Hi, could you write something where reader is an former f1 driver who is now retired and she had a great relationship with Daniel so she calls her hoping to find some comfort after all the situation and they start talking about retirement and she just let him be sad open io because Daniel trusts her and all that? Thanks
Note: why do you want to make me cry? Do you hate me or something?
You weren't expecting his call so soon. The race was still so recent, the feeling were fresh. But you picked it quick.
"Hi..." You heard his tired voice on the other side.
"Hi, Daniel."
"Are you still in Austin?"
"Yes, I am." You had been on the race, you had teamed up with Jenson long ago and interviews with the two of you were already a thing.
"Do you mind if we meet?"
"Of course, whenever you want"
"Can I come over?"
"I'll send you the hotel details."
"Do you want coffee?"
"Okay"
He took a while to arrive, but once the door opened you sighed. He looked defeated.
"Come in"
You caressed his back as he walked past you. He was quick finding a seat on the couch. You would ask how he was. It was obvious. So you just sat next to him, close enough to feel his warmth.
"I'm lost" He said.
You took a deep breath and observed him, thinking about his words and the best way to talk to him.
"You are not. You feel lost and it's okay. It's different."
He turned his face to look at you.
"I don't know if there is something else out there for me. I don't want to stop racing. It's all I've ever known"
You saw how tears filled his eyes.
"I'm tired of pretending it's okay"
"Then don't. Just let go. Rant, cry and do whatever you need. It's safe here"
What he did surprise you. He took his shoes off and lay on the sofa, resting his head on your lap. You tried to keep yourself calm.
"How is it?"
"Retirement?"
"Not racing. I hope it's not my time yet"
I smiled a bit. He was looking up at the ceiling plaster.
"Well, it's different. It's weird at first. The first few races are hard to watch. But then you get used to it. You end up understanding that there is a reason why you did it"
"They made me do it"
You let your fingers wander over his hair. You had always been close.
"Yes. But I know there is a reason, Dan. This two years..."
"I wanted it to work."
"Sometimes it doesn't. And it's fine because you can learn from it. YOu grow. And to be fair. I think you need a break from all of it. These two years had been hard, Danny. Maybe you need to stop for a bit before getting into another car."
"I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have plans, yes. I have things coming, but... I don't know..."
"C'mon, Daniel. I'm sure there are a million things you want to try... or return to. We have done so many things together, Dan. And I have watched No Brakes as if it was a Netflix show. I know you are not a boring guy."
He sniffed for the first time and then a tear fell.
"Oh Danny"
You gently cleaned it.
"There is so much in you. So many things to learn and discover. I know it's scary and it will be hard. But it's something we all end up going through. Maybe you are not in your best moment right now but you have been great, Daniel Ricciardo. You can still be."
You laid your hand on his chest and he grabbed it before pulling it to his lips and leaving a soft kiss on it.
He lays on that couch in his dorm room and lets the feeling of utter devastation eat him whole.
It starts in his stomach, subtle and trickling. It’s like the beginning of a conversation, fresh and unsettling. He ignores it, like the first buzzing of an insect at his ear, but it escalates. Slowly at first, then all at once it feels like he is consumed.
The feeling morphs into an all body sensation, he can feel it in the tips of his fingers and the strings of his heart; he aches.
Sometimes it happens out of no where. He can be watching tv, calm and content, eyes drooping with his body curled beneath a blanket, not a care in the world, and then he is suddenly hallow. The feeling is almost like dread, sinking, drowning. There is never a reason for it, it just is.
His eyes will burn with tears he refuses to shed, why am I crying? His hands will wrack with a barely-there tremor, and his body will curl inward, I’m fine. But he is not fine, nothing is fine, and nothing will ever be fine.
His body quakes like a storm, so many things happening at once. His mind is the wind, howling and chaotic, his throat is the sky, closed off and thundering, and his stomach is a tornado, twisted and spinning in knots.
Sometimes, the feeling will stay with him for minutes, sometimes for hours, and other times it stays for days. He pretends it doesn’t effect him, that it doesn’t change anything, but it does. It takes the life out of him.
When the twinge in his gut begins, it's like a darkness surrounds him, he loses his words, his mind blanks, and he can’t move. It's when he feels the most alone, but he can’t bare to be with anyone but himself.
