After Daniel woke up from surgery he flagged down the first nurse he saw. It mostly had gone well was what she said. Some minor complications with his blood. The surgeons had had to replace his heart.
“My heart?” Daniel said.
“Only part of it,” the nurse reassured.
Only part. The nurse went off and Daniel stayed. He couldn’t think about anything; thoughts scattered and ran from him like cockroaches into corners when you turned on the light. A complaint rose up in his mouth but he swallowed it back down. Spit and the taste of tap water. It was part of his contract that Red Bull could do whatever was necessary to make him a better racer. He could have the contract amended but then Helmut would just throw him out. There were ten thousand boys slavering at a shadow of a chance at the life Daniel possessed, ten thousand boys with their fingers shoved under his bedroom door. Boys who would burn alive to sit in the car.
It wasn’t the whole thing, Daniel told himself, wiping his eyes on a corner of the bedsheet. He was, in part, still there.
Lando came in with his shirt off for some reason, so Daniel was treated to the sight of the whole upgraded kit.
“New goodies,” he said, and sounded transparently jealous even to himself. The scarring wasn’t bad at all for one month post-op. He slid his hands over his spine as Lando yelped and twisted, whinging about Daniel’s cold fingers.
Nico became world champion and then two years later he died. His kidney collapsed went one rumor Daniel had heard. The machine parts of him failed, or the human parts did. The two sides stopped talking, and it killed him.
Apparently Mercedes had tried to reclaim their equipment after, but the Rosbergs roundly denied them, dragged it up to the press and gave them hell. Well, no team made that mistake again. The next year Daniel’s contract was quietly amended with a line about “minimizing material losses”. His funeral, when it came, would be closed casket.
Lewis didn’t attend Nico’s service, which Daniel knew for a fact, because there had been a Grand Prix scheduled for the same day. He’d placed P6, not a great showing for him. He was different, after. He and Nico had always been their own system, two binary stars, and it was like lacking his gravity Lewis grew ever more distant, flew higher and further. He emitted a hard light and was difficult to look directly at. But sometimes you would catch a crack, glancing up at you if you walked suddenly into a room where he was sitting. The expression in his eyes then tore at Daniel. Like he was wandering around with flowers, still searching for the funeral home door.
Then Oscar walked in to complain that Lando was late to something or other. He ignored Daniel completely, so Daniel decided to say something cunty to him.
He looked at Piastri’s white chest and thought about making a comment about snowblindness, but he didn’t know him that well and worried it would come off mean-mean rather than fun and flirtily, mean.
Instead he raised an eyebrow and glanced meaningfully between him and Lando’s bared torsos until he’d made a point. “What were you two up to?” he said.
This meaningless and not very clever comment, went off like a nuke in the cramped briefing room. Piastri froze over like a pond, only his blotches creeping pinkly about, while Lando squeaked, “Haha”, but, like, not like he was laughing. Just repeating the Ha noise twice in a row.
Okay. Fucking weird. “Alrighty then,” said Daniel, and retreated to where Max was getting powered up via his butthole or whatever.
Liguria, 2003. a bonus from constantly on fire, for @overkeehl and @vamphorica :)
"Matt came over and dripped water on Mello, cutting his nap off mid-sentence."
He took over most of the towel and promptly fell asleep.
Mello put on his sunglasses, and then he was free to look at anything.
Matt's legs were wet, the hair plastered down. He had gotten bushy and tall over the last summer, overgrown like a hedge. His body took up more space and stank more and was generally obtrusive in various ways. Sometimes Mello caught a whiff off his trainers which would curl your toenails right up.
Wavy red hair. The water had darkened the strands and made them more visible than usual. They dipped and sworled like moss under a river. It gave Mello the feeling he'd fall in if he looked for too long, like Matt was concealed beneath like an animal in a tidepool, and he had to look hard for him. The hair would be soft and wet to the touch, and then crunchy and hard later, when it stood up.
"Is it gross?"
Matt wasn't sleeping. "What?"
"Like should I shave?"
"I don't know. I don't care."
"I don't think girls like it," Matt said mournfully.
Mello reached around him and took a big bite of watermelon, so that he could mix it with his hateful thoughts and swallow them down. "You look like a yeti," he said.
