Your kimi bono fotb ask response made me realize that despite having followed you for a while and as a result having seen many posts that you tagged fotb i never actually realized what it stood for lol for the past few months i’ve been alternating between thinking it stands for fresh off the boat or, later, once i realized that it was a fantasy au, fellowship of the (b)ring. Oops.
So anyways i loved your answer to the ask so much that i just read through everything you’ve tagged with it and wow!! This world you’ve imagined up is so so sick!! I’m always impressed with your ideas but this one in particular is crazy to me, probably because it comes with a whole world with its own lore and also SO many characters with rich backgrounds + interlocking stories (and, if i read one of your asks right, some character sheets???) Did you know you are insane and also an inspiration to us all?? ? Anyways. I am quite curious about how you see rosquez fitting in given what little you mentioned about fantasy spain and fantasy italy not getting along but also so interested in enea + pedro (loyal knight pedro im foaming at the mouth…. i imagine him in my mind’s eye and I like what i see!!)
scREAMS sometimes i completely forget that i never actually call it by its full name. have i EVER called it by its full name on main??? oh my god. anyway fotb stands for Flat Of The Blade lmao. fellowship of the 🅱️ring is vastly superior in every way, though
re: the lore and everything like. as i've mentioned in passing a couple times there is a whole map which is how you know a bitch is in too deep and YES there are character sheets!! i think sometime early last year i was relistening to one of my fave d&d podcasts and was like well. i have this fantasy au. might as well build fucking d&d character sheets for the fotb cast. and i did! there are ten of them as it turns out i just looked. i love putting time and energy into things that will never see the light of day
PHEWWWW YOU HAVE UNLEASHED SOME THINGS WITH THIS ASK!!! really this should be a two-parter but we'll see how we go i apologize so much in advance!!
SOOOOOOOOOO rosquez. here's the thing no matter the au they've got to have a whirlwind romance that turns tragic. and that's what happens to them here naturally. i guess to explain their bit we have to talk about the war a little bit? as touched on briefly in the previous post about fotb, the war started out mostly as little border skirmishes between basically all of the sections/provinces/countries. no one really liked each other and no one wanted to work with each other but fantasy spain & italy especially had a TON of beef because there's this disputed territory in between them that they'd been fighting over for yeeears and years even before the war started in earnest. (this area in "present day" is technically neutral land but is largely controlled by the south in collaboration with fantasy spain) (somewhat relevantly all of the countries are all still sovereign, even fantasy italy! lewis is The King people respect him all around but he's only truly the King in the south)
anyway the war happens, it is bloody and messy and unfocused until they (as mentioned) find focus and unite against the blood magic-using italians, which is fair. honestly. at that point you've got the italians largely just defending their own territory vs making any attempts at invasion, and their "proper" army is pretty flimsy by the end of everything especially once the magic runs out lol (there's some stuff to say about the magic but we'll get into that another time). BUT during one of the later stage border skirmishes (this is after the Defeat of italy but the war drags on a bit after that because of the pre-existing spain-italy beef) there's an incident where valentino is separated from his roving gang of horseback orphans and is near-fatally injured, left for dead, pinned under his dead horse. i have referred to the italians as horse cultists a few times; this is partially because, well, ferrari. and partially because they LOVE their horses. like a lot of these guys have grown up with their horses from childhood and when their horses die it's a massive deal, often more of a big deal than a person dying? there's all sorts of rituals and funeral pyres and things and usually a year-long grieving period where they just. don't have a horse. don't ride. it's agony lol. so vale being pinned under the body of his dead horse who he has been riding for well over a decade is traumatic on a lot of levels lmao
enter: marc marquez! marc, who is like, 19 or 20 at this point? and joined in the fighting three or four years prior more out of honour than outright hate for fantasy italy has also been separated from his gang of roving spaniards, but he is not injured, and he finds vale, and it's like. i think valentino is probably pretty well-known, definitely in fantasy italy and to a lesser extent in fantasy spain? infamous over there for sure. so marc has this opportunity to kill valentino, and to be able to say I Killed Valentino Rossi, which would be... glorious, especially for someone his age. like he'd be lauded forfuckinever about it. but i think also marc at this point has a very tender heart. and he knows enough about the culture to know this dead horse situation is a legitimate tragedy, and so the options then narrow down to mercy-killing (which would still end with Glory, technically) or. save valentino's life.
