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Pierre doesn’t dream often, but when he does, they’re more like nightmares.
And it’s at two this Paris morning he finds himself barrelling into a dirty yellow wall, pain shredding through his entire body, scraps of metal cutting his cheeks as they whip past when he jolts awake.
Immediately he scrambles for breath, sweat sticky on his hairline, and digs his hand into their cream bedsheets to ground himself. The sound of his jagged, shuddering breath feels like the only thing awake and alive in the entire apartment, the entirety of the universe.
“Pear?” there’s a distant mumbling beside him, and in an instant, there’s a hand cradling the scruff of his beard.
“You’re okay, Pierre, it’s not real,” the voice says, as his vision starts to clear, starts to see the practised concern etched on the unidentified face in front of him.
“Y-Yo-?” he can barely manage to stutter out. “ Yo-?”
There’s a kiss on his forehead, where not one second ago was cracked open against-
Against…
Against?
“Breathe in with me baby, it wasn’t real, ” Charles, it’s Charles who speaks and he sucks in a deep breath; lungs inflating - swelling wide against his ribcage like a balloon.
“That’s better,” Charles, yes, his fiance Charles, hums and slowly Pierre finds himself grasping their shared reality. “You’re doing so well, you’re okay.”
“I’m-” he tries again and his tongue still refuses to cooperate. “I’m… okay?”
“Yes,” he can see his lover’s face clearly now, those kaleidoscope eyes ever knowing. “You’re okay, Pierre.”
A word jumps out from between his cold lips. “P-Promise?”
Charles smiles. His eyes are bloodshot. “I promise.”
He says the words with so much certainty Pierre’s headache fades entirely.
“Sorry,” he dumbly apologises rubbing his forehead, fingers coming back damp. “Just a bad dream.”
“I know,” Charles slumps back into the pillows, letting go of his face.
This must have happened before, he realises.
“-We still have a few hours until we need to get up.”
He frowns at the radio clock - it showing the time and day.
“But it’s Monday?”
Charles snorts and lightly presses a hand on his chest, bringing him back into bed. “The cakes aren’t going to bake themselves, beautiful.”
And before he has time to think, wrapped in his lover’s arms, rapt with his lover’s love, he’s once again asleep.
It was a rookie mistake, really. Well not really because he’s not really a rookie anymore - having done this at this level for two years now, but it’s an unfortunate, completely unacceptable, avoidable accident.
He didn’t put enough baking soda in the triple-chocolate mix.
The cakes are deflated in their oven pans.
He’s binned it.
He curses and restarts the process. Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cacao powder, melted dark chocolate, melted milk chocolate, condensed sweetened cream, the correct amount of white powder.
The cake turns out perfect.
He hums a tune that feels familiar but can’t quite place as he adds the ganache, then the tempered chocolate domes for decor.
It sells not fifteen minutes after he places it in the window.
“I’m off!” he yells out as the clock strikes two-forty-five.
And then he’s back on the alleyways that swirl around Paris, feet moving on autopilot - brain exhausted from the day. He has to wake up at five for his job at the bakery. He’s lucky it’s only a fifteen-minute walk away because neither he nor Charles owns a car - not enough income for that - keeping up with rent is hard enough, he supposes.
It’s trickling down just slightly as he weaves around the final brick wall to reach their shared apartment complex. He frowns at the raindrops on his tan trench coat. He should have brought an umbrella.
He’s not sure what time Charles will get back from work. But it seems like only minutes when the other comes through the door, despite the clock reading five.
“Hey, Pear,” comes the gentle voice and as soon as he sees his fiance’s face, he smiles.
“Hey, you,” he accepts the kiss Charles leans in to give. “How was work?”
“Not bad,” the younger takes off his long black coat, hanging it on the door hooks. “A client wants an ‘aquatic theme’ for her living room. Like what even does that mean?”
“Don’t know,” he chuckles, clinging onto his lover’s hand. “Maybe add some photos of fish?”
His fiance laughs at his attempt at a joke.
They spend the night drinking a bottle of Merlot and watching the cheesy romances. It’s everything his younger self yearned for.
He’s loved Charles since their karting days.
He bakes twenty-two perfect chocolate eclairs. They’re Charles’ favourite.
Not one person buys one.
They’ll sell out tomorrow, he convinces himself.
At the end of his shift, he slides one into a napkin, to bring home for his lover.
But when he gets in the door, and unravels the brown napkin, nothing is inside.
They spend their evening watching a silly American TV show, probably aimed at a target audience younger than themselves, but hey, life’s too short to not do things, right?
It’s a stereotypical junkie fighting the hero because the hero took away his drugs. There’s an excessive use of profanities and the word ‘yo.’
Pierre snorts. “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘yo’ once in my entire life.”
