’t mind me asking... why the turtleneck?”

The question shouldn’t have caught him off guard. He’d been asked it before—by reporters, by fans, even by well-meaning acquaintances who didn’t know how to tiptoe around the subject of his scars. But coming from Y/N, it felt different. There was no pity in her voice, no morbid fascination. Just simple, straightforward curiosity.

Jason hesitated, his fingers absently tracing the edge of his sleeve. He could deflect, could make a joke and steer the conversation elsewhere. But something about the quiet intimacy of the kitchen, the way Y/N waited without pressing, made the truth feel less like a burden and more like just another part of himself.

“After the crash,” he started, his voice quieter than he intended, “people tend to... stare.” He shrugged, as if that explained it all. And in a way, it did. The scars were a map of his worst moment, etched permanently into his skin. A reminder he carried everywhere, whether he wanted to or not.

He realized how somber his words sounded and quickly tried to lighten the mood. “And even then, I wouldn’t wanna scare you with ‘em. It’s ugly stuff.”

Y/N didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she turned back to the bread, her knife moving steadily. But just as Jason thought she’d let the subject drop, she murmured, so softly he almost missed it:

“Not to me, it’s not.”

The words hung in the air between them, delicate as the dust motes floating in the sunlight. Jason wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly—if he’d imagined the quiet sincerity in her voice. But before he could question it, Y/N looked up again, her expression shifting seamlessly back to casual ease.

“Hey, can you wash the cherry tomatoes, please?”

Jason nodded, pushing away from the counter to comply. As he turned on the faucet and let the cool water run over the vibrant red tomatoes, he became acutely aware of the quiet sounds filling the kitchen—the splash of water, the rustle of Y/N gathering herbs, and beneath it all, the soft, absentminded hum escaping her lips.

The melody was unfamiliar, but the way she let it drift in and out of her thoughts, barely aware she was doing it, struck something deep in his chest. It reminded him of his mother—how she would hum old lullabies while cooking, the sound wrapping around him like a comfort as he sat on the countertop, swinging his legs and waiting for dinner. It reminded him, too, of Alfred—the Wayne family’s butler—patiently teaching him how to prep vegetables, his dry wit hiding a warmth Jason had taken for granted in his youth.

He hadn’t thought about those moments in years. Hadn’t let himself.

The water ran over his fingers, the tomatoes glistening like little gems in his palms. For the first time in longer than he could remember, the simmering anger that had fueled him since the crash—the bitterness, the relentless drive to prove he was still the same, still unbeatable—felt distant. Fading, like an old wound finally beginning to heal.

And standing there, in a kitchen with the scent of fresh bread in the air and Y/N’s quiet humming weaving through the space between them, Jason realized something with startling clarity:

He was happy.

Not the fleeting rush of a podium finish, not the hollow satisfaction of proving his critics wrong. Just... happy.

Y/N perched on the edge of the worn wooden counter, her legs swinging idly as she took another enthusiastic bite of her sandwich. Crumbs tumbled onto the plate below, but she paid them no mind, too absorbed in savoring the flavors—the rich creaminess of Gianna’s homemade goat cheese, the sweetness of sun-ripened tomatoes, the crunch of freshly baked sourdough.

Across from her, Jason sat frozen, his own sandwich hovering halfway to his lips. His expression was distant, conflicted, as if caught in some internal debate. The voices of his past—his coaches, his nutritionists, even his own relentless drive—whispered warnings in his mind. This isn’t part of the plan. This isn’t what champions do.

Across from her, Jason sat frozen, his own sandwich hovering inches from his mouth. His fingers gripped the bread just a fraction too tightly, his knuckles pale with tension. The voices in his head were louder than the cheerful clatter of the kitchen—his old trainer’s stern warnings about maintaining race weight, the nutritionist’s rigid meal plans, the unspoken expectations of a champion who couldn’t afford to slip, not even for a moment.

Was this weakness? The thought slithered through his mind. Was he throwing away years of discipline, all the sacrifices he’d made—the early mornings, the grueling workouts, the endless self-denial—for something as trivial as a sandwich?

“Is there something wrong?”

Y/N’s voice cut through his spiral, her brow furrowing as she studied him. The concern in her eyes was genuine, untainted by the judgment he’d come to expect from the racing world.

Jason shook his head, more to clear his thoughts than to answer her. Then, before he could overthink it further, he took a bite.

The flavors exploded across his tongue—sharp, tangy cheese mellowed by the sweetness of sun-ripened tomatoes, all anchored by the nutty depth of freshly baked bread. It was simple. It was perfect. And for the first time in years, Jason actually tasted his food.

His so-called “cheat meals” had always been at Michelin-starred restaurants—obligatory team dinners or sponsor events where the food was secondary to the politics. He’d long since trained himself to ignore the delicate dishes placed before him. The flavors had become irrelevant, just another sacrifice in the pursuit of perfection.

But here, in this tiny kitchen with its chipped tiles and sun-faded curtains, with Y/N swinging her feet like a child and Gianna humming off-key in the corner, the weight of expectation lifted. For the first time in longer than he could remember, Jason was present—truly present—in a moment that had nothing to do with racing.

“Want one more?” Y/N asked, already reaching for the bread.

Jason didn’t hesitate. “Actually, yes I do.”

The words felt like a revelation.

Between races, in stolen days across different time zones, he found himself dragged into what Y/N affectionately called their “hobby hunts”— whirlwind excursions into the mundane wonders of each Grand Prix host country. In Italy, he’d learned the meditative art of pasta-making from a Nonna who smacked him whenever he kneaded the dough too aggressively. He’d reluctantly tried watercolor painting, only to discover an unexpected satisfaction in the way colors bled across the paper.

And now, in Venice after the triple header, Y/N was determined to subject him to what he firmly believed was the most ridiculous “hobby” yet.

“Mask-making is not a real hobby,” Jason declared, arms crossed as they stood outside a tiny workshop in Dorsoduro, its windows filled with elaborate papier-mâché creations. Y/N’s expression shifted instantly—her usual playful smirk dissolving into something far more serious. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that gave Jason pause.

“Tell that to Guillermo,” she said quietly, “who spent thirty years perfecting this ‘hobby’ of his. After he lost his job and his son stopped speaking to him, it was the masks that kept a roof over his and his wife’s heads.”

The raw sincerity in her words hit Jason like a missed braking point. He stiffened, suddenly aware of the careless privilege in his dismissal.

“I—” He swallowed, uncharacteristically lost for words. “That was insensitive of me. I’m sorry.”

Y/N studied him for a long moment before her face lit up with sudden mischief. “So that means you’ll give it a go?” The whiplash-inducing shift in tone left Jason blinking. “...What?”

“You promised,” she singsonged, bouncing on her heels with renewed energy. Realization dawned slowly, then all at once. Jason’s jaw dropped. “You made that up?”

“Every word,” Y/N confirmed cheerfully. “And no takesies-backsies. You already agreed.”

Jason groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re an evil little thing, you know that?”

“But you love it,” she teased, already pushing open the workshop door.

The protest died on Jason’s lips. Because as much as he hated to admit it, she wasn’t wrong.

The crisp Canadian air carried a bite that was absent in the Mediterranean warmth they’d left behind. The empty rink stretched before them, its surface gleaming under the soft glow of evening lights, freshly smoothed by the zamboni. Jason exhaled, watching his breath curl into the cold air as he stepped onto the ice, the blades of his skates cutting effortlessly into the pristine surface.

He hadn’t expected this. When Y/N had mentioned renting out an entire rink as a thank-you for flying her to Montreal in his private jet, he’d assumed she was joking. But here they were, the only two people in the arena, the silence broken only by the distant hum of refrigeration systems and the occasional scrape of steel against ice.

It was… thoughtful. Unnervingly so. Y/N had a way of anticipating what he wanted before he even voiced it—like she understood that, despite his love for the roars of the grandstands on track, he craved these quiet moments away from prying eyes and cameras.

As a high-performance athlete, Jason found his balance almost immediately. The muscle memory from years of rigorous training translated seamlessly to the ice, and within minutes, he was gliding across the rink with the same natural ease he carried on the racetrack.

Y/N, however, was another story entirely.

She clung to the boards like her life depended on it, her usual confidence replaced by wide-eyed terror as her skates betrayed her at every turn. Jason watched, amused, as she attempted to push off—only to immediately pitch forward with a yelp, arms flailing wildly before she somehow managed to right herself.

