Archive of Our Own

Bronya first meets Seele in an adrenaline-soaked city on one of those nights—the ones where the rain falls to the ground like knives, cutting to the bone. The streets are lit in garish neon fluorescence. The outside of the bar smells like bitter tobacco so she breathes through her mouth and tastes leather and the sharp tang of gasoline.

It’s a poorly lit bar. The late time doesn’t stop it from being packed like a can of sardines, however, every inch of the space filled with moving bodies and sleek plastic. All of the locals know of this place—and Bronya, who is a local but hardly the type to frequent such an establishment, only knows of it because of Gepard.

Somebody stumbles in front of her path even though she’s hardly three paces in, and she wrinkles her nose at the sharp smell of alcohol that follows soon after, taking a ginger step to the right. Scanning the rest of the room, she pinpoints the telltale gleam of Gepard’s blond hair by the counter.

“Hello,” she says finally, sliding into the empty space next to him. The bar seats are all dingy, ripped-up leather, and the lights flicker once.

Gepard straightens up. “Bronya!” he says in greeting, flashing her the big smile that she’s gotten accustomed to seeing in the past season. They both race on the same team for Belobog, and she’s convinced that his recruitment clinched the deal on their victory. “Serval was just here but she wandered somewhere around back just before you arrived.”

“I’ll just stay long enough to say hi,” Bronya says. She smiles briefly at the other bartender whom she has gotten more acquainted with ever since Gepard began dragging her here on their off days. “Was she excited?”

“More than I was, actually,” Gepard remarks dryly, and Bronya laughs. Serval is Gepard’s older (and enthusiastic) sister; a musician by day and bartender by night. She’s the entire reason Bronya and Gepard even take the time to visit this place.

“Of course she was.” Bronya settles back into the bar stool when the television catches her eye. “Hey, they’re playing the Grand Prix from two days ago.”

“Hmm?” Gepard turns to look in the corner as well. “That has to be Serval’s doing.”

Bronya laughs, watching the cars zip past the camera on the wall. Even though she can’t hear the sportscaster over the din of the bar, she can almost imagine the narration in her head. “She’s proud of you.”

“Prouder of you, more likely,” Gepard says. “She wouldn’t stop talking about how proud she was of you when I called to tell her about my win.” He sighs. “Not that it’s out of the ordinary. Not many can compare to Bronya Rand.” The person on Bronya’s other side shifts—the sound of their leather outfit catches her attention for a millisecond before she returns to Gepard.

“That name means a lot less off the track,” Bronya replies sardonically. “Don’t sell yourself so short, Gepard.”

“Yeah, don’t sell yourself so short,” a voice says, and then Serval slides in front of them, grinning. “Bronya! You made it! Did you happen to see what I specifically requested they play on the television?”

“That I did,” Bronya says, laughing a little bit. She can admit to herself that it’s nice to take a break and visit even a rundown place like this where a familiar face makes the downpour just a little less dreary. “I appreciate it, Serval. It’s quite the homecoming.”

“Anything for you,” Serval says brightly, still smiling broadly at her. Gepard groans next to Bronya.

“This is what I mean,” he grouses, though it’s lighthearted. “None of this fanfare for me.”

“Oh, you’re special in your own way,” Serval placates him. “There are only two drivers representing Belobog, aren’t there?”

Gepard ducks his head, waving her off though he looks secretly pleased. Bronya smiles at the two siblings. 

“Anyway, can I get something for you?” Serval prompts, turning to her again. “On the house. Just this once.”

“I’m okay,” Bronya says. “I only stopped by to see you. Besides, I’m driving.”

“Aren’t you always, darling,” says Serval, and on the screen, Bronya’s sleek car rips through the finish line.

The rain isn’t any lighter when Bronya steps outside but at least the storm has washed away some of the thick scent of cigar smoke. She shivers. The wind is colder than the actual air.

Peering up at the sky and watching the raindrops fall, she contemplates the merits of sprinting for her car or ducking back inside to borrow an umbrella. The high-rise buildings staining the skyline like ink crawl up the sides of her vision as the storm continues, ceaseless.

“What, afraid of a little rain?” a voice says beside her, and Bronya turns her head sharply to see the same figure from inside the bar peel themselves off the brick wall. It’s a young woman who looks to be about her age, she realizes. She has purple hair so dark it flashes midnight blue in the limited light of the entrance, and none of the offhanded glances that Bronya had gotten inside the bar do any justice to the way her long black jumpsuit fits her body.

“Not afraid, just wary,” Bronya says lightheartedly. “It took a while to wrangle my hair into this shape, you know.”

“Huh,” says the girl, stepping closer into the light so that Bronya can clearly see her eyes now. They’re watchful, vigilant. Bronya swallows and tips her chin a little higher. This is someone who’s approaching her with intention. “You’re that racer chick, aren’t you? The one they call the princess of the track? Makes sense, I guess.”

As she speaks, she reaches out and tugs on one of Bronya’s curls, letting it bounce back into place as she curls back her long fingers. Bronya, who could have smacked her hand away the second the other dared to reach out, watches in equal parts fascination and guardedness.

“Racer chick,” she echoes, finding it amusing that’s all she’s known for. Usually, those who recognize her make a bigger deal of it than it actually is. “I suppose I am. And you are?”

The girl shrugs. “You average eavesdropper,” she says, smiling sideways at her. It glints in a way that shouldn’t be possible under the artificial light of the city. “Was just curious, is all.”

Bronya braces herself for the inevitable comment that she doesn’t look as if she’s a world-renowned racer but it doesn’t come. Instead, the other lets her gaze slide off of Bronya and out toward the street, landing on the pristine luxury car sitting at the curb. “That one is yours, isn’t it? It’s fitting for such a hotshot. Mine is the one behind it.” She jerks her chin at the beat-up motorcar.

“As long as it gets the job done,” Bronya replies, still unsure why they’re making conversation at all. “That’s a nice model. Do you like cars? Do you follow racing?”

The young woman laughs, and Bronya doesn’t know what she’s finding humorous. “I do like cars,” she agrees easily. “And yeah, I follow racing. Probably not the kind you’re accustomed to, though.”

The way she refers to Bronya almost sounds as if it’s meant to be an insult. It certainly rolls off her tongue like one, even though the comment is lighthearted and throwaway at best.

“Oh,” says Bronya. She doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to say. The rain continues to fall around them, creating a blanket of water. There’s no use turning back inside for an umbrella, she decides. It’ll only get worse the longer she waits. “I should leave.”

“Gotta get home to celebrate that big win, don’t you?” the other says teasingly. This time when she smirks there’s a flash of teeth. “Have fun. I’d tell you congratulations but it’s probably lost its meaning after hearing it from so many strangers, hasn’t it?”

“What?” Bronya blinks. “That’s hardly the case. I appreciate it, truly.”

The girl moves as if she’s about to head back into the bar, lingering just at the entrance with one foot through the door. “Wow, humble and pretty,” she says, tilting her head to the side so that her hair cascades off in splintering waves. “I guess they don’t call you the princess for no reason.”

Bronya brings one hand to her face to cover the fact that hearing the word princess drop from this person’s mouth is stirring hot, unfamiliar feelings in her chest. “If you say so,” she says, embarrassed, and then she ducks her head. “Goodnight.”

The girl simply hums and moves farther into the bar, the warm glow from inside enveloping the outline of her body. Bronya can see her more clearly like this. Her eyes are purple unlike any she’s seen outside of the sky at midnight during nights like these when the city feels as if it’s pulsing with a live heartbeat. There’s the outline of a tattoo peeking just above the collar of her low-cut shirt, somewhere below her collarbones. “Drive safe, princess.”

Just as quickly as she’d materialized, she soon disappears into the crowd of people before Bronya can even think to respond, a rebuke faint on the edges of her lips. She was interesting. Beautiful. Bronya thinks she wants to know her name.

Bronya leaves the bar but she doesn’t return back to her apartment straight away. One of the things she loves the most about the off-season is having the privilege to come back to the city she calls her home and merely soak it all in. Which means that she likes to spend her nights driving through the streets as she plays music through the stereo, tip-toeing around the speed limit instead of blasting down a track as she usually does.

She’s known that there exists an underground racing circuit. Most everyone in the city knows; some nights they speed past the wrong neighborhood and a string of calls are made to the police to report them, and other times they end up on the news, their pictures blurry and unfocused.

Bronya knows that illegal street racing exists. She’s a racer herself, after all—she’s going to pay attention anytime the word racing is mentioned. She’s just never come across it, nor has she sought it out.

