Work Text:
More often than not, before a race, James found himself drawn to Niki’s hovel in the pits. He was a regular enough face there at this point that his presence didn’t attract attention in the way that it used to. Now that he was allowed to linger, it was a privilege he took up on whenever he could.
Being able to watch Niki work was simply an added bonus to always being in his way.
While he didn’t necessarily understand the desire to get his hands dirty - he preferred to race not play God with the machines – he could certainly appreciate the sight of someone confident in their talent.
Niki was currently hunched over his workbench, his stance as loose as James had ever seen it, and it was a good look for him.
“It’s a shame you no longer have someone at your side to witness your defeat,” Niki said into the amicable silence and, well, trust him to ruin such a beautiful moment.
It was a jab designed to sting but James let it roll off of him to focus instead on something that had been bugging him for a while now.
“You do that a lot,” he mused. “Bring up my wife, I mean.”
“Ex-wife,” Niki corrected, and the little shit hadn’t even bothered to look up from the bolt he was stripping to lay an expert right hook.
James huffed in reluctant amusement. “Ah, yes, and I wish Mr Burton all the best with that but it doesn’t change my point.”
There was a pause while Niki thought it over and James hadn’t really expected an answer but now that he might be getting one, he stepped cautiously closer.
“Maybe a part of me still doesn’t believe it,” Niki eventually explained.
James snorted. “What? That I could get a woman?”
And even as a joke, it was too ridiculous to fathom. There was another pause while Niki sighed and then he went in for the knockout.
“That you’d be stupid enough to go through with something you clearly have no interest in.”
Finally, Niki turned around. He pulled off his gloves and his hands underneath were just as streaked with grease. When he met James’ gaze there was no humour there just something that looked like understanding.
Normally, a gaze so piercing would have made James’ skin crawl, he’d let his fists fly over less, but the weight of Niki’s attention made his skin tingle in a completely different way. He sent Niki a closed lip smile and tilted his head slightly, letting his eyes roam over him to return the favour.
“How different we are,” he sighed.
Niki nodded. “I like to think so. It gives me hope.”
There was a rustle of fabric behind him and Niki’s attention was swiftly diverted. The expression that came over his face was something James liked; maybe even more so since it wasn’t directed at him. He wouldn’t know what to do with such a look and when he turned to leave, he nodded politely at Marlene as she hovered at the edge of the entrance, watching them both.
“Forget hope, Niki,” he offered over his shoulder. “What you need today is luck.”
He didn’t need eyes in the back of his head to know there was a rude gesture being aimed at his back.
-
James lost.
He came second but that was as good as losing when Niki beat him by a sliver of a second.
He was now avoiding his own team, who wanted nothing more than to slap him on the back and offer their congratulations and that in turn brought him to Niki’s fortress. The same issue didn’t apply here. The win was already out of Niki’s mind, taken over by the loom of the next one.
When James approached his workspace, he found Niki arguing with one of his engineers. Apparently that sliver of a second just wasn’t enough.
A drink had found its way into his hand on the walk over, as they usually do, and James drank it down while watching the engineer listen to Niki with rapt attention. Marlene sidled up to his elbow a few minutes later and they observed together.
“How do you put up with him?”
Marlene glanced up at him but James made sure to keep his eyes on the way Niki’s hands were gesturing in the air.
“I knew exactly what I was getting when I married him,” she said after a while, and there was a faint hint of protective shielding in her voice that James had always admired.
“An arsehole,” he finished, mainly just for the satisfaction of seeing her roll her eyes, which she did, but it was followed by a small smile.
“Yes,” she admitted, “but a great man and an even better driver.”
James nodded, and he kept nodding until Niki happened to look over at them, his wife and his rival, sharing the same space, and his face went momentarily blank. James tipped his drink back, milking the last few drops, and when he righted himself, Niki had turned his back on them to gesture more expansively at his car.
“I think I get it.”
She sent him a searching look and James shrugged, somehow perfectly encapsulating his own surprise and also his complete lack of shame in the fact. And, oh, she understood him too if that calculating look was anything to go by.
They were both rats, the pair of them; intelligent, too perceptive for their own good, rats.
-
In the next race, James came third.
He thought it warranted a night of really drowning his sorrows. Never mind the fact that the process of losing a race was nearly identical to the system he used having won a race. The main difference here was that, for one night only, he was allowing himself to scrape at the very bottom of his darkest desires.
