dan-theman-ricciardo3

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

( all credits to @argentinagp for this dreamy gifset! )

❁ — FRITILLARIES AFTER FALL ; C.LECLERC

summ. This story is yours, but it isn't about you. Not exactly.   pairing. charles leclerc / f!driver!reader w.count. 20.2k (bible-fic) a/n. Warnings for death, & racing crashes. Late drivers are mentioned & pivotal to the story. Anyway, sorry I've been dry; have a 20k angst fic as an apology & a merry new year!

YOUR DEATH COMES with the Autumn seeding of the Fritillaries in his grandmother’s back garden.

It had not been violent, nor abrupt, nor unjust— 

You had simply breathed out, and it felt like a release.

Then came the feather-touch of Charles’ hand emerging from the still darkness, somewhere between the flames and its shadows, fingers wrapping around your wrist— an old habit that stuck from his younger years— pressed so tightly that you could feel the ghostly beat of your pulse against the thin of your own skin. Charles spoke to you then, gently, in the same cadence he used when you whispered to each other as children, I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

No matter anything.

And you’d followed it obediently; led hand in hand through rain and across asphalt, and kept walking somewhere in-between the margins of what felt like a waking dream, until you settled on the evergreen grass of his childhood home, overgrown and tickling your ankles, beside the purple-dotted bellflowers his grandmother tends to so carefully.

You follow the carnations all the way to the flagstone path that’s twisting in ways that defy logic, take the time to admire the spider-lilies that are finally blooming for you, until you reach that familiar Coast off of South France, a thousand miles away from home.

2014. He’s smitten the first time he lays eyes on you.

Not exactly the first time he sees you, no. That would have been when he was nine years old and baby-cheeked, during a Summer break with Pierre and Anthoine, drifting somewhere off the coast of Southern France on the family boat. You were a familiar face to everyone but Charles, padding down the bow with seawater-footprints after a dip— and as much as Anthoine had insisted on introducing you to each other, the both of you had only managed a passing hello before feeling the violent urge to shy away upon sight despite sharing the enclosed space for the next hour. Call it puppy love.

But, anyways, no. He means the first time he sees you. Past the road-rage during your shared karting days and the plastered smiles you’d put on show for media’s sake. You’d landed into single-seaters— unheard of for girls of the sport at the time— in the Formula Renault 2.0 Euro. The pictures attached in the bylined announcement articles truly didn’t do you justice, he’d concluded, and his mouth hung open when you moved to sweep your hair from your face. 

You’d been scrutinising racing simulations and analysing lines of data even he couldn’t quite catch up with (you were always the smarter one, anyway), brows stitched tight in concentration, spectacles on your scrunched nose and one hand on your racesuit-tangled hips as you discuss with engineers. When you catch his eyes wandering, you’re quick to shoot him a friendly smile, and it jumpstarts the beat of his heart like the pop of a starting-pistol.

How was the race? His phone pings that evening. Had to retire the car :/ !!!! Sorry to hear that, Calamar.

But, Charles types. Just asked out the loveliest girl in the world. 

A pause. He almost laughs at the way the text bubble appears and disappears, pictures the narrowed gaze of the Frenchman through the screen.

Sounds horrific, Pierre replies. Glad I wasn’t around to witness that. She said yes, idiot. How miraculous. Who in the right mind would even do so?

Charles tells him. Pierre nearly bursts from the seams asking for details.

Later, in Pau, France, ahead of the following race, your date goes a little something like this:

Charles will prepare a bouquet of “Roses, because she loves a cliche every once in a while,” according to Pierre, and will compliment your hair and outfit you’ll throw on. Then he’ll bring you to a stellar restaurant that has stellar food, where he’ll charm you with his even-more-stellar jokes, and then end the day off by walking you back home to the hotel with his jacket over your shoulders, where he’ll call you beautiful for the final time, because he’s the blueprint of what every gentleman should be.

But, no. The date does not, in fact, go like that. 

Charles will forget the bouquet he’d bought at the dresser by his hotel bed, because he spends the last 5 minutes panicking over his hair in front of the mirror, and curses himself the entire way he comes to meet you down at the lobby. Then he’d stumble over his words, say, “You’re pretty today. Not that you aren’t, always. I mean, like— every other day you are pretty too. Or beautiful. Pretty beautiful. Beautiful beautiful. And, and a good driver too. Yeah.” 

He chases it with a joke that doesn’t quite land, but you laugh anyway, because his ears have burned bright red throughout the entirety of the ordeal, and it’s quite possibly the most endearing thing you’ve ever witnessed.

When you arrive at the restaurant he’s been raving to you about over text, you’re met with a closed sign and the realisation that it’s been under renovation for the last two months. Charles is thrown completely off-kilter with this revolutionary piece of information, and spends the next 10 minutes apologising for being a complete idiot. Dieu, I should have checked. I am so sorry. This is a disaster—!

Relax, Charles, you say. You’d never seen him this stressed, not even before a race. You circle a hand around his wrist, and he slows to a stop at the touch. It’s just me.

Exactly, he breathes. It’s you.

And— huh. Well. Charles supposes he’d done one thing right tonight, because you’re suddenly shying away with a smile on your face.

Burgers are what you settle for, in the end, despite how overdressed you are in a summer dress and him in his too-polished shoes. He makes a joke that does land this time, and the both of you laugh and chatter endlessly, after which he pays, of course, for everything, because his father had raised him right. When it’s time to leave, he brushes his knuckles against yours, fleeting, and makes sure to keep you on the inner side of the sidewalk while he offers his jacket.

Then he tells you you’re beautiful again, properly this time, where he goes out of his way to pluck a flower from a low-hanging branch to tuck into your hair, and you do that thing where you smile so sweetly it makes him haywire like a short circuit.

The day ends at the front of your oak hotel room door, and the both of you exchange awkward goodnights and see-you-tomorrow’s on shifty feet.

In another universe, restaurant or no-restaurant, you think it still would’ve turned out the same:

You smile, all crescent-eyes, and he all dimples, and then you lean to lay a hand on his chest, feel the thunder-beat drum of his heart beneath your palm, and press a kiss to his cheek.

How did it go? Anthoine texts you. Clumsy, but charming. You’re so boring, he spams, I need details! Did you kiss him?

You debate on answering, but he buzzes your phone until you do. Yes, you reply.

Lips?? No!! Just the cheek Oh. Booooo Idiot

The coast off Port Hercule in Monaco is always the right temperature at any time of day, but summer break that year feels even heartier.

The family comes around in annual tradition. Jules dismisses talking about his Silverstone race in favour of muscling both you and Charles into a headlock, and ruffles your hairs into a mess in congratulations. Charles had just won both rounds in Monza, where things are looking up for him as a junior championship contender— and “Yet here you are, the only girl in the grid, and you’re giving them a run for their money!”

You laugh, snatch the towel off Jules’ bare shoulder, and conspire with Lorenzo to shove him overboard into the sea. And then you're screaming too, bright and threaded with laughter as Charles follows suit, and takes you down with him in a crash of whitewater. He holds your wrist, delicate throughout it all.

Later, when Pascale calls everyone back to eat, she makes him fetch a pitcher of warm water from the cabin.

Hervé is coughing more now. No one talks about it. You’ve lost count the amount of times Lorenzo has slid a glass his way with that shadow in his eyes— the one where it looks as if he’s trying to pretend like everything is okay. 

There will be worry, regardless. 

Thin, like a veil over everyone’s heads, or perhaps a bubble— until Arthur divebombs starboard with a grand splash, all lanky limbs and pre-puberty shrieks, and the summer air clears with musical laughter. 

By the evening, when the sky dusks and the sun melts into the waves in blinding light, you’re curled into Charles’ arms. It doesn’t feel as awkward as you’d expected. His family had always been familiar with you, and you suppose being this close to Charles wouldn’t be a sight too difficult to adapt to. If anything, Pascale had practically adopted you into the family long before you’d even gotten together with her son.

“As-tu du sommeil?” he asks, when you yawn into his freckled shoulder. You smell of the ocean and the SPF sunscreen you’d insisted he lather on that afternoon. 

“Just a bit,” you nod, before chasing the sleepiness away with a stretch. You’re sunkissed and warm now, hair haloed in gold from the setting hour, and Charles has to take a moment, because he’s quite sure you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever set his eyes on. 

“Come on,” you pinch at his skin and he swats you with a yelp, “Let's help Jules get the drinks.”

Downstairs in the cabin, the Formula One driver muses into the fridge as he shifts contents around. “I always knew you two would be a thing.” 

You can feel Charles smiling against your bare shoulder as he noses a kiss into it. He’s never shy in showing his affection to you, much less around Jules. “They bet on us, did you know? Him and Lorenzo.”

“Bet?” you gape, shooting a narrowed look to Jules as he feigns a sheepish face behind the counter. “Did you atleast win?”

“Ofcourse,” he answers, confidently, pulling out a handful of Blue Coasts and sodas to pass to you to deliver back up the cockpit. “I can always count on Charles.”

Once he’s sure you’ve disappeared from sight and out of earshot, Jules pops two spare bottles open, sets them down, and slides one across the cold counter with a raised, calculated look. “You better be careful, you hear me?”

Charles is positively startled. 

“I— Dieu, no, we’re not— I haven’t—”

Jules snorts into his drink, breaking off into a laugh. “Not that, you…”  He could never really keep a straight face around him. “I’m saying be careful with a woman’s heart. Especially hers.”

“Bien sûr,” Charles answers, quickly, unhesitatingly. “I’m serious with her. I—”

Charles cuts himself off. Jules doesn’t press any further. Love, after all, can be a terrifying thing to admit.

2015. Anthoine hounds you; Pierre hounds Charles.

The troublemakers of the two resort to innocent jabs and the occasional tease, directed more to Charles’ way than yours, because he’d always been the pushover since you were children. (A part of you had feared the thought of dating amongst the friend group, but, the dynamic between all of you doesn't change, thankfully. It never really does, in the grand scheme of things— only ever suspends whenever it comes to racing against one another.)

“Just, don’t be stupid,” Pierre advises, in a rare moment of level-headedness for his character, albeit delivered ungracefully. He had come to visit the races, and Charles had gone off to sneak you all an oily lunch. “That’s Anthoine’s job.”

You laugh. Pierre fails to dodge the smack Anthoine sends his way.

“Shithead!” he snorts, but snags you and Pierre around his arms anyway with that same, dreamy look he gets in his eyes whenever he looks over to the horizon. “None of us are allowed to kill each other,” he gestures. “After all, we still have yet to race each other one day, in Formula One.”

And you beam at them, confident, saying yes, we will, together, because you’re seventeen, young and innocent and hopelessly in love, feeling like you had the entire world in the palm of your hands; naïve enough to believe that being the only girl to make it into single-seaters at this day and age would matter, that your burning passion is all it’ll take to keep this career going against any uphill battle.

It’s only after the final race of the season, that the both of you find out about the accident.

There’s no time to celebrate your win. You don’t really care, at that very moment. Both of you book a flight out of Spain instantly. Charles is quick to seek you out, lean to you in some form of desperate stability with a slip of his hand into yours. You stay like that, pressed close, holding each other all the way throughout the 12 hour flight toward Japan, and then several more throughout the dreadful hours on the stiff seats of the hospital waiting room.

He’s barely turning eighteen when he learns that the only thing greater than love is loss.

It’s the first time you see him breakdown.

Jules’ departure scalds Charles in a way he never knew possible, and for awhile, he becomes an unrecognisable shell of himself. The media won’t know this, ofcourse, because he’s been trained to keep his head high, fed his PR-answers, told to smile that same, dimpled smile, throughout the remainder of his F3 career. They tie every win and every point he gets to Jules, Jules, Jules, as much as it stings him. 

All the while you try to keep his head above the tide, even when it feels like you’re drowning too— try to tell him to breathe with you in between each coming wave when the bouts of panic rattle him to the core. He makes you promise not to tell anyone about it, and you keep it. 

“I’m sorry,” he hiccups, the first time it’d happened. He had snatched his palm away from yours abruptly, curled up with his knees up to his chest as he tried to steady himself. “I want to, but I can’t— I can’t—”

How does he tell you the world doesn’t feel right? That it felt too big looking at the sky, and too small looking at the four walls around him; that he wants to throw up, but there’s a pit in his stomach; that he wants so desperately to hold your hand, and that he can’t, because right now he wants to peel the skin off his bones; that everything is heavy and his lungs aren’t functioning and he can’t fucking breathe, God, I think I’m dying, please, stay, don’t go, just stay—

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, again, that night, when he sneaks you into his hotel room. He’s uncharacteristically nervous, having shown you his whole heart at its most vulnerable just that afternoon. It’s tough to keep up appearances when you’re in the same Feeder Series with him now, too. The spotlight of being the only competing girl on the F3 grid is heavy. Charles doesn’t want to add on to that. “For everything.”

I love you, you want to say.  Having seen him at one of his worst, to be able to see this dismantled version of him he presents to the world— it’s trust. It’s love. But you settle on something else. You don’t want to bombard him with such a grandiose statement out of the blue, even though it feels like the right thing to say. Even if you know it’s true. 

“C’mere,” you say, soft, feel him shift closer to your touch. “S’nothing to be sorry about.”

“J’suis un désastre.”

“We all are,” you hum, let him press his face into the crook of your neck. Tucked next to him under the duvet, legs tangled around each other, you smell like clean sheets and the hotel shampoo. “I’ll always be here, no matter… No matter anything.”

“No matter anything?” he says, with a tiny smile, and you know it’s real; you can thumb at the dimples on his cheeks as he bumps his nose against yours. “Is that correct english?”

“Dunno. It is to me,” you laugh, because Charles is contagious like that. “I’ll always be right here no matter anything. I promise.”

“Really?” he asks, even when he knows what your answer is. You’d never been the type to go against your word, but tonight he just needs to hear it.

“Yes.”

“Even if I snore?”

“Ah, well, hmm…” you feign a second thought, but let out a yelp when he pokes your side with a ‘Ey! 

Okay! Yes! Yes, stop— you concede, trying to keep your laugh low as he tickles you. But then Charles shifts, impossibly closer now, and catches your lips into a kiss. 

He’s warm all over while you run your hand down his jawline, and when he breaks away, his pupils are blown wide under the moonlight. “I love you,” he says, breathless, terrified.

Oh. You blink, let out a huff of laughter, and say the same. I love you.

“No matter anything.”

“No matter anything,” Charles confirms, and seals you into another kiss.

The crest and the fall comes in 2017. 

No matter anything sticks. Even on bad race days, when the car just doesn’t cooperate, when someone takes a bad corner and you pay the price having been there at the wrong place at the wrong time; Even on date nights that never come around to be, sacrificed when Charles or you are whisked away to entertain other businesses in sponsorships and PR duties; Even on the death threats of your social media accounts that you managed to hide, months following your relationship being revealed, and he’d discovered it only after you’d accidentally left your screen unlocked on your vanity. 

No matter anything sticks, especially when his father passes— the sickness had been aggressive; hard to fight and even harder to beat— and Charles gets his maiden win just four days later, like a Greek tragedy come to life. No matter anything sticks when he confesses to you, broken and heaving in your arms, that he hates himself; That he’d lied to his father about his signed contract with Ferrari, because he deserved to be happy. I just wanted to see him smile, I needed to see it.

No matter anything sticks, even when you watch the way he’s slowly eroding into someone entirely different, throughout the years.

No matter anything sticks, until it doesn’t. 

Grief, you come to learn, is what sticks just the same. It sticks like the watermelon candy you share with Pierre, sticks like the soot in Charles’ grandmother’s fireplace, black and permanent and relentless. Grief hurts even more when you’re grieving for someone who isn’t dead, who’s alive and breathing, who’s making the choice to walk away from you.

Fights have always been few and farther in between, never really holding any gravity or significance unless it truly mattered. But, time changes people, and he didn’t even bother waiting for the plane ride to be over, didn’t even bother waiting for touchdown to the airport, didn’t even bother waiting to tell you at the hotel. 

“Maybe this just isn’t the right moment for us, amour,” he’d said. Dropped, practically. Then the seat belt light overhead pings off in perfect timing, and you stay for a second to soak in the way his words sound like radio-static in your ears, the way he can’t even bring himself to look you in the eyes. You excuse yourself to the washroom, stay there for ten, fifteen minutes, maybe— Enough that the stewardess knocks on the door to check on you— breathing but not really, feeling like your soul’s escaped its body and been left behind to drift thirty-thousand feet in the air.

The rest of the ride is completed in dead silence, both of you drafting the right words to say in your heads to let each other down slowly. How do I fix this, you’d panicked. How do I end this, he’d thought. 

You’re the first to break when his hotel room door shuts. He wipes your tears, because of course he does, because he can stand anyone’s tears but yours— even less knowing he’s the reason behind every one. It’s the racing, he reasons gently, the career.

And you get it, really, you do. You’d spent your childhood karting alongside Charles and Pierre and Anthoine for Christ’s sake, raised in engine smoke and grease since you could walk, so of course you understand the lifestyle, the grit. You get it. You get it. But you don’t. Because if you could handle it, then, well— why couldn’t he?

“It’s…” His face twists in frustration when the luggage he rolls catches at the carpet lip. “I can’t balance it all. Us, the driving, the— the expectations.”

The implication stings, but you know he hadn’t meant it to sound out that way. Charles is well aware of just how much you sacrifice being in this with him, too. You, who’d been spotlit until you melted, who’d been kept under the giant, unblinking eye that was Skysport, analysed down to the last breath and blink you take in social media; you who’d practically been studied under a public microscope— being waited on, preyed on, for a single misstep, misgiving, mistake, just so they could tear you to pieces for being Charles’ girl, for thinking you had a shot in a ruthless sport like this, for being a woman in a man’s world.

You toe the wheel off the lip his luggage is stuck on, and watch as he nudges the bags to the corner of the room with a little force more than necessary. 

“I have expectations,” you say; not angry, not yet, because you still wanted to salvage this relationship, still wanted to lick your wounds together with him in the aftermath, still wanted to crawl into his arms by the end of the day and pretend this never happened.  “We can work this out, Charles.”

“I’m—” he blinks his eyes hard, brushes past you and into the kitchenette, as if it pained him to even gather the effort to look at you. “We’ve tried. I can’t— I can’t give you what you deserve. You, you deserve someone bett—”

“Stop,” you flinch, rear your head back in disbelief. “You sound exactly like everyone else; telling me what to do, what I need. Like you know how I feel. You don’t get to decide what I want, Charles.”

“Putain—” He leans into the marble countertop of the kitchen island, arms spread, lets out an exasperated sound because he knows where you’re going with this; because this was descending into an argument faster than he’d expected. “—That’s. That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

You’re giving up, you don’t say, because it’d hurt you just as much to admit it out loud for him. “Isn’t it?” 

“I don’t want to fight,” he overrides, evenly, cut to the quick when he hears your calm begin to give way. Above all else, he’s always been a pacifist, and you’d never thought you’d come to hate it until now.

“Not even for us?” Your voice cracks but you shake it off in irritation. “So what? That’s it? You’re not some hero, sacrificing your heart for what’s best for me, Charles. You’re just being a coward.”

His shoulders drop. “You’re being unfair.” 

The statement nearly gives you whiplash. Charles had just broken up with you on a red-eye flight, waited until both of you arrived in the hotel to explain himself— and when he did, gave a shitty excuse— and now, now you’re the unfair one? 

“I’m doing what I think is right. I, what—? Wait,” he stumbles, alarmed, when he sees you toss the roomcard to the counter in front of him. “Amour, arrête!” he calls, rounds the island to grab you by the sleeve just as you pick up your phone to make headway to the door. “Tu fais quoi?”

You’d tried to sound resolute, but the tears flooding your vision aren’t helping, and his now-unfamiliar touch is making you waver. “To book another room. I can’t be here,” then, more bitterly, “You don’t want me here.”

Charles feels the fight drain out of him. “That’s not true.”

And in another universe, this would be where it ends well, where the love rekindles again. This is the part where the fork in the road would be, and he’d take the path that would save the both of you. 

This would be the part where Charles apologises, says, I’m sorry. We can talk about this tomorrow. Let’s unpack, and eat, and rest. Just stay, please; because I love you, and I don’t think I can go to sleep knowing you’re hurting, and you would cry from the relief because at least, at least, you know now that it isn't the end just yet, that he’s still willing to fight for this, to fight for you, no matter anything.

Pierre receives a text late that night from Anthoine, frantic, and he only truly realises this one might be the worst, might truly be it, when he reads; Piccolo, she called me crying tonight. Did you know about this? 

What did you do, Calamar? Charles. Reply me Hello?? She’s my friend too. I’ll beat the answer out of you if i have to.

I broke up with her.

I’m going to fucking kill you.

So it goes.

2018. Charles is green-lit and signed into Sauber that season for F1, and you’re left behind. It’s no surprise to you— your management had told you to brace for it; that no one would want to sign the only girl, as interesting as the headlines would read, because who would want to bet on a shot in the dark? Your results are impressive, yes, that you’d been able to hold your ground against the better half of the grid is a feat in its own— but the world of motorsport, and Formula One specifically, is first and foremost money-hungry, all-political, and then some. It’s too late for you to realise the cards have never played in your favour, and never will, as a woman. 

Summer break grows dull. You’re not here for as long as you used to visit because of scheduling differences, and now neither is Jules, and neither is his Dad. When Charles reaches for the Blue Coasts in the fridge, he freezes. “What’s wrong?” Lorenzo says, across the same counter Jules had stood all those years ago. 

“Nothing,” Charles answers, and doesn’t even bother hiding the fact that it’s a lie. He pops a bottle and slides it to his brother, fights back the déjà-vu suffocating him. “I just remembered something Jules said to me here, last time.” He’d been seventeen then, now he’s twenty-one. Four years fly faster than expected.

2019 rolls by. Both of you have long since drifted, separate in your own careers, though you’re not sure he keeps an eye on yours as much as you do his in Ferrari. The occasional bump and race overlaps happen every now and then, but conversations are reduced to minimal topics that mean little to nothing to the both of you. You talk more with his mother and brothers, granted, horrifically awkwardly; until he’d brought his new girl, had no choice but to nervously introduce you two when he couldn’t get out of it.

(A model; young and ambitious and wearing sponsored brand collections to every paddock visit she does. You almost laugh at the way you see so much of yourself in her innocence, in the way she looks at Charles like he was a God amongst men.)

This one is a distraction, you can tell. They’ll break one another like how you both did 2 years ago. Or maybe you’re just bitter, jealous, angry. You’ll get over it. You’ll get over him. You’ll—

It’s Anthoine that brings you back together. 

In another time, you’d see sense in the morbid poetry of it all.

You’d caved, sobbed; the weight of grief and of loss and of death and everything else, bearing down on you. “It was supposed to be all of us. You, and me, and Pierre, and— We, we were all supposed to be here, Charles. We were all supposed to race.”

I’m sorry, is all he can manage, inadequate as it is, at the face of your anguish. You’re on the cold floor of a hotel somewhere in France, hands twisted into his sleeves, cradled in his arms the past hour against the foot of the bed. 

The Leclerc’s, the Hubert’s, the Gasly’s— all of you had returned from the funeral. Charles has to remind himself, sometimes, that you’re not as familiar with saying goodbye as he is. 

So he holds you instead, like he always did when the both of you were younger; familiar and delicate and full of love, like you were a porcelain doll cracking at the seams, because you were. For a moment, it feels like it’s 2015 again, leaning into each other's pain the summer Jules had gone.

“I don’t want to race, anymore,” you’d whispered into his shirt, utterly defeated. It’s soaked in your tears, and still, still, you can practically taste the scent of Charles through the wrinkled fabric. He’s had a growth spurt last you saw him; he’s grown into the fat of his cheeks, more angular in the jaw and mature in the eyes— but boyish all the same, in the wide-eyed way he looks at you like you’re his whole world. 

(You’re not sure if he’s even aware he does that. The better half of you would have crawled out this embrace, save yourself whatever dignity remained after falling apart in the arms of your ex— but you think you’ve buried your better half along with Anthoine that dark morning.)

“You have to,” Charles says. He doesn’t make the mistake of saying, Anthoine would’ve wanted this, or Anthoine would hate to see you this way, because it would’ve been unfair. You and Pierre had always been far closer to him than he ever was. “You need to prove everyone wrong,” he says instead.

The crying tires you out, eventually, but you’re quick to catch him by the wrist when he slips out the bed to leave. The touch alone sends a wave of homesickness through the both of you. You didn’t want this to end, not yet. 

“Stay,” you plead, and omit the rest of the sentence. I’m scared. I need you. I miss you. It isn’t a good idea, you know this, because he has a girlfriend now for Christ’s sake, and Charles had hurt you once before, so you’re sure this would be taking a path down the same road, but— 

—No matter anything exists between you two. Maybe, maybe, you can hold onto that, if nothing. 

“I don’t want to sleep,” comes your confession, when the clock hits midnight and the stars and satellites dot the sky. I can’t, would’ve been the better way to say it, in hindsight. 

That you couldn’t even close your eyes sometimes, because you’ve yet to erase the sight of the aftermath in front of you that turn in Spa, that you couldn’t shake the post-race anxiety that still nestled deep in your marrows like an ache long after you’d exited your cockpit in the garage that day. You figure he understands. 

So he stays. This is the crest. The fall will come after. He knows it. He deserves it.

He brews coffee just how you like it, just like how you both used to share in the early mornings back in his apartment, and slides under the covers by you. He tells you about his Winter breaks because he knows you won’t want to hear about anything that has four wheels and an engine, and drapes an arm around your shoulder, your head on his chest, where you can feel him play with the strands of your hair just like once-upon-a-time ago. He talks, and you listen, ears pressed against his ribs, distract yourself from the horrors of the world by basking in the rumbling nostalgia of his voice, and the hum-drum of his heart, instead. 

You want— need— to carve this into memory, as badly as it hurts, knowing he’ll disappear come morning.

Hm? you murmur, eyelids heavy.

Rien, he dismisses, and you’re too drowsy to register that it’s his lips you feel ghosting across your forehead. Bonne nuit.

The coffee on the table is stone-cold by the time you wake, alone. 

He’s still with his girl come New Years. It’s a late celebration; January 3rd, 2020. 

You wonder if she knows. If she knows Charles had slipped into bed and kept you company until you slept, that he’d kissed you goodnight on your forehead; that you’re still helplessly, hopelessly—

You’re not drunk enough, but Arthur is; you’ve been trying to pep-talk him after you’d caught him swooning over a pretty blonde named Carla across the room, with a cute accent to match. “Fais-le, ‘Turtur. She’s been staring at you too.”

