something in me knows where I’m going something in me knows where I’m going something in me knows where I’m going something in me knows where I’m going
need march and its bullshit to wrap it up because i just had a meghan thee stallion moment seeing the girl who would’ve accused me of heresy and witchcraft in salem times and let me tell you it was NOT her that looked busted injured 🚬🚬🚬
no rollout for starboy ch3 </3 ive let u guys down im sorry. in my defence this was supposed to be a three chapter series so the rollout i had planned was for that :( yap under the cut
anyway the next and final chapter (!! officially the longest project ive ever written so far) has an extra that im soso excited to post hehehe shoutout to my @sunnie-angel who has been so involved and indulgent throughout the process of me writing this fuckass fic <3 love u diva
unrelated life updates nobody asked for
ive been missing tumblr and i think being on other social media instead is making me extra evil BUT i think in a way this is also good in some way for me. probably.
currently reading kitchen confidential shoutout tony bourdain. making my way very slowly through it though so i think i need to add in another book (any and all recs welcome i know im not on here on here but i do still check my notifs occasionally)
thinned my brows and became a depopaholic (have dropped a little too much money on belts than i can defend) and have been experiencing extreme bouts of egomania. if you are my behavioural psychologist bestfriend who occasionally stalks my blog - look away right now i don't want to know what this means
The years have passed you by.
For a moment, that time had been worth something. Listening to the disorder that spills out through the doors behind you, it feels like you’ve gone right back to the beginning. A boyfriend too drunk on his own ambition to remember your existence, except when he’s seeking out your affirmation or consolation; You, a willing, yet miserable, accessory to the goings on of a life deemed of more value than your own.
What the hell are you doing?
chapter tags: alternate universe - formula 1, fem!reader, possessive kyle garrick, past relationship, original character/reader, dubious morality, emotional infidelity, suggestive/sexual content, dirty racing, arguments, angst, hurt/comfort | word count: 7804 | definitions at the end of chapter!
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MINORS, AGELESS AND BLANK BLOGS: DO NOT INTERACT
“Who’s the bigger risk taker on the track?” Kyle and Alex sit in a brightly lit room, exchanging amused looks. Pointer sticks are being waved around by both drivers and at the question, they let out knowing laughs, as if recalling an incident they don’t care to share with the camera. Both pointer fingers swing in a wide arc to point to Kyle.
Off screen, the producer mumbles something and Kyle nods, sheepish.
“Yeah,” he admits, tapping his chin with the plastic extremity, red finger resting against the crease of his chin. He smiles, a little bashful. “I’ve been known to take a few leaps.”
“A few?” Alex barks out a laugh. “C’mon, man.”
He rolls his eyes playfully. “When I was younger, yeah? Not like that now.”
Alex looks at the camera directly with a disbelieving set to his mouth, shaking his head. “Yeah, you’re totally reformed now.”
Kyle snickers, holding up a hand. “Swear it, mate. I don’t do that anymore.”
A week ahead of Imola.
With Niki growing increasingly zealous about coming back from his disastrous finish in Miami, spending hours upon hours either in the race simulator or with his trainer, the pressure hasn’t been lost on you, either. You’ve considered everything from faking an illness, to calling in a family emergency that’ll call you away for at least the next few races, to cashing in on life debts you’re not even sure will hold up.
As it had happened with Kyle, Niki’s touches begin to come more and more infrequently. Sex is not witheld with any sort of conscious thought or effort, but rather he spends so much time in the gym, or simulating races that he often slips into bed long after you’ve passed out, and rarely at the end of the day does he have any energy to do much else but get his required 9 hours of sleep. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are strictly portioned and controlled, and you mourn, briefly, the days where he might have stolen you away to get dessert well into the night. There is no room now for anything less than perfection, now that he’s thrown his hat in the ring, has shown the makings of someone potentially great.
You might mourn the loss more, if it didn’t bring such (guilty, guilty) relief that you will not have to bear his touch. His fall from the ether draws out, in you, a shameful, slow-simmering repulsion, a knee-jerk response that scalds him and you both the first time you tense under his fingers. Disinterest is not, you come to find, a temporary flaw, a fault in your wiring – not stress, not jet lag, not homesickness. You bite back the horrible truth: it is his hunger, his sole-mindedness, that never satiated desire to win and its resulting quick-drawn temper of which you fall victim to daily, it seems, that sours each and every touch.
The team’s social media admin, standing beside you outside the meeting room and scrolling through their social media feed – all racing related content – isn’t helping at all. The sound of your ex boyfriend’s voice makes you jolt in your seat, your heel screeching a little against the tile, and the boy looks up from his phone. Trying to calm your now racing heart, you offer him an apologetic smile, holding up your cup of now watered down coffee in explanation.
Satisfied, or perhaps not particularly interested in prodding you any further, he returns to his feed, thumb swiping away the video. From where you sit, you catch an upside-down glimpse of the man who’s been heavy on your mind as he disappears out of view.
You’d chosen to leave the restaurant in Miami, after he’d let you leave the bathroom on shaky legs, managing to coax Niki into a car before Kyle had returned from the bathroom. Shoulders tensed the entire time as Niki had settled the bill, you’d turned your gaze over anxiously. As if he were a figment of your imagination to conjure himself up at the worst possible moment, you’d been spurred by the fear that he would appear at your elbow and smile at Niki, telling him through honeyed tones just what he’d said to you in the bathroom and just what you hadn’t done while he’d pressed himself against you and offered to make you come in no uncertain terms.
He hadn’t, of course. Whether or not he actually would have dared to cause such a scene, you’d been unwilling to stick around and find out what would come of it. Niki had made no protest of his own at cutting the evening short, still sour about his defeat and in no mood to affect pleasantries.
Still, for the favour he’d unknowingly done you in driving the getaway car, you’d been left to your own devices in the aftermath. What a scene, the two of you, you’d thought. Niki, slumping into the sheets to sleep off his misery and you, filing into the bathroom with a silent click of the door. Dishonest, disloyal, look at you. Hands rucking up the material of your skirt and sinking your teeth into your tongue that same moment your fingers breached your entrance. Fucking yourself to the thought of molten brown eyes and an unforgiving, sharp smile, coming so hard you’d smacked the back of your head on the wall.
The composure you’d started the season with has quickly shown how brittle it really was to begin with. You’re coming apart at the seams more and more by the day, it seems, flinching from pixels and a disembodied voice now. Your skull throbs a little in disquiet.
Noise filters into the hallway suddenly with the opening of the door to the meeting room. Both you and the social media admin rise to your feet, the knot in your chest tightening when Niki steps outside. He’s followed closely by Markus, the both of them sporting near identical frowns. When you open your mouth to say something, he continues past you without a second glance.
Markus offers you a sidelong glance, faltering ever so slightly before the distance between him and Niki only continues to grow and he’s tugged after him by an invisible thread. He grimaces, instead, lifting a shoulder in a weak shrug and speeding up a little.
The two of them round a corner in the facility. You’ve been here enough times to know where they’re likely headed, and that once you pick your feet up from where they’ve seemingly rooted themselves to the carpeted floor, it’s in the simulation room that you’ll find the two of them. Mouth dry, you pry your gaze away from the end of the hall to find the intern’s eyes on you.
You don’t know what’s worse: that you’re hoping that he hadn’t caught it on his camera, or that if he did, it’ll be clear you didn’t know what you were going to say. But the pity in his eyes makes your skin crawl, a soft, uncomfortable understanding that makes your fingers curl.
The smile you offer him before you push yourself forward in pursuit of Niki, lest you take out your wounded pride on the unsuspecting 18 year old, is wooden.
Imola’s results bring Williams and 1-4-1 head to head, with the latter holding a tentative second place in the championship. Having been competing against the higher competing midfield teams thus far for the podium, both Niki and Markus’ finishes against their competition give the team a solid margin. It also, you realise with dread, pits them much closer to 1-4-1 and shifts the focus of their next few race strategies not just to keeping a podium spot, but on the offensive against the team standing between them and that constructors’ trophy.
Your boyfriend climbs out of the car and pulls his helmet off to reveal a near manic grin. Sweat plasters his inky strands to his forehead, indents in the skin around his eyes and nose where the helmet had rested for the better part of the last couple hours. He and Markus collide as the other jumps from the chassis of his car, laughing wildly.
Leaning against the barricade, you’re keenly aware of the bodies pressed against you. You’re shoulder to shoulder with the team’s various mechanics and strategists, someone’s chest is brushing against your back and you’re jolted a little every now and then by the undercurrent of excitement in the crowd. Cameramen skate along the barricade, around the cars, by the drivers as they hold their post-race interviews. Through it all, you have to swallow down the nausea that threatens to put a certifiable damper on the festivities. Pasting on the fakest smile you’ve ever worn in your life, you fix your eyes on the host of the post race interviews, some celebrity whose name you can’t remember.
The champion sprays overhead. You remember the way Niki had sharply overtaken a driver around a tight corner. The smile on your face feels all the more brittle.
You elect to depart from the festivities a little after midnight, knowing they’re only due to ramp up even more. Niki, drunken, manic, pouts when you kiss him goodbye but laughs uproariously with the rest of his entourage when you make a weak joke about needing your beauty sleep.
“You guys have enough energy to make up for me, I promise,” you force out a giggle. The lipgloss you’d swiped on earlier has settled in a thick, tacky layer over your mouth over the past few hours in the crowded club, and you’re eager to return to the hotel room to scrub it off. Niki sighs loudly like a child but rears forward to smack a slobbery kiss to your mouth in goodbye. You press your hands resolutely to your sides, so that you don’t instinctively wipe your face and embarrass him in front of his team.
“Bye, baby,” he croons and the heat in the room is suddenly even more stifling, your face flaming when the guys around him burst into cackles, making drunken, kissy noises. Even Markus, usually the more level headed of the group, pitches his voice to mimic him.
“Bye, baby!”
You raise a hand in goodbye over your shoulder as you exit the booth, exhaling heavily once you’re past the doors. The air outside is chilly, the breeze skittering over your bare arms.
For one moment, resting against a pillar outside the nightclub, you can almost pretend you’re back in the in between years. Your mid twenties had been good to you, once you’d managed to extricate the majority of yourself from the wreckage that had been your breakup. Those misspent years spent running around the world again, only this time it hadn’t been at the heels of someone else. Slinking out of the odd nightclub just in time for the sun to rise, eyes burning with exhaustion and arms in yours to ground you from floating away, light as a feather and prone to hysterical laughter. Warm, warm, warm.
Even in your grief, in the wake of your unmaking, there had been hands to put you back together. A slow shift in the tides, your coming together didn’t happen overnight but bit by bit. In every city, under twilit skies and in crowds pushing through crosswalks – there had been meaning in that grief, in that mess.
Now, you’re closer to 30 than 18. The years have passed you by. For a moment, that time had been worth something. Listening to the disorder that spills out through the doors behind you, it feels like you’ve gone right back to the beginning. A boyfriend too drunk on his own ambition to remember your existence, except when he’s seeking out your affirmation or consolation; You, a willing, yet miserable, accessory to the goings on of a life deemed of more value than your own.
What the hell were you doing?
