there are many many talented women in Motorsport. This is a work of fiction and in no way meant to diminish any of their accomplishments!
also this is set in my ideal alternate universe where the 500 and Monaco GP are still the same day next year.
This one’s a sorta long one lol (wc: 3k)
cw: use of y/n, awkward scenes that made me nervous writing them, multiple time jumps, sexual references (nothing explicit), one bed trope, two clueless idiots, i guess you could say pining but not really, not proof read
He was a stubborn fucker, always convinced he knew what was right.
“The mediums aren’t working” He claimed after a free practice session.
“They are. We have-“ you tried to correct.
He cut you off. “I’m telling you, as the person who is sitting in the car, they’re falling off way too quick. And not worth it.”
Eyes narrowed, you tilted your head. “Perhaps it’s a driver issue then.”
He just shook his head. “Just saying, I think two Hards and a medium for the race.”
You nodded, sure you’d take his opinion into account, but, “we have a team of people whose entire job is analyzing strategy. I’m sure they know what’s best for you.”
And in the race, when he felt that you’d left him on the mediums for too long? “Mate, think about getting me off of these fucking mediums.”
Despite his attitude, “Plan A, Oscar,” was all you said in response.
“And I’m telling you Plan B.”
You chewed your cheek, then looked to Andrea. Andrea looked to your lead engineer. Back at you. He nodded.
You huffed. “Box this lap.”
Oscar said nothing. Not in the moment.
But boy did you hear it after.
“I told you.” Was the very first thing he said to you.
You rolled your eyes. “You do one thing right and you think you’re the smartest man alive.”
He shrugged. “Smarter than you, I guess.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. “Just go get ready for media before I have Sophie on my ass.” You gave his shoulder a shove.
A chuckle, the sound low and rumbled. “Wanna come with? Watch me change?” It wasn’t a real offer, said just to get a reaction out of you.
Shaking your head, you gave him another shove. “Get out of here.”
It was flirting. Thinly veiled by constant arguments—or bater, as Lando would say.
Three races later, Oscar caught too much of a curb, lost control and hit the wall. The rear suspension broke, as well as the rear wing.
You waited for him in the garage.
He blew right past you.
You followed him all the way to his driver’s room.
“I told you to watch that curb.” You expressed, calm but with the undertones of irritation.
“I’m aware.” He muttered.
“Then what was what?” You gestured a hand to the door.
He sighed. “A mistake.”
Your arm fell back to your side, shoulders slumping. Something was off about him. You could see it in the way he threw his gloved down and yanked at the sleeves of his overalls.
Concern etched its way onto your face. “You alright?”
“Yeah. Fine.” He dismissed.
But you pressed, stepped forward. “Don’t lie to me.”
Mirroring your movements, he also took a step closer. Dangerously close. Almost chest to chest. He glared down at you, but the look was fragile. Forced. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak-
“Oscar, media!” The shout through the door came after two quick knocks.
His eyes lingered on yours a beat longer before he shoved past you.
McLaren held their usual end of season party. You were in a blue dress that reached your ankles. The top half didn’t hide your curves, nor did it annunciate them. From your hips, the dress fell strait. The happy medium between professional and good looking.
Andrea took the microphone.
“Thank you all for being here tonight.” He started. Many more thanks followed after that. Paid special attention to each department, devised individual thanks to each of them. And then to the drivers. “You both gave us an incredible show this year, even if it did make us all nervous on many occasions. And thank you so much for maintaining the peace between you two. Truly, it makes everyone’s lives much, much easier.” The room erupted in laughter. “So if you could both come up here?” Andrea gestured with his hand.
Lando spoke first, thanked the team for the car they built and Oscar for allowing him to have a chance at the championship. Cheeky, as Oscar would say.
Oscar was next, followed the same script of thanking the whole team for helping him win his first championship. And then, “and a special thanks to my race engineer, y/n. Despite the many disagreements we had, this wouldn’t have been possible at all without you.”
Your face went pink. You gave him a small smile and a nod.
Later in the night, he found you secluded in a corner. “Wow, I got special thanks? An honor, truly.” Sarcasm, obviously. It carried your usual conversations, and this one would be no different.
Or so you thought. “I meant what I said. I don’t think I could’ve done it without you.”
You shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s kinda my job.”
“It’s not just that. If it was anyone else…” he shook his head and shrugged, implying that he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Staring at him, you tried to decipher whether or not he was joking. He had to have been. “You’re just saying that so I don’t-“
“No I’m not. I’m serious.”
And he was. You could see it in his eyes. Still, a part of you was skeptical. You shifted on your feet. “Okay. Thanks.”
You hadn’t seen each other until testing in late February. Headset over your ears, arms crossed and brows furrowed against the sunlight. “Your car looks good with that number one.” Was the very first thing you said to him.
He chuckled. “Hopefully I can keep it for another year.”
Both hands raised in defense. “Hey, they’ve done the best they could. It’s up to you now.”
His lips split into a smile, showcasing his bunny teeth. “And you. Don’t forget, I can’t do it without you.” He repeated his words from months earlier.
Those words did something funny to your chest. Your heart, more specifically. Like the beating of it had stopped completely, and shocked into a new rhythm.
“How about we get some laps in?” You changed the topic quickly.
The rain was coming down hard in Australia. Droplets the size of golf balls chucked down to the pavement outside repeatedly.
Stupidly, you’d forgotten your wallet at the track. Which held all of your cards. Including your hotel room card. It was too late to go back.
You’d been standing in the hotel lobby somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour. Apparently, they’d given you the only existing keys to your room.
Oscar, hungry for a small snack, came down to the lobby. He paused, spotting your slumped figure at the receptionist desk.
“What are you doing?”
You’d heard a lot of Australian accents today. But his was easily distinguishable. You turned around, brows raised and eyes tired. “Oh uh, forgot my wallet at the track. Apparently they have no extras room keys so now I’m standing here waiting while they figure something out because they also have no open rooms.”
Oscar glanced around. No sign of any employee. And you looked exhausted. “Why don’t you just stay with me tonight?”
A blink. Then a strange, awkward laugh. “What?”
“I don’t mind.”
Your attempt to stand up straighter failed, weighed down by exhaustion. “No, I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”
It was his turn to laugh. A genuine sound, not awkward like yours. “I just said I don’t mind. And besides, you look beat and I need my engineer wide awake for qualifying.”
It was dangerous and potentially crossed the line to unprofessional. Even so, a nice bed sounded like heaven to you right now. A second more of confliction. And then, “I’m too tired to fight you.” You shook your head and started walking with him.
Right after he got a snack from the vending machine, you both went up to his room.
He loaned you a pair of grey and white pajama pants, and a t-shirt of his.
He ignored how the sight did something weird to his stomach. Like it had just done four summersaults in a row.
The both of you settled into bed, your backs turned to each other. Everything was fine that night.
But then the sun rose the next morning. He woke before you to find your body hugging his. Your head snuggled into his neck, an arm around his torso, and a leg across his lap.
That wasn’t the issue, though. No, it was something much harder to ignore. Especially when you were shifting every five seconds, your leg rubbing against him each time.
He cursed under his breath, shifting slowly away from you. Waking you would be the worst mistake of his life. He could say it was typical for guys to wake up hard, but would you believe him? He doubted it, and he didn’t want to risk whatever dynamic you two had going.
Lucky for him, he was able to slip away from you without waking you up. He went and took a cold shower while you continued to sleep.
Oscar had an issue. He couldn’t get you off his mind. It’s like you were haunting him, even though you were still very much alive.
He knew why. But it scared him—terrified him, even.
And he was being stupidly obvious with his infatuation. “I think we should go plan B. Given where you’re starting, I think it’s the smartest.” You shrugged, pointing out graphics on the computer.
“Sounds good.” He smiled.
That threw you off, rapidly blinking at him like he had eight heads. “That’s it? No argument? No ‘what about’s?” It was a historical moment in your books.
He just shook his head. “You have more degrees than me, so.” A shrug.
Still, you didn’t believe him. “Are you feeling okay?”
He laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. “Of course.”
You looked genuinely scared, glancing around the garage. “Okay.” You said it like you didn’t really believe him.
Everything exploded after he won in Monaco. After the celebrations died down, and the both of you were drenched in champagne, he found a moment alone with you. “Hey, uhm-“
“Ah! Hey! Congratulations again! Honestly it’s unbelievable!” For the fifth time since the race ended, your arms were circled around his neck.
Yes. He was keeping count.
His hands were on your waist. Just enough to be there. The faintest of touch. “Yeah, but do you want to come over to my place and watch the 500 with me?” He asked after you pulled away.
Pause. “Uh,” a glance around. Then a small smile. “Sure, why not? I’ll see you soon.”
Soon was sooner than he anticipated. You were knocking on his door before he got the chance to make the house look spotless. The living room looked great, but that was about it.
He opened the door to you sporting a shy smile. “I hope I’m not too early. But I just thought-“
“No, you’re okay. I was just tidying few things up.” He dismissed quickly, a tiny white lie.
You took in his living space. Spacious, but not so much to the point it felt empty. There wasn’t much color to it though, apart from the occasional pop of blue. You nodded as he closed the door behind you. “Expensive.” You commented, a light chuckle.
“Oh. Uh, yeah.” He muttered, moving around you to the living room.
You followed him slowly. The sofa cushions absorbed you as you sat down.
The tension in the room was thick. Awkward. You’d never been alone before, not without someone else nearby. Save for that night in Australia, which didn’t really count because you were only half conscious, living off energy drinks.
It was like without other people’s eyes prying, neither of you knew what to do or say around the other.
“It’s nice though. Not what I was expecting from you.” Then you realized how that sounded. Typically, you wouldn’t care. If anything, it just goaded him into another back and forth. But today felt different. He felt different. “Not in a bad way, just. Yeah,”
“No, yeah.” He paused. “Do you want anything? Something to drink or a blanket? Or- or-“
“No I’m good.” You shook your head.
The broadcast turned on as soon as the green flag was waved. “Right on time.” He joked. You laughed along.
The awkward tension in the air only thickened with each lap. Oscar’s reactions were expressed through subtle shifts in his brows. Yours were limited to how hard you bit down on your lip.
Finally, it was too much for you. “Scotty is doing good.”
“Wha- oh, yeah.” He nodded, hardly sparing you a glance.
You sat forward, within his peripherals. Tilted your head and a brow raised in question. “What’s up with you? You’re acting off.”
“No I-“ he cut himself off when he looked at you. Afraid at how much he wanted to kiss you. He swallowed and adverted his eyes. “No I’m not.” Quiet, like he was unsure of his own claims.
The way he stuttered. The way his throat bobbed when he swallowed. You noticed it all. “Okay that was weird.” You laughed, trying to ease the tension. “Did I say something? Or do something?”
He shook his head. No words offered.
“Then why are you so…” you gestured with your hand. “Nervous?”
His eyes met yours again, flickered down to your lips. His eyebrows were creased like looking at you pained him. “Just the race.” He brushed off.
You let him off the hook.
But it kept happening.
Every conversation, Oscar only spared you glances. Kept every sentence as short as it could be. Even when you tried to start an argument to get something out of him… nothing. Hardly a response.
You caught him alone in the hallway of the hotel in Belgium. “Oscar.” You called, audibly irritated.
He paused before turning. “Hey.”
“What is wrong?” The irritation was gone. Morphed into distress. “You’ve been so weird since the beginning of the year. It’s frustrating and frankly-“
His hand closed around your wrist, and he pulled you into his room. “I know.” He breathed.
“Why?” Your eyes darted between his eyes, searching for something in them. A hint of sorts. “Is it me? Did I do something?” And when he didn’t say anything, “tell me Oscar, damnit!” You shoved him. He didn’t move. You bit your lip softly, eyes going glossy. “Please. Because this,” you gestured between them. “It’s not working. I can’t work with you like this.”
It was a long moment before he gained the courage to speak. “It’s not you.” He sighed. “I mean, I guess it is, but it’s nothing you did. Or I guess, it’s everything you did.” He shook his head, nothing inside making sense to him.
“I don’t understand.”
Another long pause from him as he chewed his cheek. “I don’t- I don’t think we can work together anymore.” He said quietly.
Silence. And then a scoff. “No! You said that you couldn’t-“
“I know what I said.”
“Then what is your problem?”
“You! You’re my problem!” He raised his voice. “I can’t focus with you around because- be- because”
“Because what?”
More silence. The words right on the tip of his tongue, but he was terrified of letting them roll off. It could fuck up everything. He could lose you forever.
“Because what, Oscar?” You asked again, quieter this time.
It coaxed the courage out of him, the fragility in your voice. He swallowed his fear. “Because I think I may be in love with you.” His voice cracked, his throat closing.
A sharp exhale expelled from your lungs. Then a deep breath. “You can’t just say that!”
“You asked!”
The silence stretched again. His eyes on yours. He hated how glossy they looked. The air around you shifted, thick with mutual hesitation.
You stepped forward first. Took the first move. Hands on his face, you pulled him down, smashed your lips onto his.
Oscar was too stunned to move. Too stunned to kiss back. Until you tried to pull away. He grabbed the back of your neck, bringing your lips back to his in a kiss that could only be described as needy. Needy in the way that he thought he would die if he didn’t taste your lips again. He finally got a taste of you, and he wasn’t letting it go.
You leaned against the closed door of his driver room, trying not to stare too hard as he got changed. “I need you to actually listen to me today. The team wasn’t happy with what you did last week.” A mini scolding. Your crossed over your chest. They told him to hold position while they lap the backmarkers.
He didn’t listen. Overtook Lando, and stole the win. Or not really stole per se, he did earn the position on merit, but the team wasn’t happy about it.
He huffed and ran a hand through his hair before tugging the balaclava over his head. “I get paid to go racing. So I go racing. And then I get reprimanded for going racing.” His hands flew about the place. Not so much frustration, just baffled.
“It’s more so about risking the 1-2, you know, taking each other out.”
Humming, he sauntered over to you, looking annoyed. But when he reached you and his hands fell to your waist, a smirk grew on his lips. “I’ll take you out.”
Smooth. You scoffed, a small shove to his chest. “You better. I’m expecting dinner on you tonight.”
His nose scrunched. “Only if you let me fight.”
The click of your tongue echoed around the small room. “You can fight. Just don’t be stupid about it.” You shrugged, fingers drumming on his chest.
“I wasn’t stupid.”
You rolled your eyes, no real fire behind it. “Right. You were risky.”
“But I didn’t crash. He didn’t crash.”
“You could’ve.”
“But I didn’t.”
Looking to the ceiling, you smiled. “Tell you what, if you don’t pull any stupid moves today… maybe there’ll be a reward after dinner.”
Now that was something you knew would get to him. And evidently it did as he chewed his cheek and scrunched his nose. “Okay. Fine. But I’m holding you to that.”
You got closer to him, chests pressing together, noses brushing past one another. “Great.” Was all you said, a sensual whisper. Then your lips were on his. Soft and slow.
“Good luck.” You whispered when you broke apart. “Go get another win.”
they’re in love with their PR girl who won’t give them the time of day
lando norris
you once told him to stop winking at the camera during grid walks
he started doing it twice as much
when you finally scolded him after a press conference, he grinned and said,
“so you do pay attention to me.”
would fake an injury if it meant you'd touch his arm
would date you tomorrow
would also tweet “i love my pr girl” and then delete it in 0.2 seconds
“is it a scandal if we’re soulmates though?”
oscar piastri
his flirting is subtle — but constant
dry comments, lingering glances, always asking for you to review his answers
when you tell him to focus on the race, he goes,
“i’d focus better if you weren’t in that outfit.”
you freeze.
he pretends he didn’t say anything
he did
and he meant it
charles leclerc
this man is WHIPPED.
trips over his words during interviews when he sees you watching
asks for “private media training” just to spend time with you
you say “charles, i’m here to help your image” and he’s like
“yes, please fix it by dating me.”
would literally beg in french
accidentally calls you mon cœur under his breath and prays you didn’t hear it
(you did)
lewis hamilton
the smoothest menace alive
never flirty in public, but in private?
“how are you always so composed around me?”
you: “professionalism.”
him: “boring answer. try again.”
writes thank-you notes to the team and always adds a personal one just for you
the kind that makes your stomach flip
would 100% show up outside your hotel room with flowers and a bottle of wine saying
“no cameras. no pressure. just you and me.”
carlos sainz
thinks he's being subtle
spoiler: he's not
literally stares at you in meetings
asks you to “approve” every interview, even ones he knows went well
starts speaking Spanish just to see if you’ll blush
one day calls you “mi reina” and swears it slipped
watches you leave the room like it physically pains him
it does
daniel ricciardo
no shame
calls you “boss” and “hot stuff” interchangeably
sends memes to the media group chat that are clearly directed at you
“when ur pr girl tells you to stop flirting but she looked cute af today 😔”
says “i’ll behave” with a wink and then absolutely doesn’t
you: “daniel please—”
him: “daniel please kiss me? wow okay that escalated”
gabriel bortoleto
tries to play it cool
completely fails
stumbles through interviews and always looks to you for reassurance
calls you “minha deusa” once when he’s tired and soft
you pretend you didn’t hear
he hopes you did
franco colapinto
nervous. quiet. obsessed.
tries to flirt but ends up giving you his coffee and tripping over his words
asks you if he’s “handling the press okay” just to get your praise
you once touched his wrist to adjust his watch and he thought about it for three days
just wants you to smile at him
would literally cry if you ever called him “pretty boy”
max verstappen
doesn’t flirt. just stares
and asks personal questions like
“do you ever get tired of dealing with us?”
you answer professionally
he doesn’t break eye contact
his hand brushes yours when you hand him his briefing notes
you don’t talk about it
but he feels the tension every time
lance stroll
pretends to be chill. is NOT chill.
you told him to stop smirking during interviews
he started smiling every time you entered the room instead
texts you memes. waits for you to like his IG posts.
when you told him “this can’t happen,” he just blinked and said,
“so you have thought about it.”
sends you flowers signed “from a fan”
After a disastrous first date, you and Quinn Hughes think you’ll never see each other again—until he shows up in your office… as your newest therapy client.
recs are open + prompt list
beachy’s masterlist🐚
THIS IS MY WORK AND MY WORK ONLY. I DO NOT GIVE CONSENT TO ANY FORM OF “REWRITING” MY FICS
You agree to the date because your friend swears he’s normal.
“You’d like him,” she says. “He’s low-key. Dry humor. No red flags. And he’s hot. But like… tired hot.”
“Tired hot?”
“You’ll see.”
The app profile is vague. One picture—blurry, probably a cropped group photo. Bio says:
Hockey. Golf. Mostly quiet. Good at Mario Kart.
You message him because the Mario Kart line makes you laugh. He replies ten minutes later.
Only if you pick Yoshi. Anyone else is a war crime.
You meet him at a little place you like—a bar with decent food and mercifully low lighting. He’s ten minutes late, and when he walks in, he looks…
You squint.
He looks like he got hit by a truck, reversed over, and then forced to do media availability. His hoodie is slightly damp. His eyes are red-rimmed. He has the audacity to sniffle.
“Hi,” he says, voice rough. “Quinn.”
You blink. “You’re sick.”
“I’m not contagious.”
“Right.”
“I took DayQuil.”
“...Okay.”
You both sit.
It goes downhill immediately.
You ask normal questions. He answers in fragments.
“So, are you from around here originally?”
“Michigan. But I live here now.”
“What brought you to Vancouver?”
“Hockey.”
You sip your drink. “Right. Of course.”
He nods, sniffling.
“You play professionally?” you ask, just to clarify.
He glances at you. “Yeah. Canucks.”
“Oh. I don’t really follow hockey.”
“That’s fine.”
Silence.
You try again. “So besides that... what do you do for fun?”
He shrugs. “Not much. Golf in the offseason.”
You wait.
That’s it. That’s the whole sentence.
He reaches for his water and knocks over the salt shaker.
You press your lips together. “You know, we could reschedule.”
“I’m already here.”
“You’re clearly not feeling great.”
“I didn’t want to be a flake.”
“That’s very noble of you,” you say flatly, and he huffs a quiet breath that might be a laugh.
You spend the next ten minutes trying to scrape a conversation out of someone who answers like he’s being cross-examined in court.
Eventually, you set your fork down.
“This isn’t working, is it?”
He looks up, startled. “What?”
“This. Us. The date. It’s not going well.”
He opens his mouth. Pauses. Then nods. “No. I guess not.”
You sigh. “Okay. I’m gonna go.”
“I’ll get the check.”
You blink. “Seriously?”
“I feel bad. You came out.”
You glance at him, and for a moment—just a second—you feel sorry for him. The hoodie. The puffy eyes. The way he keeps rubbing the side of his neck like he’s thinking hard about something he’ll never say.
But then he adds: “You ask questions like you’re a therapist or something.”
You raise your eyebrows. “I am a therapist.”
His face does a weird thing—like his brain short circuits and he reboots mid-sentence. “Oh. Shit. That makes sense.”
You stare at him. “Good night, Quinn.”
Two weeks later, your receptionist pokes her head into your office.
“New intake just arrived. Quinn H., 2:30 p.m.”
You freeze.
“No,” you say automatically.
She tilts her head. “No?”
“No,” you repeat, pulling up the intake form. “That can’t be right.”
You read the form.
Referral: E. Pettersson Presenting concern: Work-related stress. Generalized anxiety. Difficulty with emotional processing. Client: Quinn Hughes.
You close your laptop and stare at the wall.
A minute later, there’s a knock on your door.
You don’t look up when you say, “Come in.”
You do look up when he says: “Are you serious?”
He’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed, looking like someone just told him he has to retake the SATs.
You stare back. “I could say the same thing.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Petey said you were good.”
You sit straighter. “Elias sent you to me?”
“Yeah. He’s worried about me or whatever.”
“I mean… fair.”
He glances up. “You gonna refer me out?”
You pause. “Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t treat someone I’ve had a personal relationship with.”
Quinn snorts. “We went on one date and hated each other.”
You nod. “True. Still personal.”
He looks at the wall. Then back at you. “I just— I don’t really want to start over.”
You sigh. “You could’ve led with that.”
“Not really my style.”
You hesitate. Think. One session. One session won’t kill you.
“Alright,” you say. “Let’s try. One session.”
He sits, awkward in the chair, like it might bite him. “So what now?”
You fold your hands in your lap. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
He talks more than you expected. Not easily—but once he gets going, it’s like he can’t stop. He talks about pressure. About expectations. About how he gets stuck in his own head. About never feeling good enough even when he is good enough. About how sometimes he feels invisible, and sometimes he wishes he was.
You say very little. You let the silence do its work.
At the end of the session, he stands slowly, almost reluctant.
“That wasn’t terrible,” he says.
You give him a bland look. “High praise.”
He huffs a laugh. “You’re still kind of annoying.”
You smile sweetly. “And you’re still emotionally repressed.”
Quinn pauses at the door.
“Hey,” he says. “I didn’t mean that thing I said. On the date. About you analyzing everything.”
You shrug. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not.” He shifts on his feet. “You were just trying to be nice. I was... sick. And stressed. And kind of a dick.”
You nod once. “Apology accepted.”
He clears his throat. “So, uh. See you next week?”
You smile. “Same time.”
Quinn’s slumped in your office chair, head tilted back, arms crossed. He's staring at the ceiling like he’s trying to count how many ways he’s trapped in his own head.
“I don’t get it,” he mutters. “Why is it still like this? I’ve done what you said—I've tried journaling, I’ve been getting sleep, I even stopped reading Reddit.”
You blink. “Wow. That one must’ve hurt.”
He gives you a weak smirk. “Little bit.”
You nod slowly. “Alright. You want to try something different?”
He looks at you. “Different how?”
“Out-of-office different.”
Quinn squints. “Like... a field trip?”
“Not officially,” you say. “But yeah. Come with me. I want you to try something.”
Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing outside a strip mall building with blacked-out windows and a fluorescent sign that says: “Rage Room.”
Quinn looks at the door. Then back at you. “You’re kidding.”
You don’t blink. “Nope.”
“You want me to hit stuff?”
“I want you to let go of things without overthinking them.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Is this even—like—allowed?”
“Ethically? Not ideal,” you admit. “But you said you didn’t want to start over. So you get me. And I say you need to get out of your own head before you spiral into another three-day silent shame cycle.”
He huffs a breath. “You’re weird.”
You smile. “You’re avoidant.”
The rage room smells like old rubber and drywall. A speaker’s blasting 2000s emo music at an almost disrespectful volume. A wall of bats, crowbars, and sledgehammers hangs like a weapons rack in a zombie movie.
Quinn’s in a beat-up hoodie and safety goggles, staring at a pile of breakables like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
You hand him a metal pipe. “Start small. Smash something.”
He hesitates. “Like what?”
You gesture to the row of ceramic mugs lined up on a folding table. “Pick your least favorite and commit a crime.”
He gives you a look. “You get weirder every week.”
“You get quieter.”
He walks up to the table, lifts the pipe, and smashes a mug with one clean, decisive swing.
It shatters like a tiny explosion. Glass skitters everywhere.
You wait.
“…Okay,” he mutters. “That was kind of satisfying.”
You grin. “There it is.”
Twenty minutes later, Quinn has completely entered his rage era.
He’s sweating, muttering under his breath between swings. You only catch bits and pieces—some unholy mix of “fucking power play,” “media bullshit,” and “Jack gets away with this stuff.”
He’s wrecked three keyboards, a set of old plates, and a plastic printer you brought from home that’s been jamming since April.
And finally, finally, when he stops—breathing heavy, shoulders tense—he leans back against the wall and lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a laugh.
You pass him a bottle of water. He takes it, still catching his breath.
“That helped more than I want to admit,” he says.
You sit next to him, cross-legged on the padded floor. “Then why don’t you want to admit it?”
He shrugs. “It’s dumb.”
You tilt your head. “It’s not. It's physical release. Unfiltered emotion. No expectations. You don’t have to explain yourself.”
He’s quiet for a second. Then he says, “I think that’s the part I’m bad at. Not being explainable.”
You blink. That’s… unexpectedly honest.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m not loud. Or charismatic. I don’t want to be interviewed. I don’t want to sell myself. I just want to be good at what I do.” He pauses. “But everyone’s always trying to tell a story about me.”
You nod slowly. “So you feel like you’re not allowed to write your own.”
He glances at you. “Yeah. Exactly.”
You let the silence settle between you for a second.
Then, gently, you ask, “So what story would you write?”
He snorts. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn one good moment into a pop quiz.”
You smile. “I call it ‘holding space.’ You call it ‘being a pain in the ass.’”
“Both can be true,” he mumbles.
You nudge his arm. “Come on. Try.”
He sighs. Looks down at the dented metal bat in his hands.
“I think…” he starts, slowly, “...I’d write that I’m trying. Even if it doesn’t look like it. Even if I fuck it up. I’m still trying.”
You look at him for a long second. “That’s a good story.”
He shrugs, glancing away. “No one wants to hear that one.”
“I do.”
It’s out before you can stop it.
He blinks. His face shifts—something between surprised and soft.
You clear your throat. “Professionally speaking.”
“Right,” he says quickly. “Obviously.”
Another beat of silence.
“…But seriously,” he says, “this was good.”
You nod. “Next time we do yoga.”
He groans. “No thanks. That feels like a Jack thing.”
You grin. “Exactly.”
You walk out together. It’s raining lightly, just misty enough to make your clothes cling.
He stops at his car, hesitating before opening the door.
Then: “Hey.”
You turn.
“Thank you.”
You nod. “You’re welcome.”
Quinn’s quiet for a second. Then, very softly, “I don’t think I hated our first date as much as I acted like I did.”
Your breath catches.
You try to play it cool. “Because of me? Or the DayQuil?”
He laughs—low, real. “A little of both.”
“Noted.”
He opens his door.
“You’re still not allowed to flirt with your therapist,” you call after him.
“I know,” he says. But he smiles anyway.
Quinn stops coming to your sessions after the rage room.
At first, it’s just a reschedule.
“Practice ran late.”
Then a last-minute cancellation.
“Bit of a travel day mess. Can we push to next week?”
Then nothing.
You try not to take it personally.
You’re a professional. You have to be. You remind yourself of this while reading over your clinical notes, chewing your pen cap like it might bite back.
Still, you can’t help but notice the shift.
He’s not just skipping therapy. He’s avoiding you.
Which—fine. It makes sense. The line got blurry. He opened up, got comfortable, probably caught himself too late. That happens sometimes.
But what bugs you isn’t that he stopped coming.
It’s that he didn’t say goodbye.
Three weeks pass.
You try to forget about him, but then Jack Hughes goes viral for doing donuts in a golf cart, and it’s all over your For You page.
Quinn’s in the background of the video, arms crossed, trying not to smile, and your stomach flips like you swallowed a rock.
You set your phone down and say—out loud, to your empty apartment—
“Get a grip.”
It’s nearly 7 p.m. on a rainy Thursday when you hear a knock on your office door.
You glance at the clock. You don’t have anyone booked this late.
You open it slowly, cautiously.
Quinn’s standing there in a baseball cap and a hoodie like he thinks he’s undercover. His expression is unreadable.
“Hey,” he says.
You stare at him. “Are you lost?”
He huffs a soft laugh. “Kinda.”
You lean against the doorframe. “You’ve missed three sessions.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t even email.”
“I know,” he says again.
You pause. “You okay?”
He looks down. “Not really.”
You step back. “Come in.”
He doesn’t sit on the couch. He hovers, fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie like he’s not sure he should be here.
You let the silence stretch until it starts to fray.
Finally, he says, “I think you should refer me out.”
Your heart sinks.
“Oh,” you say, trying to sound neutral. “Okay. That’s fair. If you think someone else would be a better fit—”
“I don’t,” he cuts in. “You’re—you’re a good fit. That’s the problem.”
You blink. “Sorry?”
He drags a hand down his face. “I liked talking to you. Too much.”
You stare at him.
His voice gets quieter. “And then after the rage room… it didn’t feel like therapy anymore.”
You try to steady yourself. “We’ve kept clear boundaries—”
“I know,” he says quickly. “You’ve been... great. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But you did?”
“No, I just—” he stops, frustrated. “I couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t feel like something else.”
Something thick swells in your chest.
He finally meets your eyes. “I couldn’t come back in here and keep pretending I didn’t want to see you outside of this room.”
You don’t say anything. You can’t.
“Look,” he continues, his voice shaking slightly, “I don’t want to mess this up, and I don’t want to put you in a weird spot, but I— I want to try again. I want to go on a real date. With you. No DayQuil. No pretending it didn’t happen. Just... you and me.”
You let out a slow breath. “You understand the rules, right?”
He nods. “Six months. After termination.”
You raise an eyebrow. “You looked it up?”
He shrugs. “I looked a lot of things up.”
You stare at him. You think about your ethics board. You think about your job. You think about the way he looked in that rage room—focused, present, real—and the way his laugh got stuck in your throat after he thanked you. The way your fingers itched to reach for him and didn’t.
And you think: maybe it’s okay to want something, too.
You exhale. “Alright.”
Quinn blinks. “Wait—really?”
“I’ll refer you out. To someone I trust. And if you still want to try... after the required time... I’ll consider it.”
His eyes flicker with something bright. “You’ll consider it?”
You smirk. “You have to earn your second date.”
He grins, small and honest. “Fair.”
He stands to go.
At the door, he pauses. Looks over his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says softly. “For what it’s worth... I think I got better. Not fixed. But better. Because of you.”
Your throat tightens. “Thank you.”
Quinn nods once. “See you when I’m legally allowed to flirt with you.”
roommates with unbearable tension – f1 grid reactions ── .✦
lando norris ── .✦
the tension is so bad the walls feel it
he walks around shirtless and acts casual, but glances at you every 2 seconds
late-night Mario Kart turns into knees touching on the couch
he says something dumb like
“imagine if we were dating lol”
but he’s not joking.
he’s dying for you to say “why imagine?”
oscar piastri ── .✦
painfully quiet yearning
he watches you pour cereal in the morning and thinks “i could marry them”
but says nothing
accidentally brushes your hand when you both reach for the same mug and it’s like
“oh. oh no. oh no i like them too much.”
writes it all out in the Notes app and never sends it
charles leclerc ── .✦
you touch his shoulder once in the hallway and he thinks about it for 6 days
calls his mom like
“maman… i’m going to die here.”
he leaves little pastries on your side of the counter
gets irrationally jealous when someone flirts with you at a party
crashes on the couch after one too many drinks and whispers
“i love you. wait—forget that.”
(you don’t.)
lewis hamilton ─ .✦
he’s so good at hiding it
except when he walks into the kitchen at 2AM and finds you in his hoodie
and he just STARES
you catch him and he’s like
“couldn’t sleep. you?”
it’s a lie. he couldn’t stop thinking about what it’d feel like to kiss you
carlos sainz ── .✦
acts so confident but is literally a mess inside
always brushing past you in the kitchen like
“you like touching me or something?”
you roll your eyes
he dies a little
mutual “almost” moments: reaching for the same thing, collapsing on the couch after cleaning, falling asleep facing each other
one time he mumbles
“if i kiss you, you’ll kiss me back?”
and you pretend you didn’t hear it
daniel ricciardo ── .✦
flirty. way too flirty.
but the second you flirt back?? his whole body malfunctions
calls you “roomie” with the most ridiculous smirk, then stares at your lips
writes “D+Y 4EVER” as a joke on the fridge whiteboard and erases it the next day
one night, after brushing teeth side by side, he whispers
“i can’t take this anymore.”
and you just stand there
frozen
heart exploding
gabriel bortoleto ── .✦
he’s so obvious about it
stares a little too long when you laugh
gives you his coffee mug every morning
watches you leave for a date with someone else and sits on the floor like a drama queen
your friend visits and says
“you guys are dating, right?”
you both go
“NO.”
in unison.
and then don’t speak for three hours
franco colapinto ── .✦
has a playlist titled “they’ll never know”
steals your blanket “accidentally”
accidentally calls you “babe” and pretends it didn’t happen
you fall asleep on his shoulder during a movie and he does not. move. a. muscle.
“you good?”
“...no.”
max verstappen ── .✦
he feels it. you feel it.
no one says anything
but everything is heavy — standing too close in the kitchen, his hoodie on your bedroom chair, the way he opens the door for you like you’re delicate
sits next to you on the couch with exactly one inch between you
thinks about closing that space every single day
“i’m not gonna ruin this unless i’m sure.”
but he’s sure.
he just doesn’t know if you are
… starring oscar piastri x f!reader
... 5.2k words
... in which your good samaritan tendencies, and some loser forgetting to show up on your first date, lead you to the most bizarre yet exhilarating nyc commute of your life.
... featuring fluff, humor, meet cute, some forced proximity. female reader (wears 'feminine' clothing). language, reader gets stood up on a date, suspension of disbelief for manhattan geography and the logistics of the mta (please forgive me new yorkers i went ten years ago). english is not my first language.
... author notes tadaaa oscar piastri debut who cheered!!!! not me because i'm scared to death of getting him wrong lowk. i was bemoaning the absence of oscar pictures at the f1 premiere and thought, "i know he just couldn't be bothered to go, but wouldn't it be funny if he'd just gotten lost?" and thats how this fic happened. ngl this is very much out of my comfort zone, i know oscar less than other drivers + much more romcom than i'm used to and idk how i feel about it so feedback would be VERY appreciated! very much open for a part 2 if you'd like that tho!!! enjoy ヘ(≧▽≦ヘ)♪
MASTERLIST / ASK BOX
There was no valid reason dating in New York City should have been this complicated.
Yet you prided yourself on being quite smart—smart enough to survive in the hostile urban jungle as a twenty-something on her own; definitely smarter than the national average judging by the (frankly depressing) headlines you heard pinging on your phone every morning. Outstanding high school GPA, reading comprehension way above your grade as a kid, and still no damn clue how to score a date in Manhattan.
Well, rather, how to score an agreeable date. Or perhaps just one that turned out to be real.
Monday morning had risen with a yawn from the sun, as though it were remembering only now that June was well underway but the streets remained chilly. Weak light shimmered over the fire escape when you’d drawn your curtains open. Ramen was sitting on the railing, licking his cream paw and staring at you with unimpressed nonchalance, and you’d grinned. Ramen—your downstairs neighbor’s cat, a sandy little imp whose real name you’d never found out but had baptized so after he’d stolen your instant dinner right off your kitchen counter—only showed up on mornings with importance. Like the day you’d aced Introduction to Statistics with nothing but two hours of sleep and five Monsters.
This was a good omen.
So yes, you were enthusiastic by the time you got home from class, scrambled together an omelet, and disemboweled your apartment looking for your favorite earrings. You were optimistic, and that sometimes sounded like the worst thing anyone could be in New York City.
But this first date promised to be nothing like the others, your inner voice hammered home as you tried to cram your feet into shoes half a size too small. He was cute, funny, not a fascist, he waited exactly the right amount of time in between replies—neither psychopathic nor disinterested—, and he’d told you to dress up because it was only fair that real-life art should match the paintings on the wall. After half a dozen insipid dinners at every other pizza place in Little Italy, and as many ghostings, a museum first date sounded more promising than you’d dared to hope.
Even though he dropped off the radar at ten p.m. the prior evening. Even though you shot him a bubbly, “you said 2:30pm right? can’t wait!” at eleven (the appointed time was but a scroll away, but you just needed to say something, diffuse the nerves somehow). Even though you double-texted him at two fifteen, “omw!”.
But Ramen was there this morning, blinking his slow blinks at you. The date had to go well.
The sun was fully awake, undeniable, blazing above the trees and endless spires piercing the sky beyond Central Park, by the time you sat down on the steps in front of the museum. Alone.
It wasn’t until two fifty-seven that you accepted to face the glaring truth.
First miss for Ramen.
You collected yourself in a clumsy torpor. Nothing to do with your heels, or the stupidly long dress you’d picked out and whose skirt you now had to lift with every step—this was the inescapable, crushing feeling of disappointment.
Of course New York City would punish the optimistic. The naïve. The superstitious, who put the outcome of their days into the hands of some feline apparition, scan the sky for four-leaf clover clouds. Served you right for still believing in things falling into place.
Your face burned from the sun and the humiliation, eyes prickling from unshed tears as you stuffed your phone into your purse. Pretended not to notice the group of tourists snapping shots of you, perhaps thinking you some roaming Millais muse. Disappeared into the shade of 103rd Street station, green gown flowing behind you like a pennon.