Charles huffs in amusement and stands up off the couch to grab a bottle of Merlot. His hands shake as he opens it.
“Are you cold?” he looks away from the screen, ready to toss the blanket over him at Charles.
“No,” the other frowns. “Are you?”
“No,” he responds plainly. He isn’t cold actually - despite the fact they left the window open and it has started bucketing down with rain - something he hadn’t noticed till now.
Charles pours them both a glass. The other finishes his first and is halfway through another when the last crimson drops of wine fall past his own lips, his glass empty.
Their night, no matter how romantic doesn’t feel the same as it did yesterday. Pierre feels like he’s missing something; has forgotten it when really he should know.
Still, Charles kisses him passionately as their show and bottle comes to their joint ends and the thought goes out of the window immediately - floating out into the Paris Eve, the streets that they love, and that loves them back.
Wednesday is a warm morning. The air is fresh and crisp - the rain of last night lightening the streets and making the sunrise Pierre sees as he walks to work even more beautiful. God’s fingers extend through the cracks of the clouds - reaching out to him. He bathes, just briefly, in their warmth.
Done with chocolate-flavoured things after the mess of the cake, and the rejection of the eclairs, he spends his time making berry pastries. He crushes up raspberries, strawberries and pits the stone of cherries-
No, that’s not right, what is he forgetting?
He steps back from his station with a frown.
He needs to pit. The cherries cannot be crushed with their stones inside, that just wouldn’t work. The compote would he ruined.
He reaches for the blueberries and tries to shake off how wrong that feels.
He boils them down in the saucepan, adds sugar and pectin and when it reaches a perfect consistency, he feels relaxed again.
He maneuvers the mixture into tiny little pastry cups and places them in the oven.
When he goes to wash his hands, the red clings to his fingers - staining his cuticles that no amount of soap can scrub off.
He picks obsessively at his fingernails back at home, glaring at the obnoxious scarlet dying his skin.
“Pierre,” a pair of hands grasp his.
“Charles,” he looks up - feeling guilty - caught red-handed. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Don’t do this,” the other kisses at his fingertips. “Don’t injure yourself. I hate seeing you hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” he forces himself to look away from his hands - where they are still firmly held by his lover. Instead, he stares into Charles’ eyes. The apartment’s lighting makes them look grey today - it must be from the reflection of the rain clouds outside.
“Don’t apologise,” Charles doesn’t let him go. “Let’s shower, yes?”
Pierre smirks and the other cocks up an eyebrow - salacious - and even throws in a wink.
Their shower is steamy. After, he wipes his fingerprints off the glass. The time they sent under the water’s hot spray must have been the trick to clean them. Well, that or Charles’-
He stops that thought - creating a barrier in his mind. It feels evil to remember, a sin to re-live those precious intimate moments. Already they feel ever-present but fleeting - like the clings of a beautiful dream. Besides, he doesn’t need to hold them in the captives of his mind - he’s sure soon they will happen again. Their days, their times shared together always happen again - it’s a constant in Pierre’s life.
He finishes cleaning the shower glass, crouching down to get the last of the remains.
His left knee creaks in protest as he stands.
When he returns to the living room a question pops into his mind.
“Have you called Arthur yet?”
Charles hums - non-committal. “I will tomorrow. The time zone is too different to call now.”
“Today is a difficult day,” his mouth speaks before his brain catches up to him - as if already knowing the shapes and sounds to make without his direct thought. “It’ll be a hard weekend for him.”
That makes his lover look up to him. “I know, Pear. I’ll call him.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He blearily slaps his phone to shut off his alarm - hitting the old-school radio system is his several attempts and when the blares finally stop, he groans into his pillow. He doesn’t want to wake up. Not when rest is so comfortable, so peaceful.
But the cakes can’t bake themselves.
As he slides out of the bedsheets, out of Charles’ embrace, the other startles.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he eyes the time, the date, on their little bedside radio.
5:03a.m., Thursday, 6th of October.
“What are you doing up?” comes his fiance’s grumbled question.
Pierre frowns. “For work.”
Charles rubs at his eyes. “It’s your day off, remember?”
Pierre looks back at the radio’s clock. “Oh.”
“Are you okay, mon cheri?”
He sags back down onto the warm blankets. “I…”
“Does your head hurt?”
“No,” Pierre ducks away from the other’s concerned touch. “Nothing hurts, I just… feel like I’ve forgotten something. Like work.”
“You haven’t, beautiful,” Charles kisses his fingertips. “Do you want me to stay home today? I can call in sick and look after you.”
“No, no,” he shakes his head. “I’m not in pain, I’m okay-”
“I can reschedule my appointments-”
“No,” Pierre says, sure of himself. “I’m okay, Charles.”
