dystopia au? 👀
Here you go mate, sorry it's not very fleshed out oops
cw: dystopia au so general misery and pain that comes with that, and use of irl an girlfriend as a character that does not reflect my irl opinions of them!
It’s been eight months since Max last saw Daniel.
When it’s been this long, nights on end of going to sleep thinking about him and waking up from dreaming about him, but never seeing him, he worries how much of Daniel is in his head and how much can possibly be true.
On his worst days, he’ll wonder if he’s real at all, if he’s not some figment of Max’s overactive imagination, something created in desperation of a life barely worth living.
It’s happened before; drivers going mad.
It helps when he wedges his fingers down the side of his mattress and gets to run his fingertips across the worn and yellowed edge of the only picture he has of Daniel. To just feel it there. Taking it out is something that he does less, it hurts to see the blinding white of his teeth, shark-like and bared at the camera in a grin. Torn from an old Red Bull Racing programme, it’s not a real photograph. Not like one Max would take himself on a camera that nobody else would get to see.
Then always, the doubt will linger, because in the crowded rooms full of watchful eyes, it goes like-
“Hey good lookin’,” Daniel drawls with a smirk and something in his eye that Max knows better than to believe, but is exactly what Daniel is kept around for.
Max nods, and Daniel’s eyes bounce away from him, to Kelly, and then to the rest of the party. Kelly tugs him away before Max has a chance to say anything back. Not that he could, mouth bound shut. Not that he would know how to open it even without the muzzle, and not let something of the truth slip out. All the things he’d spent the last two hundred or more endless days imagining saying to Daniel.
Like, I missed you.
Max knows he doesn’t look good because that’s what Kelly's father wanted this time. For him to look skinnier at the start of the season, for his eyes to look sunken in. For it to look as though she has complete control over him, has ‘tamed,’ him, because the leash around his fucking neck is not enough. He’d heard the gasp when they first entered the room, when she paraded him right through the center of it.
They circle the party so that enough people see them together, another part of the show. The car Max will drive this season, which Daniel might get to drive a handful of times if he’s lucky, is spinning on a podium, lights beaming down so harshly that they make the paintwork glitter. It used to excite Max, when he had nothing else he cared about. Fingers itching to touch the body of it, one front wing enough to feed his family for a year if sold in the right place, not that it mattered once he’d made it. It was part of the deal of being a driver, that your family ate well.
Now, looking at it makes him tired.
He tries to both catch Daniel’s eye desperately, and to not look at him at all in varying intervals. Every time their eyes do meet, Daniel’s slide away as though there is nothing to see where Max stands, and Max tries to tell himself that it’s okay. That it is just because Daniel is just as good as playing the game as the FIA is. It’s always been Max who never got the rules.
You’re too fucking sweet, Daniel had panted over him once, holding Max’s hands down against the bed, above his head. Like it was a bad thing, dangerous. Something that might mean Max could hurt Daniel where not many people can anymore.
They make Max go on stage, and Kelly makes them let her lead him up there, too. He says some words about how grateful he is for the opportunity to drive for the FIA, that he hopes they can win another year to bring honour to Red Bull Racing, and when he looks for Daniel in the crowd, he can’t see him anywhere.
-
Alone, it goes like-
“Hey Maxy,” Daniel says, voice hardly above a whisper but so gentle that all of Max’s doubts gush from him, water rushing back from the shore into the sea.
He opens his arms as soon as the door to his compartment is shut behind Max, and stepping into them is like a blissful lobotomy, everything outside of the room wiped from memory.
For these stolen moments there is just the two of them, their touch moulding each other new again.
“Checo, I do not think he will be driving so well,” Max says later, sweat cooling on his back where he lies against Daniel’s chest. Ear pressed against it so he can hear the thump of his heart, slowing now they’re no longer desperately moving against one another.
It feels a little cruel to wish for that, Checo out, when they all know what happens when you leave the FIA for good. He isn’t Daniel, nobody will paying him for his time and keeping him around.
But Daniel only hums, fingertips tracing over Max’s back. Years ago, when they first started this, Max would concentrate in silence and try to work out if they were letters, a secret message. Now they just feel like random patterns.
“If he did, you could be back in the car all the time,” Max tries again, but still nothing. “This would be better, do you not think, if you could-“
“Maxy, baby, let’s- Let’s not, okay?” Daniel interrupts, sounding drained.
“But- But Daniel, then they wouldn’t-“
The FIA would still let people hire Daniel, if they wanted, but there’d be less hurt. It’s too hard to drive a car and perform well with broken ribs, with bruises on your tailbone. With- With worse.