It’s illegal. There are plenty of other forms of racing—ones that don’t put vehicles at risk and put lives in danger, for example. Bronya has never thought highly of it.

She doesn’t think of it, period. That is until she comes face to face with what is very clearly an illegal race about to start.

They’re located in what is considered the ghost town area of the city; nicknamed so because it’s so empty that the only civilians wandering the streets are usually those without homes. Bronya figures it makes for a good racing ground.

She’d only been attracted by the outskirts of what was clearly a large crowd gathering; after stopping just down the street and peering closer, it’s obvious what they were amassing for.

In the center of the crowd, two cars sit waiting. They’re visibly altered for racing. The two that Bronya assumes are the racers sit by the hoods of their cars, shouting and laughing with people in the crowd.

Despite herself, she makes her way through the crowd and picks her way to the front, curious about what kind of people would be involved in such a dangerous activity. Most of the crowd was fairly young. One of the drivers looks to be about her age, a man with a cocky sort of grin on his face. The other is—Bronya narrows her eyes, feeling her heart beat unnaturally in her chest.

The other is the girl from outside the bar. She’d only spoken to her for all of five minutes but there was something about the way that she held herself that imprinted itself into Bronya’s mind. Plus, there weren’t many other girls who had that shade of hair, even though it was now matted and slicked down from the rain. Even fewer girls who showed an interest in racing and roamed these parts of the city.

No wonder she had acted so shady when she brought up the topic of racing. No wonder she hadn’t even given Bronya her name— given by all of the staring and hooting coming from the crowd, she was no newbie to the street racing scene. It was especially evident with her car, which was modified to hell and back. 

Bronya feels something unclench in her chest. Maybe it’s the slight bit of tension that she gained the first moment she laid eyes on that girl in the bar. Perhaps it’s a breath she didn’t know she was holding, captured in place by the cheeky way the other tilted her head to the side as if she knew Bronya was watching her every move.

Or possibly it’s the realization that the girl who had stolen her attention and ran with it participates in what Bronya considers the bastardized version of proper racing.

The smell of tobacco and burnt asphalt is even stronger here than it was outside of the bar, and Bronya turns on her heel to fight her way back out of the crowd. She has no interest in watching an illegal race, even if one of the racers at the helm is one of the most curious people she’s happened to brush past. She has even less intention to potentially get caught at the scene of the crime, especially when the police will inevitably get called and the crowd cornered.

She can imagine it already—Bronya Rand, princess of the F1 world, seen and photographed supporting an underground racing ring. Her reputation would be demolished.

It’s already too much that the rain is soaking into her clothes and weighing her down; Bronya is hit with the sudden need to escape from the crowd as soon as possible before her shadow can stain the ground any longer. The amount of people is oppressive, choking. She’d spent so much time deliberating outside of the bar only to end up soaking anyway.

Bronya turns on her heel and slips her way out of the mass the same way she entered, dodging outreached arms and stray feet. Her heart is beating far too fast inside her chest considering all she did was make an appearance at the race. And despite herself, she turns back one last time to take another look at the racer—it’s only because she’d recognized Bronya and that’s what makes her intriguing, she tells herself—and at the last second, right as she’s about to make her final exit, she thinks she catches her eye.

The other girl’s eyes widen in that millisecond, that impossible field of purple expanding like a star on the verge of bursting, and then Bronya turns tail and leaves for good, intent on leaving all memory of this night behind.

It’s unfortunate that she keeps following Bronya around. She swipes through the posts on her private Instagram account where she still follows people from high school and sees a few highlights about a street race that had taken place downtown. It was loud, they said. Disruptive. They wish that the police would do more about stopping it from taking place in the first place.

They didn’t catch the perpetrators, Bronya finds out. There’s no mention of any girl with purple hair or a tattoo at the base of her collarbones. No names—because if Bronya was being honest with herself that’s the only thing she had been on the lookout for.

Bronya furiously exits out of the app and slams the phone down on the cushion beside her. She doesn’t need to know.

She doesn’t need to know, and that’s why she’s inexplicably ended up at the same bar as two nights previous, except this time she doesn’t have the excuse of going to see Serval because she doesn’t work Tuesday nights since she has weekly gigs with her band.

Bronya doesn’t even like it here when she’s not accompanied by her friends. She hates the cigarette stubs decorating the outside of the door and the way the air always feels thick and stifling the moment she enters the premises. She typically doesn’t drink for recreation just because it’s never interested her and she doesn’t have the taste to do so on her own, nor does she have the time.

So there is no rational reason that Bronya should be here on a weeknight when she could be having a night in with herself in the comfort of her home. She’s certainly not comfortable here with the grimy corners and the beer-stained cushions.

But she is, however unfortunate it may be. She orders a glass of water and sips that languidly as she people-watches, gaze flicking periodically between the entrance to the bathroom to the old television set hung up in the corner.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” the bartender asks, eyeing her glass of water with disdain and a look on his face that says he’d rather serve an actual customer instead of a girl sitting around wasting time.

“I’m okay,” she declines, setting down the glass and pushing it away from her as she finally stands, giving one last cursory look around the room. “Thank you, though.”

The bartender dips his head. “I’ll tell Serval you were in. Waiting for somebody?”

“Oh,” Bronya says, flustered. She feels caught in an act she wasn’t even aware she was playing. “No. Nobody’s expecting me. I’m only…” Her words die off. She’s not even sure how to phrase it herself.

“Right,” the bartender says knowingly. “Have a good night, then. Come again soon.”

Bronya has no intention of being back unless Gepard or Serval urge her to visit again but she hides the words under her tongue instead of speaking them aloud. “You too.”

As soon as she escapes the bar, the cool air hits her in the face immediately. It almost reminds Bronya of two nights ago, when she’d stepped outside to leave and was confronted by the girl that the rain swept in.

She’s not here, of course. It had been stupid for Bronya to even consider that she might have shown up on a random weeknight when she should theoretically be getting ready to sleep. Or whatever it is that non-professional racers do with their nights.

She leaves behind the stench of tobacco and the last vestiges of her embarrassment and turns the corner, biting her cheeks at the night chill. She’d been less lucky this time and had to park halfway down the block, and she laments her poor decision to leave her cozy apartment.

“Hey, you,” a voice says sharply out of the darkness, and Bronya startles, her hand reflexively flexing at her side. It’s the girl. She’s standing by Bronya’s car, leaning against the wall adjacent to the street the way she had two nights ago, though this time when she walks toward her there’s a sterner look on her face. None of the playful half-flirting that she’d put on before.

“You know my name, don’t you,” Bronya says. “Why not use it?”

The girl smiles but it’s without any warmth. “Sorry about that, princess. It seems to have slipped my mind.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” Bronya says dumbly, not sure what else to say. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” the other says, and Bronya curses at the slight tingle of anticipation that shoots through her body at the words. “I saw you the other night, you know. Not here at the bar. In downtown.”

So Bronya was right and they had made eye contact. “And?” she says slowly, quirking an eyebrow. “I don’t see why that necessarily warranted hunting down my location to confront me about it.”

“Aren’t you also here to see me?” the girl rebukes, and Bronya has nothing to say to that so she just swallows and stands her ground, crossing her arms. She can note the little bit of height that she has on the other from this position, a fact she hadn’t noticed before.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bronya laughs and sucks her cheeks in at the sudden chilly breeze. Whatever she had expected on the off chance that they were to brush paths again, it hadn’t been this—this somehow accusatory confrontation.

“Don’t worry, I’m not,” the girl says, slinking closer with narrowed eyes. “I would have found you somehow even if I didn’t catch you tonight. You saw us. You got a good look at our faces, didn’t you? You planning to do anything about it?”

Caught off guard, Bronya just blinks at her. “Sorry?”

“You know too much,” the other snaps, finally getting to the point. “I know who you are. The entire racing world knows who you are. Everyone who has scanned the news in the past six months knows who you are. You’re a high-profile figure, whether you want to admit it right now or not, and you unfortunately have a lot of power in your hands right now.”

“So that’s what this is about,” Bronya says slowly. “You’ve made a whole lot of assumptions about me without even getting to know me. What’s your name?”

“They call you the princess of the track,” she retorts. “I can make all of the assumptions I want.” Then she blinks at Bronya consideringly, tilting her head to the side much in the same manner she had that first night when she first imprinted herself in Bronya’s mind. “Seele. That’s all you get.”

“Seele,” Bronya tests out, getting a thrill out of the way Seele’s eyes slightly twitch when she says the name. “Nice to meet you. Can we get out of the cold?”

