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#i know they have like fan translated names too i think
doodlerh · 2 years
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i am unfortunately not immune to mithrun dungeon meshi
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mariacallous · 1 year
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Last year, the lead singer of The 1975, Matt Healy, managed to offend a whole lot of Gaelgoirí (Irish speakers) when he appeared to mock a fan’s name – Dervla – at a meet-and-greet.
Healy isn’t alone, though, when it comes to anglophone bafflement at Irish names. A recent study based on an analysis of Google searches revealed the words that British people have the most difficulty pronouncing. The names Aoife, Saoirse, Niamh and Siobhán occupy places in the top 10.
And it’s not exclusively a British problem: I always cringe watching US talkshows where the host quizzes their Irish guest (usually Saoirse Ronan) on the pronunciation of their and other Irish names.
I’ve heard every possible variation of my own name from non-Irish people. It’s not uncommon in Ireland; in secondary school, there were four Niamhs in my class. But I rarely come across an English person who is familiar with it, despite the proximity of our two countries.
In case you don’t know, it’s pronounced “Neev” or “Nee-av”, either is perfectly acceptable. The prefix Ní means “daughter of”. My surname is trickier, and has even tripped up a few Irish people; it can be translated as Herbert, and is pronounced “her-a-vard”.
When I was living in London, I quickly learned that saying Niamh at the counter in a coffee shop or over the phone to make a booking simply wouldn’t fly. This led to the invention of what I call my “Starbucks name”. Anything easily pronounceable with a simple spelling would do. Mia, Sophie and Rose were among my common aliases.
Speaking to others reveals a litany of similar experiences. Aoibhe Ní Shúilleabháin, a designer and teacher, spent two years at college in England having her name mispronounced and disrespected. (Her first name is pronounced “Ay-vah”.) More than one lecturer resorted to calling her “blondie”.
She tells me: “I was asked to say, ‘Three hundred and thirty three trees’” – a tongue-twister that does the rounds on TikTok – “more often than I was asked to repeat my name.” She recalls the lack of interest when she attempted to explain that Irish and English are different languages with different pronunciation rules.
Clearly, the sensitivities at play here are rooted in history: Ireland was colonised by the English and our national language was all but wiped out. A language revival began in earnest in the 19th century, but it’s never quite recovered. Ireland’s most recent census shows that about 40% of Ireland’s population can speak Irish. The English destroyed our language once before, so every little throwaway comment and scoff at our names hurts a little bit more – and ultimately becomes just tiresome. A handful of people even remark, “Oh! I didn’t know Ireland had its own language,” when I tell them about my name.
Writer Darach Ó Séaghdha is all too familiar with these difficulties. (The “rach” in Darach is pronounced like “Bach”, he says.)He hosted a podcast called Motherfoclóir, a podcast about the Irish language and culture, and whenever there were guests on with Irish names, “inevitably the episode would turn into group therapy”. There was one bad experience, he recalls, when he was told that his surname “looked like a wifi password”. But he decided to give his children Irish names, too. It’s a common trend, he says, “because parents with Irish names have been battle-hardened”.
Like the others I spoke to for this piece, writer and director Rioghnach (think “Ree-nock”)Ní Ghrioghair believes that a sense of superiority among English speakers is to blame for the constant mistreatment of Irish names. But she’s defiant. “We are going to scrutinise the British for any transgression regarding the pronunciation of our names,” and other things, she tells me, like British media claiming Irish actors as their own during awards seasons.
There is no easy crash-course I can give to you on the pronunciation of Irish names, but you can always try out “how to pronounce”-style websites (which themselves can be contested). But the simplest and most reliable solution is perhaps just to politely ask an Irish person – and listen attentively to what they say. I may have accepted that English people are very rarely going to get my name right on the first go, but I appreciate a well-intentioned effort. Just don’t laugh at it, please.
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othercrossee · 1 year
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#z rants#NOT MAD ANYMORE ITS JSUT FUNNY TO ME NOW#okay i eed to actually ramble about this cuz i ended up laughing reading shit on twt about how what he said was a mistranslation#ill be censoring his name cuz i dont aant it leak into the tag and i dont want yall pieces of shit to argue with me#a fat person who can comprehend what he said and how it cpuld come across despite it not being his intention 👍#also cuz as a fan for 5 years who love these guys a lot but still see them as human who can very much do wrong and judge them for that#yall bow to these bitches a little too much like they arent grown ass men who are being idolized by many its so crazy#first of all. an apology is so easy idk why u think he csnt comprehend what he said or refuse to answer but sure#lets get into it#amother thing is yall must be some pretentious little cunts telling people to apologizs to hao instead#i do want cunts who were bodyshaming him in recent news to do that whatever but. people who r rightfully mad?#they have the rights to be idc what wrong translation when u read at the sentence throughly it stil came off....weird#lets not make this into a personal issue thing we all know the industry is filled with fatphobic cunts whos awaiting the moment to say sum#so what he said is apparently * they need to stop esting but i cannot say it thoughtlessly. because whatever your body type is-#you just need to love yourself* which is understandable mind u. id say this is an okay answer#but i do think the way he just word this shit is so bad like u didnt nedd to add the first part my god 😭😭😭 sir 😭😭#he meant well mind u i do think he does but its just craazyyyy#* they need to stop eatinf but i csnt say it thoughtlessly* just dont say it then bro 😭 not that hard#do u not see the undertone of that? EVEN IF that wasnt hsi intention#thats another one of fatphobia undertone babey! csnt say it thoughtlessly. god thats so good man#so if u were to say it thoughtfully what would it be then? they ened to eat healthier?#let me repeat this. no matter which is his intention. he should still be educated about this more#especiallh coming from a person like him with skinny priviledge and in an industry so filled with hate for fat people#twt bitches r a bunch of bootlicking little bitches be serious for once yall r too dramatic idk laugh a little#*theyre attacking him! apologize!* we r asking a 25 yo man to be accountable for what he said as an idol with milliosn of fan#who all comprehend his answer differently and how that answer could mean when u think of fatphobia rhetoric 😁#twt carat dni yall cannot think st all its sk crazy that the first thing i saw was someone being so emotional about the whole issue#and how the people who r mad should rethink this snd spologize and r fake fans#must be so much to not use your brain at all like them#grown ass man accidentally says sth fatphobic and csnr even apologize a little bit when we all kmow its get swept under the rug anyways
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marvelouslizzie · 11 months
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You're My Desire - Co-written with @notafunkiller
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Summary: Your best friend drags you out on a double date. You were supposed to be Steve Rogers' date, but plans change pretty quickly and you end up in Bucky Barnes' arms.
Pairing: 40s Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Warnings: 18+ NSFW MINORS DNI, first date, public sex, ripped clothing, teasing, rough sex, dirty talk, praise, pet names, no mention of y/n
Word Count: 5.5K
A/N: We really don't have an excuse for this one. We just wanted 40s Bucky to have a good time, you know? This is basically smut with little bit of plot.
Please give my lovely co-writer @notafunkiller a follow. She's also a Bucky Barnes writer and her stories are amazing.
All work is ours, please do not repost or translate without our permission.
Every like, comment, and reblog is highly appreciated. Don’t hesitate to message us. Unless it's hate. That's never welcome.
Read more tag starts after the first paragraph of the story.
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Even though you really didn’t want to, you find yourself on a double date with your best friend. She literally begged you to come because she promised she would bring someone for her date’s best friend and apparently she really doesn’t wanna disappoint the handsome soldier.
You're shocked, though, when you arrive at the fair and see Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in the flesh waiting for you two at the gate.
You were pretty sure she brought you here for Bucky Barnes but it turns out your date is actually Steve Rogers, aka Captain America himself.
You don't know what to do at first, awkwardly watching your friend hugging Bucky as if they knew each other for ages. Even though they met just a day ago. Steve extends his hand politely, which you immediately shake.
It doesn’t take long for you to go inside the fun fair together while chatting casually. Your friend, Cassie, starts asking questions about the war. She loves front-line stories, but Bucky doesn’t seem like he enjoys telling them.
Steve, on the other hand, is very excited to do it, answering all of Cassie's questions as you quietly watch them. You wonder why you said yes to this date. You've never been into soldiers and even less into war discussions. But you love your friend very much even when she ignores you.
You find yourself looking at Bucky while Cassie and Steve start to chat and exchange stories. He kinda seems amused by this development. You shrug looking in his direction, waiting for him to say something. After all, you are both already bored and your friends don't even seem to care or notice you anymore in the first place.
Bucky just smiles and then tries to change the subject. You think he actually handles that topic change pretty smoothly and it sticks for a while until Cassie gets bored of talking about books.
You remark Bucky's sad face, but you don't say anything. Instead, you subtly start to walk slower, hoping he'll do the same. As Cassie keeps talking to Steve, Bucky notices you are getting behind and just slows down a little.
"You're okay? Are your legs hurting?" Bucky asks concerned while looking at her shoes.
“No, no, I’m fine. Just got tired of the war stories, that’s all.” You keep walking slowly.
"Me, too." He sighs. "It's a never-ending subject at this point."
“Well, where there's life there's hope.” You quote the Hobbit instinctively. You hold on to the hope, one day you won’t have to talk about this war.
Bucky gasps, looking at you in a way you never experienced before. "What did you say?"
“I just said where there's life there's hope.” You repeat, surprised by the way he probably recognized the quote. People usually have no idea what you are referring to. Not him though.
"You're a fan? Oh god!"
That starts your actual conversation with Bucky Barnes. It turns out he’s a big bookworm himself. He reads as much as he can, always buying more books that he manages to read.
You didn't even realize how close you are until your shoulders slightly brush. You blush when he smiles, clearly not minding. Still, you feel very conscious about your closeness and quickly look toward your friend, feeling guilty that you are enjoying the company of her date, but she doesn’t seem to care one bit. On the contrary, she’s actually holding Steve Rogers’ arm while talking and laughing.
"You're very beautiful." You hear Bucky murmur shily.
His compliment catches you off guard. You were about to apologize on behalf of Cassie. Yet you find yourself blushing.
"And you love reading. I am a lucky man. I get to talk to you."
“I could say the same thing myself, Sergeant. I much rather talk about books instead of the war.”
"Then you got the right company." Bucky smiles and looks around. "Should we get some ice cream?"
“That would be amazing.” And that’s how you end up separated from Cassie and Steve. Bucky informs them about their plan and then leaves without waiting for them.
You spend the next hour talking and walking around the entire fair. James even won a teddy bear for you. Once in a while both of you act like you wanna find Steve and Cassie, but you definitely don’t care.
"I don't remember the last time I felt so comfortable and good with someone."
“I’m glad I’m not boring the shit out of you.” You know it’s not ladylike to speak this way, but you feel comfortable around him. It’s crazy when you consider you just met him maybe two hours ago.
Bucky smiles. "I can say the same. Steve says I'm quite boring."
“He’s quite boring himself.”
"Is he?" He snorts.
“Yeah. Who knew Captain America would be into war stories?”
"Doesn't the name say it?" He continues in the same joking tone.
“The name suggests he’s heroic and boring but he’s more boring and less heroic than expected. Stealing his best friend's date doesn’t scream honorable to me.”
Bucky is shocked to see her indirectly standing up for him. "Maybe I stole his date, though."
“His date was uninterested from the start and just being nice to her best friend.”
"Is she still uninterested?"
“In him? Yes.” You act like you don’t understand what he is actually asking.
"Well, the feelings are mutual. About the date and now…"
“You were uninterested in Cassie?” You say it in a way that shows you don’t believe him.
"Wasn't it obvious?"
“Nope.” It definitely wasn’t when they hugged each other the moment they arrived.
"I was trying to be polite. She insisted on this… meeting because I helped her out. I was relieved I could bring Steve."
“She sounded very interested in you until Captain Rogers started with war stories.”
"She was staring at his… back ever since we arrived."
You burst out laughing and he joins you right after. It sets the tone for the rest of the night and makes you notice you both don’t give a shit.
*
"I want to show you something," you say after a few seconds and quickly drag him after you until you reach a darker alley close to the last attraction. You drop the teddy bear carefully at your feet. "Hi."
“Hi.” He still seems a bit confused, but it’s so cute. He looks at the teddy bear and then his eyes turn back to your face. You can’t help but smile.
"You're so cute. Has anyone told you that?" You smile in return.
He acts like thinking for a second. “No, not really. Just cute?” He fishes for more.
"And smart." You touch his chest shily. "And kind."
“Hmm, those are not what people notice first.” He moves a little bit closer. “You have something…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, instead, his thumb brushes the corner of your lips. You wait for him to wipe off whatever you had on your face before opening your mouth and letting your tongue touch his finger shamelessly.
You watch Bucky’s eyes widen out of surprise. He didn't expect that at all. You grab his hand, bringing his finger inside your mouth, and notice how his breathing quickens. Yet he doesn’t stop you.
You let your tongue play for a few seconds until you let his finger go with a small bite. He lets out the lowest moan but not only do you hear it, but you also love it.
"Wow, I…" He doesn't know what to say, all red and excited.
“You what? Do you feel uncomfortable? Excited? I mean, I can stop if you want.”
In response, brave and happy, Bucky kisses you. His tongue is already on your bottom lip asking for permission, which you grant by opening your mouth without realizing it.
The kiss isn’t shy like you expected, and he definitely knows how to kiss. The way his lips and tongue move makes you want more, right then and there.
Your hands go to his neck as you let yourself enjoy the kiss even more. You keep kissing until you feel breathless. When Bucky breaks it, he doesn’t move away. His forehead touches yours as you try to catch your breath.
"This was…"
“I wanna do something if that’s okay…” You say while suddenly getting on your knees. You are wearing your favorite nylon stockings and you're sure they are gonna get ripped, but you don't care.
Bucky thinks he's daydreaming because how can this happen? How?
"What? What are you doing?"
“I think you know what I am doing, Sergeant. Just tell me to stop if you don’t want it, okay?” Your hands move to his belt but you wait for a reaction first.
"Stop. That's not… you don't have to do this. We are having a great time anyway."
“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. Is that okay for you?”
He can only nod, totally shocked and excited at the same time.
You unbuckle him slowly. Even though you are in a public place, you're in no hurry. You unzip him while looking into his eyes. When you finally take him out of his pants, he seems speechless. He’s already hard, but as soon as you start to move your hand, he gets rock hard after maybe four pumps.
"Jesus, you're so pretty. You look like a doll on your knees."
You smile proudly. “Tell me what I look like when I do this,” you say before taking him inside your mouth.
He closes his eyes, groaning. Your mouth is so wet and warm. You take it slow at first. Your mouth moves gently while you swirl your tongue around the head.
"Please." You hear him whisper, his left hand resting against the wall behind him.
You move your mouth away from him just to ask “Please what?” Your lipstick is already a little smudged.
"Oh god, keep going. Please, you're such a pretty sight."
“Tell me how I look when you're inside my mouth and I'll continue, promise.” You wink and remind him he still hasn’t fulfilled your request.
"Like a dream. Like a goddess."
“Hmm…” You go back to taking him inside your mouth without making another comment. This time, you move a bit faster than before and start using your hand.
"Your mouth will be the death of me."
That makes you smile but you don’t stop, moving your hand and mouth at the same time, hoping for a good reaction. His hand finds its way to your hair, wrapping it enough to pull a little. That encourages you to go faster, in need for a tighter grip. And you get it: soon, he wraps more of your hair around his whole fist, moaning your name.
“I think I'm gonna…” He sounds so breathy. “You should pull away.”
You look at him, acknowledging his warning, but showing him you are ignoring it. You keep moving fast, making sure your tongue flicks around the right spot every time until he spills inside your mouth. It’s a lot more than you are used to, but you still keep going until he completely empties himself. You take your mouth off, looking into his eyes before swallowing.
"No." He covers his eyes while groaning. "You can't do this to me, doll. Jesus…"
“Do what?” You innocently ask.
He doesn't answer you, taking you by the back of the neck and kissing you sloppily. You don’t get a chance to warn him about the taste and he doesn’t seem to care one bit. He groans into your mouth when he feels your hands on his ass and breaks the kiss just to suck on your neck.
Then you feel his hands between your bodies, trying to pull up his pants again.
You break the kiss to ask: “What are you doing?”
"I'm putting on my pants," he sounds like a kid. "And I wanna get on my knees for you, too."
“Maybe I want something else that doesn’t require you to put your pants on.”
He nods, without understanding what you mean. "Alright. I'll just-" He drops his right hand until it reaches her skirt. "Is it okay?" You nod with a smile. Even though it’s not what you meant, it’s fine.
His fingers immediately go to your underwear and push it aside.
"Fuck me. Look at that." You are really wet and his curses don't help either. "Soaked. Is that for me, doll?"
“No, it’s for Captain Rogers, who bored the shit out of me.” You joke.
You feel his fingers stopping on your slit as he lifts his head. "What did you say?"
“I said it’s for Captain Rogers, who bored the shit out of me. You know that gets the girls wet.” You hope he won’t be offended by this. It’s just a silly joke.
In response, Bucky pushes a finger inside you quickly, his lips curling into a smirk. "Should I start talking about war, too? Bet that would get you even wetter."
You let out a deep breath, relieved. Thank God he isn’t offended. “That would get me dry as a desert, Sergeant Barnes.”
"Should I dye my hair then?" He snorts, moving his finger faster.
“Maybe you should get a shield. It would definitely look better on you.”
"A shield, huh?" Bucky adds another finger, trying to scissor them inside you a couple of times. "Is it too much?"
“Nope,” you say after a moan. “It’s not enough.”
"Fuck, you…" he closes his eyes. "You want another?"
“I want something else.” You smile, hoping him to understand this time.
"Yeah? Like what?"
You grab his cock and gently rub it without saying a word. You are not surprised he’s hard because his erection has been pressed on your leg for a while.
"Fuck. You want my cock, baby?"
“Yeah. Why do you think I didn’t let you pull your pants back up?”
"I don't-" He moans. "I didn't think."
“Come on. You are making me wait while I’m soaking your fingers.”
"Wanna make you…" Bucky interrupts himself by adding a third finger, his other hand going to your clit. "Happy."
“Fuck.” You throw your head back, that felt so good.
"You like this?" He rubs a little more, paying attention to your body. His fingers inside you keep the same pace, though. He isn't slowing down now even if it's the end of the world.
“Yeah, that.” You breathe out. You already feel your legs shaking and you're afraid your knees might give out, but it feels so good, you can’t seem to focus on the concerns.
"Hold on to me."
You put your hands on his shoulders and it helps you relax a bit more. After that, your orgasm comes crashing in like a big wave that leaves you breathless. He doesn't stop moving his fingers until you finish coming, then he slowly pulls them out, making sure to lick them before kissing you.
“You are such a dirty soldier, Sergeant Barnes,” you say with a smile.
"What is dirty about this?" He shrugs. "I'm a good soldier, of course."
“Doing this in a dark alley with me and licking your fingers clean like that. Very good soldier, indeed.”
"Ihm." He buries his head right onto your shoulder and breathes in. "Thank you."
“For what?” You find yourself kissing his hair while asking the question.
"For this evening and this. Thank you for trusting me."
“You are something else, Bucky,” you say while caressing his hair.
"Hmm?"
You kiss his hair and his ear, then move your lips to his neck. “You can thank me later. We are not done yet.”
"Changed your mind?" He smiles. "Want me on my knees after all?
“Maybe later.” You wink. “Now don’t act like you don’t know what I want because I know you want it, too.”
He freezes. "Wait, you're serious?"
“Of course I am serious. Just don’t finish inside, okay?”
He looks at you again all serious. "Are you sure? We don't have to, I can use my tongue."
“Don’t worry, it’s not my first time and yeah, I’m sure unless you don’t want to.”
Bucky looks at you with puppy eyes. "Uhm, it's my first time."
“Oh god.” Your eyes widen. “I… didn’t consider… that possibility. I’m sorry.”
Bucky starts laughing at your worried expression and kisses your cheek. "My first time with a bookworm doll."
You punch his shoulder. “You worried me!”
That makes him laugh even harder, and you can't help but smile. Because he's extra beautiful like this.
"Why? Do you have something against innocent boys, ma'am? Shame!"
“No, nothing against it. Absolutely would love to teach and corrupt but wouldn’t want that to be your first time.”
"You don't want to take advantage of me, huh? Such a good girl." He surprises you by suddenly lifting you and helping you wrap your legs around his torso.
“Would you like me to take advantage of you?” You kiss his jaw and cheeks.
"Fuck, yes. Yes."
“Then you have my permission to take advantage of me, too.”
He doesn't ask you again if you're sure. Instead, he lifts his right hand to your blouse and starts unbuttoning it as fast as he can. He's so impatient he even manages to rip a button. You just watch him work and smile, hoping the gentleman side of Bucky finally stops holding him back.
He groans at the sight of your hard nipples and quickly leans in to take one in his mouth.
“Oh fuck,” you whimper while he uses his tongue to play with your nipple. It feels so good you don't even notice when his hand drops under your skirt. Until you hear the ripping sound.
“What the fuck?” You can’t believe he's just ripped your nylon stockings. They are so hard to find and so expensive!
"Whha?" He doesn't even take his mouth off your nipple as he speaks.
“Do you know how expensive those stockings are?” Your surprise is so clear in your voice. “You owe me a pair of nylon stockings, Sargeant.”
"They were in the way, baby."
“Getting impatient?” You mock a little.
He pushes his hips a little more. "Can't you feel?"
“You still owe me a pair.”
"What about these?" His hands are now on her panties. "How many do I need to buy you so I can rip these off?"
“Just one pair, but if you wanna rip that one, too, this cycle might never end.”
He sighs, contemplating, but he finally decides not to, only pushing your underwear aside. "How do you want it?"
“What do you mean?”
Bucky takes another step until your back barely brushes against the wall. "How do you like this? The sex."
“Don’t try to act all kind and push aside what you actually want to do. That’s how I want it.”
"Do you uhm… like it fast or slow? The pace I mean." He's slowly pushing inside you while he asks, trying to be as gentle as possible.
“That’s exactly what I meant. Do it however you want and we will see how I like it. Don’t be too gentle like this.”
"Talk to me, okay?" He's halfway inside you now, staying still for a few seconds as he leaves small kisses on your neck.
“Oh, I will, don’t worry, handsome. No one can stop me from complaining if I don’t like something.”
"Good girl." He tries different types of thrusts and angles at first, wanting to see what you respond to the most.
“Fuck. Why do you keep saying that?” She moves her hips to make him thrust faster.
"Because you're my good girl. Dirty too." He moans when he feels you. "God, you want it faster, baby?"
“Yes, yes, I do. Please. Move faster.”
And he does, his grip on your ass tightening as he starts thrusting just the way you want. "Fuck, you're soaked. You feel so good around me."
“You feel good, too.” You moan in between words. “And you are strong. Really strong,” you remark because he doesn’t look tired while holding you.
But he doesn't seem to acknowledge that. "I'm so fucking lucky, Jesus." He groans when he feels your lips sucking on his collarbone.
“You didn’t think your double date would end this way, huh?”
"Deep inside you? Not a chance." He smiles, speeding up.
“Maybe deep inside someone else.” You tease on purpose.
Bucky immediately stops thrusting. "What?"
“I was just joking about how we were meant to be on a date with other people.” You hate that you can’t shut your mouth sometimes.
"Oh," he nods, restarting to move. "Well, I can assure you, he wouldn't have done this tonight." He jokes back.
“Fuck me against the wall like this?”
"Fuck you at all. But especially like this. And the language?" He laughs. "Never."
“Oh, so honorable of him.” You keep joking. “Poor Cassie.”
His right-hand flies behind your head to protect it as his thrusts become way too quick. "Fuck. You feel like heaven, I swear."
“God, how do you do that?” You are surprised that he can carry you with one hand. “Are you sure you aren’t a super soldier yourself?”
Bucky shakes his head amused. "That will go straight to my ego."
“You're carrying me with one hand while protecting my head with the other, and you keep fucking me at the same time. I think it should go straight to your ego.”
He groans. "Lower one of your hands now."
“Lower it where exactly?” You don’t understand what he wants.
His hand moves from the back of her head for a few seconds just to bring her fingers to her clitoris. "Right here. Can you rub this for me?"
“Ohh.” You finally understand what he’s trying to do, so you listen and start rubbing yourself while his hand goes back to your head.
"Good, good girl. Look at you." He doesn't even realize how deep his thrusts are because his focus is on your fingers.
“Oh god… It feels so good.” You have never done something like this before. No public sex, no touching yourself during sex, no good girl whispers next to your ear. They all make you feel dizzy.
"Yeah? Just good?" His mouth finds your breasts this time, and you just know he's leaving a few marks there by the way he sucks on your skin.
“You wanna hear how good it makes me feel?”
"Ihmm."
“Oh, you are even dirtier than you are showing, aren’t you, Sergeant Barnes?”
He looks up immediately. "Say that again." He demands.
“Sergeant Barnes?”
"Fuck, you need to rub faster."
“You need to fuck me harder.” You say while listening to his order.
"Harder?" He repeats, shocked, not expecting that in the slightest. But he does as you demand in a heartbeat, biting his tongue because it feels so good.
You have a hard time holding back your reaction because it feels just perfect. You can feel your orgasm approaching.
“Shit, you need to cover my mouth,” you say as quickly as possible.
"Just use me. Bite my shoulder," he suggests quickly, keeping the pace exactly the same.
You wanna say no, because you don’t wanna hurt him but there’s no other choice left. You sink your teeth in somewhere between his neck and shoulder and try to muffle yourself. The orgasm hits you so hard that you are afraid someone is gonna hear you even like this.
"Fuck," he groans, the pain feeling amazing as you keep coming, your legs wrapping even more tightly around his ass.
“Please, don’t stop,” you manage to say and go back to biting him, very aware of the hickey you are giving him, but that doesn’t stop you because you don’t want to get caught like this.
"Can't stop." At this point you wonder how no one noticed you by now. The sound of your skin touching and your groans are not quite silent. But even if they did, you know you wouldn't stop. How could you?
"Keep rubbing, I want you to find pleasure again."
“Again?” You sound shocked because you've literally just come.
"Again." He tries to lift one of your legs a little more. "Please."
“I don’t think I can, but keep going, okay?” You already came twice in a short amount of time. How much more can you do?
"Well, I think you can." He smiles. "Gonna mark me up, baby?"
“I think I already did.” You can see your teeth marks on his neck. You are sure it will turn into purple really soon.
"I'm your property now?" The hand he has on the back of your head quickly grabs your hair and wraps it around his fist.
“Are you?” You like the sound of that and how he’s pulling your hair.
"I am." He's frantically thrusting in and out of you. "Rub faster."
“Fuck,” you mumble while rubbing yourself. You aren’t sure if it’s gonna do anything, but it feels good. “Can I keep you then? You know, kidnap you and hide you in my apartment so you don’t have to go back to the war. We can just do this every day.”
"Fuck, do it." He smiles. "I dare you."
“Should I tie you up so it looks more realistic?” And suddenly all that rubbing starts to feel different, more pleasurable.
"On your bed? Go ahead."
You laugh at how easily he’s convinced, but your laugh is interrupted by a moan.
"Gonna come for me, dolly?"
“I am not sure.” You struggle to speak. “It feels like it.”
He pulls your hair hard. "Please, please."
“You beg so beautifully, how can I say no?” It’s not like your body is saying no, either.
When you finish coming again, you watch with your eyes semi-closed as James takes himself out without dropping you even a little and comes right on your thighs and ripped stockings. You feel the warmth of his come while you both are trying to catch your breath.
"This was… wow."
“This is a hell of a first date.” You find yourself giggling. Did all that really happen? The soreness between your legs says yes.
Bucky slowly puts you down. "You think?" He snorts.
“Oh yeah, very memorable.” You notice that your stockings are completely ruined so you have no other choice but to take them off.
"Fuck, you're dripping." He doesn't look like he's sorry and he can't say he is, either. He's actually very proud.
“Yeah, I am aware.” You laugh while taking them off and using them like a washcloth to clean yourself up.
"You have no idea how lovely the sight is." He winks at you while zipping up his pants.
You bite your bottom lip while looking at him. “Likewise. You look satisfied, Sargeant. Did something happen while you were gone?” You pull your skirt down.
"I got touched by an angel."
You laugh. “So cheesy. You are lucky that you are a bookworm. A really good-looking one, who is also good at bed even though we didn’t even need one.”
"Next time. Maybe we'll break it." He sounds so confident, but not demanding at all at the same time.
“When are you going back?” You find yourself asking. If he’s promising you a second time, you are gonna take it.
"In one week."
You make a sad face without realizing then take a deep breath to help yourself focus on the positive side. “That’s a lot of sex.”
He immediately lifts your chin and presses a kiss on your forehead. "I was joking. We got two months."
“You are such a liar.” You punch him in his shoulder.
Which only makes him laugh. "You like it hard."
But your attention is on his neck, on the spot you bit so hard. The purple spot looks really old and mostly faded already.
"No comment?" He snorts. "We're gonna have a lot of fun for sure."
“I have a question.” Your eyes are still on that same spot. “Does Steve heal quickly?”
"Why? You plan on kicking his ass?"
“Just answer the question, please.”
"Yeah, he does." Bucky shrugs. "One of the perks of the serum."
“Even the small scars or purple spots?”
"Yes." Bucky doesn't even think about it. "Which is great. Why? You think your friend will want to know?"