“Ah bon?” he gapes, and repeats himself in English, for some reason, “Really?”

You shoot Charles a distressed look. 

“Ouias! Oui,” he covers for you, instantly, and the both of you cringe as you watch Arthur shake his tipsiness off and dust his corny button-up shirt designed with tacky fireworks. 

“He’s going to embarrass himself,” Pierre groans into his drink, but you notice there’s a glint in his eyes— the same one he always got whenever he schemed with Anthoine. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen it again.

“I don’t see you stopping him,” you say, and the three of you descend into laughter at the sight of Arthur fixing his hair at every reflection he passes on the way to the other end of the club.

“Ça suffit pour l’instant,” Pierre chastises, once you’d reached your fourth glass of… whatever that was. 

“I’m not drunk,” you insist, trying not to slur your words. Charles had long disappeared from the space beside you to dance with his girlfriend, somewhere. Summer is gone, but you think you can still see it through the flash of strobe lights; your eyes instinctively searching for the tousled hair, the half-lidded eyes, the rosy cheeks and stupid, stupid dimples. That’s him, actually, you realise. And— oh. 

“For your sake, don’t look,” Pierre says, and nudges you enough that you blink, and you lose track of the ugly scene playing in front of you. 

“I…” I miss him, you almost say. He used to kiss me like that. 

Pierre watches you carefully. 

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” you blurt.

“What.”

You do hurl, a minute later.

Pierre complains the entire time, and of course he does, but you know he doesn’t actually mind because he’d tucked your hair behind your ears and held it up into a ponytail despite it all, and ordered a glass of water for you when you’d finally washed up. Ever the gentleman.

Oh my god, you’d laughed, at the curbside of a random street for fresh air, I’m unlovable, before descending into tears at an alarming rate, burrowing your face into the white linen of Pierre’s shoulder. You want to apologise for ruining his night, for putting him through hell and back, for fucking everything, but words are impossible, clumping like a ball in your throat. 

It must be so difficult, you realise: to be the in-betweener, the neutral party. To have to stand at the crossroads, and be stretched thin between the two people who matter the most to you. 

“You’re not,” says Pierre, patient yet rough in his own brotherly-way, and pulls you closer to his side, pats you on the head. “I love you.”

You sniffle out a laugh. “You know what I mean, Piccolo.”

He beams at that. That nickname had been the bane of his existence for the brief moment of time you’d been taller than him as children. “I do,” he agrees, after a moment of pained silence. Then, after careful consideration, adds, “Il t'aime encore, tu sais.”

That sobers you in an instant, and you inhale sharply, sit back up proper. “Pierre,” you sigh. “Arrête.”

 “J’suis sérieuse,” he shoots, and says your name for good measure.

“He loves her, and he loves Ferrari,” you argue, in hopes of steering the conversation elsewhere. “Talks about them with all the love in the world.”

But Pierre scoffs, much to your chagrin, and does that thing where he raises his eyebrows with a smile, shakes his head in disbelief. “Then you’ve never heard him talk about you.”

Congratulations, Pierre had texted you, later that year in the Autosport Awards. You’d won the W-Series driver’s championship with three races to spare, and he’s never felt prouder of you, watching you appear in the screens. You deserve it. 

Say it to my face, comes your reply, because even after all this time you could never quite change the way Pierre turns you back to your younger self— playful, soft, hopeful. He just laughs, peeks at the buzz of notifications from his phone when you continue. We’re having a party. Bring Charles. I miss him.

Ouch, he writes, and fails to send the I missed you too in his textbox. 

Their plane doesn’t touch down in time for the party, but you manage to squeeze in a Christmas dinner in Mallorca before the end of the year. I want you to meet someone, you’d said, and Charles had felt his heart drop in his chest.

This is Emilio, you introduce. You try to brush off the arrested look on Charles’ face, try to convince you'd just been imagining the pass of… something in his eyes, out of self-indulgence. Charles has moved on, surely. Why shouldn’t you? Why couldn’t you?

Emilio. Right. Him. Charles had heard of your supposed attachment through the grapevine mid-season, but they’d never held any ground (or maybe he just refused to believe it). That Singapore weekend had been spent trying to convince Pierre not to message you about the rumour; claiming out of privacy’s sake, but Pierre knew Charles long enough to understand it’s mostly because he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know the truth.

He’s a Doctor, you smile, proud, lay a hand on his bicep and look up at him like he’s your universe, like the Mallorcan view around you isn’t literally right there to gaze at. Charles might have to take a seat before he collapses, at this rate. Not really, Emilio says, humble— because of course he’s fucking humble too, Christ; what else does this guy have that holds a candle against Charles? I’m in my second year of Residency.

He’s everything good, Charles concludes, by the time the night had winded down and dinner was beginning to come to a closing end. Emilio had held the door open for you, for everyone; he’d pulled the chair for you and translated the Spanish dishes for everyone patiently, and took his time to learn about him, and Pierre, and Lorenzo, Arthur, Carla. He’s affable, naturally charming, effortlessly funny, and managed not to squirm under Pierre’s doberman-like size up: the perfect type to bring home to your parents and get an immediate stamp-of-approval on. He’s everything Charles isn’t, hasn’t been, hadn’t been, could’ve been—

CRACK.

You yelp. 

Lorenzo curses.

Charles blinks, then blinks again, at the shard stuck in his palm. He’d crushed the thin wine glass in his hands.

He can’t tell if this is a crest or a fall.

“Force of habit,” he dismisses later, after he subsequently becomes a patient of Emilio— the Doctor— your boyfriend’s— care for the next five minutes. It didn’t make sense at all, but an answer was better than awkward silence. Carla hands him a spare plaster from her purse. Charles thanks her, excuses himself from the restaurant for a breath of fresh air.

He doesn’t notice you’d trailed to follow him until he feels you brush by his shoulder. You’ve got Emilio’s blazer over your shoulders. He wonders if it would’ve been his jacket instead, in another life. “You okay?” 

“Yeah.” He raises his palm to show the bright red Lightning McQueen plaster. “Never better. Kachow.”

You scoff, amused, and tuck your hair behind your ear. Mallorca in December is high-strung in Christmas lights and bathed in Winter markets across cobblestone streets; if you listen closely past the hustle and bustle of the restaurant, you’d be able to pick out the local buskers singing festivities and dancing with one another. “The view is beautiful.” 

“It is,” he replies, instinctively.

He’s not looking at the scenery. You know, because you can feel the burn of his gaze through your peripherals, like a brand on the side of your face.

He’s watching you, waiting for a sign in your expression, waiting for the shift in your footing and the bloom of your cheeks. It would mean something. It would mean it isn’t too late for him yet, as fucked up as it would be for him to think. It’s wrong. Charles knows this. But he couldn’t leave Spain yet without letting you know, someway, somehow, that you’d always have a key to the backdoor into his heart. 

“You kept bringing up the past,” you ignore. She likes the Fritillaries in my Grandmother’s backgarden when they’re in season, he’d told Emilio. When you made a passing comment on your dinner being one of the best you’ve ever had, Charles had went; The best dinner I ever had was a burger in Pau, France.

He was being childish. Is. He didn’t have the right. He’d been the one to break your heart, been the one to give up, to act like nothing ever happened; been the one to make sure the space between you two felt like a million miles apart, and now— and now? Now he wants to do this? 

“Is that so bad?”

“In front of ‘Milio, yeah.” It’s delusional, but he clings onto the fact you’d said Emilio, instead of my boyfriend. “You did it on purpose.”

“I didn’t.” ( He did. He’s self-destructive like that. It’s a trait he could never shake— Sebastian had told him. )

“Oh my god,” you sigh. “Could you for once just be true to yourself?”

“True to—?” His voice pitches there, but he’s quick to reel himself back in. 

“There. That,” you gesture. “Just say it how you want to.” How you used to.

“I’m not going to yell at you,” he says, strained. He’s well above that. His father had taught him better, and he’s made that mistake before. “Just tell me what I did wrong.”

“Don’t, don’t act like you don’t know, Charles. The glass breaking—” you raise your finger before he can cut you off, “—Chalk it off as an accident, why don’t we. But my favourite flowers? Our first date? Wh— I don’t understand why you would even do that!”

He makes a dry sound from the back of his throat, and it irks you. It irks you because he’s looking at you, glacially calm yet looking as if he wants to spill every word that’s latching onto his tongue, like he wants to scream at you, like he wants to kiss you, all at once.

“I think you do,” he says, finally. 

That stops you short. 

No. No, no, no, no. He couldn’t possibly be doing this to you; here and now. After all this time. Not when you’re finally putting your pieces back together and trying to live a life, not when you’re finally trying your best to move on.

“Oh, you are so fucking selfish,” you snarl, and Charles visibly flinches at that. You’d always told him to be more selfish. To take the wins he gets in each race and carry it with pride, and to not do the same with his losses. Now, he’s not so sure. “I don’t know, Charles. I don’t. No.”

“Yes.” He reaches for your wrist. It feels like Summer of 2014, when you’d leapt off the boat, feels like Fall of 2015, when you’d held him in your arms in Monaco, feels like Winter of 2016, when he’d been pressed into you that early Christmas, feels like Spring of 2017, wh—

“No, I want you to tell me,” you snap, snatch your arm away. 

It’s easier this way. It’s easier to hear it openly from him, so you can still come out on top of this argument in your own rotten metaphorical way; so you can spit out the script you’ve drafted in your head time and time again, so you can still manage, at the end of the day, to blame him, and move on, move on, move on. 

“Go on, Charles. Tell me.”

“You’re lost,” he says, instead, and it’s in part the truth. You hate that he’s right. You hate that you still notice how his cheeks dig in when he speaks. You hate that at the end of the day you’re always going to be caught in his orbit one way or another. You hate him. But you don’t. But you do.

“I’m… lost,” you parrot, throwing your hands up. “What the fuck is that? Where am I supposed to be then, Charles, huh?” And then you blurt it out for him before you can even stop yourself. “Back in your arms? Back with you?”

He’s silent. Even after all this time, you could always read him like an open book. ( It’s a yes. A yes in the gentle breeze of the night, a yes in the buzz of the amber lantern lights, a yes in the way he’s watching you with that sad look in his eyes. Concession. Admission. Confession: No matter anything. )

“No. No, you don’t get to do that. You of all people—” you choke up, grit your teeth when your face twists, and look away. “You are being so… you are so mean, Charles. So mean.”

And then you’re running your hand through your hair and down your face, chasing the flush away, the burn at the back of your eyelids. Emilio, Pierre, Clara, and the brothers have appeared around the corner. One of them must have paid the bill. 

“Tout vas bien?” Lorenzo says, by way of polite intrusion. Pierre’s got his hands in his pockets, and he’s staring Charles down colder than ever. He looks two inches away from snapping his neck. Pierre knows. Ofcourse, he knows. 

“Nothing,” you sniff innocently, leaning into Emilio when he sidles by you with a comforting hand. You didn’t have the heart to look at anyone, afraid you might just burst into tears. You feel like a porcelain doll again, fracturing, losing your pieces with every pained breath you take trying to swallow down the disgusting churn of resentment in your throat. “A fan just wanted a picture with Charles.”

“I wouldn’t want one with you,” Arthur jokes, and you’re laughing with them, carrying the joke forward. Had Charles not known you, he would’ve fallen for it. You’re an excellent liar. 

I’m sorry, he messages you that night, even though he wasn’t. Not, at least, for telling the truth. 

A text bubble appears, then disappears. Charles waits, and waits. Holds out on hope. 

You never do reply him.

Are you coming for Léon’s wedding? you receive, mid-season in 2021. You’re just about halfway up to zipping your racesuit when you see the screen flash. It’s Pierre. Don’t think so, you reply. I’ve got a contract thing coming up then.

In an airport a thousand miles from you, Pierre pauses mid-sip on his coffee, narrows his eyes at your text. What contract thing? 

Secret, comes your reply, followed by a string of emojis. Gotta race. Ciao.

Congrats on pole. 

Don’t curse me, Piccolo.

You don’t see his middle finger emoji until after the race, where you do, in fact, pole, despite a questionable start under even more questionable weather conditions. It bumps you up to lead comfortably in the Women’s Championship. 

Charles won’t be there, is the final text he sends, last seen one hour ago. You roll your eyes at that, wipe your champagne-soaked hands on your towel. Your world doesn’t revolve around Charles. Not anymore, you hope.

Doesn’t change my answer. 

I need distance. 

Pierre leaves you on read with a knowing laugh. 

(You do end up going, in the end. That had been a fleeting weekend in Malta, alone mostly with Pierre, where you had time to reflect on the whirlwind that was your life after witnessing the wedding between two of your good friends.)

Distance doesn’t work. 

Distance doesn’t work because you’re two halves of a whole Universe as much as you don’t want to admit it, because your world is small and Monaco is smaller, because there’s always been that divine, gravitational pull you have towards each other; celestials caught in each other's orbit.

You know it never will, not when it comes to Charles, who always made you weak, always made it so difficult to stay mad at him, so easy to forgive. You’re sure you’d forgiven him the day you turned your back on him in Mallorca— just didn’t want to admit it to his face, give him the satisfaction. In retrospect, you’d been just as childish as him.

“Pink looks silly on you,” you comment, when you see each other again in a mutual friend's baby shower. That’s a flat-out lie. The champagne has you loose-lipped. Charles looks good in anything; and he always seemed the doting girl-dad type.

“Blue isn’t your colour,” he replies. It’s a blatant lie. Any colour is your colour, in his opinion. You could dress in a rainbow potato sack and he’d still find you the most beautiful person in the world. “I thought you’d have bet on a girl, too.”

“I grew up and competed with boys my entire life,” you shrug. His model-girlfriend isn’t around, and your doctor-boyfriend isn’t around. Neither of you dare to comment on it. You just skirt around each other and talk about the races, and of Arthur in F3, now. 

You drift between circles of friends, talk until the clouds clear and the balloon bursts and the couple announce that It’s a Boy! And the blue-and-white petals scatter in the yard, and you’re laughing, and he’s laughing, because; vous gagnez, cherie. 

You hand him a too-sweet cupcake in navy sprinkles, from one of the sidetables in the kitchen. “For the loser.”

It’s a peace treaty. A proverbial apology. No matter anything?

Charles picks it from your hand, and takes a bite.

I’m sorry, too. No matter anything.

Come 2022. Carla asks, half-whispering, “Are you two okay, now?” as she clasps her sunscreen shut. She peers at you carefully through the mirror. 

“Uh.” You’re mid-dip down into the mess of bikinis and sundresses that was your luggage bag, digging through for an appropriate outfit in the Maldives weather. You don’t know why she’s whispering, it’s just the two of you in the hotel room right now. Right. Okay. What is okay, to you and Charles? 

Okay had been elbow nudges and shy hand-holding once, had been open-mouthed kisses and thumbs over knuckles and around wrists, had been distance and tolerating each other’s presence, pretending everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t. Okay had been balancing the tight-rope of something and nothing, of too-familiar-strangers and ex-lovers who bet their everything on no matter anything.

If okay is pursed lips and friendly smiles, there-and-away glances that aren’t decipherable to either of you anymore, and keeping each other within a comfortable distance, then, yeah. Okay. The both of you are okay, you guess. Enough time has passed.

“I, uh, never actually asked him.” 

Carla makes a face when you pull two bikinis up, points to the non-printed one draped over your left forearm. “You should, though.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” you say, picking the conversation back up once you’ve settled comfortably in the beach hammocks. Carla wriggles her feet and claps her hand to dust the sand away, hopping in beside you with a squeal when the cords nearly twist and throw the both of you backwards. 

“Just, ask,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. 

Maldives has been kind to all of you, the weather bright and the clear water gently lapping on white-shores. The atmosphere is good. Perfect, even. It’s Summer break and again it feels like you’re under the sun in Southern Italy. The brothers, and Pierre, are here and happy. Race season has paused, and for now you can set the weight of the world down at your feet if only for a little while.

“Easier said,” you answer, with a tone that signalled you aren’t really in the mood to debate it. Carla nods, and lets go of it with a final:

“Okay is easy, but not love. Love should never just be easy.”

You mull on it. Churn it and digest it and try to pick it apart in your brain. Loving Charles had been so easy. As easy as breathing. Loving Charles feels like instinct, second-nature. You decide you don’t understand her, not completely, atleast. 

“Amour.”

Your head whips up at his voice. Easy. Instinct. Second-nature. 

It’s Arthur. He always sounded horrifyingly similar to Charles. Pierre, trailing behind, catches your mistake, and pins you with a knowing look.

Fuck off, you shoot back a glare. When Charles arrives not long after to pass you a freshly broken coconut, umbrella and swirly straw in, you try not to stare at the sheen of sweat on his chest and arms. It’s near sinful.

“Did you bring it?” Charles says, digging greedily into your tote.

“Yeah. Go put some on, you’re turning into a fuckin’ Ferrari,” you chide, even though you’re already setting your coconut down, and squeezing the sunblock on your hands to do it for him. (Summer as teenagers. Old habits. The fact that moving around Charles is as unconscious as a heartbeat.) 

“Turn around. I’ll draw a dick on your back.”

“Bitch,” he swats with a laugh.

You’re smiling as you lather your hands and swallow down the instinctive, Love you too.

The rest of the day is spent frantically running in the sand as everyone argues over volleyball rules and whether or not “it went over the line!”; followed closely by a chance golden hour photoshoot with everyone, where you try not to let the compliment get to your cheeks when Charles tells you, you look beautiful, as the sun melts into the horizon.

“I think I just drank seasalt,” you hiccup, wading back inland, beer in hand. The ripples light alive in bioluminescent plankton as Charles meets you halfway, one hand outstretched, as always— ever-ready to steady you when you need it. He’s a gentleman, like that.

“Seawater,” corrects Charles. He can tell you’re already beginning to slip deeper into the planes of tipsiness when he hands you a roasted marshmallow, and you miss grabbing the skewer by an inch. You make a face at him when he laughs before settling down onto the shoreline, wiggling your toes into the wet sand.

Then the silence comes, and it’s comfortable. It’s just stars, now; and the cold, and the water, and Charles, beside you with his elbows propped on his knees, fingers rolling on the lip of the empty beer bottle he’d offered to hold for you. Ten-year-old you would have found it hard to believe that it hadn’t always been like this— that there’d been a point in time when you’d leave from every room he enters, that you couldn’t bear to even think of him.

“I think I knew you,” you say, and you’re half-surprised you’d blurted something out.

Charles looks at you funny. “I sure hope you did.”

“No, no,” you amend, looking up from your feet in the tide. “I mean. Knew you. Before all this. It makes sense.” 

He’s got a boyish smile on his face, sweet and dimple-y as he reaches to adjust the beach towel he’d swept over your shoulders earlier. “I think you’re drunk.”

“No, no, hear me out. I think..” you look at him, straight in the eyes since he’s first sat beside you, and Charles finds himself pinned under your loopy gaze. “I think we're soulmates, you know?”

You say it with the kind of conviction that could convince even the Devil himself.  “… Yeah?” he asks, feels a creep of warmth somewhere in his ribcage.

A nod, slow. “Yeah.” His eyes hang onto the movement; the curl in your lips, the flutter in your eyelashes, the wet hair sticking to your forehead. You’re sunkissed. You’re beautiful. He wants to tell you, again. He can’t, he thinks.

“What were we, then, before this?” Did I love you the same? Did I hurt you the same? Did you let me back into your life as you are now? Did we get our happy ending? 

“Maybe we were… strangers. We meet by pure accident, like those cheesy Hallmark movies where the girl accidentally spills coffee on the guy, and then he looks at her as if she hung the moon and the stars.” 

You don’t notice it, because you’re busy wading the water with your fingers, picking at a seashell— but he’s looking at you right now, that way. The bioluminescence of the water glows and glitter neon in the reflection of your eyes, and the distant moon and firelight is painting you like a saint off the tinted glass windows of a church— some sacred thing he probably doesn’t deserve, but selfishly wants to keep for himself forever.

“And then?” He can barely conceal the desperation in his voice. He hides it with a small laugh. “Then what happens?”

“Then we fall in love,” you tell him, softly. You think back on Malta. The vows, the shift in the air, the way colours seemed to saturate around the presence of intimacy. “Get married. And grow old together. Then we find each other again, in the next life.”

A next life. You’re thinking of a next life, with him. “You’d like that?”

“Ouias. I’d like that.” You remember telling Pierre something similar to this— that you’d like to settle down, somewhere sunny and slow and beautiful; perhaps Tuscany. He had teased you for it.

“And… what about this life?” 

You glance at the sand between his fingers. The droplets of water on his skin. If you didn’t know Charles so well, you wouldn't have recognised him with how small he’d sounded. But you do, so you did.

“What about it?” 

The tide laps. It bathes you in a moonglade of blue. The implication hangs in the air, and it’s frighteningly tentative. Charles lets the words tumble before the regret can haunt him. “Do you see it? See us?”

Concession. Admission. Confession. It feels like Mallorca, all over again. 

“I…” I don’t know.

You look away. Down. Up. Down. Then back up to his eyes. He looks torn, but patient.

“It’s okay,” he says— smiles. It’s sincere. It’s sincere because it’s digging into his cheeks, and you can finally translate the looks in his eyes, again, after all this time apart: I will wait for you. No matter anything.

“Just— as long as we’re okay.” The hope in his tone phrases it like a question.

“Of course,” comes your answer, easily. It’s okay. We’re okay. Nothing has changed between us, even when I thought it did. You are still Charles. My Charles. In every way; In the only way I’ve ever known you. No matter anything. 

Your fingers brush against his. You can feel his bracelets pressing against your wrist. “Always.”

Sobriety comes with the five slices of watermelon that Pierre had supposedly ‘fought tooth-and-nail’ to keep from Arthur and save for you. 

“Y’shaid y’had to tchell me shomething,” you remind him, clawclip in your mouth as you gather your hair up. It’s two in the morning. The overwater-bungalows are a distance from the shoreline, but the boardwalk is a welcome stroll to clear your mind. You’re still at the beach though, busy shaking the sand off your sandals while Pierre puts the fire out. It’s getting dark. Everyone has already gone off to disappear into their rooms.

“Nah,” Pierre dismisses, after a lengthy, contemplative pause. “It’s nothing. Just— Hey, is that Arthurs?”

You clip your hair, hook your fingers to the straps of your sandals, reach with a free hand to the white square that’s bending the hammock out of shape. Airpods. You flick it open. Only one earpiece is in. 

You snort.

At half past 2 in the morning, someone knocks on Charles’ door.

“Idiot,” you say, when he opens the door to find you standing outside, bleary-eyed, holding his airpods up. “You left this at the hammock.” 

“Oh shit.” He takes it from you with a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”

In hindsight, you should have left, afterwards. Or maybe just handed it to him the next day. But— but. He’s leaning against the doorframe, topless, one hand busy rubbing the sleep out his eyes. You hang onto the movement, flick your eyes from the way his wrist twists, arm flexing. He looks good. Too good, for someone who just seemed to have rolled out of bed. You’re growing alarmingly warm under the thin material of your cover-up, suddenly violently aware of how you must look standing at his doorway with half your skin showing in a bikini of all things.

“Can we talk?” 

“Can we talk?”

He laughs. It’s a soft, boyish rumble deep in his chest. “Yeah, uh— come in.”

“Désolée,” he apologises once you step in, “C'est en désordre.”

But you don’t mind. If anything, it’s familiar. Nostalgia finds you between the clothes strewn by the edges of his bed and the luggage burst open at the corner of the room, looking like it’d been kicked to the side at the last minute. He’s never been able to keep his rooms clean for any longer than a few days— never in his apartments and never in his hotels. You remember. You always remember.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, hurrying to clear the floor.

“Nothing,” you reply, try not to focus on the way the cord of muscles on his back pull when he bends to reach for a stray t-shirt in the way. “You just. Haven’t changed alot.” 

He dimples at you over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

You kick up a towel at your feet and hand it to him. He tosses it into a messy pile in the corner. “Yeah.” You’re still Charles. My Charles. I’m still helplessly, hopelessly, in love with you. You’re still the same because we move the same, breathe the same, look at each other the same. 

“I think I’ve changed,” Charles says, shuffling further into the room. He places his airpods down a side table, by a bowl of complimentary fruit from the hotel. “I’m a better man than I was.”

“Less of an idiot?” you tease, if only to deflect the unspoken implication. ( We’re all idiots when we’re teenagers and in love, anyway. ) Charles turns to you to find his other missing earpiece in your forefingers, dug out from God knows where. “Highly unlikely.”

You toss it. Charles catches it easily without breaking eye-contact, just smiles. The motion shouldn’t have been that attractive to you. 

“I can try,” He clips it back into the case, sets it down. “If you will let me.”

The sliding doors facing the ocean waves are curtainless, and left ajar. When a breeze blows through, you can smell the salt winds, the smell of Charles; feel the way your skin rises with goosebumps— but only because he’s gazing at you with that dopey look he has; doe-eyed and green and twinkling with hope. 

“Let you do what, exactly?” Your mouth is dry. You take the pause in his answer as an opportunity to walk into the kitchenette, ground yourself by paying attention to the grooves of the wood beneath your bare feet as you pour yourself a glass of water, sip slowly to occupy yourself.

The kitchen island works as some border between you both. Charles closes the distance, slow, like he’s testing the waters; until he reaches the corner where you stand, and sidles his hip on the edge. He runs a hand across his day old stubble. You’re one reach away. He doesn’t close you in. If you wanted, you could walk right past him and out the door. It’s an option. A choice. Don’t go, he means to say. But if you must, I’ll spend the rest of my days wondering where I went wrong.

“It’s. I mean,” he says, twists his rings as he usually does when he’s nervous. “I— Need to apologise. Properly.”

The sentence is stilted, and it’s impossible to not remember how he’d stumbled over his words all those years ago— A first date; Somewhere at a hotel lobby; Calling you pretty in a messy, albeit charming way. “There’s no need,” you say, because it’s the truth. You’re okay with it now, as far as okay can be. “We’re past that. We’re past all of it.”

“Even Emilio?” He waits for the recoil, the affronted look on your face, but nothing comes. 

“Emilio was…” you shrug, end it off there. Was. It’d been a mutual break over breakfast, admittedly a lovely thing of the past. Not the right person, and definitely not enough time seeing each other to make up for it. “You did apologise, though,” you remind Charles. He’d texted you on a flight back to Monaco, and you left him hanging. 

