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#my boy Carlos is so confident

sunny44 · 29 days

Text

Lost in the Paddock

Pairing: Carlos Sainz x Girlfriend!reader

Warnings: none, just a lil blurb

Summary: A few drivers got an eye on Carlos girlfriend.

The paddock was bustling as always, and I walked through it trying to find the Ferrari garage. It was easy to get lost in the confusion of teams, mechanics, and journalists, and that's exactly what happened to me.

Carlos and I have been together for 4 years, but I had never been to a race before and was trying to find my way around. I was already familiar with his world, so that's why we decided to keep our relationship hidden.

As I walked, I could feel the curious looks of some reporters, fans, and even some drivers since I was wearing the Ferrari badge.

Among them were drivers like Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, and Charles Leclerc, and from what Carlos told me about them, I knew they were cool.

Lando was the first to approach, with his bright and confident smile.

"Hey, you seem lost. Need any help?" I smiled politely, trying not to reveal my nervousness.

"Yeah, I'm actually very lost," I smiled nervously, and he chuckled.

"I'm Lando, by the way."

"Oh, I know your name, I'm Y/n.”

"It's a beautiful name. Just like the owner." He smiled, and I saw Max and Charles approaching.

"Thank you. Actually, I'm looking for the Ferrari garage."

"Or you could come with me to Red Bull. Our garage is much cooler, and I'm Max, by the way." I felt flattered by their attention, and I had to hold back from laughing because they really had no idea who I was.

"He's lying, the Ferrari garage is much better, and I would love to take you there."

He smiled, and if I didn't love Carlos, surely that smile and those dimples would have won me over.

I was startled when I felt arms around my waist and recognized the hands immediately.

"Hiii baby.” I turned and held his face, kissing him.

"Hey hermosa, I thought you'd arrive later," he smiled and looked at the three behind me. “Why the shocked faces? And what are you doing around my girlfriend?"

"She's your girlfriend?" Lando asked shocked.

"Wait, you have a girlfriend?" Charles said.

"Since when?" This time it was Max.

"Like 4 years ago," he said.

"4 YEARS?" Lando shouted and got a slap from Max.

"Why do you look so shocked? As if it were impossible for me to have a girlfriend."

“It's just that she's WOW, and you're you," Lando said, and I laughed.

“Oh, thanks for calling me ugly."

“It's not that, it's just that she's way out of your league.”

“And way more out of yours so back off and stop drooling, all three of you.” he said, taking my hand.

"Bye, boys, it was nice meeting you, and thanks for the help.” I said, waving to them.

“You don't think I'm ugly, do you?" He asked, and I started laughing.

“Of course not, in fact, I think you're very very hot." I gave him a peck on the cheek, and he smiled as we headed to the Ferrari garage.

Bonus scene!

Carlossainz Instagram stories

“Yes, I have a hot girlfriend!!!!!”

1K notes · View notes

natailiatulls07 · 1 month

Note

Could you please do the drivers reaction to driver reader bringing a boy to the race?

Formula one grid x female!driver!reader Male!OC x female!driver!reader

Summary - Being youngest on the grid meant that Y/n was heavily protected by many other drivers so when she gets a partner it's mixed emotions all around

Warning - Small anxiety

Reader drives for Mercedes

Part two

"Are you sure? I know that some of the fans can be a little crazy about my private life..." In the past few months, Y/n had started a relationship with a guy she matched with on tinder. Not many people knew of the relationship, only her family and her management team.

Although that would change today, it was the first race of the season and they had wanted to hard launch their relationship. Adam, her new partner, was a lawyer and had his own wealth behind him but he was really proud of Y/n and loved to support her.

He could tell how nervous she was, seeing how she kept fidgeting with her hair and teamwear. "Hey, it's okay. Plus if any thing happens and you have to take legal action, you have a great lawyer on your side" He would often use humour to calm down his f1 driver girlfriend, loved to bring even the smallest of smiles to her face.

Adam took hold her hand, stopping her from fidgeting so much and started to drag her to the paddock entrance where fans stood behind barriers waiting to catch a glimpse of a driver.

As they began to walk past the barriers, fans were shouting her name and some were asking questions about the man who held her hand. They both had proud and confident smiles painted on their faces, any anxiety seemingly disappeared.

"Y/n! Y/n! Is that your new partner?"

Nodding her head, Y/n stopped to sign some merch and greet some fans. "Yes, yeah he is. Meet Adam" Looking over her shoulder, she felt how Adam had his hands gently resting on her waist. They were both very big on pda.

Thankfully the fans had reacted well to the new face. Some softly threatening Adam not to hurt their favourite driver, which got a laugh out of Y/n and some fear out of Adam.

Soon they started toward the main entrance of the paddock, waving goodbye to the fans and individually scanning their passes. Yet as soon as Y/n set foot into the paddock, dread and anxiety plagued her mind once again.

Only now remembering that she'd have to introduce Adam to her fellow drivers, her adopted big brothers. If today weren't such an important day, she would've turned around and made her way home. Procrastinating the eventual doom.

As usual, the man still held her hand in his could sense her fear. And he knew exactly why. "Look I know I have never meet them and I know that they very protective of you but I'll try my best to earn their approval, I promise..." He coached her to take a deep breath but pulling her forward to continue the walk.

They were passing by the Ferrari hospitality area when we heard a loud shout before some softly running of feet. "Disculpe! Y/n!" A strong spanish accent mde itself known behind the new couple.

Whilst Y/n tensed, Adam turned around fully with a confident smile. "Hi you must be Carlos right? It's lovely to meet you" He started a positive conversation, only to be met with a glare and scowl from Carlos.

"Yes, that's me. And who are you?" The spanish driver snapped back, snatching Y/n's arm and pulling her away from her partner. "What do you want from Y/n?"

Taking her arm back out of his grasp, Y/n moved back to Adams side with a sign.

She knew that the other drivers would be just as protective and some even more than Carlos. "Carlos..." Her voiced broke through the awkward silence that he created. "This is my new partner, Adam. You can chill out..."

All shoulders relaxed as she explained, a small guilty smile replaced the scowl on Carlos' face. Reaching out his hand towards Adam as both an apologie and a better introduction.

After a small conversation between the three, Y/n realised that the couple had to continue down the paddock. Saying goodbye to Carlos, the two were walking down to her team garage once again but were quick stopped once again.

This time by her old teammate and the reigning champion the grid. "Y/n, um who's this?" Unlike Carlos, Max was more shy and cautious rather than forward and hostile. Something Adam was thankful of.

"Hi I'm Adam, I'm Y/ns partner. It's nice to meet you, also I promise to take good care of Y/n..." After his last interaction with Carlos, Adam tried even harder to prove himself. "Please, I promise I love her a lot and-"

Max raised his hand to stop the ramble from the younger man. He had a small smile on his face, slightly amused by his fear. "It's okay, I don't doubt it. I'm sure you'll prove yourself over the next couple of weeks..."

Giving Y/n a quick hug and Adam a pat on the shoulder, Max told them that he had an important meeting to attend and he'll see them around.

Finally they arrived at the Mercedes hospitality and when they first entered, Adam eyes turned to the other driver in the room. Lewis, he was sat at one the table along with some of his management team.

Much like Adam, Lewis immediately noticed their presence in the room and beckoned them over to him.

"Hi Lulu!" Y/n quicking moving to give her beloved teammate a hug before moving back to her partners side. "Lulu meet Adam, he's my partner and Adam meet Lulu, my teammate."

Unlike the other two drivers, Lewis had a reassuring smile on his face whilst getting up from his seat to give Adam strong handshake. "Well it's nice to meet you Adam, I assume you'll take good care of that crazy women right there. I wish you the best"

It was short and simple but it meant a lot to Adam. Immediately he felt approved by a legend in the sport and by someone who Y/n considered a father figure.

"Thank you, I'll take good care of her"

>Seb! -Seb!!! -SEB OMG I HAVE NEWS!!! >What?! >It's about Y/n!! >Well go on tell me!!!!! >She has a partner! -His name is Adam and tbh I can see them getting married!!! >THATS BOLD >IKR But it's true! -They're perfect for eachother!!! >I need to meet him first and approve him first before they can even think about engagements >Ofc ofc

698 notes · View notes

fangirl-dot-com · 24 days

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🐍 Track 2 - . . . Ready for It?

TAG LIST IS CLOSED

I'm sorry to the ones I couldn't tag. If you do want notifications for when I post, there's always that option as well!

Logan had a new phone. And for the first time in a while, it felt nice to just be disconnected from the world for a bit. The people who truly mattered had his phone number. His Instagram had been wiped, along with every other social media. The American had gone dark.

And apparently you had done the same thing.

His parents and brother knew where he would be, just in case for emergencies. However, he asked them to not text much. He needed time away, well, away from the current grid. It hurt him, seeing how supportive everyone was with Theo. No one had ever congratulated him when he first got signed. Hell, even Oscar hadn’t known right away, claiming he had forgotten.

Of course, he had given you his new number because you’d be the only person he previously knew that he’d still be in contact with. You also gave Logan you’re new number, having similar ideas to your friend.

Well, he had given George his new number. The Briton had texted his old number in a panic-like manner when Logan deactivated everything. Under a temporary contract, Logan wasn’t legally allowed to tell George anything except that he was safe and needed time away.

The brunet was not happy with that, but he let Logan know that if he needed anything, he would come running. A bit of happiness let itself seep into Logan’s heart, thankful for the Mercedes driver’s friendship.

When he had read the email after the social media posts went up, his mind blanked.

What did Andretti want with him? A washed-out jobless nobody. He believes they should have been looking at someone like Carlos or even Ollie, who was making good times in F2 car. It had to be anyone but him.

So why was it him?

He had been about to call you when you had first facetimed him on his laptop. He couldn’t even get words about before you started screeching. Logan chuckled as you went on a rant, as this could be their big break. His silence had given you a look into how he was truly feeling.

Your voice had quieted down on the device.

“You’re going to take the offer right?”

Logan winced at your tone, which gave you the information you needed. You rolled your eyes as you sat on your bed.

“Logan, we were just dropped by two teams that didn’t even want us. They pushed us away like we were nothing. And now, there’s a team with top potential that truly wants us, and you don’t want to take the opportunity?”

The American boy sighed. You had a point.

“I’m just scared that I’m going to get there, and then make a fool out of myself. Then Michael is going to see how truly bad of a driver I am,” he hugged out.

You could hear the fear in his voice, and it devastated you. Where did your confident and smiley boy go? Williams would pay for it, one way or another.

You were hesitant to say something.

“Logan, even if our times aren’t what we’re wanting at first, Michael said that we will get better. He’s sent my manager some data and it looks like we are scarily similar with our driving styles. Logan, the car is going to be made for us. Michael made sure that I knew that we’d have a chance, because I’m not driving if you’re not. Together or nothing, we come as a package.”

Logan sat up quickly off his bed. He glared at you through his laptop.

“You did not just quote Charles Leclerc to me.”

“And what if I did?”

“No, you can’t give this offer up if I don’t drive.”

You glared back at him, although you had a smile.

“It’s either both of us, or none of us. I’m tired of never seeing you, and you need a friend you can count on. I’m sorry to say but Oscar has done a very shit job of being your friend. I’d say that George is a better friend than him.”

Logan sighed. “No, you’re right. It’s just hard to accept that.”

Your smile dropped a bit.

“Logan, he was supposed to be your friend and then he dropped you. Everyone had dropped you so many times and you’ve been the one to pick yourself back up. But now, you’ve been dropped a final time, yet someone wants to be the first to help you back up, to clean your wounds, and to heal you. And now you don’t even want that?”

You had a point.

Like always.

“Your words never seem to fail me woman.”

“That’s because men are the inferior being.”

Logan snorted.

“Will I see you in Milan next week?” you asked with hopeful eyes. Logan could see the glimmer that shined in them. He didn’t want to be the person to damped that.

“I will see you in Milan.”

The first thing that popped into Logan’s mind when he got to the base was “Holy Shit.”

The building was massive as he walked through the giant doors. He really thought that this was a movie set with how grand it was. Surely this couldn’t it? Maybe he had the wrong address.

“Mr. Sargeant?”

Or maybe he did. His body turned to the lady standing near the front desk. He showed a smile that was definitely a tad too wide and showed too many teeth. Thankfully the lady didn’t show any malice as she sweetly grinned at the blond.

“Yes ma’am. That’s me.”

Always the good southern-hospitality manners with him.

“I’m glad you could make it. If you’d follow me, Michael is waiting in his office for you.”

Logan breathed a sigh of relief when he finally knew that he didn’t have to circumnavigate the entirety of the building.

The air was fresh as he walked behind the lady, who he now knew as Marissa Andretti, Michael’s sister and Head of Directors. Her own American accent was like a comforting blanket to Logan. Gosh, did he miss hearing a familiar voice to his own during 2023.

The one voice he couldn’t wait to hear was your own. He knew he’d be safe once he heard the lisps of a Southern draw when you talked. The slurred vowels and the biting consonants would be music to his ears.

“How have you liked the simulator and the data so far?” Marissa asked as she led Logan down yet another hallway. How big was this building and were they leading him to his death?

Yet, despite his concerns, Logan was very happy with the results.

“The car is already so fast. It’s like it’s just an extension of me instead of working against me. It feels so right.”

Technically, Logan had been on the first plane to Milan to start testing, as his own anxiety wouldn’t let him wait until the week was up. You had your own simulator back in the States, so you did your testing there. Logan had been back in London when the email came, and his set up was not going to function with the high tech that Andretti needed.

Marissa smiled over her shoulder. “Good, that is exactly what we are wanting to hear.”

Finally, she stopped in front of a door that had a giant-ass A on the front. Logan wanted to laugh at the cinematics. Surely, this was a movie and he was going to be the main character. Marissa pushed a button and the door slowly swung open.

Logan’s smile grew once he saw you in one of the very plush seats in front of the desk. You immediately stood up and jumped into his arms. He breathed deeply and all weight slowly melted from his body. It had been so long since he had gotten to hug you, hold you, feel you.

When you pulled away, you had a blinding smile on your face.

“Glad to see you here Logs.”

His nose scrunched at the old nickname.

“I don’t think you’ve called me that since we were 12, Y/n.”

You huffed.

“Fine, no nickname for you.”

“I take it back. I ban you from calling me Logan.”

“Isn’t that your name?”

“No?”

“Logs!”

“Ah there it is!”

A cough signaled to Logan that they weren’t actually alone. He sheepishly turned around to face the man who, hopefully after this meeting, would be his boss for a couple of years. Logan turned his full body towards the desk and stepped with his hand outstretched.

Michael had a knowing smile as he shook Logan’s hand.

“I am so sorry sir, I didn’t even realize that you were already here, and I haven’t seen her in a while, and it’s so good to just here the accents because the grid is entirely too European and Asian, sometimes I couldn’t even understand them, and…”

Michael put his hands on Logan’s shoulders.

“It’s just fine kid. I totally get you.”

Logan visibly relaxed under Michael’s hands.

“Now, why don’t you sit down and we can start talking contracts.”

Logan lit up at the word.

“Contracts?”

You gave him a smirk.

“Yes Logs, contracts.”

Logan felt as though he couldn’t breathe. But this time, it was with excitement and not dread. His butt quickly found the seat next to yours. Marissa left the room with promises of coming back with celebratory drinks.

Michael pulled out two small stacks of paper before he started speaking.

“So, I’ve talked with both of your managers and we’ve come up with a contract. You two can look over it as I read the big details. The finer print is stuff that you both have already previously gone over, but you are still encouraged to look over it one final time.”

You and Logan had the same exact papers.

In the initial emailing process, the two of you had voiced that you were a packaged deal. Logan was surprised to see that Michael had said that he wouldn’t want it any other way and was glad to possibly not have to deal with drivers hating each other. Logan thought anything would be better than Brocedes 2016.

You looked down at the words as Michael read them out loud.

“Ok, so in the contract, the two of you will be signed until 2027. There is an exit clause in section C, but we are not allowed to terminate prior to 2027. The two of you will be granted ambassadorship with whatever sponsors we’ve received. The sponsorships are in section E and it gives a rundown of each one and what they will be contributing to the team.

“Per secrecy of wanting to keep the identities secret until we reach the grid for testing, the two of you will go under pseudonyms.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“Like a call sign?”

Marissa flashed a wicked grin.

“Exactly like a call sign.”

You continued, “Do we get to come up with them?”

Michael clasped his hands. “So we thought that Y/n could go by Phoenix and then Logan would go Venus.”

Your eyes widened as you took in the name. Wasn’t too bad, you thought.

Logan let out a sigh of relief. “At least it’s not like Eagle or something. That would be super obvious.”

The boss-man chuckled before he looked back down at the contract.

“Since the two of you did not specify a salary, we took the liberty to come up with one ourselves. But please feel free to mention what you’d like and we can always raise it. We also liked to put in that for every point scored, the two of you get a bonus as a little incentive. The salary will not be dropped no matter if points are scored or not. Think of it as a baseline.”

Michael chuckled as he watched yours and Logan’s eyes drastically widen at the sight of the eight digits before the decimal. Logan gulped at the sight.

“Michael, I think you added too many zeros.”

“I think I didn’t add enough.”

Logan couldn’t respond.

You looked up from the paper to Michael. “I think it’s high enough.”

The goateed-man smiled back at you and continued.

“I’ve seen the skills parts on your resumes and thankfully the two of you do not need to learn Italian from scratch. I don’t even know when the two of you had time to learn it, but thankfully it is not required in meetings or in the garage.”

Logan smirked as he looked at the words.

“What’s the fun in that? We can have secret conversations with ourselves.”

You tapped his shoulder.

“Except Ferrari will know and maybe Lewis.”

“I’ll have my Duolingo account at the ready.”

Michael watched as the two of you pored over the papers and bickered like an old married couple. He and Marissa already had a bet going to see when the two of you would get together. But, you didn’t need to know that.

“I digress. You can speak in Italian if you want to. The next couple of sections are just PR related. The two of you wanted to bring you own teams in, which is fine. I’ve sent emails and meeting times to each of them and have been replied to. All is in motion. Logan, you mentioned something to me once about your personal trainer leaving?”

A sigh left his lips at the mention of Benny. He really didn’t want anyone else. He slowly nodded.

“He had to leave to be with his family. Williams wasn’t the most accommodating and he was told that he had to be at every race. Normally I didn’t even need him until race day. He’d miss so much time with his family because of traveling and things like that.”

“Well, I think we have you covered.”

Logan looked back down at the paper. A small gasp left his lips.

Ben Jacobs was written in black ink under “Personal Trainer.”

“How?”

Michael smiled.

“It took some convincing, but he said he’d come back for you. Of course, Ben will be highly compensated to return after he said he wouldn’t. His family will also be accommodated for any race that they’d like to attend and Ben can show up however late he needs. His leave will also be paid time as well.”

Logan could kiss the man if he could. Tears pooled in his eyes and he could only manage a small thank you. Your hand rested on his shoulder in comfort. He just couldn’t wait to see him again.

“Looks like that is everything. Are you two ready to sign?”

Yours and Logan’s heads nodded eagerly as pens were uncapped. There was light scratching for a few moments as you filled out the needed information on the multiple sheets of paper. Once everything was completed, you let out a sigh of relief. You and Logan could finally do this.

Marissa showed up at the right moments with a few different beverages. You took one of the iced americanos, claiming that Italian espresso was, in fact, the best kind. Logan surprised you as he took a mimosa.

He side-eyed you.

“It’s freshly squeezed orange juice and you cannot go wrong with it. It’s a classic.”

You held you drink up and your other hand in mock surrender.

Michael took a black coffee and sipped it.

“Now, onto the fun stuff.”

Your eyebrows pinched. “Fun stuff?”

Michael smirked before pulling up a projector that was attached to his laptop. He started to click through the slides.

“First, the car.”

On the slide was a sleek yellow and black livery. The black really highlighted the tamer yellow.

Michael pointed at it.

“This is our 2024 livery. We designed it awhile back, but it’s finally going to be used.”

You let out a whistle as a video played the engine noise. To you, it sounded fast. You had been able to do a few laps with an actual car to get the feel of it since IndyCar were so much different. Michael claimed though that you were a natural in the car, being able to command it to what you needed it to do. Logan was quite the same.

The next slide showed multiple models of Lamborghinis. With it came a smirk from the sister and brother pair.

Logan looked at them.

“I don’t know whether to be excited about the smirks or nervous.”

Marissa was the one to pull up something on her personal iPad. She showed the official Lamborghini website.

“Because the two of you will now technically ambassadors for Lambo as well, you two need to pick out what models the two of you would like to own. For now, we can start with one, but Tonino wanted his drivers to start a small collection.”

You made her pause.

“Tonino, as in, Tonino Lamborghini?”

Marissa sent a gentle smile to calm you down.

“Yes. Mr. Tonino will be at quite a few races to watch. He has mentioned wanting to see Ferrari fail, but our data is saying that although we look promising, there’s not guarantee.”

Logan exhaled sharply.

“No pressure right?”

Michael leaned forward over the desk.

“Listen to me Logan. You have been with a team that has now destroyed every bit of self-confidence. Mr. Tonino is actually the one who put your name on my radar. If you’re good enough for him, you need to believe that you’re good enough for everyone else.”

Logan was taken back. Mr. Tonino was the one to bring him up? He felt honored in a good way. A nod of his head let Michael and Marissa know that they could continue. Logan turned your way, only to find you already smiling at him. He hoped that he could always be on the receiving end of that smile.

Marissa continued where she left off.

“Just look over the models and customize it however you’d like. We’ll get it sent to the factory to be made in time for the first race in Bahrain. These cars will be shipped along with our supplies so you can always have them.”

You smirked. “I’ve always wanted a black Lamborghini Aventador.”

Logan turned to Marissa. “I’d love a black Lamborghini Huracan.”

A smile grew on your face. “Aw, Logan. We’ll get matching Lambos.”

Logan thought that if you had been an emoji, you’d be the one with the big teary eyes and a pout. Marissa looked pleased at the requests for the different models.

You raised your hand. “Do we need to start looking for places to stay here in Milan?”

Michael lifted his eyebrows.

“You don’t actually. Between races, the two of you are more than welcome to either go home or adventure somewhere. We will let you know when it is crucial to come back here to do some testing. Housing is provided when you need to be here. There are multiple estates that can be used on bought property.”

You and Logan definitely liked the sound of that. Maybe you could stay in close villas or something. Or maybe in the same place as you tended to get lonely. That’s what being pushed out of everything does to someone in a year. You can’t remember the last time that you were invited to do something with the team, always retreating to your small hotel room after a race. You feel as though Logan might feel the same.

Michael moved to the next slide, showing the race suits.

“These are the suits for the season. Black or white fireproofs will go well with them. Helmets are up to the two of you. You will need on standard for some races and then you can choose what races you want fun ones to be. Miami, Austin, Las Vegas, and Imola are going to be considered our home races.”

“What about Monza?” Logan questioned.

Michael had a glint in his eyes.

“That will forever belong to the Tifosi I’m afraid.”

You decided to pipe up.

“Or Charles Leclerc. I feel like wherever he goes, the Tifosi goes with him. You make him trade teams, the Italians will follow him.”

Logan shot you a teasing look.

“You always have to bring him up in one way or another.”

You shrugged.

“He’s a good driver. Let’s not bring up that you’re such a fanboy for Max Verstappen of all people.”

Logan’s torso shifted.

“It’s not every day that one beats Sir Lewis Hamilton and take away his 8th championship!”

Laughs erupted from Michael and Marissa, making you and Logan pause. You cleared your throat.

“Sorry, please continue.”

Michael went a bit further with the slides, going over compatible data to the car. He went over sponsors and things like that before he finally leaned back into his chair.

“Are we able to drive the cars today?”

Much like you were, Logan was itching to be back behind the wheel. And hopefully, the wheel belonged to a reliable car.

Michael stood from where he sat, making you and Logan also rise to your feet.

“I’d thought you’d never ask,” he said, making his way to the door. When the two of you didn’t follow, he turned back around.

“Are you ready for it?”

lamborghini_racing has posted

Lamborghini_racing Are you ready for it?

liked by y/n.nation, logang2, box_box_express, and 4,205,095 others

l4mbo.child a hello or how are you doing WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE

f1_fan I fear they have gagged the entire grid with this

ferrariforza damn, I thought we had the best livery - sorry kings 👑

lambo_drivers all I'm asking is who is going to be driving this beast?

lo-girlies do I even utter his name in fear that it might not happen?

y/nfan or even utter her name?

thepaddock_person who 🤨

childofF1 I'll say it - LOGAN AND Y/N FOR LAMBO 2024

box_box_express the paint, the yellow, the black, the lighting, THE EVERYTHING

taylorswiftxf1 I see the admin is a Taylor fan??

phoenix95 has posted

phoenix95 baby let the games begin

liked by venus2, Lamborghini_racing, y/n.nation, dior, and 2,195,086 others

4theF1_girlies EXCUSE MEEEEEEE

driver95 ayo - we got the Lightning McQueen number with a queen

lambo_duo oh gosh I hope I live to see the day that they reveal their drivers

venus2 looking snazzy 😎

phoenix95 no one ever says that anymore

venus2 🥺

phoenix95 fine...thank you

venus2 🥰

venusxphoenix WHOEVER THEY ARE - THEY HAVE MY HEART

rising_phoenix95 immediate fan

lambo_child the Aventador is such a slay 💅

lambof1 I wonder if they have like matching cars with their contracts

venus2 has posted

venus2 let the games begin now

liked by phoenix95, marissa_andretti, Lamborghini_racing, and 4,205,850 others

lambof1 I THINK I CALLED IT?? THE MATCHING BLACK CARS

pitstop_nightmare I'M SORRY FERRARI BUT THIS IS TOO SEXY

lamborghinivsferrari THE HURACAN 🥵😱

c16_leclerc I'm guessing they went to Charles's school of serving cunt

hamilton44lewis and graduated with a degree in slay

phoenix95 that's sexy baby

venus2 thanks 😚

phoenix95 ...I was talking about the car?

venus2 sure...sure you were 😈

box_box_express I feel like I have some sleuthing to do - hold please

logansarg2 I miss Logan so much - it's heartbreaking to see all of his accounts go dark, I guess I'll have to stan this dude instead

y/n.nation I miss our girl so much

TAG LIST: @fionaschicken @myxticmoon @cherry-piee @blueberry64857959 @glitterquadricorn @lizzypiastri @disneyprincemuke @sam-is-lost @spilled-coffee-cup @ilove-tswizzle @the-untamed-soul @allenajade-ite @starssfall @torchbearerkyle @judespoision @halfdeadsage @juniper-july19 @severewobblerlightdragon @thatgirlmj @gods-menace @ineedafictionalman @namgification @dark-night-sky-99 @samantha-chicago @2pagenumb @treehouse-mouse @fangirl125reader @megatrilss1885 @kagatinkita @itsjustkhaos @nikfigueiredo @awekbachira @vellicora @skepvids @sunrizef1 @stan-josie @fanficweasley @hiireadstuff @barcelonaloverf1life @c-losur3 @graciewrote @bruhhhhhhhhehhhhhhh @tallrock35 @ashy-kit @kat-s2 @minkyungseokie @lozzamez3 @leslieis-crying @adventuresofrose @lighttsoutlewis

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weeknd-ogoc · 8 months

Text

LUNA, SOL Y MAR ˳ ׄ ⟡ . CARLOS SAINZ JR.

SUMMARY: in which carlos reminisces about your long relationship before he decides to propose to you. (inspired by the song, san lucas by kevin kaarl) FACE CLAIM: cindy kimberly CONTAINS: overprotective parents, major fluff, making out and carlos catching a feel! AUTHOR'S NOTE: as a latina, i feel likes there's not many imagines with latina girls for carlos so i decided to make this for ya'll. 🩵

(the smaller words are the english translation!)

🩵 twelve years old

carlos and you had been best friends growing up so somewhere along the way the both of you ended up falling so in love with each other. at first your parents thought it was just a harmless crush so they allowed you to spend your afternoons with him.

since you guys lived a few minutes from each other, their was a little garden area near your house and that became your little spot to hangout.

"my dad's taking me on a trip to italy to enter a race tomorrow..." carlos had told you as he plucked the little blue flowers on the ground. "but i'll be back next week."

he was always worried about leaving you since he knew how harsh your parents could be with you, in the case he wasn't around he sent his older sister to make sure you were alright.

you smiled at him as he handed you one of the flowers. "lucky you, i want to go to italy some day."

the young boy plucked another flower from the ground and put it on your ear. "créeme, cuando seamos mas grandes te llevaré por todo el mundo." (believe me, when we're older i'll take you with me all around the world.)

little did you know he had actually meant that.

🌙 sixteen years old

as the new year started, carlos made it his mission to make sure you were going to be his from now on. so the next night he helped you sneak out of your room and the both of you walked to your spot — where he had set up some blankets and pillows on the ground.

"very romantic." you smiled as you laid down next to him.

god did he love that vanilla scent you had.

the both of you laid down under the stars in silence, he was trying to gain the confidence to ask you out and in doing so he slowly wrapped his arm around you.

"la luna se ve tan hermosa..." you had said as you laid comfortably against his arm. (the moon looks so beautiful)

you hadn't noticed he was actually looking into your eyes "no tan hermosa como tu." (not as beautiful as you)

this had you both screaming on the inside.

he cleared his throat and looked back up to the moon.

"it's now or never..." you mumbled out and before he could ask what you said — you had already softly pressed your lips on his.

deep down he was kind of glad you made the first move.

before you knew it the kiss was starting to get more intense and he pulled down one of your straps on your dress, which you allowed him to. "let's try to slow down..." he said in between kisses and you let out a small mhm. so the both of you tried to slow things down, but it wasn't easy since his hands were wandering and your lips had somehow attached onto his neck.

"y/n!" the both of you heard which made you guys jump up — you had pulled up the straps on your dress and he tried hiding his very visible boner.

your father stood their crossing his arms. "regresa a la casa ahorita mismo." (return back to the house now.)

you glanced at carlos before walking back to your house and overheard your father telling carlos he was never going to see you again, but the two of you were teenagers and in love so of coarse you were going to see each other again.

☀️ eighteen years old

the day before your eighteenth birthday, carlos was finally returning back to spain. he had chosen to become a professional driver and you one hundred percent supported him, he had been traveling for a few months but you guys managed to still talk over the phone whenever your family wasn't around.

his parents always welcomed you into their house when things got hard back at home, they had loved you as a daughter after finding out carlos and you were together.

"meet at our spot, i have something to tell you!" he excitedly told you before he got on his plane. "te quiero mucho..." (i love you so much)

so after your parents went to work, you snuck out and walked to your spot, where carlos was already waiting for you. he had the blankets placed on the floor and blue roses in his hands.

you jumped into his arms as he hugged you tightly. "god, i missed you hermosa." (beautiful)

after a few more kisses and hugs, the pair sat under the sun as he had told you about his races and showed you pictures. he loved how excited you were for him and he was excited for what he was about to ask you.