You don’t comment about his question, instead, touch the spot you bit down so hard. “You are nearly completely healed. My mark has vanished.”
"What?" He asks, confused.
“I bit down on your neck so hard, it was dark red. Now it’s gone.”
"I don't get purple easily. Never did. I guess you have to suck a little more." He smiles leaning in to kiss you again.
“I fully bit you,” you say before he does.
"I noticed." He giggled.
Since he doesn’t take it that seriously you let it go. “Fine. I will prove it to you later.”
"Prove what?" He gives you another kiss.
“That you heal quickly.” You try to fix yourself while you kiss him back.
"Oh, I feel healed every time I look at you."
“You are so cheesy.” Yet you can’t help but laugh. “How do I look?”
"Good boy version or?" He pauses dramatically.
“Both.”
"Good boy version first: you look like an angel." He smiles cheekily.
You snort. “I’m asking if I look decent, Bucky.”
"Angel,” he repeats before dropping his hands to your ass and squeezing. "They won't know you've got fucked against the wall if that's what you're afraid of. But you look strangely content and happy."
“That’s because I had a good date.” You scrunch your nose cheekily.
"Me too. The best date ever."
“Should we try to find our best friends?”
"Oh, sure." Bucky leans in to get the teddy bear before handing it to you.
"Ready for more war stories?"
“No, I’m not.” You hug the bear. “I gotta wash this.”
Bucky snorts. "Poor bear. Got traumatized."
“Traumatized and all dirty.” You don’t notice how close you are to Bucky until you feel him next to you. “Should we keep this a secret from our friends?”
"Do you want to?"
“I meant the having sex in a dark alley part. I don’t think my friend needs to know that.” She definitely shouldn’t know all this.
"We should totally keep that part to ourselves." He smiles.
“I could say that you kissed me or something. I don’t know. Is that too forward for the first date?”
"There's no such thing. You can say I kissed you."
“I was genuinely asking.” You smile. “I normally don’t even kiss on the first date.”
Bucky giggles, his hand squeezing your hip. "I am a lucky gal." You smile back at him until you notice a familiar face.
“Oh, is that Steve?” You point to the tall blonde guy.
"Yes, that's him. But where is your friend?"
“Right in front of him. I can see her dress.” It’s sticking on the side.
"Oh, yes. Gonna drive you home after that if that's alright with you." He sounds so casual like he already did that many times, but you notice something else.
“You have a car and you didn’t think of using it until now?”
"Oh." Redness takes over his cheeks. "I got… distracted."
"You are such an idiot." You start to giggle while walking toward your friends.
"Your idiot now. You got stuck with me for at least two months." He laughs.
"Just for two months?" You test his intentions.
"I can't assume you'd want to wait for me, can I?"
"I will tell your best friend to bring you back home in one piece. He's the hero after all. That should be easy, right?"
Bucky looks at her with a soft expression before kissing her hair. "Guess you really got stuck with me."
"Oh shit, Steve saw you kissing my hair." It’s going to be hard to keep this thing between you two.
"Does it bother you?"
“No, no, no.” You quickly try to explain. “It’s just I’m worried that they might think the worst of me. I mean… questioning our closeness.”
"I dare them." She is surprised by how serious and determined he is as he speaks.
“I would kiss you right now if I could.”
"I won't stop you." He giggles like a kid.
“Our friends are,” you whisper and look at your best friend, who is coming toward you. Cassie is holding Steve’s arm proudly.
"Oh, hello," Steve says. "Where have you been?"
"Here and there." Bucky shrugs. "Did you have fun?"
"Yes!" Cass immediately giggles, joining the conversation. "He has the best, best stories. What about-" She cuts herself off when she notices your appearance. "What happened to your stockings?"
“Oh.” You blush a little, thinking about how they got ruined. “I tripped and ruined them. They looked so horrible I had to take them off completely.”
"Yes, they got really dirty," Bucky confirms with the biggest grin Steve has seen in ages.
"Oh, really?" He lifts his eyebrow. "What a shame."
“Yeah. Sergeant Barnes promised me a new pair. What a gentleman he is.”
"A gentleman indeed." Steve shakes his head, well aware of what you two have done.
You bite your lip and give Bucky a look, hoping at least Cassie has no idea. You are sure the three of you can keep a secret. For now…
You may wanna read the next part: Trust In What Tomorrow Brings
4K notes · View notes
prodkatsu · 7 months
Text
youtuber ⨾ suna
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youtuber!suna who roasts people on his channel, reacts to various things, gives his review on many topics and sometimes shows the mundane things in his life.
youtuber!suna who is a well known content creator and has almost 2 million subscribers.
youtuber!suna has a big fanbase because boys admire him for his attitude and think he's cool while girls love him because he's pretty and well spoken.
fans of youtuber!suna go batshit when they get to know their favourite youtuber is in a relationship. they calm down when they see how happy suna is in his relationship and how nice you are.
youtuber!suna likes to keep his private life aside but he loves it when you support him from behind the camera or accidentally appear on the video.
youtuber!suna keeps the shots of you mindless coming into the room he's recording and asking him about dinner.
youtuber!suna never publicly talks about you but during livestreams on instagram if people ask him about you he'll reply to them.
youtuber!suna makes you sit by the camera where people can't see anything except your shoulder or your legs that are draped over suna's lap while he caresses them.
youtuber!suna who is sharing his views on a topic and he would ask you about your opinion and would listen to them intently.
people know what you look like because of your various accidental and sometimes intentional appearances on youtuber!suna videos.
youtuber!suna would make you watch certain videos with him so you two can react together and cringe and laugh at them.
after gaining a lot of fans youtuber!suna gets more comfortable in showing his relationship and asks you to do more frequent appearances if you're comfortable.
youtuber!suna now lets you take over his youtube channel for a day. you vlog your daily life with him and how you roast the man who loves to roast people.
fans of youtuber!suna makes cute edits of the interactions between you, how he treats you with utmost respect and love, how your eyes light up whenever you're talking to him, the heated gazes and soft kisses before you leave him alone to do the rest of the video. everyone loves you two because you two are just the prettiest and perfect couple out there.
youtuber!suna now talks more freely about his relationship with you and tells everyone how you have been with him since highschool. he shares your memories with his fans and tell them how you've always been his number one fan.
years into the gig youtuber!suna posts a video of him proposing to you. you saying yes to him and him crying while hugging you.
youtuber!suna becoming a household name around the world and everyone is happy for how he has grown. now a father to a twin with a lovely wife who loves him a lot and he loves her too with the same passion as day one.
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© prodkatsu — do not plagiarise, translate or repost my work on any other sites. the characters that i write about are not mine (sadly), they belong to their respective creators.
1K notes · View notes
mischiefmoons · 6 months
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kiss his face with an uppercut
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smutty part 2 here-> heavy hitter
words: 4k
summary: james potter is so attractive you could beat him to death with a bludger. james potter x fem!beater!reader not from gryffindor (for the plot!!)
warnings: none! james gets physically hurt multiple times by reader, multiple innuendos, enemies to lovers kinda, less serious lovey dove more sexual tension!!! probably not accurate quidditch gameplay
a/n: sorry for the hold up guys this took almost a month of on and off editing lmfao— this whole oneshot makes me think of the filipino word ‘gigil’– simply translating to cuteness aggression; i barely know jack shit about sports much less quidditch but this concept had me looking up quidditch rules to be able to provide– eat up kids
Y/S- sibling name
Y/H- house
(posted & edited 10/10/23)
Oh BROTHER, this guy STINKS! I mean, how has he not gotten walloped at least once during this godforsaken game? You suck your teeth at the sight of James flying around the pitch blowing kisses to his fan club and Lily Evans, who turns her nose up at the sight of him.
Merlin, when will this game end?
The Hogwarts Quidditch Semi-Finals of 1977 was a game to watch… until both teams stopped scoring what seemed like hours ago. Both Gryffindor & (Y/H) were at a stalemate, down some players due to injury and now, even lower team morale. Gryffindor team captain and chaser James Potter, notorious Marauder, and resident flirt, is not someone who likes to lose. He’s spent all season drilling his teammates, memorizing plays, and thinking of every outcome possible to ensure another Gryffindor victory. James’ affinity to be right takes precedence over anything, after all. But after beating down almost all of (Y/H)’s reserves, James was almost vibrating with confidence. He really doesn’t lose, not if he can help it.
“AND ANOTHER (Y/H) IS DOWN WITH AN INJURY— Team captain Whithall calls for a timeout as they reconvene on what to do next! Hope you’re still comfy in the stands, folks….” the student announcer grumbles.
There’s absolute chaos on the field, and like birds scuffling over a piece of bread, (Y/S), the team’s last good beater is floating on a gurney, ready to be transported to the Hospital Wing.
“Oh, here comes trouble…” Sirius murmurs, smacking James on the back to grab his attention.
You jump down from the stands to check on (Y/S), and James is too busy reveling in the idea of winning the goddamn semi-finals that he doesn’t notice you putting Quidditch gear on.
“Easy win from here on out, Pads! The little lady’s just checking the damage. Not important,” he chortles before Sirius physically grabs his head to face the girl walking towards him, currently storming across the turf to meet him and his team.
“I’m subbing in,” you say, angry at how dirty Gryffindor’s been playing, and angry that you even have to play in (Y/S)’s stead.
“Sweetheart, this game is for serious, you know that right?” James says a bit dumbly with a furrowed brow. Both of you are head to head, and James sees the twitch in your eye as you cross your arms. Hot air is seeping out of your pores but James’s lip simply quirks up in intrigue. You’re someone he hasn’t noticed before, and the only thing running through his mind besides winning the game is that you’re really pretty. But then again, he’s always found angry women to be attractive, in retrospect.
“Yeah, for the actual cup, not…for Sirius… It’s the wrong time to joke, innit?” Sirius says to break the ice, noticing the palpable tension between your glares. Your faces are inches away from each other and he’s not sure if you two are going to fight or kiss, but it makes him grimace all the same.
“Who do you think (Y/S) practices with? Unlike you and your friends, I know when to take things seriously,” You say through gritted teeth.
“She’s legit, Potter. Got added to our reserves last week.” Whithall pipes up, ready to get back to the game. The crowd has been weathered down after hours of anticipation, and they want to see the end of it, no matter the outcome.
“Much to my surprise,” you grumble, elbowing the authority in the form of a teenage boy not much older than yourself. You should’ve known your sibling was looking a little too happy as they got floated off the pitch on a gurney.
“Then let’s play. Don’t hurt yourself, sweetheart.” James says condescendingly, floating away on his broomstick like it’s a walk in the park, but the way you’re slapping the bat against your palm is getting Sirius a tiny bit nervous for his precious countenance. The whistle blows and the game resumes.
“A SURPRISE ADDITION (Y/N) JOINS HER HOUSE AS BEATER! Gryffindor better watch out for her swi—” You slam the bludger in James’s direction and it hurtles toward him so fast that he almost folds in half, barrel-rolling on his broom to dodge it. The move makes Sirius and a few of their other teammates gasp to see James scrambling back onto his broom.
“Oops! Looks like I missed.” you deadpan, balancing midair as you whack another one where it rebounds off the Gryffindor seeker and back towards James, hitting both of them in the gut.
“THIS GIRL’S GOT AN ARM ON HER! Though might I say her hits look a bit targeted…” The commentator says worriedly, and everyone in the crowd is leaning in their seats trying to get a better view.
“Merlin, are you trying to kill me woman?” he yells in outrage.
“I’m trying to finish the game. Your big head is in the way,” you say with a straight face as Sirius bats towards you, and you spin on your broomstick without shifting your posture. The smile on your face as you taunt him should be considered criminal, but he’s looking at you in a new light.
Yeah, now he’s paying attention. The other Gryffindor players can’t seem to figure out your next move and you bat another bludger towards Potter’s extremely large target of a head, and all of a sudden he’s freefalling through the air as his teammates fly to catch him, one by one. His nose still makes impact with the ground before Sirius catches by the ankle like Achilles taking a dip in the River Styx.
“AND (Y/H) HAS CAPTURED THE SNITCH! Good job to their Seeker, Appleby! Congratulations on a job well done, so that we can all finally go home.” The commentator cringes as McGonagall swats at him to leave the podium.
Who even is she, taking over the game and stealing his win like that?
He’s walking up from the sidelines with a bloody nose, going to shake Whithall’s hand and you’re standing behind him, a malicious grin plastered between your rosy cheeks, windswept and almost ethereal while he looks like he got flattened by a hippogriff. Fuck, she’s pretty. You look like you floated down from the heavens, and by the looks his team gives him, he may have just crawled out of the earth.
“Congrats,” he grumbles, turning to you. Really pretty. It’s even worse that you’re devastatingly stunning up close— with sweat glistening on your brow and a pearly white smile, he takes a good moment to really look at you and memorize the flutter of your eyelashes. He’s unsure if he’s concussed or maybe it’s his astigmatism, but there are actual stars in his vision as he peers down at you. Your confidence is actually kind of sexy.
“You look…um…you ride well.” He stutters, shaking his head from his personal reverie.
“Excuse me?” you say, your little mouth agape in what he hopes is not disgust. He looks pathetic, blood sopping down to his jersey as he looks at you like he’s only seeing you for the first time, acknowledging you closely. Something about seeing him flail makes you crinkle your nose as you stifle a grin.
“I mean…Um…” Damn.
Sirius pulls his best friend away before you can bite back your laughter, all of your teammates leading you away to celebrate.
“Mate, what the shit was that? Are you alright in the head?” Sirius says, and if James’ nose wasn’t already bleeding he was going to slap him silly.
“Just…Didn’t see that coming…” he mumbles, and his mind, along with all of Gryffindor is in disarray as they walk back to their tower. He’s got a lot of thinking to do on what his next move will be.
James Potter goes through life in three methodical ways: 1.) creating a strategy, 2.) making a scene, 3.) and dragging his friends into it— in that particular order, every single time.
Now notice how considering consequences is not part of said process.
His ego wouldn’t let him rest after a girl, much less a very pretty one that he’d never noticed before—beat him at what he does best; quidditch! In fact, the next few nights were void of sleep and filled with thoughts of you. The way your hair looked so soft in the sunlight, how your lip turns almost Gryffindor red when you bite it in concentration, and maybe how your delicate hands would look as they tightly grasp onto his bat...ahem…your quidditch bat. Some dirty delusions aside, if looks could kill, he’d be dead seven times over, but honestly? He’d probably thank you for it.
James’ new mission was to figure you out, and if that was his mission, it meant it was the rest of the Marauders’ too. For the sake of winning the Cup, of course. That’s what he tries to tell himself until his mates catch him ogling you again at breakfast.
“So what is it with you and girls that inflict you nothing but pain and humiliation?” Remus muses, as the Marauders watch James laugh at a joke you told your friends at the (Y/H) table across the Great Hall. He looks at you like someone who stares at the sun, squinting and burning himself as he ponders on why he’s unable to look away.
James fumbles a response, shoving Remus as they all laugh. “Listen, I’ve got a bit of a masochistic streak, Moony. Just…There’s something about her…”
Your friends are pointing at him now, and as you turn to meet his eyes, you lift a brow inquisitively and flip him off. Sirius’s face pulls up in shock at James’s growing smile at the interaction as he mumbles, “Maybe you’ve met your match, Prongs…”
The boy pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, anything to try to see you clearer as he leans over to put his head in his hands, sighing dreamily. His friends are not as easily amused.
“A match made in heaven, you reckon?”
“Match made in hell, more like!” You spit, almost choking on your scrambled eggs at your friends’ insinuations. Your back is as stiff as a board, shoulders tight at the notion of you ever liking James Potter triggering your fight or flight response. When it comes to someone as pompous as him, only the word fight comes to mind.
“Oh come on, love… He’s popular, funny, and quite handsome…It’s James freaking Potter we’re talking about!” your roommate gushes, but you're not the least bit impressed.
“Is that supposed to do anything for me? I can think of a few F words that middle initial can stand for…” Eyes rolling, you peek back at the Gryffindor table to see said boy wiggling his fingers at you teasingly until he accidentally smacks Peter in the face with his toast. Idiot.
“Only hot people get away with stupid shit. I mean look at the four of them!” you continue, gulping down the rest of your coffee. “Potter’s the worst out of all of them though. Big ass head must compensate for a lot of things." You say, shaking your head at your friends.
"And yet, here you are, talking about him for the fourth time this morning," your roommate replies, smirking. " You’ve been Potter crazy since you helped us beat Gryffindor in the semi-finals! Are you sure you don't have a crush on him?"
"No!" you say too quickly, too loudly, that the shrill noise of your voice makes your ears hurt and the shit-eating grins on your friends’ faces reflect how desperate that came off. You slump onto the table, eyes rolling to the back of your head.
“You wanna kiss him, don’t you?” they tease, and you push away their puckering faces as you scoff, “With an uppercut, maybe!” Almost makes you want to stomp over there and wipe the stupid look off his face…and maybe sit on his lap. You run your fingers through your hair in frustration. All this aggression really needs to go somewhere, but unfortunately, James Potter’s lap is the only destination you have in mind.
“He’s just really punchable. I get so annoyed by the sight of him I just want to… ugh!” you groan, your hands shaking as you try to convince them (or yourself). Your friends cackle at the sight of you pretending to squeeze his curly-topped, mothball-filled head, but your brain changes course and you imagine what it’s like to hold his hand. Your fingers flex cautiously at the idea, wondering what his touch would feel like. Grabbing a glass of water to cool your thoughts, your peripherals reveal he’s still staring at you like you make night turn into day. His gaze is searing, and as you put your lips around your straw, he licks his lips slowly. Shit.
Availability bias is one hell of a mindfuck. If only they taught psychology at this magic school, maybe the wizarding world would have way fewer problems and more people would be straightforward and not.. Dead. James decides he can categorize his life now as before you, and after you.
Before you, well… he honestly wasn’t even sure if you were a student at Hogwarts until he saw you marching down the pitch, but now… You’re everywhere. He can spot your voice in a crowded hallway, and who was going to tell him you’ve had three classes with him this whole term? Even down to when he shuts his eyes, he’s convinced his eyelids are branded with the imprint of your silhouette. Every conversation he strikes with you ends with you laughing at him, and he’s unsure if that’s a step up or down from the many boisterous rejections from Lily Evans over the years. He sort of wishes you’d laugh with him, and do a number of other things, (heck he’s got a list of ideas he’s wanked off to), and well… His soul is tightly wound with thoughts of you and Godric, listen to this guy…. maybe the boys were right…. Maybe he really does need to get laid.
It’s funny how fate works, two people who’ve barely interacted in the past six years at Hogwarts are now paired together for a History of Magic essay worth 20% of the term grade. You’re trying to get this done as fast as possible, he notices, mapping out ideas and trying to discuss how to piece it all together, yet James does everything but that to get you to pay attention to him. He fills your head with mundane little questions, asking you what your favorite fruit is to the childhood bedtime story your parents told you as a kid.
“What’s your middle name, Potter?” You muse, finally entertaining him after endless chatter. His eyes trail to the exposed skin of your collarbones as you stretch in your seat, and well… you don’t look as menacing as you always do but did it seriously have to be this question? He scratches the back of his head, silent for the first time in the two hours you’ve been trying to craft this essay for the sake of both your grades.
“What? I can’t just go around calling you James Fucking Potter. Spit it out, you know too much about me already.”
He clears his throat, a blush creeping up his neck. “It’s… that’s an intimate question, love… I…”
Your laughter at his response makes his senses shut down. “Oh, so it’s bad. What is it, Franklin? Fabio? Come on, I won’t bite.” A part of him wishes you would, your face equally flushed and so close to him right now, almost leering at him for an answer. It’d be easy to just lean over…
“Fleamont.”
Your lips quirk, until they pucker like you’ve guzzled a lemon. The blush on your cheeks intensifies, and the sound explodes out of you. You laugh so loudly Madam Pince kicks you both out of the library, James carrying both your knapsacks, a hand around your waist as you rush out of there. Your body is firm under his touch, pupils unfocused and dilated looking at him now that you know his dirty little secret. James thinks that if you keep looking at him like that, hell, you can call him anything you want.
Fleamont.
What a prick. A really attractive, clueless prick. The memory makes you giggle as you get ready for the Quidditch Cup and your team charges out onto the field to face Gryffindor again, as you’ve both advanced to the finals. He’s not as much of an asshole as you originally thought. It’s undeniable that something pulls you towards him, whether it be hormones, concern, or the fact that it’s actually adorable the way he writes his mother back weekly, or admirable how he moved Sirius out of Black Manor himself last year. Maybe it’s endearing the way he goes out of his way to make first-years smile or heartwarming how even Filch can’t find reasons to hate him. The golden boy. You get it now, why people get trapped in his web, and why many are unwilling to leave.
You pass him outside the locker rooms, bumping shoulders as he smiles almost bashfully. The golden boy, loudmouth, ball of energy is reduced to a nervous pile of teenage ineptness at the sight of you, every time. You could take him (not in a fight). In an actual fight, maybe you could land a few solid hits before his nice muscly arms hold you do—
“Ready to finish this, darling?”
Your eyes refocus when his hand nudges the small of your back, right above your hip. “Mhmm,” you clear your throat, “Ready to lose, Potter?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He moves closer, slowly backing you into the wall.
“Eyes on the prize Potter, I’m in this to win it.” You say, looking at the closing distance between both your chests. James nods, not taking his eyes off of you for a moment, even when the announcer calls out the imminent start of the game.
“WELCOME TO THE HOGWARTS QUIDDITCH CUP OF 1977 GRYFFINDOR VS. (Y/H)! I hope you are all excited as our last match between these teams was quite thrilling at the end of it!” The announcer says, hyping up the roaring crowd as your teams parade onto the pitch.
His eyes are still on you when he shakes Whithall’s hand and the whistle blows. It’s intense, and makes you feel like you’re burning, even if the wind is blowing like crazy today. You bat the bludgers toward anything red on the field that even dares to move toward your teammates. James won’t stop staring at you, and you both lock eyes across the pitch.
“What? Flirt with me later, Potter, I’m trying to win!” you yell.
He’s got you transfixed, and it’s crazy how his timing is always wrong. You bat the bludger away from your captain but don’t notice James flying towards you to respond as you give it your hardest swing, making the impact against his huge target of a head all the more painful.
Holy shit, did you kill him?
He keels off his broom like a shot bird and then he’s falling, and you’re the one chasing the Gryffindor chaser as he flaps his arms like the idiot you know he is as you push forward to catch him before he splits his skull open.
“I’msofuckingsorryJamesareyouokay?” You blurt out as you land, soft hands moving over his broad chest and quickly swelling face. He’s wearing that stupid grin again, and you think you may have finally broken Gryffindor’s team captain.
“You know my name?” he sighs happily, comfortable in your lap and maybe it’s the brain damage you’ve caused him or the way his glasses are bent beyond repair but you will every magical predecessor you can think of to stop you from punching him in the face right now.
“Are you fucking dense?” You scream, shaking your head, and jostling him as his arms try to reach out to swipe the hair away from your face.
“Must’ve hit him so hard you knocked his filter loose..” Sirius muses after he lands next to you two on the grass.
“POTTER’S TAKEN A HIT FROM (Y/H) and it doesn’t look good ladies and gents! Gryffindor calls a timeout to check on their captain!” The announcer calls out, and there are so many eyes on the two of you as James is simply giggling like a prepubescent schoolboy. Fuck, you’ve maimed the golden boy.
“Y’know, sweetheart. You’re…really sexy when you’re on top of me like this,” he says breathily, and you really can’t hit him, so you jab Sirius in the gut instead when he tries to laugh at his best friend’s stupidity.
James wakes up in the hospital wing with a blinding headache until someone gently pulls the curtains closed, stroking the hair off his sweaty forehead.
“Poppy you always take such good care of me…” he mumbles. A punch lands on his chest and his eyes rip open, not expecting to see you at his bedside.
“Idiot,” you mutter. “You’re always in my way and now look, you almost got yourself killed and it would’ve been my fault! How dare you, James…” The red is crawling up your neck like a brushfire as you berate him, and he takes it with a grin as you jabber on, putting his arms behind his head.
“Were you worried about me, love?” James smiles cheesily, catching your arm at its half-hearted attempt to slap him across the face.
“I was not. Stubborn people like you are hard to kill. I’m more annoyed that I can’t morally punch your face in since you have a concussion. Madame Pomfrey’s already healed your cheekbone.”
“That you broke,” he says matter-of-factly, taking a chance to kiss the palm of your hand. This concussion is working like a bottle of Felix Felicis. It’s endearing to see you taking care of him, whether you like it or not (even with the punches he’s sure it’ll come with).
“You’re sick in the head.”
“For you. I was trying to come tell you that I never took my eyes off the prize, but then of course you bludgeoned my face in before I could get sweet on yo—”
Your lips crash down on his, and nothing about it is delicate. It’s a month’s worth of yearning, imaginations coming to fruition as he grabs the back of your head to deepen the embrace. Your lips on his are hot and heady, and he could be easily convinced that he’s stuck there, cauterized to the shape of you.
“I know. I could feel you watching.” You breathe into his mouth, leaning up on his chest. His lips chase up again to meet yours, biting down on your bottom lip as you groan. He might like that noise better than the sound of your laughter. It’ll be fun to find out.
“Who won the Cup?”
Laughter spills out of your red, kiss-swollen lips as you pat his cheek gently, fingers grazing over his healed cheekbone.
“Not Gryffindor. But listen closely James, if you be a good boy and get past this concussion, I’ll make up for it by showing you how well I ride…”
He likes the sound of that, Quidditch Cup be damned. You see, James Potter never loses, ladies and gentlemen, not really—and well... there’s always next year.
“I like the way
you look at me
like you are
going to talk to me
or devour me
and I am fine with either.”
-N.R. Hart
taglist: @jsjcue
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maryleclerc · 4 months
Text
𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧
pairing: charles leclerc x reader ; carlos sainz x reader
face-claim: gigi hadid
summary: in which after knowing about reader pregnancy, charles decided to make everything right.
warning: mention of pregnancy, exes!, paparazzi. use google translate,swearing. english is not my native language! does not have any pregnancy experience!
so i’ll made this mini series with 2 ending, one will be reader end with charles and other one will end with carlos (ofc if reader end up with carlos which mean the reason why reader and charles broke up will change too)
more importantly: reader you can suggest any baby girl name too!! or baby boy idk 😩🙏 also suggest some drama and stuff ideas!!
if you wanted to add into taglist please reply or dm me
read part 01
yourusername
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yourusername With my bestie! @/carlossainz55
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carlossainz55 Bestieeee
yewenmitle Love their friendship already!!!
roseross How can they be so cute not even trying
⤷ yourusername Born natural 🥸
dailypaparazzi
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2,799,678 likes
dailymail Y/n Y/l/n and Carlos Sainz spotted having a cozy dinner in Monaco
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friendsaddictedd Oooh sound ✨ROMANTIC✨
kiearre She looks serious tho, her face
livinginthedprm Everybody saying Carlos has a crush on Y/n. HE DESERVE TO BE LOVE TOO!! they would be so cute together
f1lovelifeupdates
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58,510 likes
f1lovelifeupdates Charles Leclerc has confirmed that he and Megan have broken up a months ago, after 2 months of dating. And he also confirmed that his ex-girlfriend, Y/n, is pregnant with their first child.
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haileylee Ok, I don’t really care about them… all I need to know is Charles know about the baby?
charlessbaby I missed them so much!!!
ppeeeepss Megan, she’s wonderful, pretty and talent how can this happen. I just hope he’s not get back with Y/n
⤷ lovensfw Honey, we know but he’s a grown man so I think it is very important to know what’s ‘responsibility’ mean 😀 also Y/n’s PERFECTLY FINE!!!
yourusername
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yourusername 👶👩‍🍼💞
Hello everyone!
Recently, there have been photos of me and of course, photos of me pregnant that were unintentionally leaked. And that's also the reason why I spoke up about this, (why do I sound so serious, haha) anyway, it's been a while and it's time to share with you guys.
Since you love me, you deserve me to share your joys with you. Yes, I'm pregnant and my baby is 8 months old!! time flies, since the day I announced that I would take a temporary break for a while because I felt OVERWHELM, that actually was the time I wanted to devote all my time to taking care of myself as well as my baby, prepare to be a mommy. And I am truly grateful to all of you who have sent me kind words and wishes, I truly appreciate it!!
Love you all so much! Also, I still don't know what to name our baby, so I need your suggestions
IT’S A GIRL!! (reader also can suggest a name too!!)
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lolamckaylee Congrat to you Y/n
_josephinee Who’s the baby daddy?
⤷ ynsqueen It’s Charles Leclerc
⤷ _josephinee Wait I thought he dating someone else, and knock her up?
⤷ johnsongreen HIM AND MEGAN BROKE UP!!
carlossainzstuff_
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1,681 likes
carlossainzstuff_ Carlos has mention Y/n on today “We asked Carlos Sainz what F1 fan really want to know” by P1 with Matt & Tommy.
Tommy asked Carlos if he knew that F1 fans were very curious about the relationship between Carlos and Y/n after the photos taken by paparazzi when they spend sometime at Monaco.
TOMMY: Did you know that every F1 fan here wanted to know if you and Y/n are a thing?
CARLOS: We’re bestfriend, bff
TOMMY: But there are also had that one question that has been ask alot that’s “Are having a crush on Y/n?”
CARLOS: It’s really hard to not fall for her, she’s so kind and everything. Everybody love her, how can I not
TOMMY: Yea, It’s true. And you also know that she’s pregnant right?