“So then it’s just… now. What happens now?” That’d been what he wanted to talk about, after all. What are we? I need to know. I need to hear it. I need you to tell me. Tell me to leave, and I will. Tell me to stay, and I will. Tell me to follow you to the ends of the earth and I will. 

“You asked what I’d like in this life,” you repeat, and you can feel your heart swell with the tide. If he noticed the warble in your voice, he didn’t comment on it, just relishes in the closeness, the proximity. It’s been so long since he’s been this near you. “I was going to say that I—” you trail off to inhale, gather your thoughts, exhale. “I want you. I always have. In this life. In all of it.”

There. There. Your heart laid out on the cutting block waiting for the final strike. Tell me you feel the same. Tell me something. Anything.

“Me too.”

Charles shortens the remaining space between you, hopes you don’t notice him shaking, fidgets at the tassels of your cover-up idly. It’s chiffon; sheer. He’s been trying not to let his eyes wander at your silhouette beneath it. His fingers curl at its threaded fringe; quiet permission. May I, May I, May I? 

This is the crest. Fall be damned.

“Tu n'as pas froid?” he asks.

You shake your head, honest. 

“Can—” he swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs, and you want to mouth at it. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” you whisper. Your pupils are blown wide, bright and inviting, and he drops his gaze. It falls on your mouth, the curl of your lips— then he’s reaching forward to kiss you.

Charles’ palms fit to your face like it’s always meant to be there, perfect, slots together like a puzzle piece. He tilts your head up, feels your hands scrape up from the nape of his neck, and he hums in response, until you can feel the vibration from his chest run into yours. He wants to breathe you in, kiss you impossibly deeper, hold you tight like this forever, until he could hide you into the spaces of his heart. 

He winds his arms around your thighs to lift you with alarming ease— and maybe that shouldn’t have turned you on more than it did— setting you gently on the countertop so he could gaze up at you like a goddess come to grace the earth. He says your name, hushed and spoken into your lips, and it sounds like a prayer. “I never stopped loving you,” he confesses, reverent, and kisses you again for emphasis, for good measure, for the sake of tasting you. “Never. No matter anything.”

You keen into his touch when he kneads at your hips, can’t stop the giggle from escaping you. It’s ticklish. He remembers. “I love you too,” you whisper, his five o’clock shadow scratching at you when he nips at your bottom lip, nudges his nose against yours. “No matter anything.”

A kiss, again. Hungrier and more eager, this time, because Charles tastes like an aphrodisiac— warm and honey sweet in all his flushed-face, bare-chested, dark-eyed, glory— and because what you wanted from him is simple. His face gleams under the wash of moonlight. Angelic. You’re half-sure you’re dreaming this, half-sure if you run your fingers down his spine you’ll feel the bump of where his wings should be.

He breaks away, rests his thumb on your lip, where you take it between your teeth.

Je m'emballé, he pants, almost wistfully, unable to resist smiling. It’s the kind that dimples deep, makes him laugh quietly under his breath, makes him duck his head down into his bicep in embarrassment. You can feel the tufts of his hair tickle your jawline, and you skim your palms up, press at the indents of his cheeks when he finally looks up at you, half-lidded and so, so, in love. “I, ah, need to…” he pulls his thumb from your mouth, pantomimes spinning a thread with his index finger. “I should.. Reel it in. Take it slow.”

“Tomorrow,” you shake your head, breathless, dizzy, half out of your mind and intoxicated by the taste of him, him, him. Slow can come tomorrow. Right now— “Just kiss me, Charles.”

And he does. He presses himself between the bracket of your thighs and undoes the buttons of your cover-up, running his lips down your throat and feeling like a live wire when you hum in content, purr in his ears. 

He kisses you, urgent, but soft, because it’s the only right way to treat you after all he’d put you through, and lets his hand slide across your buzzing skin. The tangle of your legs with his when you reach the sheets is unceremonious, bumping knees and ankles, where you slip a comment on how untidy his bed is, and he just laughs into your neck, giddy, because I’ve missed you so much, amour.

How much? you dare, trace the cupid's bow of his lips, count the freckles across his collarbones like you used to. How much have you missed me?

I’ll show you, he promises, holds your wrist down to feel your rapid pulse just like he did all those years ago, and dips his moon halo-ed head to kiss you, again and again, deep and desperate until he got you to arch, to croon his name into his ears.

And if anyone heard the both of you, well— the tide had long since been crashing in, wind soughing against the windows, where no one could possibly hear.

Pierre finds your sandals inside, on the foot of Charles’ villa door, the next morning.

“Have you seen her?” he asks, even if he knows how stupid it is to ask. (He has to check. But if the sandals, or Charles’ hair— tousled and sticking out in all directions— isn’t enough of an answer, the figure ducking just out of sight in the bedroom behind him is.)

“Uh,” Charles begins, eyes flicking down to where he’d left his slippers by yours. He blinks multiple times, tries to come up with something. He’s never been a good liar. “She’s—”

“Breakfast is in fifteen minutes,” overrides Pierre, already walking away with a grimace. “Be presentable, oui?”

You come as presentable as can be.

Everyone’s excited for the next activity of the day— a short boat trip out from the lagoon and into the sea where the manta rays would come now that they’re in season.

Carla compliments your sundress, pokes at the eyelets, and doesn’t realise you’d chosen it because the halter neck covers up the marks Charles had left on your chest. You don’t think anybody notices— anybody but Pierre, that is. He’s sitting beside Charles, looking slightly green, glancing uncharacteristically between everyone and the food but you. You would’ve laughed, but. Well. It’s awkward. Charles had told you, anyway, the moment he’d slammed the door shut and started cursing like a sailor earlier in his room. Pierre knows. He knows.

It’s fine, you’d laughed, drowned tiny in his linen button-up, squeezing toothpaste on his toothbrush for him. He won’t spill. You know him. If anything, he’ll hold it against us.

Charles had just smiled, relaxing, took the brush from your hands. Then he’s combing aside your hair in favour of nosing a kiss to the juncture of your neck, your shoulder, thought quietly to himself as the déjà vu hit, so this is what it’s like to love you freely, again.

“I’ve been keeping a secret from all of you,” you announce, when breakfast winds down, and Arthur had finally come back with his third glass of juice in hand. 

Pierre’s neck must’ve gotten whiplash with the way he’d snapped towards you. But, no, that isn’t what you’re going to be talking about. God forbid. 

You squirm in your seat as all eyes fall on you. Charles, beneath the table, nudges his ankle against yours in a silent show of affection. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. He already knows. ( You’d told him sometime last night, a final chance for him to take it all back if he wanted. Charles had simply kissed your doubts away. )

“I’ve got a contract,” you say, after a momentary beat. Then, with a heavy inhale— deep enough you could feel the sting in your diaphragms: “I’ve signed into Williams for the next Formula 1 season.”

2023. Fanfare is, obviously, as bad as it gets. 

It’s exhausting, most of all unfair, but Charles is there every step of the way, and so is Pierre. They try. They try, so you try, too.

Your debut is either controversial or progressive, the last resort or the perfect choice, a diversity seat or an earned seat. You know you won’t win against the media, much less the fans that had dug up your past and aired out whatever dirty laundry they could find in hopes of tearing you down. Your history with the drivers— Charles, specifically— has become an open secret amongst the sport. The headlines and bylined articles run wild. You’d called it, Williams called it, Ferrari called it. Hell, even Netflix called it. Talk about adding bittersweet, romantic spice into the pinnacle of motorsport, hey?

It’s a PR team's worst nightmare. The first half of the season is spent dismissing, denying, disregarding. We’re friendly competitors now. I’m here to race just like everybody else. Charles is in Ferrari and I’m in Williams, that’s what matters to me. It’s making sure you arrive into Paddocks either earlier or later than Charles, and to keep a measure of distance between each other in the off-chance you do appear at the same time. 

It’s making sure your congratulatory hugs and comments about each other are kept at a minimum after races so that no one can string up a story from those moments, that you don’t sit too close to one another during race conferences, or that you don’t get caught in pictures with each other when in airports or hotels, because it’s impossible for Charles to just be friends with a woman.

Then the death threats escalate, and the team bumps up security, and sometimes it feels like you’re eighteen again, jokingly debating the consequences of deleting all social media until Charles shuts your phone off for you. The FIA makes a late stand, exactly three races later, condemning the misogyny that surrounds you as one of the first débutantes of Formula 1. You and the other drivers just laugh at the irony of it all, over an afterparty celebrating Lando’s podium finish, because the FIA had only spoken up on it when Lewis had commented on it, but never when you did. 

“I’m sorry,” Charles had said once, after your first points had been overshadowed by hate. Baku had been one of the most exhilarating races of your life. “I want to—” he sighs, runs a hand down his face. He’s about to cry. You can tell. Not because he pities you, but because he feels helpless. “I don’t know.”

I want to protect you. I want to love you freely. I want you to be happy. No matter anything.

“I want to help,” he tries to be firm, fumbles with his words and the mess of languages in his head. “But most of all I want you to be happy.”

The pang in your heart sears like a bolt of lightning. You remember the last time you’d been in a situation like this. Except this time no one’s baring teeth and rearing for a fight. This time he’s choosing you, you, you. 

You come to the vanity he’s leaned his palms on, tuck yourself into the space between his arms to look up at him. “I’m the first female driver in decades. I scored points on debut. I very nearly had a podium finish,” you list down. “I’m in a good team, and we’re scoring. I have a supportive boyfriend. I have my family. Who says I’m not happy?”

“Charles,” you call out, half-laughing, kissing the red of his eyes away and letting your fingers scrape up from the back of his head the way he likes. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” This is how it should have turned out years ago, you realise. Instead of turning your backs against each other; instead of pretending the both of you weren’t horrifically in love with one another; instead of swallowing the ache. Maybe then the both of you wouldn’t have wasted so much time finding each other again. 

But you’re both here, now. Neither of you would give it up for the world.

The next year, your driver’s parade car— a 60’s vintage Corvette— unfortunately breaks down mid-way, and you find yourself clambering into Pierre’s so you don’t get left behind the cavalcade. The shutter of cameras grow louder; you can already picture the comments fans will leave behind.

“My car just shit itself,” you laugh. Pierre offers a hand to lift you into the seat, but you ignore it. He doesn’t comment on it. He knows why. “I’ve missed you,” he teases, blunt and honest, like he usually is, too distracted with waving at the grandstands to notice your surprise. Miami is always overwhelming.

You adjust the Williams cap on your head. “We see each other every race weekend, Piccolo.”

He shrugs, turns to see you eyeing the back of the Ferrari rolling ahead. Charles has his whole-hearted attention to the fans, as usual— a loyal sea of red that follows him everywhere he goes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” You dish out a smile and a wave when the fans scream for you at the next turn. “But you know how it is.” Pierre, or any driver— any male presence, really— could offer a ‘bless you’ when you sneeze and the fans will still find a way to give you flak for it. You still remember the one time Skysport had zoomed in on you at the weighing scales post-race in Australia, asking Daniel to help you pry open the cover of a glass bottle screwed too tight— fans flooded your comments telling you off for flirting with a man who’s attached.

“But you’re okay,” he says— asks? He can’t tell if he’d said it for himself or for you. You’ve become this unwarranted extension of Charles, now, and sometimes of Pierre too— he didn’t want you to be reduced to just that. An extension. You’re not just the girl who grew up with Charles, and Pierre, and Anthoine. You’re not just a pretty face for Formula 1. You’re brilliant; talented. You deserve your seat. The data, the achievements, speak for itself.

You smile at him, all cheeks, skip the concern in his voice as you answer humorously, “S’long as I finish the race ahead of you.”

Imola is, unfortunately, not yours to win. 

The race syphons the spirit out of you: tyre degradation, marbling, poor weather, and an even poorer pit strategy, only to end with a grand ending of a DNF thirteen laps from the finish line. Media duties always feel more stretched out in the hours afterwards, and you suppose the only silver-lining that could come out of a bad result like this is the fact that you’d—  for once— get interesting questions about the car and it’s set-up instead of your alleged ‘friction’ with Jamie Chadwick or Logan Sargeant or Nyck De Vries after you’d ‘stolen’ their Williams seat.

Your press-officer and ever present shadow warns you the coffee machine back at the motorhome is down. You wonder if your day can get any worse, descend from the pen, and make a beeline for the Ferrari motorhome next door instead. To hell with the rumours or the tiktoks— you’ll be in and out, anyway. 

“Joris,” you blink, when you finally fill your cup at their hospitality. He should be back at the paddock with his other ragtag group of friends, or supporting Il Predestinato from the pitwall himself, cheering for the red boy in the red car in the red team. “What’re you doing here?” 

“Hey, you are the stranger here,” accuses another voice. It’s Charles, appearing with hair still damp from sweat, looking as raceworn as you are, but somehow glowing, still as pristine as ever. He fidgets with his racesuit, re-tightens the sleeves into a knot around his waist. You try not to let your eyes fall to it. “What is a Williams girl doing in Ferrari?”

Moreso who, Joris coughs, only to earn an elbow into the ribs from Charles.

“Stealing iced coffee,” you reply, honestly. “Sorry I didn’t stick around. Were you P2 or P3?” You look to the screens playing highlights of the race behind him. Verstappen and Norris would be taking the 1-2 podium.

“P3.” He shrugs, cards his fingers through his hair the way he does when he doesn’t have the energy to talk about something. His press officer nudges at him, and you understand— Lord Perceval, the little boy in red, their Predestined, is needed elsewhere. “A plus tard à l'hôtel, hm?”

Charles, you nearly blurt, and tilt your head instead, raise a warning brow— he had instinctively leaned forward for a kiss. 

He fumbles through the motion by awkwardly reaching for an empty cup instead, where you turn to leave, swallow back a laugh when Joris runs a hand over his face, exasperated. Mate, you’re a shit actor.

“He’s right,” Charles admits, much later, ahead of the Monaco race day. And perhaps it was the thrill of a pole in Quali, or the adrenaline from being surrounded by support in his home race, that brings him to say, in the peace of his apartment: “Amour, when I win, let me kiss you for the world to see.”

You shut down the idea, ofcourse, with a cringe and a scrunched nose. “Lando’s shown you that side of tiktok, huh? He’s poisoned you, I fear. Also, it’s if I win, doofus, not when.”

He laughs out from his piano— the stiff kind, the one where he tries to lighten the air and gauge where the conversation will head— and motions for you to come. “Don’t girls like romantic gestures?” he hums, once you’d sat on his lap. 

His hands are gentle atop yours, ghosting over the keys to a new song he’s composing (“What’s the title for this one?” you ask. “M’not so sure, yet. But the inspiration will come.”). You both play and stumble over the chords, until you can feel the way your hearts sync in tandem, until each of you have drafted what to say to each other.

“I love you. Why should I hide it?” This will not turn into an argument. Charles won’t let it. 

“You know why,” you say, leaning into the kiss he plants on your shoulder. “Besides, the fans already sort of know there’s something.”

“Exactly.” He murmurs, steadying you as you shift in your seat. You have a perfect view of his profile, now. He looks busy in his head. “It won’t be that big a change.”

“But it will.” It will for me. For a woman. For a female racer in a sport that’s spent its decades rigged against anything but men. “Let’s get to bed, hm? We can talk about this another day. You’ve got a lot on your shoulders tomorrow.”

You don’t talk about it, in the end.

You chalk it off as timing; that you should let the days pass with celebrations before confronting him with anything. You both celebrate his first Monaco win, remember his Dad, and of Jules, of the entirety of his home country rallying in support, and of the bells that will sing in Maranello for him. 

You don’t talk about it, because there is always the crest and the fall.

You don’t talk about it when Perez clips your rear-left tyre in Baku, Azerbaijan, and sends you off at 200kph to meet your maker. The crash is so violent it practically strips your car clean, save for the survival cell. You’d sat terrified and kept watch at the turn, helpless in the middle of the street circuit, praying to God that no other car turning the high-speed corner would T-bone you straight into your side. (You finally understand George’s horror from his crash in Australia.)

You don’t talk about it even when Pierre pulls you into a hug at the Medical Centre, and your boyfriend is nowhere to be found.

You don’t talk about it until Charles is holding you in your hotel room, and you admit to him, irrational and as petty as it seems: Where were you? Where were you? I feel safer with you. In your arms, than I ever would in even the strongest survival cell in the world; that you’re not quite sure you’ve ever felt pure fear sitting in that car since Spa, when An—

“They didn’t let me into the medical centre after the race,” Charles says, furious. He’s venting the stress, you realise this. He isn’t fighting you; he’s fighting the contracts that stand between you two. “If it wasn’t for Albon, I would have knocked someone’s teeth in.”

You don’t know what to say. You don’t think there is anything to say. It’s nobody’s fault, you remind yourself. Sometimes, repetition breeds comfort and it makes you forget the danger of this sport. You just sit in your aftershock, rattled to the core, and let him hold his head against your heart as you both lay in bed, so he could listen to your heartbeat as a reminder you’re alive. 

“They’d have let me in if everyone knew about us,” Charles comments, off-hand. He hadn’t intended to nor realised he’d steered the topic back to that night in Monaco, but you pick up from where the both of you left off the conversation regardless. You owe it to him, you suppose. Or perhaps it’s simply something else to think about other than a brush with Death.

“December, then,” you finally relent. It isn’t grand— the world already suspects the both of you, and it was a matter of publicly announcing it— but the weight that lifts off your shoulders surprises you. There’s nothing to be ashamed about, afterall, and you’ve always wanted to love Charles as openly as any other person in the world; Screw the politics of it all. The both of you have learned from your pasts; things will be different. Better. “After the season ends.”

He nudges his nose against yours into a lavish kiss. It grounds you, makes you beam and break into a laugh and press close to him. Thank you, he breathes, because he recognises the sacrifice. I love you. I’m glad you’re okay. I love you, I love you, I love you. No matter anything. He’s not quite sure he could have held all the love in his heart any longer, much less how the both of you managed to fly under the radar these past years. Sooner or later, he would’ve slipped.

No matter anything, you mirror. You don’t linger about the accident. You dash the thought of bringing up how you could have sworn you’d heard his voice calling to you through the radio when you’d crashed; dash the thought of Anthoine, of Jules and of the radiostatic.

You let Charles wipe a tear from your eye and kiss you from your lips and to your neck and to your stomach, instead. You let him curl over you under the sheets, remind you you’re alive throughout the night.

It’s euphoric. You’re happy. This is the crest: You’re in love, and the world will know it soon. No fall can possibly break this. 

When Fall comes, Charles’ grandmother would seed Fritillaria bulbs for the next Spring. They’re bow-headed bellflowers once completely bloomed, so he always wondered why you took a liking to them instead of the Carnations or the red Spider-lilies by the flagstones leading from the backdoor and down the garden.

“The spider-lilies always bloom too late for me to see,” you remark, defensive. “Besides, sometimes there is no reason to like something.”

His Grandmother laughs. She always had a soft spot for you. “And if you try to find one, it’ll just drive you crazy,” she adds. “Never seek reason where there is none.”

Charles will think he understands this. He thinks he will understand this after Jules, after his father, after Anthoine, after his Grandmother. He never really does.

(It takes 15 years before he truly understands.)

“Come, Charles,” she waves him over. “Enough with the--

--chatter and radio-static in your in-ears. It’s hard to distinguish words, much less what was left and right or up and down. The air is rushing around you, sounding like flags in the wind. Something is crackling between the pelt of rain. Searing. 

“—epeat, can you hear me?” It’s your race-engineer. He sounds urgent. You can’t remember why. You can’t remember where you are, really; it’s just flashes of black and orange as you nod. How many G’s had you taken? “Yes,” you relay, unlocking your seatbelt instantly, feeling around your halo and sidepods. The steering wheel is gone; one less concern.

“Can you move?”

You try. You try in all possible directions; You really, really, do. But it feels as if you’re pushing against a concrete barrier, compressed into an impossible box— or cage? Your muscles hurt; it’s getting hard to breathe. How long had you been out cold?

“Get me out of here.” You’d meant to yell, but it comes out in a croak. Your throat is stinging. You want to remove your helmet, as irrational as it is, though you don’t have space for that either. 

“Marshals are working as fast as they can. Stay calm. They’re on--

--the way to Brignoles, there was a pop-up shop selling nomination bracelets,” Charles says, as cool-headed and cavalier as a 13-year-old kid could possibly say in front of their biggest crush ever, “If you don’t like it, you can give it to Pierre. Or. Whatever.”

Lorenzo, in the distance, laughs. He debates telling you how meticulous Charles had been at the booth as he picked out which charms you’d like. (He brings this up over Christmas years later, and the brothers still laugh over it. A classic of the Leclercs.) “You can rearrange and choose the pieces, by the way. Looks like the bracelet is a little too big for you.”

“I’ll give this one to Anthoine, then.” You clip off a charm— a little four-leaf clover coloured in gold and embedded onto the metal— and tuck it away into your pocket. You don’t know it yet, but Anthoine will come to wear this for the remainder of his life. “Merci beaucoup, Charles!” you fawn, rotating your wrist and listening to the tinny sounds it makes, “C'est très joli!”

You’re prettier, Charles doesn’t say, because he’s timid for his age, and God forbid he admits something like that within earshot of his brother, no less. But he admits it years later, when you both visit Brignoles to kart again. The circuit is holding a racing event in memory of Jules. “Were you actually?” you laugh, bright and resounding as you thread through the streets. 

“Ouias, I was thinking it!” He squeezes your palm. “What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart.”

“You’re a flirt,” you roll your--  

--eyes are tearing up from the fire. The helmet is designed to protect your head and keep the fire out, but only for so long. You’re sure the tear-offs have begun melting in its layers— it’s getting hard to see. “Please,” you manage. The strength in your body is fraying completely. Your words are weak; you aren’t even sure you’re speaking loud enough for the comms to pick up.

The silence lasts so long that you think you might have lost connection after all, when a voice comes through, serene, “They’re with you.” 

It might be your race-engineer. It might be Charles. It might be Pierre. Voices are a blur and you’re slipping by the second. You know it. You feel it. “Just stay with us. Stay with us, you understand? You’re going to be okay.”

The world is melting away, and the thin air has you locked in a plummeting tailspin. Your fingertips scald from the metal of your car as you try to breach from any angle, gloves singed and bitten through from the flames, while your mouth tastes like smoke with every harried breath. You can’t for the life of yourself figure how long you’ve been trapped. Longer than you should, probably. “I’m sorry,” you breathe out. You don’t know why you’re apologising or to who— perhaps everyone, or yourself—? but it feels right. Everything feels…

You feel yourself sink into your seat.

There’s fear, still, stirring low like whitenoise in your heart; the same kind of feeling you get when you’re swimming in the ocean, and you’re starkly aware of how your feet can’t reach the ground. 

Dread, perhaps, is the word. But bigger and more quieter. All racers feel it atleast once in their life. 

But this… peace? You’re not quite sure you’ve felt this boneless with relaxation in your entire lifetime. (Had this been what Grosjean meant about ‘Benoît’?)

“They’re right on you. They’ve got you,” they call your name. It’s distant. The car— this living, breathing machine that you’ve become one with for the past year— seems to shift in its weight with a metallic groan. “Are you with me?”

Yes, you answer them. I am.

They call your name--

--again,” Charles dimples, gentle and polite as he rubs a thumb at the back of your palm. The sun is setting, and it’s turning your skin liquid gold before his very eyes. He wonders if it’s possible to get drunk off of the sight of you alone.

“You know what, I give up,” you huff, half-hearted as he noses a kiss into your neck. He breathes you in, murmurs some comment about how you smell like fresh laundry. “You should quit racing and become a full time musician.”

“And leave the fun of racing to you?”

You lay the back of your head to his chest. If you focus, you can feel the pulse of his heart. You want to fall asleep to it; to the lull of his voice as he speaks. “I’ll win the championship for the both of us.”

“We can both be world champion.” Charles descends across the chords again, the melody slow and graceful. “Me first, though.”

You laugh. It’s punched out, yet delicate. Charles thinks he could never compose a piece as beautiful as that sound you make; could never find an art piece as striking to his heart as the sight of you sitting warm between his arms. “What will you title this one?”

He makes a noise, and cocks his head. “What about…” he pauses. You wait patiently, tuck your hair behind your ear as you watch the gears in his head turn. “No matter anything?”

“No matter anything,” you assent, breaking into a grin. He presses a kiss into your hair, and you take his hand up to your lips to return the gesture. “You’re so lame. You’re lucky I love you.”

“I love you too.” He bumps his cheek to yours, where you catch the tail-end of that boyish laughter you’ve grown to cherish. “C’mon, let’s try again. Give me your--

--hand, amour. Don’t be scared. It’s okay. 

And you may be having trouble reconciling left to right, but this voice, the vowels and Its lilting cadence— Charles, your beloved, your heart, your soul— you have no trouble remembering, at all.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

No matter anything.

So you’d followed It obediently; led hand in hand through rain and across asphalt, and kept walking somewhere in-between the margins of what felt like a waking dream, until you settled on the evergreen grass of his childhood home, overgrown and tickling your ankles, beside the purple-dotted bellflowers his grandmother tends to so carefully.

You follow the carnations all the way to the flagstone path that’s twisting in ways that defy logic, take the time to admire the spider-lilies that are finally blooming for you, until you reach that familiar Coast off of South France, a thousand miles away from home.

A boy a lot like Charles dimples at you, carrying Blue Coasts in his hands.

Then, someone else offers you a hand up to the boat.

Hey you, says the boy with the clover charm on his wrist.

You smile, and rest.

Fritillaries, Charles is reminded. He’s paralysed with fear, watching the screens in the garage document everything:

Your body dragged out from underneath the fiery pile up— bow-headed like bellflowers in riotous bloom.

This. 

This is the Fall.

It— the situation— doesn’t quite hit his brain yet, but his heart has caught up somehow; the tears haven’t stopped falling. He thinks this is some twisted catatonia— stupor— his body is putting him through. (Shock, he remembers the correct term, later.) 

He hasn’t felt like this before; not for Jules, or for his father, or for his grandmother. He had time for those. He had time to brace for the end, like headlights you see at the end of a road, before it hurtled towards him. 

But this? This is a band-aid ripped without warning. This is antifreeze running through his veins. This is the abyss at the bottom of the ocean, come to swallow him whole. This is standing outside the ICU on a Sunday evening, with the best minds and Doctors that Singapore has to offer, declaring: We tried our best, and feeling the earth open up beneath his own two feet.