The Monacan looks at him - eyes gentle but worried - grey.
Just like old times, he cocks out his pinky finger “...Promise?”
He nods, accepting the extended digit - linking it with his own. “Promise.”
When he wakes up again there’s no one next to him, the sun is peeking through the curtains and a cold cup of tea is on his bedside table.
10:24a.m. the radio’s digital clock reads.
He must have needed the sleep. Charles, as promised, is at work; probably researching aquatic-decor-related matters.
He gets out of bed and ignores that creak in his knee as he stands. His first day with the house all to himself. Well, the first day this week, he should say.
Even though he’s slept five hours more than the usual beginning of his day, he finds himself not really knowing how to spend his time.
He starts off by making a cup of tea, imagining how amazing the berry pastries would taste with it. He looks down at his fingertips.
Normal.
He opens the fridge to put the milk away and realises it is fully stocked - every fruit and vegetable without as much as a blemish. Huh. Charles must have gone grocery shopping recently. Strange. Charles hates grocery shopping.
After, he cleans some dishes including a coffee mug left behind by his fiance, and wipes down the countertops. For a small apartment above a fabric store, the counters are made with beautiful marble; lavish.
He thinks that when Charles first saw this apartment, when moving from Monaco, he must have convinced Pierre this was the perfect one, the perfect home. And really, it is. It's not the mansions they had dreamt about owning as kids, in fact, there are things that perhaps make their small space a teeny bit cluttered, but it’s cluttered by love. The entirety of them fit inside this apartment.
And the parts that make themselves whole that may not live inside these walls, or even on this Earth, still have intricacies and antiques that obtain them.
He finds one such item in a photo album
A smaller version of himself - one without facial hair or a sharp jawline - one softened by youth. He is perhaps fourteen or so in the photograph, Charles with his apple cheeks and disastrously long hair beside him. They’re not looking at the camera - they’re entranced by something out of frame, something that with time, he now can’t recall.
Their karting careers are immortalised in these pages; racetracks, and karts, and helmets span along years of their pictured lives. But one image gives him pause, one not linked to racing at all - just him and Charles standing side-by-side, twinning smiles gracing their lips. At the bottom is a year, reading in cursive ‘2007.’
The camera clicks, his mother’s doing, but Pierre doesn’t drop the arm he has swung around Charles’ back.
The younger however wriggles away with a playful grumble. “You scored sixteen places higher than me!”
“I know,” Pierre laughs; they already had this conversation on the drive home. Well, to his home at least - Charles is staying at his tonight for a sleepover. Herve will be able to pick him up tomorrow.
He watches the ten-year-old bounce up the steps of his home and feels that strange flutter in his heart when the other looks back at him - a pout on his face.
“What’s wrong?” he questions, because since his birthday when he turned eleven, he’s trying to be more mature.
That’s what his Mama tells him to be when Esteban says something stupid after a race. He said something stupid again today when he won the Championnat de France - standing up high on the podium. Pierre resigned to sixth and pretended that he didn’t care. He will just beat Esteban when they enter the Cadet categories next year, anyway.
Seemingly, his move to the higher category is what has Charles upset.
“You’re leaving me next year.”
“I won’t leave you, Charles,” he takes the steps two at a time and holds out his hand to his best friend. “You’ll be big enough for Cadets soon.”
“I hate waiting,” the other replies, petulant.
“I know,” Pierre repeats, and squeezes the paler hand when it finds his own.
“We’ll be in Formula One together,” the younger says wistfully, but with determination steely in his kaleidoscope eyes. “We’ll be World Champions together one day.”
“We will,” he agrees, resolute. “Together.”
“Promise?” Charles holds out his pinky with his other hand. “That we’ll be together forever?”
Pierre hooks his finger into the other’s smaller one. “I promise.”
His alarm brings him back to life.
Its beeps that sound more hurried and unpredictable than it did just yesterday, alert him to his surroundings: the warm bedsheets, the heat from Charles’ bare chest pressed against his back, the hot, heavy sensation of phlegm caught in the back of his throat.
He rolls over and hacks the disgusting fluid up, feeling it leak down his oesophagus and into his airways. A yellow mixed with red inconspicuous little puddly thing stares up at him when he’s done, resting innocently on the wooden floorboards.
“Pear? Pear?! Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes,” he bats away his lover’s hand. “Sorry for waking you. Again.”
“Do not stress,” Charles combats and Pierre relaxes into the calming feeling of lithe fingers threading through his hair. “Are you sick? You could stay home today.”
“I… I can’t do that,” his Mama raised him with integrity. Never once has he called in a faux sick-day in his life. Even on the days he felt terrible he still worked, which is strange thinking about it now. Who in their right mind shows up even when it’s the last thing they would want to do? Who has that kind of determination?