CARLOS: She look espléndida
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carloswifee He’s madly in love with her, NOT crushes, just LOVE
yncarlossainzs The way his eyes look at them when they mention of Y/n is wholesome, he talk about her like a proud boyfriend
ferarrilovrs__ Thinking of when they’re really dating, ahh I can’t stop kicking my feet!!
carlossainzsidechick SOMEONE KISS HIM ON THE FOREHEAD RIGHT NOW!!!!!
[ to be continue ]
( taglist ) @janeholt3 @formulas-bitch @celestialams @aundercover
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ecrivainsolitaire · 2 months
Text
Humans have the capability of perceiving when they're being stared at, even if they can't see it.
Dr. T'Chem was staring at Lieutenant /θkɡɾɑːˈŋæ/ (or as his current fling affectionately nicknamed her, "Tucker-Annie"), whose dorsal spikes were still rattling after the incident at the holodeck. It was his first time at the witness stand, and he didn't want to ruin a young star sailor's life.
Lieutenant Tucker-Annie was the combat specialist in charge of the training dojo of Federation Vessel TSN457, named after the Terra-Saturn-Ceres coalition where Dr. T'Chem currently served as the xenoanthropologist charged with facilitating human integration to the local Federation of Fraternal Planets and Satellites. The FFPS had the goal of finding planets with intelligent life to trade resources and technology, and due to their recent incorporation, local research vessels were fitted with diverse crews to acclimate everyone to each other's cultures and biological needs. Dr. T'Chem was the human expert in the ship, and was tasked with helping smooth over interpersonal relations among the crew.
The relations were, at that moment, as bumpy as Lt. Tucker-Annie's dorsal spike line.
An incident had occurred during a training exercise. The squad consisted of a Venusian, two Saturnians, three Ceresians, two monks from the Transcorporeal Temple of Robotic Ascension, and five Terrans (two humans, two dogs and a cybernetically enhanced cat). The exercise consisted of getting through a generic jungle scenario and, unbeknownst to the squad, avoiding a team of ninjas lead by Lt. Tucker-Annie trying to take them out one by one. It was supposed to test the way they would react to a surprise attack.
It was not supposed to reveal that humans could sense when they were being stalked.
Of course, any trained sailor would have an ingrained knowledge of potential threats and how to spot them. Look for the shadows that are too dark, listen for the spot air isn't blowing from, things like that. Basic things most people don't think about but that can be identified if you think about them.
This was not that.
"Something's watching us," said Crew Johnson, in that sloppy way only creatures with lips spoke.
"What do you mean? There's cameras everywhere, of course they're watching us," responded Crew Hessikh, slithering over the vines on a tree branch to cross a river. She grabbed the axe in Crew Johnson's belt with her telekinesis and took down a small tree to serve as a bridge.
"Crew Flufflepaws, could you please take a look?" Asked Crew Johnson, nervously looking around. Crew Flufflepaws got on the tree as well and scanned the terrain from above.
"I can't see anything, or smell anything. And my hearing isn't what it used to be. I'll stay on the lookout for—" a horrendous hiss interrupted the automatic translator's feed. Crew Flufflepaws' comm line cut off.
Hessikh and Johnson looked at each other. That was the strongest fighter of their team, gone. They knew it was a simulation, but it still gave them chills.
The rest of their crew mates were split into two different teams further along the path. Crew Fanning's voice came from the comm line.
"Johnson, Hessikh, are you okay? What happened to Flufflepaws?"
"We don't know, Johnson said something was watching us and it went to check, then we lost comms."
"I felt it too. I know this isn't that kind of exercise but I think— AAAHHH!"
Two blaster shots were heard, then a thud.
Lieutenant Tucker-Annie, who was watching Hessikh and Johnson from the mud pit behind the latter, had her tranquilizer dart ready. She got ready to shoot down Hessikh, but then heard a voice over the comm line.
"Code Lithium, we have a Code Lithium, we have to end the simulation, I just took down- I can't-" the breathing was sounding heavier and faster, too fast for a human.
"Fanning, calm down, remember your sutras. We need you focused, what happened?"
"I felt like I was being watched, so I turned around and saw this thing and it scared me and I jumped and I thought it was on stun mode and-"
"It's alright, we're calling it off. Captain, we have a Code Lithium! End the simulation now or- fuck, there it is again. Hessikh, do you see any heat sources?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary- why haven't they shot it down alre-"
The next thing Lieutenant Tucker-Annie remembered was the sound of a heel turn over the mud, followed by darkness.
Lt. Tucker-Annie woke up in the hospital bay, getting her tail regenerated by a robot nurse. She looked over and found her underling on the next bed, with a huge bandage on the side of his neck and a wing in a cast. Thankfully, he would be alright as soon as the stem cell bank was reprogrammed after her treatment.
The disciplinary board was called, an investigation was open, and both Crew Fanning and their captain were put on paid leave while the investigation was ongoing. Dr. T'Chem was called in as an expert after a review of the holodeck footage revealed there was no way Crew Fanning could have heard, seen or smelled the hidden sailor.
It was the first time in a while he hadn't helped himself to a glass of Venusian whiskey for breakfast. He really didn't want to mess this up.
"And would you care to explain how this is possible, Doctor?" Asked the prosecution, staring him down with an unnerving amount of eyes.
"I am as astounded as this court; our firm has been looking into Terran medical literature and we're still trying to figure out how it works; they don't even know, but they know it does happen, it's been documented for thousands of years. I have a hypothesis, but I don't know if it's even testable."
There was a murmur in the court. The judge asked him to elaborate.
"The way eyesight works is the light bounces off of opaque bodies and in its way it collides with the lenses in our corneas, which send it to the brain as electrical signals to be interpreted. The light that doesn't go into our eyes just bounces off our bodies and other opaque objects as well, the photons go everywhere and anywhere. This is the same for most species in this constellation, including humans. But even other Terran species don't have these abilities, as Crew Flufflepaws has testified."
A begrudging meow was heard from the audience.
"Order in the court, please. Dr. T'Chem, what do you suggest is the origin of this mysterious sense?"
The camera drones all hoovered around him. Dr. T'Chem straightened his fins and got close to the microphone.
"I believe it's possible that humans have a sense of touch so sensitive that they can feel the photons that don't bounce back. The ones that go into an eye instead of an opaque body. I think humans can actually feel in their skin when they are being watched."
There was an uproar in the crowd. His paramour, a dark skinned young human from the human settlement known as "Colombia", grabbed the religious symbol on her necklace and made a gesture with it he hadn't quite figured out yet.
The trial had to go on recess.
The implications were incalculable. Three dozen biologists from six different planets, including Terra, had emailed him before the end of the day to ask him to justify himself. Multiple human religious leaders took the chance to link it to demonic possession or moral evils. By the end of the week, four different labs were trying to figure out a way to double blind test shooting a photon cannon on a human's back and trying to get them to sense it.
But most importantly, the news made it outside of the Federation. The rumours about this new species that couldn't be stalked got so far, it ended up affecting the outcome of a border conflict with the Betelgeuse Libertarian Army on the Federation's favour.
Humans were terrifying.
If this is what they evolved to be, what was their planet like?
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httpsuniverse · 9 months
Text
BF 🤝 GF | PG10
wherein pierre’s dating THE y/n, who, according to fans, takes fan service on a different level and has the same energy as her boyfriend (seriously, they both need to think before they click).
↳ TYPE: ig au
↳ PAIRING: pierre gasly x singer!reader (face claim: bibi)
↳ DETAILS AND WARNINGS: suggestive
↳ AUTHOR’S NOTE: some drafts i’ve written/made, just needed to clean up the drafts. there’s more but i’ll edit them first before i post em! enjoy ❤️ also, the pictures of bibi are from waterbomb 2022! :)
this work is purely fictional. names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. © newuniverse, 2023. do not steal, repost in other platforms, translate and/or claim this work as your own.
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yourusername waterbomb 2023 💦 the energy you guys had today was INSANE!! see you again next year 🩵😘
view all 397,726 comments
user miss maam ofc the energy is insane i mean ... you literally performed in a bikini top ⁉️ REMOVED YOUR SHIRT ON STAGE EVEN ⁉️
user MOTHER
user i, too, would go feral for this miss y/n y/l/n
user ATE AND LEFT NO CRUMBS, SHE MF SLAYED.
user SERVED CUNT.
user i hate myself so much for catching a fever today
pierregasly 🫣🫣
yourusername 😉😚
yourbffsig stop!! whats with these cryptic messages 😒
yourusername it’s not really cryptic when you know what we’re talking about 🤔
user omfg y/n!!!!
yourusername 🤫🤭
pierregasly
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pierregasly what? i can also post thirst traps after my girlfriend did hers 😏
view all 7,826 comments
user WTF PIERRE
user ok funs over give me urs and y/n's phone. IMMEDIATELY.
user AND NO ONES GETTING IT BACK UNTIL YOU BOTH LEARNED UR LESSON.
yourusername 😂 this is the last time, we promise!!
yourusername 🤤😍
user NAHHH YOU TWO ARE WILD AND WE HAVE TO BAN YOU BOTH ON INSTAGRAM AT THIS POINT
user pierre, remind us again whats your fav position
pierregasly 🐶🫣
user THAT IS IT.
yourusername PIERRE.
pierregasly what? you wrote songs about cigarettes and condoms 😒
yourusername QUIT IT.
pierregasly fine 🙄
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neobomb · 5 months
Text
give into things i (dont) want to [lee haechan]
bully! (yandere) stalker! Haechan x innocent! church girl!reader Part of the give into things i (dont) want to series. Word Count: 1.2k Inspired by this drabble made by @neocentral Warnings: mature themes, toxic/inappropriate behaviour, stalking, forcing??, slut shaming, masterbation, choking & breathplay?, hair pulling, manhandling, MDNI, there will be smut in part 2 [Pt.1] [Pt.2] Summery: bully!Haechan is secretly in love with you and loves pulling your hair as it feeds into his perverted fantasies. btw, donghyuk is haechan's real name © 2023 @neobomb. Unauthorized copying, translation, manipulation, or alteration of this work is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.
Haechan is hopelessly in love with you, a secret he vowed to take to his grave. However, his misguided attempts to gain your attention had spiraled out of control. What began as innocent teasing morphed into malicious intent. He has gone too far now. There is no going back. Over the years, he subjected you to relentless bullying: mocking you with derogatory names, spreading false rumors, and cornering you against his locker to threaten you. For as long as he had known you, he couldn't recall a single moment when he had treated you kindly.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to..” he loves hearing you plead for forgiveness. Tears welled in your eyes as he pulled your long luscious hair, your eyes looking up at him with an innocence he couldn't ignore. 
“A slut like you should know when to keep their dirty mouth shut.” he says, looking down on you. You looked like a mess. A hot mess. You’re on the floor, tears running down your face as heavy breaths left your lungs after the assault. When he goes home, he would picture this exact image of you in his head while mercilessly stroking his dick. He would imagine ramming his dick into you while pulling your hair, forcing you to meet his gaze. It was the primary reason he enjoyed pulling your hair during confrontations.
Everyday, he would follow you home after school. It didn't appear unusual since his house was only a few blocks away from yours. You never thought much of it. Each time you entered the safety of your home, you assumed he would just keep going until he reached his own. But oh…how you were wrong. 
Haechan would always linger around you at a close proximity. Your bedroom is on the first floor, facing a large oak tree, his favorite hiding spot. Peeking through the leaves, he watches you through your bedroom window. You’re sitting on your bed, reading a book. You look so peaceful. So beautiful. Whenever your hair gets in the way, you tug the strands behind your ears, revealing more of your neckline each time. Occasionally, he would take photographs of you as you undress, showing it to his friends as "evidence" of your supposed slutty behavior, but primarily keeping them for his own twisted satisfaction later on.
Haechan knows better than everyone that you’re anything but a slut. He doesn't even think that you have had your first kiss yet. Over the past year, he's spread rumors about you sleeping with countless older men, intending to dissuade other boys from showing interest in you. In truth, you're a devout church-goer with a deep love for immersing yourself in books and fiction. But still, he loves calling you a slut. The humiliation that marks your face each time he calls you those names does wonders to him. 
An intense heatwave has gripped the town. The scorching sun felt like it was searing your skin as you used a book to fan yourself. This summer break, aside from working at your cousin Kun's restaurant, you hadn't accomplished much. During your shifts, Haechan would consistently appear, each time accompanied by a different girl. What a manwhore, you thought to yourself. 
“If you feel as though he is bothering you, I can take his table. Just slice the salmon for me and keep an eye on the fryer.” Jaehyun offers, extending his knife to you. As your fingers lightly touch, a swarm of butterflies stirs in your stomach. You've harbored feelings for Jaehyun for some time. He's tall, amiable, strikingly handsome, and an exceptional chef. He embodied everything you desired in a boyfriend. Though only a few years older, he appeared to have everything figured out. 
From a distance, Haechan observed your exchanges with Jaehyun. Not paying any attention to the girl he was on a date with. He took note of your hearty laughter at Jaehyun's jokes and the way your face flushed crimson with every compliment he paid you. Saying Haechan was jealous would be a severe understatement; he was profoundly possessive over you. 
The community you live in organized a grand gathering, and by chance, your parents had offered to host the entire event in your backyard. Such events were never to your liking as you would panic at the social interactions. Worst of all, lee donghyuk was present at the event. You seek refuge in your room, after hours on end, having to endure awkward conversations. 
“Why did you cut your hair, Y/N?” Haechan stands in front of your bedroom door. He stared at you intensely, noticing how your hair falls right at your shoulder, revealing your pronounced collarbones. He suspected you might have cut your hair based on the conversation he had overheard between you and Jaehyun a few days ago, where Jaehyun expressed his preference for girls with shoulder length hair. It seemed evident to him that you were attempting to align with Jaehyun's preferences, which angered him greatly. “Yes, why do you care?” 
“Is it because you can’t just grab onto it as easily anymore?” The words you just uttered struck him with the realization that you might have uncovered his dirty little secret. He restrained himself from showing any emotion. Keep it cool. Keep it cool. You’re probably just being paranoid, he tells himself “Huh, What a big mouth. Why would you say that?”
“You obviously have something against me. I mean, every day at school, you pull my hair and shove me against your locker," you state, setting your book on the surface of your nightstand. He steps into your room, wearing a deeply unsettling grin, and closes the door behind him.
"Why do you think you can just come into my room, DongHyuck?" You ask sharply, rising swiftly from your bed. You urgently sought an escape from the situation, but Haechan's imposing stature blocked your exit.
“You’re not going anywhere, Y/N.” He gets a rough grip around your neck, pushing you into your bookshelf. Once again, he noticed the familiar panic in your eyes, a sight he disturbingly loves.
“You think I won’t be able to man-handle you just because you cut your hair short. Well, think again.” His grip around your neck gets tighter and tighter. You were no longer registering his words. His words became a distant echo as your mind retreated to a different realm. He has never grabbed onto your neck before. It was certainly a new sight for him, a sight he was going crazy for. The way your hands grab onto his wrist, desperately trying to ease his grip, and the way your eyes almost fall shut by the intensity of the situation. It all turned him on so much. 
He gradually loosened his hold on your neck, observing as you gasped for air and color that returned to your face. As you caught your breath, Haechan abruptly pressed his lips against yours. The fervor of the kiss was overwhelming. He bit down on your lips with force, leaving a faint metallic taste behind. His patience has ultimately run out.
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f1girliefics · 6 months
Text
Too Far
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Mick Schumacher x Reader
Summary: When dating him causes rage in some fans, they forget where the line is.
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When the news of Mick and you dating came out, you expected the rumours, you were ready for the hate and the comments.
What you weren’t ready for is the crazy fans who decided to harass you in public.
It started off with small things.
When you went shopping, things were missing from your cart. Then people started to push you. You thought it was by mistake but then you realized, it was all a game to them.
Videos on TikTok started to go around, it was almost like a challenge to them.
Who could push you more?
Mick mentioned to you that it wasn’t okay and you didn’t have to deal with the harassment, but you brushed it off.
“Don’t worry, it will die down after a while. You know how people are, they will move on to the next thing.”
He knew you were right. 
But then, it got out of hand. So much so that you fell and got injured.
The video went viral before you could even get some help.
You were rushed to a hospital with a broken ankle and twisted wrist.
Your boyfriend called you, furious. 
“This has to stop!” he texted. “I’m on my way, almost there.” came another text, then. “I’m so sorry that this happened. I love you!” 
Before you could text back, the door opened and he came in.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as he saw the cast on your leg and the wrap on your arm.
“I’m good. The idiots pushed me on a slippery floor and as I fell my leg got stuck under the shelf and I fell on my wrist. How I can press charges?”
“I saw the video, Lando sent it to me. It’s going viral and the public opinion is with you. Everyone’s saying how that is just taking it too far and how they should be ashamed. Someone even found out the name of the girls and even after they took off the video, someone reported them.” he let out a long sigh. “I was so worried about you. I’m glad you are safe.”
“I agree, this has gone too far. Light pushing I can handle but breaking my leg… too much. Thank you.” you smiled at him and pulled him in for a short kiss before the doctor came and let you leave.
You arrived home and ate something while Mick was on his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m making a post. I need to set the boundaries and I can’t just let this one go.”
“I understand and agree… just be… kinda nice.” you said as he nodded and continued typing.
‘My Dear Fans,
I’m sure many of you are aware of what happened today. I kept silent out of respect for my girlfriend, but I can no longer do so. 
She got seriously hurt today and I’m honestly surprised it didn’t happen before.
I do appreciate all my fans but I think we all can agree that this is seriously not okay.
I decided to take a break from social media and spend my time with my girlfriend as now she will need someone to help her with tasks.
I hope we all can learn from this.’
You gave Mick a nod and he posted it.
He spent the entire day helping you with anything. He ordered food and even offered to help you eat.
“My other hand is just fine!”
“But I want to help.” he argued and you couldn’t help but laugh.
He wanted you to smile and laugh to forget everything that happened.
But later that night, while he was sleeping, your mind began to wonder.
All your insecurities and fears came to the surface. 
You knew you shouldn’t blame yourself. But you were angry that you let things get out of hand and it got to this point.
You were used to the interviewers, the inappropriate questions, and people shouting at you.
But this was a new low.
You were just happy to have Mick by your side.
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DO NOT STEAL, REPOST OR TRANSLATE ANY OF MY WORKS  
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Hi! Big fan :) You're an environmental lecturer, right? I recently got into a debate with someone about rewilding in the UK, and the clash with farmers and agriculture. To me, this is a no-brainer - I absolutely do feel for farmers losing their livelihoods, and I think there needs to be a system to help them transition to something else, but also, the planet is dying. But you explain things well, so I wondered if you have thoughts? Particularly on the Welsh side of things. Thank you in advance!
Hah. I literally have a lecture on this. Or, well, a chunk of a lecture, anyway; so yes! I have thoughts. I'll use those notes, and stick a big reference at the end in case you want to read more
I'll talk about this specifically from the Welsh perspective, okay so:
The rewilding project in Wales is the Cambrian Wildwood, launched in 2004ish by a guy who bought an abandoned farm in the northern end of Mid Wales with the express intention of rewilding it. The aim is to convert some 7000 acres, and the initial mission statement said they'd reintroduce wolves and lynx. That's the project I'm going to talk about, because it's a great case study for how to spectacularly fuck something up (and eventually realise you've spectacularly fucked up, and do something about it.)
These are the Cambrian Mountains:
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When looking at that, there are two competing viewpoints that are relevant here:
The Cambrians are ecologically depleted. Their biodiversity has crashed since the Second World War, when modern farming methods were introduced. Environmentally, there is a perception of emptiness and degradation.
The landscape is a glorious one that has been shaped by the human actions taken on it for generations, as we are a shepherding culture – culture and land are inextricably intertwined.
That's a big fundamental difference! Two people can look at that same photo, and see something diametrically opposed. But there's more lying on it, so you also need to understand the socio-political background.
Socio-Political Background
(I know! Headings! So professional)
A lot of rewilding – Cambrian Wildwood included – is taking place in areas where farming is declining for various political/socio-economic reasons, so this can be ENTIRELY FAIRLY seen as yet another threat. This goes hand in hand with rural migration and community decline, too.
In Wales, we’re mostly rural, and characterised by extensive upland livestock farming (sheep in particular). Most farms are small to medium family-run setups. ON TOP OF THAT, the vast majority of Welsh farmers are Welsh-speaking, and the right to operate a farm the ‘traditional’ way without UK government oversight is seen by Welsh Nationalists as an important post-colonial act.
Many of them didn’t even like the National Parks being set up, as they were seen as an English outsider imposition that ignored the working nature and cultural history of the land. Remember: the farmed uplands are often seen as a heartland of Welsh identity, and those have historically been intentionally destroyed by UK central government land management decisions (e.g. Tryweryn, Elan, Claerwen, etc)
“Over the past half century we have witnessed the arrival of countless environmental fundamentalists… seemingly oblivious to the fact that their new-found paradise is already occupied by people whose connection with the land is deep rooted, dates back thousands of years, and is embedded in their language and culture.” (Nick Fenwick [Farmers’ Union of Wales] 2013)
SO IT’S CULTURALLY DICEY
(And in my opinion an incredibly stupid idea to go and give it a primarily English name with a Welsh translation as an afterthought but that is Elanor’s Opinion and not Scientific Fact)
(But fr fr if you ever have to get involved in these sorts of projects you will go a long way if you have the basic respect of learning the Welsh names and pronouncing them right rather than lazily expecting everything to be in English sorry sorry I digress)
From the Cambrian Wildwood’s Mission Statement on their website, their objective is:
“To rewild or restore land to a wilder state to create a functioning ecosystem where natural processes dominate by carrying out habitat restoration, removing domestic livestock, and introducing missing native species as far as feasible.”
Can you see the controversial bit of the statement
Can you see the bit where they directly say they want to remove domestic livestock
Jesus Christ
Cultural Differences
AND THEN HERE'S THE BIGGER PROBLEM
‘Culture’ in Welsh is diwylliant – literally, a ‘lack of wildness’. There is no direct translation into Welsh for the term ‘rewilding’ – the closest you can get is anialwch or diffeithwch, which mean ‘wilderness’ in the sense of ‘desert’ or ‘wasteland’. So right off the bat, if you tell a Welsh-speaking farmer that you want to rewild the place, what they hear is "We want to make it dangerous and empty and degraded."
A related concept is cynefin - knowing one’s ‘patch’ and the feeling of belonging associated. The term has its roots as a description of the way grazing animals know their area of mountain land, but it is also used to describe how people come to form an intimate experiential knowledge of place - and specifically, a Welsh farmer's cultural attitude.
Basically, Welsh literature and oral traditions speak of a relationship with the land, not a separation and longing for an untouched wilderness. Farmers feel this especially keenly. Culturally, this is a big part of why they do it – they’re rooted to the land, and therefore to their identities.
“Interviewees conveyed this by referring to areas proposed for rewilding as being comprised of “a quilt of cynefinoedd: interwoven stories, the layered and collective place-making of families and individuals over-generations, co-constituted with the physical landscape” (Wynne-Jones, Holmes and Strouts, 2018)
So, to them, rewilding is erasing and disregarding these stories. To them, this is not just a land-use change, but the latest colonial attack. They've known the family who lived on that farm for generations - every birth, marriage, death, joy, triumph, loss, everything. You are saying that you are going to strip that family, all those stories, all those people out of that land, to be forgotten.
However. There is a counterpoint to this.
Many farmers taking this view have therefore identified themselves as the only “truly Welsh” people in the debate, accusing environmentalists as being outsiders. The problem with this being, most of the environmentalists involved with the project are also Welsh; so who the fuck are they to say who is or is not Truly Welsh? It's what we on the internet would recognise as gatekeeping, with a big side order of No True Scotsman fallacy.
Also this quote sums it up well:
“Sheep farming in this country goes back a few hundred years. I think if you go deep enough into our culture and ancestry, we have a really deep native relationship with wild forest areas and with the wild animals that are native to this country…I just don’t agree that sheep farming is really part of our traditional culture.” (WWLF Interview [15] 2016) (Wynne-Jones, Holmes and Strouts, 2018)
This is also a fair point. It is true that upland sheep farming, the way we now practice it, is only a few hundred years old, and at the current intensity only a few decades (since WW2).
On top of which, there has been plenty of exploration over the years of farmers as being a government-subsidised landed gentry, which I won't go into here, but it also contains some fair points.
In truth, all of it and none of it is true. It’s far more complex and nuanced than either side might want to believe.
Solutions So Far
This is an ongoing project and they're still learning and changing new things and stuff, but a big thing they did was get someone in to basically be a mediator and listen to both sides, because Jesus, those sides were not listening to each other.
But to date:
They actually worked with a first-language Welsh speaker (WHY DID THEY NOT DO THIS FIRST I'm sorry I'm fine). Originally the Welsh translation of the project was Tir Gwyllt – wild land. But given that Welsh connotations with gwyllt are something out of control or dangerous, Coetir Anian has been chosen – anian refers to a sense of natural order and creation, a sense of health and vitality. Similarly, ‘rewilding’ is being translated as ‘di-ddofi’ – ‘de-taming’. This acknowledges the labour and culture taken to tame it, and just suggests an avenue for discussing some relaxation of farming practice in appropriate locations rather than, you know, releasing packs of wolves directly into sheep pens
In online materials and in community engagement events where traditional storytellers and musicians have performed to celebrate the Wildwood, the trustees have drawn heavily from Welsh myth in the form of the Mabinogion. Enormous amounts of the Mab lovingly and respectfully feature wild woods and wild animals. The emphasis is therefore on how wilderness is also part of Welsh identity – and arguably a much older part, going back to the Celts. (This is clever, in my view, but something to approach with care - it's rarely a good idea to play the game of "What's the most Welsh". But so far it's been done sensitively)
Land purchased for the project has so far been wholly limited to that available in the public domain. The main site, Bwlch Corog, was empty and unfarmed for six years before purchase, which has been stressed in all media interviews and releases; this is important, because farmers do have a sense of "Productive land is being stolen by environmentalists".
Large predator reintroductions have largely been abandoned. Lynx and wolves are no longer on the agenda. It’s possible they’ll be included in the future, but it is acknowledged as currently impractical (both from clashes with farmers and lack of habitat).
Instead, they’ve supported smaller species reintroductions, such as the Vincent Wildlife Trust’s pine marten translocations, and some proposed red squirrel ones.
Bwlch Corog is to be managed as an experimental plot that farmers are encouraged to engage with.
Assessing the potential for new income streams (from improved tourism and educational activities) rather than just the ecological benefits – this has become central to the project, and the emphasis is on how this might benefit farming communities and keep them together. This has been huge, and has also been successful in rewilding schemes in Europe.
Tensions are a lot lower now than they were ten years ago, but ultimately the problem was a bunch of outsiders came in and decided they knew best without listening to anyone else's point of view, and that meant both sides really dug their heels in. Much better now.
Ultimately... yes, I am in favour of rewilding, in a general sense. But I think it needs to go hand in hand with supplying farmers with the necessary subsidies to transition back to more traditional and sustainable farming methods, and the two elements run side by side. You can't do one without the other, not if you want them to succeed. The Pontbren Project is a great case study for how a farmer-led scheme can successfully aid them economically while also improving environmental outcomes, and we need to learn and incorporate more lessons from it when discussing this kind of landscape-level management.
Also, with land management in general, I think you're a fucking idiot and dangerously arrogant if you think you can get anything done without all stakeholders being on board. And potentially wandering down the ecofascism path, circumstances dependent.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Source:
Wynne-Jones, S, Holmes, G & Strouts, G (2018), 'Abandoning or Reimagining a Cultural Heartland? Understanding and Responding to Rewilding Conflicts in Wales - the case of the Cambrian Wildwood.' Environmental Values, vol. 27, no. 4.
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devildomwriter · 5 months
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Their Pacts
I’ve compiled what was said when the pacts were made, when MC asked, their responses, and when and why the pacts were made.
Lucifer’s Pact
When: Chapter 20-14
Where: Lucifer’s Office
Why: It felt right to them
Who Proposed the Pact: MC though Lucifer prodded it
The Proposal:
Lucifer: “…have you done all you set out to do here in the Devildom? No unfinished business? No loose ends?”
MC: “I still haven’t made a pact with you.”
The Response:
Lucifer: “A pact, you say? I see. You’ve made pacts with all of my brothers, which just leaves me… Do you really want to make a pact with me? Truly? I don’t know how my brothers felt about making a pact with you, but I am more than a name to be crossed off of your list. I can’t have you lumping me together with everyone else. That won’t do.”
The Pact:
Lucifer: “Now Listen, and listen well. I will not be your possession. I won’t belong to you. You will belong to me. So, what will it be? Will you make a pact with me, MC?”
Option 1 MC: “Yes. I’ll make a pact with you.”
Lucifer: “…Good. Then it’s done.”
Option 2 MC: “No, I don’t want a pact with you.”
Lucifer: “How unfortunate for you. Because it’s too late now.” —
Lucifer: “As of this moment, MC, you are mine.”
Mammon’s Pact
When: Chapter 2-8
Where: House of Lamentation Kitchen
Why: MC— was asked to | Mammon— to save Goldie
Who Proposed the Pact: Leviathan suggested it, MC asked
The Proposal:
MC: “Make a pact with me, Mammon.”