“You have an interesting definition for nice,” Seele says, and then she pauses. “There’s nowhere else for us to go, princess. I’ll make it short.”

“There’s my car,” Bronya offers half-heartedly. “It’s right there.”

“Intimate,” Seele scoffs. She stops and looks at the way Bronya trembles slightly at the next hit of the breeze, and then she sighs. “I guess I don’t want to piss you off anymore.”

“Great,” Bronya says, quickly unlocking the car and jumping into the driver’s seat. She turns on the air immediately, sighing at the release of warm air.

Seele enters the other seat hesitantly, the way a cat would, with ginger, careful movements. She looks uncomfortable. 

“Well?” Bronya prompts. “You were threatening me, I think. Or at least putting some unwarranted slander on my name.”

“I was not threatening you,” Seele says. “If anything, you’re the one who would be posing a danger to me right now. Like I was saying, isn’t it your civil duty to report any instance of crime you see? Especially you? What’s stopping you from going straight to the police and turning us all in?”

“Have you seen me do that in the past two days?” says Bronya plainly. “I don’t plan to.”

She should, if she’s being honest. She has a lot of opinions on street racing as a whole and all the hazards it brings up and like Seele said, she really must bring any concerns to the officials.

But Bronya thinks that Seele wouldn’t look half as pretty if she were stuck in a police station getting questioned at a metal table, so she keeps her silence. Fuck. She doesn’t even know this girl and now she’s keeping secrets for her.

“Oh,” Seele says, her eyes widening a little. “Why wouldn’t you?” Her tone of voice, at first reproachful, is nothing but curious now.

Bronya shrugs and gazes through the windshield, focusing on a street sign on the other side of the road. She has no good answer to give. No response that she even understands herself. “I have no reason to, I guess.”

There’s a silence, and then Seele sits back in her seat and looks at Bronya again as if reevaluating her. “Huh,” she says finally. There’s a hint of a smile on the edge of her lips, pulling up and revealing the sharp white of her teeth. “You’re different than I thought you’d be, princess. You always seemed so cold and untouchable on the screen.”

“So you admit to watching my races,” Bronya says, turning to meet her eyes with her own smirk.

“It was just one!” Seele turns to face forward again. There’s what Bronya thinks is a pout on her face. “A woman in professional racing who managed to win the world championships? Of course I had to see at least one race in action.”

“Just one?” Bronya echoes, wondering how Seele could possibly dip her toe into the ocean that is professional racing and decide that she doesn’t want to jump fully in. Maybe it’s her misguided loyalty to street racing that’s holding her back. “What do you have against Formula One?”

“What do you have against street racing?” Seele shoots back immediately. “I saw that look on your face right before you left. It’s the entire reason why I decided to track you down again. You didn’t look exactly… approving of it.”

“Hm,” Bronya says noncommittally. “Did you win?”

“Of fucking course I did,” Seele scoffs. “I know how to handle a car, princess.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Bronya wonders aloud, ignoring the fact that the name stirs a curious excitement in her chest that she doesn’t get when the other strangers she meets call her that. She’d heard it enough in her lifetime that she could be considered actual royalty at this point but nobody else had quite made it land the same way Seele did.

This time when Seele sends her a smirk, it’s definitely intentional. “I know how to handle my girls, too,” she says, and then her gaze drops deliberately to Bronya’s lips, then to the hollow of her throat, and finally back up to her eyes, which have widened slightly in shock and something else.

Bronya swallows and finds her throat dry. “Do you,” she says weakly, her tongue thick in her mouth.

“It doesn’t turn out well when people doubt me,” Seele says, “so you’ll just have to believe it. I know how to quit when I’m ahead, though, so I’ll catch you later, princess.” With that, she opens the door immediately and steps outside, leaving Bronya pinned to the seat before she can process what’s happening.

“Wait!” Bronya calls before she can realize what she’s saying, wincing internally at her lack of self-control. “Are you… You never answered my question before. About what you have against Formula One.”

“And you didn’t answer my question about what you have against street racing,” Seele says, bending down to meet her gaze as she hangs off the car door, “so I guess we’ll just have to pick this up again later.”

Bronya meets her gaze head-on, unflinching. This is also a race she doesn’t intend to lose. “I guess so.”

“Glad we’ve settled that,” Seele says, and she gives one sarcastic salute with a half-hearted couple of fingers. Then the car door slams shut and she walks away, the outline of her back highlighted against the dark backdrop of the night-shrouded city.

Bronya sits in her seat still, both hands on the steering wheel as if to brace herself, and lets loose a long exhale. “Fuck.” She replays the sound of Seele’s low drawl calling her princess, the word licking itself around her tongue instead of calling her by her actual name, and when she feels her own cheeks heat up she hangs her head down in defeat. 

Fuck, indeed.

We’ll have to pick it up again later, Seele had said. Except Bronya doesn’t really know what later is supposed to mean in Seele terms, nor does she know if the other was being serious and whether that was a genuine promise. Bronya hates that she’s come to anticipate another meeting and that she has convinced herself that the lingering scent of perfume in her car is Seele’s.

She doesn’t know anything about Seele except for her first name, the make of her car, and the way her teeth flashed against the midnight backdrop of the city. On the other hand, Seele knows everything from Bronya’s full name to her birthday, what her typical day looks like, and where she went to high school. A single Internet search could pull up countless interviews and Wikipedia pages on her life.

It’s part of being a globally-known figure that Bronya has long accepted—it’s just that, though harsh, she doesn’t normally care about the strangers who know more about her than she will ever know about them. She’s certainly not interested in their family names or where they work their nine-to-fives or how it would feel to have their hand run against her inner thigh.

Not that she’d thought any of those things about Seele, of course.

The only thing she’s wondered is whether Seele intends to make good on her promise and whether Bronya should be expecting to see her around the city. Should she go back to that bar and anticipate seeing Seele’s dark figure skulking against the wall of the building again? There are a million ways they could miss each other and only a few moments that they would be lucky enough to catch each other.

As it turns out, Seele finds a way to contact Bronya through mutual connections. It comes from a phone call from Serval.

“Hi Bronya,” comes Serval’s voice through the phone, slightly strained from the poor connection and the loud chatter of the bar in the background. “There’s a chick here that’s asking for you. Says her name is Seele and that you should know who she is by the name.”

Bronya’s heart thuds in her chest at the name, and she glances out the window of her high-rise apartment. It’s dark, that time of the night when it’s not too late but it’s no longer evening. It seems that they’re always seeking each other out after hours.

“I can kick her out if she’s unwelcome,” Serval continues. “I dunno if you get stalkers, but she doesn’t seem like the sort that you usually hang with.”

“Oh,” Bronya says quickly. “I do know her. Ah, can you tell her that I’ll be there within twenty minutes? And that if she wants anything to drink, put it on my tab.”

There’s a bit of silence while Serval presumably relays the information to Seele, and then she comes back to the phone. “She gives her thanks for the drinks,” she says, her tone amused, “and she also says that she’s more than familiar with the type of car you drive, so you can certainly make it in fifteen.”

Bronya pulls up to the bar in fourteen minutes, but that’s no one’s business but her own. It’s not as if she was timing it anyway.

She takes her time getting out of the car so it doesn’t seem as if she rushed all the way over the second she got the call, flipping down the mirror above her seat to pick at her hair and running a finger over her lips to make sure that they won’t volunteer any more secrets than she’s willing to sacrifice. She steps into the bar two minutes later, cracking the door open so that the light within can spill out into the street, and when she lands on the third floorboard from the entrance it lets out a familiar creak as if announcing her entrance.

Serval is deftly picking through the shelf of alcohol to serve a customer. The television in the corner blares just loudly enough to be heard above the din of the crowd, though the sound is dampened by the usual raucous laughter and a medley of heightened voices that probe at Bronya’s ears.

And Seele is in the corner, kicked back in her chair with one foot thrown carelessly across her other leg. She looks as if instead of waiting for someone else to arrive, she’s been summoned to come here instead. As if it had been Bronya who called up Serval instead of the opposite.

“Hello,” Bronya says, settling into the chair opposite the other.

“Hey,” says Seele, something like a smirk dancing on her lips. She picks up the glass in front of her, theoretically the one that she’s put on Bronya’s tab, and when she brings it to her mouth Bronya has to concentrate on a spot on the wall behind Seele’s head so her gaze doesn’t drop down to where the glass meets her lips.