"you're turning eighteen in a few hours and i want you to leave with me..." he quickly told you. "come with me to my next race and after that we can travel all around the world."

your parents quickly crossed your mind but you nodded to his question "cuándo nos vamos?" (when do we leave)

he kissed your forehead and looked back down to you. "tomorrow morning!"

after talking about your futures, the sun was starting to get stronger and you put your hair up in a bun. "hace más calor" (it's getting hotter)

he smirked before planting a kiss on your head. "no tan caliente como tu." (not as hot as you)

you rolled your eyes at him before pushing him down into the blanket and kissing him once more.

the both of you stayed until midnight and he walked you over to your house, where your parents were waiting for you on the front porch.

your dad instantly stood up. "yo te había dicho que ya no te acercaras a mi hija." he told carlos as he walked up to him. (i told you before not to get close to my daughter)

before your dad could touch him, you stepped in front of them both. "i'm leaving with him..."

your dad let out a laugh and looked back to your mother who looked scared. "he's not going to be able to support you with his silly dream job."

you scoffed "carlos is going to make it and i'm going to be right there next to him so i'm getting my stuff and i'm leaving."

carlos had helped you pack your things and when you went to the bathroom to get the last remaining of your things, your mom walked into the room.

"carlos, por favor cuidala." (please take good care of her)

he nodded. "siempre." (always)

your mother knew he had actually meant that and he truly did.

🌊 twenty five years old

the two of you had now been together for almost ten years now and were living in a big house in spain, you guys had gotten two dogs and they were basically like your children.

your relationship with your parents had gotten better after you left and your father had apologized to carlos for saying the things he did the night you left. he was proud of carlos for being able to fully support you.

"woah, are you okay?" charles had asked you since he saw you throwing up in a trash can.

you nodded as he handed you a napkin and rubbed your shoulder. "just peachy..."

"what's wrong then?" he asked.

the italian gp of 2023 was just in a few hours and it had you feeling real nervous for carlos, he had been training real hard and even looked nervous.

what you didn't know was that he was actually nervous because he was planning to ask you to marry him right after the race, he was so sure he was winning this race.

carlos overheard you telling charles that you were twelve weeks pregnant and he froze for a second.

it's now or never.

he cleared his throat and you looked at him with wide eyes.

"oop, i'll be out there." charles quickly mumbled before walking out.

you had walked up to him to him and he stopped you.

"amor, i was going to tell you aft-"

"cásate conmigo" he got on his knee and pulled the little box out of his pocket. "cásate conmigo" he said again. (marry me)

your heartbeat had instantly raced "car-"

he interrupted you once more. "i have loved you since i was a little boy, our whole childhood i knew it was going to be you and right now i know that i'm going to love you and our child for the rest of our lives."

your tears had began spilling out and you nodded. "yes i'll marry you."

he slipped the beautiful ring on your finger and pressed his lips onto yours. "te queiro mas que la luna, sol y mar." (i love more than the moon, sun and sea.)

thank you guys for reading, my requests are open!

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mirohlayo · 4 months

Text

F1 DRIVERS AND THINGS THEY

LOVE ABOUT YOU

including mclaren, ferrari, mercedes + verstappen, ricciardo & gasly

warning : mention of imperfections and insecurities

note : can't wait for the new f1 season because my sundays are so boring

!! english is not my first language !!

ᦈ OSCAR PIASTRI 81

you free up time only for him. you're always busy with your essays and assignments which means you don't have much time to spend with your boyfriend. but still you always manage to free up some time just fort him. and he loves that, he feels confident knowing that he is the only one who is so special to you. of course he won't waste a single second of your time together, because he couldn't ask for anything better than spending time with his favorite girl in the world.

ᦈ LANDO NORRIS 4

your cuddles. i swear this boy will cuddle you every chance he gets. he loves how your two bodies fit perfectly together in the arms of each other. he'll grab your waist and lay you on the bed, his body on top of you. he'll hold you tight and bury his face in the crook of your neck. you play with his curly hair, your hand gently stroking his back. he places some soft kisses on your neck and collarbones. and he delights in your warm embrace, which provides him so much comfort. like he's home.

ᦈ CHARLES LECLERC 16

the way you show to the whole world that he belongs to you. it's often subtle but you always try to give everyone a hint about your relationship with charles. to make sure the world knows he's yours. because he secretly loves when you do that. he genuinely feels loved and he loves thinking about the fact that there is only him in your heart.whether it's a matching jewelry or the faint trace of your lipstick on his cheek, he cherishes those little clues that show the world your deep love.

ᦈ CARLOS SAINZ 55

your eyes softening when you look at him. he notices it, the way you gaze at him, how you stare at him. but he has observed the way your eyes always soften when you look at him. some sparkles in them as you admire the love of your life. and he can't help but get lost in the beauty of your pupils. he stares into your eyes until he finds all the love you hide behind them. he feels special, and he always ends up flustered as his cheeks and face become all red. he turns into a blushing mess under your loving gaze.

ᦈ LEWIS HAMILTON 44

your imperfections and insecurities. gosh how much he loves your insecurities. lewis knows you don't like certain parts of your body and you can be insecure about your flaws. but he wants to show you how beautiful you are despite your imperfections, which he obviously doesn't agree with because you're literally the most prettiest person in this world. every single day he reminds you how perfect you are, and that no matter how insecurities you have he'll always cherises them.

ᦈ GEORGE RUSSEL 63

the way you're just yourself with him. george genuinely adore when you let your true self shine when you're around him. you don't open up to people easily and you're not quite comfortable when you meet one another. but not with george. you trust him and he makes feel you so safe that's why you're not afraid to be you, and he loves so much that. it means so much more than you think, his heart overflows with love every time he is with you.

ᦈ MAX VERSTAPPEN 33

your kisses. as simple as it is, he simply loves your kisses. whether soft and sweet kisses or rougher and deeper, he loves every type of kisses. especially after a bad day or a bad race (though 2023 was a pretty good year for him anyway), a kiss from you is all he needs. it's never enough kisses for him, he always asks for one every single minutes and if he doesn't get it then you're sure he'll pout for the rest of the day. but your kisses brings so much comfort and he feels so loved every time.

ᦈ DANIEL RICCIARDO 3

your smile. how much he loves your smile it's insane. obviously you two are a perfect match. he's so funny and his sense of humor is the same as you, you two are like the funniest couple of the grid. but daniel uses his humor and jokes mostly for you, just to see your beautiful smile rises on your face. the way your eyes narrow with a few tears of laughter on the edge, the way your smile brightens up his whole day. he just needs to see your smile to feel better. and he wishes you'll never stop smiling because how you look perfect like that.

ᦈ PIERRE GASLY 10

your little habits. one thing pierre loves about you is your habits. first in the start of your relationship, he didn't really know about your behavior and your little habits. but then he started to notice them : the way you bite your lips when you're concentrated, when you put the dishes away in a specific order because otherwise it stresses you out, your usual morning routine. he finds these things absolutely cute and he even started to appropriate them too. it shows his love for you.

#f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #oscar piastri x reader #lando norris x reader #charles leclerc x reader #carlos sainz x reader #lewis hamilton x reader #george russel x reader #max verstappen x reader #daniel riccardo x reader #pierre gasly x reader

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lecsainz · 7 months

Note

could you please write a smut of carlos? i don’t have any ideas other than the smooth operator song being included and like a “smooth opera-te me” type of joke.

SMOOTH OPERATOR

parings: carlos sainz x girlfriend!reader

authors note: I'm not entirely sure if this is what you were after, but hope you dig it!

warnings: (+18) smut, minors dni!

☆. . . masterlist !

Having a boyfriend who was a Formula One driver was something Y/N always adored, not because he was famous or wealthy – far from it. She and Carlos had known each other since school, and from the first year of elementary school, Carlos knew he would one day call Y/N his girlfriend, and that's exactly what happened. Y/N could confidently say that what she loved most about dating the Ferrari driver was that Carlos had a penchant for speed, and it reflected in all their encounters.

It wasn't that Carlos was rough or anything, but she loved the ideas he brought to the bedroom, and he was always open to hers. So, for her, dating an F1 driver was amazing.

Then, like every night after a long day of training at the gym, Carlos entered the apartment he shared with his girlfriend. However, as soon as he stepped into the apartment, he found it unusually quiet, with no lights on.

"Y/N?" Carlos dropped his gym bag on the shelf next to the door. "Cariño?"

With no response, Carlos decided to call Y/N, but just as he was about to dial her number, he heard a noise coming from the bathroom. "Hmmm." He was certain it was Y/N.

Carlos approached and leaned against the slightly ajar door, finding his girlfriend with a vibrator in her hands.

"Oh, my God..." he moaned softly at the sight.

Carlos had nothing against Y/N satisfying herself, especially since he spent a lot of time away from home due to his commitments with Ferrari. He thought he might climax just from watching his girl find pleasure.

Carlos moved closer to the door, and then, as if it were meant to happen, he fell to the floor with a thud.

"MY GOD!" Y/N tossed the vibrator aside and rushed out of the bathtub to help her boyfriend on the floor. "Carlos Vázquez de Castro, what the hell was that?" She tried to hold back a laugh at the boy on the floor who had a pained expression.

"Do you want help?" she asked and received a mumble in response.

"I think it's better if you don't get too close unless you put on some clothes because this sight is too tempting, and I have a strong desire to fuck you right there in that bathtub." As soon as he said that, Y/N could feel her entire body tense up, and she got slight shivers just imagining Carlos taking her in the bathtub.

"Do this," Y/N leaned in and took the opportunity to sit on her boyfriend, who was lying on the floor. "Smooth opera-te me." she whispered in Carlos's ear, and he could swear he would never find anyone more perfect than the girl in his lap.

As if that served as a response, Y/N felt her boyfriend's member harden beneath her. "Make me climax like you always do, mi amore..."

Without any prior warning, Carlos got up, taking her along. "Is this a challenge?" he asked, raising an arched eyebrow.

"Who knows?" she replied, and Carlos playfully slapped her on the behind.

He pressed her torso against his with increasing desire, feeling her respond in the same way, as if they wanted to merge their bodies into one. When Y/N's lips were starting to ache from the pressure against Carlos's, she decided to start pulling up Carlos's gym shirt as she explored her boyfriend's muscular body with her hands. Her legs unconsciously tightened around Carlos's hips, lifting her up, and he took advantage of this to sit on the edge of the bathtub. He continued to escalate his touches until he found Y/N's breasts, which he cupped with his hands, releasing a muffled groan against her lips. Y/N allowed him to enjoy for a while, and then she broke the kiss with a bite to his lower lip, signaling for him to remove Carlos's shirt.

Carlos quickly moved, letting out a frustrated groan at being apart from her. He removed his shirt and hurriedly took off his sweatpants. When Y/N realized her boyfriend was without underwear, she let out a low moan.

"Carlos..." She hugged Carlos from behind.

"I-I know, mi amore," he replied, tossing his pants aside and returning to kiss Y/N. Carlos broke the kiss calmly and somehow managed to get into the bathtub, bringing Y/N with him. She lifted herself until they found the right position. Carlos placed his hands on her waist gently, as if to encourage her, and Y/N took him inside her slowly. She felt him grip her waist tighter as she reached the limit.

To find some stability in the small bathtub space, Y/N held onto her boyfriend's shoulders, trembling, and let all those new sensations wash over her. The couple stopped kissing and opened their eyes, staring deeply into each other. The connection through their gazes was so intense it could almost be touched.

Carlos closed his eyes, furrowing his brow slightly and sliding his hands down to her hips, while Y/N resumed the kiss, feeling pleasure growing monstrously and suddenly inside her. She wrapped her arms around Carlos's neck, tangling her fingers in his damp, sweaty brown hair, and began moving over him, accelerating with each passing second. Soon, Carlos was moaning again, as was she, and it was becoming almost impossible for both of them to kiss to muffle their moans and not disturb the neighbors.

"I-I'm close," Y/N gasped.

Carlos adjusted the angle and helped her go faster, intensifying each thrust and drawing a loud moan from her. "Shhhh, we have to be quiet, cariño."

Their faces remained close, intensifying the warm mix of their breaths until Sainz hit a sensitive spot in Y/N, bringing her to climax, followed by him.

She allowed her body to rest against his, unable to determine which of them was more breathless. She buried her face in the curve of Carlos's neck, letting his scent calm her, and after a few seconds, she felt his arms wrap around her waist, pulling her even closer to his chest. She closed her eyes, embracing him around the waist as well, and could hear him chuckle softly.

"I love it when we do something different," he said.

Even without much breath left, she couldn't help but let his soft laughter infect her. Carlos laughed along with the girl in his arms and kissed her head.

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gentlyweeps-world · 5 months

Text

Wine and Lies 2

summary: A dinner date turns into a heartbreak. But maybe, you could get revenge.

pairing: carlos sainz x fem! reader, charles leclerc x fem! reader

warnings: alcohol consumption, toxic relationship, cheating, sexual tension

Previously: You never imagined that Carlos, your Carlos, would do this, then lie to you. You find that her name is Rebecca. She’s a model, of course she’s a model. Why are the homewreckers always models?

Clicking onto your Instagram you find that she’s following you. Rage filled your body, along with the need to throw up.

You rush off the floor and run towards the bathroom, throwing up the appetizers and wine you had.

Your phone buzzes to life next to you, showing the caller ID of your boyfriend's teammate, and Ferrari's golden boy, a smirk spreads across your face.

If Carlos could do it, you were going to do it ten times better.

LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO

You swipe to accept the call, “Hey Y/n..are you alright..?” You hear Charles softly say, the tone of his voice showing he already knew Carlos had cheated.

"Y/N? You there? You alright?" he asks again having not gotten a response from you. "Yeah, sorry," you reply, sitting back down on the toilet as gently as possible. "Just a lot going on right now, I don’t know what to do."

"I know what it's like..." he says quietly, trying to be there for you though his voice still betrayed the sadness there in his voice, "I think you should probably just leave him," he says after a moment's hesitation.

“I think if I tried to, it wouldn’t work” You say truthfully, knowing you and Carlos would end up back together somehow, he would never let you leave.

“Then you should dump his ass for a better option. Like me” he says a moment of silence as if realizing what he had just said.

“I’m just kidding of course, maybe.” He sighs

Your eyes widen at his suggestion, I mean you had known Charles had a soft spot for you, and sure you found him attractive but you would have never tried anything, but now, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

“Really?” You say teasingly, getting up from the toilet and wiping off your smudged mascara.

“If you want to leave him” he says, his tone nervous and hesitant.

“Let me take you on a date”

“A date?” You muse, fixing your mascara and applying some lip gloss. “And why should I go on a date with you?” You add on.

“Cmon you know why. I’ve always wanted to see more of you” he says, and now you can hear the smile there in his tone.

“You know Carlos is an idiot who doesn’t deserve you, I’m the best option”

“Really? And you’re sure of that?” You add on, wanting to see what else he’ll say, now touching up some of your eyeshadow.

“You name the place and I'm happy to take you” he says confidently. He knows he's a good option and he wasn't afraid to let you know it.

“Hmm well, I think I’m about to go out, I’ll send you my location soon” You say before hanging up on him.

You take your time fixing your makeup and hair, then you change into a red dress you know Carlos loves, you also know Charles would love it too.

You hear the door to your apartment slam open and shut, then footsteps lead to your bedroom, turning you see an annoyed Carlos.

“Why weren’t you at the restaurant?” He asks, his voice stern. “Because I had a much better alternative. Why did you decide to ruin us?” You say standing and looking at Carlos in anger, “I know about her, I know you slept with someone else, and I know Im better than her” you say and he looks shocked that you know.

Hearing his silence you add on, “So if you don’t mind, I’m going out”. Grabbing your purse and shoving past him.

“Where are you going?” Carlos asks angrily, grabbing your wrist and yanking you back towards him.

“It doesn’t fucking matter to you” You hiss out to him, yanking your wrist out of his grip.

“You don’t own me” You add on glaring at him. “It does matter to me” he hisses back, “ you belong to me” he says and you know just the thing to say to piss him off now.

“I belong to Charles”, you say and you immediately see a red flash in his eyes because god did he hate being compared to Charles.

“So go seek out Rebecca, I’m sure she’d love to hear you complain” You add on, opening the door to your apartment and shutting it behind you as you walk off to a nearby club.

You get a call a few minutes later, a call you know who it is from. It's Charles but before answering you decide to enjoy the power trip of letting him wonder why you aren't answering.

You arrive at the club and instantly beeline to the bar, ordering a gin tonic.

Grabbing your phone from your purse you text Charles your location with no further explanation, excited to get your revenge.

It’s not long before he arrives, the club a bit quieter than others but still pretty busy he finds you and comes over and orders himself a vodka tonic.

“Hey” he says smiling at you, as he takes a sip from his drink, his eyes wandering as he takes you in.

“Hi..” You say with a smirk, slowly checking him out as you sip at your drink.

"God, you look even better than I imagined" he says, taking another sip of his drink and getting a bit closer to you.

"I'm glad Carlos is an idiot, otherwise I might not have been able to see you tonight" he says teasingly.

“That makes two of us then..” You say softly, moving in closer to him as you place your hand on his arm, knowing that someone will probably be taking pictures, which is exactly what you want.

He feels your touch and he smirks, his eyes darting across you, imagining what he'd like to do with you, how you'd feel like in his arms, and his hands.

"Shall we get out of here?" he asks, leaning down to whisper in your ear.

“Let’s stay awhile, no need to rush anything..” You whisper back, drinking some of your gin tonic, needing the alcohol.

"You're right" he says, and he puts his arm around your back leaning in close. His eyes wander down your body, and you want to kiss him. You want to feel his breath on your neck, his lips on your skin.

He notices where your eyes go to and he looks back up at you, you're so close now and you smell good. He moves in slowly, his lips so close to yours.

With a smirk you pull away from him, “Let’s go dance” You say, finishing off your gin tonic you place the empty glass on the bar and leave some cash for the bartender.

You walk away from Charles, making your way to the dance floor area. It was relatively crowded and the music had gotten louder, almost to the point you couldn’t really hear anyone else.

Charles follows you closely looking at your body as he sees it sway with each move you make, the music drowning out everything else and all there is left is the sound of your breathing, and your heartbeat.

He gets close to you once again this time pressing his chest to your back, the heat between the both of you intense. His hands travel to your waist, guiding your hips against his.

You can feel his hard chest against you, his hands on your waist, a low groan leaves him as he guides your hips against his, moving in time with you, as you both move your bodies against each other.

“This is perfect,” he says softly in your ear. “It is..” You say, forgetting about Carlos, solely focused on Charles.

“How long have you wanted this?” he asks softly, his voice low, only you can hear it in the loud club.

“How long have you wanted me?” he adds, his voice sounding almost demanding.

“Tell me.”

“Months..” You whisper out, but that wasn’t the truth. You knew that this, between you and Charles, was just to get at Carlos.

But who’s to say you couldn’t have your fun with it? Charles is, after all, an attractive guy. And you had a soft spot for him. You knew you already had him wrapped around your pinky, just like Carlos. It was time for you to have your fun.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

radio 🪩: So excited to get this series started! 💙

taglist: @janeholt3 @lightdragonrayne @roseseraj

next part

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saintescuderia · 25 days

Text

pancakes (pt. 3)

AKA - the story of how the naive australian rookie befriended the gym junkie F1 hospitality worker with the shoe collection - and inadvertently broke the grid's most treasured and unspoken rule: you don't go for y/n.

series masterlist here :)

A/N: don't come for me. i love daniel. it's all for plot. (also, if the timeline seems odd it’s bc creative liberties have been taken 😌)

P3 - stairmaster endurance

As you walked down the steps to the Drivers Gala in your stunning red dress, you were unaware how one Ferrari driver couldn’t take his eyes off you. Looking at you smiling elegantly to one of the reps who greeted you, Charles realised just how much of a mistake he had made. Carlos was at his side, saying something that was back ground noise. All Charles could focus on was you. Your flowing hair, your eyes glinting in the light as you smiled your beautiful smile at whoever was talking to you. You always spoke with such passion. Charles always loved that about you. He would always love every little thing about you—

The alarm went off.

You blinked and stopped the timer notification that essentially shook you out of the deep rabbit hole of F1 fanfiction you had found yourself falling into. Closing the purple app, you wondered why you still remained on Tumblr even after the 2013 hype of it died and everyone shifted to Twitter. Let alone the fact that your Tumblr had become your closeted way to fangirl about the sport you had dedicated your life to.

Then again, what were you to expect? The algorithm clearly picked up on your interests. That or the government was listening in and knew that Formula 1 was your day-to-day. That would explain how, one day, you were simply scrolling through the random, niche memes and BAM! You were met with the completely random gif-set of Arthur Leclerc and Oscar Piastri sat in an interview for Prema.

It had caught you off guard, seeing that come up on your phone screen. It had also been a while since you had seen Arthur. For the whole duration of that single and endless moment, you didn't know how to react.

So your thumb double tapped the screen.

And maybe it was your fault for liking it, for encouraging the algorithm. But you could’t help but smile at the gif of Arthur confident and proud of his 18 hour screen time. That boy had no filter and never gave a fuck about the social norm. That and he often just didn’t read the room. Even after all these years, and his climb up the motorsport ladders, that youthful element about him had remained. It made you smile. You always liked that about him.

However, with that gif-set came more stuff. Innocent stuff. More F2 bits - you really missed those boys - and then everything else. Funny bits of Max at Red Bull. Carlos and Lando. All the Guenther Steiner moments. It was a little weird to be liking gifs of a team principal, you were well aware, but if anything it just made you feel proud of how far the German-Italian had come.

Back in the old Red Bull days, Guenther would always tell you about his dreams of directing his own team. It was nice to see him finally achieve that. It was also an endless source of amusement for you.

For example: the day Kevin had shattered the door.

When it happened, though, it was definitely not a laughing matter. You had been just finishing up the lunch service at the Haas motorhome - making sure to pack up some food for the drivers and mechanics who still were in a meeting - when you had heard the loud noise. Mack, the sous-chef, had stopped and looked at you with wide eyes.

You had both exited the kitchen to walk out to the main space of the motorhome and see other Haas employees equally as confused and whispering. Not getting a clear answer, you patted Mack on the shoulder and returned to the kitchen to finish plating up Kevin and Romain’s lunch for later.

Fifteen minutes later, however, and you had gotten your answer when Guenther stormed into the kitchen fuming. “He does not slam my fucking office door! What am I going to do? Call Gene and tell him his drivers are some fucking idiot babies?!”

You had simply stared at him, blinkingly.

Guenther had then spied a plate of food sitting on the bench. “That fucking driver doesn’t deserve any of your fucking food!” And he picked the plate and dumped plate with its contents in the bin.

“Guenther," you had began in a calm voice, "that was my lunch. Kevin’s plate is in the fridge.”

“Well eat his fucking food! Or—" Guenther reached into his pocket and pulled out a credit card and slammed it onto the table in front of you. “Go to a fucking five star hotel and have lunch there on that fucking idiot baby's pay.”

And the two of you had actually done so.

Even after he calmed down, Guenther had been adamant to take you to lunch which, admittedly, wasn't the most odd thing ever. Guenther was removed enough from all the driver drama and you had known him a for long time. You were the reason he had helped in the debut in 2016 anyway.

Still, no matter how Guenther Guenther was, Kevin was still a driver. You knew how it might look.

Said driver, however, had thankfully just dismissed it when you offered to pay him back. "Make me those mini pizzas next time you're with us and we're good."

And so when you clocked on this morning to see you were covering Haas, you immediately smiled and went to make good on your promise to K-Mag.

You always loved working in the Haas motorhome. If only half the stuff you saw Guenther did and said ended up in gif-sets on Tumblr.

Pushing yourself off the stool, you pocketed your phone and grabbed the oven mitts to pull out the mini pizzas. You had made extra for the engineers since there was an issue with Nico’s PU and knew they would be up late working on the engine. It wasn’t a secret that your pizzas were a coveted snack, being low-carb and high protein enough for even the drivers to consume. You were half expecting Fred Vasseur to pop in and steal some. He did love these pizzas. Any time you were stationed at Alfa Romeo, it was a guarantee you would be making them at his request.

Though, now Fred was moving to Ferrari. So you weren't sure if he was still going to be nice to you. Mattia Binotto had always treated you like the fucking plague.

"Ah, Y/N. For fuck's sake!" You heard the German accent and felt your mouth curve up into a smile as Guenther arrived on scene. He was dressed in the Haas gear for 2023, lanyard around his neck. "You still here running the coffee when you can beat any of these idiots in the car."

You gave him a fake two finger salute. "If I drove, no one would stand a chance."

"Well maybe you could help us score some fucking points." Guenther said. Immediately, he got down to business. "Harry Kane did well last night. Scored two fucking goals."

You snorted. One of the many reasons you and Guenther bonded so well was that you one of the few people amongst this Paddock that took football seriously. Almost as seriously as Formula 1. Almost.

"Didn't see it." You said, shaking your head. Bundesliga was lower on your list of priorities when it came to games. You only paid attention to the German league when it came to teams making it into Champions League. Besides, Guenther should’ve known what game you were watching last night. Still, you reminded him. "The Reds were playing."

He rolled his eyes, though unsurprised. "Of course you're going to watch English fucking football."

"Hey, only because of Salah.” You reminded him and hit your chest proudly, “I gotta represent."

"That much is fucking obvious." Guenther said. One of the many reasons you liked working in Haas so much was that it was by far the most relaxed garage out of them all. For example, you hadn't yet taken off the hoodie you wore which had, on top, the number 10 Liverpool jersey. It looked unprofessional, having a t-shirt over a jumper like that, especially mixed with the headscarf you had tied on your head like a durag, but Guenther couldn’t care less. If anything, he was probably just offended at your choice of EPL team.

“United is fucking Red.”

"Ah, Guenther. You know my heart really lies." You reminded him.

Your uncle, a Spanish man, had brought you up following the iconic Real Madrid. He literally visited the hospital with a teddy bear and Bernabeu membership, adamant he would get his newborn niece into the sport. No matter what.

From the moment he found out your number one team, Guenther was salty. “Los Blancos.” He scoffed. “The fucking villains of football." He came round to see the circular pieces of bread covered with sauce and an array of different toppings. Guenther picked one up - and immediately dropped it. "Fuck!"

"It's hot." You said, dryly. You took out another tray and set it down. You closed the oven door and turned it off. You flipped the towel over your shoulder as you watched Guenther now at the sink, running water over his burnt fingers.

"You don't fucking say." Guenther blowing on his fingers.

“Stop being a baby.” You laughed, bringing up your hands to your head to fix your headscarf.

Guenther ignored that comment. "Fred fucking loves these things. Don't tell him you made them. I don't want him in here stealing them."

You said nothing and turned around to pretend to busy yourself with the trays of mini pizzas. It was best to just remain quiet sometimes. Bahrain testing had kept everyone occupied and at that start of the season F1 Hospitality were usually running around after Stefano Domenicali and the FIA Co. for last minute set up. It was only into the race calendar that Hospitality were eventually went around to the teams.

So, no. You hadn't seen Fred. You hadn't seen anyone. You were just grateful that your first race of 2023 was in the safety of Haas. Nico and Kevin were older and, therefore, a little more out of it when it came to driver drama. If they knew anything, they were old enough to be mature about it.

Though, that couldn't be the same of others from their generation. You were already losing sleep from the feelings that arose from seeing Daniel in Red Bull gear. It didn't help that the last time you two had spoken, things hadn't exactly been civil.

You were on the stair-master. The clock on the machine read 37:48. The sweat was dripping off you.

Your grey jumper had darkened in shades, wet from the sweat. You kept your hands on your head as you stepped and stepped and stepped and stepped. Angsty rap music blasted into your ears. Tinnitus was likely to worsen, but you would take that over the shit storm that was currently breaking all over the Paddock.

I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 have put out a press statement late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract for Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year.

Oscar hadn’t even yet joined Formula 1 and he was already stirring trouble. That was a problem. For you. You were supposed to lay low. The whole point of this was to lay low and not drawing any attention to yourself. The agreement was that you could still be there if only in the role of Hospitality.

And the idiot had tweeted that and then, ten minutes later, decided to follow you.

How he even found your Twitter was surprising? It wasn’t very personal - your profile picture was solid black - so no fans would be able to recognise you. But the Paddock? The FIA and your bosses? They were raising confused eyebrows that Oscar Piastri would drop that bomb and then follow you.

You could already imagine what Otmar was going to say. God, the 2023 season hadn’t fully started and you were already dreading walking into the Alpine home. And then Jos Verstappen was rumoured to be attending more races this year and who could forget about Daniel coming back to Red Bull? The universe apparently needed to give you some character development, it seemed.

Your legs ached, begging to stop. Your mind thought about pressing the red emergency button, to just end it. But you knew better. You knew this was all a mind game. Pain is an allusion. Keep going. Shit hurts but you push through. Keep going. Keep going. Keep fucking going. It's what you always told yourself. It's how you got yourself through everything. It's how you'll get through all of this. If you can push through the pain of the stairmaster, then you can push through the pain of anything. You had learned that pain was temporary and it was just a mind-game. You could always go longer than you thought possible. You just had to keep reminding yourself of that fact. So, right now, it was just practice. Each step you took right now was practicing the endurance of pain from this stairmaster fucking filling your legs. If you could get through this, you would be able to handle any drama in the future.

Unfortunately, drama walked through the door before you could make it through the current pain of said stairmaster.

Daniel Ricciardo stormed into the Driver’s Only Gym, knowing all too well that this was where you would be. He had been the one to tell you about this fucking place in the first place. Before everything, you had always loved working out and exercise was part of the reason you two ended up as you did. Now, you didn’t have the luxury you did before. You didn’t have the lanyard.

So, now, you had to workout in the shadows.

That didn't mean Daniel didn't see you. Didn't hear you. Didn't know what you were doing every single day of every weekend the both of you avoided each other at the Paddock. He knew you still wore your sneakers according to the race location. He knew you still wore headscarves when in the Middle East and covered your tattoos when in Japan. He knew you still avoided Charles just he like he knew you still avoided him. He knew you.

So Daniel knew you woke up at 4am every day to work out. And after Zak Brown told him the news, he spent the night dealing with his spiralling career through a bottle of Jack Daniels. Then he had the idea to come out from the four walls of his hotel room and see you.

Because Daniel knew you had made your pancakes for the rookie, that fucking Oscar Piastri. And Daniel was one of the few people who knew, who fully understood just what that meant to you.

Drunk and emotional, Daniel planted himself right in front of the stair master. He stared at you, caught like a deer in headlights and got right to it.

“You must be fucking happy.”

It was the first time he had directly spoken to you in five years.

So it took you a second to process what was happening.

