Prompt - everyone knows Charles is nice, friendly, bubbly, but if there’s one thing that can get him angry (and we’re taking zero to 80, flip the switch angry) is someone badmouthing or shittalking Pierre.
aaaaaa this was tough!!!! i hope this is close to what you were going for tho <33333 thank you for sending!!!!!
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The presser for this weekend's race is uneventful like always. Charles never enjoys doing media, no matter how much his PR training might make it seem otherwise: the journalists that always gather at the pen to ask him one thing or another are all the same, all looking for a quote to jump down his throat on. There are no allies here besides the men he drives alongside.
Of course, he's become good at this, is the thing. Ferrari has schooled him in this, made it fundamental for his performance both in the car and outside of it. We do not make headlines for bad reasons, Charles, practically chanted in his ear from the moment he’d stepped foot in Maranello for the first time as a Ferrari driver. He'd only fought on-track a little with Seb in their time together, just a race or maybe two, and had gotten an absolute earful from just about every talking head upstairs for weeks on end afterwards. He'd learned from there: Carlos is his friend, and even if he makes some pretty bad decisions on track, Charles isn't going to comment or try and fight him on it. He's gone through the gauntlet. He knows better.
So here he is, sweating under the sun in his Ferrari jacket in front of the too-big microphone, chatting with the media members before him
"Any comments on the struggle between you and Gasly last weekend?" Will Buxton's face is passive as he says it, but Charles can tell there's something underneath the words.
"Um, not particularly?" Charles replies, rubbing at the back of his neck. "We were at the same corner pressing for the same position, he just backed off to give me space. It was the right move because it kept us both safe." They’d joked about it afterwards, Pierre spending the evening dramatically opening doors for Charles to let him through first only to pretend to shut it on him as he got close, but really—nothing had happened. Nothing had come of it. It was a racing move.
Charles doesn’t get why Will is even asking him this.
"Agreed," Will says. And that's it. That should be it. But the thing is: it's not. "We've seen Gasly's struggles on track all season so far, he's been very inconsistent with what he's been given."
What does this have to do with Charles? "Sure, but—"
“So you agree that he’s struggling noticeably?”
There’s the pounce he’d been waiting for. “I did not say that, no—” Charles shakes his head, frustration starting to bubble a little in his gut. “No, I think Pierre has been dealt a tough hand, but he is working admirably.” Why are they even talking about Pierre in the first place?
Will just blinks at him. “Admirable is definitely a strong word,” he offers, and the look that crosses his face is so snide and condescending that Charles, suddenly, is filled with rage. Disgust. That anyone would talk about Pierre like this is utterly insane, let alone one of the most prominent journalists in the sport. Buxton is still talking, Charles can see his mouth moving with that same judgmental expression on his face, but he’s been entirely tuned out.
“What the fuck.” It spills out of him before he can even stop it, instincts taking over. Will stops talking at that. “What the—what kind of journalism is this, Will?” They’re still on the media circuit, there are still people around, and Charles is really trying to keep his voice from carrying. “Do you talk about other drivers like this? Grill people about their friends for a good story?” He’s being careful, he is being so careful, because if he slips up and calls Pierre his boyfriend then this is going to be an entirely unforgettable media scrum for a whole different reason. “It is incredibly unprofessional, mate. I just—” Charles raises a hand, pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Sorry, I am done. I am done today.”
And he storms off, a trail of debris that looks and sounds like Will Buxton and his media crew left in his wake.
He’s going to have to answer for this, eventually—it’s been a rough few weeks, for sure, and Charles imagines that his team will chalk it up to the stress of struggling to remain in competition for the championship title. But if he’s asked directly? Well.
“Charlito!” Pierre’s voice sing-songs, almost entirely out of nowhere as if Charles had manifested him to appear on the spot. (Which, he kind of always is, but that’s beside the point.) One arm hooks around his shoulder, the other reaches over to tap a little at the brim of his hat. Pierre’s grin is so big and sparkly that it aches in Charles’ chest.
“Pierrot,” he murmurs in response, trying to quell the rage that had literally just been burning in him moments before. “Hi.”
Of course, because it’s Pierre, he can sense something is off immediately. “Hey, what’s on your mind.” He shakes Charles a little, gentle but insistent. “You feel different, cher.”
“Do I?” He tries a grin on but it feels too forced. It’s useless, trying to hide anything from Pierre. With a sigh, he bumps into his best friend’s side, grumbling a little under his breath. “Ugh, I know. I’m sorry, it was just a shitty media session.”