“Show-off,” she muttered under her breath, glaring at him as he executed a lazy backward crossover right in front of her.

Jason smirked. “You’re the one who picked this hobby, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t realize you’d turn out to be some figure-skating prodigy,” she shot back in an attempt to gain back some of her dignity, gingerly releasing the railing—and immediately regretting it as her feet slid out from under her.

Jason darted forward, catching her by the waist before she could faceplant onto the ice. “You’re hopeless, I swear,” he laughed, steadying her as she wobbled like a newborn fawn.

Y/N’s cheeks flushed, though whether from embarrassment or the cold, he couldn’t tell. “I’m great at plenty of other things!” she grumbled, attempting to shake him off.

“Oh, I believe you,” Jason said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “But skating isn’t one of them.”

As she wobbled dangerously again, his arm shot out to steady her. “Careful, doll. Can’t have you messing up that pretty face.”

She muttered something decidedly unflattering under her breath, but the effect was ruined by the way her lips twitched, fighting a smile.

Jason held out his hand. “Alright, baby steps. Take my hand.”

Y/N hesitated, staring at his outstretched palm like it was a trap. On one side: this was Jason Todd, the man whose posters had adorned her teenage walls, whose career she’d followed with near-religious devotion— offering to teach her something for once. It should’ve been a dream come true. But letting him witness her utter lack of coordination was humiliating enough and accepting his help felt like surrendering the little dignity she had left. Especially considering how insufferably smug he looked seeing her struggle.

For a brief, stubborn moment, she considered refusing. But the ice was unforgiving, her pride bruised but definitely not worth a broken tailbone and his hand looked awfully steady. With a sigh, she placed her hand in his. Perhaps this was karma from the pottery class.

“Don’t you dare let go,” she warned.

Jason’s grin was all teeth. “Wouldn’t dream of it doll.”

The scrape of blades against ice filled the quiet rink as Jason guided Y/N in slow, careful circles. Her fingers trembled slightly in his grip - whether from the cold or the unfamiliar intimacy, he couldn’t tell.

“Stop looking at your feet,” Jason chided gently. “Look at me instead. It helps with balance.”

Y/N’s eyes flicked up, meeting his with a mixture of irritation and reluctant trust. The moment their gazes locked, her posture straightened almost imperceptibly.

“See? You’re getting it,” he murmured, unable to resist a small, genuine smile.

“I’m literally just standing here while you do all the work,” Y/N grumbled.

Jason chuckled, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze before slowly releasing it. “Alright, try on your own. Just remember - knees bent, weight forward.”

For a glorious three seconds, Y/N glided unaided, her face lighting up with triumph. Then physics intervened. Her arms became frantic windmills, her balance abandoning her in an instant. Jason saw the exact moment panic flooded her wide eyes—the dilation of pupils, the part of lips ready to yelp—before his body moved on instinct honed from years of split-second reactions.

One strong arm banded around her waist, hauling her flush against his chest with enough force to knock the breath from them both. His other hand slapped against the boards to arrest their momentum, the impact vibrating up his arm. But all Jason registered was the feel of Y/N pressed along his entire side—the warmth of her even through layers of clothing, the way her racing heartbeat thudded against his ribs in perfect sync with his own runaway pulse.

Jason had always known Y/N was attractive. Objectively. The way one might note a well-composed photograph or an elegant car design. As a presenter, she fit the expected mold of paddock beauty—polished, camera-ready, the kind of woman sponsors loved to position near their drivers for photo ops.

But this... this was different.

In his years as a champion, Jason had been paraded before countless models and starlets, had endured awkward PR “dates” arranged by the team, had smiled for cameras with women whose names he barely remembered. None of them had ever made him notice how the arena lights caught gold flecks in their eyes. None had hands that fit so perfectly in his, as if engineered by some higher power just for this moment. No one’s cheeks had ever flushed such an enticing pink from cold and exertion, nor had their lips—currently parted in surprise and glistening with whatever gloss she’d applied that morning—ever seemed so impossibly, distractingly soft.

And the scent of her—citrus and something sweet beneath the cold air—wrapped around him more completely than any embrace.

“Maybe... maybe we should call it a night,” Y/N whispered, her breath puffing warm against his neck.

The words were a surrender, but her body told a different story—the way she hadn’t pulled away, how her fingers had fisted in the front of his jacket as if to anchor herself.

Jason blinked, suddenly aware he’d been cataloging her features with an intensity that bordered on obsession. He cleared his throat, carefully putting space between them while keeping a steadying hand at her elbow. The air from the refridgeration systems rushed in to fill the void she left, chilling him instantly.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed, voice rougher than intended. He busied himself with adjusting his gloves, avoiding her gaze. “We can, uh... try again another time.”

The words tasted like a lie. Because what Jason really wanted was to pull her close again, to see if her hair really was as soft as it looked, to discover if her lips tasted as sweet as that damned gloss promised. But that way lay madness—or at the very least, a complication neither of them needed.

In the weeks that followed, something undeniable shifted in Jason Todd’s racing—a transformation that didn’t go unnoticed by the sharp analysts and devoted fans who tracked his every lap. The reckless, almost desperate aggression that had once defined his driving—the “madman” style commentators loved to dramatize—had mellowed into something far more dangerous.

His moves were calculated now, his overtakes executed with surgical patience rather than brute force. Where he once would have forced a risky gap, he now waited, biding his time until the perfect moment presented itself. The result? A steady climb up the championship order that left his rivals scrambling to adjust their strategies.

“What the hell’s gotten into Todd?” became the paddock’s favorite question.

Only Jason knew the answer.

In the quiet hours between races, when the roar of engines faded to memory and the paddock emptied of its usual chaos, Jason found himself reaching for the books Y/N had slipped into his life like secret treasures. Each volume carried her fingerprints—literally, in the smudges on the pages where she’d gripped them too tightly during thrilling passages, and metaphorically, in the notes she’d scribbled in the margins with her characteristic wit and insight.

“While finding new hobbies, it’s important not to lose the old ones,” she’d told him with that knowing smile of hers, pressing another book into his hands after their delightful attempt at Venetian mask-making.

He’d taken her words to heart in a way that surprised even himself. The books became his companions on long flights between races, their pages a refuge when the weight of expectation grew too heavy. He raced through them not just for the stories they held, but for the promise of her next recommendation—the quiet thrill of her commentary when he texted her his thoughts at 2 AM after finishing one.

What he didn’t tell her—what he couldn’t bring himself to admit—was that he’d commissioned a custom sandalwood bookshelf for his bedroom, its rich grain polished to a warm glow. It stood as a shrine to something that was uniquely theirs’s: the slightly lopsided cup that he made at Nonna Gianna’s, a beer mug from their trappist brewing adventure in Belgium, the framed photo of them covered in cheese curds in Austria, the pressed wildflowers from their trek across the Scottish highlands after his P1 finish in Silverstone. The one that brought him back in contention for the World Championship. It felt like he was building something more than just a collection.

It felt like proof.

Proof that there was a Jason Todd beyond the racetrack. Proof that he could be more than the sum of his scars and his victories.

And it was all because of her.

His phone was a dangerous thing these days.

The gallery, once filled with nothing but race data and engineering schematics, now held a growing album of stolen moments—candid shots of Y/N laughing at a joke he hadn’t meant to be funny, her nose scrunched in that way he’d come to adore. Screenshots of her social media posts and presenter segments saved before he could talk himself out of it.

It was pathetic, really.

World champion. Three-time title holder. And yet here he was, lurking on her Instagram like some lovestruck fan, his stomach twisting every time she posted something new.

Most of her older posts were about him—race photos, blurry grandstand shots, captions filled with exclamation points and heart emojis. The realization should have been flattering. Instead, it left him unsettled.

Did she still see him that way? As some untouchable idol, a fantasy to be admired from afar?

Or could she want the man behind the helmet—the one who woke up sweating from nightmares, who still caught himself holding his breath when tire smoke curled too thick on race day?

Then there was Danny.

A single photo, buried deep in her feed like a landmine. Y/N pressing a kiss to some grinning bastard’s cheek, her caption cheerful and simple: Happy birthday, loser.

Jason knew Danny. Knew him in the way you only know someone who’s shared both your childhood dreams and their dissolution. They’d started karting together, two scrappy kids with more talent than sense, pushing each other until their tires wore bald and their wrists ached from steering. Danny had been one of the few who could match him turn for turn, whose laughter rang just as loud when they tumbled into the grass after some reckless, glorious overtake.

