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#LONG TIME NO SEE PHOTOSHOP
charmac · 7 months
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expelliarmus · 2 years
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ltbelanna · 11 months
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NCIS: LA SEASON 14, EPISODE 21 “New Beginnings, Part Two”
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flipsonthemoon · 1 year
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me? post? banish the thought
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aesfocus · 4 months
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On one hand I could play through awakening and gif it, lock in my choices, get that lore(architect my love)
On the other hand I am excited to blast through and get to DA2.
What we thinking here? how long to beat thinks its 13 hours long..
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konako · 2 years
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... she lied
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tlatia-the-radiant · 3 months
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- @askthecaptiangeneral
I will club you to death with your own fucking femur
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sumeragi-hokuto · 10 months
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Tokyo Babylon
By CLAMP, volume 5
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yuriyuruandyuraart · 9 months
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ahh no wonder yer art always feel like a fuzzy peach then :]
it's all scripted and edited.......it's all fake UnU </3 except when my computer's too old and slow to open up photoshop which is like. almost always now so i have to rely on my artist brain to draw the fuzz myself hhh xD fuzz DIY<33333
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astrxealis · 1 year
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i really want to make gifs of fuuta's 2nd trial mv while it's still really new. idk if i should post them if ever though... <- has never posted any of my edits of any sort and gifs. even icons
#⋯ ꒰ა starry thoughts ໒꒱ *·˚#⋯ ꒰ა milgram ໒꒱ *·˚#nah i only have like. access to canva for paid. and it's education and not even pro LMAO ty to school for providing canva education <3#yeah but i only really use canva and photopea and take a fucking long time doing anything related to editing#it's fun and a great way to pass time esp bcs i take a long time but for time efficiency... not really <//3#i'll do my homework first and then ya ^___^#i want photoshop but if you get me i don't want to YEAH. not only do i hate yeah i also don't like paying often#like ofc i do for what i need but i. barely spend my money (it helps knowing that idk how much money i even have)#idk maybe it sounds good like 'yo you don't waste money' but also it sucks idk how to handle money at all and stuff#i rmbr being so excited planning for getting ffxiv. laying out the costs and all. LMFAO ya i only really pay for xiv sub and that's it#cash shop i only have a few stuff bcs i've been there for old events and my friend (very generous. big brother guy) gifted us stuff#fuuta's voice is so good. man i keep getting distracted this went from editing to money and then ffxiv and then fuuta#UHM ANYWAYS...... anyways............. yeah i just do really simple edits. just literally changing the color and all#but you see i often like things most when it comes from me. or my friends. or if it is personalized#so i don't like taking random things! idk the process feels best when it comes from me but i also love stuff that have heart in it#and if it's yk. oh. this is for me. ig i'm just used to mostly having to do things for myself bcs i don't get it often from others </3#braindead. it is 1 pm. i will finish my homework (soon!)#i love all milgram characters. i was a bit yk to muu and kotoko but i think i understand kotoko better after studying fuuta more#and i get now ^^ it's a bit hypocritical to vote her innocent and fuuta guilty but at the same time it depends on what you value#and also did people really not expect her to. do that. hello. i saw that coming from a mile away but yeah you can't predict the future#so makes sense too! tbh im a fuuta innocent guy but i do believe guilty first trial is best but also wow the effects of guilty 1st trial#were yeah. but taste of his own medicine (real!) i just hope the others get that too. in time.#specifically muu and kotoko bcs though i love them they still iff me a bit (is that even a word)#tbh my feelings on milgram characters are complicated but i think i'm complicating it too ngl.#obsessed with mikoto though. his voice!!! his va slaying as always#tbh w kotoko it's mostly that i think she's getting ahead of herself. in a way. i think that's how to say it but i'm not sure#with muu. i think i get her but it's more of fuuta for me and i think that's why yeah? but i like muu she was one of the first that#caught my eye from b4 i watched the mvs and all!! i think it might be that she reminds me a tiny bit of myself#but in a way i'd rather not admit or something i don't like about myself that makes me like her less. curious#hi um i wrote a lot more tags but they stopped after 30 oops. i took screenshots tho <3 anyways this is a 20 minutes post BYE
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ms-demeanor · 5 months
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Why reblog machine-generated art?
When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.
When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.
When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.
When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.
You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.
And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.
My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.
People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.
I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?
The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.
I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.
However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.
Also because it's just patently untrue.
But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.
It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.
I liked it.
I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.
Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)
Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?
My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.
What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.
And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).
There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.
I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.
Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.
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empty-movement · 6 months
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Chiho Saito's Illustration Collection artbook is the highest-quality visual media in the Utenaverse. Oversized, single-sided, heavy pages with extremely high quality printing. It is the first artbook I ever scanned.
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In 2001, the average screen resolution was 800x600, and I delivered a 1250px wide collection that for a while, took $60 A MONTH to host, because no normal website was hosting images of this ludicrous size. It took my scanner almost an hour to capture a third of each page. I spent months piecing the scans together in Photoshop. It was one of my first true Utena labors of love, and the result is that for decades, these copies have been the definitive copies of Chiho Saito's artwork on the internet. For a very long time, even kinda now, if you see these images, they're probably my scans.
But decades have passed, and I've never been happy with these results, because they couldn't capture the fine details, the paint spills, the sketch beneath poking out, the brilliant use of gradients of dark color to pop the image but drive me insane. What I am finishing up now is a true, archival copy of the artbook. One that delivers such high resolution, that these can print posters larger than the originals, and thanks to some truly brilliant descreening tech, (Thank you Sattva) I've been able to dig up fine details in the work that the printing obscured, but undeniably included.
It's been over 20 years, and it shows. 1250px? Nah, my archive copies are 15,000px wide. I can't wait to finish this and share it with the world. <3
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leclsrc · 1 year
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it’s never over ✴︎ cl16
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genre: childhood friends to friends with benefits to lovers (a mouthful), smut, humor, Fluffff!!!!, several references to 70’s music, 
word count: 12.9k  
You must have lost the plot along the way, because pretending to date your childhood best friend was not on your 2023 bingo card. (Neither was the fact that things are looking a lot more real as time passes.)
nsfw warnings under the cut!
18+ because... handjob (f receiving), penetrative sex, semi public sex, praise central, size kink
auds here… hi hi hi!!! you’ve no idea how much i missed writing posting and interacting w u guys. thank u for all the love & follows i’ve gotten in my periods of mia. more things soon i promise ty for ur patience love love love u allll 🌟🤎🤠💋 this is my love letter to fic tropes. i feared if it was too long i’d lose the plot somehow so i had to condense it. i truly hope u all like it :) will try & reopen reqs sometime soon to get inspo kicking
It’s later than late. The lights are strobing purple and blue, the “let’s get you even drunker than you are” headache inducing kind. The floor is crowded, swelling with teenagers who are probably too young to get in, drunk off cheap aperol and watered-down tequila shots. You’re balancing yourself on a barstool, one hand busy wrapped around a slim glass, the other clawing your miniskirt lower because the air bites at your legs.
“Another voddy Red Bull!” You’re slurring, mind spinning almost as fast as your vision. You almost drop your empty glass in your rush to look for another one—but right as it slips clumsily out of your fingers, it’s caught. 
Charles, your cocktail’s knight in armor and yours just as well, is eighteen. His hair is  light brown and long, but not draping over his eyes like before. You know before because you’ve never not known before—Charles has been your best friend since you were five.
Snoopy, he says, voice steady and calm in your ear. His frame is still lanky but he’s tall and his grip on your shoulders is enough to quell the yelling. You pout. Get me another voddy red, you plead. Charlie, it’s my birthday. He smiles to himself, knowing your vision’s too cloudy to see him and your mind’s too bogged to remember any of this. You’d already slipped up and told two bouncers you were seventeen and not eighteen, like your poorly-Photoshopped ID suggested; Charles had to keep you in check, lest you or your friends end up kicked out of the club.
A song booms in through the speakers and your eyes widen with recognition. Charles doesn’t anticipate your reaction fast enough, affording only a stumble backwards when you attempt to leave the barstool to dance. He swears under his breath, mind recounting the five previous dance sessions that left you exhausted and out of breath earlier.
I’ll get you a vodka Red Bull if you sit down, he tells you. He enunciates because, twelve years later, you still can’t wrap your mind around his thick European accent. Sit down.
Alriiiight! You hoot, throwing two fists up in the air. Customary for many bartenders on nights as busy as this one, a free shot is thrust into your vacant hand and you cheer loudly, much to Charles’ chagrin. With whatever malice the eighteen-year-old can muster, he casts the bartender a dirty look before turning to face you again, worried. He places a hand on your shoulder and watches, half-anxious and half-endeared, you take the shot and visibly grimace at the raw taste. Fuck. It’s gin I think, you sputter. Charles presses: You okay?
More than, you holler, smiling. I am officially seventeeee— 
The bartender’s eyebrows furrow, the thirty-something businessman in the adjacent stool turns to look—so Charles has no choice but to shut you up, leaning in and pressing his lips to yours before you can seal your fate.
Your eyes widen briefly, and when Charles feels the passed seconds are sufficient, he pulls away. You stare, eyes hazy, at the pretty boy you’ve had feelings for since you turned fourteen, and lean in to kiss him again. 
Pascale is hosting her weekly Sunday brunch at the Leclerc residence, all French windows and wide kitchens and bowls of fruit. As always, your place is at the kitchen island picking at plates to taste test them. Bonjour, Arthur drawls when he walks in. He turns to Pascale. Mum. Then you. Snoopy.
You halt biting into your forkful of arugula and turn toward the younger Leclerc, eyebrows raised. “What’d you just call me?”
“Snoopy,” he says simply. He’s beside Pascale, one arm wrapped around her affectionately. “Or, Snoops, if you like that. Yes?”
“Who told you about that nickname?”
“Lorenzo.”
“Hasn’t been in use since your voice was cracking every sentence.”
“Tête de noeud.” Pascale swats his arm and he yelps, so you resume your arugula with satisfaction.
Charles is late for reasons he did not disclose, but everyone is used to it. The open kitchen door stretches into the front yard, where the table is set up and Lorenzo is setting the places. You know that although you usually expect a few more relatives, today’s just for the family—and you, but you’re basically family.
“How is Paris?” Arthur asks, licking hummus off a spoon opposite you. Your position is reminiscent of how you spent afternoons after school with Charles before, and the memory strikes a chord in you. Strange nostalgia, fondness.
“It’s fine.”
“Oh really?” He laughs in-between nibbles of carrot.
“I got an offer for a higher position,” you relent. Pascale calls you both, and you get up and walk toward the yard to sit down. “If you must know.”
“Oh? Let me know how that goes.” He follows you, carrot slice in hand, chewing. The conversation is cut short by the smooth noise of Charles’ decidedly un-smooth parking outside.