The Williams personnel— your team, your work family— take the reigns. They smother the pain because that’s what they need to do for everyone right now, and tell Charles to just take a seat, or go home, mate. We’ll handle it from here. It’s okay. If you want, I can contact someone. Do you want me to contact someone?

Maman, Charles calls, sounding lost and frighteningly like a child. Ma mère— my Mama.

Then he roots himself outside the unit, stills himself from the crown of his head down to the soles of his feet, and… waits. He doesn’t know why, though. It’s not like it’d change anything. His mother is a thousand miles away, and the phone call they eventually share does little to comfort him, and it’s not like he’s expecting you to exit the room and jump into his arms. 

He isn't sure. He hasn’t kept track of time, or what has been happening around him. He hasn’t even—

“Charles, precious boy, let’s go back home, yes? You must be so tired.”

He’s quick to bow his head. Andreas must have sent her his way. “Ma’am—” He hasn’t called your mother that in a long time, “—you shouldn’t have troubled yourself.”

“Pascale w— Your mother would hate to see you like this,” she says, thin and doting and worried for him, of all things. Who is he to deserve this patience, when she’s just lost her daughter? “Pierre is waiting too.”

“Pierre,” repeats Charles. My best friend. 

He blinks and breathes and blinks again. “Okay.”

“Yes,” she says, and gently leads him by the hands. She’s not quite sure Charles notices he’s still in his racesuit— they’d red-flagged the race and called it then and there following the shunt, 4 laps away from the end. Charles had bolted straight out the garage and skipped every media duty, fines be damned. “I think it’d do you two some good to be around each other, okay?”

“Okay.”

An aside on the strange thing we call grief: it can be a rampant, demonic, abysmal thing— so it goes for Pierre— or a quiet, quiet, stillness— so goes for Charles. 

(It should be said they will both experience the same things in due time, since the journey is never quite the same for either of them; or anyone involved, for that matter. Grief is just the unsaids and the excess, anyway, of every kind of love one can uniquely share with a single person. There is no existence of a baseline or foundation or limit. It simply is.)

And if you’d brought the best in Pierre, then losing you brought his worst—

So it’s no surprise that when he crumples, he tears everything else down with him.

That’s not to say his breakdown happens during the funeral, though. Yes, there had been something about the fritillaries and the hydrangeas and the knell of the church bells; Something in the arid, clotting smell of frankincense and myrrh, and the distant thin drift of smoke up in the chapel that had sent his guts curling up at the thought of that black, forsaken night back in Si— 

He shoves off someone’s steadying hand.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch me, Charles.”

—but the funeral had gone fine, other than that. Hell, Pierre drifted through the rest of the season, albeit like a ghost of himself, racing against Colapinto who’d replaced you. He managed to power through the annual driver-dinner despite wanting to throw up from seeing the empty seat they’d left in your name, and powered through the choking grief during the 2024 FIA Awards Ceremony where they did the same in your honour.

It’s only when he gets shitfaced at Alex and Lily’s wedding. 

In hindsight, Pierre thinks it might not have been because of Charles playing that piano-piece he’d made with you for the newlyweds, but the fact that everyone had been— happy. You would have been grateful, he thinks. To have your memory lived on in love. 

Surrounded by silken, pastel gowns and white, floor-length veils and perfectly-timed petals sailing down from the lavender sky, Pierre has to remind himself that he’s not back in that dreamy Malta wedding he had been in with you three years ago. Three. Fuck— had it been that long? 

(Life had gone on without you.

Ofcourse, it did. Ofcourse, it does.)

And so Pierre drinks.

He drinks the overpriced champagne, and the aged Riesling, and the Jameson Malt whiskey, and the bespoke St. Hugo wine that Danny sponsored cartons of for the wedding. He drinks and drains and downs until Charles had to tug him aside and into a washroom, telling him to take it easy, you’re embarrassing yourself, piccol—

“Ne t’avise pas de me toucher, putain,” Pierre hisses, snatching him up by the collar. “And don’t fucking call me that. You don’t get to.”

“What the hell is up with you?” Charles snaps, wrenching out his grasp. There’s no malice in his words; he’s simply never seen Pierre shoot a glare so savage that it physically makes him recoil at the sight. There had been the absence too: Pierre’s sudden severance from his life, avoiding him like the plague and cold-shouldering him like a child acting out a tantrum. Charles had gathered it'd been the grief, but now this—?

“None of this is fair,” Pierre waves, stumbling to lean onto the basin with a growl. “None of it. The fucking flowers and the dancing and the singing. They…” But then he’d shaken his head abruptly, and looked up at Charles in the reflection of the mirror, looking pristine as ever in his Spring Collection Armani suit— or whatever the fuck it is he’s wearing.

“You,” Pierre amends his words. “You don’t fucking deserve. You never did, but I…”

“Deserve what, you asshole?”

“Her.”

A beat. 

Charles seizes. Pierre turns to face him.

“What is it you say, again, Calamar?” he hiccups. “No matter anything—?”

Something sobers him in an instant.

Charles had struck him.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” 

There’s a ringing pulsing all around Pierre’s head. Dizzying. The world ripples into painful clarity: he’s been shoved and pinned against the bathroom wall. “I told you not to touch me, you basta—”

“Fucking answer me, Pierre!” 

“I said!” he snarls, now in full command of his senses. “That you never fucking deserved her.”

The scuffle is vicious—

—but it doesn’t last long. Lewis had intervened before the fight got too bloody and out of hand, prying them off each other like wild strays. Charles comes out with a nosebleed; Pierre recovers from drunken bruises and a split lip. Neither Alex nor Lily, fortunately, ever hear a peep about what had gone down that night.

By 2025 pre-season testing, they still don’t talk. 

Not since the wedding in early January, to pre-seasons in February, nor when they shared a podium in the first race of the year that mid-March in Australia. “Whatever the hell it was I stopped that night… You gotta talk to him, man,” Lewis had even counselled out of the blue. “Don’t wanna end up like me, Charles. You don’t.”

He doesn’t listen, ofcourse. He’s petty like that, and Pierre is stubborn.

(Charles does, however, ask during a 20-second elevator ride down to their shared Melbourne hotel lobby:

“For how long, Pierre?”

There’s no need for thought. The answer is too easy.

“For as long as I knew her.”)

So it doesn’t take much before the fans put the pieces together. There had been that pianissimo lament Charles had released, after all, damningly titled ‘SIN24(1:4)’ like something out of a melodramatic movie, alongside a heartbreaking interview that tore the entirety of motorsport asunder from the sheer grief it carried. Couple that with existing connections over the years with you and Charles’ rekindling relationship— 

Well.

Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of all is that the world doesn’t fully learn about Charles' love for you until after your death.

Or, no. The greatest tragedy, perhaps, is that no one knows—

“I loved her first,” Pierre laughs, meanly. It’s childish and immature and nonsensical. But what can he do? What can he do? This is Pierre, who has been so polite with his longing, who has carried so much love in his heart for you and never found a place to put it down.

This is Pierre who couldn’t begin the next day without you, because you took the sun with you when you’d gone and selfishly left nothing but a cavern in his soul; because his heart was still pulling through every yesterday he had to endure without you.

“So who are you so angry at, Pierre. Charles?” Over the phone, he can hear his mother set her mug down, resolute. “Your best friend?”

“He’s—!” Not my best friend, he’d wanted to cry out, but the words taste rotten. My best friends are 6 feet beneath the earth; in a place I can’t reach. He kicks the leg of his hotel vanity instead, hard enough to rattle a perfume bottle down to the carpet. “Pierre,” he hears his mother chide. 

“You need each other. Now more than ever.”

“I can’t,” he says, face twisting into frustration as the tears blur his vision. “You don’t understand. How can you?”

“Unless, dear boy, you’re angry at her—”

“Non! No!” he cries, furious. “For fucks sake, I can never be angry at her. I loved her. Love. Maman, I love her. I can’t— I don’t—”

He’s looking back on it all now. It feels like remembering how you left someone through the rearview mirror. The months since your death had collapsed into a shrinking gap in his memory. He had only ever been placing one foot in front of the other, day by day by day by—

When did you become this? Something he couldn’t think become possibly worse? Worse than an agonising pain that screamed in his chest, a twist in his gut, a— a memory. Memory. Someone he could only cry or scream and never just talk about. 

You who’d held his heart in such an relentlessly tight fist  (unknowingly too, so how could he ever blame you?); paralysing, breaking— And then: you up and fucking went. You’re gone. Yet somehow, still, he thinks he’s never felt you haunt him now more than ever. 

“I’m— It’s me,” he crumbles, choking in his tears. There’s that harrowing, daunting feeling gripping Pierre’s entire body again; makes him want to curl in on himself and squeeze into the tightest, darkest corner of the room and disappear. It’s the same pit of dread he’d felt that night they broke the news to him that you’d died from asphyxiation, and not upon impact.

(Slow. You had died slow. You must have been terrified.)

“I’m so fucking angry at everything. At the world. At me. I wish I never took on this pain. I wish I learned to let go easier. I wish she was here, because I miss her. I miss her so bad, Mama, I fucking miss her. Do you understand me? Tell me you do. Because I think I could die. I think I am dying. I want— To, I— I can’t— I can’t breathe. Not without—” 

My boy, his mother weeps over the line, because sometimes that’s all a mother can do to console their twenty-seven-turned-seven-year-old child, halfway across the world. My sweet, darling boy. I’m so sorry.

It’s Doohan who he goes to, heaving and red-faced and trembling out of his skin like a cowering dog. They sit together for a long while; long enough for Jack to realise it’s not him who Pierre needed, but — Charles, Jack texts, He’s having a panic attack. 

I’m already boarding my flight, the Monegasque answers, bitterly. It’s the truth. The thing about having Lewis Hamilton as a teammate is that you can leave as early as you wish for the next race. Just keep me updated. Tell him to pick up my call.

Charles calls once, ten minutes later.

Pierre doesn’t pick up.

He doesn’t bother calling again.

— I miss her too, is all he allows via text, and isn’t even surprised when he sees Pierre’s phonescreen has earned a new crack on it the next time they cross paths.

A shunt in Shanghai rattles something in Pierre again. 

“I thought you—” he swallows, mouth dry, “—would’ve been at the Medical Centre. I looked for you.”

“They cleared me,” Charles explains, blankly. It had been a gnarly crash, but barely ranking in any of the worst ones he’d ever suffered. “Pierre?”

“I owe you a drink,” Pierre blurts, before thinking. The scar on Charles’ nose from when he’d punched him back in January is invisible to everyone but him (and Lewis).

“Ouias. You do.”

They don’t get their drink in Shanghai, but back in Monaco, where Charles had to be taken on a detour to for some APM photoshoot. It doesn’t take long for another argument to spring up between them again, borne from the tension in the air, and—

“You threw them away?” Pierre frowns, looking at the remaining PR boxes stacked at the corner of Charles’ apartment. Every single one of them had cards with your name on it. They must have been from last year, sent by brands and companies long before your accident had happened. 

“Not all of it. Not yet. I…” he huffs when Pierre shoots him a sour look. “I didn’t have the time.”

Pierre sets the Whiskeys he owed onto the kitchen island with more force than necessary. “She would have wanted you to give them away, Charles. C'est du gâchis.”

“Don’t tell me what she’d want,” he bites, instinctively. He snags one of the bottles and doesn’t bother with taking crystals, just goes to slump at the foot of his living room sofa. (Not on it, because you’d laid there last, and he wanted to keep your scent on the throw rug for as long as he could.) “And I know. I gave most of it away to Lily, back in January. She wears the pieces to paddock sometimes.”

“Does she know that it’s—”

“Yeah. Ofcourse. The first time she went to wear one she took the time to ask me if I was okay with it.” She’d been kind. He forgets Lily had lost a dear friend in you, too.

“What about her other things?” Pierre asks, eyes scanning Charles' shared apartment with you. Your possessions have remained in time, caught and clung frozen in a glacial, eerie stillness: the slippers by the door seemed to wait to be worn again, and so did the half-empty bottle of perfume by the keys. “Did you throw those too?”

“Pierre,” Charles warns, before sighing. The weight of the day had suddenly crashed down on him. “Sit the fuck down.”

There’s an anger and sadness swarming up and threatening to choke him, but beneath that, something hurts him more. It feels a lot like a betrayal– which makes no sense, because Pierre has never made him any promises. Despite having a ringside seat to the relationship Charles had with you, Pierre has never interfered; has only ever protected you; and above all else, had been considerate about his love for you.

(And Charles knows intimately what that’s like, however brief his experience had been. The white-hot pain; a burn that smoulders continuously under the skin like embers. He can only imagine how much longer Pierre had suffered in silence compared to him.)

Pierre sits. Takes a swig after Charles does. There’s something in his mind begging to resurface— he might’ve done something like this with him before, sharing a bottle amongst each other like teens. There are 4 people in that distant memory. He shakes it away in favour of another thought.

“I almost deleted my chat with her,” Pierre says.

Charles had pieces of you everywhere he went. Charles had Pau, France; had the bungalows in Maldives, had the chords of your song in his fingertips when he plays the piano, had the handwritten chicken-scratch writings you’d left behind in his little notebook he carries into the Ferrari garage. He had a song he made for you that’s unfinished, the chords in his laptop frozen in time from when you’d sat on his lap to listen to what progress he made.

(It’s a song unfinished, he’d explained, when it’d been pointed out in an interview. A lot like her, he couldn’t bring himself to say, eyes catching on the polaroid of you stuck at a wall.)

Pierre only had you, and you alone. A museum of text messages in an old chat, or a photo album of you in his gallery, or your bright voice in an old voice message over the phone, sent from a million miles away, once upon a Tuesday. He scrolls them as far as the app allows him, and calls your number (hoping, irrationally, that you’d pick up) so he could hear your cheesy pre-recorded voicemail.

“You have no idea how much better I could have loved her, Charles,” he says, and it’s so soft that the Monegasque nearly misses it. “I could have loved her better than you. I did love her better than you. I’ve loved her all my life, you know?”

The air is dead silent between them. Charles rests the back of his head to a cushion, and can feel the world warp between the tipsiness. “But I loved her.” I did. I did. I loved her. I love her. Je l’aimais. Because what is there left to say? To argue about? What would it change?

Pierre nods. “Yeah.” He can recognise it; recognise himself. What Charles had was true— and above all, real— so Pierre couldn’t have a say on it. Who was he to do so? He of all people had no right. “I know,” he agrees, and tries to tamp down the waver in his voice. “I know you did, Charles.”

“Did you ever think to tell her?”

“No,” he flinches, lightning quick. “Why would I?”

“Tell me the truth, Pierre, or I’ll crack this bottle at your head.”

“Never, Charles.”

Something savage ignites in him. You fucking liar, Charles thinks— knows. Harsher words snap in his mind. They taste disgusting. Maybe it’s the alcohol.

He doesn’t force him, in the end, just scowls and sets the emptying bottle down with a disappointed thud. It would’ve been unfair, anyway. Everything about this is unfair. He figures Pierre is keeping the truth for his sake. He isn’t even sure if he’d have been able to take it, and he’s not sure if he should even be grateful. He’s just angry. And it’s so much more easier to be angry at Pierre than it would be to whatever divine being that decided to take you away from him.

“I hate you,” Charles admits. If he said it any louder then Pierre might’ve heard the lie in his voice. He probably knows, anyhow. If there’s one thing grief had gifted them, it was clarity in the off-moments. 

(Charles briefly closes his eyes. What is it Mémère had told him again? Never seek reason where there is none.)

“I understand,” Pierre says, and then, with little malice: “I hate you too.”

Now, this may be a good place to worry about another fall: 

A fault line driven like a crack between their childhood friendship, a petty amount of years spent ignoring each other, or a farce held up to the media that everyone can very clearly see through. But this isn’t Lewis or Nico; this isn’t that kind of story— animosity over competition is different to animosity over heart, even if the outcome could be the same. 

No; Pierre and Charles will eventually come to the ugly realisation that out of the original four of their childhood friend group, only two of them are the last ones standing to achieve this godforsaken dream— and nothing brings two people of shared history together like all-encompassing grief.

There is no crest or fall here. There is only that plateau you feel in your soul after losing someone dearest to you; a vast ocean of Nothingness; Doldrums. They’re both sinking in it. 

What an inconvenience it is that they happen to be each other’s lifelines, too.

“Will you drink with me?” invites Charles, on the second bottle he goes to take. (Will you drown with me? More like.)

Ofcourse, the louder part of Pierre doesn’t say. You are my greatest friend, and I am not that cruel. 

“Okay,” Pierre nods, resolute, and resists to tag Calamar at the end of his answer. 

They’ll be fine. They will be because they have to be, now that four has turned to three has turned to two. 

To put it all simply: they cannot lose each other. They have no one else. 

You have made sure of that.

The Universe has made sure of that.

“I wanted to plant fritillaries,” Pierre quietly says. “I couldn’t make it past the cemetery gates.”

A hum. “Let’s go together.”

“We will never be the same, after,” Pierre warns, after a long drawn out pause. “Calamar, I need you to know. I won’t apologise.”

“Bien sûr,” Charles confesses. “I don’t want you to.” 

Something unspoken in the air lifts as they pass the bottle again to each other.

“Okay. When should we plant it?” 

Charles thinks of your sunshine smile in the evergreen garden, again. 

“Après la saison d'automne,” he mumbles. Then, lucidly: “Fritillaries are planted after Fall.”

* Footnotes, regarding the story.

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

i can't believe how much i care about daniel ricciardo this is so stupid

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

SLUT! ━ C.L

based off ‘slut!’ by taylor swift

or

in which you work in a man’s world, and loving your competitor is a lot more damning for you than charles.

warnings; smut, driver!reader, themes of sexism and misogyny and touches on inequality, angst, lotta tension tbh, she’s kinda long, unprotected sex, overstimulation, praise, degradation like once, public sex, jealousy and maybe a bad friend reader if u squint, haas suck, manifested monaco win for charles :p

lovelorn and nobody knows

love thorns all over this rose,

i’ll pay the price, you won’t

you’d overcome enough challenges in your life.

you’d constantly proven everyone wrong, do what those said you can’t ━ every step and move you made was met with criticism instead of praise. doubt instead of belief.

you found a way. you broke the records, created your own more so. first modern day female f1 driver, and you didn’t intend to be the last.

haas wasn’t where you wanted to be, and while most expected you to be happy with just having a seat; that’s not why you were here. you didn’t fall in love with the sport to just become a driver.

you wanted to win. podiums, wins, championships. like the other 19 drivers ━ you all wanted the same thing.

for some reason you were the only one who got laughed at when speaking on such wants.

but you got used to the laughter, to the unamused or unimpressed journalists ━ this was a man’s world.

that didn’t scare you as a 14 year old girl, and it wouldn’t scare you now.

all these challenges and obstacles that you overcame, all the doubt and hate you shook off; yet there was a certain something you just couldn’t shake.

certain someone more so.

it killed you inside that a man of all things could cause you so much grief, so much internal conflict.

for some reason when it came to charles, you just couldn’t resist. putting your career first, which you’d done all your life, suddenly became difficult.

you didn’t show it, you also weren’t too hard on yourself. it was unfair to be in this position in the first place. to have to be so aware of your relation to the driver, any other drivers of that matter, was a circumstance only you found yourself in.

friendships and banters amongst any other pairings on the grid was adored; snatched up by social media and cameras.

your friendships caused headlines and unwanted press apparently.

it was something you picked up on quickly, the obsession of romance and the assumption that you wanted to sleep with every damn man you raced alongside.

you laughed at it, spoke down on such thing; then didn’t give it any of your time.

until suddenly the rumours were true; charles leclerc had somehow weaselled his way past every barrier and wall you put up.

it wasn’t something you accepted quickly. and once you caught wind of your stupid little heart and it’s fondness of the monegasque you were quick to try put the friendship and it’s entirety six feet under.

this worked, for a few months.

charles had been confused ━ under the assumption you two were at the bare minimum friends. as good as friends as two drivers could get at least. then suddenly you avoided him as if he was carrying the plague.

he couldn’t question it however; it’d be pathetic. to ask you why you refused to meet his eyes in press conferences and drivers briefings anymore.

why you avoided whatever side of the drivers parade truck he was on. why you couldn’t spare him more than a ‘hello’ in passing these days.

he interacted less with other drivers, and didn’t question them. so he couldn’t question you.

las vegas however, was your downfall.

drinking was unavoidable ━ daniel had made you promise to go out with him the moment you congratulated him on his return; and if it hadn’t been him, you knew someone would’ve of.

with daniel, there was max. that was fine; you got on well with max.

then there were talks lando would make it out, despite having gone to hospital; you knew a couple other drivers would also be in the same club you were. an entry fee so high, everyone around you was oozing importance and wealth.

it shouldn’t have surprised you when suddenly charles appeared at an already drunk daniel’s side; loud laughter and murmurs of a prior vegas trip giving you enough time to down your drink in preparation to be in his presence.

you couldn’t run, not when stood in a group of four; silver slip dress doing little to allow you to blend in with the crowd around you.

you felt his gaze on you before your eyes met his, almost as if it was causing heat on your skin ━ demanding you to look at him.

his eyes had met yours with a slight twinkle, slightly hooded and telling you that he too had enough alcohol running in his veins; and the lazy smile he flashed you had your own lips curving upwards with little resistance.

it was embarassing the way your cheeks went a tint of pink as you watched him weave around daniel who was now speaking to max, too engrossed in a story to care about the way charles moved him out of the way, to stand next to you.

immediately you were aware of his hand finding the small of your back as your body became aware of the closeness of him, breath getting caught in your throat as he leant down towards your ear.

“you look incredible,” the compliment was genuine; the smile accompanying his words rendering you unable to find room to complain.

suddenly it was too hot in here. you’d like to blame the alcohol, or the stuffy club. but the man to your left was the only reason you suddenly craved fresh air.

“thank you,” you hummed, not creating distance between the pair of you despite the idea crossing your mind. he was too close, you should step away. but his cologne smelt incredible. and his hand was still lingering on your back lightly.

his smile only grew at your response, having expected you to wiggle away and disappear into the crowd.

the conversation was harmless, it always had been; but speaking with charles was just a reminder that he was one of the good ones.

he’d only ever been kind to you; kind to everyone. one of the first to speak with you like any other driver, speak about racing and your careers without undermining you.

the more time you spent with him the more clear it became that he was flawless. and oh so tempting.

maybe you would’ve ended the conversation when daniel gave you an out, interrupting the pair of you. but it was with shots on a tray next to him.

three shots later and the four of you were all cringing, scrambling to find chasers; charles offering you a lime that you quickly took ━ managing to squirt lime juice everywhere but your mouth.

it had the pair of you erupting into giggles, your hands quickly landing on his shirt which was now speckled in droplets.

“i’m so sorry!” you exasperated, only now becoming aware of the way you were struggling to stand up straight. using his chest to balance you momentarily.

he wasn’t doing any better, telling you it was fine through his own laughter; his hand lifting to your face ━ thumb brushing a few droplets off your cheek as he too swayed side to side.

your eyes met, both drunken and amused ━ and suddenly all rational thoughts had left your body.

“we need another.” you declared, hand grasping around his forearm; watching as his lips parted to disagree. but he couldn’t. a good time too tempting to resist right now.

max and daniel were long forgotten as you weaved through the crowd to the bar to sought after shots of your own; unable to identify the moment your hands had taken grasp of each other.

it was a fun two hours; innocent as well, flirtatious maybe but his hand didn’t stoop lower than your back ━ drinks consistently being poured; drivers, personnel, sponsors and fans rotating through. but you didn’t leave charles side.

you weren’t on edge either, not thinking about the what ifs. about tomorrow or the next week. just enjoying the moment.

time had gone incredibly quickly. you lost track of how many hours had been spent at the bar, how many drinks you’d downed.

charles too, until you were leaning further and further into his side. his intake stopped the moment he realised you were now struggling to stand straight.

the thought entered his mind to find a member of your team, haas or personal, to help you get you to your room soon.

he was drunk, there was no doubt about it. but he was attempting to sober up in your presence.

when you spilt a drink over the bar however, he took responsibility and declared your night was over.

it was a struggle, as his hands clasped around your arms and attempted to push you towards the exit ━ quickly realising he too was struggling to walk straight.

he’d managed however, getting you into the back of his drivers car not as easy with you dropping your phone. then him his wallet, resulting in drunken giggles and mumbles as you finally got buckled in and situated.

most of the car ride was filled with you rambling, charles more than happy to let you speak. he’d missed hearing from you ━ even if he could barely make sense and keep up with your story.

it wasn’t until you were stumbling in the hotel, through the underground entrance thankfully, and into the elevator that there was moments of silence.

you leaned back against the wall, watching as charles pressed the buttons. admiring more so, head titled aside as you gazed over the ferarri driver.

only then did you realise you shouldn’t be in this position. because all you wanted to do was get your hands on him. admire him up close, the distance of the elevator a rude difference to how the night had been spent.

your arms reached upwards, practically beckoning him over; and with an amused smile he easily fell into place ━ approaching you as his hand pressed against the wall beside your head, eyebrows raising upwards in curiosity as he peered down at you.

your arms wrapped around his neck naturally, neither of you phased from the new closeness and comfortability ━ your eyes flickering over his face, lingering on his lips for a few moments too long.

“i want to kiss you,” the words escaped your lips without any thought; it was as if a weight was lifted off your chest. some form of confession quite relieving.

charles hummed at your words, smirking even as he let out a breathy chuckle.

“yeah?” he teased ━ his breath fanning your face, and you nodded without any hesitation. it’s not what you wanted that had you not making any movements.

“mhm,” you sighed, head falling back; charles having not expected the huff of disappointment. you missed the way his eyebrows furrowed for a split second. if he was sober maybe he’d pick up on your internal conflict.

“kiss me then,” charles chimed, hand finding the side of your head; cupping your cheek so delicately you could only lean into the embrace.

never had you called on such will power and mental strength, fighting every instinct and nerve in your body that was practically yearning for him. begging you to put yourself out of your misery for once and rid the distance between the pair of you.

but you hadn’t come so far for nothing. you could only make so many drunken decisions.

“i can’t,” the words were painful to say, even the slight numbness that alcohol brought; you felt every sting of the sentence.

you watched the way his lips only curved upwards, he hadn’t picked up on the seriousness of your words.

“why not?” the question was teasing, his thumb caressing your cheek making it difficult to stick to your guns.

you looked at him as if he should know; because you’d hope he’d have some sort of idea. maybe if you could see straight you would’ve realised that charles reality wasn’t the same of yours.

