Angel By The Wing - SEVEN

Angel by the Wing - SEVEN

Chapter Warnings: drunk idiot at the bar grabs the reader once but that’s it, mentions of domestic abuse

A/N: I have two more finals to go and they’re both essays. It’s the end of the semester/seasonal/clinical sad girl hours. This fic is consuming my brain. I will get to other requests soon but for now, enjoy our three sluts.

Series Masterlist

“Polynomials suck,” Amelia Benjamin declared as she slapped down her pencil on the counter. You chuckled at her declaration and pushed a bottle of Coke towards her. You were counting inventory at the bar while Penny and Gary worked in the back organizing the kitchen.

“When am I ever going to use this stuff?!” she moaned and buried her head in her hands. Rolling your eyes at her melodramatic display, you patted her hand and then ruffled her hair.

“If it makes you feel any better, I had to learn that stuff too. And look, I never use it.”

She let out a triumphant battle cry and dove back into her work, leaving you to grab the two chipped glasses you found. You pushed your way into the kitchen and deposited them in a trash can before leaning up against the counter next to where a very flustered, very stressed Chelsea stood staring at a mixology cheat sheet.

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Heart's getting soft (Jake "Hangman" Seresin x fem!reader)

Summary: It felt so nice, so normal. Having you in his arms, as you laughed and chatted with his sisters and mother. For a second, he forgot it was all fake.

A dash of angst, lots of fluff, a little smut, and a Christmas fake-dating trope.

Warnings: dysfunctional families, cursing, friends to lovers, fake dating, bed sharing, slow burn, mutual pining, very brief miscommunication, smut, unprotected p in v, very brief oral (f receiving), fingering, breeding kink, not beta'd.

A/N: Finally! I started this thing back in November but anytime I opened the draft I just kept staring at it. It's finished!! I didn't plan on this being so long, but oh well. There's still 1 day left of my 700 follower celebration

Wordcount: 18K

There weren't many things that left Lieutenant Jake Seresin terrified. Fear was a pretty unfamiliar word for him. He was raised not to be afraid of anything.

When he was four years old and cried in his parents’ room, because he heard a noise at night, his father scolded him.

Men don’t cry.

When he fell and scraped his knees, he swallowed the whimpers that were threating to escape and stood up, acting as if the blood trickling down his leg didn’t bother him at all.

You’re weak. I didn’t raise you like that.

When he was 17 and the girl he was dating broke his heart, he never showed it. He told her she couldn’t possibly hurt him, if he never loved her to start with. She couldn’t see through his lie. She couldn't see the broken pieces of his heart lying on the floor.

Love is pathetic. It makes you weak.

When his best friend’s plane was almost shot down, his eyes started tearing up and his throat got tight. He blinked the tears away, without anyone even noticing they were there in the first place. He never showed fear in front of anyone else, instead he bottled all of his emotions up. Javy was okay, after all. What was there to cry about?

Emotions were a weakness and he wasn’t supposed to be weak.

He didn’t fear heights, instead enjoying the rush of adrenaline he felt anytime he was up in the sky. He didn’t fear death, after so many brushes with it. He knew everyone would die one day and he seemingly made peace with it. Yes, there were still some things on his bucket list he wanted to experience, but he felt like he still had so much time to do them. There was no rush.

But one thing that still made the hairs on the back of his neck stand, his heart drum wildly in his ears and his blood run cold, was his father.

Commander William Seresin was a tough man.

He never cried, wanting to keep the image of this heartless, cold monster, because he thought that would make people respect him. He never told his children he loved them, never hugged them, never showed positive emotions. How else would they learn discipline? Love won't teach them to be tough.

Commander Seresin wasn’t a good father, he was far from it.

How can a father make his own children feel so worthless? He always hid his insults behind “words of encouragement”, because he wanted his children to be the best.

You should be better. This isn't anything to be proud of.

As if that made hearing those words any easier.

For this very reason Christmas was a sore subject to Jake. He didn’t spend it with his family since he moved away from home when he was 18.

He missed his mother’s cooking and decorating the gingerbread house with his sisters. He missed sitting around the Christmas tree and watching those dumb Hallmark movies in the living room, even if he complained the whole time.

His mother was pleading with him, begging him to come home this year. He had his answer ready, on the tip of his tongue: I have a mission, I won’t be able to make it there for Christmas. But hearing his mother’s desperation made his heart clench painfully.

So now here he was, having a dilemma, and there was only one person that could comfort him. You.

You and Jake met back at Top Gun all those years ago. You didn’t start off as friends. Hell, he was sure you wanted to punch him any time he as much as looked at you.

Jake was an arrogant asshole, everyone knew that. So of course he started out by teasing you and flirting with you. You didn’t take his shit and humbled him. And as hard as it was for him to admit, he’s been whipped ever since. At first it was just a stupid crush, one that made him feel like a 13 year old, who kept twirling her hair and giggling as she wrote in her pink little diary with one of those fluffy pens.

But then the years went by, without hearing much about you. He thought his luck has run out and he wasn't going to see you again. It's not like he could just reach out to you. You weren't exactly friends.

And then you got called back for the mission. After so many years, you met again at Top Gun. You were just as beautiful as before, just as feisty, but something changed. You were softer when you spoke to him, welcoming. You still bickered like children sometimes and teased each other, but you also became somewhat of a safe haven for each other. Without ever saying it out loud.

Somewhere along the line, after things started to blur between friendship and something more, he fell in love with you. You did too, but Jake was a blind man. He never believed someone like you could ever want someone so broken. If he only knew you had so much more in common, that you were just as broken, he might have changed his mind.

That didn't mean he didn't hope. His eyes lit up anytime you hugged him, or called him over to your place to watch a movie and cuddle. He felt like he was going into cardiac arrest anytime you were near him. He’s pretty sure everyone figured it out by now; not like he could do much to hide it anyway.

Jake’s tired mind wasn’t able to catch up with how fast his legs took him to your house. You didn’t know about Jake’s family issues, nor his own. But just being close to you could bring him a peace of mind like nothing else could.

He found you sitting on your terrace, in a warm Christmas sweater with Rudolph on it, what he presumed was hot chocolate in your hands and a fluffy blanket wrapped around you to protect you from the cold. You looked so cute. He smiled unconsciously, before he realized he was staring at you. He cursed under his breath, realizing just how fucked he was. Running a hand down his face, he walked up to you.

When you finally noticed him, you grinned, pulling up the blanket so he could sit down next to you.

“Hi.” Jake swore his heart skipped a beat, hearing your tired, soft voice.

“Hi, Angel.” you smiled, rolling your eyes affectionately at your callsign.

Of course, you got it from Jake. He was always teasing you with cheesy nicknames, but for some reason, this one stuck. You were mad at him at first, but you got over that with time. He found the death stares you gave him absolutely adorable.

He still kept telling people, very proudly, that he gave you your callsign.

Jake sat down next to you, pulling you closer to him, wrapping the blanket around the both of you. You handed him your cup and he took a sip.

“God, how can you drink that?” he asked, grimacing. He knew you had a sweet tooth, but this was too much, even for you.

“It’s hot chocolate, Jake.” you scoffed.

“It’s too sweet.”

“It is not.” you protested. He loved how defensive you got over the smallest things. Teasing you was always fun.

“You’re gonna get diabetes.”

“Well, it will be worth it.” He shook his head at your antics, but his smile gave him away.

A comfortable silence took over, before Jake frowned, looking at you. “What are you doing out here?”

“It's supposed to snow.”

“So you decided to freeze your ass off?"

“Why do you always have to ruin my fun?” you pouted, trailing your nails down his chest, the action making Jake’s heart beat faster. It was unbelievable how easily you turned him on. He had to bite his tongue in order not to tell you how much he wanted to take you on this fucking bench, before he ruined everything.

“I mean look at it, it’s beautiful.” you said, nodding your head towards the view in front of you. Jake hummed, running a hand down your arm.

You started telling him about the movie that you watched, which you thought he would also enjoy. Small things like this always made his heart leap, knowing that you were thinking about him just as much as he was thinking about you.

But halfway through he stopped listening to you, instead turning his face to look at the sky. The moon was full, illuminating the street even through the slight fog. Every house on the street was decorated with Christmas lights, some more than the other, and he realized how right you were. It was indeed beautiful. He didn’t think there was anywhere he’d rather be than here with you in his arms, right now.

When he didn't respond, you realized he wasn’t listening to you, and although you wanted to be offended, you sensed there was something bothering him. Jake didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but you sometimes knew him better than he knew himself.

“Okay, talk.” you said, putting the hot chocolate (that was now cold) on the table, turning your body towards Jake. He whined at the loss of your body warmth against him, reaching his hand out to pull you close again. You sat farther away from him, dodging his attempt, and gave him a stern look.

Jake sighed. “Talk about what?”

Your gaze softened when you heard his defensive tone. “What’s going on, Jake?”

“What do you mean? Nothing is going on.” He deliberately avoided looking into your eyes, hoping you wouldn’t push it. But you just looked at him, your eyebrow raised, your face screaming something along the lines of Cut the shit. He still didn’t know how you figured him out so easily.

“My mom wants me to go to Texas for Christmas.” he said quietly, so quietly you almost missed it.

Although Jake didn’t talk about his family, you could sense there was some tension. Anytime his father was brought up, his jaw clenched, his eyes void of emotions. It was just a fleeting moment, so short you wouldn’t have even noticed, if your eyes weren’t always on him.

“And you don’t want to?” you asked, shuffling closer to him.

Jake let out a humourless chuckle. “Not really.”

“Why not?” you asked, instantly noticing how his body tensed next to you. You winced, regretting your previous question. You didn’t want to push him too much, scared that he would just build those walls you were pretty sure you already knocked down back up. “If I’m pushing, you don’t have to answer.”

“No, it’s-it’s fine.” he let out a shaky breath, running his hands through hair.

“I don’t really have a good relationship with my father. He’s not really the loving parent type, y’know?” If that wasn’t an understatement.

“Yeah, I get that.” you said, thinking back to your own parents. You knew exactly what he meant. “You don’t have to go. You can just make something up.” You reached your hand out to wrap it around his wrist, rubbing his skin with your thumb.

Jake nodded. “I know, I thought about that. But my mum will be sad and I haven’t spent Christmas with them in years.”

You hummed. “How can I help?”

Jake caught your hand, intertwining your fingers with his, still avoiding your eyes. “I didn’t come here because of this, I just-“ He couldn’t find the right words to express how much you helped him without even knowing it. “You-“

“I what?” You caressed his hand with your thumb, hoping to soothe him. You knew Jake was shit with words, especially when it came to talking about his emotions. Sometimes he got frustrated with himself for it and you wanted to let him know that it was okay.

