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Maximilian Günther | Monaco ePrix 2024 | by me

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James Rossiter | Monaco ePrix 2024 | by me

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just an appreciation post of andré's evil ass smile (with a hint of toni)

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met james rossiter today so my life is now complete

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i will always be a "they're both not normal™ about each other" brocedes truther, but ngl i really do think that nico being able to go into the paddock and both praise and criticise lewis fairly, and talk about him openly and admit that sometimes he was jealous, and he did play mind games and he doesn't regret that but he also didn't want to be that person anymore is infinitely healthier and better adjusted than lewis's "all my teammates have been better than max's [conspicuously fails to mention the only teammate to ever beat him to a championship]" and bringing up unprompted "a better teammate" at the finale of the first championship that he's properly had to fight for since nico left five years ago. like, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. and i don't think lewis is indifferent

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if you know, you know

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SÃO PAOLO, 2023 — Maximillian Günther. (Photo by Sam Bagnall)

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jev funniest man alive

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additionally (I must stress that I've been awake since 3:20am) I keep thinking about the Somerset Maugham quote from the 30s or whenever, about Nice/the Riviera being "a sunny place for shady people" and just how inspirational that is and how much I want to write fic about that era. and damn maybe I should have brought the marvellous 'living well is the best revenge' by Calvin Tompkins with me to re-read because it's the Murphys and really everything in this region seemed to begin with Sara and Gerald Murphy. I think about them so often

currently sitting outside a café in Nice imagining a parallel universe where a younger, thinner, hotter version of myself is running through the streets barefoot in a white dress and having a torrid romance with [redacted] the former maserati msg team principal, sighing his name like a 1970s bond girl

this is what trying to be a tourist on three hours sleep does to you

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currently sitting outside a café in Nice imagining a parallel universe where a younger, thinner, hotter version of myself is running through the streets barefoot in a white dress and having a torrid romance with [redacted] the former maserati msg team principal, sighing his name like a 1970s bond girl

this is what trying to be a tourist on three hours sleep does to you

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Can't wait to get up at 3:30am instead of the nice leisurely trip to the airport I had planned 🫠

fully support the right to strike but could air traffic control PLEASE stop doing it on the day of the formula e races i’m travelling to 💀

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laurens vanthoor podium slip + kévin estre laughing at him

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even when cass is being bullied he still wins somehow

x / x

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Dance AU + Criminal AU for any fic involving nico?

Thanks for asking! I enjoyed writing this a lot. Vague angsty past brocedes and a bit of Nico/Mick

**

There’s a painting in Nico’s office in Nice, above the desk so he doesn’t have to look at it very often; first thing in the morning and again in the evening when he leaves. A small reminder of where he began. A little needle of what might have been, and what didn’t come to pass. It keeps him honest, that memory.

It isn’t his own exact likeness, the painting, although people always assume it is and Nico lets them. A beautiful boy, eighteen, nineteen maybe, backstage at a theatre perhaps, en pointe, arms outstretched, angel wings folded on his back. In the corner of the painting there’s a mirror, the reflection of a demon’s face, flared in red, eyes glittering. It had been a gift from one of his father’s friends, the summer before he took up his place at Juilliard.

“You are the dancer,” Michael had said, grinning at him as Nico had stared, transfixed, at the image in the frame. “And who will be your demon?” 

Nico had felt honoured, and unsettled, the way he always did when Michael gave him gifts. He wasn’t stupid, he knew the nature of his father’s business, of Michael’s, and wanted nothing to do with either. 

Later he’d found out the painting was a long vanished Wyeth; but he’d already discovered his demon by then.

Or was Lewis the angel?

He’s stared at that painting for hours across the years and still never been able to make up his mind. Sometimes he thinks Michael only gave it to him as a punishment for turning him down, or because Keke broke their business ties, as if he thought Nico would be stupid enough to display it and get arrested or something.

He hadn’t displayed it, not for years. But it’s different now; there’s enough security staff in the building, cameras he can dial into on his phone. If Lewis or another one of his colleagues from Interpol were to somehow make it through to Nico’s office the Wyeth would already be in the vault by then, something legitimate in its place.

He checks his schedule. It’s been a quiet few months, a lull of the sort that he likes to engineer in between big scores. The buyer in Qatar he thought he’d found for the Brancusi had fallen through and now he’s stuck with a quite identifiable sizable brass cock in a warehouse in Amsterdam that he needs to figure out how to sell. He leans back in his leather Eames office chair, hands clasped as he considers his latest distraction. 

* 

It’s salt in the wound, always, returning to New York, to Juilliard. That’s partly why Nico does it. Scene of his dreams before they dissolved. No one in his life now knows why he walks with a cane, just that something happened once upon a time in New York and that when Keke’s prodigal son had returned to Europe all dreams of dancing had been abandoned, the fancy forced aside allowing Nico to take up his mantle in the family business.

He’s made it his own since then, even branching out. The forgery arm that he’d created has proved more lucrative than his dad’s old fashioned brand of thievery; easier to find someone who’s good at painting than it is to break a team of men into the Uffizi in the middle of the night. Still, sometimes he gets lucky with that. Sometimes there are boys who will do anything because they believe Nico might love them, that he even knows what love is, anymore. 