Every step down the long stairway stung more than the last, but you kept your gaze firmly to the ground, careful not to trip—and bury any ounce of dignity left in you for good. Blend in with the jaded city folk, you thought as you swiped your Metrocard; act as if you know exactly where you are going and go there with purpose, even if you could not be more stranded. Where to now? Back to your disordered, sweltering apartment, its haphazard pile of dishes in the sink and Ramen gauging you silently from the windowsill? Or to the campus library, trying to glean whatever productivity lies within heartbreak? And risk bumping into your friends, who’d teased you all day about the giddy bounce to your step, and having to explain you weren’t even worth showing up for?
“Excuse me?”
You looked up and met hazel. A mop of chestnut hair, that he had manifestly tried to arrange before giving up; discreet moles on an otherwise pale face, and brown eyes where danced flecks of gold and the most gripping kind of urgent resignation. The stranger was cute, and for some incomprehensible reason he matched you: he, too, was dressed to the nines like he’d run off from some wedding, and he also distinctly looked like he wished more than anything for the Earth to swallow him.
“Are you going to the F1 movie premiere?”
“What?”
“The, uh, the F1 movie red carpet thing? Are you going there right now?”
You were starting to worry your foreign-accent (British, or perhaps Australian?) comprehension skills had gotten alarmingly bad, or maybe the shrieking of MTA wagon brakes had finally rendered you deaf.
“No, uh... I…” Oh, what the hell. Like there was any use lying to a beautiful stranger who seemed like he was somehow having a worse afternoon than yours. “I got stood up by my date. F1, you mean like Formula 1?”
What a formidable and ridiculous scene you two must’ve painted—two kids in formalwear, standing in the middle of a New York City subway platform, stuck amidst the pungent smell of piss and nonsensical conversation.
“I’m sorry about your date, they sound like a bit of a dropkick,” the stranger replied, and although you weren’t entirely sure what a dropkick was you were surprised to find him genuine. “But, uh… I think I’m lost, and I hoped you might help me, or else I’m gonna be the one doing the standing up. On about two thousand people.”
You had no time to furrow your brow, or chew on his words. Suddenly everything clicked with an audible bang, right in sync with the train doors closing to your left. The reason you’d felt so familiarly drawn to that cherub face, and why he had mentioned Formula 1… None of the downright lubricious Instagram edits your best friend had ever sent you featured him in a suit, but he was unmistakable.
“Oh my god, you’re Oscar Pia—”
“Please don’t tell all of Manhattan,” Piastri interrupted, grimacing as he glanced around the platform. You suffocated your voice, though found his dread of being heard a little pointless. Two people standing idly in black-tie garments as metros passed them by were eye-catching, for sure, but nowhere near NYC eye-catching standards. “It’s already pretty bad how late I am to my own premiere, I don’t want to have to take selfies in the subway.”
A million questions jostled about inside your head, but all you could do was stare at him, mouth agape in incomprehension. You didn’t keep up with Formula 1, hardly saw any point in cars going in circles, and perhaps a McLaren (was it McLaren or Mercedes?) superfan might have known better than you what the fuck Oscar Piastri was doing there. Not the film premiere gimmick, you were willing to believe that was the kind of fanfare F1 drivers spent their off-days doing—what the fuck he was doing alone at three in the afternoon, asking for your help in some acrid station on Lexington Avenue.
“Couldn’t you just drive to the damn premiere?”
“Oh, right, so I should just steal a car off the street?” he deadpanned.
“No, I mean… don’t you have a chauffeur? An… an agent or something? A team? How do you even end up…” you trailed off, finding no words that wouldn’t bring you to astonished frustration. Instead, you opened your arms wide, encompassing all of New York’s rickety railways. “Here?”
Piastri parted his lips to retort with one of his impassive quips, but his whole face fractured then with tremendous vulnerability.
“I’ll tell you if you help me find my way. Please?”
He did not look like the type of man who’d ever begged anyone to do anything for him—you expected a high-adrenaline junkie like him to pray for neither forgiveness nor permission—and the contrast made you consider. That, and the sheer absurdity of the situation. And the fact the only other way you could see your afternoon ending was with an onslaught of messages from some guy assuring you life had gotten “sooo hectic” in the last ten to twelve hours.
Piastri was much cuter than him anyway.
“You know what, yeah, sure, what the hell,” you shrugged with a growing smile. “I’ll help you. I could use the good karma. I’m Y/N, by the way.”
This whole plan was utterly ridiculous, and you had no idea how you’d possibly explain that to your friends when they’d ask how your date had gone, but the way Piastri deflated with relief, like his whole body was exhaling, had you convinced you’d made the right call.
“Thanks, Y/N.” He said your name with the slightest of accents, and you caught yourself wishing he could say it again. “Maps said this was the shortest path to Times Square, but I think it’s a little confused—”
“Times Square? Oh, you’re not getting anywhere near that on the 6. We need to get to Central Park North. You coming?”
You tilted your head to the side, to the staircase drenched in hazy summer light, and Piastri seemed to be weighing the pros and cons for a split second—you couldn’t fault him, to be fair; you could’ve been a stalker, or a lunatic, or the lowest echelon to a weird MLM scheme. Still, he must’ve decided whatever you were recruiting him for was less dangerous than missing this premiere, because he took off after you.
When he billowed out of the station and back into the city, Piastri winced, and at first you assumed it due to the piercing sunlight reverberating on glassy panels, or the cacophony of horns and engines. However, you quickly noticed him glancing at the passersby with frantic interest… and looking puzzled at their utter disinterest in him.
“Relax, no one’s looking at us,” you reassured him, striding down the street on autopilot. He jogged two steps to catch up.
“You sure?”
“Certain. There’s so many people in New York City, and so many of those people do weird shit, that practically anyone can go unnoticed. I assure you that this,” you gestured down at your long dress, catching the light like rippling topazes, then at the silver cufflinks on his jacket, “does not even make the top 5 weirdest things any of these people have seen today.”
But the Australian looked unsure still, twisting his thin lips in a crooked zigzag, so you stopped in your tracks and hailed a young lady passing you by on the sidewalk, Airpods firmly bolted inside her ears.
“Excuse me, do you know who this guy is—”
She strode past you with the most furtive glance biologically possible and a mechanical Nothankyouhaveagoodday. You turned back to Piastri.
“See? No one cares.”
He chuckled, face breaking like dawn, and you chuckled too with no real reason. You weren’t too sure what was funny about typical New York callousness, but the way Piastri’s eyes crinkled, still somewhat strained from stress but illuminating all his features, made you all fuzzy inside. Up close and under sunlight, he looked even younger than you’d thought, no more than twenty-five, and the shadows on his face had lifted, rounding the angles and softening the corners. Like he’d been oil-painted on canvas, ochres and whites melting into each other at the edges.
“Okay, I guess you’re the local,” he conceded, and you resumed your brisk walk.
Maybe you really were at the museum, after all.
“So,” you spoke up after a bit. “I was promised a story.”
“Right,” he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, clearly regretting his bartering skills.
“How do you, Oscar Piastri, end up late to a movie premiere and alone in a subway station?” You stepped across a grate on the sidewalk, careful not to wedge your heel in the holes. “They just left you behind? Did you oversleep or what?”
No reply, but his dry laughter morphing into a cough was a flagrant enough response.
“Oh my God, Piastri,” you gasped merrily. “Did you seriously sleep through your movie premiere?”
“No! … It’s not over yet. I’m just late for the red carpet part. I can still make it to the screening.”
You stared, unconvinced, and he stared back, unconvincing. Biting the inside of his cheek, he watched your smile grow wider until he couldn’t take your teasing anymore. For heaven’s sake—you’d known him a grand total of five minutes and were already tormenting him!
“What?”
“How do they let you get away with this?”
“I was racing in Canada yesterday! God forbid a guy wants a nap,” he stressed the last as though it were some capital punishment and rolled his eyes.
Something in his demeanor was fabulously amusing. He was all relaxed tension, calculated coldness akin to what you’d expect from a person who’s constantly scrutinized; yet there was something more, a sort of agitation bubbling within, under the pores of his handsome face. Feeling so deeply and letting a stranger see so much was not in his nature, that much was clear. Every microexpression, in the lift of his brows, the curve of his lips, the arc of his eyes betrayed a kind of imbalance. He was losing his footing, like a glacier abraded from the top by the sun.
New York City had trained you for all sorts of people, including still waters like him. How to ripple their surface.
“Does this happen to you often?”
“No. Never.”
“Never missed a flight?”
“Just once. My mom woke me up screaming one hour before boarding the second ti—watch out.”
Swiftly, he grabbed your elbow and switched your spots on the sidewalk, pushing you closer to the wall. Before you could open your mouth to protest, the ground rattled from a firetruck barreling past you, ruffling Piastri’s hair and the lapels of his jacket.
“But I set three different alarms on my phone and I figured, Lando will probably break my door down if I sleep through them, so I’m safe,” he resumed, entirely unfazed. You looked up at him like he’d just performed actual magic. “But… apparently not. I woke up… twenty minutes ago?” That explained the slim, red pillow mark on his face you’d mistaken for a fading sunburn. “I wanted to call a taxi, but they’ve cut off traffic. It’s a big deal, you know? Brad Pitt’s gonna be there.”
The way he said Brad Pitt, with a tone so level it became thick with meaning and the littlest of jazz hands, made it abundantly clear there were few people on Earth Oscar Piastri would’ve been less excited about than Brad Pitt.
“Are you in it?”
“What?”
“The movie. Are you even in it?”
“Uh, my elbow is. Minute fifty-three.”
“Wow,” you giggled, arching your eyebrows in a playful wave. “So am I talking to Oscar Piastri the pro athlete, or Oscar Piastri the movie star?”
“Eh, just Oscar Piastri’s fine,” he shrugged, non-committal, though the glint of a smile now flickered uninterrupted on the corner of his lips, almost real enough to remark upon.
Your steps had carried you to the subway entrance north of Central Park already—too soon, far too soon, you thought with a faint ache in the chest. Piastri stirred in your body some kind of early-summer warmth, soft and shimmering like a drowsy morning. As soon as he would vanish to the far side of the platform, only the icy wind would remain, howling endlessly through the corridors…
Piastri, however, did not seem set on giving you up. At least judging by the tiny, tentative steps he took as he walked up to the turnstile, as though the machine could eat him the way it did cardboard tickets. You saw him take out a small, green-lettered card from his pocket… and stopped him.
“Wait, that’s not gonna work.”
“Huh?”
“Your ticket, it’s a single ride. You used that back there on Lexington, right?”
“Uh, I guess?”
“You don’t have a Metrocard?”
He turned to you, puzzled, and almost slammed into a hurried businessman in the process. Thankfully for Piastri, even assault was too inconsequential to reroute the average New Yorker, and the man just breezed past the turnstile and into the guts of the Earth with a nasty glare and a taunting beep!
“Why would I have a Metrocard, Y/N, I’m in this city about twelve hours a year.”
You glanced toward the entrance, where a faint trickle of light still seeped in. A flock of little old ladies, perhaps en route to a high-stakes bingo showdown, had laid siege to the terminals. Judging by their furrowed brows and squinting eyes, no one else in the station would be seeing so much as a hint of a ticket anytime soon.
Goodness gracious. Your helpfulness would be your undoing.
“How late are you to this thing?”
Piastri checked his watch. “Very.”
“And how much do you care about being late to this thing?”
“Normal dude Oscar Piastri? Not so much, to be honest. Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri…”
“Say less.”
Veritable horror surfaced on Piastri’s face at your confident strides, as if he imagined you were about to vandalize your way through the gates.
“Come on! Hop over,” you signaled.
“Uh…”
“Or we could wait in line. Your call.” Like trying to get a puppy to jump through a hoop. What was he waiting for, a treat?
Or perhaps the patrol of inspectors coming down the hallway at the exact same second as Piastri gathered momentum and jumped the turnstile. That, too, seemed like a sensible thing to be on the lookout for.
The two men cried out right as his dress shoes hit the ground.
“Oh come on!” you whined. “They’re never here!”
“What do we do?!” he cried.
“What do you mean, what do we do? Just book it!”
You heard a cacophony of footsteps behind your back, promptly echoed by lighter sounds as Piastri ran down the corridor. Without a second glance, you pushed down on your hands, swung your legs forward, and… came to an abrupt halt mid-air. Looked down. Sage green fabric had wrapped around the metal blades of the turnstile, like snakes constricting their branches.
“Oscar!” you yelped.
If you’d had any doubt Oscar Piastri was the real racing deal until now, they were all silenced at once from the way he spun on his heels, ran back to you and, without a split second’s hesitation, not even the span of a breath, picked you up from your perch and took off. Instinctively your arms wrapped around the taut base of his neck as you felt his clammy hands slide down your back: the glossy fabric offered no grip to hold on to, yet his strong arms held you into place as tightly as they could. You gritted your teeth, prayed to God your heels would not fall off, and watched in stunned silence as Oscar raced down the stifling hallways.
It seemed like but an instant had passed when Oscar threw himself into the belly of the train, its imminent departure chime his very own chequered flag, and the old doors rattled shut behind you. For the first time, New Yorkers shot you strange looks. Finally you had crossed their threshold for urban bizarrerie.
And you were still in Oscar’s arms, flushed and panting even though he was the one who’d done all the running. And had barely broken a sweat.
You were about to clear your throat and kindly—begrudgingly, perhaps?—request he put you down… when the announcer’s perky voice began chirping out the next stops through the loudspeakers. You snapped your head at the line map above the doors. No matter what language she said it in, your next stop was always wrong.
“Oscar,” you murmured.
“Yeah?” he breathed out.
“We got on the wrong way.”
“There’s no oil in New York City.”
Oscar remained silent for a few seconds, as if in a trance. His jittery leg did not.
“What?” he mumbled when he broke out of his reverie.
You simply pointed at his knee, bouncing up and down since he’d sat.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to drill a hole in the ground with your shoe for. There’s no oil in New York City. If there was, Trump would’ve sucked it dry already.”
Oscar sighed, throwing his head back against the glass panel, but your heart swelled with satisfaction when you caught a glimpse of his smile.
Rippling anyone’s surface had seldom proven as easy as it was fun.
You leaned a little closer to him, and he closed his eyes with a faint grunt. His leg, however, was now still.
“Why are you so nervous about being late? You’re the main attraction, it’s not like they’re going to hold it against you.”
Hearing his reply proved difficult over the train’s thundering racket, glass windows and moist handles vibrating within their sockets like charged electrons. His eyes, mercifully still closed, allowed yours to linger on his mouth—to decipher each word as it formed, and to savor the quiet contemplation.
“Being fashionably late usually draws more attention than I like to get.”
“So why bother going? You don’t look like you enjoy being in the public eye that much anyway.”
Only one eye opened, tentatively so, and met your small, expectant smile, chin resting on your fist and your crossed legs imperceptibly brushing his. Any story he could’ve told you right then would’ve been riveting, it seemed, and for the first time in weeks Oscar found that for you, he did not mind sharing one.
“I told Lando I’d go. We collided yesterday on track and they thought it would maybe look bad if one of us showed up and not the other. Like we’re avoiding each other or something. I don’t know, PR stuff. But I promised Lando, so.” He pursed his lips then, and blew air through his nose, holding back a giggle. “Also, I don’t know, I felt like I had to go. I had a… a premonition.”
“A premonition?”
“Yeah, I don’t know, some kind of hunch. In my cereal.”
You stared at him long, assessing him and the likelihood of a lie, but he was a master of the unreadable smile, the one that could mean anything from I’m one look away from bursting into laughter to I have never dissociated more than I am currently, and even, perhaps, I wish this train ride with you would never end.
“In your cereal?”
“This morning, at the breakfast buffet, I had cereal and there was this kinda cornflake clump that looked like a clapperboard. You know,” he mimed it with his hands and the click of the tongue to match. “So I thought that was some… sign? The universe was telling me to go to this premiere, or something.” His neck tensed abruptly as he suddenly remembered himself. Who he was, and what he believed in. “But uh, that’s a little stupid. Forget it.”
The subway doors opened and closed, chimes rang and accordion tunes from the platforms faded in and out of the background chatter. You had close to lost count of how many stops were left until Times Square. The incessant ballet of New York’s illustrious unknowns would still play out, with or without your attention.
When Oscar looked down at you, almost entirely hunched over his lap and taking him in like he was an August rainshower, he found you beaming.
“No, I totally get you. This date I was supposed to go on before I ran into you… I went because Ramen showed up, even though there were so many red flags that I could’ve seen coming.”
“Who?”
“Ramen.”
“Who’s Ramen?”
“The neighbor’s cat. That’s not his real name, just what I call him.”
Oscar stared at you, expression frozen in one of delightful incomprehension, the one you get when you are not entirely sure a miracle is destined for you just yet. And you stared back, awaiting his next words for as long as it’d take them to come.
“So you went on a date because a cat told you to?”
“He didn’t tell me anything, silly, he’s a cat,” you retorted like it was the most obvious thing in the universe, to which Oscar rolled his eyes and muttered Of course. “He just stared, and every time he does it, I know I’m gonna get lucky that day. He’s never failed me before. Well, until today.”
A beat passed, during which you refused to elaborate further out of fear you’d betray the words lingering at the front of your mouth. Maybe this hadn’t been a miss for Ramen, after all. Maybe his magic had worked in unexpected ways. Oscar, on the other hand, just basked in the whole of you, and his lips slightly parted without a sound, as though they didn’t quite know where to begin.
“What?”
“It’s just… My job, this whole universe I live in, there’s no room for good luck charms or silly little superstitions. They’re just… distractions. All the answers are in the data. Our only faith is in the numbers.” And you sensed him about to say something else, something he had to wring out of the very cloth of his ribcage, but suddenly the deep wells in his pupils were sealed off with his favorite lid of deadpan humor. “Well, except the Italians. But they suck, so I wouldn’t take them as an example.”
“Oh my God, Oscar,” you gasped, “you can’t say that, do you know how many Italians there are in New Y—”
A sudden jolt shook the entire train, knocking the carriage back onto its breathless tracks; the momentum sent a teenage girl flying into a tall gym guy, who in turn crashed into you—your hands were too slow to catch you, not lighting-fast and gloved in greatness—you fell on top of Oscar, your nose buried against the open buttons of his shirt.
You were upright in less than a second, locked in a litany of Oh my God sorry’s to which Oscar replied his own recitation of No worries it’s not your fault’s. The train resumed its journey through the depths of Manhattan as if nothing had happened, and truthfully nothing had—except you were now a little closer to each other than you’d been before, and you hoped with all your might that he wouldn’t notice the way your eyelids fluttered, or how your fingertips had started burning up, or how the air was now thicker, or maybe you hoped he did, so you wouldn’t have to speak it aloud—nothing had happened, and truthfully everything had.
“Why did you think I was going to the F1 premiere back there?” you asked softly, not sure why that was the question you’d elected to go with now.
Oscar’s face was impassible—he’d found his calm, collected control back. But he didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, that you could hear his heartbeat louder than the railroad racket below.
“You looked funny.”
“Okay, you’re literally wearing a bowtie, and it’s crooked, by the way.”
“No, I mean, you looked pretty.” The faintest flick of his tongue showed above his bottom lip, undoubtedly accidental. “You looked really pretty, so I assumed you were a guest or something.”
Maybe what you’d heard and thought was his heart pulsating in sync with the wobbly tracks had not been his, but yours. Somewhere indistinct, the lady’s mechanical voice crackled something about Times Square.
“Thank you,” you smiled, with no mischief attached, this time.
“I’m… pretty glad that your date didn’t show up in the end, huh,” he laughed half-heartedly.
“Oscar, Times Square,” you sprung to your feet, nearly twisting your ankle. “That’s you!”
The doors almost chewed down on the hem of Oscar’s pants when he jumped out of the train. Without so much as a glance back or a single word of forgiveness, all the carriages vanished into heavy shadows, and the world was back to normal again.
Or almost. If there was anything even remotely normal about Times Square.
Every single light blinded you—no matter how many times you came you could never wrap your head around how the place managed to dazzle you even in broad daylight—as you both exited the metro station. Summer lay heavily on the commotion of cars, police whistles, loud music, and… screaming bloody murder?
“Ah, I think that’s my cue.”
Oscar held his hand over his eyes as he took in the scene, and only then did you notice the race cars parked in the middle of the street, some fifty meters ahead. It was probably a fair assumption, then, that the thousands of people massed near the makeshift stage, underneath gigantic screens, were all waiting for him. A fair assumption, and an incredibly odd one; to think you had spent such a mundane moment with the man they would soon shout themselves hoarse for!
“Yeah, good luck with that, I’m not going any nearer,” you forced between clenched teeth. “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble.”
When you spun on your heel, you found Oscar extending his hand out for you to shake, squinting his eyes against the sun. Or maybe it was an excuse not to have to look you in the eye more than absolutely necessary. In the same way you couldn’t tell whether your hand was slightly clammy from the heat or the nerves.
“Thanks for saving the day. Or at least mine,” he said, a little too solemn, a little too final. Like this was a farewell rather than an acknowledgment.
“Thanks for saving mine,” you replied, hoping the little smile you forced on your lips looked appropriately warm, and not inexplicably aching. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
To anyone else Oscar would’ve replied the truth—Probably not—but that was not what his bowl of cereal would have wanted of him, so he said:
“Maybe.”
He gave you a wink half a second too long, and immediately looked horrified at what he’d done, which made you double over in a flurry of giggles. When you opened your eyes, he was a few steps ahead, waving you goodbye, and you returned the salute. You watched him jog the distance to the first cameras until he was but one more black and white dot in a sea of elegant millionaires, your throat hollow save for a funny kind of longing.
Then you walked back the way you came, carrying the end of your skirt down the stairs of the metro station.
Thirty minutes later, as you rummaged through your purse for your keys in front of your apartment complex, you noticed your phone lighting up. Usually, when you went on a date, you’d put it on Do not disturb so as to not be tempted—basic education, you reckoned, and something not many dates of yours had had the courtesy of reciprocating—, but you always sent your best friend your location beforehand and allowed her and only her to go through. She knew better than to text you unless it was life or death.
Clearly, this was of the utmost importance, and the fact there were only three messages instead of the fifty-seven you were expecting did not reassure you one bit.
“bitch”
“who tf is that with oscar”
“and why tf is it you??????”
A link to a TikTok came up mere seconds later.
The sage green gown was unmistakable. Anything else could’ve been explained otherwise, maybe blamed on some uncanny resemblance, a fortuitous angle—it looked like the video had been shot from very far away, and the protagonists not at all aware of the recording; but you would’ve recognized that lilypad-bright dress anywhere. Just like you knew that the blurry mass of pixels near the man’s face was a pathetic excuse for a wink, and the woman doubling over for no reason was actually laughing. That she’d watched him disappear into the crowd, immobile and longing, to commit to memory the very way his bones moved when he walked.
“Oscar Piastri’s Mystery Date Gets Cold Feet Right Before Red Carpet Debut?? 👀”
You stared at your phone even as it kept going off, its vibrations tickling your palm. A series of interrogation marks, each its individual message, popped up one after the other on your notification bar, and all you could do was clutch the screen as though you could shatter it with your bare hands.
This meant nothing, you calmed yourself down. This would blow over soon, you swore. As soon as they realized Oscar Piastri would never be seen again with this mysterious woman, and that it was never anything serious. Anything at all, even. That the New Yorker in apple green was just a mirage on his path, pertaining only to him and for a split instant.
And even if things didn’t smooth over… you had a feeling Oscar’s team would have no problem tracking you down.
it was an oscar piastri x reader where reader was a musician (maybe popstar?) and her whole album was about her feelings about oscars and the summary was something like “how long does it take oscar to notice your new album is about him. answer: a long time.”
anyway i foolishly lost it so any help is much appreciated 🫶
summary: since lando turned eighteen, he has yet to figure out what his soulmate trait is, but he's pretty sure he has mastered the art of emotional intelligence, which is totally the same. right?
or: you can feel your soulmate's emotions. lando has no idea.
wc: 7.3 k
warnings: moments of angst and poor emotional management
➤ MASTERLIST
2017
Lando sits, in the middle of his living room couch, surrounded by all of his friends and family. This year had been magical, joining McLaren, becoming a reserve driver, so close to his dream he could almost taste it. And now, he was about to find his soulmate, and his entire life would be complete.
He never could dream small, he thinks as the seconds tick down. He had this all planned out for who knows how long: he would win a world championship, have a giant family and a dog and a house in Monaco and England and maybe even one somewhere fun and tropical, and he would be the happiest, coolest person alive. His soulmate would be gorgeous and smart, much smarter than him, and run to him after every race, and-
"Five," They begin to count down for him, and Lando lets his fantasy slip away to brace for impact, arms stretched out in front of him to watch for any magical marks on his wrists. "Four."
"Three," Lando whispers under his breath. His soulmate mark or trait would be something cool, not the stupid colour blindness one, or a hard-to-find one. "Two,"
"One." For a moment, the world is perfectly still. No one moves, no one breathes, and nothing appears on Lando's arms. No voice fills his head, no memories of past lives come flooding to him. He stands, ripping off his shirt in case it's a mark hidden someone, stripping down to his underwear as everyone laughs, and he waits.
Mere seconds pass before the realization hits like a truck: Lando has no idea what his soulmate trait is, and it isn't obvious. "Maybe you have to write something on your arm?" Someone passes him a marker, and he frantically writes 'hello' on his forearm, and nothing appears.
Disappointment has never felt so bitter. It's deep within him, spiralling around his chest in a way he'd never felt before, ceasing him up entirely. He didn't have a soulmate trait. Maybe, he didn't have a soulmate. Maybe, this was all stupid and pointless, and he was standing in his underwear in front of everyone.
And then, just as he thinks he might cry, his heart very gently become warm, a slow building happiness that has Lando awkwardly smiling as he sniffs and wipes at his eyes. It's a calming notion, that comes over him next, like his heart is reminding him to take deep breathes, and he does. "So?"
"Nothing," He says to the crowd. "Nothing changed."
-
2023
"And you're alright with travelling?" Amanda asks over a mug of tea, steaming in the cool England air. "We've a winter house in the Alps and a summer house in Monaco, which with little ones is a big deal."
"Travelling, if anything, would be a perk." You joke back over your own mug, hands clamped around it tightly. Why she insisted on sitting outside in the morning just after the rain, when the chill still hadn't quite left the air despite the spring weather, was beyond you. That being said, you weren't about to miss this opportunity because of the weather, or your own annoyance with the cold. This was your one chance to finally travel, to finally put all your hard work to use, even if it was chasing a billionaire's kids around.
"Well, it's a highly stressful perk." Amanda continues, "And taking care of kids is a highly stressful job. Are you good at handling stress? Negative emotions?"
You nod, your real answer stuck on your tongue. Bringing up soulmates during an interview wasn't exactly the smartest of ideas, considering the potential discrimination from employers who might not want to hire someone who has yet to find their soulmate. After all, soulmate tracking could lead you around the world, and above all, you can tell Amanda needs someone committed to her children and their needs. "May I be honest?"
Amanda raises an eyebrow, mug paused just below her mouth. Based on the name scrawled on the inside of her wrist, and the fact you were interviewing to be an au pair, she had no trouble finding her soulmate.
But you?
You were not so lucky. "I have to be good at handling emotions, because it's my soulmate trait. I feel whatever they feel, all day, every day."
When you turned eighteen, nothing obvious had changed. Your family had stayed up to see the clock strike midnight, to see what soulmate trait you'd get, carrying on the tradition of colour-blindness, or maybe a timer, like your cousin had gotten. Instead, you saw no change, no secret mark appearing on your skin.
You just felt disappointed, and somewhere in the universe, in yourself, the feeling of disappointment returned to you.
It was always hard to explain that you could feel the same emotion as your soulmate, but you could. It was a separate thing, based in the middle of your chest, as if your heart could feel two things at once. It was always there, at the back of your consciousness, every feeling attached to a life you'd never seen.
Joy, you think, was the most pure and obvious emotion, something that bubbled up in you with a smile you could never shake. When your soulmate was happy, it was never just contentment, but a bright thing that made you daydream of how their grin must look, how wonderful their laugh must sound.
Anger was the second most common. It came in short moments of frustration, or sometimes a deep, week-long affair of something blinding, a rage that seemed to consume them whole, and you by proxy. Sadness was a different sort of beast, originally all consuming. There had been long, long stretches of time where it felt as if all your soulmate could feel was anxiety, sadness, grief, and it was this period that made you seek out meditation methods, psychology courses and ways to help others. You spent enough energy sitting with your soulmate's emotions, keeping calm on your end to help them with theirs, that it just sort of became your whole life.
They might have outgrown the sadness, but you never outgrew your ways of helping them.
You found joy in the world around you because you knew how it helped someone else feel. You pursued jobs and opportunities that allowed you to help others because you knew how to keep a level head, to hear everyone's story, to sit and mourn and love as if they were your own emotions.
Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest thing to get so wrapped up in the emotions of others instead of your own, but it was what your life had come to. Your soulmate had carved this life for you, despite the fact that you had no luck so far in finding them. The next step, then, was obviously branching out and travelling, which made this position, offered to you based on your emotional intelligence, a dream. "But besides your soulmate, how can you deal with other people's emotions, especially children's?"
"I've spent so long studying people, their emotions and their body language in attempts to find my soulmate that it's now just sort of second nature. I can tell what people are feeling because I'm so used to feeling more than just one thing at one time." You answer, and she shakes her head slowly.
"What an impossible thing to track. How would you know?" She sets her mug down and flags a waiter. The man stops by with the receipt, the timer on his wrist reading four months, six days, three hours. "See, a timer, that's useful. Emotions? Ridiculous, if you ask me."
"I think I'll just know when I meet them." Or at least, that's how all your fantasies played out, just locking eyes across a crowded room and realizing that you could feel them, that it was always them, but so far, nothing of the sort had happened. "I mean, I've experienced all of their emotions for the past five years, I ought to be able to pin that to a person."
Amanda rises, putting on her coat, and you're quick to follow, your own half-full drink abandoned. "I would've hired you already without the soulmate trait, but I suppose that's the bonus that makes you so special, anyway." She pauses, then, and turns back to you. "If you don't mind me asking, what is your soulmate feeling currently?"
"I think he's frustrated, but it's not the same as angry. Just sort of annoyed." You take a slow, deep breath in an attempt to calm your own racing heart. If they were annoyed, the last thing they'd need to feel is your nerves added to it. And, after enough breaths, you can feel them start to relax, all on their own.
-
“No soulmate trait?” Oscar asks, and Lando hums over a ridiculously large bowl of salad.
“It makes no sense!” He answers, stabbing at the lettuce in front of him with a vengeance. “Like not a mark, no colour changing shit, just…nothing. I think it’s one of those things where you have to touch people to know.”
“So that’s why you’re so clingy,” Oscar answers sympathetically, and Lando takes a crouton and throws it at him. It had been six years, and he had yet to find his soulmate, to have that connection click into place with a simple touch. Sue him for being clingy when it was the only hope he had for finding true love.
Then, just as soon as Lando begins to feel genuinely resentful, a soft wave of calm comes over him. He had joked, once, that his heart and his brain were capable of feeling two different emotions at once. Sometimes, he was furious, but in his heart, he knew he would be fine. Othertimes, his heart was just so happy for no reason. No one really understood what he was talking about, but Lando didn't mind. He was rather proud of his emotional intelligence, being able to decipher what he was really feeling under the surface. He was maturing into a proper adult who could rationalize their thoughts and feelings, but then again, proper adults don't throw croutons in dining halls.
He takes a slow, deep breath, trying to match the beating of his heart, and after he exhales, he returns to his conversation. “Does your heart ever get happy when your brain is angry?"
“What?”
“Like I was pissed about the soulmate thing, and now I feel all calm. Like my heart knew I was being stupid.” It was like someone reminding him to breathe, to think of the better alternatives, like the fact that his soulmate was probably out there, just with a rare trait that would make it all the more worthwhile.
Oscar, unfazed by both the strange question and the crouton, thinks for a moment before speaking. “I think you’re just old enough to know not to be mad about things. Or you have other things to focus on.”
“Maybe.” Years later, Lando would look back at this moment and bang his head into a table, but in the present, he continues to eat his salad and ponder why no one's investigated the psychology of the heart.
-
2024
"Micah? Is that what you're supposed to be doing?" Micah, who should be unpacking his things into the summer house in Monaco, has decided he will not be sorting his socks, and instead will be constructing the world's largest indoor racetrack around his bedroom floor. Never to be left alone, his younger sister Emily is perched in the middle, drooling over a little pink car.
"I put 'em away, Nana." Micah says, jabbing his thumb in the direction of his suitcase, half shoved in a closet. Typically, children called their grandmothers Nana, but they had adopted the word for you, a sweet little thing you were terrified they'd outgrow. "See?"
"Ah, yes, I see." You walk over to the suitcase, gently drumming your nails on the top. "How silly of me, this is perfectly unpacked as your mother requested."
Micah, not quite yet understanding sarcasm, beams his gap-toothed smile. "Told you!"
"But, what if you need to get an extra pair of shoes? Or sandals? They're stuck at the bottom." Emily gives up on her determination to eat the pink car and grabs part of the track, like a baby-sized Godzilla over the raceway. "And what if we, say, wanted to go to the beach after dinner?"
Micah pauses at that, sitting up and squinting at his suitcase. "...I can just lay the suitcase down?"
"And if you can lay your suitcase down, you can put your other clothes away too. Now come on, before dinner. Your cars will stay exactly where they are." Then, to grant him some mercy, you scoop up Emily from the floor and try to put the pieces of his track back in place.
And then, your heart stops beating in your chest, fingers hovering over the little plastic track.
Disguised for a moment of panic, you realize it's your soulmate's heart that's stopped, your whole body going cold. For a moment, a terrible awful moment, it feels as if the connection is broken, that there is no emotion to be felt at all, and before you can truly grasp what is happening, a joy greater than anything you've ever known washes over you. Scientifically, you know it must just be a rush of adrenaline, of endorphins and hormones, but god, this must be the most a human body can produce at once, rendering you entirely numb to anything but the excitement, the triumph, it can't compare. It's ecstasy, with a laugh you've never heard before ringing in your ears.
It's a bright kind of sunshine that makes you dream of how your soulmate must be smiling, what they must be doing to become so happy, how much you wish you could be there to experience it with them. Then, as it begins to wane, it becomes tinted with every other emotion possible.
Sadness, grief, pain, fear, love. It's that last one, the love, that startles you the most, because you've never felt it on your soulmate's end before. You dream that this must be how it will feel when you finally meet, so different than any other emotion you've dealt with before. It's something pure and unadulerated, with no real sign. You just know it's love, and you have to sit on Micah's bed as you try to catch your breath at the feeling.
It's the sort of mosaic of emotions that you think must embody a person whole. That everything your soulmate has ever felt has just been channelled back inside you, taking over where veins once were. Colours are brighter, the world slower, the pain softer. Emily reaches up to pat your cheeks, startling tears from your eyes that you hadn't realized had formed.
Micah comes to stand beside you, a sock outstretched in his hand. "I'm sorry I didn't put them away."
"Oh, sweetheart," You soothe softly, gently parting his hair away from his face. It's sad, you think, that people don't get to experience this in their everyday life. To know what it's like to feel a partner's joy, to know that when you reach out with your own happiness for them, it gets taken and amplified a hundred times over. "I'm not upset because of you. I'm happy."
"Happy?"
"Your mom told you what soulmate's are, right?" He nods along quickly, face lighting up.
"Did you just meet yours?" He almost shouts, and while she must have explained some concepts, it's obvious he doesn't understand how the whole thing quite works yet, but he has plenty of time to learn.
"My soulmate is really, really happy about something, and I'm so happy for them." It makes it all worth it, you think.
Becoming so devoted to learn about the brain and emotions was already worth it, already a passion, but feeling this, greater than any emotion you've ever felt, it's indescribable. It's something you doubt you ever could forget, the power of their excitement feeling as if it might never fade.
"But you don't know what they're happy about." Micah points out, returning to the volcano that is his suitcase.
"I don't need to." You answer honestly. "Joy should be shared at any time, for any reason. I don't need to know the fine details." And with that, you rise, intent on finding Emily's sandals somewhere in her nursery. "And for that reason, we should go and celebrate too. We can get ice cream after dinner."
Micah, not needing much convincing, quickly joins your side. "I like your soulmate. He should be happy more often."
"Yes," You answer, wishing you could bottle this emotion and keep it forever, "He should."
-
Lando knew his first win would be big, but it was the sort of dream that didn't feel real, even as he was thrown into the crowd, even as he put the trophy over his head, even as he hugged his mom, even as the night waned and the club slowed and he, inevitably, found himself back in his hotel room.
He couldn't help it. It was just this constant rush of everything all at once, the excitement, the pride, the terrifying realization that life continues on. There will be more races that he might win, and he finds himself more determined than ever to win them. It's the delight that he did it, he finally did it, and the sadness that comes with knowing it took him so long. His younger self would be so proud, and the thought only adds more confusing emotions into the mix. Overall, however, is how much he loves this sport, despite all the pain that does come with it. This was what he was always meant to be doing.
His heart isn't helping either. The happiness from it just sort of comes in waves, not connected to his thoughts or his words at all. It's like his heart, every so often, remembers that he has something to be so happy about, radiating a warmth that Lando's never felt before. He's never been this happy in his life, like he's perfectly whole, even with his missing piece, a small cloud he'd ignored hanging over him the entire day.
He never could dream small, but when he had his first win, he wanted a soulmate to share it with. That being said, he's not sure it really matters now. This moment, soulmate or not, is just perfect. He can share plenty of wins with them in the future, anyway. For right now, there's just him and his heart, gently beating and echoing warmth, joy, delight, triumph, whatever you want to call it.
Lando is very happy that his heart is happy, he decides as he finally goes to bed.
It should feel like that more often.
-
2025
Fourth wasn't bad, Lando could tell his heart was trying to tell him, but he didn't want to listen.
He had fucked up, plain and simple, all the way back to starting tenth like he was a fucking rookie again, and sure, he had made his way back to fourth. It was respectable, really. He made a good recovery, he was fine, but he was more furious than he had been in a long time, because this season showed that he should know better.
He was leading the championship, for god's sake, and now he was below Oscar when he could've kept his title. It was an anger that led, rather quickly, into self-deprecation. He had failed, of course. He could have done better, could have tried harder, could have been better. He didn't have the mindset, people kept saying. What mindset? What did Oscar have that he didn't?