You’re nearly six feet into your commiseration when the sound of wheels crunching over gravel in front of you flits into your consciousness. Still, you pay it no mind – you’ve wandered beyond the club’s entrance to wait for your car, a large, sweeping awning over a faux cobblestone driveway which serves as a makeshift smoking area. Patrons lean against the parapet overlooking the actual driveway, cigarettes clutched in nicotine stained fingers. Girls in glittery dresses titter amongst themselves, stumbling forward into the arms of their partner for the night with drunken smiles.
A car horn beeping snags your attention and your head snaps over your shoulder towards the curb. Blue eyes meet yours from a rolled down window and your brows wrinkle, bemused.
“You look like you’re about to burn a hole in that wall,” Soap calls out from the driver’s seat.
“Does the Captain know you’re taking his wheels for a drive?” you retort, walking towards the car. He pretends to wince and it makes your lips twitch.
“Who’s going to tell him?” he challenges and you let out a quiet laugh, nodding. Fair enough. “You need a ride?”
You shake your head. “I’m waiting on one. Thanks, though.”
He regards you with a scrutinising look, eyebrows furrowing like he’s reluctant to let it go.
“Sure you’re okay?” he says at last. It’s a sincere thing, his voice lowered, stripped of all amusement. You go to tell him you are, when you find you can’t. For whatever reason it is, you find your tongue weighed down as if it refuses to lie. Perhaps you’ve run out of untruths.
“Just needed a break,” you say quietly, when you manage to find your voice. The smile you conjure up is twisted, an unhappy thing. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the partying as much, anymore.”
“Well, sure,” he agrees. “Not much of a partier these days, myself.”
You let out a tremulous sigh, unsure whether you’re about to laugh or cry. “Yeah?”
He nods, rolling his eyes. “Getting too old for it.”
“As if,” you murmur. “What’re you doing out at this hour if you’re so old, anyway?”
Soap grins like that’s a secret he’s unwilling to divulge. “Can’t a man go for a drive without being interrogated? Insomnia’s a common symptom of old age, lovely, you know.”
“Grand theft auto on that list of symptoms, too?” You ask and he barks out a laugh.
“Touché,” he concedes. Then, he sighs a little. “Be honest with you, it’s not all that interesting – think Cap and I switched keys today. I only realised when I went to grab them and I think he’d’ve had my head if I woke up him up.”
“You’re right,” you tell him, shifting your weight from one aching foot to the other. “That isn’t very interesting.”
He hums, looking over his shoulder as another car pulls up behind him and a gaggle of younger people climb out. One of the guys gives you a passing once-over and you wrinkle your nose up at it, looking back at Soap.
“Look, you sure you don’t want a ride back? It’s no bother, and..” he trails off.
“What?”
He shrugs. “You look like you could use a friend.”
A moment passes, and then another. You stand on the curb and pretend his words haven’t made your eyes water, and he pretends not to see it. A burst of noise expels out of the doors behind you. Pulling up the ride service on your phone, you cancel the car and reach for the handle in front of you.
It had been Johnny you’d spent most of your time with, back during those lost days. Friends had been a rare commodity, hard to find, harder still to keep when you’d been trotting all across the globe at the behest of a boyfriend. It seemed there were only so many girl’s nights and brunches you could fail to show up to before the invites started to peter out, only so much understanding that could be given before it became obvious that even when you were present – you weren’t, really.
Too busy thinking about the next weekend away, too busy worrying about the boyfriend waiting back at your shared flat and whether come race time, he’d drive himself and a few others into a wall just to make sure his reign remained uncontested. Even sitting in pit lane, you bore the weight of a championship on your shoulders as equally as Kyle.
Johnny had been a friendship born of proximity. Weekend in and out, you’d share the garage space, sharing nervous looks whenever the roar of the spectators carried in through the doors – a certain sign your lover had employed a difficult, dangerous maneuver. What had started out as cordial nods and conversation only where necessary – “He’s over there,” he’d mumbled once, jerking his head to a corner of the garage, when you’d made your way in looking for Kyle – had bloomed into companionship that had seen you through the best and worst parts of your time with the team.
Johnny Mactavish doesn’t offer you platitudes now as he drives you back to your hotel. Streetlamps wash over the car in rapid succession as he carves a path down the roads, silent save for the rumble of its engine beneath you. There’s a chance here, you realise, resting your head back against the seat, to come clean and offer your conscience some relief. To share your troubles with someone that had once been so dear.
The words linger and rot on your tongue, growing sour with every breath you waste not confessing. Johnny doesn’t pry, much as he’d like to – fingers tapping against the steering wheel, blue eyes flickering over his shoulder at you every few seconds, curiosity etched on his face plain as day. You press your lips together to hide your amusement.
Time, ever heavy, weighs your tongue. Far too much has happened, it’s been much too long. The love that remains – and it is a testament to how exhausted you are that you can admit it to yourself, there is feeling, still, for that chapter of your life and its characters – burns low and steady; it isn’t enough to sustain you.
Still, you try to warm yourself at its hands. A temporary comfort. You pretend, for the last few minutes it takes to drive up to your hotel, that there is nothing else to this but a friend dropping you off. That this friendship had never been splintered, that what had caused its fracture never occurred – you ignore wishes it had endured, simply erasing its occurrence outright – and that you’d had the privilege of growing alongside your friend. Johnny had been bare faced the first time you’d met him. Now, you eye the shadow of his beard, the wrinkles by his eyes and the slivers of grey you spot in the dim light.
When you get out of the car, there is a different heaviness settling in your stomach. When did you grow up?
“Hey,” Johnny says, when you reach for the door handle. You look back and he smiles, a serious, grim thing. “It’ll be okay.”
Oddly enough, you believe him.
Monaco passes by in a blur. The sights are too achingly familiar, the cobblestone and smell of diesel that carries over the harbour, the doors that open to a balcony overlooking the city – it’s nauseating. You spend the better part of the weekend lying in the dark of your hotel room. Cold sheets, curtains pulled tight to shut out the sunlight, eyes closed and pretending the stuffiness in your nose is a result of exhaustion and not the overwhelming haunting of years past – too much travelling, you’d told Niki, who’d barely questioned you after confirming you’d still be there on race day to watch him clinch his next win.
Next door, the 1-4-1 garage teems with an energy that seems to spill out into the rest of the pits, invisible fingers curling, beckoning you almost. You grapple with your own control. Sunglasses even though the day had been overcast, always accompanied, gaze straight ahead of you. If you let yourself wander – thoughts, eyes, feet – you’d never come back.
Niki does not win. You lie next to him that night remembering another life, wondering if the hotel had fixed the dent in the wall from where you’d slammed the door open in your haste to get inside.
Not for the first time this weekend, your eyes water and you bite back a sob. Desire and guilt rarely come separately these days, and as your hand slips beneath the waistband of your shorts it flays you open.
In Barcelona, in your haste to douse the heat that swallows you after you accidentally look over at the 1-4-1 garage during practice, you nearly fall headfirst into the hotel swimming pool. Gripping the tiled edge with trembling hands and staring at the rippling reflection of your panicked face, you almost wish you had – if only to wash away the phantom trace of a heated gaze you can’t sever.
Williams pulls off a 2-3 that makes up for Monaco. Niki is ecstatic. You mention to his manager that you’re not feeling well and take a car back to the hotel. When he doesn’t ask after you except when he comes in later that night as you feign sleep, you aren’t sure whether to be relieved or devastated.
Canada.
You cross through the paddock and nearly twist your ankle when a shout draws your attention to the 1-4-1 garage, where a pair of smug brown eyes are already locked on you. Kyle, with his suit half zipped and hanging around his waist, tilts his head inquisitively, brows quirked thoughtfully. Ready to admit it, yet?
The sneer you pull at him isn’t your classiest moment, but it makes him snicker and turn to head back into the garage.
Spitefully, you’re glad when a suspension failure in the last turn of the last lap causes him to lose out on the podium he’d been maintaining all day, managing somehow to cross the finish line before retiring the car in parc fermé. His face is taut when he climbs out of the car, lips pressed thinly together even as he congratulates the rookie who’d sped past him. The boy beams, flushed from the attention and exhaustion, and both your gazes follow Kyle as the man disappears into the garage.
Austria – or, an interlude.
There is a tense undercurrent to the buzz within the grounds of Redbull Ring. Everyone stands a bit straighter, moves tentatively, gaze sharp and assessing; not only in preparation for this weekend, but the next to come. The Austrian Grand Prix has not yet closed but already all eyes look forward. Across the continent, across the ocean.
Silverstone. Famed, holder of fates. Shrouded in her ever present gloom, you hear her call, feel the pulse of anticipation in your throat. The siren song of a home race never loses its allure, its seductive glamour. To race under a flag was one thing. To hear the anthem of one’s homeland atop the podium, you imagined, was intoxicating. To do it on home soil, amongst your countrymen, cheered on in front of your family and friends – that was something else entirely.
Near half the grid, across teams and drivers, had their roots in the United Kingdom. Niki’s own team, Williams, would be gunning even harder for a win next weekend. And though you strived not to think of him, it was hard to avoid associating Silverstone with Kyle. For someone like him, as proud of his home as one could be, so stubbornly committed to excellence, it had meant another set of stakes to an already high pressure job. Failure had never been, and could never be, an option.
The last near decade at Silverstone had seen consecutive first place finishes from him – even all these years, you’d been unable to shut yourself off from the reach of that news. Champion of the fucking world, that.
In the paddock, you ferry back and forth with hopes of finding something to do. Listless, teetering on a precipice, your body stays tense as if in wait for a blow. Summer sunlight tickles the back of your neck, on the pleasant side of warm and accompanied by a gentle breeze. Still, your palms are clammy.
The Williams staff had all but banished you after Niki had snapped at one of his engineers earlier, his manager ushering you away with a tight smile and gentle suggestion to get yourself a drink upstairs in hospitality. In polite terms, fuck off before you get reamed out, too.
Now, you stand just off the main path carving through the paddock, trying to fan out the heat in your face. Motorsport fans and businessmen alike mill through the area, lanyards proudly slung around flushed necks. The odd camera crew rushes through, teenagers clad in bright reds and orange pose for photos in front of the hospitality suites. What most of them wouldn’t give, you think, to be in your position. And yet you find yourself a bit sick of it all.
By the time the clock draws closer to race-time, you’re sure there’s a dark cloud following you. Re-entering the Williams motorhome, you make eye contact with Niki briefly. He’s already in his suit, standing off to the side with his strategist. Just as he grimaces in what you think might be an apology (perhaps the poorest one you’ve ever received from him) you turn away, ascending the stairs to the hospitality suite instead of heading deeper into the garage.
Accepting a drink from one of the hospitality staff, you make your way to an empty barstool. Beside you, two women giggle in low tones about meeting one of the other drivers on the grid. Another couple nearby argue in tight, controlled whispers, something about not getting a good photo that makes you snicker quietly as you bring your drink to your mouth.
The noise in the room gradually cedes to a low buzz, collectively aware of the time as the drivers begin to climb into their cars. You watch Niki and Markus walk out in tandem, parting ways with a clap of their hands. The cameras come close up on the car expected to start in pole today – Alex Keller offers a small wave, helmet covered head tipping forward in a nod of acknowledgement.
“And that’s our polesitter for the Austrian Grand Prix, Alex Keller. Amazing work from him and his team yesterday to cinch that spot ahead of the Ferraris – 1-4-1 have been performing sensationally well this season, don’t you think so, Yulisa?”