The jet touches down, a car waiting to take him to the opening night of the New York City Ballet’s fall gala. It’s not really Nico’s type of ballet, this one tonight, he prefers the classics but the dancers are undoubtedly skilled. When he was young, having two men dance a pas-de-deux for an actual public performance was unheard of. There’s something about it that twists in his stomach, a memory that he allows only because he knows it makes him stronger. 

Mick is part of the ensemble, talented enough, yet miles away from the skill of the leads, Nico can see it. He watches them again, the principal dancers, the hypnotic motion of their bodies, the love story played out in the fluidity of their limbs. He sees himself, who he was before. Himself…Lewis. The Lewis he thought he knew, not the Lewis who was his enemy. 

His ankle throbs. A gunshot to the achilles does that to you, even so many years later. 

“Can I ask you about this,” Mick says, later that evening when they’re splayed out naked atop the sheets, bodies damp with perspiration. Nico's hotel room of course, not Mick's student digs, no matter how nice they are now. 

Fucking Mick is a delight heightened by just how much Nico knows Michael would hate it. Giving to the son what he had denied the father. Mick rubs his big toe over the scarred mess of Nico’s right heel. None of his other lovers has ever dared to ask that question. Nico admires the bravura. He turns onto his back, sliding a hand down Mick’s taut stomach. Oh to be so young. Nico is in shape, he eats healthily, goes to the gym four times a week, but still Mick’s twenty years feels like a lifetime away, both physically and mentally. 

“My dance partner put a bullet in me,” Nico says, matter of factly. “He wasn’t who I thought he was.” They were learning each other, not the choreography. All along. Learning how to unravel, searching out any weak spots. Maimed but not caught, though. Nico has never seen the inside of a cell. 

Mick winces, rolls over to look at him. “That’s rough.” 

“Tell me about it. But I guess, in some ways we’re still dancing.” He pauses. “So there’s another reason I came to visit you, actually. Do you know the Whitney Museum? There’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

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Brocedes and birthday fic + bathtub fic for the prompt meme!

This is light on the birthday side of it, sorry! And more fluffy than I usually write. But hope you like it :)

“I mean, it looks cool.” Lewis steps back, slipping his iPhone out of the pocket of his cargo pants, snapping a photo and then walking around to take another, as if the angle is going to prompt a revelation about practicality vs design. Lewis likes pretty things, always has; clothes, jewellery, Nico. “But don’t you think it would be awkward to…well, I mean.”

“To what?” Nico’s voice has adopted that tone, light amusement that flirts with innuendo. The sales guy looks at Nico, then focuses his hungry gaze on Lewis, scenting out a challenge. Nico is enjoying this immensely, Lewis can tell.

“We have sold seventy of this particular model already this year,” the sales guy, Charles, informs them. He’s pretty, too. Aesthetically in place in the bathroom showroom among all the gleaming carrara marble vanity units and Japanese style heated toilets. He probably lives in a shoebox high rise like half of Monaco does though. Lewis bets that Sharl, as he had pronounced it, doesn’t have a wall-mounted carbon fibre hammock bath in his flat. He looks at the bath again; for one person it’s fine, he guesses, but the sides are low. Impractical for two. No proper edges, nothing to hold onto if you were to find yourself on your knees, bent forward.

Lewis pictures the water sloshing out all over the wetroom floor. “Do you have anything bigger?” He asks. 

Nico snorts into the brochure, yelping exaggeratedly when Lewis sidles up next to him and jabs him in the ribs. So far, the house furnishing decisions have gone as badly as anticipated. Lewis hasn’t done this before. In the past, a designer had sent him a few links and he’d browsed them in about ten minutes and confirmed which choices he liked the look of. It hadn’t occurred to him when they decided to move in together that Nico would want to actually go to places and pick things and get into bathtubs with his shoes on. 

“What he means,” Nico says, “is do you have anything big enough for two people to fit?” 

“Fucking hell, man.” Lewis drops his head into his hands, but really, he’s used to it. God help him when they get to the bedroom showroom. 

To his credit, Charles maintains his composure remarkably quickly despite the endearing flush of pink that deepens his complexion. 

“Actually this design studio does take commissions if you were looking for a larger model.”

*

“See, it’s nice isn’t it. I knew you’d come around.”

Lewis rolls his eyes, lifting his foot to press his toes into Nico’s armpit. It is nice. Somewhat uncomfortable, but nice. “I only agreed to it because it’s your birthday present and I know how much you liked it,” Lewis protests. “I preferred the one with the jacuzzi.” 

“No taste,” Nico tsks, earning himself a splash of water in the face. 

“Yeah, must be why I ended up with you.” 

“You love me really,” Nico protests, leaning over the curve of the sleek black carbon fibre panel to place his champagne flute on the polished concrete floor. No glass in the wetroom ― that was another of Lewis’ firm rules that he’s somehow allowed Nico to bypass. Water cascades onto the floor, warm and soapy as Nico shifts and rearranges himself, hair wet and head resting on Lewis’ chest, their legs tangled together. Lewis’ back hurts but he doesn’t mind, not really. “Of course I do,” he says.