He had cried and fought and struggled to get here now, and he fucked up. In qualifying, like a rookie, like someone who should know better. Fourth, a burn only worsened with the thought of the meagre points he'd get. Fourth.
Needing something to lash out against, Lando picks up his water bottle from beside him in the driver room and winds up, eyes set on the wall across from him, when his heart does what it does best, and soothes him. It wasn't telling him that fourth was okay, he finds, but rather a strange sort of sympathy that he had a right to be mad.
It was understanding of his pain, sending soft waves of calm, a tune stuck in the back of his mind that he couldn't quite understand. He should be mad, the water bottle launched across the room, but it stayed in his hand as his heart unravelled the worst parts of him. Anger, rage, was a good, short release, but it didn't get to the heart of the problem. He needed to take a deep breath, his lungs working of their own accord as he let his arm fall, dangling uselessly at his side.
Fourth.
Next race would be better. Next race, he'd lock in, he'd figure out whatever hiccup had cost him podium, had lost him first. He would do better, and he would be better, and that would be that.
Even still, as he finishes up for the night, he finds a sadness coming from his heart, an emotion he didn't know would hurt as much as it did.
-
The anger and joy, this year, kept coming in rounding bouts. Excitement one weekend, failure the next, something that could only be akin to gambling addiction, some sort of sports fan, or someone going through just a rough couple of months. Emily seems as attuned to your soulmate as you are, wailing the moment the anger occurs, rearing its ugly head, and you find yourself calming two souls at once.
You bounce Emily in your arms, a hefty task now that she's four, humming a soft lullaby as you try to get your soulmate to take deep breaths, take apart their anger. Sorting through emotions was a tall task, even this many years in, but there were so many layers to the sadness and anger that it was just...hurtful.
A pain you couldn't fathom. Emily soothes as your soulmate does, falling back asleep as you get her tucked into bed, your soulmate's resentment cascading away to just a tired, dull sort of thing. There's a hint of happiness, somewhere at the edges, and that's all you need to let go, to focus back on your own life.
You don't know how often you'd done that, taken time to soothe someone who never did the same. Your own anger, sadness, what have you, never seemed to be noticed. There was never a comforting, deep breath, a calm happiness to comfort you, just whatever they were feeling, like they couldn't care about helping yours.
You had devoted your life to the emotions of others, you realize as you peer into Micah's room to find him asleep, peacefully curled up under his blankets. You'd raised him for the past two years, taught him how to exist and grow and act, same as Emily, sleeping peacefully behind you. They were children who needed the guidance, the extra set of hands, but your soulmate was grown.
So how could they not handle it? You took extra courses, found a career path out of it, but they just seemed to live life, going through the motions with little regard for what all the frustration might do to someone else's daily life. That spike, that explosion of joy held so fondly in your memories now only returned in shorter bouts, like a drug slipping away from someone, and you focus on tidying up the last of the toys scattered around the hall to distract yourself.
You knew all the emotion tactics to calm yourself, anyway.
So why would you need someone else?
-
Lando's heart has been acting up lately, following him through Miami's second place, and into Imola's second place, and now Monaco.
It just hadn't been as happy as it could've been, as calming as it could've been, like every time Lando experienced a bump, it got less and less willing to pick up the pieces, and Lando understood. Being his heart was a big task, but it was sort of his heart. He needed it, and its strange intelligence.
The worst part was people started noticing it, too. Not his heart, exactly, but just that as much as he was happy, it wasn't to his core. He had tried numerous remedies, chocolates, therapies, everything, including now going for runs at random hours of the day, currently on a hike in the few hours of dawn just outside of Monaco.
But the farther he ran, the more up this hillside he went, the further his heart sank inside him, until he could only describe it as weeping.
Reaching the top, he begins to think he might be losing his mind when he begins to hear it crying, too, only to stumble across a real person, crying before him, and his heart tugs in his chest so hard he thinks it might fall out.
-
Burnout happens far too fast to really understand it, even coming from someone who dedicated their life to understanding people's emotions.
It was hard to always be happy, to always be in tune with other people's emotions, but it was all that you knew. You were supposed to be the happy one, the helpful one, but it was hard to always be happy and always be helpful when it was all coming to an end anyway. Emily and Micah were grown, old enough to have opinions and dreams that far outshone your own, because at some point, children outgrow nannies. This would be your last year full-time, Amanda had broken to you a week or so ago.
She wanted you around for help with Emily, at least until she was five, but after that, they were going to try functioning as a whole, with you there if they needed extra support. And it wasn't leaving the family, leaving this job, that was the hard part. You were more than understanding, after all.
The hard part was the realization that nothing was meant to last. You weren't meant to always be there, supporting other people, raising children and sending peace out into the world. At some point, you needed to stop projecting emotions and needed to start feeling them, stunted for so long in the name of love.
You didn't blame your soulmate, really, but it was time you started living, outside of them, outside of nannying, and that meant doing things for you, like waking early, finding a nice hiking trail, and just going. You walked until your feet grew sore, until a bench looked promising, until your emotions caught back up, and so did your soulmate's.
Soft and on edge, a sadness that wasn't anything too deep, but just persistent. Instinctively, you take a breath, and it all falls apart.
Every emotion you've been taught to suppress, to help others navigate through, every joyful moment not shared, every painful moment you've taken on as a burden comes out in a wail that you can't control.
It was a gift to feel your soulmate's emotions, but you shouldn't have to feel so obliged to help them through every bout of sadness and anger, exhaustion piled up from years of your own neglect.
You had been given so much joy in this life, watching a Monaco sunrise from the clifftop, but you can't help the way it's all been tainted by experience.
After all, there are no tips or courses on how to heal a broken heart, desperately trying to get out of your ribcage.
-
Lando's heart keeps tugging him toward the person currently sobbing on a bench, and he has no idea what to do about it. He's emotionally intelligent, he tries to reason with himself. If someone is in distress, like they're lost, he can help! Or, he might be ruining a moment that a stranger needs alone, but his heart keeps weeping and the sadness keeps spreading until finally, Lando takes a few brave steps forward before coming to kneel before the person on the bench. "Hey," He says, with the awkwardness of a man thrust into a truly new situation, "Don't cry."
You blink at him owlishly before covering your face with another sob.
Great start. "I mean, crying's okay!" He says, quickly coming to sit beside you, leaving enough space not to crowd you. "It releases stuff for you. But like, if you're crying about a reason, I can...help."
"Oxytocin and endorphins," You sniff, a sentence that fully catches him off guard, but the weeping in his heart ebbs way for...annoyance? "Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, they help promote-" You uncover your face to look at him, and it's just heartbreaking, truly. He doesn't remember the last time he saw someone this upset besides his own reflection in the mirror. "Helps promote well-being."
"Maybe I should cry more often," Lando jokes softly, and happiness slips into his heart before disappearing again. His heart normally was so good at calming him, so why was it so difficult to calm other people? "But I mean it. I get that I'm a stranger, but if something's wrong, I can help." Then, because he knows better, "Or I can try?"
You don't answer him immediately, turning to look out at the sunrise. It's pretty, he thinks. Calming. You hiccup beside him, and Lando glances over to see your bottom lip tremble with another wave of unshed tears, and his body reacts before he can.
He takes a big, deep breath. The kind his heart is always telling him to take. One deep breath in, one deep breath out. "You can breathe like that, too. It helps."
"It triggers the relaxation response." You answer through stuttered breath, somehow far more informed on emotions and their controls than he is. You must be a doctor or something, he thinks. Maybe one of those wellness coaches. Either way, you start breathing alongside him, in perfect unison.
"My heart always helps me breathe." Lando says, trying to make conversation, and you give him a strange look as his heart echoes confusion. "I don't know how to describe it, but my heart has its own emotions. And when I get upset, god knows it's too often, it reminds me to be calm, and breathe. Like this-" He takes in a deep breath, and releases it.
Then you take a deep breath in, and release it, and his heart mimics the action. You watch him intently, repeating the action a few times, until Lando realizes his heart is in sync with you.
The breathing, the confusion, the weeping.
A strange mix of emotions floods his heart seconds before he makes the connection, too.
"You can feel me?" You ask softly, "My breathing?"
The world sort of comes to an end on a park bench in Monaco, Lando realizes, because he can feel you breathing. When your eyebrows raise, he feels the shock deep in his heart, and his mind supplements that his soulmate trait must be feeling your emotions, and like the true idiot he is, this whole time he just thought it was his heart feeling things.
God, it's been eight years. Eight years you've been feeling every emotion and trying to help him out, and Lando never knew. He'd never got to help you with your emotions, anyway. You've just had to suffer through all his anger, all his sadness, and he slowly lowers his head into his hands, truly unable to come to terms with what you're saying, what he's feeling, what you're feeling.
He's been blind. Worse than that, he's been ignorant and honestly almost manipulative. All those deep breaths were you having to take the time to breath with him. All those moments his heart was sad, for no reason, or happy, for no reason, it was you living a life that he was unaware of. Every secret emotion he let out, that only he and the walls of his room shared, you knew.
You knew all the deepest, darkest parts of him, and he thought you were his heart.
It's a new sort of grief that wells up inside him, that is immediately replaced with action. This was not his time to mourn, but yours. He snaps back up, and you're still in the same, curled up position, looking at him in awe, and without much ceremony, Lando reaches over to pull you to his chest, the soulmate connection snapping in place as he gently cradles the back of your head into his shoulder. "Jesus fucking christ," He breathes out, "I thought you were my heart."
You don't answer him, but he waits to expect the anger, the confusion, the sadness, but all he can feel is something soft and small radiating from you that he thinks might be love, and he begins to cry for it.
He's sure that if there are any other unfortunate hikers on this trail, they'll stumble across a strange scene of two strangers hugging each other and crying, but Lando has seen stranger in Monaco. Besides, he can't care much about anything besides the soulmate in his arms, and all the ways he needs to make it up to you. From now on, his emotions take a back seat, and he'll help calm you, keep you happy. He wants to memorize every detail of your face, your smile, your laugh. Firstly, he thinks, he should probably get your number and your name.
"How do you know how to handle it?" Lando finds himself asking as he lets you pull away, wiping at your eyes. "Oxy-cotton or whatever, how could you..."
"I studied it." You answer quietly, "For you."
"For...for me?" You nod, and Lando's body shakes with unshed tears.
"You experience everything so vividly. I just wanted to help." You've felt how hard he's been on himself, how angry, and you've been there every step of the way, trying to help. You studied how to help him, for him specifically, and there's nothing he could ever do to make up for it. You reach up to wipe away the tears as they fall, studying his face. "Seems like I could have taught myself a thing or two."
"You're perfect," He says, voice cracking as he looks down at you. "I'm an idiot."
Lando never expected to meet you here. He always thought he'd be in some strange corner of the world, where he'd lock eyes across a crowded room and just know, but instead, you're here, in Monaco, a gift from the universe because he never would have been able to find you otherwise. "Your words," You answer with a sniff. "Not mine."
"Stop being so good at this," Lando says, rubbing his hands over his face. "I need to be the one helping you, not the other way around." He opens his fingers to peer at you through them.
"You just being here helps." You shove his shoulder gently as you speak. "But you really didn't consider once that your heart having emotions was weird?"
"Thought I was emotionally intelligent. Like...my heart was also a brain." He watches you suppress a laugh and he hides behind his hands again. "Shut up! I know, I know, I have a lot of work to do."
And for a moment, you just look at each other, and then that happiness comes spiking back up, and you're slumping into his side as you laugh, a deep thing that has Lando laughing too, like some old joke you've known forever.
His soulmate. You're his soulmate, and he can feel your emotions, and while that is genuinely probably the worst soulmate trait Lando has ever heard of, it's a trait. He has a soulmate, and he is an idiot, but as he wraps an arm around your shoulders and watches the Monaco sunrise, he realizes he has all the time in the world to make up for it. "I'm Lando, by the way."
-
-
-
Every time you look at Lando, you feel a rush of emotions that you now know he feels too. Maybe that's why he turns to flash you a grin, just as bright as you knew it would be. Or, maybe, it's because it's your first time in the paddock, the first time Lando gets to reveal you to the world, the fact that you're real.
You can't really fathom how he never knew he could feel another person's emotions, and with a soft groan, he leans into your side. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"
The past months you've spent together, Lando has been determined to get to know your emotions. Every little thing you go through, you get a text, a random delivery at your door, him peering around the corner into the living room with a raised eyebrow as you angrily try to put together Ikea furniture. Nearing the end of your contract with Amanda, and trying to find your new way in life, Lando insisted you move in with him, and that he would be your emotionally intelligent student. It was a lot of big steps to take, but looking at him now, you're more than happy to take them.
"I thought you couldn't read minds," Lando's teammate Oscar says, and Lando's quick to shake his head.
"I told you, we can feel each other's emotions," He says, arm wrapping around your waist. "For example, I can tell that right now, they are madly in love with me."
He leans in to kiss you, and you gently shove his face away with your hand, matching grins plastered over your faces. You were, honestly. He was a strange, strange being who defied the emotional courses you took, but it made sense. You were a rock when he was a bouncy ball - hyper and all over the place, but he was teaching you to relax, to let go, to let him go. He insisted that he didn't need your help now that he knew how much brainpower it took up, but that didn't stop you from slipping into old ways, reminding him to breathe no matter where in the world you were, calming him from a distance.
Micah makes a fake gagging sound from beside you, though he's also grinning ear to ear. Lando had given the entire family paddock passes, mostly as a gesture of goodwill, but also so that he could have an excuse to have you here for a race. "Be nice, Micah." You say, ruffling his hair.
"Yeah, Micah." Emily quotes, reaching for your hand. She was still quite shy around Lando, whose energy was not always appreciated. You pick her up, an old habit that will die hard, even as she's no longer a toddler, but you hold her on your hip as you hum one of her old lullabies to help ease the stress.
Beside you, Lando absent-mindedly hums along, and you stop your own noise to stare at him. He was always full of surprises, really, somehow knowing a song that must have slipped through the cracks of your emotions. Well, all of him was a surprise, being an F1 driver more famous than you had ever expected your soulmate to be.
To Lando's surprise, you existed. It was something to get used to, a shame that clung to him, but he was growing out of it. He wanted to know every little detail, from favourite colours to where you grew up to where you wanted to go. You weren't sure yet, really. You wanted to help people, but you needed your own time and space with your emotions, and Lando was more than willing to help grant you that.
The media, unfortunately, had also wanted to know every little detail, intent on painting you as some young mom before it came out that you were a nanny, which was somehow better and worse. People had plenty of things to say, but that didn't really matter when Lando was at your side, intent on making Emily smile and putting up with Micah's antics, who had already scored a free hat, shirt, and the fuzzy part of a boom mic from somewhere. "Who do you think is going to win the race?" Lando asks the two, who both blink back at him. "Come on, it's me, right?"
"Or is it going to be Oscar?" You ask, the other man beside you laughing.
"Oscar." Emily announces rather quickly. "He can win."
Both Lando and Oscar wear matching expressions of confusion, but Oscar's quickly morphs into a grin as he does a little bow. "Thank you, I'm happy to have your support."
"Oh, come on!" Lando says, now desperately turning to Micah. "You want me to win, right? British boy to British boy."
Micah looks from Lando slowly to Oscar, who offers two thumbs up. "I want...Oscar?"
"Oh, this is just not fair!" Annoyance stirs in Lando, but dissipates when he looks at you. "You're supposed to teach them better than this."
"Oscar wins so you can stay home," Emily says, playing with her paddock pass. "You make Nana happy."
Lando pauses, and you can feel his heart swell with love, and with little regard for the cameras everywhere, he buries his face into the side of your neck as he blushes. "Get off Nana!" Micah says, tugging at Lando's shirt.
"Nope," Lando says into your neck, wrapping his arms around your waist and holding you tight. "S' my heart now."
"Always was yours," You answer with a kiss to his temple, and you can feel Lando melt both against you and in your heart. "Now go win a race, yeah?"
Lando peels back with that smile that makes your heart do things, and you can tell he knows exactly what you're feeling when that grin just grows. "Thought I was supposed to stay home to keep you happy?"
"You've got the rest of your life for that." With a genuine sadness you can feel in your veins, Lando finally parts, sneaking another kiss before he's off, and you find yourself that much more attuned to his emotions when he's gone. You can feel the anxiety and the stress as he prepares, the excitement as the race starts up, and the inevitable growing anger and fear as he fights for pole. Second, in your mind, was fantastic, but Lando never knew how to dream small.
Taking a deep breath, slowly in and out, you wait for Lando's heart to sync with yours, and you can feel him relax just the smallest bit, granted a moment in a corner to overtake Max, and you scream so loudly with excitement that Emily and Micah cover their ears. Lando echoes back that joy and excitement, keeping pace until the race ends. You don't get to see him when he pulls up to the parc ferme, still stuck wrangling the young children, but you can feel nothing but pure joy all the way until he's up on that podium, trophy high above his head as he scans the crowd. He belonged up there, you think, with this kind of ecstatic delight taking over him. That moment filled with joy and love, all those years ago, had been his first win.
And yet, here, now, that memory was dull in comparison.
Because when Lando scans the crowd, and finally locks eyes with you, you feel a burst of nothing but pure love.
It's a feeling that never goes away.
a/n: i saw this concept for a soulmate trait and just had to do something with it!! i honestly want to write so much more between these two
kymillman: a new pup in the paddock … and they belong to this mystery woman? she’s been seen in and around the mclaren hospitality so could she been the super secret girlfriend of one lando norris!
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user5: …. that’s it?
user6: yeah i’m kinda underwhelmed after this long of a soft launch
user7: does he know he’s lando norris? that he could get anyone he wants?
user8: well isn’t this comment section a barrel of laughs
user9: people on the internet be normal about f1 drivers challenge (failed)
user10: i mean she’s brave as fuck in my opinion because the way people are insane about him, oh i know her DMs will be horrifying
user11: also - yall actually don’t know these f1 drivers you know? your opinions on their love lives actually have no impact whatsoever
user12: shush you’re making too much sense for them
user13: hiding behind a bush i think she looks cute!
user14: also they’re clearly somewhat serious if they have a dog together
user15: i mean i wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been together a lot longer than we think - he knows some of his fans are crazy, it would make sense if he waited to show her off
user16: i feel so bad for them honestly
user17: since no one else is saying it… stunning!
user18: seriously how did he get her?
user19: maybe the lando norris charm does really work?
user20: as much as those sunglasses slay… did she take them off at any point this weekend?
user21: not as far as i have seen with like the broadcast and fanpage posts
user22: does this rub anyone else the wrong way?
user23: no i think it’s real snobby to not even take your sunglasses off to greet your boyfriend and his family
user24: also the way she just walked past everyone in the paddock, like not even turning her head to acknowledge fans or workers ???
user25: ugh i thought lando had gotten better with his love choices
yourusername
liked by alexalbon, oscarpiastri and 182,943 others
tagged: lando
yourusername: finally decided to turn up to ‘bring your gf to work day’
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user26: SLAY
user27: ohhh the unseen pics of lando… we’re being fed
user28: i need her to unleash the files
lando: love you baby
yourusername: i love you too !!!!
lando: i promise i’ll be out of this boring debrief soon…
yourusername: how boring can it be? you won?
lando: any room without you bores me
yourusername: oh!
yourusername: i’m sat next to your momma, she can see all of these comments
lando: whoops! eh, they’ve heard worse
yourusername: just hurry up, peaches is getting sleepy
lando: anything for my two girls
user29: they’re so stinking cute
user30: her being with his family constantly + peaches… how long have they actually been together
user31: well we can defo deduce that she’s been to the norris family home plenty of times
user32: too many times by the sound of it, poor cisca
carlossainz55: why have i been deprived of my peaches time?
yourusername: she’s been working mister - not everything is about you :P
carlossainz55: god forbid a guy wants to cuddle the cutest dog in the world
charles_leclerc: you are no longer welcome back in the ferrari garage
yourusername: but i am?
charles_leclerc: can peaches teach leo to actually listen to me please ???
lando: she’s not a miracle worker…
user33: is she ever gonna take those damn sunglasses off?
user34: ZERO respect for those around her
user35: and those comments about peaches 'working' ... omg reeks of those girls who claim emotional support animals because they think the rules don't apply to them
user36: yeah something weird is going on here
lando
liked by oscarpiastri, carlossainz55 and 1,094,388 others
tagged: yourusername
lando: weekends like this
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user39: the fucking sunglasses… yall are going to have to sedate me
user40: it’s a crime to be stylish now guys
user41: god a girl gets with an athlete and all of a sudden they’re ‘stylish’
yourusername: bestest weekend ever!
yourusername: after your race wins of course
lando: nice save there
yourusername: i didn’t save anything, you know i love being with you when you win
lando: and i love seeing your beautiful face when i get out of the car
lando: and the fact that you get all up in my sweat
yourusername: dude…
lando: sorry, it just slipped out after hiding for so long
yourusername: worth it in the end though
lando: anything is worth it for you
user42: yeah there’s something wrong with this girl
user43: “being with you” instead of you know watching him race… way to expose you’re with him for one reason and one reason only
user44: ding ding ding gold digger alert
user45: imagine being that desperate for a person and still being rude as fuck to his family/coworkers - not even taking off sunglasses or making eye contact
yourusername: omfg you people are pissing me the fuck off
yourusername: I’M BLIND?
yourusername: i prefer to wear sunglasses in new environments?
yourusername: take ‘be kind’ out of your bio because as soon as someone doesn’t conform to what you think lando deserves you are so fucking hateful
oscarpiastri: FUCKING FINALLY
oscarpiastri: obviously i wanted you to share your business but i was so ready to fight the people in these comment sections
lando: awwwww osc so protective
alexalbon: he’s not the only one
alexalbon: coming for y/n was bad enough but PEACHES AS WELL?
yourusername: the jobless hate to see a working girl
lando: oop.
user46: YALL ARE SO FUCKING DUMB
user47: peaches being a guide dog makes so much sense and the sunglasses thing was such a non controversy to like normal people ?
user48: y/n should’ve been allowed to shoot yall idc
mclarenf1
liked by oscarpiastri, adamnorris and 1,754,034 others
tagged: lando & yourusername
mclarenf1: look who’s back in the garage! y/n always has a unique race day experience, due to her visual impairment, y/n cann’ watch the race but she sure knows what’s going on! instead of having the commentary in her headset, she has the noise of lando’s car. based on the sound of the engine, upshifts, downshifts and braking, y/n knows exactly where he is on the track!
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user49: so she’s basically a superhero is what you’re telling me
user50: imagine being so in love with a boy you learn the sounds of his engine i can’t
lando: erm actually she loved the sport before she loved me
yourusername: but i love you even more now
lando: i know you do because you learnt the sounds of the … MCL36 for me
yourusername: guilty!
user51: THEY’VE BEEN TOGETHER THAT LONG?
user52: oh so they’re locked in for life?
lando: 100%
yourusername: we threw away the key a long time ago
maxverstappen1: this is so freaking cute
lando: you’ve known the whole time?
lando: you helped teach y/n to do this
maxverstappen1: still cute as fuck
yourusername: not as cute when i hear a big whack to the side from a certain red bull
maxverstappen1: just because I think yall are cute doesn’t mean I’m gonna give lando a break
user53: i’ve known about this couple for a couple weeks and i would already die for them
user54: they’ve raised the bar FAR too much for the remaining dating pool
user55: the men or women on hinge would NEVER do something like that for me
user56: yall speaking all about this like y/n isn’t moving mountains for lando… wtf does he do for her?
yourusername: not that i need to prove that he’s a good boyfriend to you guys but he does way more than you all think, including learning braille and completely rearranging any rooms i go into for optimal movement
user57: this comment just shot me in the face
yourusername: thank you guys for being the loveliest ever!!!
mclarenf1: anything for our no 1 fan
yourusername: not this peaches erasure
mclarenf1: i think she only likes us because everyone keeps slipping her treats…
lando: STOP BRIBING MY DAUGHTER
yourusername
liked by alexalbon, georgerussell63 and 406,345 others
tagged: landonorris
yourusername: my beautiful boy shot by me (yes i know he’s beautiful, a man with a soul like his has to be)
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user61: user61 found dead, cause of death: this post
user62: the way this is not dramatic at all lol
georgerussell63: you sure you want to be stuck with … that?
yourusername: i don’t like your tone mr russell
georgerussell63: does lando … have a soul?
yourusername: you’ve got ten seconds to delete that tweet before i strangle you
yourusername: and don’t think peaches won’t lead me to you
georgerussell63: bullying george russell… you people are made for each other
lando: ‘you people’? i’ll put you in the barriers
user63: i love how all of the photos are clearly taken by y/n because they’re slightly off centre
user64: omg i didn’t notice… if you go through loads of his old posts they all look like this :0
user65: they’re so in love
alexalbon: oh how i remember coaching lando to ask you out - how times fly
lando: when you’re having fun!
alexalbon: i was having fun, you were a trainwreck
lando: no i was SMOOTH
yourusername: you did your best
lando: but i didn’t even stutter?
yourusername: i could hear you shuffling constantly and wiping your hands on your trousers…
lando: but you love me now so WHO CARES
yourusername: yes i do!
lando: you what?
yourusername: i love you
lando: i love you tooooooooooooo
user66: they’re parents for real
user67: can’t believe some people wanted them to break up over SUNGLASSES
user68: at least there’s silence in these comment sections now
oscarpiastri: as much as i love you guys… y/n can you turn off the feature that reads the texts from lando aloud in my vicinity
yourusername: how was i meant to know what he wrote?
tell all your friends i'm crazy (i'll drive you mad)
george russell x reader , university!au
feat. university!au, academic rivals to lovers, both of them are genuinely kind of unhinged about each other but reader is even more so, losers who can't communicate properly, EPISTOLARY!!! (a.k.a. a lot of emails), uni student government hijinks, george is student government president
author's note. no other explanation to this other than the fact that kae and i have a crazy f1 university au inside of our lil brain spaces and i ended up with this behemoth of a piece. i say that after every smau but seriously. this one took me weeks to finish because of how … much it is. anyways. f1 university au you have my entire heart !! this is dedicated to kae @tsunodaradio , first and foremost, who will be one of the only people to understand the niche references i've got going on here. also dedicated to george russell nation… all ten of us !!!!! seriously . we need more george fics . ALSO ONE LAST NOTE i know this has the most random cameo but trust me it makes sense in the birdykae f1 university verse
mixtape. maniac & checkmate by conan gray were on repeat the entire time i was writing this. that's all you need to know about their dynamic.
🧸 | yourusername • 15mins
congratulations to georgerussell63 for winning the presidency. wishing the incoming student council a productive and transparent school year 🌟
⤷ username1 you’re being soooo brave right now girl 🫶🏽
⤷ username2 no bc i’m p sure the election was rigged anyway i voted for u diva
YU FREEDOM WALL | yufw • 14mins
#YUFW1938 → random but why was george russell wearing a full on astronaut jacket to the announcement . are we sending him to the space katy perry style
miss rabbit has fainted ꗃ | thisisnotY/N • 13mins
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL YOU WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE. I AM CURSING YIUR ENTIRE FAMIYL LINE
⤷ oomf1 THE FULL GOVERNMENT NAME???
⤷ oom2 u couldn’t even fake nice for more than 2 mins?? 😭
YU FREEDOM WALL | yufw • 6mins
#YUFW1939 → does anyone else think y/n is kinda mother for crashing out after losing?? like go off queen i would’ve kicked a tree too
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [10:12PM] : Heard you tried taking down a tree outside the library. Not very environmentally conscious of you
you [10:12PM] : u know spreading false information is VERY unbcoming of a president
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [10:14PM] : It was a good race, though. I’d say better luck next time, but unless you’re looking at a fifth year…
you [10:14PM] : oh FUCK OFFFFF
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [10:17PM] : You are SO gracious in defeat. Truly inspiring.
you [10:18PM]: im literallt goingto print out your headhsot from the cmapaign postr and put it ona dartboard
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [10:18PM] : I would be so honored :)
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [10:18PM] : Wait. Are you drunk?
you [10:20PM] : takeanwild fuckign guess!!!!!!
This is a formal acknowledgment of your, for once, decent behavior last night.
While I maintain that your company remains largely insufferable, I appreciate you ensuring I arrived safely back at my dorm after the election results. Please do not misinterpret this as any kind of endorsement of your personality, your presidency, or your general existence.
Consider this a one-time display of civility. Do not get used to it.
Yours (begrudgingly and only because the Student Code of Conduct demands it),
Y/N L/N
she/her
[email protected]
No need for such dramatics — your gratitude (however painfully extracted) has been graciously accepted, documented, and added to my phone’s Favorites folder for posterity. :)
Rest assured, I’ll treasure the memory. And should you ever find yourself in need of rescue again — emotional, logistical, or otherwise — you know who to call.
Yours (always ready to catch you when you fall — literally and otherwise),
George Russell
he/him
President-Elect, YU Student Government
[email protected]
you [11:49AM]: ‘president elect’ it’s barely been a day can u be any more insufferable
you [11:51AM]: also delete that screenshot of my email omg??? are u obsessed w me or smth
Not to interrupt your (undoubtedly busy) schedule of plotting my assassination, but as the Chairperson of the Finance Committee (your new title, congrats again), you’ll need to attend the preliminary budget meeting in August.
Sent you a Google Calendar invite. Just making sure you’re aware, so you can’t blame me later when you “forget” and accuse me of sabotaging you. :)
Yours truly,
George Russell
he/him
President-Elect, YU Student Government
[email protected]
from: Y/N L/N [email protected]
to: George William Russell [email protected]
cc: none
subject: Re: Upcoming Fall Semester Budget Committee Meeting
Hi George,
Thank you for the reminder — rest assured, my schedule is plenty full without the added burden of thinking about you.
In the future, though, you may want to reconsider CC’ing the entire Finance Committee when sending thinly veiled jabs. Would hate for your professionalism to be called into question before the semester even starts. 👍
I’ll be there. Try not to miss me too much until then.
from: George William Russell [email protected]
to: Y/N L/N [email protected]
cc: none
subject: Re: Re: Upcoming Fall Semester Budget Committee Meeting
Hi Y/N,
Duly noted. I’ll be sure to save my charming commentary for private correspondences moving forward — wouldn’t want to tarnish my sterling reputation.
(Though between us, I’m not convinced you mind the attention as much as you claim.)
Glad you’ll be at the meeting. It wouldn't be nearly as fun without you trying to kill me with your eyes across the table.
Behave yourself until then :)
Yours (whether you like it or not),
George Russell
he/him
President-Elect, YU Student Government
[email protected]
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [3:34PM] : You really couldn’t help yourself, huh?
you [3:34PM] : idk what you’re talking about dude 🤷♀️
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [3:36PM] : The “highest standard of leadership” tweet 😐
you [3:36PM] : i was simply speaking in general terms???
you [3:37PM] : sooooo weird that you felt targeted tho 😬
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [3:37PM] : Weird that you think you’re subtle
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [3:38PM] : Also weird that youre obsessed with me. And yet here we are
you [3:38PM] : you’re so lucky i’ve committed to nonviolence this semester
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [3:39PM] : Good to know you’re still thinking about me when making your resolutions for the new school year :)
Seen 3:39PM
YU FREEDOM WALL | yufw • 20mins
#YUFW2364 → saw a freshman get lost trying to find the new library and end up in the forest behind the science building. welcome to YU babyyyy
miss rabbit has fainted ꗃ | thisisnotY/N • 19mins
it’s sooooo funny how men can be wrong and smug at the same time. what a talent. what a gift. someone put him back in the box he came in
⤷ oomf1 and the box in question is your arms babe. be serious.
⤷ oomf2 can you pleaaaase just kiss already … girl we are SENIORS now 😭😭😭
⤷ thisisnotY/N why would i wanna do that???????????
YU FREEDOM WALL | yufw • 13mins
#YUFW2365 → why did the bookstore line look like the waiting room to hell this morning. i just wanted a pen. ONE. SINGLE. PEN.
George Russell | georgerussell63 • 10mins
New bike lanes are finally painted in front of the Humanities Building! Thanks for your patience — and to the two students who almost ran me over last semester: this one’s for you! 🚲 #YUForward
⤷ username1 for journalistic purposes was one of the students who tried to run you over yourusername ??
⤷ georgerussell63 Yes it was.
⤷ yourusername i plead the fifth 🤷♀️
Just wanted to clarify if the Finance Committee table was intentionally placed next to the improv club at the Fall Festival or if this is some elaborate psychological warfare on your part.
Let me know if there’s flexibility. Or if you want me to file a noise complaint through official channels.
Yours (why do we keep using this sign-off?),
Y/N L/N
she/her
Chairperson, Finance Committee, YU Student Council
[email protected]
You’ll be pleased to know the placement was random, but I’ll admit the image of you slowly losing your mind next to the improv club is pretty entertaining.
That said, I’ll check if there’s room to move the booth — assuming you ask nicely.
Yours (but only if you beg),
George Russell
he/him
President, YU Student Council
[email protected]
This year’s Student Government Winter Formal planning is officially underway. Please let me know if you’d prefer to emcee the event yourself, or if you’d rather have someone less prone to causing spontaneous headaches (i.e., me).
Also: I’ll admit, you do look marginally less terrible in a suit. Maybe even almost presidential. Do NOT let it get to your head.
Yours (very, very reluctantly),
Y/N L/N
she/her
Chairperson, Finance Committee, YU Student Council
[email protected]
...Are you feeling alright? Should I alert the university health services that you’re handing out compliments now?
And yes, I’ll emcee the formal. Wouldn’t want you stealing my thunder. I’ll even bring a powerpoint and everything for when we have downtime.
Yours (wait… what?),
George Russell
he/him
President, YU Student Council
[email protected]
you [1:11PM] : yu chorale singagram just dropped the setlist and i fear for our campus
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:12PM] : I’’m preemptively sorry for whatever poor souls are going to hear "all i want for christmas is you" sung a cappella
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:12PM] : Might even bring earplugs
you [1:13PM] : justice for the altos honestly
you [1:13PM] : kind of tragic they’re not doing my favorite this year though
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:13PM] : Dare I ask what it is?
you [1:14PM] : river by joni mitchell, duh
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:14PM] : That’s a holiday song?
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:14PM] : Also just surprising
you [1:15PM] : what’s that supposed to mean, russell?
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:15PM] : Nothing.
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:15PM] : Just that I’m surprised you even celebrate the holidays… considering how you’re the Grink and all.
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:15PM] : **The GRINCH. Damn it.
you [1:16PM] : LMAOOOOOOOOO HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
DO NOT REPLY (gorge russell 🤢) [1:16PM] : Can we go back to my great joke there before the untimely typo?
you [1:16PM] : HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [1:18PM] : ANYWAY let’s move on to more pressing matters. Am I still “DO NOT REPLY” on your phone? After the blue rabbit event in sophomore year?
you [1:18PM] : not anymoooooore 😊😊😊😊
I don’t care what excuse you’re about to give me — the Student Council does not approve a major venue change 24 hours before the event without informing the Finance Committee. Not only is it irresponsible, it’s flat-out disrespectful.
We had a system. You ignored it. If you’re going to act like protocol doesn’t apply to you, maybe stop pretending this is still a collaborative council.
You know what’s actually disrespectful? Spending more energy writing this email than just showing up and making it work like the rest of us.
I made the call because the original venue double-booked and no one from your committee caught it. So if you’re looking for someone to blame, try the mirror.
You’re not the only one doing work. But you might be the only one convinced the entire university revolves around you.
Grow up
Sincerely,
George Russell
he/him
President, YU Student Council
[email protected]
Don’t you dare put this on me. Your office was the one who confirmed the original reservation. If you had looped in literally anyone, this could’ve been solved in under an hour.
But instead, you went ahead with a last-minute change that impacts logistics, catering, AV, and accessibility — and somehow I’M supposed to smile and thank you for that?
I’m not here to clean up your damage control. I’m here to do my actual job, and I’d appreciate it if you could try doing yours.
Fuck off, man.
Sent from my iPhone.
you [3:32AM] : this is the yu chorale right? how much for a singagram?
+44 20 **** **** [8:07AM] : Hello! Apologies for the late reply. You can find our setlist and our price list here! [IMAGE ATTACHED]
you [10:12AM] : ok great. how much to have you sing ‘all i want for christmas’ to GEORGE RUSSELL for every single class listed here? [IMAGE ATTACHED]
YU CHORALE [10:16AM] : Um. We’d just like to double check your order. You want “All I Want For Christmas” for George Russell for… all 5 of his classes on Friday?
you [10:17AM] : yes. my email is [email protected] send the invoice there
I know you have a predetermined setlist, but may I ask if I can order ‘River’ by Joni Mitchell? Order details below.
Recipient: Y/N L/N
Schedule: 9:00 AM, Rm. 302 @ Social Sciences Building
Song: River by Joni Mitchell (I can pay extra for the special request!)
Thank you!
Best regards,
George Russell
he/him
President, YU Student Council
[email protected]
GROUP CHAT → [YU Chorale] - SINGAGRAM SZNNNN 🔥🔥🔥🎄🔥🔥🔥🔥
estie bestie (intake duty) [12:02PM] : [2 IMAGES ATTACHED]
estie bestie (intake duty) [12:02PM] : Should we tell them
yukes [12:05PM] : no
Pierre Gasly [12:05PM] : No
albono [12:06PM] : NO
🐻-man [12:08PM] : Wait what’s going on?
YU FREEDOM WALL | @yufw • 13mins
#YUFW2782 → someone in my class just got serenaded to river by ben platt by the yu chorale ?? why didn’t anyone tell me special requests were an option i had to have my boyfriend serenaded to LAST CHRISTMAS ???
⤷ username1 no one told you to do rhat?? it’s famously not a love song?