You’re seated at your usual spot—in-between Charles and Lorenzo, across Arthur—when the former finally walks into the yard. He looks tired, moreso than usual, bags under his eyes deep and hair a bit more disheveled.
He sits beside you. “I need to talk to you.” Then, quieter, “Private.”
You hum confusedly, eyes flitting across the three other people at the table to gauge their reactions. They’re equally aloof. “Wh—now?” He nods.
You end up talking in the kitchen. He’s sighing the whole fifteen steps there, rubbing the bridge of his nose, exhaling, inhaling. Ever observant, and of someone as close to you as he is, you pick up on the tiny actions, behaviors. Charles is wringing his hands. He’s tried to pop the same knuckle twice. He isn’t frantic—he’s scared. You lean against the counter, waiting, eyes looking him up and down to identify his exact emotions.
“Tell me,” you press. “Whatever it is, I won’t judge.”
“The—my—the iCloud of my phone has been leaked. The press found out.”
When you were eight and he was nine, you and Charles summered in Villefranche with your mum and dad. The weather then was the kind you could write love letters to and about—blue skies, salty wind, soft sand. The current was calm enough that you could ride the gentle waves without fear of going under or straying far from the shore, where your parents sunbathed blissfully.
Don’t drown, he’d warned you, ever protective. You wore pink floaties over your arms, so it was already difficult to.
You dove under with great effort, fighting against the buoyancy, and poked his bare knee, surfacing to watch his reaction. He grimaced. Slowpoke, you teased, swimming away. You wondered then what it might feel to drown. Maybe not in the blue water of Villefranche, but anywhere else.
You think it hurts to drown? You blubbered, bobbing above the wave. Charles swam in front of you and wiped water off your face gently. I hope you never find out, he said, smiling.
But this is you finding out. This is it now, the drowning. Your fingers flex over the edge of the counter and you gulp, eyes fluttering with nerves. “Shit?” It comes out like a question from how nervous you are. “Um, sorry. What are we—” But your question is cut short by Pascale’s voice, cutting through the tension like it’s wet cardboard. The agreement is silent and mutual: save this discussion for later.
Charles can’t wake up fast enough. There are calls, texts, voicemails from every officer on his team, which isn’t that surprising given he’s up two hours late. But the amount—the sheer amount of notifications is dizzying. Overwhelmed, he finds it in himself to pull up his search engine app and let his fingers possess themselves.
All he types is his last name, and then The Sun article is splashed onto his face like a pot of scalding coffee: “F1 DRIVER ICLOUD LEAKED, PERSONAL PHOTOS ALL OVER INTERNET.” Daily Mail is next, of course, watering down the situation to seem more dirty and scandalous: “Naughty Driver? Charles Leclerc’s iCloud Hacked, Reveals Mystery Girl.” And then of course Page Six, who doesn’t miss a beat—
Wait. He blinks and presses the back arrow to return to the previous webpage. He reads over it again, slower this time. Mystery Girl? Shit—no. No way. It’s almost (it should be) silly, the way he’s reading vigorously over the reports like he’s a fan, but he’s anxious. He scrolls, because if any tabloid is daft enough to publish the leaked photos, it’s got to be the Daily Mail.
He pauses his quick swiping when his eyes harden with recognition, and staring back at him, on his phone’s full brightness, is a picture of you on his lap at Christmas. It’s the one Lance took while attempting to guess Charles’ password, one of you wine drunk with his head buried in your neck.
It’s unmistakably him, at his own house in Monaco where the drivers had a holiday get-together. It’s unmistakably you, hair draped over your face, three gold rings on your fingers. You had just given him a Strokes vinyl, he recalls. That’s why you were hugging.
There’s another one of you playing Scrabble in his bed—he’s not in the frame, but he remembers taking it. This, he could deny. He’s not in it, and he’s pretty sure the fans don’t know his house this well. Already his brain’s doing manual damage control, dread filling his veins at the thought of reading through his team’s frantic messages.
Another message stands out, pinned on top of all the others—from his mum, reminding him about brunch. He gets ready half-focused, half-lucid. Fully worried. He worries about the PR crisis this may cause, about his iCloud security, about the reactions online. Above all, though, he worries about you. About what he should tell the press. About how “actually, we’re not dating, we just fuck constantly” might hold up for the fans.
You’re twelve and Charles thirteen, both of you seated across Hervé and Pascale. Behind them stand your own parents, and they all look stern. What this is, Pascale says gently, is a family meeting. Okay?
Okay. It leaves your high voices in shaky unison. You both know what you’re doing here—you snuck out of school to catch a movie earlier, the teacher naturally caught wind of the misdeed, and now you’re in a meeting for it.
Snoops, Charles whispers, trying to ease your nerves with lighthearted commentary. This is the worst.
No, you want to tell preteen Charles—this is. You’re older now, yet still subjected to similar questioning, though today it’s Pascale going solo. It’s been three days since the fated day where the press leaked the pictures of you and Charles in compromising positions, and like any boomer, she’s used Facebook to her advantage and gotten ahold of the compromising pictures, too. 
“How long?” Her voice is enunciated in hard syllables.
“Mum—”
“Answer the question.” She looks back and forth, moving into territory of intense questions. “Both of you.”
“Um.”
“Because… I’ve been…”
You notice it immediately, given your observant track record: her shoulders relax and her lips smile just slightly. You sit still, and wait for the next words out of her mouth. “…waiting for this all my life!”
You and Charles watch in mild horror as Pascale’s face goes from firm to absolutely elated. Her eyes soften and a smile spreads over her face, illuminating her with pure joy. Do you even know how many bets I made with your papa, Charles? She claps her hands together several times.
Charles opens his mouth to verbalize dissent, but she doesn’t take it—she’s already droning on and on about how long she’s waited for this to finally happen. Your eyes glide over to the doorway of the dining area, where Lorenzo and Arthur watch with smug looks on their faces. Little shits won’t help you. You don’t even try to protest, and at some point Charles gives up, too. You don’t know how it’ll come across, anyway.
Ninety minutes later, you’re in Arthur’s bedroom rifling through his desk and praying you don’t find anything too gross. He’s on his bed throwing a bouncy ball up in the air, conversing with Charles about your gameplan with their mum.
The sky outside is in limbo between afternoon and night. It’s cloudy, so the sunset is a pale yellow instead of angry orange. “Why not just tell her the truth?”
You’d also thought that was the easiest option, escape route, exit path. But that would involve breaking Pascale’s heart, and that was out of the question for you, let alone Charles, certified mommy’s boy.
“I can’t, Arthur.” Charles’ voice is steady and unwavering.
“You can.”
“No.”
“Fine. Next best thing then.”
You fiddle with a Rubik’s cube, then turn in the seat. “What?”
“Pretend you’re dating.”
“Arthur,” you say seriously. “Shut up.” But he doesn’t join you, and you realize neither does Charles. You stare blankly at both of them, unwilling to believe they’d actually bank on this as an actual plan. 
“You guys realize this kind of thing never works? Zero percent success rate.”
“It’s just paddock appearences. You’re not pretending for millions of people,” Arthur says, shrugging. He catches the ball and throws it to you—you catch it one-handed. “You’re pretending for Mum.”
“Sure. And by extension, millions of people. Are you dense, or do you think the paddock appearances will just breeze by everyone who saw the leaks?”
“Ughhh. You’re acting like it’s impossible.” Arthur holds his breath before he utters the next sentence. “Like you two aren’t fucking every other w—”
“—oh, my God!” Shocked, you get up, and so does Charles. “Wh—I’m—language, Arthur!”
Charles balks. “How did you even—”
“I didn’t. But merci mille fois for confirming my theory,” Arthur quips faux-sweetly, smiling dopily. “I mean, I was going to find out! Your pictures are so… intimate. So just pretend to date and throw Maman off your scent.”
You protest briefly, wrestling with the option, and reconvene on the bed, you cross-legged and leaning on Charles’ shoulder and Arthur in front of the both of you. He’s always had a knack for schemes—he never got caught sneaking out, which destroyed your and Charles’ record of being caught twelve times by either of your parents. It’s a bit childish, but he gets the job done.
“Do it for… let’s say a month. Tell Mum you’ve been dating a while—Christmas isn’t that long ago, and that was the least recent picture. D’accord?”
You both nod, hyperfocused. 
“During race weekends, be all over each other—shouldn’t be hard—especially in front of Mum. People might catch you doing it, but I wouldn’t worry.”
“No, wait—I mean.” You shrug. “People—tifosi—they know I’m Charles’ friend. They’re going to be all over the fact that we’re apparently dating.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll use palatable density,” Charles says, nodding.
You pause. Arthur does, too, sensing something off.
“You mean plausible deniability.” Your deadpan voice is tinged with amusement, muffled into his shoulder. 
“Right, ouais, that.” He smiles, chuckling a bit; his shoulder shakes with it and your head nearly slips off. He brings a hand to cup over your jaw and hold you steady. “Sorry.”
“S’fine.” You sigh. “I’m totally okay with this. Just worried it’s going to have unintended consequences.”
Arthur quells you with rushed explanations about how it’ll be over and you two can say something like we decided we’re better off as friends to really sell the thing. At the seven-minute mark of your and Charles’ intense interrogation, he promptly kicks you out to figure out if you’re willing to do it yourselves.
You wedge yourself into Charles’ front seat, knowing you were headed to his place anyway. You massage your temples with one hand and fiddle with the hem of your shorts with the other. Nervous. Antsy. “Did Fred say anything?”
“Got the IT team to fortify my account.” 
“You think this thing’s going to be okay from a professional standpoint?” You look up and toward him; he’s already gazing at you, eyes soft. “I’m worried. Plus, with my job offer thing in London and New Y—”
“Don’t be.” He starts the car and maneuvers out of the driveway, into the dips of Monaco streets and the familiar route back to his place. “Bitter with the sweet. The only thing you need to worry about”—he takes your hand in the centre console, laces your fingers together loosely—“is your acting skills.”
“God, you’re right.” You sigh, looking out the window. “How am I going to pretend I can stand you?” Then, for good measure, you squeeze his hand wrapped in yours.
You visit Monaco from uni in London over spring, and for the first time in months, your schedule aligns with Charles’—though you learn this indirectly when you visit the Leclerc home. Pascale, of course, is the one who tells you his new flat’s address before she presses a kiss to your cheek and then leaves to run errands in the city. Alone, and in a burst of excitement, you make the drive there, take the elevator upstairs and shove the door open without knocking. He’s there. Your Charles. You can tell because the music he plays is loud—The Kooks—like his ears are still fourteen and not twenty-one, like he’s still in middle school and not in Formula One.