“people will talk.” it sounded pathetic when you said it out loud, the sentence sobering you up enough to realise such thing. you weren’t one to usually care what people thought, so the way his smile faltered made sense.

charles took a few moments to process your words ━ he would’ve stepped away if it weren’t for your arms around him.

he wanted to point out that you two were in fact alone, but he knew what you meant. no secret was kept secret for long in the world of f1.

“let them.” charles attempted to dismiss, a cheesy smile to match, one that had you smiling as well. but it wasn’t the grin you’d been carrying all night. it was a sympathetic one almost.

charles was putting some pieces together now, as much as he could at least. your avoidance of him was making more sense with the words currently leaving your lips.

“wouldn’t fair well for me,” you mumbled; the disappointment clear in your tone. the annoyance at the fact there was clearly something stopping you. your mood was falling, charles noticed that easily.

and while he himself wasn’t overjoyed with how the night was concluding, he wouldn’t let it be ruined.

“it’s okay,” charles reassured quickly, his lips pressing to your forehead delicately instead ━ you shouldn’t have to explain yourself, he didn’t want you to feel as if you needed too. “let’s get you to bed.” he grinned.

the affectionate action caught you off guard, left speechless as his hand grasped yours and began to directing you out of the elevator. it only having you feeling regret and self pity for letting the moment escape your fingertips.

which only piled on you tenfold when he left your hotel room barely after making it two steps inside.

climbing into the sheets alone had never been so painful.

painful. a good word to describe the next few interactions with charles.

abu dhabi had you on edge. you didn’t know how to face him.

it was typical, finding yourself sat next to him in the drivers press conference. feeling as if every journalist in the room would take note of the exchanging glances, the way your eyes would quickly find something else if his met yours. the way you listened to him speak a little too intently.

charles however had no worries. not a thought in his mind as he shamelessly admired you, listening to every answer you gave. watching as you reacted to the words of other drivers or questions that weren’t to do with you. he couldn’t look away.

you’d avoided him all morning and yesterday; having not caught you after vegas.

charles was used to such behaviour, except now, he knew why. and your reasoning wasn’t good enough to him.

you two could be friends; it didn’t need to be one extreme or the other. so he had no shame in putting in effort to deter yours.

it was frustrating, almost as if every corner you turned he was there. all weekend, if you were not in the haas hospitality or your motor home, charles was near.

it was no coincidence, leaving the press pen at the same time; passing him after any interview, stuck next to him at the drivers briefing.

you couldn’t avoid the conversation, every moment with him was just pushing you further to the edge ━ your self control was hanging by a very thin thread and you were almost ready to cut it every time those damn green eyes linger on yours.

when you arrived at your hotel after qualifying, it was easy to spot him waiting in the lobby. an odd sight considering the lurking fans.

it made sense however, when charles beelined towards the elevator the moment you did.

you had to hold your breath as you both got inside, biting down on the inside of your cheek to not allow your own frustration bubble over.

“what are you doing?” the question was asked through gritted teeth, and the confusion that masked charles face did little to convince you he was as clueless as he looked.

the twinkle of amusement in his eye revealed enough.

“what do you mean?” the question was almost a challenge, charles peering down at you inquisitively - as if he didn’t know the answer himself.

you took a breath, shaking your head ever so slightly.

to put it simply, you were annoyed. at the world for putting you in this position, at yourself for getting to this point, and him for making it more difficult than it had to be.

“you’re stalking me.” you accused; eyes narrowing into a glare; one that intensified as his own lips curved upwards, and if you weren’t so focused on being annoyed you would’ve swooned over the dimples that lined his cheeks in doing so.

“i am not stalking you,” charles mused, laughing at the accusation as he leant against the wall behind him.

you expected more of an explanation ━ your own eyes trained ahead of you at the elevator doors that remained shut. looking at him was too risky.

“you are. you’re everywhere.” you huffed; not pleased with how clear the frustration was in your tone.

charles wasn’t phased, not in the slightest ━ the grin hadn’t left his face; almost as if any conversation with you was more than enough. even if you were huffing and puffing.

he wasn’t sure how the infatuation had spiralled so quickly; maybe he just wanted what he couldn’t have. the man wasn’t too use to rejection, and last week definitely stumped him.

or maybe he just refused to let you run away from what you clearly both see. feel. there was a connection here, he was sure of it.

“are we not friends?” charles question had you drawing a deep breath, suddenly aware of how slow these elevators were. and recognising the first flaw with being blessed with a penthouse room.

“of course we’re friends.” you rolled your eyes, speaking with such certainty as if you needed to remind yourself. friends.

you two were friends at most, that’s all you’d allow the pair of you to be.

“then you shouldn’t actively avoid me.” charles hummed, no shame in calling out your obvious behaviour that he’d let go on for too long.

it was humorous, the way your jaw dropped in offence at the accusation you knew was true.

“i do not.” your voice went up an octave, not even you could believe your own lie ━ nor try to sell it, avoiding his eye now as your leg began to bounce impatiently. it was becoming suffocating, in an enclosed space with him.

“you do.” charles mocked your voice ever so slightly, but the smile that went along with it left you no room to complain as you glanced over at him; your own lips curving upwards for a mere second.

you had nothing to say. to you it was clear, he knew where you stood. but you weren’t budging. it’s not like you wanted to deprive yourself of him; but you refused to sacrifice your career for a man. call it paranoia; but you don’t want to find out the consequences of adding truth to rumours.

“you don’t trust yourself around me.” charles had you read, and he wanted you to know it.

you two could be, should be, able to be friends at least. the monegasque was unsure as to why he was so set on such thing; some of you, was better than none.

“don’t flatter yourself.” you mumbled, attempting to dismiss his words; he was right. hit the nail on the head actually, but you wouldn’t admit that.

“we can be friends.” charles huffed when he realised he was straying from his original intentions; he didn’t want to provoke or tempt you. just make it clear there can be a platonic relationship here. you shouldn’t be scared of that.

“we are.” you reminded, eyebrows raising as you looked up at him; finally holding eye contact with the driver for more than a few seconds.

“then stop avoiding me.” charles repeated; and he’d be ashamed of how desperate he sounded if he had any room to care. but you were more of a pressing issue.

if he hadn’t called you out on a whole range of fronts you would’ve commented on his desperation; the elevator ding beating you to it regardless as the doors slid open.

“fine. only because you care so much,” your reply was playful; attempting to sound amused and unbothered ━ maybe that would distract from the fact you were agreeing with him.

you only had another day of being around him, you could easily do a day with him. las vegas was an example of your strength and will.

but as his grin widened, dimples and all, green eyes still pouring into yours as he backed out of the elevator; you knew it was never going to be easy.

the sticks and stones they throw froze mid-air

everyone wants him, that was my crime

the wrong place at the right time

of course it wasn’t easy.

you’d kept true to your word, he’d called you out so you finally relented.

the only solace you found in allowing yourself to get closer to charles was the fact you were right.

every moment spent with him felt like a ticking time bomb. you were cracking, you knew it. deep down you knew it was only a matter of time until you shattered and he’d be there to pick up every piece.

at first you’d coincidentally ran into him at your favourite cafe in monaco. not the first time you’d seen him there; but the first time he signalled you to sit down.

it was harmless at first, a quick catch up. one you’d have with any other colleague you’d bump into in public during winter break.

but there was something about seeing him in such casual attire, hoodie and sweats portraying him in a new light you couldn’t help but take a liking too.

what should’ve been five minutes of small talk was two hours of conversation; two hours of mind numbing tension, pretending to not notice the way his eyes would linger on your lips every now and then. or acting oblivious to the way you laughed at every second word that left his lips.

he parted with an offer to go on a run together sometime, and you accepted with the assumption it would be an empty gesture. a plan that never gets put in place.

but then he texted you a few days later; and suddenly you were struggling to find excuses to reject the offer. struggling to find the want too.

a run wasn’t dangerous. you’d both be pre-occupied.

and you were, until you were standing there puffed; exhausted and puffed; and struggling to not grow further flustered of the sight of a sweaty charles.

muscles flexing against the tight shirt, hair messier than usual; cheeks slightly flushed.

inviting him up to your place for a drink wasn’t your intention, but your mouth was a step ahead of your brain.

uncharted territory had now been crossed. messages were swapped regularly, weekly runs together was almost routine. then hours of conversation at either your apartment or his.

if you hadn’t fallen for him before, you definitely had now. it was beyond physical attraction. and it was mutual.

it was the way you found yourself always ensuring you had the biscuits he’d practically raided the first time he was over, always in an unopened packet awaiting him.

the way he found himself buying the lime flavoured water you preferred to drink after exercising; knowing your odd quirk of not being keen on regular water.

the way he came over with your coffee order and a chocolate croissant from your shared favourite cafe when you bailed on your run, apologising to him because you’d become run down with a cold.

“you didn’t have to do that,” you’d sniffled, heart fluttering at the kind gesture.

“what else are friends for,” charles had practically cheesed.

you’d like to convince yourself he was still at a safe distance, it made it easier to ignore the fact this wouldn’t last forever.

the limbo state was not ideal to neither of you, but it was much better than doing what you felt was inevitable. avoiding him again.

except that would just be much harder this time. before it was a crush; now you were swoon. you counted down the days to see him. awaited his name to appear on your phone.

there’d been close calls; moments where you thought one of you would crack.

like the time you struggled to grab a glass out of his cupboard, tippy toes and all it was out of reach.

you felt him behind you before seeing him, hand finding your hip as his other arm simply reached over you to grab a glass; quick to turn on your feet you hadn’t expected him so close.

“thanks,” you had mumbled, clearly flustered as you looked up at him ━ trapped between his frame and the counter; eyes finding his lips immediately.

silence fell over the pair of you, awaiting one of you to make a move.

you were glad charles had cleared his throat and stepped aside, returning to a safe distance ━ because you didn’t think you’d be capable of such thing in that moment.

charles questioned how he managed to do such thing, each and every time you got close to him he doubted how long he could resist being selfish.

he’d failed to realise back in abu dhabi that he neither could trust himself around you. he’d put in so much effort to prove to you that friends was possible, so naive to the fact it may be worse than before.

while he loved your company, it was a cruel reminder that you had ruled out the possibility of this going further. any dreams or fantasies of more would always stay that way; dreams. not reality.

it frustrated him beyond belief, not that he showed it. the way you gazed up at him through your pretty eyes; as if you’d do anything he asked. the way you always leant towards him when you laughed; how easily he could make you laugh.

and he couldn’t do anything about it. because he wasn’t selfish, you feared the consequences of being with him so he would not push you to face them.

deep down however, the pair of you knew it could only be a matter of time.

yet it still stung how easily it could’ve been avoided.

you weren’t meant to go out tonight, it had been a last minute and spontaneous decision; pressured by your friends who insisted, claiming you missed too many girls nights as it is. that winter break was there time to make up for all you miss while away during the season.

you got kicked out of the first bar you found yourself in, all because one of your friends picked a fight with the bartender; but that didn’t bother you in the moment.

on to the next.

it took a whole eight minutes being at the club, one you had subtlety name dropped to get yourself and your friends into, to spot charles in the crowd.

your friends eyes had found him first; your own merely following theirs in curiosity, and you were grateful that all four of you were preoccupied looking at the driver so they would fail to realise your own longing.

“i have not seen him in ages,” your friend stella spoke first; clueless to the developed friendship between the pair of you. you hadn’t really told anyone, call it trust issues.

“we should go say hi,” stella continued; looking at you all with hopefulness; eyes having lit up and appearing incredibly eager.

you couldn’t think of a worse idea. alcohol and charles almost ruined you once; and that was a few months ago. you didn’t think you had that much self control left.

“we have our own driver right here,” your friend had joked, rejecting the idea as she nudged your arm; purely because she wanted a girls night. and you laughed at the stupidity, ready to play along for your own selfish interests.

“unfortunately y/n, you’re not one stella can sleep with again,” your other friend joked through a smirk, alcohol causing word vomit, because by the way stella quickly slapped her arm told you that information she didn’t want shared.

the revelation had your face falling flat, not able to hide such thing as you pursed your lips in thought.

“you and charles?” the words escaped your lips with too much interest but you couldn’t stop yourself. suddenly needing to know more.

stella had let out an exasperated sigh.

you were grateful to know your friend beside you who rejected the idea of speaking to him was as shocked as you.

“ages ago.” stella tried to downplay, waving the idea off. although then she peered over her shoulder to look at the driver again, an innocent smile spreading across her face.

you nodded slightly, trying to muster a fake smile. you couldn’t be mad; it wouldn’t be rational to be mad. even in the slightest.

“i’m gonna go talk to him.” stella announced, and you could only swallow intently as your friend whined about it being girls night, watching as stella promised she’d be back before weaving through the crowd.

you were staring, but you didn’t care.

left to watch as stella made her presence known. watch as charles face lit up at the familiar face, embrace her quickly and introduce her to those he was stood with.

you could tell he was slightly tipsy, the way he was swaying side to side; even with his arm now draped around stella’s shoulders.

the sight made you sick. jealousy was an ugly trait but you’d never embraced it like you were now.

jealous of the fact your friend didn’t have to worry in going after what she wanted. jealous that she could quite happily cling to charles without worrying who saw.

your mood had plummeted, there was no hiding it. your friends definitely noticing but not questioning as they too glanced over at stella to note her progress.

it wasn’t until charles’ eyes found yours across the room that you looked away.

not in shame, you didn’t care that he knew you were watching; but more so to not make it clear how annoyed you were from the sight alone.

charles tensed up the moment he saw you ━ he hadn’t known you were here. and now that he did, the company he was with suddenly wasn’t good enough.

he’d picked up on your cold stare though; the way you failed to offer him your usual sweet smile.

suddenly he felt guilty, quick to remind himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

the driver distracted himself momentarily, tuning back into the conversation that was going on around him. but his mind was now elsewhere. you were consuming his thoughts now.

intentions to keep his distance were thrown out the window when he noticed you in his peripheral; standing at the bar alone.

he shouldn’t approach you; but the idea of letting you sit there and think he would rather spend his time with the blonde on his arm than you didn’t sit well with him either.

so he found himself excusing himself, heading to the bar where you stood.

you’d grabbed your drink, and the moment you turned around to head back to your seat and continue your moping, you’d spotted charles headed straight towards you.

a creature of habit; avoid him was your first thought. so you attempted to pretend to not see him, a sudden sense of urgency as you headed back to the booth your two friends were still sat at.

charles picked up on such thing however, his own urgency increasing as he managed to get ahead of you; practically cutting you off.

you’d been so desperate in your attempts to avoid him and his eyes that you collided, your drink taking the brunt of the hit as it fell to the ground; pouring ice and liquid on the floor, thankfully missing the pair of you.

you were quick to glare up at him, made to watch as he put his hands up in innocence and let out a quick and not too meaningful ‘sorry.’

you didn’t want to speak to him. he was an easy target for your current anger, so stepping around him was easy; you’d go without your drink for now, wanting to return to the safety of your booth.

but charles didn’t think that was fair.

he’d grabbed your arm before you made it two steps away; your name falling from his lips almost in warning.

“you don’t get to be mad at me.” charles huffed, it wasn’t fair. you told him that friends was the only possibility, so you had no reason to be glaring daggers and avoiding him as if he’d done something wrong.

he was right, you knew he was right. you weren’t even mad at him. but you were mad; fed up with the constant deprival you had to put yourself through, at how much you cared about what people would say ━ that you couldn’t put you and him out of your shared misery.

but unfortunately you had nothing else to aim your anger at; it was just you and charles in this position, meaning he fell into your firing line.

“i think you care too much about what i think of you.” you tried to dismiss his comment; not wanting to admit he was right, calling out his constant efforts of chasing you.

you watched as his jaw tensed, the breath he let out and his eyes drifting aside as he tried to rationalise his thoughts before he said something he’d regret.

“i didn’t know you knew stella.” charles huffed; deciding on what could be a civil approach. he didn’t need to explain himself, but that would be easier than playing into your game and letting you try create a rift between the pair of you.

you wanted to throw the words back at his face; but you stopped yourself. neither he nor stella owed you any loyalty when it came to one another; definitely not back then, so you couldn’t use it against him.

“it doesn’t matter.” you tried to sound calm, remove yourself from the animosity you held. if you could just get away from him, go home, and pretend this never happened.

“it clearly does.” charles didn’t miss a beat; it would have been easier to blindly believe you but how was that possible when you were refusing to meet his eyes and running away from him.

you shook your head, not knowing what to say because you couldn’t disagree there. he was right; like usual, surprise, surprise. truths were harder to ignore when it was coming from his mouth.

“it shouldn’t.” you spoke simply, before turning on your heel and heading towards the bathroom now; anywhere to get away. the thread was getting thinner, you didn’t trust yourself around him.

he’d debated on following you for a couple seconds, knowing what he should do. return to his friends. to stella; there was no complications there.

but yet he found himself just a few steps behind you, refusing to let you get the last word. to let you fall back into your old habits of avoiding him.

a part of you knew he was following you, or maybe that’s what you wanted to believe. your want to get away from him was just a product of self preservation, not true desire.

so you weren’t surprised to hear your name once you were about to reach the bathroom. turning around to face him with a sigh. you should’ve pretended to not hear him.

“what are you doing?” you huffed; looking at him with lost eyes because you were running out of things to say or do, unsure where to go from here.

“what do you want?” charles question caught you off guard, alongside the fact he took maybe one or two steps too many when catching up to you ━ so close and you couldn’t find the strength to create any distance.

you pursed your lips, shaking your head ever so slightly.

the lack of an answer spoke for itself, you knew what you wanted. him. but admitting such thing would be dangerous.

“you know we can’t━” you started to say, needing to remind yourself that as tempting as he was right now it wasn’t possible.

he cut you off however. charles knew what you thought; what you presumed others would think.

“i don’t care about anyone else. what do you want?” charles repeated, speaking with such intent it would’ve been intimidating if your mind wasn’t a scramble of thoughts.

he was practically begging you to spell it out for him; to face the truth of the matter. if you could look him in the eye and tell him you were happy with what you both had right now, he’d walk away.

but you were never going to do that. you could only bend so far.

you finally snapped.

connecting your lips with his was the easiest option, and the moment you did it was as if nothing else mattered. relief washing over the pair of you, as if a giant weight was suddenly lifted.

there’d been the slightest amount of hesitant in the action, but that was forgotten immediately.

it was rushed and messy at first, months worth of tension bubbling to the surface as your hands both pawed at one another eagerly; grabbing whatever you could.

having your hands on him wasn’t something you’d take for granted; gripping his shirt; moving to his biceps before wrapping around his neck.

his intentions were similar to yours, his large hands sprawling amongst the sides of your waist ━ not bothered by the way it caused your dress to bunch ever so slightly. he tugged you closer too, as if he was scared you’d leave his grasp.

he managed to back you into the bathroom without disconnecting your lips; hand only leaving your waist to fiddle blindly with the lock.

the kiss was still messy, eager and heated; gasping into his mouth when your back suddenly hit the wall. charles body enclosing you immediately, your legs suddenly feeling week as his hips pressed forward against yours.

it was not surprising that it didn’t stop their, neither of you were stopping now that the ice had been broken.

the night concluding with your hands spread on the wall ahead of you as charles pounded you from behind, dress bunched around your waist and panties pulled aside.

“gotta be quiet mon amour,” he’d whispered into your ear after your moans continued to grow in volume ━ his hand then moving to your jaw, sliding two fingers past your lips to shut you up.

you would’ve died happily in that moment, moments away from the best orgasm of your life.

no matter what happened, you wouldn’t be regretting it.

and I break down, then he's pullin' me in

in a world of boys, he's a gentleman

you hadn’t seen charles since that night in monaco.

he’d left for maranello not too long after, then you spent the rest of break in america; the season approaching relatively quickly.

messages were swapped, but nothing more.

testing was hectic, you didn’t get to see him or spend time with him even if you wanted too.

you weren’t sure you wanted to however. you missed him, that had been mutually expressed over text. but both you and he were scared; unsure how to navigate what happens now.

because unfortunately the circumstances hadn’t changed, you’d just gotten a taste of one another.

by the time it was raceday at bahrain, all excitement for the start of the season had left your body.

thursday set the tone; all your hard work, months of avoidance and deprival ━ it suddenly meant nothing.

you first caught wind of such in the press conference, sat alongside max, lewis, lando, carlos and alex.

when you finally got asked a question, your breath got stuck in your throat.

“did you enjoy your winter break? a new trainer in charles it seems?”

the question was posed so innocently, you knew the tone. the cheery and amused light heartedness to mask the undertones; it was accusing. you knew it was; any girl would get it.

you knew photos were circulating of you and charles running around monaco, but that wasn’t an issue. there were photos of you and daniel out for lunch as well. ones of you and toto exchanging hello’s.

what a headline; you got along with people you worked with.

“uh yeah,” you laughed off; biting your tongue, like usual. you knew when to pick your battles. “i’m no good at padel so, stuck to running.” you hummed, left to watch as the journalist nodded almost unconvinced.

it was a sinking feeling; they knew, everyone knew. it’d somehow got out. that you’d slept together. paranoia; you had to remind yourself. they couldn’t know.

“is it difficult to have relations off track with competitors?” he was looking you dead in the eye as he posed another question to you, and it hit a nerve.

you shifted ever so slightly in your seat. you hadn’t faced these sort of questions since your rookie year, when journalists didn’t realise what they should and shouldn’t imply.

you had to hold back a scoff; biting down on the inside of your cheek.

“is that a question for all of us or just me?” you practically challenged, and the awkwardness that fell over the room only had the pit in your stomach growing.

it was as if they all knew something you didn’t.

that was all you were asked, all you could think about as you sat on the couch, itching to get out of this damn room.

but that was just the start.

entering the haas hospitality your gut feeling made sense when you were faced with the entirety of the press team awaiting you.

granted, the press team was only four people. but you only ever really dealt with your own press officer if it was without warning.

the whole conversation was a blur, you felt sick the moment it begun.

‘we need to have a meeting,’

‘there’s photos of you and leclerc,’

‘damming to your reputation. our reputation,’

‘unacceptable behaviour and a breach of contract,’

‘negotiating to not let mainstream media run with it,’

‘we’re opening our own private investigation.’

you were being spoken at, no room to reply, no ounce of sympathy. you could feel the disgust as they spoke. as if you’d actually done something wrong.

“investigation?” you repeated in confusion, bewildered as you glanced between the lot of them.

you didn’t know what to say. or do.

deny? beg them to cover it up? apologise?

you felt like that 13 year old girl again, that anything you said wouldn’t matter. keeping your mouth shut as they broke out in chatter again.

short. blunt. your own press officer not even sticking around as they the dispersed, even mentioning that gene would probably be calling later.

you felt like you were going to throw up the moment you got into the privacy of your drivers room, it only taking a few seconds to find the photos flooding your timeline.

monaco. it was undeniable. it was definitely him, definitely you, kissing.

you held back your tears, determined to not let the comments ruin you. your press teams words lingering, but you pushed them back.

the day dragged, you were on edge; one wrong move and an on pour of tears would arise to the surface. just needed to wait till you were in the privacy of your hotel room.

these people would not see you cry.

you hadn’t expected the cold shoulder from your own team. but it was your manager that was the tip of the iceberg.

you hadn’t seen him all day, a close friend you’d consider him, he’d been with you since f3.

“where have you been?” you breathed as you climbed into the car, more than relieved to be leaving the track. and hopefully every conversation that was had.

“cleaning your mess.” he’d muttered in annoyance, and you couldn’t help but shake your head as your jaw clenched.

“not you too,” it was an attempt of a joke, head resting against the window. “don’t know why people are acting like i shared the teams 3 year plan with the enemy,” you huffed.

but you were only met with silence, causing your eyes to glance to your manager who was focused on his laptop in his lap.

“i mean it jason. the way i was treated today was━” you began to speak up at his silence, anger was easier than the self pity.

“what did you expect?” his question was venomous, shutting you up quickly as you stared at him with a slack jaw. it took a few moments to process, how he was on side with them.

or more importantly, not on your side. the guy who you pay to be on your side.

“for my personal life to remain personal.” you spoke like it was obvious.

you had feared this, yes, but that didn’t mean it was right. maybe you held onto hope your lack of faith in the world was misplaced. but everyone was proving you right.

he shook his head simply, so disappointingly you had to laugh, eyes gazing back out the window as you rapidly approached the hotel.

“i thought you didn’t want to be known for this.” his comment was a throw away one, but it cut you deep. his insinuation one he knew would sting, so you didn’t hide the fact it did.

“known for what?” you spoke through gritted teeth; if he wanted to insult you he better not half ass it.

there was moment of silence, hesitance; but not long enough.

“sleeping around.” he shrugged, still typing away on his computer. “great way to halt contract talks. i mean come on y/n,” he groaned.

you weren’t sure if he was right, you’d like to think your talent would over shine paddock gossip. but if he was right, the problem should lie with teams misogyny. not your sex life.

you highly doubt ferarri will hesitate resigning charles because of the matter.

you didn’t say another word, not trusting your voice; it was too much. felt like you were being attacked from every angle. ambushed even.

you’d slammed the door the moment you got out the car, urgently getting inside the hotel; managing to find the elevator through blurry eyes, tears threatening to spill.

almost there.

the elevator ride was testing, the silence made your short breaths and sniffles hard to ignore as you tiptoed on the line of breaking.

the final straw however, was charles himself leaving his hotel room as you navigated your way to yours.

your name had never sounded so delicate coming from his lips, as if he knew that you were fragile, sympathetic eyes as he took a few steps towards you.

“don’t━” you breathed out, voice breaking on you before you could say his name. your hand raising to tell him to stay where he was.

the first tear fell, silently.

“i’m so sorry,” he breathed out; cautiously stepping forwards despite your action. it broke him, the sight of you. he’d never seen you so upset.

overjoyed, pissed off, ecstatic, confused, riled up; he’d seen it all. but never had he seen you cry.

“you’re the last person i want to see right now.” you managed to get out.

lie.

complete lie, but unfortunately once more he was an easy target. the face of today’s events and the reason for fractures in practically every professional relationship you’d formed over the years.

charles didn’t take your words to heart, watching as you fumbled to find your room key; your shaky hands had him frowning, behind you now as he grabbed your arm when you took a step inside.