Pierre hums softly, squeezing Charles’ shoulder once more before finally releasing him, their shoulder hug lasting far too long for the public eye as it is. “You too?” Charles just nods once, tapping idly at the water bottle in his hands. “Come to my room, we can talk about it somewhere I can actually get my hands on you.” He winks his usual silly little Pierre wink, mouth quirked in a smile, and Charles exhales softly, some of the tension finally beginning to leave his body from where it’s been tangling up for the past few minutes.
“Okay,” he murmurs, unable to bite back a bigger smile as Pierre bumps into him again.
The walk back to Pierre’s room in the AlphaTauri base is quiet, mostly. Pierre murmurs about how the weather is beautiful and there are things he’d much rather be doing in the sun sweating in fireproofs around a hot track, which had earned Charles another hip-to-hip check. He wants to indulge Pierre, he does—there is nothing he’d like more than to spend a few of their fleetingly spare minutes pressed into his boyfriend, Pierre’s mouth wet and heavy all up his neck, but.
“Charles.” Pierre’s voice brings him back, and oh they’re already inside, aren’t they. “You spaced out again.” He reaches over, grabs one of Charles’ hands in his own and threads their fingers together. “Where did you go?”
Charles shakes his head once, quick. “Nowhere, Pierrot, nowhere, I am—” he squeezes Pierre’s hand. “I am here.”
“Okay, you are here now,” Pierre echoes, but shakes his head now. “But you were not a moment ago. Should I be worried, mon chat?” His smile is gentle but concerned. Charles thinks about the look on Will’s face before, how unbearably condescending his eyes had been as he’d assumed Charles would fall into his trap and say something bad about Pierre. Because—
Because there’s not anything bad about him, not a single thing. “I was just thinking about the briefings we were just in,” he admits, shrinking in a little on himself. “How they got to me today.”
The tenderness of Pierre’s concern hardens almost immediately to steel. “What? Charles, what did they—what did they say? Doesn’t your team control the topics? I feel like there has to be someone we can talk to about this, no?”
“Pierre.” Charles guides their clasped hands to his chest carefully, tucking the back of Pierre’s palm close. “Pierre, they were talking about you.” He feels like a child, admitting it—admitting that this is bothering him, that he let it bother him the way it did, because he is the one in control of the two of them. Their whole lives, Pierre has always fired off and Charles has always kept it closed off. It’s how their dynamic has always been. He just watches, now, as Pierre’s face shifts from steely defensiveness back into what Charles is more used to behind closed doors.
“They tried that with you too, huh.” Pierre scoots closer so that they’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh as Charles all but clutches at Pierre’s hand. “All sports journalists are the same, I think.”
Charles huffs a humorless laugh. “Assholes?”
Pierre laughs, too, although he’s clearly amused at Charles’ choice of words. “Assholes, yes,” he repeats, grin curling up on his face. “As if I would badmouth you to them.” Pierre shakes his head, tsks. “I talk my shit to your face, Charlito, I can promise you that.”
Charles giggles, releasing Pierre’s hand from his own so he can properly thwack him in the leg. Pierre yelps softly, laughing along with Charles until they’re both completely sprawled on their respective chairs. Here Pierre is, working his magic again to keep the poison of anger from really reaching Charles’ heart and ruining him, and Buxton has the nerve to—to even—
“It is a shame, though,” Pierre mumbles, reaching to caress Charles’ cheek a little. “I did tell Will that he was the best looking of the journalists today. Had I known about this, I would’ve told him to fuck himself.”
Charles feels his face heat up. “I may have already done that.”
Pierre gawks at him, mouth open in the funniest looking gaping expression he possibly could’ve come up with. “Are you—what did you do with my Charles, where did he go?” He exaggeratedly rests a hand on Charles’ forehead, pretending to feel for a fever, and Charles finds himself laughing harder than he’d expected at it all. “My media darling would never, I cannot imagine.”
“What can I say,” he answers with a little shrug, reaching for Pierre’s hand again. “I will not let anyone talk bad about you, mon petit. They have to know that.”
Pierre chuckles softly, once again tucking his fingers between Charles’. He lifts them to his mouth and presses a gentle kiss to each knuckle, gaze unflinching. “This is a good look on you, darling.” A crooked smile. Charles will never get used to it, never ever—his stomach flips like it’s the first time all over again. “I love you.”
Charles hums quietly. “I love you too,” he replies immediately. Then, after a brief pause: “I think you are rubbing off on me, Pierrot. There is no other explanation, I don’t think.”
Pierre snorts. “You would know if I was rubbing off on you,” he replies, wagging his eyebrows, and Charles yelps at the implication. Pierre laughs, loud and genuine.
“You’re disgusting.”
“You just said you love me.”
Charles pauses again, then grins, leaning in to Pierre’s bubble for a moment to press a harmless little kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Both can be true, you know.”
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