“Save your eardrums,” you say, before beelining toward the couch and leaping onto him for a hug. He sits up to match your energy, arms wrapping around you, sitting up straighter to keep you from totally falling atop him. 
“How’s uni?”
“Shit,” you say into his hair. It smells like his shampoo and his favorite cologne. Clean, soapy. “Obviously. How’s the Ferrari?” 
“Amazing.” He smiles. “Obviously. How’d you know I was in? Mum told you?”
“Ouais. She’s running errands. Listen, can we drink tonight?” You sigh, parting from the hug and sitting across him.
Yeah, sure. His voice is concerned, thick with worry. You shake your head—it’s not that deep, you tell him. It’s just—I had a bad date before I left and it’s put me in the worst mood.
Oh? He leans back, clasping two hands behind his head as he goes.What happened? He laughs. 
You tense visibly, rolling your eyes despite yourself. “He was just weird. Nothing.”
He wiggles his eyebrows. “You shy, Snoops?”
Ha-ha. You roll your eyes, but your face is flushed and your gaze avoids him. You reach up to tuck the loose strands of hair by your ears behind them, face warm. You’d never talked with Charles about boys or flings before—maybe several times, but never in full detail. It was always vague umbrella statements, like Ryan is boring or Greg is such a prick, but never anything beyond that. Come to think of it, you don’t know why, either.
“You can tell me.”
“The—when we—I had to fake,” you say cuttingly. “You know.”
He purses his lips and smiles, eyebrows furrowing. I don’t, actually. Something unnamed trills through you—through your stomach and into your fingertips. Your first time talking to your best friend in real life after months of uni and racing and this is the topic? It’s, if anything, a sign of your growing up, you guess.
Charles lets up on the teasing and you end up rejecting the club in lieu of sharing a bottle of vodka, throwing it back raw and without any type of chaser (to really prove nothing at all; you don’t even know why any sane human would do this). You do a Just Dance party on his TV, even try out drunk sim racing and FIFA, but by the end you’re well exhausted and retired to the couch again.
His voice is wavy and tipsy when he speaks. “You really had to fake it?”
“Yeah.” You pout. “Can never—um, finish, I dunno.” Your inhibition’s gone, shame loosened and untied by the vodka. You shift in your position on the couch.
“Maybe because it was too casual.” His voice hardens.
“So you’re saying I should…” You swallow dryly, eyes fluttering. “Sleep with somebody I know?” You’ve dropped the implication and it floats up, hangs above.
His eyes flick over to your legs, folded on the couch. The hem of your shorts. Your fingers playing with your empty shot glass. He didn’t mean anything by that. He’s half-sure you didn’t. 
“I am just saying that a good friend would do that for you.”
“You’re a good friend,” you say, volume low. 
Five minutes later you’ve properly crashed into each other, him pinning you down against the couch, licking fire up your throat. His lips trail across your jaw. 
He dips a hand into your shorts, presses against your clothed core. He’s smiling. So wet for me. He’s got his mouth pressed messily up to your jaw, when he sinks one finger all the way in, slow and stretching; and you’re clenching around him—
Come on, he’s saying. Insisting. You’re trembling, yanking desperately at his hair as he pumps his finger slowly in and out of you, aching to be full of him, to take him deeper. 
He slips another one in, and you feel the cold of his ring pressed against your entrance, then he’s fucking them into you and you’re leaking around them. 
Yes, yeah, Charles—you’re gasping, airy breaths tapering into whimpers that sound sinful, desperate. He knows you so well already. Presses his fingers against your sweet spot, watches your eyes flutter.
So needy, and you’re chanting his name under your breath as he quickens his pace, craving the stretch of him desperately. I know you want to cum, baby. He’s calling you baby and you’re closer, so much closer. Come on, for me, yeah? 
You melt, crashing and crumpling into him and shuddering as you release all over his fingers. He presses his forehead to yours and lets you take a beat. You feel giddy and dizzy and warm, which is weird because you don’t feel drunk at all anymore. This dizziness is something different. It’s Charles.
“Are we going to do that again?” You ask meekly, hand still in his hair.
“Only if you want. Whatever you want,” he says. He’d do anything for you. He’d do whatever you wanted.
“I do, I do want.” And Charles, the good friend he is, helps you out.
Imola is humid, warm, and the racetrack is absolutely teeming with people. But you’re not there—clad in linen shorts and a fresh tank top, you’re walking around the vicinity of the track, cup of gelato in hand, sunglasses over your eyes. The restaurant near you is playing music out loud. Beside you, singing along and drafting a list of wedding appetizers, is Lorenzo.
“Lamb chops?” You suggest, licking amaretto off the plastic spoon. The weather is pleasant enough that people are crowding the streets without it being too unbearably hot. Stevie Wonder flows from the speakers, permeates the entire block.
“I was thinking more seafood.”  
“Tuna? Make ‘em little tacos.”
“Good idea. Think I’ll go for those. Hey, are you sure you’re on board with fake-dating my brother?”
You turn sharply toward him, taken aback. He hadn’t brought it up in the week and a half this plan had been in the works—he’d been privy to it the entire time, too, which makes it weirder that he’s asking so suddenly.
“I meaaan…” You slow your pace, contemplative. A shy smile plays at your lips, brows knitted together. “It’s only going to be for a month. Ish. So, yeah. Are you—do you—sorry. Is it alright with you? Sorry.”
“It is not not okay.”
“So it’s…” You pause. “Okay.”
“It’s—yes, but I worry, is all. How sure are you that this won’t hurt anyone?”
“I don’t know, it’s… bitter with the sweet. And who’s getting hurt… like the fans?” You laugh a little. “They’ll live, won’t they?”
“Like you.” He pauses. “Like Charles.”
Pierre is running a comb through his hair, staring at himself in the mirror; his Narcissus moment is interrupted by a banana to the back of his head. Bonjour, he says, monotone and already knowing the culprit.
“We need to talk.”
“Could this possibly be about the news of your brand new ‘girlfriend’ over last week? Where is she, by the way?”
“With Lorenzo. Listen, here’s the thing. Mum thinks we’re dating, and I don’t know how to tell her we’re not—so I won’t.”
“Lie to your mum, go ahead.” Pierre crosses his arms and hums.
“Tais-toi. It’s for her own good.” 
“So you’re going to pretend to date.”
 “Ouais.” 
“Should be easy. You guys are hooking up and making out or whatever all the time.”
Charles pauses and lets the silence speak for itself. When Pierre makes a noise of confusion, he gives. We don’t kiss, he says finally. She thinks it is too intimate, and we ‘are not dating,’ so sex is the only thing we do. Sex, and if you still have leftover antsy energy, you pull on his shirt and sit up against the headboard to finish a crossword puzzle. Sometimes he helps you, but most of the time he’s just there to press lazy kisses to your hair and temple, cheekbone and jaw—never your lips.
“You don’t kiss?” Pierre’s genuinely shocked. “Putain, you’re a hero. How does that even work?”
“We just do not kiss. We fuck, but no kissing.” He shrugs. “It’s always been that way.”
“So how about her birthday?”
“She doesn’t…” Charlex exhales tightly. “Remember.”
“Charles,” you suddenly say, head appearing into the doorway. “Oh, hey. Fred said you might be here. What are you guys talking about?”
“Sprint racing,” Pierre says, an easy lie.
Charles, though, is never good at the lying bit. “International tariffs.”
Your only memories of your seventeenth birthday are applying lip gloss and mascara, wearing your shortest skirt and tightest top, and reciting your supposed date of birth in line like a mantra. Anything after that’s been sprayed off by the ultra-clutch strength of vodka. Which, you’ve been told, was your drink of choice.
“Headache’s better,” you moan over the phone, face squashed onto your pillow. “Mum gave me an Advil but I was so sick all morning.”
“Did you snog anyone?” Charles is always teasing.
“God, I wish.” You shut your eyes and try to remember if your drunken stupor had somehow managed to get you successful in lip-locked matters. Nothing comes up and you wipe a dry hand over your face, heaving a sigh. “I really wanted to kiss Matthew but I think he left before you and I did.”
A pause. Then Charles clears his throat. “You mean you and me and the police car that escorted us home?” He snorts.
“You’re such a prick!” You scream into your pillow, laughing. “I already thanked you for being my literal savior last night.”
He smiles to himself. “You’re welcome.”
“Did you have fun?” You flop onto your back and stare at the stick-on stars on your ceiling. You make a mental note to try and remove them.
“Bit boring because I vowed not to drink at all, but I got to dance. Bitter with the sweet, right?”
“Nervous?”
“I mean, fuck, yeah.” You fix the hem of your dress, speaking to Giada through the phone. “Pascale’s waiting for us on the paddock. And so are, like, a hundred photographers.” You wince. “Can you even imagine Charles and me? It’s just—I dunno—it’s weird.”
“It isn’t,” she says, laughing. “Not really. It makes sense. Plus, aren’t you on the whole arrangement?” You envision her air quotes.
“Yeah, but”—you slip your sandals on—“it’s on and off, and that’s not dating. It’s sex. Two different things.”
“Is it really, though? Considering how close you are outside of bed, aren’t y—”
“Okay, input no longer needed,” you laugh. “Bye, Gi. I’ll text you later.”
You reunite with Charles just by the paddock entrance. The throng of fans holding cutouts and posters notice you two before anyone else does, inciting a collective bout of yells around the both of you. He notices your blue silk dress first, eyes unmoving. “You look like the sky.”
“Thanks, man.” A beat, and you squint through your sunglasses. “That’s a compliment, right?”
“Sure.”
“Prick.” You peek over them and to the fans, who wave more aggressively when they notice you’re looking. Nervously, you raise a hand and wave back, and the noise heightens. “I think I’m going to be replacing you.”
“Dream on. On y va?”
You turn back to him, smiling, and you both enter at the same time. His hand wraps around your waist, dips a bit lower to rest at the small of your back as you walk—the fans clearly dig it, because everyone’s yelling in a frenzy as you depart. What are you doing, you ask through your smiling teeth.
“Did you forget we’re supposed to be dating?” He maintains an equally pleasant (totally duplicitous) façade, smiling. 
“I didn’t think,” you say, still smiling falsely, “that you’d put your hands on me five minutes into the whole agreement.”
“Smile, honey,” he teases. “I see at least five cameras at us right now.”
“It’s seven,” you beam. “Dumbass.”
“Again with the competitive streak.” memory
“I totally deserved to win last week’s game. You’re just a sore loser.”
“No you’re just a—hi, hi, hello!”
Your walk to the motorhome is interrupted by running into a friend of Charles’—someone from McLaren, one of the executives there. While Lando has been informed of your stunt, nobody else on that team has. 
They handshake and he waves at you politely. “Whole paddock’s buzzing with news of you dating,” he says, smiling. “It’s a tad crazy! I remember seeing you as Charles’ plus one back when he was in Formula Two. And now you two are dating. How did—well, if you don’t mind me asking, where’d it all happen?”