Maybe the him from years ago, when karting consumed everything. Maybe now, just pushing through the pain is habit.
He and Charles are both the same in that manner.
“I must go,” he presses a kiss to his lover’s lips, “I will see you tonight?”
“Of course,” Charles’ voice is deep from slumber, gentle yet corrosive.
He’s out front today.
“Bonjour, can I have one of the croissants, please?”
He smiles and passes it to her.
“Bonjour, can I have two of the berry pastries, please?”
Ah, the ones he made last shift. They should last for a while - they will expire on Sunday.
“Bonjour, can I have three of the spinach quiches, please?”
There aren’t many customers. In the times he is alone in the bakery he watches the television attached to the wall. It cycles through news stories and advertisements until something catches his eye.
“Yuki, how are you feeling racing at your home circuit today?” a reporter asks, pushing a microphone towards a shorter man, who smiles at her question.
“Well, today is not - uh - racing. Just practice. But, yes, I am excited,” the man, Yuki, responds.
Pierre frowns at the television. For some reason, the other looks familiar, brings back familiar emotions of elation, and humour, and something about karaoke machines, but… Pierre has never met him. He never raced with him, he knows that is absolute.
He’s still trying to place those disjointed memories, when a face, a person who he did race with, pops up on screen.
Esteban Ocon.
“Tell me you’re joking!” a palm shoves him into the back of a trailer and Pierre spins around, clenching his fist - remembering his mother’s words - to be mature.
And yet, at this current moment, at age seventeen, he has never felt more out of control in his entire life.
“Why the fuck would I joke about this?” he hisses back, glaring up at the other.
Esteban steps back as if he’s been slapped. “This - But - You’re… You’re leading the championship! You can’t just walk away-”
“Bonjour, can I have four of the meringues, please?”
Pierre snaps back to the present, where a woman on the other side of the glass counter looks expectantly back at him.
He shoves four in a bag and ignores the way his hands shake.
When he finally braves himself to look at the television, and see the face of the man he spent so much of his childhood battling, Esteban is gone. An advertisement for refrigerators is playing.
The world has moved on.
Saturday is the same dreariness it has been this entire week. The rain clouds outside make him feel off-kilter. This morning he finally manages to get up without waking Charles, a small victory he considers, as he quietly showers.
He’s first to get to the bakery - on the early shift. As he turns the sign to ‘open’ he reads the days on the back of it - the bakery is closed the entirety of Sundays. Looks like tomorrow is a rest day as well.
Until it starts all over again.
The first half of the day he creates - he bakes. Brownies. Jules’ favourite. It was Charles’ too before the crash, he used to look up to his godfather with such intensity and admiration Pierre could never really truly comprehend it.
The second half, he’s on the register. Few people trickle in. He tries turning on the TV; to see the results from Free Practice One and Two, but it doesn’t respond - just stays black.
Before he sees Charles, he hears him.
“Yes…” the muffled words come through the door. Trying to interrupt as little as possible, Pierre opens the front door and slinks down the hall into their apartment’s main studio area.
“As long as your strategy is right, you should be perfect,” Ah, he must finally be calling Arthur.
Pierre sets his bag on the counter, and in acknowledgement, Charles sends him a small wink.
“Yes, we will watch it tonight,” he hears his fiance reassure the other as he grabs an apple from the fridge - one perfectly round, but not perfectly red. Its colouring makes it green in places - not in a bad mouldy way - in a these are hybrid apples type way.
“-Alright, yes, talk soon, bises.”
“Quali?” he asks, taking a bite and Charles nods, sagging onto the couch.
“How’s the weather there?”
“Same as here,” his fiance nods over to the windows, where it is currently raining buckets. Pierre hadn’t even noticed. That creeping uneasiness returns. He sets his meal down.
Carefully he moves towards the other, placing a hand on the nape of his neck - feeling the other’s short, spiky hands under his palms. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” Charles lies.
Pierre dies. Just a little bit inside. He knows he does, because as he speaks his right eyebrow twitches - his tell.
“Promise?”
Charles throws him something between the laziest smile in the world and the most pent-up grimace. “I promise.”
Arthur is starting on the front row.
Both he and Charles jump up screaming in celebration as the red Ferrari passes the chequered line just as the last seconds of Q3 tick down to zero.
“Yes!” Pierre cheers, speaking into his lover’s neck, as they embrace, spirits high.
“Ah!” Charles pulls away first. “It’s like this! He will do well tomorrow then, certainly.”
Pierre snickers at the use of that iconic phrase, usually said in defeat, but this time proclaimed in joy. As Charles leaves to call Lorenzo, he stays behind and scans the names of the other drivers on the grid. Some he grew up with, but most he didn’t.