shocking no one he chooses the latter lmao. so you've got this short stocky dude heaving a full-grown horse off of this guy who has killed So Many of marc's countrymen, and then checking out vale's wounds, and then TREATING his wounds. i don't think marc is big on like healing-craft by any means but he knows enough that vale is stabilized, and he's able to get vale to a relatively safe place (significantly less safe for marc, because they head west and into fantasy italy!). they also camp out that night and marc goes back to the body of vale's horse and clips some of her hair for vale to keep because, as mentioned, he knows enough about the culture to know how significant the horse is. vale wants to hate him sooooooooo bad. but is. so touched by this
it takes them like two weeks, then, but they manage to stumble back to valentino's hometown (where all the orphans are yay! and where luca's dad is the "lord" (there's a bit of a different system in fantasy italy which again we'll get into another time). and marc just. stays there. for like a year and a half. and the rosquez romance grows and grows and it gets very Very serious until there's a fucking raid by a rogue fantasy spain group lmao
essentially what happens then is this town is fucking decimated. any kids that weren't orphans before sure are now, including luca. the town is burnt to the ground, so so so many people die, and this town was sort of one of the last Proper towns left? so it's this extremely horrific final blow and it happens AFTER the war which is like. not good. (nothing ever comes of it because fantasy italy is still on thin ice and since all the countries are sovereign lewis can't intervene and insist on any punishments etc, and fantasy france just doesn't give a fuck). so this is happening, and vale is standing in the fucking inferno that was his home, and he immediately blames marc. how could this group have gotten so close undetected without help? has marc been a plant this whole time? basically vale goes temporarily truly insane and marc is pleading with him and trying to reason with him but obviously this doesn't go well; valentino goes after him with a knife or sword and fucks up marc's arm (!) and at that point marc runs. valentino chases him for ages through the forest in the night, it's all very dramatic. there's some ironing out that needs to be done with the details here but marc encounters An Italian who does believe that he's not been undercover this whole time and helps him escape, and coincidentally (like a day or two later) marc runs into alex close to the border of fantasy spain, at which point he just collapses and is real fucked up for a long time, but they get him home, relatively safe if not entirely whole
and vale spends the next ten years literally roving the land killing any spaniards he sees even close to italian land because he hates marc So Much lmao. marc sort of grows out of it but he carries that sadness with him for a very very long time
(they do see each other again during the second war. but that's another story)
okay this is so much. this is too much. i'm going to rb with the pedrea bit even though i THINK it should be shorter than this LOL but!!! thank you THANK you for coming into my inbox and indeed my HEART by asking abt fotb 😭😭😭😭
hi it's me i'm back again. hello. it is time to talk about fotb pedrea. for some background first of all here's the thing okay it's not a crackship it is a RAREPAIR of the highest order and i'm okay with that. some moons ago i saw this video and then a while later this one, which set me down a path i could never return from. and now we have one of my fave arcs in the entirety of fotb lmao
so where we left off in the previous post is of course the end of the war. the year before and after the "true" end is messy and not all that defined as far as an actual ending, and in that span you have a lot of typical War Things going on, and in this case we're going to talk about prisoners of war and slavery and things and also there will be some implied/referenced sexual violence SO tread carefully if these are concerns for you (i won't go into any real detail but the implications are there). HERE WE GO
in the final months of the war, whatever date that is defined as, the spaniards have overpowered the italians and end up taking a lot of them back to fantasy spain with them, and fantasy spain has some pretty loosey goosey rules about slavery. which is to say there are no rules or laws against it or anything to regulate it really; in the other countries you have fairly rigid laws about thralldom but not fantasy spain. so you have a lot of mid-teens to mid-20s people being brought over to do manual labour, mainly
enea is one of these prisoners of war! yippee! so enea is around 15 when he's essentially kidnapped to build things or dig holes or whatever it is they have need for, BUT we are still in a low fantasy setting, so. there are hella brothels around. there's a reasonably famous brothel that's just off of the main south-north road, and this brothel is run by flavio. briatore. you know, that guy. pretty much everyone in this au has some level of subjective goodness, like vale is evil to the spaniards but a hero to the italians, marc is evil to vale (and by proxy his gang of orphans) but a hero to the spaniards. flavio is just a dick. he's been living in fantasy spain for a long long long time, pre and post war, and he's been running this brothel for at least this long. at some point, probably a year or two after the war, he's perusing the slave-wares of whoever happens to own them right now and finds like. 16-17 year old enea. and is like yeah that one will do. and now enea is a whore yay and yippee!!!