“Oh,” you say, laughing. “Yeah, Monaco.”
“Texas,” Charles says at the same time.
Alarm bells go off in your head at the totally random, unwarranted statement out of Charles’ mouth. Texas? Neither of you have even ever been at the same time. “He means”—you say, coughing and nodding—“we went on this, um. Wild West themed, um, restaurant in Monaco, and that’s where he asked me out.” You make a face that you hope conveys you get it, and it seems to work.
“Definitely not what I had in mind, but if it worked, it worked, eh?” He grins. “I guess I always knew you two would end up together. Alright, ciao!”
You’re smiling and waving after him as he leaves, and then you’re (semi) alone again, or at least within your own space on the incredibly crowded paddock. 
You turn to him, unable to hide your confusion. “Um? Texas?! What’s up with the backstories?”
“It slipped out! Sorry. But nice save.”
“You’re so f—” You try to scold him, but can’t, bursting into laughter and leaning forward to laugh into his chest. “Texas, really?”
“Sorry,” he says. You feel the vibration of his own laugh through his chest and it’s warm and nice. You peel yourself off lest you look too clingy, and resume your walk to the motorhome.
Ferrari is crowded, filled with people and strategists and guests. You’re given a bottle of water and then hounded with questions from the team who haven’t been informed of the situation at hand. David, one of the engineers close to Charles who you’d previously spoken to in one of the earlier races, asks to borrow him.
“Ciao, ciao.” They speak in one of the outdoor patio areas. “Is everything okay?”
“The car is fine. I just wanted to ask about the girl.” David punches his arm, playful. “You finally got her!”
“Oh.”
“It’s just… I remember all the times she would show up and you’d tell me about how much you liked her… I don’t know, it’s perfect for things to end up like this, no? Bravo!”
“Oh, si. I’ve just been, you know…” He looks through the glass sliding door and into the hospitality, where you’re talking to Isa and Carlos, sunglasses over your hair. Your hands are moving quickly, and you’re smiling while talking. He wonders what you’re so passionate about. When you’re caught in fits of happiness and passion, you’re extra animated. Your eyes are lively, and your lips can’t stop curling into a slight beaming smile. Now, maybe it’s France, maybe it’s crossword puzzles, slim chance it’s your job—whatever it is, he could watch you talk like this for hours. He thinks it’s beautiful, the way you transform, the way you smile, when you talk of things you absolutely love. 
“… crazy about her forever.”
There are banners, Italian flags, and Charles’ face on every other wall. He’s done his first hat-trick of the season (of several more, you’re hoping). You’ve foregone the usual clubbing for dinner with a smaller group of people, but only because you’ve been told the nightlife is bleak and you’d rather save that energy for the next race.
Lando picked out the restaurant—he’s “on a massive Yelp high” trying to get the best restaurants in every city they get to. He’s tried two over the weekend, and is hoping this guns for first place. The restaurant’s name is long and so very Italian, to the point where your semi-fluency fails you. The food is amazing, though, and so is the wine—a whole other level of grape-flavored bliss.
You’re in-between Joris and Charles, nursing your fourth glass while Charles downs a bottle of beer. Light conversation flows through the table, but your sleepiness only allows you to hear some of it. You’re content with the white noise.
Lando is getting a new cat, Lewis bought a new pair of shoes—oh, no, shares in the company that makes the shoes—Joris bought the shoes, Lorenzo will now buy the shoes, why isn’t anyone paying attention to Lando’s cat. It’s funny, entertaining, and the perfect nightcap to your immensely exhausting day of acting.
Wine tipsy makes you loopy and snoozy. By default, your head lolls onto Charles’ body; he immediately wraps a sweater-clad arm around your frame, leans back, pulls you closer. Doesn’t miss a beat. In fact, while doing so, he’s even able to get a dig in against Lando’s affinity for cats.
“No more wine, m’kay?” He whispers quietly, angling his head to yours. 
“Oh, but it was so good, though.” You mope, but nod in agreement. “I could seriously drink wine out of a keg here.”
“Sure did that a lot with beer.” You laugh, punching his bicep with what little space you’re given. “You sleepy?”
“Yeah. But I’m fine,” you respond, smiling. “Now shut up. I need to know what happened to Lando’s cat.”
Lewis leaves first, claiming he’s into this whole “sleeping at 9PM” thing, and Lorenzo follows to get ahead of an early flight tomorrow. It’s you, Joris, Charles, and Lando now, and you’re good as dead, eyes half-shut and fluttering, head slipping off his shoulder.
How was it? Lando asks, lowering his volume to keep from being too jarring. Day 1, fake dating? I actually read something like this in one of those, um, fanfiction stuff the fans do. Joris and Charles cast him a half-weirded out, half-amused pair of looks, but Lando defends himself. They’re actually pretty good, guys. I read one where I ended up with my rival or summat.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, Lando,” you croak, voice raspy with sleepiness and a day of bubbling laughter, “but Charles and I probably didn’t do your fanfiction kink justice.”
“Ignoring the emasculation.” He says, turning beet red. “What’d you do, then? Wasn’t it hard?”
“It was hard, but it’s like that.” Charles likes to substitute the phrase it is what it is to it’s like that, a result likely stemming from his trilingual childhood. “We just. Pretended. Oi, we held hands in front of the cameras.”
“Yeah, you can get a good wank in if that does it for you,” you joke. Lando hurls a cube of parmigiano at your face; it lands squarely and you flip him off, the table erupting with peals of laughter.
“In all seriousness, though—how are you two okay with this? I know I’d be second guessing my feelings every second.”
You shift, trying to hide your obvious lack of answer. It’s quiet for a few seconds, and then Charles says, “We’re both comfortable with each other, I think.”
“Yeah, comfortable enough that we can, you know, be honest.” You’re looking at Lando when you say that. You don’t know how well you could repeat the sentence if you were looking straight into Charles’ eyes.
You leave the restaurant with a generous tip, and Charles helps you pull your coat on when you’re out the door, back into the chilly night air. It’s then that all four of you catch news via text, of a club invite somewhere in the city.
“It’ll be fun, guys.” Joris and Lando stand in front of you and Charles, bumbling with excitement. “I heard Lil Tjay is going to be there.”
“It sounds very fun,” you say, smiling, “but I might pass out if I drink anything other than water, and I have zero energy. You three go ahead.”
“Wh—no, I’m not going, either.” You raise an eyebrow at Charles. “Serious! I wasn’t in the mood much, anyway. Joris, take Lando’s car and we’ll take mine.”
“Alright,” Lando whistles. “Suit yourselves, agoraphobes.”
“Joke’s on you”—Charles smiles, smug—“I don’t know what that means.”
“Not the dig you think it is, Charles,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Night, Joris, Lando. See you guys tomorrow. Use protection!”
“Should be saying that to you guys,” quips Joris with an evil grin that he closes the car door on.
The climb into the car feels like a chore in itself with how tipsy and sleepy you’ve become. Charles likes to bring his Ferrari to race weekends, but you convinced him to use a different car for this one, because you honest-to-God can’t stand the low seats anymore. 
“You want dessert?” He asks when he’s rounded the car and settled into his seat. “Gelato, a cone, biscotti…”
“No, no,” you say, voice thin. A palm covers your shutting eyes; blindly, you reach for his hand. It’s easy because he sees you searching and takes your hand to cut it short. “I’m good. So sleepy. Can I sleep at your hotel room?”
“Sure.” He starts the car, waves to the wait staff idle by the entrance, and drives off. “How was the day as my fake girlfriend? Anyone ask about me?” He wiggles his eyebrows, flickering his gaze to your figure beside him. “Wasn’t too tough, I hope.”
Imola whizzes by, trees and city, and a poorly stifled yawn escapes your lips, wine stained. You laugh sleepily. “It was a bit awkward, but bitter with the sweet, right?” He smiles, nodding, and you continue. “Yeah, few strategists, some people who knew you from Prema. I was talking to Isa and Carlos, too, earlier. Even if they know it’s fake.”
He recalls seeing you talk to them through the glass. “About?”
“You.”
The sun is merciless on the clay courts, and so are your shoes, shuddering against the surface in your continuing attempt to beat the opposing team. Charles cowers behind you—he’s scored less than half of your points thus far—but you’re on a mission, like your competitive self always is when you’re put in a position to be able to win.
You’re two points down now, and the noontime is becoming increasingly itchy and unforgiving; across you both, Giada and Joris call a mutual time out. “That’s not allowed!” You say, petulant.
“This is a practice session,” Charles says gently, nearing you. “Mate, none of us are actual players.”
You wipe sweat off your forehead. “Right. Désolée. I’m just—I’m in the zone.”
“Ouais, I get it. Relax, m’kay? We got this.”
You shake yourself off and hop a few times, skirt bobbing by your waist as you go. Your braid bounces on your shoulder and you nod, turning your racquet over in your grip. 
Charles pings the ball hard and it soars over to land just shy of the line, seemingly scoring a point for you two and securing your win. Giada and Joris chime in with protests, claiming that the ball’s out. You throw your hands up in question.
“Okay, what? That was clearly a point!”
“Snoops, I think they might be right. The ball looked out to me,” Charles says, wrapping a sweaty arm around your red shoulders.
“What are you talking about, Charlie? That ball was in! I saw it!” You elbow yourself out of his grip, aghast.
“How about…” He suggests quietly. “We let them win? You did win the last”—he pauses to count—“five sets. Come on, Snoops. They need this. Bitter with the—”
You take a deep breath, staring into his eyes. “Fucking sweet, right, okay. Fine, fine.” 
Charles thinks he’s in the clear and he’s managed to extinguish your flames of frustration—that is, until you walk into the Leclerc household for lunch an hour later and, after greeting Pascale and Hervé, you point squarely to the jar on the kitchen counter. “Five euros.”
He splutters. “Five? Wh—non, non! I was trying to calm you down.”
“You were blind and gave Giada and Joris a fake win,” you say playfully.
“Saluuut,” Lorenzo greets, sitting at the stool beside yours. “Quoi de neuf?”
“Charles has five euros for the jar.” The jar, the infamous jar, sometimes dubbed the Dumbass Jar when Pascale’s out of earshot. It was Lorenzo who first made it up after three straight instances of Charles pulling a push door (three different establishments).
Arthur’s joined in at this point, but its biggest indirect donors are definitely Lorenzo and Hervé, who view it as just about the funniest thing in the world. Out of pity, you don’t call dumbass too often, but the tennis loss is bruising enough that you warrant the usage.
“You heard Snoopy. Five euros. We’ll be able to get milkshakes with this money after next week.” You high five. “At this rate, Charles, you could open a restaurant in Paris.”