The Response:
Mammon: “UH-UH, NO WAY! NOT INTERESTED! I am the Great Mammon, Avatar of Greed, one of the seven rulers of the Devildom! Fool…do you actually think I’d like some human be the boss of me?”
The Pact:
Mammon: “I mean, of course I’ll make a pact with you, human! I’d be thrilled to!”
Leviathan’s Pact
When: Chapter 4-6
Where: House of Lamentation Planetarium
Why: Supposedly this pact is suggested sometime before the TSL competition but through error—possibly a translation issue—the pact is never actually proposed in-game.
Who Proposed the Pact: It was likely MC who proposed as Levi seemed annoyed by the possibility of a pact.
The Proposal: *see above*
The Response: *see above*
The Pact:
Leviathan: “…All right, look. Here’s the thing. You remember why we decided to have that competition in the first place, right? It was to see who the bigger TSL fan was. And I told you that if you won, I’d enter into a pact with you. That Little trump card you pulled out was a real dirty trick… …but a promise is a promise, after all. It really kills me to do this…it makes my stomach churn. But, I’ll keep my end of the bargain. I’ll do it. I’ll make a pact with you.”
Satan’s Pact
When: Chapter 12-10
Where: House of Lamentation Hallway
Why: MC— to free Belphegor | Satan— respect for MC
Who Proposed the Pact: The first time, MC. The following times, Satan
First Proposal: *the first proposal is in response to Asmodeus asking MC who they’d like to make a pact with next*
First Response:
Satan: “If you want to make a pact with me, it’ll cost you. A lot. Though, if you offered me your soul in return, I might consider it…”
Second Proposal: *made by Satan to annoy Lucifer*
Satan: “…Good question. What are you trying to accomplish…? Hmm, well…I guess I’ll just have to help MC too, won’t I?”
Leviathan: “Wait, you’re going to have to explain that, Satan. Are you saying that…?”
Satan: “Yep. I’ll also be making a pact with MC.”
Second Response:
MC: “I’m not making a pact with you.”
Satan: “…What did you say? I told you I’d make a pact with you. You can’t seriously be planning in rejecting me? You, a human…reject me? …Don’t you dare trifle with me. Do you think I’m called the Avatar of Wrath for nothing? I usually work to contain my anger so it doesn’t show. But I will make you suffer if you cross me, and it will be much more cruel and much less humans than anything my brothers would ever do. I’ll slice off your nose and ears, rips off your arms and legs, and feed you to the lower- level demons…!”
MC: “…!”
Satan: “Listen well, human! If you dare say that you won’t make a pact with me again, you’ll pay for it with your—“
Proposal:
Satan: “Anyway, I know this isn’t the best time for me to ask this, but… MC, would you agree to a pact with me?”
The Pact:
Satan: “All right, time for me I go ahead and take the oath. …I am Satan, Avatar of Wrath. I pledge myself to you, MC…that we may be bound by an unbreakable pact. This I swear to you on both my name as well as the very blood that runs through my veins.”
Asmodeus’s Pact
When: Chapter 8-15
Where: Demon Lord’s Castle Hallway
Why: MC— to free Belphegor | Asmodeus— originally it was a deal but he wanted to after witnessing MC’s power
Who Proposed the Pact: MC vaguely proposed it but Asmodeus made it clear
First Proposal: *the first proposal is in response to Asmodeus asking MC who they’d like to make a pact with next*
First Response:
Asmodeus: “Yes, I’m not surprised you want me all to yourself. And I understand. Believe me, I do. All too well… Humans Just can’t help themselves when confronted with someone beautiful and alluring, can they? Oh, but just because I said I understand, that doesn’t mean you actually have a chance with me. Because I’m not the least bit interested in forming a pact.”
Proposal:
MC: “I could control you if you made a pact with me.”
Response:
Asmodeus: “Me? Make a pact with you? Hahaha! What? Do you think that because I made a pact with Solomon, I’m willing to do it with any human who comes along? Please. If you really think I’m that Ea͏s͏y, you’re mistaken—very mistaken. Still…Hmm. If you want to make a pact with me that badly then what do you say to this? If you can manage to outwit Lucifer somehow, then I’ll be willing to recognize you as someone worthy of me. If you really want to make a pact with me, then…surely you can do something like that, right?”
The Pact:
Asmodeus: “Yep. But I mean, even if Solomon did lend his powers, it shouldn’t be possible for someone to draw that kind of power out of me, you know? I mean, you’ve got to admit, it’s super impressive! MC you really were amazing down there! So, I’m making a pact with MC. I’ve made up my mind.”
Beelzebub’s Pact
When: Chapter 6-10
Where: The Twins’ Room
Why: MC— claims they want lucifers respect but it’s really to help Belphegor escape | Beelzebub— believes MC will help him and his brothers make up
First Proposal: *the first proposal is in response to Asmodeus asking MC who they’d like to make a pact with next*
First Response:
Beelzebub: “Uh-uh. No. Although, if you’d make sure I always had tons and tons of food—as much as I could eat—then I’d consider it.”
Proposal:
MC: “I want you to make a pact with me.”
Response:
Beelzebub: “So, you’ve made a pact with Mammon and Leviathan, and now you want to make one with me. Why are you so interested in making pacts with demons, huh? I want to know why you want to make a pact with me. Let’s hear it.”
The Pact:
Beelzebub: “So, by making a pact with us, you’re hoping to impress Lucifer? So that he’ll understand that you’re actually someone worth listening to, despite the fact that you’re a human? You want to do what even Solomon hasn’t been able to accomplish? … …All right. I feel the same way. I want Belphegor and Lucifer to make up, too. So I’ll do it. I’ll make a pact with you, MC.”
Belphegor’s Pact
When: Chapter 18-19
Where: Demon Lord’s Castle Gazebo by the Lake
Why: He wanted to gift himself to MC
Proposal:
Belphegor: “…You know, I had a hard time deciding what to get you for a present. And maybe this isn’t very original of me, but…MC, how would you like to make me yours? I’m asking if you’ll make a pact with me.”
The Response:
Option 1 MC: You bet I will! Yaaay!”
Belphegor: “Good…I like you’re reaction.”
Option 2 MC: “I thought you said you didn’t want to do that.”)
Belphegor: “I did say that before, yeah…”
The Pact:
Belphegor: “Also, I’d like it if I could be the closest demon to you…the first one you turn to for help whenever you need it. …So then, let’s make it official. Here’s to a long and lasting relationship, MC.”
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high by the beach
sfw & nsfw headcanons with chad meeks-martin, sam carpenter & ethan landry.
18+, unedited work and fem description, do not steal, repost or translate my work. thank you.
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chad:
sfw
chad is a very protective bf, he's kicking ass the second someone calls you out your name.
the minute you become his gf he's doing everything for you.
sleeping with chad in the twin size bed in his dorm is really just you sleeping on top of him because he hardly fits on there on his own but he doesn't mind because he's a cuddler.
the type to serenade you like derek did to sid in scream 2. chad has no shame.
def the big spoon but secretly loves being the little spoon.
is surprisingly a good cook and has you taste his food n blows your food for you when he's giving you some hehe.
you guys probably go on ice cream dates.
he loves chisme, chad is a big gossiper and always gossips with you.
the bf that'll randomly throws you over his shoulder and carry you around.
imagine giving him back rubs 🥰 ofc he'll give you back rubs too but sometimes he gets a little too rough because when you let out a moan he gets distracted a bit and squeezes too hard but he apologizes immediately pressing kisses all over your back.
his love language is physical touch and he's always touching you whether it's holding your hand, holding your waist, hand on your thigh, hand in your back pocket, he's always got to have a hand somewhere on you.
he isn't always the jealous type because he knows 100% that you're his girl but if the person starts to get too handsy that's when he steps in and tells them to back off.
he'll probably call you babe or baby or sweetheart.
likes to help you with your skincare routine and will do facemasks with you.
HE IS SECRETLY A HUGE FILM NERD AND CONSTANTLY HAS COMMENTARIES ON HIS FAVORITE FILMS. is a secret harry potter fan, no i don't make the rules.
says he needs help studying but he's actually just pulling you into his lap and smothering you with kisses.
neck kisses always 🥰 it's definitely his fave place to kiss you.
chad is not afraid of pda so making out everywhere. he's def had you pinned against the wall at a party, his hand cupping your face and his leg pushed between your thighs.
imagine chad being a flustered around you like chad trying to sweet talk you, telling you that it'd be nice if you guys went out some time but the minute you lean forward a hand on his knee "you asking me out?" he's stuttering and flustered, mindy's probably a few feet away laughing her ass off because how down bad chad is.
you have an amused look on your face as he tries to find the words. "i-uhm-yeah- i mean yes-" he's nodding as you're smiling at him, you're giggling softly and he thinks he's messed it up "if you want to though, we don't have to."
you stand up and his eyes follow you "pick me up at 8." he's frozen when you kiss his cheek before walking off. he's immediately in shambles
nsfw
chad loves eating pussy, it's definitely one of his favorite things to do and he just love your sweet little moans for him. the way your nails dig into his skin, it's like heaven. he's a messy pussy eater idc what anyone says, he's got your wetness spread all over the lower half of hes face, he's basically making out your pussy.
i said it once and ill say it again, chad eats you out when you're stressed, the minute you come in and tell him you're stressed about an exam. his arms are wrapped around your waist pressing soft kisses against your neck as he listens to you rant about it. "i know something that can make you feel better." he'll tease tickling your side but before you know it you're laid out onto your back and he's eating you out with his arms wrapped around your thighs to hold you still.
he seems like the type to love missionary just because he gets to see your face, he gets to kiss all over your skin and just love all up on you but also does love when you're riding him, his hands gripping your waist as he watches you fuck yourself on him.
"that's my girl." "let me hear you." "look at you taking me so well."
he's very vocal definitely talks you through it and praises you a lot AND he definitely starts off slow with teasing movements until you're begging for him to move.
he loves to hear you beg and whimper for him and will wear your marks on him proudly.
loves manhandling you and also loves fucking your tits.
holds the hem of his shirt between his teeth so he can see you while you guys are having a quickie .
he's a big tease too though, if you tell him that something feels good he'll be like "what this?" before he does it again watching your eyes roll back.
ethan definitely has walked in on the two of you a bunch of times but you can't help that you can't keep your hands off your man.
is the guy that'll fuck you in front of your mirror to show you how hot you are.
he doesn't mind doing all the work and never asks for anything in return because everything for him goes with your pace.
he likes when you take control, he doesn't mind you pushing him down and taking what you want. what can he say? he loves a powerful woman.
he's definitely a whore for you, the minute you tell him that you're horny he's pulling off his shirt with one hand and taking off your pants with the other.
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sam:
sfw.
very hesitant with the relationship at first but when she gets into it, she's actually a really caring and sweet girlfriend.
she's 100% an overprotective gf even when she doesn't mean to be, she cares about you so much she has to protect you. holds your hand in crowded areas so she doesn't lose you and because she still gets slightly nervous.
random headcanon but sam loves pizza but dont ask me how i know this but she does. she takes the toppings off your pizza for you if you don't like them.
is the big spoon, loves when you lay your head on her chest. she loves playing with your hair.
hates horror movies but secretly loves disney movies.
her love language is words of affirmation don't ask me how i know i just do!! she's not really the touchy type but if you're into that she'll try to be more cuddly with you but she's learning so give her a break she'll get the hang of it.
she sucks at bowling and mini golf.
she's never jealous (or at least that's what she tries to convince you) but she does get a bit insecure at times because she thinks you can do better than a murderer's daughter. you sometimes have to reassure her and tell her you love her and that you're down for forever.
has punched a guy at the bar who disrespected you.
loves when you scratch her scalp.
carries you home when you're drunk and maybe you admit your feelings for her or something but she won't mention it when you're sober she'll just be really weird tho.
gave you a pocket knife so you could protect yourself and she'd get super weird about this too when she gives it to you but tara is in the back giggling because she knows that this is a sign sam likes you.
forehead kisses!!!! she loves when you give her forehead kisses and she loves giving you forehead kisses.
not a big outside pda person but in private she's kissing you all the time and holding you. also not too big on pet names and will probably call you a variation of your name or something simple like babe.
stays up late waiting until you get home and honestly can't sleep unless you're in the bed with her.
secretly has you as her lockscreen.
washes your hair in the shower.
if you make her a playlist she listens to it religiously.
you'd have to ask her out because she'll check you out for months without saying a thing to you.
pretended to hate you when you guys first met because she's in constant denial of her feelings.
will probably have an argument about her being overbearing and then she'll blurt out that she loves you.
nsfw
she's very hesitant with the sex stuff, not because she's a virgin but because of her trauma. she doesn't want it to go far and you end up trying to murder her so for months yall are going steady but when she finally gets comfortable she's a mess for you.
she's not the crazy sex type, she's very vanilla, very only in the bedroom kind of girl but she definitely prefers to be more in control.
she isn't crazy experienced either when she's eating you out for the first time you have to tell her what to do but once she's get the hang of it shes not bad at it. she's a bit messy with it.
is a fool for seeing you in her clothes, will fold instantly and jump your bones right then and there.
isn't too vocal at the start but once she finally gets the hang of it you get a few "you like that?" "right there?" "you okay?"'s .
secretly a big tease and will take it real slow with you, placing small wet kisses down your body, sucking lightly at your clit, her fingers teasing you but she never gives you too much until your hands are in her hair and you are begging for her.
gags you with your panties if tara and quinn are hommmmeeee.
eating sam out and she'll have her hands in your hair pulling lightly at the ends and you'll especially know you're doing good when she has to cover her mouth from stopping from getting to loud and will always return the favor.
probably wants to experiment and gets something simple like handcuffs or a vibrator. she's not afraid to try knew things so if there is something different you want to try, don't be afraid to bring it up to her.
fucked you in a ghostface robe once
has pinned you against the wall and ate you out right then and there.
sam can get a little rough when she's horny, manhandles you a bit especially when she only has time for a quickie. she's tossing you on the bed, her hands gripping your skin.
gets super shy when you show off the marks she gave you.
drunk sam is horny touchy sam.
she has a praise kink don't ask me how i know but you telling her how good she's doing and how good she's making you feel really gets her going.
bought a strap once and loves using it on you but she definitely likes using her hands more, she's always been a more hands on type of girl.
loves when you straddle her, her hands are gripping your waist and her tongue is in your mouth as you began grinding against her. shes a wreck <3
i firmly believe she's a master with her fingers, idc about your opinion i know sam is.
didn't touch you for a month because tara caught you guys and she was so embarrassed and paranoid she'd catch you again.
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ethan:
sfw
is 100% willing to be late to his classes so he can carry all your things for you to your class and definitely has puppy dog eyes for you.
will learn how to do your hair and ethan definitely ties your shoes for you.
chad catching you and ethan making out and him shoving you off his lap. "we were just talking." is his excuse but the lipgloss spread on his lips and his disheveled hair tells chad all he needs to know.
he probably applies your lipgloss for you and maybe helps you apply mascara but once you get to the eyeliner and stuff he backs out because his hands are so shaky.
licks his lips when he's concentrating .
pushes you on the swings.
first date was a roller skating date which he actually doesn't even know how to do but he got nervous and blurted out roller skating so you got to witness him fall a few hundred times.
tells you to come over after he's done with his homework because you distract him, take it as a compliment because if you were around he'd be focused on you the whole time.
can never really say no to you, he is a slave for you.
the first time he kissed you was in the dark and he accidentally kissed your nose, he was so embarrassed.
always kissing him on his cheek and vice versa.
holding your hand until you complain that your hand is sweaty.
helps you wipe your makeup off if you're too tired or drunk.
doesn't mind being the big or little spoon but he does love laying his head on your chest. whines in the morning when you have to leave for class and when you guys study together you always leave something behind accidentally so he probably has your earrings or pens somewhere.
probably calls you babe or honey.
he probably has murdered someone who talked bad about you ( possibly multiple people ) but ignore that babe he was just feeling a little goofy that day 🙂 ( it will happen again )
also not a big pda person but loves when you give him little kisses on the cheek or nose. is probably a weirdo and likes giving eskimo kisses or butterfly kisses.
not a huge partier but if you like to party, he will be there with you whether he's following you around like a lost puppy or watching you closely from a corner, he's there with you.
got drunk once and did karaoke to wildest dreams by taylor swift.
is the bf that pauses movies to give you his commentary.
gives you lessons on how to stab correctly and shoot and saw you once in his ghostface robe and almost collapsed because you looked so good.
a very secretly overprotective bf and follows you everywhere because he has 'nothing to do' but he actually just wants to make sure you're safe.
will say something doesn't bother him but he's actually burning on the inside. will get in a fight for you.
honestly ghostface!ethan and normal!ethan are two very different people, he'll be a normal shy boy but then suddenly he's gutting your bio teacher for failing you ( once again ignore it babe he's just a goofball 😍 )
nsfw
inexperienced but is a fast learner after a few sessions of you telling him what to do and where to touch he's got the flow and suddenly he knows all your tells and he's making you cum like he's done it a million times.
idc what you say ethan is a switch. and he's also a panty stealer i don't make the rules but he's less of a stealer. he'll shyly ask if he can take them, chad was scarred when he was helping ethan do his laundry and found a pair that had been uhm.....that ethan may have used for his own pleasure.
bite marks all over you always. he loves when you mark him up and we all already know he motherfucking whimpers.
fucked you with the handle of his knife.
wakes you up with his face between your legs on your birthday (or any holiday tbh)
mean!ethan calling you a dummy.
phone sex with ethan where he's whimpering into the phone telling you how he wishes you were touching him right now and how bad he wants you with him right now.
has fucked you in his ghostface costume, his head tilted down at you as his fingers slammed into you watching you moan and cry for him then he flips you over and fucks you into the mattress.
cried when you sucked him off the first time.
comes home from class stressed and eats you out as HIS stress reliever.
has fucked you in an alley once but he's not a huge public person so it only happens once or twice. you guys also probably fucked in the bathroom at a party. he's a bit more of a only in the bedroom type but sometimes he gets a little needy.
has a few secret kinks like choking (he likes to choke you and likes when you choke him), spitting, overstimulation (because he likes to see you cry) and a few others.
used to let you sit on his lap while he did his homework but you're banned because you keep making him hard.
loves your tits and sometimes when you're making out both his hands on cupping your boobs. also loves fucking your tits.
has fingered you in the back of the library.
read a fic where he cums in your panties and all i have to say is yes.
he's always a little nervous so he does ask chad for tips and stuff like that but soon he'll get the hang of what you like and what makes you feel good.
lives and breathes you and you only.
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a/n: hey here are just some yummy headcanons! i really hope you enjoyed this and feel free to request! pls pls tell me what you think!
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jeidafei · 2 months
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Hi, DGM fandom! I'm jeidafei. You may have seen me in Kougeki-scans' scanlation of D.Gray-Man.
I know Kougeki releases have been delayed for these past few chapters. And people have taken to releasing their own translations on Reddit and MangaDex as early as a few days after the Japanese release. We at Kougeki have asked people to wait if they could. People have told us to, basically, go d*e.
And of course, you are perfectly entitled to say so. You are perfectly entitled to release your own translations and not wait. After all, we at Kougeki are just fans of D.Gray-Man, similar to you. We have zero claim over the series.
I normally stay out of the fray when it comes to quarrels with these 'snipers' until now. When I saw the quality of the translations some of these people are putting out.
(Specifically, Chapter 250 on MangaDex)
Japanese is a difficult language. D.Gray-Man is a difficult manga to translate due to its ongoing status, complex nature and plot twists. I have made mistakes myself that others have pointed out. I have my own interpretations that might be different. I readily forgive mistakes I understand are due to the complex Japanese grammar, and the confusing mysteries of the D.Gray characters.
But these are not it. These are just blatant laziness and lack of basic knowledge of even the most recent developments in D.Gray-Man. Or even simple logic. These are the results of people dishing out sub-par work quickly just to get the most exposure possible.
So while we wait for Kougeki's version, I am going to point out these egregious mistakes. We need transparency so that going forward, you can make your own decisions on whether it is speed or accuracy you are looking for.
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The original Japanese text says "7,000 years ago" (七千), not "17 years"(十七). A difference any beginner Japanese learner would notice. Even most D.Gray-Man fans without Japanese knowledge would probably realize something is off based on what we know of the story so far.
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The original text says "Do(es) the passion/sentiments run so deep, you must reincarnate into a human who resembles Nea?" (the word 'regret' is simply not there). I think 'passion' or 'sentiments' are more compatible here, considering earlier theories about Tyki, the Noah of Pleasure.
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Jasdevi is saying they were at their limits anyway and wouldn't be able to keep restraining Apocryphos for long. When Wisely orders them to dispose of Apo, they scream "Oni!" (Demon) which is quite similar to "Onii-san" (Elder brother), but most people would probably know which one is more fitting in this scenario, even without Japanese knowledge.
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When Desires asks Wisely if he is just going to set Apo free like that, Wisely explains that this way, Apocryphos (not Desires or Wisely as in the translation), can keep searching for the Heart for them. Again, basic story knowledge.
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Wisely didn't say "Fine, enough already"; this bubble is a continuation of the earlier bubble, spoken by Desires. Together, he is saying "Wouldn't you just spit it out already!?"
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In Japanese, many words sound the same and the meaning can only be determined by context or the Chinese characters (kanji) used. In this case, "kikai" can mean either "machine" (機械) or "opportunity" (機会) or "strange" (奇怪), among a dozen others.
Yes, it's difficult, I know. But, you see the kanji. You know the context. I'm sure you can take a guess.
There are a couple more minor mistakes (ones that don't impact your understanding of the story too much). But I'm just going to leave you with one more, the most conspicuous mistake:
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The chapter is named "Curse's End" by this translator. Actually, it's the opposite in Japanese. "Owaranu" is a form of "Owaranai" which means "not ending", which fits the revelation of this chapter by Wisely that their 35-year curse has yet to come to an end.
So, there you have it.
As you can see, I'm not shaming people for not being as fluent in Japanese. Not everyone can dedicate almost two decades to learn a language. As I have pointed out, most of these mistakes are rookie-level, and should have been picked up in double-check if that someone is familiar with D. Gray-Man at all. With these nigh unforgivable mistakes, even Deepl and Google Translate are more accurate.
This is a matter of someone not giving enough of a sh*t, plain and simple.
I'm also not gatekeeping scanlation whatsoever. I'm just pointing out the mistakes and actual text because the fandom deserves to know. With the localization drama going on, it proves faithfulness to the actual text and accuracy matters.
Of course, anyone has the right to put out their translation. And I have the right to point out whether they can be trusted. I'm not passing judgment. I'm just providing evidence so the bystanders can decide for themselves.
Lastly, from the bottom of my heart, I thank everyone who has supported the work of Kougeki Scans and waited for our release. I apologize for the delays. We're working on the latest chapter and will release 249 and 250 very, very soon.
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said something stupid, instead of 'i love you.'- c.leclerc
can't we just act like we never broke each other's hearts? pairing: charles leclerc x female reader word count: 26.9k (my bad fr fr) warnings: 18+ minors dni, protected sex, oral sex, google translated french. tw: charles' 2022 season (including france) a/n: this is something, that's for certain. good or bad is yet to be decided. I'VE MOVED BLOGS! if you enjoy this and are looking for more, follow me @formulaforza
You’d texted him two weeks before the season opener. It was short, simple, and a huge overstep, one you promised yourself years ago you’d never make. Do you have any extra paddock passes? He’d said yes, and you begrudgingly asked if you could have an extra, if you could bring a guest, a boyfriend, Michael. He’s a big fan, of Charles and of Formula One. I really want to impress him.
Michael’s been impatiently itching to meet Charles since he spotted a photo of the two of you in your living room. You thought you’d taken them all down before he came over, but, you missed one. He’s sort of a Ferrari fan-boy, an Italian whose transplanted himself to Monte Carlo. You’d been putting off the meeting as long as possible, forced to consider if Michael actually liked you, or if he just wanted to know Charles. It wasn’t easy, to keep them apart. It was winter break, and Charles was in Monaco too much to be easily avoided. There’s a lot of verbiage that is used to describe home, vast is not one of them. 
You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now, the way you followed him around the globe like a helicopter parent that first year he wore red. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. Michael was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to. His presence, though, felt intrusive on something that had, for so long, been just yours. 
Arthur’s familiar voice calls your name, over the bustling hum of different important and wealthy figures. You grin when your eyes meet his, stand up from the leather sofa you’re seated on, give him, and Pascale, big hugs. Charles told me you brought someone? She asked, voice sweet and curious. 
Her tone was contrasted by Arthur’s quip asking where your arm-candy had run off to, wiggling his brows and searching the room for a man he’d never seen. He’s oblivious to the glare Pascale shoots into the side of his head. 
You explain that he’s in the bathroom, check your watch. “Have you seen Charles today?” It’s not like him to not stop by and say hello, to check in and make sure you’re still enjoying yourself–or that you’re still capable of pretending you are. You wonder if he’s avoiding you, annoyed by the presence of your guest, a guest he doesn’t know. It’s unheard of, you asking for passes. It’s literally never happened. You’d asked about the possibility of one for yourself, back when he was with Sauber, and he’s maintained that you have an open invite since. 
“We were just with him.” Arthur says.
“How is he?” You ask, because he might be mad at you, but also because you know him. His brain works like clockwork. Two hours before a race, right now, he’ll be doubting himself, doubting the car, doubting himself again. In his moments of downtime, before he’s swept up into the chaos of it all, his brain will pick itself apart with nervousness. You think it’s endearing, his nerves. They remind you that he’s still Charles at times where he feels so grand and invincible. 
“He’s good.” Arthur says, because between crucifying jokes and mockings of his big brother, Arthur idolizes him. He’s none the wiser to Charles’ anxieties and insecurities because he’s never looking for him, blind confidence in the man he’ll never admit is his biggest role model. You look to Pascale, who understands the depth of your question, and get a reaffirming nod. 
Arthur diggs two sticker tags from his pocket, full grid access. “For you.” He says, fastening one onto your lanyard. “And for the boy.” He holds out the other, presents it like a crown jewel. You sigh, snatch it from his hand and shove it into your pocket. You hate watching races in the garage, with all the hyper-wealthy motherfuckers who buy their way in. You always feel like you don’t belong. Like, no matter where you move, you’re always in someone more important’s way. Your limbs don’t feel like your own, unable to settle, so close to the comfort of your best friend yet miles away from his occupied mind. 
“What’s going on?” Michael asks, airy tone in direct conflict to his hand on the small of your back, tense with envy. He’s silently laying claim to you, reminding you who you belong to, and you almost laugh at the thought of someone being threatened by Arthur. Charles, you could see. Charles, you’ve had that argument about before. Arthur, though? Arthur, who slept with his ratty blanket until he was sixteen, who lost not one, but two pet goldfish in the span of a year. Arthur, who is very happily in love with the sweetest girl to ever grace this Earth. 
“C’est lui?” Arthur asks, tone bored. “Il est vieux.”
“This is him.” You say, through gritted teeth, introduce them all formally and sit by as an observer in their conversation. The lowlight was Arthur’s mention of grid access, and Michael’s giddiness at watching the race in the garage. You knew then that you’d be uncomfortable well into the night. 
You end up in the garage during the driver’s parade. “Don’t touch anything.” You told Michael, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage. The warning you give was less for your boyfriend, and more for you, who is desperate to run a hand over the red chassis, to memorize every detail of it. If you do, you might feel more comfortable when he’s inside, might be able to pretend you understand the concepts he casually mentions over dinner. 
You squeal like a child when you see Isa, hugging her tight and spilling all the details of your lives since Abu Dhabi last year. You introduce her to Michael, who says he’s a big fan of Carlos. Joris tugs on your ponytail, appearing with Andrea, who kisses your cheek, tells you Charles is going to be so happy to see you in the garage. You roll your eyes. 
Charles is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. He’s probably just as surprised to see you in here as you are uncomfortable about it. When you hug him, the knotted waist of his overalls digs into you awkwardly. “You’re warm.” You say, peeling your body from his sweaty form. 
“It’s hot.” He says, runs a hand through his salty hair.
“They shouldn’t make you wear all this during the parade.” You said, and he shrugged it off, asked where your guy was. You look around, search the garage for him. He can’t be far, and surely he’s gawking from one corner or another. If not at the sight of Charles Leclerc, Formula One driver, than at Charles, a man, whose hand hovers just behind the small of your back. 
Two hands, two separate distinctions. One, possessive and impossible to ignore. The other, protective, almost goes unnoticed. For a few breaths, your shoulders are relaxed, but then his hand is gone, shaking Michael’s. “Good to meet you, Mate.” Charles says, and the whole place feels like a straightjacket again.
– – 
You stand next to Isa, your hands wrapped nervously around each other’s the entire race, watching monitors and listening in on the headsets. “Carlos says the cars have it this year.” She says, while the guys are lining up in their starting spots. It feels like everyone at Ferrari has been chasing it, whatever it is, for a decade. Every year is the year, and every year, you’re begging Charles not to base his self-worth on a bad race or a bad season. You’ll believe in him until your last breath, but your glass of Ferrari is never going to be half-full.
Charles and Max, Max and Charles, Charles and Max. They flip flop positions lap after lap. When it seems like he’s settled in, you allow yourself to breathe. The universe has never allowed him comfort, though. Enter, safety car. The replay is on the screen, and your heart pangs for Pierre, watching his dash go black in system failure. Your heart aches for Charles, though, and the forty-six laps of hard work that was erased just like that. 
