Chapter Text
There is nothing Fernando likes better than having his own things.
Like Lance, for example. It’s been a few months since Lance asked Fernando to just take whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and Fernando is a bit drunk on the power—especially since it gets Lance off hard too.
At any time, Fernando can drag Lance over, push him down onto his knees, and make him cock-warm for a few hours while Fernando catches up on a show or studies tyre degradation charts. Or he can come up behind Lance as he’s washing dishes, pin him against the counter, and fuck him right there until the water runs cold. Or he can cut a shitty iRacing session short to make Lance sit on his dick. Like he’s about to.
“Lancito, come here,” Fernando calls. He’s hard in his jeans and cannot wait to make it Lance’s problem, although Fernando knows that Lance will want it just as badly, if not more. They’ve just arrived home after a poor race weekend, and if Fernando is pent up, Lance must be so needy it hurts.
Lance pads into the room and looks at Fernando curiously, but before Lance can make any sense of the situation, Fernando grabs him by the wrist and drags him into his lap. He loves the cute little gasp Lance makes once he realizes what’s happening.
Lance turns to face Fernando and straddles him, giving Fernando the perfect angle to snag the collar of his shirt and pull him in for a messy, openmouthed kiss. It makes Lance moan gently and shift a bit in Fernando’s lap, seeking friction in a way that makes Fernando roll his hips up involuntarily. (Fernando should be used to how quickly Lance can get hard and needy, but damn, it’s still superhuman.)
“Fuck, Lance…” breathes Fernando.
“Yeah, that’s what you’re about to do, fuck Lance, correct,” Lance babbles.
“Sì.” Fernando watches Lance’s eyes go wide as he unbuckles his belt and shimmies his jeans and boxers down just enough to let his cock spring free. It’s bouncing gently against his shirt and smearing a bit of precum on the fabric, and honestly Fernando used to be embarrassed by his own arousal, but it’s hard to be now, when Lance stares dumbly every single time at it, eyes dark, face flushed, and palming the front of his own sweats.
Fernando swats his hand away, making Lance whine, and, fine, maybe the only reason Fernando does it is to hear him. If he’s drunk enough to admit it, Fernando will go on about how Lance’s voice is built for whining, how the high-pitched, breathy indignancy of it is something Fernando could live off of, how it makes Fernando want to—and that’s usually when Lance slaps a hand over his stupid lovesick mouth.
Now, though, Lance’s hands are on Fernando’s hips as he rocks on his thighs and begs to suck him off, unleashing the most potent fuck-me eyes he can, and damn, that’s unfair. Lance knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. Thankfully, Fernando has spent enough time with the little freak to (usually) know exactly how to make him wait.
“No.” Fernando’s voice is firm.
“Please, Nando, please, just a taste, please?”
“No.”
“Why—“
“Because you are going to ride me and you are going to look so pretty bouncing on my cock that I might consider letting you come.” In truth, Fernando’s already decided he will. He’s feeling nice. But Lance doesn’t need to know that.
Lance narrows his eyes. “You will anyway.” Oh.
“I don’t need to, do I, Lancito? I could leave you there and tie your hands and then only you would be able to beg, and even then I would say no.”
Lance’s stubborn farce cracks a bit. Fernando has won.
“You would not want that, would you? Hmm?”
Lance huffs, but starts yanking off his sweatpants anyway. He’s such a brat. Fernando wouldn’t have it any other way.
He opens Lance up slow and steady—much more than needed, frankly, because Lance just gets so damn irresistible when he’s rocking back on Fernando’s fingers and gasping moans with his eyes screwed shut whenever those fingers curl just right and gripping Fernando’s thighs hard enough to bruise through the denim because otherwise he’ll touch himself; of course he will, his cock is flushed and heavy and dripping precum and if Fernando’s grasp on his own control wasn’t so tenuous he would let his Lance relieve himself a bit. Oh well, too bad for Lancey.
Fernando draws his lubed fingers back suddenly, causing Lance to make this little affronted noise and turn his gaze, framed by his sweat-damp, flushed face, sharply to Fernando. He beckons Lance with his finger in response. Lance is like a marionette when he gets like this; he’s practically strung to Fernando’s finger with how he scrambles forward into Fernando’s lap, lines himself up with the ease of familiarity, and sinks onto Fernando’s cock in one smooth motion. Fernando gasps and has to use the last strands of his resolve not to buck his hips up. He’s still surprised with how easy Lance makes it look—Fernando’s thick, he knows he is, Lance knows he is—but Lance still just takes him like he was made for it, insisting that it doesn’t hurt, that he wants it harder, faster, now, and the way he acts—like it’s been years since anyone touched him, like he lives for being fucked, every single time—makes Fernando fucking believe him.
The sound of Lance’s hitching breath as he takes up a rhythm brings Fernando back down to earth, and the sight of Lance’s muscled thighs flexing as he lifts himself up makes Fernando want to stay there. He’s rewarded; rewarded by seeing Lance like this, damp with sweat and flushed wherever he’s sensitive and choking on gasps and moans with each drop down as he uses Fernando’s cock like a toy to nail his own prostate. Soon Fernando snaps his hips up, and Lance, surprised by it, positively shouts. Fernando smiles. The sim rig gets enough use for them to know that it puts Lance at the absolute perfect angle when he rides.
“Lance, Lancito, you are so fucking good, God, taking my cock like you were made for it, shit,” pants Fernando. Lance goes red at the praise, then furrows his brow and rides Fernando harder, bouncing higher and moaning lewdly with each drop, panting some mixture of harder and need it and Fernando that makes Fernando see stars, makes flame lick up his whole body from the burning embers of every point of contact with his Lance.
Fernando only has half a mind to think that he really needs to let Lance ride him more before he’s scrabbling for purchase on Lance’s hips, bringing him up and down just the way he needs it, chasing the familiar warm tightening in his gut and bucking up into the tight heat of Lance’s hole frantically, rhythm be damned. Fernando digs his nails into Lance’s delicate hips (certainly drawing angry crescent moons that will grow tender and red and show anyone who sees that Lance is his) and Lance whines, whines like he was put on the earth for it, and that’s all it takes. Fernando comes hard, never bothering to warn Lance, and Lance rides Fernando through it, rides him for all he’s worth, rides him until it turns from bouncing to squirming on top of Fernando’s lap and Fernando is forced to acknowledge Lance’s cock, still rock-hard and dripping.
Maybe this is his favorite part—that he could tell Lance to wait, get Lance so needy that he’s arching into the most benign brush of Fernando’s fingers against his skin. But it’s also so good to let Lance come, to let him rut frantically into Fernando’s palm until he falls apart at the seams and turns liquid in Fernando’s arms, so he does… as long as he can make Lance ask nicely.
“Ay, Lancito, so perfect… you make me feel so good, cariño,” Fernando says fondly.
Lance preens at the praise. “Good enough to let me come?” His voice is sex-soaked and rough around the edges, and if Fernando was a bit younger he would be able to get off again on just the sound.
“Maybe later. I like when you beg for it.” He uses his grip to encourage Lance off of his spent cock; Fernando knows that leaving Lance empty makes him absolutely pathetic, and even better, entirely his.
Lance huffs and pouts, biting his lip as if it’ll contain his response. “Please?” he says weakly.
“Please what?”
“Please let me come, Nando, please, I’ve been good, come on—“ Fernando doesn’t need words to cut him off, instead opting to wrap a hand around Lance’s throbbing cock in a silent invitation. Lance wastes no time arching into the touch, and once he’s grabbed Fernando’s waist for leverage, he thrusts into Fernando’s hand in earnest, precum making the slide just smooth enough.
Lance comes quickly, shuddering and moaning as he spills over Fernando’s hand and makes a mess of their shirts. A few tears have slipped from Lance’s eyes; more still hang on his lashes, and he looks beautifully ruined—because he is, he’s ruined for anyone but Fernando, as he’ll fervently declare when Fernando’s possessive streak flares hot in his chest for one reason or another.
Exhausted, Lance collapses against Fernando’s chest and nestles his head into his neck—and Fernando knows that’s a silent invitation of his own. So he wraps his arms around Lance’s back and holds him tightly, tracing patterns idly with his finger and laving praise as Lance pants into his shoulder. “Lancito, my Lancito, so good just for me… so close just from bouncing on my cock, I’m so proud of you, cariño, so perfect, love you so much, Lancito…” Fernando’s less than coherent himself—his brain is just as fried as Lance’s after being ridden within an inch of his life—but Lance still nuzzles closer, evidently trying to press every single inch of his body to Fernando’s at once. Fernando’s heart squeezes. He might not admit it as readily, but he’s ruined for anyone but Lance, too.
It’s only once Lance catches his breath and lifts his head from Fernando’s shoulder does he seem to comprehend the situation. He grimaces and gestures to the tacky, drying cum smeared between their chests. “Gross. We need a shower.”
Fernando hums in assent. “You get the water going and I will clean the sim rig?”
That plan seems to work for Lance, who nods. As he gets up to leave, though, Fernando has an idea. He pulls off his sweaty shirt and tosses it at Lance. “Lancito, put this in the laundry for me?”
“Yeah, okay, I gotcha. Just lemme admire for a bit.” He plays it up, dropping his mouth into an O and staring hard at Fernando’s bare chest.
Fernando laughs, deep and hearty. “You see me shirtless all the time, no?”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I get used to it.” Lance pouts. His lips are still a bit kiss-bitten, and it just makes him look cuter.
Fernando pushes himself out of the chair, and a bit of chaos ensues as he chases Lance around the room until he can finally land a solid slap to his ass. “Get to it, Lancelot,” he commands playfully, and Lance obliges, but not before he can return the favor with a slap of his own.
-
The water is hot and the pressure is good—Fernando silently thanks Lance for introducing him to the joy of high quality shower heads—and Lance is gentle, reverent even, as he massages Fernando’s shoulders under the running water. He washes Fernando’s hair as well, but as he’s lathering it with shampoo, Lance stops to scrutinize a spot. “You’re balding, old man!” he jokes. Fernando can hear the smile in his voice.
“Okay, okay. We cannot all be young, Lancito.”
“Kidding. And besides, I like my men finely aged. Like wine.”
Fernando gets him back later, when he puts way too much shampoo in Lance’s hair and uses the excess suds to give him a mohawk. And maybe steps out of the shower to get his phone and maybe, possibly snaps a photo.
-
They both end up collapsing on the couch after, wet hair and all. When Fernando wakes, he thinks it’s been an hour or two, but he can’t tell—Lance is curled up with his head on Fernando’s chest (like a cat, Fernando thinks fondly) and Fernando wouldn’t dare disturb his nap to check the time on his phone.
Finally Lance wakes, and he stretches his arms before rolling over to fix those doe eyes on Fernando. “Hi,” Fernando says, putting a hand softly on Lance’s cheek.
“Hi yourself.” Lance smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. He rubs the sleep from them, then swings himself up from the couch. “‘M gonna make tea. You want any?”
Fernando nods. He pulls Lance down by the shirt and presses a kiss to his cheek before letting him leave. Lance pads to the kitchen, and Fernando can hear him filling the kettle and clicking on the gas stove.
Sighing, Fernando sits up and stretches, twisting from side to side. With his newly freed arms he can grab his phone from the coffee table, and after checking on his fantasy F1 league (Lance may poke endless fun at him for it, but no, it’s not weird to have a fantasy team for your own sport), Fernando yawns and opens his email. It’s a good thing the tea is still in progress, because the first email he reads would have made him spit the drink all over himself.
To: Fernando Alonso
From: Aston Martin
Subject: Immediate activation of contractual clause
Body: Due to team underperformance, Aston Martin officials have deemed it necessary to stimulate competition between yourself and your fellow driver, Lance Stroll. The Free Use clause of your contract will be activated IMMEDIATELY, and will last for as long as needed until improvements are made.
A meeting will be held tomorrow at 9:30 AM to discuss this further.
Best,
Aston Martin
Fernando just closes his eyes and sinks into the couch, where he considers disappearing for the next few hours. Or weeks.
The clause isn’t unheard of—it’s in fine print in every driver’s contract as far as Fernando knows, and in a lot of legalese says that the driver who performs better on a race weekend is permitted to use the other driver however they please for the week—but the last time it was activated, or even mentioned by anyone at any of the teams he’s raced for was… never, not that Fernando can remember, maybe because team officials have realized that it’s just fucking weird.
“Nando, what the hell is the free use clause?” comes from the direction of the kitchen. Lance has certainly gotten the email as well.
-
“I mean. That’s just what we’re doing now, right?”
The tea is long forgotten by now; it never even made it past water in the kettle. Fernando pinches the bridge of his nose. Lance is right, that’s the thing, but… the whole situation is just so alien. Their home life is separate from their work life, thank you very much, and more importantly, Lance is his. Nobody else gets to see him trembling and begging, especially not everyone else on the goddamn team. And if anyone even catches wind of their relationship…
“Lighten up, Grinch. Bet my dad just figured out I think you’re hot.” Lance is playful, but the thought of Lawrence fucking Stroll being privy to their sex life makes Fernando want to gag. He groans and presses his fingers to his closed eyes. When he opens them again, though, Lance is peering at him from the other side of the couch, eyebrows quirked in concern. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry…” he starts, tentative. “We don’t need to do anything, ah, right? ‘S just a suggestion?”
“No, they will be concerned if they do not see any, uh…” Fernando trails off into a grumble dripping with exhaustion. He closes his eyes again and sinks as far into the cushions as he can, and for a second, he just tries to breathe deeply and calm down (because what else could he do when his attempts to disappear had been fruitless?).
Soon, though, Fernando can feel warm breath tickling his nose. He cracks his eyes open, and as expected, Lance is right there, having migrated from the other side of the couch to hover right above Fernando, bracketing him in with his forearms. Lance has this big dopey grin on his face, the idiot, and Fernando can’t help but huff a fond laugh as he smiles right back up at him.
Lance kisses him once, then twice. Soon he’s peppering kisses all over Fernando’s face—literally any part he can reach—and Fernando is laughing in earnest, trying and failing to kiss back as he really can’t predict which part of Lance will be over his lips when he puckers them. Grinning, Fernando grabs Lance by the shoulders and pulls him down; Lance’s balance falters and he collapses right on top of Fernando with a surprised squawk.
He kisses Fernando in earnest, now, although with more clacking of teeth as they both kiss through grins. Finally, Lance pulls back and rests his face on Fernando’s chest, looking up at him with a soft gaze that makes Fernando’s heart squeeze. “We’re gonna get through this together, ‘kay? Not gonna do anything you don’t want.” Lance laughs a bit. “‘M sure I can pull some strings.”
Fernando sighs, but it’s with relief this time. “Okay, Lancito,” he says fondly. “I love you.”
“Love you more,” Lance replies, nuzzling his face into Fernando; Fernando can feel Lance’s smile through the cotton of his shirt.
“Want to prove it?”
Lance snaps his gaze up, interested, and his eyes glint with the undercurrent of want that somehow manages to always run through him, right below the surface and just waiting to be invited to play.
“Not like that, tontito.” Fernando flicks Lance’s nose playfully. “You are such a… how do you say? Your mind only goes one way.”’
Lance lifts his head up (so Fernando can see that pout in full effect, surely). “Well, I didn’t drag myself into the sim rig, did I?”
A fond laugh bubbles up out of Fernando; and he can’t help but reach over to ruffle Lance’s thick crop of hair. “Later. Patience, Lancito.” The answer seems to satisfy Lance, so Fernando continues, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “What I mean is that I am hungry and you can cook. I will join you, yes? So that the kitchen does not burn down.”
Now it’s Lance’s turn to flick Fernando’s nose. “Tourtière?” Lance asks, and Fernando nods. After pressing one more sweet kiss to Fernando’s lips, Lance pushes off of Fernando’s thighs and starts towards the kitchen, stopping only to shoot some retort about how if anyone would burn down the kitchen, it would certainly be Fernando.
Fernando sighs deeply and closes his eyes, relaxing into the couch once more before he has to get up. We’ll figure this out together, he thinks. Like we always do.
Chapter 2
Summary:
They vow to not let the meeting change things. It changes things.
They should probably talk about that. Of course they don't.
Notes:
all this positive feedback??? i love you all??? thank you so much??? i have been fundamentally altered i fear???
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Fernando wakes up as he usually does—wrapped around Lance’s warm, strong back with his tan arms tucked under Lance’s pale ones, keeping him close. It’s nice and cozy for about five seconds until Fernando remembers that fucking meeting (literally, a fucking meeting, he realizes) in a few hours. He cringes at the thought and tightens his grip on Lance’s torso, pulling him closer.