Jason had assumed they’d climb the ranks together, side by side. But life had other plans—Danny’s family couldn’t sustain the financial hemorrhage of competitive karting and pragmatism won out over passion. While Jason raced forward, Danny stepped back, trading the driver’s seat for textbooks, determined to stay close to the sport in whatever way he could. He still remembered the hollow look in his friend’s eyes the day he packed up his helmet— “Engineering school,” he’d muttered, “like the old man wants.” Jason had fought to keep him close, badgering Bruce until Wayne Racing took Danny on as a junior mechanic. They weren’t the brothers-in-arms they’d once been, but the bond remained, worn comfortable with time.

But his closeness to Y/N bothered him. Jason stared until the pixels blurred. He could ask her. Three words —“Who is Danny?” —and he’d have his answer. Who was he to her? A friend? An ex? Worse—a current?

But the thought of hearing the answer—of watching her face shift in that way when someone mentions a name that matters—left him cold.

Better not to know. Better to—

His phone buzzed, Y/N’s name flashing across the screen like she’d somehow sensed his spiral.

Y/N: It’s a shame the race in Zandvoort is so late. You should see the tulips they have in April.

Jason exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing as he typed back without thinking.

Jason: Yeah well. Next year I’ll take you.

The reply came instantly.

Y/N: Bet. Though the beach there is pretty cool too. The water’s cold this time of year but still warmer than your ice tubs :P And then there are the museums too—a history buff like you would appreciate them.

Jason smiled despite himself, imagining her rolling her eyes as she typed.

Jason: I’ll go wherever the lady takes me.

The words hung in the air between them, heavier than he’d intended. For a long moment, the typing bubbles appeared and disappeared, until finally—

Y/N: Careful, Todd. That almost sounded like a promise.

“Jason, what do you think?” Bruce’s voice cut through the low murmur of conversation in the boardroom. He was seated at the far end of the long, polished table, flanked by executives in tailored suits and their managers poised with styluses over tablets.

Jason blinked, startled. His head snapped up from the phone in his lap, only to find nearly a dozen eyes trained on him. He straightened in his seat, his screen going dark as he shoved the device into his blazer pocket. Of course, he had zoned out—texting during a sponsor meeting was probably frowned upon, but truthfully, Jason didn’t give a damn.

The Wayne Formula One team hardly needed financial backing. Bruce’s wealth alone could fund a fleet of cars and pit crews for the next decade. But apparently, having glossy logos of luxury brands and legacy sponsors plastered across the chassis was “strategic”—whatever that meant. Optics over necessity. It was all part of the game.

“Uh, yeah. It’s… cool, I guess,” Jason mumbled, shrugging one shoulder with disinterest.

Bruce closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose in silent frustration. But without missing a beat, he turned back to the others and carried on with the presentation.

As the meeting ended and people began shuffling out with polite handshakes and promises to circle back via email, Dick approached him with a concerned look, pulling him gently aside into a quieter corner of the lounge just outside the boardroom.

“Jason, I think you should see this.”

╰┈➤ Masterlist

╰┈➤ Event masterlist Tags: @joekitsu @sophiethewitch1 @hana-no-seiiki @thisisafish123 @ceramic-raven @millyhelp @blamedbisexual @trunkswithlonghair-blog @jasontoddthings @deans-spinster-witch @12134z03 @johnnysilverhandeeznuts @yasmin-oviedo @rosecentury @pierayanna @jinviktor @crybaby-21 @solarrexplosion @sahana28banana @ari-sama21 @princessbl0ss0m @fictionalwhor3 @leeleecats @lalalozer @shkosm @swamiiyasssss @lilyalone @cxcilla @one-pea-in-a-pod-blog @cooki3dough @misaki-kira8 @br0ke-b1tch @cherriespopsicle @lilithskywalker @multifandom-simp @hayleym1234 @sukaretto-n @idontwantthis22 @sarveshishwarishsuta @eclipse-msoul @aaaashiiii

A/n: Ughhhhhh this is what I get for trying to cram what should be a multi-chapter fic into a single one-shot. Tumblr said "bitch i think the fuck not" and slapped a only-1000-blocks-allowed-per-post on my dreams 😭😭😭Anon I'm so sorry it took me so long😔😔 (Tumblr, I beg you—just let me post my novel-length emotional support in peace.) Feel free to send more requests for the event.

326 notes · View notes

mangooes · 3 months ago

Text

Fast, Fatal, and Flirty

The ticking of the bomb was the only thing (Name) heard in that moment. Her hands moved swiftly, steady fingers dancing between wires as her mind calculated every possible detonation trigger. A drop of sweat slid down her temple as she whispered,

“Red, green, blue—definitely not yellow… unless this guy’s color blind, which—”

Snip.

The countdown froze at three seconds.

She exhaled. “Boom, you’re disarmed, sweetheart,” she muttered, brushing her fingers along the side of the explosive. “Not today.”

She straightened, only to nearly choke when a familiar voice drawled casually from behind.

“Well, well. Look what my pretty kitten’s been up to.”

(Name) spun around. “SYLUS?!”

Leaning against the rusted frame of the abandoned warehouse door, in his signature jacket and leather pants, stood her husband, grinning like he’d just stepped out of a vacation brochure titled ‘How to Look Sinisterly Sexy While Crashing Your Wife’s Job.’

He tilted his head. “You didn’t invite me to the party?”

“You—how the hell—why are you here?!”

“I was in the neighborhood.” He glanced at the disarmed bomb. “And my wife was playing with fireworks. Thought I’d stop by before you got yourself turned into confetti.”

“Pfft, confetti? I’m flattered. I had it all under control.”

Sylus shrugged, walking toward her. “You say that, but I just saw you nearly blow your face off.”

“Three seconds left! That’s called flair!”

“More like playing with death.”

Before she could throw a wrench at him, a burst of gunfire cracked through the warehouse walls.

“Oh for the love of—” (Name) grabbed Sylus’s wrist and bolted. “Not the time! Move your ass big guy!”

Outside, a sleek black getaway car idled a block away. (Name) practically threw Sylus into the passenger seat, jumped into the driver’s side, and hit the gas.

Tires screamed as the car surged forward, bullets pinging off the rear bumper. The side mirror shattered. (Name) gritted her teeth.

Sylus turned to her mid-chase, the city blurring outside the window, and smirked. “Is it wrong that I’m kind of enjoying this?”

(Name) kicked him.

“Ow? You wound me sweetie.”

“This is not a date, Sysy!”

He just laughed, the wind tousling his white hair. “Admit it, kitten. It’s fun when we do it together.”

Behind them, two black SUVs swerved in, engines roaring. (Name) cursed and jerked the wheel, drifting between narrow alleyways.

“They’re tailing us hard,” Sylus noted, tone a little too cheerful for someone in a high-speed chase.

“You think?!” She stuck her head out the window for a moment. “Damn it, I’m gonna need a better angle—“

Without a word, (Name) kicked her heel off, propped her foot onto the wheel to steer (what kind of ungodly core strength—) and climbed halfway out the window, dual pistols raised.

“Sweetie, I know you’re a badass, but this isn’t—holy shit—”

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Shots rang through the night. The first SUV swerved, smoke billowing from the engine. The second clipped a fire hydrant, water geysering as it spun out.

(Name) flipped her hair over her shoulder as she slid back into the seat, still steering with one leg.

Sylus stared at her, absolutely delighted. “That was the hottest thing I’ve seen all month.”

She gave him side-eye. “Oh so you think I’m not hot everyday?”

“That’s not what I meant, kitten.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled him down, one hand on the steering wheel. Leaning toward him as she was about to plant him a sweet treat, Sylus immediately pulled her head toward his chest as a stray bullet brushed past them, hitting the car window.

“Oh, someone’s eager to die.” His brows furrowed, a frown on his face.

More gunfire. A third car appeared.

“I’m ending this,” Sylus muttered, cracking his knuckles.

Before (Name) could stop him, he slipped out the window—because of course he did—and vanished mid-air in a swirl of black and crimson mist.

“SYLUS!” she shouted. “I SWEAR TO—”

BOOM.

The third car suddenly flipped, landing on its roof. One heartbeat later, Sylus reappeared in the passenger seat, dusting off his jacket with all the calm of a man who just walked out of a bakery.

“Taken care of.”

“You reckless idiot!” (Name) snapped, slamming on the brakes to drift the car into a side alley.

“You’re welcome.”

“You didn’t have to teleport onto a moving car! What if you missed?! What if your timing was off by one second?!”