Daniel Ricciardo was right here, in front of you, at 4:50 in the morning as you sweated your body weight out through the repeated steps you took on the machine.

Suddenly you were aware that you had rolled yourself out of bed with a little less motivation than the norm. You had been extra tired, hitting snooze more than twice. You hadn’t washed your face and you wondered if Daniel would be able to spot the stain of egg yolk on your hoodie. It had been some time since he had been this close to you and you were in bike shorts and currently on a bulk. Suddenly, you wished you were on a cut. Why did the one time he came this close to you had to be so big and puffy?

"Excuse me?" You found yourself saying, shifting one headphone off your ear. “Can I help you?”

"Did you know?" Daniel asked. He didn't give you a chance to respond. "Of course you fucking did."

Without even thinking, you pulled the red plug your mind had obsessed over and jumped down. The pain was already here so there was no point going through any more than necessary. You looked up at Daniel, panting. He, too, was exhaling a little heavier than normal. Too angry and, judging by the smell of his breath, drunk to be stable.

There was no point lying to him. Aside from the fact that Daniel was emotionally charged (and drunk - and he got super passionate when he was drunk) you knew he would immediately pick up on it. You don't spend three years with someone and not know them like the back of your hand. And, unlike him, you can safely say that you hadn't really changed since 2018. If you lied, he would know.

"I signed a NDA, Daniel." You said simply, walking to your gym bag sat on the red bench. You picked up your bottle to take a sip, your throat dry. You tried to keep yourself calm and not shaky. Do my legs look too big? God, Please don’t let me smell like BO. Your thoughts were still running rampant. Despite the extensive cardio, your body was buzzing from the anxiety of having Daniel so close.

Daniel. To think you had once been so deeply in love with the man stood before you.

"Fuck off." He spat. You recoiled. "No one gives a shit about that."

"I do." You said, trying to keep your voice from growing small. "Sorry I care about my job."

Daniel let out a sardonic laugh. You braced yourself, knowing what was to come. You had experienced this many times before during your fights. "What? Making coffee and fucking washing the dishes? Yeah, great job you got there, babe."

"Don't call me babe." You spat back. "And can you not be a dick for two fucking seconds, Daniel."

You said it. His name. When was the last time you had said it? It made you both take a second to process what was happening, to acknowledge how long it had been since the two of you had actually spoken to one another, how long since you had addressed the other as a human being that actually existed.

In that moment, Daniel finally seemed to lose a bit of anger and, instead, show a glimmer of vulnerability. "I lost my seat. I don't know what I'm going to do."

You looked down at your shoes at show of helplessness. New Balance 350s. Red and yellow. They had been on sale. You liked them for stable LISS circuits but hated the colour way. Now, they were the most interesting thing to look at.

Everyone knew that Daniel Ricciardo was always all smiles and that, no matter what, he was optimistic. Happy. He never showed any weakness.

Except, you had seen him when the smiles fell away and the laughter died. In the safety of your private hotel rooms and Daniel could just be, you saw him vulnerable, you saw him hurt, you saw him stress, worry, cry, swear and be open to how he was really feeling. Like right now.

“Daniel I—“

"You didn’t even think to fucking tell me."

You looked up at the change of tone and how he was frowning-- no, sneering at you. This made you change and any remorse, any pity, you felt for the man in front of you immediately vanished. You weren’t in a hotel room. You were in the gym. And it had been five fucking years.

"Are you fucking blaming me right now?"You snapped back. "What the fuck do I owe you, exactly?"

"I’m the reason you’re here!"

By now, your heart was racing. And not from the exercise. This, this was it. You finally had your moment to say it.

"Yes, exactly, Daniel. You’re the reason that I am, as you said, making coffee and fucking washing the dishes! If it weren’t for you, we both know where I would be right now. But you got fucking scared of Max and blamed me for it!"

This hit a nerve. "I was not scared of Max! I outperformed Max!"

"Yes, on the weeks I fucking trained you!"

"Fuck me,” Daniel was shooting straight daggers at you despite the wry grin on his face, “do you really think that was all you?"

You put your hands on your hips and squared up to meet his eyes, narrowing your own. "Considering how your teammate took me on as a trainer and then became the number 1 driver, yes, I will take some fucking credit for that." Daniel's face dropped when you said it. And you knew it was a low blow, but you couldn't help the words before they tumbled out from your mouth. "The world’s fucking moved on from Monaco 2018. Maybe you should too."

"Fuck you!" He shouted.

"Fuck you!" You shouted back. You grabbed your phone and found yourself tapping onto a recent chat and speedily composing a text. You hated how your fingers shook. You also hated how you were texting for help.

"Well, clearly you haven’t moved on from Monaco if you’re bringing it up." Daniel said, no longer shouting, but his tone still as icily. "You’re going to be mad about that until the end of time?"

You closed your eyes and willed your eyes not to think of the image of him with her, the pain you felt walking in and seeing that. Instead, you opened your eyes and stared him dead in the eye and spoke as calmly as possible.

"Jos Verstappen will be coming to the races more often this year. That means I won't be able to work in the Red Bull garage. If I'm at AlphaTauri, do not fucking come."

Daniel ignored this, undeterred. Instead, he kept grinning down at you thinking he found something. "You seriously aren't over it, are you?"

"No, the memory of you putting your dick into another woman still keeps me up at night." You rolled your eyes despite how it still did admittedly hurt. You pretended it didn’t and hoped he believed it. "Please stop thinking so highly of yourself. Remind yourself of why you're here, right now, talking to me."

Daniel's eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to say something but the sound of the doors opening had him closing it. You grabbed your gym bag and finally made a move to turn around and escape the gym.

Ignoring the looks of one very confused Carlos Sainz as you breezed past him.

"I have to go deal with idiots who can’t tell me what’s wrong with the engine." Guenther said. You had brought forth two plates and slide two pizzas onto each.

"Here. For you and Nico." You said, knowing Nico would join the meeting about his car. "I'll bring a tray in a little bit for the rest of the engineers."

"Make me and Nico some coffee, please." Guenther said, taking the plates. "And pour in some fucking whiskey." You laughed and watched him disappear down the hallway of the offices set up. Haas' lack of financial support meant their motorhome was mediocre at best. Still, you loved being here more than anywhere else. It was the safest, really.

Wiping your hands on the towel, you went outside to where the coffee cart was situated. Another example of Haas' lack of funding was needing a Formula One coffee cart and not having an in house machine like everyone else did. You went about preparing the coffees like how you knew Nico and Guenther liked - as well as making yourself one while you were at it.

"No Real Madrid today?"

You found yourself jumping at the familiar Spanish lilt of the other Ferrari driver. Carlos Sainz was someone you never really paid any close attention to. He wasn't close enough to either Daniel or Charles' circles to ever have been on your radar. He had left Red Bull before you did and since he was Ferrari associated, it meant you never really had much to do with him.

Still, he was pleasant and nice. He always had been. He was one of those drivers that if word had spread to him - and it was very likely that it had - he didn't show it. Or care enough about it. Any time Carlos saw you around the Paddock, it was with a warm smile and a quick small-talk question about your thoughts on Real Madrid's latest match. But that was really ever it.

Until that time he had walked in at 5am to see you and Daniel Ricciardo screaming at each other.

"Uh, no. Liverpool was playing yesterday." You said, wondering if he knew you also cared about the Scouse team. Admittedly, you didn’t have the same love for them as you did for the Spanish legends, but you couldn’t have Egyptian heritage and not care about Mo Salah.

"You're Egyptian, no?" He asked. You focused on frothing the milk, unable to really look him in the eyes so soon after this morning.

"Yes." It was there in the mix, yes, but you really weren't up for explaining the complicated heritage of your ethnicity this morning. Looking at the milk circling in the silver jug, you realised your face was heating up. You were slightly surprised he even knew you were Egyptian in the first place. Unlike with Guenther or the splattering of other football fans in the Paddock, you and Carlos only ever had brief snapshots of Real Madrid small talk.

Still, this wasn't an odd conversation, you had to remind yourself. You were talking about the one thing you and him ever talked about. But, again, this was after Carlos had walked in to see you, a Hospitality worker, arguing with a driver.

"Please don't tell anyone about me being in the gym." You finally said, turning off the frother to gently tap the metal jar against the bench and settle the bubbles in the milk. "I could get into a lot of trouble since it's only for drivers."

Carlos waved a dismissive hand and shook his head. When it was clear he wasn't going to, you breathed a small sigh of relief. But then he leaned against the cart and you felt yourself starting to get anxious again. There was a quiet moment for a second as your poured the latte for Nico. Carlos' eyes followed your hands.

"I will say something if Ricciardo upset you." He said in a quieter voice.

You immediately shook your head and finally looked him in the eye. "Please don't. There's enough complication with... everything." You finished lamely.

"So I've heard." Carlos said.

You looked away. He knew.

"So then you'll know I don't need anymore complications." You said through gritted teeth, hating very much the confirmation that word had spread about what had happened.

"You haven't done anything wrong, though."

This caught you by surprise. It was the first time anyone - or, at least, a driver - had said those words to you. At the start, everyone had immediately pointed fingers at you. You were shunned and blamed. Some saw your position with the Formula One Group as part of Hospitality too light a punishment for what had happened. For the longest time, it was the confusion as to why everyone had reacted that way that did that hurt you. You hadn’t thought you had done anything wrong. Not really. You struggled to understand why no one else saw it that way. Least of all any of the drivers that knew what had happened.

Hearing Carlos say that really threw you for a short second. Carlos even caught it. He said your name and you finally looked up at him when you heard him say your name.

"Sorry it’s just - uh, Carlos, man.” You laughed a dry laugh. “You're probably the only driver who thinks so."

"I'm not." Carlos crossed his arms. "I might be the only one who has said so, but if I've understood correctly... then I'm not."

You looked down at metal jug in your hand with the extra milk you had frothed for yourself. Suddenly, you didn't feel like any caffeine. Your anxiety was already through the roof.

"Do you want a coffee?" You asked, sounding, again, very lame as that was your response to Carlos' comment.

The Spaniard looked back down at the spoon and jug in your hands. He nodded. "Have you had one already?" You asked. He shook his head and so you went about pulling down another paper cup to make his piccolo.

"You remembered." He said, laughing slightly.

"First coffee is a piccolo. Second and third are black." You recalled his order. Carlos smiled at you as you poured the milk. "I know everyone's coffee orders."

You didn’t catch how his smile lessened slightly at that.

You looked back at him and tried to ignore the thought of whether his kindness was exaggerated for your sake. A pity thing or something. Carlos accepted the coffee and then he actually offered a thank you in Arabic. You found your lips turning up hearing the marhaba on his Spanish tongue. “Es un placer.” You came back with his own native language.

You don’t work in Formula 1 without picking up a few things here and there.

Hence how you could recognise the German swears that sounded from within the motorhome as Guenther suddenly appeared.

“Where is that Y/N? Liverpool fucking tops the league and thinks she can take her time with— ah, you Ferrari fuckers!” Both you and Carlos looked to where he had come up behind the driver and slapped a friendly pat on his back. “Tell Fred he can’t have any pizza.”

“Pizza?” Carlos asked and looked down at you. “You made your pizza?”

You didn’t get a chance to respond before some Haas engineers appeared behind Guenther and called for you and him. Carlos took this as his sign - he was technically on Haas territory - and nodded at you and Guenther, holding up his piccolo in salute. Guenther had already taken the coffees you’d made for him and Nico and disappeared behind the sliding doors. You made a move to follow when Carlos called out.

"I want to try some famous Y/N pizza!” He said, turning on his heel as he walked backwards and called out to you.

You smiled and shook your head, walking back into the Haas home. You went back to the oven and set about plating up the pizzas to be a little more presentable to them. You also made sure to put some aside especially for Kevin. This was supposed to be for him.

You thought idly of saving some for Carlos when some Haas engineers you vaguely recognised walked past.

"Oh nice!" One engineer said, coming up and immediately reaching for one to stick it in his mouth. You watched him do the same blunder that Guenther did.

The other engineer, a woman with a thick Irish accent? was staring at you. Smug. "Damn, who got you smiling like that, missy?"

"What?" You asked, eyes going wide. You hadn't realised the wide smile on your face that was likely the direct result of one Carlo Sainz. Your face became hot again and it took every ounce of will to not seem affected by her words. “No one.”

"Mmm. If you say so.” She said in a sing song voice. “Well and me Mr Cool over here,” she gestured to the the other engineer trying to breathe through the hot pizza, “are heading to the garage now to see Kevin. Can we take them?"

"Yeah." You nodded. "Go ahead."

"Not saving some for anyone?"

"No." You shook your head firmly. "Take them all."

taglist:

@eugene-emt-roe @spookystitchery @vicurious28 @taytaylala12 @c-losur3 @hiireadstuff @samantha-chicago @fionaschicken @casperlikej

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absolutelynotmate-archive · 1 year

Text

said something stupid, instead of 'i love you.'- c.leclerc

can't we just act like we never broke each other's hearts? pairing: charles leclerc x female reader word count: 26.9k (my bad fr fr) warnings: 18+ minors dni, protected sex, oral sex, google translated french. tw: charles' 2022 season (including france) a/n: this is something, that's for certain. good or bad is yet to be decided. I'VE MOVED BLOGS! if you enjoy this and are looking for more, follow me @formulaforza

You’d texted him two weeks before the season opener. It was short, simple, and a huge overstep, one you promised yourself years ago you’d never make. Do you have any extra paddock passes? He’d said yes, and you begrudgingly asked if you could have an extra, if you could bring a guest, a boyfriend, Michael. He’s a big fan, of Charles and of Formula One. I really want to impress him.

Michael’s been impatiently itching to meet Charles since he spotted a photo of the two of you in your living room. You thought you’d taken them all down before he came over, but, you missed one. He’s sort of a Ferrari fan-boy, an Italian whose transplanted himself to Monte Carlo. You’d been putting off the meeting as long as possible, forced to consider if Michael actually liked you, or if he just wanted to know Charles. It wasn’t easy, to keep them apart. It was winter break, and Charles was in Monaco too much to be easily avoided. There’s a lot of verbiage that is used to describe home, vast is not one of them.

You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now, the way you followed him around the globe like a helicopter parent that first year he wore red. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. Michael was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to. His presence, though, felt intrusive on something that had, for so long, been just yours.

Arthur’s familiar voice calls your name, over the bustling hum of different important and wealthy figures. You grin when your eyes meet his, stand up from the leather sofa you’re seated on, give him, and Pascale, big hugs. Charles told me you brought someone? She asked, voice sweet and curious.

Her tone was contrasted by Arthur’s quip asking where your arm-candy had run off to, wiggling his brows and searching the room for a man he’d never seen. He’s oblivious to the glare Pascale shoots into the side of his head.

You explain that he’s in the bathroom, check your watch. “Have you seen Charles today?” It’s not like him to not stop by and say hello, to check in and make sure you’re still enjoying yourself–or that you’re still capable of pretending you are. You wonder if he’s avoiding you, annoyed by the presence of your guest, a guest he doesn’t know. It’s unheard of, you asking for passes. It’s literally never happened. You’d asked about the possibility of one for yourself, back when he was with Sauber, and he’s maintained that you have an open invite since.

“We were just with him.” Arthur says.

“How is he?” You ask, because he might be mad at you, but also because you know him. His brain works like clockwork. Two hours before a race, right now, he’ll be doubting himself, doubting the car, doubting himself again. In his moments of downtime, before he’s swept up into the chaos of it all, his brain will pick itself apart with nervousness. You think it’s endearing, his nerves. They remind you that he’s still Charles at times where he feels so grand and invincible.

“He’s good.” Arthur says, because between crucifying jokes and mockings of his big brother, Arthur idolizes him. He’s none the wiser to Charles’ anxieties and insecurities because he’s never looking for him, blind confidence in the man he’ll never admit is his biggest role model. You look to Pascale, who understands the depth of your question, and get a reaffirming nod.

Arthur diggs two sticker tags from his pocket, full grid access. “For you.” He says, fastening one onto your lanyard. “And for the boy.” He holds out the other, presents it like a crown jewel. You sigh, snatch it from his hand and shove it into your pocket. You hate watching races in the garage, with all the hyper-wealthy motherfuckers who buy their way in. You always feel like you don’t belong. Like, no matter where you move, you’re always in someone more important’s way. Your limbs don’t feel like your own, unable to settle, so close to the comfort of your best friend yet miles away from his occupied mind.

“What’s going on?” Michael asks, airy tone in direct conflict to his hand on the small of your back, tense with envy. He’s silently laying claim to you, reminding you who you belong to, and you almost laugh at the thought of someone being threatened by Arthur. Charles, you could see. Charles, you’ve had that argument about before. Arthur, though? Arthur, who slept with his ratty blanket until he was sixteen, who lost not one, but two pet goldfish in the span of a year. Arthur, who is very happily in love with the sweetest girl to ever grace this Earth.

“C’est lui?” Arthur asks, tone bored. “Il est vieux.”

“This is him.” You say, through gritted teeth, introduce them all formally and sit by as an observer in their conversation. The lowlight was Arthur’s mention of grid access, and Michael’s giddiness at watching the race in the garage. You knew then that you’d be uncomfortable well into the night.

You end up in the garage during the driver’s parade. “Don’t touch anything.” You told Michael, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage. The warning you give was less for your boyfriend, and more for you, who is desperate to run a hand over the red chassis, to memorize every detail of it. If you do, you might feel more comfortable when he’s inside, might be able to pretend you understand the concepts he casually mentions over dinner.

You squeal like a child when you see Isa, hugging her tight and spilling all the details of your lives since Abu Dhabi last year. You introduce her to Michael, who says he’s a big fan of Carlos. Joris tugs on your ponytail, appearing with Andrea, who kisses your cheek, tells you Charles is going to be so happy to see you in the garage. You roll your eyes.

Charles is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. He’s probably just as surprised to see you in here as you are uncomfortable about it. When you hug him, the knotted waist of his overalls digs into you awkwardly. “You’re warm.” You say, peeling your body from his sweaty form.

“It’s hot.” He says, runs a hand through his salty hair.

“They shouldn’t make you wear all this during the parade.” You said, and he shrugged it off, asked where your guy was. You look around, search the garage for him. He can’t be far, and surely he’s gawking from one corner or another. If not at the sight of Charles Leclerc, Formula One driver, than at Charles, a man, whose hand hovers just behind the small of your back.

Two hands, two separate distinctions. One, possessive and impossible to ignore. The other, protective, almost goes unnoticed. For a few breaths, your shoulders are relaxed, but then his hand is gone, shaking Michael’s. “Good to meet you, Mate.” Charles says, and the whole place feels like a straightjacket again.

– –

You stand next to Isa, your hands wrapped nervously around each other’s the entire race, watching monitors and listening in on the headsets. “Carlos says the cars have it this year.” She says, while the guys are lining up in their starting spots. It feels like everyone at Ferrari has been chasing it, whatever it is, for a decade. Every year is the year, and every year, you’re begging Charles not to base his self-worth on a bad race or a bad season. You’ll believe in him until your last breath, but your glass of Ferrari is never going to be half-full.

Charles and Max, Max and Charles, Charles and Max. They flip flop positions lap after lap. When it seems like he’s settled in, you allow yourself to breathe. The universe has never allowed him comfort, though. Enter, safety car. The replay is on the screen, and your heart pangs for Pierre, watching his dash go black in system failure. Your heart aches for Charles, though, and the forty-six laps of hard work that was erased just like that.

Max races like Max, inching closer and closer to Charles, practically lining up next to him. You’re rearing up for a dogfight, but Max fucks up. You don’t know what he did, why he did it, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else does either. It doesn’t matter, though, because Charles is gone. Something in you settles, sure and confident, even if it’s not over yet. You hear murmurs, celebrations, Max is retiring. Charles is going to win.

A Ferrari one-two to start the season. Your smile is so big your cheeks ache. Under the lights, watching him up on the top step, listening to your national anthem, you allow yourself to hope, to buy into the hype everyone else is swearing by.

His skin shines brighter than his smile, sparkling with whatever lemon-lime soda they’d filled the champagne bottles with this year. You have a momentary lapse, consider what his skin would taste like, sweaty and sticky and sweet. Michael’s presence, his arms caging you in between him and the barricade, assures that the thought is nothing more than a passing one.

He hugs you when he makes the rounds, being whisked away to whatever media responsibilities he had to fulfill before he heads to the debrief. Sweat and seven-up soaked, he’s running on pure adrenaline, squeezing you so tight you struggle to breathe.

– –

You shower back at the hotel, wash his hug down the drain with the rest of the race anxiety. He takes everyone out to dinner late that night; Arthur, Lorenzo, Pascale, Andrea, Joris, Michael, and you. It’s a tradition. No matter how late or early in the day it happened. A podium, a celebratory dinner. Like always.

The air is light, happy conversations flow from smiling faces, filling the room with laughter and excitement and hope. You’re sandwiched between your boyfriend and your best friend. Charles’ arm throws itself around your shoulder when Lorenzo retells a story meant to embarrass you. Michael reacts accordingly, hand on your thigh, fingers digging into your skin. They’re fighting over you and only one of them knows it.

Charles is engaged in conversation, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have bruises in your leg by the time you go to sleep tonight. You nudge Charles’ foot with yours, his head turns before his eyes, lingering on Andrea and the conversation you’re pulling him from before he's searching your eyes curiously. You shrug your shoulder, and as if noticing it’s there for the very first time, he drops his arm onto the table and returns to the conversation.

He must’ve showered, changed, and hurried here. His hair is still damp, and you want to play with it. Curl the long pieces around your finger and play with the short pieces at the nape of his neck. You soak up his presence as much as you can, knowing it’s going to be several weeks and several races before you see each other again. Crazy lives and crazy schedules that won’t feel normal again until break. You both take care to cherish the times you do get to spend together these days. You’re not twenty-one following him around the world anymore.

“Merci.” You say, at the end of the night. “For everything.”

He shakes his head, shoos your words away like they’re unnecessary, like you shouldn’t be thanking him for pulling strings. “Ton jouet garçon parle-t'il français?” He asks quietly, just for the two of you to hear. You roll your eyes, shake your head. “Il aest assez fan de moi.”

“Tu l’aime bien alors?”

“Non.” He chuckles. “Je ne l’aime pas. Pas pour toi.” He says it matter-of-factly, annoyingly so and without any elaboration.

“Heureusement, que tu n’es pas ma mère.”

“Heureusement.”

It’s Miami when you see him next. Hot and humid and sunny, once more. Windy, too. Big gusts move the palms, gluing your hair haphazardly across your face before you tie it back, blowing his shirt tight across his chest. “How’s grandpa?” He asks at lunch. You’re sat across from him on the expansive patio of a waterfront restaurant, waves crashing against the cement beams below you, a seagull running around on the wooden planks in search of fresh crumbs.

After Bahrain, Arthur wouldn’t drop the salt and pepper allegations, pushing until he found out Michael was seven years older than you. None of the boys have referred to him as anything but a grandfather since.

“Oh, that?” You say, nonchalant, like you can’t be bothered when you very much were. “He liked me too much.” Translation, he wanted me on a leash.

“He liked you too much.” He repeated, smile tugging on his lips. “Please,” He gestured to you, “Élaborer.”

“You never liked him, anyway.” You say into the rim of your water glass, taking a long, cold drink. The condensation from the glass drips down your wrist, forearm, off your bent elbow and onto your bare thighs, just past the hem of your sundress. The glass makes a heavy clunk when you set it back on the tabletop.

“Oh, I loved him.” He laughed. “He was just wrong for you, chou.”

“You barely knew him.”

“After he left you alone in the garage?” He leans back in his seat, gestures harshly across his throat and clicks his tongue. “There was nothing to know.”

“You leave me alone in the garage.” You remind him and he’s quick to jump in.

“I do not.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, animated. You smile, he smiles. “I leave you with Arthur.”

“You do not!” You laugh, protest without thinking, without needing to. The memory of each and every race you’ve spent in the garage is burnt into your memory. Every second feels like a second and a half. There are no distractions, it’s just you, in the way, and him, flying around in a death trap at a million kilometers an hour.

He tries to argue, insist he would never leave you alone if he thought you were uncomfortable. You don’t want to hear it, though. If he does leave you under the watchful eye of someone, they have always done a pretty shitty job at looking out for you. “Whatever.” He finally concedes. “Who’s on the radar now?” Nobody, you tell him. Going to be single for a while.

“What are your plans tonight?” He asked over the phone. It was the middle of the decade, the start of your first year at University. The longest you’ve been away from home and the only time he’d been there without you.

Jules had died that summer, and the sun had felt dimmed since. You spoke to Charles almost every day, but you were in no rush to get back home. It was ironic, Monaco reminding you of Jules, you finding an escape from the memories in France. It should be the other way around, but, logic has never had much hold over grief.

“I have a presentation, remember?” He listened to you revise for it, mindlessly picking apart your notes, adjusting even the most minute details, for hours last week. You cried when the ancient printer in the library wouldn’t fulfill it’s only earthly purpose, and he patiently calmed you down, stayed with you on the phone until you fell asleep that night. He never acknowledged it, and you were grateful for it.

“That’s tonight?” He asked, sounded defeated.

“Yes. Why?”

“I miss you.” He said, and you nearly crumbled into a little ball on the street. “I was going to come see you.”

You hesitated for a moment, tried to remember just how messy your apartment was, sized up your outfit. You didn’t want him to go telling stories to your parents of a disheveled daughter drowning somewhere just below the surface in France. You wanted to be put together when you saw him again, be the rock you were before you left.

Generously, you would say you fell somewhere in the grey. “Come, then.’ You told him. “You can pick me up.”

– –

Nearly three hours later, after the conclusion of your presentation and his mind-numbing drive, he’s parked a short walk from your university building, waiting for you. “Sulut.” He said.

“Hey.” You replied, climbing into the passenger seat. “How was Portugal?” He’d just gotten home and you’d been too busy with school to check any race results. Plus, you always liked hearing his recounts of races more than Google results.

“How was your presentation?” He asks, doesn’t answer your question.

“Good.” You smiled, buckled your seatbelt.

Last season, before last summer and before Jules, you couldn’t get him to shut up about racing. It was all he ever wanted to talk about. He could be winning races or embarrassing himself on track, it didn’t matter, he’d talk your ear off. Now, he’s a lockbox with a combination that changes every day. You talk and you talk but nothing is really said, not anymore. You use each other’s voices to drown out the ones in your heads, to dull the pain, if even briefly.

Growing up, it had always been your three families. Your fathers were best friends, had known each other before they knew their wives. You vacationed together, spent holidays together, had monthly family dinners and walked to the bus stop together. All of you kids were the same ages. Not planned, completely coincidental, they’d always say. You didn’t buy it, Arthur was the only one without a match, poor kid, the permanent brunt of jokes and the forever baby brother.

“I don’t know my way around here.” He says, hand on the back of your headrest, backing the car out onto the road.

“I do.” He smiles. Oh, how you missed his smile. All perfect and pretty, just like the rest of him, only happier.

You arrive in Spain early, with him. There’s optimism after Miami, Charles is back on track, back to believing he deserves the title and then some. You all spend the entirety of Monday in La Barceloneta, soaking up as much tranquility and Spanish sun as you can.

Someone is knocking–pounding–on the door of your hotel room. The sun has barely risen, pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting hard golden shadows on the entire room. “Fuck.” You groan, rubbing sleep from your eyes, dragging your feet the entire way to the door. When Charles had said, we’re going to spend all day at the beach, you thought he meant midday, at the earliest. “What?” You say, met with Arthur’s annoyed face.

“You could sleep through a freight train.” He says, and you flip him off.

“You could have called me.” You say, yawn, stretch your arms out above your head. He rolls his eyes, and it gets under your skin in a way only a little brother can manage. You wish you had a shoe to throw at his stupid face.

“Charles did. Three times.” He holds up a matching amount of fingers and you nod, that sounds like something you’d sleep through. “Are you ready?”

Deep breaths, deep breaths, don’t lunge at him. “Do I look ready?” He looks you up and down and you can actually see the gears turning in his head, all three of his brain cells working overtime trying to convince him to keep his mouth shut. “Don’t answer that.” You say, stop him before your eye starts to twitch. “Give me half an hour.”

You knock on the door to Charles’ suite forty-five minutes later. Messy ponytail that you barely brushed, swimsuit, shorts, cotton button-up, entirely too large tote bag slung over your shoulder. Lorenzo answers, “Good morning, sunshine.” He says, all sing-songy and stupid. “Sleep well?”

You walk straight past him into the suite. You think your entire room could fit in his living area. You walk through it, past Joris and Arthur, engaged in a heated conversation, and Carla, who looks about as sleepy as you do. Charles is leaning against the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of something colorful. “No coffee?” You say.

Mouth full, he answers around his spoon, “I don’t drink coffee.”

“But, I do.” You say, grab a sliced strawberry from his bowl, eat it in one bite.

“Feel free to make some.” Lorenzo chimes in. You flip him off, too, pouring coffee grinds into a paper filter and starting a pot. Lorenzo grabs a strawberry from Charles’ bowl too, and the metal spoon promptly collides with his arm. “Ay!” He yelps, tries, and fails, to jump away from the cutlery. “You let her have one!”

“She scares me when she’s tired.” He says, and you take another one because you know you’ll get away with it. He points the spoon at you, warningly. You wink, pop it in your mouth and he smiles, chuckles into the breakfast.

– –

You fall asleep on the cabana bed in your shorts and bikini top, cotton shirt unbuttoned and laid over your face like it’s going to block the light out. You wake up when you’re hit with a bottle of sunscreen. There’s a possibility whoever threw it didn’t realize you were asleep, but the seam lines on your legs lead you to believe you’ve been relatively stationary since laying down here.

You pull the shirt off your face, sit up, disoriented from the nap. “You’re going to burn,” Charles says, rubbing the lotion into his face. “You have pink cheeks.”

“No, I don’t.” You say, but lather up anyway, ask Carla to reach the places you can’t.

The first drinks of the day come with lunch, a round of beers. Corona with lime. You keep yourself paced for the first couple hours, a 1:1 ratio between liquor and water. You maintain the slightest of buzzes, one that you really only feel when you catch yourself giggling too hard at one of their stupid jokes. It’s not the beer that takes you out, you’ve spent your entire life trying to keep up with Charles and his professional-drinker friends. It’s not the Sangria, either, however fun that is to sip. It’s the shots. It’s always the cheap tequila shots that do you in. You feel them too late, don’t realize you’re tipsy until you’re shitfaced. You’ll learn one day. One day, but not today.

You and Charles are sent to find tequila, and you walk down the beach until you find a bar that looks like it’s got decent shit. “I like you like this,” You say, toes sinking into the wet sand, cool water washing over your feet with each crashing wave.