It’s not a panic attack, he is not plagued by nightmares of the past or possible futures, he is simply overcome by emotion.
He can be all four seasons, but mostly he is winter, cold and dark and alone. The room around him disintegrates, the walls crumbling to ash, the furniture burning away, and he is left in the freezing cold and the buzzing of silence that is left over.
He lays on that couch in his dorm room and lets the feeling of utter devastation eat him whole.
If someone comes in, Neil doesn’t really notice, nor does he realize how much time has passed. People do come in though. At first it’s Matt, boisterous and fresh out of class. He is all smiley and asking Neil a question he doesn’t quite hear right. He nods nonetheless, even though it isn't a yes or no question. Matt doesn’t seem to mind, he grabs what he needs and he is gone just as quickly as he had arrived.
Neil sits in his silence for a while longer.
He falls asleep at some point, the anxious bubble in his stomach still present as he falls into the unreliable grasp of unconsciousness. He wakes hours later to find the tv still on, an old Exy game on mute instead of the mindless reality show he’d put on earlier. It takes him far longer than it should to realize that someone is sitting on the ground in front of the couch. It’s Kevin, of course, watching tv, too immersed in the game to notice Neil slide his legs off of the couch and shuffle drunkenly off towards the bedroom.
Neil is used to this feeling of emptiness, of dread and unease and anxiety, but it doesn't make him hate it any less.
Neil creeps into his room and crawls into bed, back facing the door for once and face towards the eerily darkened sky out of the window. Neil stares at the trees and wonders for a brief moment how far down the ground is from up here. He harshly flinches back at the thought, so out of the ordinary and startling that he pauses. He has wanted to survive for so long yet now he finds solace in the idea of plummeting.
He falls asleep, again, to the comforting thought of a mind filled with silence, and the whistle the wind would make as he flies.
He wakes up not long after, aware of a presence in the room. He doesn’t need to look to know who it is. Andrew is sitting at the end of his bed, feet just barely brushing against Neil’s, with a book in his lap.
Neil blinks his eyes open and meets the unwavering gaze Andrew pierces him with.
“What is wrong with you?” Andrew asks with his usual indifference, his face a casual mask of nothing. If Neil were anyone but himself he wouldn’t notice the way Andrew’s face is just slightly pinched around the mouth.
Neil stares back at Andrew, tired. “What isn’t wrong with me,” he sounds dejected to his own ears. Andrew keeps looking at him, his book entirely forgotten in his lap, and puts his hand almost casually on top of Neil’s foot.
“Do you want to be alone?” Neil knows Andrew is asking because he wants Neil to feel in control, but he knows Andrew has no intention of leaving.
Neil thinks about it, and discovers that even in this state, lonesome and unsteady, he doesn’t want to physically be alone. He thinks Andrew knows this already.
“Not really,” he whispers because the silence feels too dangerous to break entirely.
“Yes or no?”
Neil thinks about the pile of homework on his desk, and the time he’s losing on the court, but mostly he thinks about how he feels like crying for the first time in his life and how he just wants Andrew to sit here with him while he thinks about not wanting to exist for a little while.
“Yes.” He doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to, but he trusts Andrew won’t ask him something he can’t give.
Andrew moves slowly towards him, and carefully lays down beside him, back to the wall and face towards Neil.
“What do you need.” Andrew is looking at him like he always does, but he feels bare and exposed all of a sudden.
Neil moves ever so slightly, placing his left hand, palm up beside his face on the pillow. Andrew merely looks at it, and Neil thinks he won’t take it, that it was too much to ask. But then Andrew places his hand onto Neil’s, palm to palm.
Neil doesn’t feel any better than he did before, with Andrew here, he still feels hallow and empty and breakable, but Andrew makes him feel a little steadier and a little less lonely.
When he wakes up hours later, Andrew is still laying there beside him, his hand in his, watching him. His chest feels a little less tight.
It might be 4:24am and I have work in the morning but Tumblr has me feeling like I'm 16 during the summer thinking of what my future will be like when I get out of this small town
With a heavy sigh, he shut the door, staring at his hand on the handle. He wanted to run after her. He wanted to scream at her to stay, to be with him if only for tonight. Instead, he balled up his fist and gritted his teeth tightly. His fist hit the wall with a solid bang before his head dropped to the wall. “Fuck,” he grunted.