Sylus looked so smug. “Please. I’m offended you think I’d miss. Besides, I wasn’t about to let you hog all the fun.” Hands moving up in a surrender motion.

(Name) pressed a hand to her forehead, sighing. “I am never letting you come on my missions again.”

“Sure, kitten.” He grinned. “Right after we continue where we left off earlier. Kiss me.”

“Ugh, shut up.” But her cheeks flushed despite herself.

Sylus leaned in, voice low. “Come on now, you weren’t this shy earlier.”

“What?”

“I make a good getaway partner. I got rid of the bug disturbing us. Shouldn’t I get a reward for being such a good boy—”

Before Sylus could finish his sentence, a warm sensation washed over him as the feeling of soft lips pressed against his in a gentle manner.

As they pulled apart, she smiled at him.

“…Thank you,” she muttered.

He chuckled and slung an arm over her shoulder. “You’re always welcome, sweetie. I’ve told you to use me as you please, no?”

And as the two of them sped into the night, back toward safety and another probable argument involving hidden explosives and missed briefings, Sylus was already planning how to crash her next mission—just for the thrill of hearing her yell and the reward of that rare, breathless laugh that only she gave him.

UM HAVE U GUYS SEEN THE NEW MAIN STORY SYLUS OH MY GOD I SCREAMED IM AKJANKJENIEHBRIRBI HES SO HOT OMG SYLUS RAFGH RAFGH AAAAAAAAAA TAKE ME ON A JOYRIDE PLS SYLUS JUST ONE CHANCE MY BABY SHAYLA

#sylus x reader #lnds #lnds sylus #love and deepspace #sylus x you #love and deepspace sylus #qin che #lads sylus #sylus

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paucubarsisimp · 5 months ago

Note

Alexandra x reader x Charles like supporting Charles when he won Monaco?

monaco

pairing: poly!charles leclerc x reader x alexandra saint mleux

summary: in which your boyfriend wins his home race

warnings: none

a/n: i hope you like it love!!

the streets of monaco were alive, buzzing with excitement as the grand prix weekend kicked into high gear. the atmosphere was electric—monaco, always glamorous and full of energy, felt even more charged this year. it was charles’ home race. and after all the near-misses, all the years of close calls, this was finally his year. everything had been building toward this moment, and you, alongside alexandra, had been there for every single step of it.

you both stood in the garage, watching with hearts full of anticipation as charles’ car zipped around the track. the noise of the pit crew, the mechanics, and the team engineers was constant, but your attention was fixed solely on the screen. everything else felt distant. charles was racing at home—this was the race that had been his dream, his goal, for years.

“do you think he’s really going to do it?” alexandra’s voice was a low whisper, filled with a mixture of nerves and hope. her hand brushed against yours as her eyes flicked between the monitors, watching charles’ every move.

you gave her a smile, trying to calm her nerves. “he’s going to do it. this is his moment. you’ve seen how he’s been driving—he’s so calm, so in control. i know he’s got this.”

alexandra glanced at you, her eyes still full of worry. “i just… i don’t want him to feel all that pressure. i mean, it’s monaco. it’s home, it’s everything, and the world’s watching.”

“he’s used to it. and he knows we’re here. we’re always here for him,” you said, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “this is what he’s been working toward. he’ll be fine.”

the tension in the garage was thick, and you could feel it even through the calm words you spoke. every person around you, from the pit crew to the engineers, was tense, watching every lap. the sound of charles’ car flying around the circuit, roaring down the straights, was deafening, but you didn’t care. all that mattered was the monitor, the screen showing that charles was still leading. He was pulling away from the others.

alexandra exhaled, her shoulders slightly relaxing. “he’s doing so well…”

“he’s always been good at monaco,” you said quietly, eyes glued to the screen. “this is his track. he knows it better than anyone.”

the laps passed by in a blur of sharp turns and roars of engines. charles was still ahead, but every second felt like a century. it was like you could feel his nerves even through the monitors. but then you realized—he was more than just good at monaco. He was born for this track. His movements were fluid, confident, and precise. he was exactly where he needed to be.

as the final laps drew closer, the nerves were almost unbearable. the radio crackled to life with charles’ voice, calm but with a definite focus in it. “what’s the gap to second?” he asked, his tone even, as though he were asking about the weather.

“he sounds so… in control,” alexandra whispered, her eyes glued to the screen. “how does he stay so calm?”

you couldn’t help but smile. “it’s charles. when it matters most, he always stays calm. he’s used to pressure.”

you watched charles make his way around the track, taking each turn with precision. his confidence was contagious. and it was clear to both of you now that this was it. this was the race that would cement everything he had worked for. the final lap came up, and the garage fell into a hush. you could hear a pin drop.

it was the moment you’d been waiting for, the one you hadn’t dared let yourself believe in until it was almost within your grasp.

“he’s got it,” you whispered, more to yourself than to alexandra. “this is happening.”

the race took on a surreal quality. it was like time slowed, and all you could focus on was charles’ car, speeding through the final stretch. the crowd in the stands was a distant hum, and you could feel the electricity in the air. and then, when charles crossed the finish line, it felt like the world erupted in sound.

“charles leclerc, winner of the 2024 monaco grand prix!” the announcer blared over the loudspeakers, and you could barely believe it. You and alexandra froze for a second, staring at the screen, your hearts pounding in your chests. And then, the reality of it hit you.

he had done it.

he had finally won monaco.

you and alexandra exchanged wide-eyed looks, the mix of shock, joy, and relief crashing over you both. without saying a word, you both rushed out of the garage, making your way through the bustling pit lane toward the track. charles would be celebrating with his team, but you had to see him—now.

the crowd was thick around the paddock, but you could see him. charles, still in his racing gear, surrounded by his team, his face lit up with a smile so bright it could have rivaled the sun. he was laughing, the pressure from the race finally lifted off of his shoulders. but as soon as he saw you both, that smile intensified.

“you made it,” he said, his voice full of pure joy as he made his way toward you. his eyes were sparkling with excitement, and you could feel the energy radiating off of him.

you didn’t wait for anything. you both rushed into his arms, laughing, overwhelmed with everything you were feeling. charles pulled you close, his arms wrapped tightly around you as if he could hardly believe it either. you kissed him, a quick but sweet peck on the cheek, tasting the salt from his sweat, and then pressed your forehead against his.

“you did it,” you said breathlessly, your heart racing from both the sheer excitement of the moment and the love you felt for him. “you really did it, charles. i knew you would.”

alexandra stepped in next, pulling charles into a hug of her own. she kissed him softly on the cheek, then smiled up at him. “we’re so proud of you, charles. you’ve earned this more than anyone.”

charles beamed, his hands resting on both your shoulders as he pulled away from the hug just enough to look at you both. his eyes were bright, a mixture of disbelief and happiness. “you two… i couldn’t have done it without you. without you, this wouldn’t mean anything. i’ve been working toward this moment for so long, and to have you both here with me? It’s everything.”

you both smiled, your hearts swelling with affection for him. you’d been there through all of it—the ups, the downs, the hard moments, and now this. monaco had always been charles’ dream. and now it was his victory.

before you could say anything more, charles leaned in, capturing your lips in a kiss. it was soft at first, slow, the kind of kiss that was heavy with meaning. then it deepened, and you felt him smile against your lips. the kiss was everything—relief, joy, love—all of it wrapped into that one perfect moment.

he pulled away reluctantly, his hands still resting on your shoulders as he looked at you both with a smile that made your heart skip. “this is just the beginning,” he whispered, eyes glinting. “we’ve got so many more moments to make together.”

before you could reply, charles turned his head toward alexandra, pulling her in for another kiss. it was just as soft and sweet as the one he had shared with you, and in that moment, you realized just how much this moment meant to all of you. this was more than just a race victory. this was the result of everything you had been through as a team—the three of you, supporting each other, pushing each other to be better, stronger, always.

when the kiss ended, charles smiled at both of you. “thank you for always being here. you both make everything better.”

you leaned into him, resting your head against his chest. “we always will be, charles. always.”

and just like that, the celebration around you, the noise, the crowd, everything melted away. in that quiet space between the three of you, nothing else mattered. you had charles, and he had you. and nothing in the world could ever change that.