“There's just something about you that makes me forget about everything else when I'm with you." You looked at him, a little surprised at his admission. He turned to look at you, knocking your knees together. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice I always come to you after a hard day or if neither of us can sleep.”

You smiled softly, your heart clenching in your chest with the affection you felt towards this man. “I did notice. I’m honoured.”

You bit your lip, thinking about something. “Would it help if I was there with you?”

You spending Christmas with him? He would definitely say yes. You spending Christmas with him and his mother and sisters? He would also say yes. You spending Christmas in his childhood home, with him and his whole family, which included his father? Hard pass. The last thing he wanted was for you to find out what kind of a childhood he had, so you had just another reason to write him off as a lost case. As if he didn't already give you enough of them.

Jake shook his head. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. Don’t you have plans with your family?”

You sighed. “You’re not the only one who’s family sucks.”

“I’m sorry.” he said sincerely. You did mention that you weren't on the best terms with them, but he didn't know it was so bad you weren't even going home for Christmas.

If you weren't spending Christmas with family, would you be spending it alone? Maybe he should tell his mom that white lie and just stay with you. Hang a few mistletoes around the house so he could kiss you at least once and then laugh it off afterwards.

You shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s okay. If I have to deal with your issues, at least I can ignore mine.”

Jake pouted at you, acting offended. “Mean.”

You grinned. “I am.”

As much as he would've loved to say yes, he shook his head. “Still. You don’t know what you’d be getting into.”

You rolled your eyes, exasperated. “Jake. Just answer the question.”

He sighed. “Yes, it would help me immensely if your cute ass was there to calm me down.”

“Then I can come.”

“What should I even tell them? Hey this is my friend Y/N, she’s here because I don’t want to deal with dad’s bullshit alone this year?” That sounded ridiculous and weak. His father wouldn't even let him step through the threshold if he told them that. 

“Lie and tell them I’m your girlfriend. We’ve been dating for a while, but you didn’t want to tell them unless we knew it was serious.” Jake was taken aback a bit at how quickly you came up with a cover story, before he even really realized what you said. You wanted to play his girlfriend. 

Girlfriend. Which meant there would be hand holding and hugging. Not that you've never done that. But you've never done that while pretending to be his girlfriend.

This would be different. And maybe...maybe he would finally get to kiss you. But now wasn't a good time to think about all the things he'd like to do to you as part of your little plan.

Oh, you were good. It was getting harder and harder to say no.

You sensed that he was contemplating, thinking about this whole thing. You knew Jake enough to know what would work on him. “Tell them I don’t have anyone to spend Christmas with either. And since you’re such a lovely boyfriend, you don’t want to leave me alone, so you’re bringing me home with you.”

Jake groaned, closing his eyes. “God, you’re so good at scheming. It’s so hot.”

You giggled, the sound stirring something deep inside him. He wanted to make you laugh all the time. 

Jake sighed then, finally nodding. “Okay. I will call my mom tomorrow.” It's not like your suggestion was so bad. He just hoped it wouldn't end in a catastrophe. He looked at you one last time, wanting to make sure that you thought this through. “Are you really sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely.” He looked at you, still not convinced. “Let me be a little selfish." You smiled softly, sadness passing through your eyes for only a brief second. "I don’t want to be alone either.”

“You won’t have to be ever again.” When you looked into his eyes, you knew he meant it. You looked down at your intertwined hands, your cheeks flushing with warmth.

Both of you stood up, as the night got a little colder. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you into a warm hug. “Thank you, sweetheart.” You buried your face into his chest, inhaling his cologne that you loved so much, before finally saying goodbye. You watched as he walked away, disappearing into the night.

That night, Jake lied awake in his bed, unable to sleep, his mind too occupied with you. He thanked the Gods he didn't even believe in, and his lucky star, that he got to meet you.

The next morning, Jake woke up to a text from you, reminding him to call his mother. He smiled, sending you a short response.

Javy, like the amazing friend he was, was hyping him up through text messages, reassuring him that this was an amazing idea. Wasn't spending time with you alone exactly what Jake craved?

Maybe Javy also had a selfish reason for doing this. He just couldn't watch you two dance around each other without either of you making a move, while Jake whined about how much he liked you. It was becoming unbearable to the point he was thinking about spilling Jake's biggest secret to you in order to help his friend (and himself).

Jake clicked on his mom's contact, finger hovering over the call button. He found at least 20 reasons why this was a bad idea and 20 reasons on why this could go terribly. But those 10 reasons on why you playing his fake girlfriend was the best plan you ever came up with were enough for him. There was no one else he would want to do this with. So he called her and waited anxiously, before she picked up. 

“Jake, sweetheart. Is everything alright?” He could hear the worry in her voice, which made him smile. 

“Hi, mom. Everything’s fine.” he reassured her, making her let out a breath. “Oh, good. Made me panic a little bit there.”

She always worried. He might've been an adult, old enough to take care of himself, but that didn't mean her mind was at ease. Jake could still remember her cries when he told her he was joining the Navy.

At least one of his parents cared.

“Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Just wanted to ask you something.” 

“What is it, honey?”

“I was wondering if I could bring someone home.” Jake closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. Why was it so hard to say those words out loud? He practiced those exact words so many times in the past hour and he still couldn't get them out. Maybe if his father didn't teach him his whole childhood that loving someone would make him vulnerable and that it was a bad thing, maybe then it would be easier.

He sighed shakily. “My girlfriend. I wanted to ask if she could come with me.”

He heard as she took in a sharp breath. Was she shocked that he was dating someone? Was she shocked that he was bringing them home? Or shocked he was going home at all? “Oh, honey. You didn’t even tell me you were dating someone. What’s her name?” He could hear the smile in her voice, which made him smile in return. 

“Her name is Y/N. We’ve been together for a few months, but we wanted to keep it quiet until we figured out where we’re heading.” It's a good thing he got pretty good at lying about anything by now. It came completely natural. At least this lie wasn't going to hurt anyone.

“Oh, of course. Is she not spending Christmas with her family?”

“She doesn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with, mom.”

She cooed sympathetically. “Oh, poor thing. Of course she can spend Christmas here. You never brought anyone home, I’d be so happy to meet her.” I'm happy you're going to meet her too. It's not you I'm worried about.

But Jake knew there was no point in making his mother sad, so he didn't say those words out loud. “That’s great. Thank you, mom. I will tell her that. How are you?”

“We’re getting by, baby. The last few months have been chaotic thanks to our newest family addition.”

Ah, yes. His little nephew, Noah.

“I can’t wait to meet him.” Jake smiled, thinking about the little boy. He got his sister's eyes and her personality. At just two months old, he was already just as stubborn as her.

“I’m glad you’ll be home for Christmas.” His vision blurred slightly as he teared up. “Me too, mom. I have to go now, we will talk later, okay?”

“Bye, honey. Tell your girlfriend I said hi too. Love you.”

“I will. Love you too.” He ended the call, letting out a breath.

That part was done. Now he just needed to make sure both of you would survive the holidays.

“So you’re going home with him for Christmas?” Phoenix asked, while you were sitting and drinking at Hard Deck. Rooster was sitting next to her, munching on some peanuts, giving you a questioning look.

He was way too judgemental for someone who was sitting in a Hawaiian shirt in the middle of December.

“Yeah, why?” you shrugged, acting like it wasn’t a big deal. But it was and you were freaking out. You were about to go to Texas with Jake, meet his family, all while pretending to be his girlfriend.

Rooster and Natasha looked at each other, before giving you the are you serious look.

Rooster spoke up. “That doesn’t sound very friendly.”

Natasha agreed with him. “His parents were okay with him bringing a stranger to their home? On Christmas?”

Oh. Right. You forgot to tell them the most important part. “He told them we’re dating.”

Their eyes widened, mouths hanging open. “What?!”

You rolled your eyes, groaning. You should've guessed they would make a big deal out of it. “I told him to say that, there’s no need to panic, jeez.”

Phoenix turned to Rooster with a smirk. “I bet you 20 that they’re going to fuck at some point.”

“At this speed, it will take them 20 years to get there. You will get a dollar for every year.”

Bradshaw thought he was really fucking funny with that quip. He didn't even realize he was in love with Natasha yet, so you're one step ahead of him.

“Can you guys stop? Me and Jake are friends.” Just friends. Unfortunately, that was true. And it didn't bother you at all. Nope. 

Rooster raised an eyebrow. Were you really that blind? “Friends my ass. You’re way more than friends. Don’t tell me you didn’t think about banging him. I saw how you looked at him when we were on the beach.”

Of course you were drooling when you saw him running in the sand shirtless, skin all shiny as if someone poured a whole bottle of baby oil on him, which made him look like a model during a calendar photoshoot. 

You groaned, exasperated. “He’s hot, you can’t deny that. But you know Jake. He doesn’t do relationships.”

“He didn’t do them before. Have you not noticed that he didn’t sleep with anyone for months now?” Matter of fact, you did notice. You kept looking at him at the end of every night you spent at the Hard Deck and he never once even looked at another woman. Maybe he just got bored of meaningless one-night stands? But Bradley didn't share that opinion. “Unless he's practicing celibacy, I'd say he's waiting for someone special."

“Why wouldn't he tell me then? He's the most confident person I know, if he wanted me he wouldn’t keep that a secret."

Bradley shrugged. “He's probably just as scared to lose you as you are.”

You were about to tell him just how dumb that sounded, because this was Jake you were talking about. Jake, who wasn't scared of anything. But what if there was at least a small chance that they were right? Before you could overthink it, Rooster spoke up again. “Anyways, we will see after you come back. Trust me, there is something going on there.”

Natasha smirked teasingly. “Pack some pretty lingerie, I feel like you will need it.”

“Fuck off.” you grumbled. 

That's when Jake walked over to the table, putting down your drinks. “Did I miss something?”

You shook your head, sending your annoying friends a death glare. “They're just being asses.”

“Say the word and I will fight them.” Nat and Bradley looked at each other, as Jake wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

“My hero. But there's no need for violence.” Jake grinned at you, before getting into a conversation with Rooster.

Natasha nudged you with her foot under the table, while you shrugged innocently.

Throughout the days leading up to your flight, Jake was restless. He wanted to make sure everything would be perfect. He warned his family not to bring up any embarrassing stories, hide all the baby pictures, not be too pushy or overbearing. Everyone reassured him that it would be okay. They never saw Jake like this, so concerned about what someone else might think of him. His mom teased him, telling him how cute it was. 

And then there was you. He wanted to make sure you weren't nervous, or that you didn't change your mind. So the next step was to talk about boundaries and make up a story on how you got together, all while hoping that one day, he could take you home and you wouldn't have to pretend anymore. 