“He’s going to race,” you correct. You both watch a begrudged Charles junk a bill into the nearly-full jar. “What race driver is going to open a restaurant?”
You meet Yuki Tsunoda on a flight to Nice. You’ve seen him several times before, not too frequently but enough that his name and face are familiar on your mind. Also a personality trait that Pierre would bring up in fond conversations with you and/or Charles: he loves food, apparently.
“Yuki’s volunteering AlphaTauri to be your hideout,” Pierre tells you and Charles, across him. 
Turns out, the hardest part (insofar) of this whole schtick: the officially appointed paddock photographers are being extra sneaky with it, finding the best vantage points to snap pictures of an unwitting you and Charles.
They’re like hawks, watching for even the slightest glimpse so they can post the photos on Instagram and get clicks.
So, just a few hours earlier, Charles asked if there was a place you and him could talk if needed where photographers wouldn’t be awaiting you already, and this was the answer.
“If it’s too much trouble, feel no need to… you know.”
“Nonsense.” Pierre smiles goofily and Yuki pokes him to stop, pausing his session of eating a quesadilla (where he’d even acquired it, you’re clueless). “Yukino would be happy to.” 
The flight lands and the drive to Monaco is infected with notoriously slow traffic; you pop an Advil to try and alleviate the motion sickness. Pierre and Yuki, it seems, have joined you even outside of the flight. They’re in the backseat offering bits of conversation.
“Oh, mate, we should totally play tennis while we’re here.” Pierre sighs. “Didn’t you guys play before?”
“Mmm, yeah,” you mumble with a lilt of amusement at the memories from basically a decade ago. “At the country club. Doubles always, otherwise I’d knock Charles out of the park.”
“Hey, I won a couple times!” He protests weakly. “Like… twice.”
You laugh out loud. “Anyway, Pierre, do not bring me into tennis. I get all competitive and develop anger issues.”
“I had to calm her down twice a set,” Charles says; you swat him lightly to silence him. “Still do.”
“You know, if the Dumbass Jar still existed,” you say cuttingly, “I swear I’d be able to buy off Ferrari with that money.”
Monaco is swelterinly hot today. You know this because you know the weather here, you know the curves and ups and downs of it—this is your home. And today is hot. Every few minutes a breeze filters through the air and you can hear journalists or PAs sigh a collective breath of relief before they’re all subjected to the inane, high-degree weather again.
It’s also, according to Arthur, a good day to kiss in front of the cameras. He says it easily over a plate of sliced kiwi, with a devious smile, because he assumes your friends-with-benefits arrangement equates to constant kissing. But the truth is you’ve never kissed Charles, and it intimidates you.
“Do we have to kiss?” You play with his bracelets, sitting beside him on the sofa. The talk of kissing entertains the thought of sex and you can’t help but mentally complain at the remembrance that you haven’t gotten laid in weeks.
“If you don’t want to—”
“I do.” You splutter, eyes going wide, face warm. “No! I mean I don’t mind. If it sells the thing.”
“D’accord, then we will.” He smiles. “That okay?”
“Sure. First kiss,” you say. Your voice feels as clammy as your hands.
“First.” He looks away.
You take your woes off the kiss by playing a friendly round of tennis with your favourite opponents, Giada and Joris. They bemoan your competitive nature (that, to be fair, allots you and Charles three straight wins), and Giada incites a protest for a girls versus boys round.
You both embarrass Charles and Joris, heckling them as you win another two straight games. Charles runs over to you when you throw up the L sign on your hand, lifting you up and making you squeal.
“Put me down, loser!”
Giada and Joris exchange a look. Amused, knowing. “Charles! You’re such a cunt.” You kick hard, and manage to snag his abdomen, so he gently places you onto the clay again. He laughs and paces back over to his side, and you play with the tail of your braid as you watch.
You play set after set, but the kiss comes anyway. When you know photographers can see you—by the entrance—and it happens faster than your mind can muster. He’s leaning in, you’re reaching up, and your mouths slot together. It’s—and it feels crazy to say it, but—
It’s perfect. It’s lovely. You smile against his lips like they belong there and like they’re familiar and yours and like maybe this is all you’ve ever wanted, and like they deserve the smile, because they do. You feel your need to pull away before you can’t help but keep him tethered to you always. It’s strange and it’s not platonic—you’re mature enough to admit that, but not enough to label exactly what it is.
You spend the day with your fingers pressed to your lips, like you’re sealing the memory. Hours later, Charles wins. There’s massive uproar and you’re in the crowd when it happens, in the sea of strategists going to congratulate him on winning Monaco, which—that’s—it’s winning Monaco. Your ears ring by the end of it and your throat’s dry from your own cheering. Carlos comes in second, and the outlook for their team is going much better than it’d been at the start of the year, so there’s a lot to celebrate.
And celebrate you do. It starts with being pinned up against the door, hungry kisses along your jaw and neck. One kiss, it seems, has broken the dam from the few years you’ve spent abstaining from the kissing. He’s just finished interviews. He’s only just changed into his polo, and now he’s tugging it off again, feverish.
This is rushed and dirty, down low and dark. Only one light’s been switched on and he’s hiking your dress up, panties down with one hand to tug his cock out with the other. He’s kissing you—kissing you stupid, almost. Like he’s waited forever to taste your lips and now he’ll starve if he’s away for just a moment. He needs you. So have me, you want to say, all of me, push me up against the wall again and cover my mouth with your palm. Or don’t, don’t—so everyone knows I’m yours.
He presses your chest against the wall so your back’s turned to him, thrusts in with a breathless, throaty grunt. 
“S’ big,” you’re saying, clawing at words the pleasure bars you from finding.
“Barely even in,” he whispers. “Slow down, baby, come on, take it.”
Your toes curl. You’re high on the win, on the kissing, on Charles, on the slow delicious stretch of his cock. “I’m taking it, I’m taking it,” you say, shaky. He thrusts, slow and deep and dirty, until he’s bottomed out and you’re tiptoeing from the overwhelm.
“I feel you,” you’re whimpering, moans and gasps leaving your mouth. You blindly search for his hand, find it against your hip, drag it to your abdomen, under your dress that he hasn’t even fully removed. “I feel you there,” you say, an edge of teasing to your voice.
His cock’s bulging, almost, out of your stomach, and it’s getting you both all lightheaded. He thrusts harder, a devious smile felt against your neck.
I need it, Charles, you plead, please, please fuck me harder. You feel it coming, the familiar pleasure intensifying so quickly—you don’t usually cum so early, he’s always making you wait for it—pussy squeezing around him.
Jesus, already? He’s groaning but a laugh escapes, breathy and amused and taunting. He’s fucking you harder, faster. It’s so good, each hit getting you closer. Taking me so well, you’re bruised all over now, baby. You hate how well he knows what turns you on; memories of mornings post-sex spent inspecting the purple marks on your hips flash through your head and you’re even closer now, shaking, whimpering, begging.
You’re half-sure someone can hear, but it doesn’t even phase you. Harder, deeper— and you’re collapsing, legs spasming uncontrollably, orgasm so intense it’s on the brink of totally hurting. Tears roll down your sweaty face and he kisses them away, cumming onto your back to wipe off in a few minutes.
“I never even”—you pant, tired—“got to say congratulations.”
“That was more than enough.”
Charles is elated when you tell him his family has thrown a party for him the day next. He’s boyish in that way, optimistic and kiddy, the kind of person who’s up at five-thirty to announce their own birthday. 
He drives you both to his childhood home, a route so familiar he could drive with his eyes closed. (“I hope you’re not driving closed-eyed,” you’d warned.)
Even if he could, anyway, he’d rather not. The scenery of Monaco is stunning, ever-changing, and he never tires of it—the buildings, the skies, the trees and shrubbery, stores lining the streets, clean entrances. 
And you—in the passenger seat, humming softly to a song of his choosing. Drives are always better when you’re in the passenger seat.
The turnout is generous: extended family, and several friends from school. There’s bowls of fruit, salad, plates of salmon and racks of lamb, knobs of butter with warm bread. Pascale commands the kitchen—visible in how she leaves it cluttered with bowls, ingredients, whisks still dripping with syrup or batter, spoons licked for tasting. The good kind of clutter.
Lorenzo has also taken reign of the AUX, because it’s 70’s music playing, which is what he’s fond of for family gatherings like these. It’s My Cherie Amour now, Stevie Wonder mellowing across the lawn and into the house.
Charles knows you love the kitchen as much as his mum does, so when you get to the house, he’s not surprised to see you leave him in favor of checking out what damage has been done to your favorite marble countertops. He watches Pascale turn from the gas range, her eyes lit when she sees you, inviting you into an embrace. 
You look like the song playing, pretty and lovely, breeze in the summer. He almost loses himself in thought before his great-aunt Eden places two bony hands on his arms and greets him in feeble Italian.
He flits his eyes away from you, if just briefly, and faces the woman with a smile on his face. “Ciao, zia,” he says, voice buoyant, happy. “You came here to see me, no?”
All five-foot-one of her shakes in disagreement. She wags a finger for extra measure. “No,” she says. “Sono venuto a vedere la tua ragazza.”
His eyes widen. “She’s—” He pauses. He debates telling Eden you’re not actually his girlfriend, that this was a setup to appease Pascale and, by extension, tifosi. But he backtracks.
He shouldn’t, but he gives in, lives out his dreams for a bit. “Ah, she’s over there, zia. Con mamma.” He points to the open door, and to you on the far end of the room inside, holding a spoon. “Beautiful, yes?”
“Molto,” she says proudly. “You marry her?”
Fact: his great-aunt has the worst memory. She forgot Charles’ name twenty times, let alone niche facts like this one. Another fact: she rarely shows up to family events. Maybe now, because it’s a racing thing; but baby showers and funerals, she’s at home. So he indulges a bit more.
“Si, we’re engaged. But—it’s a secret, zia.” He grins. “Non dire a nessuno. Okay?”
“Sei fidanzato?!” She claps once, excited. “Ay, Charles. I waited my whole life for this moment, si?” And she’s wobbling away, still muttering under her breath.
“How is my son?” Pascale’s voice is teasing. She sighs happily. “For years I wondered if this would happen. And it really is.”
“Oui, sure is,” you sing-song, laughing a bit awkwardly. “We’re—he’s okay. We’re great. In love.”
“Oh, in love,” she swoons. She leaves you, after fifteen more minutes of detailed discussion, with half a spoonful of vinaigrette to taste-test, departing to check on the guests for a few minutes. In her place arrives Lorenzo, already bearing a shit-eating grin. “Saluuut.”
“Mmm, good to see you, too.” You taste the liquid and add lemon to the bowl. “How’s wedding planning?”
“Think we’ll throw a shower. Is that pretentious?”
