stoke

my boiler room writing blog 🇺🇾🇺🇸/🇵🇸

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side blog: @stokeholdsblog

multifandom writer on ao3 (works are archive locked)

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shining like gunmetal🔒| ongoing, Kmag/Nico/Gabi

Their mingled laughter drifts through the hall as they head for the elevators; it echoes a little bit around the empty lobby. It echoes more in Gabi's mind even after they're gone. He hugs his arms around himself again, resting his neck on the top of the chair as he stares up at the pristine white ceiling. The bright white light licks burn marks into his corneas.

And if we were, smukke? What would you do?

or: Gabi, an employee at a luxurious resort in Sardinia, finds himself being courted by an older, very attractive couple. He accidentally friendzones himself all the way to hell.

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shining like gunmetal | ongoing, Kmag/Nico/Gabi

Their mingled laughter drifts through the hall as they head for the elevators; it echoes a little bit around the empty lobby. It echoes more in Gabi's mind even after they’re gone. He hugs his arms around himself again, resting his neck on the top of the chair as he stares up at the pristine white ceiling. The bright white light licks burn marks into his corneas.

And if we were, smukke? What would you do?

or: Gabi, an employee at a luxurious resort in Sardinia, finds himself being courted by an older, very attractive couple. He accidentally friendzones himself all the way to hell.

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chapter 3 is up!

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this place will burn you up | ongoing, LS2/OP81/LN1

Sleep is significantly harder in this state. It happens, on occasion, that his soulmate will be feeling a burst of adrenaline or some form of extreme excitement that drips into Logan’s hands. It lasts a day at most, but it has a habit of straying into the night. Tonight, though, it’s not necessarily just the swirling discomfort from an active mark— it’s more, a feeling deep in his chest that keeps his eyes from closing for too long.

(If you’d asked Logan to pick a paradigm shift in his life, the exact moment that led him to crash his car into the snow, he’d point you here.)

or: Logan's overactive soulmarks and formidable intuition lead him to places he wouldn't even go with a gun. For the @loganficfest !!

[loganficfest]

Today's december 1st which means we're less than 10 days away from the submissions date. I hope writing's going well for everyone who picked a prompted!

And if there's some fast writers out there who'd like to participate, there's still some prompts up for grabs!!

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shining like gunmetal | ongoing, Kmag/Nico/Gabi

Their mingled laughter drifts through the hall as they head for the elevators; it echoes a little bit around the empty lobby. It echoes more in Gabi's mind even after they’re gone. He hugs his arms around himself again, resting his neck on the top of the chair as he stares up at the pristine white ceiling. The bright white light licks burn marks into his corneas.

And if we were, smukke? What would you do?

or: Gabi, an employee at a luxurious resort in Sardinia, finds himself being courted by an older, very attractive couple. He accidentally friendzones himself all the way to hell.

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chapter two is up!! huzzah!

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shining like gunmetal, chapter 2 snippet bellow the cut.

Nico lets out one of those cat-call type whistles, the ones he hears in American movies that come out of him when Kevin puts a suit on, or when good food is placed in front of him, or at guys twenty years younger than him showing up in a tank top, passing out waters looking like sin.

Kevin looks over to his right, to the center point between their court and the one directly beside. He sees what Nico is seeing too, clearly, because his eyes do that little thing they do when he’s on the couch watching a race and a driver drifts into an overtake. (The ball catches on the net and rolls away from them, forgotten.)

It’s Gabriel, dressed in a tight tank top that rides just a little under his bellybutton and a pair of jeans that pool over his shoes, shoved low enough so anyone with at least one eye can see the band of his underwear. Nico’s eyes trace back up his silhouette and up to his hair, which is darker still in the sunlight and falls over his head in a way that reminds him of the princesses he reads about to his nieces.

It’s. A lot. To think about one guy you just met yesterday.

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shining like gunmetal | ongoing, Kmag/Nico/Gabi

Their mingled laughter drifts through the hall as they head for the elevators; it echoes a little bit around the empty lobby. It echoes more in Gabi's mind even after they’re gone. He hugs his arms around himself again, resting his neck on the top of the chair as he stares up at the pristine white ceiling. The bright white light licks burn marks into his corneas.

And if we were, smukke? What would you do?

or: Gabi, an employee at a luxurious resort in Sardinia, finds himself being courted by an older, very attractive couple. He accidentally friendzones himself all the way to hell.