"So, I assume we can do all the things we usually do, like hugs, hand holding and cuddling?" Jake asked, sitting on your couch as you both ate the take-out he brought. You nodded in agreement. That wasn't too much PDA. You could definitely do that.

Jake hummed, digging his fork into the rice. "What about kissing?" he asked, looking at you to gauge your reaction.

You stopped chewing, as you looked up at him with wide eyes. "Kissing?"

He shrugged. "Cheek kisses, forehead kisses. Maybe a small peck here and there." You were just imagining what it would be like, finally being able to feel his lips against yours, when you felt his foot nudge yours to bring you back to reality. "But if you want we can fully make out in my room, I don't mind."

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head. But you agreed to the kisses anyway. How could you not?

"And how did we get together?"

"Obviously, you fell in love with me as soon as we met the first time years ago. After lots of begging from your side, I relented and finally went on a date with you." He grinned at you, wiggling his eyebrow.

You scoffed, shaking your head. "Not a chance in hell you're telling that to someone."

Jake laughed but nodded. It didn't take him long to come up with a better story. "We met again after a couple years and I finally had the balls to tell you I've had it bad for you since we met for the first time." If only the whole sentence was true.

You nodded, smiling a little. "Yeah. That's a good story."

After that night the days went by in a blur, before the calendar was showing the big X, the day of your flight.

You were squeezing his hand the whole flight, trying to take his mind off the things that made his thoughts race. But before either of you knew it, the taxi was turning into the street, his house visible in the distance. 

“It’s gonna be okay.” you reassured, giving him a soft smile. If his heart wasn't already beating out of his chest, it would definitely sped up right at this moment. You were almost there. Inside his childhood home, where his parents and siblings would all meet you and welcome you with open arms. Except for his dad. And isn't that exactly what he's been terrified of since you brought this up? It's terrifying, knowing that you might look at him differently once you find out what kind of a person his father is. 

The car stopped in front of a big 2 story house, decorated from top to bottom. Jake took in a shaky breath, squeezing your hand briefly. “We’re here.” 

He handed the money to the driver, as you both got out. Like a gentleman, he took your luggage, and lead you inside. 

You heard the rushed footsteps coming towards you, before you saw his mom standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes. "Oh, I can't believe you're here." She hugged her son, as you quietly watched, taking in the peaceful expression on Jake's face. You knew he missed his family. He talked about them a lot. You were glad you could be here to support him as much as you could.

His mom pulled away, looking at you. "Mom, this is my girlfriend Y/N." Jake introduced you with a smile. 

"It's so nice to finally meet you." you said politely.

As it turns out, the Seresin's are huggers. "Come here." She pulled you into a tight hug, before looking you over. "I'm so glad my son brought you home." 

"I'm glad I can be here, Mrs. Seresin." you said, hoping you were making a good first impression. You really wanted them to like you.

"Call me Pam." She waved her hand with a chuckle. "Go and unpack. I prepared everything you might need, but if I forgot anything just let me know."

"Thank you, mom." She nodded, looking at her son one last time, before leaving you two.

"Come on, sweetheart." Jake took your luggage and lead you upstairs into his room.

You whistled, surprised at how not-Jake his room was. "I definitely imagined your room with a bit more playboy posters."

Jake put his hand on his heart, acting insulted. "How judgemental of you." 

If his father wasn't so strict, he definitely would have had them, but you didn't need to know that.

You took your time to look at all the medals hanging on his wall back from his school days, before looking at the only picture he had framed in his room. It was of him and his sisters, back when they were younger. You smiled, putting the picture back down, before unpacking your stuff.

Jake kept stealing glances at you, still in disbelief that you were really here, in his home. He was about to spend Christmas with you. 

Once you were done, you went back downstairs to wait for his sister. Jake made you sit down on the couch, after his mom assured you she didn't need any help in the kitchen. He brought you a tray of cookies, as you quietly watched some Christmas cartoon playing on the TV. 

The door opened, both of you looking up when you heard someone complaining under their breath about the snow. You instantly recognized Jessica from the pictures Jake showed you. Jake took your hand, both of you standing up to walk over to her.

She looked up, her eyes twinkling with the reflection from the Christmas lights. She had a big smile on her face, showing her excitement. Jake let go of your hand to hug her, but she shooed him away, looking at you expectantly. 

Jake rolled his eyes. He knew his sister would instantly love you, why was it surprising that she was more excited to meet you than to see him? “Jess, this is Y/N, my girlfriend. Y/N, this is my younger sister, Jessica.”

You smiled at her, a little unsure if you should shake her hand or hug her. So instead, you just stood there awkwardly. “It's so nice to meet you.”

Luckily, she didn't seem to mind. Instead she took charge, walking towards you with open arms. “Oh, come here.” She hugged you tightly, like she was really looking forward to this. Which was surprising considering that Jake only told them that you were dating two weeks ago. “It's nice to meet you too. I can't believe he kept you away from us for so long!” she looked at her brother, scolding him, before she let you go to hug him. 

“I had my reasons.” Jake whispered, not wanting to think about that right now. He was just happy to see his little sister.

She sighed, nodding with a sad look in her eyes. “I know you did.”

She turned back to look at you, while taking off her coat and scarf. “How are you finding Texas?”

“It's nice.” 

“She's lying, she hates Texas.” You rolled your eyes, silently thanking Jake for throwing you under the bus like that. Traitor. He just couldn't let go of that time when you told him (after way too many tequila sunrises, so it's not like that should count) that you despised his accent, country music, cowboys, and all of Texas.

One of those was a lie and that was his accent. You only said you despised it because you didn't want him to know the effect it had on you.

Also the cowboy thing, was maybe half a lie. He was wearing that stupid fucking cowboy hat and looking so good, it took a lot of self-control not to do what Big & Rich were saying. You didn't really know where you would find a horse to save, but you had already picked the cowboy you wanted to ride. 

And okay, maybe you didn't hate country as much as you said, especially when Carrie Underwood was playing. You knew some of her songs word for word. But he didn't need to know any of that. 

She scowled jokingly. “How did he convince you to get together with him, then?”

“His good looks and charm?” If she only knew that the only reason you became such good friends was because her brother was absolutely unbearable and wouldn't leave you alone and maybe you kind of liked it. And now, years later, you weren't strong enough to resist his charm.

Just then, a man walked through the door, holding a baby car seat. Jake shook his hand, exchanging a few words, before Jess introduced him to you. “This is my fiancé David and our son, Noah. David, this is Jake’s girlfriend, Y/N.”

“It's nice to meet you. She hasn’t stopped squealing the whole way here, she couldn’t wait to meet you.” You laughed, happy that Jake's family was so welcoming and kind. You heard a small cry coming from the car seat, as you both finally looked at the baby. He was covered in a fluffy blanket, only his little face visible. Both you and Jake cooed, as you saw his little pout transform into a grimace, before his cries got louder. 

You wrapped an arm around Jake's torso, leaning your head on his shoulder. “He's so adorable.”

Jess chuckled, shaking her head. “Want to borrow him for a day?”

“If you guys want to have a night off, you can leave him with us.” Jake offered, looking at you for approval, as you nodded. 

“Okay, we're definitely taking advantage of that offer.” 

David nodded, grinning. “As cute as he is, we're exhausted.”

Jess looked a you pointedly. "We should definitely have a girls night. Leave the kid to the men, go out, have fun. Drink.” 

Pamela walked in, interjecting. “If Jake can let go off her for more than 5 minutes, that is.”

All of you laughed, except for Jake, who found it very not-funny. “Stop.”

His mom shrugged. “It's true. The poor girl hasn’t had a second to breathe since they arrived.”

Everyone slowly left the hall, leaving you two behind. 

Jake groaned, burying his face into your neck. “I'm regretting this already.” His breath tickled you, making you squirm in his arms as you laughed. 

“I'm not. They're nice.”

He sighed, pulling away from you slightly. “Yeah they are.” 

You could feel how tense he was the whole time, knowing he dreaded the second his father would walk through that door. Your heart broke for him, as you wanted nothing more than to hold him in your arms and comfort him.

You held his face in your hands, making him look at you. “Hey, everything's gonna be fine. I'm here.” He nodded reluctantly, really wanting to believe your words. 

“Come and eat, you're probably all starving.” Pamela shouted, getting your attention. 

You walked to the dining room, before Jake spoke up. "We're not waiting for dad?"

She shook her head. "No. He said we should start without him."

You sat down next to Jake, who reached out to hold your hand under the table, making you smile. You all chatted, as everyone kept asking you all about your relationship. 

It felt so nice, just sitting there with Jake. You got a glimpse into what it would be like to be his girlfriend and you loved every second of it.

The laughter died down when the front door opened, all of the Seresin's getting uncharacteristically quiet. 

You saw the change in Jake the second his father walked in. He pulled away his hand from yours, his smile vanished, his relaxed posture became tense as he straightened out, almost like the person wasn't even his father, but his superior in the Navy. It made sense. He did mention he followed in his father's footsteps. Just like he mentioned that he was a Commander. You should've realized this sooner from everything he told you. Jake probably never had a father, a parental figure. Instead he had a military man, who wanted to form a mini-me out of his child. A perfect soldier. 

Which was why he wanted to be perfect at everything, why he was the most competitive person you ever met. Why it was so hard for him to let anyone in. 

He didn't want anyone to see how imperfect he truly was. If only he know that was exactly what you all loved about him. Hangman was a selfish, egoistical bastard. Definitely someone his father would be proud of. But Jake Seresin was the sweetest, kindest human, with the biggest heart. That's why you fell in love with him. 

You frowned when you saw his jaw clench, wanting to reach out, so he would know he's not alone. But you were scared he would get defensive and that would only hurt and embarrass you. So instead you just gave him space, hoping that he would tell you if he needed you. 

His father walked towards his seat, sitting down. Jake gulped, swallowing the nerves, before speaking up. “Dad, this is my girlfriend Y/N. Y/N, this is my father.” His voice wasn't soft or carefree like a few minutes before. It was monotone, almost harsh.

His father finally looked at you two, eyeing you quietly.

“It's nice to meet you, sir.” you smiled, lying through your teeth. You were sure he knew that though, if not even his children were happy to see him. 

William hummed, but didn't do anything else to acknowledge you. He looked at his son, sneering. “I'm surprised you’ve found someone that wants to put up with you.”

The fake smile on your face disappeared, your blood boiling as the man sitting opposite you started to eat his dinner as if he didn't just insult his child. What a piece of shit. 

You could feel your heartbeat ringing in your ear, too scared to look at Jake. You didn't want to see the heart-broken look on his face. But once you had enough courage to face him, what you saw was even worse. Your Jake was gone, in his place was sitting a man drained of any emotion, his face blank, almost like he was detached from reality. Cold and distant. 