“No,” you say, mulling over it. “Sure, a bit. But just don’t make it a whole thing, you’re golden.”
“I see.” He sighs fondly. “You know, many a conversation we’ve had right here at this counter. About anything.”
You loosen your school tie, slicing an apple like you so often do, waiting for Charles’ karting practice to end. Pascale had fixed you a bowl of something, Hervé a glass of orange juice. And somebody else would always, without fail, steal your food. A hand swipes two slices form your chopping board and your head whips up.
“Lorenzo!” You stomp your foot. “Stop stealing! That is my apple.”
“You mean the Leclercs’ apple.” He laughs, pops another slice into his mouth, smiling. 
You roll your eyes, shaking your head. The braid beside your head shakes with it as you continue slicing it into perfect quarters. He pipes up again: “How was school?”
“Shit, as usual.” You lower your voice and smile, leaning in. “Pascale scolded me earlier, for saying that word.”
“Did Papa?”
“Obviously not. He fist bumped me.” You share a laugh, both chewing on apple slices now. “Anyway, I aced a math test, had aubergine for lunch… got driven here by Charlotte’s mum.”
“Charlotte?” Lorenzo hums conspiratorially, making a mmmm sound. You look up from the yellow chopping board, furrowing your eyebrows. He persists: “Mmm. Cha-r-lotte.”
“What’s up with Charlotte?” Bit impolitely, you ask, in-between chews.
“I think she likes Charles, a little.” You nod slowly, trying to follow. Charlotte liking Charles. Your Charles. Wait, no. Not your—or nobody’s, really. Just Charles. Yeah.
“What? Bull!” You narrow your eyes. “Says who?”
“Why do you care?”
“Wh—I don’t!” You squeak, caught. “Just… I think I’d know, Lorenzo.” You make a tch noise, crossing your sweater-clad arms. “So—says who?”
“I saw her leering at him during his birthday party.” 
“You’re wrong,” you say, but you don’t really know who you’re convincing. He reaches over for an apple slice, and you move the chopping board out of the way sharply.
“Mon dieu, you’re snappy. Fine, fine. I might be wrong,” he relents, shrugging. He gets up and slides beside you to be able to acquire more slices. “I talked to her during the party, too.”
“Weirdo,” you tease, allowing him to take a few more. “About Charles, yes?
“No, about her brand new dress.”
“You’re the funniest Leclerc brother, I assure you.”
“She told me…” He says, louder this time, shushing you effectively. “She told me she ‘finds Charles cute.’” Air quotes, shrug. “But that they ‘probably won’t’ date.”
“Huh. Did, um. Did she say why?” You play with the tail of your braid, shuffling back and forth on your flats. You don’t know why you’re so fidgety—you aren’t nervous, you don’t think.
“Because…” he says, chewing to allow for a pause. “She said every time she looks for Charles to try and ask for time alone, or on a date, or something, he’s already following you around like some puppy.”
You comb your hair into a bun and venture into the patio, having avoided a good chunk of the noon heat. You greet some relatives politely along the way, and receive a hand squeeze from great-aunt Eden. At one of the tables is Charles, beside Joris and another friend, and Giada and Charlotte across them, an empty seat beside the latter.
You seat yourself in it and Giada kisses your cheek. “Hey. Ça va?”
“Fine,” you say, smiling. Then you lower your voice to a whisper. “Do you remember when I told you about my crush on Charlie? For the first time?”
“Yeah,” she whispers back. “Around… 2013.”
“Ouais. And… and it disappeared after that,” you say. “Right?”
“You said it did,” she says. “A year later. When we were sixteen.”
“Right.” You think. Seventeen onwards—you’d never formed a full-fledged crush on Charles. “Okay. It’s nothing. Just a memory. I was just. Yeah, oui.”
“Oui, let’s eat.” The memory fades and so does your running mind. Charles’ eyes meet yours across the table, and suddenly you feel a little less like your thoughts have ripped you open.
When you and Charles were younger, you adopted the adage “bitter with the sweet.” Charles will have people believe it was made by the both of you, with philosophical minds stretched so far beyond their years. Well, revisionist history. The truth lay in the Carole King song of the same name you’d heard on the stereo.
Those are the exact words Charles tells Ted when he’s interviewing for the Spain Grand Prix. It’s a hot day and you’re especially doubled down on by the fact that he’s finished ninth. 
You’d been fake-dating for the cameras all weekend. At all costs, you try and avoid interviews, but the damned Drive to Survive producers insist on a soundbite and start following the two of you around everywhere (only to find your conversations sound very weird and niche, and not scandalous or sexy).
Pascale also called—Charles first, and when he didn’t check his phone, you. You spent an hour on the phone just talking about the race. About the penalties and the nasty headlines that followed, and just everything.
“I’m glad you’re there,” she says. “God knows he needs you.”
You end up biking to try and relieve the stress, posing with fans for pictures.
“I’m such a big fan. I stalk Charles’ Insta like, all the time, and it’s crazy how you guys are dating.” A teenaged girl laughs nervously. “Where’d it happen?”
“Texas!” He, again, tries out the bit to appease the fans but you have to extinguish the flames of his blatant lies.
“He’s kidding,” you interject. “It’s just—it just happened, really.”
How does something just happen? Someone told you once, in a Paris bar, that love is like an echo. It’s always there, in the underbelly, underneath it all, and then one day it echoes, like a bass drum or a cymbal. And the echo—the echo is you feeling it. You feel the echo, the all-encompassing echo, even if the love itself’s been there all along.
With Charles, it’s out of the question. You love him. He’s your best friend. You trusted him before you even learned what trust meant, for Chrissake.
How could you not love him? That seemed impossible. The love was there. The love’s always been there and it’ll never go away.
It echoes at half-past-two in Barcelona, when he whips past you on his bike and says on your left. The breeze pulls your hair to the left, covers your face, and when you rake it away he’s stopped to check if he accidentally bumped you in his rush to look cool.
You’re creepily observant; you’ve been told this many times before. What people don’t know is with the observance comes even more questions. Ifs, whys, wheres, whens, hows, God the hows. The questions keep coming because there’s never an answer.
“Are you okay?” He asks. Green eyes glittering like a lake. Smile like the sun. Hair curly at the ends. “Did I hurt you?”
Then you realize. In the matters of love, every question—every single question. Every single one. The answer is Charles.
“Of course not,” you say. And you smile.
You almost drop your book in your rush to scurry past the paparazzi. They’re still busy on the two figures (Alex and Lily, you think) on another end of the paddock, which allows you only a few moments to try and evade them.
Others are stationed near the Ferrari hospitality, which means you’re going to need your hideout. Yuki had texted Pierre who had texted Charles who had told you that it was all clear to go there for a few minutes while waiting for the photographers to clear out.
Hurry, Charles is saying. Laughing. His hand’s gentle in yours. You want them there forever. You want to drag the tip of your nail over the barely-perceptible grooves of his fingerprints so he knows how much you need him.
The days post-Spain were spent biking, watching shows, listening to music, eating food. The travel to Canada—long, cold, compression socks. Pascale had called mid-flight to check on her “favorite pair”—you maneuvered yourselves into a much more cuddly position to appease her, and her giddy smile was incentive enough to stay that way for ninety minutes.
You’d been in a weird mental state trying to grapple with your rapidly returning and intensifying feelings for him, which have dawned on you all at once.
But he makes it better. You’re still laughing when you wedge yourselves in, eyes meeting.
And then you’re quiet.
The gaze you share is intense, but almost unsure, like you’re supposed to be looking away anytime now. You step backward shakily, and his hand moves from your waist to the small of your back to keep you from stumbling any further. You’re closer now. But this shouldn’t feel as strange as it does when you two have been in much more scandalous positions before—what’s different?
He’s so close, so so close, his green eyes looking right through you. You lean closer, ready to kiss him like you have before, ready to feel his mouth slot softly over yours, comforting and safe and Charles.
Funnily enough, it’s then that the illusion breaks, his grip loosening and the distance between you increasing. He coughs twice, awkwardly.
“Shit—sorry,” you say profusely, clearly having read the moment wrong. Embarrassment wells up in your system, warming your face. You laugh to diffuse the tension but it barely does anything.
“No, don’t—” He exhales, squeezes the bridge of his nose, trying to find words. “It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you. I do.”
“So kiss me,” you suggest simply, looking around for anything that might stop him. The embarrassment ebbs away, replaced quickly by confusion. 
“I don’t want to kiss you in an AlphaTauri stock room,” he mopes, burying his head in his hands in clear frustration. “An AlphaTauri stock room.” He repeats it in a hushed whisper, disbelief etched all over his pretty face.
“Charles,” you begin, smiling already, the quaint way that makes his knees go weak every time. “You’re acting like you and I haven’t kissed before.” 
“This is different.” He says firmly, looking away lest he lean in involuntarily. He interjects with conviction, not realizing what he’s implying until the implication’s hanging in the air. The longing kills him softly, and he feels if he looks at you a second longer he’ll kiss you anyway.
It’s a wonderfully confusing feeling. You open your mouth to respond but you can’t; your brain tacks itself onto his sentence, the division created between the kisses before now and the kiss that might happen anytime soon.
“H…” you trail off, throat drying. Blinking, you try again, “How different?”
He looks up, eyes conveying all the things his lips never will. This is different. You know it. I love you this time.
The answer is exchanged and accepted wordlessly. You slip out of the room when Pierre tells you it’s okay to, and it’s only then—only then—that Charles’ hand leaves your body. You seem to burn alive with its absence.
It’s a Ferrari 1-2. You snap a thousand pictures with Isa and Carlos holding Carlos’ trophy while Charles is doing interviews, and they invite you to join them for the break. You’re open to it—the win, the good standings, they definitely warrant a celebration for the few weeks’ break. So your original itinerary is Portugal—beaches, coasts, food—but the jet re-charts a route and the flight is cut much shorter because you’re in New York City.
Somewhere in Manhattan, a wedding shower is thrown on an outdoor rooftop. “This is one hell of a wedding shower,” you squeal excitedly when you spot him, bringing Lorenzo in for a hug. Your yellow dress flows in the wind. “I thought you guys were going to throw it in Monaco?”
“Yeah, well… why not here, right? It’s beautiful.” He gestures to the skyline, smiling. “Plus, Charles, Arthur, and Mum were already near the country for work, so we got ahead of it. Everyone was happy to fly out.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I love it.” You beam. “I can’t believe it, either. When’s the final date?”
He opens his mouth to reply, but the wind is knocked out of him by Charles barreling into his arms for a hug. You roll your eyes at the latter’s childish behavior, smiling despite yourself. They part and Charles finds his place beside you, arm snaking around your shoulders. “What a wedding shower!”
“Don’t flatter me, dipshit,” Lorenzo jokes.