we can skip over a lot of those early days because they're not fun for enea. a lot of citizens will pay a lot for an italian to be cruel to at this point (and for a long time after, even) so enea is a huge cash cow? it's a brilliant business decision technically lol. ANYWAYYYY
(i won't get deep into this because clearly i can't shut up about anything BUT very early on marc goes to this brothel with carlos (sainz jr, you know, the crown prince) who is like well you have all of this rossi-based trauma why don't you get it out a little bit. and marc goes in with the intention of doing this to enea specifically and has a bit of an epiphany about like. enea is just a person. he's just a person with a family, he's someone's son, someone's brother (marc has a truly horrible vision of alex being put into this position and feels a DEEP amount of disgust with himself for ever considering hurting enea), and ends up having a little freak out in enea's room. enea takes a long while to warm up to him but marc does keep coming back and eventually they actually become really close friends (and later on With Benefits! marcnea as a treat))
so fast forward, like, seven or eight years. enea is pretty established in the brothel, he's a bit of a bitch (fair) and has learned how to deal with you know. the inherent trials of being a whore. and he's very settled he's submitted to probably a lifetime of doing All That and then this weird fuckin kid who talks very fast and very loud stumbles Very drunkenly into enea's room, having just sort of waved a bag of coins around and said GIMME WHOEVER. and was directed into enea's room. surprise, it's pedro!
pedro is like 17 or 18 and a shockingly accomplished bounty hunter/sellsword, he travels mainly alone except when he's hired into groups which he is super choosy about. he's a super weird little dude with extremely deep pockets, even though he sends a ton of money back to his family on the coast. (there is obviously some permin backstory up in here but it barely comes into play at least not for a long long time)
anyway. pedro has never been to a whorehouse before and has gotten so spectacularly drunk that he could not perform even if he wanted to, so he just talks at enea for like an hour and then passes out on his bed. he's paid for the whole night, so enea's like sick. cool. and just chills because he doesn't have to take any more clients lmao. this becomes sort of a theme for them; pedro sort of kind of gruffly apologizes in the morning and tips enea directly (enea has a secret stash of coin under a floorboard (how original) because as a non-fantasy-spain citizen he's not allowed to own anything) and then fucks off to do bounty hunter things. but then he comes back. and he keeps coming back!
there's a lot of getting very drunk and ranting because like. he's paying for a captive audience at this point right? and after like the fourth time in two months that he's sitting there talking about some idiot he had to work with, enea first of all has the realization that oh. this guy is. just lonely huh. which is not a rare thing for enea's clients to be? but it's significantly rarer for them not to have sex with him or anything even adjacent to sex. when enea interrupts (pedro, scandalized) to point this out (pedro, embarrassed) pedro is like. well i mean i'm paying for it but i like the people i have sex with to Want to have sex with me. and enea works very hard not to laugh in his face and then cranks up his charm, like, oh of course i want it, of course i want you, touching pedro all gentle and sensual, and pedro just stares at him the Most sober he's ever looked like. well i don't want you to lie about it either
here is the thing. i think pedro does think with his dick a lot. but i think also he has such a chip on his shoulder about like... he doesn't HAVE to pay for sex. and he doesn't want to force someone into anything, which like. the paying for it is essentially forcing it. which he does not want
so he keeps coming back. and paying for enea's time. until enea starts looking forward to his visits, and pedro starts asking questions instead of just raving at him about whatever pops into his head, and they actually get to know each other? and eventually they do have sex, and enea is shocked and appalled to find that he does want it, even though pedro is kind of bad at it, but like. that's something that can be taught. and enea's an expert!
after a while, enea realizes maybe he is in trouble. it's for sure a pedro fell first, enea fell harder situation. because pedro has been coming in and progressively talking more and more about how bored enea must be here, how much of a pain it is for pedro to detour ALL the way back here (he is lying it is not a pain he'd travel to the ends of the earth for enea), and why don't they just run away? why doesn't pedro just build a house for them ("you don't know how to build anything," enea says, baffled. "like it's hard?" pedro snaps, and then wanders around enea's room for an hour pointing out theoretical ways to build the things in it) and they'll live together and enea won't ever have to fuck anyone he doesn't want to ever again?
there's a big chunk of this that i've written, in which pedro comes in and he's quiet and exhausted and he's hurt, which he often is, but it's a lot worse this time and enea hadn't realized how much he cared? until this moment?