“Hey, I need those ribs you’re breaking,” mumbles Lance sleepily.
Fernando says something into Lance’s back, but evidently it’s not the response Lance is expecting, because Fernando just tightens his grip and snuggles in so hard he thinks they might conjoin.
-
They do get up eventually, albeit with much grumbling on each side (and a pillow launched at Fernando’s head when Lance can’t get him to move any other way), and soon they’re in the car together, and Lance is begrudgingly surrendering control of the radio to Fernando like usual, and it’s so close to a normal day that it makes Fernando want to scream.
Fernando can barely eat once he gets to the paddock; his mouth is dry and his stomach churns with stress. He glances at Lance—good, Lance seems to be okay; he’s putting an ungodly amount of maple syrup in his oatmeal like usual. Catching Fernando’s gaze, Lance turns to him (which isn’t unusual in its own right, as Lance spends every morning defending his maple syrup consumption from Fernando), but quickly his gaze softens from indignance to concern as he notes the stress tightening Fernando’s expression. Reaching under the table, Lance takes Fernando’s hand in his and squeezes it reassuringly (and then lobs an orange at him so that he’ll eat something), and for that fleeting moment, everything is okay.
Then they arrive at the meeting, and nothing is okay.
The only two seats available are right next to each other, far from the head of the long table, and despite the air of professionalism that everyone in the room tries to maintain, Fernando can’t help but notice that none of them will lock eyes with him. He sits down stiffly in the chair, and the deafening beat of silence seems to drag on forever before one of the officials finally clears his throat and speaks.
“Thank you for coming to the meeting, uh… Fernando and Lance. Before we address the elephant in the room, I have prepared some data to present to you.” He gestures at someone else, who clicks the projector on to reveal a slideshow. Fernando nearly barks a laugh—it’s just their race results and they’re making it sound so serious—but it dies in his throat once the official continues. “I, um…” He glances towards Lawrence, who nods (incidentally, that’s the first time Fernando notices him at the head of the table, and in lieu of physically recoiling he simply clenches his jaw and presses his fingertips together so hard they turn white). “You, well, both of you have been underperforming over the last few races. Far out of the points, both of you, not to mention mistakes that you frankly should not be making.” He flips to the next slide.
“DNF here, beached right on the gravel… you were wide around this corner, Lance, look at that opening you left… Fernando, DRS available here, why weren’t you using it? P15, P18, not numbers we want to see, especially not after how the car looks in practice.
“We spent a lot of time looking at your onboards, of course, and will make changes with our radio messages—essentially, you’ll be getting more feedback during the race, as well as more specific suggestions. The factory is also working to improve that understeer you two have been reporting, so there should be a notable improvement this weekend.” The official babbles on about what they already know. He’s avoiding it. Fernando clears his throat loudly; if they’re going to call them into this surreal meeting, he thinks, they should just get on with it.
“Well… we believe that you two aren’t competing enough, essentially. Drivers need to be cutthroat, and having an incentive to beat your teammate can be what pulls you through. So–” The official looks physically pained by preparing the next sentence. “So the team has decided to activate the free use clause in your contracts.” There it is. Fernando wants to sink onto the floor and die.
The official seems to be trying to wrap it up, but Lawrence interrupts him. “Will you elaborate on that? Fernando and my son won’t be leaving without a full understanding of the clause and what it entails.” Lance’s face has taken on an alarming shade of cherry-red, and Fernando wonders if this is actually some form of cruel and unusual punishment devised by Lawrence for… really, Fernando doesn’t know what it’s for, and Lance doesn’t seem to either.
Gulping, the official reluctantly continues. “Um… in professional settings, what we mean by free use is, ah… well, sexual control over the other driver,” he chokes out. After mentally adding him to the growing list of Aston Martin employees who desperately need a raise, Fernando glances to his side, where Lance seems to be doing his best to slide out of the seat. Fernando tears his eyes away; his face is already hot with embarrassment and if he looks at Lance, somehow, someone would know. So he keeps his eyes trained on the official, who has resigned himself to a look of disengagement as he continues his explanation. “The winning driver will be able to, uh, use the losing driver for the week. He can take what he wants and the losing driver is not empowered to refuse. Of course, the team staff will be notified of this and will be instructed to ignore any of your… interactions, so the winning driver should not be bound by time or place.”
The official clicks off the slideshow and is about to sit back down, until evidently he remembers the last part of his speech. “Oh, yes, I should mention… uh, the team would like to see you engaging in some… activity while the clause is active.” Lawrence shoots the official a scathing look, sending him into a panic as he tries to save himself. “Of course, we wouldn’t set any kind of minimum requirement, oh no, that would be unethical, it’s just to make sure you’re obeying the clause, that’s all—”
Fernando cuts him off with a raised palm. “Yes. Lance and I understand. There is no confusion.”
“Okay,” the official squeaks. As if trained to respond to some unspoken signal, the meeting attendees start to gather their things and file out of the room, leaving only Fernando and Lance behind. The silence in the room is deafening, punctuated only by Lance giving in to his urges and sliding completely out of his seat and onto the floor beneath the conference table. Fernando wants so badly to giggle at Lance’s antics, but his tongue is thick and his mouth is dry.
-
The flight after might be the worst part.
That whole meeting pushed the entire team’s schedule back, so everyone was scrambling to get everyone and everything on the flight. It’s a private jet, although with none of the usual motley crew of drivers that they fly with due to their, uh… delay, so when Lance flops down, exhausted, in the aisle seat next to Fernando, all Fernando can hear is the hum of the engines and Lance’s soft breathing.
Normally Lance will advance on Fernando, moving a hand to a tender part of skin or keeping some weight leaned against him after a turn, so Fernando smiles knowingly when he sees Lance’s hand start creeping its way across the armrest and towards Fernando’s lap. Lance is going to stay there, tracing little patterns on the inside of Fernando’s thigh as Fernando leans his head on Lance’s shoulder.
Or, at least, he should.
When Lance’s finger brushes the inner seam of Fernando’s jeans, he pulls his hand back sharply instead, like he’s brushed it against a freshly-discarded tyre. Lance’s hand is still close, still teasing over the armrest, but never closing the distance; Fernando wants so badly to reach over and drag Lance’s hand—no, his whole body, rather—into his waiting lap, but he just can’t, inexplicably, for reasons he doesn’t want to even begin to pick apart. He leans in what everything in him screams is the wrong direction and presses his forehead to the glass (plastic? who knows?) of the little airplane window, trying desperately to ignore Lance’s hand mere inches away from where it should be; not touching, not quite, but so close that Fernando can feel it anyway.
-
The car this year is good—certainly enough to bring them firmly into the midfield so they can chase some points—and Fernando can’t wait to drive it, can’t wait to clear his head and focus on numbers and strategy and issues he can navigate without a second thought.
Practice is fine—it goes well, even. The car feels great, and the understeer issues he had noticed the week before seem to have been mostly solved.
Qualifying is okay. Lance exits in Q2, but Fernando makes it to Q3. They’ll start in P12 and P9, respectively. Not bad.
The race—well, Fernando hasn’t seen anything like it before. It feels like it should be unremarkable, the kind of race that blends into all of the other ones before it right after the pressers, and it would be if it wasn’t for the Aston behind him.
Lance drives aggressively, seeming to have taken a page out of Fernando’s book. The gap is close and on the straights Lance is in Fernando’s mirrors, letting him see some of Lance’s overtakes—they look like snapping bites, like he hasn’t just passed the car but has chewed it up and spit it out—and suddenly he’s taking up Fernando’s mirrors, milking the DRS for all it’s worth, when it dawns on Fernando—is Lance taking the clause seriously?
Clenching his jaw and gripping the steering wheel tighter, Fernando wills the nagging thought out of his mind and tries to focus on defending from Lance. Lance is basically in his gearbox, and his tyres must be getting eaten up by the steady wash of dirty air, but he stays close, threateningly close, until he sneaks through a tiny opening to snag the inside line on a turn, forcing Fernando wide as Lance takes his place. Fernando grimaces and jabs the radio button with his thumb. “Did you tell Lance to be so aggressive?”
“No, Fernando, we did not.”
“What the hell is he doing then? He is going to crash—tell him that.”
“Okay, copy.”
Lance either ignores the team or the message doesn’t get through, because if anything he’s more aggressive, climbing the ladder with overtake after overtake. When Lance finally crosses the chequered flag, he’s in P6 by a wide margin. Fernando finishes in P8; the double points would be sweeter if he could decide whether to be incredulous or frustrated at Lance’s drive.
They always debrief together after the race. It’s robotic, with much of the same chatter as what goes on with their engineers, but it’s as Lance and Fernando as Aston Martin green. So Fernando is honest with Lance, telling him that he took unnecessary risks, telling him that it was a good drive, it was, but that was stupid, being so aggressive.
Lance nods ruefully. “Yeah, uh… probably not smart.” It’s a short comment from Lance, who normally will take any excuse to dive into stats and strategy in private, and especially surprising because Fernando can’t remember the last time Lance didn’t retort with a tongue-in-cheek response before being serious. Lance turns his face down, avoiding Fernando’s gaze, and Fernando suddenly feels a pang of guilt deep in his chest. He’s hurt Lance, he realizes, and it feels like he’s slipping—so he scrabbles for purchase in Lance’s heart before Lance can close himself off, before he can become Media Lance and not Lancito.
“Shit, ah, Lance, I’m sorry, did not mean it to be rude, sorry…” Fernando stutters.
“‘S okay,” Lance replies coldly. “I just… the…” he starts, but continues to sputter like an engine on the fritz before he sighs. “Nevermind. See you, Fernando.”
Fernando watches, wide-eyed, as Lance stalks to his driver’s room.
-
Later that night, back at their own apartment, the two of them lay in bed together… but it’s so wrong and Fernando hates it, hates that they are back-to-back, hates that he can’t awkwardly use his small frame to spoon Lance as usual—but he can’t bring himself to turn, to face his mistakes, so instead he stays put, focusing on the little bit of heat that emanates from Lance, hovering both a few millimeters and a few miles away at once. Suddenly Lance speaks, wrenching Fernando from his thoughts.
“I won, Fernando,” Lance mutters, just loudly enough for Fernando to hear (and be appropriately confused).
“Hmm? Won what?”
“The clause—the free use clause. You have to respect that.” A beat of silence passes. “Even if you hated my drive.” He gets the last part out in one sharp exhale, and Fernando thinks it’s as close to a punch as one could throw with words alone. But Fernando’s too tired from the day—not just from the race but from the emotions of it all, emotions he’s facing without Lance by his side—to give much of a response.
“Wha-okay. Yes, you did. I will,” is all Fernando manages before he’s too tired to talk anymore. It’s funny, though—Fernando feels tired to the bone, but his mind races, and he lays wide-eyed in the dark for long hours before he finally drifts off to sleep.
-
The morning comes. Fernando does not want it to.
Lance is up before Fernando is, and the floor creaks as he pads around. The apartment smells nice, and Fernando has just started to wonder where the smell is coming from when Lance sticks his head around the doorframe. “I made breakfast, if you want some…” he says timidly.
Taken aback, Fernando stammers, “Oh, uh, okay. Thank you, Lance.”
Lance just smiles and looks at the ground. His head disappears from the doorframe, so Fernando forces himself to get up and follow.
-
“You’re hungry, huh? Shoulda made more.” Fernando can barely hear Lance through his own chewing as he downs his food like a starved man.
“No dinner yeshterday,” he explains through a mouthful of eggs. “Rashe day. Paddock food’sh terrible.”
“I take it that they didn’t teach you manners in Asturias?”
Fernando kicks Lance under the table, but it doesn’t deter him. “At least you’ll eat what I cook.”
Fernando swallows, then nods. “Better than Yuki.”
“Oh, really? That’s high praise, old man. High praise.”
They continue like that, trading remarks back and forth. It’s idle chitchat, really, and Fernando can feel the clause looming over the table, can hear it in Lance’s voice as he speaks more stiffly than usual, can taste it in the too-long silences that force Fernando to take a bite of his food to give himself a reason not to talk.
Fernando gets up to clear the plates as a little thanks for the breakfast. When he gets back, Lance is leaning against the table, chewing his lip and wringing his hands. “Uh, so, about the clause—” he blurts out.
Fernando doesn’t let him finish. “Yes, you can do as you like. I won’t stop you. Is just the contract, does not need to change anything at home.”
Lance nods. Then, in a voice barely over a whisper: “Thanks.”
-
It’s ironic, really, because Lance doesn’t touch him for the rest of the week.
He seems even more cautious than usual at the paddock, always making sure to put a good foot or so between them (more if there are cameras looming), not even looking towards Fernando’s driver’s room when he’ll normally make any excuse to be there with him, not even the occasional slap or pinch to Fernando’s ass that he’s already way too confident about.
Fernando can’t complain, because he’s not doing much better.
He’s distant. He’ll admit it.
He hasn’t touched Lance, either—at least nothing beyond benign. It feels awful, but he reaches out for Lance and his fingers curl back, like he’s going to shatter him. Lance is stiff—too stiff, his tones too clipped, his words too stilted, and… and a kiss could fix it, but it could also make everything worse.
Fernando can’t help it. He knows Lance can’t either.
That fucking clause has in fact changed something at home; something thick and bitter and awful now oozes from a safe that has, in the midst of all the chaos, cracked barely open, and it festers, hangs thick around the apartment and leers at Fernando when he tries to sleep at night.
Fernando doesn’t want to think about what it might be, and he suspects Lance doesn’t want to either. He can’t be sure, though, because ever since the meeting he hasn't been able to read Lance’s unusually inexpressive face. Normally he can read Lance like a book, but Lance has managed to shut the cover. It worries Fernando.
It probably makes him more distant too, now that he thinks about it.
Fernando’s head hurts now, a lot. His head is heavy with the needling, spiny feeling that pools sickly in his gut, but that he becomes more and more amicable to every day—that this whole situation is Lance’s fault, somehow.
All Fernando wants is his Lance back.
All Fernando wants is to never see Lance again.
It’s the biggest fucking enigma he’s ever experienced.
-
When Lance finally touches him, Fernando believes it's out of necessity.
It’s necessity because it may be the only way they can interact. It’s necessity because Lance is young with a high libido and zero inhibition and has most certainly been suffering quietly throughout the week. But Fernando won’t lie to himself—really, it’s necessity because of that awful clause, because the team hasn’t seen anything from them, because they’ll be in a load of trouble if they disobey.
So Lance sidles up to Fernando in a meeting that Lance has no reason to be at with the sort of forced relaxed swagger that manages to look tenser than his natural gait, and without saying a word he swings his leg around Fernando’s lap, straddling him awkwardly in the little rolling chair. Casual hey Lance!’s from around the room stutter to a stop, but after the engineers Fernando is meeting with can subdue their expressions from shocked embarrassment to mild discomfort, they move on as normal, red-faced as they are.
At first Lance doesn’t move, just buries his face in the junction between Fernando’s neck and shoulder and wraps his arms loosely around Fernando’s waist. It presses their bodies close enough for Fernando to feel that Lance is sporting a semi, and… oh fuck, now? Here?
Fernando stiffens in Lance’s grip. Yet again he’s fighting himself; parts of him that want to squirm away and indulge Lance and himself pull in opposite directions, and he’s frozen in place for Lance to crash right into.
The engineers are still going on about something, but Fernando can barely focus anymore. Without a word, Lance has started to grind gently on Fernando’s lap, shifting over to straddle only one of Fernando’s thighs and grant himself more friction.
Each little movement from Lance is sharp and insistent—so different from how he usually is, pliant and soft. He’s just taking, not taking in the way he normally does, where he takes what Fernando gives him and sometimes begs for more, but in the sense that he’s taking from Fernando, taking and taking and taking even when Fernando has nothing left to give. He’s grinding on Fernando just like how he drove in that race—aggressive, punishing, never satisfied with anything but the entirety. Lance is not going to settle for half. It’s far beyond Fernando—the world is Lance’s; he will have it and he will have it whole.
He’s not there out of necessity, Fernando realizes. Lance is proving his point.
Fernando’s eye twitches, and he bites his lip. He’s beyond embarrassed, but his dick seems to disagree with him, and… well, that only spurs Lance on. He speeds up with these little bitten-back huffs that make Fernando want to throw him on the table and ravish him right there.
Well. He would want to if half of the team’s engineers weren’t currently pretending not to notice the scene.
All of a sudden, Lance presses his knee against Fernando’s crotch, and fuck, that’s unfair. It takes everything in Fernando not to push his hips into the touch, and the answer to whatever question he’s currently trying to field gets replaced by some strangled noise.
Lance grins into Fernando’s neck. The bastard.
