[PODFIC] a deer called shotgun by @racecrafting (20 minutes, rated e, maxiel)
“Land yacht,” says Daniel with a low whistle, barrel-lensed gaze drifting along the old ‘95 Fleetwood spinning out of the nearly vacated mall lot. “Real beauty, ain’t she? Became a man in the back of one of those — spacious things, those cars.”
sick. depraved. bizarre. strange. off-putting <- the highest compliments i can give to a piece of writing. oh lord folks. this one is FOR THE BOOKS. people toss around the term carfucker plenty around these parts, but few have the GUTS and the TALENT to go for it like our beloved racecrafting does. a collection of extremely well-chosen and well-formed vignettes, perfect escalation, prose that melts in your mouth and sings in your ears........ it was nothing short of a pleasure to give voice to these lush sentences. run, don't walk.
I like when people like a character so way too much that it transcends even self shipping or kinning and becomes more of a patron saint that you pray to type of deal
Sentence ask: “the truth may hurt for a little while but a lie hurts forever”
Maxiel if you please 👹😈
From atop Mont Agel, Monaco looks like a model village. It’s a fitting end, reducing these years of Daniel’s life to toy shop ephemera. The first time he came up here he felt like he could pick it all up and take a bite of it. Now he pictures a display case: ne pas toucher.
“Help me down,” Max says from a tall boulder he’d climbed, a cat stuck up a tree. His legs are dust-dotted and lean again, like he could still be 19.
“I’ll piggy back you,” Daniel offers. “Or like, boy cheerleader you. You be the girl cheerleader. Step on my shoulders.”
Max doesn’t laugh. He’s been oddly sullen, not returning any of Daniel’s bon mot volleys on the way up. When he takes Daniel’s proffered hand, his fingers feel slim and cool. Back at Red Bull, his hands were always sweating, fingers bloated. Daniel wants to make him press his hand into the reliefs they left at Kintetsu Shiroko station. He wants to say, Where’d you go?
Back on the dusty ground, Max glowers at the vista.
“Wanna talk about it?” Daniel asks, thumbs under his backpack straps, rocking on his heels. He doesn’t know Max well enough anymore to jolly him out of his sour moods. He doesn’t know what to do with big boy problems.
Max shrugs, a small and jerky motion that seems somehow apoplectic. “You’re leaving again.”
Daniel almost laughs. He’s seen Max one time in the calendar year. His skinny legs and slender fingers and accusations feel like that of a time-traveler. It’s as if he’s been decorticated, peeled back to his former self with its childish hurts, raging at the loss of his teammate.
“Guess I never really came back, hey.”
“Why’d you leave?” Max demands, the same thing he’d asked eight years ago.
Eight years ago Daniel had said he wanted a challenge, that he was excited about Renault’s future. But Max knows the axiom of it. He’s got half siblings. It sucks to watch someone replace you; it’s better not to hang around.
Max crosses his arms and juts his chin like he’s sure there’s some bigger reason, like he can bully his way to the pith of it.
There’s not. But there’s something Daniel never put words to, something that didn’t factor in to his decision to leave but almost made him stay. He takes off his cap and holds it by the stiff rim, slaps the floppy sweat-wicking mesh into his thigh. The wind whips his curls. “I felt weird about you.”
Max frowns, his eyebrows pulling together and his lips pursing. “What.”
Despite the eight-year wide lacuna in the feeling, it’s still uncomfortable to talk about. Daniel chews his lip. “You made me—I don’t know, it was weird. We spent all this time together and—” Daniel slows down, breathes deep. “I think I was in love with you or something.”
It’s not exactly true, but it’s more felicitous than I couldn’t stop wondering what you sound like when you come.
Max’s eyes go wider and his brows go lower. “What.”
Daniel laughs, breathy and awkward. He slaps the cap some more and looks at Monte Carlo and considers that he may actually never set foot here again. “Like…gay love.”
Max’s eyebrows fly to his hairline and the time traveling 19-year-old effect is shattered: he’s got more lines there now.
Part of Daniel had been wondering if this is what Max was chasing all along, if his bullishness about knowing Daniel’s reasons for leaving was because he felt it too. But it’s cataclysmically clear by the naked shock on his face that he never anticipated this response.
Daniel laughs but doesn’t look away, because 37 is wiser and braver than 29. “Sorry for making it weird. At least we’re not neighbours anymore, hey. I’ll be the weird guy who’s like eight thousand miles away.”
Max presses his lips together and they fill with white. Or maybe it’s an unfilling. They empty of red. “You are joking.”