“Are you surprised, Jude? Kyle Garrick’s been breaking records since he debuted. Course Keller’s going to give it his all with a world champion as his seatmate.”
“What was that, some 10 years ago now? Time flies, doesn’t it? Only, he was wearing very different colours back then, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right, Jude. Motorsport fans will remember that earlier last year, Garrick broke the news that he wouldn’t be renewing his – near decade long, might I add – contract with Redbull to sign on with newer, British based team 1-4-1.”
“Imagine being a fly on the wall for that meeting. Didn’t he poach one of their strategists, too?”
“Poach is such a strong word, Jude. But the current team principal of 1-4-1, John Price, did also leave with him.”
“Bet Redbull are regretting that decision now.”
“Ha, wouldn’t you?”
The cameras pan to the pit wall, where the man in question sits in front of the various screens, arms crossed and brows pulled low. Indigo headphones cover his ears and he resolutely avoids looking at the camera, instead turning to one of the strategists by his side to confer with him.
In the years since you’d last met him, he’s since grown a thick shoebrush moustache that covers his upper lip, mutton chops equally as dense. It places him a little beyond his late 30s, you think to yourself with a giggle, though you find it suits the seriousness he’s always carried with him, ascetic and unforgiving. The camera offers you a clear view of his profile, blue eyes glaring down a strong nose at the controls in front of him.
In the next second, the commentators move to another topic and the cameras flip to the track again. One of the girls next to you boos and her friend shushes her, giggling. You have to hide your grin behind your hand, pressing your fingers against your lips as if to stamp out the smile.
The track begins to clear, staff moving back into the pits in time for the formation lap. Despite yourself, you sit up a little straighter, leaning forward to watch the lights begin to go out one by one. Keller leads the caravan of cars, tyres turning left and right to carry him in a zig zag path through the track.
The commentators keep up a steady stream of conversation through the formation lap, crying out with some dismay when one of the younger rookies has to retire his car. You watch as the boy sits in the car, visor pulled firmly down to shield his eyes from the prying lens of the camera, which is eager to catch and broadcast a glimpse of his despair.
But there’s little time to dwell on his misfortune as the rest of the drivers begin to line up on the starting grid, cars pulling up to their markers. The air in the suite almost crackles with electricity as the lights glow and begin to count down. Any conversation to be had is muffled under the sounds coming from the speaker.
3…2…1…
“It’s lights out and away we go for the 2025 Austrian Grand Prix!”
Beyond the minor disruption of the formation lap, you almost fool yourself into complacency when the race begins with little to no fanfare. There are a few clean overtakes in the lower positions that you only get a glimpse of when they zip past your viewing spot, some turns made too hard that produce sparks and some minor debris. But nothing major – and yet it is in the relief that, of course, it all inevitably breaks apart.
“We’re heading to our last lap and that’s Landau and Rousseau in the battle for fifth, just past Turn 2 and into 3. So far Landau’s managed to defend that position but Rousseau’s not giving up yet and I think we can see here he might be attempting to overtake – OH! THEY’VE STRUCK THE WALL!”
You sit up, heart in your throat as on screen Niki’s car, a few breaths ahead of Rousseau’s, jerks suddenly to the left and slams the other car viciously into the wall. The crowd around you gasps and your ears begin to ring as they cut to the onboard camera.
Rousseau’s view turns your stomach, even though it’s clear he’s okay. Niki’s left front wing is completely demolished, the tyre twisting upward and wobbling from the impact. His car rests in front of Rousseau’s angled to cut him off from the rest of the track, the latter’s car halfway through the barrier lining the side of the track.
“What the fuck? What the fuck!” Rousseau bellows into the comms. “What was that idiot thinking? Are you fucking kidding me?”
With only a lap remaining of the race and the degree of damage to both cars, you don’t need to be told they won’t finish the race. You’re already pushing yourself off your seat and heading for the stairs, hoping the camera crew in the suite haven’t already caught your growing upset on camera.
You completely miss the last lap of the race as you make your way into the garage, standing next to one of the engineers with your arms crossed tightly in front of you. The screens downstairs are smaller but you pay them no mind, waiting instead for your boyfriend. He arrives as the U.K.’s national anthem begins to play over the speakers outside, the sound filtering in over the roar of the crowds waiting in parc ferme and beyond the gates, where they’ve been allowed to enter the track.
Sweat lines Niki’s brow and he looks downright thunderous. When he catches sight of you, his expression only blackens further and he shoulders his way past his team, stomping further into the garage and veering off to an alcove that–mostly–offers you some privacy.
“What the hell was that?” you demand. Immediately, you know you’ve chosen the wrong approach. Already in a foul mood, your boyfriend doesn’t take well to being chastised. His lip curls derisively and you feel the hair on your arms stand up, distilled heat prickling the back of your neck.
“I’m not in the mood,” he says firmly, trying to shut it down. His eyes flicker over your shoulder apprehensively, and you know he’s worrying about the appearance of a media crew member, worrying about getting caught on camera being chewed out. Even if the stewards rule that his behaviour on the track is just a racing incident and choose not to penalise him, he has to be aware that it’s a bad look.
“I don’t give a fuck, I want an explanation for what you just did out there. Explain it to me.”
Silence. You let out a brittle laugh. “Okay,” you nod. “Maybe I’ll tell you, because from where I was sitting, it looked like you deliberately pushed him into the fucking wall so he wouldn’t steal your position. Niki – seriously, are you crazy?”
His nostrils flare at that, eyes flashing. “You’re overreacting.”
“No, you know what, you don’t get to tell me that,” you spit, fingers curling into your fists. “I’ve been so patient with you these last few months. I thought, you know what, he’s just going through a phase, maybe work is getting to him, but the truth is you’ve been completely out of line for ages now and today just takes the cake! How could you be so reckless?”
And for a moment – just a single, brief moment – you blink and it isn’t Niki you see standing in front of you but rather someone else, narrowed toffee eyes and brown skin gleaming with perspiration. 21 year old Kyle Garrick flashes violently before your eyes and your breath catches in your throat, before Niki replaces him again.
“You don’t get it, you’ll never get it,” he argues, trying – failing – to keep his voice low. If they hadn’t heard you before, the tens of people packed into the garage space definitely could now. “This is my job – what was I supposed to do? Let him overtake me?”
“Maybe not throw him into the fucking wall, for one!” you holler shrilly. He wipes a hand over his face, throwing an exhausted look upwards and your throat tightens.
“Mistake,” he mutters under his breath and you narrow your eyes.
“Excuse me?” He lifts his head to meet you head on and repeats himself,
“I said it was a mistake. Bringing you here,” he clarifies, angry. “You don’t even want to be here, be honest. You just – you don’t get it, at all.”
Your mouth drops open in affront. “Are you serious? I’ve been part of this way before you came into my life. And even if I didn’t know the first thing about racing, it doesn’t take a genius to tell that if the only way you can win is by playing dirty, you shouldn’t be playing at all.”
He glowers and you step forward until you’re in his space. He smells like diesel oil and sweat, hair matted to his scalp. “You’ve let this job consume you and-”
“And what.”
“I can’t follow you into it,” you say, finally, meeting his gaze steadily. Cold. You shake your head. “I won’t.”
Niki’s silent. You exhale noisily, stepping away from him and exiting the alcove. With a final glance over your shoulder, you call out your parting words.
“Figure out what it is you really want, because I’m not going to stick around while you pretend you’ve got your priorities in order.”
When you exit, it becomes clear that they've finished crowning the winners – a single look overhead finds, of course, Kyle Garrick's gleaming face on the broadcast at the top of the podium. Champagne and sweat roll down the slopes of his face, soundless laughter creasing his expression as he flinches away from the spray.
The paddock club is sparse in its offer of hiding spots. You're unwilling to ride back to the hotel with Niki, so soon after you've had it out with him and you rather figure he feels the same. Racegoers mill about, happy to close out the festivities of the day with their own celebratory drinks in the comfort of the paddock.
For a while, you walk around the paddock. You keep your gaze fixed strictly ahead of you in an attempt to discourage any conversation, trying your best to look busy. It's difficult to keep your disappointment hidden and you can only hope nobody takes a photo of you stewing – that would be the icing on the cake, for Niki to have ended the day so disastrously and photos of you, so obviously angry afterwards, to come out.
When you've taken a lap around the paddock, it's the Williams motorhome you end up in front of. Staring up at the structure, you bite your lip, wondering whether you can find the courage to enter, whether you've got the grace to make up with Niki right now.
Conversation spilling out from next door draws your attention and you watch a crowd of 1-4-1 mechanics spill out from the garage. Chancing one more look at the blue motorhome in front of you, you turn the other way.
Nobody says anything to you when you enter. The place is mostly cleared out by now, with only one or two people still lingering about in the hallway you enter through. They look up briefly, but their gaze slides over you like water soon enough. Heading deeper and deeper into the garage feels rather like wading into the belly of the beast – you've very little idea what you're doing, or how you expect to defend yourself if asked.
The actual garage itself has emptied out, the scene before you as still as if time had held its breath. You wander over, fingers hovering over the slight clutter on the toolbenches, the powered down screens that don't emit even the slightest hum of electricity. It's surreal, to stand in the middle of this, usually a hub of activity, ever-consistent, now stifled.
"Someone could report you for gathering intelligence, you know."
The sound makes you startle, your hand flying out to catch itself against a table. A wrench goes flying, clattering loudly against the ground and you whirl around to face the interruptor.
Kyle stands in the mouth of the hallway, staring at you discerningly.
"I-" you stammer, "I was just – looking for Soap."
"Ah," he says, nodding like he doesn't quite believe your poorly sold lie.
He's freshly showered now, changed into a loose t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. As he approaches, he picks the wrench up off the floor and places it gingerly on the workbench, where he pauses, only a few steps away from you. He runs a nail over the surface, scratching lightly at something you can't see. His head is turned down, away from you, but you can see the beginnings of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth before it smooths over and he looks up.
"He left," Kyle informs you, honey eyes unnervingly on your face.
"Oh."
"Oh," he repeats, and you bristle at the smug undercurrent to his whisper. He looks over your shoulder, looks around like he's expecting to find something. "Shouldn't you be consoling your little boyfriend?"
And just like that, he shatters the tense snare he's trapped you in. Kyle doesn't wait for you to reply, shaking his head and clicking his tongue admonishingly. "Shirking your wag duties, huh? Can't say I'm surprised."
It sets something off in you, sparks the dying embers of your still flickering annoyance.
"You would sympathise with him, wouldn't you," you snap. "Expecting to be babied after acting like a complete moron out there. Figures that's what you'd bond over."
He holds his hands up, laughing a little. Mildly, he says, "Strike a nerve, did I?"
You bare your teeth.
"Don't act like you're any better than him. That out there-" you point in the direction of the track, "-was light work compared to the shit you used to pull, don't tell me you've forgotten now."
"I haven't." Kyle's lips press together thinly in admittance.
"Then?" You lift your chin upwards. "Why are you even standing here. Don't you have a win to celebrate?"
"Maybe I like your company better," he suggests quietly. Then, he smiles, fond, just a touch mischievous. "Not quite the way I'd prefer to celebrate with you, but it's endearing, seeing you this worked up."
You blink, a little flustered. "Come off it," you scoff, looking away. "You're just happy you've got one over on him for once."