#f1 #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x alexandra saint mleux x reader #alexandra saint mleux x reader #alexandra saint mleux

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hamilton-here · 2 months ago

Text

𝒰𝓃𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃 𝑅𝓊𝓁𝑒𝓈

Authors Note: Hey everyone! I wanted to write a rivalry of some sort between the teams, so I hope you like this. Lots of love xx

Summary: The daughter of Red Bull’s team principal and Lewis Hamilton fall into a secret romance that risks rivalries, media chaos and family fallout all for love.

Warnings: mild sexual content, age-gap, mild language

Taglist: @hannibeeblog @nebulastarr @cosmichughes

MASTERLIST

࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊

The world of Formula 1 had always been a battleground. The speed, the precision, the raw hunger to be first it all collided into one of the most high-stakes environments in global sport.

But for you, the daughter of Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing, it had always been more than just the race. It was about legacy. About control. About the unrelenting pressure of being born into the fire rather than choosing to walk through it.

From the moment you were old enough to understand the difference between soft and hard compound tyres, you knew your life was destined to revolve around motorsport not because it was your passion, but because it was expected.

Your last name wasn’t just a name it was a brand, a symbol of Red Bull’s grit and calculated dominance. And being Christian Horner’s daughter came with rules. Boundaries. Expectations so deeply ingrained they felt like law.

The most ironclad of those unspoken rules? Never speak to Toto Wolff let alone entertain anything or anyone associated with Mercedes.

Toto and your father had a rivalry so bitter it felt almost Shakespearean. Every press conference turned into a subtle war of words, a performance of thinly veiled contempt.

Their disagreements weren't always televised, but you'd seen enough tense meetings behind hospitality unit doors, red-faced shouting matches over regulation loopholes, and that one memorable argument at Silverstone where your father had stormed out, muttering that he wouldn’t “waste another breath on that corporate bastard.”

As a child, you didn’t understand why it mattered so much. Why every time a silver car overtook a Red Bull on track, your father’s jaw would tighten, and his voice would drop.

Why Toto’s name was always said like a curse word. But as you got older, you understood the deeper truth: this wasn’t just about racing. It was personal.

And you were caught in the middle of it.

Now, at twenty-six, the burden had never felt heavier.

Your father had begun talking more seriously about grooming you for a greater role within the team “PR first, maybe, then management. Just like Susie Wolff used to be, but for the right team,” he joked, with an edge in his voice. You smiled, but your stomach twisted. You didn’t want a life defined by rivalries you hadn’t chosen.

You loved Formula 1 truly but on your own terms. You admired the technology, the finesse, the community that thrived behind the scenes. But you wanted to choose your place in it. Not have it assigned to you like an inherited seat in a car you never asked to drive.

That’s why, on that particular race weekend in Monaco the crown jewel of the F1 calendar you found yourself wandering a little too close to the Mercedes garage. You weren’t supposed to be there, of course. Just passing by you told yourself. But curiosity tugged at you.

And then you saw him.

Lewis Hamilton.

He was just stepping out of the garage, helmet in hand, suit half unzipped, revealing the branded fireproof undershirt clinging to his chest.

He walked with that unmistakable ease, the confidence of a man who knew exactly who he was not just a seven-time world champion, but a symbol of poise and persistence in a world that had often tried to box him in.

He passed by the engineers with a nod, his braids pulled back neatly, sunglasses perched low on his nose. And then, somehow, his eyes met yours.

It was no longer background noise. No longer fans chattering or mechanics working or engines howling. For a heartbeat maybe longer, it was just you and him.

You froze, blinking in disbelief. He looked straight at you, as if he'd been expecting to see you there all along. His smile was warm, genuine, and laced with something more curious… a spark. Not flirtatious, not bold just...interested.

And in that moment, everything shifted.

The paddock you’d walked through a hundred times before suddenly felt different. Brighter. Warmer. And not because of the Mediterranean sun. But because of him.

Your pulse quickened. Heat flushed beneath your skin. You tried to look away you should have looked away but you didn’t. Couldn’t.

He offered a small nod of acknowledgment, subtle, but purposeful. And then he was gone walking down the path, chatting with Angela, disappearing into the Mercedes motorhome.

But the moment stayed.

And you knew, deep in your chest, that something inside you had changed.

You didn’t know yet that that brief encounter would unravel the tightly wound world you lived in. That it would pull you into something dangerous, something exhilarating. That it would challenge everything you thought you stood for.

You didn’t know that the smile Lewis Hamilton gave you so simple, so soft would be the beginning of a secret that could shatter the paddock.

But you felt it.

Like a warning.

Or maybe a promise.

It started innocently enough. Or at least, that’s what you told yourself in the beginning. A passing hello at a post-race gala. A casual exchange of words in the VIP lounge of a luxury paddock suite. He’d always keep it light with playful glances, soft smirks, the kind of flirtation that could be dismissed if anyone saw.

But it never was just that. Not really.

The first real conversation happened at a sponsor’s dinner in Milan. You were seated a few tables apart, but during the mingling that followed, you found yourselves standing near the same corner, pretending to admire the same oversized art piece none of you really cared about.

“Did you know the artist was once banned from this gallery for lighting a sculpture on fire?” Lewis had said, his voice low, edged with amusement.

You turned, raising a brow. “No, but that sounds about right for this sport. Always a bit dramatic.”

He grinned. “And competitive.”

“Dangerously so,” you replied, your voice soft. He tilted his head, like he was reading between the lines. Maybe he was.

From that point on, it became a dance whispered conversations behind velvet curtains, stolen moments behind hospitality doors, late-night texts that made you smile in the dark while lying in your hotel bed, phone screen illuminating a world you were trying desperately to keep hidden.

A world that felt like yours.

You kept telling yourself that it was harmless. That a conversation wasn’t betrayal. That a smile across a crowded press room wasn’t a line crossed. But deep down, you knew the truth this was no longer innocent.

And neither were your feelings for him.

Lewis was everything you thought he’d be. Charismatic, confident, with that quiet, magnetic charm that pulled people in. But what you hadn’t expected was the softness behind it all. The humanity. The thoughtfulness that lingered in his words, the way he listened — really listened to every answer you gave him.

There was no ego, no bravado. He wasn’t trying to impress you. He was just trying to know you.

And the more he did, the more he peeled away the layers not just yours, but his own.

You learned things that never made it to the cameras or the interviews.

His doubts. His exhaustion. His moments of feeling like the world had placed him on a pedestal he never asked for. And in return, you gave him your own truths the weight of growing up in a world where your choices were shaped by power and legacy, not desire. Where your name opened doors but also chained you to expectations you never agreed to.

You told him about the pressure of being your father’s daughter. About the way the paddock looked at you like a fixture, not a person. He never judged. Never interrupted. He just listened, his gaze steady and kind, like he understood every word without needing you to explain further.

And then, one night Monaco again, always Monaco you found yourselves alone on a quiet balcony during the afterparty.

The music pulsed behind the glass doors, soft bass reverberating through the walls. Laughter and clinking glasses filled the air inside, but out here it was just the two of you, cocooned in shadow. The city lights glittered below like fallen stars, the harbour shimmering in the distance.

You were leaning against the railing, arms bare in your sleeveless gown, the night air cool against your skin. You felt him approach before you even saw him the way the air shifted, charged and thick with something unspoken.

He came to stand beside you, his tailored jacket open, shirt unbuttoned at the collar. The scent of him clean, warm, unmistakably him wrapped around you like a secret.

“I never thought I’d be talking to the daughter of my biggest rival,” he said, voice low and velvet-smooth, a teasing smile tugging at his lips.

You turned toward him, your heart skipping at the sight of that half-smile. “I could say the same about you,” you murmured, keeping your voice light, but there was a tremor in it. “My father would have a fit if he knew I was talking to you.”

Lewis chuckled, and the sound melted something inside you. “Good thing we’re not telling him then.”

He looked at you, really looked like he was memorising your face in this light, in this moment. “You know I don’t like following the rules anyway.”

There it was. That shiver again. A current of electricity that danced over your skin whenever he looked at you like that like you weren’t part of this world that had always sought to define you. Like you were simply you.

You exhaled, quietly, as if trying to steady the storm rising in your chest.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you whispered, but you didn’t move away.

“No,” he agreed. “But I want to.”

His voice was lower now. Rougher. And his hand, slow and deliberate, brushed against yours on the railing. Barely a touch featherlight but it felt like a match had been lit.

The city below continued on, unaware. But for you, time had stopped.

And in that pause that breath between decision and desire you leaned in, just slightly. Just enough.

And Lewis met you there.

The kiss was soft at first. Cautious. Testing. But the moment your lips met, it deepened into something inevitable. His hand cupped your cheek, warm and grounding. Your fingers tangled in the lapel of his jacket, pulling him closer.