Max races like Max, inching closer and closer to Charles, practically lining up next to him. You’re rearing up for a dogfight, but Max fucks up. You don’t know what he did, why he did it, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else does either. It doesn’t matter, though, because Charles is gone. Something in you settles, sure and confident, even if it’s not over yet. You hear murmurs, celebrations, Max is retiring. Charles is going to win.
A Ferrari one-two to start the season. Your smile is so big your cheeks ache. Under the lights, watching him up on the top step, listening to your national anthem, you allow yourself to hope, to buy into the hype everyone else is swearing by. 
His skin shines brighter than his smile, sparkling with whatever lemon-lime soda they’d filled the champagne bottles with this year. You have a momentary lapse, consider what his skin would taste like, sweaty and sticky and sweet. Michael’s presence, his arms caging you in between him and the barricade, assures that the thought is nothing more than a passing one. 
He hugs you when he makes the rounds, being whisked away to whatever media responsibilities he had to fulfill before he heads to the debrief. Sweat and seven-up soaked, he’s running on pure adrenaline, squeezing you so tight you struggle to breathe. 
– –
You shower back at the hotel, wash his hug down the drain with the rest of the race anxiety. He takes everyone out to dinner late that night; Arthur, Lorenzo, Pascale, Andrea, Joris, Michael, and you. It’s a tradition. No matter how late or early in the day it happened. A podium, a celebratory dinner. Like always. 
The air is light, happy conversations flow from smiling faces, filling the room with laughter and excitement and hope. You’re sandwiched between your boyfriend and your best friend. Charles’ arm throws itself around your shoulder when Lorenzo retells a story meant to embarrass you. Michael reacts accordingly, hand on your thigh, fingers digging into your skin. They’re fighting over you and only one of them knows it. 
Charles is engaged in conversation, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have bruises in your leg by the time you go to sleep tonight. You nudge Charles’ foot with yours, his head turns before his eyes, lingering on Andrea and the conversation you’re pulling him from before he's searching your eyes curiously. You shrug your shoulder, and as if noticing it’s there for the very first time, he drops his arm onto the table and returns to the conversation. 
He must’ve showered, changed, and hurried here. His hair is still damp, and you want to play with it. Curl the long pieces around your finger and play with the short pieces at the nape of his neck. You soak up his presence as much as you can, knowing it’s going to be several weeks and several races before you see each other again. Crazy lives and crazy schedules that won’t feel normal again until break. You both take care to cherish the times you do get to spend together these days. You’re not twenty-one following him around the world anymore.
“Merci.” You say, at the end of the night. “For everything.”
He shakes his head, shoos your words away like they’re unnecessary, like you shouldn’t be thanking him for pulling strings. “Ton jouet garçon parle-t'il français?” He asks quietly, just for the two of you to hear. You roll your eyes, shake your head. “Il aest assez fan de moi.” 
“Tu l’aime bien alors?”
“Non.” He chuckles. “Je ne l’aime pas. Pas pour toi.” He says it matter-of-factly, annoyingly so and without any elaboration. 
“Heureusement, que tu n’es pas ma mère.”
“Heureusement.”
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It’s Miami when you see him next. Hot and humid and sunny, once more. Windy, too. Big gusts move the palms, gluing your hair haphazardly across your face before you tie it back, blowing his shirt tight across his chest. “How’s grandpa?” He asks at lunch. You’re sat across from him on the expansive patio of a waterfront restaurant, waves crashing against the cement beams below you, a seagull running around on the wooden planks in search of fresh crumbs. 
After Bahrain, Arthur wouldn’t drop the salt and pepper allegations, pushing until he found out Michael was seven years older than you. None of the boys have referred to him as anything but a grandfather since. 
“Oh, that?” You say, nonchalant, like you can’t be bothered when you very much were. “He liked me too much.” Translation, he wanted me on a leash. 
“He liked you too much.” He repeated, smile tugging on his lips. “Please,” He gestured to you, “Élaborer.”
“You never liked him, anyway.” You say into the rim of your water glass, taking a long, cold drink. The condensation from the glass drips down your wrist, forearm, off your bent elbow and onto your bare thighs, just past the hem of your sundress. The glass makes a heavy clunk when you set it back on the tabletop. 
“Oh, I loved him.” He laughed. “He was just wrong for you, chou.”
“You barely knew him.”
“After he left you alone in the garage?” He leans back in his seat, gestures harshly across his throat and clicks his tongue. “There was nothing to know.”
“You leave me alone in the garage.” You remind him and he’s quick to jump in. 
“I do not.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, animated. You smile, he smiles. “I leave you with Arthur.”
“You do not!” You laugh, protest without thinking, without needing to. The memory of each and every race you’ve spent in the garage is burnt into your memory. Every second feels like a second and a half. There are no distractions, it’s just you, in the way, and him, flying around in a death trap at a million kilometers an hour. 
He tries to argue, insist he would never leave you alone if he thought you were uncomfortable. You don’t want to hear it, though. If he does leave you under the watchful eye of someone, they have always done a pretty shitty job at looking out for you. “Whatever.” He finally concedes. “Who’s on the radar now?” Nobody, you tell him. Going to be single for a while. 
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“What are your plans tonight?” He asked over the phone. It was the middle of the decade, the start of your first year at University. The longest you’ve been away from home and the only time he’d been there without you. 
Jules had died that summer, and the sun had felt dimmed since. You spoke to Charles almost every day, but you were in no rush to get back home. It was ironic, Monaco reminding you of Jules, you finding an escape from the memories in France. It should be the other way around, but, logic has never had much hold over grief. 
“I have a presentation, remember?” He listened to you revise for it, mindlessly picking apart your notes, adjusting even the most minute details, for hours last week. You cried when the ancient printer in the library wouldn’t fulfill it’s only earthly purpose, and he patiently calmed you down, stayed with you on the phone until you fell asleep that night. He never acknowledged it, and you were grateful for it. 
“That’s tonight?” He asked, sounded defeated.
“Yes. Why?”
“I miss you.” He said, and you nearly crumbled into a little ball on the street. “I was going to come see you.”
You hesitated for a moment, tried to remember just how messy your apartment was, sized up your outfit. You didn’t want him to go telling stories to your parents of a disheveled daughter drowning somewhere just below the surface in France. You wanted to be put together when you saw him again, be the rock you were before you left. 
Generously, you would say you fell somewhere in the grey. “Come, then.’ You told him. “You can pick me up.”
– –
Nearly three hours later, after the conclusion of your presentation and his mind-numbing drive, he’s parked a short walk from your university building, waiting for you. “Sulut.” He said. 
“Hey.” You replied, climbing into the passenger seat. “How was Portugal?” He’d just gotten home and you’d been too busy with school to check any race results. Plus, you always liked hearing his recounts of races more than Google results. 
“How was your presentation?” He asks, doesn’t answer your question. 
“Good.” You smiled, buckled your seatbelt. 
Last season, before last summer and before Jules, you couldn’t get him to shut up about racing. It was all he ever wanted to talk about. He could be winning races or embarrassing himself on track, it didn’t matter, he’d talk your ear off. Now, he’s a lockbox with a combination that changes every day. You talk and you talk but nothing is really said, not anymore. You use each other’s voices to drown out the ones in your heads, to dull the pain, if even briefly. 
Growing up, it had always been your three families. Your fathers were best friends, had known each other before they knew their wives. You vacationed together, spent holidays together, had monthly family dinners and walked to the bus stop together. All of you kids were the same ages. Not planned, completely coincidental, they’d always say. You didn’t buy it, Arthur was the only one without a match, poor kid, the permanent brunt of jokes and the forever baby brother. 
“I don’t know my way around here.” He says, hand on the back of your headrest, backing the car out onto the road. 
“I do.” He smiles. Oh, how you missed his smile. All perfect and pretty, just like the rest of him, only happier.
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You arrive in Spain early, with him. There’s optimism after Miami, Charles is back on track, back to believing he deserves the title and then some. You all spend the entirety of Monday in La Barceloneta, soaking up as much tranquility and Spanish sun as you can.
Someone is knocking–pounding–on the door of your hotel room. The sun has barely risen, pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting hard golden shadows on the entire room. “Fuck.” You groan, rubbing sleep from your eyes, dragging your feet the entire way to the door. When Charles had said, we’re going to spend all day at the beach, you thought he meant midday, at the earliest. “What?” You say, met with Arthur’s annoyed face. 
“You could sleep through a freight train.” He says, and you flip him off. 
“You could have called me.” You say, yawn, stretch your arms out above your head. He rolls his eyes, and it gets under your skin in a way only a little brother can manage. You wish you had a shoe to throw at his stupid face. 
“Charles did. Three times.” He holds up a matching amount of fingers and you nod, that sounds like something you’d sleep through. “Are you ready?” 
Deep breaths, deep breaths, don’t lunge at him. “Do I look ready?” He looks you up and down and you can actually see the gears turning in his head, all three of his brain cells working overtime trying to convince him to keep his mouth shut. “Don’t answer that.” You say, stop him before your eye starts to twitch. “Give me half an hour.”
You knock on the door to Charles’ suite forty-five minutes later. Messy ponytail that you barely brushed, swimsuit, shorts, cotton button-up, entirely too large tote bag slung over your shoulder. Lorenzo answers, “Good morning, sunshine.” He says, all sing-songy and stupid. “Sleep well?”
You walk straight past him into the suite. You think your entire room could fit in his living area. You walk through it, past Joris and Arthur, engaged in a heated conversation, and Carla, who looks about as sleepy as you do. Charles is leaning against the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of something colorful. “No coffee?” You say.
Mouth full, he answers around his spoon, “I don’t drink coffee.”
“But, I do.” You say, grab a sliced strawberry from his bowl, eat it in one bite. 
“Feel free to make some.” Lorenzo chimes in. You flip him off, too, pouring coffee grinds into a paper filter and starting a pot. Lorenzo grabs a strawberry from Charles’ bowl too, and the metal spoon promptly collides with his arm. “Ay!” He yelps, tries, and fails, to jump away from the cutlery. “You let her have one!”
“She scares me when she’s tired.” He says, and you take another one because you know you’ll get away with it. He points the spoon at you, warningly. You wink, pop it in your mouth and he smiles, chuckles into the breakfast. 
– –
You fall asleep on the cabana bed in your shorts and bikini top, cotton shirt unbuttoned and laid over your face like it’s going to block the light out. You wake up when you’re hit with a bottle of sunscreen. There’s a possibility whoever threw it didn’t realize you were asleep, but the seam lines on your legs lead you to believe you’ve been relatively stationary since laying down here. 
You pull the shirt off your face, sit up, disoriented from the nap. “You’re going to burn,” Charles says, rubbing the lotion into his face. “You have pink cheeks.”
“No, I don’t.” You say, but lather up anyway, ask Carla to reach the places you can’t. 
The first drinks of the day come with lunch, a round of beers. Corona with lime. You keep yourself paced for the first couple hours, a 1:1 ratio between liquor and water. You maintain the slightest of buzzes, one that you really only feel when you catch yourself giggling too hard at one of their stupid jokes. It’s not the beer that takes you out, you’ve spent your entire life trying to keep up with Charles and his professional-drinker friends. It’s not the Sangria, either, however fun that is to sip. It’s the shots. It’s always the cheap tequila shots that do you in. You feel them too late, don’t realize you’re tipsy until you’re shitfaced. You’ll learn one day. One day, but not today. 
You and Charles are sent to find tequila, and you walk down the beach until you find a bar that looks like it’s got decent shit. “I like you like this,” You say, toes sinking into the wet sand, cool water washing over your feet with each crashing wave. 
“Like what?” He asks, squinting through the sun to see you. You left your sunglasses at the cabana and he gave you his to wear. They were big on your face and you thought if you moved too quickly they’d fall off into the sand. His linen shirt whips in the wind, his hair is sticking up in all directions, greasy with sunscreen. He glistened with sweat and coconut lotion, beautifully sunkissed.
“Just.” You shrug. “Happy.”
“Awww,” He teases, throws an arm around you, makes you miss a step and trip into him. He smells like summer and sandalwood and fresh, warm towels. “So sweet.”
At the bar, you order and he pays. Licking the salt off the back of your hand, you down the shot, pucker your lips around the lime, and set off back toward the rest of the group with a handful of shot glasses. It’s harder to carry them than you thought it would be, both of you fighting laughter when a bit of alcohol spills out of the tiny glasses, moving quickly over the burning sand. Back with everyone, you take another shot, no salt this time. 
The next round is broken up by something sweet and fruity. Joris takes a picture of you and Charles drinking them, arms intertwined like newlyweds at their wedding reception. You hope it doesn’t end up on social media, uninterested in a weekend full of online death threats. 
Another round of shots follows soon after, and then another. Not a single water has been sipped in hours. “We should go swimming.” You declared, unbuttoning your shorts and wiggling out of them. “Before we’re too drunk.”
“We’re not getting drunk.” Lorenzo says. Carla laughs from Arthur’s lap. 
You shrug. “I am.”
“You already are.” Charles laughs into a beer bottle. “No deeper than your ankles.” Fuck you, you mouthed, walked backwards towards the sea. You wade out until the waves splash against your chest. On the beach, Charles is unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it on the cabana, taking off his sunglasses. You feel hot in the chilly water. 
“My babysitter!” You laugh when he’s within earshot, slowly cutting through the water to you. 
“I told you ankles.” 
You shrug, form first with your hands and push them against his palms. “I’m not drunk.” He pushes back, laughing, you are. You shake your head, move your hands from his and run them over your hair, gather it to one side, twist the water from the ends. “The water is sobering me.” You lower yourself, sinking down until the salt water tickles your chin. 
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You look up at him, probably with blown, tipsy pupils. 
“I don’t believe you.” 
You hum, dipping your head back into the water. “You never do.”
“I always do.” He says, and you laugh at the immediate contradiction like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. You might be drunk. 
You cut yourself off after that, until you can eat something and drink a non-alchoholic beverage. You won’t let yourself get sober, because then you’ll be passed out on someone’s shoulder by sunset. You won’t get trashy, though. It’s a race week, anyone could see him, take a picture with him, a video with you in the background. When you’re together, whether you like it or not, you’re a reflection of him, a public display of the type of people he wants to associate himself with. Tipsy and fun is cute and carefree. Trashed and blacked is messy and irresponsible. 
You’re trying to hold your composure in the taxi, resting your head, and eyes, on the window. The guys picked a restaurant while you and Carla were using the bathroom, and now you’re making Charles read you the menu. He’s doing it in butchered Spanish, trying to pick out the words and meals he recognizes. 
“Is there tapas?” You ask, smacking his chest with the back of your hand. 
“There is tapas.” He confirms.
You almost cry, laugh instead. “My god, I could kiss you right now.”
“You are so drunk.” He chuckles, and you bite your fist, sink into your seat, wish you could fake it better. Have fun and let loose without embarrassing him. 
“Je suis désolé.” You whisper, drop your head the other way, onto his bicep. He adjusts, moves his arm so it’s around you, runs a hand over your hair. He doesn’t ask you what you’re apologizing for, knows that you’ll tell him anyway. “Pour être embarrassant.”
“Chérie,” He says into the crown of your head, a soft kiss before continuing. “You could never embarrass me.”
– –
The sobriety returns during dinner, bringing a pulsating headache with it. You drown your sorrows in delicious, cheap food, and drink an entire pitcher of water by yourself. When you leave, on the street outside, a band is playing in front of a fountain. You all stop, gather around and listen, sway to the lyrics you can barely understand. Joris is taking pictures of the band, Arthur is spinning a giggly Carla around. Charles grabs your hand, twirls you around and dances with you under the orange street lights. You rest your head on his chest. 
“You should sing along.” The vibrations from his laugh soother your aching head. 
It feels like a scene from a movie, like every other person in the city fades away into obscurity and it’s just you and he swaying on the cobblestone street. You’re so close to him, can’t be much closer, wish you could be. If you could, you’d crawl inside him, inspect his brain and the beautiful way it thinks, admire the way he sees the world. You know it’s special. Everything about him is magnificent, from the tallest hair on his head to the soles of his feet, every birthmark and fallen eyelash in between. 
Slowly, your sway has come to a stand still, and he’s staring at you with dopey, tired eyes. It should be illegal, the way he;s looking at you. His sightline jumps all over your face. Your right eye to your left, your nose to your lips. They linger there, on your lips, and then he’s staring into your soul, searching for something. Can I kiss you right now. Give me a reason not to. You don’t know what he wants you to silently speak. If you knew, you’d tell him. 
A cat-call whistle snaps both of your heads to Lorenzo. “Get a room!” Arthur yells, pretends to gag. Carla smacks his chest a little too hard to be playful. 
The gap between you and Charles is only a few inches larger, but he feels unreachable, eyes glossy and avoiding you. “Fuck off, mate.: He says, drop a bill into the band’s opened guitar case. 
– – 
Sunday is a nightmare. There’s no way to sugar coat it or make it sound prettier than it is. Andrea grabs you from hospitality, throws his pass around your neck because nobody is going to stop him from getting into the garage. He keeps you at an arms length for the entirety of the short walk. 
The car is already stopped in front of the garage, he’s climbing out. His posture is defeated, depressing. You wonder if you’ll be able to say the right words or if he’s just going to want to yell. A few people give him encouraging words, pats on the back, a hug. They’re already asking him to go to the media pen, to feed him to the sharks like a bucket of chum. He moves past them all, gets his weight taken and bee lines it to his drivers room. 
Andrea nudges you in his direction. You stay in play, your feet frozen. You don’t know what to say. Go on, he says. 
Fuck. 
You knock on the door softly, nothing. Opening the door just wide enough to squeeze through it, you find him sat on the floor. Knees bent, arms locked and resting on them, fingers intertwined. His back is against the edge of the couch and his head is hung low. He doesn’t look like himself. 
“What?” He says, rigid, doesn’t even bother to look in your direction. 
“Do you want me here?” You ask, and his eyes shoot over to you. He looks exhaustingly sad and sorrowfully tired. You wish you could make it better, rub Neosporin on his cutes and stick a race car bandaid over them. Promis the wound would get better and know you were telling the truth. 
“Stay.” He says, so you close the door behind you. 
You sit on the couch, awkwardly scooch yourself over and around him, a leg on either side of his body. His head rests on your knee and your fingers toy with his hair, soaked with sweat. You don’t know how long you sit like that, just that it’s long enough for someone to knock on the door twice. You stay seated. 
“You should change.” You finally say, after the third set of knocks noticeably lacks the patience of the previous two. 
“Yeah.” He says, and you both stand. “Don’t go home?” He asks when you’re already halfway out the door, when you’re already looking at Mia in the stairwell. You look over your shoulder, nod, smile, and leave the door open for her to slide in and get to work. 
You wait on the stairs, take a deep breath before re-emerging into the chaos. Carlos is still fighting for the podium and you don’t want to drag the mood to the Marianas Trench. It’s just so, so hard to see him hate himself. 
Energy is low, morale is lower, but you stay seated in the back of the garage. When the race is over, you head back to hospitality, linger in his room there. Your phone is dead, abandoned on the floor and you lay on his massage table, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. Everything replays on the blank canvas. The perfect lap the day before, his pole position. The sparkle in his eyes and the lightness to his voice. A great start and a commanding lead and a quick pit stop and then he’s slowing down, Andrea is grabbing you and hurrying you across the paddock strip. 
Your presence scares him, makes him jump when he opens the door. “Fuck.” He says. “I thought you went home.”
You don’t bother to look up at him, to sit up. “You asked me to stay.” You listen while he shuffles around the room. His presence means the presence of others, and it’s not long before Andrea is there, picking up your phone and placing it on your stomach. His brothers are gone, Carla too. Joris lingers, the silent, unrelenting support of a friend. 
“Are you hungry?” Charles askes, and you turn your head to face him. His expression is as tired as his voice. 
“Are you?” You aren’t, but you can be if he is.
“No.”
“Me neither.” His eyes narrow, trying to decipher if you’re telling him the truth or if you’re being agreeable. He hates it when you do that, when you tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to, instead of the truth. “Serious.” You reaffirm, and he returns to packing up his things. 
You just watch him. There’s nothing else to do, but, you want to live in his head, know what he’s thinking and feeling and fighting. You relish in any hint towards those emotions, from the way his shoulders hand to the way he zips up his backpack. 
“Come,” He says, extending a hand, pulling you to your feet. He grabs his sunglasses from their comfortable position on the collar of his shirt. It’s dark out. He just wants to hide the disappointment. There are still people lingering on the track, after all these hours. On your way out, he stops and talks to Pierre and Esteban. About what, you don’t listen. You don’t ever want to talk about this race again, want to leave it in the past. Head down, focused on the things yet to come. When Charles is ready to move on, Pierre gives him a heavy pat on the shoulder and a hug, one of the largest displays of encouragement any of these guys are capable of giving to each other. 
It must be so strange, you think, hoping for someone’s success and failure simultaneously. 
Fans are still here, too. He holds his head high and takes pictures and signs everything, makes them all feel loved and appreciated. Nobody is any the wiser to his inner turmoil, to the way he wil pick apart every single aspect of the race and internalize it, use it as fucked up motivation. He’s silent when he’s not interacting with the stragglers. You, Andrea, and Joris all trail behind him, engaged in quiet conversation about Monaco; the race, sleeping at home, the always surprising strangeness of a race you could watch from your bedroom window. Ahead, he holds out a hand to you, and you take a hurried couple of steps to match his pace. 
“You okay?” You ask. He nods. “Anything but?”
Anything but, a term you’d coined after Jules’ accident, when all anyone ever wanted to talk to you guys about was how you were doing, what you were feeling. The constant retelling, reliving, reassuring everyone you were doing okay when you were far from, it was almost as painful as losing him. Anything but is invoked, and the other has to change the subject, ignore the elephant in the room, no matter how big it is. 
A soft, sad smile tugs on his lips, silent gratitude, and he squeezes your hand tighter, barely so. “Yeah.” He says, and you go on about the haircut you’re thinking about getting once you’re back home in Monaco, asking if he thinks bangs are an option on a face shaped like yours. 
– –
You’re flying to Monaco with Charles, and the rest of Ferrari, early tomorrow morning, so your small group deciding in the hotel lobby that the night will be made better by liquor, probably isn’t the wisest of decisions. You do it anyway.
You all behave, careful not to get tipsy. Andrea reminds Charles he still has to train tomorrow, and that keeps him from going too far. The rest of you are just following his lead. 
He insists on walking you back to your room at the end of the night, even though Andrea and Joris both swore they’d get you there safe. She’s a runner when she’s drunk, he’d said, and you scowled. “Not since I was sixteen!” You defended, insistent that you didn’t need anyone; Joris, Andrea, or Charles, to walk you to your room. It’s not like you’re lost and drunk somewhere in an unfamiliar city. It’s a five-star hotel and you had all of one floor to travel between. 
He doesn’t even say anything on the walk he’d insisted on being present for. Your footsteps echo off the carpeted floors, bouncing between the thin walls and reflecting off the sleek, minimalist artwork. He has a beer in his hand, something from the hotel bar, priced entirely too high for the quality, you’re sure. Each time he brings it to his lips, the glass clinks against the ring on his pinky finger. 
He’s flushed, beautiful as ever, and you wished you were an overpriced bottle of beer; your sweat on his skin, the cold ring contrasting his warm, calloused hands. Those soft, pink lips on you, the way they almost were this week. They almost were, you keep telling yourself, you weren’t imagining it. “Charles.” He raises his brows, silently tells you to continue. “It,” You hesitate. You falter, because it’s not too late to say nothing, to bask in the silence a little longer. You can still stop yourself, shove the thoughts deep down and abandon them somewhere in the back of your mind. Curiosity, desperation, something sparked by the green in his eyes and the red on his shirt and the condensation on the bottle, it all gets the best of you. “The other night, it felt like you were going to kiss me.”
“Hmm.” He hums against the lip of the bottle, finishing off the last of the drink. There’s a long pause. You, waiting for him to say something, memorizing the strange pattern on the carpet. Him, saying nothing. You reach your room, hold the key card up to the lock. The silence is amplified by the shifting electronic gears and you’re pushing the door open. “Are you going to ask me?” You blink. “If I was going to kiss you?”
You exhale. Long and slow, do you want to know? “I haven’t decided yet.” You finally say. I’m not ready for this to get flipped on its head, you could’ve said. I love you too much to like you, you could have said. You didn’t.  “Nuit, Charles.” You say instead, disappearing into the darkness of your room. 
“Bonne nuit.”
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“I’ve decided against the bangs.” You tell him in the grocery store around the corner from his apartment, leant against one of the doors in the refrigerator aisle. He’s waiting for a text back from his nutritionist, trying to figure out what he’s going to cook on the boat tonight. It’s family dinner night, and he’d volunteered to host, which meant he volunteered you to host on his yacht
“Good.” He says.
“You told me they would look good.” You laugh, wonder if he even remembers the conversation or if your words were just the backing track to his overthinking. 
He shrugs. “You’re supposed to stop me from looking like a fool.” He laughs at his phone screen, turns it off and slides it into his pocket. 
“My favorite thing about you is that you’re a fool.” He says, pulling open the door you’re leaning against, moving you with it. That’s not very nice, you said as he piled two packages of chicken breasts onto the groceries already in your hands.
“Chicken. Brave.” You add, reminiscent of the last time he tried cooking chicken on the water. It’s a good thing there was a fire extinguisher on board, and saying anything else would break the oath of secrecy you were sworn to. 
“Ha, ha.” He mocks. “Not funny.”
“You know what isn’t funny?” You grab another pack of chicken, just in case. “Telling me bangs would be good.”
Good luck this weekend, the cashier tells him when you’re checking out. Break the curse, yes? Charles laughs, because he’s a good sport, and agrees. You hate all the curse talk, it pisses you off, more than it does him. The conversation around it gets worse every year, every time he doesn’t win at home. 
They love him so much here, he’s their poster-boy during their poster-week, they don’t mean any harm by it, but it still gets under your skin. Curse this, curse that. Fuck off, shut up about it already. Everyone knows his Monaco track record, can everyone please find anything else to talk about?
– –
He finishes fourth, and it feels somehow worse than last year’s DNF. SO close, only to be screwed by the same shit as last week. You drink your weight at the club that night because maybe a lack of sobriety will make it sting a little less. 
“You are not wearing that.” Lorenzo says when you walk out of your building. You groaned, looked down at your outfit. It was slinky, but slinky is what everyone wears to the club, especially during the grand prix.
You settle for a blazer, tell him to suck your dick, and fill the pockets so you can abandon your purse. You start off at a smaller club, one that transitions from a restaurant after dark and has intimate, smaller tables. You’re there for a couple hours, eat something and get buzzed. Predictably, you meet up with half of the grid at Formula One’s favorite club, where you have a bigger section and a bigger group and get a bigger buzz.
“I can’t wear these anymore,” You whined, stopping to lean against the wall of a building to take off your heels. Your feet were blistering, and the thought of having to continue the walk with them on was dreadful. Charles carries them because you keep dropping one without realizing it. It’s not your finest moment, but, you only threaten to jump into one bush on the nearly fifteen minute walk. Overall, a strong showing on your part. 
You lose Charles at Jimmy*z, dancing with friends and strangers and other drivers and their parties. You’re drinking Negroni’s, and you aren’t sipping, occasionally splitting it up with a shot whenever someone suggests it. That’s when you see him again, when he’s putting a double shot of something expensive in your hand. I shouldn’t, you say, because you're teetering close to the line of embarrassment. He rolls his eyes, fully inebriated. Shiftfaced, if you will. “Shut up and take a shot with me.”
You do, it goes down smoother than water. 
“That’s good!” You say, examininging the glass. 
“I know.” He deadpans, and you both laugh. Sober Charles is one of the funniest people you know. Drunk Charles is the funniest person you know. He’s so unserious in everything he does–the way he talks, dances, expresses emotions, there’s nothing not funny about it. 
The club comped the table and a few bottles of champagne for the publicity that comes with having half of Formula One partying under their roof. In exchange, a manager is trying to wrangle Charles’ section into a group photo. You were standing back, laughing at them all failing to maintain any semblance of sobriety, all logic and composure out the window three drinks ago. Charles and Arthur are yelling your name, yelling at each other, looking for you in the strobe lights. You move, hope he doesn’t see you. He does, locks eyes with you, dopey smile, summoning you with this come-hither motion, his middle and ring finger calling you to him. Even drunk, you notice the gesture, the subtle curl, twitch of his long fingers. 
Fucking, hell. Flushed cheeks burn bright and you’re grateful your hair is down, covering your undoubtedly matching ears. He almost kissed you. He did. You’re not crazy, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s too smart not to. 
You smile, lips pursed, and shake your head. It makes him pout, and then he’s yelling your name, gesturing you over with the rapid movement of his entire arm. His other hand is smacking Arthur’s face, trying to rile he and Carla up. It works, and now half the group is yelling your name, so, you give in. Celebratory cheers leave their mouths and the boys share a near-miss high five. Charles grabs the back of your head, pulls you under his arm in one fail swoop. You hone in on his cologne. Tom Ford Tuscan Leather, no doubt. His signature night-out fragrance, the one you and Lorenzo nearly peed your pants laughing at when Pascale bought it for him a few years ago. The hints of raspberry and amber wood, the ones nobody can smell unless they’re this close to him, make you dizzy.