Carlos, Arthur’s teammate, is just one place behind him. Esteban has done well getting himself into fifth, but Yuki, the Japanese driver he saw on TV has qualified a measly seventeenth; his other Alpha Tauri teammate Pierre didn’t catch the name of is four grid squares ahead.
“One-hundredth of a second,” Charles is back from his call, staring at his younger brother’s face as it pops up on the screen. “He would be on pole if he was just one-hundredth of a second faster. That could have changed the whole outcome of the race tomorrow.”
Pierre frowns at the incorrect grammar, but then he sees that bottle of Merlot rested on the mantle, beside the little bell. It’s three-quarters of the way empty. He has no idea if Charles even left the house today.
But, he won’t push it. Not today, not tomorrow, not this weekend. Perhaps on Monday, he can mention the drinking. He prays to God above that it won’t become an issue if it isn’t one already.
“One-hundredth of a second can change everything,” he replies, morosely and out of his periphery he sees Charles turn towards him, something akin to guarded horror on his otherwise beautiful features.
“...What are you saying, Pierre?”
Head split. Red. Screams. Anguish. Lights.
“Nothing,” he stands, feeling ill. “I’m going to bed. Congratulate Arthur for me.”
The bed is too quiet without Charles in it.
It’s pouring outside, yet he can’t hear it. He can’t hear anything.
He can see the sliver of amber light under the door. He wonders what his fiance is doing out there if he’s polished off the bottle yet and reached for another.
He scrolls on his phone. Most of his recommended feed is recipes to try, or Formula One-related. He doesn’t want to think of either of those things right now.
So, he extends a hand in the darkness and turns on the radio.
It’s static noise, nothing coming through - nothing like the classical music he imagined. He switches frequencies, but nothing again. Just white noise.
But, that’s better than his thoughts.
So as the crackle of the incomprehensible radio lulls him into sleep he swears, swears he hears a faint distant call through the static.
“Pierre? Are you okay?... Pi…? …rre?! Ca… you hear…?... Oh, God.”
He wakes up alone.
No alarm, no Charles, nothing.
Headache forming, he sits up in bed, rubbing at his face. It feels… sticky? Wet? He pulls his hand away and just like on Wednesday, he finds crimson. But not just on his fingertips - it’s - it’s running down his whole hand, splattering onto the cream bedsheets and oh fuck, oh fuck, oh-
“-Fuck!”
His knee has given out and he’s on the hardwood floor. But it’s not him that yells out.
“Pear?!” there’s a shake of his shoulder he can barely feel.
He stares down at the ground where he’s fallen. There is no red to take sight of.
“I’m okay,” he accepts Charles’ hand who pulls him up to his feet. “Sorry-”
“Don’t apologise!” his fiance has that same intensity in his eyes that he used to have daily - back when they were teenagers rising through the ranks with a common dream. Over the years, since they left the sport behind, and watched people under them rise to the ranks that they once held so dear, that intensity has faded. It brightens up Charles’ eyes. Pierre realises he’s missed it, even if he feels deep down a week ago it was there.
“I-” the other starts, still clasping onto his hand. “I should apologise, mon cheri. I… feel yesterday I did something that was not right.”
Over such a small miscommunication, Charles’ guilt seems to burn as bright as the sun, as noxious as poison.
On that thought, Pierre looks towards the kitchen, where the bins lie. The recycling one is empty. No Merlot bottles to speak of.
“It’s okay,” he says but feels like he should also be the one saying sorry.
Charles looks at him, with such anticipation that his heart feels like it got impaled. “We’re okay.”
Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if he didn’t drop out of Formula Renault 3.5 Championship three races until the final. He’d been leading. Esteban had been in 22nd.
But he made his decision. It was either racing or Charles - he couldn’t have both.
He chose his love.
Esteban had been furious that he left. Charles had kissed him for the first time.
Pierre still remembers the salt. From his sweat when he had no time to shower after the race - racing to Charles instead of the chequered flag. From Charles’ tears when they got the news.
The news that Jules had crashed. The news that is was bad.
The news that both his and Charles’ lives had gone into a headspin - neither of them knew where they’d end up.
And they’d ended up here, in this Paris three-room apartment atop a fabric shop.
His stomach doesn’t rumble but he goes to the fridge anyway.
When he opens the fridge door, immediately he spies an apple. Half green, half red, blemished, imperfect.
The one he had yesterday. The one he had taken one bite off, before leaving it on the counter.
It’s back in the fridge.
Skin unbroken.
Untouched.
When he flicks on the TV, the news cycle starts with the weather forecast.
“Bonjour, we are expecting a day full of bright sunny blue skies-“
Pierre looks out the window.