“It’s a lovely one.” Lorenzo thanks him. “An amazing shower. You know, it’s a total golden shower!”
You purse your lips. “Charles—”
“A golden shower, mate. Absolutely.”
That garners at least three odd looks and you calmly place a hand on his chest to whisper don’t ever fucking say that again it means something completely different please don’t embarrass me or your brother. 
For all your embarrassment, you make up for it in having the literal time of your life. The food is good, the city view is amazing, the weather is fair and the music—Desafinado now—is amazing. “I could see myself here,” you say offhandedly to Charles, who nods back with a faint smile. He’s half-distracted.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” he says, squinting from the sun in his eyes. “Very.”
You part ways at some point—Pascale whisks him off, no doubt for another long round of questioning about your relationship, and you meander around with a glass of champagne.
You’re halfway through swiping a mini quiche when a hand wraps around your wrist and squeezes to get your attention—Charles’ great-aunt Eden. She speaks only intermittent English, and your Italian fails to carry you through well enough, but you smile and greet her. “Ciao, Eden!”
“Ciao, bella.” She smiles. “Flight was long.”
“Oh, yeah. New York’s far. I might work here someday. I’ll hear results in around two weeks, but I’m hoping for London instead.” You slow your speech.
“When will you two wed?”
“Wed?” Your face warms and you stutter through a giggly mess of a sentence. “Oh, Eden—zia—no, no! We’re just friends.”
“My Charles told me you two are to be married.” You both crane your heads to the right, where Charles is leaning against the terrace railing talking to one of your friends, Matthew, animatedly. He meets your eyes, sees Eden beside you, and seems to connect the dots.
Jokingly, perhaps, he raises his hand and wiggles his empty ring finger. You can’t help but smile as you turn back to the old woman. “Oh, did he, zia?”
“Si, he did.”
“Well, we’re just going to let it happen, then. You’re invited. Front row.” You kiss her cheek and she smiles, wobbling off to drink more wine before any of the adults can stop her.
It’s announced then that the dance floor is open, and many of Pascale’s friends filter through to show off their moves to the 70’s music. You watch, amused, at the display of dexterity to Frankie Valli and Aretha Franklin. You cheer them on, content to watch them against the backdrop of the New York sunset.
When Ain’t No Mountain High Enough plays, the dance floor grows, because nobody can resist the song—not even Charles, apparently, who takes your hand without preamble and takes you, squealing, to the centre.
You sing each of the parts, like you always do when the song comes on. It’s semi-tradition at this point: you take Marvin Gaye’s, Charles takes Tammi Terrell’s. You both exaggerate your dance moves and pretend you’re performing.
His hand’s in yours, winding you around and pulling you close. At some point he starts robot dancing to entertain you. It works—you laugh out loud, your eyes half-shut and faced to the stars above. He could write a poem about this. Or a song.
The song ends and you lean onto his shoulder to take a breather—then the photographer swoops in and takes a picture. “That’s going into the RSVPs!” He says, accent unmistakably American.
“Does he know we’re not the couple here?” You ask.
Do we know we’re not the couple? Charles asks himself.
The night escalates as the “oldies” leave, and Matthew, Joris, and Giada join you both for one last round of drinks again. You’re all standing at the exit making conversation; Lorenzo attends to his friends at the other end of the terrace.
“I feel young again,” Matthew says, liberated by Tito’s vodka. He takes another swig and pulls his coat on.
“You’re twenty-five, calm down,” you joke. “Dodged that bullet.” You’re poking fun at the semi-massive crush you had on Matthew in secondary school, and a laugh passes through the four of you. “Anyway, you three be careful. No driving.”
“Jesus, but really—I haven’t been this drunk since you”—he points at you, laughing—“turned seventeen at that club, Amber? No?”
“Oh, God. Y’know, same.” You fail to notice Charles and Giada share a look. “I remember nothing from that night! Or, like, the first two hours at least.”
“I remember drinking my body weight because of heartbreak,” he jeers. 
“Heartbreak? Were you—were you with anyone?” You ask, confused.
It happens before anyone can stop it. “No, when Charles kissed you. And you kissed him after. Alright, night mates! Lorenzo—merci!”
Oh, fuck, you hear in the back of your now-muddled brain. Giada’s voice.
You open and close your mouth. “Ch—wait, he—what?”
“I—let’s talk here,” Charles flounders, dragging you to a more secluded spot and facing you. The three of your friends exit; Giada waves, apologetic. “When… we were at Amber… and you were absolutely hammered, we kissed. It was twice—just twice. And you didn’t, um. Remember a thing.”
You’re unsure. “In Amber?” You blink, confused. “What do you mean?”
“We… I don’t—I mean, I understand why you don’t remember. We kissed that night.”
“So that’s… Charles… You didn’t tell me.” Your voice quivers, like a wire flicked. “Why didn’t you say it at the time?”
He doesn’t give you an answer. He just looks at the counter, imagines the way your eyebrows furrow, your lips move, eyes glitter. He can’t give you one. He doesn’t want to hurt, disappoint, sadden you. He wants to get on his knees and root you here, so he’ll have all the time in the world to come up with an answer.
“Charles.” But he loves you, and he can at the very least be honest for you. “Look at me.”
“I was scared.” His eyes gravitate to yours.
“Of?”
“It felt stupid, is all. That you didn’t remember, and maybe you did but you were pretending you weren’t. I didn’t—it didn’t—sorry.” He laughs, stutters. “I convinced myself it didn’t mean anything because we didn’t have feelings for each other.” He pauses. “Then.”
“Well,” you say, slow. Eyes stuck to his. “How about now?”
“Now?”
“I love you, now. I mean, isn’t that all this is? Loving? Even if? De—despite of?” 
And this—God. This is how it feels. He’s looking at you and you’re telling him you love him because you do, and finally he’s been over with reassurance.
You love him, too. That way. He trembles with it. His hands are shaky when they lace into yours, like you’re a shrine, a prayer, and he feels like maybe these are the emotions that swirl through the human body when one wins the lottery and gets struck by angry lightning at the same time.
This is it, he thinks. Profound and lovely and an echo of sweet memories. He’s yours. Here in a city unfamiliar to both of you, yet to be conquered, your fingers lace lightly and you smile, smile, smile at each other, as if you’re the last two people on Earth. He’s yours, so foolishly in love with you.
Even far from home, you’re both filled with warmth, with longing. Extended stares, pits of your stomachs welling up with something lovely in between homesickness and nostalgia. Here again, you again, us again—it’ll always be us again, your heart seems to say, surrounded by the same love the same hurt the same sad the same everything, you and me, all the love in the world, all the confusion, we’re here. It’s never over.
Across the terrace, Lorenzo watches. Two figures, laughing, emanating happiness, gentle unkowing love. You two have finally made it here, after what felt like a thousand trials and dreams and stories.
So even if you’re taller, in high heels and a yellow dress—and Charles is broader, in a suit and tie—Lorenzo thinks he can blink and see the two little kids who hosted a tea party in the backyard. He can blink again and see you hugging, eyes shut, his lips pressed to your forehead to convey the intimacy nothing else will do as well. 
“So what now?” You ask. Again with the questions. In your defense—it begs so many follow-up questions. A love so many years in the making—layer after layer after layer—of course it begs all the questions, almost to the point of overwhelming capacity. What’ll we tell Pascale? The fans? The family? Everyone?! 
But one look and he makes it better. His green eyes, bright against the deep black of the skyline. You’ve grown. You’ve done it. You’re here. “We’ll figure it out.” He smiles. “We deserve this kind of ending, don’t you think?”
“He has my name.” A tubby finger points to the boy on the greeting card. “That one.”
“And who’s the dog?” Asks the girl beside him, hair wound into a plait. She likes this boy. He’s cute. She plays with the end of her braid and stares, eyes flickering in-between him and the card they’re staring at.
“The name’s right there. They’re best friends.”
“Okay, that’ll be me.”
“So that’s us.”
“Oui.” She smiles. “Charlie and Snoopy.”
read an omitted scene here :)
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boiohboii · 9 months
Text
The Spaniard's Wife (Carlos Sainz x wife!reader)
Inspired by @charles-eclair16 's fic
Carlos Sainz had a secret for the past 9 years, but when he forgot to take off the one thing that can reveal everything, everyone has questions
or
in which Carlos let's everyone know that the rumors, in fact, are true
masterlist
N.B: didn't turn out how I wanted but I've been rewriting it multiple times and I think this is the best option, hope you like it...WARNINGS: swear words a lot, not proof read, spelling mistakes and really bad photoshop tbh, if I missed anything please let me know!
Faceclaim: Emeraude Toubia
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Liked by Charles_leclerc, danielricciardo, landonorris and 910,583 others
Carlossainz55: my wife and I have been friends for 20 years, we have been lovers for 13 of those years, engaged for 2 and married for 9. I have never been sure of much, but I am sure that I love her with my entire heart, I will always love her. I have known yn since before I could even dream of being an f1 driver, what happened in that one interview was disrespectful and just disgusting. No one has any right to speak any ill word of my wife, you don't know her and you never will, as long as she doesn't want you to. I will do everything for her, for her happiness, her comfort and for her ease of mind.
landonorris: tell yn I miss her!
Carlossainz55: leave her alone
landonorris: I'll tell her that you're rude to me
Carlossainz55: she's my wife!
landonorris: yeah yeah, you never let us forget it
username: yn been here since day 0 apparently, can't fight her now
username: YES!! CHILDHOOD FRIENDS TO LOVERS!
username: I want dts to make a reincarnation of their love story
username: we need a spinoff
username: yes! It'd be so cute
username: I can't imagine 16 year old carlos realising he is in love with his friend
username: she is every man's wet dream
-this comment has been removed-
username: she looks so pretty wtf
username: she's looks like a doll
username: wish i looked like that at 20 years old
username: her dress is phenomenal
username: this screams money
username: 2 different cars for a wedding
username: the third slide, holy shit
username: I wouldn't be surprised if the last 2 pictures are carlos' or her house, like holy fuck
username: both scream rich
username: mum used to say rich people look it and I never gave it much thought until I saw carlos sainz and now his wife
username: did y'all see the picture that one twitter user took? Their outfits looked so fucking good
username: YES! I SAW IT! I could never afford a thread on either outfit!
username: did you guys see her hair! It looks so thick and healthy
username: fr!
username: I want a wedding like that!
username: I want a husband like that!
username: I want a wife like that!
username: I love how he is not in one single picture 💀😂
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Liked by danielricciardo, landonorris, Pierregasly and 1,209,316 others
Carlossainz55: 10 years since i was able to call you wife, and I will never get tired of letting everyone know that. I am in love with you, forever and always.