You didn’t think about the consequences. Or your father. Or the media.

All you could think about was how right it felt. How everything in your life – the weight, the pressure, the legacy disappeared when you were with him.

You broke apart just long enough to breathe.

“You know this will complicate everything,” you said, your voice barely a whisper against his lips.

He smiled not his public smile, not the one cameras loved. But the real one. The one meant only for you.

“I’m not afraid of complicated,” he said. “Not if it means I get to be with you.”

And just like that, the line was crossed.

And you didn’t want to go back. ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊

As the weeks passed, your secret relationship with Lewis grew into something far deeper than either of you had anticipated.

What began as curiosity and chemistry had quietly unraveled into a connection that neither time nor rivalry could easily sever. It was a flame you tried to hide behind closed doors, but it burned brighter with every encounter.

Late-night texts became your lifeline tucked beneath your pillow after lights out, buzzing softly with messages that made your heart race. “Land safely?” he’d send after a late flight. Or “Wish you were here,” from a hotel room in Monaco when you couldn’t travel with him.

You’d reply in whispers under the covers, your fingers dancing across your screen in the dark, smiling like a teenager with a crush only this was no crush.

It was stolen glances at race weekends, the kind that lasted just a second too long. Eyes meeting across the paddock, his lips twitching in a subtle smile while your father stood just metres away, oblivious.

Sometimes he’d brush past you in the corridors between hospitality suites, his fingers lightly grazing your hand in a fleeting touch no one else could see. You lived in fragments tiny collisions of longing in a world that was never meant to let you fall for each other.

You met where you could wherever there were shadows and privacy. Hotel suites booked under different names. Discreet drives with tinted windows.

Once, after a race in Singapore, he flew you on a private jet to his next stop, the lights of the city falling away as the sky darkened and you curled up beside him on the leather seat, his arm around you as you whispered stories neither of you had ever told another soul.

He never made you feel like a secret, even when you were one.

What surprised you most was that it wasn’t just physical. Not really. There was desire, yes - a magnetic pull that neither of you could deny. But what truly bound you to Lewis was how seen he made you feel.

In the quiet, private moments between races, when the world stopped spinning, he showed you pieces of himself that no press conference or post-race interview ever could.

One night in Paris, wrapped in the sheets of a hotel bed after hours of talking and tangled limbs, Lewis had stared at the ceiling and said quietly, “You know, there are days where I walk out onto the grid, and it feels like I’m completely alone.”

You turned toward him, watching his profile in the dim light. “But you’re surrounded by people. Fans. Media. The team…”

He sighed, eyes distant. “That’s the thing. I’m never alone physically. But sometimes I still feel like no one really knows me. Not the brand. Not the champion. Just me.”

You reached out and slid your fingers between his. “I know you.”

His eyes met yours, and for a moment, he looked almost vulnerable. Like that small sentence meant more to him than trophies ever could.

In turn, you found yourself opening up to him in ways you never had with anyone else. You told him about the weight of your last name. What it was like to walk through the paddock and feel like you were always being measured not just as Christian Horner’s daughter, but as a woman in a sport that still viewed you as ornamental unless you proved otherwise.

“I get these looks,” you confessed one night while sharing a quiet dinner in a candlelit booth in a back alley restaurant in Rome. “From the engineers. The sponsors. Like I’m just a decoration. And my father doesn’t see it. He thinks I should be grateful to be part of his world.”

Lewis leaned in, resting his hand over yours. “You don’t belong to his world. You belong to your own.”

You blinked back the sudden emotion in your throat, because no one had ever said that to you before. Not your family. Not your colleagues. Not even your friends. But he did and he meant it.

Even in your most hidden moments, when you lay curled in his arms in the dim light of a suite somewhere in New York, Abu Dhabi, or London, Lewis never treated you like a secret. You weren’t an escape. You were home. And he became that for you, too.

There were times you’d lie awake at night beside him, tracing the tattoos on his arm with your fingers while he dozed beside you, the slow rhythm of his breathing anchoring you.

You’d memorise the curve of his shoulder, the way his lips parted slightly in sleep and wonder how something that felt so right could be so wrong to the world around you.

Because outside those walls, everything was different.

Your father still tore into Mercedes every chance he got. Toto Wolff’s cold fury flared in every interview and Christian Horner was just as quick to fan the flames.

You’d hear their voices bitter and biting echoing through the media, slinging barbs at one another while you quietly sat on the sidelines, hiding the fact that you were slipping further in love with the one person who could ruin everything.

And yet, you didn’t want to stop.

Not when Lewis made you feel understood in a way no one else did.

Not when the sound of his voice, the safety of his arms, the truth in his eyes, had become your calm in the chaos.

What started as a secret was now your sanctuary.

And every day, you found yourself sinking deeper into it even knowing the fallout that might come.

Because loving Lewis wasn’t just a rebellion.

It was a revelation.

One night, after a particularly explosive press conference the kind that had journalists buzzing and social media ablaze you found yourself pacing the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel, heart pounding, hands trembling.

Your father and Toto had just gone head-to-head in front of the cameras, their voices sharp, their words venomous.

It was supposed to be about team strategy, about upgrades and pace. But somehow, as it always did these days, the press twisted their questions just enough to suggest something personal. About Mercedes and Red Bull. About you and Lewis.

It was subtle, but it was there a whispered rumour turned into a media feeding frenzy. Every glance between you and Lewis, every moment you spent near the paddock he walked in, had been photographed, dissected, speculated on. You felt like a live wire, exposed and fraying at the edges.

Now, the only place that felt safe was here inside this dimly lit suite above the city, wrapped in silence, waiting for him.

The door clicked softly behind you.

You turned.

Lewis stepped in, his movements quiet but deliberate, his presence grounding you in an instant. He didn’t say anything at first just took you in, the tension in your posture, the way your arms were crossed tightly over your chest as you stared out the glass wall at the glittering skyline.

He dropped his keys on the console and walked toward you. “You okay?” he asked, his voice low and warm, as if he already knew the answer but wanted to hear it from you anyway.

You didn’t answer right away. You felt the weight of everything pressing down on your shoulders your father’s fury, the reporters' questions, the endless hiding. You swallowed hard.

“I hate this,” you finally whispered, your voice cracking as you blinked back tears. “I hate the secrecy. I hate lying to everyone. I hate pretending like this like we don’t exist.”

Lewis reached for your hand gently, lacing his fingers through yours. His thumb brushed softly over your skin, grounding you in the moment. “I know,” he murmured. “I hate it too.”

He stepped closer, his free hand brushing a strand of hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear with a tenderness that made your chest ache. “But I’d rather have a thousand secret nights with you than a lifetime without them.”

Your eyes met his. There was something raw in them tonight something more vulnerable than usual. A softness that warred with the storm you both lived in. You could see the strain behind his eyes, the exhaustion of playing roles, of keeping up appearances.

His voice dropped lower, almost a whisper. “I can’t stop thinking about you. About us. About what it would be like if the world just didn’t matter for once.”

He moved closer, his hands settling on your waist, fingers splayed gently against your sides as he guided you toward him. The air between you shifted, heavy with unsaid truths and barely restrained longing. You could feel his breath on your skin, warm and steady.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he whispered. “But I need you to know I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to.”

And you didn’t want to. Not tonight. Not ever.

When his lips met yours, it was slow at first tentative, careful, like the two of you were still learning how to exist in this fragile in-between.

But as soon as your lips moved against his, as soon as you tasted him, something inside you snapped. The kiss deepened, grew hungrier. Your hands slid up his chest, fingers curling into the soft cotton of his shirt as you pulled him closer, needing to feel him, needing to know that he was real.

Lewis groaned softly against your mouth, his hands roaming your back, tracing the dip of your spine like he’d memorised every curve of you.

You broke apart for air, panting, your lips swollen, heart pounding. “Lewis,” you breathed, “we can’t people will find out. My father, the media it’s too dangerous.”

But he shook his head, his expression fierce, unwavering. “I don’t care anymore,” he said, voice hoarse. “Let them find out. Let them talk. I’m done pretending like you’re not the most important thing in my life.”

His words pierced through you, melting every last wall you had built between you and this man. You cupped his face, your thumbs brushing along his jaw, remembering the way he looked at you like you were something holy, something rare.

“I want you,” he said again, softer now. “All of you. No more hiding. Not tonight.”