It almost made you cry, with how much your heart ached.

You decided to reach out your hand, intertwining your pinkies. His finger twitched, making you think he would hold your hand, but he didn't make any move. He just sat there, staring ahead. 

It was a defence mechanism he developed in his childhood. Act like you don't feel anything, make everyone else believe you don't feel anything and maybe one day, you can make yourself believe that it doesn't hurt.

Everyone continued to eat their dinner in silence, except for Jake. He couldn't eat, feeling like he was going to throw up any second. He could already picture it; once you got up to his room, you would tell him that this was too much for you. There was no way you could ever love someone like him. He was going to lose you. 

You hoped the tension would die down eventually, but his father didn't share your sentiment. 

"You would think that at thirty years old, you would at least have a higher rank. As my son, it's your duty to make your family proud. You need to be better." he grumbled bitterly, disdain coating his voice. "I didn't raise you all to be disappointments." Did this man hate his own children for him to talk to them like this?

You really tried to bite your tongue and keep it in, but you couldn't. Not when you heard how he talked to his own son. So you took a breath, trying to keep your voice steady, but to no avail. You were too angry for that. “Your son was one of the top 12 graduates from Top Gun. He has 2 confirmed kills.” you said through gritted teeth, your voice laced with venom. “He's an amazing pilot and an even better person.” You hoped Jake knew how much you meant that. 

You stood up, trying to form a smile as you looked at his mom apologetically, before looking back at that poor excuse of a father. "If you will excuse me. I lost my appetite." 

You needed to calm down, before you ruined anything even more. But you had more than enough things you still wanted to say. 

As soon as you were out the door, Jake's fist clenched, nails digging into his palm, as he looked at his father with anger. "Can I be dismissed?" 

He nodded, before making sure he knew he already formed an opinion about you. "You should teach your girlfriend some manners." Jake knew what that meant. He couldn't even keep his girlfriend in line? What kind of a man was he?

Jess joined the argument, having much less patience than her brother. She didn't try to keep her voice low like him, didn't try to hide the tears in her eyes. At least she learned how to handle her emotions, unlike him. "She's right and you know it. You should learn to appreciate your children before you end up all alone." 

"Like there would be anything to miss." his father said, without any anger in his voice, which was felt even worse. It meant he has already given up on them.

Of course. One of his daughters had a child out of wedlock. His other daughter was dating a woman. And his only son wasn't man enough in his eyes.

Jake stood up from the table abruptly, knocking his glass over. His hand was shaking, jaw clenched as he tried to control himself, before he did something he would regret. Instead he tried to think about you, about what you've done for him. He looked at his sister, to make sure she was okay. She nodded for him to go, as she also stood up from the table, before he left. 

The door to the room opened and you heard Jake’s footsteps coming closer and closer to you. Your back was turned to him, as you watched the snow that was falling. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice hushed.

Was he really asking you if you were okay? You sighed, turning to face him. “I’m sorry for that. I just couldn’t listen to him berate you.” You lasted exactly two minutes. Not too bad. Usually, you would have been much harsher if someone insulted the people you cared about.

“Come here.” he said, outstretching his hand. You hesitated for a second, before taking his hand and stepping closer towards him. Jake pulled you into his arms, your palm coming to rest on his chest to feel his steady heartbeat. His hand came to rest on the side of your face, thumb caressing your cheek softly. “I’m not mad at you, okay? Don’t think that even for a second.” he assured you.

“You stood up for me, that was…” He could never find the right words. But they weren't needed. You understood. You always did. 

“Of course I stood up for you. He was talking bullshit. You’re great at what you do, Jake. You know that. Don’t second guess yourself.”

He smiled, kissing your forehead. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

No matter how dysfunctional his family was, you knew there was no place you would rather be than here with him. “Me too.”

As it turns out, his father barely stayed at the house. The marriage between Jake's parents had been crumbling for years, the love long gone. 

The good thing was, after you and Jake calmed down, you could return to the living room knowing that his father would be gone.

You were ready to apologize to everyone as soon as you stepped in, but they didn't even acknowledge what happened at dinner. 

Jessica looked up, Noah in her arms. "Look who woke up." She stood up, walking towards you two. "Wanna hold him?" She looked between you and Jake, waiting for you to decided who should hold him first. 

You looked at Jake, nodding at him. "He's your nephew."

"And you're my girlfriend." Jake grinned, the word rolling off his tongue with ease. He loved the feeling in his chest whenever he called you that. He also loved the way you looked up at him with wide eyes, flustered. "You can hold him first."

You nodded. "Hi." You took the baby into your arms, sitting down on the couch with him. You booped his little nose, while he looked at you with wide eyes, mouth open as he let out little gurgling sounds. "You're so cute!" He grinned at you, as if he understood what you just said. You caressed his chubby little cheek with your finger, feeling content just sitting there with the little one.

Jake watched as you cradled little Noah in your arms, his little fingers wrapped around your finger. As if he needed another thing to add to the list of things that make him soft for you. He was whipped. He could hear Javy's voice in his head, the one that was always telling him to finally make a move. But what good would it do if you would kill him soon anyway? Because if you kept looking at him with those eyes, while grinning at him, his heart would eventually give out. 

“You're in love.” Jessica teased, coming up from behind him suddenly. 

“What?” he scoffed with an incredulous laugh. Was he really that transparent?

Who was he kidding? Of course he was.

Jess knew her brother. He never looked at anyone the way he was looking at you. But she also knew how hard it was for him to accept his feelings. He never knew how to handle them. She hoped he would realize he deserved to be loved, just like everyone else. And if there was one person that could make him realize that, it was you. You were strong and stubborn, keeping Jake in line. It was like you were made for each other. 

She had half a mind to just let it go, knowing that Jake wouldn't admit it, but decided against it. There was no fooling anyone. “I've seen the heart eyes you've been giving her.”

“Well, she looks good with a kid on her arm.” That at least wasn't a lie.

Jess smirked, a knowing look in her eyes. “You just wish it was your kid, don’t you?”

Jake shook his head, but the smile on his face was enough to prove her right. “Maybe in a few years.”

Her smirk softened into a smile, as she patted his shoulder. “You would be a good dad.”

He looked at her, surprised. “You think so?”

“I know. You always took care of us. Of me, Kim, mom. You wouldn't be like him. I know that."

He didn't really think about fatherhood that much, but when he did, he thought about his own father. Jake's biggest fear was always that he would turn out to be like him. What if he became a coward like him? What if he couldn't love his child right? What if his kid grew up to hate him? Hearing those words coming from his sister meant more to him than she would know. “Thank you.”

She smiled at him, before nodding in your direction. “Go after your girl, she looks like she needs the help.” Jake looked at you, chuckling when he saw you trying to pry your hair out of Noah's hands. 

"Need some help, baby?" Your heart almost burst out of your chest at the nickname, while Jake, oblivious to all that, reached out to help you untangle your hair from Noah's fingers. 

"Thank you. You wouldn't believe the strength these babies have." Jake wrapped an arm around your waist, leaning into your side. "Here, hold him." You handed the little boy over to Jake and regretted it instantly. 

Did seeing Jake with a baby make your hormones go crazy? Did it make you feel absolutely feral, because you wanted him to put his baby in you, while your heart also beat wildly because it was the most adorable thing you've ever seen? Yes, yes and yes.

You blamed his big, strong arms and the way he used that soft, baby-talk, while holding the little one so carefully, like he was scared he'd break any second. His protective nature always made you a little horny, but god, this was new. It was too much. If he continued on like this, they'd have to sedate you, before you started acting like a rabid dog. 

Jake caught your eye, smiling at you. You hoped he didn't see the drool in the corner of your mouth. 

You were thankful he didn't call you out on your obvious staring, instead, he just smiled at you. "Want to go for a walk?" 

You nodded, as he passed his nephew over to his sister.

Jake took you out to walk around the streets, both of you admiring the beautiful Christmas decorations. He wanted to reach out and hold your hand, or wrap his arm around your shoulders to pull you closer to him, but he decided against it. 

Instead he tried to take his mind off of how much he wanted to hold you and started a conversation. “So? Did you enjoy today?” Except for the part where you went toe to toe with his father, of course. 

His soft smile got bigger as soon as he saw your contagious grin as you practically started skipping next to him. “Are you kidding me? Your nephew is the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.”

The words left his mouth before he could stop them. “I bet we could make a cuter one.”

You swore your heart stopped for a second when you heard those words, but you tried to not let it show. You hoped to god it didn’t show. Instead you grinned again, nudging his shoulder with yours. “Wanna be a daddy, Seresin?”

He really had stop getting affected by you so easily, but hearing you say that word…let’s just say he wouldn’t mind hearing it a few more times, in a different situation. Not like talking about you having his baby wasn’t making him feel some type of way either.

He tried to clear his head of the dirty thoughts and get back to the conversation at hand, but with him thinking about you all pretty and round, while pregnant with his child, it was hard.

“Yeah, one day.” he smiled and you could feel the happiness radiating off him as he thought about it. “I always wanted to have kids, a big house, a happy family.” He looked at you for a second, then back at the ground. With you was left unsaid. “Something that I never had.”

You wrapped your arm around his, leaning your head on his shoulder, while continuing to walk. It wasn’t comfortable at all, but you were yearning to be close to him so bad, it didn’t matter.

Jake leaned his head on yours for a second, kissing the top of your hair.

“I’m just not sure if I could be a good parent though.” he sighed. “I didn’t really have the best example growing up.”

You shook your head, squeezing his arm to make him look at you. Both of you stopped walking, turning to fully face each other.

“You’d be amazing.” you reassured him with a smile. “I’ve seen you with Noah. You’re amazing with him.”

“Yeah, but having your own is different after all, isn’t it?”

You nodded. “It is. But I know you, Jake. You just have to let people in. Work past your issues. I feel like you talking to me about this so freely means you’re on a good path.”

He looked at you, not believing that a person like you really existed and chose to be friends with him. Every day you surprised him more and more, and he should’ve gotten used to it by now, but he still couldn’t help but feel surprised about how amazing you were. “You’re so incredible, you know that?”

“I try.” you giggled, the sweetest sound he ever heard. Was there anything he could ever find at least slightly irritating about you?

He pulled you closer to him, his cold fingers caressing your cheek. “You're way too good for them. They don't deserve you.” he said in the softest voice you’ve ever heard him talk in, and you saw the unshed tears glistening in his eyes. It made your heart thump wildly in your chest.

At first you were confused, before you understood who he meant. Your family. What did you do deserve someone like him in your life? You weren’t sure, but you were grateful nonetheless.

You smiled, biting your cheek to stop your lip from wobbling. “Let’s go back inside, I’m freezing.”