MATT: so the goth chick aldis cashier was going proper mental today. fullon crying at the checkout mascara running the whole works
MATT: oh i should explain the goth chick aldis cashier is like a goth chick who works the checkout at the aldis
MATT: you know the one
MATT: just down chilbolton the 3 blocks. that we used to always go to
MATT: anyway all to say shes the highlight of my week
MATT: big fat titties done up in leather. like watermelons doing bdsm
MATT: and the blonde bob cut even the same but i have to say shes working it a lot better than you do
MATT: like giving major dominatrix energy
MATT: where you mainly just looked like a twat
MATT: might have to start dating her ;)
MATT: she could give me a handie anyday in those gloves like jeessus!
MATT: *did
MATT: *ever did
MATT: maybe you’ve changed your hair by now
MATT: christ i hope so
MATT: oh thanks for asking mello i was buying some rolling papers and kinder maxi
MATT: and condoms :) magnum
MATT: since you left mostly nothing has changed. same room same kids same shit life. i got some new bedsheets and a recreational drug habit but its nothing to write home about as they say
MATT: wonder where you are now. in winchester it’s midnight and cloudy out
MATT: you know i could find out (literally. anytime) but i am CHOOSING not to :)
MATT: because actually i totally agree with the decision you made to be independent and free and not be total freaks about one another and not lick each others ears after maths and be each others only friends and exhibit worrying faggot behavior and be alienated and hate everyone
MATT: like i get it
MATT: we should grow up
MATT: but like just fyi you were my first hj and i was yours
MATT: and that won’t change no matter how many people you sleep with (dont doubt its many at this point)
MATT: handjob brotherhood 4 life :)
MATT: no gcac (goth chick etc) today. devestated
MATT: i did heroin about it and i feel muchh better
MATT: graduated today. did heroin about it. didn’t feel much
MATT: woowwww wasted my whole fickingg sumerrrr
MATT: im so high rnn
MATT: went back to chilbolton aldis for the first time in a long time
MATT: like literally took the train up from london
MATT: i was thinking if goth chick was there id ask her out proper but no cigar. just a bunch of fucking twelve year olds from the house. so fuckin depressing. i didnt even buy anything just fucked off and took the train straight back
MATT: i was thinking
MATT: about how you kind of ruined my life
MATT: like i am pretty confident i wouldve turned out normal if i never met you. i wouldnt even be popping a semi over goth chick i would just be like wow what a freak and marry a girl in a tshirt. id move to california and do a phd at stanford and invent an algorithm that tells you if your dog is sick and make a million dollars and retire age thirty six off dog cancer money
MATT: like my life would be pretty good. boring af but kind of nice
MATT: compared to my current situation
MATT: which is like.. living in this rundown building post-apocalypse style, chilling with ten thousand roaches, ceiling blasted open wind screaming through asbestos coming down like snow
MATT: metaphorically
MATT: metaphorically camped in an abandoned ruined fucked fucked fucked falling down building that could cave in and kill me any time literally every other person has run away screaming from but i cant leave
MATT: but i cant leave
MATT: because im afraid youll come back and missm e
MATT: im so tired of feeling so stuck all the time :((
MATT: it would honestly be easier for me if you died
MATT: inn sorry dudbt mean thyt
MATT: in this metaphor youre the nuke
MATT: idk
MATT: basically just trying to survive
MATT: and not even managing that
[MATT is offline.]
[MELLO is online.]
MELLO: You know I can see you typing all the time, Matt.
MELLO: + presumably backspacing since this whole fucking conversation is blank
(from this wip game) max/kelly/daniel. yacht. cuckolding fetish :)
It turned out twelve ignominious years of earnings in Formula 1 still didn’t pay well enough to get you out of arranging your own threesome.
Obviously, even one single season in Formula 1 could purchase many threesomes with many parties of individuals. But since the other individuals were, in Daniel’s case, Max, Kelly—their millions and millions and millions came to nothing.
Max started a group thread on WhatsApp but Kelly said WhatsApp wasn’t secure so they got on Telegram instead. And then it turned out even on Telegram she and Max had made their accounts using pseudonyms, whereas Daniel just named himself Daniel, so that he was made to feel like a fucking bozo talking with “Catherine” and “James”.
For a trio where two of the people were, let’s face it, basically unemployed, their schedules were proving impossible to align. Kelly did something clever where she overlayed their calendars but the results looked like the Rosetta Stone. Discouraging. The chat jerked on in fits and starts like an engine on its last legs. Either Max was slow to respond, or Daniel was.
Finally, Kelly had had enough. She suggested sweetly they do a “Zoom call”, and then him and Max went Noo Noo, and Kelly canceled something and Daniel canceled something and Max dug a hole in his schedule like a badger digging in the garden for voles.
Daniel stood on a dock on the harbour, and a little boat came and took him to Max’s big boat, out in the sea.