"Hey." His brow dips, then, voice lowering seriously. "I could've been better about a lot of things, but I've never once been dishonest with you about wanting you."
After a beat, you swallow and quiver out, "It doesn't matter. I'm with Niki. You know that."
He nods.
"I know that. I also know I'd be driving a lot more carefully if I had you waiting for me at the end of it all."
You can't help but sigh at this. "You did, once. Have me. And you nearly caused a pile up in the end anyway, didn't you? Or have you forgotten?"
Something almost like regret etches itself across the planes of his face. His throat bobs, and he looks down.
"Will you hold that over my head forever?" he asks, quiet.
You look away, trailing your gaze once more over the blank monitors. "I'll hold it over your head as long as you try to act like you're any better than Niki in that aspect."
At this, he smiles, amused. "I am, though." You raise your brows but he continues. "In every way – don't laugh at me, I'm being serious."
Despite his scolding, you can't help it. "I'll believe it when I see it," you tell him.
But he's determined to press this into you.
"I drive better," he says, seriously. "I know you better. I love you better."
Kyle steps forward with every sentence that falls from his lips, until he's closed the distance and you're backed up against the workbench.
"I don't need to play dirty to win," he murmurs, looking down at you. "Not anymore. That has to count for something."
There's a quiet plea in there that your calcified heart is too hardened to accept – yet. You purse your lips, unhappy.
"It's too late."
"Is it?" he questions.
You're unable to answer, staring up at him with your fingers clenching into fists against the workbench. He could close the distance between you right now, mere centimetres reduced to nothing in a matter of moments, standing like this. All he'd have to do is lean forward, and he'd be kissing you. It's been years since you last touched him, really touched him. It would just take a single breath.
But he only stares down at you a moment longer, gaze heavy, before he steps away and leaves you in the dark cavern of the 1-4-1 garage.
You're ashamed to say you do not immediately leave the garage, once he does. Don't take it as a sign to scurry back into the arms of the boyfriend you've been touting all season as a shield whenever your interactions veer too close to breaching some invisible line of propriety. The truth tastes bitter when you admit it to yourself; propriety had flown out the window the moment you'd allowed Kyle to approach you in Suzuka.
There'd been no chance of maintaining civility without you on his arm – and part of you had known this. Yet you'd gone along with it, calling his bluff knowing it wasn't a farce, if only to see what he'd do, to gauge the extent of what he'd do to gain you back. Like running your tongue over a wound, your injured pride demanded it.
In the dark of that carport, you listen to his footsteps echo until they fade away. And after, you wait, to see if he'll come back.
He does not – you know he won't, and yet you wait anyway, unable to move from where he's struck you down.
Is it? Is it over now? Is it too late?
A year ago, you would've laughed at the thought, that there could be anything left unfinished about your relationship with Kyle. The great love of your life, once. That, you would allow him. That he'd held your heart in his hands for a great deal of your youth, you could not deny. But as far as you were concerned, it had ended the moment he'd let you walk out of that hotel. Perhaps it had been long over before that.
Too late, too late.
Against all reason, memory summons each race of the calendar forth – I don't need to play dirty to win – and sure enough. For all you'd held against Kyle this year, his inability to let this die, his unending pursuit, the hunger in his eyes – not once do you recall watching him pull the kind of stunts that had driven you out the door.
The kind of stunts your boyfriend had been pulling lately.
It settles bitter on your tongue as you walk through the door. Niki is waiting in the hotel room when you let yourself in, features drawn into a morose expression that in the afterglow of a long day, strikes you as looking oddly hollow.
He draws you into a tight embrace, one you step into with some hesitation, weary where your forehead presses against his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he sighs, pressing a kiss to your head. "I don't like fighting with you."
You close your eyes, cheek warmed by the heat of your breath, diffusing through his shirt. "I just feel like winning means more to you than I do, sometimes," you confess quietly.
These are words you've said before, to a different love, in a different life. The reception they get is the same and perhaps it's in that brief silence, that ugly intake of breath, tensing muscles beneath your cheek, that you know, no matter what eventually follows when Niki recovers – it is doomed to follow the fate of that which came before it.
author's note:
we're really in it now, guys. also - i know i have i the power to make this canon but in my heart there's an au of this au or a cutscene where soap is their third. i know it in my heart guys…they've hooked up at least once.
posting this after the fog that ausgp2026 had me in... i hate to use this word because it is so incel-y but there's something about waking up at 4:30 in the morning (?????!!!!!!) to get up and go see a bunch of rich ass millionaire billionaire men who do NAWT gaf about me or anything drive fast cars for two hours that makes me feel like a CUCK.
not my first rodeo but with every year i get GA tickets to the grand prix it just feels so embarrassing. like look at me i lost the ticketmaster war and couldn't get seats so i have to scramble to find a nice spot on the grass and get cooked by the sun for 5 hours waiting for the race to start because it's so packed!!! RAGHHH
ok rant over it was actually fun (<- masochist ?) (apart from watching national pride and joy and the grid's resident australian not even get to start... oh that is actually so sickening and i am CERTAIN l*ndo and z*k brown had something to do with that)
i will forever ride the brief high of watching a ferrari overtake and lead the race before their strategists inevitably fucked it up.
i wish i'd been able to post this yesterday in honour of race sunday but alas. i was at the race sunday ! shoutout to jensen button whose facecard momentarily pulled me out of the depths of my despair after the race.
anyway. holy yap over, definitions below:
SIMULATION ROOM: F1 simulators are designed to replicate the thrilling experience of driving a Formula 1 car. I'm pretty sure/assuming they have simulation rooms in most team headquarters
SUSPENSION FAILURE: usually indicates a failure in the system's ability to maintain ride height, often caused by leaking airbags, a worn-out compressor, a clogged air dryer, or faulty height sensors. "A vehicle with a bad suspension may pull to one side or drift when driving, even when you're steering straight. This can make it challenging to maintain control and stay in your lane. Tie rod ends are a common cause."
There would be no one else for him. Nobody else would do. He’s always been a believer that you have to work to get what you want and Kyle’s clawed his way to where he is, but this…there is something about it that feels preordained. You and him, this thing between you, it’s bigger than the both of you, far larger than he can ever comprehend.
chapter tags: alternate universe - formula 1, fem!reader, possessive kyle garrick, past relationship, original character/reader, dubious morality, infidelity, dubious consent, sexual content | word count: 10170 | definitions at the end of chapter!
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MINORS, BLANK AND AGELESS BLOGS: DO NOT INTERACT
Where does it begin to go wrong?
When all that lays before you is glittering promise, how can one anticipate its sudden ruin? The comfort of stability comes with false oaths, ones Kyle swallows easily, ones that occlude the truth from him: nothing ever lasts forever. Grown used to the routine he has built for himself, the ins and outs of a life he has crafted from the ground up, he’s left dazed when it crumples suddenly. Foundation weaker than he’d believed, he pores obsessively over every single detail like running his tongue against a knitted over wound, an absence where before there’d been abundance. The edges of his memory are fraying from use, time-worn and sun-bleached.
One day, he is 24 and a man on top the world. The trophy in his hands shines his warped reflection back at him, gleaming under the desert sun. Silver and gold wrap around each other. It’s another prize his team will add to the collection he’s earned them over the years, golden boy, winner that he is.
You’d asked him, once, if he hadn’t grown used to the feeling. He’d known it then, that there was no way of explaining it to you. Still, he’d persisted, to translate the force driving him, to make you see that he would push his body every single time to the limit and that its payoff was worth more to him than anything he had ever owned.
Kyle is seven years old the first time he lowers himself into the seat of a kart. A birthday party he hadn’t even wanted to go to, a mother who’d pressed him to go now watching from the sidelines with worry lining her brow; it’s pure luck that throws him onto the course of his fate.
The smell of burnt rubber makes his nose wrinkle but the sound – oh, the sound. The engines, the way the karts seem to go faster than anything he has ever seen, whipping past him so fast it makes the hem of his shirt flutter. Seven years old and nearly pushing the barricade down to get a better look as the karts go by –
“Senna in the making, eh, mate?” one of the employees at the range had said, when he’d climbed out of the kart, whistling low when he’d presented the scores. The birthday boy – a classmate of his who he cannot recall for neither love nor money, only a blur of blonde hair and a fading, grating voice that had been prone to tears – had not been happy at losing out. But Kyle had stared at the slip of paper given to him with his heart in his throat, the thrum of a phantom engine buzzing through him.
– It is the beginning of it all.
He learns about the greats, goes to the library and checks out as many books on racing that the librarian will let him. His aunt is the one that finances it when he expresses a desire to take it up, older than his mother with no kids of her own to dote on, sweet on her only nephew who throws himself at her knees with a delighted yell when they break the news to him.
Senna in the making, perhaps – Kyle finds a hero in Schumacher instead. He remembers the early days, pressing his nose to the screen of his mother’s television set and watching the German driver score win after win that only stokes the embers of the rapidly growing desire within himself.
A winner.
When they ask him at school what he wants to be, amongst the policemen and firefighters, the ballerinas and pilots –
Kyle brings home the piece of paper with its accompanying picture, scrawled by a steady hand: a car, all to be seen of its driver poking out from the top, covered by a colourful helmet.
When I grow up, I want to be: A Formula One Driver
It is a life he claws his way to. Karting brings competitions and as it turns out – Kyle is good. He wins a lot. He loses, sometimes. The shock of it never deters him, only igniting his desire to come back better. Mostly, he wins. Seven, eight, nine, ten – through it all, this remains his steady constant, his faithful companion.
This life opens many doors for him. His mother is, understandably, nervous. Despite the years he’s been at this, it is inarguable that he has chosen a profession with no guarantee of safety. There is little comfort in the thought of her only son racing fast cars down straights, turning sharp around corners while pushing wheel to wheel with another metal beast, his wellbeing contingent on flaky agents – the track, the weather, his ability to react in time – it’s pure luck that keeps him from being flattened beneath the shell of his car.
If it isn’t the car that will claim him, just out of sight, there awaits the danger of vices.
Kyle likes the cameraderie that flows when his team are celebrating a win but he finds himself stepping out earlier than the others tend to. There’s a quality to the world he finds preferable when he’s wandering the streets of whichever city it is he’s found himself in that week. He watches the streetlights soften, listens to the city chatter, casts his eyes up to the sky.
He believes himself unscathed – that grip which has taken ahold of all the drivers in some shape or form, it remains a stranger to him. Sadecki favours his smokes, tobacco and tar clinging heavy to every item of clothing the man wears. Binotto washes his disappointment down with spirits, vodka sharp on his breath in the mornings when they sit through the briefings.
Kyle smokes, occasionally. He drinks in moderation – he’s uninterested in getting caught by the media and painted as sloppy, has no eagerness to partake in some of the drinking games that the crew propose on their nights off. He’s the one that has to drive the car, after all. If he wants to win, he’s got to give it everything he’s got.
And drive he does. Gloves gripping the steering wheel, fabric squeaking beneath his fingers as it tightens over his knuckles, his visor down to shield his eyes from dust and gravel.