They stumbled down the hallway, giving the barest thought to where their feet were going. Not for the first time, James was thankful for his training. Where would he be without his ability to map out the path between the lifts and his hotel room door without even opening his eyes?
Once they reached the right room, he found himself pushing her up against the wall instead of going for the door. While she tasted him, James ran his hands down her sides, marveling at how good the worn material felt on someone else.
He thought he was truly lost in the sensations but all it took to break him out of it was a quiet gasp of surprise sounding over his shoulder. Their mouths separated with a slick noise and when James pulled far enough away to find Marlene standing frozen at the end of the hallway, he was able to watch the shock on her face melt into something closer to disappointment.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought…never mind.”
Her voice turned into a shaky laugh and James could see her hands shivering from where he stood. Only, she wasn’t looking at James, she was staring at the woman leaning languidly against the wall.
James followed her gaze and he knew immediately what Marlene had thought because he’d thought the same thing.
The woman was wearing James’ racing overalls. Well, more appropriately, she was drowning in his overalls, but that coupled with her dark eyes and dark hair, cut short, he could see the blunt resemblance. In reality, they looked nothing alike, beyond the softly rounded face, but from the other end of the hallway, along with the blur of familiar racing red…
With the idea already planted in her head, it was a logical assumption to make.
When James’ eyes locked with Marlene’s, it was a kind of turning point. The thing that really sealed the unspoken deal between them, though, was the fact that Marlene clearly wasn’t angry. She understood. When James leaned across to open the door, Marlene stayed where she was. When James made to follow the woman inside, Marlene didn’t shrink away from his parting sultry grin.
In the dark of the hotel room, alone once again, the padding of the suit made the woman feel firmer under James’ hands and when he dove back in for another wet kiss, her subtle curves were the last thing on his mind.
-
There was no concrete reason why it came to happen in the end, just a coalescence of right place, right time. The consensus seemed to be that Marlene had played the most hand in it, but she would refuse to claim credit when it so rarely came up.
All James could remember was that she had definitely started it.
-
Two beers in hand, James made his way over to Niki’s sanctuary. With the race tomorrow, it was the surest bet that Niki would be there, putting in the last minute touches to make sure everything ran smoothly the next day.
James had a very different work ethic, one that namely involved alcohol.
“Here,” he said, striding into the calm to place one of the chilled drinks on the back of Niki’s hand. He left it to balance there and wasn’t surprised when Niki shot him a look of, objectively fond, hatred. Niki rescued the bottle but moved it aside to continue working.
“If you put the same effort into racing as you do trying to piss me off, you might pose more of a threat.”
James leant his hip against the workbench and nursed his own drink, thinking. “Wouldn’t one lead to the other?” he asked.
Niki shook his head. “Winning races fairly doesn’t piss me off.”
James could only hum at that and it paved the way into a comfortable silence.
Perched on a stool at his workbench, Niki would occasionally reach for his drink and James would hide his gratified smile behind his hand, believing that it felt so good to corrupt.
It wasn’t long before Marlene appeared at the door and, seeing them both already there, she paused.
It all unravelled rather quickly at that point.
She crossed the room and went to stand by Niki’s other side, where she laid her hand gently on top of his in a way not too dissimilar to James and his beer. When Niki looked up at her, his expression was the opposite; fond on the surface but a hint of hatred hidden below. And trust Niki to be pissed at someone showing him genuine care. Poor guy probably had trouble accepting the simplest gesture of love.
“I thought you left already,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft in the quiet and James knew his presence here made for a completely different dynamic.
“I did,” she said, simply. “And then I came back.”
Her eyes met James’ over Niki’s head and all of a sudden it hit him that this was the moment. His mouth ran dry.
Marlene used her grip on his hand to pull Niki to his feet. He went quite readily but his jaw tightened from a lack of understanding about the situation. Before he could question it, Marlene brought their foreheads together and it was a practiced gesture, something significant between the two of them, and James watched amazed as Niki relaxed into it. The kiss that followed was her way of testing the water.
The shock of it caused Niki’s eyes to flutter closed. James soaked up the image of them together but it was the scrape of his feet on the ground, as he moved to take a closer look, which broke Niki out of his haze.