“please,” charles sighed; desperate for you to let him help. let him comfort you. he felt responsible, but it wasn’t guilt that was pushing him towards you.

just the need to ensure you were okay.

he’d barely received a slap on the wrist. told by his press team to ‘be more careful next time.’ and reminded issues would arise if talks of strategy and racing came to light.

that was that. his day went on. he almost got ahead of himself, optimistic the day could end with him showing up at your door to tell you that you never had anything to worry about.

but word spread quickly in the paddock, and charles caught onto the double standards incredibly quickly with how you were being spoken about in comparison to him.

you didn’t trust your voice once more, simply shaking your head ‘no’ as you got inside, attempting to shake his grasp.

he didn’t let you however, which was almost a relief.

the door shut behind the pair of you, charles tugging you towards his chest immediately.

you had no more strength, no fight left; simply letting him do so as the tears poured.

your head met his chest, arms clinging to his shirt as his arms went around you; holding you close as he mumbled encouraging words.

he felt like a safe place, allowing you to be weak and vulnerable with no fear for the first time in a long time.

quiet sobs and sniffles escaped you as you shook in his hold. it wasn’t just a days worth of torment, no, but all the other shit you put up with from the start of your career.

charles wasn’t sure what to say, just that it’d be okay. let it out. i’ve got you.

his hand was running through your hair delicately, and you somehow register the multiple kisses he pressed to the top of your head; such subtle actions that managed to slow your heart rate.

“i’m so sorry,” charles words were whispered, it was what brought you out of your own head; teary eyed peering up at him as you shook your head.

this wasn’t his fault.

“not your fault,” you spoke through a deep breath, starting to gain your composure. still timid, but you’d gotten the tears out.

“it’s not yours either.” charles spoke in certainty, sounding pissed off. because he was. and it made your stomach flip.

it was the bare minimum, but hearing someone be in your corner was exactly what you needed. the fact it was charles was just a bonus.

“i mean it’s more my fault than yours. i didn’t leave you alone, putain, i am sorry,” he began to ramble. the guilt was eating him alive. you’d tried to avoid this ━ he couldn’t help but feel as if he threw you into the lions den.

you disagreed however. deep down, this all felt inevitable. like it was a matter of when, not if. you were so scared of this happening because apart of you knew there was no avoiding it.

“i don’t regret it.” you told him in certainty, hand moving to cup his cheek; offering a sad smile. “it’s just━ not fair.” you mumbled.

his smile mirrored yours, lacking the usual brightness it held as thumb lifted to your cheeks; brushing away the tears staining your skin.

“it’s gonna be okay. i’ll fix this.” charles promised, but it wasn’t a promise he could keep. you knew that, your head tilting aside as you sighed.

his intentions were pure, held your best interest at heart.

“m’ just gonna have to let it blow over.” you told him, taking a sharp inhale. that didn’t answer the question that lingered between the pair of you.

what this was. what you two were.

he nodded ever so slightly, frustration growing at the fact he couldn’t fix it himself. he wanted to help. to rid you both of the outside noise and judgmental opinions.

“but i think━” you’d cut yourself off, you didn’t want to say it.

he knew however, by the way your grip had tightened on his shirt. the way your eyes held sympathy and sorrow. he knew what you were going to say.

“i know,” charles sighed; nodding in reassurance.

this needed to stop. whatever this was, it couldn’t go further. not for now at least; charles knew that.

rumours won’t die down if there is still truth to them.

your bottom lip quivered slightly at the sight of the sad smile he showed you; the way he was so willing to comply.

you hated the fact you both had to suffer, all for what?

“i’ll stay away, i promise,” charles hummed; biting down on the inside of his cheek as he ran his fingers through your hair once more.

you still had no words, because it was the last thing you wanted. yet somehow was what you needed.

you’d like to say to hell with it, to tell him you didn’t care. that you could be together, and figure out the latter.

but today had been hell; you weren’t sure it was something you could get used too.

“thank you,” you whispered out; charles only response was pulling you close once more, knowing when he let you go, it would be for good.

he had to let you go.

but if I'm all dressed up, they might as well be looking at us

if they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once

charles stayed true to his word.

it was obvious, the way you two steered clear of each other.

talk of you and him died down, the paddock found something else to focus on within a couple weeks; and it was just another story for the history books that would be brought up every now and then.

their was awkwardness in the team however.

their investigation closed with no findings, something you laughed at.

a motivator; to get the fuck out of there.

it paid off, comfortably beating your teammate. dragging the car into the points most weeks.

talks with mercedes was going well, progressing nicely ━ you wanted to emphasise to your manager that charles hadn’t been mentioned once from them either.

but you weren’t going to dwell on the past.

not audibly at least.

charles was a sacrifice you hated making, and it was mutual.

it was cruel, the way you were too scared to meet his eye if cameras were around. scared one wrong move and you’d be jumped on by prying eyes and gossipers.

charles too shared your fear; he didn’t want to put you in a compromising position. and while it was physically painful to cut you off completely, he managed.

none was easier than some, it seemed.

it was laughable, how the pair of you actually believed the avoidance would stick this time. that it would actually work.

couldn’t even make it to summer break, a few months apart was bound to be all you could endure.

monaco, a race you’ll never forget.

your signing with mercedes was announced on the thursday; a milestone in your career, a highlight.

you were ecstatic, nay-sayers and doubters did little to dull your mood ━ nothing would ruin such an achievement.

but it motivated you.

you heard it all before, when you signed with haas. how it was a PR move, not on merit. for the money you would bring in. the commercial value.

it was the same thing, and the need to prove people wrong was always a blessing when you got in the car.

it’d been a wet qualifying, playing into your favour. putting the car into p3 meant everything would’ve had fallen into place. and it did.

you were overjoyed, the smile had not been wiped off your face. you were proving that contract was yours based off your talent.

you went on to hold onto p3 in the race and secure a podium, you were high off adrenaline and excitement the moment you got out of the car.

you’d handled the pressure, failed to make a mistake; blessed to have had your best qualifying at the hardest place to overtake.

the other headline of the weekend?

charles had finally won his home race.

he wasn’t on your mind, not as you shared the podium. or as you faced the media together afterwards.

you cared deeply for charles, but this was your childhood dream. years worth of hard-work had finally paid off. being near him wasn’t hard, for once, because you had way too many things to currently be happy about.

it was civi and casual, friendly; in the cool down room, on the podium; in the interview.

it wasn’t until later that night, on a random super-yacht, surrounded by drunken socialites and f1 personalities that temptation reached you once more.

you’d barely had a drink, being pulled in every way and direction; talking to many that you didn’t have time to sip the half full glass in your hand.

charles knew this; he’d been watching you all night.

his dream had come true, winning in monaco; in front of his home fans.

call him greedy for wanting more as he stood on the yacht, surrounded by his friends as his eyes settled on you.

he couldn’t help but think of the only way to make this night perfect; you.

the praise and congratulations from everyone else was nice, but he was dying to hear it from you.

to congratulate you as well. on your podium. on your contract.

he thought he was over it, the unfairness of it all. but this was a new challenge.

watching as you stood there, hugging everyone. beaming and laughing, as you should.

would it be so wrong for him to congratulate you as well? to steal a couple minutes of your time? he’d promised to stay away, but this had to be an exception.

right?

so charles went against his word, weaving through the crowd the moment you caught a break in conversations.

uncharacteristically dismissing those who tried to speak to him as he set on his way towards you, nothing would stop him.

“hey,” charles made his presence known; capturing your attention; and the way your eyes lit up and lips curved upwards, he wanted to kill whoever had deprived him of such sight for however many months.

“hi!” you couldn’t help but sound surprised, pleasantly surprised.

you’d been wanting to talk to him; which wasn’t anything new. needing to talk to him however, just unsure how to navigate such thing.

“congratulations. sure you’ve heard it all, but you deserve this.” charles words were genuine; smiling down at you proudly, and while you had heard it all the past couple hours; it meant more coming from him. “the contract as well. huge news,” he added.

your nose scrunched up slightly, grinning ━ pure happiness present because you really were oh so happy.

“thank you,” you smiled; nodding appreciatively. “i should say the same to you. i know how much this win means to you,” you spoke; and charles could only smile at the way you sounded so sincere.

“thank you,” his turn to offer thanks, a silence falling over the pair of you.

that was all you should say, all you were sure was excusable.

it was clear, the way you both had so much on the tip of your tongue; too scared to let it out. neither wanting to be the one to crack. to undone all the hard work.

charles so desperately wanted to rant his heart out, remind both you and himself that the past few months had been undeserved torture. and he was convinced he was going to for a moment.

but he couldn’t. he wouldn’t be selfish with you.

“well i’ll see you━” charles had cleared his throat, ready to do the right thing. to walk away, like he promised he would.

but you cut him off. scared if you didn’t tell him now, you never would.

“wait.” you interrupted, pursing your lips; and he was happy to shut up. he didn’t need any convincing to stay put.

“i uh, with my mercedes contract…” you trailed off; biting your lip. “i made it clear, what expectations would be of me. on and off track, obviously. like anyone would,” you rambled slightly; nervously even.

charles wasn’t sure he’d ever seen you nervous.

you were nervous because of what you were implying.

you’d made it clear you didn’t want to be held to any individual expectations off track, that your relations with others wouldn’t concern the team if it didn’t jeopardise the team.

you were grateful, how understanding mercedes were. a breath of fresh air really. so much you’d basically outright told them that you didn’t want you and charles to be an issue, if anything were to arise between the pair of you.

you’d figured if you had a team that backed you, handling outside noise and assumptions would be made a lot easier.

“me and you, it wouldn’t be an issue.” you summed up; practically spitting it out. it felt weird, suddenly lacking confidence as you referenced a ‘you and him.’ worried that ship had sailed.

you watched as his eyebrows raised, lips parting in surprise.

he hadn’t expected you to say such thing, the one thing he’d dreamt of you saying one too many times.

“if that uh, you know. ever happens, i don’t know,” you added on; feeling the need to back pedal, not wanting to come off headstrong. it was the reason for your hesitance. you and charles had never discussed what you were, because it never seemed possible.

charles wasn’t sure what to say. his first instinct was to kiss you; because it seemed as if this was the best night of his life, with all his hopes and dreams coming true.

but his care for you trumped all.

“people will still talk,” he couldn’t help but remind softly. not to argue against you, but to ensure you knew exactly what you were implying. he knew the rush you were feeling, first podium. fresh off multiple highs, he didn’t want you to come crashing down tomorrow and regret these words tonight.

he didn’t know you’d already assessed all your options, weighed up the two cons. your mind had been made up, you just needed to bite the bullet.

you’d already been through it, called every name in the book. may as well make it all for something.

“let them.” you breathed out, a shy smile following suit, mischievous almost, quoting him from that night in vegas. you’d said it with confidence, such conviction he knew you meant it.

his smile was bright, practically beaming at you as he nodded. unsure what to do next, but he didn’t care. he liked the way things were looking.

he hadn’t expected you to kiss him, in the middle of the crowded floor, but god he wasn’t complaining ━ hands finding the small of your back as yours wrapped around his neck.

you’d pulled away shortly afterwards, not creating any distance as your foreheads touched.

“if you still want this of course,” you spoke; just above a whisper, realising you hadn’t really let him confirm he still wanted this.

he’d laughed, at the idea alone he didn’t. shaking his head at the thought as he brought his hand up to cup your face.

“all i could think about tonight, was that the only thing that would make today truely perfect, would be sharing it with you.” charles confessed; taking in the way you lit up at his words, watching as any last doubts or fears vanished from your frame.

you were relaxed, happy and carefree; not one bit of energy spent on anyone around you. who saw, who cared; it meant nothing to you.

you giggled as you pressed your lips to his again, passionately this time; charles leaning over you as he held your body close to his, smiling against your pink lips.

it felt incredibly cliche, as if you were the only two people on the yacht in the moment.

he’d murmured something about getting out of here only moments later, you being quick to agree.

patience was something you’d both demonstrated incredibly well over the last year; safe to say you both had none left to spare.

navigating the crowd hand in hand almost felt like a rush, relieving to not care as you followed him off the yacht; giddy like teenagers as you climbed into the back of a car.

he’d barely gotten his address out before you were on him again, lips pressed against his as you gripped his shirt.

charles hand tangled in your hair, revelling in the way your lips felt against his. he’d spent many nights recounting your night together; attempting to cling to the feeling and pleasure it brought. this was ten times better than what his imagination could produce.

the only time you kept your hands off him was the short walk from the car to the elevator of his apartment complex, the moment the doors slid shut you found yourself pressed against the wall ━ his hands gripping your hips and lips attacking your neck.

you became breathless quickly, satisfied hums escaping you; head tilting back to give him as much access as he wanted.

“have i ever told you how beautiful you are mon ange,” charles sighed against your skin; only lifting his head when he heard the doors ring open.

you smiled at him stupidly, taking in the sight. his pretty green eyes, slightly swollen lips and tussled hair. more beautiful than anything you’d ever seen before.

“come on,” you mused with a blush, urging him to head to his room; in quick pursuit.

you’d barley gotten your heels off once inside when charles was snaking his hands under your thighs, hoisting you up as your legs wrapped around his waist.

it didn’t feel really; finally able to have you like this.

“gonna make you feel so good,” charles murmured against your lips as he navigated his way through the apartment, hands squeezing your ass which granted a gasp from you. “deserve so much more than a quickie in the bathroom,” he commented.

while your first time together was more than satisfying, it was rushed. muffled moans and chasing release desperately with fear the moment could’ve been ruined in any moment.

tonight you were all his. no need to keep you quiet, no limit to the positions he could put you in.

he sat at the end of his bed; you not taking long to get comfortable in his lap as your lips moved roughly against his; hips grinding as you did so.

“you won,” you breathed out as you shifted your attention up his jaw, teeth catching his ear momentarily as you kissed at the skin of his neck. “let me make you feel good,” you whispered; charles head tilting back as he audibly groaned. “you deserve it,”

charles always loved praise, his ego thrived on it. but god, hearing it from you? his pants were feeling way too tight.

he couldn’t say no to you, not that’d he’d ever want too.

you didn’t give him any time to reply regardless, climbing off his lap and standing between his legs momentarily, hands holding onto his knees as you pressed one lingering kiss to his lips.

sinking to your knees, you were incredibly eager. a scenario you’d play out too many times as your hands got to work in freeing his cock.

charles lips parted as he rested back on his hands, head tilted downwards as he watched you intently ━ biting down on the inside of his cheek at the sight alone.

his breaths only got heavier as you spat in your hand and jacked him off a couple times, hissing as your thumb rolled over his tip.

the sight was better than you could imagine, as you took him in your mouth and watched his head fall back. his clenched jaw, neck muscles and arms flexing as he groaned.

it had your thighs clenching together, not wasting time in bobbing your head; taking as much of him as you could; hitting the back of your throat each time but it did little to deter you.

“putain,” charles grunted under his breath ━ forcing himself to tilt his head back down to watch you work, hand gathering your hair in a makeshift pony tail. and the way his lips curved into a smirk when your eyes met his had your thighs clenching once more.

“there you go pretty girl, taking me so well,” charles huffed ━ noting the way you gagged around him every now and then, yet showed no signs of slowing down. “mouth is fucking heaven,”

his praise only encouraged you further, doe eyes staring up at him through your lashes; tears welling in your eyes.

your hand was holding his thigh for support, watchinf as he busied himself momentarily by ridding himself of his shirt ━ revealing his toned torso flexing with each sharp breath he took.

“pull your dress down,” his words were direct, a clear demand and with him staring down at you like he was ready to ruin you, you didn’t need to be told twice. tugging your dress down to free your breasts.

his admiring eyes raked your body shamelessly, pleasure only increasing from the sight. you were fucking perfect, and he couldn’t believe this was real.

it was as if you caught on to the moment, reading him perfectly as your efforts picked up ━ keen to make him cum.

and by the way he was starting to tug on your hair, you knew he was close.

he came in your mouth moments later with little warning, and you were practically squirming in your place as you licked him clean.

“you’re perfect,” charles breathed after catching his breath, which happened incredibly quickly; signalling you to climb back into his lap.

you giggled as you did so, grinning as you pressed your lips to his once more; straddling him with ease as your hands spread across his toned chest ━ happy to touch him now that he was back in reach.

his hand moved up your leg, pushing your panties aside and cupping your cunt with little warning; causing you to moan into his mouth.

“you’re fucking soaked,” charles spoke, pulling back to watch your face contort in pleasure; watch as you became putty in his hold. “barely touched you yet baby,” he cooed ━ you couldn’t help but whine, hips bucking against his hand as he circled your clit.

he took in every feature on your pretty face, able to live in the moment and not be rushed like last time. make you feel everything he wanted you too.

“who would’ve guessed you were such a slut,” charles mused; practically toying with you. he couldn’t help himself, not when you looked so pretty panting and whimpering in his lap.

“for you.” you whimpered, hand gripping his bicep tightly as your hips moved against his hand; yearning for more.

he grinned widely at that, rewarding your words as a finger pushed past your folds unexpectedly.

“all for me.” charles hummed in agreement, words still slightly breathless himself as his other hand moved to cup the side of your face, making avoiding his eyes impossible. “all mine.”

the statement had your stomach flipping, words you could used to. something you’d know a long time, but hearing it out loud was so refreshing.

you were his. he was yours.

“please charles,” you whined out impatiently, his toying with your cunt felt good; but you need more, your thighs a painted mess along with his hand by now.

your plea had him hardening again, words sounding so alluring coming from your lips.

“what do you want mon amour?” charles spoke through a breath, eyes gazing over you as if you were the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. because you were. “tell me, i’ll give it to you,” he promised; thumb grazing your cheek; such a delicate action that didn’t correlate with his thumb teasing your clit expertly.

you whimpered again, cheeks a tint of pink as your eyes fluttered shut momentarily, but they found charles gaze once more.

“all of you,” you spoke. “wanna feel you,” you sighed; his cock was pressing against your inner thigh ━ not helping with the urge to feel him inside you.

his lips curved upwards, pleased with your answer; and unable to deny himself any longer either. you’d both been through enough torture, he wouldn’t be delaying this any longer.

“want me to fuck you yeah?” charles paraphrased for you, hand leaving your cunt to find your waist; lifting you off his lap with ease and laying you beside him.

he was hovering over you within seconds, leaving you to nod eagerly below him. your hands found the hem of your dress, tugging it up and over your head as if that would help entice him.

but he didn’t need any help; he doesn’t think he’d last another second without being inside you.

he slid inside you without another word, your gasps intertwining as your own head fell back against his pillow; eyes fluttering shut at the stretch.

he gave you a moment to adjust, his head falling into the crook of your neck; light kisses peppered on your skin, a contrast to the way he was about to fuck you.

your hands tugging on his hair told him you wanted more; thrusting into you slowly and deeply at first, your mouth fell agape at the angle it hit ━ moans beginning to fall from your lips.

“charles, fuck,” you mumbled ━ fingers moving down his back, sure to leave marks as he gradually picked up the pace.

his thrusts got quicker, but not softer; fucking you into the mattress, all you could do was whimper and moan ━ eyes rolling back at the pleasuring sensation.

“so perfect for me,” charles grunted; the way you were squeezing him was better than he remembered, keeping his focus on your own pleasure because if not, he’d probably cum within moments.

“oh my god,” you all but practically squealed when he moved your leg over his shoulder, feeling as if he was splitting you open; you bit down on your lip to try shut up the now constant sounds.

charles wasn’t having a bar of it however.

“ah, ah,” charles breathed; hand moving to tap your cheek. “wanna hear you gorgeous girl. every fucking sound,” charles told you; eyes pouring into yours which made it clear he wasn’t joking.

you nodded weakly, on cue charles delivering a harsher thrust that had you choking out a moan once more.

it didn’t take long, for you to get brought to the edge; stomach growing tight as your eyes rolled back once more. cumming without warning, unable to process the pleasure you were feeling.

a moment of weakness for charles, watching as you shook beneath him and screamed his name; squeezing him suddenly, he almost came too. he didn’t though thankfully, because his focus was still you.

you weren’t prepared for him to not relent, instead feeling his hand snake between your bodies and find your clit, eyes flying open.

“o-oh,” you gasped, the onslaught of pleasure hard to cope with as your hands gripped onto his back tightly, nails digging into his skin as he smirked down at you.

“take it baby,” charles grunted; eyebrows raising momentarily. “too much?” his question was teasing, and he couldn’t help the breathy chuckle when you shook your head; scared he’d stop. you didn’t want him to stop.

you weren’t sure you could take it, but you were going to try. you’d do anything for him when he was touching you like this.

“so good,” you moaned; tears welling in your eyes quickly from the overstimulation, body jolting with every thrust which hadn’t relented.

his stamina impressive, having not slowed down nor gotten sloppy as he pounded into you.

you were struggling to keep your eyes open now, lost in the pleasure. but charles wanted to watch you, and wanted you to watch him as you pushed you over the edge once more.

“look at me baby,” charles grunted; pinching your clit lightly which had your eyes flying open, meeting his. “gonna watch me as you cum again yeah?” charles told you, his own breaths heavier now as he struggled to not let himself revel in the feeling of you.

you nodded, again, like a broken record; all your effort focused on watching him as your face contorted in pleasure. maybe even a tear or two fell, the familiar feeling washing over you again suddenly as he delivered another harsh thrust. and another. and suddenly it was as if he found new energy somewhere.

you all but screamed his name as you came again suddenly, coming undone on his cock. he was close behind, unable to resist with the way your walls squeezed him again.

your heavy breaths filled the room as charles helped you both ride out your highs, before sliding out of you, he remained above you regardless.

he was looking at you in awe, hand pushing some of your hair away that had gotten stuck to your forehead, earning a lazy smile from you in return.

“i could get used to that,” your words broke the silence; eyes flickering to his lips which gave charles the hint to place a kiss on your lips, a delicate one unlike those shared earlier.

he’d chuckled at your words afterwards, humming in agreement as his hand ran up and down your side comfortingly.

“me too,” charles agreed with a grin; pressing yet another kiss to your lips, a longer one this time; passionate and slow. enjoying the moment. the peace of it all.

when you pulled away moments later, you practically beamed as you urged him off of you; moving to straddle him instead.

you had a lot of time to make up for.

━━━━━

a/n: oh she’s bACK BACK CHARLES FIC YAY

hope u liked, still rusty lol i don’t rlly like the smut but i did enjoy writing the angst hehe

unedited sorry i’ll get to that later like usual oOps

as always feedback is always greatly encouraged and appreciated, means the world to me so pls share ur thoughts 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

luv u all !!!!!!!

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

yeah F1 is cool but imagine a driver gets shunted and he bodily rips off his rear wing (Which fucking says "Race Against CRIME") as he's being swarmed by officials

And he just yeets it at the guy who shunted him

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

FML i don't know if i've ever had a post that aged so badly so quickly 💀💀💀

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

The driver swap was necessary and would’ve worked if it was done earlier but there was no point in doing it delayed, when yuki at first refused. It compromised both Daniel and yuki’s last laps.

Daniel had more battery and the soft tyres were coping a lot better than the hards which is what yuki was on. Daniel was told a couple of times to let yuki past last year which he did without a word. It’s how the sport works.

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

omg taylors boyfriend vs daniels boyfriend only one 1989 princess gets to be happy today

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

so... if your requests are open I had this stupid idea for Lando where his ex girlfriend is in a stream/live and also watching the race. Lando gets podium. and she kind of gets really happy congratulating him and the Internet start talking about it until Lando sees it, they maybe are still in love? (sorry for any misspelling, I'm portuguese)

this took so long to write that the draft said "mexico GP" and then I changed it to vegas lolll

warnings: mentions of Lando's crash, reader throws up once

“I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional over some Sims,” you admitted to the stream that was laughing at the tears building in your eyes. “I just really wanted them to get together. Even if I had to cheat to get here.”

Your eyes flickered to the wall of comments on the side of your screen and you grinned at the engagement. It was amazing seeing your little channel bloom and grow into the chaotic space you harbored. People loved to watch you just sit and play Sims, Animal Crossing, and other cozy games. It seemed unreal.

A comment caught your eye and you raised your brows in surprise. “Am I watching the Vegas GP? Uhh, I wasn’t planning on it but I can certainly turn it on. One second.”

Thanks to this streaming career, you were able to afford a pretty nice setup with multiple monitors. With Sims paused on your left screen, you pulled up the F1 website. Oh, you were still logged in.

Three months ago, the last vestiges of a relationship between you and Lando Norris dissolved with a screaming match. Two years of feeling as though he was the sun and stars fell apart from a distance that just seemed to stretch farther apart each weekend he was gone. When he was gone for a triple header, the little voices in your head gained volume. Over and over they reminded you that your failure to support him, your own job be damned, was just proof that you weren’t enough for a man like him. 

You don’t even remember what the argument was about. You don’t even remember the last words. You just remember him walking out, the door slamming shut behind him, and you blocking his number and social media. Occasionally, Max would text you to check up on you and you figured it was more out of a way to ensure that you weren’t going to expose any of Lando’s dirty little secrets to the world. He didn’t need to worry. You wouldn’t tell a soul about the parts Lando hid from the world.

Because despite your best efforts, you still loved him.

This was just better for him. Easier.

“Oh, perfect timing,” you commented as the screen loaded on your monitor. “Lights out and away we go, folks. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been paying much attention to the races recently. I am glad to see Danny back on the grid. He’s always been a really great guy and loves racing so much. He actually texted me a hilarious TikTok a few nights ago.”

You resumed playing Sims but kept glancing over at the race. Quite a few of your fans were also F1 fans thanks to the visibility you received as Lando’s girlfriend. God, the word stung your tongue in an acidic reminder of what you once were.

“I’m also really excited to see Oscar doing well. He’s a sweet kid and it’s great seeing him succeed in something he loves. I know that Lan- I know that McLaren has been doing really well this half of the season. Of course no one is doing it like Red Bull right now, but-”

One McLaren flew past the camera with a second close on its heels and then…oh god, and then the second one started spinning out. Sparks erupted from the undercarriage as the wheels uselessly turned against the pavement. The car spun a few times before slamming into the boundaries.

“Oh my god,” you whispered. Unbidden tears sprang to your eyes but you didn’t care to wipe them away. Your gaze was fixed firmly on the stream and you fumbled with your mouse until Lando’s onboard appeared on your screen. Despite the faint ringing in your ears, you heard his engineer inquire about his status.

A grunt and a groan of pain came from Lando’s radio. You clasped your hands in front of your face and sent a silent prayer up to literally any deity that took their time to listen to you. This was your worst nightmare. You had been there in Belgium. Your relationship was new and fresh. 