“How was your day?” Bronya tries because she’s still not entirely sure why Seele wanted to meet, only that the second she asked, she was immediately on board.

“I’m not sure you actually care about that,” Seele says, her eyes glimmering. “Are you always this pleasant? What would it take to actually get a reaction out of you?”

“Is this all you’ve called me out here for?”

“Why don’t you ever have any actually important questions for me?” Seele shoots back immediately. “You’re interesting, princess, but that’s about all to it. Talking to you feels more like you’re trying to balance that crown on your head instead of showing what’s underneath the surface.”

The truth is that Bronya hates the title. It sounds more as if she’d achieved it from hereditary privilege instead of through fair fighting, which is the truth. She hadn’t clawed her way to the global stage just to be dismissed as a princess, even if she had been born into a family that was naturally predisposed to producing racers. She could have been content with making it into a prestigious team, but of course that would never be enough, and so she became world champion. Naturally. It’s Bronya, after all.

She’s had to endure multiple of her opponents spitting the moniker at her as if it minimized any of her accomplishments. (They were all men, of course.) And she’s also had to experience the name being turned into an insult against her just because she’s a woman.

But when it comes from Seele’s mouth, it doesn’t sound quite the way it does from anyone else. Even when she’s essentially calling Bronya superficial for it. Because the other night, though it was obvious that Seele was trying to get under her skin, it didn’t seem to be because she genuinely wanted to irritate Bronya but because she wanted to unveil the mask that she instinctively puts up for anyone that she doesn’t know personally.

And Bronya doesn’t trust people easily—she certainly shouldn’t trust an illegal street racer that she’s only known for three nights—but there’s a part of her that wants to. Just because it would be daring to. Just because it would toe the line of Bronya’s self-imposed boundaries and she hasn’t had an adrenaline high like this since the last time she was on the racetrack.

“The only crown on my head is the one that other people place upon it,” Bronya replies. “I’m nothing but a racer.”

“Hmm,” Seele says. “They call me the king of the streets, you know. Down in Wildfire.”

“Wildfire?”

Seele picks at her nails. “Yeah. The underground racing community. You probably know nothing about it, huh? Or do you simply have no interest in it?”

“I wouldn’t say that I have no interest,” Bronya says. She taps her fingers against the sticky table and drags her eyes up and down Seele’s form, wondering if she’s also supposed to order a drink to let the words come out more easily. Demolish that princess persona that she’s not sure why she wants to dismantle in front of Seele specifically. “It’s racing, after all. But it's illegal.”

“That’s why it’s fun.” Seele looks up again, her gaze sparking. “That, and the fact that it’s not nearly as much of a drag as your type of racing. Sure, you go fast, but it goes on for hours and hours. It’s nothing like that here in the city. All the action takes place here.”

“That’s an interesting thing to say,” Bronya says, her eyes steeling, “when you don’t know much about real racing. You said you haven’t even watched that many Formula One races. Who are you to make a judgment on professional racing when all you’ve known is underground racing at night when half of your mileage comes from evading the police?”

“Real racing?” Seele repeats, one eyebrow raising. “Who are you to designate what is real and what isn’t when you have little to no knowledge of a proper street race? Though I’m not sure what I expected from somebody like you.” She spits out the word you as if it’s an insult.

“You mean the genuine racers?” Bronya says, her hackles bared, even though she knows that across from her Seele is getting equally as riled up. “You say you race, but you don’t respect the rules of the art. How could you make a judgment on something you have no education in? How do you know if the action takes place here in the city or out on a proper race track?”

“This is why I don’t like your sort, princess,” Seele says, and now the nickname is definitely mocking. She flings her hand as she speaks, nearly knocking over the drink that Bronya bought for her. “You’re all so grossly entitled. You all think you’re so much better than us city racers, even though your attitude is the reason why none of us even attempt to join your world. It’s clear from the way you act on television to the name the people all call you. Fame gets to people’s heads.”

Bronya’s mouth drops open. “Entitled? You clearly think that you’re better than I am as well! Furthermore, you don’t even know me—you, of all people, are not fit to bestow your judgment on me from passing views on the news and the few times that we’ve met. Wouldn’t I be the one with the better approximation of your character based on the fact that you are technically a criminal?”

There’s a fire burning deep in Bronya’s gut. She’s never actually come across the street racers that she only sees on police reports and on the television when she’s flashing through news channels—and clearly, there’s a reason why. Even if Seele is accusing her of prejudice, which is true in some cases of other races, she’s evidently contradicting herself by projecting her own views onto Bronya. Bronya had been professionally trained for years in the craft of professional racing. How dare Seele sweep in and attempt to critique her on a world she’s obviously never been immersed in herself?

It’s one thing to make generalizations of Bronya based on Seele’s pre-existing assumptions, and it’s another to attack the industry that she’s held dear since she was a teenager and watching recordings of professional races off of the Internet, knowing one day that she would be on that very track. It’s Bronya’s entire world. And Seele has never had a place there, being a street racer.

“A criminal,” Seele laughs, though the sound is acidic. Whatever beauty that Bronya had found in her face earlier has transformed into cold rage, the edge of a knife sharpened by her own incandescent rage. She’s all hard angles and quiet fury now. “I see. That’s quite the accusation to make, isn’t it? Anyone in passing would think that I’ve committed actual harm to other people. Surely there are many other people more deserving of such a critical title, aren’t there, princess?”

“It’s not as if I know you,” Bronya says, and the words taste like chalk in her mouth and coat her tongue like dust. It’s true. She doesn’t know her. She hardly knows anything about Seele besides the fact that she’s probably wanted by the police, and that’s not the most promising trait to go off of when it comes to entrusting a stranger with her company. “I wouldn’t know.”

Seele reels back a little, her face now impassive. “You don’t,” she says carefully. “That’s right. And I don’t know you. Nothing besides the fact that you apparently live up to the character you put on for the audience. It’s difficult to care about anyone else when you’re so far up above everyone else, isn’t it? How is it up there in the sky with all the rest of the stars?”

Bronya, who has always considered herself to be a compassionate person when it comes to not only strangers but also those that she meets on a whim, feels something snap inside of her. “I don’t consider myself to be better than others,” she says hotly, “but I suppose that yes, considering that you belong to the underground, we do belong to two separate worlds, yes? I wouldn’t know what it’s like. I shouldn’t even listen to someone who is clearly a reject from the professional racing world—”

Seele abruptly stands up, her mouth a thin line of severity and her movements stiff. “How bold of you to assume that I would ever want to belong to a line of pretentious racers who believe themselves to be superior to others just because they had the privilege to be taught and haven’t had to pull themselves up by their own hard work to get to where they are. How arrogant of you to believe that you know a single thing about me.”

She pushes in her chair roughly and stalks off a few paces before she turns, her eyes somehow darker in their rage and her voice clear to Bronya’s ears even though they’re surrounded by the chatter of multiple other patrons. “And sorry that you ever had to lower yourself to my level by ever speaking with me,” she says sarcastically. “I’m sure it was a waste of time on your part.”

And then she leaves, as quick on her feet as she had appeared the first night Bronya ever met her. There’s the flash of her violet hair and then nothing. The silhouette of her back is quickly swallowed up among the crowd, and even though Bronya stares out in the direction that she disappeared, she can’t find a glimpse of her.

Bronya stares at the half-drunk glass across from her and swears. She’s up in the next second, storming through the crowd and out the door.

“Seele!” she says, her voice coming out angrier than she means it to. She catches a glimpse of a body turning the corner, and she follows after her on quick feet. “Seele.”

Bronya has followed Seele into an alley that leads to the end of the other street where Seele was evidently escaping to. “Wait.”

“What, princess,” Seele says, her voice coming out low, the words barely an exhale. “You’re stalking me now, huh?”

“No, I’m just—” Bronya swallows. “I said some things I didn’t mean.”

“Didn’t mean?” Seele scoffs. “It was pretty clear that you believed what you said. If those words came out of your mouth, then you had to have thought them.”

Bronya stands, helpless. The rage that had been flickering inside of her dies down a little, tempered by the cool night air. Outside of the bar, she can’t seem to muster any of the indignation that fueled their argument inside the establishment. 

“Then I ought to apologize,” she says simply. “I guess I was thinking them, but that doesn’t mean that they were exactly warranted. Especially, as I said, I don’t even know you. It’s not up to me to determine your character before you have a chance to prove me wrong.”

“Surprisingly mature of you to say,” Seele says after a moment’s pause, her arms crossed. She seems to have cooled down as well, her tone not nearly as heated or angry as it had been just a few minutes before. “That doesn’t mean I have to forgive you.”