“You smell nice.” You say, and he just looks at you, lowers his head to talk directly into your ear. You look beautiful, he says, and you might be sober. “Don’t say that to me.” You laugh, smooth down your hair.
There’s a  real possibility at least one of the twenty people in the photo were actually looking at the camera. 
At some point in the night, you end up in the bathroom with Carla for an evening debrief. You don’t realize how drunk you actually are until you’re staring into your hazy soul in the bathroom mirror. It’s an out of body experience, truly, you’re watching this conversation from the astral plane. 
“Fuck.” You say, looking to Carla, who appears to be having the same experience as you. You both burst into a fit of laughter, the hunched over, sore abs, red faces, threat to the integrity of your bladder-type laughter that doesn't require anything to actually be funny. “I have to work tomorrow.” You say, trying to catch your breath. You work from home, she reminds you, and you’re both laughing again. “Je t’aime.” You slur, overwhelmed by the alcohol and emotion. “Beaucoup.”
“Non,” She giggles. “Je t’aime le olus.” 
“You look.” You hiccup. “So pretty, I hate you for being so pretty.” Carla shakes her head at her own reflection, adjusts her top, checks herself out. You pat the sweat off your forehead and wipe under your arms with toilet paper from a stall. “Arthur is so, super lucky.” Another hiccup. “You are so pretty. So nice and pretty.”
“No, you are so pretty.” She laughs. “Charles is lucky, and he doesn’t know it.” Charles, Charles, Charles. You don’t want to talk about Charles and his stupid face and stupid smile and stupid fingers and stupid skin. “I should call Michael.” You say, digging your phone out of your jacket pocket. 
“You should not.” She laughs, but you’re already searching your contacts for his name. “Nope.” SHe says, snatches your phone from your hands and holds it out of your reach. 
“Carla.” You hiccup, pleading and pouting.
“Nope.” She says, putting the device in the bag that hands around her body. 
– – 
“This is my song!” You yell, quickly downing the shot in your hand, entire body vibrating with the bass pouring from the speakers. 
“We should start a band.” Someone says, and Charles laughs. 
“We should!”
“You’re my best friend.” You tell him, stumbling over your own feet without even taking a step. His arm reaches out as a stabilizer, just in case you need one. 
“No,” He laughs. “You’re my best friend. More-er.” That’s not a word. You shake your head. 
“I could play the drums.” 
“I know we’re drunk, but, like. I love you.” You slur, test the waters of shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Another stumble, another hiccup. “I’d do, like, anything for you.”
“I know.” He says, but you can’t hear his voice over the music. “I love you.” He adds, smacking Lorenzo on the arm to get his attention, to draw him out of band practice planning. “She’s my best friend!” He says. 
“I know!”
“I love her.”
Lorenzo laughs. “We all know.” 
“We should take a picture!” You suggest to Charles, and he agrees. “I don’t have my phone. Someone stole it.” He gives you a puzzled look, concerned, grabs your elbow like you’re going to float away in the crowd and asks you to clarify. You just shrug. I have it, dumbass. Carla laughs, takes a picture of the two of you, doesn’t give you your phone back. 
The next time you see him, you’re sat at the table having one of those drunken moments of emotional, existential crises. Your fingers twiddle with the fake eyelashes you peeled from your lids minutes earlier. “I’ve been looking for you.” He says, heavily drops into the space to your right, slings an arm around you. 
You’re always under his damn arm, you never realized before just how often you’re here. Not that you don’t like it, it’s just an observation, confusing and emotionally charged, but an observation nonetheless. He’s so relaxed, completely slouched into the rich leather, legs spread wider than they need to be, the arm that’s not around you resting on the back of the booth. He’s watching everyone else, observing the different people with sleepy eyes and heavy lids. When he talks to you, he turns his head all the way, cranes his neck so he’s speaking into your ear again. You don’t turn your head, you’d be too close. “I have a secret to tell you.” He doesn’t whisper.
“What?” You laugh, settle into his side, into the laxity of it all. 
He opens his mouth to speak, pauses, rests his forehead on your temple. “I forgot.” He chuckles. You hiccup. You both laugh. 
Your eyes are closed, tired and so, so comfortable. You might fall asleep here, despite the loud noises and loud music and loud heartbeat. “You were going to kiss me in Barcelona.” You say, liquid courage forcing the words from your mouth like vomit. It isn’t a question. It doesn’t need to be. 
“I kiss you often.” He says, a weak defense, and kisses the crown of your head. “See?”
You’re not crazy. He was going to kiss you. He was. “Charles.” Your voice is quiet, strained and scratchy and serious. You don’t open your eyes, can’t look at him when you demand an answer, a confirmation. 
“I was.” The admission is suffocatingly delicate, like he might go for it, right then. His hand might grab your face and guide you to him. You’re ready for it, you think, as ready as you’re ever going to be for everything to change.
You don’t have to worry about it, to think about it and dwell on if he’s going to do it. He doesn’t. He just rests his head on yours. Your thoughts race faster than your heartbeat, and you wonder if he can feel your temples pulsing.
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2013, family dinner. You’re in your room, hiding out for as long as possible, uninterested in the family events. Very teenaged girl of you, in all regards. Charles burst through your door, no knock, no warning. You didn’t even know they were there yet. Luckily for you, nothing incriminating was happening. He was quite the snitch back then, a real tattletale, especially if you were the one getting in trouble. 
“I have something to tell you.”
“Unless it’s that you’re going to turn around and leave my room, I don’t care.” You’d said, annoyed by his presence. At sixteen, your relationship could best be described as friendly enemies. He was always around, especially when you didn’t want him to be, and he was always the golden child. Perfect in school, perfect on the track, perfect son, perfect friend. His existence was infuriating and because you were so close in age, everyone always wanted you to be the best of friends. 
As a teenage girl, it was evolutionarily impossible for you to go alone with what everyone else wanted. You had to rebel, to run against the grain. Charles and you were not friends, and you did not care about what was going on in his life. 
“Single-seaters.” He said with a dumb smile, leaning on his hand against your dresser. You take maybe one step between your bed and his arms, hugging him tighter than you had since you were children. Okay, maybe you did care about his life. There are some things even evolution can’t change. 
“With who?”
“I thought you didn’t care?”
“I don’t”
His smile grew. “Fortec.”
You half-screamed, half-laughed, hugging him again, somehow tighter. “I’m so happy for you, Cha.” You said, with a level of sincerity you hadn’t used in years, especially with him. You thought for a moment you might cry, that he would make fun of you for it, that you’d do it anyways because you were so happy for him. 
“Don’t tell anyone, I’m not supposed to say anything.”
“Who knows?”
“Like, nobody.” He’s giddy, it’s almost cute. Almost. 
“Jules?” You ask, even though you think you already know the answer. Jules is God to Charles, this untouchable, invincible figure that represents the culmination of all his own dreams. He was the first person, you expect him to say. 
“Not yet.” He told you before Jules. 
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You’re traveling in the weeks after Monaco, jet-setting around the world for your own career. It’s not until France that you see him again. You beat him there, actually, opting to spend some time visiting friends from University nearby, taking a bit of time to enjoy yourself and relax. Despite what everyone in your Instagram comments thinks, race weekends are not a holiday. The nerves and anxiety and heightened emotions you feel during one is so stress-inducing that the work week feels like a week in the Maldives. 
Love you, always proud. You texted him moments after he won in Austria, along with a picture of you and the drink you were having in celebration in your hotel room. 
You were a little bummed you couldn’t be there, celebrating with him. He really needed that win, and you could only imagine the weight it lifted off his shoulders. It’s been a while since you saw him genuinely happy on a Sunday night.
Love you, too. You suck. He texted back seven hours later, reiterating the sentiment the entire time he was home in Monaco and you weren’t. When you jokingly suggested he come to France early, you were met with the threat of being blocked. 
– –
You spent the weekend with Pascale, spending every day at the track trying to out-anxious each other. You don’t know how she sleeps, Charles and Arthur both doing this shit. You’re a nervous wreck and she barely flinches. 
“You remind me of myself a lot.” She tells you. Your knee is bouncing anxiously under the table you’re eating at. “Your mother, of course, but. Selfishly, I see the good parts of me in you.”
You’d always wished Pascale was your Mom, growing up. You have a great mother, you love her to death, but she was your mom. She had to discipline you, she had to put her foot down. Pascale didn’t have to do those things, not with you. She could be cool and carefree and spoil you because she was a bonus parent, not an actual one. If you grew up to be all kinds of fucked-up, she could wash her hands of you. Your mom couldn’t do that. 
You’re so lucky to have her as your Mom, you would say to the boys. They’d say the same thing to you. 
“You’re going to make me cry.” You say, picking at your cuticles. 
“Chérie.” She says, grabs your hand, stills your anxious fingers. “Je suis nerveux rien qu'à te regarder.”
“I don’t like Monaco.” You say. “No room for error.”
“You don’t like any track.” She chuckles, releases your hands. You put them in your lap and go back to picking at the skin. “Not when the boys are out there.”
She’s right, you’re squeamish when you watch Arthur and Charles, don’t think you’ll ever get used to it. Charles loves to make fun of you for it, has videos saved on his phone of you, caught on the television cameras, captured by friends, that one time you were in the background of a Drive to Survive episode. He laughs and laughs at them, but when he watches Arthur, he’s just as bad as you are. 
It’s different, when you love the driver. When you love them more than the sport, more than the team, more than nearly any other person in the entire world, every corner feels tighter, every straight feels faster, the whole thing feels like a narrowly avoided death sentence. 
“I don’t know how you do it.” After Jules, how you do it after Jules. After Anthoine, after hugging a grieving mother and watching your son drive on the same track. 
“I love watching them race.” She says. “I hate it, but I love it. All a mother can hope for her children is that they are brave enough to achieve their dreams.” They’re brave because of her, because of Hervé and because of her. They raised all three of their boys to be strong and brave and kind, and when Hervé passed, she picked up the pieces of her boys and glued them together again, built them up stronger, braver, kinder than before. 
– –
You don’t see him for a while after the race, don’t know if you want to. He’s been eerily calm all when things have gone wrong all season, at least when you’ve been around. It’s only a matter of time until he loses his cool, until he snaps. That radio call? Snapped like a glowstick. He’s angry, at himself, at the car, at the team, at the world. There’s nothing anyone is going to be able to say or do that would make him happy, neutral even. It’s going to be all pity-party and hushed curses until he gets some rest and resets. 
Behind the garage, when you’re finally leaving, he hugs Pascale tight. Her hand runs comforting circles on his back, and then it’s your turn to be suffocated. He squeezes you like it’s the last time you’re ever going to see each other, hangs on like gravity is pulling him in the other direction. “Anything but.” He said. “All night.” 
You nod. “My mom sent me a video of Gi playing with the dog today.” You spoke of your niece, of Charles’ goddaughter. If anyone could hit his soft spot, it was her. “Do you want to see it?”
“Yeah.” He said, and when he watched her stumbling around the park, when her innocent belly laugh and giddy screams spilled out of the speakers, he actually smiled, might have even let a little laugh slip. It’s impossible not to, really, with that little girl. 
He walks in relative silence back to the driver's lot, just listened to you go on and on. You feel nauseous, watching him put on a smile and interact with fans, laugh and take pictures and make children’s days by just existing. It must be such a strange life, a miracle his head hasn’t gotten ridiculously big. 
– –
At the hotel, you can tell he’s still pissed. Rest, reset. He’ll be himself in the morning. You exchange goodbyes in the elevator, you’re on a different floor than him. You expect it’s the last you’ll see of him until summer break. He leaves for Hungary early in the morning and you’re driving back to Monte Carlo with Pascale tomorrow afternoon. You expect, because he’s knocking on your door an hour later while you watch L’Atalante on your laptop. 
The light from the hallway is almost blinding in contrast to your dark room. “Hi.” He says, in running shorts and a t-shirt, bare feet. “L’Atalante?”
“How do you-”
He smiles. “You’re predictable.”
“What do you want?” You say through a  yawn, shocked he makes out the words at all. 
“Can I watch it with you?”
You sigh. “Charles.” You were minutes away from falling asleep, from putting this day behind you. Now, your feet are so cold on the floor it hurts and you’re becoming increasingly conscious and awake with each passing moment. 
“Please?” He asks, voice small and broken. Fuck. You hold open the door, because you’re weak when it comes to him. You’d let him treat you badly if it meant he’d treat you. “You know there’s a giant TV right here, no?”
“I like my computer.” You say, crawl back into the bed, sit up against the million pillows. He flops down next to you, on top of the comforter because he runs hotter than a fireplace. When he’s finally done moving around, shifting until he’s nice and comfortable–sorry, he said–you press play on the movie. 
“I love this part.” He says. 
“You hate this movie.”
“I do not.” He does. He complains every time you watch it, says you need to find a favorite movie that’s in color, that doesn’t have random cat montages, that the main love interest has too many glaring red flags. Watch it with rose-tinted glasses, you told him once, threw a piece of popcorn at his head. “This is my favorite part.”
“No, it’s not.” You laugh. “You hate this part.”
He laughs, too, sweetly and softly, into his own shoulder. “I love it.” You shush him, shove his shoulder because he can’t even say it with a straight face. He doesn’t stay quiet for long, and it’s clear he came here to talk, not to watch the movie, but he tries to pretend. “You need to come to more races.” He says, his head resting on your arm. “I don’t like it when you’re not here.”
“Okay.” You say, only half-listening. It’s your favorite movie.
“Today sucked.”  You paused the movie. Blinked twice, hard, frustrated because it;s your favorite movie, but he’s your favorite person. 
You look at him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” He reaches over and unpauses it, adjusts so he’s sitting up, too.
You pause it again. “I think you do.”
“I don’t.”
You close the laptop, set it on the bedside table and flip on the lamp. “I don’t know how to make you feel better right now.” You say, stand up, pace the room. It sounds like you’re admitting your defeat, expressing disappointment in yourself with a half-hearted apology. 
He stands up, too, follows you for a step but then you're still. There’s something unfamiliar painted across his face. Exhaustion, anger, desperation–you can’t pinpoint it. Urgency. You realize its urgency when his hands are on your face, thumbs dancing on your jaw, eyes darting between yours. Urgency. 
He was going to kiss you. He is going to kiss you, you think, and you’re going to let him. He can use you as a distraction, if he needs to. You can kiss it better, you’re sure you can. His forehead rests on yours, the tips of your noses bumping against each other, shuddered, broken breaths. Your lips are so close, jaws slack, sharing the air. You’re dizzy. Dizzy and hot and then he’s kissing you. The taste of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, the softness of his lips, it’s all so new, so butterfly-inducing. He smells like himself, whatever soap he always uses when he’s traveling. It’s crisp and clean and you want to lick it off his skin. 
He’s the one to pull away, but you open your eyes first. “Sorry.” He says. You smile, kiss him again because you’re not sorry, wishing you could crawl inside his mouth and build a home there behind his beautiful, sharp, white teeth.  
Your name sounds like a symphony when he says it, all dopey and sing-songy, hands firmly on your waist. “Don’t look at me like that.” He says, laughs into your mouth. 
“Like what?” You ask, innocently. 
“Just. Fuck.” He shakes his head, one of his hands slipping under the hem of your shirt, open and flat, exploring the vast bareness of your back. “You.” 
“Me?” You giggle at his words, the stumble of them, cheeks hot and flustered. You shouldn’t be nervous. It’s Charles. You know him like you know your own hand, but, he’s never been yours, not like this. Your hands have never searched him like this, fingers never tugged on his hair with lust and longing, never felt the scratch of his stubble on your skin.
“Yeah,” He says into the crook of your neck, leaving a flurry of open mouth kisses in the space between your jaw and your collarbone. “You.”
“We shouldn’t.” You say, even though you’re helping him out of his shirt. “We should stop.”
“Do you want to stop?” He asks, his fingers stalling on the buttons of your pajama top. 
“We can do this, right?” You ask, because you need his reassurance. You don’t need honesty. You know the truth. You need to hear what you want to hear, for him to tell you if it’s safe to jump, to fall aimlessly into the unknown. You need him to lie to you. “Can we go back to normal after this?”
“Ouais.” He says, and even though you don’t believe him, you think he believes himself. “Retour à la normale.”
“Okay.” You say, and he’s unbuttoning your shirt again. If his mouth didn’t feel so good on you, if his big hands didn’t send shivers up your spine when he ran them up the sides of your body, you might have thought a bit harder about what normal is for the two of you.
His hands do make you shiver, though, and he’s looking at your body with these sweet, drunk eyes, sliding the shirt off your arms and letting it pool on the ground with his. 
You’re dropping to your knees on the cold floor next to the bed, pulling his shorts, his underwear, down with you. While he steps out of them, kicks them to the side, you admire him, toned and tanned and so, so pretty. You want to memorize it in case it’s the last time you see him like this, take notes on every freckle and muscle and defining feature under the harsh light. You need to feel him everywhere, to taste him, to make him feel as good as he looks. 
He’s already hard, cock twitching with lust and adrenaline and arousal, all for you. Your work is cut out for you. You tease him, whisper profanities and place soft kisses against the skin of his upper thighs. “You make me crazy.” He says, you take him in your mouth, and he goes momentarily stiff before he relaxes, lets your fingers and your lips work in tandem to pull your name from him. 
“Fuck.” He says, tastes like sex, sweet and salty and manly. His hands knot into your hair, pull it back into a haphazard ponytail that only loses shape as you continue. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He repeats, rutting into your mouth, fucking into your throat. You swallow around him, hollow your cheeks and he lets out this whimpered, wounded sound, forces your mouth off him. “Don’t do that.”
“You don’t like it?” You ask, take him in your hand, stroke over the slick of your spit, kissing the base of his cock and looking up at him with these big, saucer eyes. 
“No,” He shakes his head, drags a hand over his stubble. “You’ll make me come.”
You swipe your tongue in one long stripe, swirl it around the head of him, smile. “That’s the point.” You say, filling your mouth with him again, sinking until he’s hitting the back of your throat, gagging you, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes. 
He says your name like he’s battling to reason with himself, his grip on your hair tightening, pulling you off him again. You pout, and he rolls his eyes, shakes his head. “Tu es mauvais.”
“Ç’est vrai.” You roll your thumb over the tip, mindlessly, really, looking at him and waiting for him to speak. You’re an addict, already. It’s just so pretty. 
“Want to last for you.” You’re not even standing and your knees are unsteady underneath you. You look at the floor, your forehead on his thigh, and laugh. You laugh harder than you should, just out of shock and disbelief. “What?” He laughs, too.
You’re standing, he’s helping you stand. “Who would’a thought?” You can’t stop giggling, cock your head to the side and try not to smile. “You and me?”
His tongue is in his cheek, eyes rolling in such a bratty way. You wonder if he can see how swollen your lips are, all because of him. Your mouth feels empty without him there. “I hate you,” He says with a smile, and kisses you.
Your knees buckle at the edge of the bed, and it’s too easy, the way you’re both on it without ever parting lips for more than a hasty breath. He moves you around like a doll, gentle and effortless in his removing of your shorts, of your underwear, in the manipulation of your positioning on the soft mattress. 
He’s kissing you, sucking bruises into your collar, marking you like there’s any possibility you’re not already his. It’s hazy and intoxicating, him exploring your body, taking his time as he trails down your collar bone, through the valley of your breasts, hot, sloppy breath on your stomach, on your legs. You’re almost disoriented by it all, the natural comfort, the familiarity of him in a place so unfamiliar to his touch. He kisses your clit, you watch him, feel his hot breath on you, jaw slack and eyes glazed over. It makes you hot, makes your whole body flush and shiver. 
“Putain, t'es chaud.” He curses, smiles at you from between your legs. His fingers splay over your hip, his thumb dragging itself over you, parting your lips with the slick of you, amused smile tugging on his face. “You’re so wet.” He says, moves up to kiss you.
“Sorry.” You whisper into his open mouth. 
He shakes his head, mumbles something incoherent, kisses you again. “It’s hot, chérie. That you want it.”
“Want you.” You say, and he slides a long finger inside you, surprised whimper escaping from your lips into his open mouth. He curls it into you, crooks it at just the right angle and you writhe against the sheets. You can’t believe he’s got you like this, that you’re a mess for him over a single finger. 
He moves back down your body, another trail of nibbles and kisses before he laps at you, swirling his tongue around your clit in a way that’s almost painfully good, curling his finger into that same spot. When he slides in another, you’re a goner, moaning out his name like it’s the only word you know. 
“Let go.” He says. Your eyes are pinched shut in an attempt to keep yourself at bay for just a while longer. His eyes are glued to yours when you can finally open them. 
You shake your head. “I’m not.” You start, stopping short to compose yourself when your leg twitches, shakes in applause of his work. “No ego boosts.” You sputter. He laughs against you, the vibrations of it blinding, a whole new sensation that spreads fire over your skin, sends you over the edge with little warning. 
He doesn’t stop, not for a second, when you come. His fingers maintain their rapid pace even as you tense around him, his tongue, his lips, suctioned to you as your body tries to wiggle away. “Charles.” His name leaves your lips in a shudder, your thighs trying to close in on his head, the hand that isn’t inside you holding you open for him. 
He works you over, skilled fingers and skilled mouth, coaxing you through another, louder this time. He leaves you catching your breath, restless, incoherent, shaky on the crisp white sheets and two orgasms ahead. 
He’s so satisfied with himself, licks his fingers clean and grins and kisses you some more, just because he can. Because, it’s all gone to shit and the unspoken, unwritten rules of your friendship have gone so far out the window, they’re in another country. Maybe they’re in Hungary already, or waiting for the two of you on summer break, in Monza, hell, they might even be Abu Dhabi, there’s no telling. 
“Do you have a condom?” You ask.
He freezes, strong arm holding him over you, caging you in. His eyes shut hard. “No.”
“You didn’t bring one?”
“When I came to your room, I didn’t.” He sighs. 
“How gentlemanly.” You quip, wiggle out from underneath him. He flops back onto the bed, apologizing. You grab his t-shirt from the floor and hold it up to cover your body, he chuckles at that. “Apologize if I don’t have one.” You say, rifle through your backpack. Your leg shakes under you while you try to balance, squatting in front of the bag. You hope he notices, sees what he’s done to you without even filling you up all the way.
“Why would you have one?” He asks, just as you find the little package at the bottom of your bag. You turn on your heels, still bent over, condom wrapper in your teeth and look at him with narrowed eyes. 
“Do you really want me to tell you?” You ask around the wrapper. 
He thinks about it for way longer than should be required. “No.”
“Yeah.” You nod, dumbfounded, and stand back up. 
“Really, with the shirt?” He asks, laughing about it again.  
“Salope!” You say, drop the shirt, throw the condom at him. “Put this on yourself.”
“I don’t even like you.” He says, rips open the wrapper with his teeth and slides it over his cock. It hurts, almost, how badly you want him inside you, how empty you’ve felt since he took his fingers out. 
“Don’t do that, you’re going to make me come.” You mock his earlier words, puff out your lips, raise your brows, a knowing glance. 
“I was.” He defends, and you straddle him, wrap your arms around his neck. 
“No, you weren’t,” You kiss him, his hands explore the curve of your ass, fingers dig into your hips, push you down so you grind against him, spread your wetness over him. 
“Okay.” He says with a smirk, lust riddled and completely enthralled by you, one hand moving to thumb at your clit, start chasing another release for you. 
“Okay.” You repeat, barely a whisper, lift yourself up enough for him to line himself up with you. You sink down slow, savor the burn of the stretch, wish it was the first time anyone had ever done this to you, that you could belong to him and only him. 
“Fuck.” He says into your shoulder, kissing and sucking a purple spot into the flesh there, his hands splayed across your back, warm and strong and dragging across the hot skin. “Si bon.” Every inch of your body can feel him, hungry for more, the insatiable urge to hear his moans, to make him whimper, make him feel how you feel.
You grind your hips against his, chasing an unachievable leverage, a static inducing friction. Your foreheads rest on each other and your noses collide roughly in the sweaty, steamed, hitched breaths. 
You’re obsessed with the way he watches your bodies, eyes glued where he disappears into you. You never want to hear anyone else say your name, not after hearing the way he says it while he’s inside you. “That.” He says. “Love that.” You do as you’re told, eager to please, hungry for him to finish. “Es-tu proche?” You shake your head, because you are, but he’s closer. 
In a swift movement, he flips you over, switches your positions, slides back inside you. Even when he’s manhandling you, using you as a device for his pleasure, strong and without thought, there’s something gentle about it, something that anchors you to him. 
He fucks into you with deep, measured thrusts. The new position, the new angle, it drives you fucking crazy, your back arching off the bed, grinding onto his fingers in the selfish chase of your own high. “Charles. Fuck.” I know, he tells you, shaky, pace reduced to an erratic grind. I know, baby, and you’re coming again, biting into the muscles of his strong shoulders, wet and warm and so fucking full of him.
“I’m.” He whispers into your neck, nibbles on your ear. He pulls out and you whimper at the loss. “Where?” He asks, pulls the condom off, jerks himself with those long, veiny fingers. You smiled, devilish. You wanted, needed, his cum in your mouth. 
He’s too close to be gentle, now, to take care and take time. He’s desperate, it’s so fucking hot. His hands are on your head, knotted into your hair, holding you steady so he can fuck your throat. You gag around him, dizzy, hazy, eyes forced shut because everything is white and on fire. “Look at me.” He says. You do, and he has a fucking smile on his face, lewd and practically pornographic.
You hum, pleased with the state you’ve got him in and then he’s bottomed out, still and stiff, coming down the back of your throat, chanting your name like a prayer. 
– –
“What am I supposed to do with these?” You laugh into the bathroom mirror, after a shared shower, delicate fingers examining the fresh bruises he burned into your skin. “I’m spending the day with your Mother.”
He’s drying his hair with a towel, laughs. “Nobody thinks you’re La Sainte Vierge.”
You move through the bathroom, back into the bedroom to retrieve your pajamas from the floor. “And what is that supposed to mean?” You tease, returning, tossing his clothes on the counter. 
“It means,” He hums, wraps his arms around you, hugs you from behind. Your knees are weak and wobbly, his chin resting on your shoulder, looking at each other in the mirror. “Tu es belle, jeune et amusante.”
“Je suis amusante?” You ask, try to bite back a smile, fail.
“Très.” He says, nuzzles into your neck.
He sleeps in your room that night, wakes up early, shuffles around the bathroom, the light pouring out. His movement stirs you, his heavy feet roaming around the silent room. “Go back to sleep,” He says, kisses your hair, and the heavy door locks behind him.
Tired, from the weekend, from him, you let yourself go back to sleep. You should’ve got up and kissed him, you think. Really, truly kissed him, while the rules still didn’t apply and things weren’t back to normal. Whatever normal is for the two of you. 
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“What?” You said, spit, when Charles called you for the third time within five minutes. The first Monday of summer break, he’s in Monaco and you’re in France, a thousand kilometers, an hour and a half flight, away. More specifically, you’re standing in the corridor of your office building, meters away from the door you’d just stepped out of, the meeting you had to excuse yourself from leading because your phone won’t stop ringing and surely, something must be wrong. 
“Hello to you, too.” He says, and you can hear the smile on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
“Work.” You say, inspiringly calm. Fuck, she’s at work, you hear him say to someone. “Can I call you back in a bit?”
“Oui, désolée.”
“Ne sois pas.” You force a smile, like he can see it, and hang up, shut your phone off completely before returning to the meeting with an apologetic grimace claiming family emergency. 
You call him back an hour later, after the conclusion of your meeting and then some, pushing past the heavy glass doors to your office building and out onto the street, the breeze blowing your hair into your mouth as you step between two buildings. He answers, but it’s just shuffling on the other end, hushed, muffled voices. “Are you there?” 
“Oui, oui. Une seconde.” He says, far from the speaker. More shuffling before a proper greeting. “You’re on speaker.”
“What are you doing?” Shopping, he says, moves the phone, how’s work? You have to put a finger in your other ear to hear him, between the sounds of the city and the chatter on his side. “It’s fine.” You say, drag out the vowels because you’re bored, because you wish you were with him. He’s always so relaxed on summer break, so content and breezy and fascinating. You haven’t seen him since he was kissing your hair goodbye in France. You need to know if you can actually return to something normal.
“It’s fiiineee.” He mocks, laughs with whoever else is with him. You smile, all toothy and stupid. “Coming home today?” You can hear the hope in his voice. You’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours, it’s an unusually short trip. Most times, you’re here for a minimum of a weekend, almost always more. He shouldn’t be expecting you. 
“Yeah.” You check the time on your watch. “In a few hours.”
“You want to come on the water tonight?” He asks. 
“La Mala?” Of course, he says, like it shouldn’t even be a question. “With?” He speaks to someone else in Italian, you think you hear Andrea say something, and then Charles’ voice is louder, off speaker, you assume. 
“Lorenzo and some camera guys. We’re doing some… comment dire, day with my life?”
“I don’t know.” You hesitate, because the last thing you want to do is be one of three people, to be on display somewhere on Instagram or Youtube or wherever the video they’re making is going. You love him, but the attention is overwhelming and you like to stay as far from it as possible, especially when you’re nervously sorting out the normalcy of your relationship. 
You took a photo of him once, with a fan, just walking around the city. You weren’t even in the photo, didn’t say more than two sentences to the guy he was posing with. And yet, when he posted it on Twitter, said Charles was with some girl, posted a screenshot from your Instagram and said her, he was with her, you had a full inbox begging to know if you were dating Charles, calling you obscene vulgarities, threatening you. You weren’t even in the fucking picture. 