You remember the look of horror that passed across faces in the McLaren garage and you were sure your face mirrored theirs now.

“Yeah, all good.”

Three months since you had heard his voice in anything other than videos that haunted your memories. Three months since you had heard him begging you to explain why you were icing him out. Three months since he had tossed the key to your apartment on the kitchen counter and walked out.

Three months that felt like a lifetime.

“Oh my god,” you exhaled in a shaky breath. “He’s okay. Okay. He’s okay. He’ll be okay.”

You ignored the way that the chat was full of people chattering and typing away. You ignored the fact that you had never paused your Sims game and a fire was now running rampant on the lot. You ignored everything but the footage of the stewards helping him out of his car.

A few tears coursed down your cheek with their hot, sticky reminder of your feelings for this man. Was he truly okay? Or was he just saying that to not worry the others? He could be a self-sacrificing idiot sometimes. Did McLaren know that? Did Jon remember that Lando could be hard on himself and isolated when he felt guilty for poor race performance? Did Max remember that he liked a cup of tea after a race, the pretentious British asshole he was and pretended not to be?

Shame flooded over you like an ice cold wave crashing up the beach. You cleared your throat and focused back on the stream.

“Sorry folks, but I’m going to cut this one a bit short,” you said. Your voice cracked slightly with the thickness of fear and tears crowding your throat. “I…I hope you all understand. Okay, goodbye.”

You couldn’t think of anything else to say. You could hardly breathe. You simply watched the stream until it cut out. The dark screen felt like an endless void taunting you and reminding you that it wasn’t your place to worry about him anymore. Lando wasn’t your Lando anymore.

You saved your Sims game, fire be damned, and turned off your computers for the night. Quietly, as if your steps would disturb the tentative calm that had settled over you, you padded into the bedroom and slid into the left side of the bed. He always slept on the right.

Three months and you still hadn’t moved from the left side.

Images of fiery crashes and upturned wheels haunted your memory. Rain slicked tracks and the crunch of metal assaulted your ears. A shuddering sob wracked your body and you curled in closer on your side. You got up to throw up the remnants of your breakfast, a mess of bile and snot and heartbreak.

As you brushed your teeth, you glanced at your phone for the first time in an hour. Your notifications were bursting thanks to the fact that your stream had made it to F1 Twitter. Swiping out of the app, you opened messages and froze at the sight of two new messages.

One (1) unread message from Max Fewtrell: He’s fine. Took a bit of a hit but the hospital has cleared him. He has one more race and then he can have a proper rest.

One (1) unread message from Jon Malvern: Hey, it’s Lando. I’m fine. Truly. I was hoping we could talk once the season was over. I think we both have things we need to say.

You inhaled sharply, those voices still crowding against your brain. But the image of his mangled car pressed against your eyes and you considered what living would feel like without Lando forever. It felt fucking unbearable.

Opening your contacts, you went to your blocked numbers list and found his name.One (1) message delivered to Lando Norris: I’m so glad you’re okay. Let me know when you’re back after Abu Dhabi. I’d like to have that chat.

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

—if walls could talk

some things are meant to be secret (we'd fall from grace) pairing: charles leclerc x female reader warnings: 18+ minors dni. loadsss of google translated french. language, friends talking about sex, nsfw warnings under the cut :) love, mackie... 6.3k words! sometimes the only person who can help you out is a good friend. happy almost thanksgiving to all my american followers :) thankful for each and every one of you. mwah mwah mwah.

18+ because: fingering, oral sex (fem receiving), unprotected sex, aftercare, mentions of hookups/faking it

You’re the last one to walk through the door of Charles’ apartment. Everyone else has been long comfortable, leaving imprints on the comfortable couch, footprints in the freshly-vacuumed rug, empty wine bottles and half-empty glasses on the coffee table. 

There’s always something so cold about his apartment—always empty, always dusty, filled with the remnants of his boyhood and the promise of his adult life. It has all the makings of a home, but it still feels like a house—like a museum instead of a secondhand shop. Always, except on days like tonight, when it’s filled with warm laughter and the smell of half a dozen different meals and the quiet hum of his favorite playlist. On days like today, it feels like a home. 

Nobody in the living room hears you open the door or slip off your shoes—they’re too preoccupied in their busy, lively conversation about a road closure on the way to the airport in Nice that adds twenty minutes on to the drive. You move in the opposite direction, towards the kitchen, to set your crowd offering—blue cheese stuffed shrimp—on the counter and get a wine glass from the cabinet to fill. He’s in the kitchen when you turn the corner, carefully examining the platter of Italian meatballs he’s got cooking in the oven. 

Charles looks up as soon as you set the heavy plate down on the counter. “Hé!” Hey, he greets, closing the oven door and pulling off his blue mittens to properly kiss both of your cheeks, a single arm wrapping around your middle to pull you into a quick hug. “Quand es-tu arrivé?” When did you get here?

“Tout à l'heure,” Just now, you reply, roll up the sleeves of your shirt because his kitchen is so small, and heats up so quickly when the oven is on. “Désolé, je suis en tard,” Sorry I’m late.

“T'es pas en tard,” You’re not late, he interjects, dragging a tortilla chip through someone’s dip and popping it into his mouth. With his other hand, he’s reaching into the cabinet above his head, pulling down a wine glass and handing it to you. 

“Je suis très en tard,” I am so late, you smile, take the empty wine glass with a thank you and follow suit with your own chip in the fame dip. “Je reviens directement du travail. Les crevettes sont restées dans le réfrigérateur du bureau tout l'après-midi,” I came straight from work. The shrimp sat in the office fridge all afternoon, you explain, and he scowls, raises his brows at you and at the shrimp. You chuckle, nod.  “N'en mangez pas,” Don’t eat it. 

His eyes are stuck on your cheek, which forces your hand to investigate what he might be staring at. “Quoi?” What? You ask, fingers coming up with nothing but an embarrassed heat. 

“Rien, juste... tu as un cil,” Nothing, just… you have an eyelash, he lets a sharp exhale leave through his nose, “je l'enlèverai,” I’ll get it, and then he does. Carefully, with the pad of his middle finger, he picks the eyelash from your cheek. You don’t look at him while he does it, but you are watching when he transfers it to his thumb and drops it onto the platter of shrimp with a quick flick. “Oh, non,” he feigns concern, grabs the platter from the counter, “Allons juste…” Let’s just… he laughs and holds the plate over the trash can and drops the shrimp into the plastic bag with a thump. 

“Bon appel,” good call, you laugh. 

He drags you into the living room, towards the rest of the evening festivities, with his arm tossed over your shoulder. Between that, and the whole let me get your eyelash thing minutes earlier, you’re as close to certain a person can get that he and his girlfriend are still broken up.

They go through phases, the two of them. She doesn’t like your friend group very much, and Charles doesn’t seem like he likes her all that much, but they come and go like seasons. Together one month, broken up the next week. He usually tells you, but even when he doesn’t, you usually know. He’s always touchier with you when she’s out of the picture. Not that you mind it, but. He is. 

It’s all a little more comfortable, like you’re both a little less aware of the fact that you’re the only girl in the group who isn’t spoken for, or that you’re both atrociously the other’s type.

“Regarde qui j'ai trouvé,” Look who I found, Charles announces, and you’re met with a spattering of greetings, plopping down onto the couch, slotting between Marta and an empty space that is quickly occupied by Charles. 

You both fight over the corner seat, who gets to take up more of it. He loves to sprawl out and you love to curl up. When it’s all settled, he’s spread out like he likes, and you’re curled up into the space he leaves, half leant against him with your knees pulled to your chest, sleeves pulled over your hands because it’s hot in the kitchen, but only in the kitchen. 

“J'ai entendu dire que vous avez tous les deux eu un week-end assez mouvementé,” I heard you both had quite the eventful weekend, Marta teases. She’s the only other person besides the man next to you—as far as you know—that knows about what went down last Friday night. It takes even you a moment to remember, having already relegated the mortifying details to the bottom of your soul. When you do recall, your cheeks burn with the sudden blow flow and you giggle, curl into Charles a little further than you probably should.

“Quoi?” What, Joris asks, “ce qui s'est passé?” What happened?

“Rien ne s'est passé,” Nothing happened, Charles tries to protect you from re-living the evening, but it’s no use. Now that your friends have a sniff of a story, they won’t stop until it’s told in complete, painstaking detail. So, you begin:

“J'étais en train de garder un chat le week-end dernier pour mon collègue, n'est-ce pas?” I was cat sitting for my coworker last weekend, right?

— —

You were indeed cat-sitting for a coworker last weekend. It was an orange cat whose name you never really learned, much less remembered, and you were on day three of five of cat-sitting. It’s important for the rest of the story, for later. It is. 

Anyway, you were cat-sitting on a Friday night, but that wasn’t going to stop you from going out. Your sister had invited you, something about a club and her boyfriend’s friends visiting from London. Only if I can claim a brit, you’d joked. You’d joked, right up until coming face-to-face with the twenty-something, five-foot something-but-still-taller-than-you, perfect brown hair and perfect green eyed British man that had come along for the visit. You weren’t joking after meeting him. 

Once the two of you were finally drunk enough to lose any sense of what’s good for you, you were squeezing into the back of a taxi and stumbling up the stairs of your apartment complex, the cute boy and his little kisses and touchy hands slowing the whole process down. 

We all know what a drunken Friday night hookup looks like, so. There’s no need to explore the logistics of it with someone who’s name you’ve since forgotten, who you hope is back home in London never to return. Because where the story really gets good, is after the uneventful hookup, when Mr. Brit really needed to get back to his fiends and had you walking him to your apartment door in just a towel because he didn’t have the patience to wait for you to put on some fucking clothes. 

— —

“Bon sang,” damn, Hugo laughs from the other end of the sofa, “tu es vraiment si mauvais en sexe?” Are you really that bad at sex? 

“Va te faire foutre!” Fuck you, you scoff. “Je suis incroyable en matière de sexe,” I’m amazing at sex.

“Je peux trouver quelqu'un pour vous donner des cours, si besoin,” I can find someone to give you lessons, if you need. 

You pause, blink twice, and then continue your story. “De toute façon,” Anyways.

— —

As you open the door to let him out, the cat you’ve been cat-sitting—see. It did come back to be important—darts out of the door. 

“Grab him!” You’d yelled, and the guy actually looked back at you before replying. 

“I’m allergic.”

You scoffed, hurrying past him and down the stairs after the cat. You manage to corral it in the corner of the stairwell, pick it up and return to your apartment, just in time to watch the door shut behind you. You look at the door, at the guy you’d just fucked, at the cat in your hands, and then back at the door. “That is not good,” you say.

The guy laughs. “Just open it.”

Oh, brilliant. Why hadn’t you thought of that? “It’s locked.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

By the grace of God and all things good in this world, the guy had a fully-charged phone. Unfortunately for you, of the three people with a spare key to your apartment, there was only one number you had memorized: Charles. 

You text him before you call him. It’s me, please don’t send me to voicemail, and then he did send you to voicemail twice before calling the number back. 

“Bonjour?”

“‘Bonjour?’ Mon cul!” ‘Hello?’ My ass! You greeted, the cat snarling and wiggling against your grip. You were so far beyond being in the mood for pleasantries. You just really, really wanted some fucking pants. “J'ai besoin que tu viennes ouvrir ma porte. Genre, il y a dix minutes,” I need you to come unlock my door. Like, ten minutes ago. 

“Et avec qui ai-je le plaisir de discuter?” And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? You swear if you could, you’d punch him through the phone. You can’t, so you settle for hanging up. 

It’s at this time that Mr. Brit properly excuses himself from the evening of fun, because now that he knows you won’t stand outside your apartment in nothing but a towel for the rest of time, his conscience is clean. 

You and Charles live a sixteen minute walk from each other, and he definitely chose to walk rather than literally any other form of faster transportation. Maybe you should have disclosed your current state over the phone, but that probably would have made him walk slower. 

When he finally does trudge up the stairs, he stops three steps short of your landing at the sight of you, towel and cat and literally nothing more. “Qu'est-ce qui t'est arrivé, putain?” What the fuck happened to you? He laughs, and then finishes his walk up the stairs, holding your key out to you tauntingly. 

“Connard,” Asshole, you mutter, snatching the key away from him with your free hand and forcing it into the lock. “J'avais un gars chez moi,” I had a guy over, you add, forcing the door open with your hip. 

“Où à?” Where? He asks, following you into the apartment.

“Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire, où?” What do you mean, where? You laugh, gesture around the apartment. “Ici,” here. 

Charles frowns, scowls even. “Et il t'a laissé dehors?” And he left you out there?

You nod, gather up your clothes from the floor before they can exist there long enough to be perceived. “Tu n'es pas obligé de rester, je vais bien,” You don’t have to stay, I’m fine, you tell him, half-usher him back out the door he came through. “Je sais que ta copine va probablement me tuer,” I know your girlfriend is probably going to kill me next time she sees me.

— —

“Je ne peux pas croire qu'elle ne t'a pas tué,” I can’t believe she didn’t kill you, Ricky chuckles, looking to Charles. 

You find solace in the bottom of your wine glass, an excuse to fill the silence that follows Ricky’s comment. “En fait, nous avons rompu,” we actually broke up, Charles says, and the room falls into the same silence it always does everytime they break up. It’s not that you guys don’t like her, so much as… well. Yeah, it is that you don’t like her. But she didn’t like you guys first, so it really shouldn’t matter much that none of you like her. 

“Je suis désolé, mec,” I’m sorry, mate, Joris offers, and then everyone follows suit with half-hearted apologies they don’t mean. 

“C'est bien, vraiment,” It’s fine, really, he offers to the group. “Elle était gentille, mais elle ne l'était tout simplement pas…” she was nice, but she wasn’t… he hesitates. You take another sip of your wine. Your friends listen to him intently.  “Je ne veux pas être méchante,” I don’t want to be mean.

“Soyez méchant,” Be mean, Marta giggles. 

He laughs nervously, fidgets with his fingers, watches his rings spin. “Elle n'était pas très bonne. Elle ne pouvait pas... Je ne l'ai jamais fait, tu sais,” She wasn’t very good. She couldn’t… I didn’t ever, you know, he trails off, gesturing wildly into the space around him, anything to avoid having to say the words the entire room has picked up on. 

You roll up your sleeves, hot again. Burning. 

The teasing that follows from the guys is relentless, gets to a point where you and Marta step in, begging them to stop kicking a dead horse while Charles is in the bathroom. They do ease up, and the night continues far, far away from horrible hookup stories and mortifying relationship admissions. 

You were the last to arrive, which means you’ll be the last to leave, make sure that the whole place has been cleaned up, returned to its stiff and dusty places in the apartment before you head home for the night. 

“Juste pour que tu le saches,” just so you know, you comment, scraping the last of the left behind chip-dip into a tupperware container while he gathers up the now-stale crackers from the charcuterie board. “Je ne te crois absolument pas,” I totally don’t believe you.

He meets your eyes, confused. “Tu ne me crois pas à propos de quoi?” Don’t believe me about what?

“A propos de ne pas…” about not… you look away, direct your attention to the lid of the container. Anything but looking him in the eyes while talking about each other’s sex lives. “Tu sais. Il est impossible que vous n’ayez pas joui depuis cinq mois.” You know. There’s no way you haven’t gotten off in five months. 

You see him shake his head in your peripheral, distract himself with the task at hand the same way you had. This isn’t something the two of you talk about, and you talk about pretty much everything. Sex, though. It’s always been off-limits, especially in a situation like this, just the two of you together. “Non,” nope, he mutters. “Je souhaite,” I wish.

You roll your eyes. “Charles, regarde tes mains,” look at your hands, you say, and he does, all full of crumbs and salt and grease. “Voilà la solution à votre problème. Vous pourrez résoudre le problème dès mon départ ce soir,” there’s the solution to your problem. You can fix the issue as soon as I leave tonight.

He rolls his eyes right back, “idiote,” idiot, he says, shoves your shoulder with one of his hands and you laugh. “Je ne peux pas. C’est… je ne sais pas, c’est irrespectueux,” I can’t. It feels… I don’t know, it feels disrespectful.

You laugh, curl in on yourself at his comment because it feels so completely ridiculous. He’s a good guy, you know. You know, or you wouldn't be such good friends in the first place. You know, but that's a crazy concept even for a good guy. “Manque de respect envers votre EX-petite-amie si vous vous branlez après une rupture?” Disrespectful to your EX-girlfriend if you jerk off after you’ve broken up?

“Bien. Quand tu le dis comme ça,” well. When you say it like that.

“Ouis,” yeah, you chuckle, hoisting yourself up onto the counter you’d just cleared. The granite is cool even through the denim of your jeans. “Quand je dis ça comme ça, tu es un imbécile,” when I say it like that, you dumbass. 

“Pourtant,” Still though, he sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. He always looks particularly boyish when he gets even the tiniest bit frustrated with you. “Vous ne l’obtiendrez pas. Ce n'est pas la même chose.” You wouldn’t get it. It’s not the same. 

Wouldn’t I? You pick at your cuticles, don’t know how to skate around the admission that you’re finishing about as often as he is—that Mr. Brit, who he’d missed by no more than ten minutes last weekend, was not exactly giving you a very eventful evening when he decided he was done for the night. 

"Je ne vois pas comment tu pourrais,” I don’t see how you could.

You nod, wish you lived in his little naive world where you always finish. “La moitié des gars de ce putain de pays ne savent pas comment faire jouir une fille. Et apparemment, les gars de Londres non plus.” Half the guys in this fucking country don’t know how to get a girl off. And apparently, neither do the guys in London.

“Vraiment?” Really?

You nod. “Je ne peux pas vous dire combien de fois j'ai simulé parce que j'en avais marre que quelqu'un attaque ma lèvre gauche avec sa langue,” I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve faked it because I was tired of someone assaulting my left lip with their tongue. 

“Fuck,” He laughs. “​​Ce n'est tout simplement pas bien,” that’s just not right.

“Non, ça ne l'est pas,” no it is not.

“Vous devriez vraiment obtenir de l'aide pour ça,” you should really get some help with that.

“Et vous aussi. Je mourrais avant de laisser tes conneries arriver,” So should you, you offer. I’d die before I let that shit happen. And you would, you really would. You can’t think of something worse than dating someone for months and knowing you’ve never gotten them off once. And she knows, she has to know, because there’s no way for him to fake it. She has to know. 

There’s a pause, and you realize that somewhere on the other side of the apartment the music has stopped playing. The speaker must have died—or the phone playing through it. You realize that Charles is close, now. Really close. Has he been this close the entire time you’ve been cleaning up, close. “Le feriez?” you would?

“Cent pour cent. Une bonne petite amie le ferait—en fait,” a hundred percent. A good girlfriend would—actually, you stop yourself, scowl a bit at the idea of it all. “Une bonne petite amie n’aurait jamais ce problème en premier lieu, mais ce n’est pas la question,” a good girlfriend would never have that problem in the first place but, that’s besides the point. He smiles, the threat of a laugh, and takes a step closer, firmly between your legs, now. You put your hands on either of his shoulders, give them a firm, friendly squeeze. “Une bonne petite amie t'aurait aidé,” a good girlfriend would have helped you, you assure him, but it doesn’t sound as friendly as your gesture was. 

His hand falls to your knee, thumb moving over the fabric of your jeans there ever so softly. It sends a chill up your spine, makes you shiver. “Un bon ami pourrait m'aider,” a good friend could help me, he says, hardly above a whisper—like he thinks saying it quieter is going to make it have any less suggestion. 

You nod, gulp, your fingers intertwining behind his neck. “Un bon ami pourrait vous aider,” a good friend could help you.

“Ouis,” yeah. You’re so close now that you can feel his breath on your face, that your noses might as well slot against each other. That you might as well be kissing, even if you aren’t. You’re sure your eyes cross when they meet his. 

“Dommage que tu n'en ai pas,” shame you don’t have any of those, you tease, smile pulling on your lips, hands falling from over his shoulders to move down his chest, to feel every reaction of his muscles as you trail over his abs softly, toy with the hem of his t-shirt. 

“C'est vrai, n'est-ce pas?” It is, isn’t it? His hand moves up your leg, and you instinctively move towards the touch, move yourself closer to the edge of the counter. He moves up, up your thigh, to your hip, threatening to go further. He doesn’t, though. He stalls there, searching your eyes for the permission to be there in the first place. 

And then, just like that, he kisses you. 

It starts soft, like he’s waiting for you to stop him, but you don’t. It’s a gentle collision, tender and hesitant and exploring whatever new waters you’d just sat yourselves in. His lips are so soft against yours, so careful, so sweet, and then his tongue is slipping through your lips, settling into the kiss now that he knows you’re going to kiss back. And you do, you kiss back, until it’s all hurried and messy, noses bumping against each other, teeth scraping each other’s lips. Until you’re hazy and dizzy and have to pull apart for air. 

“Peut être,” maybe, you chuckle into his mouth, kiss him again quickly. “Peut-être que tu devrais accepter l'offre de Hugo de trouver un tuteur,” maybe you should take Hugo up on his offer to find a tutor, you joke, and his smile is sweet against your lips. 

“Peut être,” maybe…  he says, fiddles with the buttons of your jeans hurriedly, like they’re going to seal shut if he doesn’t undo the button that very moment, and then he unzips the zipper, “ou peut-être,” or maybe… 

You kiss him again. Your core aches, the knot in the pit of your stomach pulling itself tighter and tiger with each millimeter further he moves. “Tu pourrais juste,” you could just. 

“Je pourrais juste,” I could just, and he dips a hand into your pants. 

You sigh, react instantly to his touch and his lips are on your again. Your hips move against his hand like it’s the first time you’ve ever been touched—which, this whole thing feels so charged that it might as well be. Charles’ hand moves in flat circles over your clit, pushing farther, deeper, slipping a single finger inside of you. 

You hiss at the movement, kiss him harder when your breath is back, pull him hard against your lips by the back of his neck. “Putain, tu es tellement mouillé,” Fuck, you’re so wet, he says. 

You nod, talk into his mouth, “Je sais, je sais,” I know, I know.

You reach between your bodies to palm him, find him already hard in his jeans, taking in a sharp breath when you touch him there. His other hand grabs at your tits, pushing and pulling and squeezing over your shirt before finally slipping under, haphazardly pushing your bra out of the way and palming them, kissing mumbled profanities into the skin on your neck. 

He pinches your nipple between two fingers and you whine—he ruts against the counter when you do, smirks against your lips and hums whatever noise he’s attempting to swallow. 

You sigh when he pulls his hand out from your jeans, but he’s quick to get them off of you, pulling them and your underwear off as soon as you raise yourself up off the counter. It’s cold, so cold, but his hands are equally warm, burn against your body as he explores every inch of available skin. 

You work away at his jeans, pushing down his pants and underwear as far as the angle allows you to. His cock springs out of the elastic waistband and the only thing you can think is how pretty it looks, all swollen and twitching and wet with precum. It looks painful, almost, how hard he is. But so, so pretty. “C'est tellement chaud,” this is so hot, you say. 

“Tu es tellement belle,” you’re so hot, he replies. 

You’re expecting for it to all boil over, then, for him to sink into you, fill you up with his perfect pretty dick, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lowers himself to your cunt and looks at you with nauseating eye contact. “Dis moi quoi faire,” tell me what to do, he says. 

“Quoi que ce soit. Faire n'importe quoi,” Anything. Do anything, you beg. 

He does, he does—licks a long stripe through your folds, forces your head to the sky and a sweet moan from your lips. He holds your legs apart with a hand on the inside of each thigh—strong, warm, big—and fucks you with his tongue. It’s messy and natural, but every move is intentional, working towards the goal of getting you off before he even fucks you. And he will, he will, because he listens so well. 

Every direction, even the jumbled, incoherent moans that leave your mouth, even the little twitches of your legs or the way your hips move against his mouth—it's all an instruction for him. What to do. What to continue doing exactly like he’s doing. “Juste comme ça. N'arrêtez pas,” just like that. Don’t stop, you chant, and he doesn’t stop. He holds his pace, and then you’re coming in his mouth, fingers slipping on the countertop in search of some kind of grip, some kind of stability as you writhe against him.

 When you’ve come down, come back to reality and the cold countertop and his warm hands, he’s kissing you again, cock hard and twitching between your bodies. You take him in your hand and he winces, groans when you start to stroke him, to spread the precum around his tip with your thumb. “Ça fait du bien,” feels good, he mutters. 

“Laissez-moi vous aider,” Let me help you, you insist. He doesn’t need much convincing. None at all, really. 

“Êtes-vous toujours… sur le,” Are you still… on the, he asks, tapping your arm. 

“Mon implant? Ouais, ouais,”My implant? Yeah. yeah. 

He kisses you again, licks into your mouth in a way that feels half-illegal, like all the rules of the universe have been broken. “Tu veux que j'utilise un préservatif?” Do you want me to use a condom?

You shake your head against his lips, shrug somewhere in the distance, far away from where your mouth is on his. “Je m'en fiche, je suis propre,” I don’t care, I’m clean.

“Moi aussi,” Me too. 

"D'accord, d'accord. Putain," Okay, okay. Fuck, and then he's slapping the head of his cock against your pussy, making you quiver with every touch. He drags it over your clit, through your folds, and then he’s sinking into you. His fingers bruise into your hips as he ruts into you, you reaching down to circle you clit while he fucks you full of him. "Putain, Dieu," Fuck, God, he moans. 

“Oui c'est bien?” Yeah, it's good? You ask. 

“C'est tellement bon, putain, c'est tellement bon, tu es si sexy,” It’s so good, fuck—it’s so good, you’re so hot. You don’t know if its his words, or that the seal’s properly broken now, but right as his dick slips out of a particularly measured thrust, you’re coming around the air, shoving a finger back inside to ease the ache of emptiness, pulling it back out and guiding his cock back in. He fucks you so good. So hard. So deep, just the sounds of each others groans, of heavy sighs and skin slapping filling the room, bouncing off the walls. “Je suis près,” I’m close, he tells you. “Je suis si proche, putain. Je vais,” I’m so close, fuck. I’m gonna, he repeats, fucking into you hard. Hard, burying himself in your cunt longer and longer each time. 

“Fais-le,” Do it, you say, “laisse-moi l'avoir, je le veux,” let me have it, I want it. And then he’s coming. Hard. Bottomed out in you, groaning against your neck, and filling you up with him. Fuck, he breathes. You can’t make a distinction between a sigh versus a laugh. “Ça va?”Are you okay? He asks. 