Bronya cocks an eyebrow. “You said some pretty unfair stuff as well. I don’t have to forgive you either.”

“Fair,” Seele says, raising her chin. “Why did you have to follow me out just to say that? A restatement of how we stand with each other? You’ll never see me again.”

Right. They belong to two different worlds, after all. She had said it herself. They don’t have to see each other again—Bronya can avoid this particular bar for the rest of her life if she wishes to.

“I guess I just wanted to make it clear that I don’t believe that I’m above you,” Bronya says, shrugging. “You said that, but it simply isn’t true. I don’t. I’m just another person who happens to race.”

“A person who happens to be globally renowned,” Seele replies, watching her warily. “And that is all?”

“Clearing the misconception, I suppose.” Bronya’s eyes dip down to the way that Seele’s lips are pursed, starkly pink even in the poor alleyway lighting.

Seele scoffs. “Unnecessary. I can think what I want to think.” Her gaze drops to the ridge of Bronya’s collarbone, which glints sharply among the shadows.

“Hey, for a criminal, it wasn’t bad getting to know you—” Bronya begins to say, and Seele interrupts her with a groan.

“Stop calling me that, princess,” she says, and then she crashes into Bronya, backing her against the wall and driving one hand into the back of her hair as she presses her lips against Bronya’s. There’s one hand on her waist and a tongue in her mouth, and even though Bronya had been expecting this to some degree, there’s still the initial spark of adrenaline like the moment before a race starts as she’s gearing up to take off, and then she’s kissing back, losing herself into the wet heat of Seele’s mouth.

Seele draws back to nip at Bronya’s bottom lip with her teeth and she whines, dropping a little even as the brick wall scrapes uncomfortably at her back as she tilts her head back a little. Her chest is heaving, and the hand that was at Bronya’s waist dips a little lower to the band of her pants. Bronya grips harder against Seele’s back and pushes back a little more desperately, bucking up a little as the other pushes her body forward between her legs.

All of the ferocity that had fueled their argument earlier transfers into passion now, shifting gears in the low light of the alley. There’s a certain degree of illicitness to this, a kind of rashness that Bronya has never dared to breach before. She thinks she likes it. She thinks that meeting Seele had brought out that unfortunate trait in her because she would never have dreamed that she’d be here, hiding out behind a bar with a girl she met three times before with her tongue in her mouth right after they’d nearly shouted in each other’s faces over a sticky bar table.

“I’m not doing this here,” Seele says, finally drawing away. Both of their chests are heaving at this point, and Seele’s mouth is cherry red. Bronya finds that she can’t draw her eyes away from it. “I’ll show you the inside of my car this time, as long as you don’t judge it for being cheap and worn down.”

“It’s a car, I’m bound to like it,” Bronya says distractedly. She still can’t tear her gaze away from the way Seele’s mouth looks as if it needs to be more thoroughly explored.

“Great,” Seele says, and then she tugs her down the alleyway further until they get to the same vehicle that Bronya had seen all those nights before. She’s quick to dig into her pockets to unlock the doors, and then they’re tumbling into the backseat and Seele is all over Bronya all over again, and she doesn’t get a chance to admire the interior at all before she’s pressing her down against the seat.

“This is fine, right?” Seele says, breathless, her eyes roving all over Bronya’s face and her chest and her waist, and when Bronya nods she resigns herself to the fact that she’s not going to get back to her apartment until much, much later that night.

She doesn’t.

If there was one thing that Bronya was correct about, it was that seeing Seele was dangerous. Dangerous in the way that she’d been so taken by the curl of her tongue that she let her stick her tongue down her throat in an alleyway where anybody could have walked by and taken a picture of her. That she let Seele’s thumb rest possessively over the curve of her hip before the touch turned mean, demanding. That she let her fuck her in the backseat of her car until the bar was closed by the time Bronya walked back to her car on unsteady legs.

She’s never really done hookups like this before. Of course, she’s had sex before, as the young and curious woman that Bronya is, but nothing as spontaneous or risky as this. Certainly nothing hasty in the back of a car with somebody that she can’t even agree with on a matter as simple as racing.

That’s the thing about it. They hadn’t even resolved their issues—they had barely said everything that needed to be said before they were assailing each other with their mouths rather than their words.

Bronya, who if anything, likes to play by the rules, finds that there are no rules for this certain line of business. There aren’t even guidelines. She doesn’t have any pre-existing knowledge to guide her on the matter. And Seele, who has a wicked mind and even wickeder fingers, doesn’t offer anything much.

In fact, by the time they’re done, they’re both spent enough (and at least in Bronya’s case, a little confused) that they don’t speak very much at all before going their separate ways, muttering hasty farewells before driving off.

Bronya hates the uncertainty of it all. After all, it was Seele who said that they wouldn’t have to see each other ever again, and then it was Bronya who turned around and forced her to look her in the face again.

Well. It’s not as if she can quite do anything about it, even if she wants to (a part of her wants to). She has enough dignity that she’s not going to sit and wait in the same place for the next week or so until Seele deigns to drop by again, and if Seele has the mind to go and ask Serval to call her up again, then she can prove that she’s not just for her beck and call. Besides, she has a feeling that Seele isn’t the type to initiate twice in a row. If anything were to happen, the ball would be in Bronya’s court.

The ball is in her court, and so she can choose not to serve it. The ball is in her court, and Bronya swears to herself that she’s not going to see Seele again because it’s not as if one girl is a necessity and the sex is nice but Bronya doesn’t require it to breathe.

It’s just her luck that she spots Seele’s car stopped at a gas station because of course it is. It’s night, as per usual for whatever reason, and it’s definitely Seele’s car because Bronya sees her familiar figure standing off to the side as she waits for the gas pump to do its job.

The ball is in Bronya’s court. She has the decision to drive away and leave well enough alone for the rest of her life until the next racing season starts again and she leaves the city for a good amount of months again.

She must be a masochist because she pulls up behind Seele’s car and hops out of the driver’s side, emerging slowly from the door so that Seele turns to see who is approaching.

“I’m starting to believe that you’re a stalker,” Seele says calmly. She yanks the gas nozzle out of the outlet. “How’d you find me this time? Did you hire someone with all of that money of yours?”

“It seems as if I don’t have to hire anyone just to stumble across you,” Bronya says, a little miffed at this fact. “You, on the other hand, need to stop showing up where I can find you.”

Seele rolls her eyes. “Oh, so it’s my fault now that you decided to pull into the gas station right behind me even though all the rest of the pumps are open.”

Bronya glances around and finds that Seele is, unfortunately, correct. It’s just the two of them in the station. There’s nothing she can say to that in return. When it comes to a battle between Bronya and her inhibitions, it seems as if she’s been more inclined to lose these days.

“Well, it’s not an opportunity I come across often,” she says, referring to the fact that she’s naturally encountered Seele.

“Right,” Seele says after a pause. She turns to finish the transaction at the gas pump, and then she smirks at Bronya. “It’s not as if you missed me or anything, right?” She directs a pronounced look to the backseat of her car and laughs at the way Bronya’s face turns.

“No,” Bronya says, blatantly lying. She’s not supposed to think about Seele, or the way the leather of her car felt pressed up against her back, or the way that Seele gently dragged her fingernails across Bronya’s skin until the touch turned more punishing. “This is probably the last time we’ll see each other, anyway.”

“Oh?” Seele cocks her head to the side. “You going anywhere? I thought the season doesn’t start again for a while.”

“It doesn’t. It’s just…” Bronya trails off. How is she supposed to explain that if she hung around any longer with Seele, she wouldn’t be able to tear herself away? “We come from different backgrounds. We disagree. We fight. It’s what we do.”

“Right,” Seele drawls deliberately, turning her head to the other side so that her hair moves with her. “And that’s why you specifically stopped to talk to me again tonight. Because you never want to talk to me again.”

Bronya blinks against the harsh fluorescence of the gas station and the striking, mind-altering glint of Seele’s eyes. “I didn’t say never.”

“But you implied it.” Seele slinks closer to Bronya, daring to lay one hand on the hood of Bronya’s car. Perhaps she thinks that she’s being risky by doing it—thinks that Bronya is going to tell her off for it. “Hear me out. What if we meet up one more time but down in the grime of the city. And I’m perfectly aware that you think it’s beneath you, but have you even lived if you haven’t street-raced once?”

Bronya stares at her, taking a few seconds before she replies. “Are you asking me to race?” she says eventually, the words coming out haltingly. “Me. Race with you.”