Enea has the sudden, startling realization that he does not want to lose this.
It has been so many years since Enea has had anything at all, much less something to miss, or to want. But he finds, devastatingly, that he wants this.
All of the joking, all of the banter—every time Pedro has insisted that he’ll build them a house on the lake, and Enea will have all the fish he can catch, and Pedro will keep him safe and maybe grow him a garden—it all finds its way into Enea’s chest, clogging up his lungs, curling around his heart. He hadn’t let himself want it. He’s not allowed to want.
directly after this, after enea realizes he is in love and how dangerous that is to both him AND pedro (like they're not going to be good to pedro if he tries to take enea away from the brothel. flavio is not a cool dude), diggia shows up.
as is canon irl diggia and enea were friends growing up, but while enea was dragged off to fantasy spain to live in servitude diggia went up to the city and became essentially an anointed knight? and has been living the best possible life one could live in post-war fantasy italy. so he and this gang of other knights happen to be traveling along this north-south road (the spaniards do not love this but it's legal, they can't REALLY stop them since they have shared custody over the road w the south) and they hear about this brothel, which they're like yeah sure why not. but then they also hear that they've got an italian there, which like. they do not love either!! probably they have some lofty goals of freeing all manner of italian slaves but can't do all that much about it without risking open war again. anyway. they go to the brothel. diggia finds enea and somehow recognizes him immediately, and then comes back in the night and steals him away. steals him away which here means he begs enea to come home (home!!) and enea is still super shaken up about how invested he is in pedro so he's like yeah. yeah no that makes sense sure.
and then they go back to fantasy italy together.
it is so important to note here that the theme of this arc is in fact loneliness and that like. feeling of you-can-never-go-back, right? pedro, because of [permin backstory and also some family stuff] doesn't feel like he can go to his family's home on the coast and just live out his life there as a fisherman. enea, who has not been home in nearly a decade by now and has not been allowed to have anything for just as long, is like. devastated when they get back to fantasy italy, and he sees these landscapes he grew up in, and all he feels is this vague empty ache for something that doesn't exist anymore. diggia does not understand this and keeps trying to insist that enea can come with him, he can train in the city, he has a home that enea can live in, they can make a new life for him and it'll be "just like old times!" but that's not. possible for enea
so he just fuckin goes back. he marches straight back into fantasy spain even knowing that if flavio finds him he'll either kill him or torture him to keep him docile, and he goes looking for pedro
there's some fun little travel bits here, where enea (sick, because it's fucking winter) runs into marc (headed back up from a visit to the sainz family (marc is a lord now it's a whole thing)) and then marc travels With enea (there is a loosely canon bit where enea meets fermin but it's not all that relevant now) and they have one of those dramatic moments where someone matching pedro's description has been hung for treason or killed in some manner but enea does noooot give up. and eventually he's like fuck it i'll go to that stupid fucking lake pedro talked about ad nauseam and if he's not there at least i'll be able to die doing what i love (fishing)
and guess who is there at the lake. building the most fuck ugly house you've ever seen in your life. surprise! it's pedro :)
this has gotten absurdly long (AGAIN) but that's the gist of the pedrea arc? there's a lot that happens between the first meeting and this reunion, and a lot that happens after, including their involvement in the second war (they don't start it they just go fight in it and there's MORE DRAMA!!!) but that's like!! a lot of it!!! i am always doing such a poor job of explaining these things but for whatever reason i'm always thinking about them in this verse, and their stupid bantery bickering, and pedro furiously glaring at his tiny plants trying to make them grow with the power of his mind and also being extremely enchanted with bearded enea (he has been Smoov all over until they meet again) and just generally like. falling in love. being in love. fuckin CHILLING
anyway. thanks for putting up with me i need to go reread all of the wips of them and cry about it SORRY FOR THE WAY I AMMMM
tbh I just wanted to draw a standalone illustration scene kind of thing, but in the back of my mind I was starting to construct some horrible epic involving a gladiator from thrace and a seer who refused to tell a prince what he wanted to hear and got his eyes stabbed out for it
And now he has to look again. Urgently. Compulsively.
So he picks the phone back up from the sticky bartop, the screen already dark from inactivity, and unlocks it with fingers that suddenly feel weirdly clumsy against the display.
The picture is still there at the bottom of the chat. Slightly blurry. Clearly rushed. But devastatingly, undeniably, tangibly real.