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Lando/Logan/Oscar hallmark movie in f1 rpf form 👀

she’s currently a wip but yes! im posting the ole girl on (i think) December 10th for the logan sargeant fic fest, but I’ll probably post a little snippet before that :] it’ll also include a little drawing as per usual

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🔞because it’s never enough | 6k, Justine/Archer

She should be unnerved, alone in the forest with a man twice her size who’s staring at her like she’s a piece of meat, but all it really makes her feel is the need to clench her thighs together to stave off the pool of arousal that floods her, and the need to throw it back in his face the only way she knows how.

She laughs, “You’re, what, sixty? Could you even keep up with me?”

Distantly, Justine thinks about how she should cut back on her slasher obsession, because her brain is getting the serial killer wires confused with the take me now wires.

“Yeah, baby? You wanna try me like that?”

Fuck. They’re doing this.

or: child psychologist Justine meets a hot, divorced mechanic at a bar in the middle of nowhere. They fuck about it.

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shining like gunmetal (rough snippet of my gabi/nico/kmag fic, under the cut. 2k words)

The sun sets late during the Italian summertime. Really, really late. 

Gabi puts a hand up to the side of his face to shield his eyes from the sun, which is positioned directly in front of the window to his left, the gold glare beating down his face. It was nice, at first, that little bit of extra time during the day. Now, it just means longer hours at the desk, kneading the dough of the crowds that make their way in and out. There’s no union for college students working at their parents' place for the summer, unfortunately. 

He doesn’t feel like putting in the minute effort of moving his rolling chair farther back, because that would mean leaving his very comfortable position; he settles for waiting on the sun to move along to the other side of the world. Not thinking about it at all is ideal, so he focuses on the hushed whirr of the air conditioning, the grain of the check-in desk, the key lime accents streaming across the lobby— anything else. 

Gabi hasn’t seen very many people today. Two checkouts, four or five check-ins. It’s a Monday night in the middle of a heatwave, so he doesn’t expect to see anyone else till midnight when more flights start pouring in. He leans back and shuts his eyes, wraps his arms around his chest. The chair squeaks slightly when he does. Sardinia is lovely, but not enough to warrant the thirty degrees it’s currently sweltering in. 

“… excuse me?”  

Gabi’s eyes shoot open. Shit. 

He flits his gaze up to the person speaking, their voice understandably impatient with the little kid behind the counter snoozing on shift. His customer service mouth starts moving before his brain even has a chance to corroborate it. 

“Ah, yeah, sorry—”

Blue eyes. Very blue. Intensely, like someone pouring the sea outside into someone’s sockets and letting it swirl around their pupils. Gabi snaps back into place when the man arches a brow at him, clearing his throat to feign some sort of professionalism. 

“Yes. Hello. Your name?” 

Smooth. What a genius. 

“Hülkenberg.” The man replies. His voice is deep and pretty, some kind of accent dripping off his tongue like honey. Gabi types his name into the search bar on the desktop. He’s probably German, maybe Austrian— or wherever they make drop-dead gorgeous blondes nowadays. 

The reservation loads onto his screen once he hits enter. A king room, up near the top of the hotel. 

“I’ve got you here for a king suite for one week, yes?” 

“Yes, that sounds right,” Mister Hulkenberg says, distantly. He’s staring down at his phone, waiting for something. 

Gabi doesn’t bother with feeling ignored, just rolls away to the back room and retrieves two heavy, white keycards as he asks for identification details. Gabi rattles off directions and details about the resort, like the spa package and restaurants and padel courts, while he double-checks the man’s identity. From the corner of his eye, he can see Mister Hulkenberg pocket his phone. 

Gabi types the last of his information into the computer before placing his ID and keycards on the table. “Here are your two keycards. If you lose them, come straight here with your ID. The elevators are to your left.”

“I didn’t know they made lobby boys like you.” 

Gabi blinks. “Sorry?” 

“Tall, big eyes, dark curly hair. Schiebe, I see why they have you at the front.” 

Caralho. Gabi blinks again, a fish out of water.

For all intents and purposes, it’s an extremely sleazy thing to say, to insinuate that Gabi is just a hot piece of ass to be ogled at. He even has a lazy smirk plastered over his face, his eyes a little sharper now that he’s looking Gabi in the face. Gabi should be offended— should have this man kicked out effective immediately for the sheer audacity— but instead, in the midst of skittering over all the logical options in his brain in a little bit of a frenzy and shuffling responses like cards, he somehow lands on: 

“Do you always flirt with boys less than twice your age, mister Hulkenberg?” 

He winks; it's cheesy and, unfortunately, flawless. “Only the ones I like.” 

“In love with me already, old man?” Gabi laughs, leaning over the table. “That’s a new record.”  