“Like what?” He asks, squinting through the sun to see you. You left your sunglasses at the cabana and he gave you his to wear. They were big on your face and you thought if you moved too quickly they’d fall off into the sand. His linen shirt whips in the wind, his hair is sticking up in all directions, greasy with sunscreen. He glistened with sweat and coconut lotion, beautifully sunkissed.

“Just.” You shrug. “Happy.”

“Awww,” He teases, throws an arm around you, makes you miss a step and trip into him. He smells like summer and sandalwood and fresh, warm towels. “So sweet.”

At the bar, you order and he pays. Licking the salt off the back of your hand, you down the shot, pucker your lips around the lime, and set off back toward the rest of the group with a handful of shot glasses. It’s harder to carry them than you thought it would be, both of you fighting laughter when a bit of alcohol spills out of the tiny glasses, moving quickly over the burning sand. Back with everyone, you take another shot, no salt this time.

The next round is broken up by something sweet and fruity. Joris takes a picture of you and Charles drinking them, arms intertwined like newlyweds at their wedding reception. You hope it doesn’t end up on social media, uninterested in a weekend full of online death threats.

Another round of shots follows soon after, and then another. Not a single water has been sipped in hours. “We should go swimming.” You declared, unbuttoning your shorts and wiggling out of them. “Before we’re too drunk.”

“We’re not getting drunk.” Lorenzo says. Carla laughs from Arthur’s lap.

You shrug. “I am.”

“You already are.” Charles laughs into a beer bottle. “No deeper than your ankles.” Fuck you, you mouthed, walked backwards towards the sea. You wade out until the waves splash against your chest. On the beach, Charles is unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it on the cabana, taking off his sunglasses. You feel hot in the chilly water.

“My babysitter!” You laugh when he’s within earshot, slowly cutting through the water to you.

“I told you ankles.”

You shrug, form first with your hands and push them against his palms. “I’m not drunk.” He pushes back, laughing, you are. You shake your head, move your hands from his and run them over your hair, gather it to one side, twist the water from the ends. “The water is sobering me.” You lower yourself, sinking down until the salt water tickles your chin.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You look up at him, probably with blown, tipsy pupils.

“I don’t believe you.”

You hum, dipping your head back into the water. “You never do.”

“I always do.” He says, and you laugh at the immediate contradiction like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. You might be drunk.

You cut yourself off after that, until you can eat something and drink a non-alchoholic beverage. You won’t let yourself get sober, because then you’ll be passed out on someone’s shoulder by sunset. You won’t get trashy, though. It’s a race week, anyone could see him, take a picture with him, a video with you in the background. When you’re together, whether you like it or not, you’re a reflection of him, a public display of the type of people he wants to associate himself with. Tipsy and fun is cute and carefree. Trashed and blacked is messy and irresponsible.

You’re trying to hold your composure in the taxi, resting your head, and eyes, on the window. The guys picked a restaurant while you and Carla were using the bathroom, and now you’re making Charles read you the menu. He’s doing it in butchered Spanish, trying to pick out the words and meals he recognizes.

“Is there tapas?” You ask, smacking his chest with the back of your hand.

“There is tapas.” He confirms.

You almost cry, laugh instead. “My god, I could kiss you right now.”

“You are so drunk.” He chuckles, and you bite your fist, sink into your seat, wish you could fake it better. Have fun and let loose without embarrassing him.

“Je suis désolé.” You whisper, drop your head the other way, onto his bicep. He adjusts, moves his arm so it’s around you, runs a hand over your hair. He doesn’t ask you what you’re apologizing for, knows that you’ll tell him anyway. “Pour être embarrassant.”

“Chérie,” He says into the crown of your head, a soft kiss before continuing. “You could never embarrass me.”

– –

The sobriety returns during dinner, bringing a pulsating headache with it. You drown your sorrows in delicious, cheap food, and drink an entire pitcher of water by yourself. When you leave, on the street outside, a band is playing in front of a fountain. You all stop, gather around and listen, sway to the lyrics you can barely understand. Joris is taking pictures of the band, Arthur is spinning a giggly Carla around. Charles grabs your hand, twirls you around and dances with you under the orange street lights. You rest your head on his chest.

“You should sing along.” The vibrations from his laugh soother your aching head.

It feels like a scene from a movie, like every other person in the city fades away into obscurity and it’s just you and he swaying on the cobblestone street. You’re so close to him, can’t be much closer, wish you could be. If you could, you’d crawl inside him, inspect his brain and the beautiful way it thinks, admire the way he sees the world. You know it’s special. Everything about him is magnificent, from the tallest hair on his head to the soles of his feet, every birthmark and fallen eyelash in between.

Slowly, your sway has come to a stand still, and he’s staring at you with dopey, tired eyes. It should be illegal, the way he;s looking at you. His sightline jumps all over your face. Your right eye to your left, your nose to your lips. They linger there, on your lips, and then he’s staring into your soul, searching for something. Can I kiss you right now. Give me a reason not to. You don’t know what he wants you to silently speak. If you knew, you’d tell him.

A cat-call whistle snaps both of your heads to Lorenzo. “Get a room!” Arthur yells, pretends to gag. Carla smacks his chest a little too hard to be playful.

The gap between you and Charles is only a few inches larger, but he feels unreachable, eyes glossy and avoiding you. “Fuck off, mate.: He says, drop a bill into the band’s opened guitar case.

– –

Sunday is a nightmare. There’s no way to sugar coat it or make it sound prettier than it is. Andrea grabs you from hospitality, throws his pass around your neck because nobody is going to stop him from getting into the garage. He keeps you at an arms length for the entirety of the short walk.

The car is already stopped in front of the garage, he’s climbing out. His posture is defeated, depressing. You wonder if you’ll be able to say the right words or if he’s just going to want to yell. A few people give him encouraging words, pats on the back, a hug. They’re already asking him to go to the media pen, to feed him to the sharks like a bucket of chum. He moves past them all, gets his weight taken and bee lines it to his drivers room.

Andrea nudges you in his direction. You stay in play, your feet frozen. You don’t know what to say. Go on, he says.

Fuck.

You knock on the door softly, nothing. Opening the door just wide enough to squeeze through it, you find him sat on the floor. Knees bent, arms locked and resting on them, fingers intertwined. His back is against the edge of the couch and his head is hung low. He doesn’t look like himself.

“What?” He says, rigid, doesn’t even bother to look in your direction.

“Do you want me here?” You ask, and his eyes shoot over to you. He looks exhaustingly sad and sorrowfully tired. You wish you could make it better, rub Neosporin on his cutes and stick a race car bandaid over them. Promis the wound would get better and know you were telling the truth.

“Stay.” He says, so you close the door behind you.

You sit on the couch, awkwardly scooch yourself over and around him, a leg on either side of his body. His head rests on your knee and your fingers toy with his hair, soaked with sweat. You don’t know how long you sit like that, just that it’s long enough for someone to knock on the door twice. You stay seated.

“You should change.” You finally say, after the third set of knocks noticeably lacks the patience of the previous two.

“Yeah.” He says, and you both stand. “Don’t go home?” He asks when you’re already halfway out the door, when you’re already looking at Mia in the stairwell. You look over your shoulder, nod, smile, and leave the door open for her to slide in and get to work.

You wait on the stairs, take a deep breath before re-emerging into the chaos. Carlos is still fighting for the podium and you don’t want to drag the mood to the Marianas Trench. It’s just so, so hard to see him hate himself.

Energy is low, morale is lower, but you stay seated in the back of the garage. When the race is over, you head back to hospitality, linger in his room there. Your phone is dead, abandoned on the floor and you lay on his massage table, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. Everything replays on the blank canvas. The perfect lap the day before, his pole position. The sparkle in his eyes and the lightness to his voice. A great start and a commanding lead and a quick pit stop and then he’s slowing down, Andrea is grabbing you and hurrying you across the paddock strip.

Your presence scares him, makes him jump when he opens the door. “Fuck.” He says. “I thought you went home.”

You don’t bother to look up at him, to sit up. “You asked me to stay.” You listen while he shuffles around the room. His presence means the presence of others, and it’s not long before Andrea is there, picking up your phone and placing it on your stomach. His brothers are gone, Carla too. Joris lingers, the silent, unrelenting support of a friend.

“Are you hungry?” Charles askes, and you turn your head to face him. His expression is as tired as his voice.

“Are you?” You aren’t, but you can be if he is.

“No.”

“Me neither.” His eyes narrow, trying to decipher if you’re telling him the truth or if you’re being agreeable. He hates it when you do that, when you tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to, instead of the truth. “Serious.” You reaffirm, and he returns to packing up his things.

You just watch him. There’s nothing else to do, but, you want to live in his head, know what he’s thinking and feeling and fighting. You relish in any hint towards those emotions, from the way his shoulders hand to the way he zips up his backpack.

“Come,” He says, extending a hand, pulling you to your feet. He grabs his sunglasses from their comfortable position on the collar of his shirt. It’s dark out. He just wants to hide the disappointment. There are still people lingering on the track, after all these hours. On your way out, he stops and talks to Pierre and Esteban. About what, you don’t listen. You don’t ever want to talk about this race again, want to leave it in the past. Head down, focused on the things yet to come. When Charles is ready to move on, Pierre gives him a heavy pat on the shoulder and a hug, one of the largest displays of encouragement any of these guys are capable of giving to each other.

It must be so strange, you think, hoping for someone’s success and failure simultaneously.

Fans are still here, too. He holds his head high and takes pictures and signs everything, makes them all feel loved and appreciated. Nobody is any the wiser to his inner turmoil, to the way he wil pick apart every single aspect of the race and internalize it, use it as fucked up motivation. He’s silent when he’s not interacting with the stragglers. You, Andrea, and Joris all trail behind him, engaged in quiet conversation about Monaco; the race, sleeping at home, the always surprising strangeness of a race you could watch from your bedroom window. Ahead, he holds out a hand to you, and you take a hurried couple of steps to match his pace.

“You okay?” You ask. He nods. “Anything but?”

Anything but, a term you’d coined after Jules’ accident, when all anyone ever wanted to talk to you guys about was how you were doing, what you were feeling. The constant retelling, reliving, reassuring everyone you were doing okay when you were far from, it was almost as painful as losing him. Anything but is invoked, and the other has to change the subject, ignore the elephant in the room, no matter how big it is.

A soft, sad smile tugs on his lips, silent gratitude, and he squeezes your hand tighter, barely so. “Yeah.” He says, and you go on about the haircut you’re thinking about getting once you’re back home in Monaco, asking if he thinks bangs are an option on a face shaped like yours.

– –

You’re flying to Monaco with Charles, and the rest of Ferrari, early tomorrow morning, so your small group deciding in the hotel lobby that the night will be made better by liquor, probably isn’t the wisest of decisions. You do it anyway.

You all behave, careful not to get tipsy. Andrea reminds Charles he still has to train tomorrow, and that keeps him from going too far. The rest of you are just following his lead.

He insists on walking you back to your room at the end of the night, even though Andrea and Joris both swore they’d get you there safe. She’s a runner when she’s drunk, he’d said, and you scowled. “Not since I was sixteen!” You defended, insistent that you didn’t need anyone; Joris, Andrea, or Charles, to walk you to your room. It’s not like you’re lost and drunk somewhere in an unfamiliar city. It’s a five-star hotel and you had all of one floor to travel between.

He doesn’t even say anything on the walk he’d insisted on being present for. Your footsteps echo off the carpeted floors, bouncing between the thin walls and reflecting off the sleek, minimalist artwork. He has a beer in his hand, something from the hotel bar, priced entirely too high for the quality, you’re sure. Each time he brings it to his lips, the glass clinks against the ring on his pinky finger.

He’s flushed, beautiful as ever, and you wished you were an overpriced bottle of beer; your sweat on his skin, the cold ring contrasting his warm, calloused hands. Those soft, pink lips on you, the way they almost were this week. They almost were, you keep telling yourself, you weren’t imagining it. “Charles.” He raises his brows, silently tells you to continue. “It,” You hesitate. You falter, because it’s not too late to say nothing, to bask in the silence a little longer. You can still stop yourself, shove the thoughts deep down and abandon them somewhere in the back of your mind. Curiosity, desperation, something sparked by the green in his eyes and the red on his shirt and the condensation on the bottle, it all gets the best of you. “The other night, it felt like you were going to kiss me.”

“Hmm.” He hums against the lip of the bottle, finishing off the last of the drink. There’s a long pause. You, waiting for him to say something, memorizing the strange pattern on the carpet. Him, saying nothing. You reach your room, hold the key card up to the lock. The silence is amplified by the shifting electronic gears and you’re pushing the door open. “Are you going to ask me?” You blink. “If I was going to kiss you?”

You exhale. Long and slow, do you want to know? “I haven’t decided yet.” You finally say. I’m not ready for this to get flipped on its head, you could’ve said. I love you too much to like you, you could have said. You didn’t. “Nuit, Charles.” You say instead, disappearing into the darkness of your room.

“Bonne nuit.”

“I’ve decided against the bangs.” You tell him in the grocery store around the corner from his apartment, leant against one of the doors in the refrigerator aisle. He’s waiting for a text back from his nutritionist, trying to figure out what he’s going to cook on the boat tonight. It’s family dinner night, and he’d volunteered to host, which meant he volunteered you to host on his yacht

“Good.” He says.

“You told me they would look good.” You laugh, wonder if he even remembers the conversation or if your words were just the backing track to his overthinking.

He shrugs. “You’re supposed to stop me from looking like a fool.” He laughs at his phone screen, turns it off and slides it into his pocket.

“My favorite thing about you is that you’re a fool.” He says, pulling open the door you’re leaning against, moving you with it. That’s not very nice, you said as he piled two packages of chicken breasts onto the groceries already in your hands.

“Chicken. Brave.” You add, reminiscent of the last time he tried cooking chicken on the water. It’s a good thing there was a fire extinguisher on board, and saying anything else would break the oath of secrecy you were sworn to.

“Ha, ha.” He mocks. “Not funny.”

“You know what isn’t funny?” You grab another pack of chicken, just in case. “Telling me bangs would be good.”

Good luck this weekend, the cashier tells him when you’re checking out. Break the curse, yes? Charles laughs, because he’s a good sport, and agrees. You hate all the curse talk, it pisses you off, more than it does him. The conversation around it gets worse every year, every time he doesn’t win at home.

They love him so much here, he’s their poster-boy during their poster-week, they don’t mean any harm by it, but it still gets under your skin. Curse this, curse that. Fuck off, shut up about it already. Everyone knows his Monaco track record, can everyone please find anything else to talk about?

– –

He finishes fourth, and it feels somehow worse than last year’s DNF. SO close, only to be screwed by the same shit as last week. You drink your weight at the club that night because maybe a lack of sobriety will make it sting a little less.

“You are not wearing that.” Lorenzo says when you walk out of your building. You groaned, looked down at your outfit. It was slinky, but slinky is what everyone wears to the club, especially during the grand prix.

You settle for a blazer, tell him to suck your dick, and fill the pockets so you can abandon your purse. You start off at a smaller club, one that transitions from a restaurant after dark and has intimate, smaller tables. You’re there for a couple hours, eat something and get buzzed. Predictably, you meet up with half of the grid at Formula One’s favorite club, where you have a bigger section and a bigger group and get a bigger buzz.

“I can’t wear these anymore,” You whined, stopping to lean against the wall of a building to take off your heels. Your feet were blistering, and the thought of having to continue the walk with them on was dreadful. Charles carries them because you keep dropping one without realizing it. It’s not your finest moment, but, you only threaten to jump into one bush on the nearly fifteen minute walk. Overall, a strong showing on your part.

You lose Charles at Jimmy*z, dancing with friends and strangers and other drivers and their parties. You’re drinking Negroni’s, and you aren’t sipping, occasionally splitting it up with a shot whenever someone suggests it. That’s when you see him again, when he’s putting a double shot of something expensive in your hand. I shouldn’t, you say, because you're teetering close to the line of embarrassment. He rolls his eyes, fully inebriated. Shiftfaced, if you will. “Shut up and take a shot with me.”

You do, it goes down smoother than water.

“That’s good!” You say, examininging the glass.

“I know.” He deadpans, and you both laugh. Sober Charles is one of the funniest people you know. Drunk Charles is the funniest person you know. He’s so unserious in everything he does–the way he talks, dances, expresses emotions, there’s nothing not funny about it.

The club comped the table and a few bottles of champagne for the publicity that comes with having half of Formula One partying under their roof. In exchange, a manager is trying to wrangle Charles’ section into a group photo. You were standing back, laughing at them all failing to maintain any semblance of sobriety, all logic and composure out the window three drinks ago. Charles and Arthur are yelling your name, yelling at each other, looking for you in the strobe lights. You move, hope he doesn’t see you. He does, locks eyes with you, dopey smile, summoning you with this come-hither motion, his middle and ring finger calling you to him. Even drunk, you notice the gesture, the subtle curl, twitch of his long fingers.

Fucking, hell. Flushed cheeks burn bright and you’re grateful your hair is down, covering your undoubtedly matching ears. He almost kissed you. He did. You’re not crazy, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s too smart not to.

You smile, lips pursed, and shake your head. It makes him pout, and then he’s yelling your name, gesturing you over with the rapid movement of his entire arm. His other hand is smacking Arthur’s face, trying to rile he and Carla up. It works, and now half the group is yelling your name, so, you give in. Celebratory cheers leave their mouths and the boys share a near-miss high five. Charles grabs the back of your head, pulls you under his arm in one fail swoop. You hone in on his cologne. Tom Ford Tuscan Leather, no doubt. His signature night-out fragrance, the one you and Lorenzo nearly peed your pants laughing at when Pascale bought it for him a few years ago. The hints of raspberry and amber wood, the ones nobody can smell unless they’re this close to him, make you dizzy.

“You smell nice.” You say, and he just looks at you, lowers his head to talk directly into your ear. You look beautiful, he says, and you might be sober. “Don’t say that to me.” You laugh, smooth down your hair.

There’s a real possibility at least one of the twenty people in the photo were actually looking at the camera.

At some point in the night, you end up in the bathroom with Carla for an evening debrief. You don’t realize how drunk you actually are until you’re staring into your hazy soul in the bathroom mirror. It’s an out of body experience, truly, you’re watching this conversation from the astral plane.

“Fuck.” You say, looking to Carla, who appears to be having the same experience as you. You both burst into a fit of laughter, the hunched over, sore abs, red faces, threat to the integrity of your bladder-type laughter that doesn't require anything to actually be funny. “I have to work tomorrow.” You say, trying to catch your breath. You work from home, she reminds you, and you’re both laughing again. “Je t’aime.” You slur, overwhelmed by the alcohol and emotion. “Beaucoup.”

“Non,” She giggles. “Je t’aime le olus.”

“You look.” You hiccup. “So pretty, I hate you for being so pretty.” Carla shakes her head at her own reflection, adjusts her top, checks herself out. You pat the sweat off your forehead and wipe under your arms with toilet paper from a stall. “Arthur is so, super lucky.” Another hiccup. “You are so pretty. So nice and pretty.”

“No, you are so pretty.” She laughs. “Charles is lucky, and he doesn’t know it.” Charles, Charles, Charles. You don’t want to talk about Charles and his stupid face and stupid smile and stupid fingers and stupid skin. “I should call Michael.” You say, digging your phone out of your jacket pocket.

“You should not.” She laughs, but you’re already searching your contacts for his name. “Nope.” SHe says, snatches your phone from your hands and holds it out of your reach.

“Carla.” You hiccup, pleading and pouting.

“Nope.” She says, putting the device in the bag that hands around her body.

– –

“This is my song!” You yell, quickly downing the shot in your hand, entire body vibrating with the bass pouring from the speakers.

“We should start a band.” Someone says, and Charles laughs.

“We should!”

“You’re my best friend.” You tell him, stumbling over your own feet without even taking a step. His arm reaches out as a stabilizer, just in case you need one.

“No,” He laughs. “You’re my best friend. More-er.” That’s not a word. You shake your head.

“I could play the drums.”

“I know we’re drunk, but, like. I love you.” You slur, test the waters of shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Another stumble, another hiccup. “I’d do, like, anything for you.”

“I know.” He says, but you can’t hear his voice over the music. “I love you.” He adds, smacking Lorenzo on the arm to get his attention, to draw him out of band practice planning. “She’s my best friend!” He says.

“I know!”

“I love her.”

Lorenzo laughs. “We all know.”

“We should take a picture!” You suggest to Charles, and he agrees. “I don’t have my phone. Someone stole it.” He gives you a puzzled look, concerned, grabs your elbow like you’re going to float away in the crowd and asks you to clarify. You just shrug. I have it, dumbass. Carla laughs, takes a picture of the two of you, doesn’t give you your phone back.

The next time you see him, you’re sat at the table having one of those drunken moments of emotional, existential crises. Your fingers twiddle with the fake eyelashes you peeled from your lids minutes earlier. “I’ve been looking for you.” He says, heavily drops into the space to your right, slings an arm around you.

You’re always under his damn arm, you never realized before just how often you’re here. Not that you don’t like it, it’s just an observation, confusing and emotionally charged, but an observation nonetheless. He’s so relaxed, completely slouched into the rich leather, legs spread wider than they need to be, the arm that’s not around you resting on the back of the booth. He’s watching everyone else, observing the different people with sleepy eyes and heavy lids. When he talks to you, he turns his head all the way, cranes his neck so he’s speaking into your ear again. You don’t turn your head, you’d be too close. “I have a secret to tell you.” He doesn’t whisper.

“What?” You laugh, settle into his side, into the laxity of it all.

He opens his mouth to speak, pauses, rests his forehead on your temple. “I forgot.” He chuckles. You hiccup. You both laugh.

Your eyes are closed, tired and so, so comfortable. You might fall asleep here, despite the loud noises and loud music and loud heartbeat. “You were going to kiss me in Barcelona.” You say, liquid courage forcing the words from your mouth like vomit. It isn’t a question. It doesn’t need to be.

“I kiss you often.” He says, a weak defense, and kisses the crown of your head. “See?”

You’re not crazy. He was going to kiss you. He was. “Charles.” Your voice is quiet, strained and scratchy and serious. You don’t open your eyes, can’t look at him when you demand an answer, a confirmation.

“I was.” The admission is suffocatingly delicate, like he might go for it, right then. His hand might grab your face and guide you to him. You’re ready for it, you think, as ready as you’re ever going to be for everything to change.

You don’t have to worry about it, to think about it and dwell on if he’s going to do it. He doesn’t. He just rests his head on yours. Your thoughts race faster than your heartbeat, and you wonder if he can feel your temples pulsing.

2013, family dinner. You’re in your room, hiding out for as long as possible, uninterested in the family events. Very teenaged girl of you, in all regards. Charles burst through your door, no knock, no warning. You didn’t even know they were there yet. Luckily for you, nothing incriminating was happening. He was quite the snitch back then, a real tattletale, especially if you were the one getting in trouble.

“I have something to tell you.”

“Unless it’s that you’re going to turn around and leave my room, I don’t care.” You’d said, annoyed by his presence. At sixteen, your relationship could best be described as friendly enemies. He was always around, especially when you didn’t want him to be, and he was always the golden child. Perfect in school, perfect on the track, perfect son, perfect friend. His existence was infuriating and because you were so close in age, everyone always wanted you to be the best of friends.

As a teenage girl, it was evolutionarily impossible for you to go alone with what everyone else wanted. You had to rebel, to run against the grain. Charles and you were not friends, and you did not care about what was going on in his life.

“Single-seaters.” He said with a dumb smile, leaning on his hand against your dresser. You take maybe one step between your bed and his arms, hugging him tighter than you had since you were children. Okay, maybe you did care about his life. There are some things even evolution can’t change.

“With who?”

“I thought you didn’t care?”

“I don’t”

His smile grew. “Fortec.”

You half-screamed, half-laughed, hugging him again, somehow tighter. “I’m so happy for you, Cha.” You said, with a level of sincerity you hadn’t used in years, especially with him. You thought for a moment you might cry, that he would make fun of you for it, that you’d do it anyways because you were so happy for him.

“Don’t tell anyone, I’m not supposed to say anything.”

“Who knows?”

“Like, nobody.” He’s giddy, it’s almost cute. Almost.

“Jules?” You ask, even though you think you already know the answer. Jules is God to Charles, this untouchable, invincible figure that represents the culmination of all his own dreams. He was the first person, you expect him to say.

“Not yet.” He told you before Jules.

You’re traveling in the weeks after Monaco, jet-setting around the world for your own career. It’s not until France that you see him again. You beat him there, actually, opting to spend some time visiting friends from University nearby, taking a bit of time to enjoy yourself and relax. Despite what everyone in your Instagram comments thinks, race weekends are not a holiday. The nerves and anxiety and heightened emotions you feel during one is so stress-inducing that the work week feels like a week in the Maldives.

Love you, always proud. You texted him moments after he won in Austria, along with a picture of you and the drink you were having in celebration in your hotel room.

You were a little bummed you couldn’t be there, celebrating with him. He really needed that win, and you could only imagine the weight it lifted off his shoulders. It’s been a while since you saw him genuinely happy on a Sunday night.

Love you, too. You suck. He texted back seven hours later, reiterating the sentiment the entire time he was home in Monaco and you weren’t. When you jokingly suggested he come to France early, you were met with the threat of being blocked.

– –

You spent the weekend with Pascale, spending every day at the track trying to out-anxious each other. You don’t know how she sleeps, Charles and Arthur both doing this shit. You’re a nervous wreck and she barely flinches.

“You remind me of myself a lot.” She tells you. Your knee is bouncing anxiously under the table you’re eating at. “Your mother, of course, but. Selfishly, I see the good parts of me in you.”

You’d always wished Pascale was your Mom, growing up. You have a great mother, you love her to death, but she was your mom. She had to discipline you, she had to put her foot down. Pascale didn’t have to do those things, not with you. She could be cool and carefree and spoil you because she was a bonus parent, not an actual one. If you grew up to be all kinds of fucked-up, she could wash her hands of you. Your mom couldn’t do that.

You’re so lucky to have her as your Mom, you would say to the boys. They’d say the same thing to you.

“You’re going to make me cry.” You say, picking at your cuticles.

“Chérie.” She says, grabs your hand, stills your anxious fingers. “Je suis nerveux rien qu'à te regarder.”

“I don’t like Monaco.” You say. “No room for error.”

“You don’t like any track.” She chuckles, releases your hands. You put them in your lap and go back to picking at the skin. “Not when the boys are out there.”

She’s right, you’re squeamish when you watch Arthur and Charles, don’t think you’ll ever get used to it. Charles loves to make fun of you for it, has videos saved on his phone of you, caught on the television cameras, captured by friends, that one time you were in the background of a Drive to Survive episode. He laughs and laughs at them, but when he watches Arthur, he’s just as bad as you are.

It’s different, when you love the driver. When you love them more than the sport, more than the team, more than nearly any other person in the entire world, every corner feels tighter, every straight feels faster, the whole thing feels like a narrowly avoided death sentence.

“I don’t know how you do it.” After Jules, how you do it after Jules. After Anthoine, after hugging a grieving mother and watching your son drive on the same track.

“I love watching them race.” She says. “I hate it, but I love it. All a mother can hope for her children is that they are brave enough to achieve their dreams.” They’re brave because of her, because of Hervé and because of her. They raised all three of their boys to be strong and brave and kind, and when Hervé passed, she picked up the pieces of her boys and glued them together again, built them up stronger, braver, kinder than before.

– –

You don’t see him for a while after the race, don’t know if you want to. He’s been eerily calm all when things have gone wrong all season, at least when you’ve been around. It’s only a matter of time until he loses his cool, until he snaps. That radio call? Snapped like a glowstick. He’s angry, at himself, at the car, at the team, at the world. There’s nothing anyone is going to be able to say or do that would make him happy, neutral even. It’s going to be all pity-party and hushed curses until he gets some rest and resets.

Behind the garage, when you’re finally leaving, he hugs Pascale tight. Her hand runs comforting circles on his back, and then it’s your turn to be suffocated. He squeezes you like it’s the last time you’re ever going to see each other, hangs on like gravity is pulling him in the other direction. “Anything but.” He said. “All night.”

You nod. “My mom sent me a video of Gi playing with the dog today.” You spoke of your niece, of Charles’ goddaughter. If anyone could hit his soft spot, it was her. “Do you want to see it?”

“Yeah.” He said, and when he watched her stumbling around the park, when her innocent belly laugh and giddy screams spilled out of the speakers, he actually smiled, might have even let a little laugh slip. It’s impossible not to, really, with that little girl.

He walks in relative silence back to the driver's lot, just listened to you go on and on. You feel nauseous, watching him put on a smile and interact with fans, laugh and take pictures and make children’s days by just existing. It must be such a strange life, a miracle his head hasn’t gotten ridiculously big.

– –

At the hotel, you can tell he’s still pissed. Rest, reset. He’ll be himself in the morning. You exchange goodbyes in the elevator, you’re on a different floor than him. You expect it’s the last you’ll see of him until summer break. He leaves for Hungary early in the morning and you’re driving back to Monte Carlo with Pascale tomorrow afternoon. You expect, because he’s knocking on your door an hour later while you watch L’Atalante on your laptop.

The light from the hallway is almost blinding in contrast to your dark room. “Hi.” He says, in running shorts and a t-shirt, bare feet. “L’Atalante?”

“How do you-”

He smiles. “You’re predictable.”

“What do you want?” You say through a yawn, shocked he makes out the words at all.

“Can I watch it with you?”

You sigh. “Charles.” You were minutes away from falling asleep, from putting this day behind you. Now, your feet are so cold on the floor it hurts and you’re becoming increasingly conscious and awake with each passing moment.

“Please?” He asks, voice small and broken. Fuck. You hold open the door, because you’re weak when it comes to him. You’d let him treat you badly if it meant he’d treat you. “You know there’s a giant TV right here, no?”

“I like my computer.” You say, crawl back into the bed, sit up against the million pillows. He flops down next to you, on top of the comforter because he runs hotter than a fireplace. When he’s finally done moving around, shifting until he’s nice and comfortable–sorry, he said–you press play on the movie.

“I love this part.” He says.

“You hate this movie.”

“I do not.” He does. He complains every time you watch it, says you need to find a favorite movie that’s in color, that doesn’t have random cat montages, that the main love interest has too many glaring red flags. Watch it with rose-tinted glasses, you told him once, threw a piece of popcorn at his head. “This is my favorite part.”

“No, it’s not.” You laugh. “You hate this part.”

He laughs, too, sweetly and softly, into his own shoulder. “I love it.” You shush him, shove his shoulder because he can’t even say it with a straight face. He doesn’t stay quiet for long, and it’s clear he came here to talk, not to watch the movie, but he tries to pretend. “You need to come to more races.” He says, his head resting on your arm. “I don’t like it when you’re not here.”

“Okay.” You say, only half-listening. It’s your favorite movie.