He’s fully gone now, rocking against Fernando’s thigh with soft whines that Fernando prays don’t make it to the engineers’ ears. Possessiveness flares hot in Fernando’s chest at the thought. He grits his teeth and tries in vain to ignore it.
Fernando only notices how hard he’s gripping his other thigh until Lance grabs his hand and drops it over his own erection. At first Fernando just lets it sit there like a wet towel—he’s well aware of what Lance is demanding, but his last shred of dignity freezes him—
until Lance repositions his head a bit and bites.
Bites right on the sensitive skin of Fernando’s neck, hard. Fernando barely suppresses a yelp.
Okay, Lance, you fucking win.
Relenting, he palms at Lance’s cock, grinding his thumb over where the tip would be (just the way Lance likes, Fernando realizes, and something curdles in his chest at how natural it’s become); it twitches under Fernando’s hand, sensitive, and Lance barely bites back a moan at the contact.
Fernando sets a quick pace, intent on finishing Lance as soon as possible. He’s not trying to pleasure Lance, exactly, at least not any more than necessary, but he clearly is rocking Lance’s world anyway; Lance’s rhythm grows sloppy as he ruts into Fernando’s hand, each movement rampant with nigh-unrestrained need, until finally Lance comes, trembling and gasping in Fernando’s lap. There’s wetness from two sides, both from the growing patch as Lance’s cum soaks into his jeans and from Lance's tears that slide down Fernando’s shoulder until they hit the collar of his shirt.
Lance whines, thin and breathy, and it’s fucking unfair the way it instantly sends a chill down Fernando’s spine and makes his cock twitch in his pants. Lance feels it, of course he does; he starts to press his knee harder, more insistently against Fernando. Fernando curses under his breath. He’s close, so close, and—fuck, Lance knows that too. All of a sudden he freezes before carefully extracting himself from Fernando’s lap and sauntering out of the room with a shit-eating grin on his face, leaving Fernando red-faced and desperate and praying to all that is holy that the inane meeting lasts long enough where he doesn’t need to get up still tenting his pants.
“Uh, okay. That… that should be all of the data we have for you. It’s a wrap. Thanks for meeting with us, ah, Fernando,” one of the engineers says.
Fernando wants to shrivel up and die.
Notes:
so obsessed with writing this fic that i'm already ahead of schedule letsgoooo
also lol at the amount of things that get hurled at nando in this chapter alone. it was unintentional but i will try to continue the theme of lancey enjoying throwing shit at his boyfriend a bit more than he probably should
Chapter 3
Summary:
Fernando is so unbelievably bad at feelings. Lance gets hurt in the process.
Chapter Text
There’s no race that weekend, thankfully. It’s no bother; Aston is securing some good points, and excitement and determination abound in the paddock.
Well. There is some bother.
A weekend off means that Lance gets one more week of free use privileges. A week that he has been using to its fullest potential, much to Fernando’s dismay.
Fernando doesn’t have the slightest idea when sex with Lance became a chore… but it has. Lance will come up to him with that stupid smirk on his face and get his hands on him, touching him all over and sliding his warm palms over the places he knows will make Fernando buckle. Fernando will grumble and get him off as quickly as possible so that he can get back to whatever he was doing before.
It’s not the sex, though, not really. Lance’s touch always feels good, and Fernando’s always hard at the end of it, always worked up despite his lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes Lance lets him come—that’s nice. Not that he would admit it.
It’s really Lance that’s the problem. He seems set on choosing the most bustling, open, public places, when he knows that Fernando is mortified. It’s like Lance is making fun of him, and every time Fernando has to add someone to the rapidly-growing list of people he can never lock eyes with again, he ends up banging his head against the table and wondering what the fuck is wrong with a driver’s room. Or even somewhere, you know, that’s not literally in the middle of everything.
And the way Lance just gets up and smirks after, clearly pleased with himself, and strolls away without giving Fernando another look—
Lance is definitely making fun of him. And Fernando doesn’t do humiliation.
Fernando especially doesn’t do humiliation from a spoiled piece of shit who doesn’t deserve a seat (and certainly not one next to a two-time World Champion). A spoiled piece of shit who will beg for Fernando’s cock on the regular.
A pang of guilt runs through Fernando at the thought. He knows it’s not true, that he’s just angry, that he will never not go to war for Lance—but that doesn’t change the situation. Doesn’t change the embarrassment that makes Fernando’s face go red, and doesn’t change the parasitic anger that festers bitterly inside him.
The worst part is that Fernando is helpless to it.
Fernando Alonso is not one to be played with, to be prodded at to see a reaction. He is cutthroat, calculating, unforgiving—and certainly not above stepping on his teammates to win. He’ll play mind games with them, get them wrapped around his finger so he can let them drop.
But Lance?
He loves Lance.
So much.
Despite himself.
Fernando sighs. At least it’s usually just a handjob—a blowjob at worst. Fernando can do that. That doesn’t take feelings.
-
Fernando hates going home, because at least at the paddock he can somewhat avoid Lance. But their apartment? Their home is built around the two of them as a unit, not as individuals. And when they’re a unit, Fernando can’t stop the horrible mixture of conflicting emotions from bubbling up inside him.
It’s become a ritual that Lance will take the car home as usual and Fernando will hitch a ride home with Henry at the latest hour he possibly can. It’s annoying, because Fernando has to defend himself the whole ride through from Henry, but he’ll make the sacrifice.
“Fernando, you have to talk to Lance. This whole free use mess isn’t a big deal and you’re avoiding him.”
“Is a very big deal. You also would avoid him.”
“No, c’mon, Fernando. You two are so close. Don’t ruin a friendship over something stupid.”
“His fault for making fun of me.”
“Wha—no? He’s not doing anything, man. He’s really worried, actually.”
“Does not act like it.”
“You’d know if you talked to him.”
“No.”
Henry sighs as the car screeches to a halt in front of Fernando’s apartment building. Fernando can’t stop himself from slamming the car door behind him as he gets out.
He had gotten Lance off earlier, but Lance didn’t smirk at him like usual. His face seemed almost… sad.
Had it?
Fernando can’t remember.
-
The next morning, Fernando wakes up to an empty apartment and a note on his nightstand.
Left for an early morning jog. There are pancakes on the table, under the foil. Love you♥️
And indeed there are pancakes on the table, under the foil. There’s also cut-up fruit and maple syrup waiting to the side.
Lance had even put out extra strawberries. Fernando’s favorite.
Fernando hates him for it.
For acting like nothing happened, when he makes every single day an endless circus of mortification and enjoys it.
So Fernando puts the foil back over the untouched plate, shoves the whole thing into the fridge, gets in the car, and drives to the paddock with hot tears stinging his eyes. As he pulls out of the driveway it occurs to him that Lance will come back to no car and no way to the paddock. Oh well, too bad for Lancey, he thinks cynically.
Fernando hates himself for it.
-
Lance arrives at the paddock maybe an hour after Fernando does. He doesn’t mention the car, doesn’t mention the breakfast, just waves placidly at him and heads for his own driver’s room. Fernando heads for his, too; they’re flying to Mexico for the next grand prix today, and he needs to be ready for the flight.
They share the plane with everyone else this time, which has the unfortunate consequence of forcing the pair to act as they usually do. Fernando snags the window seat, but when Lance settles in next to him, Fernando goes stiff; he feels trapped and all he can do is hope that his face doesn’t show it.
From the corner of his eyes he can see the surprise on Lance’s face as he twitches and, after looking supremely fraught for a few seconds, curls into himself and shrinks into the seat, squeezing his thighs together and hugging his chest with his arms to make sure not an inch of his skin touches Fernando’s. He looks as pathetic as cornered prey, trying to make himself small so that the predator won’t take notice.
It gives Fernando a little rush, like justice has been served somehow. He doesn’t want to think about it.
For the sake of appearance, or maybe just out of routine, the two make some semblance of conversation, but it’s just that—a semblance. It’s stilted, awkward, and neither one is particularly keen on keeping it up, so eventually they fall into silence. Lance has his earbuds in, but Fernando just looks out the window at the cloud cover below them, his mind far away from anywhere the plane could take them.
-
Fernando only gets about thirty more minutes of peace.
Despite his cramped position, Lance has nodded off, and snores softly beside Fernando. He does the thing he always does when he first falls asleep somewhere strange: his head lolls to the side and then snaps back upright and his eyes flick open, like he’s trying his best to stay awake. Cute, Fernando thinks, before he can bite his tongue.
Eventually Lance settles, and his body relaxes as his weight begins to shift with the motions of the plane. Soon, his head comes to rest on Fernando’s shoulder; even asleep, Lance nuzzles his cheek into the touch and sighs gently. Fernando’s heart swells with affection. Something else in his chest snaps at the warmth, biting at the fondness that is so natural to Fernando.
What remains of Fernando is a mess of love and shame and anger—at Lance for still managing to evoke that love, at himself for not being able to resist—and all that he can do is twist away and shove Lance off.
Lance jolts awake, and his expression goes from bleary-eyed grogginess to utter, clueless confusion. He opens his mouth, but no words come out.
Lance’s face is lined with stress, but without saying a word he scoots to the edge of the seat, as far from Fernando as he can get, uncomfortably tucking his knees to his chest in the little airplane seat like he’s protecting himself. Like he’s vulnerable like that.
Fernando raises an eyebrow pointedly at Lance’s frankly unnecessary theatrics, but his amused condescension fades quickly. At least now Fernando can have some peace.
-
Media day is sort of exhausting. It always is, in truth, but only now does Fernando realize how stressful it is to not only handle his media duties, but most of Lance’s, too. It’s never ticked him off like it does today how willing he is to let Lance skirt his media duties and to pick up the slack behind him. Lance is a grown fucking adult. He can talk to the media. He can put up with whatever people want to say about him.
He can, a little voice in Fernando’s head reminds him. But you’re protecting him, remember?
Fernando decides that no, he does not remember. Hell, he hates the media himself; there’s no reason why he should be dealing with even more of it. But he does, talking about the car, promoting sponsors, forcing laughs at scripted jokes, trying not to let the urge to be anywhere but here show. He’s gotten good at it.
It’s still exhausting, though; there’s no changing that. By the time he’s finished filming his last BOSS ad in clothing he’s never going to wear, Fernando feels like jelly. With a perfunctory thanks to the film crew, he heads for his driver’s room, intent on collapsing into the bed for some well-deserved rest.
Only a few minutes after he arrives, though, there’s a knock at the door. Fernando wants so badly to ignore it, but… if it’s some press thing that he forgot about, he’ll be shanked.
He sighs. Better safe than sorry.
“Come in,” Fernando shouts. The door clicks, the handle turns, and—oh.
It’s Lance.
Before Fernando can respond, Lance shoves into the room and thrusts the paper bag in his hands into Fernando’s arms. “Uh, I walked around a bit today, you know, touring the city,” Lance begins.
Touring the city while I dealt with your media duties, Fernando thinks bitterly.
“Well, I found this tiny hole-in-the-wall place, so I got this for you.” Lance gestures to the bag. “Y’know, ‘cause you’re cold all the time.”
Fernando puts his hand into the bag and pulls out something soft. It falls as he takes it out, so he can see—it’s a blanket. A nice one, too; handmade. Warm, like Lance said.
And all Fernando wants to do is throw it at Lance. It’s like Lance is provoking him now, somehow, although Fernando knows that that would be easier to stomach than this.
This whole mess, where Lance keeps caring when he’s making Fernando’s life hell. This whole situation, where Lance is acting like he has any sort of remorse, where he thinks that he can do anything he wants to anyone and then offer them some semblance of kindness and they’ll come crawling back to him.
But it’s so genuine, and that’s what makes Fernando see red. That Lance doesn’t fit into the neat box of rude that Fernando’s put him in ever since this whole disaster of a clause was activated.
So much whirlpools in Fernando’s already exhausted brain, and he’s just done, done with the day, done with Lance, done with the whole world whipping him from side to side and not even letting him catch his breath. “Oh,” Fernando says simply, unable to meet Lance’s eyes. “Nice.”
Lance’s body seems to deflate. When Fernando finally does catch his eyes, there’s no light in them, no life. He looks like a kicked puppy.
Lance is silent as he turns and leaves the room.
Once he’s out, Fernando can’t help it anymore—he sobs. Cries angry tears that seem to sear his cheeks as they slide down. Fernando’s shoulders shake as he buries his head in the blanket.
It’s a while before Fernando cries himself dry. Once he does, he lifts his head from the blanket, still sniffling, and holds it up in front of him to get a good look. It’s beautiful, practically exploding with colors so vibrant they seem to take on life of their own as they make the rest of the room look gray in comparison. They’re in stripes in different thicknesses that seem like they should continue past the confines of the blanket and spill into the whole room, and Fernando doesn’t miss that one of the widest stripes is in a color damn near Aston Martin green. The blanket is nothing short of breathtaking, and it makes Fernando want to cry all over again. Instead, he balls it up and shoves it into the bottom of the nearest suitcase he can find, secretly hoping that the luggage will get lost on the plane.
-
It’s only so long they can keep accelerating towards each other until they crash.
They crash shortly after the first round of free practice. Fernando has his race suit tied around his waist, and he stands alone with his eyes locked on his onboards displayed on one of the big screens, studying his drive. The room is full of engineers and pit crew going this way and that, and the chaos of it all makes Fernando’s head hurt.
Lance comes up behind him. In all of the commotion, Fernando doesn’t realize until Lance claps him on the back. Fernando jumps, startled, then turns to face him.
“Nice drive, Nando! You looked really good out—”
“Forget it, Lance. I do not want to hear it,” Fernando snaps. “Just leave me alone, for once in your life, please.”
Lance sucks in a breath. “What the fuck has been your problem lately?” he demands, exasperated.
“I—”
“No, no. I’m gonna finish. You’re so awful and I keep trying to fix it and you just get worse. You’re fucking playing with me. I don’t deserve that.”
Fernando’s patience has finally been exhausted.
“Playing—playing with you? You are the one playing with me,” he nearly shouts. “Embarrassing me day after day with that stupid fucking look on your face. Is fucking pathetic. And you act like nothing’s wrong.”
“I just want to help you!” Lance is yelling now too. “You can’t say the clause won’t change anything and then treat me like shit for no reason! You’re a sore fucking loser, Fernando. Get a fucking grip.”
“Lance, are you serious? No reason? I do not care what the clause says. You are choosing places you know will humiliate me and then make fucking pancakes and expect everything to go to normal?” Fernando bellows. He’s aware of the amount of staff that has turned to watch the argument in dumbstruck silence, but he doesn’t have it in him to care.
“How the fuck was I supposed to know it mattered? You told me to do whatever I wanted, you… you asshole!” Lance struggles to get the words out; his eyes are red-rimmed and wet with unshed tears. “I didn’t want to fucking hurt you, but I can’t do shit about it if you don’t even tell me!”
Fernando clenches his fists at his sides. “God, you—Lance, I am sick of how immature you are. Thinking everything comes to you on a silver platter, that you can have anyone you want no matter how you treat them. You of all people are not going to treat me like shit. Figure it the fuck out, Lance,” he spits, voice venomous.
Lance opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out, drenching them both in thick, awful silence.
Then he closes it again. A tear spills from his eye, but he doesn’t make a sound.
Fernando is falling, falling, falling, and doesn’t know if he’ll land. Or if Lance will catch him.
Because he wouldn’t catch Lance. Not now.
Not here.
-
After escaping the last grueling presser following the second round of free practice, Fernando thinks he can finally take a breath.
Of course he wouldn’t be so lucky.
As he passes Lawrence on the way to his driver’s room, Lawrence doesn’t give him a courteous nod like usual. Instead, he levels him with a look that makes Fernando stop in his tracks before saying, “Fernando, meet me in my office in ten?” The casual way Lawrence’s voice just spills into the room always makes Fernando have to bite his lip against a remark, so he just nods sharply with a thin smile. That way, nothing can escape his mouth that’ll get him fired.
Fernando does end up stopping by his driver’s room, if only to change into slightly more professional attire than the team kit. He washes his face as well, and wets his hair a bit to make it behave, all the while skirting his gaze around the reflection of his face in the mirror as if there’s something in his own reflection he doesn’t want to see.
Fernando chooses not to pick that apart right now (or ever), and instead opts for turning the knob of the driver’s room door and making his way to Lawrence’s office.
-
Once he’s seated in the little chair across from the desk, Lawrence reclines in his expensive leather office chair, clears his throat, and speaks: “Listen, Fernando. I do not want to have to fire you.”
Fernando swallows dryly and tries not to think of a more threatening sentence he could have led with.