“It will be fun.” He says. “I haven’t seen you since france.” Exactly, you haven’t seen each other since France. Just over a week. It’s chump change for the two of you, at least it was, before his spit dripped down your thigh and he came in the back of your throat. Now, a week is the opportunity for an awkward plant to take root, grab onto you and make everything weird and uncomfortable and wrong/ “We’re having pasta.” He says, can sense your uncertainty, knows it sweetens the deal. 
“No chicken?”
“Never again.” He laughs. “You’re coming?”
“I guess.”
“You guess.” God, he is a child, truly. “Call me when you land, yes?”
“Yeah.”
– –
You can’t remember the last time you felt so nervous to see him. Sitting on the edge of the concrete landing, watching him cruise in on a little boat full of strangers, it’s almost worse than watching him race. Do you have to say something? Is he going to say something? Do you ignore it? That’s the agreement, right? Everything goes back to normal. Normal, normal, normal.
He looks like he’s been in the sun all day, cheeks pink and rosy, the blue of his shirt mellowing him out, making him glow. A God, Heaven shining down on him, presenting him to you like a gift. You hate that you have to share him with anyone when he’s like this, especially with strangers, with people who don’t know how lucky they are to see him like this. 
“Did you miss me?” He calls out when he’s within earshot. You stand up, take your shoes off because there is no way that boat is making it all the way to you. 
“Who called who?” You say, and he laughs. 
You hopped off the landing into the shallow water, walked out to the boat on your tip-toes, trying to keep the bottom of your pants as dry as possible. You had a change of clothes in your bag, but, even a minute in wet pants is too long. He helps you into the boat and you introduce yourself to the strangers pointing cameras at you. 
This was a mistake. It doesn’t even take the distance from the landing to the yacht for you to realize that. So fucking uncomfortable, cameras in your face, recording your conversations, watching the way you look at him. You can already see the comments calling you pathetic, calling you a whore, calling you a bitch.  
It is pathetic, you remind yourself when your hand is on his, stepping around him, moving from one boat to another. They will think it’s pathetic and they’ll be right. 
There’s more production people waiting for your arrival, waiting to take your place next to Charles and capitalize on the fleeting light and beautiful scenery. It’s unusual, there’s nobody here. You introduce yourself to them, too, because it feels strange not to. 
Once you’re onboard, you change in the guest suite. Sweats and a hoodie because the sun is setting, dusk settling on the horizon, bringing in wind with the tide. Bowl of pasta in your lap, mindless television playing, you lounge on the couch, watch Charles do an interview on that stupid little boat, rocking back and forth like a buoy on the open water. 
You want to reach out and grab his hand, hold it still, stop him from pulling his fingers and twisting his rings because then nobody will know he’s nervous, that he’s off balance. “What do you think they’re talking about?” You ask, pulling Lorenzo’s attention from the television. “He looks nervous.”
Lorenzo laughs, quiet, under his breath. “You.” 
You don’t turn back, know your face is going to give it away, can feel the blood rushing, the skin of your cheeks boiling. There’s no way he knows, right? Charles didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t. Lorenzo has no idea how close his joke hits, how deep the knife cuts. He’s just an older brother, living with the sole purpose of embarrassing you. “What?” You say, force out a laugh and almost choke on it.
“Kidding.” He says, and goes back to whatever is on TV. Your eyes stay on Charles, though, infatuated with the way the wind runs its fingers through his hair, the way it tugs on his shirt and inches the boat closer and closer to the yacht, to you. You stare so hard he can feel it, catches your eyes mid-sentence, smile pulling on his words. You’re convinced the upturned corners of his lips can lift even the lowest of spirits. He winks, and then he’s back in the conversation like he never missed a beat. 
Charles has made fast friends with the crew long before you got there. You wonder if they know each other, if they’ve met before. Light words flow with the waves, your body relaxing at the loss of the cameras, put aside to enjoy the experience, to breathe in the moment. His pull is gravitational, even through the strange tension and the awkwardness of the unknown. In your uncertainty, you linger just out of his reach, now comfortable enough to participate in their conversations. He catches you staring off into space, into the vast, starry sky, silently identifying the constellations above you. He pulls your mind back to your body with the tap of his foot on your outstretched leg. With what has to be the softest smile to ever grace this beautiful Earth, he calls you to his side with careful eyes and a subtle nod. 
You scooch closer to him, half-expect his arm to lazily drape itself around you because that’s what always happens. It doesn’t, and a pit of something grief-like settles in your chest. Instead, your arms hang at your sides, upper arms gracing each other every time one of you even thinks about breathing. Your hands are knotted in your lap, thumb examining the texture of your palm, fingers tugging on each other with agonizing anxiousness.
You were so naive to think, even for a split second, that you would go back to normal. THe tension you thought would settle has only become increasingly taught. 
“You okay?” He asks. You nod with a weary smile. A lie, and he knows it. “You worked all weekend?” He continues to prod, ignores the conversation happening around you like it’s just the two of you in a bubble. 
“No, just today.” You said. “Meetings all day.” You don’t look at him, eyes focused on your hands, popping knuckles and digging nails into your palm. You can’t remember the last time you were so unsettled in his presence. “I got a huge logo redesign deal.” 
“Of course you did.” He bumps your shoulder, jolts you. “You’re the best they’ve got and they know it.”
“I’m not the best one there.”
"Maybe not the most confident.” He laughs, reaches into your lap and grabs your hands, stilling them like a patient partner would do. “But definitely the most talented.” He squeezes your hand tighter, and you slide your fingers between his, envelope his hand in both of yours like you’re the one doing the comforting, squeeze back, thank you. 
Your head falls to his shoulder, sigh like you’re carrying the weight of the world, like you’re moments away from breaking down into a pile of ash, blown away with the breeze. A new normal. Maybe that’s what you’ll have to do, create a new normal that’s just as sweet as the old one. When the only options are a life of awkward anxieties or one without him in it entirely, a new normal doesn’t seem so sad. 
– –
He gets stopped seven times on the walk from the berth to the parking garage, takes careful time to be kind, especially to the kids. He’ll never not stop for a child, making their grabby hands, freckle faced days time and time again. You’re a good guy, you say after the fifth, know it’s the last thing he wants to do after his long day. I don’t know how you do it.
He shakes his head, sighs. “Le strict minimum ne fait pas de moi un bon gars.”
“You go beyond the bare minimum.”
He shrugs. “The bar is in Hell, I suppose.”
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You take the train to Monza, hunkered over your laptop for the entirety of the ride, working. You weren’t planning on coming in until late Friday night,but Charles asked you if you’d get on the next train, if you’d come with him to sponsorship dinners and obligatory events in the leadup to the weekend. Please, he’d texted. Sayingno, doing anything but getting on the 6 am departure this morning, didn’t feel like an option. 
You texted Isa for three hours trying to figure out what the dress code was for these events, planning out your outfit. All you could get from Charles was, I don’t know, I’m wearing a blazer, probably. The last thing you wanted to do was stick out like a sore thumb, draw anymore attention to yourself or embarrass him. Underdressed, overdressed, you don’t know which is worse. 
You check your phone, scroll through social media and pick at a meal from the dining cart. You’re met with the same stuff you’ve been seeing since that stupid Monaco Vlog on Charles’ YouTube channel. The general consensus amongst all the strangers who know you so well, is that you and Charles are dating. I want this. They way they look at each other. Couples who are best friends make me melt. A friend told you those should make you smile, they don’t, because you aren’t dating. You aren’t dating and he’s going to see them and everyone wants to know everything about you and someone asked on a bikini picture how good Charles was in bed. None of them made you smile. 
Does she know she’s the third choice? Not smiling. Charles, serial monogamist or serial cheater? Not smiling. You’re a whore. You’re a slut. I hope you die, bitch. No smiles. 
They stung, they made you cry at your reflection in the mirror, private your accounts, limit your comments. They were everywhere, in your Instagram DMs, your Twitter mentions, your TikTok ForYou page. It was suffocating. 
Charles was trying his best to check up on you, which only made it all worse. You wanted to believe he wasn’t seeing them. He was just making sure your head was above water, and it was those best intentions that got you invited here, you assumed. It’s easier to keep an eye on you when you’re with him. 
It was a good idea, a good effort, for sure. It was a miscalculation, though, Charles seemingly forgetting just how much attention he has to give to strangers at these events. In a room full of people, dressed in your best cocktail attire, sipping a martini and watching people fight for his attention, you can’t remember feeling so alone, so on display. 
Everyone knows, or thinks they know, you’re Charles’ girlfriend. You’re a bigger extension of him than ever. Side-stepping cameras won’t cut it anymore, they’re hungry to judge you. Look who Charles brought, what do we think of her? Look what she’s wearing, how she speaks, how she stands. They hate you, you’re sure of it. You aren’t classy enough for this scene, not sweet enough, not pretty enough. You aren’t important enough. 
“How are you doing?” Isa finds you leaning on a tall table, poking your olives around your drink with the toothpick they were originally skewered on. 
“Are these things always this weird?” You ask, voice laced with hope that there is a learning curve, that there is some top-secret strategy she can give you so you don’t feel so shitty and deflated again tomorrow night. 
She laughs. “You’ll get used to it. But, yeah.”
“Any advice?”
“Threaten a sex strike if he leaves you alone for too long.” Your eyes go wide, shocked by her words. She just shrugs, downs the remainder of her drink. “Works every time.”
“Charles and I. We’re not. We–” You stumble over your words, and she looks at you with raised brows and a grin that makes you think Charles might be blabbing to the whole grid. “We’re not sleeping together.”
“Aren’t you, though?”
“Did Charles say something?”
She smacks her hand over her mouth, muffling her laugh. “No, but you just did!”
You nod, jaw clenched, tongue running over the front of your teeth. You’ve been so paranoid that Charles was going to tell someone and you’re the one who can’t keep their mouth shut. “It was once, and you can’t tell anybody.” You whisper, sharp. “Not even Carlos.”
“I’m going to tell Carlos.”
“You can’t.” It comes out as more of a plea than an argument. “He’ll say something to Charles, and then Charles will know I told someone.”
She says your name so sweet and patient, like you’re a preschooler about to get a passive-aggressive scolding. “I’ve never seen two people look like they want to fuck more than the two of you. If Carlos says something, it won’t be the first time someone has vocalized it to him.” It’s a horrifying thought that burrows all the way to your bone marrow. You’ve always thought you were so good at hiding it. 
You’re drowning at this party, under the waves of lingering and prying eyes. It’s been an hour since you’ve spoken to Charles, forty-five minutes since you’ve seen him. You pull out your phone and delete all your social media. This is so much worse than wallowing about death threats in the comfort of your own bedroom with the familiarity of your favorite ice cream. 
– –
You’re doing your hair when he knocks on the door. Impatient, impatient, impatient. You don’t answer, he keeps knocking, over and over again. “What?” You say, sharper than warranted, opening the heavy door with as much force as it will allow. 
“This is what you’re wearing?” He says, walks right past you and into your room. You’re not in the mood for his humor today.
“That’s really funny, coming from you.” You say, go back to the bathroom, hairspray your hair, pull a few face framing pieces out from the low ponytail. 
“I look great.” Says the man who hate-crimed an entire country with his jeans in Monaco, who is cosplaying as a banana this weekend. 
“Did you dress yourself?”
He appears in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning on it, looking annoyingly handsome in his suit jacket and white button up. “I did.”
“Oh,” You lock eyes with him in the mirror, put on a phony smile, fingers digging through your makeup bag on the counter searching for eyelash glue. “How nice for you.”
You watch him check his wrist in your peripheral, opening the cardboard lash box and pulling them out, carefully applying glue to one. “What aren’t you ready?” He asks.
“I’ll be ready at five.” You said, setting the falsies on your lash line, trying not to make your concentration face because you know he’s watching. 
You put glue on the other lash. “We’re leaving at four-thirty.” Your head snaps up from the task at hand. 
“You told me five.”
“I did not.”
“You did.” You say, continue putting the lash on before the glue dries because you don’t have another set with you. Quicker, this time, because apparently you’re running a half hour behind. 
“I told you it starts at five.” He says.
Oh. He did tell you that. “We have to be there when it starts.” You say in unison, your foggy recollection becoming clear. 
“Wonderful.” You laugh, to nobody at all. 
“Are you okay?” He asks, and it feels earnest, makes you laugh harder while you hove all your makeup back into the tiny cosmetics bag. There’s no way he’s that clueless, you think, blink hard in the mirror a few times, size up your hair and makeup. 
“No, I’m not okay!” You say, toss the bag onto the counter with a heavy noise. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this.” You push past him in the doorway, stop in the little hall between the bathroom and the bedroom, next to the mini fridge and Keuring-clad kitchenette, sigh at the ceiling so you don’t cry, don’t ruin your makeup. You’re already running late, no time for tear streaks. “I feel like a fucking idiot.” 
“You’re not an idiot.” 
You scoff, don’t even know why you’re angry, so emotional, why every nerve in your body feels supercharged. “You do a great job of letting me feel like one.” You don’t mean it, not really. You say it anyway. You know it will hurt him, and you’re tired of hurting alone. 
“What did I do?”
“Nothing.” You say, hoist the ironing board out of the wardrobe. “You did nothing.” You don’t bother setting the legs up, just lay it across the bed. 
“What was I supposed to do?” He asks, grabs the iron from your hands and fills it with water in the kitchenette sink, sets it on the iron board, plugs it in and turns it on. You did through your suitcase for your dress and blazer, shaking them out like they’re dusty old relics rather than something you’d bought just for this. 
You don’t know what to tell him. You can’t summarize all of your emotions into something succinct and comprehensible, especially not while you’re in the middle of feeling them. Everyone wants me dead, everyone is staring at me, I know I’m  not good enough for this. I want to be good enough for this, to make you proud, but it’s so hard. “You left me alone last night.”  You say, roll your eyes and take the tears with it. Elaboration feels like a giant, insurmountable, unachievable challenge. “You left me alone last night.” All you can do is repeat yourself, stare at the dress in your hands, examine the stitching like your life depends on viewing the heather grey fabric at a microscopic level. 
You can’t look at him, know he’s going to be staring at you with soft, sad eyes. You see him look at you like that and it’s game over. You’re not leaving the hotel tonight, not making it to that event. You’re going to cry yourself a bath, melt into a puddle of your own tears. 
“I’m sorry.” He says. 
“Don’t be.” You flatter out the dress on the ironing board. “You’re doing your job.” You move the iron in hard, quick lines over the fabric. 
“I’m still sorry.” He’s behind you, wrapping his arm over the front of your chest, pulling you back against his chest in some kind of strangely affectionate reverse-hug. It feels to right, so you squirm from his grip, keep at the hasty ironing. 
“Don’t feel bad for me.” Flip the dress, iron the other side. “I can hold my own in a room full of strangers.”
“I know you can.” You hate the tone in his voice; proud, almost. You’re not his to be proud of, even if everyone else seems to think you are. 
“Can we just?” You look at him for the first time since he dropped the time bomb on you. “Anything but?” He nods. You nod, switch the dress out for the blazer.
 “I like this jacket.” He says. You look at the outfit, grey dress, green blazer, white accessories. You thought it was too Christmas-y, the red accents on the bottoms of your heels and the red of your lip. It’s Ferrari red, Isa convinced you, very subtle. “You look good in green.”
“Green is my favorite color.” 
“I know.” He laughs.
“You know.” You yank the iron cord from the wall and pull your top over your head without thinking. You meet his eyes, and they don’t dare to waiver from yours. You nod, an I really just flashed you nod, sigh, pick up the dress and walk past him into the bathroom. “You can stare, Charles. I have good boobs.” A laugh from the other room while you step into the dress, pull the straps over your shoulder and leave the back unzipped. “And, you’ve literally been inside me.” You add for good measure. He coughs, chokes on his own laughter. 
Leave it to anything but to abandon one elephant and pick up a new one. “We’re talking about that now?”
You smile at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, wonder if he can hear it in your voice, if he knows you that well, listened to you speak so intently for so long that he can pick out minor fluctuations like that. “Talking about what?”
“You are.” He pauses, you tug on the hem of your dress and it doesn’t give any. You thought there was more fabric than there is. “Are you on something?” You can hear the smile.
“I haven’t been not talking.” You say, coming out of the bathroom, ball of pajamas wadded up tight in your hand. He tracks you across the room, back exposed, while you put the clothes in your bag. You walk back to him, pull your ponytail to one side, gesture for him to zip up the back of your dress. You suck in before he does it, even though the dress fits. 
“You’ve been telling people?” He says, his warm fingers gracing your skin, sending goosebumps up your spine. This never would have happened before, you lie to yourself. You’ve been blushing everytime he looked at you since you were in high school. 
“Maybe.” You say quietly, bit the smile off your bottom lip when his fingers linger at the top of the zipper. “Have you?”
“No.” He says, and when you turn around his eyes trail up your body slowly, taking your permission to stare as gospel, soaking up every inch of you with unabashed eyes. 
“I told Isa.” You say, shove an earring through your lobe.
“You.” Your words pull him back from the glossy eyed size-up with a chuckle. “You told Isa.” The other earring, and then you clasp a necklace, wish you had the nerve to make him do that, too.
“Accidentally.” You add, pull the blazer on, tug on the dress again. Still not budging. 
“Does that mean I can tell someone?” He pretends to mess with the settings on his watch. Pretends, you know, because his watch is never wrong. He changes it as soon as he’s in a new location. That watch has been right since his plane landed.
You sit on the edge of the bed, put your heels on and wonder if the red bottoms are really with the pain and suffering. “No.”
���Are we going to talk about it?” He asks, follows you to the bathroom where you’re already twisting your tube of lipstick, painting them a dark, lustful red. Ferrari red, a dark, ferrari red. 
“We’re running late.” You close the lipstick, put it into your handbag and clasp that shut.
“We are.” He says, and you’re already tugging the door open and gesturing him out. “I’m sorry for not looking out for you last night.” He says in the middle of the elevator ride. “Really.”
“Don’t.” You say. “We agreed, anything but.”
– –
Anything but, you agreed, but he’s silently apologizing all night. You’re not out of arm’s reach for more than a few minutes the entire night, and when you are, he’s got eyes on you, eyes on the bathroom door, eyes on the back of the head of whoever blocks his sightline. He finds you in the crowd every time. The green, he says, I just look for the pretty girl in green. “Don’t say things like that to me.” You told him, even though it makes you warm and fuzzy and grateful when he says it, when he’s there every time you look for him.
“Questa è la tua ragazza, no?” Mattia says to Charles when he introduces you. You’ve met him before, always in passing, though, so it’s a safe assumption to think he won’t know you. 
“Qualcosa del genere.” Charles says, thinks you don’t catch it, pulls you closer to his side. 
“Che cazzo significa?” Mattia asks, and all three of you laugh with varying levels of awkwardness, too much to say for anything to be whispered in the unsaid. 
By the end of the night, you've spoken to more people than you can count and done so in three languages, four, if you count the butchered Spanish class Carlos held with you. You’ve been confused for his girlfriend a dozen times, and somewhere along the line his corrections progressed from just a friend, through no correction at all, to yes. 
“Why did you say that?” You asked the first time he did it. 
“They’re going to think what they want to think.” He said. It felt like a cop-out answer. 
You don’t know if you’re more affected by his presence or if the hoards of strangers are, but it seems like everyone is more interested in what you have to say instead of just staring you down. Calling yourself comfortable would be quite a stretch, but, the room tonight feels a little less like a fishbowl and a little more like a cocktail party. 
You love watching him on stage, really love it, him addressing the audience. You almost burst into laughter, the customer service voice that transcends industries and languages and is something you never get to hear from him. He oozes confidence, talking and laughing with the MC and Carlos and Mattia. He’s so pretty under the hard lighting, it makes all his features look sharper, more defined, somehow. Heaven-sent.
When he comes back he says he’s hot, takes off his blazer and hangs it from the back of his chair, rolls up his shirt sleeves. It’s very grassroots political, very, mind-numbingly attractive. “How are you doing?” He asks, takes a sip of your drink because his is empty, maintains insightful, careful eyes and contrasts them by wriggling his brows over the lip of your glass. 
“I’m good.” You say, nod and smile so he knows you mean it. 
“Really? He sets the glass back down on the tablecloth. 
“Really.” 
– –
You’re at the track early Friday morning, watching Arthur’s practice session with Carla. You haven’t seen him race nearly as much as you’d like to this year. In Bahrain, you didn’t come to anything except Charles’ race, so scared about bringing Michael along. No Imola. You wish you could have been in Silverstone, watched it on your phone at work with the volume on level one. The only time you’ve actually seen him race in person was in Barcelona, and you were basically hungover that entire weekend. Hungover, and trying to convince yourself Charles was going to kiss you. 
You were going to watch him as much as you could this time around, make up for all the ones you missed. That was one excuse for staying away from Charles. The other, everything the two of you did felt emotionally charged. You’re either wishing you could wring his neck, or wishing you could nuzzle into it. Sometimes both. A lot of times, both. 
You grab lunch with Carla in general hospitality and then sneak your way  into the Paddock Club’s pit lane walk to blow some time. Charles is doing his warm up, probably playing football or doing neck exercises that could be in the director’s cut of a Fifty Shades of Grey film. Carlos, though, Carlos is talking to some engineer about something or another, and you catch each other’s eye. He smiles, looks away, and does a double take, furrowing his brows. You just shrug, make him laugh and shake his head. 
“Heard you were being sneaky today?” Charles asks when you’re leaving the track. Someone ahead is taking pictures of him, one of the regulars, one you recognize but don’t know. He’s the one that always asks Charles for a smile and is responsible for half the pictures in his living room. 
You step several feet to the side, remove yourself from the frame, out of the shot. Arthur laughs. No free food for anyone, not even the ones he likes. It’s going to be a long time before you volunteer yourself to be tormented online. 
He says your name, the photographer, and it startles you because you don’t know him. He shouldn’t know your name, you’ve never introduced yourself to him. Charles looks in your direction, holds out his hand and even though you don’t want to take it, don’t want any pictures of you two walking hand-in-hand, you also don’t want to leave him hanging like that in front of a camera. So, you take his hand and let yourself get pulled back into the shot. Maybe they’ll never see the light of day, you can only hope. Surely, a million other things will be more interesting than this. 
Mr. Photographer, Kym, Charles calls him. Kym asks your opinion on the yellow, and Charles laughs because you haven’t been shy with him about your distaste for them. You know Ferrari is really pushing it, though. “I think they’re great. Very avant garde.” You lie.
Yellow not a favorite color? He asks, says your name again. 
“She thinks yellow is a coward’s color.” Charles says, laughs with Kym the photographer. You cringe, even though he’s right. “She likes green.”
– –
You wake up miserable on Saturday, spend the day in your hotel room with the shades drawn and the do not disturb sign hanging from the door handle. Flu symptoms, someone from Ferrari, someone worried about Charles’ possible exposure, delivers a rapid test to your door. Negative. 
You have your phone playing on the lowest possible volume, still too loud, if you’re being honest, and listen to Arthur’s Sprint Race, to FP3, to Quali. 
I thought you didn’t have it in the straights, you mustered up the nerve to text him. Pole, right? You weren’t positive where anyone was starting tomorrow, too many penalties. If you had to bet on being right about one, though, it’s that Charles is on pole. You’d bet on that blind, though. 
We don’t, he replies an hour later. Extremely timely for him, especially on a race weekend. How are you feeling?
Like shit. Even with the brightness all the way down, your eyes still yearn to be clawed out when met with the LCD screen. 
Sorry.
You wallow, pick at the entirely too expensive meal from room service, take a few too many Advils because you’re pretty sure this bug will kill you before the liver damage gets a chance. You nap, you shower, shiver and shake, and nap some more. COnsider scoping your brain out and squeezing it until it pops, your pulse making your temples bulge. 
Your phone lights up the dark room. You don’t know how long you’ve been staring at the ceiling, forcing your eyes closed until galaxies and oil spills of color paint themselves across your eyelids. It could be eleven in the morning. It could be eight at night. Will you answer if I knock?
You say yes, figure he’s still at the track. He’s not. 
A single, quiet knock on the door, he couldn’t have used the force of more than a single knuckle. Your eyes are squinted shut when you open it, hand shielding your eyes. He laughs, just as quiet as his knock, slides into the room and pulls the door closed as fast as the slow-closing hinges allow. 
He puts the back of his hand on your forehead. You search to make out his features in the pitch-black darkness. “I’m dying.” You say, pitiful.
“You’re not dying.” You think he’s smiling, can hear it, even with congested sinuses and clogged ears. 
“I promise I am.” Your voice is so nasally and muffled and sick. 
“Poor thing.” His voice is half an octave higher when he mocks you. 
“Did you just come here to be mean?”
“No. I came to check on you.”
“Consider me checked.” You said, crawling back into bed. Even with your hands moving wildly in front of you in the dark room, you still run into the side of the bed with a thud. “Don’t laugh.” You warn, and he tried his hardest not to. You read once that orgasms can cure headaches. Briefly, you consider the logistics of it. 
Not worth it, you decide. You’d rather have your brain explode all over the walls of this dark room than make things any weirder, leave more feelings and emotions to linger in the shadows of the unknown. “Sommes-nous bons?” He asks, and your face controls into a twisted mess. No way is he doing this now. No way. 
“Pourquoi ne serions-nous pas bons?” You mutter, after much hesitation. 
“Je ne sais pas.” He says. “Vous vous sentez loin.”
“Je suis là.” You lie, and reach your hand out. He finds you in the darkness, or you find him. You find each other, that’s all that matters, really. You move in the bed messily, tangling the sheets and comforter with your legs, pulling him with little force onto the bed. “I’m here.” You repeat with your head on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. You don’t say it because you mean it, you say it because you know when his thoughts are on the verge of becoming all consuming. You say it because the last thing he needs to be thinking about this weekend is if you’re distancing yourself from him. You might know him better than he knows himself, you think sometimes. 
When you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re feeling alive, less corpse-like. He’s not in the room anymore. 
You wonder if it’s possible to distance yourself from Charles, or if your lives are so completely and utterly intertwined that it’s too late for that. A life lived together too long to make distinctions, you think. Nothing is yours, not really. 
Fight or flight, you will freeze every time. You can’t take the leap, have the hard conversations. If you do it, and it goes terribly wrong, crashes and burns brighter than the sun, there’s no walking away, no picking up the pieces and putting yourself back together again. 
When you were young, your Mother once told you she thought you and Charles were each one half of a puzzle–incomplete without the other. You’re lucky to have him, she told you, people spend their whole lives looking for the other half of their puzzle. 
You always found comfort in it. Now, you think maybe you and Charles are two separate puzzles that have been combined into the same box. Sure, they could be sorted, but pieces are probably missing, stolen by time or never there to begin with. The only way to sort each other apart would be to dump it all out on the table, slowly rebuild from the corners in, constantly checking the box to make sure that piece is a piece of you, not him. Nobody has time for that task, not even the people who love the puzzles, not even the puzzles themselves, so you sit on a shelf all mixed up until the end of time. 
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He came to see you on your nineteenth birthday. Drove in from Monaco to the apartment you were renting with University friends. Four bedrooms, six people, two emotional support cats, low ceilings, broken fire escape, one bathroom, and a pantry full of cheap alcohol. 
When he arrived, there were significantly more than six people, the pantry full of liquor was a kitchen full of liquor, and you were dancing on a table, drunk in a way only a nineteen year old is on her birthday. Even sloppy and shitfaced, you could make out the distinctive tone of his holler over the hoots of the rest of your cheer squad. 
You’d laughed, giddy and loud, jumped off the table and threw yourself into his arms. “Vous êtes ici?!” You yelled into his ear, adjusting the strap of your top. 
“Je suis là.” He said, at a sober volume. “Bon anniversaire.”
“Merci!” You laughed, hiccuped. “Buvons!”
He should have been playing catch-up, but you’d never let a friend take a shot alone. A gruesome mistake you learned when you were curled over the porcelain toilet bowl two hours later. 
He had your hair knotted into a shitty ponytail, too loose, the part of your haircut meant to frame your face falling victim to the contents of your stomach. He rubbed his hand on your back, like a parent would, and told you it was going to be okay. You spit, laughed into the toilet because he was always so annoyingly sweet to you. You looked over your shoulder and told him so. You’re too sweet to me, you said, he looked at you all sober and earnest and chillingly, and then you threw up again. 
You rallied, though. The birthday girl always rallies. You smoked a cigarette from the perch of your bedroom window and listened to Charles talk about some girl and lecture you, going on and on about how you really shouldn’t be smoking. It’s quite bad for you. You wondered what would happen if you threw yourself out the window, if it would hurt more than his bashful words about her. It’s only the third floor. It won’t kill you. Hearing him say her name and blush one more time might, though.
Jealousy is ugly on you. You realize that in the weeks that follow, and decide that until you have the balls to say something to him, to take charge, you don’t get to be jealous of who he spends his time crushing on. Jealousy is for women who lose, and you’re not even playing, not even on the team. 
It’s a good thing you do, put it behind you, because he brings her to the family cabin you spend Christmas at every year. He warms her hands in his and kisses her under the mistletoe hung in the entryway. At the end of the week, he thanks you for being so kind and warm and welcoming to her. You smile, hug him. Anytime, you told him, cry yourself to sleep for three days thinking about how happy he is.