“Today sucked.” You paused the movie. Blinked twice, hard, frustrated because it;s your favorite movie, but he’s your favorite person.

You look at him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” He reaches over and unpauses it, adjusts so he’s sitting up, too.

You pause it again. “I think you do.”

“I don’t.”

You close the laptop, set it on the bedside table and flip on the lamp. “I don’t know how to make you feel better right now.” You say, stand up, pace the room. It sounds like you’re admitting your defeat, expressing disappointment in yourself with a half-hearted apology.

He stands up, too, follows you for a step but then you're still. There’s something unfamiliar painted across his face. Exhaustion, anger, desperation–you can’t pinpoint it. Urgency. You realize its urgency when his hands are on your face, thumbs dancing on your jaw, eyes darting between yours. Urgency.

He was going to kiss you. He is going to kiss you, you think, and you’re going to let him. He can use you as a distraction, if he needs to. You can kiss it better, you’re sure you can. His forehead rests on yours, the tips of your noses bumping against each other, shuddered, broken breaths. Your lips are so close, jaws slack, sharing the air. You’re dizzy. Dizzy and hot and then he’s kissing you. The taste of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, the softness of his lips, it’s all so new, so butterfly-inducing. He smells like himself, whatever soap he always uses when he’s traveling. It’s crisp and clean and you want to lick it off his skin.

He’s the one to pull away, but you open your eyes first. “Sorry.” He says. You smile, kiss him again because you’re not sorry, wishing you could crawl inside his mouth and build a home there behind his beautiful, sharp, white teeth.

Your name sounds like a symphony when he says it, all dopey and sing-songy, hands firmly on your waist. “Don’t look at me like that.” He says, laughs into your mouth.

“Like what?” You ask, innocently.

“Just. Fuck.” He shakes his head, one of his hands slipping under the hem of your shirt, open and flat, exploring the vast bareness of your back. “You.”

“Me?” You giggle at his words, the stumble of them, cheeks hot and flustered. You shouldn’t be nervous. It’s Charles. You know him like you know your own hand, but, he’s never been yours, not like this. Your hands have never searched him like this, fingers never tugged on his hair with lust and longing, never felt the scratch of his stubble on your skin.

“Yeah,” He says into the crook of your neck, leaving a flurry of open mouth kisses in the space between your jaw and your collarbone. “You.”

“We shouldn’t.” You say, even though you’re helping him out of his shirt. “We should stop.”

“Do you want to stop?” He asks, his fingers stalling on the buttons of your pajama top.

“We can do this, right?” You ask, because you need his reassurance. You don’t need honesty. You know the truth. You need to hear what you want to hear, for him to tell you if it’s safe to jump, to fall aimlessly into the unknown. You need him to lie to you. “Can we go back to normal after this?”

“Ouais.” He says, and even though you don’t believe him, you think he believes himself. “Retour à la normale.”

“Okay.” You say, and he’s unbuttoning your shirt again. If his mouth didn’t feel so good on you, if his big hands didn’t send shivers up your spine when he ran them up the sides of your body, you might have thought a bit harder about what normal is for the two of you.

His hands do make you shiver, though, and he’s looking at your body with these sweet, drunk eyes, sliding the shirt off your arms and letting it pool on the ground with his.

You’re dropping to your knees on the cold floor next to the bed, pulling his shorts, his underwear, down with you. While he steps out of them, kicks them to the side, you admire him, toned and tanned and so, so pretty. You want to memorize it in case it’s the last time you see him like this, take notes on every freckle and muscle and defining feature under the harsh light. You need to feel him everywhere, to taste him, to make him feel as good as he looks.

He’s already hard, cock twitching with lust and adrenaline and arousal, all for you. Your work is cut out for you. You tease him, whisper profanities and place soft kisses against the skin of his upper thighs. “You make me crazy.” He says, you take him in your mouth, and he goes momentarily stiff before he relaxes, lets your fingers and your lips work in tandem to pull your name from him.

“Fuck.” He says, tastes like sex, sweet and salty and manly. His hands knot into your hair, pull it back into a haphazard ponytail that only loses shape as you continue. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He repeats, rutting into your mouth, fucking into your throat. You swallow around him, hollow your cheeks and he lets out this whimpered, wounded sound, forces your mouth off him. “Don’t do that.”

“You don’t like it?” You ask, take him in your hand, stroke over the slick of your spit, kissing the base of his cock and looking up at him with these big, saucer eyes.

“No,” He shakes his head, drags a hand over his stubble. “You’ll make me come.”

You swipe your tongue in one long stripe, swirl it around the head of him, smile. “That’s the point.” You say, filling your mouth with him again, sinking until he’s hitting the back of your throat, gagging you, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes.

He says your name like he’s battling to reason with himself, his grip on your hair tightening, pulling you off him again. You pout, and he rolls his eyes, shakes his head. “Tu es mauvais.”

“Ç’est vrai.” You roll your thumb over the tip, mindlessly, really, looking at him and waiting for him to speak. You’re an addict, already. It’s just so pretty.

“Want to last for you.” You’re not even standing and your knees are unsteady underneath you. You look at the floor, your forehead on his thigh, and laugh. You laugh harder than you should, just out of shock and disbelief. “What?” He laughs, too.

You’re standing, he’s helping you stand. “Who would’a thought?” You can’t stop giggling, cock your head to the side and try not to smile. “You and me?”

His tongue is in his cheek, eyes rolling in such a bratty way. You wonder if he can see how swollen your lips are, all because of him. Your mouth feels empty without him there. “I hate you,” He says with a smile, and kisses you.

Your knees buckle at the edge of the bed, and it’s too easy, the way you’re both on it without ever parting lips for more than a hasty breath. He moves you around like a doll, gentle and effortless in his removing of your shorts, of your underwear, in the manipulation of your positioning on the soft mattress.

He’s kissing you, sucking bruises into your collar, marking you like there’s any possibility you’re not already his. It’s hazy and intoxicating, him exploring your body, taking his time as he trails down your collar bone, through the valley of your breasts, hot, sloppy breath on your stomach, on your legs. You’re almost disoriented by it all, the natural comfort, the familiarity of him in a place so unfamiliar to his touch. He kisses your clit, you watch him, feel his hot breath on you, jaw slack and eyes glazed over. It makes you hot, makes your whole body flush and shiver.

“Putain, t'es chaud.” He curses, smiles at you from between your legs. His fingers splay over your hip, his thumb dragging itself over you, parting your lips with the slick of you, amused smile tugging on his face. “You’re so wet.” He says, moves up to kiss you.

“Sorry.” You whisper into his open mouth.

He shakes his head, mumbles something incoherent, kisses you again. “It’s hot, chérie. That you want it.”

“Want you.” You say, and he slides a long finger inside you, surprised whimper escaping from your lips into his open mouth. He curls it into you, crooks it at just the right angle and you writhe against the sheets. You can’t believe he’s got you like this, that you’re a mess for him over a single finger.

He moves back down your body, another trail of nibbles and kisses before he laps at you, swirling his tongue around your clit in a way that’s almost painfully good, curling his finger into that same spot. When he slides in another, you’re a goner, moaning out his name like it’s the only word you know.

“Let go.” He says. Your eyes are pinched shut in an attempt to keep yourself at bay for just a while longer. His eyes are glued to yours when you can finally open them.

You shake your head. “I’m not.” You start, stopping short to compose yourself when your leg twitches, shakes in applause of his work. “No ego boosts.” You sputter. He laughs against you, the vibrations of it blinding, a whole new sensation that spreads fire over your skin, sends you over the edge with little warning.

He doesn’t stop, not for a second, when you come. His fingers maintain their rapid pace even as you tense around him, his tongue, his lips, suctioned to you as your body tries to wiggle away. “Charles.” His name leaves your lips in a shudder, your thighs trying to close in on his head, the hand that isn’t inside you holding you open for him.

He works you over, skilled fingers and skilled mouth, coaxing you through another, louder this time. He leaves you catching your breath, restless, incoherent, shaky on the crisp white sheets and two orgasms ahead.

He’s so satisfied with himself, licks his fingers clean and grins and kisses you some more, just because he can. Because, it’s all gone to shit and the unspoken, unwritten rules of your friendship have gone so far out the window, they’re in another country. Maybe they’re in Hungary already, or waiting for the two of you on summer break, in Monza, hell, they might even be Abu Dhabi, there’s no telling.

“Do you have a condom?” You ask.

He freezes, strong arm holding him over you, caging you in. His eyes shut hard. “No.”

“You didn’t bring one?”

“When I came to your room, I didn’t.” He sighs.

“How gentlemanly.” You quip, wiggle out from underneath him. He flops back onto the bed, apologizing. You grab his t-shirt from the floor and hold it up to cover your body, he chuckles at that. “Apologize if I don’t have one.” You say, rifle through your backpack. Your leg shakes under you while you try to balance, squatting in front of the bag. You hope he notices, sees what he’s done to you without even filling you up all the way.

“Why would you have one?” He asks, just as you find the little package at the bottom of your bag. You turn on your heels, still bent over, condom wrapper in your teeth and look at him with narrowed eyes.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” You ask around the wrapper.

He thinks about it for way longer than should be required. “No.”

“Yeah.” You nod, dumbfounded, and stand back up.

“Really, with the shirt?” He asks, laughing about it again.

“Salope!” You say, drop the shirt, throw the condom at him. “Put this on yourself.”

“I don’t even like you.” He says, rips open the wrapper with his teeth and slides it over his cock. It hurts, almost, how badly you want him inside you, how empty you’ve felt since he took his fingers out.

“Don’t do that, you’re going to make me come.” You mock his earlier words, puff out your lips, raise your brows, a knowing glance.

“I was.” He defends, and you straddle him, wrap your arms around his neck.

“No, you weren’t,” You kiss him, his hands explore the curve of your ass, fingers dig into your hips, push you down so you grind against him, spread your wetness over him.

“Okay.” He says with a smirk, lust riddled and completely enthralled by you, one hand moving to thumb at your clit, start chasing another release for you.

“Okay.” You repeat, barely a whisper, lift yourself up enough for him to line himself up with you. You sink down slow, savor the burn of the stretch, wish it was the first time anyone had ever done this to you, that you could belong to him and only him.

“Fuck.” He says into your shoulder, kissing and sucking a purple spot into the flesh there, his hands splayed across your back, warm and strong and dragging across the hot skin. “Si bon.” Every inch of your body can feel him, hungry for more, the insatiable urge to hear his moans, to make him whimper, make him feel how you feel.

You grind your hips against his, chasing an unachievable leverage, a static inducing friction. Your foreheads rest on each other and your noses collide roughly in the sweaty, steamed, hitched breaths.

You’re obsessed with the way he watches your bodies, eyes glued where he disappears into you. You never want to hear anyone else say your name, not after hearing the way he says it while he’s inside you. “That.” He says. “Love that.” You do as you’re told, eager to please, hungry for him to finish. “Es-tu proche?” You shake your head, because you are, but he’s closer.

In a swift movement, he flips you over, switches your positions, slides back inside you. Even when he’s manhandling you, using you as a device for his pleasure, strong and without thought, there’s something gentle about it, something that anchors you to him.

He fucks into you with deep, measured thrusts. The new position, the new angle, it drives you fucking crazy, your back arching off the bed, grinding onto his fingers in the selfish chase of your own high. “Charles. Fuck.” I know, he tells you, shaky, pace reduced to an erratic grind. I know, baby, and you’re coming again, biting into the muscles of his strong shoulders, wet and warm and so fucking full of him.

“I’m.” He whispers into your neck, nibbles on your ear. He pulls out and you whimper at the loss. “Where?” He asks, pulls the condom off, jerks himself with those long, veiny fingers. You smiled, devilish. You wanted, needed, his cum in your mouth.

He’s too close to be gentle, now, to take care and take time. He’s desperate, it’s so fucking hot. His hands are on your head, knotted into your hair, holding you steady so he can fuck your throat. You gag around him, dizzy, hazy, eyes forced shut because everything is white and on fire. “Look at me.” He says. You do, and he has a fucking smile on his face, lewd and practically pornographic.

You hum, pleased with the state you’ve got him in and then he’s bottomed out, still and stiff, coming down the back of your throat, chanting your name like a prayer.

– –

“What am I supposed to do with these?” You laugh into the bathroom mirror, after a shared shower, delicate fingers examining the fresh bruises he burned into your skin. “I’m spending the day with your Mother.”

He’s drying his hair with a towel, laughs. “Nobody thinks you’re La Sainte Vierge.”

You move through the bathroom, back into the bedroom to retrieve your pajamas from the floor. “And what is that supposed to mean?” You tease, returning, tossing his clothes on the counter.

“It means,” He hums, wraps his arms around you, hugs you from behind. Your knees are weak and wobbly, his chin resting on your shoulder, looking at each other in the mirror. “Tu es belle, jeune et amusante.”

“Je suis amusante?” You ask, try to bite back a smile, fail.

“Très.” He says, nuzzles into your neck.

He sleeps in your room that night, wakes up early, shuffles around the bathroom, the light pouring out. His movement stirs you, his heavy feet roaming around the silent room. “Go back to sleep,” He says, kisses your hair, and the heavy door locks behind him.

Tired, from the weekend, from him, you let yourself go back to sleep. You should��ve got up and kissed him, you think. Really, truly kissed him, while the rules still didn’t apply and things weren’t back to normal. Whatever normal is for the two of you.

“What?” You said, spit, when Charles called you for the third time within five minutes. The first Monday of summer break, he’s in Monaco and you’re in France, a thousand kilometers, an hour and a half flight, away. More specifically, you’re standing in the corridor of your office building, meters away from the door you’d just stepped out of, the meeting you had to excuse yourself from leading because your phone won’t stop ringing and surely, something must be wrong.

“Hello to you, too.” He says, and you can hear the smile on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”

“Work.” You say, inspiringly calm. Fuck, she’s at work, you hear him say to someone. “Can I call you back in a bit?”

“Oui, désolée.”

“Ne sois pas.” You force a smile, like he can see it, and hang up, shut your phone off completely before returning to the meeting with an apologetic grimace claiming family emergency.

You call him back an hour later, after the conclusion of your meeting and then some, pushing past the heavy glass doors to your office building and out onto the street, the breeze blowing your hair into your mouth as you step between two buildings. He answers, but it’s just shuffling on the other end, hushed, muffled voices. “Are you there?”

“Oui, oui. Une seconde.” He says, far from the speaker. More shuffling before a proper greeting. “You’re on speaker.”

“What are you doing?” Shopping, he says, moves the phone, how’s work? You have to put a finger in your other ear to hear him, between the sounds of the city and the chatter on his side. “It’s fine.” You say, drag out the vowels because you’re bored, because you wish you were with him. He’s always so relaxed on summer break, so content and breezy and fascinating. You haven’t seen him since he was kissing your hair goodbye in France. You need to know if you can actually return to something normal.

“It’s fiiineee.” He mocks, laughs with whoever else is with him. You smile, all toothy and stupid. “Coming home today?” You can hear the hope in his voice. You’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours, it’s an unusually short trip. Most times, you’re here for a minimum of a weekend, almost always more. He shouldn’t be expecting you.

“Yeah.” You check the time on your watch. “In a few hours.”

“You want to come on the water tonight?” He asks.

“La Mala?” Of course, he says, like it shouldn’t even be a question. “With?” He speaks to someone else in Italian, you think you hear Andrea say something, and then Charles’ voice is louder, off speaker, you assume.

“Lorenzo and some camera guys. We’re doing some… comment dire, day with my life?”

“I don’t know.” You hesitate, because the last thing you want to do is be one of three people, to be on display somewhere on Instagram or Youtube or wherever the video they’re making is going. You love him, but the attention is overwhelming and you like to stay as far from it as possible, especially when you’re nervously sorting out the normalcy of your relationship.

You took a photo of him once, with a fan, just walking around the city. You weren’t even in the photo, didn’t say more than two sentences to the guy he was posing with. And yet, when he posted it on Twitter, said Charles was with some girl, posted a screenshot from your Instagram and said her, he was with her, you had a full inbox begging to know if you were dating Charles, calling you obscene vulgarities, threatening you. You weren’t even in the fucking picture.

“It will be fun.” He says. “I haven’t seen you since france.” Exactly, you haven’t seen each other since France. Just over a week. It’s chump change for the two of you, at least it was, before his spit dripped down your thigh and he came in the back of your throat. Now, a week is the opportunity for an awkward plant to take root, grab onto you and make everything weird and uncomfortable and wrong/ “We’re having pasta.” He says, can sense your uncertainty, knows it sweetens the deal.

“No chicken?”

“Never again.” He laughs. “You’re coming?”

“I guess.”

“You guess.” God, he is a child, truly. “Call me when you land, yes?”

“Yeah.”

– –

You can’t remember the last time you felt so nervous to see him. Sitting on the edge of the concrete landing, watching him cruise in on a little boat full of strangers, it’s almost worse than watching him race. Do you have to say something? Is he going to say something? Do you ignore it? That’s the agreement, right? Everything goes back to normal. Normal, normal, normal.

He looks like he’s been in the sun all day, cheeks pink and rosy, the blue of his shirt mellowing him out, making him glow. A God, Heaven shining down on him, presenting him to you like a gift. You hate that you have to share him with anyone when he’s like this, especially with strangers, with people who don’t know how lucky they are to see him like this.

“Did you miss me?” He calls out when he’s within earshot. You stand up, take your shoes off because there is no way that boat is making it all the way to you.

“Who called who?” You say, and he laughs.

You hopped off the landing into the shallow water, walked out to the boat on your tip-toes, trying to keep the bottom of your pants as dry as possible. You had a change of clothes in your bag, but, even a minute in wet pants is too long. He helps you into the boat and you introduce yourself to the strangers pointing cameras at you.

This was a mistake. It doesn’t even take the distance from the landing to the yacht for you to realize that. So fucking uncomfortable, cameras in your face, recording your conversations, watching the way you look at him. You can already see the comments calling you pathetic, calling you a whore, calling you a bitch.

It is pathetic, you remind yourself when your hand is on his, stepping around him, moving from one boat to another. They will think it’s pathetic and they’ll be right.

There’s more production people waiting for your arrival, waiting to take your place next to Charles and capitalize on the fleeting light and beautiful scenery. It’s unusual, there’s nobody here. You introduce yourself to them, too, because it feels strange not to.

Once you’re onboard, you change in the guest suite. Sweats and a hoodie because the sun is setting, dusk settling on the horizon, bringing in wind with the tide. Bowl of pasta in your lap, mindless television playing, you lounge on the couch, watch Charles do an interview on that stupid little boat, rocking back and forth like a buoy on the open water.

You want to reach out and grab his hand, hold it still, stop him from pulling his fingers and twisting his rings because then nobody will know he’s nervous, that he’s off balance. “What do you think they’re talking about?” You ask, pulling Lorenzo’s attention from the television. “He looks nervous.”

Lorenzo laughs, quiet, under his breath. “You.”

You don’t turn back, know your face is going to give it away, can feel the blood rushing, the skin of your cheeks boiling. There’s no way he knows, right? Charles didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t. Lorenzo has no idea how close his joke hits, how deep the knife cuts. He’s just an older brother, living with the sole purpose of embarrassing you. “What?” You say, force out a laugh and almost choke on it.

“Kidding.” He says, and goes back to whatever is on TV. Your eyes stay on Charles, though, infatuated with the way the wind runs its fingers through his hair, the way it tugs on his shirt and inches the boat closer and closer to the yacht, to you. You stare so hard he can feel it, catches your eyes mid-sentence, smile pulling on his words. You’re convinced the upturned corners of his lips can lift even the lowest of spirits. He winks, and then he’s back in the conversation like he never missed a beat.

Charles has made fast friends with the crew long before you got there. You wonder if they know each other, if they’ve met before. Light words flow with the waves, your body relaxing at the loss of the cameras, put aside to enjoy the experience, to breathe in the moment. His pull is gravitational, even through the strange tension and the awkwardness of the unknown. In your uncertainty, you linger just out of his reach, now comfortable enough to participate in their conversations. He catches you staring off into space, into the vast, starry sky, silently identifying the constellations above you. He pulls your mind back to your body with the tap of his foot on your outstretched leg. With what has to be the softest smile to ever grace this beautiful Earth, he calls you to his side with careful eyes and a subtle nod.

You scooch closer to him, half-expect his arm to lazily drape itself around you because that’s what always happens. It doesn’t, and a pit of something grief-like settles in your chest. Instead, your arms hang at your sides, upper arms gracing each other every time one of you even thinks about breathing. Your hands are knotted in your lap, thumb examining the texture of your palm, fingers tugging on each other with agonizing anxiousness.

You were so naive to think, even for a split second, that you would go back to normal. THe tension you thought would settle has only become increasingly taught.

“You okay?” He asks. You nod with a weary smile. A lie, and he knows it. “You worked all weekend?” He continues to prod, ignores the conversation happening around you like it’s just the two of you in a bubble.

“No, just today.” You said. “Meetings all day.” You don’t look at him, eyes focused on your hands, popping knuckles and digging nails into your palm. You can’t remember the last time you were so unsettled in his presence. “I got a huge logo redesign deal.”

“Of course you did.” He bumps your shoulder, jolts you. “You’re the best they’ve got and they know it.”

“I’m not the best one there.”

"Maybe not the most confident.” He laughs, reaches into your lap and grabs your hands, stilling them like a patient partner would do. “But definitely the most talented.” He squeezes your hand tighter, and you slide your fingers between his, envelope his hand in both of yours like you’re the one doing the comforting, squeeze back, thank you.

Your head falls to his shoulder, sigh like you’re carrying the weight of the world, like you’re moments away from breaking down into a pile of ash, blown away with the breeze. A new normal. Maybe that’s what you’ll have to do, create a new normal that’s just as sweet as the old one. When the only options are a life of awkward anxieties or one without him in it entirely, a new normal doesn’t seem so sad.

– –

He gets stopped seven times on the walk from the berth to the parking garage, takes careful time to be kind, especially to the kids. He’ll never not stop for a child, making their grabby hands, freckle faced days time and time again. You’re a good guy, you say after the fifth, know it’s the last thing he wants to do after his long day. I don’t know how you do it.

He shakes his head, sighs. “Le strict minimum ne fait pas de moi un bon gars.”

“You go beyond the bare minimum.”

He shrugs. “The bar is in Hell, I suppose.”

You take the train to Monza, hunkered over your laptop for the entirety of the ride, working. You weren’t planning on coming in until late Friday night,but Charles asked you if you’d get on the next train, if you’d come with him to sponsorship dinners and obligatory events in the leadup to the weekend. Please, he’d texted. Sayingno, doing anything but getting on the 6 am departure this morning, didn’t feel like an option.

You texted Isa for three hours trying to figure out what the dress code was for these events, planning out your outfit. All you could get from Charles was, I don’t know, I’m wearing a blazer, probably. The last thing you wanted to do was stick out like a sore thumb, draw anymore attention to yourself or embarrass him. Underdressed, overdressed, you don’t know which is worse.

You check your phone, scroll through social media and pick at a meal from the dining cart. You’re met with the same stuff you’ve been seeing since that stupid Monaco Vlog on Charles’ YouTube channel. The general consensus amongst all the strangers who know you so well, is that you and Charles are dating. I want this. They way they look at each other. Couples who are best friends make me melt. A friend told you those should make you smile, they don’t, because you aren’t dating. You aren’t dating and he’s going to see them and everyone wants to know everything about you and someone asked on a bikini picture how good Charles was in bed. None of them made you smile.

Does she know she’s the third choice? Not smiling. Charles, serial monogamist or serial cheater? Not smiling. You’re a whore. You’re a slut. I hope you die, bitch. No smiles.

They stung, they made you cry at your reflection in the mirror, private your accounts, limit your comments. They were everywhere, in your Instagram DMs, your Twitter mentions, your TikTok ForYou page. It was suffocating.

Charles was trying his best to check up on you, which only made it all worse. You wanted to believe he wasn’t seeing them. He was just making sure your head was above water, and it was those best intentions that got you invited here, you assumed. It’s easier to keep an eye on you when you’re with him.

It was a good idea, a good effort, for sure. It was a miscalculation, though, Charles seemingly forgetting just how much attention he has to give to strangers at these events. In a room full of people, dressed in your best cocktail attire, sipping a martini and watching people fight for his attention, you can’t remember feeling so alone, so on display.

Everyone knows, or thinks they know, you’re Charles’ girlfriend. You’re a bigger extension of him than ever. Side-stepping cameras won’t cut it anymore, they’re hungry to judge you. Look who Charles brought, what do we think of her? Look what she’s wearing, how she speaks, how she stands. They hate you, you’re sure of it. You aren’t classy enough for this scene, not sweet enough, not pretty enough. You aren’t important enough.

“How are you doing?” Isa finds you leaning on a tall table, poking your olives around your drink with the toothpick they were originally skewered on.

“Are these things always this weird?” You ask, voice laced with hope that there is a learning curve, that there is some top-secret strategy she can give you so you don’t feel so shitty and deflated again tomorrow night.

She laughs. “You’ll get used to it. But, yeah.”

“Any advice?”

“Threaten a sex strike if he leaves you alone for too long.” Your eyes go wide, shocked by her words. She just shrugs, downs the remainder of her drink. “Works every time.”

“Charles and I. We’re not. We–” You stumble over your words, and she looks at you with raised brows and a grin that makes you think Charles might be blabbing to the whole grid. “We’re not sleeping together.”

“Aren’t you, though?”

“Did Charles say something?”

She smacks her hand over her mouth, muffling her laugh. “No, but you just did!”

You nod, jaw clenched, tongue running over the front of your teeth. You’ve been so paranoid that Charles was going to tell someone and you’re the one who can’t keep their mouth shut. “It was once, and you can’t tell anybody.” You whisper, sharp. “Not even Carlos.”

“I’m going to tell Carlos.”

“You can’t.” It comes out as more of a plea than an argument. “He’ll say something to Charles, and then Charles will know I told someone.”

She says your name so sweet and patient, like you’re a preschooler about to get a passive-aggressive scolding. “I’ve never seen two people look like they want to fuck more than the two of you. If Carlos says something, it won’t be the first time someone has vocalized it to him.” It’s a horrifying thought that burrows all the way to your bone marrow. You’ve always thought you were so good at hiding it.

You’re drowning at this party, under the waves of lingering and prying eyes. It’s been an hour since you’ve spoken to Charles, forty-five minutes since you’ve seen him. You pull out your phone and delete all your social media. This is so much worse than wallowing about death threats in the comfort of your own bedroom with the familiarity of your favorite ice cream.

– –

You’re doing your hair when he knocks on the door. Impatient, impatient, impatient. You don’t answer, he keeps knocking, over and over again. “What?” You say, sharper than warranted, opening the heavy door with as much force as it will allow.

“This is what you’re wearing?” He says, walks right past you and into your room. You’re not in the mood for his humor today.

“That’s really funny, coming from you.” You say, go back to the bathroom, hairspray your hair, pull a few face framing pieces out from the low ponytail.

“I look great.” Says the man who hate-crimed an entire country with his jeans in Monaco, who is cosplaying as a banana this weekend.

“Did you dress yourself?”

He appears in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning on it, looking annoyingly handsome in his suit jacket and white button up. “I did.”

“Oh,” You lock eyes with him in the mirror, put on a phony smile, fingers digging through your makeup bag on the counter searching for eyelash glue. “How nice for you.”

You watch him check his wrist in your peripheral, opening the cardboard lash box and pulling them out, carefully applying glue to one. “What aren’t you ready?” He asks.

“I’ll be ready at five.” You said, setting the falsies on your lash line, trying not to make your concentration face because you know he’s watching.

You put glue on the other lash. “We’re leaving at four-thirty.” Your head snaps up from the task at hand.

“You told me five.”

“I did not.”

“You did.” You say, continue putting the lash on before the glue dries because you don’t have another set with you. Quicker, this time, because apparently you’re running a half hour behind.

“I told you it starts at five.” He says.

Oh. He did tell you that. “We have to be there when it starts.” You say in unison, your foggy recollection becoming clear.

“Wonderful.” You laugh, to nobody at all.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and it feels earnest, makes you laugh harder while you hove all your makeup back into the tiny cosmetics bag. There’s no way he’s that clueless, you think, blink hard in the mirror a few times, size up your hair and makeup.

“No, I’m not okay!” You say, toss the bag onto the counter with a heavy noise. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this.” You push past him in the doorway, stop in the little hall between the bathroom and the bedroom, next to the mini fridge and Keuring-clad kitchenette, sigh at the ceiling so you don’t cry, don’t ruin your makeup. You’re already running late, no time for tear streaks. “I feel like a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

You scoff, don’t even know why you’re angry, so emotional, why every nerve in your body feels supercharged. “You do a great job of letting me feel like one.” You don’t mean it, not really. You say it anyway. You know it will hurt him, and you’re tired of hurting alone.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing.” You say, hoist the ironing board out of the wardrobe. “You did nothing.” You don’t bother setting the legs up, just lay it across the bed.

“What was I supposed to do?” He asks, grabs the iron from your hands and fills it with water in the kitchenette sink, sets it on the iron board, plugs it in and turns it on. You did through your suitcase for your dress and blazer, shaking them out like they’re dusty old relics rather than something you’d bought just for this.

You don’t know what to tell him. You can’t summarize all of your emotions into something succinct and comprehensible, especially not while you’re in the middle of feeling them. Everyone wants me dead, everyone is staring at me, I know I’m not good enough for this. I want to be good enough for this, to make you proud, but it’s so hard. “You left me alone last night.” You say, roll your eyes and take the tears with it. Elaboration feels like a giant, insurmountable, unachievable challenge. “You left me alone last night.” All you can do is repeat yourself, stare at the dress in your hands, examine the stitching like your life depends on viewing the heather grey fabric at a microscopic level.

You can’t look at him, know he’s going to be staring at you with soft, sad eyes. You see him look at you like that and it’s game over. You’re not leaving the hotel tonight, not making it to that event. You’re going to cry yourself a bath, melt into a puddle of your own tears.

“I’m sorry.” He says.

“Don’t be.” You flatter out the dress on the ironing board. “You’re doing your job.” You move the iron in hard, quick lines over the fabric.

“I’m still sorry.” He’s behind you, wrapping his arm over the front of your chest, pulling you back against his chest in some kind of strangely affectionate reverse-hug. It feels to right, so you squirm from his grip, keep at the hasty ironing.

“Don’t feel bad for me.” Flip the dress, iron the other side. “I can hold my own in a room full of strangers.”

“I know you can.” You hate the tone in his voice; proud, almost. You’re not his to be proud of, even if everyone else seems to think you are.

“Can we just?” You look at him for the first time since he dropped the time bomb on you. “Anything but?” He nods. You nod, switch the dress out for the blazer.

“I like this jacket.” He says. You look at the outfit, grey dress, green blazer, white accessories. You thought it was too Christmas-y, the red accents on the bottoms of your heels and the red of your lip. It’s Ferrari red, Isa convinced you, very subtle. “You look good in green.”