“But this… dynamic that you have created has to stop.
“I know you, Fernando. Don’t think I haven’t given your… shall we say, tendencies any thought. You do not want to give in. And that is one of the reasons we have activated the free use clause: to spark that in you, to push you—and as a result, the rest of the team—to improve. But you are not going to be outright rude to Lance in your pursuit of it.
“Of course, as a father, I am especially protective of him.” Fernando grits his teeth and digs his fingers into the seat’s armrests; he’s the one who’s really protective of Lance; protective of Lance in ways that Lawrence couldn’t even begin to touch. “But as a simple logistical matter, you must put a stop to this. I will not have you two spending all of your energy fighting like cats instead of working to improve. Your close relationship with Lance is, I believe, crucial to the performance of the team, and it is my duty both as a father and a team principal to step in before it can dissolve. Does that make sense, Fernando?”
Fernando nods. Well, in truth, it doesn’t, not in the least, but Fernando certainly isn’t going to say that. He values his life, thank you very much.
“Good.” Lawrence flashes a corporate smile before continuing: “Lance has been trying to mend your relationship, I’ve been told. Don’t be silly, Fernando; make up with him. Oh—and, just so you know, I believe this issue to be of utmost importance. If it continues, I will not hesitate to give you the boot… especially since in terms of points scored, you are currently Aston Martin’s second driver.” Lawrence caps off the sentence with a frigid look that makes Fernando’s gut freeze over.
“Okay,” says Fernando, voice thin with the effort needed to force the word out.
-
When he doesn’t think, when he lets himself react, Fernando is angry at Lance. The anger is acrid and bitter in his chest, like ink, threatening to stain everything in sight when it drips through his fingers.
But when Fernando tries to really examine it, tries to crystallize the anger inside of him so that maybe he can take a closer look, it blurs into a wider, darker anger, one at the world and the situation and himself—when that happens, Fernando can’t tell one from the other.
The thought of apologizing (him, apologizing) to Lance makes him grit his teeth with how unjust it feels, but the thought of not apologizing makes something curl and twist in his chest. Something colorful, plump with life like a flower petal—but it’s halfway to dead, and it’s impossible to tell if the twisting is it clawing back to life or curling away from it.
Fernando shakes his head, like he’s trying to physically expel the thought from his body. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and letting himself fall to the thin mattress of the driver’s room bed.
He’ll do it tonight. Say something—no, apologize—to Lance, tonight.
Rip off the band-aid and all that.
-
Fernando manages to catch Lance that evening, right as Lance is about to head out of the paddock. He’s so unaccustomed to the anxiety making his hands tremble and his breathing shallow; somehow it’s worse than every daredevil race he’s driven, where he feels like he’s staring death in the eyes as he accelerates. Fernando’s tongue feels thick in his mouth, so he grabs Lance’s wrist to get his attention instead; he can feel the clamminess of his skin in contrast with the warmth of Lance’s. Lance startles, jerking his hand away, and spins around. “Oh. Fernando,” he says, a curious expression painted on his face.
Fernando takes a shuddering breath. “Uh, I… I am sorry for being awful.”
Lance snorts. “No. You aren’t. Stop lying.” A strange gaze twists his face, halfway between bitter malice and deep hurt. “Just leave me alone, for once in your life, please?”
He’s stepped closer, so he can look down on Fernando. Fernando has never felt so small.
Narrowing his eyes, Lance continues his verbal barrage. “You don’t care about me. You don’t care how you acted. You’re a fucking extension of my father is all you are. Bet he told you to apologize to me. Bet this is the only way you’re gonna keep—keep your job.” Lance sniffles and wipes at his eyes as his facade breaks down.
“No, no, Lance, he had nothing to do with this, I—”
“Liar,” accuses Lance. He takes a shaky breath. “Just fuck off, okay? Fuck off, Fernando.”
Lance’s breath hitches with a sob. As he turns and begins to walk away, Fernando can hear more sobs coming. Lance’s shoulders shake.
Fernando feels sick. Because Lance is right.
He did lie.
Lied in self-preservation, just getting words out there before he could think twice about doing so… but lied nonetheless.
And if Fernando knows that Lance deserves the truth and nothing but the truth, why does the dusty, dormant urge to play with him until he’s broken rear up and kick in his chest?
The haze of affection has thinned and dissipated from Fernando’s heart, leaving the sharp edges to scratch and tear at his psyche until the only thing he can do is take it out on something (someone) and not look back.
Fernando tastes bile. His stomach lurches like it’s been twisted into a knot.
Notes:
I feel like lawrence gets unnecessary shade in this chapter lol. sorry lawrence I'm sure you're great idk why I made you give Fernando the ick
Chapter 4
Summary:
TFW they're so bad at communicating that the only thing they can do is fuck about it. When has that ever helped fix things?
Notes:
so sorry for the wait! life's been hitting me hard lately. i hope the extra long (and extra smutty) chapter makes up for it!!
i ran into the inherent dubcon of the free use clause here, but i tried to keep enthusiastic consent as much as possible b/c that's sexy
it may be a few weeks until the next chapter; the next week or two for me are going to be awful and idk if i'm gonna be able to write (sorry) but i will try to have it out as soon as possible!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The best thing Fernando can do for himself is to put this whole mess out of his mind. It’s time to race. Everything else can wait.
So he wishes on every goddamn shooting star and fallen eyelash and whatever else to just have a peaceful qualifying—to get a good result, even if it’s not pole; something to boost his confidence and focus his mind.
But—and Fernando is really starting to get used to this pattern—of course that doesn’t happen.
Throughout practice, the car had felt okay—just okay, nothing more—but Fernando had been able to acclimate to the quirks and imbalances enough to get some good pace out of the thing. So when he pulls out of the pit lane in Q1, he’s ready.
And the car feels like shit.
There’s no goddamn downforce and Fernando feels like he could go flying at any moment. He nearly spins out on the out lap and just barely saves himself, firing off a few radio messages afterwards that will definitely end up on some highlight reels. He’s walking on eggshells in the damn thing, and his pace shows it. By the time Q1 ends, he’s knocked out, sitting in P17. P-fucking-17.
He’s more than a bit pleased that Lance seems to be having the same issues (karma!), but Lance makes it through, eventually settling into P12. It could be worse, Fernando thinks. Some bitter realization flashes in his mind that this is the first time worse means Q3; that worse means Lance in a better position. Fernando shoves the thought out of his head just as quickly as it appears.
Groaning, Fernando buries his head in his hands, thankful that everyone puttering around the garage gives him a bit of space. It’s… well, they know why he’s frustrated. Whether that’s worse than them crowding him, Fernando isn’t sure.
-
The media certainly doesn’t know why Fernando’s angry, however. As soon as he emerges from the garage he’s hounded by cameras and reporters, all of them trying to get his opinion on his performance so they can twist his words however they’d like. Despite Fernando’s attempts to brush them off, they’re fucking incessant, and eventually Fernando gives in, schooling his expression into a completely blank canvas and saying what the media wants him to say.
“What did you think of Stroll’s performance? Do you think he’ll be able to score some points for the team?”
There it is. Fernando suppresses a grimace at having to consider Lance and points at the same time—especially after the hellish circus of the past two weeks. But the media doesn’t know that, of course, and now it feels like every microphone in the whole damn paddock is shoved into his face, desperately awaiting his response. So Fernando smiles thinly and tries to keep his voice even as he spouts a media-trained response. “Yes, I think he might be able to score points. He can handle the car, for sure—is not easy, this week.”
Most of the reporters laugh way too loudly, but Fernando could swear some of the reporters fucking coo over his response. Even if they don’t know the… extent of it, his whole relationship with Lance is good PR, and the media won’t hesitate to obsess over it.
It can be exasperating, their fixation on it, but Fernando can deal. That is, until one of the reporters shoves a microphone impossibly closer and asks, “Fernando, is it not stressing your relationship that Lance has been performing above you?”
Fernando purses his lips and shakes his head. Not the most polite response, sure, but if Fernando opens his mouth he isn’t sure he’ll be able to control what comes out.
-
After qualifying, all Fernando wants to do is hide out in his driver’s room; he can’t face Lance, he really can’t, and anywhere else in the paddock he could see him.
It’s some stupid coincidence that on the way there, he runs right into Lance anyway.
Lance’s arms are crossed, and a look of pure indignance is painted on his face. “Fuck me,” he says, voice low.
Fernando’s eyes go wide. “I—Lance… what the hell? Right before the race?” he stutters.
“Don’t care. C’mon.” Lance grabs Fernando’s wrist with a bit more force than necessary and drags him closer.
“Is something wrong with you?”
Huffing, Lance rolls his eyes. “Just fuck me, Fernando. I know you want it.”
And, well, he’s right. Fernando wants, with every cell of his body. But even that doesn’t surpass the nagging anger; now, the only way he can act on it is by denying Lance. Lance doesn’t deserve it, not at all, and it’ll hurt his race, anyway.
Then he remembers that he can’t even do that.
“Gilipollas,” Fernando grumbles.
“Sorry, shoulda been more clear. Fuck me and don’t complain.” Lance sounds cynical, but there’s an edge to his voice that Fernando feels like he’s going to fall right off of.
“Why though?” spits Fernando, halfway between exasperated and agitated. “Is fucking stupid, you are going to be sore in the car.”
Lance’s face twists into a smile. “If you don’t, I’ll call Esteban. Bet he wouldn’t mind.” It’s an empty threat, Fernando knows—an out, a chance to say no—and the fact that Lance offers it up stirs something in Fernando that he doesn’t quite know how to name.
But, okay, that’s fucking unfair and Lance knows it. Fernando grits his teeth as the slumbering beast of possessiveness begins to stir deep in his chest.
“Take your pick, Fernando.”
God, Fernando hates him.
“Sit on the table,” grumbles Fernando, gesturing.
Lance smiles too widely, walks over and hops up onto the table too jauntily. And Fernando certainly doesn’t miss this Lance—the one who preens not at praise but at his awareness of Fernando’s embarrassment, the one to whom Fernando is just a toy.
Fernando would never do that—not to Lance, at least. Why can’t Lance reciprocate?
Maybe if he did, the urge to retaliate somehow wouldn’t be such a thorn stuck in Fernando’s side—unpleasant, a sensation that Fernando would like to forget, but one that consumes his thoughts anyway.
Lance snaps his fingers. “Eyes on me.”
It instantly wrenches Fernando from his thoughts. It shouldn’t, not really, but it does anyway. Something kicks up in him at the command—Fernando is supposed to be the one ordering Lance around, not the other way—but he grits his teeth against it, determined to get Lance off as quickly as he can and move on. Nothing else to it.
The way Lance leans back on his elbows, legs spread like an invitation etched onto thick paper and the obscene bulge in his sweats the handmade wax seal on the envelope, is all too casual, all too easy. Fernando feels the spark instantly, the heat zipping down his spine and into the soles of his feet as his own cock stirs. He can feel his face redden with a new heat that is far less pleasant but now just as familiar as the first. Before he can let himself think, Fernando walks in these jerky, awkward steps to the gap between Lance’s legs. He goes for Lance’s waistband, aiming to untie the strings, but before he can close the distance, Lance grabs his shoulders, drags him down, and kisses him, and, oh.
Fernando’s head swims. He shoves Lance away.
Like it’s a one night stand. Like he doesn’t want to get attached.
“Do not fucking make me wait,” Lance says, voice low, as if Fernando was the one who just tried to pull him into a kiss. There’s a tremble to his voice that Fernando can’t quite understand.
“Idiota,” Fernando tries, but there’s nothing he can do except fold.
With shaking hands he unties Lance’s waistband and yanks it down along with his boxers, shimmying it awkwardly since Lance stubbornly refuses to lift his hips. Lance’s cock springs free, and—God, he’s so wet already, wet and hard and flushed deep red that complements his team shirt. Fernando’s cock twitches, already most of the way to hard (like he’s a horny teenager again, he thinks, embarrassed), but then the desire to dive in and suck Lance off and make him fall to pieces with his mouth kicks up in his chest, and the embarrassment of his own arousal pales in comparison to the fresher sting of this new shame.
Lance whines, demanding. Fernando grabs Lance’s knee and hikes it up, giving himself room to finger Lance open. Lance shifts a bit, reaches into the pocket of his jacket, and throws a bottle of lube at Fernando. It gets Fernando right in the fucking forehead, and he flinches and brings his other hand up to rub at it. Lance laughs.
That fucking laugh grates against Fernando’s psyche like nails on a chalkboard. It’s all he can do not to shout, not to yell at Lance until he’s chipped a piece off of Lance’s self-worth in an irreparable lesson to not ridicule Fernando.
But he can’t. He’ll be fired, for one, and despite it all, Fernando knows he would shatter before Lance ever did.
He grits his teeth instead and focuses on prepping Lance. He’s tight, but not as tight as he should be after not being fucked for a few weeks. Sickly, viscous jealousy bites at the image of Lance rocking back on his own fingers or, worse, some type of toy. Lance should know damn well that nobody touches what’s Fernando’s.
Either way, Fernando fingers Lance open carefully—he’ll give him what he wants, fine, but he’ll do the bare minimum in terms of speed and intensity; if Lance is too sore and fucks up his race, everyone currently pretending like they’re not ogling will be on Fernando’s ass, which would frankly just get in the way.
It’s not for Lance’s sake, not at all. Fernando tells himself that over and over like some kind of mantra.
In fact, there’s a part of Fernando that wants to go too fast, to drive the point home about the sheer stupidity of making Fernando fuck him the day before a race… but he can’t. Can’t, no matter how loudly that repulsive, twisted part of his brain screams for it. Fernando’s willpower is gone. Lance threatens it.
Lance has been moaning and whimpering this whole time, apparently unaware of all of the red-faced employees trying and failing not to notice them (the thought that Lance might be trying to call attention to them to mock Fernando further is one that Fernando refuses to even consider). He’s babbling, too; give it to me, more, need it, the works. It makes Fernando weak in the knees. It makes Fernando want to give in to his urges and fuck Lance like he wants it. It makes Fernando want to care—and that’s why he wishes like nothing else that Lance would just shut up.
“‘M ready,” Lance slurs, and, well, it’s not like Fernando can do anything to stop anything at this point.
Fernando’s achingly hard in his pants, actually, and the urge to just grind on Lance’s leg like a fucking dog until he comes is all-consuming. There’s a rational part to his mind, though, and that part is the one that makes his fingers hesitate when they reach the buckle of his belt. Fernando can feel his face go red.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Lance. “Come on,” he huffs impatiently, then grabs Fernando’s belt and undoes it himself; after that everything is a blur, and before he knows it Fernando is standing dumbly with his cock exposed to the air.
Something hot and tingly zips up Fernando’s spine.
He has never been more humiliated in his life.
“Lance!” squawks Fernando, face going hot as he tries in vain to cover himself up with one hand and hide his face with the other.
“What?” Lance’s expression is flat, unamused.
“You just… I—”
“You’re not that stupid, right? I said I don’t care.” Lance pauses to flick at Fernando’s erection, making Fernando jump a bit and release some sort of startled half-moan that results in him biting his tongue. “Clearly you’re fine,” Lance remarks, giggling.
“You know you are going to be sore tomorrow, no?” Fernando’s Hail Mary.
“I’m well aware, Fernando,” Lance sasses. “Now hurry up and fuck me like you mean it.”
Fernando sighs. Whether it’s worse that Lance is being a moron—and a bratty one at that—or that Fernando can’t ignore anymore how badly he wants Lance, he doesn’t know. Fighting to keep his face blank, Fernando lubes himself up (embarrassingly eagerly, he realizes before he can do anything about it), grabs Lance’s hips, and slides into Lance, inch by careful inch, trying to make the not-insignificant stretch as easy for Lance as possible.
Lance is just as ungrateful about it as expected, trying to hook his legs around Fernando’s thighs and encourage him deeper. A remark dies in Fernando’s throat as he grits his teeth and tightens his hold to bruising on Lance’s hips as he hangs on to his self-control with everything he has. God, it’s tempting as hell to just rabbit his hips into Lance like he wants to so desperately, but you can’t fuck up his race, Fernando, he’s being stupid balloons in his brain until that’s the only thought he can obey—the deeply-embedded instinct to protect Lance above everything else, regardless of how his emotions may be otherwise.
Also, Fernando can’t admit to Lance how needy he is. He’s done losing to that little shit.
The guilt that always slams against Fernando’s psyche when he catches himself letting his mind wander mixes with the arousal and shame and anger and everything else there. Fernando feels like he might explode with how hard it’s becoming to contain it all.