“Uh, yeah?” Seele laughs, the sound shattering in the otherwise silent air. “I’m not sure there’s any other way to interpret my words.”

“I can’t be caught there,” Bronya says, turning away. “You know that. And besides, you already know how I feel about street racing.”

“I know, I know,” Seele says, waving one nonchalant hand. “And you think the same thing about me, but it’s not as if that stopped you from fucking me in the backseat of my car behind a dingy bar. Not very dignified of a princess, is it?”

“Jesus.” Bronya closes her eyes. “Have you always been this crude?”

“You must have a hell of a filter over your eyes if you haven’t seen me for who I am this entire time.” Even though Bronya has her eyes closed, she can hear the telltale sounds of Seele inching closer. The tapping of her nails against the side of her car and a shoe against the concrete. “You can’t get much lower than fucking an underground girl. What’s one step lower? I’ll get the car hooked up for you and everything.”

“No,” Bronya says determinedly, opening her eyes again and staring Seele down for good. Seele is standing only a few paces away from her, one hand on her hip and the other settled on Bronya’s car; her foot is slung over the other and there’s a hint of a frown on her face, though it doesn’t make her any less darkly attractive. “You’ve got your boundaries, and I’ve got mine.”

Seele sighs dramatically and turns with a flourish, her hair following. “Whatever,” she says over her shoulder. “I’ll get you eventually. I had my mind made up about you, but you turned that all around the moment you decided to follow me out of the bar. There’s a dirty streak to you that I’ll coax out eventually. One thing about me is that I don’t give up easily. I’m sure you know that already.”

“It’s no use,” Bronya says, the words falling like ash because she already knows it’s not going to do her any good. Seele is as determined as she is rash, and as desperate as Bronya is to get the other out of her head, she knows that there’s a similar sentiment that keeps bringing Seele back to her. “I can’t be won over that easily.”

“So you say,” Seele hums, and then she yanks open the door to her car and pauses to look back at Bronya, a wild sort of smile on her face. “See you later.”

Bronya crosses her arms over her chest. “We’ll see.”

Seele just laughs, and then she gets into her car, the lights flashing as she turns on the engine and prepares to leave. As Bronya swivels on her feet to leave as well, she notices a slip of white stuck between the windshield wipers on her car, and she snags it between her fingers and slides into her car.

It’s a number, hastily scrawled in what must be Seele’s handwriting despite Bronya never seeing it before. Bronya folds the paper back up and looks up at the ceiling, biting her lip between her teeth. Damn.

When she gets back to her apartment, she doesn’t even bother flipping on the lights in the room before she pulls out her phone and enters the number into her contacts. There’s a second of hesitance, and then with uncharacteristic heedlessness, she opens the conversation and sends a message.

Seele responds within the next five minutes.

For somebody who swore to herself that she wouldn’t succumb, Bronya’s willpower crumbles most easily when it comes to Seele. They meet again, and again, and again, and each time Bronya tells herself that it’ll be the last time. That surely after this night, it’ll be the end of it.

Seele, her head thrown back in an open-mouthed gasp as Bronya mouths over the sharp cavern of her collarbone.

The grunt that escapes Bronya’s mouth when Seele pushes her down against the ratty hotel bed, their actions too hasty to even turn the lights on, and Seele’s answering husky laugh.

Seele’s shirt carelessly left on the floor of Bronya’s car. A text lighting up Bronya’s phone that has her bolting to her feet, keys in her hand and ready to leave. Seele gripping the inside of Bronya’s thighs as if she knows nothing else, could care for nothing else. Bronya on her knees, answering no god but instead what must be the precipice of sin. Pleasure instead of penance.

It doesn’t end.

There are a few sweet moments after they’re done wherein Bronya finds that she quite enjoys talking to Seele, as long as they’re not talking about racing. Seele has her head propped up against her hand, lazily tracing nonsensical drawings against Bronya’s bare abdomen. Bronya is staring up at the ceiling, her mind calm for once.

“I feel like you owe me for this,” Seele says. “I’ve eaten you out so many times that I think I deserve something in return.”

Bronya frowns, tilting her head to look at her. “Haven’t I returned the favor enough?”

Seele laughs, the sound drifting off in the warm air. “I mean a race. Have you given my generous offer any further consideration? I don’t give that out to many people, you know. You ought to feel special.”

“Oh.” Bronya lets her head fall back against the sheets, abruptly feeling a little cold. So that’s what that’s about. She has thought about Seele’s proposition actually, more times than she’s willing to admit. She hates that she’s even entertained the idea in her head, even though she hasn’t spoken any of those thoughts to anyone else but herself.

Because getting to know Seele—and Bronya knows quite a bit about Seele now—has made her come to realize that there’s much more beneath her mysterious persona than she’d initially thought. She’s much more than a criminal, which Bronya isn’t afraid to now say was an unfair assumption on her part.

To some degree, that must extend to street racing as well; seeing that Bronya has little to no knowledge about it, there must be some reason why Seele is so addicted to the art. There has to be more to it than the disruption and bastardization of racing that she’s always considered it to be.

But it’s the way that Seele had phrased it that leaves Bronya feeling a little empty. As if the sex was really that meaningless, as if it was merely a way to crawl into Bronya’s bones and convince her to succumb to the darker side. To trip and fall a little further down into street racing.

There’s a part of Bronya that thinks that maybe all of this was a ploy to tempt her into it. That all of that sex was merely a tactic.

“No,” Bronya says coldly, the word coming out shorter than she intended for it to come out. “I’ve already told you that.”

Seele sighs. “Alright,” she says skeptically. “You can’t blame me for asking again.”

Maybe not. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t ache any less.

It’s Seele’s fault for putting the idea in her head, Bronya decides, because there’s no other explanation for why she’s here this late at night, standing amongst a rowdy crowd and tip-toeing to look over people’s heads to watch a race.

A street race. An illegal one, located in the far outreaches of the city. Bronya took her own car but parked far away so that she couldn’t be connected to the event, wearing plainer clothes than she normally adorns to blend in with the rest of the attendees.

She’s only here because Seele is, she reasons. She’s not actually curious about the race itself. It’s illegal. It’s against the rules for a reason. It’s nothing like true racing, nothing like the sport that she fell in love with among long tracks and the steady, growling hum of her engine accelerating as she leans into the wheel.

But the crowd rises in anticipation as the time stretches on, and Bronya can’t help but feel adrenaline build in her gut as she watches to see what will happen next. She’s already been waiting for a bit of time, but now Seele and another racer that she doesn’t know look as if they’re about to kick off the race. Seele has that look on her face that Bronya has grown acquainted with, the one that signals that she thinks she’s about to win.

The other racer has just gotten into their car and the din of the spectators grows even louder with expectation. Seele is opening the door to her car when there’s a sudden cry that goes over the crowd, which silences immediately.

“Somebody tipped off the police!”

All around Bronya, people start to flee in every direction, somewhat reminiscent of cockroaches swarming the area. Bronya swears and looks around, unsure of where to turn despite every nerve in her body screaming for her to escape. In front of her, the other racer starts to peel off, the sound of their tires squealing in the night. If the police didn’t know where they were before, then they surely do now.

Bronya doesn’t know where to go. In hindsight, it’s good that she had decided to leave her very conspicuous car in a faraway location, but now that she actually needs to run she has no idea what to do.

“Bronya?”

Bronya lifts her head sharply and meets Seele’s gaze head-on. The hood of her jacket falls off then, and she winces as she realizes that there’s no mistaking the sheen of her signature hair. “Seele.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Seele hisses, and then she looks up with a curse. “Shit. You need to leave.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Bronya says hysterically, and then Seele jumps up and drags her to the car.

“You need to leave, get in the car,” she repeats, this time harsher and with more urgency.

Bronya doesn’t wait any longer and runs to the passenger seat, barely closing the door before Seele hits the gas and they race off down the street. There’s the faraway but distinct sound of sirens somewhere behind them. Seele makes a sharp turn and slides into a set of backstreets.

Bronya struggles to catch her breath, and even as she looks at Seele from the side, she figures that she shouldn’t be the first to speak until Seele breaks the tense silence. Not that it’s entirely quiet—there’s the wind rushing past them with how fast she’s driving as well as the rushing in Bronya’s ears and the steadily ratcheting sound of her heartbeat.

Bronya can’t be caught with Seele, not in this car, not at this time of night. It’s dangerous.