Mister Hulkenberg looks a little bit like the cat that got the cream, all smug and self-satisfied, like he’s watching a mouse get snapped into the maw of a trap. Under normal circumstances, but an older blonde perv that flirts shamelessly is not normal circumstances. There are always exceptions to be made, unfortunately for their Human Resources department. Seriously, who is Gabriel to not go for the pretty carrot dangling right in front of his face? 

He extends a hand over the desk. Gabi, probably very stupidly, takes it. 

“Nico.” 

Nico is smiling now. Gabi shakes his hand in kind. It feels too casual for what they’ve been doing up to this point. “Gabriel. My mates call me Gabi, but you can call me anytime, Nico.” 

Nico squeezes his hand and laughs again. Their eyes stay locked together, but the moment is broken by footsteps pattering along the marble floor just around the corner. He lets go of Nico’s hand instinctively. He’s not exactly sure how his parents would take it if they were told his son was holding hands with another man at the reception desk, red-faced and smiley.

The steps round the corner, and out emerges someone who is very fortunately not hotel staff. Gabi straightens himself out a little, smooths the wrinkles in his baggy white button-up to try and regain some semblance of decency. 

“Ah! Bärchen. I was just checking us in.” 

Nico reaches his arm out, and the other man takes the outstretched hand and pulls him closer, smacking a little peck on his lips when they’re chest to chest. Nico’s cheeks are painted a sweet red color, accentuated by the bright smile that persists even through the contact. Gabi watches this, his eyes darting back and forth and back again as it happens like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. 

It feels like a lightning bolt of anger striking hard and fast straight through his heart, leaving an ashen forest and tall, hot fires in his wake. It’s not jealousy, or envy, or anything of that sort— it's the unmistakable feeling of having been taken advantage of. 

It’s only now that he sees the wedding ring that’s basically welded to Nico’s ring finger, a shiny and polished gold thing that gleams like it’s laughing at him. If the anger was bad, then the shame that follows it is even more pungent. 

The two men are only just separated when Gabi clears his throat, and they look up from their hushed whispers and turn to look at him. Gabi levels Nico with an unimpressed glare, but can’t bring himself to meet the other man’s eyes. 

“Mister Hulkenberg, when were you going to introduce me?” Nico has the audacity to look a little bit surprised, and it makes it all the more bitter for Gabriel, flirting with a shameless prick like that. No matter how much he teases or pokes or prods, he’s never going to be the other man, the bait taken to justify infidelity.

Gabi runs a hand through his curls, shuts his eyes for a second to push the shame down. “I’m sure if your priorities included flirting, you could have waited for someone a little higher on the list to show up.

The two men exchange a series of glances, but Gabi finds himself too frustrated to decipher them. Gabi looks at Nico, who looks at his partner, whose eyes flick back and forth between the pair. He expects anger, some kind of blowup argument at worst, or at best a take-him-out-back type of situation. Not… the barely contained amusement on his face. His eyes crinkle against the smile painted on his face. Not closed, not disbelieving, but amused. At Gabi. Like he’s the funny one, not whatever the hell they’ve got going on.

“Kevin,” The man sticks out his hand, “Kevin Hulkenberg.” 

Hulkenberg? 

Gabi feels the deep furrow of his brow, his mouth opens a little as he brings his hand to Kevin’s, unthinking. A touch hysterical, too. With any luck, they can’t see it on his face. 

“Gabriel. Get your husband on a tighter leash, before I have to call someone.” He wants to say: whatever fantasy is going on here is not my problem, babaca, but refrains. There’s a little microphone on the camera in the top right corner of the adjacent wall, so he’s probably in enough trouble as is.

The handshake is firm, the man’s hand is a strange combination of soft and calloused– like someone’s been forcing him to care for himself after a long day’s work. Gabi tries to pull his hand away when Kevin stills, but he squeezes his hand, turns it over before he even has a chance to think of protesting, and brings it up to his lips.  

Gabi short-circuits. Makes a drawn on uhm noise the moment he realizes what it is Kevin is doing. The other man looks him in the eyes for the entire exchange, piercing blue right through his skull like a silver bullet. Gabi’s surprised steam isn’t coming out of his ears by the time Kevin gently sets his hand back down onto the table, where it sits limp. For the first time, in possibly his entire life, someone has shocked him into complete, utter silence. 

The last of the sun dives under the ocean. It moves on to make a new day somewhere else, and Gabi finds himself, Illogically, though nothing about the situation is logical, jealous of the sun. 

Nico looks at Gabi, waiting. Bated breath. His brain suddenly snaps back into place like a Rubik's Cube. His mouth runs reflexively, like pulling your hand away from a hot stove, blinking when something approaches your eye, talking incessantly when two men proposition you on the job. 

“You two are not… really looking for a third in the most strictly run resort on this island, are you?” 