⤷ username2 yu chorale had santa baby in their setlist….. i feel like this is kinda on u man
⤷ username3 i feel like we’re all brushing over the fact that op thinks river is by ben platt … BABY HE SANG THAT ON A TV SHOW WE R LOSING RECIPES 😭😭😭
YU CHORALE [9:15AM] : 🎶SINGAGRAM COMPLETE!🎶 “All I Want For Christmas” by Mariah Carey successfully delivered to George Russell from Y/N L/N 💌
you [9:16AM] : NO
you [9:16AM] : CANCEL the rest PLEASE
you [9:16AM] : i am on my knees begging
you [9:19AM] : ocon i KNOW this is you i know they have you on intake duty i can hear your stupid little voice in the confirmation text
YU CHORALE [9:20AM] : uhhh no this is gasly actually 😐
you [9:20AM] : okay fine sure PIERRE
you [9:21AM] : tell your friend to CANCEL THE REMAINING SINGING TELEGRAMS PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU
YU CHORALE [9:23AM] : we can cancel the afternoon requests
YU CHORALE [9:24AM] : no refunds though. proceeds go to the Duck Pond Preservation Fund
you [9:27AM] : i hope the duck pond floods and swallows the entire performing arts building
you [11:18PM] : okay. okay i am the first to say that i am sorry
you [11:19PM] : i really thought you’d take it in good stride and it wld be like a haha so funny!!! moment but then alex told me u looked super down after the third one which . in my defense was not my fault because i didn’t know WHY they couldn’t just cancel the rest of the singagrams
you [11:19PM] : i didn’t know you’d send me something and i didn’t know it would be RIVER of all things and now i feel awful
you [11:20PM] : and now i hate that you were so nice because now i feel like a bad person which i probably am but idunno thoguht this was smthn we alwyas did w each other and i didn;t think it would get to you badly
you [11:25PM] : what i’m trying to (terribly) say is that i’m sorry. i really am, george. you did a nice gesture for me after we argued and i responded terribly.
you [11:43PM] : george?
you [12:03AM] : if it makes you feel any better i’ll be eating ramen the rest of the week because i blew all my money on those stupid singing telegrams
The Grink™️ (gorge russell) [12:04AM] : you know for the finance chairperson you’re really bad at handling your own money
you [12:05AM] : okay haha fair
you [12:05AM] : i genuinely don’t know what’s wrong with me
you [12:06AM] : you surprise me with the most perfect thing ever and i panic
you [12:06AM] : so i;m sorry
you [12:06AM] : truce? please?
Seen 2:49 AM
OK listen. Im only sending this because Alex took my phone away and also because this is the only email I still have starred on my laptop (??? weird ??? anyway). I;m still kind of mad about the singagram thing. Like I KNOW we argue. And I know u hate me sometimes or whatever. But I was actually trying to do something NICE?? Genuinely. I paid EXTRA. For them to learn the arrangement. F gave them sheet music. Real sheet music. I dunno I thought it would make u smile
You are so fucking mean sometimes and I dont even know why it bothers me but it does. It actually does. because I try really fucking hard to give you some big grand gesture so you know how I feel and u never let me be. Anyway. I think we should have a meeting. Io discuss. Important Business. Like why you look so good when you’re mad at me. HAPPY NEWW YEARRR. fuck u (affectionate)
George WIllliamm Russell
president (notin any official capacity)
YU student government!
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [8:51AM] : Hi.
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [8:51AM] : I am. So sorry about the email.
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [8:52AM] : Truly, I did not know why I thought it would be a good idea.
you [8:52AM] : george, it’s all good
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [8:53AM] : Can we both just forget what I said? I was really just drunk and stupid
you [8:59AM] : oh
you [8:59AM] : oh yeah sure definitely
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:00AM] : Great! Yeah
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:00AM] : Okay
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:00AM] : Truce?
you [9:02AM] : truce :)
you [9:02AM] : it would fill me with great delight if you told me you’re hungover rn tho
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:03AM] : Trust me, I am DYING
you [9:05AM] : yay❤️
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:05AM] : Never going to a party with Lando and Alex ever again
you [9:08AM] : really? was the grink there?
The Grink™️(gorge russell) [9:08AM] : I thought we had a truce!
you [9:13AM] : HAHA okay yeah we do
you [9:13AM] : happy new year, russell:)
george r 🤡 [9:13AM] : Happy new year!
Thanks for the draft — already made some minor adjustments to the booth flow (a few orgs have insisted on having shade after last year’s sunburn incident). Spreadsheet attached.
Budget looks good. I’ll Approve the release on Monday. Don’t spend it all on last-minute balloons again.
Yours (embarrassingly excited about planning week),
Y/N L/N
she/her
Chairperson, Finance Committee, YU Student Council
[email protected]
With full respect and love: Please stop CC’ing us in this thread. We got the booth map, like, 3 emails ago.
All setup details confirmed on our end. See you Monday.
Alex
Events Committee
you [2:30PM] : were the sunflowers from you?
george r 🤡 [2:31PM] : 🤷♂️Anonymous is anonymous
you [2:31PM] : wowi guess ‘anonymous’ just has very george russell-esque handwriting
george r 🤡 [2:31PM] : Weird… he sounds handsome, though
george r 🤡 [2:32PM] : You’re welcome
you [2:32PM] : haha okay thanks
you [2:32PM] : really. it’s stupidly sweet
george r 🤡 [2:33PM] : Wasn’t really expecting to get a whole florist truck in return
george r 🤡 [2:33PM] : Did you mean to send me half of GreenGround’s stock?
you [2:33PM] : okay that’s just one (1) apology bouquet
george r 🤡 [2:34PM] : A 14-stem apology bouquet
george r 🤡 [2:34PM] : You always have to one-up me, huh?
you [2:34PM] : NOOOO wait i’m being soooo honest rn i’m not trying to one-up you
you [2:35PM] : i just. idk. i still feel like i should be apologising for how messy things were last semester
you [2:35PM] : so this felt like. yk. a friendly gesture :)
george r 🤡 [2:41PM] : Oh, yeah. Of course.
george r 🤡 [2:43PM] : Thank you for the flowers, friend:) They’re nice.
miss rabbit has fainted ꗃ | thisisnotY/N • 11mins
fool me ONCE fuckyou fuck you fuck you fuck youfcuky you fcuk you fuck you fuck yo ufuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck youfcuky you fcuk you fuck you fuck yo ufuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
⤷ oomf1 this is soooo very baller cash money normal person of you diva 😍😍 keep up the good work 😍
you [10:56AM] : hope you had fun at the mixer last night:)
JAIL george r 🤡 [10:5APM] : Depends on your definition of “fun” I guess
you [11:01AM] : ah
you [11:01AM] : okay
JAIL george r 🤡 [11:01AM] : You good?
you [11:03AM] : yeah totally
JAIL george r 🤡 [11:03AM] : Right
JAIL george r 🤡 [11:03AM] : Cool
Seen 11:46AM
from: Y/N L/N [email protected]
to: YU Student Government Executive Board [email protected]
cc: George William Russell [email protected] + 3 others
subject: Motion to Initiate Impeachment Proceedings Against Student Government President George Russell
To the Executive Board and Judicial Oversight Committee,
I am formally submitting a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against George Russell, Student Council President, on the grounds of conduct unbecoming of an elected student representative.
This is not a motion I bring lightly. However, in light of recent public behavior— documented and attached to this email in .PDF format, as per standard operating procedure— I believe the matter warrants formal review.
The Student Government Code of Ethics outlines expectations of leadership that include accountability, professionalism, and the maintenance of public trust. When the face of student leadership engages in behavior that actively undermines the credibility of the council, we are forced to ask ourselves what standards we are upholding.
I am requesting that this motion be added to the agenda for our upcoming Executive Board meeting, and that the Judicial Oversight Committee begin a preliminary review.
I am, of course, available for further clarification.
from: George William Russell [email protected]
to: Y/N L/N [email protected]
cc: YU Student Government Executive Board [email protected] + 3 others
subject: Re: Motion to Initiate Impeachment Proceedings Against Student Government President George Russell
Y/N,
Thank you for your submission. Though I’m not sure whether I’m more impressed by your speed or your level of spite.
Since we’re all pretending this is a matter of “public ethics” and not an impulsive overreach rooted in whatever tension you and I have been pretending doesn’t exist since September, I’ll keep this professional.
I stand by my record of leadership. One evening off-campus does not invalidate the work I’ve done, the hours I’ve put in, or the impact I’ve had. If the committee chooses to pursue a formal inquiry, I will cooperate fully.
In the meantime, I suggest you take a step back and ask yourself if this is really about the council. Or if it’s about the fact I wasn’t orbiting around you for once.
I am writing in my capacity as the Student Affairs moderator and faculty advisor assigned to the overseeing of student government disciplinary proceedings.
Having reviewed the submitted motion, supporting materials, and the... spirited email exchanges that followed, I have come to the following conclusion:
This is not an impeachable offense.
While I admire the enthusiasm for constitutional engagement and deeply appreciate how invested you both are in the workings of this university, I will be formally recommending that the impeachment charge be dismissed in its entirety.
Whatever “tension”— and I quote, because I have genuinely lost track of which part of this is political and which part is personal— exists between the two of you is not something this Student Government is equipped to legislate.
You are both bright. You are both capable. And you are both (to be perfectly honest) exhausting. Please conduct yourselves accordingly.
Moreover, and I cannot emphasize this enough: I am currently overseeing seventeen student-led events, three sustainability grants, and an interdepartmental soil restoration conference.
I do not have time for this.
As a final note: according to the spring semester programming spreadsheet, both of you are listed as co-chairpersons for the upcoming annual Senior Bonfire Committee.
So. Good luck with that.
Sincerely,
Sebastian Vettel, PhD
Moderator, Office of Student Affairs
Dean, School of Environmental & Sustainability Studies
[INCOMING VOICE MAIL FROM: JAIL george r 🤡]
hi. it’s me. obviously. i don’t know why i said that, i’m just— i’m not calling to fight, okay? i don’t want to fight. god, i’m tired of fighting. you exhaust me. you actually exhaust me. i mean that in the nicest way possible. or maybe i don’t. honestly i should stop being nice to you.
but i’m sitting here, and i was trying to sleep, and instead i’m just lying in bed replaying every single thing i said to you this semester and every single thing you didn’t say back and i just keep thinking—what the fuck are we even doing? what the fuck are we doing?
and yeah. yeah, i went out. and i got drunk. and i kissed some girl who i don’t even remember the name of. and she tasted like strawberry vodka and too much lip gloss and i knew, like knew even in the moment, that it wasn’t gonna fix anything. but i did it anyway. because you said the flower was a friendly gesture. friendly. friendly?
and fine. fine. i probably overreacted. i probably shouldn’t have gone to bunker and gotten plastered and made out with some stranger while the whole campus watched. that’s on me. but you— you filed an impeachment motion. an actual, documented motion. cc’d judicial affairs, cc’ed fucking professor vettel.
do you know how insane that is? what the fuck is wrong with you?
no, seriously. what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
and– and maybe this is stupid. god, maybe this whole thing has always been stupid and it probably would have been easier when we were arguing about committee agendas and pretending like that was the only thing making us miserable. because now it’s just— i don’t even know what it is anymore. you say one thing like it means nothing and i end up doing something reckless and public and so goddamn pathetic just to see if you’ll react. and you do. just— just not in the way that i wanted. and maybe that’s on me, too, for not saying the quiet things out loud, but you— you do that, too. never– never give any indication. so maybe it is my fault, and maybe it’s yours, too.
but i meant the song. and the flowers. and i meant every email i wrote where i went back and forth over the wording four times before pressing send because i knew you’d read it like it was code and—
i don't know. i think— i think i'm just talking now. you don’t have to call back. you probably won’t. and that’s— fine.
i just. i guess i wanted you to know i noticed. that you didn’t say anything back. and that i’m still here. god help me, i’m still here.
okay, uh— goodnight.
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:03AM] : Hey
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:03AM] : About the voicemail
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:03AM] : I was drunk
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:03AM] : Iou don’t have to listen to it, I didn’t mean half the shit I said
you [8:14AM] : are you fucking serious right now
you [8:14AM] : you always do this
you [8:14AM] : you say shit and then backtrack the second it scares you
you [8:15AM] : LIKE OH MY GOD??? you think I’M the difficult one? you think i’m making this hard for you? you keep doubling down on everything you say and you say I’M confusing??
you [8:15AM] : jesus christ russell
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:19AM] : Okay I guess I deserved that too
you [8:19AM] : no you don’t get to do that either
you [8:20AM] : you don’t get to play the martyr just because you left a voicemail you regret
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:21AM] : Fine
JAIL george r 🤡 [18:21AM] : Then let’s talk about your part in this
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:22AM] : Because, honestly? I’m still trying to figure out what I did exactly that made you want to humiliate me in front of the entire student government.
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:22AM] : Are you just pissed that i have a life outside of you?
OUTGOING VOICE MESSAGE TO → JAIL george r 🤡 0:47
oh my god, you are so fucking presumptuous— you think i care that you have a life? you think that’s what this is about? you have no idea, george. none. you just assume everything. you walk around with your smug little student council smile and your goddamn perfect emails and your stupid—stupid sunflower and think you know everything.
you think you’re the only one who gets confused? you think it’s not hard for me too? you think it’s not fucking exhausting trying to act normal when every time we’re in a room together i want to shake you or scream at you or, i don’t know, do anything just to get you to look at me properly?
why am i jealous you have a life? oh my god, george, fuck! i’m jealous it wasn’t me!
fuck! fuckfuckfuck don’t send that don’t—
you [8:36AM] : fuck
you [8:36AM] : don’t listen to that
you [8:36AM] : george please don’t listen to that
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:38AM] : Too late
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:38AM] : Even stevens now?
you [8:39AM] : fuck off
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:40AM] : I feel like this is something we need to discuss in person
you [8:41AM] : great
you [8:42AM] : perfect
you [8:42AM] : AMAZING, really
you [8:43AM] : maybe while we’re planning the seniors bonfire you can pencil me into the agenda between logistics and the end of my dignity
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:43AM] : Great, I’ll bring the marshmallows
you [8:45AM] : fuck. fine. one last fucking truce because i feel like they’d crucify us if we fuck up the seniors bonfire
you [8:45AM] : do NOT make this weird
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:46AM] : I mean
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:46AM] : It’s already weird
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:46AM] : But okay
JAIL george r 🤡 [8:46AM] : Truce
you [8:47AM] : 🖕
you [4:12PM] : hey quick question
you [4:12PM] : did you request an extra rose delivery?
you [4:13PM] : because i’m triple checking everything and there’s a box that wasn’t in my spreadsheet and i’m lowkey spiraling thinking i messed up the whole count
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:17PM] : Nope, you didn’t mess anything up
you [4:17PM] : what
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:17PM] : They’re for you
you [4:18PM] : like… the whole box?
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:20PM] : Yeah.
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:20PM] : Different colors. Thought you might want options.
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:21PM] : You’ve been the one keeping this whole bonfire thing from falling apart so
JAIL george r 🤡 [4:21PM] : Call it a thank you
you [4:22PM] : oh
you [4:22PM] : okay. cool
you [4:22PM] : thank you
lando and 79 others liked
live from the hill! the seniors' bonfire has begun — and the last bloom ceremony starts in just a few minutes. 🎓🌹
username1 i’m a freshman but i already know i’m gonna sob when it’s my turn four years from now !!!
username2 me and my situationship both holding white roses rn. we’re in danger
username3 i still have my rose dried in a journal. most romantic thing i’ve ever experienced. good luck, class of 2026 ❤️
username4 if i don’t get at LEAST a yu turquoise rose tonight i’m throwing myself in the fire
[INCOMING VOICEMAIL FROM ALEXANDER ALBON → GEORGE RUSSELL : 9:47PM]
mate. george. where are you? okay listen— don’t get mad, but i couldn’t find you and i had to give my turquoise rose to someone, and lando was right there and i panicked, okay? i panicked. it was supposed to be yours. you know it was yours. do not make this a thing. where the hell are you anyway?
[INCOMING VOICEMAIL FROM LANDO NORRIS → GEORGE RUSSELL : 9:53PM]
MY MAAANNNN WHERE ARE YOU ALEX JUST GAVE ME HIS TURQUOISE ROSEEEE SUCK ON ITTTTT
epilogue ...
from: George William Russell [email protected]
to: Y/N L/N [email protected]
date: June 18th, 2026
subject: One Last One (For the Archives)
Hi.
Sending you one last email before they shut this whole system down and erase four years of bickering and budget drafts and accidentally too-long threads about table placements. I think part of me will always look for your name at the top of my inbox. But, hey, I figured it would be weird if my last message wasn’t to you.
You made this place something else entirely for me. Annoying, yes. Infuriating, often. But also bright, and sharp, and alive in a way I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully explain. There’s no one else I would’ve rather fought with every day. And no one else I would’ve rather... walked out of the woods with, after. Haha.
I know we joked about the bonfire being the end of the world, but if it was… I didn’t mind the way it ended.
r/aita · @awenthealchemist asked, “aita (m24) for constantly avoiding my coworker because i’m (hopelessly) in love with them?” & @landoscarino asked, “aita (m24) for being so emotionally constipated that i made my coworker think i hate her because i can’t function properly when she’s around?”
ꔮ starring: oscar piastri x mclaren mechanic!reader.
ꔮ word count: 5.3k.
ꔮ includes: romance, humor, teensy bit of angst. mention of food; profanity. oscar is so emotionally constipated it’s absurd, idiots in love, miscommunication. title from ned’s declassified school survival guide.
ꔮ commentary box: this was initially supposed to just be a ha-ha funny fic (as evidenced by the title!!!) but uhhh. this oscar pic hit my timeline and the prospect of a little angst became a little tew good,, the fact that oscar got two requests of this nature is very telling :D 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
GUIDE TO: TALKING TO YOUR CRUSH.
Step one: Don’t be weird about it.
Oscar fails this step almost immediately.
You’re standing by the garage bench, sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in telemetry notes and gearbox data. There’s a smudge of grease near your jawline—a perfect crescent moon of imperfection that Oscar wants very badly to ignore and also memorize forever. His first coherent thought upon walking in is that the lighting is unfair. Too cinematic. The way the fluorescents hit your skin makes this look like the opening scene of a doomed romance.
He clears his throat. That’s a thing people do when they want to talk. Right?
You glance up. “Morning, Oscar,” you greet. “Car’s ready for install checks. We made a few minor tweaks on the rear wing.”
Professional. Efficient. Like this is your actual job or something. It is. Oscar nods too quickly. “Cool. Great. Rear wing. My favorite part of the car.”
What?
“Right,” you say after a moment’s pause. “Well, we’ve adjusted the flap angle slightly. Should help with balance into Turn 12.”
“Yep. Downforce. Love that stuff. Big fan.”
Step two: Form actual sentences.
He tries again. “I mean, yeah, that’s—that sounds good. Smart. Like you. Not that I think about you being smart. I mean, obviously, you are, that’s why you work here. With me. I mean, not with me, with me. Just… adjacent. Garage-adjacent."
You stare at him.
Step three: Pull the emergency eject before you combust.
“Anyway,” he says, voice cracking like he’s fourteen again, “I’ll just go… check the tire blankets.”
He doesn’t even know where the tire blankets are. To top it all off, he spins too fast and knocks his elbow against the table. The telemetry tablet wobbles. You reach out, stabilizing it with reflexes honed over years of high-stakes pit work.
“Careful.” Your voice is neutral, but your brow twitches. Confused, maybe. Or mildly concerned. You’re not used to seeing Oscar flustered. No one is. He’s known for being unshakably calm. Cool. Tactical, even.
Except around you.
Around you, he forgets how to be human.
He ducks his head and mutters something vaguely apology-shaped before disappearing behind a stack of Pirellis. Once hidden, he presses the back of his hand to his forehead like a fainting Victorian heroine.
Step four: Get it together.
He’s been telling himself for months now that he can handle this. That you’re just a coworker. That it’s fine if his pulse races when you say his name, or if he finds himself inventing excuses to linger near your workstation. He’s an F1 driver. He can do impossible things at 300kph. Surely he can speak to you like a normal person.
But then you smile at him. Or call him mate in that easy way that suggests you don’t think twice about it. That you don’t know what it does to him. And Oscar just short-circuits.
He peeks around the corner. You’re already back to work, focused and capable and utterly out of his league.
Step five: Try again tomorrow.
GUIDE TO: HAVING DINNER WITH YOUR CRUSH.
Step one: It’s not a date. Repeat that. Out loud, if necessary.
Oscar repeats it three times in the mirror before leaving his hotel room. “Not a date. Not a date. Team dinner. Totally normal. Totally fine.”
He still changes his shirt twice.
The restaurant is one of those trendy-but-trying-not-to-look-trendy types. Ambient lighting. Concrete floors. Eucalyptus in glass jars. Half the grid has probably eaten here before a photoshoot. But tonight, it’s just McLaren—engineers, mechanics, and the drivers who secured a front row lockout. A reason to celebrate.
Oscar usually doesn’t come to these. He’s good at the post-race Irish exit. Ghosts away after media, catches up on debriefs, crashes early. He’s got his routines. But then he heard you were coming.
So.
Now he’s here.
And you’re across the table. Not directly—thank God—but diagonally enough that he can see you without making it obvious. (It’s not working. He’s being obvious.)
You’re laughing. The real kind, not the polite kind people do when someone from aero makes a weird joke. You’re talking to one of the tyre techs, relaxed, shoulders loose, sipping from a glass of white wine like you haven’t spent the entire week elbow-deep in machinery.
Oscar can hear the way you say “brilliant” with that low, amused lilt. It hits him somewhere soft and stupid.
Step two: Do not stare.
He’s staring when you glance over. Just a flicker, like you felt him looking. Your eyes meet his.
Oscar immediately looks down at his menu like it personally offended him. “They have food,” he mumbles to no one in particular.
He hears Lando snort beside him. “Of course they have food,” the Brit huffs. “It’s a bloody restaurant. What were you expecting?”
Oscar kicks him under the table. Misses. Hits the table leg.
Step three: If you’re going to suffer, suffer discreetly.
The food comes. Oscar picks at his. Conversation floats around him in waves. Banter, stories from pit wall chaos, someone making a joke about Zak’s karaoke voice. He hears you again before he sees you: a low, amused hum, your elbow lightly nudging someone’s arm as you tell a story.
You’re magnetic without trying. You talk with your hands. You tip your head when you listen. When you laugh, Oscar feels it in his molars.
It should be illegal.
Then the check comes.
“We splitting this or what?” someone asks.
Oscar, caught mid-thought (the thought was “what would happen if I accidentally knocked over this glass of water and needed someone to help clean it up”), says without thinking, “I got it.”
There’s a brief silence. Then a round of delighted surprise:
“We’ve got a big spender over here!”
“P1 perks, huh?”
“Look at our golden boy!”
Oscar wants to crawl under the table. “I didn’t mean—I just meant—it’s not a big deal,” he protests weakly as he scrambles for his wallet. “I can afford dinner. Occasionally. Once a fiscal quarter.”
Lando claps him on the back. “Generous king.”
Oscar groans, fishing out his card, muttering something about regret and financial ruin. But then you stand. Shrug into your jacket. You touch the back of his chair as you pass, a gesture so casual it might not mean anything, and say, soft and warm: “Thanks, Oscar. That was really sweet of you.”
You smile.
And Oscar?
Step four: Die quietly.
He watches you walk toward the door, your voice joining the others as the team filters out into the night. The air smells like grilled steak and good wine. Lando says something else, probably teasing, but it doesn’t register. Oscar’s still frozen in place.
He tucks your thank-you away like a note in his back pocket. Something small. Something priceless. Something that’s just his.
GUIDE TO: CELEBRATING YOUR CRUSH’S BIRTHDAY.
Step one: Arrive at the garage like it’s any other Friday. Practice sessions ahead. Tyres to scrub. Data to collect. Emotionally perilous scenarios to avoid.
“Did you sign the card?”
Oscar’s brows furrow. The engineer in front of him is grinning like he knows something Oscar doesn’t. Which, clearly, he does. “What card?” Oscar asks.
“For her birthday. Come on, mate, there’s cupcakes in the sim room and a paper crown someone stole from hospitality.”
Step two: Panic.
Birthday. Your birthday.
How had he not known? Had it come up and he just—blanked? Had he repressed it, maybe, in some strange bid for self-preservation? Was he supposed to know? Was this a fireable offense?
He drifts toward the sim room, trying to play it cool. (He is not playing it cool.) A few crew members shout greetings to you. One even sings. You laugh, tucked half over your laptop, pen behind your ear, and it does something violent to his chest.
You look good. You always look good. It’s unfair, really. Something about the daylight against your cheekbone, the way your smile tugs to the side when you’re caught off guard. Oscar catalogues these moments in real time, all while internally spiraling.
Then someone asks if anyone has a lighter.
Someone else says, “Oscar, didn’t you say you’d pay for the cake?”
He feels his brain fizzle like a light bulb. This happens a lot around you, apparently. “I did?”
“You did. Earlier,” one of them mechanics notes. “Very loudly, in fact.”
He had blacked out, clearly, and now everyone is looking at him with the coercive energy of people who know he can’t say no. That’s how Oscar ends up standing in the center of the garage, clutching a cake topped with flickering candles like it’s a live bomb.
You’re pulled away from your work and corralled into a semicircle of clapping and whistling. You look bewildered but amused, and then your gaze lands on him. Oscar almost drops the cake he’s apparently footing the bill for.
You smile. Gently. Kindly. Like you don’t notice the way he’s standing too straight, too still. Like he isn’t seconds from combusting.
You blow the candles out in one breath.
The crew cheers. Oscar exhales.
Step three: Try to recover from Step two.
Later, in a lull between tire tests and telemetry readouts, you find him by the stacks of unused slicks. You’re still in your overalls, arms crossed, expression soft. “Thanks for the cake,” you say.
Oscar shrugs, one shoulder up, eyes flicking away. “Wasn’t a big deal.”
“Still. It was nice.”
“Yeah, well. People like cake.”
There is a beat of silence. You nod. Not hurt, exactly. Just—pulling back. Stepping away from the space between you like it doesn’t belong to you both.
“Right. See you at briefing,” you say with a half-wave that’s pitifully awkward.
Oscar watches you leave. Feels the quiet settle like dust. He wonders if there was a better version of that conversation in a parallel universe. One where he said something funny. Or sincere. Or even just not dumb.
Step four: Contemplate the merits of baking lessons and time machines.
Both feel equally out of reach.
GUIDE TO: TELLING YOUR CRUSH YOU LIKE THEM.
Here is where the steps fall apart.
Where the feelings overtake, trying to squeeze in some nonexistent gap. Where everything that could be doesn’t quite cover for everything that is.
Here is the thing Oscar Piastri will never say out loud, not to his engineer, not to Lando, not even to the digital diary he sometimes keeps on long-haul flights when no one else is awake: he is having the most emotionally taxing race weekend of his life.
Because of you.
Because you smiled at him on Thursday morning like nothing’s wrong, like he didn’t all but flee the birthday conversation two weeks ago with the grace of a malfunctioning espresso machine. Because you handed him a tablet during FP1 with your usual gentle efficiency, your fingers brushing his for half a second, and he forgot every single line item on the run plan. Because he cannot focus, not when you’re around the car, around him, around.
He’s been trying to keep his head down. Driving smooth. Avoiding Lando’s sideways glances and Andrea’s knowing comments. But he’s a little haunted this weekend. Haunted by the way your laugh travels across the garage. Haunted by the suspicion that this whole crush thing might be undoing him in ways telemetry will never explain.
It bleeds into everything.
He takes corners with the kind of deliberation that feels almost holy. He treats the car like something sacred—like it’s borrowed, like it matters. Like if he takes care of it well enough, it might return the favor. Maybe he thinks if he drives beautifully enough, you might look at him and see more than a stammer and an awkward joke about tire deg.
He’s not proud of it, but he does glance at the pit wall. During pit entry, during yellow flags, during brief moments when the world slows just enough to allow him a glimpse. You’re always focused, always impossible. You never notice him looking, which is probably why he keeps doing it.
Qualifying is a blur. He finishes P1.
P1.
He can barely hear his own breath for how loud everything is. The crowd, the crew, the cheer that rips through the garage like lightning. All he can think about is how you don’t look surprised. He catches it—barely—a flicker of calm satisfaction in your eyes, like you always knew he had it in him. Like it was inevitable.
They take photos of him, hands braced against the halo, head bowed like he’s praying.
He is.
Not to the gods. Not to the MCL39. But to the parts you touched. The bolts you torqued. The wings you adjusted. This ridiculous machine he fell in love with, because falling for the person who builds it felt impossible.
He can love the car, love the process, love the speed. He can show love to everything but the hands that build him up for failure and success.
He thinks about that too much.
He wants to tell you. He almost does. After parc fermé, when the garage is awash in orange and accolades, and he finds you standing just beyond the crowd with your arms folded like always. He walks up, half-drunk on adrenaline and your proximity.
You beat him to it. “Nice one, Piastri,” you say, soft and sure. Your voice is his favorite post-session sound.
And he just—blanks. All he says is, “Wasn’t bad,” like a fool. Like a man who just won pole and still can’t summon the courage to say, I like you. I like you so much it’s inconveniencing me.
You nod, faint smile flickering. Then someone calls your name and you’re gone again, swallowed by tire blankets and telemetry screens and the rest of your life that doesn’t include him.
Oscar exhales. Presses his palms back to the car. Prays again, maybe.
Or just thinks of you. Nowadays, they feel a lot like the same thing.
GUIDE TO: NOT GETTING JEALOUS OVER YOUR CRUSH.
The thing about emotional maturity, Oscar thinks, is that it always sounds like a good idea until you actually have to practice it. Like yoga, or flossing. Or staying calm when the person you like is laughing with your teammate in a corner of hospitality like she didn’t just cause you to nearly fumble a front wing this morning with one offhanded smile.
He tells himself it’s fine. He tells himself distance is good. Necessary, even. He’s tried talking to you. Tried the whole dinner thing. The birthday fiasco. And after all that? Still pathetically infatuated. Maybe this new strategy is the answer. Avoidance, detachment, sheer willpower.
So far, it’s been working. He’s been diligent. Professional. Leaves the room when you enter, pretends to be very busy with tire data when your voice floats too close. Rewires his brain to treat you like an ambient noise: the quiet whirr of a fan, or the distant hum of the garage. Background.
It’s working until it isn’t.
It’s a humid Thursday afternoon in Barcelona. The whole team has gathered in the McLaren hospitality unit. Engineers swapping notes, marketing handing out itineraries, Lando dramatically recounting some dinner party in Ibiza like he’s auditioning for a reality show. You’re there too, sitting with one knee pulled up in your chair, giggling over Lando’s animated storytelling.
Oscar should look away. He tries. But then you say something, and Lando bursts out laughing, and the two of you lean close in that way people do when they share some unspoken shorthand. Oscar feels it again, then. That thing he’s been pretending doesn’t live under his ribs.
Someone teases, “You two should start a podcast or something. Oscar’s missing out.”
And Oscar—like an idiot, like a boy who’s forgotten every chapter of his own guide—says, with a half-laugh and a mouth moving faster than his brain: “Nah, they’ve got the flirting covered without me.”
There’s a beat of silence. The one that feels like a collectively sharp inhale, like a breath being held, as Oscar realizes this may not have been his best moment.
Lando raises his eyebrows. Someone coughs. Your eyes shift, and Oscar catches it—the flicker of surprise, the hint of hurt. It hits him square in the chest. “I was joking,” he says quickly, forcing a laugh. “Kidding. Just tired. Jet lag or whatever.”
You give him a small smile, the kind that doesn’t reach your eyes. Then you excuse yourself, something about checking telemetry. Your chair scrapes softly against the floor. The room breathes again.
Oscar wants to disappear.
Later, he corners Lando by the espresso machine.
“Hey,” he starts, voice low. “About earlier—sorry. That wasn’t about you.”
Lando sips his coffee, tilts his head. “You sure? ‘Cause it sure felt that way.”
“It wasn’t,” Oscar says again, firmer now. “You’re not the problem.”
Lando looks at him for a moment. Then shrugs. “I’m not the person you should be apologizing to.”
Oscar rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. I know. I just—”
He breaks off. His throat is dry. Lando watches him. Patient. Curious. This is how Oscar knows things are particularly bad; when even Lando can clock his shit, then the world must truly be ending in some bird-flapping-its-wings-over-in-Asia way.
Oscar exhales, then mutters, more to himself than anyone else, “Can you keep a secret?”
GUIDE TO: ASKING YOUR CRUSH OUT (WITH ADVICE FROM LANDO NORRIS).
The only step: Catch her when she’s not holding a wrench.
Oscar thinks this around the same time you duck out from under the chassis, motor oil on your sleeve and a very specific look on your face. Not annoyed. Not exactly. Just very focused. Which, for some reason, is even more intimidating.
“Hey,” he starts, already flinching at how loud it sounds in the garage. “I, uh. Was wondering if you maybe wanted to grab a coffee later?”
You look up, eyes narrowed in a scrutinizing way, before gesturing vaguely to the side pod that’s still half off. “Kinda in the middle of something,” you answer, tone a touch clipped.
Right. Free practice. The clipped barrier. The unscheduled hands-on aftermath of a moment’s lapse.
“Right,” he echoes, because repetition is his only coping mechanism. “No, yeah. Obviously. Just—later? Not like. A date. Or, I mean—unless you want. It’s fine. I wasn’t planning anything major.”
You stare at him for a second longer than he can reasonably survive. Then you sigh and nod toward hospitality. “You want coffee? We can do that. Ten minutes.”
He shouldn’t feel winded by that. But he is.
The McLaren hospitality is empty enough to echo. Late afternoon sun flares in from the side windows, painting long, golden lines across the table where Oscar sits stiffly, gripping a branded paper cup.
You’re seated across from him, still in uniform. Still with a faint smudge of something along your jaw. He doesn’t point it out.
You take a sip. He takes a sip. There is sipping.
“This is weird,” you say after a moment, not unkindly. “You don’t usually do this.”
He raises his shoulders in a shrug. “I could surprise you.”
You lift an eyebrow. “This wouldn’t happen to be about that thing you said last week, would it?”
The jab. The Lando thing. Oscar nearly drops his cup, swallows hard, grasps at straws. “Yeah. No. I mean—yeah. I’m sorry. For that. It was… dumb.”
You watch him, quiet.
“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” he adds. “It was more about me than it was about you. Or Lando.”
You nod slowly. Then tilt your head. “It’s alright. I’ve heard worse.”
That should make him feel better. It doesn’t. You finish your coffee in one long sip. The silence creaks. “Well,” you say, standing, “if this was HR-mandated bonding time, I hope you got to check it off your list.”
Oscar’s stomach sinks. “What?”
You offer him a smile. Tight-lipped. Cordial. Evasive in that already-halfway-out-of-the-door way. “Nothing. Thanks for the coffee.”
And then you’re gone, leaving behind the faint scent of motor oil and roast beans, and Oscar sitting in a chair that suddenly feels much too big. He stares down at his hands.
No matter how bad he thought that might go, it still went worse.
GUIDE TO: COMFORTING YOUR CRUSH ON A BAD DAY.
It’s a shit weekend, full stop. The kind there’s no guide for.
The rain is unpredictable, the car’s balance is off, and Oscar ends up P17 in qualifying after a messy stint that leaves his engineers speaking in apologetic tones and his helmet visor fogged from the inside out. The debriefs go long, too long, and he peels his race suit down to his waist as he stalks through the garage, feeling every part of his body buzz with the kind of frustration that hums in his bones.
He’s halfway to the motorhome when he sees you.
You’re tucked behind some crates near the back of the McLaren garage. Your shoulders are hunched, your head bowed. There’s the unmistakable tremble of someone trying not to cry. It makes him stop cold.
He wants to back away, pretend he didn’t see anything. But he’s rooted. And then he pads over slowly, careful not to startle you. You hear him anyway, looking up too fast, wiping at your eyes in a quick, practiced motion.
“Sorry,” you mumble, eyes already flicking away. “Just needed a minute.”
He doesn’t say anything, just slides down to sit next to you. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket. He never means to carry one, but his mum insisted he keep one during his rookie year and now it’s a habit. He offers it to you without a word.
You glance at it, then him. Then take it.
The silence that stretches out isn’t awkward. It’s something gentler. Steadier. The muted thrum of activity around the paddock feels distant from this makeshift alcove. You cry, not heavily, but enough for it to stretch. He stays.
When the tears subside, you laugh a little under your breath. “Bet this is the last thing you need,” you say, voice watery around the edges. You say it like it’s a joke, except it’s not really.
Oscar blinks. “What?”
You huff out a breath too brittle to be a laugh. There’s something tired in your eyes, but also wry. “Oscar, you avoid me like I’m contagious. You barely talk to me. You make digs about me and Lando, remember? The dinner thing? My birthday?” You shrug. “It’s fine, really. You don’t have to explain. You can’t be expected to like all of your co-workers.”
He opens his mouth. Then closes it. He feels like he’s back in boarding school again. Clumsy. Helpless. Trying to solve a maths problem with the wrong equation.
The words don’t come right. They never do when they matter most.
You smile softly, a little sad. “We probably could’ve been good friends,” you say, and somehow that’s the shittiest thing about all of this.
You stand before he can figure out what to say, his handkerchief balled in your fist. “Thanks for this, though,” you say. “For staying.”
You leave. Oscar stays, hands limp in his lap, wrinkled from the type of day he’s needed to weather.
Rain taps against the metal siding of the garage. For once, he doesn’t know what part of him feels more soaked: his suit, or the inside of his chest.
GUIDE TO: CONVINCING YOUR CRUSH TO STAY.
Oscar is riding a high. P17 to P1 is the kind of miracle they talk about in the Bible.
His visor is still flecked with champagne spray, a towel around his neck, every other teammate slapping his back with unfiltered elation. He grins for photos with the trophy and McLaren’s social media team, answers questions at the press pen with a string of rehearsed lines, all while his brain starts drifting somewhere else entirely.
“The car was good,” he tells everyone, in different variations. The car was perfect. The car was flawless. The car was the best it’s ever been. Underneath it all, he is saying thank you, thank you, thank you to the crew. To you. To the extra work you put in to make sure he could make this impossible comeback.
He doesn’t clock your absence until the cool-down lap is long over. There’s no familiar click of your boots in the garage, no sharp clap on his shoulder, no dry comment about how he took that one apex like a cocky bastard. No handoff of telemetry sheets. No nods between you and the race engineers. Usually, you’re grumbling about how long podium ceremonies take, arms crossed and grease still on your collar. But now—now you’re just not.
He overhears it from Paul. Offhand, casual. It’s not even directed at Oscar. It’s a piece of information passed on to some intern, and Oscar just so happens to be passing by when he catches your name and hears, “Bit of a shame she’s moving to Lando’s side by the next race.”
Oscar stops walking mid-step.
His towel slips off his neck and hits the floor with a wet, forgotten thump.