“Nah, mate. Dead as. I used to, like, space out in team meetings looking at your bad haircut or the way you’d scratch at your arm. Here, under the hem of your sleeve.” Daniel gestures to his own bicep, since he doesn’t think Max would welcome his touch right now. “Your skin would get all these raised pink lines, like it was holding onto it after it was over. Like if I—” Daniel swallows down the next part and feels abruptly like he might cry, like maybe he’s the one decorticated, raw insides exposed. He laughs again. “Sorry.”
Max stares at him so hard Daniel wonders if he’ll laser his skin off. Even though he’s not saying anything, Max’s tongue keeps moving inside his mouth. “Why did you not tell me.”
Daniel gives him a rueful grin. He should have. Max had been so hurt by it, saw Daniel’s job-hunting as a rejection of their friendship. It could have saved him some hurt, probably. “I dunno, Max. I’m telling you now.”
Max scoffs. “Now,” he says contemptuously, kicking up a plume of dust. He looks down at his city, then up at their sky. When he finally looks at Daniel, it’s with unalloyed hatred. “Now.”
Daniel shows his palms, heart racing. “Hey, calm your farm, what the fuck?” Martin Garrix started dating a dude this year and he and Max are still friends. “I’m not gonna—I don’t feel that way now!” Standing up on this cliff, he’s not actually sure if he’s lying.
“I don’t—” Daniel whips his head over his shoulder because Max is staring off into the distance like there’s a fucking French mountain lion waiting to eat them, but there’s nothing there. “What do you want me to say, Max?” He asks it desperately, because he needs to know exactly what to say to make it right.
Max laughs mirthlessly, already walking away. “I don’t want you to say anything, Daniel. I don’t want you to say anything now.”
☠︎ SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO PUSH YOU by @always-waxing-crescent - Oscar/Carlos, rated E, 7K (ongoing, 1/2)
Carlos isn’t even saying words. It comes out a never-ending howl of disbelief, a moan of horror. As it pours from his mouth, Carlos has the thought that he will never stop screaming ever again.
☠︎ Double Horizon by @lealu - Oscar/Carlos, rated E, 10K (ongoing, 1/4)
“If this is hell, you’re a terrible person to spend eternity with,” Oscar says and lowers his head on the steering wheel.
Carlos smiles. “At least you won’t be lonely.”
☠︎ Clever as a Fox by saumenschoftemplar - Pierre/Yuki, rated M, 2K (ongoing, 1/?)
Pierre the Fox finds himself banished from the court of King Max to an island nation far off in the east after one too many dalliances.
Yuki the newly minted nine-tailed kitsune is now embroiled in a prank war with a mere one tailed fox whose silver tongue could rival his own supernatural powers in causing chaos.
☠︎ the (rocky) horrors by @fourtyforever - Max/Daniel, rated E, 3K (ongoing, 1/15)
Max decides to try out for the annual on-campus Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast to impress the cute guy in his class. What results is a series of horrors, up to and including facing stage fright, costume mishaps, pretending to have sex with your crush onstage, final exams, and George Russell.
☠︎ Marriott Inn by @oopslandiia - Oscar/Lando, rated M, 5K (complete)
There are tears running down his cheeks while Oscar just looks... confused. Very confused. But still, the smile on his face grows into a real thing before he lunges over, pulls Lando into his arms, and pushes his face between his neck and his shoulder, peppering the soft skin with kisses.
"You are okay, Lando. It was just a bad dream."
☠︎ small & soft, flesh & blood by @brushedbymelancholy - Alex/Carlos, rated E, 8K (complete)
But even if Alex was under no expectation that Carlos would be attaching himself at his hip like a rookie, he still wanted them to get on well—at least until, if JV was to be believed, 2026 or 2027, when they’d be able to make a proper fight of it. So when Carlos’s contract was announced, Alex made sure his was one of the first congratulatory texts in Carlos’s phone. And after Carlos’s appendix exploded in Jeddah, Alex helped him adjust his seat belts so they wouldn’t press up against his surgery site. And after the season ended, Alex added a copy of a book to his Amazon cart titled, Supernatural Coworkers: A Beginner’s Guide, and spent the first week of his break highlighting passages from the chapter on vampires.
☠︎ angels for each other by @unpubprivlit - Lando/Martin Garrix, rated T, 7K (ongoing, 1/4)
The fae wakes up screaming at midnight.
---
Martijn has been alone in the house for a long time.
☠︎ who ya gonna call? by @fryingthepans - Lando/Oscar, rated M, 4K (ongoing, 1/?)