Jake nodded, turning around to walk back towards his house, his arm wrapping around your shoulders. He let out a breath, closing his eyes for a second to savour how good it felt to have you this close. “Want me to warm you up in our bed?”

You glared at him jokingly. “Stop pushing your luck.”

The words just kind of went over your head. You haven't really thought about what he meant. Which meant you didn't understood why he was acting so weird once he closed the door to his room behind you.

“So.” Jake started, looking awkwardly around the room, which was very out of character for him.

“So?” you looked at him confused.

He motioned to the bed and you realized why he was acting the way he was. Of course, there was only one bed. Of course, you were going to sleep in one bed, because you were dating. Not like you’ve never shared a bed with friends before. But you were never attracted to those friends.

“Are you cool with sharing?” he asked, scratching the back of his neck. He hoped to god you would be. This was the thing he’s been looking forward to the most. But if you didn’t want to, he’d respect your decision. It’s not like he’d ever do something you weren’t okay with.

You just chuckled, rolling your eyes playfully, trying to act like you weren't about to jump out of your skin. “If you can keep your hands to yourself.”

Jake sighed, looking you up and down. “Can’t promise anything when you look like that.”

You shook your head, turning away to hide your grin from him.

“Wanna take a shower first?” he asked, switching on the light in his en-suite bathroom, before he looked back at you with a smirk. “Or we can share.”

“I will go first. Thanks for the offer though.” You gathered everything you needed, before walking to the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, Jake let out a breath. The day turned out better than he expected. He had you here with him and that was all that mattered. 

Minutes later, you walked out of the shower. Jake wanted to make a joke about how long you were inside and that you probably already used up all the hot water, but the words died on his tongue the second he looked up at you. He felt like a cold shower was exactly what he needed right now. 

You, oblivious to what was going on inside his head, wrapped a towel around your head. “The shower’s all yours.”

Jake stood up, clearing his throat. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

He couldn't look away from you. The way his shirt (which you denied stealing from him after an impromptu sleepover at his place) barely covered your thighs, leaving your legs exposed. He could see your hard nipples through the material, and as you turned around to look for a pair of socks in his drawer, the shirt rid up enough to expose your black panties and your round ass. He had to bite his lip to not let out the groan threating to leave his mouth, as his hands itched to touch your soft skin. 

He walked over to you just as you found the perfect pair of fluffy socks, but instead of heading to the bathroom like you thought, he paused in front of you. He reached for the hem of your shirt, pulling you closer to him. Your legs moved on their own accord, a little wobbly.

He wanted to kiss you, touch you, pull you on top of the bed and show you just how much he wanted you. Goosebumps rose upon your skin, as you rolled your bottom lip between your teeth, biting down. You could hear his heavy breathing, before he swallowed and let go of you. He looked you over one last time before leaving to the bathroom. You were tingling all over, confused, but really turned on. 

How were you going to survive this week?

Once Jake got back, he saw you laying there in his bed, wearing his shirt, looking so cute and hot and his heart and dick both agreed that it was the best sight he's ever seen. 

Meanwhile you were just about to lose your mind, seeing him only in his boxers and knowing that he would be sleeping like that next to you.

He laid down next to you, turning the light off. His arm was behind his head, as he laid on his back, while you were on your side, facing him. 

You cuddled before. He could just shuffle closer to you, pull you into his chest. No big deal.

He turned suddenly, so he was also on his side, before putting his hand on your waist and pulling you closer to him. He could hear your steady heartbeat, as he ran his hand up your bare thigh and side. He inhaled sharply when he heard a small noise coming from you, before clenching his fist into the hem of your shirt.

Your hand was on his warm chest, his heartbeat steady under your palm. You had to fight the urge to ran your hand down his abs, as his soft breathing slowly lulled you to sleep.

The last thing you remember before falling asleep, was Jake pulling you flush against his chest as he wrapped his arms around you. 

Waking up in Jake's arms for the very first time felt so good, you were questioning if you were really awake.

When you looked at him, you were mesmerized by how pretty he looked. You were looking at the way his eyelashes kept fluttering softly, when he suddenly spoke up, spooking you slightly. 

“You're staring.” he said, his voice deep and hoarse, as he opened one eye to look at you. 

Flustered, you looked away from him, rolling your eyes. “Can't help it.”

Jake grinned, pulling you closer to him to kiss the top of your head. He hummed, nose brushing along your jaw. "Good morning, beautiful.”

His good mood was contagious and there was no stopping the smile forming on your face. “Morning, handsome.”

“How did you sleep?”

You haven't slept that good in years. His body kept you warm all night, like your personal heater.

“Good, and you?”

Jake sighed, content. “I woke up with the most beautiful woman in my arms, so.”

You had to bury your face in his chest, hoping he wouldn't see how flustered he made you. “Shut up.” You pulled your face away, looking into his eyes when you felt how empty your stomach felt. "Breakfast?" 

Jake thought about it for a second, before he caged you underneath him, careful not to put his whole body weight on you. "Or we could stay here, like this." 

You laughed, wrapping your arms around him, caressing his back. "Until?"

"Forever."

"Forever sounds good." If only it was that easy. You smiled softly, kissing his cheek. You didn't even realize what you did, but Jake did. He was surprised you couldn't feel his heart beating out of his chest. "But I'm hungry."

He groaned, kissing the side of your neck where your face was buried, before standing up. It was your turn to get all worked up over how good his lips felt on your skin, even for that brief second. 

"Stay here." he said, putting on some clothes, before running downstairs. He came back a few minutes later with a tray.

“Breakfast in bed?” you asked, sitting up.

Jake hummed, kissing the top of your head. “My girl deserves the best.”

You smiled, shaking your head, as you both ate, content to just sit with each other in silence. That was the best thing about your friendship with Jake. There was no awkwardness when neither of you talked, you just enjoyed each other's presence.

When you got downstairs, you were instantly ambushed by Jessica and Kim, who arrived in the morning.

Kim gasped, looking you over, before looking at her sister. "You were right, she's gorgeous."

You were looking between them, a little embarrassed, while Jake only stood there, proudly showing you off.

Kim noticed you standing there, playing with the sleeve of your hoodie, before she realized she hasn't even introduced herself. "Oh, I'm sorry, manners. I'm Kim. Welcome to the family." she said, pulling you into a hug, which made you laugh. "Hi, I'm Y/N. It's so good to finally meet you."

"You're telling me!" She pulled away, punching her brother in the shoulder. “Jake talks about you so much. We had a little bet going on about how long it will take him to ask you out.”

Jake talked about you to his family?

Jake froze for a second, his mind going blank. He told them not to bring those things up. "Can you not-"

Kim waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, hush. You're already dating, what does it matter."

“Mom told me about the dinner yesterday." She gave her brother a sad look, before looking at you with an appreciative smile. "What you did was very cool."

You felt Jake’s arm curl around your waist, as he rested his chin on your shoulder. "I just couldn't listen to the bullshit he was saying." You shrugged, like it was no big deal. You had no idea that it meant the world to Jake.

"Still. I'm sure Jake appreciates it." As if to show she was right, he squeezed your hip, before kissing the top of your head affectionately. 

Jess cleared her throat, changing the topic. “Anyways, mom is already planning your wedding. Speaking of which, summer or winter wedding?”

You were taken aback, as you stuttered out a response. “I-I think fall?"

Jess cursed under her breath, turning to leave. “We will have to re-plan everything from the start.”

You looked at Jake with a raised eyebrow. “They're just kidding, right?”

He gave you a look, before taking your hand and leading you to the living room. 

There were presents and wrapping papers scattered across the floor, as Jess and Kim sat next to the Christmas tree, wrapping the presents.

Jake pulled you into his lap, as Pamela sat down next to her daughters, to help them. 

"You guys are so cute." Jess cooed, as Kim nodded. "I've never seen Jake so in love. I'm happy he found you."

Indeed, Jake was a very good actor. You almost believed him yourself. You smiled. "I'm happy I found him."

It felt so nice, so normal. Having you in his arms, as you laughed and chatted with his sisters and mother. For a second, he forgot it was all fake. 

You turned to look at Jake, noticing how quiet he was. “Tired?”

He had a far-off look in his eyes, as if he wasn't present in the room at all. “Hm?” He rid himself of the thoughts swirling aimlessly in his head, before looking at you. “Oh no, just thinking.”

You hummed. “About?”

“Stuff.” he shrugged and you knew you wouldn't get anything else out of him right now.

“Fine, keep your secrets.” you teased.

“You two would have really cute kids.” Kim spoke up.

“I know, I said that too.” Jake grinned, thinking about it. You and him having children. You having his children. The thought always made his heart race. He felt you squeeze his hand, as you relaxed against his chest. 

The hand that wasn't holding yours was laying on your ribcage, dangerously close to your belly. He wanted to put his hand on it, just for a second, to imagine what it would be like. The perfect life with you.

“Well, when am I gonna have another grandchild?”

Jess rolled her eyes. “Mom, leave them alone.”

Kim squealed, agreeing with her mother. “No, I need another nephew or a niece to spoil.” She looked at you two expectantly, waiting to know when you were planning to take your relationship a step farther.

You looked at Jake, raising an eyebrow jokingly. “Well, Jake?”

He scoffed. “Why are you looking at me? You will be the one that has to carry the little spawn for 9 months.”

“And you're the one that has to make the spawn.” 

While you were having a little staring contest, his sisters already started talking about how they would spoil your child. Since the attention wasn't on you anymore, you found enough courage to lean closer and whisper into Jake's ear seductively. “Wanna go upstairs and practice, daddy?”

You felt his whole body tense, his fingers digging into your ribs. You looked at him innocently. “Did I say something wrong?”

Jake chuckled, but there was no humour to it. “You know exactly what you said.” he rasped, voice so low it sent chills down your spine. “You'll be the death of me.”

After David and Noah got back, you spent most of the time with Noah in your arms, which made Jake pout like a little kid. He just wanted to hold you and have you to himself for a few minutes. 

All of you were having an amazing time, but the good mood only lasted so long. 

His father arrived, making himself known by slamming the door so loud you were sure even the neighbours heard it. 

You squeezed Jake's hand, hearing his shallow breathing in your ear. 

His father walked into the living room, eyes searching the room, until he found Jake. "Son." He motioned for Jake to follow him and you reluctantly let him go. You watched as he walked out of the room with a worried expression and the way everyone else was acting didn't really help you calm down. 

Jake closed the door to his father's study, not bothering to sit down. He knew his father wouldn't have anything nice to say to him.

"She's a pretty one. Mouthy but pretty." Jake's first clenched, as he gritted his teeth. 

"Is that why you called me here?" He didn't want to ruin Christmas for his family, but if his father insulted you once, he couldn't be held accountable for whatever he'd do next. 