“Green is my favorite color.”

“I know.” He laughs.

“You know.” You yank the iron cord from the wall and pull your top over your head without thinking. You meet his eyes, and they don’t dare to waiver from yours. You nod, an I really just flashed you nod, sigh, pick up the dress and walk past him into the bathroom. “You can stare, Charles. I have good boobs.” A laugh from the other room while you step into the dress, pull the straps over your shoulder and leave the back unzipped. “And, you’ve literally been inside me.” You add for good measure. He coughs, chokes on his own laughter.

Leave it to anything but to abandon one elephant and pick up a new one. “We’re talking about that now?”

You smile at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, wonder if he can hear it in your voice, if he knows you that well, listened to you speak so intently for so long that he can pick out minor fluctuations like that. “Talking about what?”

“You are.” He pauses, you tug on the hem of your dress and it doesn’t give any. You thought there was more fabric than there is. “Are you on something?” You can hear the smile.

“I haven’t been not talking.” You say, coming out of the bathroom, ball of pajamas wadded up tight in your hand. He tracks you across the room, back exposed, while you put the clothes in your bag. You walk back to him, pull your ponytail to one side, gesture for him to zip up the back of your dress. You suck in before he does it, even though the dress fits.

“You’ve been telling people?” He says, his warm fingers gracing your skin, sending goosebumps up your spine. This never would have happened before, you lie to yourself. You’ve been blushing everytime he looked at you since you were in high school.

“Maybe.” You say quietly, bit the smile off your bottom lip when his fingers linger at the top of the zipper. “Have you?”

“No.” He says, and when you turn around his eyes trail up your body slowly, taking your permission to stare as gospel, soaking up every inch of you with unabashed eyes.

“I told Isa.” You say, shove an earring through your lobe.

“You.” Your words pull him back from the glossy eyed size-up with a chuckle. “You told Isa.” The other earring, and then you clasp a necklace, wish you had the nerve to make him do that, too.

“Accidentally.” You add, pull the blazer on, tug on the dress again. Still not budging.

“Does that mean I can tell someone?” He pretends to mess with the settings on his watch. Pretends, you know, because his watch is never wrong. He changes it as soon as he’s in a new location. That watch has been right since his plane landed.

You sit on the edge of the bed, put your heels on and wonder if the red bottoms are really with the pain and suffering. “No.”

“Are we going to talk about it?” He asks, follows you to the bathroom where you’re already twisting your tube of lipstick, painting them a dark, lustful red. Ferrari red, a dark, ferrari red.

“We’re running late.” You close the lipstick, put it into your handbag and clasp that shut.

“We are.” He says, and you’re already tugging the door open and gesturing him out. “I’m sorry for not looking out for you last night.” He says in the middle of the elevator ride. “Really.”

“Don’t.” You say. “We agreed, anything but.”

– –

Anything but, you agreed, but he’s silently apologizing all night. You’re not out of arm’s reach for more than a few minutes the entire night, and when you are, he’s got eyes on you, eyes on the bathroom door, eyes on the back of the head of whoever blocks his sightline. He finds you in the crowd every time. The green, he says, I just look for the pretty girl in green. “Don’t say things like that to me.” You told him, even though it makes you warm and fuzzy and grateful when he says it, when he’s there every time you look for him.

“Questa è la tua ragazza, no?” Mattia says to Charles when he introduces you. You’ve met him before, always in passing, though, so it’s a safe assumption to think he won’t know you.

“Qualcosa del genere.” Charles says, thinks you don’t catch it, pulls you closer to his side.

“Che cazzo significa?” Mattia asks, and all three of you laugh with varying levels of awkwardness, too much to say for anything to be whispered in the unsaid.

By the end of the night, you've spoken to more people than you can count and done so in three languages, four, if you count the butchered Spanish class Carlos held with you. You’ve been confused for his girlfriend a dozen times, and somewhere along the line his corrections progressed from just a friend, through no correction at all, to yes.

“Why did you say that?” You asked the first time he did it.

“They’re going to think what they want to think.” He said. It felt like a cop-out answer.

You don’t know if you’re more affected by his presence or if the hoards of strangers are, but it seems like everyone is more interested in what you have to say instead of just staring you down. Calling yourself comfortable would be quite a stretch, but, the room tonight feels a little less like a fishbowl and a little more like a cocktail party.

You love watching him on stage, really love it, him addressing the audience. You almost burst into laughter, the customer service voice that transcends industries and languages and is something you never get to hear from him. He oozes confidence, talking and laughing with the MC and Carlos and Mattia. He’s so pretty under the hard lighting, it makes all his features look sharper, more defined, somehow. Heaven-sent.

When he comes back he says he’s hot, takes off his blazer and hangs it from the back of his chair, rolls up his shirt sleeves. It’s very grassroots political, very, mind-numbingly attractive. “How are you doing?” He asks, takes a sip of your drink because his is empty, maintains insightful, careful eyes and contrasts them by wriggling his brows over the lip of your glass.

“I’m good.” You say, nod and smile so he knows you mean it.

“Really? He sets the glass back down on the tablecloth.

“Really.”

– –

You’re at the track early Friday morning, watching Arthur’s practice session with Carla. You haven’t seen him race nearly as much as you’d like to this year. In Bahrain, you didn’t come to anything except Charles’ race, so scared about bringing Michael along. No Imola. You wish you could have been in Silverstone, watched it on your phone at work with the volume on level one. The only time you’ve actually seen him race in person was in Barcelona, and you were basically hungover that entire weekend. Hungover, and trying to convince yourself Charles was going to kiss you.

You were going to watch him as much as you could this time around, make up for all the ones you missed. That was one excuse for staying away from Charles. The other, everything the two of you did felt emotionally charged. You’re either wishing you could wring his neck, or wishing you could nuzzle into it. Sometimes both. A lot of times, both.

You grab lunch with Carla in general hospitality and then sneak your way into the Paddock Club’s pit lane walk to blow some time. Charles is doing his warm up, probably playing football or doing neck exercises that could be in the director’s cut of a Fifty Shades of Grey film. Carlos, though, Carlos is talking to some engineer about something or another, and you catch each other’s eye. He smiles, looks away, and does a double take, furrowing his brows. You just shrug, make him laugh and shake his head.

“Heard you were being sneaky today?” Charles asks when you’re leaving the track. Someone ahead is taking pictures of him, one of the regulars, one you recognize but don’t know. He’s the one that always asks Charles for a smile and is responsible for half the pictures in his living room.

You step several feet to the side, remove yourself from the frame, out of the shot. Arthur laughs. No free food for anyone, not even the ones he likes. It’s going to be a long time before you volunteer yourself to be tormented online.

He says your name, the photographer, and it startles you because you don’t know him. He shouldn’t know your name, you’ve never introduced yourself to him. Charles looks in your direction, holds out his hand and even though you don’t want to take it, don’t want any pictures of you two walking hand-in-hand, you also don’t want to leave him hanging like that in front of a camera. So, you take his hand and let yourself get pulled back into the shot. Maybe they’ll never see the light of day, you can only hope. Surely, a million other things will be more interesting than this.

Mr. Photographer, Kym, Charles calls him. Kym asks your opinion on the yellow, and Charles laughs because you haven’t been shy with him about your distaste for them. You know Ferrari is really pushing it, though. “I think they’re great. Very avant garde.” You lie.

Yellow not a favorite color? He asks, says your name again.

“She thinks yellow is a coward’s color.” Charles says, laughs with Kym the photographer. You cringe, even though he’s right. “She likes green.”

– –

You wake up miserable on Saturday, spend the day in your hotel room with the shades drawn and the do not disturb sign hanging from the door handle. Flu symptoms, someone from Ferrari, someone worried about Charles’ possible exposure, delivers a rapid test to your door. Negative.

You have your phone playing on the lowest possible volume, still too loud, if you’re being honest, and listen to Arthur’s Sprint Race, to FP3, to Quali.

I thought you didn’t have it in the straights, you mustered up the nerve to text him. Pole, right? You weren’t positive where anyone was starting tomorrow, too many penalties. If you had to bet on being right about one, though, it’s that Charles is on pole. You’d bet on that blind, though.

We don’t, he replies an hour later. Extremely timely for him, especially on a race weekend. How are you feeling?

Like shit. Even with the brightness all the way down, your eyes still yearn to be clawed out when met with the LCD screen.

Sorry.

You wallow, pick at the entirely too expensive meal from room service, take a few too many Advils because you’re pretty sure this bug will kill you before the liver damage gets a chance. You nap, you shower, shiver and shake, and nap some more. COnsider scoping your brain out and squeezing it until it pops, your pulse making your temples bulge.

Your phone lights up the dark room. You don’t know how long you’ve been staring at the ceiling, forcing your eyes closed until galaxies and oil spills of color paint themselves across your eyelids. It could be eleven in the morning. It could be eight at night. Will you answer if I knock?

You say yes, figure he’s still at the track. He’s not.

A single, quiet knock on the door, he couldn’t have used the force of more than a single knuckle. Your eyes are squinted shut when you open it, hand shielding your eyes. He laughs, just as quiet as his knock, slides into the room and pulls the door closed as fast as the slow-closing hinges allow.

He puts the back of his hand on your forehead. You search to make out his features in the pitch-black darkness. “I’m dying.” You say, pitiful.

“You’re not dying.” You think he’s smiling, can hear it, even with congested sinuses and clogged ears.

“I promise I am.” Your voice is so nasally and muffled and sick.

“Poor thing.” His voice is half an octave higher when he mocks you.

“Did you just come here to be mean?”

“No. I came to check on you.”

“Consider me checked.” You said, crawling back into bed. Even with your hands moving wildly in front of you in the dark room, you still run into the side of the bed with a thud. “Don’t laugh.” You warn, and he tried his hardest not to. You read once that orgasms can cure headaches. Briefly, you consider the logistics of it.

Not worth it, you decide. You’d rather have your brain explode all over the walls of this dark room than make things any weirder, leave more feelings and emotions to linger in the shadows of the unknown. “Sommes-nous bons?” He asks, and your face controls into a twisted mess. No way is he doing this now. No way.

“Pourquoi ne serions-nous pas bons?” You mutter, after much hesitation.

“Je ne sais pas.” He says. “Vous vous sentez loin.”

“Je suis là.” You lie, and reach your hand out. He finds you in the darkness, or you find him. You find each other, that’s all that matters, really. You move in the bed messily, tangling the sheets and comforter with your legs, pulling him with little force onto the bed. “I’m here.” You repeat with your head on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. You don’t say it because you mean it, you say it because you know when his thoughts are on the verge of becoming all consuming. You say it because the last thing he needs to be thinking about this weekend is if you’re distancing yourself from him. You might know him better than he knows himself, you think sometimes.

When you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re feeling alive, less corpse-like. He’s not in the room anymore.

You wonder if it’s possible to distance yourself from Charles, or if your lives are so completely and utterly intertwined that it’s too late for that. A life lived together too long to make distinctions, you think. Nothing is yours, not really.

Fight or flight, you will freeze every time. You can’t take the leap, have the hard conversations. If you do it, and it goes terribly wrong, crashes and burns brighter than the sun, there’s no walking away, no picking up the pieces and putting yourself back together again.

When you were young, your Mother once told you she thought you and Charles were each one half of a puzzle–incomplete without the other. You’re lucky to have him, she told you, people spend their whole lives looking for the other half of their puzzle.

You always found comfort in it. Now, you think maybe you and Charles are two separate puzzles that have been combined into the same box. Sure, they could be sorted, but pieces are probably missing, stolen by time or never there to begin with. The only way to sort each other apart would be to dump it all out on the table, slowly rebuild from the corners in, constantly checking the box to make sure that piece is a piece of you, not him. Nobody has time for that task, not even the people who love the puzzles, not even the puzzles themselves, so you sit on a shelf all mixed up until the end of time.

He came to see you on your nineteenth birthday. Drove in from Monaco to the apartment you were renting with University friends. Four bedrooms, six people, two emotional support cats, low ceilings, broken fire escape, one bathroom, and a pantry full of cheap alcohol.

When he arrived, there were significantly more than six people, the pantry full of liquor was a kitchen full of liquor, and you were dancing on a table, drunk in a way only a nineteen year old is on her birthday. Even sloppy and shitfaced, you could make out the distinctive tone of his holler over the hoots of the rest of your cheer squad.

You’d laughed, giddy and loud, jumped off the table and threw yourself into his arms. “Vous êtes ici?!” You yelled into his ear, adjusting the strap of your top.

“Je suis là.” He said, at a sober volume. “Bon anniversaire.”

“Merci!” You laughed, hiccuped. “Buvons!”

He should have been playing catch-up, but you’d never let a friend take a shot alone. A gruesome mistake you learned when you were curled over the porcelain toilet bowl two hours later.

He had your hair knotted into a shitty ponytail, too loose, the part of your haircut meant to frame your face falling victim to the contents of your stomach. He rubbed his hand on your back, like a parent would, and told you it was going to be okay. You spit, laughed into the toilet because he was always so annoyingly sweet to you. You looked over your shoulder and told him so. You’re too sweet to me, you said, he looked at you all sober and earnest and chillingly, and then you threw up again.

You rallied, though. The birthday girl always rallies. You smoked a cigarette from the perch of your bedroom window and listened to Charles talk about some girl and lecture you, going on and on about how you really shouldn’t be smoking. It’s quite bad for you. You wondered what would happen if you threw yourself out the window, if it would hurt more than his bashful words about her. It’s only the third floor. It won’t kill you. Hearing him say her name and blush one more time might, though.

Jealousy is ugly on you. You realize that in the weeks that follow, and decide that until you have the balls to say something to him, to take charge, you don’t get to be jealous of who he spends his time crushing on. Jealousy is for women who lose, and you’re not even playing, not even on the team.

It’s a good thing you do, put it behind you, because he brings her to the family cabin you spend Christmas at every year. He warms her hands in his and kisses her under the mistletoe hung in the entryway. At the end of the week, he thanks you for being so kind and warm and welcoming to her. You smile, hug him. Anytime, you told him, cry yourself to sleep for three days thinking about how happy he is.

She’s too good for you was the nicest thing you ever said about her. It was a lie. Nobody is too good for someone as sweet as him.

You see him next in Austin, a late birthday celebration in the land of unfamiliar accents and oversized portions. The losing battle for the championship is over, Max won in Japan and sat in some stupidly oversized armchair in the cool-down room. It’s ridiculous, honestly, I’m glad I didn’t win, he told you. You went along with it even though you know he’d give an arm and a leg to look like a fool in an oversized armchair in a cool-down room in Japan.

Despite that, because of that, whatever, the pressure is off his shoulders a bit, the need to perform at superhuman level lowered. He seems lighter when you hug him.

“I did a hot lap with Brad PItt.” He tells you.

You laugh at the absurdity of his life, follow him on his walk up the paddock. “And?”

He shrugs. “Tires were shit.” His typical day at the office might be batshit insane, but he’s always going to be Charles–little boy who loves cars-Leclerc.

“Tires were shit.” You repeat. “That's all you got for me?”

“He didn’t speak much.” Make him speak, Charles. It’s Brad fucking Pitt, you would’ve said if it was a few months earlier and things were normal and deadpan and sarcastic between the two of you. You roll your eyes instead.

– –

“You guys should not let them do this.” You tell the girl working the counter at Austin’s–an amusement park in, you guessed it, Austin, Texas. Americans are incredibly creative, you’ve come to learn. “They’re going to kill each other.”

She can’t be making more than minimum wage–seven U.S dollars and twenty-five cents an hour–but there isn’t any amount that is enough to deal with this crowd in karts. Two of the most competitive men on the planet, egged on by each other and by the group of guys in line behind you trying to pay for your group’s tickets.

Do not let them pay for you, you told Charles and he nodded, told you he knew, paid for everyone’s tickets. At any moment it feels like a little red dot is going to appear on your head and Ferrari is going to take you out. They won’t be thrilled to discover both their poster-boy and Disney prince were out late the night before a race, even less thrilled when they find out Charles and Carlos were risking injury in search of cheap thrills with strangers.

You and Isa share a laugh, feel like mothers chasing toddlers around at Disneyland. We should do that, we should do this. Oh! Look at that, we can’t leave without doing that.

You watch them ignore the teenager telling them the rules about the karts, telling everyone not to run into one another. It’s just the four of you; Charles, Carlos, Isa, and you. You know they’ll be crashing into each other before you get through the first turn.

They argue about if they’re fighting for first or fastest lap, flip a coin and throw a fit about the results, play rock-paper-scissors to come to a decision. They lap you and Isa–the rule followers who don’t exceed the speed limit–fly around the track at a speed you didn’t expect anyone to be able to pull from the cheap karts.

Carlos wins, Charles contests, says he’s going to formally protest it. Then, they want to switch to two-seater carts, so you and Isa are passengers to their reckless driving. Charles wins that round. Carlos and Isa leave after that, claim they’re tired. You and Charles stay for a meal.

“It’s a pre-podium celebratory meal.” You said.

“You’re going to curse me.” He groaned.

For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, a meal shared with Charles is awkward, stiff. Before today, you’d barely spoken since Monza. Your social media was still full of death threats, or so you’d been told. The apps have yet to be redownloaded, it’s not healthy for anyone to see that kind of stuff.

This is how it happens, you think. How lifelong friendships fall apart. There isn’t a separation spot that you can pinpoint and say yes, this is where it all went to shit. It’s a gradual separation, a day without a call, a week without a text, a month without speaking. Slow, steady, and sure, until eventually, you live separate, untangled lives.

“So,” He says, eats a fry. “That big work deal?”

“Yeah.” You nod, cross one leg over the other on the cold metal chair. “It’s good. Almost done, I think.”

“I’m sure you killed it.”

“Yeah.” Uncross the legs. “Thanks.” Cross them again. The positioning of your legs isn’t the problem, the cold metal chair that doesn’t sit evenly on the floor and rocks when you shift your weight isn’t what’s making you uncomfortable. The food is good and the drinks are cold and your waitress is a sweetheart with a southern accent and long blonde hair.

Y’all came from the race? She asked. We were busier than ants at a picnic all weekend. You told her yes. I like y’all’s accents, and that was the end of it. He couldn’t get away with that interaction anywhere else in the world.

Everything is perfect, but you’re still uncomfortable. The problem is him. The problem is you. Everything breaks under enough pressure, even unbreakable things.

“I miss you.” He said, because the closer your bodies are, the further away your minds wander.

“I’m here.” You lie.

He sees right through it. “No, you’re not.” Any possible defense would be weaker than the lie, so you don’t bother, sit in suffocating silence and pick at your fries. “Things have been weird since we slept together.” It was a mistake, you brace for the impact of it. Sleeping with him wasn’t a mistake, not for you. It was everything that has followed that was the issue. It should have been the end of a chapter, a closing book, one way or another. Instead, you’re writing an epilogue and flying by the seat of your pants, stumbling over your words and forgetting characterizations and just trying to make it to the next page. You should be in a new book entirely–a book without him or a book with him on every page.

It was a mistake, you brace and brace but it never comes. He doesn’t say it. The other shoe doesn’t drop. He just looks at his hands, twists his rings on his fingers, pops his knuckles. “I don’t know how to fix this.” He speaks, finally, and it reminds you of when he kissed you, when you didn’t know how to make everything better.

More silence, until you’ve both cleaned your plates, until Mary-Grace, the sweet talking southern-belle, sets the check down on Charles’ side of the table, until you watch him google how much gratuity he’s supposed to leave because he’s always scared he’s going to mess up tipping when you’re in the U.S.

Distance is good, you think. Distance. People need distance. “Abu Dhabi is going to be my last race.” You whisper.

He laughs almost, sliding his card into the leather folder and setting it back on the edge of the table. “It’s going to be everyone’s last race.”

“My last race for a while, Charles.” My last race, ever, you think, if distance goes the way you think it will. “I’m going to–I think we.” You sigh. “We need some space, I think.”

“No. Don’t be stupid.” He shoos your words, brushes them under the rug.

“We can’t fix it. We both know we can’t–”

“--I don’t know.” You speak over each other, building a Jenga tower of lies and one-ups until you finally snap into a different language.

““--Doit-on vraiment continuer à prétendre que tout va bien?”

“I love you.” He blurts, cuts you off like it’s some grand admission, like you haven’t been saying it to each other since before the word love had any sort of connotation to it, back when it was just something people said to each other. The distance, it doesn’t mean you don’t love him. You’ll always love him, he’s Charles. You just. You need to breathe, and you can’t catch your breath when he’s around.

“I love you, too.” You say, like you have a million times before, like you’re almost offended he thought any of this meant you didn’t love him.

“No, no.” His voice is desperate, pleading with you to understand something you’re clearly missing. Surely, he doesn’t mean. “How do you… je suis amoureux de toi.” You clench your jaw and blink, and you’re pretty sure one eye closes before the other.

“Don’t say that to me.” You say. Not, I’m in love with you, too, even though you are. You’re trying to put yourself first here, trying to objectively look at your life, at the things in it that are hurting you. Mixed signals, hurting you. Death threats, hurting you. Unwanted attention, hurting you. The common thread is him, you need to separate yourself from him and he’s saying the only thing that could make you waiver.

“Pourquoi pas?”

“Because.” You dig your shaky fingers into your leg, burrow them into the denim. It’s going to bruise, you don’t care, so will this conversation, so will walking away. “You don’t mean it.” Shake your head, lip quivering like a little girl who got hurt on the playground. He does mean it.You know him well enough to know he does, which only makes it that much fucking harder. “And I’m not going to say it back.”

You love him so much, more than oxygen, maybe. You’d throw it all away for him, your heart would let you lose yourself if it meant making him happy, if it meant being with him. You’d stay off social media and pretend nobody was wishing for your death. You’d sit at awkward dinner parties and watch races with limbs that didn’t feel like your own. You’d do it all, if your heart was in charge, because you love him, and can’t fathom losing him.

Space. Space will make it better, ease the sting of unspoken feelings and heavy words and stupid little games. Space will wash the salt from the wound.

He says your name like a plea, a desperate prayer, bloody knees and lit candles. You say nothing, too much internal conflict to sort out to verbalize anything.

The drive to the hotel is deafeningly silent. You can hear the tires of the rental car on the road below, can hear his feet on the pedals, the grind of his teeth because he’s angry at you. He’s angry and he doesn’t want to be. In love with you and he doesn’t want to be. You understand it well, recognize your own emotions being reflected back at you. If you listen hard enough, you convince yourself you can hear the traffic lights changing colors.

You fly home commercial the next morning, skip the race, hear about his podium three days later from a friend.

You don’t go to Abu Dhabi.

You don’t go to November, or December’s family dinner. He doesn’t text you, doesn’t call, makes no attempt at playing phone tag.

You skip Christmas at the cabin, find out after the fact that he’d done the same thing.

“Ça devient ridicule, chérie.” Your mother tells you over the phone. “Vous agissez comme un enfant. Vous l’êtes tous les deux.” You’d just told her you were skipping your dad’s birthday party. I have to work, you lied. I’ll bring his gift by the house next week. It was the straw that snapped her back, it would seem. “Vous serez ici demain. Pour papa. Il ne t'a rien fait.” She said it sternly, and if you were sixteen you might have been intimidated by it, might have listened.

You told your sister after you got off the phone with Mom that you wouldn’t be there, told her as a heads up, so she knew the shit-show of slamming cupboards and passive aggressive comments she was walking into tomorrow.

Go to your dad’s birthday. He texted you for the first time in months. I won’t go.

I’m an adult. There’s no way to send a message like that without sounding like a child.

I wish I could see my dad on his birthday. Nobody does the guilt-trip like he does. Go. I promise I won’t be there.

Charles is scarily close to your Dad. Growing up, Charles–hell, all of the boys–they were the sons your dad never had, the ones he didn’t realize he wanted. It was infuriating, sharing him. And then Hervé got sick, and then he was gone, and your dad became a father figure for the boys. It was slow, and subtle, but it happened nonetheless.

You were the one who blew things up, who demanded space and time and distance. If anyone should suffer because of it, it’s you, not him. You should be there.

Not more than you. You disagree, but he’s impossible to argue with without being face-to-face.

I can be an adult. You say, even though you aren’t so sure you can be. We can both go.

– –

You lingered in your apartment, wondered if he was really going to show up, if you were actually going to get in the car and drive over there, if it was too late to say you’d caught Covid or something.

You change clothes seven times. Seven, because you want to look good, but not like you tried to look good. Effortlessly glamorous and classy and sophisticated. You don’t know why, it’s not like he’s the one who wronged you. If anyone should be spending extra time in the bathroom today it should be him, he should be trying to prove you wrong, to show you your mistake in walking away.

It wasn’t a mistake. It was the biggest mistake. There were two very distinct sides to the coin. You’re back on social media, back to living your life without death threats and constant judgment. You haven’t spoken to your best friend in months, have no idea what he’s up to, don’t know anything more than his millions of followers. You miss him, but you don’t miss being Charles Leclerc’s friend, Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend. You like having your own name, being a person with traits that go beyond knowing him. You hate not seeing him, not being with him, worrying that you’re going to run into him around any corner. It’s a small, congested city. He could be any of the faces in the crowd.

You get to your parents house after your sister and your brother-in-law and your niece. The house smells like pasta sauce and your mom’s flowery candle–the one that is teetering awfully close to potpourri and death and elderly woman. The Bianchi’s aren’t coming–they thought the party was next weekend, called and apologized three different times in the past forty-eight hours, according to your dad. The Lecelerc’s are yet to arrive.

You slip into comfortable conversation with your family, Mom is right, you aren’t avoiding any of them. You help her out in the kitchen, get yelled at for tasting the sauce, chase your niece around the house, fulfill your duties as the fun aunt, sneak her candy from the jar in Dad’s office and swear just enough that she might call the dog a bitch.

Arthur and Pascale get there first, before Lorenzo and Charles. They’ll be here late, Pascale says to someone, not you. “My brother is an idiot.” Arthur says when you greet him with a tight hug. You haven’t seen him since Monza, either.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” You say. You haven’t seen him, but you’ve spoken to him, congratulated him on moving to F2, offered to take him out to dinner the next time your schedules lined up. Drama with Charles wasn’t going to stop you from celebrating the closest thing you’ll have to a baby brother.

You almost forget he’s coming. Almost, and then he’s knocking and walking through the door with a small, gift-wrapped box and an expensive bottle of wine, charming smiles onto everyone’s face with just his easy presence. He looks good. He always looks good, but damn, he looks good in that sweater and those jeans and his glasses–he should wear his glasses more, you’ve always thought. He doesn’t hug anyone, and you wonder if it’s so he doesn’t have to hug you. Instead, he hoists Gigi up into the air and steals her seat on the sofa. It’s his seat, unassigned, but assigned by years of occupying it at every family function. Gi wants to lay claim to it, but she’s just as happy on Charles’ lap as she is curled up in the corner seat of the sectional.

You keep meeting his eyes, snapping them back to the ground every time. It’s sad, if you think about it too long. You were right,the two of you are too entangled. There’s no separating you, not with ties that run so deep, not when you and Charles are just pieces of a giant web of people. There are a million invisible strings and unseen connections that intertwine every member of your family and every last one of your friends.

You’re painfully cordial. He helps your mom serve dessert, hands you a plate with a corner piece of cake and your favorite ice cream, doesn’t have to ask you like he does everyone else. You don’t even know how he knows your favorite flavor of ice cream, why he remembers that you love the corner piece of cake.

You thank him, tell him the wine he brought is good and overpriced. I’ve missed being judged for every purchase I made He said, and you told him he couldn’t get rid of you that easily. It’s weird, the weirdest, because he did get rid of you pretty easily.

“I’m going to F1. Sauber.” He told you in his kitchen while the two of you were washing dishes. You dropped the forks into the dishwasher with a spattering of clangs.

“Really?” You asked, a glaring absence of excitement in your voice. You knew it was coming, everyone knew it was only a matter of time, a talent like his is destined to get to the top. You knew it was coming, but, still, you selfishly and silently hoped it wouldn’t work out. He was yours, and you wanted to keep him to yourself, hated how much you already had to share him with the rest of the world. Gone for nine months of the year, away from home and away from you, it will be so lonely.

He’s happy to leave you behind, overjoyed, even, and you struggle to come to grips with it, struggle to separate the emotions he’s feeling about achieving the dream versus the ones he feels about leaving you. It feels like the end of the world to your young and naive heart, like nothing is ever going to be the same, like you’re losing another person you love more than life.

– –

It was the beginning of the season, he hadn’t been home in almost two months, was in the middle of a double header, China and Azerbaijan, you think. You were just trying to survive to Monaco. He’d never been so busy, you’ve never missed him so much.

Your roommates were having a party, and you were working late. When you got home, his favorite song was playing through the apartment. You don’t know the name, aren’t even sure about the artist, but you know every word, learned them all against your will. Listened to him sing it under his breath while he cooked and scream it during long car rides and blast from his headphones so loud you were worried he’d have hearing damage. He was always, always, singing this song, and you were always, always, asking him to turn it off.

You wished he was here right now, singing it out of tune and thinking he’s a popstar. You wish you could begrudgingly sing it with him. Instead, you grab a snack from the pantry and lock your bedroom door and put in your headphones, play your music so loud you can’t hear the party on the other side of the door. Tune it out, turn off your longing for him with it.

You can’t wait until you graduate, until you can pack everything up into a little suitcase and spend all of your money and follow him around the world, can’t wait until you never have to miss him again.

Come see me. He texted, a month after your Dad’s birthday, right before pre-season testing in Bahrain. He’s already there, or so you can piece together from the text, from the attachment in the subjectless email he’d sent you. Plane ticket, two, actually. Nice to Dubai, Dubai to Muharraq. Both first class.

No. You replied. Get a refund.

See you tomorrow night. You hated the cockiness of the reply, hated more that you were already packing a suitcase. He didn’t even ask if you were working, didn’t check to see if your schedule was clear or if it was even something you wanted to do.

I’m not your booty call.

Trust me, I know. He said. Ma vie serait tellement plus simple si tu l'étais. Well, he’s not wrong about that one.

Your sister drives you to the airport. “I think I’m in too deep.” You told her. You two have never done shallow, she said. You promised to protect yourself, to prioritize yourself, and to text her updates whenever you had them.

You wished your life was as simple as hers, a good job and a husband and a perfect baby girl. Big family parties and plenty of babysitters for date night and a village that loved and supported everything they did. She had the perfect family, had all her ducks in a row and her shit situated. “I love living vicariously through your insane life.” She said, and you kissed her cheek goodbye.

– –

You follow his instructions, feel like you’re on a delusional scavenger hunt. Board the plane, land in Dubai, board another plane, land in Muharraq, get on the bus, talk to Azim at the front desk of the hotel, he knows you’re coming. Azim isn’t there. He works the night shift, apparently.