There are flashing lights, black and white police vehicles surrounding Beau Rivage. Massenet has been barricaded by rolls of caution tape, cones like sentries surveying the scene. Smoke rises from somewhere in the center, flames dancing above officials’ heads. Firefighters—no, fire marshals—arrive, armed with extinguishers. Oscar can’t see what has caused the wreckage, but there is one lone tyre near one of the barriers.
Something is wrong with the sunshine.
When Lando agrees to become the first F1 driver to install the microchip, he believes it will make him faster. Stronger. Better. Able to challenge Max. And it does. But every upgrade demands a sacrifice.
☠︎ Love Bites (So do I) by @devilish-frog-3 - Daniel/Max, rated E, 10K (ongoing, 1/2)
Max found himself face to face with a man. Athletic body, hidden below a thin baby blue sweatshirt covered in fresh blood. His hands were still dripping red. Max’s expert eyes scanned through every detail, but he couldn’t grasp anything else, not his age, nor his facial features.
☠︎ ardent desire by @dreamlandbarnes - George/Max, rated E, 2K (complete)
He should have known that George could take it. That the creature wanted Max just as badly.
☠︎ the devil without trying by september - Isack/Liam, rated T, 4K (complete)
The audio they’d used for filming the campus tour today—something about the first, second, third floor—was playing on repeat in Isack’s head, when Liam said, out of nowhere, “They called you.”
“You’re really not going to talk to me?” George asks, catching Max waiting at the bar. His sunglasses are pushed up into his hair, and the skin under his eyes is pale, faintly luminescent, where the sun hasn’t reached to tan. “It’s not that big of a boat.”
☠︎ A Portrait of a Man at Work by Fall2See - gen / Fernando, rated M, 3K (complete)
A scared, angry little man after a crash. He thinks it's all over now, but he's wrong. For The Rookie Fernando Alonso, it's just the beginning as he enters The Night Race Zone.
☠︎ in pursuit of prey by @passtheseppie - Oscar/Mark, rated E, 12K (complete)
Mail is Mark’s favorite way to get to know a new plaything. From all the times he’s nicked Oscar’s out of the mailbox, he’s gathered that Oscar loves his sweets – and, based on the accompanying dental bills, has the cavities to prove it. He knows Oscar’s favorite takeaway (Italian), knows he likes to buy his music on CDs, knows his annual bloods have come back with perfect results.
☠︎ o dio, liberami dal sangue by @birb-shaped-cloud - gen / Kimi & George, rated M, 1.4K (complete)
There is blood on Kimi’s hands. Old blood, dark and crusted. His nails hurt: there is dirt under them, Kimi remembers, from when they dug the earth and put him in it. It had taken him so long to crawl up. He had not known which way was up.
☠︎ ad incubum, ad veritatem by @bitingdrivers - Max/Daniel, rated E, 8K (complete)
The demon closes his eyes in a long blink. "You called for an incubus," he says, but his reply not only does not clarify anything, but Daniel also gets the distinct feeling of being called stupid.
☠︎ in the open red by @officialmood - Max/George, rated E, 10K (ongoing, 1/2)
“You’re really not going to talk to me?” George asks, catching Max waiting at the bar. His sunglasses are pushed up into his hair, and the skin under his eyes is pale, faintly luminescent, where the sun hasn’t reached to tan. “It’s not that big of a boat.”
☠︎ would you like to play a game? by @testarossa - Alex/George, rated M, 2K (complete)
Hello. This is a horror story.
Or maybe, more accurately, this is several horror stories woven into one. Which story you read is entirely up to you. You can go on a journey to one of several universes, all branching out from the same beginning, and you’ll meet different people along the way. If you have a good time, you can even go back and check them all out.
☠︎ Nothing can separate me from you by Eggyyolk - Fernando/Mark, rated T, visual art
☠︎ Natural Deaths Department by @overtake - Max/Daniel, rated M, 7K (ongoing, 1/3)
Daniel had zero plans on becoming a Grim Reaper, mostly because he wasn’t aware that was an option.
girl you don't know the beatles members?? Wish that was me
LMAOO I grew up in an immigrant household and so my relationship to Western “rock” bands from the 60s is largely shaped by that. And then the neighbourhoods I was raised in further informed the types of music we enjoyed — my mom would play a lot of JLo, Mary J. Blige, and Sean Paul (though she did have an Evanescence CD she used to go crazy to). My dad… he would experience bouts of religious psychosis so sometimes music was a sin and other times he’d turn to me and randomly say shit like “You know Jay-Z is the best rapper of all time” fghjhgfh
Leave me alone man 😔 I’m just learning Bob Dylan didn’t sing ohhh ohhh I’m on fire and also that he’s not John Lennon and that John Lennon’s not Paul McCartney