"How long do you think this one's going to last? How long before she decides you're not worth it?" It felt like Jake's been stabbed in the heart, as his father brought up his greatest fears without any regards to how it would make him feel. 

"She's not like that."

William shook his head. "You have so much potential. She's only going to slow you down. Kids, marriage, love. That won't make you happy."

Jake chuckled humourlessly, licking his dry lips. "Stop acting like you care about my happiness. You don't even know me."

"I know enough. You're my son. We're not good with emotions." Jake clenched his eyes shut, trying not to think about his father's words and how true they were. "She's going to leave and it's going to hurt. Better end it now before you can get too attached." 

He didn't say anything, just stood there leaning against the door with his head hung low. 

"Do you really think, that once she gets to know who you are inside, she's going to stay?" 

Jake looked up, shaking his head. "You don't know Y/N. She's going to stay."

His father hummed, raising an eyebrow. "Is she?" He didn't even try to hide the disappointment he felt for his son. "She's going to find someone better. There's always someone better."

"You're just bitter because there's no one left in this world that cares about you. But I won't let you ruin this for me." Jake stormed out, angry. You stood up, reaching for his arm as he rushed out the back door, but he shook you off. 

"He's going to the tree house." Kim said, giving you your coat. The words you wanted to say died in your throat, as you swallowed. I'm not sure he wants me to follow him.

As if Kim saw your inner struggle, she smiled. "Trust me, he needs you."

You put on your coat and boots, before following him. Behind their garden, there was a small forest filled with trees. You followed the path, noticing a big tree house in the distance. 

Once you finally got there, you climbed up the ladder, finding Jake sitting on the old, worn-out carpet. 

You sat down next to him, putting your hand on his shoulder. “Jake?”

He smiled, leaning into your touch without looking at you. “When I was younger, I always sneaked out past my bedtime to come out here.” He could still remember the stinging sensation his father's palm left behind after he came hoke covered in mud and rain one time. He climbed down the stairs quietly, in his pyjamas and slippers, before running out of the house, only a small flashlight to in his hand. He wasn't scared of the dark or the animals that were lurking there. He knew who the real monster was. “It was always so peaceful and calm. I didn’t have to listen to my parents fight, or my sisters cry in the other room.” His voice broke a little, as a tear fell from his eye. “This was my safe place.” He smiled, before it turned into a grimace as the tears kept coming. He finally turned to look at you apologetically. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m so sorry for all of this.”

You shook your head furiously. “Hey, none of that.” You reached out, brushing his tears away. “I want you to know that whatever he said was a fucking lie, okay?”

He looked anywhere but at you, trying to pull his face away, but you didn't let him. “No, Jake, look at me.” you begged quietly. “Please, look at me.”

It was hearing your voice break that made him finally look at you. You smiled, caressing his face. “You’re amazing. You’re so brave and courageous and kind when you want to be.” Both of you laughed at the last part, knowing it was true. “I don’t regret coming here, because the thought of you having to go through this alone scares me more than whatever your father can do or say. You achieved so much and everyone else is so proud of you. Don’t let him ruin you.”

You pulled him into a hug, wrapping your arms around him as tightly as you could. “He’s not going to scare me away from you.” you added, hearing the pained whimper escape from his throat as he buried his face into your neck. “I’m so glad I met you.” he whispered against your skin softly, as you smiled, thinking back to the first time you met. 

When you got back, after everyone made sure Jake was okay, he pulled you away from them. "I'm going for a run to clear my head. Will you be okay here?"

You nodded. "Yeah, go. Just be careful, the roads are slippery. It was freezing all night." He always got butterflies when you acted so protective and caring. It was just one of the reasons he fell in love with you. He wanted to pull you in and kiss you breathless, right under that fucking mistletoe you were standing under, obliviously. Instead he nodded, giving you a tense smile. "I will be."

While your boyfriend went for a run, you decided to help his sisters bake some cookies. Somehow it evolved into you sharing embarrassing stories about each other, but mostly about Jake. 

When Jake got back, he found you all laughing in the kitchen, an album with his baby photos open in front of you. He groaned, ready to tell everyone off for breaking their promise, but then you looked at him, your eyes twinkling and your smile so big it was hurting your cheeks. You walked up to him, kissing his cheek. "Did you have a good run?"

He nodded dumbly. "Yeah."

You grinned. "Good. Go shower real quick and get ready. We're going to the Christmas market." He shook his head with a smile, but did as he was told.

You decided to facetime with Nat and Bradley while Jake showered. You didn’t really have time to keep them updated, which was probably for the better given the last 12 messages you had that were all asking if you have already banged.

But right now you needed to get some things off your chest.

“So, how are things?” Nat asked.

“Tense.”

“Between you and Jake, or his family?” You wanted to tell them about the previous night, the way Jake looked at you and how he acted, but ultimately decided against it. 

“Between me and his dad, between him and his dad.” You sighed, running a hand through your hair frustratedly.

“But the rest of the family loves me.” 

Bradley scoffed. “Of course they do, who wouldn’t.” But that wasn't why they've been dying to talk to you. He bet Natasha another 20$ that you would be the one to make the first move, while Nat's convinced it's going to be Jake. Both of you are stubborn as hell, so it can be either, really. “What about you and Jake? Come on. Don’t leave us hanging. That’s your boyfriend’s job.”

You ignored the fact that he called him your boyfriend, because in the last two days you got so used to calling Jake that, you barely even noticed it anymore. Before you could decide where to start,  the words were spilling out of your mouth. “He told me we would have cute kids.”

Nat punched Bradley in the shoulder, telling him she was closer to getting her 40$ than before. “Jake wants kids? Jake wants kids with you?”

“I’m sure he was joking.”

“Come on, stop doing that." 

Just as you were about to answer, the door to the bathroom opened, Jake walking out in just a towel wrapped really low around his hips. You couldn't pull your eyes away from his Adonis' belt, as you imagined just trailing that V shape with your finger. Or mouth. You moved your eyes up, over his very nicely shaped body, over his six-pack and his pecs and that definitely wasn't the outline of his cock under the white towel, right?! 

“You okay?” Nat asked, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah, just uh-” Everything was fine. Your brain just stopped working, because it got overheated. 

Bradley knew who you were looking at like that. You were going to kill him for this but it would be worth it. "Is that drool?" he yelled out, making you screech as Jake laughed in the background. 

"Fuck off!" you said through gritted teeth, before ending the call. You were mortified, unable to look Jake in the eyes. Instead, you were already drafting the message you were going to send to your best friend for being a dickhead. You squeezed your eyes shut, hoping you would just die on the spot, so Jake wouldn't get to tease you about this. 

You opened your eyes, rather reluctantly, when you felt his hand on your chin, as you met his green eyes. Your eyes strayed, again, but it's not like he could blame you for that. The towel was like, really, really low. Like, you were scared it would fall off low. 

“See something you like, sweets?” Jake teased, his face so close to you you could feel his hot breath on your face. You gulped, nodding. “You know I do.”

Jake's smile widened, his face leaning closer-

"We're leaving in five minutes!" Kim shouted, before you heard her footsteps disappear as she ran down the stairs. 

Jake swallowed, nodding his head with a small smile, before he picked out some clothes and went back to the bathroom to get dressed. 

You just kept sitting on the bed, wondering what would have happened if Kim didn't interrupt you. Was he really about to kiss you?

You couldn't get that thought out of your head even as Jake pulled you through the crowd of people an hour later. His hand was holding yours in a tight grip, as you walked next to him. You got separated from his family halfway through, almost as if Jake did it on purpose. Which he did. He wanted to spend some time with you alone, without anyone else. 

“Jake?” You were both admiring the lights, when you heard a feminine voice somewhere from behind you, making both of your head's turn. You found a pretty blonde looking at your boyfriend, an unfamiliar feeling in your chest. You should've expected to run into a few of his exes or one-night stands. Why was it even bothering you?

“Stacy?” Jake asked, almost like he didn't believe the luck he had to meet her here. You had to ignore the urge to roll your eyes, as Stacy ignored your presence. Maybe she was too busy ogling Jake and didn't even notice you were there. Who could blame her. 

“Hi. Oh my god, it’s been so long since the last time I saw you. How have you been?” 

You could feel the jealousy running through your veins like lava, setting everything on fire, when you heard him chuckle. “Great, great actually. I just came home for the holidays with my girlfriend.” 

It was over as soon as he looked at you with that heart-stopping, panty-dropping smile, as he wrapped an arm around your waist to pull you into his side. You guessed that Stacy and him didn't end on good terms, otherwise why would he keep up the charade when his family wasn't near? 

You saw her smile drop when she saw you, turning into a bitter grimace, which made you smile. “Oh, that’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’m so happy she finally got to meet my mom and my sisters.”

“Have you been dating long?” She wasn't giving up. Damn. How desperate can one person be to try and get with someone's boyfriend in front of them? You eyed her, hoping she caught the judgy stare you gave her. 

“Few months. Definitely not long enough for me to say that I’m looking forward to spending forever with her, but…” Jake spending forever with you? That almost got a laugh out of you. You needed to admit though, he was a good actor. 

“I’m so happy for you.” she said in a high-pitched voice, something you both knew was overly-affectionate and fake. Her face screamed something entirely different. “I have to go now. But hopefully we will see each other again soon.” Hopefully not. She kept her eyes on Jake the entire time, as if waiting for a response. But she didn't get any. It did make you feel a little smug. You leaned into Jake's side, smiling into his coat. 

When she realized Jake wasn't going to say anything, she looked at you. “It was nice meeting you…” she trailed off, realizing she didn't know your name. “Y/N." you introduced yourself with a grin. "Likewise.” Not.

She said her goodbye, before leaving.

You looked up at Jake. “Ex?”

“Something like that.”

You nodded, looking away from him, a bitter feeling taking over as you thought about her. You were envious of whatever they had together. 

“You okay?” Jake asked, pulling you out of your thoughts. 

“Mhm.” Oh yeah, just peachy. 

He was looking at you with an unreadable expression, a smile on his face. He reached for your hand, intertwining your fingers with his. “Let’s go, we still have to buy the best gingerbread cookies you’ll ever eat.”

“The best? You’re setting the bar a bit too high, don’t you think?” you teased.

“Trust me on this. You’re going to love it.”

And he was right. They were the best gingerbread cookies you ever had. He also bought you hot chocolate with little marshmallows in it. 

You moaned as you took a sip of the drink, savouring the sweet, chocolatey taste, while it warmed you from the inside. "This is the best hot chocolate I've ever had." 

“Can I get a taste?” Jake asked innocently. 

You stopped walking, handing him the drink. “Here.” 