It’s the McLaren jersey – his McLaren jersey, bright papaya orange and stamped with the number four across the chest – except the problem is that the body underneath it is objectively far too broad and muscular for a shirt that hangs comfortably loose on Lando himself.
The fabric stretches across Oscar’s shoulders obscenely well.
ZERO CYCLE, CHAPTER 2: Training/Bastion – fanart by elmocracy
no idea if you’re still taking fic requests (and absolutely no worries if not!! thank you for your banger writing as is) but if you perhaps are.
I keep reading your lando pussy curse free use thing and drooling it’s everything and I’d love to see that universe explored a bit more? it’d be nice to see what george does in those workout leggings or how oscar gets passed around… or one of the drivers who didn’t get brought up in the og fic even!
anyway keep up the great work your writing is enchanting
in the same verse as this piece <3
It's a matter of convenience, when George wakes up with the curse, to slide into the tightest workout leggings he owns. Without his dick to fill them, underwear just feel strange, so obviously he has to forgo those. It just makes sense. Some people find the loosest things in their closet to hide in. George prefers having everything locked in tight. Sue him.
If it were up to him—and he would never admit it out loud—he would skip over everyone else and head straight to Williams every time he's like this. It's fine, sure, messing about with whoever he happens upon on the way. Fine to have to waddle through the paddock, with an arsecrack full of leggings, and slip into Alex's driver room to wrap it all up. But really. If it were up to George, he'd go to Alex, and he'd let Alex fuck him all morning until they both fall asleep and George wakes up normal again.
Unfortunately, it rarely is up to George. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.
Lewis catches him out on his stealthy attempt to navigate the paddock. Lewis says, "I think I have a pair of those," gesturing vaguely at George's leggings, and George lets himself be guided into a Ferrari hospitality toilet. Lewis is always good about it. They've only really fucked about it once; mostly, Lewis likes rubbing his big hand against George's fresh pussy through a layer of fabric. Likes grinding the heel of his palm against him until his thighs are shaking, until he can hear the wet of himself soaking through the lycra. Lewis always makes him come, which is nice. Not everyone is so kind.
Relatedly; it's Max who catches him next. It's George's fault, really, for spotting Lando and dodging mindlessly out of the way; George, personally, gets a bit shy about seeing anyone else who's been cursed recently. He's always a little embarrassed, especially, about the way Alex uses Lando's cunt like a messenger pigeon every time. This is beside the point. The point is that George slips down what he thinks is a deserted alley of the paddock, runs directly into Max Verstappen, and ends up bent over right there with his leggings yanked down around his thighs.
Max doesn't speak to him when they do this. Which is fine by George, but it is annoying that there's no perfunctory oh, shall I wear a condom? Would you rather I don't nut inside of you and make a damn mess of the place? Annoying, but unsurprising. Once Max is done, even, he doesn't speak. Just pulls out, yanks up his ugly khakis, and grunts what could be something in the same solar system as a thank-you.
Whatever.
It's a bit easier after that. Williams isn't all that far, and even though George is squelching with every step he manages to avoid everyone else on his way. He dodges Isack—George is sure he's lovely, but he's not looking to find out today—and Franco—who Lando had talked up with great enthusiasm but again, not today—and then finds himself sneaking through Williams' hospitality without any further incident. Even Carlos doesn't catch him this time.
"I thought someone with wet socks was coming to try to assassinate me," Alex says, the second George shuts the door behind him.
"Do shut up," George says, and lets Alex manhandle him onto his back on the couch.
Alex spends a while doing what Lewis does; rubbing George through his pants, working him up until the wet squelching between his thighs is truly embarrassing. He doesn't get his dick out for a long while, which is always a bit annoying, because George does want it. But it's fine, Alex climbing up between George's legs, hitching his hips down in a parody of fucking. It's gratifying how hard Alex gets. The rigid line of him grinding into George's pussy, pushing the lycra up and in until George might as well be flossing with it.
Eventually, after George has startled himself by coming before Alex even has him bared, Alex sits back. His pupils are blown and his hair is hanging over his forehead, heavy with sweat. He's panting, needy, cupping George's cunt like a stressball.
George says, "Well—" at the same time that Alex says, "Oh, fuck it."
Alex gets both hands between George's legs, crooks his fingers into the seam of the leggings, and pulls.
George makes a noise, furiously turned on. These are some of his favourite pants, he doesn't say. Come to think of it, they're also some of Alex's favourites.