He finds you in the shadowed end of the motorhome, half-tucked behind a storage shelf, clipboard in one hand and scribbling notes while half-listening to someone from logistics. There’s a pen behind your ear. Your brow is furrowed in that way that means you’re troubleshooting something in real time. You look like you built the whole operation from scratch. Today, you probably did.
When you notice him, you straighten, expression unreadable. “Congrats,” you say. “P1. Smooth drive.”
“You’re transferring to Lando’s pit crew?” he blurts out, voice just a touch too sharp.
The logistics person excuses themself and hurries off. Rumors of Oscar’s feelings towards you have been greatly exaggerated, and it irks him more than he cares to admit. Even more than you coolly saying, “Yeah. Guess you heard.”
“Why?”
“Just felt like a change.”
It’s meant to come off light. Detached. It doesn’t. Not to him.
Oscar doesn’t believe it for a second. Not when the car felt like it had been designed to read his mind. Not when every corner today had felt like grace. Not when he could feel your work in every single turn.
He says your name like it means something. (It does.)
You look away, your gaze catching on something behind him. “You made it clear you didn’t want me around,” you say. “I figured it’d be easier for everyone if I just... moved.”
Oscar exhales. He wants to pace. He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you. He wants to review every stupid mental guide he’s made insofar and chart where it all went to shit.
Instead, he starts talking. Or rather—he starts panicking, but with words.
“God, that’s not true. That’s completely wrong. I haven’t hated you. I haven’t even come close. I’ve—” He stops, shakes his head, tries again. Tries harder. “I’ve liked you. I like you. Like, a lot. Too much. To the point where I could barely function normally. So I avoided you, or made some idiotic joke, or froze. I thought I was hiding it. But apparently I just came off like a complete asshole. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want to make things weird. It got fucking weird anyway. And now you think I hate you, which is just—” He gestures, helplessly. “It’s backwards. All of it.”
He finally stops, chest rising and falling like he’s just come out of the car again.
Silence follows. Heavy and exposed.
You stare at him. Your mouth parts slightly, but you don’t speak right away. When your words finally form, your voice is rough with disbelief. “You have a weird way of showing you like me.”
He laughs deliriously, his hands dropping to his sides. “Yeah. I know.”
You shift your weight. And then, a little quieter, a little less sure: “I wasn’t exactly straightforward either.”
Oscar’s eyes snap to your face. There’s an uncharacteristic flush of red high in your cheeks. You’re blushing. Why are you blushing?
“I really thought you hated me,” you admit. “So I kept my head down. I threw myself into work. Every upgrade, every tweak—I just kept thinking, okay, maybe I can’t fix whatever’s between us, but I can at least give you a good car. Something that works. Something that will get you what you want.”
Sometimes, Oscar’s sisters liked to wax poetics about ‘Oh.’ moments. Exactly like that. Capital ‘O’, italicized, full stop with a period. The realizations of all realizations. Epiphanies that hit like a train. Oscar called them all hopeless romantics, but now—
Oh.
Your confession is a lot more sophisticated than his, but it’s still that. A confession. Rationale for the endless chances, the delicate smiles, the car that put him on the podium most weekends. Before he can overthink it, before he can try and consult the guides that have failed him spectacularly so far, Oscar reaches out.
Your hands are not soft. They’re rough with work. Calloused, nicked, a little stiff around the joints. Oscar loves them. Oscar loves you. They’re the hands that have made him, the hands that he’s thought of holding for an impossible amount of time. He should tell you that. Instead, he says:
“You’re something that I want, too.”
GUIDE TO: DATING YOUR MECHANIC.
Step one: Be subtle about it.
Oscar likes to think he’s subtle.
He likes to think he’s smooth now, too. That something about crossing that invisible threshold from oh God, I can’t even look at her to I get to kiss her now!!! has imbued him with a serene sense of smugness.
He brings you coffee when he knows you’ve been up since five. Waits for you after debriefs like it's protocol. Accidentally-on-purpose grabs your hand when you pass tools. You nudge his ankle under briefing tables. He swears you winked at him once in parc ferme, but you’ve denied it. The same way you denied canceling your transfer to Lando’s pit crew because Oscar was, in fact, just someone terribly down bad for you.
You’re both very professional. Very secret. Very subtle.
Everyone knows.
Oscar hears it in the way Lando coughs pointedly every time he sidles up next to you during a garage walk-through. In the way the rest of the crew suddenly finds reasons to give the two of you space at lunch. In the deadpan way Zak says, “Tell your girlfriend good job on the diffuser setup,” and walks away before Oscar can sputter out a reply.
Oscar insists to Lando that it’s not a thing. “No one thinks we’re dating,” he says one evening, the words muffled around a protein bar.
Lando doesn’t look up from his phone. “Mate, you smiled like it was your wedding day when she tightened your front wing.”
Oscar goes red. Deeply, irrevocably red.
Still. He likes it. The way you catch his gaze across the garage, shake your head just a little like you’re both in on a long-running bit. The way your fingers brush his when you pass him telemetry sheets. The fact that he knows you’ll be there at the end of the day, leaning against the doorframe, helmet bag in hand, looking at him like he’s still something new and ridiculous and kind of wonderful.
He knows it won’t always be this easy. That the season will twist and tighten again, as it always does. That one of you will slip up eventually. That the world might want to chew on this thing that should be worshipped.
For now, Oscar will win races and kiss you behind stackable crates and pretend that no one knows you’re the heart on his sleeve.
He gets to call it subtle, gets to hold your hand.
And he steadfastly follows the only step that really matters: he gets to be happy. ⛐
summary: you and daniel have an unwritten rule: when either of you has a bad day, you play a certain song to brighten the mood.
or: 2 times daniel forces you to sing to 'unwritten' by natasha bedingfield, and the one time you force him to.
wc: 3.4 k
warnings: none!
➤ MASTERLIST
1.
It starts with Daniel, a red-eye flight, and your lost luggage. You honestly don't remember what Grand Prix you were coming back from, or how long you'd been awake, but it was about 4 AM at the Sydney airport as you waited for your suitcase to come. It was eaten by the airplane, spat out over New Zealand maybe, but it wasn't at the carousel, and the longer you waited, the more delirious you felt.
"Come on," Daniel teases as you try not to glare daggers his way. "It's one suitcase. They'll find it, return it, it's no big deal."
"Unless they lose it forever! My favourite shoes were in there. All of your merch was in there, too." The hats, the jackets, everything you tried to cycle through the race weekend to support him.
"I can buy you more." The radio changes from some crackling speaker above, and Daniel starts to hum along to the song as you drop your head into your hands. The attendant had told you to wait here until they got word of where it was, apparently able to trace it through some system, but it felt like you were dying.
You were tired, you were hungry, everything hurt, the lights were too bright, and Daniel too much energy for such an early hour. Despite all those complaints, however, Daniel didn't seem too bothered. In fact, as you spare a glance up, you watch him begin to dance along to the song, the sight of which forcing you to smile, even if you really, truly, do not feel like smiling.
"I got you." Daniel says, spinning around in a circle. "Can't be sad when I'm dancing, right?"
"You're ridiculous." The few other people left in the airport begin to stare, but Daniel had never really cared about the eyes on him - he thrived on attention, and tonight, or you suppose this morning, was no different.
"Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window, let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find!" He sings, shimmying forward to grab your hands, pulling you to stand, and you flush as he tries to spin you around.
His kind of happiness was infectious, but it didn't stop you from being self-conscious. "Danny, come on."
"Release your inhibitions," The song times perfectly, Daniel singing along with it, "Feel the rain on your skin!"
Reluctantly, you let him spin you, and he takes your hands as he pushes you back and then pulls you in, making up dance moves as he goes. He beams down at you at you finally begin to laugh, and for a moment, the lost luggage, the late night, it all disappears, because he's here holding you, dancing like no one's watching, and it's one of the many little things that made you fall for him in the first place.
Only Daniel would turn a miserable morning into a dance in the middle of an airport. "Come on, sing along!"
"You are ridiculous!" Daniel waits, hands planted on your waist to keep you still until you listen to him. "Dancing is ridiculous enough right now."
"Live your life with arms wide open," Daniel continues, gently squeezing your waist to try and get a reaction out of you. "Today is where your books being, the rest-"
"Is still unwritten." You finally sing along, and Daniel dips you, happily pressing a kiss to your lips before righting you again. He cackles happily, keeping his arms wrapped around you as he then manages to sweep you off your feet, spinning you around.
"There you go!" He finally sets you down, and you slump back into your seat with a huff. "The rest is still unwritten, so don't worry about your luggage. Live for the moment, feel the rain on your skin."
You extend a hand to him, and he takes it, a mistaken place to put his trust. You pull him down, and he collides roughly with the bench beside you, though he doesn't stop laughing. "That's what you get for being a menace at this hour of the morning."
"Eh, you love it." He says, and you can't argue with that, so you press a kiss to his cheek. "You can't be mad with Unwritten playing, it's just a fact."
"Really?" Daniel nods happily, still humming along to the song, and you just shake your head. "Next time you have a bad race, I'm playing it."
2.
You had waited for this vacation with Daniel for forever. It was a sunny beach, far away from the world of Formula One and prying eyes, from your own work and concerns. You intended to spend the week in the sand, or at the tropical bar, and the day you arrive, it rains like nothing you've ever seen before.
Stuck in your bungalow, you stare wistfully out the window as the second day passes, the rain letting up, but still drizzling down. It wasn't calming, wasn't relaxing, it was you, trapped in a room with Daniel. For a much lower cost, you could've done the exact thing at home, and the weather in Australia was probably that much better.
You try not to sulk as you return to your book in your lap, but with a long sigh, it seems even your moping has got the worst of Daniel, a hard task for someone who radiated sunshine wherever they went. "That's enough." He says as he stands, coming over to you. You expect him to complain or propose something for you to do, but instead, he bends down to pick you up bridal-style, and you gasp as your book topples from your hands and down onto the couch.
"Daniel!" He marches you both over to the door of the bungalow, and out onto the beach, and you smack at his shoulder as the rain immediately begins to soak the both of you.
"I refuse to let rain make you grumpy." He sets you down and pulls out his phone, tucking it onto the front step of the bungalow so as to not get too wet, and he cranks the volume. "So, I think it's time you felt some rain on your skin."
"I swear-" And, sure enough, Unwritten begins to play. You stare at him in awe as he begins to dance again, throwing his arms out to spin in the rain like it wasn't the most absurd thing you've ever seen, and you decide not to wait to join in this time. You grab one of his hands and spin him yourself as he laughs heartily, that big, infectious grin spreading across his face as you move him about.
You take the lead, pulling him in as you wrap your arms around his neck, and he easily wraps his around your waist, swaying to the song as he begins to sing. "No one else, no one else, can speak the words on your lips." He pulls you in for a kiss, and you let him, despite the rain that's getting you soaked to the bone.
"You know, I think the airport might have been better than this." You say against his lips, and he pouts, pulling back to shake his head, spraying you with water as he does so.
"I am on a tropical beach, in the pouring rain, with the love of my life." The admission does something strange to your heart, staring up at Daniel as the world slows, even if the rain doesn't. "Doesn't get much better than this."
Perhaps, in a more serious moment, you'd kiss him senseless or return the sentiment, but for now, you choose to bury your face in the side of his neck as you grin. "You are such a sap."
"Hey, I am staring at the blank page before me, opening up the dirty window, and letting the sun illuminate the words I cannot find." He parodies from the lyrics. "And I think you need to release your inhibitions and feel the rain on your skin."
"Oh, I am feeling the rain on my skin." You pull him in for another kiss, dance moves forgotten as he presses against you, hot and heavy despite the chill that comes with the rain. Your hands glide into his hair as his head dips, gently kissing along your jaw and then down your neck.
"No one else can feel this for you."
"Oh, no one else better be feeling you like this." You taunt, and Daniel nips your neck teasingly as you gasp, before he finally pulls away.
"You don't have to worry about that," He says, "I don't think anyone else would put up with things like this. I'm so lucky that you don't care."
"I do care! I just happen to love you enough that it's going to take more than some rain and that stupid song to really get me going." Daniel seemed to know how to push all your buttons, without pushing you over the edge, the right kind of annoying and adorable that made him hard to resist, even when he was hard to be around. "Which, speaking of, my clothes and hair are ruined from this."
"Oh yeah?"
"Mhm. Going to need to shower and change to fix it." You say, walking back up the steps to the bungalow and lounging in the doorway. "But I'm sure you're too busy singing to help me out with that."
"Oh hell no." He grabs his phone from the step and bounds up the stairs, happily helping you into the bungalow as he wraps his arms around your waist. "I've got some unwritten things I wouldn't mind doing with you."
"That's what I thought."
3.
Things were not going well for Daniel, that much was obvious. Apparently, his seat was up for negotiations, he hadn't been on the podium in weeks, and something was wrong with the car that no one else seemed to notice. You took his word on everything, trying to support him the best you could, but some days it felt like bad luck, like a curse hanging over him.
What was once all smiles was almost tears. What was once happy celebrations, champagne, and parties was now desperation, late nights spent working out, checking in with mechanics, doing everything he could to get it right.
And standing in the paddock, watching him almost spin out on the monitor, you knew today wasn't any better. It was a hard thing to fathom, seeing Daniel struggle over what he loved, but there was nothing you could do from here. You couldn't magically make his car any better, couldn't give him a hug and hold him tight, like how he did on your bad days.
You couldn't force him to dance or sing. And then, sparing a glance over to the radio, the thought strikes you that maybe, just maybe, you could make him sing.
You could release his inhibitions, you think with a growing smile, make him feel the rain on his skin. Payback, for the airport, and the rain, but that wasn't really payback. You were giving Daniel what he'd always given you, and that was something to smile about. You're quick to move over to the radio, his race engineering offering a strange look. "Do you have anything important to tell Daniel?" You ask, and the man shakes his head. "Can I speak to him, then?"
"I don't know if that's a good idea." He says, and one of the mechanics glances over, offering a sympathetic look.
"It might be his last race," The mechanic says, the words ringing in your ears. "It could be a nice send-off."
This will not be Daniel's last race, you determine as you put the headset on and adjust the mic. This is just the beginning, the ending unplanned. "Danny?" Your voice crackles over the radio, and you wait patiently for him to respond.
"What the-" There's a brief moment of static over the headset. "Sweetheart, what are you doing on the radio?" Daniel asks, and you realize this might be recorded, broadcast out to others, but you don't care, not when the cameras turn to you, not when Daniel needs you.
"I think you need to feel the rain on your skin." You begin with, much to the confusion of everyone, considering the clear skies, but Daniel is laughing on the other end, and you can hear the smile on his face.
"You're an idiot! You can't be serious." He says, and you watch on the monitor as he nears another driver.
"Oh, I'm so serious. Staring at the blank page before you-" You try not to be embarrassed, singing the opening line, but Daniel is happily finishing it for you.
"Open up the dirty window, let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find!" His singing is not quite right, considering the power he's exerting, but it's working. He just barely manages to get a pass on the driver as you cheer, jumping up and down with your hands clasped over the headset to keep it on your head. "Reaching for something in the distance, so close you can almost taste it, release your inhibitions! What, you're not going to sing it with me any more?"
You can't answer as you hold your breath, watching another car ahead of him spin out onto the grass. He has a chance at this, you think. A couple more positions, and he's in third. "You've got this, Danny."
"You don't know," He grunts out, taking another corner wide. "The rest is still unwritten."
You take off the headset and hand it back to the engineer, who stares at you as if you've grown two heads. "Long story," You try to explain, and they just offer a grin before returning to their post. You're not sure if you can look at the screen, watching him this close to his first podium in a long time, but by the time you drag your eyes back to the big screen, another car has made a pit stop, and he's ahead.
"What was all that?" The mechanic asks, the group turning to look at you. "That his new thing now, like Carlos and Smooth Operator?"
"Maybe?" It was your thing. It was a way to make each other smile, even when you didn't feel like it, even in the strangest of situations. "I just-" A cheer erupts from behind you, and you watch in awe as Daniel, with seconds to spare, pushes past a driver and into third place, and all hell breaks loose in the paddock.
You're sprinting towards the parc fermé, cackling with laughter as you go, because you're never going to let him forget this. His silly little thing to cheer you up brought him to third place. He might be the driver, but Unwritten? Unwritten is what must have pushed him over. Daniel stands on top of his car when you reach the barrier, helmet off and propped on one hip as he happily raises a fist in the air.
You don't have much time to cheer for him, however, before he spots you and is immediately rushing across the track to you, and you wrap your arms around his neck as he's kissing you, and it's sweaty and gross but it's Daniel, in third place, and you'd can't quite argue with that. "You," He says against your lips, barely heard over the crowd around you, "Are an idiot."
"I told you I'd use that song on you when you're having a bad race." You try and smooth out his hair, but the curls have decided to point in every which direction. "Thought you could use a little pick-me-up, and it worked."
"The song isn't what made me place third," He says, and you roll your eyes.
"I know, it's your strength and determination as a driver-"
"It's you." You blink at him, and he laughs softly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "I think I need to hire you as my engineer, get to listen to you sing to me every race."
It's you.
It's a simple admission, really, but it makes you blush nonetheless, trying to think of anything to say after that. Someone calls his name and Daniel turns, staring at the cameras and reporters waiting to talk to him after such a comeback, and you lean up to press a kiss to his cheek. "I think you might actually lose if you do that," You tease softly, "But I'll be here whenever you need me."
"Or whenever I need to feel the rain on my skin." He says with a dramatic wink before walking off, and all you can think is how much you love him as he begins to dance as he walks off, fully returning to belt out the lyrics as everyone looks on in confusion.
-
-
-
+1
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" The DJ calls over the crowd, clearing the dancefloor. "It's time for the first dance, so if I could have the lovely couple make their way to the dancefloor?"
"I hope you know how much trust I've put in you for this," You say softly as Daniel leads you to the floor, or you suppose patch of grass designated as the dancefloor. Daniel, for all the wedding planning, had very few requests, one of which being he got to pick the first dance song. Knowing Daniel, it wasn't a hard thing to give over, considering his good music taste for the most part, but it was still worrying, especially with how he hadn't stopped smiling at you.
You suppose it's normal for a groom to smile at his partner on their wedding day, but something felt off. "And trust me, it's worth it."
"This song is one that Daniel has loved for some time now, which I think is pretty obvious from his radios!" Those on his team laugh, and it dawns on you slowly what the song might be. "But did you know it's actually a song these two sing together, quite often?"
"Daniel Joseph Ricciardo." You state bluntly as Unwritten starts up over the speaker, and rather than goofily spinning you around, he plants his hands on your hips as your arms wrap around his neck. "Are you serious?"
"What, do you not like it?" Then, slightly quieter so only you hear, "Do you actually not like it? I can change it, I just thought-"
You lean up to press a quick kiss to his lips, cutting him off before pulling back. The crowd hoots in response. "You're ridiculous," You say softly, swaying along to the beat with a growing smile. "But it's perfect."
"Thank god," He breathes out, extending an arm to spin you around, "Thought I fucked up there for a second."
"Reaching for something in the distance," The crowd sings in unison, a cacophony of what you can only describe as love as you find yourself back in Daniel's arms "So close you can almost taste it!"
"This is what you've been hiding from me?" You tease, allowing yourself to not sing along for once to rather focus on his moment.
"It's our song," Daniel states softly, "Or at least it's the song that always makes me think of you."
It really does. Every time you hear it, all you can picture is Daniel, making a fool of himself for you. "And lost airport luggage, and rain on vacations-"
"It makes me happy, like you make me happy." Daniel answers quietly, far more serious than you expected for this song, and his words slowly settle in your heart. "I hope you know, when you were singing that over the radio, I was so close to crying that I just had to laugh and sing along."
"Daniel," You breathe out softly, "You never told me that."
He tries to shrug it off, but you don't let him as you hold his stare, and he leans forward to press his forehead to yours. "Well, we're married now. Might as well start telling our secrets eventually."
You let yourself get lost in the music for a moment, radiating all you can think of as pure joy as you hold Daniel, your stupid, wonderful, perfect husband. It's a strange thing to think, that he's yours now, but he was yours since that airport, since long before that. You were always meant to be here, dancing to some cheesy song with Daniel in your arms.
"Live your life with arms wide open," The crowd continues, as Daniel dips you.
"Today is where our book begins," He tries to say it seriously and fails, giggling to himself before he kisses you, and you know the words he's going to say before he even pulls back. "The rest is still unwritten."
a/n: i never watched f1 during daniel's time, and i feel like i really missed out
synopsis. charles and carlos accidentally steal your phone. chaos is bound to ensue as you meet franco during the race charles invited you to as an apology for the phone theft he committed
warnings. like one (1) swear word
note. there's a lack of franco fics out there, so i'm fixing it
We heard about the incident with our driver, Charles Leclerc. On behalf of Mr Leclerc we would like to offer our sincerest apologies. Mr Leclerc has expressed a wish to invite you to the Monaco Grand Prix, or any other Grand Prix if you are unavailable for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Please let us know your availability and we will provide a paddock pass for the entire weekend.
Best regards,
Ferrari PR
yn
liked by user1, alexandrasaintmleux and 97 others
yn and to think this all happened because charlos stole my phone (thank you alexandrasaintmleux for taking the first picture)
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alexandrasaintmleux it was lovely meeting you 🫶
yn it was so nice to meet you too!! i cannot wait to meet you for lunch later
charles_leclerc ?? what
alexandrasaintmleux don't worry about it, amor
user1 remember me when you're a niche internet celebrity
yn niche internet celebrity for going to one race once 😀
carlossainz55 again, i'm so sorry for stealing your phone
yn i got it back, so no hard feelings (and charles got me a paddock pass, so i won't slander you on the internet)
charles_leclerc thank god
user2 did you forget we had an exam the DAY after the race?
yn whoops? but at least i got to go to an f1 race?
francolapinto
liked by pierregasly, alpinef1team and 501,123 others
francolapinto Monaco Grand Prix. It was a tricky weekend, but back to work and we'll be stronger in Barcelona 👊
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user3 i really hope alpine keeps franco for more than five races
alpinef1team ¡vamos!
yn it was so nice talking to you, thank you for carving the time out of your (undoubtedly) busy schedule to do so!!
francolapinto the pleasure was all mine, even though you wore the wrong team colours
yn well, if alpine had invited me and not ferrari then maybe i wouldn't have worn red
francolapinto maybe i'll just have alpine invite you to barcelona
yn a, i have university, b, i would still show up in red because that is the only right colour
francolapinto what a shame, you'd look stunning in blue
yn 😳
user4 is that franco… flirting?
user5 sorry, he's just like this
user6 so proud of you for p13!!
user7 can't wait to see what you do in barcelona next weekend 🫶
pierregasly let's go, barcelona ‼️
yn
liked by francolapinto, user1 and 85 others
yn a week ago, i was at the monaco grand prix, now i'm back at uni 💔
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carlossainz55 stay in school kids, it's important
yn did you even finish school?
carlossainz55 i did, actually
user1 so, coffee date when
yn you're literally sitting next to me, we could go right now
francolapinto you could always come to a race (and ditch uni)
carlossainz55 DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM
yn CARLOS?? i thought you liked having me around 😔
carlossainz55 I DO, but don't ditch university for a race
francolapinto we have strayed so far from the original plot of the movie
pierregasly no, we're sorry, please continue with your pathetic attempt at flirting
yn i think it's cute
francolapinto at least someone here appreciates me
francolapinto hermosa 🤩
yn my face isn't even in this??
francolapinto i can still tell, it's the vibes
user8 you know what, sure
charles_leclerc
liked by yn, alexandrasaintmleux and 869,495 others
charles_leclerc i accidentally stole a phone one time and now i've got an annoying little sister who won't leave me alone
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yn oh, i look good in that picture
francolapinto you always look good
yn 🤭
pierregasly you need to heighten your standards if that makes you blush
yn you should've included some pictures from the yacht outing in this 🙃
alexandrasaintmleux agreed!!
user9 yacht outing?? girl is living the dream
user10 phone thief to unwilling older brother is real and thriving
user11 FORZA FERRARI
user12 i want to BE her
yn probably not, uni is killing me 👍
yn reply to my text, charles, please it's an EMERGENCY
charles_leclerc is the emergency in the room with us?
yn YES??
charles_leclerc you asked for a paddock pass so you could, and i quote, "talk to franco again"
francolapinto i'm flattered, hermosa
francolapinto give her the paddock pass charles_leclerc
charles_leclerc oh god fine i'll get you a paddock pass
yn thank youuu 💕
yn
liked by charles_leclerc, francolapinto and 102 others
yn highlights from the race: conversations with franco and FERRARI P3!!! FORZA FERRARI SEMPRE 🏎️
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user13 what is that picture of franco?
yn i just found him like that
user1 forza ferrari or whatever
yn put some more enthusiasm in it???
francolapinto maybe we can go on that date soon ☺️
yn what date? i don't recall a date
francolapinto 🥹
charles_leclerc DATE? DATE? mon dieu
yn please calm down, i don't want you to get a heart attack especially at your old age
charles_leclerc …
yn i also haven't agreed to a date, but that is mostly because franco has been a COWARD and hasn't ASKED
francolapinto would you say yes if i asked
yn yes ☺️
francolapinto
liked by charles_leclerc, yn and 450,653 others
francolapinto argentina, baby 😉
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user14 FRANCO COLAPINTO IS THAT A GIRL??
user15 THE FLOWERS ‼️
user16 this is not a drill, i repeat, this is NOT a drill
user17 francoooo, you can't just do this
francolapinto actually i think i can hehehe
user18 he said fuck subtlety
user19 as he should
carlossainz55 happy for you, hermano
pierregasly how did this happen
alex_albon i'm just as confused as you are
charles_leclerc more importantly when did this happen
yn more importantly who is she
charles_leclerc 🤨
pierregasly what do you know
francolapinto 🥹 heart: broken
yn
liked by francolapinto, alex_albon and 163 others
yn hehehehe
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francolapinto what is that last picture i look like i don't care which is WRONG
yn you look cute in it
francolapinto the cute one is you, me thinks
yn psa: franco does care he was just busy finding a restaurant in the last picture
pierregasly we were getting a little worried he didn't
francolapinto YOU'RE MY TEAMMATE??
pierregasly i still like yn better
user1 so this is why you suddenly left for argentina
yn yes 🤭
charles_leclerc as your older brother i'm obligated to be protective (i'm very happy for you)
yn thank you, charlie 🫶🏻
charles_leclerc does this mean i don't have to sit and listen to you talk about franco anymore
yn no
alexandrasaintmleux ❤️
carlossainz55 so this is why i caught you sneaking around in that hotel hallway that one time
yn you promised not to speak a word of it
carlossainz55 oops?
yn you're legally required to pay reparations now, sorry i don't make the rules
francolapinto to both of us ‼️
oscarpiastri i support extorting carlos sainz
carlossainz55 can you come get your kids charles_leclerc
charles_leclerc only oscar is my child, yn is my sister 👍
francolapinto
liked by yn, pierregasly and 457,896 others
francolapinto she wore red to our first date because "you have to know that my allegiance will always be to ferrari"
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charles_leclerc i don't see the problem??
yn that's because there is no problem
user20 is franco dating the girl who got her phone stolen by charlos lmao
user21 that's charles' little sister
charles_leclerc i stole her phone and then she leeched onto me until i (reluctantly) accepted her as my sister
yn you love me
charles_leclerc i do
user22 my husband has a girlfriend 🥲
yn ferrari is forever, boyfriends come and go
user23 how does this season make you feel
yn terrible
francolapinto amor ☹️
yn i love you, i just don't like alpine
yn give my boyfriend a seat for the next season alpinef1team
scuderiaferrari don't forget your roots 💔
yn never ‼️ FORZA FERRARI SEMPRE
scuderiaferrari FORZA FERRARI
alpinef1team don't forget who provides your paddock passes yn
scuderiaferrari if you no longer want to, we'll gladly provide them
user24 not ferrari and alpine fighting over yn LMAO
an: i was feeling nostalgic and was missing home again so i wrote an isack aladdin au! i made this exta special because i used arabic darija in this fic (obvs with translation) i hope you guys enjoy this baby i wrote
wc: 13.5k
summary: a street thief with nothing but a dog and a smile. a princess trapped behind gold and glass, longing for freedom. one quiet escape into the night changes both their fates. secrets whispered in alleyways, promises carried on the wind. in the end, the streets remember what the palace chooses to forget.
ALGIERS NEVER TRULY SLEPT.
Even in the dusk between call to prayer and moonrise, when the shadows stretched long like fingers across whitewashed walls, the medina whispered. The breeze carried the scent of cumin and orange blossom, the air warm like honey clinging to the skin.
Somewhere, the sound of a flute curled upward from a rooftop. Laughter, sharp, drunken, echoed in the alleyways below.
And Isack ran.
Barefoot, nimble, heart thudding like a darbuka drum in his chest, he darted through the tight alleys of the Kasbah. His curls stuck to his brow, a sliver of stolen gold tucked into his sash. He had the grin of someone used to running, used to getting away.
“Waqef! Waqef ya l’kleb!” Stop! Stop, you dog!
He didn’t stop.
Instead, he vaulted over a market cart, snatched a fig from a vendor’s stall mid-air, and winked at the shouting man behind him. It was a dance, the only one he knew. The guards were slow. He was fast. And the streets were his.
By the time he climbed the back wall of a half-collapsed riad and collapsed onto the tiled rooftop, the sky had turned gold. He bit into the fig, sweet and overripe, and let the juice run down his chin.
Below, the city pulsed. Blue doors, stray cats, distant call to prayer. A woman’s laughter from an open window. Laundry snapping in the wind.
He loved this place. It was cruel, yes. Hungry. But it was his.
He leaned back, golden-brown eyes flicking upward toward the first stars emerging in the indigo sky. The city’s noise became a hum, and for a moment, he felt almost like a king.
And elsewhere, behind tall palace walls, she watched the city from her window, veiled and silent.
Below her, chaos, life, fire. A city she was not allowed to touch. A city that belonged to her only in name.
They called her princess, l’amira, daughter of the land, of bloodlines older than the red earth itself. She had her mother’s cheekbones, her father’s eyes. But her soul? That was her own.
She pressed a hand to the cold lattice, eyes following a small boy climbing a wall far in the distance. Free. Barefoot. Laughing.
She envied him.
Her maid’s voice broke the silence.
“L’amira, your father, he says there’s a suitor. Another one.”
Another one. Another man with polished words and ancient rings, sent to ask for a piece of her like she was a jewel in the souk.
She didn’t answer. Only watched the horizon, where the rooftops met the sky. Somewhere beyond it, the stars were starting to blink awake.
She wished one would fall.
The palace walls were smooth sandstone, gold-dusted and cruel.
They caught the sun at every hour, gleaming like something divine, but she knew better. Inside them, everything was hushed and heavy. Voices behind curtains, steps softened on marble. Nothing real ever made it past the gates.
She sat now on a silken cushion, spine straight, wrists wrapped in gauze-thin silk, and tried not to scream.
Across from her, the suitor spoke in a voice as smooth as almond oil, his words polished to a shine. He was a noble from Constantine, or maybe Tlemcen, she couldn’t remember, and he wore his robes like armor. Perfect posture. Perfect manners. Perfect boredom.
He was talking about the scent of jasmine in his summer home.
She nodded politely.
Her tea had gone cold.
Behind him, just past the carved archway that opened onto the courtyard, the muezzin’s call rose into the air, haunting, beautiful. The day was sinking into twilight, and the world outside was moving.
She turned her head slightly, not enough to be scolded, and looked past him.
The gates beyond the garden had been opened for the breeze, and through them, beyond the veil of palm leaves, she saw the street.
Children ran barefoot toward the mosque, drawn by the call to prayer. She saw a boy with wild black curls tugging his younger sister along, both of them laughing, racing the call. Their djellabas fluttered behind them like wings. One of the guards smiled as they passed.
A knot tightened in her throat.
That life, so ordinary, so loud, so free, would never be hers. She had never run in the street. She had never laughed outside the palace walls. She had never once stood beside strangers and bowed her head in prayer as an equal. Even her worship was private, sterile, behind curtains and gold incense burners.
She looked back at the prince.
He had stopped speaking.
He was watching her with a soft frown, like he’d seen something he wasn’t meant to. “Forgive me,” he said gently, setting his cup down. “I don’t think I interest you.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. There was no real way to explain it.
“You’re not unkind,” she managed, at last. “You’re just not real.”
He blinked. “Not real?”
She offered the smallest of smiles. “Not enough.”
That night, she couldn’t sleep.
She shed her jewels. Let her hair fall unbound down her back. The moonlight caught the copper strands threaded through it, a family trait, they said. Her birthright. Her burden.
The palace was quiet. Too quiet. Like a tomb that smelled of oud and rosewater.
She walked barefoot through the colonnade, cool tile beneath her feet, heart fluttering like a trapped swallow in her chest.
From her window, the city glowed, a thousand flickering oil lamps, rooftops like mosaic pieces laid out for the stars.
She didn’t know exactly where the thought came from. Only that it arrived fully formed.
She was leaving.
Not tomorrow. Not with guards. Not with permission.
Tonight.
She turned from the window and began to move, silent, deliberate, pulling on a plain linen tunic left behind by one of the maids, wrapping her hair in a faded scarf. She looked nothing like a princess now. And maybe for once, that was the point.
Her pulse sang.
Outside, the world waited. Wild, sharp-edged, and beautiful.
And the palace slept.
She moved like a shadow past the guards, heart hammering in her ribs, the scarf around her head slipping ever so slightly in the breeze. No one looked at her twice, not like this. Not dressed in rough linen, no kohl on her eyes, no scent of amber trailing her steps.
For the first time in her life, she was invisible.
And it thrilled her.
Once beyond the palace gates, the city opened up like a book she’d never been allowed to read.
The air at night was cooler, threaded with the scent of charcoal smoke and distant mint tea. Lanterns swung gently from the iron hooks above doorways, casting dappled patterns across cobbled streets. Stray cats watched her from rooftops. Someone played a flute off-key in the dark. The call to Isha’a had passed, but the buzz of night lingered.
She wandered deeper into the medina, past shuttered stalls and old men playing dominoes beneath a flickering bulb. Nobody recognised her. Nobody bowed. No one whispered l’amira like a ghost.
She felt giddy. Lightheaded with it. Free.
She didn’t even notice the man at first.
He’d been sitting on a step, smoking. When she passed, he straightened. Followed.
It wasn’t until the footsteps quickened behind her that her stomach turned.
She kept walking. Turned into a narrower street.
Too narrow.
She should have gone back. She should have kept to the open, where there were people. But her legs moved faster than her thoughts. And then he was there, in front of her now, as if he’d appeared from the shadows themselves.
He was older. Unshaven. Smelt like cheap wine and sweat. A smirk played at his lips as he stepped into her path.
“Labas ‘lik, zine?” What’s a pretty girl like you doing out alone at this hour?
She tried to step aside, but he mirrored her.
“I don’t— I don’t want trouble.”
“Oh, I’m not trouble,” he said, teeth flashing. “Not unless you make me be.”
He reached for her wrist. She pulled back, fast, panic blooming in her throat. Her breath caught.
And then—
A low growl sliced through the quiet.
The man froze.
From the darkness of the alley, a shape emerged, all silhouette and shadow. First the dog: big, bone-coloured, eyes sharp like molten gold. Then the boy. Barefoot. Loose shirt open at the throat, curls wild, a crooked grin stitched across his face like sin.
He took one look at the man and smiled, slow and lazy.
“Khoya,” Brother he said, voice like honey over blades. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk to girls who don’t want to talk to you?”
The man sneered. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Isack tilted his head. “Lah ybarek, I think it does.” God Bless
He clicked his tongue once.
The dog lunged.
The man screamed, stumbling back, barely dodging a snap of teeth. “Wah! Get it off—!”
Isack gave a soft whistle. The dog stopped, but only just. Still growling, still close enough to bite.
“Mazal barki,” Too early, Isack said calmly. “He’s just playing. If he were serious, you’d already be on the floor.”
The man spat on the ground. “You’ll regret this.”
Isack took a single step forward. The dog took two.
The man ran.
Silence settled in the alley.
Isack looked at her then, but really looked. His eyes softened slightly, but his smile stayed wicked.
“Bit far from the palace, aren’t you?” he said, almost teasing.
She blinked. “How—?”
He tapped the side of his nose. “You lot smell different. Like roses and gold coins.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended.
Isack held out a hand.
“Come on, l’amira. You’re not going to last ten minutes out here without someone like me.”
She hesitated. Looked at the dog, then back at him.
Then she took his hand.
And just like that, the world tilted on its axis.
They walked side by side through the sleeping veins of the city, the dog padding ahead of them like a quiet sentinel. The lanterns were dimmer now, the night heavy with spice and dust, and still, the thrill hadn’t left her chest.
She kept glancing sideways at him, the boy who'd appeared from the shadows like a spirit, all cocky swagger and barefoot confidence. He didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did, and just didn’t care.
Eventually, she spoke.
“Where are you taking me?”
Isack gave a half-shrug, as if that question had no weight.
“I’m assuming you wanted to live a real life. Not many other reasons a girl like you leaves a palace in the middle of the night.” He turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “Unless you’re sneaking out to see a lover. That would be scandalous.”
She scowled. “No.”
“Shame.” He grinned. “Would’ve made a good story.”
She stopped walking. “You think this is a joke?”
His grin faltered, not completely, just softened at the edges. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I think it’s a risk. And risks are either foolish or brave.”
They walked in silence after that, her arms folded tightly over her chest, his hands buried in his pockets. The city around them seemed to pulse with a life she’d never noticed before, an old women leaning out of windows to gossip, a boy chasing a chicken down a lane, the rustle of music from a distant courtyard.
At last, they turned into a narrow side street, its end lit by a single flickering bulb above a door.
“Come on,” he said, pushing it open. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had this man’s mint tea.”
The teahouse was small and dimly lit, smelling of cardamom, smoke, and dried orange peel. Rugs layered the floor, and the low wooden tables were uneven. There were no other customers, just an old man behind the counter with a wiry beard and thick glasses, hunched over a chessboard.
He looked up when he saw Isack and groaned.
“Ya weledi, not you again. I’m not running a charity.”
He sighed.
Isack held up a hand, grinning. “Sidi Ahmed, Allah ybarek fik w fi shay bik.” Sidi Ahmed, may God bless you and your tea.