Your breath is heavy, heart thumping in your chest, in your ears, in your toes. “Je suis,”  I’m, you laugh. “Ouais, je suis plus que… je vais bien,” Yeah, I’m more than… I’m okay, you finally sputter out into his patient eyes. You think that’s the reason you stutter—the eye contact. “Es-tu?” Are you?

“Ouais,” Yeah, he says, running a hand through his hair, nodding.  “Oui. Très bien.” Yes. Very okay.

“Bien,” Good, you nod, and then, with all the vulnerability in the world: “Étais-je bien?” Was I alright?

He smiles, moves his hand to brush your flyaways from your forehead, to stop them before they can get in your face. “Vous étiez…” You were… he laughs, and there’s no mistaking it now. When he does it, you’re reminded just how full of him you still are, of the ache you’ll feel when he finally pulls out. “Je ne pense pas que quiconque puisse avoir un problème avec toi,” I don’t think anyone could have any issue with you. 

“Oh,”, you chuckle, eyes locking onto the clock hung on the kitchen wall. You can hear the second hand clicking around the same way you can hear your own pulse. “Bon alors,” Good then.

“Et moi?” And me? He asks, and pulls out slowly before you can begin to answer. There’s a silence in the room, just the clock and your heart and your breathing, his eyes glued to your cunt like he’s admiring his handy work. “C'étaient…” Those were…

“Tous deux très réels,” Both very real, you nod, biting the inside of your cheek, catching his eyes when he leans over the sink, wetting a paper towel and ringing it out. “Je ne suis pas doué pour faire semblant,” I’m not that good at faking it. 

“Bon,” Nice.

“Je ne pense pas que nous soyons le problème, alors,” I don’t think we’re the problem, then, you chuckle, eyes snapping back to the clock, mind to the feel of the counter under your fingertips. You can’t think about anything more, of any other feeling or sense of taste or smell you’re experiencing or it will be too much. 

“Non je ne pense pas,” No, I don’t think so, he continues, and starts to clean you up, warm hands on your legs again while he runs the cool paper towel through your folds. You recoil at the cold, a shiver running up your entire body and his eyes jump to yours—”Désolé,” Sorry, he mumbles. 

“C'est bon,” It’s okay, you squeak, and it sounds like you’re about an inch tall. Utter mortification will do that to you, something this fucking awkward making you incredibly aware of everything happening in the room around you, of every touch of his warm hands on your skin. A lot of things are different now. Everything is different. 

“Je, euh. Putain,” I, uh. Fuck, you resort back to what you know best, to the only thing you can think about that doesn’t spiral back to the feeling of him finishing inside you. “Je n'arrive pas à croire que je doive nettoyer à nouveau ce comptoir,” I can't believe I have to clean this counter off again. 

He laughs again, tossing the paper towel into the trash can. It sits on top of everything else like a billboard, screaming about what it had been used for. The lid on the trash can doesn’t close like it’s supposed to. “C'est à ça que tu penses en ce moment?” That’s what you’re thinking about right now?

“Ouais,” Yeah.

“Tu es tellement bizarre, putain,” You’re so fucking weird, he says, adjusting himself, tucking back into his boxers, pulling them and his jeans up to make himself proper again. You have to hop off the counter to do the same, collecting and correcting your things as fast as you can because you can feel his eyes on your figure while you dress, and it feels too intimate. 

“Je ne suis pas bizarre,” I am not weird, you quip, buttoning your jeans and pulling up the zipper, carefully fixing your shirt, your bra, smoothing all of your clothes out over your skin. 

“Tu es. Tu es tellement bizarre.” You are. You’re so weird. 

“Peu importe,” Whatever, you mumble, quickly closing the lid to the trash can. 

The night has run its course by now, and then some. You spend fifteen minutes silently moving around each other in the kitchen, the whole room quiet enough to hear a pin drop in the downstairs lobby. You spend at least ten of them cleaning off the counter, which doesn’t feel so cold anymore, at least not where you were sitting. 

“Tu peux rester, tu sais…” You can stay, y’know… he finally breaks the silence. “Si tu veux.”  If you want.

“D’accord,” Okay, you nod. “Je ne… je ne sais pas si c’est une bonne idée.” I don’t… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.

“C'est vrai, ouais,” Right, yeah, he says, and the place threatens to fall back into negative decibel levels. “Je t'entends, tout ce que tu veux.” I hear you, whatever you want. 

“Désolée,” Sorry, you choke.

“Ne le soit pas, vraiment,” Don’t be, really, he assures, but you still are, still feel like you're stepping on a little baby bug that’s on its way home to its family. It’s not that you don’t want to stay, it’s more that you… you don’t trust yourself to stay, and you don’t trust him not to turn this into a messy rebound thing. If you slept in his bed tonight and got a text next weekend that he’d gotten back together with his girlfriend, you’d feel like a piece of shit. It’s bad enough that when they do inevitably reconnect, you’re already never going to be able to look her in the eyes again. 

“Tu m'enverras un texto quand tu rentreras à la maison?” You’ll text me when you get home? He asks, standing opposite you in his doorway. 

“Bien sûr,” Of course, you nod, fidgeting with the keys on your lanyard. “Nous n’avons pas simplement ruiné notre amitié, n’est-ce pas?” We didn’t just ruin our friendship, did we?

“Non,” he answers, without leaving space for a hesitation, to really wonder about your question. 

You smile at your keys, bite back a chuckle at just how quick he’d responded to you, about how sure he seemed. “Parce que tu es une de mes personnes préférées, tu sais,” Because you’re one of my favorite people, y’know.

“Tu es ma personne préférée,” You’re my favorite person.

You swallow, and when you look up from your keys, he’s staring right back at you. The comfort in the silence is palpable, and it makes you shy, pushes a nervous laugh from your lips. Charles just nods, certain in his choice of words. It makes you even more sheepish. 

You’re completely aware that he doesn’t look at everyone like this, that he never looked at her like this. “Que s'est-il passé entre toi et elle cette fois, d'ailleurs?” What happened with you and her this time, anyway?

He sighs. “Tu veux vraiment savoir?” You really want to know?

“Ouais,” Yeah, you nod. “Je fais,” I do.

“Je euh,” I uh, his fingers fidget with each other, pulling on the joints and twisting his rings. He doesn’t look at you when he tells you, watches the metal spin around his finger. “Je suis rentré de chez toi le week-end dernier et elle attendait dehors que je la laisse entrer. J'ai complètement oublié qu'elle venait après le travail.” I came home from your place last weekend and she was waiting outside for me to let her in. I totally forgot she was coming over after work. You regret asking as soon as he starts explaining. It’s not your business, and you could have gone your whole life without knowing that you were the catalyst for it. “On s'est disputé, elle m'a dit de choisir qui était le plus important,” We got into a fight, she told me to choose who was more important, he shrugs, like it’s nothing. Like he was being asked to flip a coin, asked what color the sky was. “Je te choisi,” I chose you.

“Charles,” your head falls to the side defeatedly. You wish he never told you this, even though you asked. You wish he knew better, that you knew better.

“Je sais,” I know, he nods, and it sounds like he feels genuinely bad about the truth.  “Je suis désolé,” I’m sorry. 

“Je devrais y aller,” I should go.

“Ouais…” Yeah… he hesitates, his hand lingering around his front door, refusing to close it on you. “Ouais,” yeah.

“Juste... ne le fais pas,” Just… don’t. You stop yourself—or you try to stop yourself—from speaking. It’s unsuccessful, how could it not be when he’s staring at you intently with those big green eyes, clinging to every word that leaves your lips. “Ne te remets pas avec elle S'il te plaît,”  Don’t get back with her. Please.

“Je ne vais pas,” I won’t.

You nod, even though you know he will. He always does. They always get back together. It’s nice to pretend, though, for a few days. To pretend that anything is ever going to come of what’s happened this evening. 

“Bonne nuit, Charles,” Goodnight..

“Bonne nuit.” Goodnight.

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

Nothing safe is worth the drive

Part 96 of the Max Verstappen x bestfriend!reader social media au

A/N: DINNER. IS. SERVED. Okay be kind guys because if this doesn’t live up to everyone’s expectations Imma need to sleep in the road. But seriously I hope you guys enjoy this and that it has been worth the wait! 🧡🥺

Tag list

@somanyfandomsbruh @eugene-emt-roe @reidsworld @maxcuntstappen @laneyspaulding19 @elliegrey2803 @inthestars-underthesun @jayda12 @gaysontoast @baw-sixteen @wcnorris @motorsp0rt @obsessed-fan-alert @lifesuckslife @luciaexcorvus @dumb-fawkin-bitch @lickmeleclerc @goldeng1rl8 @trentwife @mynameisangeloflife @princessria127 @mcmuppet @hiraethrhapsody @toomuchdelusion @lxclerc @lpab @lordperceval-16 @larastark3107 @bangtanxberm @random-readers-world @bladestark @allenajade-ite @ironmaiden1313 @thatgirlthatreadswattpad @charllleclerc @kachoooow95 @bellalilo @samywhale @satellitelh @leclercdream @jamie2305 @illicitverstappen @vellicora @honethatty12 @sociallyinepludi @raizelchrysanderoctavius @bellewintersroe @taylorslovesswifties13 @tyna-19 @jquinnmunson

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

mfs be like "oh the alpha tauri car has improved so much"

mfs also completely ignoring the timeline for when the car started showing improvement...

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

"But I Liam deserved the seat" -> well he didn't get it

"Daniel was signed only for his PR image" -> Not my fault your favourite driver has the personality of a wet paper fork

"Daniel only got the seat because of Christian" -> again not my fault every single person on the paddock wants to fuck Daniel

"He's old" -> so are 5 other drivers, I don't see you complaining about them

"He's washed up" -> okay Mr. Secret Data, show us what both RedBull and Alpha Tauri engineerings have clearly missed but your beautiful and genius mind didn't

Anyways, stay mad. Stay furious. Stay angry. Stay pressed because baby, the HONEY BADGER IS BACK AND HE'S HERE TO STAY

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

Unmasked

Part 12/?

<<< previous part

Word count: 3.7k

*******

You sat in the cockpit for a moment longer than someone who just got a podium should have, but you got third. It had felt like a kick in the teeth because had your team given you a chance, you could have won. You would have. You had got the fastest lap and your pace was unmatched but the team had favoured Charles - better strategy paired with team orders meant he had got P2 to your P3, moving him even further ahead of you in the championship.

Part of you didn’t want to face Charles, he’d undoubtedly have your outburst thrown back at his face - telling him just how unreasonable you were, what a bad teammate he had. That you were too emotional. When in reality, if any other driver had been told to hold position when they had more pace - they’d be just as frustrated. You sighed and climbed out of the car, throwing the crowds a thumbs up before going over to be weighed. Charles was standing across parc ferme, nodding as he was being Maxsplained to, his back to you.

You took off your helmet and placed it on its stand before approaching your boyfriend, placing a hand on the small of his back to get his attention. As his green eyes fell to you, all of your guilt melted away - sure he didn’t know about your radio message but this was Charles, he wouldn’t care. He grinned and pulled you into a hug, squeezing you with all his might.

“I’m proud of you, Charles.” You whispered, nuzzling your face into his neck.

You felt his arms tighten around your middle, his voice low - his words were for your ears only. “I’m sorry, this should’ve been your win.”

You frowned and pulled back a little - just enough to lock eyes with him, his gaze was soft. “I… what do you mean?”

“My pace was shit come the end, my tires were gone, they told me you weren’t going to attack. You could’ve won this if they let you.” He pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead before stepping away to do his post race interview.

Your cheeks flushed dark, rubbing the back of your neck awkwardly as Max approached you to give you a congratulatory hug. “What a race, happy to be sharing the podium with you for real.”

“First ever post-race interview before then, wish me luck.” You couldn’t help but cringe as you slowly approached Charles, being handed a microphone ready to speak to the crowd for the very first time since your interview. You took a moment to collect yourself as the interviewer thanked your boyfriend - this was a big step, you’d never spoken to the masses like this before and before you knew it, your name was being called so you stepped up to face them.

As loud as cheers were, you couldn’t help but hear the boos hidden beneath - the dissonant harmony rang through your ears as you put on a smile and waved to the crowds, doing your best to ignore them. “Congratulations on your first podium as you, y/n! How does it feel?”

“Unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced.” You laughed, trying to put on your best brave face as you spoke. “Finally being able to put my name to my achievements is something I’ve always wanted to do and now I’m doing it.”

“Team orders meant you couldn’t race your teammate, you didn’t sound too pleased about it - any more to say now?”

You shook your head. “I understand why they gave the orders and we ended up with a double podium - Charles’ tires were vulnerable and if I had gotten past who knows who else might have.”

“Thank you for your time, I hope to see a lot more of you.”

After one more thumbs up to the crowd you dipped into the cool down room to join Charles and Max who were seemingly engrossed in conversation - you placed your things on your pedestal and grabbed your third place cap, sitting it atop your head. Eyes flickering up to the screen as they replayed clips of the race and you couldn’t help but wince when your radio message popped up at the edge of the screen, ending the conversation in the room in a moment.

“...awkward.”

You narrowed your eyes at Max, not wanting to look at your boyfriend as you willed them to hurry up and take the comms off of the screen. It felt like an eternity before someone spoke again, and you felt Charles’ hand on your shoulder as he spoke. “We’re good, I already told you how I feel. Okay?”

The breath you didn’t know you were holding escaped your lips as you nodded, as you opened your mouth to apologise he simply smiled and shook his head - the three of you being summoned to the podium. This time around, Charles heard the crowd when you stepped out in front of them. After his interview he had gone pretty quickly into the cool down room but there was no denying the chorus of boos that were, despite being quieter, threatening to cover up the cheers. There was something about that horrible sound that seemed to overpower its counterpart.

He wanted to cover your ears, cheer louder than he ever had before to cover it up but once the champagne was in his hand - he opted to distract you by pouring the cold liquid down the neck of your race suit. “Fuck, that’s cold!”

Charles grinned as you laughed, returning the favour by spraying the contents of your bottle over him before taking a big swig. It took everything he had not to wrap you up in his arms and kiss you - but he knew the press of it would be too intense so instead for the podium photo, he pulled you tight into his side.

He was going to have your back, no matter what.

***

***

You chewed nervously at the skin around your thumb as you stood in the media pen with your PR manager, waiting for an interviewer to be free. This was your first time in the pen and you could see just why all of the other drivers hated it - you felt like you were in some weird petting zoo. Before you could quietly protest, saying they’ve never interviewed you before, why start now, you were ushered over towards a very excited looking lady - she was the first to get a post race interview with you. After a final deep breath you stepped up to the barricade and gave her a smile.

“Hi y/n, thank you for speaking with me. Great race today.”

“Thank you, it’s a really good result for the team and keeps us in the game for the WCC, we’re ahead right now and we’d like to keep it that way.” You said with confidence, hopefully trying to explain the team orders without shitting on the strategists - as much as you disagreed with it, you wanted to come across as the team player.

She scribbled something down in her notepad before glancing at you through her mascara coated lashes. “Reckon you would’ve won without those orders? You had better pace than Charles and you sounded irritated in your radio message.”

You shrugged a little. “Maybe but there’s no point speculating what could have been. I just need to focus on the next race and hopefully get back on that top step.”

“Thank you, good luck.”

From then on you were ushered from interviewer to interviewer - barely getting a second to breathe before you were asked again and again about the team orders. For the most part they were respectful and you could throw up your media trained answer but as you approached a woman, her carved brow raised and her painted lips curved into an almost evil smirk. You didn’t like where this was going, that was for sure.

“Afternoon, y/n, disappointed by the result?” She went straight in, offering the first jab - which you shook your head at.

“A double podium at this point in the season is key. I’m very proud of the team today.” You refused to break eye contact, the blues of her eyes were intense - like she could read every thought that crossed your mind.

She held up her voice recorder and pressed play - your radio message playing loud over the speaker before she popped it back into the small handbag tucked under her arm. “You didn’t sound too pleased during the race. Don’t you think that after Charles’ performances this season, he deserves to be prioritised by the team? That perhaps you were being a little ungrateful.”

You held your tongue for a moment, the burn of your PR manager’s eyes bore into the side of your head. “In the heat of the moment, I was frustrated, yes. But I understand and respect the team’s decision.”

“You’ve been beaten by Charles in practically every race so far this season - does this mean that you will be second driver from here on out? He is the best shot of winning the championship for the team.” You could almost taste the venom on her words as she taunted you - challenging you to break, so there was proof that you were just this emotional, bitchy woman.

“I will continue to try my hardest in this championship battle, it's not lost yet. We’re barely a third of the way into the season, there’s no telling what’s gonna happen. Thanks.”

You stepped away from her before it got ugly, you knew no matter how calm you were - people were still going to find ways to tear you down. You hadn’t won. You’d complained about Charles. The people who didn’t like you never would - it was hard to accept, especially when they were so damn loud. You felt trapped in your head, their cruel words caging you in as you walked back to the ferrari motorhome for the end of the day.

And as soon as you were alone, you did the worst thing you could have possibly done… and went online.

Charles had already seen some of the responses to your radio message and post-race interviews, for the most part people were on your side but he just knew that for the hundreds of nice comments - there were 10 negative ones that would catch your eye. He got caught up in the media pen longer than he would’ve liked, protecting you from the snark reporters were tossing in your direction, trying to get him to bite back at you. But he was frustrated for you. You were right in your message, you could’ve beat Max and as much as he wanted to win the championship, he didn’t want to do it at your expense.

He lightly rapped his knuckles on the door of your driver’s room, hearing a soft shuffling from inside before the lock unclicked and you peered around. “Hey, been waiting for you… come on in.”

“My interviews dragged on a little more than I would have liked. How are you doing?” Your teammate hummed, stepping into the room - allowing you to lock the door behind him. He crossed over to the couch, draping his arm across the back as you sat beside him.

“...They really don’t like me, Charles.” You mumbled, leaning into his side. “I feel like no matter what I do they’re going to criticise me.”

“Baby, they criticise all of-”

You narrowed your eyes at him, shrugging his arm off of your shoulder - and standing. “Don’t you dare compare criticisms you get to how they talk about me. You don’t get it. You’ll never get it.”

“Then talk to me, y/n!” Charles finally snapped. “How am I supposed to be there for you if you won’t tell me what’s going on in your head! You’re shutting me out. I’m your boyfriend, your teammate… if you can’t talk to me then who can you talk to?”

“I don’t know! Okay?! None of you get it. Lewis maybe but none of you have never and will never be a woman in this community. And I get why now. It’s not because we’re not talented enough because there’s some girls out there with more talent than half this grid in their pinkies but because no one will ever see us the way they see you.” You really didn’t mean to take all of this out on Charles, you knew his intentions were good but he’d opened the can of worms and now he was dealing with the mess. “It doesn’t even matter if I had won the race today, they would’ve accused me of stealing it from you.”

Your teammate stood up and approached you, taking your shoulders in his hands. “I know I won’t ever understand… I’m very aware of how privileged I am. But, I am your number one supporter y/n. I know it’s hard to ignore but we’ll get through this… you’ll get through this. You’re bigger and brighter than they’ll ever be.”

He watched as a tear rolled down your cheek. “I’m… I’m just not sure if I will get through this. I knew there’d be backlash but this? Physical violence… boos everytime I get in front of a crowd? It hurts so much.”

Charles wished he had the right words to say at that moment but instead he wrapped you up in his arms, burying his face into your neck and just holding you close. He felt your arms rest against him weakly, your chin hooking over his shoulder. It was hard for him, you were right - he’d never get what you were being put through. All he could do was defend you, but he was scared it wasn’t enough as you extracted yourself from his hold and started gathering up your things to head home for the day. The spark of hope you had about being revealed had been fully extinguished and he wasn’t sure what to do.

But he knew he had to do something.

***

***

“So what’s this all about?”

Charles stood in front of the grid, Lewis and Sebastian either side of him, Seb had somehow managed to pull everyone together for a briefing without you finding out and now 16 pairs of eyes were staring him down.

“It’s about y/n.” He said, fiddling with the edge of the table he was perched against. “All of this criticism is getting too much and we need to back her.”

“All of us get criticism, I don’t see why you need to waste our time with a meeting about this.” Fernando rose from his chair. “I’m sorry, but I am not interested in whatever you have planned… she needs to learn to deal with it herself.”

He shook his head and left the room, muttering to himself in Spanish. Charles stood there quietly for a moment, waiting to see if anyone would follow the driver out of the room but thankfully the rest remained in their seats - he wasn’t sure if it was Lewis and Seb's gazes from behind him keeping them in their seats or if they genuinely wanted to help.

“Look, the criticism we get is nothing compared to the backlash that y/n has been getting…” Lewis said, pushing himself off of the wall to stand beside the younger driver. “I like to think we’ve all stood together before for one of our own. You all stand or kneel with me when I’ve asked before, so I hope this cause is as important.”

“Just because she’s a woman, it doesn’t mean that what she’s achieved is any less.” Seb spoke next. “You all know that. We’re not asking for you to set the FIA on fire, we just want you to stand with her.”

Max leant back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “I mean… I’ve got a lighter somewhere.”

Lando shoved his friend’s shoulder lightly. “Idiot. What did you guys have in mind?”

“Just a simple shared statement posted onto our instagrams.” Charles tried to make eye contact with each of his rivals, in an attempt to gauge what they were thinking. “Just saying how we won’t tolerate the bullying and actual violence.”

The Dutchman frowned. “That’s it? She was attacked, Charles… I’m in but you’ve got to have a better plan than that.”

“What did you have in mind?” Lewis said. “We didn’t want to go guns ablaze and scare you guys off.”

“I think a blanket statement is sensible.” George spoke up next, leaning forward in his chair a little - Max still didn’t look impressed. “I think a message like that from all of us will go a long way.”

Max scoffed. “Yeah sure, it won’t come across as a PR move at all. You guys can do whatever you want but I’m not just going to sit here whilst there are people out there who think they can hurt her and get away with it.”

The room fell into a stunned silence as he stood up, he stopped in front of Charles - eyes flickering across his childhood friend’s face. “I’m disappointed in you. She deserves better than this.”

The Monegasque was lost for words as the current champion left the room, the door shutting behind him the only sound in the room. He had no idea how vehemently Max felt about what you were going through.

What surprised him next was Esteban, despite his publicly tumultuous relationship with Max, he didn’t even hesitate to follow him out of the room - muttering something in French about fighting for you. He had never really considered that your other childhood karting rivals would be just as passionate as Max about standing up for you - especially as, unlike the Dutchman, he hadn’t known your secret prior to your reveal. Esteban was never one for bold statements either so the fact he was willing to do something like this surprised most of the drivers in the room.

“Uhm, anyone else?” Charles asked quietly, eyes flickering across the room. He could see a couple drivers looking a little fidgety, like they wanted to go but not knowing what Max had planned - Charles’ idea seemed like a safer bet.

He barely noticed Lewis’ strong hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “Are you still happy doing it like this? We can do something else if you don’t feel like it’s enough.”

Charles frowned a little but nodded. “Yeah. I mean, people can customise things as they see fit but I feel like the more of us they hear from the better. If you’re interested can you leave us a place to send the blanket message to? Thanks.”

He gave handshakes and bro-hugs to each of the drivers as they left the room, not noticing the way that Pierre was hanging back - still sat in his chair. The Frenchman had a feeling in his stomach that Max was right, that this wasn’t enough. He was as guilty as anyone for assuming that Thirty was a man and just like some of the others, he’d known you since you were a kid, he knew what you were capable of but has always taken your story as gospel, never questioned it. The fact he hadn’t recognised you when he joined F1 was just the final nail in the coffin, he’d ignored you more than he cared to admit- even objectifying you like many other women in the paddock.

“Pierre, you okay, man?” The Ferrari driver sat beside him. “Looking a little spaced out.”

“Max is right. I don’t… mate, I don’t have a fucking leg to stand on here.” He laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wasn’t exactly an advocate for women, for her, being in the sport.”

“C’mon, you didn’t know.”

Pierre’s frown deepened. “That’s not an excuse. I grew up with her and since we stopped racing together I spent more time staring at her fucking tits and ass than taking a second to use my brain.”

Charles went to speak but his childhood companion rose suddenly from his seat. Pierre walked over to the door before stopping with his hand wrapped around the handle.

“Do you not remember before her reveal when you were coming out of that team thirty meeting and I didn’t even consider her? I have to find Max. I’m sorry.”

The Monegasque sat there for a little while longer as he thought about what Max and Pierre had both said. They were right, you did deserve more than just some statement but he was nervous. He was the Tifosi’s golden boy - meanwhile, he was sure Max could get away with anything and well Pierre was a nuisance so he did what he wanted regardless.

And he loved you, he did but his reputation mattered too right? He just had to figure out the best way to do it without putting up the picket signs and actively tearing down the FIA HQ to get them to protect you. His eyes flickered to the door where the grid had since left him to his thoughts. Should he have followed Max, Pierre and Esteban? Or should he stick to Sebastian and Lewis’ sage advice?

He knew you were the only person who would know exactly what to do right now - that you would give him the perfect answer. But he also knew that if you knew what he was up to, you’d say that you weren’t worth all this fuss.

But you were worth it, more than.

As his phone buzzed in his pocket he fished it out, a text from you bringing a smile to his face. The public didn’t need to love you like he did - he wasn’t sure they ever would - but you deserved as much respect as the rest of your rivals. And if meant blindly following Max, Pierre and Esteban as they acted out whatever craziness they had planned…

He was going to do it.

***

Thank you all for being patient!! Last weekend was so good 🏎️ hope you enjoy!!

Want to be notified when I post? Join our discord, head over to #reaction-roles and click the sunflower 🌻

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

Girlies I don’t think we understand what we’re in for:

Mini helmets

Matching race boots

Matching Beats headphones

Danny F1 merch

Alpha Tauri garage playlists (the Danny Ric edition)

Danny press conferences with Max (because we shall get what we want)

YUKIEL content = pure chaos

Danny dancing to EVERY national anthem again

DTS comeback era (because if he got an episode on his departure he sure as hell is get 1 or more on his return)

The cackle laugh and everything and anything

The smiling face still showing through the visor

The return of Danny in the F1 driver song (HOLY SHIT WHAT WILL HE DO?) 🫠

And I can’t fucking wait!

[dan-theman-ricciardo3]

SEB WAS THEERE??? https://t. co/kHe6Tq9Mph

IS THAT SEB CONGRATULATING HIM???????