Azim is not here. You texted your sister.

Who is Azim?

They call Azim, he answers, and it’s all sorted out when the day-shift manager hands you a key. You wonder what Charles had told Azim. There’s a girl coming, be discreet. It doesn’t seem like him, none of it seems like him. Azim, I’m drunk and tired and invited my best friend, who claims to need space from me, to my room. Please let her in. That felt like more of a possibility, felt like it would confirm your suspicions, that he doesn’t want you here. He wants you, of last year, here. You, of France, likely.

You’re not having sex with him. Not happening, you won’t fold, not even if he asks nicely. It would solve nothing, and has already fucked up enough of your relationship. If you suck his dick again, you won’t be able to be cordial at birthday parties, he’ll forget what kind of ice cream you like, and neither of you will ever be seen at the christmas cabin again.

When you get to the room, the suite, you find there’s two bedrooms. Maybe he wasn’t looking for France, maybe he got into the room and saw there was another room and had a momentary lapse where he thought, you know who would enjoy being here? He bought the tickets, sent the text, and by the time he realized what he’d done, it was too late to back out.

You’re replying to emails on the couch when he walks through the door. That redesign deal, after months and months of back and forth about something as small as the shade of one pixel versus another, is finally launching this weekend. You’re trying to make sure everything is in order, putting the final bows on the project and making sure no ends are left loose.

“Hi.” You call out, in case he forgot he invited you.

“Hi.” He says, appears in the lamp-lit room all comfy in that one sweatshirt you’ve always loved on him. “Are you watching L’Atalante?” He asks, moving past you and into the kitchen. It’s too normal. Eerily so, the plane might have passed through the z-axis or something and now you’re in an alternate timeline where none of it ever went sour.

“No.” Everytime you watch it you think of him. Not in the cheesy, God, I love him and he is such the main character in this love story, way. In the God, I love him and wish he was here to make fun of me for loving this movie, way. “Haven’t watched it in a while.”

“Shame.” He says. “I liked that movie.”

You don’t feel like humoring him about this again, vividly remembering exactly where it got you the last time. Really, you could blame all of this on that fucking movie. If you never watch it, he never asks to come in, you never have sex, and everything is happy-go-lucky between the two of you. “How’s the car this year?”

“Don’t know yet.” He says, pulls a bottle of water from the fridge, the seal snapping when he turns the cap. “Why aren’t you watching L’Atalante?” He takes a drink.

“I told you.” You say quietly, unfocused on your words, fingers rapidly moving across your keyboard.

“No, you told me you haven’t watched it.” He says, flops down onto the couch. “I want to know why.”

“I don’t know, because I haven’t felt like it.” You tell him, a little more annoyed this time. You haven’t watched the movie. A lot of people don’t watch their favorite movie all of the time. “Why do you care so much? Did you call me out here to play anything but?”

“I called you out here because I miss my best friend.”

“You don’t know me, anymore.”

“It’s been a few months, not a few lifetimes.” Even then, he’d probably still remember the corner piece of cake and his hand would probably still hover behind you protectively and find you in the dark rooms and the crowded rooms. You know no amount of time could make you forget his favorite song, or at what point in his day he gets nervous, what he needs when everything is going wrong, and the way he can sober you up with one look. “I still know you. I still love you.” You sympathize with it, relate to it, because nothing is as hard as trying to unlove another person, you’ve come to learn. “I miss my best friend.”

Don’t break. I still love you, Charles. Don’t break. I miss my best friend, too. Don’t break. Don’t break. “We can pretend for a weekend.” He says. “Just, be normal again. Be us again.” Us. There is no us. Don’t break.

It’s not like it’s an argument you can just apologize and move on from. He can’t apologize for loving you, for needing to vocalize it. You can’t apologize for loving him, for not being able to take the leap. Normal, normal sounds so good.

Can we go back to normal after this?

Yeah. Back to normal.

You never should have let yourself believe him. You wonder if he loved you, then. If he knew when he said it that it was a lie. You can’t remember when you knew you loved him, like really, really loved him. It was gradual, you suppose, a combination of time and sweetness and jealousy, of grief and joy and innocence. At some point, you were forced to face the sobering reality, but, you don’t know how long you’ve loved him like this. Does he remember a moment, or was it gradual for him, too?

“Back to normal.” You said. The ultimate game of anything but, the final boss of your friendship. “Just for the weekend?”

“Whatever you want.” He says. “We can do whatever you want.”

Don’t break. Do not break. “Okay,” you crack, and then, with the force of your entire heart, “yeah.” You break.

A long time ago, before the gradual realization, you thought Charles and you were platonic soulmates. Today, can you go back to that? To the platonic love. Was there ever a fork in the road, a wrong turn, a path where you end up somewhere else, or have you always been destined to end up like this, in a hotel room, in a foreign country hiding from the rest of the world and pretending everything is light and breezy and comfortable when it’s far from.

– –

It’s Monday morning, and your weekend together is over. It was a shorter adjustment period than you could have predicted, like relatives who don’t see eachother but once a year. It’s awkward hellos and bombed small talk until suddenly one of you makes a joke and it’s like you were apart for minutes instead of months.

You go to this tourist attraction together, the Tree of Life. It’s a four-hundred-year-old tree that’s like, ten meters tall or something. It sits alone in the middle of the desert and nobody knows how it’s still alive. It’s a spectacle, according to Google, and was nominated to be another wonder of the world. Someone says its roots run fifty meters deep, and it sticks with you, the idea that there’s so much beneath the surface. You wonder if the tree had a companion four hundred and some odd years ago, if it always imagined spending every day with the companion tree, if their roots were tangled fifty meters below the surface. The tree is gone, now, but maybe its roots are still there, fifty meters down, all tangled up in the roots of this tree.

It’s probably not from the Garden of Eden like they claim, and there’s surely a scientifically sound explanation for where the tree is getting its water from in the middle of the desert in a rain-less country. It’s just a big tree, destined to dry up and fall over and burn with the rest of the planet. It’s just a big tree, unless it isn’t.

Does the tree know if it’s special or if it’s just that? You don’t know if what you and Charles have is something special or if you’re just something, but, then again, you aren’t a tree. Maybe the tree knows. Maybe you know. How does a person know that they know?

Charles seems to know, to think you’re worth his unrelenting patience, deserving of the corner slice and the color green, of the stars and the sand and everything in between. He understands you, and he still seems to know, to declare with confidence in the rush of a sports bar in the middle of Texas that he loves you. He’s sure enough that he skips Christmas because you thought space would make everything better, doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong even when you so obviously are, doesn’t stop loving you when you push him in the opposite direction.

You’ve never been that sure about anything, you think.

“Looks a bit lonely, doesn’t it?” He offers into the dry air, taking a picture with his phone. You hadn’t thought of it as lonely until he said something, viewed it as possessing an other-worldly strength and unmatched level of determination. The tree never told its companion it loved it, the tree kept to itself and eventually, learned to live alone in the sand.

You shook your head. “It’s strong.”

“You can be both.” The tree can be both, he’d meant to say, because the Tree of Life is not a metaphor. It’s just a tree.

– –

The weekend, the game of anything but, the avoidance of the World’s biggest elephant, is over. It’s Tuesday, now, breakfast from room service in the suite, awkward tension filling all the available space, compromising each molecule at an atomic level. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, because he always is, and it sits on him so nicely, looks so comfortable on his skin. You’re wearing a yellow pajama top and the silky material is charged with static and clings to you in all the spots you wish it wouldn’t.

How do you know when it’s real? You had texted your sister in the middle of the night prior, two-twenty-three if you remember correctly. You couldn’t sleep, had a bad dream–couldn’t decide what was worse, the nightmare while you sleep or the nightmare when you wake.

You don’t. She replied at a normal hour, when normal people wake up after going to sleep at a normal time. You never know for sure.

That’s fucked.

“I booked a flight home last night.” You told him, picking at the plate of eggs in front of you, the fork scraping on the ceramic plate like nails on a chalkboard, your teeth clinking against the metal everytime it was in your mouth. Just, wrong. In every possible way.

“Why?” He asks, takes a drink of orange juice, a new quirk, you think. He always used to complain about the pulp getting stuck in his teeth. Don’t be such a princess, you’d tell him and he would roll his eyes, drink the remainder of the glass just to prove he could do it without complaining.

“The deal was a weekend.” You say, pretend you’re not conflicted, regretting buying the ticket, admit you’re running away again. “The weekend is over.”

“You’re just going to leave again?” He nods, reassures himself through the sentence, wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Not even going to talk about it?” You stay quiet, teeth clicking against the fork. “I–you are. God, you are so–”

“–Anything but.” You invoke it like a constitutional amendment, like a prophecy, like an unbreakable law.

“Oh, va te faire foutre.” Your head rears back, but you don’t let it sting, know you deserve it. “We’re not doing Anything-fucking-but.” It’s been a long time since he was angry with you, openly like this, cussing you out. He’s scary when he’s angry at you, because he’s always calm about it. Raises his voice, maybe, but never yells at you. You wished he’d scream sometimes, it would be easier to read.

“This weekend was really great, Charles. I don’t want to ruin it.”

“I just. I don’t understand.” He runs his hand over his stubble, deep in contemplation, trying to analyze you, make sense of you. Good luck, you want to tell him. “I love you. I really, really fucking love you. Je sais que je ne suis pas fou. Vous le sentez aussi.”

A single, heavy tear falls from the corner of your eye. You wipe it with the rough cuff of your jacket before it can trail down your face. The inside of your cheek is bleeding, you think, because you can’t feel the pressure from your teeth but you can taste copper. “I’m scared.” There, you said it. You admitted it, exhaled it with the weight of the world, vomited it into his lap.

His lips are tight in their frown, eyes red and glossy like he’s going to cry, too. He laughs, though, a sad and defeated chuckle. “You think I’m not scared?” He asks, voice fighting against itself not to crack. “I’m scared as hell to want you.”

He’s scared? But, nothing scares him. He’s fearless, you’re frightened. Unflinching and hesitant. Gutsy and cowardly. Nothing scares him, not even his own mortality. You’re supposed to believe that you, of all people, you, scare him? Impossible, you think.

“I didn’t tell you for fun.” He continues. “I told you, because it was eating me alive. I was so scared to tell you, thought I would ruin us. Mais tu partais, et je ne pouvais pas te perdre. Je ne pouvais pas.”

Why, why, why is this so fucking hard for you. Sixteen-year-old you, twenty-year-old you, twenty-five-year-old you. Every version of you is screaming at you, we’ve loved him forever, this is all you’ve ever wanted from him. They kick your shins and gut-punch the breath from your lungs and scrape their nails behind your eyes. They are furious, because for longer than you can remember every wish–shooting stars, birthday candles, fountain pennies, fallen eyelashes, dandelions, and ladybugs–they’ve all been for the same thing. The very thing being served to you on a desert platter, all you have to do is pick up the fork.

“Tu as peur?”

“Pétrifié.”

Pick up the fork. Eat the corner piece of cake and savor every bite. Be scared. Be terrified that the world is going to take something pure and wreck it. Be scared, but do it together. Pick up the fork.

“I love you, too.”

You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. He was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to.

“Ask before you touch, please.” You told him, his hand in yours, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage.

He is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. “Hi.” You beam.

“Hi” He says, kisses you, runs his hand through the boy’s hair. “Quoi de neuf, Crevette?”

“Il fait chaud, papa.” He says, with poor enunciation and the dramatic waving of a little hand, fanning himself. Charles nods, hoists the little man onto his hip, whispers something in his ear. A private conversation between the two of them, you don’t dare intrude. “Dis-sa.” Charles says, repeats it when he’s met with a giggly belly laugh.

“We go.” He says, in little, butchered english with a thick french accent. It’s easier to decipher a babble.

Charles laughs, quirks his brows at you, shrugs. “We go.” He backs away from you slowly.

“We go, where?” You say, laughing, too, because you can’t not laugh at your little boy’s giggle. It’s too pure, cracks even the toughest exteriors. Charles looks to his mini-me. “Où allons-nous mon amour?”

“La crème glacée.” He says, beams at his father.

“You coming for ice cream, Maman?” Charles asks, holds out his free hand because it’s a rhetorical question. He’s looking at you with the eyes that make you sober and find you in any crowd, but he doesn’t have to have eyes on you to know you’re coming. “Do you think they have Maman’s favorite flavor?” He asked.

“Ouais. Ils l'ont eu."

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norrisleclercf1 · 9 months

Note

Please can I request submissive Oscar in his driversroom, fireproofs on ... with very confident reader, femme fatale. Whimpering and begging, telling reader how good she feels wrapped around him.... biting into her shoulder to stop his moans...... wowwww 😭

A/N: hahahahahaha this Pt.2 to my first Oscar work even though baby boy didn't get a podium he still get's a treat also made the reader older because come onnnn Oscar is one to date older

Warnings: Smut, dom!reader, sub!oscar, p in v, biting, sex in driver's room, ect.

This is a One shot there will be no second part

It happened to fast, at first your kissing his helmet telling him if he get's a podium you'll reward him. Oscar smiling behind it as he nods, already excited at the promise.

"Be a good boy, Wombat." Oscar blushing at the nickname ever since he's cute like a Wombat he loves when you call him that. "I will, babe." The mechanics helping you rush off the track.

Then you see him and Carlos collide. And then he DNF'd, you curse loudly and rush off to meet Oscar. The most he'd be annoyed, but other than that he'd shrug it off saying it happens. How you two got the drivers room was a blur.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Oscar whimper, watching as you bounce on his cock. He loved watching you ride him, letting you take control. Anger was fueling you, he shouldn't be here. He should be out there winning. "Damn, you should be driving." You moan moving faster as Oscar whimpers.

"Don't....care." He throws his head back, arms wrapping around you waist pulling you close. "Well, you should....Wombat. Oh GOD!" Snapping your hips forward you move them back and forth. Oscar's eyes roll back, about to let out a loud moan when he hides his face in your shoulder.

"Awww, come on Wombat, it's okay to moan. Am I making you feel good?" Fingers tugging at his honey locks. Oscar, whimpers. "Yes, fuck yes. Feel so good wrapped around me. Ugh, don't..." Oscar moves biting your shoulder, sending shockwaves of pleasure through your body.

"Fuck, fuck.....right...there." You move faster before stilling as Oscar and you both come at the same time, his teeth digging into your skin while you moan loudly not caring who hears it. "Don't care I DNF'd, I'm the one who get's pussy every night." Oscar's head falling back with a goofy drunk smile.

Giggling you kiss him deeply, pulling away you nip his bottom lip. "Don't get smart with me Wombat." Oscar just mummer's a yes ma'am the high of his own orgasm leaving him loopy. "I guess you did win, in your own way." Placing soft kisses on his face.

But you'll still knock Carlos's teeth out, for messing with you boyfriend

#f1 #formula 1 #f1 fandom #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 x y/n #f1 scenario #f1 smut #f1 one shot #oscar piastri smut #oscar piastri blurb #oscar piastri imagine #oscar piastri #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri x reader

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vinvantae · 7 months

Text

Unmasked

15/16

<<< previous part

Word count : 5.2k

Warning: poorly translated French (English translation at the end)

A/N : I feel terrible about how long it’s taken me to write this, the inspiration just hasn’t been with me for a little while. I hope you enjoy it regardless ❤️

**********************************************

SC - With the weight of the world seemingly off her shoulders, y/n absolutely flew around the track today. It feels like for the first time in a while, we’re seeing Thirty in her element once again.

Even with two rampaging Bulls chasing her down, it’s the Prancing Horse who takes the chequered flag. Y/N Y/L/N wins the Spanish Grand Prix!

MB - Despite all of the noise this weekend, it’s races like this one that define y/n as one of the best drivers of this generation. From the flawless start, to defending from the tremendous speed of the two Redbulls when it mattered most - that was a wonderful race to watch.

SC - I’m sure Ferrari were hoping for a 1-2 finish today, but after Charles' engine issues forced him to retire, I think they’ll be happy to get the most possible points with y/n’s fastest lap too. Look at that celebration, if there’s one thing about Thirty, every win is just as exciting as the last.

The feeling you got when you won never was any less triumphant, no matter how many you had tucked under your belt. But after how long the weekend had felt, this one felt particularly special. You climbed atop your car and pumped your fists above your head - practically giddy with glee as the crowd cheered for you, the underlying boos barely phasing you. They just didn’t matter - their opinions didn’t matter.

Your eyes zeroed in on a small group of girls who were in the grandstands, dressed head to toe in red - waving a banner for you above their head. Their celebrations seemed louder than anyone else's so you made sure to wave, putting the biggest smile on their faces before you hopped over to the car.

You laughed as the team swept you up in a tight hug when you ran over to the barrier, patting you on the helmet - the noise vibrated through you, making your heart soar. If there was a group of people you knew you could rely on, it was your team; even after your reveal, they were never any less supportive of you, always there for you no matter what the result was and treating you as they always had. It was one of the reasons why none of the contracts you offered tempted you, Ferrari are your family, you belong in red.

After swapping your helmet for your team cap, both Redbull drivers approached - Max giving you an overly enthusiastic bro hug, slapping your back so hard it almost hurt but you couldn’t help but laugh. “Amazing job, y/n. Almost got you.”

“Well, thankfully you and the smooth operator were too busy having a family squabble for that.” You teased, pulling back to let Carlos hug you as well, the Spaniard’s strong arms looped around your middle. “Now, if you boys don’t mind me - I have a winner’s interview to do.”

“Good job, y/n. Really happy for you.” Carlos made sure to get his praises in before you head across parc ferme. “See you soon.”

“Congratulations, y/n, what a result!” Naomi looked almost as excited as you as you approached for your post race interview. “How are you feeling right now?”

Your face was already hurting from how much you were smiling, you placed a hand on top of your cap and laughed. “I’m over the moon, this win felt so good.”

“After all you’ve had to deal with since your reveal, this is definitely wonderful to see.” She praised. “You raced spectacularly, anything you’d like to say to the people out there who still doubt you?”

“Honestly? After everything the guys, Max, Pierre, Esteban and Charles especially, put on the line for me, none of it really matters anymore. I have confidence in my skills and talent in this sport and knowing that my rivals believe in me too means everything… I won’t pretend that reading cruel things online will magically stop hurting, but I know what I’m capable of. I’m a world champion for a reason and there’s nothing anyone can say that will take that away from me.”

“Is this the start of your triumphant return, are we going to see you up on the top step now you’ve got your confidence back?”

“I’m ready for whatever the rest of the season throws at me. The championship is still all to play for right now, so I’m going to put my best foot forward and focus on racing.”

“Thank you so much, y/n. Congratulations. Your race winner, everybody!”

You waved at the crowd as you stepped inside to head to the cool-down room, your heart racing. Max and Carlos both greeted you with large smiles as you stepped into the room, the Spaniard playfully swatting at the brim of your cap to knock it from your head - swapping it for the 1st place Pirelli cap. “Much better, hermosa.”

“Thank you, however…” You knelt down to pick up your Ferrari hat, dusting it off before placing it on the table, a teasing lilt to your voice as you spoke. “Don’t disrespect! You can be proud of me for winning without being rude about my team, Carlos. I won’t ever let you forget you were almost one of us.”

“Idiot.” Max mumbled playfully, a strong arm draping across your shoulder - his eyes crinkled up as he smiled. “Congrats again on the win, y/n. You raced like a proper champ.”

“It felt good. Like of course winning is always good but this one felt different. Perhaps it was the timing of it, but there’s something about winning while feeling confident in myself again that makes me hungry for more.” You smiled softly. “To be honest, it felt more like the two of you were pushing me along than racing me… I’d thank you for taking it easy on me but there’s no way that that’s true.”

“You know I’d never do that. It was all you.” The Dutchman scoffed. “How dare you remember how good you are at racing, how am I supposed to beat you now.”

The way you grinned at him, gave Max flashbacks to your karting days together - your genuine joy when you beat him or all of the other boys in races. He could picture the small girl with her hair all messy from her helmet, sticking her tongue out at him when he whined to his Dad that a girl beat him. It’s not fair, she pushed me! When in reality you were just talented from day one. The way anyone could ever doubt you were Thirty bewildered him because you were you. Driven. Passionate.

It was why he never had any issue sharing the podium with you - your wins felt truly earned. Sure every driver had a win or two that they got under unusual circumstances but when the two of you were on those steps together, he could see how much you enjoyed it, no matter which number win it was and finally being able to see your smile made it all the better.

As you lifted your trophy above your head, you scanned the crowd for Charles - who, despite his DNF, was now standing in the front row, smiling up at you with pride. He threw you a cheesy wink as he clapped, not letting his own race ruin this for you. Despite not being your first win of the season, it was your first time on the top step so you relished every second of it - drowning both Redbull drivers in champagne before chugging some of the sparkling liquid. Max made sure he poured his drink down the back of your race suit, something he insisted he missed out having to share with your body double after the last win when you scolded him for it.

You felt on top of the world, all of your criticisms temporarily forgotten when that evening, all you could hear was the clinking of glasses against your own - the girls’ lips all sparkled with champagne as they toasted your victory. As much as you loved the guys, being celebrated by other women made your win all the more special. Lily looped an arm around your middle and pulled you close as Carmen snapped a photo - their laughter twinkling through the air. They gushed on how amazingly you raced, teasing you as your cheeks flushed.

All of this however, didn’t stop Charles watching you from across the bar - your red race suit traded for a gorgeous dress of the same colour, your eyes sparkling under the lights. The confidence you were radiating was intoxicating; he wanted to blame it on the beer he was drinking but there was nothing more he wanted than to have his hands all over you. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, everything about you was magnetic. He wanted to steal you from the girls, but he knew you needed this. Even when Max slapped him on the shoulder, he struggled to tear his eyes away.

“She’s not going to vanish if you stop looking at her, mate.” The dutchman teased, Charles finally turned away from you. “Let her celebrate, she knows where you are when she’s ready.”

“Something about her is just…different. Lighter.”

Max smiled softly, secretly fond of how Charles was with you. “She just won a race!”

“No, no. It’s more than that.” The other driver insisted. “But I just can’t put my finger on it… and if you’ll excuse me, I can’t just watch from a distance. She’s too beautiful.”

“Gross.”

He shoved Max lightly on the arm before crossing the bar to get to you, weaving between the flashes of red of those who were still in their team kit. Charles watched Lily give you a look before you cast your eyes over your shoulder - your face cracking into a grin. Your teammate felt grateful you were as pleased to see him as he was you. “Charles.”

“Mon amour.” He hummed, draping an arm around your waist - pressing a chaste kiss to your temple. “Sorry, I couldn’t stay away from you any longer. Having fun?”

“So much. I’m glad you’re here actually, we were just talking about you.” You lent into his touch.

“Oh yeah?”

Lily’s brow raised playfully. “You’ve got a big battle coming, il Predestinato. Now that our girl’s back, you ready to step it up?”

“I don’t think she ever left.” You looked at him as he spoke, his green eyes already fixed on you. “Just needed a little reminder of who she is.”

You smiled softly at him before leaning in to kiss him - his hand coming up to rest on your jaw. “I’ll never forget again thanks to you, and who knows, there’s still 16 races to go… anything could happen.”

“Joint world champions.” He teased, “That ever happened before?”

“Don’t think so.” Your laughter was soft, Charles had practically forgotten the presence of the girls watching you both with a fondness in their eyes. “But if anyone could do it, it would be us.”

“Cheers to that and cheers to you, y/n. I love you.”

You clinked your glass against his. “I love you too.”

***

Yourusername added to their instagram story

***

After your race win in Imola and poor strategy in Monaco from your team - ruining Charles’ chance at a win at his home grandprix, it didn’t take long for you to catch up to your teammate in the points and by the time the chequered flag was waved in Azerbaijan, you were the championship leader and it felt good. You could tell the strategy calls were starting to affect your boyfriend but whenever you brought it up, he told you it was all fine and that he was nothing but happy for you and selfishly, you believed him. You wanted him to feel as excited as you did, and it was the first time in a long time you were feeling good about your career.

Instead, you focused on racing with the same confidence you always knew you had before your reveal and with the people around you always making sure you had a smile on your face - the last few straggling cynics barely made a noise over the roaring crowds every time you lifted a trophy above your head.

Part of you thought maybe you had just become more attentive now you were free to be yourself, but every race that passed seemed to have more and more female fans eager to greet you at the barricades, ecstatic that you were leading the championship even if there was only 7 points in it.

“You’ve got this in the bag, y/n!” They always told you Canadian’s were nice, and it was shown with the way your new poor assistant’s arms were piled high with gifts as fans chatted away with you. You were never allowed to talk to them before as Thirty, so meeting them really was a delight. “Those boys don’t stand a chance.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. Charles is pretty good.” You smiled softly. “But, I’ll tell you what… I’m gonna do my absolute best for you.”

“You’re already the champion in my eyes, regardless of how the season ends.”

“Oh stop, you’re gonna make me cry.” You laughed softly, giving the girl a one armed hug. “I have to go now, thank you all though - for the support, the gifts. I’ll try and win for you today, promise.”

You helped to take some of the gifts from your assistant before heading towards the motorhome, saying hi to the other drivers as you passed by - after the protest, they had much more an effort to include you in idle chit-chat or debates they were having with another driver. Whether it was Esteban trying to get you to convince Mick and Lance that his long standing feud with Max was definitely over or Kevin showing you photos of his kid, it was nice. It was truly all you had ever wanted from your reveal - not just to be a driver, but to feel like one too.

Charles tucked you under his arm before the driver parade started, bickering with Pierre in French about god knows what but the glint in their eyes and the cheeky smile on Charles’ face assured you it was all in good fun. You simply rested your head against your boyfriend, eyes closed as you enjoyed the surprisingly warm weather as you waited for the flatbed to start moving.

“Mon amour, are you falling asleep standing upright?” He teased, squeezing you into his side.

“Mhmm, you’re so comfy, Charles.” You hummed softly, standing up straighter as the engine began to rumble - wanting to wave to the crowds instead of being caught dozing. “Besides, I’ve got to be well rested before I win the race later.”

“Leading the championship and suddenly your ego is massive.” Pierre teased, kicking you lightly in the shin - making you whine and glare at him. “I’m kidding. You deserve to be cocky, you have been very impressive recently.”

You raised a brow. “I’ve got my eyes on you, Gasly.”

“Uh oh, Pierre, you’ve made an enemy of Thirty. You better there’s no chance of the two of you tangling during the race.”

You practically snorted out a laugh. “Oh Charles, he won’t need to worry… unless, maybe I end up lapping him.”

“Oh it is on.”

It was your turn to bicker with Pierre, your boyfriend slipping away to talk to some of the others as the flatbed pulled back in to drop you all off at the pits. You felt in such high spirits when you got in the car that there was just nothing that could stop you - you were sure of it. You were going to get your 3rd title and Ferrari their first WCC since 2018. it felt like you owed them at least that much after keeping you on.

And oh, did you love this track. With its tight barriers hugging the track and long straights, the high speed was risky but made the race all the more exciting. That paired with the two Redbull’s sniffing at your car’s rear end and your teammate starting at the back of the grid, it was bound to be an exciting race.

Max put up a hell of a fight, chasing you down and barely giving you even a second to breathe - he nearly caught you on more than one occasion, but not pitting during the late safety car was his fatal mistake - his pebbled tires were no match for your shiny new softs. And before long you were lifting your second consecutive first place trophy above your head, Max and Lewis alongside you.

You felt untouchable, blowing a kiss in the direction of a small crowd of Redbull fans who had booed you louder than the rest as you’d been handed your trophy before giving their golden boy a good hosing down with your champagne, the two men who you shared the podium with upended the bottles over your head in a bubbling waterfall- a giddy smile on both of your faces as you celebrated.

“Hey congrats.” Lewis grinned, patting you on the shoulder as the three of you stood on the podium for the photo together. “Winning looks better on you every time.”

“Thanks Lewis, means a lot. Especially from you.”

The three of you stepped off the podium for your post race interviews, and you just couldn’t shake the electricity running through you. Not a single interview passed without them commenting on just how different you seemed - how over the course of the past few races, the personality they had loved beneath the helmet seemed to have finally come to the surface. “It’s so nice to see how much you’re enjoying racing again, y/n.”

“Yeah, it’s been really really good.” You smiled, your hands resting against the cool metal barricade in front of you. “Sure, I still see and hear some nasty stuff but it… it just doesn’t feel the same, it doesn’t hurt as bad knowing that I have nothing to prove to them. They’ll never like me, and that’s okay. I have plenty of supporters and friends who love me and back me up no matter what.”

“Well, it’s good to have you back. Hope you enjoy your weekend off, see you at Silverstone.”

You thanked the press before heading back to the Ferrari motorhome, letting out a yelp as you were practically tackled by your boyfriend as he swept you up in his arms. “There’s my race winner.”

“Oh who cares about my race win when you made it up from 19th to 5th!” You laughed, wrapping your arms around him - the warmth from his body made you feel at ease. “That’s far more impressive. You very much deserved the driver of the day, I’m glad your hard work was recognised.”

“Well...” He carefully placed you on the floor, placing his hands on your hips. “How about we take our weekend off to celebrate your phenomenal race and my win, hmm?”

You wrapped your arms around his neck, running your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck before leaning in to kiss him. He smiled against your lips and pulled you closer, deepening the kiss like you weren’t surrounded by the hustle and bustle of your team packing up now the weekend was over. Neither of you cared, you simply couldn’t get enough of each other.

When you pulled back, you couldn’t help but notice the cheeky glint in his eyes. You let your hand move to rest on his jaw, brushing your thumb across the stubble. “That sounds like an offer I simply can’t refuse.”

***

The skies were blue when you touched down in Silverstone, another favourite - a classic; the Tifosi showing wasn’t as big as it used to be but there were enough flashes of red amongst the crowds for you to feel their support. But, much to the disappointment of the Mercedes and Mclaren fans filling the grandstands, you and your team were currently on track to win the whole thing. You’d spent more time than you cared to admit trying to figure out what the earliest race you could win the championship at despite your slow start to the season.

But with Charles, Max and Carlos all having an equally impressive score sheet, you honestly had no idea which way it was going to go - you could only hope it would be in your favour. You’d worked so hard to fight for not only the championship, but the respect you deserved that you knew that you couldn’t stop now. Everything was to play for and you couldn’t back down now.

SC - Welcome one, welcome all to the Formula 1 Lenovo British Grand Prix here at Silverstone, the sun is shining down on all of us Martin and it looks set to be a good race. With the Ferraris and Redbulls occupying the two front rows, it will be a challenge for anyone else to claim victory. Our Championship leader shares the front row with Max Verstappen, who is gaining with each race on her and her teammate Charles Leclerc.

MB - It definitely is one to watch, the battle between the Prancing Horses and Bulls has been thrilling so far this season. I can’t wait to see how this all plays out and with Y/N having claimed podiums in her last six races, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her back on that top step.