Your lips met again, this time with no hesitation. It was all heat and hunger and need. You tasted his desire, felt it in the way his hands slid under the hem of your shirt, lifting it slowly as his fingers trailed fire across your skin.

He lifted the fabric over your head, discarding it to the floor, his eyes never leaving yours. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, almost reverently. “Do you know that?”

You couldn’t speak. You could only reach for him, tugging at his shirt, needing him closer, needing more. You kissed him again, your hands roaming over the hard lines of his chest, feeling the way he trembled under your touch.

Clothes fell away like secrets piece by piece, until there was nothing between you but breath and skin and years of longing finally unleashed.

Lewis guided you back toward the bed, his lips never leaving yours. He laid you down with a gentleness that contradicted the fire in his touch, his body settling between yours as he kissed down your neck, your collarbone, every inch of skin he could reach. Each kiss was a promise. Each touch, a declaration.

When he finally paused, hovering above you, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with yours, he asked the question that made your heart stop:

“Are you sure?”

His voice was barely a whisper. His eyes searched yours, vulnerable and full of love real, honest, earth-shattering love.

And in that moment, everything else faded away.

There was no Red Bull. No Mercedes. No media. No fathers or rivalries or reputations.

There was only this.

You nodded, your fingers threading through his curls as you whispered, “Yes. I’ve never been more sure.”

And when he kissed you again, it wasn’t just passion.

It was surrender.

It was love.

You nodded, your hands moving to his chest, feeling the strength beneath his clothes, the warmth of his skin. "Yes," you breathed. "I’m sure."

There was no hesitation after that. Lewis kissed you again not the tentative, careful kiss from before, but something deeper. Something desperate. His lips moved against yours with a fervour that sent shivers down your spine, his hands threading through your hair, anchoring you to him like he was afraid you might vanish. And you kissed him back just as fiercely, clinging to him as though he were the only solid thing in a world that kept trying to tear you apart.

The urgency between you intensified. His hands explored your body reverently, almost as if he were trying to memorise every curve, every inch of skin, every tremble beneath his fingertips. He guided you backward, the two of you stumbling toward the bed, laughing breathlessly between kisses when you nearly tripped on the plush edge of the rug. The moment was so achingly tender it broke something open in you.

Clothes were discarded in quiet desperation not rushed, not careless, but with the aching patience of two people who had waited far too long for this. His shirt came off first, revealing the toned, tattooed skin beneath that you’d seen only in flashes before in paddock glimpses, magazine photos, stolen moments. But here, now, it was all yours to touch.

Your fingers traced the familiar ink over his chest, lingering over each design like it told a story. He watched you the entire time, eyes dark with affection, with desire, with awe. He wasn’t rushing you. He never did. He waited until you were ready, until you reached for him and when you did, when you pulled him closer, skin to skin, it felt like coming home.

The bed sheets tangled around your bodies as he hovered above you, his lips pressing slow, tender kisses along your neck, your collarbone, your shoulder. Each kiss felt like a vow not loud or boastful, but silent and steady. A promise that whatever this was, whatever storm waited outside that room, you’d face it together.

And yet, even in the quiet intimacy of that moment, fear hung in the corners of your mind.

Because this was dangerous. So, so dangerous.

Every stolen moment, every touch, every whisper could unravel your lives if discovered. You knew it. He knew it. The truth of your relationship the secret you both carried could destroy your bond with your father, tear apart the fragile peace between two rival teams, and ignite a media circus that neither of you would walk away from unscathed.

But none of that mattered right now.

Because his hands were on your waist, and your fingers were in his hair, and he was kissing you like he was drowning, and you were air.

You let yourself fall not recklessly, but willingly. Completely.

The intimacy between you wasn’t hurried. It was slow and purposeful, unspoken in the way you moved together like you’d done this a thousand times in another life. You touched each other with reverence, kissed with a hunger born not of lust but of need, the need to be seen, to be understood, to be loved without condition or consequence.

And Lewis loved you in a way that made you believe it was possible.

His hands trembled slightly as he held you, not from nerves, but from emotion from the overwhelming truth of finally being able to hold you like this, freely, if only for one night. You could feel the vulnerability in every movement, every whispered word against your skin. He wasn’t hiding behind charm or media-trained confidence now. This was him, raw and real and utterly yours.

When it was over, neither of you spoke. You lay tangled together in the low light of the room, your head on his chest, his arm curled tightly around your shoulders. His other hand moved slowly along your back, tracing mindless patterns as your breath slowed and synced with his.

“I don’t want this to end,” you whispered into the quiet.

He kissed the top of your head, his voice barely audible. “Then it won’t.”

But you both knew the truth. Morning would come. The world would return.

There would be team briefings, press questions, your father’s sharp eyes and the relentless pressure of keeping your secret intact. There would be cameras waiting, headlines written, assumptions made.

But right now, in this room, in this bed the rest of the world didn’t exist.

You turned your face toward his, brushing your lips against his jaw. “I’m scared,” you admitted. “Not of being with you but of losing everything because of it.”

He looked down at you, cupping your cheek in his hand. “Then let’s make it worth the risk,” he murmured. “Let’s make us the thing we fight for.”

You pressed your forehead to his, your fingers slipping between his. And for the first time in weeks, the weight on your chest felt a little lighter.

Because no matter what happened next no matter how hard things got you knew you weren’t facing it alone.

You had each other.

And tonight that was enough. ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊

It was only a matter of time before someone found out.

You’d always known it, deep down that the secret you and Lewis shared wasn’t sustainable. That the soft moments in the shadows, the kisses stolen behind trailers, the late-night rendezvous in locked hotel rooms none of it could remain hidden forever. But still, when it happened, the reality hit harder than either of you had expected.

The photo was simple, almost innocent a single kiss in a quiet corner of the paddock. Your hand on his chest. His lips brushing against yours, gentle and unguarded, the kind of moment you thought no one had seen. But someone had a photographer with a long lens and an instinct for scandal.

By morning, the image was everywhere.

Headlines screamed from every corner of the internet:

“PADDOCK ROMANCE: LEWIS HAMILTON SPOTTED KISSING RED BULL TEAM PRINCIPAL’S DAUGHTER”

“MERCEDES AND RED BULL’S BIGGEST SECRET EXPOSED”

“LOVE IN THE FAST LANE – OR CAREER SUICIDE?”

The fallout was immediate and vicious.

Christian Horner was on you within the hour.

He didn’t knock. He didn’t pause. He slammed the door of the motorhome open and stood there, red-faced and trembling with fury. You barely had time to stand before his voice exploded through the small space like a bomb.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

You flinched at the venom in his voice. You’d seen your father angry before at drivers, at mechanics, even at reporters but never like this. Never directed at you.

“You’re dating him?” he spat, each word like a slap. “Him? The enemy? The man who has humiliated this team, year after year? The man who has kept us off the top of the podium?”

“It’s not like that,” you tried, your voice shaking. “Dad, please—”

“No.” He raised a hand sharply, cutting you off. “Do you have any idea what this does to our credibility? To your reputation? To mine?”

Tears stung your eyes, but you held your ground. “I love him.”

The words slipped out before you could take them back. Quiet. Honest. Devastating.

Your father froze for a moment, as if the sentence had stunned him. And then, his shoulders dropped but not in defeat. In disbelief. In something darker.

“You’ve ruined everything,” he whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I brought you into this world. Into this paddock. You grew up surrounded by this team, this dream. And now, you’re throwing it all away for him?”

“I didn’t plan this,” you said, your voice breaking. “It just happened.”

Christian shook his head slowly, as if he didn’t recognise the person in front of him. “You’re betraying everything I’ve built.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. The echo lingered longer than the confrontation itself, leaving you alone, numb, and breathless.

But you weren’t the only one facing the storm.

On the other side of the paddock, things were no better.

Toto Wolff stood in front of Lewis, barely containing his fury. The team’s hospitality unit buzzed with tension. Engineers pretended not to listen, but their silence said it all they were hearing every word.

“This is a disgrace, Lewis,” Toto snapped. “You’ve jeopardised everything - everything we’ve worked for. You’ve crossed a line.”

Lewis didn’t flinch. He stood tall, arms crossed, jaw tight.

“I didn’t betray the team,” he said, voice even. “I fell in love.”

Toto scoffed, turning away for a second like he needed space to cool the heat rising in his chest. “Love?” he repeated, almost mockingly. “Do you think love excuses recklessness? You know what this looks like to the board? To our sponsors? You handed Red Bull ammunition on a silver platter.”