But as weaknesses are wont to do, his are inconspicuous in their reveal, subtle in the way they slip his blinders on. So sharp to all that everyone else does, he is ignorant and unassuming, all too open and vulnerable. The perfect host for vice to sink its teeth into him. Sin, pure and unadulterated, comes to him in the kiss of victory; a black and white checkered flag, the thrum of the engine beneath him as it carries him over the finish line, the crackle of a radio and his engineer in his ear –
P-fucking-1, baby.
He’s weakened by the end of the race, significantly lighter than when he’d stepped into the car, but victory throws all of his senses into sharp relief. Colours brighter to his eyes, lights winking. He tastes the metal in the air, keenly aware of the heaviness of his tongue in his mouth.
Binotto takes a single look at him from across the cooldown room, lounging against the chair with his bottle pressed to his mouth, and scoffs knowingly.
“First win,” the older man murmurs. Kyle drags his gaze to him, sluggish, like he’s moving through water. He blows out a breath, shaking his head, a faraway look settling over his eyes. “Tell you this much, there’s nothing like it.”
Alvarez, beside him, looks up and laughs in agreement. “Make the most of it, rookie. There’s no going back from this.”
Prophet of ill tiding, Binotto’s next words slither over the embankment Kyle has cocooned himself beneath, riding out the best high of his life – “‘S all downhill from here, mate.”
Binotto does not sign on to any teams after the season and his contract concludes, and the words lay stagnating in the thick of Kyle’s memory, buried beneath the recesses of every podium and win he goes on to achieve.
The champagne pours, lights burst in a dazzling display of blue and gold stars, he stands atop a podium and the adrenaline in his veins is a feeling like no other. Kyle’s bummed a dart from a stranger before, watched a mate trip on an acid tab, ecstasy blowing his pupils wide, all with a detached curiosity. He imagines it must’ve felt something like this, sweat soaking through his suit, his heart hummingbird quick in its cage and his head spinning.
You stand in the crowd below, gazing up at him with winking lights in your gaze and he feels it then, really feels it. This is what he was made for. The two of you are scheduled for an early flight in the morning but the celebrations continue well on into the night. Again, and again, and again, he pulls sounds from you until you’re incapable of little else but silent screams, lips parting in mute ecstasy. It’s downright fucking filthy – he feels like pure, uncontrolled energy, a maelstrom of light and electricity having escaped its vessel.
By the time he lays back against the mattress, the sheets are soaked through and the sunlight is creeping through the curtains. Your body lays stretched out beside him, sweaty, sated, a dazed part of your lips and eyelashes fluttering against your cheekbones. He is keenly aware of every inch of his body, aching muscles that twinge with each breath, the pulse of his heart against his chest and the blood that rushes in his ears.
When you ask him, then, whether he’d grown used to it, he opens his mouth to explain. But the words fall short. He can only look at you and shake his head.
Standing on that elevated podium, runners-up on either side, the same scene no matter where they were. Azerbaijan, Monaco, Singapore. Victory tastes just as sweet. Like sweat and champagne, the press of a beautiful woman against him and the clutch of your hips at the end of the night.
He looks around him, at the other drivers around him. Well out of his rookie season, he knows he isn’t new and shiny anymore, that he’ll fall to the wayside soon if he isn’t careful. The threat of it scares him stiff: becoming just another decorated driver fated to never rise beyond the bottom of the grid haunts him. He finds that when he’s known what it’s like to be a winner – records broken, championships collected, pure, unimitable skill – he’ll do anything to stay that way.
So maybe he plays dirty, sometimes. He knows what these guys have to lose, knows how to apply the pressure just right, set the cards up so they’ll fall exactly as he needs them to. Families, wives, children – the others can’t drive as they used to, with reckless abandon and toeing the lines of the rulebook. They’re slowed down, if only by a hair’s breadth. In this sport, every single moment counts, down to the tiniest details. In the minutiae, that is where he strikes. What’s he got to lose?
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t think about it before answering a reporter who asks him if he’s proposed to you – it’s just another rumour, speculation floated by tabloids struggling to gain traffic. He shuts it down with a frank, honest, “No, I’m not.”
There is no elaboration, nothing to bolster the foundation of his long-term relationship, exposed now to the rest of the world. You say very little then. Later, he’ll think that maybe that’s where it began to crumble.
The revelation that he does, indeed, have something to lose stuns him.
Your departure from his life throws him into a tailspin of the worst kind. Confusion and anger are his faithful friends, and he oscillates between the two. How could you go back on all that you’d promised each other? What had driven you to it? Had he been blind to the signs? He can’t break the loop, trapped in his ruthless desire to know why.
Hadn’t you been happy?
He can’t make sense of it when you tell him tearfully, I love you, maybe too much. He arrives to the scene of your exit far too late; this isn’t impulse that drives you to pack your things and book a ticket back home, it’s a decision that you’ve made without him. The betrayal winds him – it is a betrayal, no matter how you spin it, sinking into the mattress and burying your head in your hands, weeping.
“I want a life with you, outside of this,” you get out through hitched breaths, eyes wet and doleful. On the other side of the hotel room, he sits in the chair, staring hard at the contents of your open suitcase.
He looks up at you. “You have one. We have that.”
“No.” You shake your head. “No, what we have is me following you around the world and watching you nearly kill yourself just to win another race.”
Kyle’s brows draw together incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“You think I haven’t noticed?” you demand, fingers digging into your palms. The urge to reach out and stop you makes his own hands twitch. “You’re so caught up in winning, you don’t care about anything else. Do you know how many collisions you’ve barely walked out of lately, this season alone? You don’t care about us, you don’t care about anyone else on the grid, you don’t even care about yourself.”
He scoffs, defensive anger rising to the surface. “That’s not true.”
You bring a hand to your mouth, trembling, looking away for a moment before you exhale. Another shake of your head. The pit in his stomach is steadily deepening, a slow panic that blooms through him as he realises what’s happening.
He’s prided himself on his ability to read other people. To anticipate their needs and actions. It keeps him sharp on the track. Where you’re concerned, he’s dialled it to eleven, fine-tuned it to a near sixth sense over the years. He knows you intimately, knows the map of your body, knows the meaning behind your every expression, your different smiles. He knows you better than he knows himself, it feels like, somedays. He’d thought he did..
For the first time, he doesn’t know what to do to fix this. It occurs to him that maybe you’re better at keeping things from him than he’d thought.
“You’re going to kill yourself, for another metal cup,” you tell him dully. “And I won’t watch it, Kyle. I won’t. I love you….Maybe too much. Every weekend, I sit there in that garage wondering if this is it, whether today will be the day I watch you die. All I do is worry about you, and I’m tired.”
He doesn’t know what to say. “It’s my job. It’s always going to be risky.”
“Not like this!” you explode, voice pitching nervously. “You never used to drive like this. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid! How long have we been together? I know how you drive and you’ve never, not ever, been this reckless. You think you’ve got this under control but you don’t and you don’t want to admit that.”
He’s silent. You nod, like you’d expected this, and continue to stuff things into your suitcase. Not once do you look at him, but he can’t tear his gaze from you. Your hands are shaking as you zip it closed, shoulders hunched over, exhausted. He’s frozen, watching you gather the last of your things and leave your key to the room on the bedside table. Only then do you look at him, once, a stricken, troubled set to your mouth before you leave.
Your exit from his life is quiet, so at odds with the way you’d arrived into it; the soft snick of a door and a silent goodbye.
He can’t tell how long he sits in that chair, staring at the dip on the sheets where you’d sat. Minutes, hours, years could have passed, he remains rooted there.
This is a dream, he thinks, wishes, this is just a horrible dream and I’m going to wake up any moment now.
But no matter how long he stays there, he does not wake up. His eyes burn, his body begins to grow stiff and the terrible dream continues on to be. You’re no longer here, you’ve gone and he’s alone in his hotel room. Five years come to an end in a matter of moments and he’s helpless as to how he’ll get himself out of this one.
It’s Price that finds him, all but busting the door down when he doesn’t answer. Watery blue irises regard him thoughtfully, and Kyle, distantly, is grateful for the lack of pity. Price has always managed to level with him. Even in crisis, he’s no different.
“She left?”
He nods, silent.
“What you going to do?” There’s a direction behind the question. He needs to get his head on straight, needs to move. He can’t sit here and do nothing. Price watches him as he cycles through muddy thoughts and stumbles to a realisation.
“I’m going to–” he breathes out, harshly, trying to expel the thought of your tearstained face and the sound of your suitcase wheeling across the room. “I’m going to fix this.”
You’re in a taxi halfway across the city when he leaves the hotel. You haven’t stopped sharing your location with him, likely too preoccupied with the more pressing parts of running away to consider it, something he finds himself thankful for as he gets into a car. His blood is rushing through his ears when the car comes to a stop outside the airport and he all but throws himself out.
He shouldn’t be running in an airport, much less where there are about a thousand eyes on him. But Kyle pushes himself forward, sweat dripping down his brow despite the cool air fanning through the space. He makes to security blindly, muscle memory guiding him through the entry until he spots the large queue. He’s made his way through this airport so many times over the years, never once had he thought he’d be chasing after you, here.
He searches the crowd, heart in his throat. He’s going to fix this, it’ll be alright, but first he has to find you in the dense crowd. Over hats and colourful shirts and businessmen in charcoal suits –
There. Stood between a woman and her children, and an older boy, staring listlessly into the distance while the queue stalls.
His knees nearly give out with the relief and he staggers forward, calling your name. There’s a flash of light in his periphery, a murmur that goes up. He’s more focused on the way you startle, turning around in surprise as if to confirm you’ve heard right.
“Baby,” he breathes out and isn’t it a kick in the gut when he gets closer and sees the sticky trace of tears still lingering on your cheeks? “I’m sorry, alright? You’re right, I’ve been shit lately, I’m going to – I’m gonna fix it. I’m sorry.”
“Kyle,” you say tightly, eyes darting around and he leans forward to cradle your face in his palms. He watches how you flinch at the touch, eyes squeezing shut tightly, a tear slipping down your cheek. He catches it with his thumb, wiping it away. “We’re in public.”
“I don’t care,” he insists. “Let them look.”
“Go home,” you urge and he shakes his head.
“Not without you.”
Your face contracts at that, pained. Still, he pushes on.
“I’m not going without you,” he says, intently. Pleading. “I don’t want to be without you. We’re it, remember?”
“That’s not –” you stutter. Another shutter clicks loudly and you flinch at the sound. “Things have changed.”
“They don’t have to. Come home with me,” he implores. He pulls a hand away then, and rummages through his pocket. Your brow furrows and then your eyes widen when he pulls out a small box. He smiles, rueful.
“I was, um, saving this for after the championship – after the season ended,” he amends, when he sees your face tighten. “But tonight…you’re right. I want a life with you, I’ve wanted a life with you since we were 18 and you talked me out of that stupid tattoo after my first win. It’s only ever going to be you. I’ll fix it, you’ll see, we’ll be alright. Just – come home with me.”
You stare at the ring in quiet astonishment and for a moment he thinks maybe there’s hope. It’s a beautiful thing, glittering as his hand trembles and the light catches on the precious gem. It’s the kind of ring you’d eyed whenever you passed jewellery stores, gaze passing over all the other gaudy options on display to catch on wistfully.
The kind that you’d spoken about once, during one of those times when summer and the break from racing deepened into that gentle, liminal space in which he became near unable to distinguish where he ended and you began, truths free-falling from your lips like water without inhibition–those were his favourite moments, when you’d press under his arm and look up at him with those soft eyes, the kind of look that always came before you revealed a new part of yourself to him. All these years together and he was still discovering shades of you.