“Sweetheart, I don’t want to think about racing,” Daniel sighs, and then he’s untangling himself from Max to sit upright, legs kicking round to dangle off the bed. For a moment, Max’s heart stops and he thinks desperately, please don’t go, we still have until morning, but then he sees that Daniel is just lighting a cigarette.
Then he’s getting back in beside Max, pulling him back close.
“I don’t want to think about racing,” he repeats, like he thinks Max will risk their time together fighting him on this.
“Well what do you want to talk about?” Max asks instead, looking up and watching Daniel inhale smoke through his lungs, then exhale it from his nostrils, plumes of it billowing from them like he is a dragon who could breathe fire.
Closing his eyes, Daniel sinks further into the pillows.
“Australia,” he says, and Max smiles.
This is a game Max knows how to play.
“I am almost done fixing the fence in the sheep’s pen,” he begins, tracing his own patterns on the skin of Daniel’s chest, connecting the bruises to mak constellations of pain. “I think I will just need your help to lift the gate back onto it’s hinges tomorrow morning.”
Daniel hums again, then says, “okay Maxy, but after I want to go to the beach. Think you’ll have time to make us some food to take down there, if we pack the blanket?”
Max nods, face pressed so close to Daniel’s chest his lips catch on his skin as he speaks.
“For you, I can make the time,” he promises, like it’s not one thing on a list of many that they never have enough of.
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wip wednesday
tagged by @jesuisici33 @callaplums @daffi-990 @loserdiaz @thewolvesof1998 @disasterbuckdiaz @fortheloveofbuddie 💖💖
made a bit of progress on the sick fic so here it is🤷
prev snippet
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“Maybe we should get you to a doctor.” Buck muses, wrapping the blanket over Eddie’s shoulders.
“I don’t need- I just closed my eyes for a second. I’m fine.” he grumbles, fumbling with the blanket too long to want to actually throw it off, but he does in the end – he’s cold and refuses to admit it, and he’d rather sit here and pretend he’s fine. He’s impossible.
“Eddie, that cough did not sound fine.” he points out.
“Buck-” he sneezes, and then wraps the sleeves of his hoodie over his palms. Buck raises his eyebrow, and Eddie pointedly avoids his eyes, as he not-so-discreetly wipes his nose with a sleeve.
“I bought tissues.” Buck reaches for the bag and digs out a box, then tries to give it to Eddie, who, instead of taking it, just levels him with a stare, as he sniffles loudly, and swipes a sleeve under his nose again. “Seriously? You’re gonna be gross and disgusting just to prove you’re not sick?” That’s a new level of stubborn Buck hasn’t seen from Eddie yet. He can’t believe this is the man his heart decided it wants. And that even while sick and gross and stubborn and ridiculous, a part of Buck is still endeared by him.
“I’m not.” Eddie insists, sounding so congested Buck swears he can feel it in his own sinuses. “Let me just finish my coffee, and then I-” another sneeze. “Have so much to do today.” he finishes, but at least this time he reaches for the tissues, looking anywhere but at Buck, cheeks red.
“Yeah, no, all you’re gonna do today is rest and take some medicine.” Buck says decisively, then takes the bag in his hand, and slowly starts walking to the kitchen. “Get comfortable, and I’ll just put this all away and be right back. I bought meds, tissues, and something to cook you some soup-” he starts listing off, getting louder the further he gets. “Oh, and stopped by the farmer’s market to get honey. Did you know that honey has antioxidant and antibacterial properties?” he asks excitedly, ready to tell Eddie every single thing he found in his quick research. Buck learned a long time ago that with Eddie he doesn’t need to hold back and can rant and ramble all he wants, and Eddie is happy to listen to him.
“Yeah?” Eddie yells back, voice hoarse and strained. Buck can hear the couch shift as Eddie gets comfortable, maybe even finally lays down. He knows Eddie won’t just give in and admit he’s sick, but this is a start. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” he sounds genuinely interested, though also really tired.
“I will, just a sec! I’ll make you some tea with lemon and honey, how’s that sound?” he asks, and gets a grunt in response, though he’s not sure if that’s an answer, or if Eddie’s just trying to suppress a cough in an attempt to hide that he’s sick, as if Buck didn’t already know. He chuckles to himself. He really has his work cut out for him today.
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no pressure tags: @elvensorceress @gayarthur @diazass @thebravebitch @silentxxsoul @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @arthursdent @diazblunt @911onabc @eddiediaztho @housewifebuck @lover-of-mine @gayhoediaz @rogerzsteven @watchyourbuck @hoodie-buck @monsterrae1 @hippolotamus @ladydorian05 @forthewolves @honestlydarkprincess @wildlife4life @spotsandsocks @eowon @theotherbuckley @weewootruck @thewolvesof1998 @giddyupbuck @disasterbuckdiaz @hoodie-buck @spotsandsocks
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