Lance’s needy whine brings Fernando back to the present. Lance is already slicked in sweat, hair sticking to his forehead in little dark curls, chest heaving and muscles flexing as he tries to find some purchase with which to give himself some friction, and Fernando groans low in his throat, emotions giving way to the sensation. He’s curled forward so he’s above Lance, but Lance has also grabbed Fernando’s waist to sit up a bit; their bodies swirl like some kind of yin-yang: polar opposites, never mixing, but still hopelessly tangled around each other no matter how hard they may try to pull apart.
Finally Fernando moves, slow and careful and holding back. It’s fucking frustrating how Fernando has to pick up Lance’s slack so much; even now, he has to save Lance from himself like Lance is some kid with no foresight and endless, sigh-inducing stubbornness.
Well. Lance has foresight now, but the stubbornness has only grown.
It’s especially hard to do because of how at its core Fernando just feels good, the tight heat of Lance clenching around him a welcome return to normalcy if he can make himself stop thinking and only focus on the heat thrumming through his body. He pulls out so carefully, biting back noises at the slow, searing drag of skin on skin, heat on heat, until eventually only the head of his cock is still inside Lance, the sensitive ridge of it alight with pleasure.
“Come on already,” Lance chokes out as he shifts under Fernando, needy and wanting and even more impatient than usual. Fernando doesn’t even try to argue; on one hand, the frustration is still a bitter paperweight in his chest, but on the other, Fernando wants, more than he would admit to anyone and just barely enough to admit to himself. His thighs tremble as he thrusts slowly, the squelch of lube an unavoidable lure of avoidant eyes back to the pair that makes Fernando’s face go hot. It’s far too late for the embarrassment to change his desire, however. Fernando can feel his cock throb, the heat of the humiliation strangely interconnected with the heat of the pleasure. He pays it no mind.
Instead, Fernando just focuses on setting a slow pace; it’s damn near impossible, actually, to hold himself back like that, and he feels like a rubber band about to snap. Lance doesn’t want him to hold back either—he’s taken his own cock in hand and pumps it in time with Fernando’s thrusts (it takes willpower that Fernando doesn’t think he’ll ever have again to not pull at Lance’s wrist, not tell him no touching what’s mine, not remind him that he only gets to come when Fernando wants him to). The slide is visibly too dry, even with the copious amounts of precum leaking from Lance’s twitching cock, but Lance doesn’t even seem to notice.
Each thrust is like torture, so slow but so good, and maybe Fernando hates himself for enjoying it as much as he does, but he doesn’t even notice it in his efforts to keep himself in check. Biting his lip in desperation keeps Fernando silent, but Lance is far from it, releasing punched-out moans and whimpers at the apex of each thrust. Lance is getting close—Fernando can tell from the way he screws his eyes shut and throws his head back (not to mention how Lance has started to squirm demandingly on Fernando’s cock, trying to speed up his rhythm)—and eventually breaks a bit, demanding, “Faster, faster, need it, shit…” Lance’s voice is punctuated by his hitching breath whenever Fernando grinds his cock against his prostate, and although Fernando desperately wants to give in and fuck Lance like they both want it, he keeps the pace sluggish. He’ll have a bitchy Lance to deal with later, sure, but he’s become used to that, and it’s certainly easier to deal with than a bunch of angry engineers, so Fernando ignores Lance and uses his tenuous grip on his self-control to fuck Lance slow and careful.
Suddenly Lance drops his own cock and rips one of Fernando’s hands off of his hips, pressing it onto his cock with Lance’s hand over his and moving Fernando’s hand the way he wants it in a wordless demand that Fernando has become all too used to over the past two weeks. It’s more of a turn-on than Fernando would like to admit—maybe that’s why it’s so embarrassing, he realizes—but at this point, all he can do is curse under his breath as he takes Lance in his hand and begins to jerk him off, working his wrist in the way that he knows makes Lance’s knees weak, the force of habit still so strong. Lance arches his hips into the touch and makes a little punched-out noise at the contact, simultaneously trying to impale himself on Fernando’s cock and buck up into his hand—the angle drives Fernando deep, and then Lance is coming, hard, in thick spurts that make a mess of his shirt as he whines and trembles through the aftershocks. The feeling of him clenching around Fernando is almost enough, and he’s so close—God, it’s all he can think about, really, filling Lance with his cum after so fucking long—but somehow he still has the presence of mind to pull out, to not stretch Lance’s hole any more than is absolutely necessary.
Fernando wants to sob, he’s so close, and for a second he entertains the idea that Lance might finish him; the thought of it makes Fernando have to bite back a moan. The next one he can’t quite contain, though, because Lance is reaching over, down—
and then passes right by Fernando’s leaking cock, instead opting to hop off the table and grab his sweatpants from the floor.
Lance doesn’t even acknowledge him, or at least nothing beyond a wayward, pitying glance before he pulls on his sweats and heads in the direction of his driver’s room.
Before he knows it, Fernando’s standing there, dripping cock standing proudly in a direct contrast to the look of defeat on his face.
“Uh. Are you okay?” an engineer squeaks, torn between mortified and concerned. His voice makes Fernando realize how exposed he is, and his face goes bright red as he tries in vain to cover himself. With shaking hands he manages to tuck himself back into his pants, and in lieu of a response Fernando simply scurries out of the room, blazing face downturned.
-
It’s only the next morning, after Fernando has gotten some semblance of a night’s sleep (although he spent most of it tossing and turning and getting himself off more times than he’d like to admit), does that sickly-sweet feeling start to well up in his chest—like he’s won an argument in which he always knew he was right and lost a friend in the process—that he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care about Lance’s qualifying, couldn’t care less about Lance making himself sore. If Lance wants to throw the race, Fernando figures, he can. Certainly nothing for Fernando to lose sleep over.
Whether this state of mind gives Fernando more perverted joy than denying Lance to see him crumble, Fernando doesn’t know. What he does know is that the push and pull of the two is destroying him, that this dynamic, as Lawrence put it, is rotting him from the inside out. One way or another, it has to stop.
Luckily, Fernando knows just how to stop it.
Fernando will beat Lance today.
-
Unsurprisingly, Lance is limping when he arrives at the paddock.
It’s not terrible—that or he’s doing a damn good job at hiding it—but with each step he winces a bit, a grimace pulling at the edges of his face. He hisses as he lowers himself down into the seat and hits the hard carbon fiber, and then he shifts endlessly in the harness, trying to get himself comfortable—details that Fernando only knows because of the panicked chatter he overhears from the other side of the garage.
Yesterday’s mess—how Lance simply sauntered away after just barely sparing Fernando a pitying look—shoves its way into Fernando’s mind. Lance didn’t even give Fernando the time of day and now he’s letting all these engineers fuss over him, and something about it makes Fernando’s stomach churn. Pointedly, Fernando pushes the thought from his mind.
He waves one of his own engineers over. “Tell them to leave Lance alone. He is fine,” Fernando says flatly, and doesn’t even think to add anything on until the engineer gives him a vaguely perturbed look. “Is just the race suit. Hot today, sweaty. Lance will not want to mention it.”
“Fernando, he can tell us that—please let them work with Lance, they know what they’re doing better than you do, okay?” the engineer pleads, but Fernando levels him with an icy glare, making the engineer gulp and scurry to the other side of the garage.
Being in the sport for so long has its perks, for sure. Slowly but surely, the engineers crowded around Lance disperse.
-
When Fernando pulls into his grid box after the formation lap, he feels alive, more so than he has in a while. Starting from P17 has never felt so good.
Today, he decides, I will take no prisoners.
The battle-hardened racing beast inside Fernando stirs up a bit, then a bit more, until it thrashes in full force inside Fernando’s chest. When the lights go out and Fernando stamps on the throttle, he could swear he hears a roar.
He will get every single ounce of speed out of this tractor that he possibly can.
-
The race makes Fernando feel 24 again. He pulls off some impressive early overtakes, snatching inside lines on corners like he was born for it. He’s milking the Aston of every drop of pace it can give him, and the impressed radio messages in his ear confirm it. Each movement is deft and precise, and his confidence is complete.
Until the twentieth lap, that is.
One of the Saubers—Fernando can’t tell which—spins into the grass in the sort of crash that is fairly unremarkable but warrants a safety car anyway. The grid bunches up—Lance’s car’s movements are a bit stuttery as he warms his tyres, and the realization that it’s likely painful to shift in the seat to press the pedals gives Fernando some twisted sense of revenge, like justice has been served. Like Lance might finally learn his lesson.
When the safety car ends and the race restarts in earnest, everything Fernando had working before is shot.
There’s nothing materially different, no. It’s just an endless parade of bad luck that spits Fernando out over and over again. A poorly-timed lockup here, a bad pitstop there—the barrage never seems to end. The car—no, the whole race, actually—feels like it’s fighting him, like Fernando’s trying to convince it to drive instead of simply commanding it to. He falls quickly through the rankings, and something in his gut curdles.
He’s lucky, though. Lance falls further. And Fernando knows exactly why.
It’s not the car.
Fernando grins, presses the throttle, and drives that shitbox like his life depends on it.
-
By the time the race ends, Fernando’s in P18. It would be horrible if not for Lance.
Lance is in P19.
Fernando sighs with relief. He won. It’s over.
The media is incessant, hounding him about it, but Fernando is beyond caring. He brushes them off in whatever way he can, hoping to escape to the paddock. Lance can deal with his own media duties. For once in his life.
Not a minute after he collapses onto the little couch in his driver’s room, though, there’s a knock at the door. It’s an Aston employee; Fernando recognizes them, but can’t remember their name.
“You’re needed in room 23 in an hour. It’s an emergency meeting, I’m told—I’m sorry, I don’t know the details.” The employee throws their hands up in surrender.
Fernando grumbles a sigh. “Is okay. Thank you for telling me.”
“Sure, Fernando. Of course.”
The employee ducks out of the room, and Fernando is finally alone.
-
Fernando doesn’t try to dress up for this one. He’s sick of these meetings, so done with the awkwardness and shame hanging thickly in the room. So he comes into this one in his team kit and a fuck-off attitude.
Lance arrives soon after Fernando and carefully chooses a seat as far from him as possible. When he sits down, he winces a bit. Fernando chuckles to himself; he’s quiet enough where the people near him in the meeting room don’t hear him, but Lance turns to shoot him a look at that exact moment, like somehow, some way, he knows.
The meeting starts abruptly, pulling Fernando from his thoughts. There’s no powerpoint this time, no accessories, just Fernando and Lance and the Aston Martin employees all bathed in a heavy fog of humiliation.
One of them clears their throat and sucks in a breath. “P18. P19. There’s a problem.”
“The problem is the whole car,” Fernando grumbles, more than a bit rudely.
The employee pretends not to notice. “Fernando, you drove well. Got a bit unlucky; if it wasn’t for that, you’d be in the midfield for sure. We have to discuss Lance’s performance, though.”
Lance leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest, looking bored. He’s managing even more of a fuck-off attitude than Fernando.
And, oh, does that make Fernando see red.
He puts it out of his mind as best he can as the engineer continues. “We, uh, of course know what happened yesterday, and that’s fine, really, but, well… to put it simply, the free use clause cannot be affecting your drives. Lance, you looked obviously uncomfortable today.”
Lance shrugs his shoulders. Fernando hates him for it.
Maybe because he doesn’t have the confidence to do the same.
“Fernando, you have to be gentle. I don’t care what you do the rest of the week, but think of the team before the race, please.”
What the fuck?
“What—he asked!” Fernando sputters, gesturing at Lance. “If you know what happened, you should know that I was as gentle as I could! I tried to tell him that it was stupid!” The words fall messily from his mouth as his face heats up with embarrassment.
The engineer opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Instead, he turns to Lance. “Lance, you too. If you have free use privileges, you can’t use them in a way that hurts your own performance. The team comes first.”
Lance’s façade cracks a bit, and he sinks down in his chair, face beet-red. He stays silent.
“If you aren’t going to be responsive, there’s nothing we can do,” says the employee, exasperated. “Don’t be selfish—both of you. Think of the team first. The clause will help if you let it. Oh, and—please talk to each other about it. This isn’t grade school. We aren’t going to fix your petty spats for you.
“Meeting’s over.”
-
Lance and Fernando are the first out of the meeting room, shoving through the door in a desperate attempt to escape the embarrassment of essentially being scolded (especially by people who have most definitely seen their dicks). They aren’t together for much longer after that, though; Fernando is just planning to wander around the paddock in search of some sort of distraction, and Lance… well, Lance might as well be going to sign a contract with Haas for all Fernando cares.
Ah, sì, remembers Fernando as he passes the factory. I was going to ask them about the downforce. So he turns sharply and weaves his way through engineers peering at data charts and fine-tuning the cars until he finds Adrian at the back, supervising the whole system and taking notes on a legal pad. The two shiny cars sit at the center of the garage, defining the space and commanding attention from any passersby—and they certainly do their job, as mechanics cluster around them (currently, the mechanics seem to be tinkering mainly with the front wing on Lance’s car) and then get up to log data or relay information to someone else.
Fernando walks over to Adrian, weaving between engineers with the sort of long-striding confidence that only experience can bring. Adrian notices him, putting down his legal pad on a table so he can raise a hand in greeting. “Hey, Fernando, good to see you, man!” he says jauntily, clapping him on the back. “What do you need?”
Fernando flashes a wolfish grin. “The downforce is shit.” Adrian chuckles, long-accustomed to Fernando’s antics. “No, I am being serious. It was like driving a plane down a runway on the straights. I was about to take off.”
Adrian laughs heartily at this, but soon flips to analytical. ”Yeah, we’ve been working on that—it was bad today,” he admits, a sheepish look on his face. Brightening up, he gestures to Lance’s car. “We think the front wing might be the problem—we altered it a bit to try and fix the understeer—but you don’t want to trade one problem for another, you know?”
Fernando nods. “Aero stats looking good?”
“They’re just finishing up the adjustments to this baby, and then she’s off to the wind tunnel for testing. So we hope.” Adrian slaps the halo on Lance’s car like he’s a car salesman.
“Sì, yes, of course. Any other adjustments you are making?”
They talk for a bit, even after Fernando’s questions have been thoroughly answered; he’s really just trying to get his mind to focus on something else for once. Eventually he plops on a low stool and resigns himself to just watching the engineers work, the din of conversation around him pleasantly obscuring his thoughts.
The peace is ruined by Lance coming into the garage. The first thing that Fernando realizes is how flushed Lance is; he’s red-faced and a bit sweaty and he could have just come from the gym, but that look—Fernando would recognize it anywhere. The dark, dreamy eyes, half-lidded with pupils blown wide. Damp eyelashes.
Did he—
He must have. Like, just now. Five minutes ago, maybe.
Heat pools low in Fernando’s gut.
Fernando groans—it really feels like he can’t go anywhere without Lance showing up and causing a problem—but otherwise he’s fine, and rests his elbows on his knees, determined to not let Lance infiltrate his mind too much.
It should work. It would work if Lance just checked in on the progress, or asked a quick question, but instead he’s grilling Adrian. He’s as cordial as ever, and somehow the fact that he’s cordial sparks a bit of anger in Fernando’s chest.
Because how could Lance come in and ask about improvements and metrics with that stupid smile on his face when the only reason he did so badly is because he was fucking sore? How the hell could he even pretend to care about the car when he’s clearly happy to ruin it for himself?
The more Fernando thinks about it, the more he sees red. The fucking nerve of him, really, to throw his own race for issues unrelated to the car and then come in and talk about the very car that he couldn’t spare a shit for on the actual track.
It’s not all bad, though. At least Lance lost.
Wait.
Lance lost.
All of a sudden Fernando is up, weaving through engineers until he’s right behind Lance. Lance doesn’t even notice; he’s deep in conversation with the engineers as he peers at his car’s sidepod, hands on his hips as he talks.
Fernando doesn’t wait for Lance to notice him, just shoves him right between the shoulder blades.
Lance falls forward, catching himself on the car’s engine intake with an awkward little oof! before Fernando’s pinning him there, hands keeping Lance’s shoulders in a death grip. “Maybe now I can fuck you like you wanted, hmm?” Fernando purrs. Lance shivers.
“Here?” stammers Lance.
Fernando doesn’t respond, instead opting for rolling his hips into Lance’s thigh and letting him feel his semi.
“Oh, oh, fuck, ah—” Lance babbles as his body tenses.
Fernando has free use privileges. He doesn’t need to ask. At home—when things are comfortable, normal, when Lance always, always wants and would tell him if he didn’t—Fernando wouldn’t. But now he leans in close, whispers “You okay with this?” so that only Lance can hear.
Lance gulps, then nods frantically. “God, yes. Please.”