It’s raining.
Charles leaves to go buy a bottle of wine to share for the race. Tangerine light floods the room; the sunset would be beautiful if he cared enough to watch it.
Pierre’s hand hovers over a contact name.
‘Arthur Leclerc.’
He scrolls down further.
‘Esteban Ocon.’
Glancing over to the door, just waiting for it to burst open, his curious, confused riflings to be burst open, exposed to the very man that went out for wine three hours ago and hasn’t come back.
His head kills.
He hits ‘call.’
Esteban sounds as surprised as he is that he actually has gone through with this. “Gasly?”
“Ocon,” he states. The name feels strange coming out of his mouth, but not as unfamiliar as he supposed it would.
The Frenchman doesn’t respond. Pierre can hear the bustling of people in the background. The race starts in three hours; at eleven p.m. Paris time. Esteban would be at the paddock already; in preparation.
“…Did you call for a reason? I have shit to do. I’m sure you are the same.”
“Um,” he starts, pacing the seven steps from wall-to-wall. “You know that day I left, and you asked me why I was ‘joking about this?’ What… What were we fighting about?"
The phone line is silent for a few more seconds. “Pierre, what the fuck is going on? Are you like - having a mental break? I’m sure Tost doesn’t have time for this bullshit and neither do I.”
“It's important,” Pierre feels like he’s losing him. “In Formula Renault. Three-point-five.”
“Pierre I know we don’t talk much, but are you genuinely okay? Just gimmie five, I can come over-”
“Just answer,” he demands, it more like a plead, gripping his head as it pounds. “Please.”
“A sandwich.”
What?
“A… A sandwich?”
“Yes, Pierre it’s stupid I know, everyone’s told me. We threw out our friendship over a baguette because you knew I hate tomatoes but you ate the one without it anyway-”
“And I… walked out?”
“Yeah, you walked away.”
“But did I walk out?”
“Of the trailer park?”
“No-“ Pierre snaps, hearing the tell-tale sound of keys jingling - metal clanging together-
“-Did I quit?”
Silence.
“N-No? But everyone was on your ass next race about how you missed the podium… Pierre, we have interviews in ten, what the fuck is going on? Are you with Yu-”
“Charles,” he clicks the phone dead.
“Hey baby,” his fiance croons, a brown paper bag in his hands and a stumble in his walk. “Are you okay? Why are you sitting on the ground?”
He looks out the window. Drizzle spatters across the glass, illuminated by the night.
“I…” he starts. “You-“
“The race starts in thirty minutes,” Charles hums, grabbing two glasses. “They’ll be finishing up the drivers' parade now.”
If Esteban is in the drivers' parade how did he answer his phone?
The drivers' parade is lacklustre. The stands are full of ponchos and umbrellas. Together they watch the drivers talk briefly into microphones and cheer when Arthur appears on the television.
The race start is delayed. Instead of two, it’s two-forty-five. In Paris time, eleven forty-five. Charles gets another bottle. Pierre’s made sure to keep up one-for-one with the other; he wonders why he doesn’t feel the headrush of liquor this deep in.
Arthur nails it off the start. For a few beautiful moments, he’s ahead of Max Verstappen, but the Red Bull creeps around the outside, effectively pushing the other out of the drier, stable racing line.
His teammate on the other hand has not had the same fortune of staying on track. By the end of lap one, Carlos, along with many others have slid off track - into barriers or gravel, effectively ruining their races.
“Arthur’s doing well,” he says because it’s true, and he has nothing else to say.
“He is,” Charles hums softly.
Pierre looks over at him. The television light makes his face look green. His hands are clasped around his glass, but he can see the crimson wine sloshing around in it, just slightly.
He realises then, that Charles is afraid.
Jules crashed at this exact race, under these exact conditions.
“Ah there’s a thing!” someone’s loud radio makes him snap back to the screen.
The graphic in the corner shows it’s Yuki Tsunoda.
“-What the hell is that!?”
Pierre almost snorts at the excessive profanities covered by the high-pitched beeps to redact them. Who knew a guy so small could have a voice so loud?
But… Pierre feels like this is something he does know, has heard, and yet…
He doesn’t know how.
Everything feels… weird.
“...Charles?”
“Yes, baby?” Charles cocks him a grin, and… winks.
Charles fucking winks.
Charles… can’t wink.
This isn’t real.
“Red flag, red flag,” one of the commentators announces and the television cuts to a crowd shot.
“Pit this lap,” a voice commands. “Pierre you have to pit to remove the barrier-”
“-We - uh - have an incident on track,” the crowd look horrified. It cuts to a shot of the Sukuza skyline.