After what could have been three minutes or fifteen, Seele eventually stops in the corner of a dimly lit street, panting slightly. There’s no other sign of the police, the rest of the city now quiet. Bronya figures that they’re far, far away from where they originally were.

Seele looks at her. “What the fuck were you doing there?”

Bronya has no good answer for her. “I told you it’d be too risky for us to race.”

Seele shakes her head. “If we were to race, there wouldn’t be any spectators and I’d make sure we’d be even farther from the action. I was just upholding my honor with this one. And you didn’t answer my question: what the hell were you doing there, princess?”

Bronya winces. She looks straight ahead instead of meeting Seele’s eyes. “I don’t know. I guess I was curious.”

“You couldn’t have chosen to be curious on a different night?”

“Is there ever really a good night to watch an illegal street race?”

“I forgot how stubborn you are about street racing,” Seele mutters, letting her head fall back against her seat with a sigh. Then she looks to the side to catch Bronya’s eye, who gives in and looks back. There’s a wry grin on her face. “Way to introduce you to the scene, by the way. What a rush. I don’t think I’ve driven you before either.”

“That was way too close,” Bronya says. “The one time I decide I want to see what’s so tempting about it. Nothing even happened.”

Seele rolls her eyes. “Because the organizers were incompetent. I had a feeling it would happen because I didn’t initiate this one. Wait for me to properly invite you to a race, princess, and I’ll show you a real show and you won’t have to see any of those red and blue lights.”

“You’d be lucky if I ever decided to come out here again,” Bronya shoots back, miffed. “This hasn’t given me a good impression of it.”

“Of course it hasn’t.” Seele’s hands tighten against the wheel, her knuckles going white, and then they loosen. “But you came out.”

Bronya swallows. “I guess I did.”

“Did I change your mind?”

“You wish.”

There’s a pregnant pause. “Are you curious enough to finally try to race?” Seele tries, hesitant.

“What’s your deal with me racing?” Bronya asks. “I’ve always wondered.”

Seele shrugs, her gaze wandering off. “I don’t really know. I guess it was your obvious prejudice against street racing at first, and then it was an attempt to shatter that princess persona of yours. But then it became obvious that you were more than that, you know, after the first few times we hooked up, and then I suppose it became… personal.”

“Personal?”

Seele ducks her head a little. “Yeah. Maybe I just wanted to share a little bit of my world with you.”

Fuck. Bronya grits her teeth. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“If it really means that much to you,” she says delicately, “I suppose there’s still more time left before the moonlight runs out. I can spare one race.”

“You’ve got this,” Seele says, one hand on the top side of the car door as she leans inside Bronya’s space, giving her a smile that says she believes the opposite of what she’s saying. “Obviously. Since you’re a world champion and all.”

“You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence in me right now,” Bronya says.

Seele just laughs. “Good luck.” Then she leans back to shut the door, sauntering off to her own car.

Seele had driven the two of them to another corner of the city that Bronya had never been to before, where she pulled out another car from a small garage and then directed her to an abandoned street. She said that she has individual races here all the time and the police don’t know the better of it. Bronya, who at that point could not have gone back on her word, merely accepted it as fact and hoped it to be true.

Bronya now grips the wheel underneath her fingers to feel how it’s different from what she’s used to driving. It’s just racing. She knows the ins and outs of it. She’s done this before, albeit in a different environment and a different atmosphere.

She’s driven in a city before. Surely she can do this, too.

Seele motions for her to roll down her window, so she does as the other does the same, leaning out to speak to her from the other car. “You ready?” she says, a hint of impatience entering her tone. She looks excited in a way that Bronya has hardly seen on her face. It transforms her. Makes her somehow look more alive even though she’s one of the most vivid people Bronya knows on principle.

“Obviously,” Bronya says, which may be a tad cocky on her end, but there’s still a part of her that plays the sound of the police sirens in her head like a warning. The more time they spend here dawdling, the more that her anxiety ramps up. 

“Great,” Seele says, ignorant of Bronya's internal dialogue. She ducks her head back in her car and faces forward, a wicked grin on her face. “We haven’t got a flag girl, so it’s off my voice, okay? On three, not after.”

“Got it,” Bronya says. Her palms sweat a little, making the steering wheel a little slick. She grips it harder.

“Fantastic,” Seele declares. “Good luck, princess. One. Two. Three.”

The last word is swallowed up immediately as they both hit the gas at the same time.

But Bronya was arrogant to assume that street racing was anything like the type of racing she was used to. She’d known vaguely that they were both built very differently, and after years of professional racing and countless hours spent behind the wheel, she knows what she’s doing—in a Formula One car.

And also on a professional track. She’d known theoretically that it would be very different to race on roads like these where they’re trapped within buildings and establishments around them with sharper turns and even sharper corners, but in practice, it’s a lot different than what Bronya had anticipated. Nothing that she had mentally prepared herself for.

To make a long story short, Bronya, the world champion of the latest Formula One season, loses to Seele. An illegal underground racer with nothing to her name but the knowledge she’d swiped from the street and from behind the wheel.

“Shit,” Bronya breathes, watching Seele get out of the car in front of her with what is the beginning of a smug smile spreading across her face.

Seele taps on the window, and Bronya, with a frown on her face, slowly moves to roll it down. “I’d hate to say I told you so, but,” Seele says, and then she doesn’t finish, letting Bronya imagine what she’d been about to say. That smirk is even more infuriating up close. But she looks lovely when she’s laughing.

How contradictory.

“You threw me in with no experience. I don’t know what you were expecting,” Bronya says, flustered, finally peeling herself out of the seat. There’s still the intrinsic fear that they’re going to be caught, but it quiets now that she’s out of the car. It helps that Seele looks so careless now, looking truly free under the spread and dim lights that the street lamps have to offer.

“More than that,” Seele says, giving her an up and down, “given how you talked so poorly of street racing.”

“I’d like to see you on a professional track,” Bronya sniffs, crossing her arms.

Seele shrugs. “I’d probably do as badly as you just performed. I’m not going to lie and say that I think I could beat you at your own game. It’s just hilarious to me to see you get taken down a peg for once.”

“There’s no need to rub it in.”

“Actually, I think I deserve this,” Seele says, inching closer to Bronya. “Admit that I’ve won.”

“Is the evidence not clear enough for you? Must you humiliate me further?”

A flash of teeth in the form of a smirk. “Say it out loud, princess.”

Bronya narrows her eyes. “You always ask for more than you are entitled to.”

Seele crowds Bronya up against the hood of her car until Bronya’s legs go a little weak in anticipation. “I’ve won the race, but I’ll win the game,” she says, her gaze hungry, ferocious, and Bronya knows she’s talking about more than just cars now. She snakes a hand beneath Bronya’s waistband. “Say that I’ve won.”

Bronya’s eyelashes flutter. “No.”

Later that night, Seele makes her eat her words until she admits her defeat and much, much more.

The next third or so time that Seele texts her again after their nightly escapade is not to ask her to hook up but instead to inquire if she is willing to race again.

Bronya pauses over the text message for so long that Seele’s typing bubble pops up and down a few times and the screen goes dark, and then instead of answering she puts down the phone and determinedly opens her inbox to answer emails instead.

The only reason why it causes so much conflict inside of her is because she very nearly says yes the moment that she reads the message. A little-known fact about Bronya is that despite her initially polite appearance, she is just as stubborn as Seele, if not more. It’s why she’s so good at her job, after all. And it’s why she doesn’t quite want to concede defeat to Seele just yet.

I’ll consider it if you do a good enough job of convincing me, she ends up texting later that night, hours after she first read the message, and Seele ends up taking her out within the hour to show her more than a good time.

Bronya supposes she shouldn’t have expected anything less. And now she has to let Seele take her out for another race or else she’d just be a liar.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway.

Seele told her that she would pick her up, so Bronya ended up giving her the address of her apartment building. She’s aware that it’s a gesture of trust that she hadn’t extended before—they’d never really spoken much about these things before. 

There are the obvious things, like racing and cars and sex and what their fast food orders are after a long night out. Seele asks about the professional racing world once, and Bronya spends the rest of the night talking about all the people she’s met and employees on her team and every single asshole she’s ever come across because she hadn’t been allowed to shit talk her opponents before.

In turn, Seele tells her about her day job and what area of town she grew up in and how her dreams deviated far from her expectations the moment she graduated college and realized that she wasn’t happy. She speaks about her upbringing and weaves stories that Bronya visualizes in her head about working odd jobs under odd bosses until she finally found her place operating out of an underground mechanic’s garage.