“You will tell me if you want me to stop, yes?”
“Mhm.”
That’s all Fernando needs. Grabbing the smooth collar of Lance’s team shirt, he braces his other hand on the halo and yanks Lance up just enough for his weight to entirely be in Fernando’s grasp. “Off,” Fernando orders, before dropping Lance right back down.
Lance just barely catches himself. “All of it? But everyone’s—“
“A lot coming from you, cabrón. All of it.”
Fernando gives Lance a few inches of wiggle room to strip off his clothes—a little something to thank me for later, Fernando thinks, laughing internally. As soon as Lance is finished, though, pale, flushed skin on display to the whole garage, Fernando pins him hard against the car, not even giving him an inch to move.
All of the car’s angles will leave some nasty red marks with how hard Lance is being pressed into them. Fernando doesn’t care.
“I have lube in my pocket,” breathes Lance. “If—if you want.”
On one hand, the fact that Lance would even suggest that Fernando would fuck him dry is beyond awful. It bites like an insult.
On the other hand, Fernando fucking knew it.
“Of fucking course you do,” growls Fernando, low and angry, right into Lance’s ear.
“Mmm… possessive,” Lance quips.
That earns him a solid slap on the ass—and one more on the tender junction between ass and thigh. It’s practiced and careful: more for sound than for pain, the sort of slap that’s a dime a dozen when they do scenes, or when their moods will align and in an unspoken agreement they’ll slip into their respective roles for the day; always Fernando the dominant, always Lance the submissive.
The sort that Fernando will give whenever he wants, really, because Lance likes it, maybe a bit too much.
Lance whines, moans, squirms against the car, drawing the eyes of several engineers who then tear their gaze away. What a fucking day for data, Fernando thinks, and barks a laugh. Engineers learn that their star driver likes it rough.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Fernando commands, voice thick with vitriol. Lance gulps audibly and obeys, so Fernando bends down to grab Lance’s discarded sweats and fish the lube out of one of the pockets. Returning, he sinks his teeth into Lance’s shoulder, just to hear him gasp and whine.
“Fuck,” gasps Lance, the single word conveying so much. Then, in a voice so breathy Fernando can barely hear it: “More?”
Fernando moans. The thought of indulging Lance in any way is bitter; Fernando flinches away from the thought of doing anything but taking and taking and taking until Lance has nothing left to give and keep taking after that.
But, oh, Fernando wants.
For the first time in way too fucking long, Fernando lets the bone-deep, blinding desire engulf him.
He’s not gentle about it, though; has no intention to be. Each mark is sucked a bit too roughly, left without a kiss or lick to soothe the sting—and the unmistakable Morse code of teeth-marks, spelling out Fernando or fuck you or whatever message Fernando sends with them, will be plentiful and sensitive, the dark purple of them a promise as well as a demand as well as a warning that Fernando makes sure will last as long as possible. Fernando smiles into them; maybe that will show too.
Fernando’s pressed so close to Lance that he can’t help but grind against Lance’s bare, muscled thigh, and oh, that’s good, it’s white-hot and fiery and Fernando pushes his hips into the sensation, uncaring of how Lance squirms under him. Deep down, Fernando hopes that the denim of his jeans will scratch bright red marks into Lance’s thigh. They’ll get Lance hard every time he feels them, and, well, wouldn’t that just be sweet revenge?
Fernando would keep doing this forever; really, he would—keep grinding and sucking and biting until everyone leaves for the day and keep going after that so they can see just how much more of a mess he’s made of Lance when they come in for work the next morning.
But Fernando really, really can’t wait any longer.
So he steps back, shoving Lance one final time for good measure, and spreads Lance’s cheeks wide until Lance hisses a breath through his teeth and Fernando knows the thin skin between them has started to sting. He eases his grip up, but only a little—he’s not giving up the view of Lance’s hole, tight and pink and twitching and so fucking greedy that Fernando could get lost in it.
He drizzles lube generously over it—really just to hear Lance yelp at the cold—and rubs the lube in carefully, fingers teasing, probing up against Lance’s perineum and then back, never where Lance wants them, not quite, but so, so close that there’s no way Lance will be able to keep quiet about it.
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fingers, oh my god, need it!” babbles Lance. Just as expected.
Fernando grins. “Is this—” he shoves a lubed finger in to the knuckle before pulling it out just as quickly, “what you need?”
“Fuck!” Lance screams, back arching and body trembling as he desperately tries to find the digit again.
Fernando indulges him, pushing in a finger quickly. He leaves it there for a second or two this time—that way, when he draws it out, Lance throws his head back, moaning and cursing loudly. It’s even more fun to play with him, Fernando thinks, when Lance can’t get comfortable.
When Fernando slides the finger in again, Lance just tenses his shoulders and sniffs back a sob, expecting to be left empty again. Which is exactly why Fernando hooks his finger just right and slides in another next to it—because now Lance is so loud it’s obscene, moans and sobs and whines and gasps all combining into this pornographic symphony that makes Fernando grow impossibly harder in his jeans.
“Right there, ah, fuck, give it to me, god.”
Fernando doesn’t mind playing god. Not one bit.
He opens Lance just short of too quickly, only barely letting him adjust before adding another finger and grinding the pads cruelly into Lance’s prostate. Lance whimpers and moans, sweat-slick body trembling and tensing with each wave of pleasure. Just from Fernando’s hand.
Lance is completely wrapped around Fernando’s finger. Just like Fernando wants it.
Now Fernando can toy with him for real.
He fumbles around trying to unzip his jeans and free his aching cock—it’s the only warning Lance gets before Fernando covers it with the excess lube around Lance’s hole, lines up, and bottoms out in one thrust.
And waits.
Because all of a sudden, the floodgates are open, and through the arousal bubbles up the other red—the anger, the frustration, the humiliation, fighting a battle that neither will win. It’s been threatening this whole time, nipping at the frayed edges of Fernando’s psyche, but now it’s back in full force.
Maybe the worst part is that it’s not that simple. Fernando feels the world, that’s what it has to be—he feels anger and everything but anger, arousal and everything but arousal, warmth and everything but warmth. And it drives him insane.
See, Fernando prides himself on being logical. He’s not one to sacrifice much for feelings; in fact, most of the time they’re just a nuisance. So he’s trained himself to shut out his heart, shut out the sting of regret after he shoves some rookie out of the points.
It means that when he stands there, buried deep in Lance as he whines and squirms underneath him, yet to move but his every muscle primed to, and his heart screams I love you and his brain screams I hate you, Fernando doesn’t give his heart a second thought.
Lance throws his head back in pleasure, drawing every feeling in Fernando to the simple motion like an eagle to prey.
“Look at the car you don’t care about.” Lance whines, pathetic. Fernando grapples his hips, digs in his fingernails. “Fucking look at it, Stroll.”
Lance’s breath hitches with some combination of a cry and a moan, but he looks. Keeps his eyes trained on it like his life is on the line. (It isn’t, of course, but to Fernando some part of it feels like it is.)
“All the fucking time and effort that goes into you, and you can’t even pretend to care,” spits Fernando, voice dripping with venom.
“Please, please, please give it to me, I’ll be good, promise,” sobs Lance. “Need it so bad—ah!” He’s cut off by Fernando pulling his hips back and then snapping them forward, leaning over Lance as he uses every bit of strength he has to fuck into Lance like a toy. Lance gasps and moans, his muscled back flexing as he takes Fernando’s thick cock so well.
Like he was made for it.
Maybe he was.
Fernando barely has the composure to, but he forces out more words: “Hi, I’m Lance Stroll, and I should be racing for the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team, but I’m too busy taking dick to even give myself a chance at being able to drive,” he mocks, voice high and nasty. “I can barely sit down in the car with how badly my ass hurts. Who cares? I’ve got a whole crew of engineers to blame!”
Lance moans, high and needy and a little punched-out. He’s trying to form words, but all that comes out are jagged little tear-stained syllables. With one great effort he manages a strangled, “Harder, please, need it so bad.” The sound is electrifying.
Fernando has made his point with his words. Now he figures he can let his body do the talking.
Each thrust is like heaven; so hot, so tight, the sizzling friction nothing short of life-changing. With each snap of his hips Fernando pants and moans, lost in his own pleasure as he chases that familiar tightening in his gut, raking his nails across Lance’s back and sides as he does so; he’s really just scrabbling for purchase anywhere, trying to find some grip on Lance’s smooth skin. And Lance sounds utterly lewd—he’s so far beyond caring about prying eyes (or ears) at this point; in fact, each moan and shout and whine is so loud that it certainly makes it beyond the walls of the garage.
Forgetting any rhythm, Fernando speeds up as the blood rushes straight from his head to his dick; the world shrinks to nothing but him and a tight hole and blinding, carnal desire that pulses through him like magma. He bucks his hips wildly, chasing his orgasm with every ounce of speed he has, and he’s getting closer, closer, closer, and—
With one final thrust, Fernando stutters to a stop deep inside Lance and comes hard, hard enough for his world to white out, hard enough to feel nothing but the live wires snaking through his skin, hard enough to hear Lance’s whimpery moan at the sensation faintly enough where he doesn’t even register it. Fernando’s whole body shudders through the aftershocks, and he’s about to collapse over Lance and catch his breath while he holds Lance close when reality comes flooding back to him in one brutal impact.
So Fernando takes a deep, shuddering breath, and pulls out of Lance in one smooth motion. It makes Lance squirm and whine, and—oh.
Lance hasn’t come. He’s close, Fernando can tell, but he hasn’t.
Fernando ducks his head beside Lance for a better look.
Lance’s cock is flushed red and looks achingly hard, and the sight alone makes Fernando have to bite his tongue before a request for round two can slip out. The car’s shiny livery is covered in smudges where Lance’s cock has been dripping precum all over it. Lance shifts uncomfortably, and Fernando can now see that the tip of his cock actually brushes against the car, and knowing Lance—yes, Lance has been rutting against the goddamn car of all things, desperate for friction; he does it again now, and it’s not enough, it won’t be enough, but he’s frantically humping the thing as if it will be.
It turns Fernando on more than he’d like to admit. He tucks his spent cock back into his pants and tries to ignore it.
Fernando grabs Lance’s thick hair and yanks it hard, pulling him up from the car (his hips still thrust pathetically into the air, and something about it makes Fernando’s cock twitch equally pathetically in response). He uses his grip to drag Lance into a standing position; Lance obliges, and turns to face Fernando.
He looks debauched. That’s the only way Fernando can put it.
Lance’s pale face is bright red and streaked with tears, and his chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath. There are so many marks of such a rainbow of colors on him that he looks like a paint palette. He grabs his hands, wringing his fingers together with such force that his knuckles crack. That way, he won’t touch himself.
“Can you please…” Lance trails off, embarrassed, gesturing vaguely to his cock.
“No. Get out.”
Lance’s face turns impossibly brighter, but he does as he’s told, finding his discarded clothes on the floor and yanking them on before scurrying out of the room, the tent in his sweats still so delightfully obvious.
Fernando feels on top of the world. Until he doesn’t.
It all comes crashing down at once—the reality of what he just did.
He didn’t use his brain. He just—Fernando can barely even think it—just got angry, and… and took it out on Lance.
Fernando crumples to the floor and balls up against the car, incapable of caring anymore about the sidelong looks in his direction.
Lance. His Lance.
Lancito.
Lancito, who always cries when Fernando fucks him just right. Fernando wants more than anything to know if that’s why the tears came this time.
Notes:
lance's reign of throwing shit at fernando continues!!!
Chapter 5
Summary:
El plan is out the window. Fernando is spiraling.
Notes:
sorry for the short chapter!! it's been a bit tough lately and my brain is so fried that anything I tried to add would definitely just be purple prose lol. hope you enjoy!!!
cw: dubcon mention but it's not dubcon at all, fernando just thinks it is because he's spiraling
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The couch in their apartment feels like shit.
It’s objectively an okay couch—a nice one, even—but Fernando wakes up every morning with a crick in his neck.
It seems like that damn crick is the only thing Fernando feels all day. He floats through the world, never quite in it. It’s… he can’t muster anything else. It’s like there’s a gaping hole where Fernando’s heart used to be, and now the emptiness, the lack, is so filling that it’s squashed his ability to think of anything else.
When he gets like this it’s become his instinct to reach for Lance, let him hold him close and protect him from the incessant turning of the world that, despite Fernando’s greatest desires, keeps spinning and spinning.
It’s a surprisingly hard habit to break.
The hard, dry-cracked shell of anger had sloughed off of Fernando’s heart in an instant, when he… it had left his heart raw, victim to every mote of dust that now feels like acid over the exposed surface.
He can’t think of anything else. The pain is unbearable; his head pounds with it, each throb seeming to shout Lance. Lance. Lance.
Fernando swallows hard. He’s ruined for Lance, he really is.
And Fernando ruined it.
Lance is catlike in nature. Upon meeting him for the first time after coming to Aston Martin, Fernando remembers that Lance had exuded this energy so painfully shy that it seemed to bleed into despair that he had long since outgrown the age when he could hide behind Lawrence’s leg (which he had in fact done when he had met Fernando for the first time, just a young kid with buck teeth and bright eyes that sparkled with dreams beyond him).
The first time Fernando met Lance—Lancito, the real Lance, the Lance that Fernando would fall so deeply in love with and—as he thought—never look back, was at some team dinner, one of the endless let’s get our new driver a bit acquainted before we strap him into a car to drive for us events that Fernando had begun to despise because of the sheer number he had been through. In his mind, once he signs the contract he’ll drive. Nothing else to it. Teams, Aston included, tend to disagree.
So he had been ushered into a restaurant and seated right next to Lance, who had smiled shyly before burying his face in his menu. Fernando remembers the overwhelming desire to reach out and touch, to tell him softly that he wouldn’t bite.
Dinner came and went as it always did. Courses were brought out, one after another, warm and aromatic; plates were cleared; glasses were emptied. By the end the whole table was a bit tipsy, a bit loose. Fernando, personally, felt a low buzz of courage.
He had elbowed Lance gently and made some comment about the food, and it couldn’t have been that funny, but Lance had looked at him, surprised, and then laughed. It was loud, melodic, mirthful.
He had sounded like the first buds of spring—putting their long-hidden trust into the world, just a little, to see if the world would reciprocate. And the world so often would—the very nature of the bud is to encourage the world’s gentle care—but still the bud is almost painfully hesitant to emerge year after year.
Fernando was startled to realize that he would do anything to hear it again; to hold that fragile beauty in his cupped palms until it bloomed bright and vibrant.
Slowly but surely, Lance had opened up to Fernando, day by day, always something—a little joke here, a comment about football there—and Fernando got so swept up in it, in the warmth and color that his life was taking on, that he didn’t even notice the time passing. All he knew was that all of a sudden, Lance was his, beautiful and vibrant and expressive; all of a sudden, Lance trusted Fernando with his life; all of a sudden, Lance not only confided in him about his deepest insecurities but laid back and let Fernando worship each and every one.
Catlike. Once Lance opens up, decides to place his trust in someone’s hands, he loves unconditionally. Always on the defensive until he’s decided that someone won’t hurt him… and then vulnerable and fragile and unapologetically Lance in front of them.
Fernando’s face is wet. He blinks. He doesn’t remember when he started crying.
Shoving the too-hot blanket off of himself, Fernando sits up and blindly gropes for his phone on the coffee table, eyes still blurry with sleep. His stomach twists into a knot as he opens his email.
He’s also 100%, absolutely, no questions about it, getting fired. There’s that too. The loading animation of his inbox is surprisingly threatening.
Besides the usual droves of junk mail, Fernando’s inbox is empty. Huh.
Maybe Lawrence hasn’t sent the email yet.
But it’s almost noon on Monday, and Lawrence isn’t one to sleep in… or keep doomed employees waiting.
But it might also take Lawrence a bit longer than usual to compose an email about how he’s firing Fernando for fucking his son. Angrily. In front of everyone.
Fernando groans and flops back on the couch. He doesn’t even want to think about it.
The apartment isn’t just empty—it feels devoid of life. Fernando drags a couch cushion over himself and hugs it close, but soon he shoves it to the floor. Trying to replicate how Lance would drape himself over Fernando at any possible opportunity feels pathetic.
Finally Fernando forces himself to get up and take a shower, rubbing sleep and tears from his eyes as he makes his way to the bathroom. When he gets into the shower, Fernando gathers his courage and wrenches the knob over, letting the water become icy as he stands there shivering; he’s punishing himself, Fernando knows, and he deserves it.
He didn’t even ask—well, he did, but… there’s no way… right?
Fernando’s stomach aches with guilt. It appears to him that he really, truly hates himself.