“Rahmt Allah fi sabrek, mashi fiya.” God’s mercy is in His patience, not mine.
He eyed Isack’s companion. “At least this time you bring someone polite.”
Isack gave her a look. “Don’t let the scarf fool you.”
She sat carefully on a cushion by the wall, her spine still too straight, her eyes absorbing everything. The chipped glasses, the way the steam curled from the kettle, the way Ahmed measured sugar like it was gold dust.
He poured two small glasses and set them down with a grumble. “Pay this time, Isack. I’m not running a zawiya.”
Isack patted his pocket, dramatically empty. “We’ve talked about this.”
The old man turned away, muttering, “Sh-shabab li mabghawsh ykhadmou.” The youth who don’t want to work.
She looked between them, and without thinking, slipped one of her bangles off her wrist. It was thin gold, etched with delicate Berber script, a gift from her grandmother.
She stood and offered it gently across the counter. “Please,” she said. “Let this cover both.”
Before Ahmed could take it, Isack’s hand came down over hers.
“La,” he said under his breath. No. “Khalih.” Leave it.
She stared at him. “Why not?”
He leaned closer, voice soft. “You don’t trade gold for tea. Not here. Not tonight.”
Then he turned, all charm again, flashing a grin at the old man. “Tell you what, you still need that window patched? I’ll come tomorrow. Ghadwa, inshallah.” Tomorrow, God willing.
Ahmed narrowed his eyes. “You said that three bukras ago.”
“And now I have an audience to impress. I’ll even sweep the floor, if that helps.”
The old man gave a long sigh, more theatre than protest, and waved them off.
“Yallah, sit before I change my mind.” Come on.
Back at the table, Isack slid her glass toward her. The tea was hot, sweet, filled with bruised mint.
She took a sip.
It was rich and strange and entirely perfect.
“You were going to pay,” he said, watching her. “With something real.”
“I was trying to help.”
“You’re not here to help,” he said, without cruelty. “You’re here to learn.”
She set the glass down carefully. “What makes you think you have anything to teach me?”
Isack’s grin didn’t falter. “Oh, l’amira, I’ve got a whole city to teach you.”
And across from him, for the first time since leaving the palace, she smiled without hesitation.
The tea had cooled by the time their conversation found stillness again.
Outside, the street hummed with distant laughter and the thud of footsteps against stone. But inside the teahouse, everything felt quieter, as though the night had folded itself around the two of them and held its breath.
She sat with her knees drawn in, hands wrapped around the chipped glass. Across from her, Isack leaned back against the cushion, head tipped slightly to the side as he watched her. Not in the way men usually did, not with hunger or calculation, but with curiosity, like she was something rare he hadn’t quite made sense of yet.
“So,” he said, gently, “what were you planning to do?”
She blinked at him.
“What?”
“Out there,” he nodded toward the door. “On your own. No guards, no money, just what? Wander through the city until you found a better life?”
She looked down at the rug beneath them, at the intricate threads that felt far more grounded than she did.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
He gave a soft laugh, not mocking, more surprised than anything.
“You really didn’t have a plan?”
She shook her head. “Only that I couldn’t stay there. That I needed out.”
There was a silence then. Not awkward, thoughtful.
He took another sip of tea and set the glass aside, speaking without looking at her.
“I don’t usually do this. Take people in.”
She turned her head, slightly wary. “Take people in?”
“To where I stay,” he said. “It’s not much. But it’s safe.”
She blinked, startled. “You’re offering?”
He nodded. “For tonight. You can leave in the morning if you want. But the streets, they change after midnight. Not even your silk cloak will keep you safe then.”
She hesitated, lips parting, but no protest came. Just a quiet breath of surrender.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I mean it.”
He looked at her then, really looked. No teasing, no smirk, just something careful in his eyes. A flicker of understanding.
“Come on then, l’amira.”
“Still calling me that?”
“Until you tell me different,” he said over his shoulder. “Or until you learn to walk like someone who doesn’t own the world.”
She rose, following him out into the night, her footsteps softer now.
She had no idea where he was taking her. And for the first time in her life she didn’t mind.
They weaved through the medina like shadows, the narrow alleys stitched with silence and stars. The dog trotted ahead confidently, tail swishing, as if it knew the way by heart.
Eventually, Isack stopped beside a faded wooden door nestled between two closed shops. An old fig tree leaned over it, casting broken leaves across the stoop.
“Here?” she asked, surprised.
He didn’t answer straight away, just offered a hand and gestured upwards. “Not quite.”
He led her down a short passage, then up a creaking set of exterior stairs. They climbed to a flat rooftop covered in laundry lines and rusted water drums, then over a low wall onto another roof just below.
The dog leapt across first, landing clumsily with a thump before padding toward a slanted wooden hatch tucked beneath the shade of some old cloth draped like a makeshift canopy.
“Mind your step,” Isack said, and helped her across with an easy grip. His hands were calloused but warm.
She landed lightly beside him, breath caught more by the moment than the leap.
It was a small space, little more than a cove made from old beams and patched fabric. But inside, it was gently lived in. Worn futons lined the edges. There was a low crate filled with books, a chipped mirror hung on the far wall, and a faint scent of sandalwood lingered in the air.
The dog circled twice before flopping onto a blanket with a sigh.
“This is…” she began, then hesitated. “It’s lovely.”
Isack shrugged, already crouching beside the hatch. “It does the job.”
Before she could respond, he swung himself halfway back down through the opening and called softly, “Hadja kayna waḥda mikhadda?” Hadja, do you have a pillow?
A voice snapped back immediately from the flat below.
“A pillow, Isack? At this hour? Wallah, you treat me like a hotel!”
“Just one,” he laughed. “For a guest.”
There was a short pause. Then the shuffle of slippers, the thud of a cupboard.
A plump hand emerged through the gap, clutching a well-worn cushion. “Here, waldi, take it, and no more surprises tonight, tfaddal.”
“N’barek fik, Hadja.” Bless you, Hadja.
He climbed back in with the pillow in hand, a bit of thread clinging to his hair.
She had been watching the exchange silently, eyes wide in quiet mesmerisation.
“She called you waldi,” she said.
He smiled as he tossed the pillow onto one of the futons. “She’s not my mother. But she pretends she is.”
“She gave it to you anyway.”
“She always does. Even when she’s cross.”
He gestured for her to sit, then settled across from her on the floor, back resting against the far wall.
“She took me in when I was ten. Found me trying to steal her olives.” He smirked. “Didn’t succeed, by the way. She hit me with a broom and then fed me loubia anyway.”
She laughed, properly this time, not the polite laughter of courts and expectations, but something warm and unguarded.
He watched her. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Good,” she said. “Neither are you.”
They talked until the city slept.
Not just quiet, but truly asleep, the kind of stillness that only arrived deep in the night, when even the stray cats gave up their prowling, and the moon hung low like a watchful eye over the rooftops.
Isack had lit a stub of a candle from a jar tucked in the corner. It flickered beside them, casting shifting shapes across the patched fabric walls.
He told her about growing up with his back against the stone, the days when food came from the hands of strangers or not at all, how Hadja would scold him and feed him in the same breath. He spoke of the souks, the rooftops, the ocean he’d only seen twice, and how sometimes, when the wind came in strong from the coast, he could still taste the salt on the air.
She told him little things. That her mother had died young. That she was educated, but not free. That there was always someone watching, waiting, measuring her every word, her every breath. That she didn’t know what to do with freedom now that she’d found it, or something like it.
“Do you regret it?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Leaving the palace tonight?”
He nodded.
She looked out through the fabric flap where the stars peeked in, and shook her head.
“No. I regret waiting this long.”
He didn’t say anything to that. Just offered her a second cushion, and a smile that didn’t need explaining.
Eventually, her eyelids began to lower. The weight of the day, the years, pulling gently at her bones.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“I don’t want to take your bed.”
“You’re not.” He motioned to the futon. “That one’s for guests.”
She arched a brow. “How many guests do you usually have?”
He grinned. “None.”
He laid out a folded blanket, then pulled the cushion from the futon before she could object. Dropped it to the floor and settled beside the wall, arms folded behind his head, long legs crossed at the ankles.
“Isack—”
“Let me,” he said simply, eyes closed now.
She hesitated, but something in his tone made it impossible to argue.
So she lay down, curling onto the futon, fingers brushing the edge of the thin mattress. The dog gave a soft snore from the corner. The candle had gone out, leaving only moonlight, the kind that made everything look a little silver, a little softer.
She stared at the ceiling, expecting her mind to race the way it always did, with lists, and rules, and voices, and what-ifs.
But it didn’t.
For the first time in her life, there was no marble floor beneath her. No silk sheets. No guards. No walls.
Just the scent of sandalwood, and mint tea, and something faintly like hope.
And sleep, when it came, came gently, and held her like it meant to keep her.
She woke to the sound of the adhan, the call to fajr, curling through the air like the voice of the city itself.
It came from somewhere distant but clear, high and smooth and mournful in the way only the earliest hours could carry. The dog shifted but didn’t rise, only thumped its tail gently once and settled again.
She blinked, still tucked into the futon, a thin sheet drawn up around her shoulders. The world around her was a shade of soft blue, the sky just beginning to brighten in the east. It cast everything in hush,the worn crates, the fluttering fabric, the half-drunk tea still resting in its glass.
Isack was still asleep, curled slightly on his side on the floor, one arm tucked beneath his head, the other resting loosely against his chest. In the half-light, he looked younger or perhaps just less guarded. A small furrow sat between his brows even in sleep, like he’d never quite let go of watchfulness.
She sat up slowly, the futon sighing beneath her.
The call continued, echoing from minaret to minaret across the rooftops. As-salatu khayrun minan-nawm… Prayer is better than sleep.
She knew she had to go.
There was no panic. No urgency. Only a quiet knowing. If she stayed longer, if she let herself fall even a step deeper into this stolen freedom, she wouldn’t return at all. And the world, her world, wasn’t ready for that.
She slipped her feet into her shoes, the silence stretching around her like a shawl.
The dog opened one eye but didn’t move, watching her with the calm understanding of someone who knew better than to bark at goodbyes.
She glanced over at Isack once more.
Then, with a breath, she reached for her wrist.
She slid off two of her bangles, the thinner ones, delicate, etched in the filigree of her mother’s people, and set them quietly on the edge of the futon where she’d slept.
Not payment.
A mark. A memory. A thank you.
She didn’t write a note. He would understand.
Then she pulled the scarf tighter around her face and stepped out into the early light, down through the hatch and over the rooftop. The air was cool and clean, the streets below still drowsy, not yet stirring with market cries or children’s footsteps.
The city hadn’t woken, but she had.
And by the time the sun had fully lifted above the rooftops of Algiers, she was already crossing back through the hidden door in the palace wall, the scent of mint and dust and candle smoke still clinging to her clothes.
Isack woke to the faint chill of dawn slipping through the cracks in the wooden hatch. The room smelled faintly of sandalwood and mint, the scent she’d left behind.
He blinked, stretched his hand out instinctively and found the futon beside him empty.
His heart sank a little, slow and steady like the weight of knowing.
She was gone.
On the edge of the futon, catching the soft morning light, were two thin bangles, delicate and filigreed, the ones she had worn when she arrived.
He picked them up carefully, rolling them between his fingers, feeling the cool metal and the slight dents that told stories of a life far from his own.
A soft sigh escaped him. “Mashi moshkil.” It’s okay
He understood. She had her world to return to.
He slipped on the bangles and let his shirt cover the gold from the sunlight.
Downstairs, the old wooden door creaked open and the smell of strong tea and cooking filled the air.
“Sbāḥ l-khīr, Hadja.” Good morning, Hadja
“Sbāḥ l-nūr, waldi. Katḥess b’raḥtek lyom?” Good morning, my boy. Feeling alright today?
He grinned, rubbing the back of his neck. “Kān bghī nsaʿdek shwiya f’dar.” I wanted to help you around the house a bit.
Hadja smiled, hands busy folding fresh flatbread. “Daima mzyan, waldi. Ma tkhafsh, ghadi nkhdem mʿak.” Always good, my boy. Don’t worry, I’ll work with you.
As he handed her a kettle, she caught sight of the bangles peeking from beneath his sleeve.
“Shno had lḥwayej?” What are these things?
He hesitated, then showed them to her.
“Tqdr tsawb bihom flus bzzaf,” You could make a lot of money with these she murmured, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.
Isack shook his head, a faint smile tugging his lips.
“Hadi, mashī ghir ljawhra.” They’re more than just jewellery.
He grabbed a length of string from the counter and carefully threaded the bangles onto it, pulling the makeshift necklace over his head.
Hadja watched, then chuckled softly.
“Mashi mzyan, waldi. La tkoun ḥmar w mat'ttīsh rasek.” Not smart, my boy. Don’t be stupid and don’t get caught.
He grinned wider, a spark in his golden-brown eyes.
“Ana mabghītsh nshouf hadchi,” I never get caught, Hadja he said, voice low and certain.
She shook her head, but there was no real scolding in her voice, just the warmth of someone who’d seen too much but still hoped.
He tucked the string beneath his shirt and turned back to the rising sun outside.
His thoughts drifted, to the girl who had left the bangles, to the quiet promise of a night that had felt, somehow, like home.
By mid-morning, the streets were wide awake, sun burning the rooftops, voices rising from alleyways, children darting between market stalls like fish in water.
Isack moved through it all like he belonged there, because he did. The city knew him, and he knew it back. The dog loped along beside him, tongue out, tail wagging every time someone threw them a passing “salam” or scrap of bread.
He reached Sidi Ahmed’s place just as the old man was dragging out a broken wooden cart wheel, grumbling under his breath.
“Sbāḥ l-khīr, Sidi,” Good morning, Sidi. Isack called, crouching beside the wheel.
The old man grunted. “Mzyan jeeti. Rah kayna chghol bzzaf.” Good you came. There’s a lot of work.
Isack smiled and set to it, sleeves rolled, sweat already gathering at the back of his neck. The wheel was splintered, but nothing beyond saving, a couple of new dowels, some sanding, a bit of patience.
Sidi Ahmed’s son, Youssef, lingered nearby, watching with a lazy sort of interest, chewing on a stem of wild mint.
“Chouf,” Isack said after a while, glancing over at him, “tqder tsaʿdni f waḥed lsu2al?” Can you help me with something?
Youssef raised a brow. “Dirti chi musiba khra?” Have you done something stupid again?
“La, la, had mara....” No, no, this time…
Youssef understood the unspoken words and spat out the stem. “Go on.”
Isack wiped his brow with his sleeve and leaned back slightly against the wall, gaze fixed on the wheel but mind clearly elsewhere.
“Say you meet someone,” he began, slow. “Someone who’s not from your world. Proper different. But you get on, like, really get on. And then they vanish.”
Youssef squinted at him. “She run off with your shoes?”
Isack huffed a quiet laugh. “Not quite. Just left. No goodbye. But left something behind.”
Youssef’s face softened slightly, as if he’d caught the edge of what Isack wasn’t saying.
“What did she leave?”
Isack hesitated, then tugged the string out slightly from beneath his shirt, just enough to let the bangles glint in the sunlight.
Youssef whistled under his breath.
“Hadchi mn lkasr?” This from the palace?
“Ma-gult walou.” Isack shrugged. I didn’t say anything
Youssef leaned in slightly. “You want advice?”
He nodded.
“Nsuḥk. Khalli l’aql qbl lqlb.” My advice. Keep your head before your heart.
Isack looked down at the bangles, his thumb tracing the edge.
“W ila ma bghītsh ndīr haka?” And what if I don’t want to do that?
Youssef laughed. “Then may God help you, Isack. Because no one else will.”
They both chuckled, the tension breaking for a moment.
Isack stood, stretching, wiping dust from his palms. “Come on then, help me lift this wheel. Unless you just came to offer useless wisdom.”
Youssef grinned and bent down beside him. “Ana daba fassḥab raḥna f chi hikayat dyal Alf Layla w Layla.” I feel like we’re in some story out of One Thousand and One Nights.
Isack didn’t reply straight away, just smiled faintly, eyes catching the sunlight, the bangles warm against his chest.
The palace was quiet in the way that only vast, marbled halls could be, a kind of elegant, echoing silence that never let you forget how alone you really were.
She sat in the morning sunroom, half-curled on one of the velvet chaise lounges, fingers absently twisting the end of her braid. A tray of untouched figs and almonds lay on the table beside her, along with a fresh pot of tea that had already grown cold.
Her father entered without knocking, as he always did. The sharp scent of musk and cedar preceded him, the trailing end of his white robe brushing softly against the mosaic tiles.
“You’re off,” he said without greeting, eyes narrowing as he took her in, from the slight slump in her shoulders to the vague shadows under her eyes.
She didn’t look up. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Clearly.” He stepped closer. “What kept you up?”
She shrugged, keeping her tone light. “The usual. Thoughts. Expectations. Century-old ceilings.”
“Don’t get clever.”
That earned him a glance. “Don’t ask stupid questions, then.”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face, brief, but visible. He came to stand beside her, hands clasped neatly behind his back.
“You never speak to me like that.”
“I suppose I’m tired of speaking like I’m being examined.”
He studied her for a long moment. “You used to confide in me.”
“When I was ten, and thought you ruled the sun,” she muttered.
There was a pause. He let it hang in the air just long enough to shift the mood.
Then, with the same cold precision she knew too well, he dropped a rolled scroll onto the table beside the figs.
“What’s this?” she asked, already knowing.
“A list.”
“Of?”
“Potential suitors. From respectable bloodlines. Royal, military, or diplomatic, no lesser. And no more poets.”
She stared at the scroll. Didn’t touch it.
“You’re serious.”
“Entirely.”
“And if I don’t?” Her voice was tight now, clipped at the edges.
“If you don’t choose one by July,” he said calmly, “then we’ll have an issue.”
She stood suddenly, pushing the chair back with more force than she meant to. “An issue.”
“Yes.”
“Like a diplomatic incident, or just another daughter buried in silk and obedience?”
His jaw tightened. “Watch your tongue.”
She met his gaze, hers unflinching, gold-flecked and defiant. “Or what?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His silence was a wall, and she’d lived behind it all her life.
He gestured to the scroll.
“Make a decision. You’re not a child anymore.”
Then he turned, and just like that, he was gone, the sound of his footsteps swallowed by the hush of a palace built more for power than people.
She sat slowly, eyes still fixed on the scroll. Somewhere far beyond the stone walls and manicured gardens, the city lived and breathed without her.
She reached for a fig. Bit into it absentmindedly.
It tasted like nothing.
She let it roll on her tongue, slowly chewing, but it crumbled like ash. Sweet and hollow. Like the walls of this palace. Like her life.
With a quiet breath, she set the fruit back onto the tray and rose, silk skirts whispering against the marble as she slipped through the archway and into the palace gardens.
The air outside was cooler, fragrant with orange blossom and rosemary, soft earth beneath the soles of her slippers. Here, the palace forgot itself. Here, at least, the stone gave way to soil, and life.
She walked past the cypress trees, fingers grazing their rough trunks, until she reached the familiar little corner where the rose bushes curled like old memories around a simple stone marker.
Her mother’s grave.
The marble was smooth, the engraved words worn by years of wind and rain.
She knelt, brushing away a few stray petals from the base, and folded her hands in her lap.
“Salam, Mama,” Peace (Hello), Mama she murmured softly.
The wind stirred the roses gently, as if in answer.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she whispered, voice barely carrying. “I don’t know what I want or who I am supposed to be.”
Her fingers tightened in the folds of her gown.
“I met someone,” she went on, casting her eyes down. “A boy. A boy with dirt beneath his nails and laughter in his eyes. With his feet on the ground and his heart open. Full. More than he has. More than he can give.”
She closed her eyes.
“Bzaf ʿlih... bzzaf ʿlia.” Too much for him... too much for me
She exhaled, slow and long.
“I wanted to be free, Mama. I wanted to run and see and breathe. But now I’ve tasted it, I don’t know if I can go back. I don’t know if I can fit in this life any longer.”
Footsteps crunched lightly on the gravel behind her. She didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
“Lalla,” Little girl, came the familiar soft voice, her mother’s old maid, gentle and lined with age. “You sit here like your mother did. All these years, nothing changes.”
She felt the old woman settle beside her with a quiet sigh.
“What would you do?” she asked softly. “You knew my mother better than she knew herself. What would you tell her, if she stood where I am now?”
The maid smiled faintly, folding her wrinkled hands in her lap.
“Tāmen b’Allah... w tmshi b’qlbek. Huwa li ghadi yurik triq.” Believe in Allah... and follow your heart. He will show you the way
The girl swallowed, throat tight. “And if my heart leads me away from here?”
The old woman touched her hand, warm and steady.
“Then you were never meant to stay, bnti.” my daughter
For a long moment, they sat in the quiet, the scent of roses thick in the air, the world turning softly beyond the palace walls.
Later that night, she sat alone on the terrace, the one on the farthest wing of the palace, furthest from her father’s private quarters and the endless eyes of the guards.
The marble beneath her legs was cool, her bare feet curling against the stone edge as the evening wind lifted strands of her hair. Above her, the sky stretched wide and endless, scattered with stars, silver threads sewn across velvet black. The moon hung low and full, casting the palace rooftops in gentle light.
She breathed in the air, the scent of distant jasmine and city dust, the distant echo of life beyond the walls. It felt like sitting between two worlds. On one side, the endless gardens, the sharp spires, the cold, polished perfection of the palace. On the other, the old city, asleep and breathing, warm and rough-edged, untamed.
Her gaze lingered there, past the battlements, past the dividing walls, past the courtyards where only soldiers and servants tread. She tilted her head, lost in thought, wondering if the boy with the sun-darkened curls and the restless smile was asleep somewhere beneath that same sky.
A soft sound pulled her from her reverie.
She stiffened.
There it was again, a scrape, gentle but clear. A footfall against stone.
Her heart quickened. She glanced back towards the archway, towards the shadowed corridor behind her, empty. Still.
Then from the wall that marked the boundary between palace and city, the high old wall she’d once scaled as a child before she’d been caught and forbidden to try again came a quiet voice, low and teasing.
“L’amira...” Princess
Her breath caught. Familiar. Impossible.
She turned sharply and there he was.
Perched like a cat upon the wall, crouched comfortably as if he belonged there, was Isack. His hair caught the moonlight in soft curls, his eyes glinting with quiet mischief, his grin wide and unrepentant.
She gaped, mouth slightly open. “You—”
“Shhh,” he whispered, holding a finger to his lips. “Do you want half the guard waking up?”
“How—how did you get up here?” she hissed, eyes darting nervously to the shadows behind her. “You’ll be killed if they see you.”
He swung his leg over the wall, now sitting casually, unbothered by the drop beneath him. “I’ve been climbing these streets my whole life, l’amira. Walls don’t frighten me. Neither do guards.” His grin widened. “Nor kings.”
She stood, her silk robe slipping from one shoulder as she stared at him in disbelief, hands curling into the stone balustrade.
“You’re mad,” she breathed. “Completely mad.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, easy as rain. “But you left before I could say goodbye. Before you could say anything at all. That’s rude, you know.”
Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs. “I had to go.”
“I know.” His gaze softened, the teasing edge fading, something quieter behind his eyes now. “But I couldn’t let it end like that. Not without seeing you again.”
For a moment, they simply looked at each other across the terrace, palace silk against street dust, gold against leather, two pieces of a story that shouldn’t have touched.
She swallowed hard, voice low. “What are you doing here, Isack?”
He grinned again, but this time it was softer. Less bravado. More truth.
“Kan-fakker fik.” I was thinking of you
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, gathering breath, steadying her racing heart.
“And what do you plan to do now that you’re here?”
He leaned forward slightly, eyes dancing in the moonlight.
“Depends. Do you want to see the city from the rooftops? Like a real life? Or are you going to stay here, on this cold stone, and dream of it forever?”
For a long moment, the world was silent, save for the wind in the olive trees and the distant call of a night bird.
Then she smiled, slow and dangerous.
“Help me over,” she said softly. “Before someone sees you and you lose that charming head of yours.”
His grin lit up his whole face.
“Mzyana bzaaf,” Very good he murmured.
His hand was rough when she took it, warm and steady, calloused from years of work and climbing and living. Not like the soft, perfumed hands of the princes she’d been paraded before.
“Careful, l’amira,” he murmured with a crooked smile, steadying her as she clambered up onto the wall beside him. “Palace girls aren’t used to balancing this high.”
“I’m not palace born,” she whispered back, grinning despite herself. “My mother birthed me out of the palace, something the Sultan would not want anyone to know.”
Isack chuckled softly. “So you do have secrets.”
She glanced at him sideways. “More than you’d guess.”
“Good.” His fingers tightened on hers. “Hold on.”
And then, like two shadows slipping from their chains, they swung down onto the flat rooftops of the old city, his dog jumping up at the sight of them with a soft whine of excitement. The stones beneath their feet were warm from the day’s heat, glowing faintly under the moon. The air smelled of spice and dust and distant sea wind.
They ran.
Across roof tiles and crumbling plaster, over narrow alleyways and sleeping courtyards. The city stretched wide beneath the sky, full of twisting streets and secrets. She laughed, sudden, wild, unguarded, the sound breaking free from her chest like a bird uncaged.
It startled her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like that. Like a girl, not a daughter of kings.
Isack grinned at her, breathless, pulling her forward. “Raki mzyana…” You’re beautiful His voice was low, teasing, but something in it was true and soft.
She ignored the heat in her cheeks and ran faster.
They went down twisting iron staircases into a courtyard where a fountain murmured in the dark. Past shuttered shops and quiet mosques, their tall silhouettes cutting sharp lines against the stars. The old souk lay deserted at this hour, only the scent of cinnamon and leather lingering in the air, and they wove through its maze, her slippers scattering sand and dust behind them.
They paused near a quiet square, where an old fig tree grew beside a shuttered bakery. Isack caught her hand, pulling her into the shadow of the branches.
“Look,” he whispered, nodding upwards.
There, the sky above the rooftops opened wide, and the stars poured down like light on water. The moon hung low and close, so bright it painted silver across his face, across the soft dark curls of his hair.
She leaned against the tree, breathless. Smiling.
“I haven’t seen the city like this since I was a child,” she murmured. “I’d almost forgotten what it smelled like. The dust, the baking bread, the night air...”
“Machi nshan, l’amira,” It’s not forgotten, princess he said softly.
He crouched by the base of the tree, resting a hand on the warm stone. “It’s in you still. The city. Like breath. Like blood.”
His dog sniffed the cobblestones, tail wagging slowly.
She crouched beside him, tucking her silk robe beneath her knees. “And this is your life. Dust and stone and sky.”
“And tea,” he grinned, pulling a tiny wrapped sweet from his pocket. “Never forget tea.” He unwrapped it, split the piece and offered her half. “You eat like the street folk tonight.”
She laughed softly, taking the sweet from his hand, their fingers brushing. “I think I prefer it.”
For a while they sat like that, sharing the sweet, listening to the quiet city breathe.
Then he stood, holding out a hand again. “Come. There’s more to see before the sun comes.”
And she went.
He led her down the back alleys where old women hung strings of chillies to dry; past the little mosque where boys gathered before dawn; over the market square where, tomorrow, the traders would shout for customers. She touched the walls, the stalls, the rough stones worn smooth by centuries of feet. She smelled mint and old wood, old iron and salt from the far-off sea.
When they reached the sea wall, they sat, side by side, legs swinging high above the water. Below them, the waves lapped gently against the old harbour.
“Tell me,” she said softly. “Tell me why you live like this. So free. So careless.”
He smiled faintly, gazing at the dark water.
“Because no one expects anything from me, l’amira. No crown. No bloodline. I wake. I eat. I live. That’s enough.”
She watched his profile in the moonlight, the ease in his shoulders, the quiet certainty in his voice.
“I don’t know what that feels like,” she whispered.
He turned to her, gently.
“Maybe tonight you do.”
For a while they sat in silence, and it was enough.
When the sky began to pale towards dawn, he stood and dusted off his hands.
“Come. One more place.”
He took her up a steep stairway to the rooftops again, to a flat-topped house where the whole city spread beneath them, rooftops and minarets, domes and arches, all touched with silver light.
She turned slowly, breath caught in her throat.
“I’ve never seen it like this.”
“It’s yours,” he murmured beside her. “All this. Yours to hold or let go.”
She looked at him, at the dog sitting quietly at his side, and something old and tight in her chest eased.
“I don’t want to go back.”
He smiled sadly. “But you will.”
She touched his arm gently. “For now let’s stay until the sun rises.”
And they did.
Until the first light touched the city’s edges, soft and golden, and the distant call to Fajr prayer rose into the waking sky.
For one night, she had lived.
For one night, she had been free.
The first light of dawn crept over the sleeping city, turning the edges of the old stone buildings to gentle gold. The minarets stood like watchful sentinels against the softening sky, and far in the distance, the call to Fajr rose, a quiet, melodic thread carried on the morning breeze.
She stood atop the rooftop, her silk robe stirring gently against her ankles, her hair loose and wild around her shoulders. The night’s freedom clung to her skin like perfume, warm and giddy. A soft yawn escaped her lips, unwilling, but honest, and when she rubbed her eyes like a child, Isack laughed quietly beside her.
“Let’s get you home, l’amira,” he murmured, gentle and amused, the corners of his mouth lifting.
She turned her gaze to him, eyes still bright with the thrill of the night. “No,” she said softly, firmly. “Not home. Just the palace. These streets...” She let her gaze sweep across the waking rooftops, the winding alleys below, the scent of baked earth and mint and dawn filling her senses. “These streets are home.”
He looked at her, properly looked, as if seeing something new unfold, and smiled. A real smile. Quiet. Fond. As if he understood without needing any more words.
Together they made their way back to the high wall separating her world from his, the wall that divided gold from dust, silk from leather, crown from calloused hand. His dog padded silently behind them, yawning as it trotted.
At the wall, he crouched first, bracing his hands, offering her a boost.
“Up you go, l’amira,” he whispered with mock ceremony.
She grinned and took the step, his strong hands steady at her waist as he lifted her. Her slippers found the old stones with ease, and she pulled herself over, turning back just as she perched atop the crumbling edge.
Isack swung up lightly beside her, half his body leaning over the top, one leg still hooked to the city’s side.
He rested his forearms on the cold stone, his face close to hers in the pale light of dawn. His voice dropped low, gentle as the breeze that stirred her loose hair.
“You know where to find me,” he said softly. “Just call my name, l’amira, and I’ll hear you. It’ll carry through the winds and I’ll come for you.”
Her heart gave a quiet, aching twist.
She reached out, without fear, without hesitation, and brushed the dark curls back from his forehead. Her fingertips lingered a moment longer than they should.
“Thank you,” she breathed, her voice barely above a whisper. “My Isack.”
And then, daring, bold, the way she had not been for all her carefully caged years, she leaned forward and pressed her lips softly to his cheek.
A kiss, warm and fleeting, left just beneath the edge of his eye.
For a heartbeat, he stilled, surprise flickering in his golden-brown gaze, before the familiar, crooked smile curved his mouth once more.
“Tsbah bel khir, l’amira,” Sleep well, princess he murmured.
She smiled back, heart thudding against her ribs.
And then she dropped silently to the palace side of the wall, back into the world of marble and duty, secrets and silk.
Isack stayed a moment longer, watching, his dog seated patiently at his feet, and then, like a breath on the wind, he was gone.
But her heart stayed wild in her chest, like the streets. Like him.
For the first time in her life, the palace felt far less like home.
Since that night, the months slipped by like sand through his fingers.
First April, when the city blossomed with the scent of oranges and the sea air grew soft and warm. Then May, hot and golden, when the sun lingered late into the evening and the alley cats grew lazy in the shade. June followed, dry and sharp, with the dust rising in thin curls from the streets. And now July was beginning to creep in, slow and heavy with its heat, the sky pale and cloudless as far as the eye could see.
And she had not called his name. Not once.
Hadja had warned him, wagging a crooked finger in his face as she stirred her pot of lentils. “Ma tderhach, waldi. Don’t go waiting for her. Girls like that, palace girls, they fly high and they never look down.” Don’t do this my boy
But his heart, that foolish, disobedient thing, still yearned.
Every evening he’d find himself drifting along the edge of the palace wall, pretending he was walking the dog, pretending he wasn’t hoping to hear her voice on the wind. But nothing came. Only the distant murmurs of the guards. Only the scent of jasmine and stone.
When the morning rose he wandered to Sidi Ahmed’s little shop near the mosque, the dog padding along beside him, tongue lolling. The old man sat outside, grumbling over a chipped tea glass, puffing on his thin roll of tobacco as he squinted at the quiet street.
“Sbah el kheir, Sidi,” Good morning Sidi Isack greeted, swinging down onto the low wall beside him.
“Sbah en-nour,” the old man grunted back, eyeing him sideways. “Mafi shghal? You’ve time to waste this morning?” No work today?
“Waiting on wood delivery for you,” Isack shrugged, scratching the dog behind the ears. “And tea. You promised tea, old man.”
Sidi grunted and waved a hand. “Go make it yourself, I’m too angry for tea.”
Isack smirked. “What now? Someone insult your prices again?”
“La, worse,” Sidi huffed, dragging deeply on his cigarette. “The streets are closing for two days. Two whole days. For that cursed royal wedding.” He spat into the dust. “Two days no trade, no customers, no deliveries, no work. All because of that stupid fuss.”
Isack frowned, stirring the tea leaves lazily in the pot. “Wedding? Which wedding?”
Sidi gave him a look of disbelief, squinting one eye. “Yal himar” You donkey “You live under the sky and you know nothing, boy? The princess. The l’amira. She’s to marry that fool from Tizi Ouzou. Some prince’s son. Their tents are already pitched outside the palace walls. The wedding’s at the week’s end.”
Isack’s hand stilled on the teapot.
“Shkun...” His throat tightened. “Shkun bnat l’malik?” Which princess?
Sidi snorted. “As if there are many. The king’s only daughter, of course. The pretty one with the Berber cheekbones, the one who never smiles. But she will soon, I suppose. Once she’s properly wed, hm?”
Isack felt the breath leave his chest as if someone had punched him. The dog whined softly at his feet, sensing the sudden change in him.
“She never said...” he murmured under his breath, staring blankly at the steam curling from the teapot. “She never said anything.”
Sidi leaned closer, narrowing his eyes. “Wach bik? What’s this face, boy? You look like you’ve swallowed a bad date.” What’s wrong with you?
“Nothing,” Isack said quickly, shaking his head. “Nothing at all.”
But the lie tasted bitter on his tongue.
Two days the streets would close. Two days of silk and gold and music. Two days and she would belong to another man, some polished stranger from the mountains who smelled of mint and power, who had never run the streets with dust in his hair or tea stolen in the market, who had never touched the old fig tree under the stars.
His hand drifted to the string around his neck, fingers brushing the hidden bracelets tied close to his skin. Cold now. Silent.
Hadja’s words whispered in the back of his mind.
“Palace girls never look down, waldi...”
But she had looked down once. And smiled. And kissed his cheek.
And now she was to be caged again, gilded and perfumed, behind marble walls.
“La tkoon hmaq,” Sidi muttered, grumbling as he refilled his glass. “Don’t be stupid, boy. This is their world. Not ours.”
But Isack said nothing.
He only sat in silence, the tea cooling between his hands, staring at the city that no longer felt like home.
She was to be wed.
To another man.
In three days.
And then she would vanish behind those marble walls forever, a shadow behind silken curtains, a memory pressed flat like petals between the pages of an old book.
Unless...
He set the glass down with a quiet clink.
There was no time to waste.
That night he paced the narrow cove above Hadja’s house, the bracelets heavy against his chest, as the old woman snored softly below. The dog lay awake by the door, tail thumping once when Isack knelt beside him.
“N’har el Khmis,” Thursday Isack whispered, running a hand through the thick fur. “You and me, boy. One last foolish thing.”
He sketched the plan in his mind as clearly as a carpenter laying out his wood. Simple. Sharp. No room for mistakes.
Early in the morning on the wedding day, the streets lay quiet, stripped of their usual noise. Banners of white and crimson fluttered from the palace walls. The gates stood heavy and closed, but not for him.
He slipped along the shadowed alleys, the dog at his heel. When they reached the outer court, he knelt low, cupping the hound’s face in his hands.
“Sma’ni, a sahbi.” Listen to me, my friend
He tugged gently at the dog’s ear. “Run to the court. Bark. Chase. Bite the silk if you must. Make every guard chase you. And don’t stop until you hear my whistle.”
The dog wagged its tail, tongue lolling, clever dark eyes bright.
“Go.”
He bounded away, streaking through the open side gate just as the servants brought out wedding garlands. With a sudden wild barking and a flurry of paws, chaos broke like a summer storm. Men shouted, cloth ripped, baskets fell; the dog danced circles round them all, scattering petals and kicking over vases.
And while the front court swarmed in shouting confusion, Isack slipped silent as breath to the side wall.
He pulled himself up, grunting softly, legs swinging over the stone as he dropped to the inner courtyard where the date palms whispered. His heart thudded loud in his ears, not with fear. With something far more dangerous.
Hope.
Up the servant stairs, fast and quiet, barefoot. Past the scent of rose oil and incense. He knew the way; he’d listened to Hadja’s stories of the palace, of secret paths and quiet doors. Now they led him straight to her chambers.
He heard her voice from within, soft, distracted.
“You aren’t allowed to see me until after the wedding,” she called, assuming it was her betrothed, come foolishly to break the old tradition.
A grin touched Isack’s mouth as he leaned on the doorframe, careless and sure.
“Well, l’amira, lucky for you, I never cared much for rules.”
The room fell silent.
The curtain stirred, and she stepped out.
And for the first time in his life, Isack forgot every clever word he had ever known.
She stood there in her wedding kaftan, ivory silk, embroidered with gold threads that caught the light like dawn’s first glow. Her hair was plaited with fine jewels, little silver charms from the old mountains woven between the strands. Kohl lined her eyes, making them deep and dark and filled with too many feelings at once.
“Isack...?” Her voice was a whisper, barely breathing.
He swallowed hard, staring, utterly and beautifully lost.
“Ya lahbibti,” he managed, a soft smile curling at the edge of his lips. “You’re something the poets forgot to write about.”
Her gaze flickered to the door, to the chaos far below, then back to him, wild and bright, like the girl who had run laughing through the streets with him under the stars.