They’d never seen each other’s beds before, just the inside of their cars. Bronya doesn’t bring Seele to meet any of her friends, and Seele doesn’t extend the offer either. For every piece of vulnerability that they bring to light, there is another one tucked in the darkness that goes unmentioned.

But now Bronya is waiting outside of her apartment building on a chilly night, and when Seele pulls up and she hops into the passenger seat she points out which floor she lives on, gesturing way, way up. And Seele makes all of the appropriate noises of acknowledgment and makes jokes about how Bronya is literally above everyone else before she asks genuine questions about how Bronya lives during the racing season.

They drive around the city slower than they ever have before, for once in their busy lives not in a rush, and before they know it, there’s rain pouring down from the skies until the roads have gone as slick as oil.

“Ah, shit,” Seele says. She pulls over to park by the sidewalk and peers up through her window up at the sky as if she can will away the clouds, then shoots an apologetic look to Bronya. “I don’t think we should race, especially since you don’t exactly know what you’re doing. Not in the rain.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Bronya agrees with no small amount of relief because she’s long since realized that she only agreed because it was Seele, not because it remotely had anything to do with cars. “So…”

The two of them sit in silence for a few moments longer, and when Seele doesn’t offer anything up, Bronya makes up her mind and pulls up a map application on her phone. “There’s this nice restaurant just a few blocks away,” she says. “It’s a little upscale so I don’t go there often, but it was my idea so I’ll cover it.”

“I’d hate to be your charity project,” says Seele, but she’s already shifting the car into drive and heading in the direction that the automated voice on Bronya’s phone tells her to go.

Neither of them is quite dressed for the occasion, and they happen to be more than a little rain-soaked since there are enough cars parked along the streets that they had to make a run for it before they got to the covered entrance, but the hostess apparently recognizes Bronya and lets them in even without a reservation.

They’re seated in a corner by the window overlooking the rest of the city bathed in neon lights and artificial daylight. And with the rain gently sliding against the glass, Bronya thinks that this is a better idea than racing each other ever would have been.

“I suppose this is nice,” Seele admits, looking back at Bronya with a grin on her face. “Even if this isn’t my usual scene.”

“It’s not mine either,” Bronya confesses. “I travel so much that I prefer to stay in and cook for myself anyway. I’m hardly out trying restaurants or hopping bars in my free time.”

“So the past few weeks have been abnormal for you?”

Bronya thinks about frequenting Serval’s bar and kissing Seele in the back of her car before she had even known enough about her to place which part of the country her accent originated from. “Unique circumstances,” she says, shrugging.

“Aw, you’ll make me feel special,” Seele says, scoffing and looking out the window with a laugh, and Bronya stares and stares and stares. Because she’s finding that Seele is special to her, and the realization is more winding than the short sprint they’d taken to make it to the restaurant while remaining as dry as possible.

Bronya hadn’t taken Seele here to impress her, and she knows that Seele wouldn’t be impressed by even grander gestures than this—but it provides a nice ambiance, and that’s all it has to be between them. Nice. It’s such an extreme dichotomy from how they usually spend their time with fast-roving mouths and quick hands that in the slow motions of the night, it feels as if it could never end.

But all good things end, and when Bronya signs the check and Seele walks her out to discover that the rain has dried up but the streets still remain too wet to race, she turns to Bronya with a familiar and expectant look in her eye.

“Do you want to see my place?” Seele says, and Bronya, with the realization that she’s falling slowly, going under with no way to fight against the current, is hopeless to her plea yet again. And she says yes.

Seele’s apartment complex is much less extravagant than Bronya’s but she doesn’t appear to harbor any shame about it. She leads her up a cramped and shadowed stairwell and stops on the third floor, unlocking a door that creaks at the hinges and reveals itself to be a small but cozy space with a kitchen, living room, and a hallway that leads to the bathroom and the bedroom.

Seele shows her to her bedroom because they haven’t known much more than this at this point. But it’s quieter than they’re used to without the sounds of cars out on the street or voices outside the bar bathroom or other miscellaneous sounds in the hotel hallway.

The lights are barely on and the curtains are opened ever so slightly so Seele’s shadow is long as she slowly approaches Bronya and pushes her down onto the bed, gentler than she had expected. “Is this okay?” she asks, a question they rarely take the time to ask as she noses over Bronya’s collarbone to reach to the back of her shirt and ease it off.

Bronya inhales a small, hitched breath that resounds much louder in the overwhelming silence. “Yes,” she breathes, and then she allows Seele to undress her and unravel her in other, much more intimate ways.

It’s slow going. Seele’s touch is gentle, sparking fire every time she brushes her bare fingers against Bronya’s skin, and the rain returns to patter quietly against the walls and ceiling as she spreads Bronya apart into a quiet, aching canvas.

She calls her princess and darling and sweetheart as she usually does, but it sounds different in a room that has walls strung up with photos of Seele and other people that Bronya doesn’t recognize. The names echo in softer tones against a bed whose sheets smell like Seele and the scent of her shampoo.

She brushes up against Bronya’s ear while she has her eyes closed and she whispers Bronya, though it’s so quiet that she thinks that perhaps she’s mistaken it, but still, it makes her jerk more viscerally than any of her touches had before.

“Seele,” Bronya murmurs back in return, the sound ripping itself out of her throat. And as the moonlight stretches out over the city in waves, the tide receding and swelling and retracting, the rain slows and stops. And so do Bronya and Seele.

With her heart in her throat, Bronya stares up at the ceiling and realizes that she’s way in over her head than she had ever originally figured. And she’s more than catastrophically fucked, because while she may have committed a crime by racing, Seele had done something much worse—she’d ripped open the fragile lining of Bronya’s heart and shoved herself in there, without word or warning, and now Bronya has no way to gouge her out without tearing open her own chest too.

“Seele,” she whispers into the empty silence. Water from the gutters drips down along the walls, the droplets landing in disparate and scattered splashes. It’s the only sound aside from the silent home of the air conditioning running through the apartment unit.

“Bronya,” Seele responds, sounding sleepy, and that hurts, somehow, to hear her own name repeated back to her when all she’s ever been called is a teasing nickname. Bronya squeezes her eyes shut and breathes in through her nose because she thinks that she wouldn’t be able to bear taking in any more of this room that is so unbearably Seele.

“Did you have a question?” Seele says again eventually after Bronya fails to respond.

Bronya’s ribcage feels tight as if knitting together to prevent any more words from escaping. “Oh, I’ve just,” she begins, and then she stops, licking her lips. She still hasn’t opened her eyes. “I think I’ve made a mistake, you see, because I think I’ve gone and fallen a little in love with you.”

The sound of Seele’s steady breathing stops, and so does the drone of the air conditioning and the fall of the rain outside. “What?”

Bronya breathes out through her mouth. “I think I should leave.”

“Wait.” There’s the distinct rustling of sheets, and then Seele places a warm hand on Bronya’s arm, silently keeping her in place. “Say that again.”

“I don’t see why I should,” Bronya says, and then she finally opens her eyes so that she can locate her clothes and figure out a way to get home, but when she catches sight of Seele’s face she loses all of her motivation to leave.

Seele has this look of open wonder on her face, her mouth slightly parted as if she can’t believe anything that Bronya has said in the last minute or so. As if she wants to believe it. As if she feels the same way.

Or maybe that’s hopeful wishing.

There’s a knot in Bronya’s throat that wants to make its way out. “Seele.”

“Bronya,” Seele says for the third time that night, and then she hauls herself up so that she’s sitting, the sheets falling away around her. “Did you mean what you said?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to lie about something like that.”

“Fuck,” Seele says, and then she leans in closer to Bronya’s side, a glimmer of more emotion finally revealing itself on her face. “I was hoping that you would fall for me so I could have an excuse as to why I fell for you.”

Bronya swallows, her gaze flickering from Seele’s open gaze to her honest mouth. “Are you joking?”

“Jesus, you show a girl your bed and your car and you run from the police with her and she still doesn’t get the hint,” Seele says, teasing. Her mouth finally lilts up into a smile, her teeth flashing in the darkness. She reaches up to hook her arms around Bronya’s neck and tug her back into her embrace, the movement sudden and kickstarting Bronya’s heart to start properly working again. “Of course I mean it.”

“Oh.” Bronya closes her eyes and rests her cheek against Seele’s chest and thinks that she can hear her heart pumping wildly too beneath the skin. She smiles, content. “That’s good.”

“Oh,” Seele mimics. “Yeah, it’s a pretty good life to be loved, isn’t it?”

Maybe not everything has to be a race between them, after all.