For taking advantage of Lance. Lance, who had placed his fragile trust entirely with Fernando, just to have it shattered.
For trying so hard to be angry because he was too fucking juvenile to let himself feel anything more difficult.
Fernando’s eyes burn with unshed tears that feel red-hot against the icy water. He can barely wrap his head around it—he just took advantage of Lance, took advantage of that stupid clause to take his anger out on who he loves more than the world itself. Lance hadn’t enjoyed it; he had cried, and maybe if Fernando wasn’t such a sad excuse for a human he would have realized it.
Lance didn’t ask him to stop… because he was scared. That’s all there is to it. It has to be.
Fernando steps out of the shower and wraps himself in a towel, barely comprehending it as he dries himself and throws on whatever clothes he had left in the bathroom to change into. It’s just—none of it feels important anymore. Not after what he did.
He’s not thorough at all with the towel, and water drips from his hair to his shirt as he walks back to the living room. As badly as Fernando wants to entertain the idea that Lance might be there, waiting for him, he can’t. There’s something else in the way—fear.
That’s it. Fernando is terrified. More so than he’s ever been in his life.
The thought that he hurt Lance seems to pierce right through the thick skin he’s built, and something more viscous than fear seems to mix with the gut-wrenching guilt that floods him. Fernando’s not cold anymore, but shivers incessantly wrack him regardless.
-
Fernando can’t sit still.
His breath is quick, and his skin feels clammy. All he wants is a distraction, but he can’t seem to focus, so he wanders the apartment in search of something that might take his mind off of Lance for more than a minute or two. He doesn’t find much.
Eventually, Fernando settles himself into the sim rig and boots up iRacing. On the first lap of the Montreal circuit, he spins out into a gravel trap, causing the sim rig to shake as his virtual car skids into the barrier.
“Enfocar, Fernando,” he hisses to himself. He resets.
The second go isn’t much better. At least he stays on the track this time.
Fernando sighs in defeat. Then he furrows his brow in confusion.
Why the hell is he in Canada? Why did he load Lance’s fucking preset?
God, he really can’t get his mind off of him.
It doesn’t help that the sim rig is the site of the last time Fernando touched Lance, really, while they were still in blissful ignorance, before that clause ruined everything they have. Or, rather, had.
The memory comes back to Fernando in full force—of Lance, with a pout on his lips when Fernando wouldn’t give him what he wanted; of Lance, flushed and squirming and begging for it; of Lance, taking Fernando’s—
Fernando swallows dryly. He didn’t ask then, either.
Of course I didn’t, Fernando reconciles. Lance would have said so if he didn’t want.
Would he have?
The thought hits Fernando like a truck. His gut drops into the floor at the realization, although he frankly has no idea how he’s only realizing it now.
He’s been hurting Lance for months now—taking advantage of the trust Lance placed in him.
Lance is catlike in nature. Once he’s devoted himself to someone, he’ll endure whatever they dish out in hopes of tiny wisps of love. He’ll hurt himself, run himself to the ground, all for the sake of someone else who’s hurting him just as much. He loves hard and unconditionally, for better or for worse.
Who knows how much time Fernando had spent holding Lance close as Lance confided in him in a voice so tiny Fernando could barely hear it? How many hours spent telling Lance that none of them deserved you, mi amor, repeating it again and again like a mantra until Lance started to believe him, until Lance looked up at Fernando through those thick eyelashes, smiled so beautifully, nodded, and said only you deserve me, mon chéri?
It had been so sweet at the time, so innocent. Such a lie.
Fernando only wishes he ever deserved Lance.
Then the door clicks, the floorboards creak, and all of a sudden Lance is on Fernando, perched on his lap in the sim rig and hugging him gently, pressing his face into Fernando’s neck as he seems to melt in Fernando’s arms. For a second it’s perfect, selfishly perfect; Fernando feels like he’s flying.
Then he pushes Lance off.
I will not force you to love me anymore, Lance, you do not owe me anything, you can go, Fernando thinks but doesn’t say.
He doesn’t get to say anything, as Lance just climbs off of him and walks away. Fernando assumes that Lance is going to turn right back around and leave, but then Fernando hears the clunk of the refrigerator and the click of the burner. “D’you want chicken or no?” Lance calls from the kitchen.
Fernando digs his phone out of his pocket. He texts Lance, not quite trusting whatever his mouth might say.
Fernando: Is fine without
There’s only one coherent thought in his brain right now. It’s so loud, and Fernando couldn’t think of anything else if he tried to.
Why do you keep coming back?
-
Why do you keep coming back? Fernando wonders over a painfully silent dinner punctuated only by the clinking of silverware. His eyes flick to Lance, questioning, but Lance evidently doesn’t pick up on what Fernando is trying so hard to say, because he doesn’t respond, just smiles sadly at Fernando and takes another bite of his stir-fry.
-
Why do you keep coming back? Fernando thinks again, having given up on trying to sleep after tossing and turning on the stupid couch for God knows how long. He’s aware of the nagging desire that grows stronger with each passing minute to go to the bedroom and snuggle against Lance’s warm back and let the problems drift away themselves. But he never makes it more than a few steps beyond the couch before he’s awash with guilt and concedes, returning with his tail between his legs. Fernando spends the night begging his brain for an answer that won’t come until he finally falls into a fitful sleep.
-
Why do you keep coming back? Fernando tries to mentally demand when he’s awoken by Lance padding around the apartment, getting ready for the day. Lance passes through the living room, pajama pants slung low on his hips, and asks so casually, “Y’know you don’t need to sleep on the couch, right? Like, don’t force yourself to stay there.”
As if Fernando could do that. Come back like that, when Lance is angry and rightfully so. Fernando opens his mouth, but doesn’t reply. There are so many things he wants to say, but he still doesn’t know how to form any sort of response.
He wants to tell Lance to stay. Fernando feels lost without him, like a boat without its anchor; aimless, neither going somewhere nor coming from anywhere. But it’s selfish—he knows that now. Selfish to continue forcing Lance to act like he loves Fernando… for Fernando’s sake. Lance is like an exotic bird, wild and beautiful and free, and Fernando is the collector who wants him just to keep him in a cage.
He wants to tell Lance to go. The thought makes his head hurt anew, although he’s spent so many consecutive hours trying to come to terms with the fact that Lance is gone already. If Lance just left, just walked out and never thought of Fernando again, he would be free. Fernando doesn’t deserve Lance, never deserved Lance, and being in the hellish limbo where he’s made that realization and Lance hasn’t is torture. If Lance left, he would realize it too. One day soon, Fernando is convinced Lance will leave of his own accord, but Fernando can’t bear the waiting—for Lance’s sake more than his own.
How Lance just lets it roll off of him, comes back to Fernando like nothing ever happened… Fernando can’t understand it for the life of him. He wants to tell Lance to be angry, to take it out on him. It would be more… honest? Fernando doesn’t know.
Fernando sighs and gets up to grab a bowl of cereal. He doesn’t know how much more emotional confusion he can take.
-
On the drive to the paddock, Lance fidgets, drumming his fingers on the center console and fiddling with the levers on the side of the passenger seat, and a remark dies in Fernando’s throat about how he’s glad he’s the one driving today. All of a sudden, as if he’s been working up courage for it, Lance mumbles, “Love you, Nando.”
Just like that. As if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Fernando’s so startled by it that he damn near runs right through the red light into an intersection. He slams on the brakes; in his rearview he can see the car behind coming too close for comfort to rear-ending them. The driver honks the horn and flips Fernando the bird, other hand still lingering on the middle of the steering wheel. At least the chaos keeps Fernando from having to respond to Lance.
It gnaws at him, though, and Fernando can’t get his mind off of it the whole day. How Lance could just say that like it’s nothing, when he’s so angry at Fernando—he has to be, with what Fernando did, not just the other day but for months now. It doesn’t add up.
For what feels like the millionth time in the span of two days, a realization hits Fernando head-on that makes his stomach drop to the floor.
Lance is scared.
Scared of Fernando, except he doesn’t know how to do anything but love him, so he pretends as if nothing’s happened. Lance can’t do anything else, because… because it could provoke Fernando.
So he puts up with it, never daring to do anything differently, never trying to do anything but take Fernando’s punches and pretend that they don’t hurt.
Fernando’s mind spins.
He’s supposed to protect Lance. He’s spent so goddamn long thinking that he’s protecting Lance. But he knows with firm certainty that this is all it’s ever been.
-
It really doesn’t get any better from there.
Fernando’s day is packed full with team meetings, which he grits his teeth and bears as usual. He may have jammed as many as possible in to avoid being left alone with his thoughts, but that doesn’t make the actual meeting schedule any easier. At least it works, and Lance is nowhere to be seen for the morning.
A little after noon, Fernando grabs a plate of cachopo from the paddock’s little cafeteria. It’s not as good as Lance’s—Fernando notices that immediately—but he can’t help but be thankful that Aston Martin is pretty good at the whole native cuisine thing. It helps Fernando feel a bit more at home, which is especially valuable now that he doesn’t know what else to call home.
He’s halfway through his meal when Lance sits down across from him, taking up the second seat at the small table.
Fernando wants so badly to reach out and touch, to tell Lance softly that he won’t bite. But it’s too late now. Fernando has bitten—no, he’s mauled, ripped at the tender flesh of Lance’s very soul and left it cold and bleeding. At that moment, Fernando resolves to tell Lance to leave, to look reality in the eyes and stop hurting himself for Fernando’s sake.
He can’t do it now, though. He tries, but his mouth is too dry and his tongue is too thick to form the words.
“Good, huh?” Lance’s voice wrenches Fernando from his thoughts.
Fernando nods shallowly, unable to form any sort of response. He doesn’t even look up from his plate. Lance doesn’t say anything else, just picks at his own food, evidently wanting to abandon it after the first few bites. The silence feels interminable.
Lance takes a deep breath. “I miss you, Fernando. Please, come back—”
“No. You are angry. Is fine.” Fernando interrupts, sighing. “I am not going to hurt you anymore. You can go.”
Fernando doesn’t know how he got the words out, but he did. It feels wrong, though, so wrong, and he can’t put his finger on why.
Lance’s fork clatters as he puts it down on his plate. “It’s not—” he starts, before dropping his hands to his lap in defeat. “Okay,” he says instead, before promptly getting up, dumping his uneaten cachopo into the compost, and leaving the room with his shoulders slumped.
-
There are fewer meetings in the afternoon, but Fernando is still determined to kill as much of the day as possible at the paddock. So he runs around the place from room to room, talking to people, asking questions, and damn near begging anyone who has any superiority to please, please give him some sort of task. He doesn’t mention why.
The one thing Fernando doesn’t want to do is get pulled into Lawrence’s office for the shovel talk. If he’s honest with himself, Fernando knows that half of the reason he’s trying so hard to be busy is in the hope that somehow Lawrence will decide not to interrupt his work. It’s futile, though, and Fernando knows it. He’s sure the untimely end of his racing career is coming—there’s only so much time that can pass before it’s inevitable—but it doesn’t.
-
It's technically the end of his work day, but Fernando doesn't realize it. He's planning to stay for his usual few hours of time without Lance, although he's uncertain if it will make things better or worse today. He's just trying to get to the garage in hopes that someone will give him something to do, but he runs into Lance halfway there, and—maybe Lance had been looking for Fernando, since he grabs Fernando’s wrist and pulls him to a quieter corner, away from the masses of engineers running about.
Fernando swallows hard. A twinge of anxiety kicks up in his chest that he tries and fails to ignore. He really, really wants to try again to make his point to Lance, but his mouth is so dry and his gut is roiling so badly that he doesn’t think he could say a single word.
Lance looks at Fernando with a gaze that seems to bore down into his very being. “Fernando. Let's go home. We need to talk.”
Notes:
WHEW we got through that one together. that one hurt. sorry
Chapter 6
Summary:
They learn about this crazy thing known as confronting your problems by TALKING ABOUT THEM.
Notes:
sorry lawrence for making you go through the horrors. if you ever see this (god forbid) please let me say hi to lance before you kill me and mutilate my body thanks xoxo
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Fernando stalls as long as possible.
It’s childish, sure, but he’s nervous. There’s this awful twisting in his stomach that makes him feel like he’ll be punished. It’s like being a kid again—he knows he did something wrong, he knows he deserves to be punished for it, but everything in him wants to squirm away, find some way of weaseling out of the crushing jaws of shame that bite down when he faces them head-on.
So he stops at some drive-thru on the way home, ordering sandwiches for himself and Lance, and parks the car as Lance eats. Fernando can’t eat—he’s too anxious; all he can do is pick at the bread—but still the car stays put.
“You can drive, Fernando, you really don’t have to wait for me,” Lance suggests halfway through his sandwich in a casual tone that somehow stresses Fernando even further.
“Is fine. Eat. One sharp turn and there are crumbs all over our car.” Something sour and sharp kicks up in Fernando’s chest as he says it—he knows he’s stalling, Lance knows he’s stalling—but that acrid acidity seems to glue Fernando’s mouth shut, and he doesn’t say anything past that.
When they get home, the only sounds of their arrival being footsteps and the click of the lock, Fernando suggests a shower. Lance looks like he’s about to reply, but instead he just sighs and pads to the other bathroom.
The shower goes all too quickly. When he’s finished, Fernando sits on the closed toilet seat, head in his hands. He can’t put it off much longer, he knows. So he takes deep, shuddering breaths as he tries to calm his nerves enough to go back.
As it turns out, Lance makes the decision for him. Fernando hasn’t been sitting there for even ten minutes before he hears a knock at the door. “Come on, Fernando. Talk to me,” Lance pleads from the hallway. He tries to sound authoritative, Fernando can tell, but his voice wavers, dropping his façade to the ground.
Fernando takes one last breath, like it’s the last precious sip of air he’ll get for hours. “Okay.”
No getting out of it now.
-
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry and I don’t know how to say it anymore.”
Fernando drums his fingers on the arm of the couch, avoiding Lance’s gaze. There’s so much he wants to say and nothing he wants to say all at the same time—but what he really wants to do is neither; that way, Fernando doesn’t have to face it and he can instead think about something else. Perhaps how the Canadian lilt to Lance’s voice draws out the o’s in the sorries.
It’s always Lance, though. What he wants to think about is Lance. And if Fernando can’t tamp down his anxiety enough to have one stupid conversation, he might not be able to think about Lance again.
“But you are angry,” Fernando manages.
“I’m not.”
“How can you not be?” snaps Fernando, exasperated with Lance’s ignorance and his own spiraling thoughts.
“Please, I don’t want to argue. Just… let’s just start from the beginning,” Lance says from the other side of the couch. Fernando swallows his pride and nods. “Actually, wait, no. Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. Uh. Why do you think I’m angry?”
“I, ah… I hurt you, Lance. I took advantage of you. Have been taking advantage of you for months,” Fernando grits out, face hot and heart aching.
“What? No, it’s—sorry. I’m not gonna cut you off. Finish.”
“You cried, Lance. Every time. I realize I scare you. Clause or not. I—you cried, Lance, you cried.” Lance’s expression softens as his eyes widen. He blushes, hard. Fernando has no idea why.
Lance chews on his lip. “But it’s fine. It’s, like, the clause is the rule, you know?”
“Is not, though. I never asked. I just took.”
“Well, I mean, you don’t need to. ‘S fine.”
Fernando sighs. He wants to be frustrated that Lance just isn’t getting it, but he knows he’s been beating around the bush. He only has himself to blame. Gathering his courage, Fernando says, “But… still not right for me to be… rough. To hurt you.” Fernando gestures to the bruises and marks still bright on Lance’s neck and collarbone. “That… and I prep you too fast, and I called you that, in front of everyone. I… I wanted to make it hurt, Lance. I hate myself for it. You can hate me for it too.”
Lance is quiet for a long minute. “I liked it,” he admits, voice tiny. “A lot.”
Fernando wants to believe him. He wants to more than anything. But he can’t.
“No. Lance, no. You could not have liked.”
Lance sighs. “Fernando, the only thing making me angry is you trying to tell me how I feel,” says Lance, without any heat. He smiles shallowly. “Hear me. Please, just listen.”
Something about the tired patience ringing Lance’s voice feels like a punch to Fernando’s gut.
How long has it been, Fernando wonders, since the last time he did that?
Listen. Just listen.
Because he keeps trying to make answers, draw conclusions from nothing. He’s trying so goddamn hard that he can’t—no, he refuses to believe it—when Lance tells him otherwise.
Fernando takes a deep breath. “Okay. I try.” He pauses. Then: “You liked?”