She’s too good for you was the nicest thing you ever said about her. It was a lie. Nobody is too good for someone as sweet as him. 
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You see him next in Austin, a late birthday celebration in the land of unfamiliar accents and oversized portions. The losing battle for the championship is over, Max won in Japan and sat in some stupidly oversized armchair in the cool-down room. It’s ridiculous, honestly, I’m glad I didn’t win, he told you. You went along with it even though you know he’d give an arm and a leg to look like a fool in an oversized armchair in a cool-down room in Japan. 
Despite that, because of that, whatever, the pressure is off his shoulders a bit, the need to perform at superhuman level lowered. He seems lighter when you hug him. 
“I did a hot lap with Brad PItt.” He tells you.
You laugh at the absurdity of his life, follow him on his walk up the paddock. “And?”
He shrugs. “Tires were shit.” His typical day at the office might be batshit insane, but he’s always going to be Charles–little boy who loves cars-Leclerc. 
“Tires were shit.” You repeat. “That's all you got for me?”
“He didn’t speak much.” Make him speak, Charles. It’s Brad fucking Pitt, you would’ve said if it was a few months earlier and things were normal and deadpan and sarcastic between the two of you. You roll your eyes instead. 
– –
“You guys should not let them do this.” You tell the girl working the counter at Austin’s–an amusement park in, you guessed it, Austin, Texas. Americans are incredibly creative, you’ve come to learn. “They’re going to kill each other.” 
She can’t be making more than minimum wage–seven U.S dollars and twenty-five cents an hour–but there isn’t any amount that is enough to deal with this crowd in karts. Two of the most competitive men on the planet, egged on by each other and by the group of guys in line behind you trying to pay for your group’s tickets. 
Do not let them pay for you, you told Charles and he nodded, told you he knew, paid for everyone’s tickets. At any moment it feels like a little red dot is going to appear on your head and Ferrari is going to take you out. They won’t be thrilled to discover both their poster-boy and Disney prince were out late the night before a race, even less thrilled when they find out Charles and Carlos were risking injury in search of cheap thrills with strangers. 
You and Isa share a laugh, feel like mothers chasing toddlers around at Disneyland. We should do that, we should do this. Oh! Look at that, we can’t leave without doing that. 
You watch them ignore the teenager telling them the rules about the karts, telling everyone not to run into one another. It’s just the four of you; Charles, Carlos, Isa, and you. You know they’ll be crashing into each other before you get through the first turn. 
They argue about if they’re fighting for first or fastest lap, flip a coin and throw a fit about the results, play rock-paper-scissors to come to a decision. They lap you and Isa–the rule followers who don’t exceed the speed limit–fly around the track at a speed you didn’t expect anyone to be able to pull from the cheap karts. 
Carlos wins, Charles contests, says he’s going to formally protest it. Then, they want to switch to two-seater carts, so you and Isa are passengers to their reckless driving. Charles wins that round. Carlos and Isa leave after that, claim they’re tired. You and Charles stay for a meal. 
“It’s a pre-podium celebratory meal.” You said. 
“You’re going to curse me.” He groaned. 
For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, a meal shared with Charles is awkward, stiff. Before today, you’d barely spoken since Monza. Your social media was still full of death threats, or so you’d been told. The apps have yet to be redownloaded, it’s not healthy for anyone to see that kind of stuff. 
This is how it happens, you think. How lifelong friendships fall apart. There isn’t a separation spot that you can pinpoint and say yes, this is where it all went to shit. It’s a gradual separation, a day without a call, a week without a text, a month without speaking. Slow, steady, and sure, until eventually, you live separate, untangled lives. 
“So,” He says, eats a fry. “That big work deal?”
“Yeah.” You nod, cross one leg over the other on the cold metal chair. “It’s good. Almost done, I think.”
“I’m sure you killed it.”
“Yeah.” Uncross the legs. “Thanks.” Cross them again. The positioning of your legs isn’t the problem, the cold metal chair that doesn’t sit evenly on the floor and rocks when you shift your weight isn’t what’s making you uncomfortable. The food is good and the drinks are cold and your waitress is a sweetheart with a southern accent and long blonde hair. 
Y’all came from the race? She asked. We were busier than ants at a picnic all weekend. You told her yes. I like y’all’s accents, and that was the end of it. He couldn’t get away with that interaction anywhere else in the world. 
Everything is perfect, but you’re still uncomfortable. The problem is him. The problem is you. Everything breaks under enough pressure, even unbreakable things. 
“I miss you.” He said, because the closer your bodies are, the further away your minds wander. 
“I’m here.” You lie. 
He sees right through it. “No, you’re not.” Any possible defense would be weaker than the lie, so you don’t bother, sit in suffocating silence and pick at your fries. “Things have been weird since we slept together.” It was a mistake, you brace for the impact of it. Sleeping with him wasn’t a mistake, not for you. It was everything that has followed that was the issue. It should have been the end of a chapter, a closing book, one way or another. Instead, you’re writing an epilogue and flying by the seat of your pants, stumbling over your words and forgetting characterizations and just trying to make it to the next page. You should be in a new book entirely–a book without him or a book with him on every page. 
It was a mistake, you brace and brace but it never comes. He doesn’t say it. The other shoe doesn’t drop. He just looks at his hands, twists his rings on his fingers, pops his knuckles. “I don’t know how to fix this.” He speaks, finally, and it reminds you of when he kissed you, when you didn’t know how to make everything better. 
More silence, until you’ve both cleaned your plates, until Mary-Grace, the sweet talking southern-belle, sets the check down on Charles’ side of the table, until you watch him google how much gratuity he’s supposed to leave because he’s always scared he’s going to mess up tipping when you’re in the U.S. 
Distance is good, you think. Distance. People need distance. “Abu Dhabi is going to be my last race.”  You whisper. 
He laughs almost, sliding his card into the leather folder and setting it back on the edge of the table. “It’s going to be everyone’s last race.”
“My last race for a while, Charles.” My last race, ever, you think, if distance goes the way you think it will. “I’m going to–I think we.” You sigh. “We need some space, I think.”
“No. Don’t be stupid.” He shoos your words, brushes them under the rug. 
“We can’t fix it. We both know we can’t–”
“--I don’t know.” You speak over each other, building a Jenga tower of lies and one-ups until you finally snap into a different language. 
““--Doit-on vraiment continuer à prétendre que tout va bien?”
“I love you.” He blurts, cuts you off like it’s some grand admission, like you haven’t been saying it to each other since before the word love had any sort of connotation to it, back when it was just something people said to each other. The distance, it doesn’t mean you don’t love him. You’ll always love him, he’s Charles. You just. You need to breathe, and you can’t catch your breath when he’s around. 
“I love you, too.” You say, like you have a million times before, like you’re almost offended he thought any of this meant you didn’t love him. 
“No, no.” His voice is desperate, pleading with you to understand something you’re clearly missing. Surely, he doesn’t mean. “How do you… je suis amoureux de toi.” You clench your jaw and blink, and you’re pretty sure one eye closes before the other.
“Don’t say that to me.” You say. Not, I’m in love with you, too, even though you are. You’re trying to put yourself first here, trying to objectively look at your life, at the things in it that are hurting you. Mixed signals, hurting you. Death threats, hurting you. Unwanted attention, hurting you. The common thread is him, you need to separate yourself from him and he’s saying the only thing that could make you waiver. 
“Pourquoi pas?”
“Because.” You dig your shaky fingers into your leg, burrow them into the denim. It’s going to bruise, you don’t care, so will this conversation, so will walking away. “You don’t mean it.” Shake your head, lip quivering like a little girl who got hurt on the playground. He does mean it.You know him well enough to know he does, which only makes it that much fucking harder. “And I’m not going to say it back.” 
You love him so much, more than oxygen, maybe. You’d throw it all away for him, your heart would let you lose yourself if it meant making him happy, if it meant being with him. You’d stay off social media and pretend nobody was wishing for your death. You’d sit at awkward dinner parties and watch races with limbs that didn’t feel like your own. You’d do it all, if your heart was in charge, because you love him, and can’t fathom losing him. 
Space. Space will make it better, ease the sting of unspoken feelings and heavy words and stupid little games. Space will wash the salt from the wound. 
He says your name like a plea, a desperate prayer, bloody knees and lit candles. You say nothing, too much internal conflict to sort out to verbalize anything. 
The drive to the hotel is deafeningly silent. You can hear the tires of the rental car on the road below, can hear his feet on the pedals, the grind of his teeth because he’s angry at you. He’s angry and he doesn’t want to be. In love with you and he doesn’t want to be. You understand it well, recognize your own emotions being reflected back at you. If you listen hard enough, you convince yourself you can hear the traffic lights changing colors. 
You fly home commercial the next morning, skip the race, hear about his podium three days later from a friend. 
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You don’t go to Abu Dhabi.
--
You don’t go to November, or December’s family dinner. He doesn’t text you, doesn’t call, makes no attempt at playing phone tag. 
--
You skip Christmas at the cabin, find out after the fact that he’d done the same thing. 
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“Ça devient ridicule, chérie.” Your mother tells you over the phone. “Vous agissez comme un enfant. Vous l’êtes tous les deux.” You’d just told her you were skipping your dad’s birthday party. I have to work, you lied. I’ll bring his gift by the house next week. It was the straw that snapped her back, it would seem. “Vous serez ici demain. Pour papa. Il ne t'a rien fait.” She said it sternly, and if you were sixteen you might have been intimidated by it, might have listened. 
You told your sister after you got off the phone with Mom that you wouldn’t be there, told her as a heads up, so she knew the shit-show of slamming cupboards and passive aggressive comments she was walking into tomorrow. 
Go to your dad’s birthday. He texted you for the first time in months. I won’t go.
I’m an adult. There’s no way to send a message like that without sounding like a child. 
I wish I could see my dad on his birthday. Nobody does the guilt-trip like he does. Go. I promise I won’t be there.
Charles is scarily close to your Dad. Growing up, Charles–hell, all of the boys–they were the sons your dad never had, the ones he didn’t realize he wanted. It was infuriating, sharing him. And then Hervé got sick, and then he was gone, and your dad became a father figure for the boys. It was slow, and subtle, but it happened nonetheless.
You were the one who blew things up, who demanded space and time and distance. If anyone should suffer because of it, it’s you, not him. You should be there.
Not more than you. You disagree, but he’s impossible to argue with without being face-to-face. 
I can be an adult. You say, even though you aren’t so sure you can be. We can both go.
– –
You lingered in your apartment, wondered if he was really going to show up, if you were actually going to get in the car and drive over there, if it was too late to say you’d caught Covid or something. 
You change clothes seven times. Seven, because you want to look good, but not like you tried to look good. Effortlessly glamorous and classy and sophisticated. You don’t know why, it’s not like he’s the one who wronged you. If anyone should be spending extra time in the bathroom today it should be him, he should be trying to prove you wrong, to show you your mistake in walking away. 
It wasn’t a mistake. It was the biggest mistake. There were two very distinct sides to the coin. You’re back on social media, back to living your life without death threats and constant judgment. You haven’t spoken to your best friend in months, have no idea what he’s up to, don’t know anything more than his millions of followers. You miss him, but you don’t miss being Charles Leclerc’s friend, Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend. You like having your own name, being a person with traits that go beyond knowing him. You hate not seeing him, not being with him, worrying that you’re going to run into him around any corner. It’s a small, congested city. He could be any of the faces in the crowd. 
You get to your parents house after your sister and your brother-in-law and your niece. The house smells like pasta sauce and your mom’s flowery candle–the one that is teetering awfully close to potpourri and death and elderly woman. The Bianchi’s aren’t coming–they thought the party was next weekend, called and apologized three different times in the past forty-eight hours, according to your dad. The Lecelerc’s are yet to arrive. 
You slip into comfortable conversation with your family, Mom is right, you aren’t avoiding any of them. You help her out in the kitchen, get yelled at for tasting the sauce, chase your niece around the house, fulfill your duties as the fun aunt, sneak her candy from the jar in Dad’s office and swear just enough that she might call the dog a bitch. 
Arthur and Pascale get there first, before Lorenzo and Charles. They’ll be here late, Pascale says to someone, not you. “My brother is an idiot.” Arthur says when you greet him with a tight hug. You haven’t seen him since Monza, either. 
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” You say. You haven’t seen him, but you’ve spoken to him, congratulated him on moving to F2, offered to take him out to dinner the next time your schedules lined up. Drama with Charles wasn’t going to stop you from celebrating the closest thing you’ll have to a baby brother. 
You almost forget he’s coming. Almost, and then he’s knocking and walking through the door with a small, gift-wrapped box and an expensive bottle of wine, charming smiles onto everyone’s face with just his easy presence. He looks good. He always looks good, but damn, he looks good in that sweater and those jeans and his glasses–he should wear his glasses more, you’ve always thought. He doesn’t hug anyone, and you wonder if it’s so he doesn’t have to hug you. Instead, he hoists Gigi up into the air and steals her seat on the sofa. It’s his seat, unassigned, but assigned by years of occupying it at every family function. Gi wants to lay claim to it, but she’s just as happy on Charles’ lap as she is curled up in the corner seat of the sectional. 
You keep meeting his eyes, snapping them back to the ground every time. It’s sad, if you think about it too long. You were right,the two of you are too entangled. There’s no separating you, not with ties that run so deep, not when you and Charles are just pieces of a giant web of people. There are a million invisible strings and unseen connections that intertwine every member of your family and every last one of your friends. 
You’re painfully cordial. He helps your mom serve dessert, hands you a plate with a corner piece of cake and your favorite ice cream, doesn’t have to ask you like he does everyone else. You don’t even know how he knows your favorite flavor of ice cream, why he remembers that you love the corner piece of cake. 
You thank him, tell him the wine he brought is good and overpriced. I’ve missed being judged for every purchase I made He said, and you told him he couldn’t get rid of you that easily. It’s weird, the weirdest, because he did get rid of you pretty easily. 
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“I’m going to F1. Sauber.” He told you in his kitchen while the two of you were washing dishes. You dropped the forks into the dishwasher with a spattering of clangs.
“Really?” You asked, a glaring absence of excitement in your voice. You knew it was coming, everyone knew it was only a matter of time, a talent like his is destined to get to the top. You knew it was coming, but, still, you selfishly and silently hoped it wouldn’t work out. He was yours, and you wanted to keep him to yourself, hated how much you already had to share him with the rest of the world. Gone for nine months of the year, away from home and away from you, it will be so lonely. 
He’s happy to leave you behind, overjoyed, even, and you struggle to come to grips with it, struggle to separate the emotions he’s feeling about achieving the dream versus the ones he feels about leaving you. It feels like the end of the world to your young and naive heart, like nothing is ever going to be the same, like you’re losing another person you love more than life. 
– –
It was the beginning of the season, he hadn’t been home in almost two months, was in the middle of a double header, China and Azerbaijan, you think. You were just trying to survive to Monaco. He’d never been so busy, you’ve never missed him so much. 
Your roommates were having a party, and you were working late. When you got home, his favorite song was playing through the apartment. You don’t know the name, aren’t even sure about the artist, but you know every word, learned them all against your will. Listened to him sing it under his breath while he cooked and scream it during long car rides and blast from his headphones so loud you were worried he’d have hearing damage. He was always, always, singing this song, and you were always, always, asking him to turn it off. 
You wished he was here right now, singing it out of tune and thinking he’s a popstar. You wish you could begrudgingly sing it with him. Instead, you grab a snack from the pantry and lock your bedroom door and put in your headphones, play your music so loud you can’t hear the party on the other side of the door. Tune it out, turn off your longing for him with it. 
You can’t wait until you graduate, until you can pack everything up into a little suitcase and spend all of your money and follow him around the world, can’t wait until you never have to miss him again. 
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Come see me. He texted, a month after your Dad’s birthday, right before pre-season testing in Bahrain. He’s already there, or so you can piece together from the text, from the attachment in the subjectless email he’d sent you. Plane ticket, two, actually. Nice to Dubai, Dubai to Muharraq. Both first class. 
No. You replied. Get a refund.
See you tomorrow night. You hated the cockiness of the reply, hated more that you were already packing a suitcase. He didn’t even ask if you were working, didn’t check to see if your schedule was clear or if it was even something you wanted to do. 
I’m not your booty call.
Trust me, I know. He said. Ma vie serait tellement plus simple si tu l'étais. Well, he’s not wrong about that one. 
Your sister drives you to the airport. “I think I’m in too deep.” You told her. You two have never done shallow, she said. You promised to protect yourself, to prioritize yourself, and to text her updates whenever you had them. 
You wished your life was as simple as hers, a good job and a husband and a perfect baby girl. Big family parties and plenty of babysitters for date night and a village that loved and supported everything they did. She had the perfect family, had all her ducks in a row and her shit situated. “I love living vicariously through your insane life.” She said, and you kissed her cheek goodbye. 
– –
You follow his instructions, feel like you’re on a delusional scavenger hunt. Board the plane, land in Dubai, board another plane, land in Muharraq, get on the bus, talk to Azim at the front desk of the hotel, he knows you’re coming. Azim isn’t there. He works the night shift, apparently. 
Azim is not here. You texted your sister. 
Who is Azim?
They call Azim, he answers, and it’s all sorted out when the day-shift manager hands you a key. You wonder what Charles had told Azim. There’s a girl coming, be discreet. It doesn’t seem like him, none of it seems like him. Azim, I’m drunk and tired and invited my best friend, who claims to need space from me, to my room. Please let her in. That felt like more of a possibility, felt like it would confirm your suspicions, that he doesn’t want you here. He wants you, of last year, here. You, of France, likely. 
You’re not having sex with him. Not happening, you won’t fold, not even if he asks nicely. It would solve nothing, and has already fucked up enough of your relationship. If you suck his dick again, you won’t be able to be cordial at birthday parties, he’ll forget what kind of ice cream you like, and neither of you will ever be seen at the christmas cabin again. 
When you get to the room, the suite, you find there’s two bedrooms. Maybe he wasn’t looking for France, maybe he got into the room and saw there was another room and had a momentary lapse where he thought, you know who would enjoy being here? He bought the tickets, sent the text, and by the time he realized what he’d done, it was too late to back out. 
You’re replying to emails on the couch when he walks through the door. That redesign deal, after months and months of back and forth about something as small as the shade of one pixel versus another, is finally launching this weekend. You’re trying to make sure everything is in order, putting the final bows on the project and making sure no ends are left loose. 
“Hi.” You call out, in case he forgot he invited you. 
“Hi.” He says, appears in the lamp-lit room all comfy in that one sweatshirt you’ve always loved on him. “Are you watching L’Atalante?” He asks, moving past you and into the kitchen. It’s too normal. Eerily so, the plane might have passed through the z-axis or something and now you’re in an alternate timeline where none of it ever went sour. 
“No.” Everytime you watch it you think of him. Not in the cheesy, God, I love him and he is such the main character in this love story, way. In the God, I love him and wish he was here to make fun of me for loving this movie, way. “Haven’t watched it in a while.”
“Shame.” He says. “I liked that movie.”
You don’t feel like humoring him about this again, vividly remembering exactly where it got you the last time. Really, you could blame all of this on that fucking movie. If you never watch it, he never asks to come in, you never have sex, and everything is happy-go-lucky between the two of you. “How’s the car this year?”
“Don’t know yet.” He says, pulls a bottle of water from the fridge, the seal snapping when he turns the cap. “Why aren’t you watching L’Atalante?” He takes a drink.
“I told you.” You say quietly, unfocused on your words, fingers rapidly moving across your keyboard. 
“No, you told me you haven’t watched it.” He says, flops down onto the couch. “I want to know why.”
“I don’t know, because I haven’t felt like it.” You tell him, a little more annoyed this time. You haven’t watched the movie. A lot of people don’t watch their favorite movie all of the time. “Why do you care so much? Did you call me out here to play anything but?”
“I called you out here because I miss my best friend.”
“You don’t know me, anymore.”
“It’s been a few months, not a few lifetimes.” Even then, he’d probably still remember the corner piece of cake and his hand would probably still hover behind you protectively and find you in the dark rooms and the crowded rooms. You know no amount of time could make you forget his favorite song, or at what point in his day he gets nervous, what he needs when everything is going wrong, and the way he can sober you up with one look. “I still know you. I still love you.” You sympathize with it, relate to it, because nothing is as hard as trying to unlove another person, you’ve come to learn. “I miss my best friend.”
Don’t break. I still love you, Charles. Don’t break. I miss my best friend, too. Don’t break. Don’t break. “We can pretend for a weekend.” He says. “Just, be normal again. Be us again.” Us. There is no us. Don’t break. 
It’s not like it’s an argument you can just apologize and move on from. He can’t apologize for loving you, for needing to vocalize it. You can’t apologize for loving him, for not being able to take the leap. Normal, normal sounds so good. 
Can we go back to normal after this? 
Yeah. Back to normal. 
You never should have let yourself believe him. You wonder if he loved you, then. If he knew when he said it that it was a lie. You can’t remember when you knew you loved him, like really, really loved him. It was gradual, you suppose, a combination of time and sweetness and jealousy, of grief and joy and innocence. At some point, you were forced to face the sobering reality, but, you don’t know how long you’ve loved him like this. Does he remember a moment, or was it gradual for him, too? 
“Back to normal.” You said. The ultimate game of anything but, the final boss of your friendship. “Just for the weekend?”
“Whatever you want.” He says. “We can do whatever you want.” 
Don’t break. Do not break. “Okay,” you crack, and then, with the force of your entire heart, “yeah.” You break. 
A long time ago, before the gradual realization, you thought Charles and you were platonic soulmates. Today, can you go back to that? To the platonic love. Was there ever a fork in the road, a wrong turn, a path where you end up somewhere else, or have you always been destined to end up like this, in a hotel room, in a foreign country hiding from the rest of the world and pretending everything is light and breezy and comfortable when it’s far from. 
– –
It’s Monday morning, and your weekend together is over. It was a shorter adjustment period than you could have predicted, like relatives who don’t see eachother but once a year. It’s awkward hellos and bombed small talk until suddenly one of you makes a joke and it’s like you were apart for minutes instead of months. 
You go to this tourist attraction together, the Tree of Life. It’s a four-hundred-year-old tree that’s like, ten meters tall or something. It sits alone in the middle of the desert and nobody knows how it’s still alive. It’s a spectacle, according to Google, and was nominated to be another wonder of the world. Someone says its roots run fifty meters deep, and it sticks with you, the idea that there’s so much beneath the surface. You wonder if the tree had a companion four hundred and some odd years ago, if it always imagined spending every day with the companion tree, if their roots were tangled fifty meters below the surface. The tree is gone, now, but maybe its roots are still there, fifty meters down, all tangled up in the roots of this tree. 
It’s probably not from the Garden of Eden like they claim, and there’s surely a scientifically sound explanation for where the tree is getting its water from in the middle of the desert in a rain-less country. It’s just a big tree, destined to dry up and fall over and burn with the rest of the planet. It’s just a big tree, unless it isn’t. 
Does the tree know if it’s special or if it’s just that? You don’t know if what you and Charles have is something special or if you’re just something, but, then again, you aren’t a tree. Maybe the tree knows. Maybe you know. How does a person know that they know?
Charles seems to know, to think you’re worth his unrelenting patience, deserving of the corner slice and the color green, of the stars and the sand and everything in between. He understands you, and he still seems to know, to declare with confidence in the rush of a sports bar in the middle of Texas that he loves you. He’s sure enough that he skips Christmas because you thought space would make everything better, doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong even when you so obviously are, doesn’t stop loving you when you push him in the opposite direction. 
You’ve never been that sure about anything, you think. 
“Looks a bit lonely, doesn’t it?” He offers into the dry air, taking a picture with his phone. You hadn’t thought of it as lonely until he said something, viewed it as possessing an other-worldly strength and unmatched level of determination. The tree never told its companion it loved it, the tree kept to itself and eventually, learned to live alone in the sand. 
You shook your head. “It’s strong.”
“You can be both.” The tree can be both, he’d meant to say, because the Tree of Life is not a metaphor. It’s just a tree. 
– –
The weekend, the game of anything but, the avoidance of the World’s biggest elephant, is over. It’s Tuesday, now, breakfast from room service in the suite, awkward tension filling all the available space, compromising each molecule at an atomic level. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, because he always is, and it sits on him so nicely, looks so comfortable on his skin. You’re wearing a yellow pajama top and the silky material is charged with static and clings to you in all the spots you wish it wouldn’t. 
How do you know when it’s real? You had texted your sister in the middle of the night prior, two-twenty-three if you remember correctly. You couldn’t sleep, had a bad dream–couldn’t decide what was worse, the nightmare while you sleep or the nightmare when you wake.  
You don’t. She replied at a normal hour, when normal people wake up after going to sleep at a normal time. You never know for sure.
That’s fucked.
“I booked a flight home last night.” You told him, picking at the plate of eggs in front of you, the fork scraping on the ceramic plate like nails on a chalkboard, your teeth clinking against the metal everytime it was in your mouth. Just, wrong. In every possible way. 
“Why?” He asks, takes a drink of orange juice, a new quirk, you think. He always used to complain about the pulp getting stuck in his teeth. Don’t be such a princess, you’d tell him and he would roll his eyes, drink the remainder of the glass just to prove he could do it without complaining. 
“The deal was a weekend.” You say, pretend you’re not conflicted, regretting buying the ticket, admit you’re running away again. “The weekend is over.”
“You’re just going to leave again?” He nods, reassures himself through the sentence, wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Not even going to talk about it?” You stay quiet, teeth clicking against the fork. “I–you are. God, you are so–”
“–Anything but.” You invoke it like a constitutional amendment, like a prophecy, like an unbreakable law. 
“​​Oh, va te faire foutre.” Your head rears back, but you don’t let it sting, know you deserve it. “We’re not doing Anything-fucking-but.” It’s been a long time since he was angry with you, openly like this, cussing you out. He’s scary when he’s angry at you, because he’s always calm about it. Raises his voice, maybe, but never yells at you. You wished he’d scream sometimes, it would be easier to read. 
“This weekend was really great, Charles. I don’t want to ruin it.” 
“I just. I don’t understand.” He runs his hand over his stubble, deep in contemplation, trying to analyze you, make sense of you. Good luck, you want to tell him. “I love you. I really, really fucking love you. Je sais que je ne suis pas fou. Vous le sentez aussi.”
A single, heavy tear falls from the corner of your eye. You wipe it with the rough cuff of your jacket before it can trail down your face. The inside of your cheek is bleeding, you think, because you can’t feel the pressure from your teeth but you can taste copper. “I’m scared.” There, you said it. You admitted it, exhaled it with the weight of the world, vomited it into his lap. 
His lips are tight in their frown, eyes red and glossy like he’s going to cry, too. He laughs, though, a sad and defeated chuckle. “You think I’m not scared?” He asks, voice fighting against itself not to crack. “I’m scared as hell to want you.”
He’s scared? But, nothing scares him. He’s fearless, you’re frightened. Unflinching and hesitant. Gutsy and cowardly. Nothing scares him, not even his own mortality. You’re supposed to believe that you, of all people, you, scare him? Impossible, you think.
“I didn’t tell you for fun.” He continues. “I told you, because it was eating me alive. I was so scared to tell you, thought I would ruin us. Mais tu partais, et je ne pouvais pas te perdre. Je ne pouvais pas.” 
Why, why, why is this so fucking hard for you. Sixteen-year-old you, twenty-year-old you, twenty-five-year-old you. Every version of you is screaming at you, we’ve loved him forever, this is all you’ve ever wanted from him. They kick your shins and gut-punch the breath from your lungs and scrape their nails behind your eyes. They are furious, because for longer than you can remember every wish–shooting stars, birthday candles, fountain pennies, fallen eyelashes, dandelions, and ladybugs–they’ve all been for the same thing. The very thing being served to you on a desert platter, all you have to do is pick up the fork. 
“Tu as peur?” 
“Pétrifié.”
Pick up the fork. Eat the corner piece of cake and savor every bite. Be scared. Be terrified that the world is going to take something pure and wreck it. Be scared, but do it together. Pick up the fork.
“I love you, too.”
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You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. He was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to. 
“Ask before you touch, please.” You told him, his hand in yours, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage. 
He is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. “Hi.” You beam.
“Hi” He says, kisses you, runs his hand through the boy’s hair. “Quoi de neuf, Crevette?”
“Il fait chaud, papa.” He says, with poor enunciation and the dramatic waving of a little hand, fanning himself. Charles nods, hoists the little man onto his hip, whispers something in his ear. A private conversation between the two of them, you don’t dare intrude. “Dis-sa.” Charles says, repeats it when he’s met with a giggly belly laugh. 
“We go.” He says, in little, butchered english with a thick french accent. It’s easier to decipher a babble. 
Charles laughs, quirks his brows at you, shrugs. “We go.” He backs away from you slowly. 
“We go, where?” You say, laughing, too, because you can’t not laugh at your little boy’s giggle. It’s too pure, cracks even the toughest exteriors. Charles looks to his mini-me. “Où allons-nous mon amour?”
“La crème glacée.” He says, beams at his father. 
“You coming for ice cream, Maman?” Charles asks, holds out his free hand because it’s a rhetorical question. He’s looking at you with the eyes that make you sober and find you in any crowd, but he doesn’t have to have eyes on you to know you’re coming. “Do you think they have Maman’s favorite flavor?” He asked. 
“Ouais. Ils l'ont eu."
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