And in that quiet moment, caught between the palace and the world beyond, the air hummed with something ancient and fierce.
A promise.
A choice.
A beginning.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The soft scent of jasmine oil hung heavy in the air, mingling with the crisp tang of fresh silk. Somewhere below, the shouting and chaos of the courtyard still stirred, muffled by distance, but here, in this quiet chamber high above the world, time itself seemed to have stopped.
Isack swallowed, his gaze steady on her, his chest tight with something raw and reckless.
“Come with me,” he said softly. His voice was not a command, nor a plea, but something gentle, a thread stretched between hope and fear.
Her hand gripped the carved edge of the dressing table; her knuckles pale against the dark wood.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
He stepped closer, eyes dark and steady. “Can’t or won’t?”
She said nothing.
The silence between them grew thick, not of anger or doubt, but fear. Old fear. Palace fear. The kind spun into your bones from birth, as heavy and clinging as the scent of burning myrrh in the halls.
Isack smiled sadly, tilting his head as if listening to the wind through the date palms.
“It’s fear, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “Not the walls, not your father, not even this ridiculous silk cage they’ve put you in. Just fear. Like a thread round your throat. It’s the oldest prison of all, l’amira.” His voice dropped low, rough as dusk on old stone. “Fear of wanting more than they told you you deserved. Of flying too far from the cage door. Of hearing your own name echo back from the wind and realising you were always meant for the sky.”
She closed her eyes, a shiver racing down her spine.
He stepped close enough to reach her wrist where it rested by her side, the silk of her kaftan soft beneath his fingers. Gently, reverently, he touched the thin golden bracelet there, the one she always wore, with its old engraving worn soft by time.
His thumb brushed across the script, his mouth quietly shaping the words in Arabic:
"Ul-iwazzan ur ttur, ul-iwazzan ur ikkes; ul-iwazzan ur ifus, zriɣ deg ul-iwazzan." The heart that is given is never lost; the hand that offers is never empty; the soul that dares is never broken.
Berber words. Mountain words. Old as the wind.
He smiled faintly.
“Your mother’s?” he asked softly.
She gave the smallest nod, her throat tight.
He traced the bracelet once more, his fingers lingering on the warmth of her skin. Then he raised his gaze to hers, dark eyes bright with something fierce and unspoken.
“Give me a chance,” he murmured. “I’ve nothing but a cove above Hadja’s roof and a dog that’s tearing up the palace court as we speak but if you’ll have me—” he breathed, the smile touching the edge of his mouth, soft and sure, “—I’ll make every breath of this life worth it. Every step. Every dawn. Until you forget what fear ever tasted like.”
The silence quivered between them.
And for the first time in her life, she wondered what it would feel like to be free.
To fly.
To fall.
And never break.
She stood frozen. A breath caught at the edge of her lips, the weight of centuries resting on her shoulders.
For a heartbeat Isack feared she would say no, that the palace would win, that the fear woven into the very stones of this place would tighten its grip and pull her back to the life she hated. Her eyes dropped to the floor; her hand trembled faintly against the silk folds of her wedding kaftan.
Then, a sound.
Her father’s voice, low and steady, carried down the corridor with the heavy certainty of all things expected.
“Binti” My daughter “It’s time. Come. We must go to the mosque.”
The words hung like iron in the air.
Her gaze flickered to the door, to the weight of her father’s voice, and then back to Isack, standing there in his worn shirt, dust on his skin, light in his eyes.
She lifted her chin, something fierce sparking in the dark pools of her eyes. Her fingers reached for the bracelet he had touched, her mother’s words warm against her wrist.
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice suddenly clear and strong, like water breaking stone. “Take me from here. Take me to the mosque, but only if you promise one thing, ya Isack.”
He stilled, breath caught.
“Promise me that you will wed me yourself. With no lords, no gold, no court. No lies. In the mosque, in the sight of Allah, with nothing but the truth between us. And let me be free of this life. Forever.”
His heart clenched. He reached out, gently cupping her face as he smiled, a slow, soft smile that held the sky itself.
“I swear on my life,” he said. “On my breath, on my dog, on the roof that shelters me and the streets that made me, I swear, l’amira. I’ll take you to the mosque with my own hand and you will be free. No walls. No cages. No fear.”
For the first time, she smiled, real and unguarded, bright as the morning sun cracking over the sea.
“Then let’s go.”
Without another word, he took her hand rough against the silk, and led her to the window. Below, the court was still in chaos, guards chasing the barking hound who darted between their legs like a spirit from the stories.
With a quiet laugh, Isack helped her swing over the terrace ledge, steadying her as her golden slippers met the stone. She glanced once over her shoulder, at the life she’d lived, the father who called for her, the walls that had held her since birth.
And then she leapt.
Into the dawn.
Into the world.
Into freedom.
Isack grinned, pulling her close as they dashed for the stairs, the wind rushing warm and alive against their faces.
“Come, l’amira,” he breathed as they ran, hearts pounding like drums. “Let’s get you wed, properly.”
And hand in hand, they fled into the waking streets of Algiers, where the call to prayer rose soft and silver into the sky, and the city opened before them, endless and wild as the sea.
They ran through the streets like the children she’d once watched with longing eyes, but now she was part of that world, part of the dawn, part of life.
Her slippers barely touched the cobbles, her golden bangles chiming softly with each hurried step, her silken wedding kaftan billowing like a cloud behind her. Jewels still clung to her neck and wrists, shimmering under the dim light of the waking city. Beside her, Isack ran barefoot in his worn scraps and dust-stained linen, his laughter breathless, his grin as bright as the sun rising behind them.
And together, like foolish lovers from some old street tale, they dashed towards the mosque.
The great white walls rose before them, calm and still against the blue-tinged sky, the call to prayer fading softly into the air. The old wooden doors stood half open, light from within spilling golden onto the stone.
Isack pushed through first, his dog waiting outside, tail wagging fiercely at the steps.
Inside, the familiar scent of oud and old prayer rugs filled the air. And there, bending to arrange the worn books of scripture, stood the imam, a stout man with a silver beard and thick brows, muttering to himself as he worked.
“Ya khoya!” Brother Isack called, grinning as he hurried forward. “Remember when I caught your runaway rooster last winter and you promised me a favour?”
The imam straightened slowly, squinting at him.
“Ya waldi, I’ve no dinar to pay you for that rooster,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “I told you already, that bird brought me nothing but bad luck.”
Isack only laughed, glancing at her, breathless, radiant in her silks and gold.
“I’m not here for money, imam Saïdi,” he said softly, the grin fading into something almost shy, almost sacred. “I’ve come for my payment. Please, wed me to the woman who holds my heart. Now. Quickly. We’re in a rush.”
The imam stared, from Isack’s rough clothes to her shining wedding jewels, then back again.
“Are you sure, boy?” the old man asked, voice low with the weight of tradition. “This is no small thing, not a game to win and laugh over. Marriage is binding before Allah, here, and in the next life.”
Isack turned to her, his hand reaching for hers, fingers twining tight. She met his gaze, her heart thudding hard and wild.
“Yes,” she whispered, voice steady. “We are sure.”
The imam sighed, but the faintest smile curved his lips beneath his beard.
“Very well, waladi. Come here. Both of you.”
And so, beneath the carved wooden beams of the mosque, before the worn prayer rugs and the quiet dawn, the old man began the nikah.
Isack spoke first, his voice clear: his ijab, his offer to take her as his wife. Her heart jumped as she gave her quiet qabul, accepting him, her breath soft and warm in the hushed air.
Witnessed by Allah. No gold. No courts. No walls.
Only truth.
Only choice.
Only freedom.
The imam prayed over them, his hands lifted gently, invoking peace, blessing, mercy. The words of the Qur’an wrapped around them like light, weaving them into something whole and sacred.
“Baraka Allahu lakuma,” May Allah bless you both he said softly at last.
But before the final words could fall, the heavy crash of iron-shod boots broke the quiet, and the wide doors of the mosque burst open.
Palace guards.
Dozens of them.
Their dark leather armour gleamed, swords glinting under the oil lamps. The captain stepped forward, gaze sharp and cruel.
“There they are!” he barked. “Seize them, by order of the Sultan himself!”
The peace of the mosque shattered, but Isack only smiled, fingers tightening around his new wife’s hand.
“Ya Allah...” the imam muttered, clutching his beads.
Steel-clad hands grabbed Isack roughly by the arms, wrenching him backwards with such force his shoulder jarred painfully. The dog growled low and deep from outside but dared not move as three more guards kept their blades close.
At the far end of the prayer hall, she stood, now alone, radiant in her wedding silk, defiant as the sunrise behind her. Her dark eyes flashed as the heavy tread of boots approached.
The Sultan himself entered the mosque, flanked by advisors and more guards, the weight of his presence sinking into the air like stone into water. His robe of deep emerald trailed behind him.
He halted in the centre of the prayer hall, eyes flicking from the bound street boy to his daughter, who was supposed to be waiting at the palace gates for her grand procession.
His face darkened.
“What is the meaning of this?” His voice cut sharp through the silence, hard as steel drawn from its sheath. “What foolishness is this? Binti, explain yourself. Now.”
She lifted her chin, her heart pounding against her ribs. “I have nothing to explain to you, Father,” she said, her voice low, steady. “I have done what you never let me do, I chose.”
His gaze narrowed, dark with warning. “Chose?” he spat. “Chose what? This—” he flung a hand towards the struggling Isack, “this gutter rat? This thief from the streets? You throw away a kingdom for him?”
He strode towards her, his robe whispering against the tiles. His hand shot out, catching her chin hard, lifting her face so her eyes were forced to meet his.
“You shame me,” he hissed. “You shame your mother’s name. Your country. What have you done?”
Before she could speak, Isack's voice cracked the air, hoarse but fierce, his whole body straining against the guards’ grip.
“Don’t touch my wife!”
The words hung like thunder in the mosque.
The Sultan froze.
So did every guard.
Even the imam, who stood quietly by the prayer books, bowed his head and folded his hands before him.
“She speaks the truth, sidi,” the old imam said softly, his voice carrying clear and unafraid through the vast chamber. “By Allah’s law and witness, they are wed. Just now. With her qabul and his ijab. With me as their witness. The nikah is done.”
The Sultan’s hand dropped slowly from her face.
His breath hissed between his teeth as he stared at his daughter, who stood unflinching, her chin high, her eyes clear and bright.
“You married him,” he said, voice low with disbelief. “You married this... street boy. Without my blessing. Without the court. Without—” His hand trembled. “You dare defy me, your father, the Sultan?”
“I dared, Father,” she said softly, “because you left me no choice. You caged me all my life. This is my freedom. My will. My faith.” Her voice hardened. “And he is my husband.”
Silence fell like a heavy cloth over the mosque, save for the dog’s soft, warning growl and the faint creak of armour.
The Sultan stared at them, the gilded princess and the dusty street boy, joined in defiance and faith.
His jaw tightened.
And the air held still, waiting for his judgement.
The Sultan’s face darkened, rage twisting the lines of his mouth as the weight of his shame settled upon him. In front of his men. In the house of God. His pride, his own blood, choosing a street rat over the throne.
His hand shot out.
A sharp crack split the air as his palm struck her cheek, sending her head whipping to the side.
A breathless hush swept the mosque.
Isack roared.
With a violent wrench, he tore free from the guards' grip, their surprise too slow, their hands grasping at empty air as the boy, lean and lithe from a lifetime of running and scrapping, lunged across the space between them.
He grabbed the Sultan by the front of his robes, strong, hands knotting into the silken lapels and hauled him forward until their faces were but inches apart. His chest heaved; his golden-brown eyes burned bright as fire.
“The only thing holding me back from sending you to your death for laying a hand on my wife,” he growled, voice low and shaking with fury, “is that we stand in the house of Allah. But God is my witness, Sultan, if I see you again, and you dare try one more thing against her, against us, you shan’t live to say the word ‘La’.” No
A gasp rippled through the guards.
Even the dog bared its teeth, hackles raised, a low rumble thrumming in its throat.
The Sultan’s eyes, wide with shock, stared into Isack’s face, the breath stolen from his chest. No man, no beggar, no prince had ever dared grip him so. His guards hovered, hesitating, unsure whether to drag Isack down and risk defiling the mosque further.
Isack shook him once, hard, before shoving him back, hard enough that the Sultan staggered on his feet, his robes twisting about him like wounded pride.
She gasped softly, her fingers brushing her stinging cheek, but her heart swelled with something wild and bright. Isack, this boy from the streets, stood tall before a king without fear.
The Imam stepped forward quietly, his old hands raised.
“Enough. Baraka min hadshi.” Enough of this
His voice cut the tension like a blade, heavy with the quiet authority of one who spoke for God.
“All of you, this is sacred ground. No more violence beneath Allah’s roof. Leave your wrath outside.”
Isack stood firm, breathing hard, the fire still in his eyes.
The Sultan straightened his robe, hand trembling slightly as he brushed the silk smooth, his gaze burning into the boy before him.
“You have shamed me,” the Sultan hissed. “Both of you. This is not over.”
Isack smiled, slow, dangerous, wolfish.
“No,” he murmured. “It’s only just begun.”
Her hand slipped into his, fingers tightening around his as the guards shifted uneasily, no man daring to break the Imam’s peace, no sword daring to fall where Allah’s name was spoken.
And in that quiet moment, beneath the great dome of the mosque and the morning light streaming in, they stood, husband and wife, defiant and unbroken.
And free.
The weight of the morning’s confrontation still clung to them as she and Isack made their way through the narrow, twisting streets, fingers intertwined. They arrived at Hadja’s humble home.
Hadja greeted them with a knowing smile, her eyes sharp beneath heavy brows that had witnessed decades of stories. “Ah, waldi,” she said softly, her voice thick with affection. “And l’amira, the princess with the heart of a rebel.” She welcomed them inside, where the scent of mint tea and spices wove through the air like a familiar song.
Once seated, tea poured and steam swirling upwards, they looked to her for guidance. Hadja’s gaze softened as she began, her voice falling into a quiet rhythm, the past and present folding together.
“Love,” she murmured, she smiled faintly, “is a wild flame. I was once foolishly in love, too.”
Her eyes drifted to a faraway place, as though seeing a younger version of herself beneath a fading lantern’s light.
“There was a boy from a far village, kan zwin, he was handsome, kind, but life had other plans. Tqadit I was deceived. I thought love alone would be enough, but it was not.”
“Knt bghit nhss b huriya I wanted to feel free. But freedom, l’amira, isn’t given; it’s taken. And love is the courage to take it.”
When she finished, silence settled, the weight of her words hanging in the air.
Hadja’s hand reached out, worn and steady, resting on Isack’s.
“My son Isack, listen carefully. Take passage from here to Ghazaouet. It’s not safe for you here anymore.”
Isack’s brow furrowed, surprise flickering across his face.
Hadja turned to l’amira, eyes shimmering with a secret long kept.
“l’amira, your mother was from Ghazaouet. I took passage with her to Algiers long ago. She was brave, she’d be proud of you.”
Her breath caught, fingers tightening around Isack’s hand.
“My sister works in the palace, she was your mother’s maid. You were closer than you ever knew.”
A tear traced a line down Hadja’s cheek, touched by both sorrow and hope.
“You’ll find fertile land there, and people who will welcome you. Seek out the trader named Rashid, he will guide you.”
The room felt alive with possibility, the past and future intertwining in Hadja’s words.
Isack nodded, determination hardening in his gaze.
She felt a quiet hope bloom inside her, fragile but fierce.
Together, they would chase the horizon.
Together, they would find freedom.
That night, they found passage to Ghazaouet, with nothing but a dog, a cloth bundling their meagre belongings, and their hearts. The road was long and winding, carving through desert and coast, dust clinging to their clothes and salt from the sea staining their hair. But they carried no burden heavier than the lives they had shed behind them.
It took five days. Five days of quiet prayers, whispered plans, shared bread, and watching the dog run wild through the hills as though he had always known freedom. On the evening of the fifth day, with the sun resting low like a gold coin on the edge of the horizon, they arrived.
They found Rashid just as Hadja had said. A man with lines on his face from years of salt and sand, eyes that knew the weight of secrets, and a heart that softened the moment he saw her face.
“Bint Laila” he whispered, as if he were seeing a ghost. “Your mother would be at peace now.”
He led them to the land her mother had left behind, acres upon acres of olive trees and wild thyme, crowned by a single stone house, worn by time but strong, built upon a rise that overlooked the endless sea. It had a stah, a courtyard with faded tiles and jasmine climbing along the old walls. Her mother had kept it all untouched, in case she too bore a restless heart, as she once had.
They did not return to Algiers. The city forgot them, as all cities forget their rebels and dreamers.
Isack worked with Rashid, hands calloused by honest labour, skin browned by the coastal sun. He returned home each day to a house alive with laughter and the scent of mint and coriander. His wife was no longer a princess. She was something far freer, a woman of her own making. She walked barefoot in the morning dew, learned the names of herbs, stitched cushions for the stah, and left her hair uncovered to dance with the wind.
They lived slowly. They lived wholly. And in quiet moments beneath the olive trees, Isack would take her hand and kiss her wrist where the bangle once sat and say, “You, l’amira, are the only kingdom I’ll ever kneel for.”
Years passed like the tide, soft but certain. No one remembered the boy from the streets of Algiers who stole the heart of a princess. No one spoke of the princess at all. The crown she once wore died with her old name, and she never mourned it.
In the spring of their third year by the sea, they welcomed a son. Isack held him with trembling arms and named him Nur el-Din, the light of faith, for he came into their lives as proof that their love had been blessed.
Years later, a daughter followed, born beneath a full moon. She named her Amal Layali, the hope of nights, for she had once looked to the stars and prayed for freedom, and the stars had listened.
They raised their children on stories and soil, on faith and fire, and on the unshakable truth that love, when pure, needs no crown to be sacred.
And in time, no one remembered the palace or the boy who walked its shadows.
But on the cliffs of Ghazaouet, where jasmine grows wild and the sea sings to the shore, you can still find the house with the stah, where a dog once slept in the sun, and where two hearts, once lost, found their way home.
And if you listen closely to the wind, you might still hear her whisper his name.
EVE’S 2K CELEBRATION 🎤: 100 tips on how to avoid certain death at the hands of the undead, as curated by local survivalist expert kimi antonelli …… ft. way down we go by kaleo & hell’s comin with me by poor man’s poison
pairing: esteban ocon x reader
contents: apocalypse au, bearcon, kimi and reader have a sibling/parent dynamic, violence, sprinkles of angst (it’s the apocalypse people), very self-indulgent chloe chambers mention, google translated italian and french, open ending.
word count: 5.5k
“You’re an idiot. Such a huge idiot. How do you say idiot in Italian?”
Kimi squints his eyes against the morning sun, your shadow partially shielding from it hitting him directly in the face. There’s dirt near his mouth, twigs in his curls, and ugly scrapes from his arms down to his legs. What concerns you most, though, is his ankle sitting below you at a very odd angle. Maybe it’s just you. You tilt your head, hoping it’s just you.
Kimi doesn’t move to stand up. He just stares up at you from the ground, his shotgun just a few feet away. He shrugs. “Idiota.”
“Idiota, yeah,” you say. “Sei un idiota.”
“You mentioned,” he responds dryly.
You arch an unimpressed brow. He’s giving you attitude—you can hear it in his tone. “Because it’s the truth,” you stress. Sometimes, you miss those moments after you first met Kimi. Soft-spoken, rightfully mistrusting kid who looked at you like you were made of steel. Indestructible. Infallible. Who clung to your every word and command. Who never gave you attitude.
You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Dumbass. How do you say dumbass in—”
“Idiota.”
Your patience frays. “Explain to me in what world you thought it would be a good idea to get on the roof with a shotgun. Really walk me through it.”
“There was a zombie outside the fence,” Kimi says as he’s rolling a twig between his fingers now, as if you’re not standing in front of him. “I wanted to practice shooting at a distance.”
“And you had to get on the roof to do it?” End of the world, and teenagers are still the same. You sigh. “Did you at least kill it?”
He nods, and this time he looks up to you, as if subtly seeking approval. You suppose that in the little self-sufficient ranch you’ve made for yourselves, there’s no one else to give it to him. “Yeah. After, like, four shots.”
You consider it for a moment. “I should just leave you like this for wasting three extra bullets.” You sigh again, tired, even when it’s barely dawn. You’re pretty sure not even the chickens are awake yet. You extend your hand to Kimi, who has the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “Can you stand?”
He scoffs. “Yeah, I can—” you pull him up to his feet, only for his entire body to recoil, his face twisting in pain. “Shit, fuck, shit—no, no, put me down.”
You hurry to help him down, biting down your cheek to stifle the chant of fuck, fuck, fuck that threatens to spill out.
“Let me see.” You take his shoes off—great shoes, that he thankfully hasn’t outgrown yet. Then, you roll up his pants and take off the wool socks he made himself to get a view of both his ankles. You’re already not liking what you’re seeing—not when his right ankle already looks more swollen than his left one. Not a good sign. “Okay, tell me if this hurts.”
You put a little pressure around the bone, and Kimi flinches, his body instinctively trying to pull away. “Mhm, yeah,” he says, voice high-pitched and pained, “it hurts.”
You hope your face doesn’t give away just how fucked this makes you.
“Okay,” you start, slowly. Calculating. Assessing. “Best case scenario? You just sprained your ankle.”
“That’s the best case scenario?”
You swallow the truth before he can ever see it lingering at the tip of your tongue. You don’t want to tell him that it might not be sprained—that it might be broken. Because for all the commodities you’ve built and secured for yourselves, a broken ankle is not bad, it’s horrible. Barbed wire might keep zombies away, but that’s only if they’re not in hoards. Not to mention raiders—and there’s nothing more dangerous than desperate humans. You’ll be damned if anything happens to Kimi while you could’ve prevented it—but a broken ankle? Just outside your fence of barbed wire and iron-string traps, that’s a death sentence.
With slow and small steps, you help Kimi up to the second floor of the house—technically not ideal for him, but it gives Kimi a vantage point that doesn’t leave him immediately exposed to any outside threats. Once he’s on the bed, you grab a pillow and put it underneath his leg before continuing to examine it with more detail.
“It’s really starting to bruise…” you murmur, and you immediately notice the worried tinge that you accidentally let slip. You glance at Kimi, hoping he didn’t catch it. But he’s grown—much to your chagrin. He’s a smart kid, who doesn’t need you to spell out what’s happening. “We can use the cloth from one of your old t-shirts as a makeshift gauze. But you’re definitely gonna need some painkillers, otherwise it’s gonna hurt like a bitch and start swelling and get ugly.”
“I didn’t know you had a medical degree,” Kimi chirps.
“I really don’t need that tone from you right now.” You run a hand across your face, thinking. It’s unavoidable. “We knew this was gonna happen eventually.”
Accidents are bound to happen. And despite the fact that you’ve managed to fabricate a nearly self-sufficient lifestyle, it had always been an unspoken understanding between the two of you. You both knew that sooner or later you’d need resources—resources you can’t acquire from your little farm.
Appropriate medical equipment, for example.
Kimi is already shaking his head before you ever get a chance to say it. “No.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“You’re not going to the city alone,” Kimi says with a sternness that almost surprises you. “Are you insane?”
“The city’s not that bad anymore.”
“You are not going alone,” he repeats, and only then do you notice the faint trace of panic that laces his words.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be careful.” You reach for his hand; an attempt to be comforting. “And I’ll be back before sunset.”
Kimi stares at you, really stares at you—like he’s trying to telepathically convey how much he absolutely hates this plan. In the end, he just huffs, pretends he doesn’t care—even when you can read it in the tense set of his jaw. You hear the soft padding of his tabby cat as she strides into the room and hops onto Kimi’s bed, curling into a ball at his lap. Meche purrs the second Kimi scratches behind her ear. “Just…” He twists around and pulls out small book from his nightstand, hands it to you while avoiding your gaze. “Take this with you.”
“Kimi—”
“Please?”
Brown eyes peer at you pleadingly. You swallow, ignoring that heavy feeling that settles like stones on your chest. Instead, you turn your attention back to the book he’s handed you. You blink at the title. “Kimi’s Expert Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse?”
“It’s a survival guide!” he says, a little more enthusiastically than you would’ve expected. It startles his cat.
“Yeah, I gathered that.”
“It was either that or Home is Where The Hatchet Is.”
You laugh, and you relish how that seems to bring a smile to his lips. “It’s got a nice ring to it.” You put it down, fingers brushing away a few stray curls of his. “It’s a one day trip, Kimi,” you say, gently. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
His stare hardens. “You’re done for.”
“What?”
“Page number two. Number two.”
You open the book on the second page.
Pro-tip #2: Everyone’s seen horror movies. Don’t be an idiot. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
You raise an unimpressed brow. “Are you serious?”
He doesn’t falter. “Deadly.”
“I’ll be fine.” You wave him off, tucking his book into your jacket pocket. “Just don’t get too bored without me here.”
Kimi turns his attention back to Meche, more nervous than he lets on. “I’ll try,” he says dryly, and the cat meows in response.
The trek to the city isn’t long. It is, however, very annoying to make—even more so when you’ve got no company. Back during the first years, going to the city was as good as signing a death sentence. There were still too many survivors inside the buildings and houses, which in turn led to infections spreading—which then led to hordes and hordes of zombies wandering aimlessly from block to block. Definitely not ideal. But based on what you’ve been hearing on your only functional radio and those few trips you’ve done with Kimi, the city isn’t nearly as infested as it once was.
You’ll count your blessings where you find them.
Still, the road is long and uneventful, so you take it as a chance to browse through Kimi’s secret project. His penmanship could do some work—though you suppose you should just be thankful he knows how to write. He was young when the apocalypse started—too young.
You avoid the thought by stopping on a random page. Pro-tip #12: Only travel during daylight hours and, if you plan on staying, always secure a place before sundown.
Sensible. Useful, even, if you had woken up from a comma and missed the past few years. Still, you don’t let it deter you from reading on.
Pro-tip #48: Listen to the radio, but never respond. Chances are other survivors will be either looters, scavengers or raiders. Don’t take the chance.
Pro-tip #87: Music is good for morale, but even better at attracting zombies. Make sure to use it responsibly and safely.
Pro-tip #31: Under no circumstance investigate weird lights or sounds. We’ve all seen horror movies. (Refer to: #2)
Pro-tip #9: Speed and stealth will be your two main advantages. Use them. Quick and quiet wins the race.
The trek goes by quicker than you originally expected. You tuck away Kimi’s book, making sure the corners don’t fold inside your jacket pocket. As expected, the city is desolate. Ivy tangles around shop windows and broken down cement blocks. Cars that have been long-forgotten line the sides of the road—a red Honda Civic, a white Toyota Camry, a Ram Pickup that would be useful, if you had any access to gasoline. There’s a billboard hanging from the roof of one of the shops—a faded and yellowed ad for some soda you can’t even remember the taste of. You continue your walk, steady and familiar. You step back onto the sidewalk, where bright-bordering-neon green moss stares back at you from the cracks on the ground. A dumb, childish voice inside your head tells you that it’s unfair, that how can moss thrive while Kimi’s in bed with a broken ankle? You step on it out of spite.
Entering the pharmacy isn’t hard—not when all that remains of the window is the aged frame. You avoid the shards of glass on the ground, quietly entering the store. Most of the shelves are near-empty, ransacked during the first weeks. You suppose you should be grateful there’s anything at all.
By the back shelves—the ones that seem to be better stocked—you spot a pair of crutches. You lay down your gun and take one, inspecting it in your hands. It could be useful—though you doubt it’ll be easy to take them back on foot. Still, you make mental notes of the overall shape and weight distribution, intending to try and make one for Kimi that’s similar to the real deal. You go to put it back, before deciding to slide it underneath the shelves. Who knows? Maybe you’ll come back for them another day. Finders keepers and all that.
Off by the side, you spot a gray fracture boot that’s a size too big, but after realizing that it fits inside your pack, you take it. There’s other miscellaneous items you take as a precaution—more gauze, athletic tape, and a tucked away tube of cream that claims to reduce swelling. Painkillers are next, and though they are expired by months, you figure they’ll still be good for something. You suppose you should be thankful there were any at all.
This should be good, right? If anything, this trip has turned out better than you could’ve ever anticipated. You’re zipping up your pack when you hear a can being kicked. You duck down, hearing an undead groan from somewhere nearby. Close. Too close.
It takes you a second to realize your gun is still on the floor and beyond your reach. It takes you another second to register that there’s more than one pair of footsteps.
The groan behind you makes you spin around—too little, too late. The scent of rotten flesh makes you recoil while decaying, graying fingers reach out for you. You scramble back, stupid, stupid, stupid. Surely leaving your weapon out of reach is chapter number one on Kimi’s book.
Your back hits the shelf and bottles with pills come tumbling down. The zombie in front of you unhinges its jaw, yellowed teeth sharp and inhuman. It groans again, hands reaching for your ankle and pulling you towards it. You twist and kick to no avail, desperately searching around you for something you can use to fight back. Its jaw widens to a degree that no human ever could, bringing your ankle up to its teeth to get a taste of your flesh. No. No, no, no.
As a last ditch effort, you reach for the crutch you had tucked underneath the shelves, yanking it out and hitting the zombie squarely in the face with it. The zombie stumbles back with a screech, though the hand around your leg seems to tighten.
“Let go!” you hiss, flailing like a fish above water. “Let go!”
The zombie grabs the crutch from your hands and pulls it with a force that is uncharacteristic of any other undead corpses you’ve encountered in the past years. It chills you to the bone.
It feels pathetic to die like this. Unearned. The frustration of it is easily overlooked for the ice-cold fear that settles over you. The zombie tilts its head with a creaking sound, eye sockets empty and hollow, and realization slams into your ribcage with a disorienting force. It’s against tender flesh, vulnerable, that you realize—Kimi will be on his own. Waiting for someone that will never come home. The zombie stands over you now; you can see its bones from where the flesh has rotted away. Years surviving zombies and the question still stands—are you still you, once you become one of them? Do you still have memories, or ghosts of your past life? It leans closer to you, and you still fight, you still kick and swing your arms for an opening that never comes. Once you’re hollow flesh, a carcass of whom you were—will you still remember a boy with curly hair and a bright laugh? Or will that be gone too?
You hear a gunshot, miraculous, and the undead now-definitely-dead body topples over you ungracefully. You feel something sting against your shoulder, and you recoil in disgust. You roll over, pushing the zombie’s body away from yours.
You look up now, heart still racing in your ears and struggling to make sense of what happened, exactly. You turn, only to spot two men standing on the opposite side of the hallway—or, more accurately, one man and one boy.
The man is the first to step forward, fire axe in hand. He has dark hair, tousled, face dirty with grime.
“Are you okay?” he asks, with an accent you don’t care to place. He lowers the gray scarf covering the bottom-half of his face.
“Yeah,” you say, breathlessly, still reeling from the fact that they just saved your life. You swallow. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Let me help.” The man offers you a hand, and you reach for it without thinking twice. The boy stands behind, still keeping his distance. He’s the one with the gun in hand—the one who shot the zombie. The boy doesn’t spare you a glance, not for a second—instead, his eyes follow the older man with sharp attention.
His hands feel rough under yours, calloused with what can only be years of having a vise-like grip on his axe. It feels grounding, a reminder—that for all their kindness, the world isn’t what it used to be. That it will never go back to what it once was.
You pick up your pack in an attempt to be nonchalant—as if Kimi’s health and recovery doesn’t downright depend on its contents.
“What’s your name?” the man asks.
“Chloe.” The lie is an instinctive response. No room for hesitation. Chloe was a girl you met a few weeks into the apocalypse. She was nice enough—had a good head over her shoulders. You’re not sure whether she’s still alive. Either way—she probably won’t mind you temporarily stealing her name.
“Horrible things,” the boy behind him says, gaze still firmly set on the man. It feels neglectful, in a way. Irresponsible. Especially when you’re a stranger to them, someone who could be a potential danger. “I thought the others had already gotten rid of all of them.”
You furrow your brows. “The others?”
“Our camp,” the man closest to you supplies. “We’re stationed a few streets down.” He lets go of your hand, and there’s a glint in his dark eyes that unsettles you. Something you can’t place. And maybe it’s the fact that you haven’t properly interacted with a human being other than Kimi in over a year—either way, you’re not taking chances. “You don’t look familiar. Are you from the camps too?”
You turn your head just a second, only to scan the ground for your gun. “Yeah. Yeah, just up north,” you lie, finally spotting the barrel of your weapon next to one of the metal racks.
The man hums, and you’re already backtracking to reach for it. “Yeah, thanks for saving me, but I really should—”
“Camps up north, right?” he repeats, and there it is again—that unsettling, unnamable thing that makes you pick up your weapon with a quicker pace. “You know, it’s funny,” you hear a click, “Because last we checked, this city ran out of survivors a long time ago.”
The cold metal of your gun doesn’t make you feel any better. Not when odds are stacked against you. “There are no camps,” you say. Which would make them—
Scavengers.
Shit, Kimi was right.
“Stand up,” the kid with the gun says, and even you’re not stupid enough to try and make a break for it. “And don’t make any sudden moves.”
The man narrows his eyes, searching you with a scrutiny that you should’ve had the second they showed up. Living on the farm has made you complacent. It’s dulled your instincts—a blade that barely cuts anymore. “Where are you really from?”
“Nowhere,” you respond a second too quickly. Then, to amend, you add, “I’m just passing through.”
“She doesn’t look like a nomad,” the boy offers, the bottom half of his face still covered with a dark brown scarf.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You look smart,” the man says, head tilted. There’s a look in his eyes—a tenderness, maybe, that has since grown teeth and claws. “Smart people don’t travel alone.”
You shrug, trying to play off the rising panic you feel in your chest. It’s two against one—and it’s only then that you realize the strategy behind this whole encounter. The one closest to you has an axe, while the one that stands further behind has a gun. It doesn’t matter which one you go for—the other will get you in a blink.
“You talk a lot for someone traveling with a kid.”
He raises his gun, and you briefly wonder whether using the scarf is an attempt to hide his boyish features. They’re both tall enough to be intimidating as is. “Watch it,” he hisses.
“Hit a nerve there,” you say, and the boy narrows his eyes at you.
“Ollie,” the man says, with a tone that feels all-too familiar. Stern. Protective. He turns his attention back to you. “How many people do you live with?”
You shrug, your hands still raised for them to see. “Like I said, it’s just me.”
He tilts his head. “Then who’s the medical equipment for?”
Shit. Think fast, think—
“Me.”
“You?”
Ollie shakes his head, barrel of the gun still very much aimed at you. “She’s lying, Esteban.”
“I’m not,” you insist, mind already turning for ways to get yourself out of this. “Just because the world ended doesn’t mean I no longer get my period.” Esteban looks at you skeptically. “What? You want me to show you?” You reach inside your pack. It’s a bluff—not a very good one.
“Fine,” Esteban says, a little too quickly. Embarrassedly. “Fine.”
It occurs to you that they’re two men on their own—men that probably haven’t heard about periods since the apocalypse started. “Suit yourself.”
“What are you thinking?” Ollie asks, taking a step closer now.
“I’m thinking if she is not from the city, she is probably stationed somewhere in the area.” Esteban does a once-over of you, eyes lingering on your face and clothes, before dropping to your hands. “Somewhere safer than here.”
“I’m really not,” you try, but catching your reflection on one of the metal racks, you see it. For all the messiness that came from struggling against a zombie, you’re still cleaner than either of them are. Your clothes are in better condition. Your cheeks look rounder, fuller—like you haven’t been starving as of late. He must’ve clocked it the second he saw you.
“The way I see it, you’ve got two choices, Chloe,” Esteban starts. “Either you lead us to your little safe haven, or Ollie shoots you and we take your things.” He shrugs. “Your call.”
Not much of a choice there. Next time, you’ll be sure to pay more attention to Kimi’s book. Really take it to heart. As if hearing your thoughts, Ollie’s eyes trail down towards the outline of the book inside your pocket.
“What’s—”
“Back up,” you say, voice sharper than before. Ollie raises his brows, a brief suspicion taking over his expression before Esteban places a hand on his shoulder.
“Se concentrer,” Esteban says in a steadying tone. Ollie nods once. The older man turns his attention back to you. “I don’t suppose I have to explain to you that if you try anything, we shoot. You make a move too suddenly, we shoot. You lead us anywhere else that isn’t where you came from and—”
“Let me guess: you shoot?”
Esteban tilts his head, and there’s a smugness there that grates at you. He reaches into his pocket for a scrap of cloth that uses to tie your wrists together. “Look at you, already getting a hang of things.” He pulls up his scarf back over the bottom half of his face, and gestures towards the broken-down entrance of the store. “Allons-y.”
Glass crunches underneath your boot, hands tied in front of you as you lead the way, Ollie and Esteban just a few paces behind. The way you see it, your options are very limited. You have the medical equipment Kimi needs—though you should’ve known it was all too good to be true. You could guide them away from the house, but who knows how long you’d be gone? How would you get back? Kimi wouldn’t wait long before going to look for you—you can’t have that. Your best bet is leading them, then using your shotgun that’s back at the house to shoot them down.
Behind you, falling in steady stride, you hear Ollie whisper, “Hey, Esteban?” A vague hum of acknowledgement follows. You turn your head slightly. “What’s a period?”
Esteban’s back stiffens. “I am not answering that.”
The rest of the walk back is quiet. You don’t make an effort to talk to either of them, while they seem to be carefully attentive of your every move. You don’t say anything after crossing the river—only once you can see the wire fence Kimi and you worked on three years ago.
“This is the place,” you say, gesturing with your tied hands. “I need my keys, though.”
Esteban nods once, as if to say, slowly. You carefully reach for your backpocket, taking out a small keychain and unlocking the metal door. Ollie steps in first, leaving Esteban half a step behind you.
“Whoa,” Ollie says, and you see him lower the barrel of his gun. As soon as he steps into the garden, his eyes widen with amazement. He blinks, lowering his scarf—which reveals those boyish features you were expecting. You shouldn’t be surprised that he’s just a kid. You shouldn’t. “Did you build this?”
You shrug. “Eh. In part.” You can still feel Esteban lingering behind you, keeping his wary gaze on you like a leech.
“This place is cool,” Ollie tells Esteban, and the lightness of his voice sounds disturbingly unfamiliar—like the boy in front of you isn’t the same one from the city.
“There’s a few chickens back in the pen,” you mention offhandedly, casually gesturing with your tied-up hands.