Now, George's pussy is bared to the cold of the room, so wet he shivers the second he's exposed. He means to squirm away but Alex is shoving two fingers inside of him, fucking into him in a weird way that George doesn't understand; his fingers are curled, knuckles dragging against George's insides, but not in a way that is designed to make George feel good.
"Are you—"
Alex pulls his hand away, flicks his wrist. What's left of Max's come splatters the floor.
"I'm not even going to ask," Alex says. It's for the better, probably.
In the next second, Alex's joggers are shoved down, and his cock is out, and George is never so desperately wanting as when he's like this. When he has a cunt for fucking, and Alex's cock is thick and hot and bobbing between them. It feels so right that George should be ashamed of it.
The shame, if there ever was any, escapes him the second Alex fits against him and plunges inside.
George is still so wet that it sounds sloppy when Alex fucks him. Sloppy at first and then sloppier, after Alex comes for the first time. Sloppier still when Alex pulls out, slumping over George's body and pushing his fingers back inside, the pad of his thumb rubbing over and over and over George's clit until all George can do is claw at the back of Alex's head. He's not like this often enough to know if Alex is actually good at this, or if it's just because it's him doing it.
Alex, eventually, gets it up again. He pulls the hole in the crotch of George's leggings even wider, the tight rip of fabric tearing, George's whole body tingling with need or want or something worse. This time Alex fucks him slow, bent right over him so they can kiss, which is something they only do when either of them are like this.
When Alex comes again, it's George who locks his ankles around Alex's hips. It's George who clings to him, holds him close so he won't pull out. He just wants to feel it. The pulse and throb of it, Alex's cock softening slow, slipping out on its own, dribbling a trail of come after it that trickles down between George's arsecheeks and soaks into what's left of the leggings. Alex doesn't seem to mind. He's sleepy, sated. Rubbing his face against George's neck and making some joke that George doesn't catch because he's too busy grinding his clit up against Alex's pelvic until he can make himself come again. He mourns the loss of fullness when he squeezes Alex out with the force of it, but he can't mind so much.
It's another reason that George always bee-lines to Williams when this happens; Alex lets him stay there, clumsily sitting up to pull the shreds of George's leggings off of him, fetching him a pair of gym shorts that George absolutely isn't going to put on until he changes back and cleans up. He makes another joke that George ignores in favour of rolling over to take a nap, waiting for Alex to spoon up behind him before he closes his eyes.
Whump is the air that I breath and a broken wrist in the motorcycle sport? Hallelujah 🙏 I'm kissing your boots for a shred of a paragraph if you would share now or future days
three days late because i have been waffling about what is and isn't canon and also literally 80% of the doc is technically pre-fic. but here's a little bit post-outing, fermin pov, after fermin goes after pedro in his motorhome for an On Track situation and accidentally catches pedro having an actual panic attack
Someone from KTM—the same guy Fermín knocked into in his rush to get to the motorhomes—is muttering in an official’s ear. Fermín shifts on his stool. Pecco, next to him, doesn’t seem to notice.
“Alright,” says the official, “It sounds like Pedro is ill, and he’ll—”
“Oh yes,” Fermín blurts. Like an idiot. “Yes, I saw him. He is very sick. I saw.”
Everyone looks at him like he’s a crazy person, which he kind of is. Why he has this compulsion to vouch for Pedro, to help him make his excuses, he has no idea.
The official blinks up at him, and then opens his mouth, and then very abruptly Pedro is sliding into the stool next to Fermín’s.
Fermín nearly falls out of his seat. It’s a complete 180 to the Pedro from, what, ten minutes ago? His face is still splotchy and pink, but he’s pulled a cap over the mess of his hair, and his eyes look a little swollen, but it’s easy to explain away. Allergies, the heat, whatever. The face that Pedro is presenting now, stony and flat and indifferent, gives nothing away at all.
“Erm—Pedro will be late,” the official finishes, lamely. “Welcome, Pedro. Before we start, we just want to emphasize that we will only be taking questions about racing, and the race, and…”
Fermín stops listening. He leans a little closer to Pedro; thinks about reaching for him, tapping his arm or his knee, and then thinks better of it. His body is so rigid.
“Um. All good?” Fermín asks, quiet as he can get away with.
Pedro doesn’t even look at him. He doesn’t acknowledge Fermín at all. Either Paul told, or he’s put the pieces of Fermin’s idiot word vomit together himself. Either way, Fermín is in a shit spot.
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