Instead of taking it, he pulled you closer with an arm on your waist, not giving you any time to panic before his lips were on yours. He sucked on your bottom lip, before you felt the tip of his tongue asking for access to your mouth. You almost dropped the cup when his tongue met yours, the moan he let out starting a Niagara Falls in your panties. 

He pulled away not long after, giving you one last dizzying kiss. “You’re right.” he said breathless, staring into your wide eyes. “Taste’s amazing."

Were you just supposed to go about your day as usual after that? Because it was definitely affecting you more than it was affecting Jake.

So the first thing you did once you were back at their house was locking yourself in the bathroom to call Natasha. To no one's surprise, Bradley was there with her.

"He kissed me!" you said as soon as she picked up, not giving her the chance to even say hello.

"What?" she exclaimed. "Tell me everything."

What was there to tell, really? That was pretty much the whole story. "He just...kissed me. And now he's acting like nothing happened. It was probably part of Jake Seresin's fake-girlfriend premium package." you groaned frustrated.

Bradley, the voice of reason, spoke up. "Just talk to him about it." And if you were braver, you would have agreed because you knew it was the easiest way to find out if Jake felt the same way. But you weren't so talking to him wasn't an option.

"I don't want to ruin our friendship over a meaningless kiss."

Bradley sighed, fed up with you two dancing around each other, but understood. "Jake's head over heels for you. I'm sure he's going to bring it up later."

"I hope so." you said with a sigh, as you listened to Nat and Bradley while they told you everything that happened in the last few days that you missed.

But neither of you actually brought up the kiss. Jake acted as if nothing happened and you were doubting yourself too much to ask him what was that about. You were scared he would dismiss it, find out that it didn't mean to him nearly as much as it meant to you. 

But the tension could have been cut with a knife. It was unbearable. And everyone noticed.

"Are you two okay?" Jess asked, once she caught you alone. 

Were you okay? You weren't sure anymore. "Uh, yeah. Why?"

"Both you and Jake have been acting a little weird ever since we got back." You felt like you were backed into a corner.

"No, it's-" It wasn't okay. You sighed. "It's going to be okay. This has just been a bit much for the both of us." you smiled, trying to make yourself believe your own words. 

She bought it though, nodding with a small smile. "Yeah, I get that." Before she left the room, she looked at you one last time. "Don't let him push you away." 

"I won't." you promised. 

But it was hard when Jake refused to meet your eyes. When he left the room as soon as you stepped inside. How he spent way longer in the bathroom than you knew was necessary, just so he didn't have to talk to you. 

"Jake." you called out his name as soon as he walked back into the room, but before you could say anything, the words you dreaded were coming out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry." he sighed, not even looking at you as he pulled back the covers and laid down on the bed. "About that kiss." he clarified, like you didn't know what he was sorry for. Was that all it was? An action he regretted doing? As a final stab, he answered your silent question. "I shouldn't have done that."

So you were right. It really meant more to you than it meant to him. You nodded. "It's fine. We talked about the boundaries, so it's-" You took in a sharp breath, your eyes tearing up. "fine."

You laid on the bed as far away from him as possible, turning your back to him. Jake's heart clenched in his chest. He wanted to reach out and pull you into him, but he couldn't. He tried to ignore the way you trembled as you tried to hold back your sobs. He tried to pretend he didn't hear the soft whimpers leaving your mouth. Tried to make himself believe he didn't want to wipe your tears away and comfort you. 

No weaknesses. No weaknesses. No weaknesses.

Maybe his father was right. Still, he didn't regret a single second of loving you.

He stayed up for a long time, long after you fell asleep, just watching you in silence. And if a few stray tears fell, wetting his shirt, no one needed to know that. 

But what else was he supposed to do after what he overheard? You found the kiss meaningless and didn't want to ruin your friendship over it. He would make sure it wouldn't get ruined.

When Jake woke up the next morning, your side of the bed was already empty. For a second he panicked, running to the closet to look if your stuff was still there. He let out a sigh, when he saw that dumb Christmas sweater he bought you last year, before putting on his sweats and running downstairs. He found you sitting in the kitchen, alone.

You looked up at the sound of his footsteps, startled. "They went shopping for some last minute Christmas stuff." you explained, when you saw his confused look. 

Jake nodded, trying to ignore the palpable awkwardness in the room. 

"I made you breakfast." you said, voice so quiet, like you didn't want to be heard. 

"Thank you." You nodded, standing up to leave. Jake's hand reached out for you, pulling you back. 

Just tell her you're sorry. Tell her the truth. Tell her you love her. 

But Jake was a coward. He didn't say any of those things. 

"Want to help me devour those gingerbread cookies?" A quiet peace offering. It wasn't much, but it was a start. You nodded with a small smile, as he put the plate on the kitchen counter, both of you eating in silence. Until your phone pinged, the screen lighting up to show a new text message. Before you could reach out and take it, Jake was already smirking, having read it. "Natasha wants to know if you brought that lingerie and if you put it to good use?" He looked at you, raising an eyebrow. 

Oh. 

You were going to kill her. 

You jumped, reaching for your phone, but Jake put his hand behind his back. "Give it back." 

"No, no, no. What lingerie and why haven't I seen it yet?" You were back to joking and teasing each other, that was a good sign at least.

"Jake, give me my phone." you groaned, knowing that there was no way you were getting it form him. "She was just teasing me, that's all. I didn't bring any lingerie." 

He hummed, eyes trailing over your body. "What a shame." His voice was low, sending chills all over your body.

You and Jake were now chest to chest, as you tried to reach for your phone, your hand landing on his lower back. “Hey, don’t get handsy now.” he scolded you jokingly, making you roll your eyes. “I’m pretty sure it was you that said no inappropriate touching.”

“Shut up.” you grumbled, taking a step back. 

“In the kitchen, none the less.” He shook his head. “And to think I thought you were oh so innocent.”

You scoffed. “Just because I don’t do one night stands doesn’t mean I'm innocent.”

Jake smirked, straightening out. “Prove it.” he challenged, knowing you wouldn’t back down.

You were taken aback for a second, your heart pounding in your chest, before you nodded. “Fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jake wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you flush to him. You gulped, hands shaking slightly as you put them on the side of his neck, before leaning up. You had to stand on your tiptoes, about to grumble about how Jake wasn't making this easier for you, when he leant down, connecting your lips. It wasn't soft, like the one in the Christmas market. It wasn't slow. No. This was passionate and hungry, rough, teeth clashing and tongues caressing each other. Jake kissed you exactly the way you dreamed about being kissed by him. 

You inhaled his scent, your lungs filling up with his cologne, as your hands tangled in his hair, pulling on the strands. This earned a groan from him, his fingers digging into your hips so hard they were about to leave bruises. His hands explored your body, trailing up and down your back, before settling on your ass, squeezing the soft flesh. 

You whimpered into his mouth, hands trailing down his pecs, playing with the chain of his dog tags. Jake pulled away suddenly, looking into your eyes intensely.

"What I said yesterday..." Oh. Here it comes again. You shut your eyes, trying to block everything out as you prepared for the blow from his next words. But it never came.

Jake held your face so gently in his palms, knowing that this might be the last time he has the chance to have you this close. "It's not that I didn't want to kiss you, I did. So badly." He took in a shallow breath, swallowing the lump in his throat. "But I heard what you said and I don't want to ruin our friendship either. If you don't want me, I will deal with that, but I can't lose you."

Your eyes opened, widening as you thought back to the conversation you had with Natasha and Rooster. Of course the idiot only listened to the worst part and misunderstood it.

You shook your head, clutching at his shirt, scared he was going to walk away from you and disappear any second. "You won't lose me. I thought the kiss was meaningless for you." You put your hands on the side of his neck, pulling him down so you were on eye-level with each other. "I wanted that kiss. And I want you to kiss me again."

And Jake did so without a second thought.

You were so occupied you didn't hear the front door opening, nor his family walk in. 

“Oh, are we interrupting?” Jess asked, as you pulled away from each other, embarrassed at being caught making out as teenagers. 

You could feel your body flush with warmth, scrambling to say something. You just kept opening and closing your mouth, stuttering, before getting out something that finally resembled a sentence. “No, I'm sorry.”

Were you sorry? Because if they haven't interrupted, you're pretty sure you would have ended up pressed up against the kitchen counter and you wouldn't be exactly opposed to that. Still, you were sorry for being caught, sorry that they had to see you like that. 

You looked at Jake, trying to see if he looked at least half as embarrassed as you, but you found him looking down at you, with a look in his eyes you couldn't really describe. It was soft and loving, and for a second you thought that maybe you should've listened to Natasha sooner. 

His mom waved her hand dismissively. She was young and in love once upon a time too. “Don’t apologize, darlin.”

Jess nodded, amused. “Yeah, I mean Noah was conceived on the couch here so.”

That got Jake's attention, making him look at her horrified. “Ew, what?”

“Hey, don’t act like you weren’t groping her ass when we walked in.” 

You hid your face in his shoulder. “Oh my god.”

Kim shook her head with a smile. “Still wanna help with dinner, or would you rather make out with my brother?” 

You pulled away from Jake, avoiding his eyes. “I will help with dinner.”

Jake on the other hand couldn't keep his eyes off of you. If Javy was there, he would tease him for that look he had on his face. He was smitten, whipped and he couldn't even try to deny it anymore. 

You felt him stare at you, as you looked up to find him smiling at you. You tried to hide your own smile, but it was hard when he didn't even try to make his staring subtle. 

Jake couldn't take the tension anymore. The way you were looking at him from across the room while biting your lip was driving him insane. 

You were only half listening to what Kim was saying to you, especially when you felt Jake's presence next to you. 

You caught his eye, raising an eyebrow. He caught your wrist, pulling you out of the kitchen and up the stairs. "Jake. Your family-" 

"Trust me, this is better than them having to watch us eye-fuck each other across the room." he said, closing the door behind him.

He pushed you against the closed door, eyes gazing into yours with a hunger you never saw in them before. He was breathing heavily, chest rising and falling rapidly, as his hands gripped your clothes. He wanted to tear them off you, but not before he could make sure that you knew what you were getting into. Because he was in it for the long run, and he hoped to God that you were too. So he licked his lips, putting his hand on your face to lean your head up. "Do you want this?"

The tip of his thumb was caressing your bottom lip, making your lips part. You nodded your head, not trusting your voice. But Jake shook his head, not moving an inch from that position. "I need to hear you say it." His tone was desperate, pleading. "I need to know that you want me." He leaned his forehead on yours, not breaking eye contact.

In that moment you saw the person Jake was trying so hard to hide. The scared, insecure man, that wanted to be loved so badly, but was terrified he wasn't good enough to be loved. You saw him now; all of him. The good and the bad parts equally and you loved all of them.

"I want you, Jake." Your voice was just as breathy, just as desperate. And all it took was one kiss and the promise of something more to come. 