“You have chickens?” Ollie rushes towards the area you pointed at, making Esteban briefly turn his gaze away from you to call him back. Finally—your opening. This time, you don’t hesitate. The second Esteban is distracted, you knock your head back and into his nose with all the force you can muster.
Pro-tip #67: Your best bet will always be to avoid hand-to-hand combat, but on some occasions you won’t be given the liberty to choose. When that’s the case, always go for the nose.
You don’t register Esteban’s shout. You barely feel his blood dripping onto your neck before you’re bolting towards the entrance to the house. You slam the door open, hurrying upstairs before either of them can blink.
“Hey! Stop!”
You hear footsteps behind you as you come barreling into Kimi’s room.
He jumps, his eyes wide as he stares at your disheveled frame. Meche hisses at you from his lap—and really? That cat is always playing favorites.
“What’s—”
“Where’s the shotgun?” you huff out, hand gripping the door. Kimi doesn’t manage to answer before you spot it by his bedside. Atta boy. You lunge for it as steps come rushing just outside the door. Your body slams against the wooden floor, movements rash and imprecise as you aim at the door, ready to shoot.
The first one out the door is the older one, Esteban—who’s holding a bulkier shotgun at you. There’s blood smeared across his jaw and upper lip, eyes narrowed with intent to kill. You’d never admit it out loud—but his survival instincts seem to be much sharper than yours. He doesn’t even spare a moment to glance around the room, no. His dark eyes are dead-set on you. He doesn’t lower his gun. Neither do you.
Then, Ollie comes barreling in, looking just as disheveled as Esteban with the axe now in his hand. Ollie, however, does take in the room with a quick scan. His brown eyes land on Kimi, and you immediately shift your aim towards him.
“Drop it!” Esteban shouts, shotgun cocking.
“Step away from him,” you bark, jaw clenched and aim unflinching.
But neither of the kids seem to be paying either of you any mind. Kimi straightens on his bed, earning a meow from Meche. “Ollie?”
“Kimi,” Ollie says, stunted, face caught somewhere between confusion and relief.
Kimi blinks once. Twice. Then, he turns his head towards you with an expression that says you’re embarrassing me. “Could you, like, not aim your gun at him?” he asks. “…Please?”
Well, dinner is incredibly awkward. Not that Kimi nor Ollie seem to notice. In fact, they both seem to have completely forgotten they are not the only ones at the table. Kimi beams and explains how the two of you have gotten the house running, while both Ollie and Esteban shovel spoonfuls of their plates into their mouths. You simply opt to stare, distrusting.
Kimi still has food in his mouth when he tilts his head at Esteban. “Hey, what happened to your nose?”
You snort, earning a not so discreet glare from the man sitting across from you. Kimi raises a curious brow, to which you respond with a small shrug. “Yeah, what happened to your nose?”
Dinner seems to wrap up quickly after that. The sun is starting to set, rays of molten gold seeping into the living room through the window.
“Can I show Ollie around?” Kimi asks, hopeful. It startles you, seeing a flash of the boy he was when you first met him.
“There’s a fracture boot inside my pack and a bottle of painkillers,” you say, pointing with your spoon. “You can go, but only for as long as you take two of them and Ollie helps you put on the boot.”
Kimi nods eagerly. “We can do that,” he exclaims, and Ollie stands to help him up, pulling Kimi’s arm over his shoulder. The two of them stumble out of the room, not wanting to waste a second of daylight.
“They clearly like each other,” Esteban finally says, voice gravelly.
“Yeah,” you say, feeling as the gentleness starts to seep out of your tone. You narrow your eyes at him. “You threatened to kill me.”
He shrugs, his plate scraped clean. “We saved you before that.”
You consider it for a moment. Mull it over. “Ollie is Kimi’s friend,” you state with an air of finality. He looks out of place—there’s still blood and dirt on his face. His clothes are worn, sporting tears and holes you could probably fix. You sigh. “You can stay. Temporarily. As long as you can show me that you can pull your weight.”
Esteban snorts into his glass. You raise a brow, unamused. He puts the glass down, as if sobering up. He exhales, extending his hand to you. “Truce?”
You glance down at his hand, before shaking it. “Truce.” You stand up, taking your plate and Kimi’s with you. “You should shower,” you say. “You stink.”
Esteban blinks, brows twitching. “Shower?”
“Yeah,” you say. “The hot water is limited though, so don’t abuse it.”
“Hot water?” Esteban repeats, and it takes you staring at him to snap him out of it. He nods, too eager, and clears his throat. “I mean—understood.”
“Good.” You pause. “And Ollie is your responsibility.”
Esteban chuckles, unfazed. “Always has been.”
You linger for a moment—just a moment. You take in his current state, the hollowness of his cheeks, his worn clothes, the fact that both he and Ollie are very clearly malnourished—and you briefly wonder how close you and Kimi were to that before you managed to secure this place. A place that had picture albums belonging to the previous owners—people that are probably long dead by now.
You blink, and the mental image is afternoon fog, weaving through the trees and the river. You swallow, and without sparing another glance at Esteban, you start climbing the stairs.
“Shower’s mine first, though!”
The bathroom door clicks shut behind you. You lock it, cautiously, silently. The mirror has a crack that spreads into spiderwebs of multiple reflections of you. They all stare back at you, grime and dirt still clinging to your skin.
You stare back at your reflection, and you can feel your heart beating uneasily. Waiting. Your chest constricts.
Your muscles feel stiff as you pull down the collar of your shirt. Your chest rises unevenly—and the six reflections of you on the cracked mirror seem to hold their breaths.
You knew it would be there—you knew it the moment it happened.
It’s not deep, you try to reason. It’s surface level. Salvagable.
The bite mark is centered on your shoulder—ugly, festering. You can make out the imprint of teeth on your skin. Panic rises inside your stomach, pushing down against your ribs. Surface level or otherwise, you know what a bite from a zombie means.
Death.
Inescapable. Unavoidable. Terrifying.
You still have time. A week, maybe two—maybe less. Your breathing feels constricted, like there’s pressure against your chest. The room spins around you. You blink, and your reflection is the zombie from the city. Unhinged jaw. Hollow eyes. Yellowed teeth. It’s you.
A knock on the door makes you jump. Kimi calls out your name. You run a hand across your face, pulse unsteady. “Yeah?”
“Do we have extra towels?” Kimi asks, voice muffled.
“Yeah—in, in my closet.”
“Va bene,” Kimi says, and you hear him limping away.
A week. Maybe two. Not enough time to get everything in order—not nearly enough to make sure Kimi is set with everything he needs.
You let go of the collar of your shirt, hiding the bite. It pulses on your flesh, slowly but steadily rotting your skin from within.
Pro-tip #1: Zombie bites are a death sentence. Never, under any circumstances, let yourself be bitten.
that, my friends, is house music! it doesn’t judge you! (but oscar might.)
ꔮ starring: frat dj!oscar piastri x reader.
ꔮ word count: 3.9k.
ꔮ includes: romance. mention of alcohol; suggestive language/thoughts. alternate universe: non-f1, alternate universe: university. frat party, reader is in a sorority (and objectively cooler than oscar), oscar is a loser (affectionately), frat president!lando. title from yeah yeah yeahs’ heads will roll.
ꔮ commentary box: my love for @norrisradio has taken me places i never thought i would go, e.g. writing a frat fic. i know this is open-ended, but i must warn: a second part is not imminent. i simply like putting oscar piastri in situations!!! anyway. love you, tara. ask me to jump, i’ll say ‘how high’; ask me to put oscar in a frat, i’ll do it. major shoutout to the oscar piastri house music playlists on spotify 🎧 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
Oscar arrives late.
This is not unusual. He is late to most things that involve standing around and pretending to enjoy himself. He arrives halfway through parties, halfway through brunches, halfway through semesters. It’s a strategic thing. Timing his entrance so the work of socializing has already started, the engine of conversation already churning, so he can just slide in without needing to spark it.
But tonight, the Delta Sig house is already humming like a generator gone slightly feral. There’s a thrum in the walls that feels structural. Lando will be pleased.
Oscar shoulders through the front door just as someone hurls a ping pong ball past his ear. The air smells like beer, cheap cologne, and the citrus-synthetic scent of a dozen different hair products. He steps over a knocked-over Solo cup and feels it stick to his shoe for two full steps before letting go.
The house is carnivalesque. Someone has looped LED lights over the antlers above the fireplace. The DJ setup—if it can be called that—glows from the dining room like a spaceship crash-landed in suburbia. Oscar catches sight of Lando standing on the staircase, giving what appears to be a pre-battle briefing to a group of pledges.
He makes his way over. “Is this a party or a military coup?” Oscar quips.
Lando, dressed in a white polo shirt that’s already unbuttoned to show off his ridiculous tan, chirps, “Both, ideally.”
“You said last time if more than three people came, you’d kiss the composite.”
“And I will,” Lando replies solemnly, waving off the pledges. They scatter obediently. “Out of gratitude. Right on Mason’s laminated forehead.”
Oscar squints at the crowd. “What happened? You threaten to draft people?”
“Alpha Nu’s Social Chair said she might come. Word got around.”
That catches Oscar off guard. He raises an eyebrow. “The DJ?”
Lando gives a vaguely dismissive gesture. “Not officially. But she has a playlist. People like her taste. Or maybe just her face.”
Oscar drifts off before Lando can say more. It’s not that Oscar cares. He doesn’t. He just—
Okay, the music is good. Not ironically good, not frat-party passable, but objectively good. Layered, textured. A bassline that actually builds. Songs stitched together like a conversation instead of a collision. No abrupt transitions, no whiplash-inducing BPM jumps. Someone cares. Someone curated this.
Which is weird. No one in Greek life cares about anything except optics and ankle tattoos, and maybe the occasional philanthropy event. He pushes past a group doing shots off someone’s stomach and follows the music to its source.
He finds you.
You’re not DJing, exactly. You’re mixing from your laptop, one earbud in, expression vaguely disinterested. Like you’re scoring a film no one else has seen. Like you’ve done this a dozen times and never been impressed.
Oscar recognizes you. Kind of. Alpha Nu’s infamous Social Chair. The one who once convinced an entire fraternity to re-theme their winter formal so it wouldn’t overlap with your aesthetic vision. The one who dated Sigma Zeta’s Logan Sargeant for three weeks before breaking up with him via GMail.
You’re wearing sunglasses. Inside. At night.
God, you’re fucking obnoxious.
Oscar sidles up beside you like a challenge. Like a dare. “Is this a setlist or a flex?” he says in lieu of a greeting.
You don’t look at him. “Does it matter?”
He shrugs. “Only if you’re trying to outshine the party.”
You glance at him then, just long enough for him to see the smirk tug at your mouth. “Maybe the party should keep up,” you say.
Oscar hates how much that thrills him. He leans against the table, arms crossed. “You always DJ your enemies’ events?”
“Only when they’re tragically under-stimulated.”
“Delta Sig is plenty stimulating.”
You nod toward the living room. “Someone just tried to eat a glowstick.”
He follows your gaze. Lando’s doing shots with someone in a lobster costume. Oscar turns back, trying to pretend his best friend is not embarrassing him in front of the hottest girl within a fifty mile radius. “Okay,” says Oscar solemnly, “point taken.”
You lower your sunglasses. Meet his eyes. “Did you want something, Delta Sig?” you drawl. “Or are you just here to commentate?”
Oscar tilts his head, considers. Then offers his hand. “Oscar.”
You don’t shake it. You just say your name and return your attention to the screen. The music shifts. A deeper, slower beat slides in, something low and sticky and magnetic. He feels it in his knees.
You say, without looking at him, “If you’re going to stand there all night, at least make yourself useful.”
Oscar smiles, because of course you’re going to be like this. “I intend to,” he says just for the sake of saying something.
More people arrive.
Oscar notices it not in the volume but in the weave of the crowd. The faces get shinier. Glossed, bejeweled, more daring in silhouette. Platform boots on carpet. Crop tops in defiance of the marine layer. Someone walks in carrying a box of White Claw like it’s a peace offering to the gods. He thinks he sees a Theta Psi guy dressed like a referee for no reason.
Your sisters show up all at once, like a coordinated strike. Tall girls with glittery lids and matte lips, weaving through Delta Sig like they own the place. Maybe they do. One of them gives Oscar a nod that’s not quite flirtation. More like acknowledgment. Recognition of ecosystem.
He drifts. Says hi to Alex, who’s halfway through a conversation about microdosing and NFT futures. Lance spills a beer on his own foot and blames the rug. Lando is still trying to convince someone to pledge by comparing fraternity life to a meritocracy with better T-shirts.
But Oscar keeps circling back to you.
It’s not intentional. It’s gravitational. Something about the way you don’t try to command attention. You just... have it. The way you flick through your laptop with fingers that know exactly where they’re going. No hesitation. No playlist, like Lando had claimed. Just instinct and memory and maybe a little malice.
He shows up beside you again sometime after eleven, holding a cup that’s 60% ice and 40% a mystery. “Okay,” he says, as the beat drops, voice pitched just loud enough for you and no one else to hear. “You’re mixing synth-pop with UK garage. That’s illegal in three countries.”
“This isn’t one of them,” you say through your teeth.
“It’s weirdly working.”
“I know.”
He watches you add a vocal sample, distorted just enough to sound like memory. “You ever consider doing this professionally?” (Oscar is flirting, he thinks. He’s never really had to do it before.)
“You ever consider shutting up?”
Oscar almost laughs. He raises his cup, hiding his smile behind it as he hums, “Cheers.”
He leaves. Returns twenty minutes later. This time, he offers a suggestion. “You could loop that outro and overlay the bridge from the last track. Would buy you ten seconds.”
You pause. Not long, just enough for him to register it. Then you do it. Exactly that. And it does work. You don’t say anything.
He tries again later. “Little heavy on the snare. Might want to EQ that down.”
You adjust the levels silently. It becomes a pattern. He critiques. You implement. Like he’s a mirror you refuse to admit you’re checking.
Until—
“Okay, no,” you snap, somewhere between 12:13 and 12:19 AM. “Do you want to DJ?”
Oscar blinks. "What?"
You swivel, finally facing him. You’re flushed—not from the heat but from restraint. The kind of anger that simmers under professionalism. “You’ve been offering unsolicited advice all night like you’re auditioning for a guest spot on Pitchfork,” you spit. “If you think you can do better, do better.”
The words land like a dare. Not loud enough to draw a crowd, but just sharp enough to cut through the music.
Oscar’s first instinct is to deflect. To make a joke. To raise his hands and walk away. But he doesn’t. He sees it—the frayed edge beneath your veneer. The strain of precision. The desire to be left alone colliding with the desire to be heard. It’s less about music and more about proving something.
Maybe to him. Maybe to yourself. Maybe to a party full of people who never really listen.
Oscar nods. Slowly. “Alright.”
He doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to. Not really. Only that he is. That something inside him is shifting to make room for it.
You step aside. The crowd doesn’t notice. The music doesn’t stop. But Oscar’s heartbeat ticks up like it knows this is the moment. For the first time tonight, he’s not circling; he’s landing.
Oscar doesn’t feel nervous.
There’s a click as he slides his hand across the mixer, like muscle memory waking up from a nap. He’s done this before. In his room. In basements. On a borrowed controller with a cracked jog wheel and only one functioning RCA cable. House music was the first thing he ever claimed without irony. Something about the way it moved without needing permission. It made space where there was none.
He’d picked up mixing sometime sophomore year. Quietly, without the SoundCloud repost campaign or the viral thirst trap TikToks. No brand. No name. Just a kid in headphones, looping vocal samples and slicing kicks until it felt like something he could live inside.
He shifts the tempo—just a little—and bleeds out of ANOTR into WizTheMC. It’s smooth. So smooth. Like walking downstairs without looking. Like pouring something expensive without spilling.
Charli xcx rolls in next, half for the girls, half for the serotonin. He lets the synths swell just long enough to hook the ones who are paying attention. Someone screams, “Who’s DJing?”
Lando shouts up from across the room, beer in hand like a flag. “That’s my boy! That’s my Exchequer!”
Oscar doesn’t look over. Doesn’t need to. Because you’re still there by his side, like you didn’t mean to stay but couldn’t quite leave.
He doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe disdain. Maybe indifference. What he sees on your face—caught between frustration and lust—is so much better. Your arms are crossed. Your eyes narrow as he fades in a percussion track underneath a bassline that shouldn’t work, but does. You look like you want to slap him. Or kiss him. Or both.
And that?
That does something to him.
He’s never considered himself the one-night stand type. He’s the fraternity’s most well-guarded secret. The one who remembers birthdays and sets up chairs for philanthropy events. He knows the quarterly budget down to the cent. Girls don’t usually flirt with that guy. They trust him with their phones when they want to take a picture. They call him a sweetheart like it’s a curse.
But right now, you’re leaning into his side, brushing hair out of your face with a motion that’s all precision and impatience. “You’re heavy on the low end,” you snap. “It’s drowning the mids.”
He adjusts the EQ. “Sure. Want me to run the lighting rig while I’m at it?”
“God, you’re so—”
You don’t finish the sentence. You just scowl, fingers already reaching to tweak the next transition. Your shoulder brushes his. He doesn’t move away. “Pitch it up two BPM,” you mutter.
He does.
You nod. But your eyes are still narrowed, like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s messing with you or just naturally this irritating. Oscar flashes a grin that’s rarely on his face at parties like this. “You always this fun at parties?”
You roll your eyes, but you don’t leave.
And so he keeps mixing, keeps obeying every clipped command you throw his way. Shift the vocal loop, cut the reverb, bring back the original tempo. He does it all, fast, without question, and he hates how much he likes it. How sharp you sound. How good it feels to be barked at by someone who knows what they’re doing.
He’s aroused.
God help him, he’s aroused by criticism.
You reach past him to kill the echo effect and mutter, “If you weren’t so cocky, you’d be almost good.”
He doesn’t respond. He just lets the music swell, watches your profile in the glow of the mixing screen.
Oscar realizes with a kind of sinking feeling that he’d rather be ‘almost good’ in your eyes than the best in anyone else’s.
The crowd gets loose and glossy as the night progresses. Hips slung sideways and necks glinting with sweat. The beat has been steady for thirty minutes straight—his doing. So when he punches in the synth-washed intro of Let It Happen, it’s not about them, or Lando, or you. It’s about him. Oscar thought he had earned the right to be indulgent.
Which is, apparently, where things go wrong.
You elbow past someone in a rhinestone corset and march up to the booth like a woman on a mission. You don’t even say anything at first, just shoot him a look that could peel paint. Oscar grins like he’s won something. He hasn’t. He just likes the shape of your anger and how hot it makes you underneath the dim lights.
“Tame Impala?” you say.
He shrugs. “It’s a classic.”
“It’s a self-indulgent eight-minute spiral.”
“Exactly.”
You reach for the controls and he shifts to block you, one hand catching yours mid-air, the other bracing on the table. A beat passes. Then another. He leans forward, deliberately, his chest pressed flush to your back, arms caging you in.
You tense. Then don't.
The song bleeds into another, and together—reluctantly, warily, almost rhythmically—you mix. It’s less of a duet and more of a hostile co-parenting situation, but still. Somehow, it works.
Oscar queues up something bass-heavy; you swap it out for an early 2010s deep cut. You roll your eyes when he reintroduces the ANOTR loop; he scoffs when you pitch-shift too hard into Jungle. He doesn’t move away, not once. Doesn’t let you, either.
People are watching now. He can feel it. It’s the most anybody has probably ever seen him with a girl, but he’s too busy trying to queue up PAWSA to care. He only really looks up when the flash goes off.
A girl with a disposable camera shouts something neither of you hear. Reflexively, Oscar drops his chin to your shoulder and grins, half-lidded and shameless. The picture is probably going to end up blurry and underexposed, but it’s a moment. You don’t pull away. You even lift your hand in a mock peace sign.
Oscar thinks he might die happy now.
And then—of course—you try to queue up Modjo.
He swats your hand away, quick as a reflex. “Absolutely not.”
You grind back into him, slow and deliberate. Weaponized. He swears—low, startled—and you throw your head back laughing. You’re both ridiculous. He’s so dizzy he think he might pass out. You pull off your Modjo and Oscar lets you, his chin still hooked over your shoulder.
It’s the most alive he’s felt since rush week sophomore year, and you’re not even trying. That’s the thing that ruins him most.
Eventually, Lando’s voice slices through the foggy booth air like a cymbal crash: “Alright, lovebirds, out. You’re cluttering my sonic vision.”
Oscar doesn’t flinch. If anything, he leans in harder against your back, like he might merge with you out of sheer defiance. Your elbow catches him in the ribs—pointed, practiced—and you slip out from under him with the kind of regal detachment that should look ridiculous on someone in glitter eyeliner and worn-in Air Forces. But it doesn’t. You walk like you’ve inherited the pavement.
He watches you disappear into the crowd, flashing lights stuttering across your shoulder blades. It hits him like a car crash in slow motion: he wants to follow you into one of the dingy upstairs bathrooms, slam the door behind you, fog up the mirror until it spits back ghosts. He wants to press you against cracked tile, not to conquer, but to ruin. Just a little. To see what you look like coming apart, breath hitching, lip bitten, pulse stuttering beneath your collarbone. You, raw. You, tangled in his hoodie. You, undone because of him.
But fantasy is slippery. You’re already out of reach.
So he goes after you.
The house exhales behind him. Outside, the air is cooler. Cut through with late-summer softness, warm concrete and chlorinated echoes. Sprinklers click somewhere out on the quad. The front lawn is a battlefield: overturned lawn chairs, glittered Solo cups, someone’s sock draped over a fence post.
You’re standing near the porch light, haloed in amber, your outline all angles and challenge. He jogs up, not trying to be quiet about it.
“Wow,” you say without turning. “Didn’t peg you for the chasing type.”
He smirks, feigning composure. Hands in his pockets. Like he’s not seconds away from offering you his throat. “I’m full of surprises,” he says, aiming for breezy and landing somewhere around manic.
You turn to face him, eyes narrowed, still buzzing from the music or maybe just from proximity. “This your idea of courtship? A remix and a semi?”
He barks out a surprised laugh. “I mean. I didn’t hear you complaining.”
You raise an eyebrow. “I was trying to maintain the vibe.”
“You were grinding on me.”
“That was retaliation.”
Oscar shrugs, half-smile tucked into his cheek. “Still worked.”
You tilt your head, considering him like he’s a quiz you forgot to study for. “What is it you want, exactly?”
He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even blink. “I want to see you again.”
That stalls you. Just for a moment. You shift your weight, looking off to the side. The music from inside is muffled now, just a pulse underfoot. Your eyes come back to his face—searching. Testing.
“Maybe,” you say. Light. Teasing. But then you step forward and press a kiss to his cheek. Soft. Barely there. A postscript.
You turn like you really meant to leave this time. Here’s the thing: Oscar should let you go. That’s what the cool version of him would do. Shrug, say something clever, walk back inside like he didn’t just get metaphorically drop-kicked by your chapstick.
But Oscar’s never been cool.
His hand finds your wrist. Not yanking. Just asking. You glance back, eyebrow lifted in mock offense. There’s answer in your silence, in the half-step you take back in his space.
Oscar kisses you.
It’s not smooth. Not cinematic. It’s all heat and teeth and wanting. His hands anchor you by the hips, yours twist in the collar of his shirt. You lean into it like you’re pulling him down with you. He swears he can feel the axis of his world tilt, just slightly, just enough.
When you break apart, both of you breathless and stunned, he stares at you like he’s just seen something holy. Your lipstick is wrecked, your grin feral. You pat his cheek once. Mocking, tender. “Oh, baby,” you coo, “you’re in trouble now.”
Then you disappear. His own personal Cinderella, leaving him with lip gloss on his mouth and adrenaline in his chest.
You couldn’t have said it better. He’s in trouble.
For once, Oscar is not late.
Which, already, feels like a narrative rupture. Like the fabric of the universe has tilted sideways to accommodate this anomaly: Oscar Piastri, present, upright, and fifteen minutes early to an elective class on a Monday morning. He even brought coffee. The good kind. Not the stuff from the frat house kitchen that tastes like burnt ambition and unresolved tension.
He settles into the back row of the small lecture hall, feeling the rare, almost illicit thrill of preparedness. Syllabus printed. Pen uncapped. A notebook opened to the first page with the words POLITICS OF MUSIC scribbled at the top in deliberately indifferent handwriting. This is supposed to be an easy win: a few discussions about protest songs, maybe a documentary or two, and a chance to argue about Bob Dylan without anyone asking him for a spreadsheet.
He sips his coffee and exhales. For once, the semester feels like something he might actually enjoy. Like something he chose for himself. No frat obligations, no networking games. Just music. Politics. Conversation. An excuse to exist outside himself for ninety minutes twice a week.
And then you walk in.
It doesn’t hit him at first. It’s the morning version of you—hair swept up, oversized hoodie hiding any glitter from the night before, arms full of books. But the way you move is unmistakable. Confident. Collected. A little predatory, if he’s being honest. Like you’re casing the room for weak spots.
He freezes, halfway through another sip of his drink. You scan the room once, spot him, and smile like you’re already in on the joke. “No,” he says softly to himself. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
But the universe, apparently, is not taking feedback this morning. You make your way to the row he’s in, climbing the stairs with the grace of someone who knows the view’s better from above. And then, with ruthless precision, you take the seat next to him. Not one down. Not in the adjacent row. Right there. Knee to knee.
“Morning, loverboy,” you say, voice low and amused.
He coughs into his coffee. He only mumbles a meek ‘hi’ back, his ears burning red with the heat of how different he is in a classroom and, say, Lando’s basement. You don’t press. You don’t have to. Your mere presence is enough to set him on edge, and you know it.
The professor arrives right on the hour. Sir Lewis Hamilton. Black turtleneck, immaculate tattoos, the kind of charisma that makes the room sit up straighter. He launches straight into an opening lecture about sound as protest, about Nina Simone and Kendrick Lamar and the literal weaponization of rhythm.
Oscar tries to focus. Really, he does.
But he can feel you. Not in a poetic way. In a very real, very physical way. Your thigh brushing his. The faint scent of your skin care products and mint gum. The little doodle you’re scribbling in the margins of your syllabus. The way your pen taps twice every time Lewis says the word subversion.
You don’t look at Oscar, but he knows you’re aware. Of course you are. Then Lewis says the thing, the one that Oscar should have printed on his tombstone: “By the way, the person next to you? That’s your semester partner. Seating is now locked in, people.”
Oscar’s stomach drops like an elevator losing tension.
You turn to him, slow and satisfied, with that same wicked smile he remembers from Saturday night. The one that came right after he kissed you.
You hold out your hand. “Hi, partner,” you say, saccharinely sweet.
He begs the ground to swallow him whole. When it doesn’t, he takes your hand. “Looking forward to it,” Oscar says without meeting your eyes.
You hold his hand a little too long. You even give it a little squeeze. Oscar wants to die.
When you let go, he tries to hide the tremor in his fingers by picking up his pen. Maybe he can pretend that he’s taking notes about Hamilton’s dissection of Rage Against the Machine.
Week one, Oscar writes. I am fucked fucked fucked. ⛐
summary: when you signed up to become f1's new rising star isack hadjar's personal assistant, you didn't realize that taking care of his three-year old daughter was going to be part of the job requirements.
F1 MASTERLIST | IH6 MASTERLIST
pairing: young single dad!isack hadjar x pa!reader
wordcount: 2.2K
content: alternative universe - single dad, toddler behavior, fluff, use of y/n
note: wrote this in one sitting who am i. this is more of a pairing exploration than an actual fic, the idea just attacked me. lmk if you want to see more of them!
EVENT MANAGEMENT THRIVED on a few core elements, but in the high-octane world of motorsports, less was always more: organization, determination, and adaptability. These three qualities were preached like holy gospel to every employee, an anthem you recited with choir-like devotion.
You adored it.
You prospered in the rhythm of conscientious planning, relishing the sight of your carefully color-coded folders transforming into seamless hospitality experiences for the Racing Bulls team. A rainbow gradient arranged each of them following their respective topics, and your notes were written in neat 1.5-line spacing with a smooth gliding blue pen.
What started as a side hustle to earn additional money had become the heartbeat of your life, so much that your college degree in marketing had shifted to online classes so you could commit yourself fully. After all, a student’s timetable was rarely vacant, and availability was another salient currency when you dabbled in a world as tumultuous as Formula One. Combining event management with its adrenaline was a gamble, one you’d taken with hungry hands, much to your parents’ overly vocal dismay.
Your work ethic would have eventually led to a promotion; you were sure of it. Although you hadn’t quite expected that promotion to be a spot as Isack Hadjar’s personal assistant.
The reason for the switch had been told through hurried whispers, something about his PA quitting right before the season opener, leaving his calendar messy and unattended. The team scrambled to find a replacement. A day in, and your name had apparently come up, your expertly organized folders had spoken for themselves, and next thing you knew, you were managing Racing Bulls’ up-and-coming talent.
You didn’t speak much to him during the first few weeks. Mostly, they were about cleaning up the mess his last assistant had left behind: you wondered how they’d managed to get anything done with the thousands of stray, half-written notes left around on crumpled paper, each one threatening you with an aneurysm. Still, amidst the handful of emails you exchanged and the scattered conversations you had, you managed to gather a few keywords that could classify what kind of man Isack Hadjar was.
Easygoing. He never fussed about the social media obligations you threw his way and partook in them with blinding enthusiasm. He happily interacted with the crowd, would quickly fire off replies to your emails about an upcoming event, and always ended them with an unprofessional (but oddly charming) smiley face. Shy, awkward. As confident as he appeared in his car or around the team, Isack often stumbled over his words in more intimate settings: the few times you were by his side to run through his daily schedule, he’d give you half-answers with cheeks flushed pink, followed by an horrid attempt at a joke, and inevitably a water bottle knocked somewhere. Young. At twenty-one, the same age as you, he often hovered between friend and boss, hesitant to treat you like a subordinate or even as a colleague.
It was part of the reason you were so astonished upon learning he had a whole daughter. See, Dad was not a keyword you’d planned to add to your mental files.
“I’m very sorry to ask this, really,” Isack had apologized on media day during the Bahrain race weekend, his eyes earnest and rimmed with exhaustion. “But I couldn’t find a daycare that would take her in, and no family member could babysit.”
You blinked at him. The request replayed in your mind like a broken record. “I’m not a babysitter, Isack. I’m your assistant,” you said, but your mind was halfway there.
He offered a sheepish grin. “Technically, you’re already babysitting me.”
“You’re a grown adult,” you deadpanned, deeply unamused. “You don’t need me to change your diaper, unless you forgot to tell me about a pharmacy run for incontinence medicine.”
“She’s three,” Isack said, his brows knitting together, and he looked more offended at your accusation toward his daughter than your jab at him. “She doesn’t need diapers anymore. She’s very capable. I just— I need my assistant’s assistance to take care of her. For one weekend, just one.”
Assia Hadjar was a beautiful girl, truly. With thick brown curls, wide hazel eyes that reminded you of a startled deer, and freckled tan skin, she was the spitting image of her father. She’d looked so shy the first time Isack first introduced you, hiding behind his legs and shifting nervously in her sparkling blue shoes. It had fooled you into thinking that, even though your gift didn’t lie in childcare, you could manage it for a single race weekend. You heard Isack’s weak “Oh putain, merci” when you nodded.
What naivety.
You’d expected that one weekend with Assia would be the longest forty-eight hours of your life, but nothing could have prepared you for the sheer mayhem that ensued.
First, there was the meltdown over the blue cup. You’d given her the green one: same shape, same cartoon princess (Tiana, if you’re interested in any precision), but somehow the wrong color. Cue tears, snot, and decibels you imagined an opera singer could reach, not a three-year-old. You’d tried to explain that all the cups were the same, even offered to swap them, which was deeply ironic coming from someone who wouldn’t write on anything other than squared paper, but by then, she’d upgraded to the “lying on the floor and wailing” stage.
Then came the pasta incident. Who knew a girl no more than three apples tall could have such strong opinions on pasta shapes? Again, coming from the one person bossing the entire staff team around. Apparently, penne was a direct insult to her pride, and only the twirly ones were acceptable. When you’d asked her to demonstrate “twirly ones” with a picture, she’d drawn what looked like a worm on the back of your neatly printed itinerary.
By the end of one weekend, you’d found pasta shapes you never knew existed—and probably didn’t—, learned that the Pokemon theme song on repeat will break your sanity, and discovered that the N-A-P word was a threat to national security. You were certain you’d done a horrible job because, at some point, you’d shamefully texted Isack an emergency SOS about a crying tantrum when you’d forbidden her to adopt a random spider from the paddock.
But when Isack came to pick her up, Assia had run to him grinning, eyes bright, babbling about how “Y/N was the best ever” and you “made the pasta worms taste sooooo good”. You’d braced yourself for mockery, but instead, he’d looked at you with a relieved gratitude that made your chest ache.
The following day had entailed your full initiation to toddlerhood, which included watching Disney’s Mulan on repeat for the hundredth time. You wondered how she didn’t get tired of hearing the same song, with the same lines, over and over again (yes, you were still reluctantly humming along. It’s Mulan.)
Halfway through the hundred and first time, Assia had fallen asleep curled into your side, half-lying on the floor and back against the feet of your hotel room couch. Her sparkly blue shoe had been abandoned in a pile of her belongings, including an Umbreon plushie, next to your bed. You’d meant to get up and tackle your emails, maybe catch up on the sponsorship decks that were piling up, but somewhere between a shirtless Li Shang and the beginning notes of A Girl Worth Fighting For, your eyelids had grown impossibly heavy.
You woke up as the credits rolled quietly in front of you, a crick in your neck and a crayon in your hair. Looking around, eyes bleary and slightly dazed, you noticed Isack leaning against the doorframe of your room. His arms were crossed on the Racing Bulls compression shirt he was wearing, hugging his biceps tightly, and you found yourself staring a beat too long in the dim light of the room. A fond smile thinned his lips.
“Rough night?” he asks, and he must have taken your stare for confusion because he stumbled upon an explanation. “You— you gave me a duplicate of your key for the room. So I could pick her up after the interviews.”
“I remember, I remember, I just— Ugh,” you groaned, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and not speaking too loud so as to not wake Assia. “I fell asleep during a children’s movie. I think that’s a new low.”
“Could’ve been worse,” Isack laughed. His gaze drifted to the almost empty blue cup. “At least you figured out she liked the blue cup, this time.”
You glared at him, but reached for the water bottle on the table. “Contrary to popular beliefs, and by popular I mean mine, she likes a lot of things,” you grumbled, unscrewing the cap. “Except naps. Or any vegetables with funny textures. Or fizzy sodas. Or—”
You paused, catching the way his smile softened as he watched you. It occurred to you that you’d never had Isack like this in your presence: relaxed, not fumbling over himself. “What?”
“Nothing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just… I think you’re better at this than you think.”
“Right.” A snort escaped you, and Assia’s asleep form shifted against your side. It was late, Isack could still carry her to bed without waking her up, so you smoothed her hair with a featherlight touch, hoping to soothe her back to sleep. She frowned, small fingers clutching the crisp fabric of your carefully ironed shirt, and buried her face deeper against your ribs. “She’s so stubborn,” you murmured absentmindedly. You couldn’t help but add, “just like her dad.” The few months you’d worked for him had taught you the family resemblance was striking in that regard.
Isack arched a brow. A surprised chuckle fell out of his lips. “That’s rich coming from you.” He padded over quietly, sneakers muffled on the carpet, and settled himself next to Assia. Slowly, with a carefulness that constricted your chest, he tucked a curl behind her ear. “She’s never that… open. With strangers, I mean. She likes you.”
Your eyes darted from the small girl to her father in amusement. “Does she, now? The tears and screams could have fooled me.”
“She does, she couldn’t shut up about you,” he insisted, huffing out a laugh. “She, uh— she takes after her dad for that too.”
That time, your carefully maintained professional front cracked, a tiny fissure in the businesslike ice wall you so meticulously built over time. Your eyes widened, heat tightened your cheeks and crept up your neck, and your hand froze on Assia’s hair—right next to Isack’s. He wasn’t doing any better. The admission seemed to have robbed him of his usual confidence, leaving him unable to meet your gaze for longer than a second.
“I— I mean, I’m, I’m glad that—” You never stammered. You were composed, efficient— your voice carried, and your words were deliberate, measured. Now, you weren’t sure you even remembered how the English language worked.
Isack smiled to himself as the title screen to Mulan rolled on again. You wanted to throw a pillow at him. Yet, with Assia curled up and fast asleep between the two of you, you still sat through another hour of songs about fighting and honor.
You thought it would be the end of it. One ambiguous weekend, and you’d slip back to your usual schedule, rearranging Isack’s meetings and leaving his daughter to his capable family or caretaker. You could ignore anything ever happened that night, and pretend the glances you stole when you thought the other wasn’t looking was a figment of boredom during bland days.
But the next race weekend, Assia refused to go to daycare as a whole.
“She said she wants to be with you,” Isack said, looking ridiculously apologetic. Jesus, that little girl really had him wrapped around her finger.
You, on the other end, had been stunned to silence. “Me? She wants to be… with me?”
“She’s been asking for you all week,” he admitted, eyes darting to the side. “And I—” He hesitated. “She’s… she’s happier with you than she’s ever been at daycare.”
You stared at him. You had a sneaky feeling that the universe had played a cosmic joke at your expense. “But— Isack— I’m not even good at this,” you protested. “My entire process was based on Google, a spreadsheet she doodled on, and a prayer.”
His laugh sounded awkward. “Like I said, she likes you,” he said simply. The softness in his voice was foreign to you, but not entirely unwelcome. What he said that night in your hotel room came back full force, and your cheeks darkened a few shades. “That should be enough, right?”
You wanted to tell him that, no, it wasn’t enough. You were in over your head, it wasn’t what you signed up for, and your messy color-coded folders cried out for a well-needed weekly organization. Instead, you found yourself nodding, because somehow—despite your many, many failures—you’d become the one person this tiny human trusted more than anyone else.
That was how your weekends became a strange blend of racing schedules, sponsor meetings, and toddler tantrums and giggles. And for reasons you couldn’t quite comprehend, you found you didn’t mind it at all. At first, you thought it was the job requirements. The obligations, as usual.
But maybe it was Assia and her loud determination. Maybe it was Isack and the way he stared when he thought you didn’t notice.