Nico looks desperately like he wants to say something, that little smug smile plastered on his face begging to make a retort, but Kevin beats him there. 

“And if we were, smukke? What would you do?” He leans over the table a little bit more, tantalizing. Goading. 

Gabi slides the other key card across the table, making his face as unimpressed as he can manage; flattening his eyebrows and lowering the small, casual smile he always keeps on him. 

“Then I would say that you have five minutes to get your belongings up to your room before I call security on you for loitering, Mister Hulkenberg.” 

Professional mic drop. Kevin tips his head back as he laughs, and Nico stifles a chuckle behind a cough. Gabi plants himself back in the rolling chair, and it tips back a little under the weight. The two men grab at the handles of their respective suitcases, Kevin still sniggering a little as Nico cranes over and whispers something in his ear.  

Nico looks back up at the reception desk when Kevin mutters something back, and Gabi tries very hard to resist the urge to listen in. 

“And you’re sure you’re not interested?” Nico says lightly. 

Gabi scoffs, “Four minutes, mister Hulkenberg.” 

(He is interested. Very. They don’t have to know that.)

Their mingled laughter putters to and through the hall as they head for the elevators; it echoes a little bit around the empty lobby. It echoes more in Gabi's mind even after they’re gone. He hugs his arms around himself again, resting his neck on the top of the chair as he stares up at the pristine white ceiling. The bright white light licks burn marks into his corneas.

And if we were, smukke? What would you do?

It’s a good question, even if it was only rhetorical. What would he do, really? Besides hide behind a wall of banter. At the end of the day, Gabi likes simple pleasures. He enjoys low-stakes poker, lounging out at the pool, soaking in the sun on a warm day. Gabi doesn’t like flirting with older men in committed relationships. Didn’t like it, until now. If anything’s complicated, it’s dealing with whatever that shitshow was. What’s complicated is how easy everything felt. How it clicked together when Kevin joined in. That’s complicated. Dangerous, too, for someone like Gabi.

But, he reasons, it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple. Gabi can enjoy the easy things if he doesn’t take it too seriously, and doesn't let his fragile heart involve itself in matters of pleasure. It doesn’t mean anything if he can’t actually have it in the end. He’ll probably see them again tomorrow, when he’s working the padel courts outside. They strike him as the competitive types.  

It won’t last till the end of the week. A few days, maximum, before they get tired of the game and move on. 

It can be simple, so long as he lets it be.

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BROTHER I’VE JUST FINISHED MY WAY OF LIFE AND OHH MY GOD I DON’T THINK I’LL EVER BE NORMAL ABOUT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN

THE PET NAMES?? THE BACKGROUND GALEX?? THE WAY YOU WRITE EVERY CHARACTER SO ACCURATELY TO HOW THEY REALLY ARE?? THE WAY YOU WRITE THE A N X I E T Y (SORT OF)? YOU’RE SO TALENTED YOU’RE SUCH A GENIUS

(sorry this is so aggressive😭😭 legit a 13/10 for me)

You have nothing to apologize for!! I’m soo deeply flattered that you liked reading mwol as much as I liked writing it! :] The little background thing I had going on with Alex and George was very fun to explore, even if just for a few sentences at a time. They’re my little dolls that I make kiss sometimes

Oscar & his cutesy pet names for Logan were such a pleasure to write! Those two make me profoundly sick with joy so I had a really hard time not going completely overboard with it!! I’m glad with what I pulled together in the end though, considering I'm saving all my best cliche flirting for a Lando/Logan/Oscar wip. That one is seriously going to be a hallmark movie in F1 rpf form and if I put all my eggs in one basket I fear there’d be a worldwide shortage

This ask is sososo sweet!! I appreciate all the compliments so much, though unfortunately I barely know how to put it into words :,} I wish I could osmosis jones my gratitude to you!! muchhh love, xo

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wait a minute what do you mean gabico mafia fic?? 👀👀

it’s an idea I’ve had cooking for the coming months! I just asked myself ‘what if Gabi was insane at cards and accidentally poked the wrong bear.’

the card counter adjacent :] (but swap out the retired american servicemen for German mobsters)

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can u guys tell that the idea of a gabico mafia au has me by the neck

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my way of life | 14k, Oscar Piastri/Logan Sargeant

It’s hard to remember exactly when his… deficiency started popping up. Some days, Logan’s convinced he’s had it all his life; other days it feels new and foreign, like a tourist stopping by his brain and taking one too many pictures.

Either way, he made it work. It was fine, manageable with some supplemental planning and a ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ mentality.

Until now.

Or: how to go about hiding your extreme sensitivity to adrenaline from the love of your life.