“Double yellow flags, Pierre, speed up to catch the back of the train-"
“An Alpha Tauri has gone off track…” he feels Charles tense. “Crashed into the recovery vehicle sent for Carlos’ car.”
“Red flag Pierre, slow-"
“That’s number twenty-two, Yuki Tsunoda-” he can't breathe.
“Pierre? Are you okay?... Pi…? …rre?! Ca… you hear…?... Oh, God.”
"-And we are waiting on information… that didn’t look good, Crofty.”
“No,” David Croft’s voice remains a solemn professional tone but is tinged with knowing. “Not one bit.”
Whenever he’s at the bakery there’s no other worker with him. When people do talk to him they’re strange, methodic, numerical, repetitive. He can’t feel temperature; it’s lashing down outside and they have no heating and yet he can’t feel the cold.
He and Charles have never eaten once. Not this entire week, barring that one bite of apple, which vanished, like the chocolate eclair.
He doesn’t feel hunger.
In fact, he can’t even feel the oxygen enter his lungs when he breathes.
Because he’s not breathing.
He never left the track that day. He never kissed Charles.
He never quit karting. Charles didn’t either.
He drove for Alpha Tauri; Yuki was his teammate.
He's barrelling into a dirty yellow wall, nay, a tractor, pain shredding through his entire body, scraps of metal cutting his cheeks as they whip past. Head split. Red. Screams. Anguish. Lights.
Metal impales his heart.
Pierre is dead.
“You…” he turns to his fiance, who isn’t his fiance, who isn’t his lover, who isn’t real.
He is Charles Leclerc Formula One driver for Ferrari, multiple race winner, his lifelong best friend. But, still, this isn’t real.
“Pear?” the younger turns to him, grey eyes that flash with something terrifying. Guilt. Realisation. Recognition. “…Are you okay?”
“Yo-“ he starts, before he stops, his own realisation appearing in his broken, broken brain. He’s never said ‘yo’ in his life.
That first morning, when he awoke, he wasn’t saying ‘yo.’
He was saying ‘you.’
“Charles,” his own voice wobbles, his mind races, his fears realised. “This isn’t real.”
The Monacan laughs - face appearing bewildering but eyes screaming defeat. “What? Pierre, what are you talking about?”
“I didn’t leave karting after Jules died,” he stands. “You didn’t either - we had a conversation about it, but we decided to keep racing together.”
“You should get some rest,” there’s the feeling of a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Pierre shakes his head, and tries to shake it off.
It grips tighter.
“Let go of me,” he doesn’t sound like himself, and Charles doesn’t sound like himself either when he yells back-
“I can’t!” the younger’s grasp is a snare, like this apartment is a cell, like this Paris is an illusion. “I can’t let you go, Pear-“
“What did you do?” his voice trembles, like Charles' hands, like Charles’ eyes. “What have you done?”
A helicopter greets the dirt.
Pierre finally wriggles out of his claw-tight grip.
“Charles what have you done?!” he roars, spinning around to look at the other. “Yuki is - fuck! Yuki is dead!”
“He isn’t!” those pleading hands grasp the sides of his face. “He isn’t - he’s okay, and - and y-you’re okay, Pierre you’re okay-“
“Get the fuck off me,” he spits and finally Charles steps back. “I crashed into that tractor. Just - Just like Jules did.”
Pain flashes in Charles’ eyes.
“You’re grieving,” he scrambles for understanding, puzzle pieces slotting together, as he eyes the Merlot bottle. “And - And that’s why you drink, and this isn’t real - you’ve - you’ve made it all up to cope or something because I’m gone-“
“You’re not gone,” Charles says, neurotic, and that’s when Pierre realises.
Charles isn’t saying all this to convince him.
He’s saying this to convince himself.
“You’re right here,” Charles paces, and grabs the Merlot bottle. “It’s like this. We’re together here-“
His eyes steel. “-We can be together like this, Pierre.”
He doesn’t recognise the other in front of him. Consumed by grief, and guilt. The man he loves is no longer there.
Charles’ eyes are that steely, despondent grey.
Pierre shakes his head, realising what he has to do.
“We aren’t,” instead of backing away, he steps close - this time being the one to cradle Charles’ hands within his own bloodstained ones. “I’m sorry, I know how hard this must be for you, first with Jules, then with me, but I’m not real.”
“You are,” tears stream down his lover’s face, because that’s what they are, right? A Shakespearian tragedy. A romance kept behind closed doors, never to rear its head, kept in purgatory parallels and faux prosperity for perpetuity.
And now gone.
Snatched away.
In one-hundredth of a second.
“I’m not,” sorrow clings to the back of his throat. “I’m so sorry, Charles-“
“-D-Don’t apologise-“
“You have to do this alone now, in the real world. We’re Formula One drivers, we always will be - not a baker and designer in Paris, Charles, please-“
Charles doesn’t submit. “Here, we can be together forever.”