Jake let out a disbelieving huff at hearing your words. "I want you too, baby." The second his parted lips touched yours, you were opening your mouth for him. Jake walked you blindly over to his bed, your hands pushing on his shoulders until he sat down on the edge. You pulled away from him to take off your shirt, as Jake looked at you in awe. You climbed on his lap, connecting your lips again, as he trailed his hand down your body, touching you everywhere he could. 

As good as your ass looked in the leggings you had on, he wanted them gone to get more access to the one place he desperately wanted to touch right now. Jake turned, pressing your back against the mattress, his fingers gripping the band of your leggings and pulling them off. He threw them somewhere carelessly, not pulling away from your lips for a second. 

He felt like he needed your lips on his to keep living. He needed you to breathe, like you were his oxygen. 

And in a way, maybe you were. 

You let out a breathy moan when you felt his hand sneak into your panties, as he found your clit with ease. "Jake."

He loved the way you sounded saying his name, while he pleasured you. He buried his face in your neck, revelling in the small sounds you were making as he played with you. 

"Need your fingers." you whimpered, tangling your fingers in his hair. Jake let out a shaky breath, nodding. His minds still hasn't fully caught up with what was happening. Like it was just one of his dirty, wet dreams that would end with him waking up painfully hard.

But your hands on his body reassured him this was all happening. It felt too real, too good to be a dream. There was no way his unconscious mind could come up with this.

He helped you take off your bra, before pulling your panties down your legs. You climbed up the bed to lay on the pillows, Jake going after you with a predatory look in his eyes that made you shiver. 

Once he was face to face with you, as he caged you under him with his arms on either side of your head, he started kissing your neck, biting, before soothing the soft skin with his tongue. 

Your hands were gripping his dog tags and the shirt he still had on. As you started pulling it up, he broke away to pull it over his head, before getting back to work. He kissed down your chest, licking and sucking on your hardened nipples, his big hands palming your breasts. 

You never really felt anything when guys did that, but you were convinced you could've cum just from watching Jake's tongue tease your nipple. It felt overwhelming. 

He kissed down your sternum and stomach, until he was face to face with the part of your body you really wanted him to lick. You whimpered as his hot breath hit your wet pussy, while he put one of your legs over his shoulder to get better access. You were writhing on the bed, silently begging him to do something. 

Jake was too mesmerized to notice just how much you needed him. His fingers slowly spread your wetness, as he pushed a finger inside you. He watched as his finger disappeared until only his knuckles were visible, before pulling it out. It was slow, he wanted to explore your body, before giving you what you wanted so badly. His pace was steady. In and out. In and out. Then he curled his finger up, hitting your sweet spot. You thought you were going to lose your mind, a conviction which only got stronger once you felt his tongue on your clit.

"Jake." you moaned his name, sounding so sweet for him. He added a second finger, picking up his pace. He was watching your face contort in pleasure, your hands gripping the sheets as you tried to silence your moans. 

"You're taking my fingers so well, pretty girl. Let's see if you can take three." He looked in awe as your pussy swallowed his fingers up, the other hand coming to hold your hips down so you wouldn't move around that much. "Looks so pretty. You're gonna look so good full of me."

You could feel your wetness gush out of you every time he pulled his fingers out, before thrusting them back again.

He pulled out his fingers, replacing them with his tongue. His hands were on your thighs, nails digging into your skin as he lapped up your sweet juices. 

"Jake. Please." you begged, needing more. When he didn't as much as look at you, you thought about the reaction you got for him to another word, and decided to play dirty. "Daddy." you moaned.

Jake groaned against you, eyes catching yours, before he pulled away. "That's so hot." He wiped his chin with his hand, gaze darkening. "Say that again."

"Please, daddy." you begged, breathing heavily. "Fuck me."

Jake smirked darkly, unbuttoning his jeans. You sat up, pulling down the zipper, before he finally took them off. You could see the prominent bulge in his black briefs, your hand reaching out to palm him through the thin material. He threw his head back in pleasure as you dipped your hand into his boxers, swirling your thumb on the head of his cock.

"Sweets." he warned in a low voice, knowing you were teasing him on purpose. You bit your bottom lip, grinning, as you pulled down the final piece of clothing, revealing the leaking tip. He saw the way you licked your lips, groaning, before he pushed you to lay down on the bed. "Want that mouth next time. But I need to be inside you now."

"Want to practice now, sweetheart?" he asked, voice raspy, bringing up the conversation you had a few days ago. You moaned, nodding your head furiously. 

Jake let out a whimper as he swiped the head of his cock through your folds, getting his cock nice and wet. "Yeah? Want me to put a baby in you?"

You whimpered, tears threatening to spill from your eyes because of how badly you wanted this man. "Yes, please."

"Beg for me, sweetheart. Beg for my cock."

"Please, please fuck me, Jake. I need your cock."

He finally pushed the head in, putting his hands on either side of your head to hold himself up, as his lips found yours again. You whimpered from the slight pain, as Jake slowly pushed his whole length in, bottoming out. He gave you a few minutes to adjust to his size, before he started moving.

He couldn't believe he was finally inside you. You were naked, moaning and writhing underneath him. 

He set up a steady pace, thrusting his hips so roughly, your moans were now a constant noise in the room. That, and the wet, squelching noises your pussy made, along with the slapping sounds of skin on skin. 

You wrapped your hands around his neck, bringing his mouth to yours in a heated kiss. His dog tags were cooling your warm skin, and the sight of the metal with his name engraved on it laying between your tits as they bounced with every move, brought out something possessive from somewhere very deep inside him. He growled, a deep, low sound, that made your walls clench around him.

"I love you." His mouth was moving, the words coming out without him having any say in it. That didn't mean he meant them any less. Your breath got caught in your throat, your eyes watering at his confession. He buried his face in your neck, moaning when you clenched around him again. "I love you so much, baby. You're so perfect for me."

Your heart was threatening to burst out of your chest from the happiness you felt, your hand going to the back of his neck to make him look at you. You could see the slight insecurity in his eyes, as if he was scared you would tell him you didn't feel the same. Like that was even a possibility. "I love you, Jake." 

He whined, kissing you, pouring all of his emotions into it.

"You're close, baby, aren't you?" he asked, feeling your walls flutter around him. You nodded your head with a hum. His hand trailed down your body, his fingers playing with your clit. 

"Come for me, sweetheart." he whispered into your ear, grunting when you dug your nails into his shoulders. "Cum so that I can fill you up."

"Jake." Your walls squeezed around Jake, as your orgasm hit you like a freight train. You've never cum so hard before, your vision going black as you let out a loud moan.

Jake groaned into your neck, thrusts becoming erratic and unsteady. "Fuck, baby."

"Cum inside me. Please." you whined. Jake thrusted into you a few more times, before you felt his hot cum fill you up, his hips stilling. 

Once you both came down from your highs, he pulled out of you, making you whine at the emptiness you felt. He laid down next to you, pulling you into his chest. 

"That was..." Jake started, not finding the right words to describe just how good it was. 

But you understood. You nodded your head, letting out a small laugh. "Yeah."

Jake never thought that the holidays would end with him dating the girl of his dreams, but life always throws a few surprises your way. A real Christmas miracle.

To make everything even better, his mom decided to ask for divorce. The relationship was dead anyway, and if that meant the holidays would be peaceful from now on, it was worth it. 

“I like her.” Pamela told her son, as you were both saying goodbye to his family, ready to go back home.

Jake smiled, looking at you affectionately. “Yeah, me too.”

"Don't let her go."

He chuckled, as you walked back towards him, leaning into his side. "There's nothing that could make me do that. She's stuck with me." he joked, kissing you.

“Come here." His mom teared up, bringing you into a hug. "Thank you for making my son happy.” she said sincerely.

“Thank you for raising such an amazing son.” 

You were meeting at Bradley's place to celebrate Christmas together and exchange some gifts with the rest of the squad. Neither of you talked to your friends about what happened yet and you knew Nat and Rooster were both waiting to ambush you as soon as you stepped through the door. Just like Javy, who's been pestering Jake ever since you two got back. Every head turned to the front door, as you and Jake walked in, laughing. 

Jake stepped under the doorway, pulling you into him with a grin. You raised an eyebrow questioningly, as he looked up innocently. You followed his line of sight, noticing the green plant, tied with a red ribbon. "Oh look. A mistletoe." 

You smiled, rolling your eyes at his antics. Still, you leaned closer. "I guess, it's tradition." Jake grinned wider, pulling you in for a slow kiss. Your friends whistled, not one bit shocked that this was happening. Once you pulled away, he smiled at you lovingly, before intertwining your fingers with his. 

Rooster and Natasha ran towards you first, looking between the two of you.

"You owe Natasha 40 dollars." you told Rooster with a grin, earning a laugh from Nat as she pocketed the money. 

Javy patted his best friend on the back, before giving you a hug. "I'm glad you two finally got your shit together, because this was becoming a little tiring." 

Both you and Jake laughed bashfully, as he pulled you into his side, arms wrapping around your waist. He kissed your temple, finding your eyes. “This Christmas might’ve been a disaster, but I’m glad I could go through this with you.”

“I’m glad I could be there.” You smiled, squeezing his hip. “I forgot what it’s like to be a part of a family.”

Jake smiled softly. “You will always have a family while I’m alive. I mean, my mom already calls you her daughter-in-law.” 

You grinned. “Can’t disappoint Pam, now can we?”

“Definitely not.” he agreed, pecking your lips.

Taglist: @shawnsblue @imahoeforchrisevans @eddiemunsonownsme

---

so incredible

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.

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."

---

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Chapter Two- The Shadow Chapter One

Pairing: God! Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x Female Reader

Prompt: A prophecy written long ago stated of a human that would become the God’s wife and live in his domain for the rest of eternity.

A/n: Thank you for all the love on the previous chapter! And a special thanks to @soapyghost for giving me some ideas for Ghost’s appearance!

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The Boogeyman

summary - Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw was ruthless, a stone cold killer both in and outside of the ring — with the belts and trophies to prove it. When a miscalculation results in a target being put on the back of his trainer’s daughter, Bradley finds himself facing responsibility he never signed up for. You’re a whole new challenge. And Bradley doesn’t think you’re one he can fight his way out of.

warnings - DARK THEMES, boxer au, language, threats from Adler, Bradley is 6′6″ because I said so, brief mentions of blood, stalking, smoking, descriptions of scars, mentions of nightmares, no use of y/n

this series is 18+, minors please do not interact

word count - 4.4k

okay I know I said this was coming on Saturday but I lied lol. I think I found a posting schedule that will be good. let’s see if I can stick to it! - bugs

monsters in the dark masterlist

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2023 F1 Season Prep I Winter Training (x)

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