Hope flickers faintly in his chest, and it’s agony, waiting for you to answer. The pain nearly blinds him when you drag your stare up to look him with reproach in your eyes, beginning to shake your head.
“I can’t,” you whisper, as though you haven’t struck him through the chest. His fingers spasm around the open box, the diamond catching the light and sending a small shower of sparks into his vision, not unlike when he bottoms out during a race and the underside of the car drags painfully against the track. “You’re not being fair, Kyle. You don’t even – you don’t even want this, not really.”
“I’ve been holding onto this for the last six months, what do you mean I don’t want this?” his voice cracks.
“You’re not ready for this – don’t shake your head at me, you know I’m right,” you whisper sharply. “You’ve got one single commitment and it’s this job. There’s no room in your life for what a life together would bring and I –”
Here, you break off sharply, looking away. So there is more to it, he thinks, bitterness brewing slow in his stomach.
“What,” he grinds out.
“So much of the last year has shown me that there’s no room for me in this life,” you say quietly. “I’m your girlfriend before I’m a person. I go where you do and it’s your name that everyone says when they talk about me. You win, and I’m meant to be another trophy for you to show off, you lose and people start pointing fingers, you won’t even look at me because you get so caught up in it. Sometimes I wonder if I even exist to you unless there’s a cup in your hand. I don’t know who I am, anymore, Kyle. I can’t remember the last time I did something for myself, by myself. This isn’t – we can’t keep going on like this.”
“We’ll fix it, then,” he tries, one last time, but you only let out a soft sniffle, shaking your head.
“I love you,” you tell him, eyes pooling with tears once more. He stands there, hands limp by his sides, blood roaring in his ears. “I love you so much. But we can’t go on like this anymore. It’s not – it isn’t healthy.”
This time, he’s the one that steps away.
“I think you’re wrong,” he tells you, plainly, lowering his voice. “I think you’re wrong and I think maybe I’m the only one right now who believes in us, but if this is what you need to do, then fine.”
By now, the rest of the people in the crowd have begun to recognise who he is and more than half have their phones held up. He knows his publicist is going to be furious when the tabloids come out in the morning with this news. But he finds himself exhausted, too selfish to care.
“Just know that with or without that championship, you were going to walk out with a ring on your finger,” he says, jaw ticking with the restraint it takes to keep his voice level, to keep himself from lunging at the guy whose phone is pointing directly at him while his world comes down around him. “I’ve been confused about a lot of things in my life but you – never. It’s always been you. It’s always going to be you.”
Your lips form the shape of his name and he steps away, clutching the velvet box in his hands, snapping it shut. Even with the noise of the airport, it seems to echo.
In the years that have passed, he’s adjusted to your absence. The season had demanded his attention in the fresh aftermath of your breakup. He’d been grateful for the distraction, even if it had only half-managed to divert his thoughts from you. The silence in every hotel room had been deafening at first, the absence when he reached out in the mornings unstitching the hurt anew.
Worse had been the off-season when, with little outside of training to fill his time, it had been much harder to ignore the pressing difference in his life. There’d been no lingering perfume to greet him in his London flat when he’d arrived. His coffee table had been absent of the memoir that had taken residence there over the last year, bookmarked halfway through and untouched. Gone were the coats and blouses that had hung in his wardrobe, gone was the toothbrush in his bathroom, the pots and tubes of skin products. Gone, gone, gone.
It’s hard, when he turns at a function to whisper in an ear that is no longer turned to him. In fact, you’ve all but vanished, it seems. There are no whispers of your presence in any rooms he walks into, only lanyards from different agencies and always, always, somebody pressing for his attention. London is no maze, but you have hidden yourself away entirely from him.
By and large, you are no longer someone he knows.
It doesn’t stop him from remembering. The years pass, the season turns over into itself and the trophies are doled out. He wins, he loses, he and Price take on a newer team – 1-4-1, of which Price assumes the position of team principal, no longer simply his chief engineer. He drops a few places in a championship, his winning streak is doused by a newer, better driver. Still, he remembers.
He can’t help it. He can’t.
Over and over, he traces the memory of you. The curve of your mouth, the flicker of a smile, shy, secretive. The laugh he’d swallowed, one night on the terrace of your stay in Monaco, kissing you in the balmy air. The way you’d cut your hair when you were 18. The day he’d known for sure – it would be this, or it would be nothing.
Running, rain soaked through the back streets and calling out for the orange cat that had slipped through the open door. A neighbour’s, temporarily your responsibility during their visit out of town. A single moment, a blur shooting through the crack in the door and between his legs. He’d been just a few months shy of 21, then, he thinks.
An hour, you’d spent, calling for the thing, before the skies had opened up and the rain had started to pour. Light, at first, a mist drifting down before the drops had grown bigger and you’d been caught in the downpour. In an instant, he’d watched your clothes darken, water bleeding into every fiber until there wasn’t a centimetre of dry cotton on you. His own clothes had submitted to the same fate. Still, on you’d searched.
Caught under a streetlight, he’d been struck by the sudden knowing – there wouldn’t ever be anything else like this, not with anyone else, not ever.
And when a moment later you’d darted across the street, almost veering into the path of an oncoming car, to wrangle a sopping mess of orange fur, looking up at him with a relieved smile and the furball in your arms, that had settled it for him.
There would be no one else for him. Nobody else would do. He’s always been a believer that you have to work to get what you want and Kyle’s clawed his way to where he is, but this…there is something about it that feels preordained. You and him, this thing between you, it’s bigger than the both of you, far larger than he can ever comprehend.
If there could be anything he could trust in to be certain, he would have said this. Sunday mornings on the off season spent intending to sleeping in but waking up early anyway, making breakfast and returning to you with fresh fruit he’d end up tasting on your tongue. Running out to get errands done and knowing no matter how far you wandered off, you’d eventually bump back into him again with a surprised giggle and your hands full of knick knacks he’d sigh at but ultimately agree would look good for the place. When you tell him you can’t go on any longer, he’ll admit there’s a moment where his faith wavers. It’s a loss he’d never once expected.
But it’s only a moment, before he’s brought back to that day, that evening in the rain. He’s young, still, but the thought of a life without you makes him restless. It’s so deeply wrong, he knows at once it can’t be true forever. So he waits. There’s so much, too much that intertwines his life with yours for it to be left open.
It isn’t over. This, he knows.
The years pass and he learns to stop reaching across the side of his bed. He no longer turns to a phantom beside him in a crowd, no longer holds his hand behind him in a dense crowd to guide a lover that’s not there.
But he waits. He bides his time, goes over what went wrong like an old, broken record.
His patience is rewarded when he least expects it, five years after you’d blinked out of existence. The start of the new season is hot – much hotter than London, this time of year. He’s in the paddock ahead of his appearance at the fan forum, talking to Simon when Soap returns, eyes wide and out of breath bearing the news he’s been waiting for.
The weight of five years apart bears down on him as he ascends to the lounge, teeth digging into the meat of his cheek. Someone says something to him as he enters, another person sidles up to him. He has only one object on his mind as he scans the room.
You’re as lovely – if not more – as the day you’d left. A little older, standing taller by the back of the lounge. His throat dries the moment your eyes meet and finally, after so long, he feels like he can breathe right.
The two of you had been too young to get it right the first time. Standing in front of you then, it’s clear that this time he won’t make the same mistakes. Racing has lost that veneer of gold that he’d clung to so desperately in his younger twenties. He knows what’s important – she’s shifting on her feet in front of him, unable to meet his gaze.
Niki, though, is a wrench in what had before seemed so simple and reliable. The expectation for you to join him once more in the 1-4-1 garage is spoiled when the other man cuts in.
He’s not above admitting that it rattles him enough to retreat. As long as he’d known you, all you had ever been was his. His to touch, his to take care of. Niki’s hand on your back, the tenderness in his eyes as he passes you a bottle of water – he wouldn’t begrudge the man if it were anyone else but the woman he’s staring at has long since been claimed, no matter the years that stretch that band thin.
It’s a bitter move, necessary as it is. He knows he can’t strike – not here, and with the pressure of his race weekend schedule pressing on him, certainly not now. To rush would be to lead himself into certain ruin and Kyle has had enough losses lately. This one would outweigh them all.
It is only through steeled self-discipline that he doesn’t return to the Williams garage where he knows you – and Niki, though he marvels at how the third rate driver managed to score a contract with them – will be. There is much to be done and though he longs to shirk it all – what was one instance of disobedience if it would bring you back to him? – a quelling look from Price calls him, begrudgingly, to heel.
He cannot act in anger, cannot execute a plan in a passion. Blue eyes strike though him, laser cutting steel to impress upon him – bide your time. Wait…
He crosses the finish line in fourth place, tires nearly giving out when the team fucks up their pit stop strategy – the heat gets to everyone, it seems, but he finds himself doubly unforgiving when he knows that you’re somewhere amongst the crowd in the lounge, watching your boyfriend cut in front of him at the last possible moment.
Observe…
Niki, on the podium, gleams under the Australian sun and you’re in the crowd amongst his mechanics looking dazed, suddenly pushed forward by rough, joking hands as he surges forward to swoop you up in a kiss. Your mouth slides against his and Kyle, handing his balaclava to an intern, watches with burning eyes, sweat dripping from his hairline and collecting in his lashes. When you part from the man, your lips gleam, gloss smudged around the edges of your mouth and your eyes flutter a little.
You do the same in Shanghai, folded within the cluster of Niki’s team and consoling him on fourth place when he exits the car at the end of the race. Kyle, who’d pushed through to second, feels his stomach curdle when he straightens up from receiving his medal, the metal heavy around his neck. When he looks down to the crowd, you’ve got your fingers in Niki’s hair, head bent close to his and nodding at something he says with that soft, sympathetic turn to your mouth that he remembers used to be reserved solely for him, once.
He can’t resist it in Suzuka, not when he spots you alone while your boyfriend makes a mess of himself. Even though there aren’t any journalists at the party, Niki could stand to be more composed. Kyle has already spotted three phones out, knows that sooner or later – for better or worse – the images of the driver will make their way out to the internet for the masses to dissect. You stand on the sidelines, watching with a little gleam in your eyes that he wants to steal for himself.
Is it stealing, really, if he’s only taking back what was already his?
And he’ll make it easy for you, precious, beautiful thing that you are. He knows he fucked it up last time, knows you deserve nothing but the best and Niki is…decidedly not that. There’s nobody better suited for the role than Kyle – he’s spent a near decade in the car, a decade spent amassing more trophies than he knows what to do with. He’s got the money to make sure you’d never want for anything in your life, the influence to get the two of you where you need to be. He knows every inch of your body.
It’s been five years, but he’d know you at your barest, still, how could he ever scrub that from his memory, it’s written in his hardwire – he was fashioned for you, as you were for him, be it by invisible hands, the cosmos or evolution itself. All that has happened since the dawn of time, every decision he’s ever made in his life, every burst of wind, every drop of water that has swelled and receded – all roads lead to you.
So he’ll make it easy.
All you have to do is agree.
He’s so lost in righteous belief that the possibility of anything else evades him. You’re standing there, in that dress, eyes on someone else and you’re…
You’re shrinking. From him.