Niki immediately pulled away, swallowing impulsively as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. He glanced wildly between his wife and James, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“What is this?” he asked them, voice faintly choked with anger, and this was the important moment where it could go either way. “What is happening here?”
Now it would do them no favours to point out that Niki wanted this. It would be the fastest way of shutting down the deal so James, having placed his drink down on the bench, simply closed the small gap between them and slotted himself against Niki’s side.
“It’s something we should have done a long time ago,” James explained and Marlene was nodding along with him.
To his credit, Niki didn’t drop his expression of wary mistrust. It stayed firmly in place even as James ducked his head to brush his mouth against Niki’s neck. The skin jumped under his lips the moment he made contact and with each dry kiss towards his jaw, the pulse leaped.
When Niki spoke, the noise rumbled through James as well.
“This has never happened,” he breathed, sounding a lot like he was convincing someone. It wasn’t until James felt Marlene slide her hand down his arm did he realise Niki was talking to her, trying to reassure her that this wasn’t a step they’d ever taken. Not alone and certainly not without her.
Niki needed to hear the words and Marlene knew that. “I know,” she sighed. “I know.”
The gentle swipe of her thumb up and down James’ arm was all the reassurance he needed and he opened his mouth to let his teeth drag over the tendon there. Niki’s whole body jerked at that and he could hear the soft laugh that escaped Marlene in the air of electricity that followed.
“I should have known you’d try anything to distract me before a race. And you call me the rat.”
Niki spoke though gritted teeth, and it was so undeniably ‘Niki’ that James abandoned his neck to seek out his mouth. It was fitting he’d brought up the race because things were no different here. It was still a competition, a battle for dominance, and still something James was determined to win.
He nipped at his bottom lip and wasn’t disappointed when Niki failed to melt and instead bit him back. They kissed for a while, simply burning off the built-up need while Marlene watched but James had always had a problem with patience and there was something he wanted more than Niki’s mouth.
Dragging himself away, James dropped heavily to his knees. From the floor, it was a great view. Niki was scowling, even now, and at some point Marlene’s hand had wormed its way inside his shirt. When James pressed the heel of his palm against Niki’s stomach, Niki whispered in German, something insulting no doubt, and James grinned.
“Maybe this will shut that loud Austrian mouth of yours,” he joked.
James glanced up again just in time to catch Marlene’s discrete head shake and was forced to smother his laugh into Niki’s thigh. He probably wouldn’t appreciate being laughed at in this position.
With a gentle shove, Niki’s back hit his workbench and James wasted no time in dragging his hand lower. A very different kind of adrenaline coursed through him as he unthreaded Niki’s belt but it was no less addictive than accelerating down a straight stretch of track.
The first touch of his mouth on Niki’s cock was an adventure for them all. They all experienced the shudder that ran through him. For James, it was a pleasure as fulfilling as finishing first in a race. It actually brought to mind the fact that he had never understood why people labelled them such fierce rivals. Feeling Niki surrender under him put against the weight of the hand he’d settled possessively on James’ head was an okay understanding of equality for them both, he thought.
While he worked at Niki ardently from below, Marlene returned to his mouth. It was obvious Niki appreciated it because it smothered all the needy noises he would rather James never heard.
It didn’t take long for the hand in his hair to twitch in warning, telling James that Niki was close, and instead of surrendering the pace, he blindly reached up to grab any part of Marlene he could find. Snagging her sleeve, he warned her too and when Niki’s hand eventually tightened to a death grip, she had enough warning to separate their mouths, allowing Niki’s moan to spill out for them all to hear.
After one final pull of his mouth, James dropped away to lean back on his hands. The air was filled with their heavy breathing and the smell of sex. Except, just like on the track, recovery time was something Niki didn’t understand the meaning of. Before James could catch his breath, Niki was already kissing his wife without a hint of embarrassment.
James watched from the floor, panting but fascinated. Everything around him was moving in a haze, right up to the moment Niki turned his sharp eyes onto his. James couldn’t help but smirk as Niki crouched, wrapped his hand into James’ shirt and dragged them together once again to taste himself on James’ tongue.
This was certainly something James could get used to.
-
What they had off the track never interfered with what went on under the public eye. The papers still labelled them rivals but alone, in the company of each other, they’d managed to perfect a pretty fair three-way split that suited them just fine.