A sob rips from his throat, not by his own volition, at seeing the person he loves, loved most in such a world of pain. “There is no here. This is - This is your brain or something, Charles. Or - Or an alternate reality you’ve created in your mind to deal with everything.”
“No,” Charles' eyes are as bloodshot red as the Merlot, as Pierre’s hands. “We will be together forever.”
“I know what this is now,” he pleads, shaking his head, trying to get the other out of his own, his dream life, his fantasies. “I know the truth, Charles.”
“You promised me,” the other’s voice goes high in desperation, in loss. “When we were kids, you promised me we’d be together forever.”
“I’m so sorry,” he runs his thumb over the other’s knuckles - pale and green under these lights. “This can’t go on forever Charles. You have to return to real life.”
Charles drops his hands.
Nothing.
“Charles?”
The Monacan takes a swig.
And that’s when Pierre remembers.
The guilt.
If the red Ferrari of number sixteen had been the one to crash in lap one, shatter the piece of advertisement panel that got caught in his front wing, caused him to pit, and bring out the safety car that eventually took Pierre’s life, the guilt would be understandable.
But even in this fictitious creation, even in the honest reality, it had been Carlos’ number fifty-five that had spun off track.
Charles was never involved.
And yet, the man in front of him is riddled with guilt.
His heart, which isn’t even beating, quickens, as trepidation creeps through his veins. “Charles?”
At the repeated call of his name, the other looks at him, now nothing in his eyes at all. “You promised. Forever.”
If this were all fake, despite the very real feeling of Pierre being alive, and the very real feeling of Charles, the man in front of him, how would he know how to get to the bakery? How would he know what streets to turn down? How would he know how to bake a cake, bake pastries with the correct technique, and correct temperature?
Unless…
“Charles,” he whispers, fear settling into his gut. “How many times have you done this?”
The other shakes his head, lost, sorrowful, delusional, afraid.
But then, when he looks up and finally meets Pierre’s eyes, there’s that harsh glimpse of something that in this twisted world Pierre had thought was gone.
Determination.
Just like the old days when they were kids in karts.
Just like last week before they were set to get on the rainy Suzuka track, for the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix.
Pierre digs his teeth into his bottom lip, now, for the first time, feeling afraid of the man in front of him. He tastes the iron tang of blood, that has been dripping down his forehead, from the crack in his skull, this entire time.
“How many times have you made me do this?”
“When we wake up tomorrow, everything will be okay again-“
“No, Charles!” he’s yelling again, voice echoing in this captivity, his cell that he thought it was Charles’ disillusioned grief that had trapped him in, but in fact was Charles himself. “How many times have you made me live like this?! As a fucking baker in the pits on an alleyway?”
“I love you, Pierre,” the other actually sounds sympathetic.
Sympathetic from keeping him from heaven, from Jules, from peace, from Anthoine.
Confined to this loop, this purgatory, that only the love of his life can break, can save him from but isn’t willing to do so.
“No,” he stumbles back, begging. “ Non, non, non, non, Charles, please don’t do this-“
“I’m sorry-“
“I’ll remember!” he decides, panic electrifying his nerves. “I’ll remember it Charles, I know it’s you. I’ll remember it’s you, I’ll know it’s you-“
The clock ticks down. Midnight is approaching.
Time is running out.
“Please Charles, I love you,” he begs. “Don’t do this to me, you have to let me go-“
“I can’t,” Charles’ voice breaks, but his eyes remain that steely, metallic grey. Like metal.
Unbreakable.
Pierre’s heart, on the other hand, already once impaled by debris, breaks once more.
His vision dims. Darkness takes over.
“I’ll never forgive you,” he promises.
Charles presses a kiss to his dying lips.
You.
You.
You.
“Y-Yo-?” he jolts up, sticky sheets clinging to his frame and can barely manage to stutter out. “ Yo-?”
There’s a kiss on his forehead, where not one second ago was cracked open against-
Against…
Against?
“Breathe in with me baby, it wasn’t real, ” Charles, it’s Charles who speaks and he sucks in a deep breath; lungs inflating - swelling wide against his ribcage like a balloon.
“That’s better,” Charles, yes, his fiance Charles, hums and slowly Pierre finds himself grasping their shared reality. “You’re doing so well, you’re okay.”
“I’m-” he tries again and his tongue still refuses to cooperate. “I’m… okay?”
“Yes,” he can see his lover’s face clearly now, those kaleidoscope eyes ever knowing. “You’re okay, Pierre.”
A word jumps out from between his cold lips. “P-Promise?”
Charles smiles. His eyes are bloodshot. “I promise.”