More, you’re stepping towards the fool on the other side of the room, arms coming around his flushed neck and bringing his mouth down to yours – yet it’s Kyle you’re looking at, eyes half lidded as you slide your mouth against your boyfriend’s, anger burning low in your irises.
Hm. So that’s how you want to play it.
He brings his drink to his mouth, tipping it ever so slightly in your direction before letting the alcohol stream down his throat.
He won’t begrudge you your games. Kyle’s always been the better strategist of you both, anyway. But he has very little intention of making it easy on you.
and then… strike.
You think you might’ve made a mistake.
Taunting Kyle had never gone over well historically, fool were you to think he wouldn’t rise to your provocation just because the two of you had grown a little older. Still, you blame it on him – it’s easy to convince yourself that you might have kept a level head had he just left you alone. But that was never in the cards and you know it, had known it from the moment he’d walked through that crowd of people in Melbourne to your side, even if you were unwilling to admit it to yourself.
Maybe you’re just as bad as he is.
When he begins to show his face around the paddock even more, gaze sliding to yours over the shoulder of an intern and greeting you with a subtle, mocking smile, you realise what you’ve just done. Instead of getting him to back off, you’ve only triggered that prey drive, that ruthless unforgiving chase in him, honing his attention to you.
It’ll be a miracle if you get out of this unscathed.
Miami brings an easterly wind that ruffles the hem of your skirt, a tailspin in the last lap of the race that leaves Niki tense, and the team a place lower in the championship. You’re barely able to exit the team’s hospitality suite to meet him before the sounds from the 1-4-1 garage, next door to Williams’, erupt and you spot that same smug, self-effacing smile that’s been plaguing you for the better part of a month.
Kyle vaults out of the car as soon as he’s able to, launching himself into his teammate Alex’s arms. The two of them are quick to turn to their team, Alex diving over a barrier into the arms of the 1-4-1’s mechanics and strategists, Kyle laughing wildly as Soap squeezes his waist, bellowing in congratulation.
First and second place respectively.
You barely manage to hold back the shudder that rolls through you when you emerge from the garage through to the pit lane, conscious of the media milling around. Niki’s car hasn’t yet been brought back to the garage and he’s nowhere to be seen. One of the mechanics mutters something about him having taken off and is quickly shushed by another, furtive glances thrown your way, where Niki’s manager stands with her phone pressed to her ear.
It’s interesting, how quickly your boy has begun to metamorphosise. How the taste of accomplishment goes straight to his head, plants itself firmly there until all you find in his eyes is a scheming to get it back. More, all it does it make him want it more. It’s a look that troubles you, one you’ve seen the beginning, middle and end of and not once had it ever meant anything but a herald of your undoing, fated from the first pour, that heavy metal around your lover’s neck destined to be your noose.
The Miami sun is weak today, filtering through a thick cloud cover, but it does little to dampen the spirits of the winners. When you turn your head back to the parc fermé, Kyle has unlatched himself from Soap’s bear grip, flushed with triumph as he steps closer in range to the scale the racing directors have brought on. As he steps on, his head tips up and your breath catches in your throat when his eyes meet yours.
That look.
How you’d ever managed to forget that look is beyond you, but standing in its path you feel rather like you’ve been caught. The world around you seems to hollow out, and even from this distance you can almost see the dilation of his pupils, hear the rapid beat of his heart. Blood, your own or his, you can’t be sure, roars in your ears. Salt drips down from his temples, lashes fluttering with every slow, heavy blink. Pure, distilled hunger etches itself across his face. Unthinkingly, your tongue ventures forward to press against your lips, saliva gathering in your mouth.
When Kyle steps off the scale, for a second he jerks one way, as if to hunt you down and momentarily, traitorously, you forget just why it would be a terrible thing. Something like electricity zips down your spine, invisible fingers pressing bruises into your hips, and you stiffen. In an instant you’re back to the way it was, twenty one and brimming with the anticipation of what that look promised you, what it always delivered –
Fogged glass panels in the shower, champagne soaked memories and boneless limbs collapsing, face-first into twisted hotel bedsheets. Sticky skin and ruined underwear that never survived the night, only scraps of shredded lace littering your hotel floor by the time dawn broke. Your thighs squeeze together and his gaze narrows, knowingly. There are only a few strides between the two of you
– A hand claps down on your shoulder suddenly and you startle, blinking rapidly up at the face in front of you.
Niki. He’s red faced, brow drawn taught as he looks down at you expectantly. Faint tear tracks stain his cheeks, and his eyes are a little red. Guilt whittles you down to the core, your embarrassment levelling his own as you let him lead you back into the confines of the garage where the cameras can’t follow. It’s mortifying, the amount of energy it takes you to keep your eyes ahead of you instead of looking back, where you know Kyle remains, his stare burning against your neck.
“You okay?” you dare to whisper, later, when you’ve climbed into the back of a car en route to your hotel. Niki, next to you, sighs and you bite your lip. The traitorous desire that had begun to simmer cools now, discomfort of another kind taking form as you watch his jaw tick in disappointment.
“I almost had it,” he says quietly, fingers forming a fist against his thigh. Your question opens the floodgates, it seems, because he begins to mutter, more to himself than anything. You wonder for a moment, when the thought crosses your mind as you watch him grow redder and redder, that you wish you hadn’t asked, and then you wonder just when you got so selfish. “I was so…fucking close. I told the team, you know, I told them there was something wrong with the car, knew it after Jeddah…”
When the car pulls up to the hotel, Niki’s woes have lapsed into a thick silence and your skin crawls in the quiet. No stranger to post-race disappointment, you’re reaching for the door handle and exiting silently. Had you been a half decade younger, you might have tottered after Niki and latched onto his arm, reached for every method of comfort you had at your disposal in a paltry effort to soothe his wounds.
But you do not. Something uncaring, something selfish and unwilling keeps you a few paces behind him, fiddling with the latch of your purse to occupy your hands. You can see it clear as day, can remember the post-loss ritual you’d whittled down to an exact science, ever doting girlfriend meant to keep his spirits up, to make sure he’s in the right frame of mind before the next race. Though you would never step foot in that garage as part of the team, you still had a duty to them. And yet something stops you every time you open your mouth, a block wedged in your throat, the only emotion you can muster a faint exhaustion that somehow once more, you’ve found yourself back here again, and you aren’t sure it’s worth it.
You’re keenly aware of the role you’re meant to be playing right now. Sitting across from Niki in an upscale restaurant, the soft lighting brings out the shadowed moue on his face, the distracted air about him as he rattles off an order for the both of you when the waiter comes around. You’re meant to cushion this fall right now, to cup his trouble in your hands and bear it for the both of you so that he might return to the track next weekend in full form raring to go.
You can’t bring yourself to.
Every time you open your mouth, there’s a weight that stays your tongue. Part of you thinks it might be an adamant refusal to fall into old habits – habits you’d picked up during your time with Kyle – that had only led you down the spiral of your identity crisis, that had only taken and taken and taken pieces of you until there was little else left but the hollow smile of a supportive girlfriend.
The part of you that knows better, the part of you that had felt your stomach flutter earlier this afternoon, pressed her legs together under the lion’s eye to savour that feeling – she knows it’s only a feeble excuse.
The real reason for your distraction, the object of your frustration, sits at a table not too far away and though there’s about three people around him, his eyes remain solely on you. Lids heavy, arm bent at the elbow with his hand over his chin deliberatively, he watches you unabashedly with no care for the conversation going on at his table; it’s a rousing one, too, if the way Alex Keller rears back in his seat is anything to go by, but Kyle has no care for any of it.
It had taken you by surprise when you’d looked over Niki’s shoulder to see him. Yet for all you’d frowned at him Kyle had only tilted his head just so, a small smile tugging at his lips. Unwittingly, you’d walked right into yet another snare, unable to look away from him for too long. That damn gravitational pull, that cursed magnetism, you’re pulled back to him every minute as if some unknown thread pulls your attention to make sure he hasn’t disappeared. He doesn’t let you ignore him, does not let up at all.
You learn very quickly that there is a thin demarcation between frustration and desire. All too soon you’re pulled back to the same heat of the earlier afternoon, shifting in your seat uncomfortably under his stare and giving Niki clipped, distracted answers when he speaks to you.
Your drinks arrive at the same time that Kyle’s does and you’re keenly aware of the way he peers over the rim of his glass, amber liquid swishing within its container as he brings it to his mouth. Your own dries, watching his throat bob, watching the way his tongue darts out to catch a droplet that clings to his lip.
Standing suddenly, you push your napkin onto the table.
“I need the bathroom,” you mutter to Niki, stalking away before he can respond. You don’t see the derisive laugh Kyle lets out behind him, or the shake of his head before he makes an excuse of his own.
No, you’re not outrunning him now.
The lights in the bathroom illuminate every inch of the space, a spotlight on your guilt from the moment your heels click against the tiled floor that gives you nowhere to hide. You’re grateful there isn’t an attendant inside to witness your unravelling. Your brow is beginning to perspire, cheeks already flushed with heat as you set your purse against the counter-top and press your palms into the cool stone. In the mirror, your reflection eyes you uncomfortably.
“Fuck.” Hissing the profanity out doesn’t lessen the tight feeling in your stomach any, and you frown hard at yourself, smacking your palm down into the counter. “Fuck.”
You reach out to turn the tap on, running your fingers underneath the steady stream of cold water when a knock sounds against the door.
“Occupied,” you call back weakly, swallowing when your voice crumbles a little over the syllables. Your reflection eyes you dubiously, lips turning down in derision.
Look at you. What a mess you’ve made of things, huh?
Whoever is on the other side of the door doesn’t seem to care for your butchered response, knocking again a little more intently. It sparks your already fraying nerves.
“There’s someone in here!” You call back, unable to keep the irritation out of your voice, but all you receive in response is another series of raps at the door.
“Asshole,” you curse under your breath, only barely resisting the urge to stomp your foot.
With a scoff, you turn the tap off and clutch your purse, damp fingertips pressing blooming waterlilies into its satin skin. Whirling on your feet, you stalk towards the door and pull it open, preparing to push past whoever’s in such dire need for the bathroom and return to the hotseat.
You don’t get a chance to even cross the threshold after the door opens before you’re being corralled back inside. Honey eyes and a taunting glare push you backwards, Kyle’s hand on your hips steering you where he wants.
Your heart lurches violently at the press of his chest against yours and you’re unable to contain the startled gasp that punches out of your lungs.
“Kyle, you –” you sputter, your nerves kicking into overdrive as you glare up at him. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“Just came to check on you, love,” he says, affecting an innocence that is wholly betrayed by the glint in his eyes, the way he draws his bottom lip into his mouth as he looks you up and down. “You left the table in such a rush, thought something happened.”
You stare up at him, hyperaware of the little distance between the two of you. Your chest heaves with your breaths, heart fluttering hummingbird-like in its cavity. Rage and desire war within you under his narrowed gaze, honey eyes now abyssal dark with want.
“I’m fine,” you manage to bite out, at last. Beneath the fabric of your dress, your stomach has begun to tighten, heat simmering in your navel and diffusing through to your thighs.
“You sure?” You dip your head in a stiff nod when he asks you, voice dipping in faux, saccharine, concern and go to take a step back. Only, there’s a hand around your wrist that tugs you right back into his orbit, stumbling into his chest. “You look a little flustered to me.”