SC - I’d put money on it if I was a betting man. Her performance leading up to this point has been something special. But with Max picking up the pace, I think he’s definitely her biggest competitor right now.

MB - Now Crofty, I wouldn’t write young Leclerc off so quickly, he is second place right now.

SC - Well, I’ll guess we’ll just have to wait and see as the grid lines up for the start of the race. The British Grand Prix is about to start, engines are revving… and its lights out, and away we go!

You felt breathless as you pulled into parc ferme, what a race. Despite your win, you couldn’t help but think about Gyanyu, George and Alex - the crash at the start was scary and you were lucky to have not been a part of it with a third of the grid getting tangled up. As much as you loved to win, it was always a bittersweet feeling when others were potentially hurt.

As you climbed out of the car, you made an effort to try and catch as many of the other drivers you knew had been part of the incident as you could as they made their way through parc ferme. You immediately wrapped your arms around Seb as he climbed out of the car, your former teammate giving you a gentle chuckle in response - promising that he was okay. So you glanced around the crowd for your childhood friend, Pierre smirking as he saw you approach. “Aw, coming to check on me?”

“Don’t make me regret it, Gasly.” You chuckled, pulling him into a hug. “But if you’ll excuse me, I did just win. Catch you later.”

You tried to catch Charles before he ducked away but you were ushered towards Lewis and Carlos for the podium interviews. With your fresher tires brought on by Esteban’s safety car, he wasn’t able to hold you off… or Lewis… or Carlos. So he was understandably frustrated. But you were still happy and wanted to celebrate with the team and you were sure once he’d had his moment of annoyance, he’d be happy for you too.

It was hard to have that same attitude when the roles were reversed the following week in Austria, and it was you who barely missed out on the podium and it all came to a head in your driver’s room. “I think we need to talk.”

“Oh?” Charles gently took off his first place cap and placed it on the coffee table. “Everything okay?”

You took a deep breath. “I don’t know why we haven’t had this conversation before but I feel like we need to talk about what happened this week and last week… when one of us wins and the other doesn’t. I think we need to find the balance of being able to understand how the other one feels versus celebrating the winner.”

“Yeah, yeah I get that. Well…” He approached you slowly, placing his hands on your hips - giving a gentle squeeze. “The winner can be sympathetic and the other can be supportive, but if one of us has a particularly bad race when the other wins then we just check in on how they feel first before jumping for joy at the win.”

“We’re both in with a chance of winning this whole thing, we have to promise not to let that get in the way of what we have.” You looped your arms around his neck, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck. “I'm really happy with you and I don’t want me beating you to ruin that.”

“Oh, you’re gonna beat me are you?” Charles chuckled. “Well, best of luck, mon amour. You’re gonna need it.”

***

Leading up the summer break, things stayed on the up for you but not so much for Charles the agreement between the two of you more in force than ever. Hungary was the last race before you could enjoy a relaxing few weeks away from the paddock but with Charles’ DNF in France the weekend before he’d lost 2nd in the WDC to Max, the Dutchman now 5 points ahead thanks to his victory and it was clearly bothering him. You were soaring ahead and he was starting to be left behind - you 33 points ahead.

Charles spent as much time as he could with fans, making sure not one was missed - chatting away, taking photos and bringing as many smiles to their faces as he could. He would always be the tifosi’s golden boy; despite you leading, he would always have a special place in their hearts and you couldn’t blame them. There was something charming and gentle about him, he was impossible to dislike. The way he avidly listened to every word fans said to him, the look on his face full of genuine interest. He was so kind and you knew someday he was going to live up to the massive expectations they had all put on his shoulders - you wanted to win the championship, but someday it was going to be his turn and you knew that he would have their support every step of the way.

As you finally stepped away from the crowds, you linked your fingers with his and gave his hand a gentle squeeze - noticing his deflated stature as you walked towards the motorhome. Neither have you qualified on pole and his hopes of winning were being diminished by the minute. “You looked like you were having a good time with the fans, what’s the matter? Talk to me…”

“I hate to say it, amour, but now that you’re off ahead in the distance - I’m gonna have to play the role of second driver.” He grumbled softly. “I really want you to do well, y/n, I do, but I want it to be fair.”

A soft sigh left your lips and you turned him to face you, his green eyes locked on yours. “I won’t let it be unfair. I’m gonna talk to my engineers and let them know how I feel about it.. When I beat you, it’s all gonna be on my own merit.”

The corner of his mouth tugged into a smile, shaking his head a little. Your heart skipped a beat at his laughter, his strong arms looping around your middle. “And when I beat you, it’ll be because I deserve it too.”

“Exactly. We’re equals.” You lent up to press a kiss to his lips, your arms wrapping around his neck. “Last race until the summer break, we just have to get through this and then you and I can escape to your yacht and make the most of the privacy.”

“You are beyond tempting.” He purred, pulling you in closer. “If we weren’t surrounded by all these prying eyes, I’d have you exactly where I want you.”

A giggle escaped you, you raised a playful brow at him. “Well, then what are we waiting for? Your driver’s room has a lock on the door, doesn’t it?”

Your teammate groaned, his nose nudging against yours before he kissed you with even more intensity than before - not caring about the cameras or poor staff members walking past you both to get into the building. The butterflies erupted in your stomach as he smiled against your lips, not wasting a second more before he tugged you into the building towards his driver room. He pressed your back against the door as he closed it, his pupils blown with lust as they scanned your figure. “As pretty as you look in red…”

“I’d look better in nothing?” You teased, slipping your hands under his polo - he shivered as your cold hands ran across his skin. “C’mon, Charles. You can do better than that.”

“You’re impossible.” He shook his head, dropping his voice to a whisper as his lips brushed across your skin. “Tu es délicieux(1)…je t’aime de tout mon coeur(2).”

You couldn’t help the moan that escaped you. “God, you speaking French really does something to me.. Don’t stop.”

He tugged you away from the door as he pulled your polo over your head, lips only breaking from your skin to mutter filth in french. You were weak at the knees as he pulled back to look at you - his lips shiny with your gloss. You reached up to brush your thumb across his bottom lip before tugging on his chin gently to bring him back into a kiss as he began to work on the button of your jeans.

“Did you lock the door?” You managed to get out, feeling breathless but your boyfriend seemed relentless, grunting in response as he dropped to his knees to pull your jeans over your hips, tugging you lightly so you thumped down on the couch with a soft oof. “Charles, the door.”

“You’re killing me.” He whined, running his hands up the insides of your thighs - pushing them apart. “Je ne peux pas supporter d'être loin de toi ne serait-ce qu’un instant(3), amour.”

You draped a leg over his shoulder. “If anyone walks in, I’ll run you off the track later.”

His lips curved into a devilish smirk. “Deal.”

****

charles_leclerc posted to his instagram stories

***

Next part >>>

(1) you’re delicious

(2) I love you with all my heart

(3) I can't stand being away from you for even a moment

I hope you enjoyed ❤️ thank you for all your continued support regardless of my terrible posting schedule

Want to be notified when I post? Join our discord, head over to #reaction-roles and click the sunflower 🌻

#unmasked fic #f1 fic #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 #x reader #charles leclerc x reader #Charles leclerc x you #leclerc x reader

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inchidentally · 5 months

Note

This ruined me! OH MY GOD :(

https://x.com/sleepynorris/status/1728299269830877688?s=20

oh my goddddd

ok but you know what ESPECially kills me about this edit? how it shows that Oscar looks at Lando with steady confident fascination and affection. whereas Lando ?? the cocky Lando who can now lock eyes and confidently bump his chest into big sexy alphas Carlos and Daniel and not even flinch ?? is looking back at Oscar so vulnerable and flustered and his body language gets smaller and fidgety.

because Oscar walked into being Lando's teammate fully aware and at home with this crush, even if he still can't quite believe the boy from his phone screen is right there in front of him. but Lando is used to big bold affection from men who don't even bother with boundaries or subtlety (and why should they he's delicious) and suddenly there's this lovely boy who respects Lando's space with everything but his intense brown eyes and Lando can't quite believe there's a new way for men to fall in love with him but! and what does he do when Oscar doesn't say it with words or with touch like the others? what do you do with a boy who is happy to just look at you like that? even when you're looking at your new shiny trophy and you look up to see him looking at you the same way? oh what do you do ??

#inchreplies #landoscar #tysm for sending this!#brazil gp 2023 #(mention)#mine #(for reference not the video lol)#landoscar edit

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bellewintersroe · 7 months

Text

Max Verstappen X HornerDaughter!

Part 6- here’s the LINK to part 5. Thank you for all your support! Only a small chapter, but 100% more coming, just you wait… When Red Bull fail to establish their dominance in Singapore, it seems nobody can get off of Max’s back, despite the fact he’s happy for Carlos and the McLaren boys on the podium. All the doubting gets to his head and in the end there’s only one person he turns to for support. Leni secretly freaks when she realises her and Max keep getting closer… Taglist: @ironmaiden1313 @callsignwidow @fangirl125reader @norassimpingzone @roseseraj @eugene-emt-roe @copper-boom @its-elias-world @cassiopeiia24

“But is Max Verstappen really happy for Carlos Sainz, or is that just a cover up?”

“Max- Max how do you feel? Should it have been you up on the podium today?”

“Max how does it feel that the Red Bull dominance has been broken?!”

“We’re sensing some tension lingering around Max Verstappen today in Singapore after he takes 5th place. It was an astonishing race for Carlos, we can’t quite say the same about the man who has been dominating the 2023 season!”

Poor Max. It was no wonder the poor guy just wanted to get out of the media’s eye. He was so happy for his friends on the podium, he was still confident and self-assured, but the media kept portraying him to be some kind of villain that was spiteful for his own close friends. Even Checo, the media harassed to shit, but Max seemed to take the brunt of it.

No matter how happy he was, it wasn’t enough for the press who constantly accused him of being a brat, or pissed off about the race. I was positive there was nothing Max could do to please them, so when he headed back to his hotel in peace, I was disappointed, but not so surprised.

Me on the other hand, after four drinks in I’d twisted my ankle and ended up limping back to my room, the kind receptionist from downstairs offering me an icepack. It was pretty boring sitting alone in my room when everybody else was out, even my whole family was somewhere but I’d drunken too much too quickly and paid for it soon after.

That’s when I thought of Max. He too was in his room, probably asleep after such an exhausting day. In my tipsy mind I lifted my phone up, glancing through our previous texts. I’d not responded to his last message which was just a simple not explanation of why the RB’s didn’t work so well on specific types of circuits. I’d seen him in person and felt too awkward to text when we were in the same proximity.

Snapping a picture of the ice pack over my ankle I sent him a bunch of pissed off emojis, feeling playful.

Leni: don’t drink Prosecco it fucks you over It wasn’t so long later when Max actually responded. I was surprised it was so quick, but god- I wanted him so bad. I felt like having him, especially now, so soon after a break up would be a little sour for everybody around us, never mind that my own dad was his team principle.

Max: wtf Leni how did you manage that, are you ok?

Leni: hahahaha don’t even ask I’m good, are you?

Max: yeah just pissed off with all the media today. I don’t want to see a single person else. I cringed at his words. Yikes. That was my invite gone. Rereading my messaged to make sure they made sense, I sent a simple message of; Leni: I don’t blame you

Max took a while to respond after that. I was actually falling asleep, my eyes feeling heavy until the buzzing of my phone aroused me quicker than I could process.

Max: unless you wanna come chill with for a while “Oh, Max. I don’t know how you deal with them. They make it out like you’re gonna start a war with Carlos just because you didn’t get a podium, once.” I sat on the edge of his bed, continuing to hold the ice pack to my ankle.

“Exactly, and I don’t know why!” He paced from one end of the room to the other. “They like drama.” I pointed out.

“True, but…” Max plopped himself on the hotel bed. “I feel fine for Japan, I’m confident, but when you’ve got millions of people doubting you it gets kinda irritating.” I winced slightly at his words. Max usually didn’t be so open about his feelings with this side of the media, I knew truthfully he never really give two shits what they thought, but when people were constantly at him I was positive he must’ve found it jarring.

“You’ve also got millions supporting you again.” I responded as he smiled gently. “Yeah. I know that.” His voice was gentle, grateful, he sounded humble. It was a side to hum media didn’t like to show, especially in drive to survive.

“I know I will be.” I shrugged, glancing over to see him smiling down to his sweats. It was a miracle to see him something other than jeans. “Thanks, Leni.”

“Or maybe I’ll switch teams completely and start going to the Ferrari garage.” Max threw a pillow at me in response.

“Dick.” I snickered, scooting further up onto the bed to rest against the headboard, besides Max. There was still possibly the largest gap between us that I’d ever witnessed.

“Could you imagine what my dad would say?”

“I don’t think he’d be too happy.” Max smirked. “Neither would I.”

“Really?” I gazed over his expression. He was still smiling, indicating he couldn’t have been too serious. “Yeah, I mean, you’re part of our team. If you’re not there it would be weird.”

Hours passed and soon we’d both retired under the covers, watching the TV in a comfortable silence. The alcohol that once streamed through my body had fallen stagnant and I was feeling more nervous than when I initially arrived into Max’s room. I stole a glance at him, his eyelids were heavy as he watched the movie, something I hadn’t paid attention to in a good hour.

The gap between us had closed slightly, and I felt myself overthinking more and more about how soon it was to be in this position with him. Friends do this, right? As long as there was no physical contact, as bad as I wanted it, it would be fine.

So the minute I felt Max’s hand brush against the bare skin of my elbow I felt myself completely freak, fidgeting my legs and accidentally kicking my bad ankle. “Ow, fuck. I kicked myself.” I pushed myself up, pretending to be completely and utterly blind to how close we were laid previously.

“Are you ok?” Max too, pushed himself up. I pushed the covers off me and glanced at my slightly swollen ankle. “I’m fine, just… hurt.” I winced, lowering it off the side of the bed.

“Oh- you can stay… if you want.” Max muttered, sounding a little nervous. My stomach grew butterflies, my heart felt like it exploded and as badly as I wanted to say yes and jump on him- something was stopping me.

“It’s okay. I better go to bed, thank you though.”

“Want me to walk you back?”

“30 seconds down the hall?” I giggled as he shrugged like it was obvious. I realised how rude that sounded, to turn down his offer. “It’s okay, thank you though, Max. I would stay but Blue is there- and if I don’t come back, you know, it looks a little…”

“I get it. Then they all start asking questions.” Max agreed as I offered him another smile. “Yeah. Exactly.” I turned my head a way, hesitating to actually turn around and leave. Max stood besides me at the door and to avoid any other form of intimate interaction I avoided eye contact at all cost.

By the time I’d got back to my bedroom I’d well and truly wanted to top myself. Well done Leni, well fucking done. That could have been one of the most finest moments of my life, not!

#max verstappen x you #max verstappen x reader #Max Verstappen x OC #Max Verstappen x HornerDaughter #max verstappen #F1 x reader #f1 x oc

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anonymergremlin · 6 months

Text

For you guys. Kink Headcanons for Romeo, Carlo and P.

WARNING: SMUT

Romeo:

Size difference: We have had a glimpse of Romeo as a puppet, he is so tall. You can't tell me that this wasn't the case when he was alive. Anyway… [Name] being smaller than him? More than a little. Oh guys, he really loves it. They are his precious little lovers who needs a 'large' guy like him.

Praise (giving): Romeo gives me the vibes of someone who really cares for others and likes to see his former lovers happy. I can see that in bed too. He calls [name] his good love. Praises them for taking his dick so well and for being so lovely and patient.

Body worship: Excuse me, but as I said. He is a good guy and he totally shows it. Adores every curve, shape and detail of [Name]'s body. Chubby? Skinny? Thick? Lean? It doesn't matter to him. Their body is something he places on a pedestal.

Carlo:

Biting: I love Carlo, he is my little trickster. Cheeky boy, playful boy. Bites in a way that leaves some red spots or hopefully even marks. He doesn't bite too hard, but hard enough to leave a mark. [Name] is the one who makes him feel loved, who he loves. So of course he makes sure that they and perhaps others are aware of it.

Oral fixation: I know that biting falls under this as well BUT it is still a kink that needs to be mentioned. He loves to lick and suck. Tongue kisses? Yes. Licking over a sensitive part of their body? Yes. Going down on them? YES! He does all of it.

Praise (receiving): This is still Carlo we are talking about. The boy who was so neglected by his father. He deserves and honestly needs some praises. Not really one on the "good boy" side, but one on the "you make me feel so good. You take care of me so well. I love you so much, Carlo"-side. Praise makes him feel good and confident about himself and what he is doing.

Wholesome: Oh P, my sweet P. I am not saying this because he is a puppet who becomes human. No, I say it because I believe it. Romantic things during sex are his kink. Holding each other, soft kissing and speaking words from pure love. That is his kind of thing.

Praise (receiving): This is something that he has in common with Carlo, expect that he really loves to be called a 'good boy'. [Name] telling him what a good boy he is, how well he pleases their body, and how happy they are to have him… Well… "Your springs are reacting".

Noises: This one might sound weird, but I can imagine him being into all the noises that they would make while he is fucking them in one way or another. Moans sound so good to him, they almost sound like they are singing for him. The sweet sounds coming from their bodies, while they sleep with eachother, make him feel so alive.

Just a few kinky thoughts I have for them. But trust me. I have more. Hehe.

#lies of p #lies of p x reader #p x reader #carlo x reader #romeo x reader #headcanons #smut #just a few little thoughts on kinks #>:)

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sainzfilm · 1 year

Note

omg i love that carlos drable, do you think you can do one in which they are friends or enemies but he gets jealous and they confess their feelings?

pairing: carlos sainz x reader

a/n: PLEASEEE oh my god i love this kind of trope 😭 thank you for requesting and i hope you like it anon! :) lmk what you think hehehe

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

“Happy birthday, Cha!” You grinned as you threw your arms around your childhood best friend, “I am ready to party tonight!”

Charles chuckled as he ruffled up your hair and yelled through the blaring music, “Thank you, petit chou. Have you seen your favorite person?”

“Blech, don’t remind me about him,” You groaned as you pretended to throw up, “All your other friends are nice! But him? Mon dieu, il est une menace!” My god, he’s a menace.

“You know, you did spill coffee all over him for like…three times,” Charles laughed as he guided you to a table with his friends inside the bar, “I can’t blame Carlos.”

Frowning, you punched his shoulder playfully as you sat down and smoothened your skirt, “Just because it’s your birthday doesn’t mean you’re exempted from my punches.”

“Peu importe ce que tu dis,” He grinned as he patted your head, “I’ll head over to Charlotte, just ring me up, okay? The bar’s just everyone I know so don’t worry.” Whatever you say.

“Go on, birthday boy,” You laughed as you tried to push him away, “I’ll see you later.”

Charles smiled at you as he headed off to the other side of the party, leaving you with the other drivers on the grid. Carlos was at the far end of the table, exchanging glances every now and then, but you never bothered to strike up a conversation and opted one with the blonde haired German driver instead.

“Just look at her,” Mick smiled as he showed you pictures of his dog, Angie, on his phone, “A tennis ball seriously can’t last for long with her!”

“Oh my god, my dog too!” You laughed as you took a sip of your drink, “I had to hoard on the tennis balls instead of running out to get one everyday.”

“You know what? We should definitely let them play together sometime,” He offered as he set his phone down, “I feel like Angie needs to have more pup friends.”

“That’d be great!” You eagerly nodded as you grabbed your phone and opened your contacts list before handing it to Mick, “Just put yourself in my contacts. I hope Stella and Angie would get along well.”

Mick smiled as he handed you back your phone, “You know what people say, dogs can reflect their owners and you’re nice.”

“Aw, thank you, Mick. I could say the same to you,” You smiled as you patted his shoulder before standing up, “I’ll catch you later?”

As Mick nodded in response, you smiled as you headed out to the back door of the bar to catch some fresh air on the balcony. But, what you didn’t know was that a certain someone followed you out.

“Guess you’ve got a thing for Mick now, huh?”

Frowning from knowing that voice, you turned around to see Carlos leaning against the wall, “What about it?”

“Nothing, nothing,” He chuckled as he shrugged, “Anyone knows what he was trying to do.”

“Oh please, Sainz,” You rolled your eyes as you crossed your arms, “All we talked about was our dogs!”

“Sure, princesa,” He smirked as he mirrored your stance and expression, “It’s obvious he was into you.”

“Are you being fucking serious right now?” You looked at him with annoyance written all over your face, “Why do you care anyways?”

“I don’t,” He grumbled as he kicked at the ground before walking to stand beside you, “I’m just saying. I don’t think he’s good enough for you.”

“And why is that?” You faced him as you poked at his chest and glaring, “Mick has been nicer to me in a span of an hour, compared to how you’ve been an asshole to me for nearly half a year!”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” You scoffed as you confidently looked up at him, “Asshole.”

“You’re seriously trying to pick a fight with me?”

“And what if I am?” You gritted through your teeth, “I’m so fucking tired of your immaturity when I’ve tried to be nice to you! If I didn’t have any respect for Charles, I would’ve never bothered to try and make amends with you!”

Carlos raised his eyebrow as he looked down at you, “Are you finished?”

“No, I’m just getting started!” You throw your hands up as you paced around the balcony, “I hate the way you treat me, how you fucking stare at me. I hate your dumb smile when you’re with other people except me. I hate your stupid laugh, especially when Charles tells you some pointless joke.”

Before Carlos could open his mouth, you raised your finger up at him as you continued, “Every single time a fucking guy tries to talk to me, you always make some stupid comment and it drives them away!”

Carlos took a deep breath and walked over to you, putting his hands on your shoulders, “Now are you finished?”

You sighed as you rubbed a hand down your face, “I’m just so done, Carlos.”

“Princesa…” He trailed off as he whispered, “I just- kiss me.”

“What did you just say?”

“Kiss me,” Carlos looked down at you, gently tucking your hair behind your ear.

Wrapping your arms around his neck, you took a deep breath and leaned in to kiss who you had thought to be your enemy.

Carlos smiled throughout the kiss, dropping his hands to your waist to hold you closer. This can’t be happening, he thought as he felt like this was just a dream.

You pulled away as it started to sink in. You kissed the guy you were supposed to hate.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” You exclaimed as you ran a hand through your hair, “What just happened?”

“We kissed,” Carlos shrugged as he had a small smile on his face, “It was pretty nice.”

“Was this your plan all along?” You looked at him, crossing your arms, “Rile me up by being an ass? Then you drive all the other guys away because you’re jealous?”

“Maybe,” He smirked as he shoved his hands inside his pocket, “You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“Oh just shut up and kiss me.”

“Whatever you say, princesa.”

bonus scene!

“You know you need to go,” You mumbled as Carlos kissed you while you were seated on his lap, “He is going to be looking for you.”

“I don’t care,” He replied back as he pulled away to brush your hair out of your face, “I just need time with my girl first.”

“Baby, we’ll have plenty of time later. You scheduled to work out with Cha.”

He grumbled as he pouted, “Stupid mistake.”

“Ay, don’t worry,” You smiled as you kissed his cheek, “I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Okay fine,” Carlos mumbled and kissed your forehead, “I’ll cook pasta for us after, cariño.”

As you held onto Carlos a little longer, the two of you didn’t hear a certain Monégasque driver come in Carlos’ apartment.

“Hey, mate, what’s taking yo- when the fuck did this happen?!”

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peaceloveandf1 · 10 months

Text

Regret Me- CS55

summary: To say that you and Carlos have a toxic relationship would be an understatement. The constant back and forth has finally forced you two to break up for the 3rd time. And this time it’s for good. Or is it?

pairing: Carlos Sainz x reader

rating: R for smut ;)

…………………………………..

“Lo siento. No quise decir nena. Sabes que te amo. Lo siento”, his voice plays through the speaker of my phone again for the third time.

This cycle of fighting, fucking, apologies, and breaking up seemed never ending when it came to Carlos and I. We could never make it last. We’d say that we are breaking up for good but like a moth to a flame we’d get drawn back in. I told him that this time was different. And I meant it.

“Fuck him. he’s just trying to get in your head.” My best friend Claudia said, snatching my phone and deleting Carlos’ message. “We’re going out tonight. Dan and the boys want us at Jimmy’z.”

“Claudia, I don’t know. Carlos will probably be there” I try to reason with her. Not wanting to run into Carlos at the club tonight.

“All the more reason to go. You know Daniel wants to fuck you. Make Carlos feel like shit… the way he makes you feel” she argued.

“No no. I’m being the bigger person.” I attempt to reason with her.

“Well I already told him we were going so get something picked out” she said, getting up and flipping through my dresses before selecting a tight black one that would have any guy on their knees.

“That one definitely” I say, my confidence coming back and grabbing a pair of pink platforms.

“The car will be here in 10.” Claudia said before going to the bathroom.

……………………………………………………….

Claudia and I down 3 shots before getting into our car, and by the time we arrived at the popular Monaco club I’m definitely tipsy.

“names?” The security guard asks as we strut to the door.

“They’re with me man.” A voice flows from the darkness behind him.

The body connected to the voice emerges and it belonged to none other than Daniel Ricciardo.

“Danny!" my voice comes out, flirtier than expected.

"Hey baby, long time no see" He smirks, pulling me into a hug before Claudia.

To say that the club was crowded would be an understatement. As we walked in, my jaw dropped. I've been to Jimmy'z so many times before but with the Grand Prix this weekend it was more packed than I've ever seen. Daniel led us through the crowd toward the VIP section, where a number of Daniel's friends are sat.

Thankfully, Carlos was not one of the Formula One drivers sat at Daniel's table.

"Hi you guys" I try to say over the music.

"Hi y/n, how are you?" Lando Norris' voice floated over to me.

"I'm doing good. Are you ready for the race?" I ask him, meeting his hug as he walked closer.

"I am. Are you coming? I wasn't sure about it because of...well you know?" He said, trying to avoid saying the name of his former team mate.

"No, uh-" I began.

"She'll be there. With Redbull though." Daniel finished my sentence for me.

"Uh- Yeah I'll be there. I'll make sure I stop by Mclaren before the race." I say to Lando.

"hey. you want to grab a drink" Daniel whispers to me.

"yes please" I giggle as he leads me away.

"y/n, you look absolutely stunning." He says to me after ordering our drinks.

"Thanks Daniel. You look hot as always" I feel my cheeks heat at his compliment and so I compliment him back.

"I always try to look my best for you" He says, winking at me. "but, I have to ask. What's going on with you and Carlos?"

"ugh. Just the usually. We fuck and then fight and he can't commit and then gets mad at me. I told him I'm done." I huff in annoyance.

"I'm saying this to you as a friend, y/n. Carlos loves you. But he doesn't deserve you."

"And who does?"

"I can think of a few. Come dance"

....................................................................................................

Daniel and I had been dancing for multiple songs and I can feel someone's eyes on me. I turn in Daniel's arms and lock eyes with none other than Carlos Sainz. If looks could kill, Daniel would have be more than six feet under.

I merely smirk and quirk my eyebrow at him before continuing to grind on Daniel. His fingers were digging into my hips but my attention was still on Carlos.

After two more songs of suggestive dancing, Carlos sauntered over to the two of us.

"Hey man, can I steal y/n for a second." He asked, his voice surprisingly calm.

"Um.. Yea sure man" He said to Carlos before turning to me, "Come find me when you're done. I think Lando wants to do something with us and Claudia."

"I will. This won't take long" I say to him as Carlos takes hold of my arm.

....................................................................................................

Carlos essentially dragged me to the bathroom by my arm, cutting everyone in line, and slamming the door behind us.

"What the hell was that, huh?" He demanded, steam was practically coming out of his ears.

"What was what, Carlos? Dancing with a friend?" I say innocently, knowing my intentions were anything but that.

"Oh nena, we both know that it was not friendly. You were practically fucking him" He seethed.

"Maybe I was going to. Until you interrupted us, to do what exactly? ¿Lloriquear como un bebé?" I fire back at him. Now it was my turn to be angry.

"Don't act like he'd fuck you as good as me." He growls, stalking towards me.

"Oh he wouldn't? Cause I think he would. Have you seen him?" I gasp as I back into the wall of the bathroom.

"No, baby, I don't think he could. I know your body way too well" He says, his hand brushing my thigh.

"prove it." My voice coming out no louder than a whisper.

That did it for him.

And so the cycle started again when his lips enclosed mine. To say that his kiss was aggressive would be an understatement. The anger he had for me and Daniel all came out with this kiss. Carlos's hands were cemented to the wall on either side of the bathroom wall. I let his tongue slip past my lips and take full control. My hands flew to his hair as one hand squeezed my throat and the other slipped under the hem of my dress.

"Carlos.. please" I whimpered as his fingers slipped past my panties.

"Qué amor, qué necesitas" He whispers, fingers toying with my clit.

"Tú Carlos, te necesito" I moan out, fingers flying to his hair.

I flip us around and fall to my knees in front of him, his mouth open is surprise. My hands find the zipper to his pants and yank them down with his boxers. Biting my lip, I gaze up at him through my lashes. One thing I can always do is make Carlos fall apart with that look.

As I settle on my knees, I spit on my hand and begin to stroke him slowly. His moans fill my ears as I finally take him in my mouth. Carlos's hands tangle themselves in my hair, pulling it away from my face. As I bob my head, I lock eyes with him again. He is trying to hold himself back from fucking my mouth, not that he hasn't done that before. But before he lost control, the grip on my hair tightened. He gently pulls me off of him and pulls me up to his level.

"I love your mouth....but I need to be in you, amor" He growled, turning me to face the mirror and pushing me over the bathroom counter.

He slips a condom on and I feel him line himself up. A moan escapes my lips and he pushes himself inside me. He begins to move and his pace is relentless. Carlos was never gentle but this was more rough than before. My name slips past his lips and he continues to thrust into me. His hand minds my hair again and pulls me up.

"Look at yourself, putita. You think Daniel can make you feel like this" He growled in my ear.

I stare at myself and him in the mirror and simply moan as he keeps up the pace he's set.

"I said look at yourself, y/n" He says, grabbing my chin with his other hand.

"No no, he couldn't Carlos" I gasp, the pleasure and pain mixing to form a deadly combination.

His hand left my chin and found purchase on my clit again. With his hand on me and him in me, I began to feel a familiar tightness beginning to takeover my body.

"Oh Carlos" I moan out, "I'm close"

"Let go." He commands, his hand moving faster.

I come with a loud moan, my mouth hung open in pleasure, no sound coming out. Carlos keeps thrusting before I feel his hips stutter and he cums after me.

"Ay, fuck y/n. You're perfect" He groans, pulling out and helping me clean up.

"You fuck good Carlos but we aren't getting back together." I hiss at him before stalking out of the bathroom, leaving him standing there.

#carlos sainz x reader #f1 x y/n #daniel ricciardo x reader #f1 x you #f1 smut #formula one

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