Charles_leclerc: simp
Carlossainz55: I don't know what that means
landonorris: ikr, it's laughable man @.Charles_leclerc
Charles_leclerc: don't pretend like you're not the same with your girl @.landonorris
username: damn charles really coming for everyone's neck today
username: bet charles is the biggest simp of them
username: he really making us feel lonely as hell huh
username: 10 fucking years, Holy shit!
username: no cause if I had yn by my side I too would be in fucking love
username: don't embarrass yourself, everyone knows you're in love without her by your side
username: I didn't ask to be attacked like that wtf
3K notes · View notes
wileys-russo · 1 month
Note
hihi idk if youre taking requests but i had an idea for leah kinda inspired by sockgate (💀)
so basically r plays for arsenal and theyre having kit photoshoots but the kit person accidentally forgot r’s (obviously the photoshoot isnt in colney) so she has to wear leah’s kit because r’s number is 5 and leah’s is 6 so it would be easier to edit and change the number like on the shorts (just say they didnt take any photos of her back because it would be too hard to change the name or something) ANYWAY leah is eating it up seeing r in her kit (especially if it’s like kind of big on her)
and then idk how you want to end it but maybe after the edited pictures are posted, leah cant help herself and also posts the original ones where you can see it’s her kit or something
love your writing <3
the sockgate trauma...never again the new number 6 II l.williamson
"leah catherine if you make us late again you're sleeping on the sofa tonight!" you yelled out impatiently, checking the time and rolling your eyes. "two minutes babe!" your girlfriend called back as you groaned in disbelief.
"they're dressing us and doing hair and makeup there leah, what is taking you so long?" you dropped your bag to the ground and stomped off to the bedroom. "no don't come in i'm-" you pushed open the door and your eyes widened at the sight in front of you.
"tell me that you are not doing a soduku right now." you spoke deathly calm, eyes locked with hers and narrowing. "would that make you feel better?" leah questioned with a charming smile, sat on the corner of the bed.
but the tinkling of her game gave it away as your eye twitched slightly and leah laughed nervously. "leah, i will be waiting in the car. if you do not join me in exactly two minutes, that thing you've been wanting to do?" you stated as leah nodded along.
"you can do it to yourself and this-" you gestured to your body. "-will be off limits, for a week." you warned seriously as leah scoffed and went to speak.
"a whole week williamson, shift it!" you cut her off sternly, turning on heel and marching out of the bedroom hearing your girlfriend trip over with a curse in her haste to hurry.
"ah fuck." you heard a thump and before you could even open the car door leah was skidding to your side, grabbing it for you. "after you darling." she grinned as you hummed and slid inside, tossing your bag in the back as she hurried around to her side.
~
"babe why aren't you dressed?" leah frowned as she returned to the change rooms, having finished with her own media promotion and asked to let you know they were ready for you now.
"they didn't bring my kit. there was a typo on the schedule and they thought less was coming so they've got 23 and not 5." you sighed in explanation as your girlfriend took a seat beside you.
"they just told me to wear your kit, 6 is easier to photoshop to 5 since its one number and not two like 23 is." you shrugged as leahs eyebrows shot upward. "leah." you sighed tiredly at the familiar look which settled on her face as she sat down beside you.
"be an adult and go change, now please." you ducked away from her arm which attempted to slip over your shoulders, standing up and crossing your arms across your chest. "have i ever told you just how sexy you look when you're pissed with me?" leah sighed with a dopey smile.
"yes. you make a point to remind me every time you grovel after you've pissed me off!" you threw a towel at her head and sat back down at your cubby. "no, go change baby." your foot shot up to press against her as she stood and attempted to get closer.
"reminds me of a different position baby, one i quite like." leah grinned wolfishly as she pulled your leg to sit on top of her shoulder and kissed your ankle with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
"you already made me late once this morning and you're doing it again. go and change leah please!" you groaned pulling your leg back and sending her a stern look.
"i know you think this is going to work but this whole annoyed look-" leah wiggled her fingers at you "-is just making it all the more harder to leave you." leah smirked as you rolled your eyes and exhaled deeply.
"alright alright! i'm going. a girl knows where she isn't wanted!" leah spoke dramatically clutching at her chest, ducking down and stealing a kiss. "unless you'd like me to just change here and we can-" leah started to suggest but a dead panned glare had her grabbing her bag and hurrying away toward the showers.
"here you go then sunshine." a bundle of clothes hit you square in the face as you'd started to daydream only a few moments later, leah changed back into the clothes she'd arrived in.
"you are so-" you stopped yourself, leah sending you a smirk and sitting down on the bench. "eyes and hands inside the ride at all times williamson, i'm on a schedule." you warned as you started to strip off and change, feeling your girlfriends gaze locked onto you.
"leah!" you huffed as you pulled her shirt down over your head and her hand smacked against your ass. "what? it slipped babe." leah shrugged with an innocent smile as you rolled your eyes and pulled on her shorts having to roll the waistband a little so they didn't hang so low, already having your boots and socks on.
"wait! you're missing something." leah shot to her feet as you fixed your hair and turned to leave, pausing with a raised eyebrow. your lips couldn't help but curl into a small smile as leahs own pressed sweetly against them.
"sap." you teased, pecking her lips a few more times before heading out of the change rooms hearing her follow after you. "behave leah." you warned seriously as she held up her hands with a wink and you pushed your way into the media room.
"well well well if it isn't our newest number six!" beth teased as she finished up and immediately noticed that you weren't in your own number. "call me vice captain." you grinned, hugging her as you swapped positions and she spoke briefly with your girlfriend before leaving the room.
"so we're mostly shooting graphics for the screens and the lineups today, some celebrations, some serious shots. we'll do everything forward facing since there was some...issues, sorry about that again." jessica the marketing and media admin smiled apologetically.
"you're just lucky i was around to save the day jess." leah chimed in as jess shot her a playful glare and stepped back, calling out a few poses as the photographer snapped away and you moved between the different backdrops.
much as you tried your hardest to stay focused there was no avoiding the shit eating grin plastered on your girlfriends face as she sat back with arms crossed, eyes laser focused on your every move.
leah wasn't shy about how much she adored you, that was given by the constant teasings of the pining looks she threw your way during trainings or the not to subtle kisses she stole what felt like every few minutes.
leah was even less shy about how much she adored the sight of you in her clothes. early on in the relationship she did find it somewhat frustrating how you'd sneak off with her hoodies or shirts or pants hidden away in your overnight bag.
but seeing you wander around colney with what leah knew was her nike hoodie covering your top half had something stirring in her stomach she couldn't ignore.
your girlfriend by nature could be possessive, though most times it never came from jealousy knowing you were just as much as infatuated with her as she was with you, but rather that solidifying assurance that you were hers.
so as she sat there seeing you take picture after picture wearing her name, number and jersey leah was grinning ear to ear and there wasn't much which could be said to wipe it off.
"all good?" you questioned once it seemed things were wrapped up, sending both him and jess a thumbs up and stepping away, boots clacking against the hard cement floor and shaking your head at the look on leahs face.
"don't say it." you warned, snatching your jacket out of her hands and making a beeline out of the room as she hurried to follow you. "leah!" you laughed as she caught up and grabbed your hand, pushing you against a wall.
"you're like a horny teenager." you chuckled against her lips which immediately ravaged yours, her hands gripping your hips as you cupped her face and deepened the kiss.
"baby girl you know what it does to me to see you in my clothes, let alone wearing my last name on your back." leah pulled away and shook her head, making a mind blown gesture with her hands causing you to laugh again and shove her.
"we're at work miss williamson, be professional." you booped her nose and darted away as leahs kiss met thin air and she watched you dissapear into the change rooms.
"oh but miss williamson all my thoughts right now are strictly unprofessional." leah sang out happily with a cheeky grin as you shook your head. "no ring, no wife." you patted her cheek and held up your empty hand causing leah to now shake her head.
"oh no no no, no need to change my girl." leah swiftly grabbed your bag, stuffing your clothes back in and slinging it over her shoulder, holding out her hand for you to take with a sly smile.
"its time for me to make our new number six feel very very very welcome."
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junosswans · 5 months
Text
FMA sketches by Ace Attorney's character designer, Iwamoto Tatsuro
For the past week, Iwamoto-san has been posting sketches of FMA characters on his twitter as a part of his daily sketching challenge and they are absolutely BEAUTIFUL.
I really want to share his art over here and also translate his posts for you all because I think his commentaries are quite insightful for people who are interested in character design!
[Those who know their AA lore would recognize him as who voiced Edgeworth (Mitsurugi) in the games :3]
Anyways, below are his FMA sketches he's shared on twitter so far! (Contains: Ed, Hughes, Kimblee, Mustang, Breda) You can click on the dates to see their original post. I will add to this post if he shares any more sketches, it seems that he has been on an FMA roll xD
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25/11/2023
If you draw your favourite things out you will know them better! So, this is Edward Elric from #FullmetalAlchemist.
Even if you have decided on the pose you want to draw, it is better to sketch out these three first:
the moment before the pose is struck
the pose itself
the moment after the pose is struck
then decide which image works better for your art. I learned this from a really great senior of mine, and it is very solid advice.
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29/11/2023 (Translator's note: I decided to move this one to the top because it is my favourite. No I don't accept criticism.)
I have been drawing Ed's automail again.
I like it when the machine part has a distinctly different silhouette compared to the human body, so I added some original ideas to the design.
What design should I draw next? Perhaps I should draw the military uniform?
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# (combined two posts because they’re the progression of the same piece.) #
26/11/2023
Again, it is the time of "drawing your favourite things to know them better!"
It feels so good to draw such great characters...
27/11/2023
My Photoshop has been crashing for mysterious reasons the whole morning, and I tried to troubleshoot in the afternoon and it was a PAIN. Computers are really difficuuuuuuuult--
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28/11/2023
Iwamoto-style drawing Masterclass: Bonus!
It is the "Give the leather and metal items a bit of flare/shine to immediately make the drawing look more complete"-jutsu!
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30/11/2023
I wanted the clothes to give off an oversized, loose impression.
Canon Hughes didn't seem to be wearing a shirt underneath... hmm.
03/12/2023
I am beginning to understand the structure of the military uniform better...
Realising the butt flap/cape didn’t actually connect to the upper jacket is a shocker to me.
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03/12/2023
A continuation of yesterday's sketch
...or so I thought, until I realized how King Bradley and Kimblee during the Ishval war had a different overcoat design, in which they actually wore a single long coat instead of a separated upper and bottom set.
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04/12/2023
When his clothes were unbuttoned, there was something that looked like an additional button on his right chest... I wonder if it could be fastened from the back?
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(Translator's note: sorry, I have no idea what button he's referring to here lol)
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05/12/2023
I like how each character's personality was expressed through the way they dress. Contrary to his appearance, this person was very intelligent, which makes him such a great character.
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