“I’m not flustered.”
His gaze gets even sharper at that and you begin to realise that for all your protesting, you’ve walked right into the trap he’d set up. Anticipation makes your limbs tremble under his grip when his head tilts, brow raising in perfunctory acquiescence.
“No?” he questions and you shake your head. “Hm. Guess I must’ve read you wrong.”
“You did,” you can’t help but spit the words at him. “Will you let go now?”
“It makes sense, it’s been so long,” he muses thoughtfully, gaze somewhere over your shoulder and continuing as if you haven’t spoken. Still, his fingers remain wrapped around your wrist, warm, pulsing over your throbbing veins. Then, he looks down at you and smiles slightly. It isn’t a nice thing, too much teeth and far too sharp around the edges to bring you any comfort. Your pulse quickens under his fingers. “I probably don’t know you as well as I used to.”
“Kyle,” you stress, tugging your wrist. He doesn’t let go, only bringing his other hand to your hip and nudging you back against the counter until the ledge meets your back.
“Just…humour me for a second, babe,” he says lightly, as if he hasn’t got you pressed up against the bathroom mirror with your boyfriend waiting in the restaurant outside, probably wondering what’s taking you so long. As if you can’t feel the tent in his slacks pressing against your hip and making your head spin at the unignorable evidence of his desire, flush against you, separated only by a few layers of fabric. You draw in a shaky breath and he smiles, a soft, dangerous thing. “You remember how it was before, right? Thought I could read your mind for a moment, there, didn’t we?”
“That was well over half a decade ago,” you defend and he hums in passive agreement.
“Yeah. Could just tell by looking at you, couldn’t I? Knew what you were thinking without you having to say it. Knew where to touch, where you wanted it, how you wanted it,” He sighs a little, as if reminiscing. “You remember Monza, don’t you? Know I do.”
Your traitorous body flushes with heat at the mention of that summer. How he’d mapped every inch of you into the early hours of the morning after his victory, keen eyes cataloguing your every expression and movement after your voice had given out on you – a long weekend of cheering him on, a longer night of crying out under the ministrations of his mouth, his fingers, his cock, all bringing you to finish over and over again.
It’s true. At one point, he’d been so attuned to your behaviour the two of you had barely needed to exchange words. It had only made the inattention that brought about the end of your relationship all the more bitter.
You can’t help yourself, heat extinguished by the sour reminder. The words fly out your mouth before you can contain them, a dagger piercing the thick haze. “Didn’t notice much towards our last few months, though, did you.”
His smile stiffens, then, and you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end as the temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees. “Guess not.”
When he leans in closer, nose brushing against yours, you hold your breath. All around you is him, the scent of his cologne, the breadth of his shoulders filling your field of vision, the warmth radiating from him. Inescapable, and you, the poor animal in his sights.
You realise, horrified: You’re not entirely certain you want to escape him.
“But I learn from my mistakes, you know. Be hard pressed to fail like that again.”
“I have to go,” you say, weakly and he only smiles, letting go of your wrist.
“You know, you’re just as easy to read now as you were then,” he tells you quietly, just as you go to move out from where he’s got you pinned. The crackling heat in his voice stops you in your tracks, a low, burning fire that warms you inside out and snaps your gaze back to him. His mouth quirks up in a wry, crooked slant and he leans in a little, peering at you through heavy eyelids. Desire swallows the honey brown of his irises and your breath quickens. “You can lie to yourself all you want but I know you.”
His hand comes up to trace the curve of your neck, curled fingers skimming down over your bare shoulder and eliciting an unintentional shiver from you. The notes of his drink tickle your nose when he speaks, your lips parting as he comes in close.
“You tell me you’re fine, but I bet if I reached under that dress of yours I’d find you fucking dripping, wouldn’t I?” He laughs a little, and you inhale shakily, unable to protest because of course he’s right. The underwear you’d slipped on after your shower is sodden between your legs, thighs sliding against each other with the traces of your arousal. “Course I would. Think I’ve forgotten how to read you just because it’s been a while? You’re not as subtle as you think, love. Think the entire room could tell, the way you’ve been squirming in your seat all evening.”
The though sends a bolt of electricity down your spine, back tensing against the counter at the thought of all the eyes in the restaurant knowing. At the thought that you hadn’t hidden yourself away as much as you’d thought. Kyle’s hand hovers over your waist, fingers ghosting against your navel and making you suck in a breath.
“I could help,” he offers, casually. “I’d make it quick. You always liked my fingers, didn’t you, baby?”
The silence that follows his words stretches on far too long to be appropriate, the protest that should come glaringly absent on your tongue as you stare up at him through wide eyes. Suggestion gives way to imagination, your mind betraying you to conjure up the memory of a fullness you’d not been able to replicate, the stretch and slide of fingers bigger than yours stroking at your most sensitive spots with an agility that could only come with intimate familiarity.
“You want me to,” he breathes out, amazed. Delighted, he laughs. “How long’s he had you unsatisfied like this, darling? Fuck, I bet you’re dying for it, aren’t you? You want me to make you come and send you out to your little boyfriend after.”
It’s the reminder of who’s sitting outside, of Niki, that makes you jolt where you stand, ice water dousing over you in a frigid recollection of where you are. You push Kyle off you, hands landing a blow against his chest with all the strength you can muster behind it, and he retreats easily, a laugh echoing in the empty bathroom as he takes a few steps back.
That damning smirk haunts you on your way out.
Kyle leans against the wall, watching you undo the lock on the door with a sense of satisfaction. Your fingers fumble with the latch, trembling in your haste to get away from him. Yet when you pull the door open, he straightens, for the little look you dart over your shoulder at him before you all but run away, unable to hide the dilation of your pupils from him, or the way you bite your lip, your fist clenching at your side like you’re afraid you’ll reach out for him if you stay too long.
He waits a few minutes before he returns to his own table, aware he can’t go back out there in such a state. He might as well put up a sign letting the establishment know he’s open for business if he does.
The feel of you against him again had done little to convince him that he should let you go. In fact, he’d been a hair away from dropping to his knees and rucking your dress up to get a taste of the desire you’d seemed so adamant about denying, had been halfway into making the fantasy of making your eyes roll with his mouth on you again when you’d startled and run away.
When he steps outside the bathroom, he’s only a little glad there’s nobody waiting outside for him. Less chance of being spotted that way. Still, he can’t help but to amuse himself with the thought of Niki finding out just what a mess he’d made of his girl.
His girl. The claim the man has on you is laughable. Even now, when Kyle turns his head to look, he’s still sulking about the loss with his eyes on his plate. You’re sitting across from him with your lips pressed tightly together, fiddling with your cutlery and staunchly avoiding looking in Kyle’s direction.
Anyone could spirit you away and he wouldn’t even notice.
Which is exactly what he plans on doing. In his defence, he’d never taken to being spurned well.
i hope you guys all had such a wonderful week and enjoyed this chapter!! my brain is a little bit mush from the week i've had LARPING as a corporate girl (!!) but i will return at some point to go over this and smooth out anything that i missed when i was re-drafting. i will say this though my highlight of the week was getting to go to lunch and seeing so many men in businesswear smoking and eating lunch. gaze was extremely lustful i'm so sorry guys…#thatshot
anyway i really enjoyed writing gaz being more manipulative (sue me) because i think he's such a sneaky little shit and it was fun to explore that side of him. yes, your boyfriend is right outside, no he doesn't have any shame about cornering you in the bathroom and reminding you just how good he was at pleasing you.
DEFINITIONS
SENNA, SCHUMACHER: famous f1 drivers
COOL DOWN ROOM: a post-race area where the top three drivers wait before the podium, allowing fans to see their real, often candid interactions, from tense rivalries to funny moments, showcasing human connection beyond the race
TEAM PRINCIPAL: An F1 Team Principal is the ultimate leader, CEO, and public face of a Formula 1 racing team, responsible for overseeing all technical, operational, commercial, and human resources aspects of the ~1,200-person organization. They make crucial high-level decisions, manage budgets, and handle team orders.
CHIEF ENGINEER: A Formula 1 Chief Engineer (often titled Trackside Chief Engineer or similar) is a senior, top-level engineer responsible for leading the trackside technical team to maximize car performance and reliability throughout a race weekend. They oversee the engineering department, bridge the gap between trackside personnel and factory management, and coordinate all technical operations.
HOSPITALITY SUITE: An F1 hospitality suite is a premium, catered, and often climate-controlled viewing area, typically located directly above team garages or along prime straightaways. It offers VIPs, corporate guests, and fans a luxurious experience with fine dining, open bars,, and exclusive, unparalleled views of the race track, including start/finish lines.
starboy chapter 2 out tomorrow !! in the meantime a few life updates in no partiuclar order: had a very corporate week, feeling incredibly like a 20 something woman who is post grad, acne in awkward spots because i've been having 16 hour makeup days, extremely appreciative of men in suits, in love with the end of summer, one foot in the rollerblade of shyness and the other in yap city, long commutes, pilates is extremely difficult because i have no real reason to push myself beyond general health (flimsy at best i find being mad at someone is a better motivator when i'm doing shoulder presses etc)
There would be no one else for him. Nobody else would do. He’s always been a believer that you have to work to get what you want and Kyle’s clawed his way to where he is, but this…there is something about it that feels preordained. You and him, this thing between you, it’s bigger than the both of you, far larger than he can ever comprehend.
If there could be anything he could trust in to be certain, he would have said this. Sunday mornings on the off season spent intending to sleeping in but waking up early anyway, making breakfast and returning to you with fresh fruit he’d end up tasting on your tongue. Running out to get errands done and knowing no matter how far you wandered off, you’d eventually bump back into him again with a surprised giggle and your hands full of knick knacks he’d sigh at but ultimately agree would look good for the place. When you tell him you can’t go on any longer, he’ll admit there’s a moment where his faith wavers. It’s a loss he’d never once expected.
But it’s only a moment, before he’s brought back to that day, that evening in the rain. He’s young, still, but the thought of a life without you makes him restless. It’s so deeply wrong, he knows at once it can’t be true forever. So he waits. There’s so much, too much that intertwines his life with yours for it to be left open.
It isn’t over. This, he knows.
content tags: alternate universe – formula 1, race car driver kyle garrick, exes to lovers, possessive behaviour, slight manipulative behaviour, dubious morality, gaz plays dirty, infidelity, manipulative gaz, female reader insert, smut, angst, dubious consent. minors do not interact, you will be blocked.
It's been five years since you stepped foot at a Grand Prix. That life had long been discarded, buried beneath the depths of your memory, painful to part with, a burden to bear. Your return is ferried by the hopes that your years away have given you the strength to bear what ghosts you'd left behind and the memories they'd stir up again.
Gaz had always been single-minded about pursuing his ambitions. The multiple championships under his belt had only served to push him further. Restless and unsatisfied, it takes a single moment for everything to fall into place. Now, you feel keenly what it's like to be on the receiving end of his pursuit.
Fool were you to hope he'd let you go again.
content tags: alternate universe – formula 1, race car driver kyle garrick, exes to lovers, possessive behaviour, slight manipulative behaviour, dubious morality, gaz plays dirty, infidelity, manipulative gaz, female reader insert, smut, angst, dubious consent. minors do not interact, you will be blocked.