Lewis stepped forward then, his voice firmer. “What matters is her. Not the politics. Not the optics. Her.”

Toto’s eyes narrowed. “And if it costs you your seat? Your reputation? Are you willing to lose everything for this girl?”

Lewis didn’t hesitate. “I’m not losing her.”

There was a pause a long, tense moment where the two men stood, the weight of legacy and loyalty pressing between them like steel. And then, slowly, Toto stepped back, his face unreadable.

“This isn’t over,” he said coldly, then walked away.

Back in your room, you sat curled on the edge of the couch, your phone buzzing nonstop texts from friends, PR statements flooding your inbox, news articles piling up by the second. You couldn’t bring yourself to open any of them.

Then there was a knock.

You didn’t need to ask who it was. You already knew.

Lewis stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. He crossed the room in three strides and pulled you into his arms, holding you tightly, protectively, like he was trying to shield you from the rest of the world.

“I’m here,” he murmured against your hair. “I’ve got you.”

You clung to him, burying your face in his chest as the dam finally broke and the tears came fast, hot, and helpless.

“I don’t know what to do,” you whispered. “My dad hates me. Everyone’s talking. I feel like I’ve lost everything.”

Lewis tilted your chin gently, forcing you to meet his eyes. “You haven’t lost me.”

And somehow, in the middle of the chaos that was enough to help you breathe again. ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊ ⊹ ˑ ִ ֶ 𓂃࣪𓏲ᥫ᭡ ₊

The media went into a frenzy.

You knew the photo would make waves, but no one not even you had anticipated the scale of the storm. It wasn’t just a headline or a scandalous blip in a news cycle. It was an explosion. It was everywhere.

“Racing’s Forbidden Romance: Horner’s Daughter and Mercedes’ Champion Exposed”

“Star-Crossed in the Paddock: Hamilton’s Secret Love Affair”

“Red Bull vs. Mercedes Just Got Personal”

Pundits speculated. Fans took sides. Social media became a battlefield your name trending for all the wrong reasons. Every movement you made was analysed, every silence picked apart. You couldn’t so much as walk to catering without a camera flashing in your face or someone whispering behind your back.

And the worst part? No matter how hard you tried to stay out of the spotlight, it seemed impossible. Your private life had been wrenched into the open dissected, sensationalised, and stripped of any dignity.

Your phone buzzed constantly:

“Comment on the rumours?”

“Is this relationship real or just a distraction?”

“How does your father feel about you betraying Red Bull?”

You stopped answering. You stopped looking. But even silence became a headline.

“Her Silence Speaks Volumes: Is Horner’s Daughter Regretting Her Romance?”

In the paddock, you were no longer just your father’s daughter. You were his girlfriend. Lewis Hamilton’s girlfriend. The scandal of the season. The distraction. The drama. The enemy within.

Your father barely looked at you now. Your former friends in the Red Bull garage whispered and avoided your gaze. Some of them unfollowed you on social media. The divide was sharp, cruel, and constant.

But through it all, Lewis never wavered.

He was your anchor. Your safe place. In hotel rooms behind drawn curtains, in quiet car rides between events, in stolen seconds between interviews he made you feel like yourself again. When the world felt like it was burning around you, he held you closer, kissed your forehead, and whispered, “We’ll get through this. Together.”

And you clung to that. Clung to him.

Then came that day.

You’d just stepped out of the paddock hospitality unit when the swarm descended a wall of reporters, microphones shoved in your face, voices shouting over one another.

“Is it true?”

“Have you spoken to your father?”

“Is Lewis just using you?”

“Do you realise what you’re doing to both teams?”

Your heart pounded. Your hands shook. But just as the panic was rising in your chest, Lewis appeared beside you. Calm. Steady. He took your hand, threading his fingers through yours, and turned to face the press.

You looked at him, and he nodded once giving you the space if you wanted to speak, but showing he’d be right there if you didn’t.

Your throat tightened. But then you looked at the wall of cameras, the endless flashing lights, and something in you snapped into focus. You were done being a headline. Done letting other people tell your story.

So, you stepped forward, your hand still tight in Lewis’s, and raised your chin.

“We’re together,” you said, your voice steady even as your heart thundered in your chest. “And we’re not going to hide anymore.”

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Reporters jostled for better shots. The flashes were blinding now, the chaos deafening. But for the first time in weeks, you felt… free.

You looked to your left and saw the soft, proud look in Lewis’s eyeslike you’d just told the world the truth he’d been aching to shout for weeks.

He squeezed your hand gently, grounding you. It was a silent promise, clear as day.

You’re not alone in this.

He turned to the reporters, calm but firm.

“We love each other,” he said, his voice carrying over the noise like thunder. “We’re not here to play games. We’re not here to fuel some rivalry narrative. We’re two people who found something real and we’re not going to apologise for that.”

There was no more denying it. No more hiding in shadows or ducking around corners.

The two of you stood there, hand in hand, while the media storm raged but for the first time, it didn’t matter. Because this time, you weren’t afraid. You weren’t ashamed.

You were together.

And that made everything else feel a little easier to bear.

It took time longer than you thought, longer than your heart sometimes felt it could endure but eventually, the noise quieted.

The media, always hungry for scandal, slowly turned their attention elsewhere. A new controversy emerged in another sport, a celebrity breakup, a political scandal. And just like that, your story slipped from front pages to the middle of the pack, and eventually, to the archives.

You could breathe again.

It didn’t happen overnight. At first, everywhere you went felt like walking on glass. Journalists still asked sly questions. Some fans booed. There were snide comments in interviews, cold shoulders in paddock halls. There were days you questioned if it had all been a mistake not your love for Lewis, never that, but whether the two of you could ever truly exist in the spotlight without being reduced to clickbait.

But through it all, Lewis never once faltered.

He stood beside you through every cold glance, every backhanded comment, every uncomfortable silence. He held your hand tighter when the cameras rolled. He brushed a kiss to your temple before you stepped into a swarm of reporters. He looked at you really looked at you — like the world outside didn’t exist. And in those moments, you believed him when he said it would all be okay.

As the season rolled on, the story began to shift. People started to see what you’d both known all along: that this wasn’t some passing fling or an act of rebellion. This was real. This was love built through late nights, hard conversations, and quiet moments when no one else was watching.

Even your father stubborn, fiercely protective, and still carrying the weight of Red Bull’s legacy on his back began to change.

Christian never said the words, not directly. He never offered an apology or admitted he might’ve overreacted. But there were small signs. The way he stopped bristling when your phone buzzed, and he saw Lewis’s name. The way he no longer avoided your gaze when Lewis’s name came up in briefings. And the day he sat silently in the back of a Mercedes hospitality tent, sunglasses on, arms crossed but watching the race by your side something in you healed.

It wasn’t perfect. Maybe it never would be. But it was something.

And then came that race one of the biggest on the calendar. The grandstands were packed, the atmosphere electric. You’d slipped into your seat on the Mercedes pit wall; nerves coiled in your stomach like wire as you watched the final laps unfold.

Lewis had driven like a man possessed. Brilliant. Calculated. Relentless. Every corner, every overtaking move, felt like poetry like he wasn’t just racing for points anymore, but for something more. For you.

When he crossed the finish line, the world erupted.

Victory.

Cheers rang out through the paddock. The Mercedes garage exploded in celebration. Engineers high-fived, mechanics shouted, and you - you just sat there for a moment, breathless, the roar around you fading to a quiet hum.

Because up on that podium, champagne dripping from his fire suit, trophy raised high above his head was him. And when the crowd chanted his name, Lewis turned, his eyes sweeping the sea of people until they landed on you.

He smiled.

Not the smile for cameras, not the one reserved for sponsors or photo ops.

It was yours.

Soft. Private. Radiant with a kind of pride that only the two of you understood.

In that moment, the months of chaos, of whispers and slammed doors and broken loyalties they all felt worth it. Because love, true love, was never meant to be easy. It was meant to be fought for.

And you had. Both of you.

You weren’t just the daughter of a rival team principal anymore. You weren’t a scandal. You weren’t a pawn in a rivalry between two titans of Formula One.

You were his - his partner, his peace, his person.

And nothing not media storms, not rival teams, not even the weight of your father’s disapproval could take that away from you.

As the national anthem played, Lewis glanced back at you once more. His hand briefly touched his heart, a subtle gesture just for you. You stood there, a small smile playing on your lips, tears blurring your vision, knowing with absolute certainty:

This was just the beginning.

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