Turning bright red, Lance tucks his knees up to his chin. “Yeah. And, um, I cry when, you know—” Lance gestures, then drops his hands at Fernando’s confusion. “When it’s good,” he finishes.
Fernando knows that. Of course Fernando knows that. He loves that.
God, when did he forget?
Fernando opens his mouth to reply, but Lance beats him to the punch. “And I trust you, Fernando, I trust you with everything. At home, at work, whatever. I’d trust you in the kitchen, even.” Lance smiles weakly and finally lets his gaze fall on Fernando’s searching one. “Okay, maybe not there. Fire hazards ‘n stuff.”
Surprised, Fernando barks a laugh. He can see how Lance’s body, drawn up so tight, loosens slightly at the sound. Soon, though, the weight returns to his chest, having only abated for a second. “But, Lance, for the past few months… I just take. At home, I mean. Not the paddock. That’s… I force you into it, no?”
“You never did,” says Lance softly. He scoots a bit closer.
“No?”
Lance bites his lip. “I always wanted it, Nando. Still do. Every second of every day, actually.” He pauses a bit before continuing. “And, like, I knew I could always ask you to stop if I actually didn’t want it. I never stopped trusting you. You think I did, and that’s where you’re wrong.”
Maybe for the first time in his life, Fernando is happy to be wrong. “I… Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Lance smiles, but it only lights up the room for a second before it falls. “I have to say it, though. I was awful to you too, wasn’t I? I’m never gonna do it again. I’m gonna be better.” His voice rises along with his obvious stress as he speaks.
And, well, he was. But honestly? Fernando is too overjoyed to finally have Lance back to care. As far as Fernando is concerned, Lance could punch him for sexual gratification and Fernando would be happy as long as everything is back to normal.
“Ah. Is fine, Lance. That’s the clause. You do whatever you want, churri.”
“Really?” Lance sounds skeptical, although Fernando can see how the pet name threatens to pull the corners of his mouth into a smile.
“Sì.” Fernando puts his hand over Lance’s on the couch, as if to seal the promise.
“Okay,” says Lance, smiling in earnest this time. “I think we’re good, then.” He moves to sit beside Fernando, settling into his side. Fernando can’t settle, though. There’s something else that Lance deserves to know; after all, it’s not fair to Lance if he thinks they have all the time in the world left together. Lance notices Fernando’s tension and sits up, turning to face him. His eyebrows are knitted across his forehead. “Fernando? Is this okay?”
Fernando’s mouth feels glued shut. He forces the words out anyway. “I lied, Lance.”
Tension creeps across Lance’s face. “About what?”
“When I apologized to you… Lance, I was there because Lawrence told me to.”
Lance tucks his knees up to his chin and wraps his arms around himself, like he’s trying to shield himself from Fernando. It makes something fragile shatter deep inside Fernando, and he wants to scramble to fix it, but he swallows hard and forces himself to wait, to let Lance dictate the conversation. Fernando can take a bit of hurt if it means that Lance is heard.
“Oh,” is all Lance says, although it’s clear that he wants to say something more.
And Fernando really doesn’t want to ask it, but it’s gnawing at him too much to ignore. “Are you angry?”
Taking a deep breath, Lance replies, “No—well, yes. About this, for sure. That you lied. But I’m damned if we don’t talk this out like a regular couple. I’m done arguing with you too.” His tone is careful, clearly intentional in its flatness and devoid of any cracks that raw emotion could shine through.
An hour ago, Fernando might have struggled to believe Lance’s answer. The instinct is still there—that in the absence of raw emotion, it is Fernando’s duty to draw his own conclusions. But he remembers now what Lance had said earlier—to hear him, please, just listen—and tamps the instinct down. It’s hard, it comes far from naturally, but Fernando does it anyway. He knows that what Lance really deserves is to be heard and trusted—like Fernando is supposed to. Like Fernando spent so long wrongly believing he was doing.
Lance seems to be waiting for Fernando to reply, so he does. “Sì. We talk it out. I am sorry. Can I explain?”
“Mhm,” affirms Lance, nodding.
“When… after FP1 in Mexico, I yell at you when you were just trying to help, remember?” Lance nods, so Fernando continues. “After FP2, Lawrence took me into his office. He told me to apologize to you. Is why I did. I was so angry.”
“But you said…”
“I know. I said he had nothing to do with it. I am so sorry.”
Just like that, it’s all gone.
Bone-deep hurt blooms on Lance’s face, tinged with an anger that Fernando feels small in front of. Fernando sets his jaw, mentally preparing to be screamed at—he deserves it, after all—but it doesn’t come.
Lance takes a deep breath, then another.
“It’s okay.”
Fernando quirks an eyebrow. “It is?”
“Yeah. Thank you for telling me. I get it, I do. I would have done the same thing.”
Now it’s Fernando’s turn to breathe deeply. “Thank you. Thank you, Lancito. Thank you.” It’s all he feels like he can say. The words feel strange coming out of his mouth—Fernando Alonso is not one to apologize. But he’s not Fernando Alonso now, is he? Here, at home, with Lance, he’s Nando. It’s completely different, and also, strangely, easier. A welcome discomfort.
“I’m not going to explode at you anymore. This is my first try.” Lance smiles shallowly.
“You did well,” Fernando replies.
Lance’s smile widens. “Thank you, Nando.”
“I just… I have one more thing I have to tell you.”
Although his face tightens with concern, Lance stays calm. He gives Fernando a look that seems to say, go on. Tell me. I’ll listen.
So even though it’s hard, and Fernando doesn’t know if he’ll be able to say it, he does.
“In the meeting, Lawrence said if it continues… and it did… I am going to get fired, Lance, I am so sorry… I feel so awful, I want to stay, but I don’t want to lie to you anymore, cariño, it is too late for me to fix…” Fernando trails off, burying his face in his hands. There. He got it out. Barely.
“No, you’re not,” says Lance, firm. Then, softer: “Hey, Nando, come out of hiding? Look at me?”
Fernando obliges, lifting his head just enough to face Lance. His brow is furrowed with confusion. He’s getting fired. That’s it. Why Lance thinks he won’t, Fernando doesn’t know.
Lance tilts his head and looks at Fernando with the hugest, most innocent doe eyes he can, the ones that sort of make Fernando want to kiss him silly. “I get everything I want around here, remember?”
What?
“How does that—” Fernando begins, but Lance cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re not getting fired ‘cause I want you here too.” Lance’s voice is playful but firm, textured with a bit of stubbornness, the way it is when he’s made up his mind, and… yeah, it’s been too long since Fernando’s heard it. His eyes go wide.
“Your whole face just lit up,” Lance observes, smiling and chewing on his lip. “You really love to race, huh?”
No.
“Is not… no,” Fernando sputters.
Because he doesn’t. Not at all.
Well. Fernando loves to race; of course he does. But it hadn’t even crossed his mind. Lance is what he doesn’t want to lose.
“What?” Lance’s voice is small, and his face cycles through every emotion in the book before finally settling on despairing confusion.
“I…” Fernando takes a deep breath. “Is you, Lancito. I can race anywhere. I cannot leave because I am never letting you go again.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Really?” whispers Lance, voice so tiny it’s barely audible.
“I keep you here with me, warm and safe.”
Lance sniffles. A single, delicate tear runs down his cheek.
Mierda.
“No, no, no, Lance, I am so sorry, I did not mean—”
“‘S not that, I just… I’m so happy, Nando, so many things.” Lance beams, and his eyes are barely visible with how much his smile crinkles them. He sniffs again. “I love you. So much. I never want you to leave, ever…” His voice wobbles.
Fernando cups Lance’s jaw in his hand and gently thumbs the tear off of his cheek. “I will not leave, Lancito. I stay right here.”
Fernando doesn’t think that Lance’s smile can get any wider, but it does. Lance rubs at his eyes, sniffles a bit, and then he’s laughing, the sound so bright and joyous, and it’s like the first time Lance laughed in front of Fernando—so perfect in every sense of the word that Fernando wants to protect that laugh (and, by extension, Lance) with everything he has.
But it’s not the first time Lance has laughed in front of Fernando. It’s so much better now.
“C’mere, you!”
All of a sudden Fernando is being yanked into Lance’s lap, and—that’s another thing he only then remembers about Lance’s laugh: it’s contagious as all hell. Suddenly Fernando’s laughing too; so hard he ends up panting trying to catch his breath. Lance sighs, muttering an exhausted “Oh, man,” that might sound angry if it wasn’t for the big, dopey grin on his face.
“What is it, Lancito?” Fernando asks, reigning in his giggles as well as he can.
Lance barks one more laugh. “What I had to do to keep you around, though. I don’t regret it, trust me, but jeez.”
Fernando buries his face into Lance’s shoulder as morbid curiosity gets the best of him. “How did you do it?” he asks, slightly muffled.
“Well,” Lance begins, petting a hand over Fernando’s hair absentmindedly. “I put two and two together pretty quick—there’s no way the engineers wouldn’t spill—so I literally ran to my dad’s office when I got to the paddock yesterday.” Lance chuckles fondly at the memory, but he’s so laughed-out that it doesn’t last long. “He was sitting there, hand hovering over the send button and looking absolutely pained. When he saw me… I felt bad, kind of, he was embarrassed. But, like, he had this look to him. Seen it a million times. You were a goner, Nando.
“I had to beg. At one point I was literally kneeling down, hands clasped over my head, the whole thing. And it wasn’t working, because, like—what was I supposed to tell him? That you’re my boyfriend? I couldn’t say much other than I enjoy working with you, which is true, but he just kept saying, ‘There are other drivers that are good mentors who won’t treat you so roughly, Lance.’” A pang of guilt hits Fernando, and he cringes into Lance’s neck as he mutters another apology.
“No, no, no, Nando, you did nothing wrong, trust me. I just had to include that because… well, I sort of had to pull a Hail Mary, and I ended up sitting there on the floor, looking up at my dad, and telling him how much I liked it.” Fernando lifts his head from Lance’s neck in disbelief just in time to see Lance’s face go red, but he continues, chuckling ruefully. “I realized I fucked up, so I sort of just started going on about how much I wanted you to stay, just the whole ‘Please don’t fire him, Dad, please, we get along well, this isn’t a big deal.’ You know, no substance, but I was panicking. He just stared at me though, kind of in disbelief. I think I broke him a little.” Lance chuckles again.
“Oh, Lance, I thought he just said yes when you asked…”
“Eh, not really. But once I had to tell him that I really, really liked getting dicked down over the car—I didn’t say it like that, of course, he would kill me—it was over. He just closed his laptop and said, ‘Okay, Lance,’ with this… this horrified look on his face. I think he just gave up.”
“Lancito… how do you say? The closet is made of glass?”
“Don’t remind me!” Lance squawks playfully. “If he didn’t think I’m gay before, he definitely does now. Oh well. Don’t think he’ll care as long as I, you know, never bring up taking it in the ass in front of him ever again.”
Fernando slides off of Lance to sit beside him and slumps over, resting his head in his hands as he grins widely. “Lance,” he says emphatically. “Thank you, cariño, thank you so much, but… wow. I did not realize my Lancito was such a tontito.”
“Sure you did,” Lance remarks, grinning. He puffs out his chest. “I’m proud to be the biggest tontito you know.”
“So brave and so stupid,” says Fernando fondly, sitting back up to look into his tontito’s sparkling eyes.
“You love it,” Lance returns. “And, like, so do I. I’ll be a bit stupid if it makes you fuck me like that again.” Fernando chuckles, but bites it back as he realizes that all of a sudden Lance is serious. “I was thinking, though… maybe we should have a safeword? Like, you know, something to stop it, just in case?” Fernando nods. “Any ideas?” he asks, eyebrow quirked.
“Lawrence?” Fernando blurts before he can stop himself.
Lance cracks up.
“Oh my God, Fernando, not my dad!” squawks Lance, fighting through giggles to get the words out.
Throwing his hands up in defense, Fernando replies, “Sorry—he is first thing I thought of!”
Lance smacks his hand over his face. “’S fine, just… not that, please,” he says, panting.
Fernando laughs, too—harder than he has in weeks, like he’s been saving it up… well, maybe he has—and then Lance is ruffling his hair, hands shaking in time with his peals of laughter. “Please do not tell Lawrence I said that!” begs Fernando. He tries to pull a face that is as convincing as Lance’s pout-doe eyes combo, but that seems to be a skill that Fernando doesn’t have. At least, not at the level that Lance does. Lance could convince anybody to do anything with that look.
Lance grins and waggles his eyebrows. “That would be the least worrying of the things I could tell my dad about you.”
A second passes before Fernando, deep in thought, can reply. “Maybe he should be safeword then,” he muses. “How do you say… boner killer, no?” Fernando grins right back at Lance.
“You are so stupid,” Lance says fondly. “How ‘bout… I don’t know… red?”
“Yes, perfect, would be good,” Fernando agrees, trying to regain a bit of the seriousness that he thinks the conversation deserves. “We could have the whole color system also… green, yellow, red?”
“Yeah, that’s smart… we probably should have had that earlier.” Lance replies, sheepish. His face is bright, and he averts his gaze from Fernando as he rubs a hand over the back of his neck.
“Yes. But nothing we can do now except to keep going with the colors.” Lance smiles and looks up at Fernando with sparkling eyes as Fernando reaches his hand out to cup Lance’s cheek reassuringly. Fernando’s heart swells.
Over the weeks, Fernando seems to have forgotten how addictive Lance is. How he forgot—hell, how he even managed to survive without him for that long—is completely beyond him.
I love you, Lancito, mi vida, Fernando thinks. Then he summons his courage and says it. He doesn’t want to keep anything from Lance anymore. Doesn’t want to keep Lance wondering. That’s what Lance doesn’t deserve.
“Fernando…” Lance’s voice is so tender, so warm. “I love you too. More than anything.”
Lance pauses for a second, chewing his lip in consideration. Then, in a voice a bit quieter but just as fond: “Can I kiss you?”
Fernando gently slides his hand down to cup Lance’s chin. “Please.”
Just as gently, Lance settles his hand on the back of Fernando’s neck and pulls him closer.
All Fernando knows is that no World Championship has ever made him feel this good.
It’s like it’s their first time all over again: careful, delicate, but reverent still, just a closed-mouth press of lips that promises something beyond them. It surprises Fernando all over again how soft Lance’s lips are; they’re thick, too, just perfect to kiss again and again, kindle the fire growing between them. The world seems to stutter to a stop; it’s just the two of them, Lance and Fernando, Fernando and Lance, and nothing else could possibly matter as much as this very moment.
It’s like it’s their last time, although Fernando knows it won’t be: intense and scalding and screaming I want it all right now. Fernando settles his hands on Lance’s waist (that beautiful, delicate waist that fits like a puzzle piece in Fernando’s hands) and sighs as he deepens the kiss. To his delight Lance seems to be moving in the same direction: Lance’s tongue is probing, and when Fernando opens his mouth in welcome, he and Lance share a breath that Fernando is certain they both have both been holding for God knows how long.
Lance pulls back for a breath, face red and slack and eyes wide as the air heats up with their shared pants. A glistening string of saliva hangs between them, binding them together when they’re not directly connected by mouth.
It snaps as Fernando becomes victim to Lance manually maneuvering him. Lance uses his grip to encourage Fernando to sit straight on the couch before climbing atop Fernando, settling his legs around Fernando’s thighs, and sitting back on his lap. It evidently leaves him a bit farther than he’d like, so Lance leans forward and hooks his arms loosely around Fernando’s neck before leaning in and kissing him again.
It’s warm and addictive and Fernando wants more; the more of Lance he’s realizing he’s forgotten, the more he wants to commit to memory forever. He slides his palms across Lance’s back, feels the muscles rippling below his touch, and Lance sighs gently, leaning into Fernando.
With a hand firmly in Lance’s hair, Fernando presses one more hard kiss to his lips before moving to pepper kisses all over his face. He nips at Lance’s soft earlobe, making Lance’s breath hitch, before moving down to his neck, mouthing gently at the bright marks there in a silent apology.
Lance accepts, murmuring something that could be “Fernando” as he settles his hands in the small of Fernando’s back, making use of the little space available to rub the hem of Fernando’s shirt a few times before sliding his hands under the fabric, warm.
“You okay with this?” whispers Lance.
Fernando pulls back just enough to smile widely up at him. “Green.”
Lance smiles, lets Fernando press a few more kisses across his collarbone, and then sits up on his knees and bends over to mouth at Fernando’s neck—hot and wet, sucking just a little; the way that makes Fernando’s legs turn to jelly.
Fernando’s breathing is coming heavy, now, and blood rushes down as his pants tighten. He chokes on a groan as he settles his hands firmly to palm at Lance’s ass, kneading the soft flesh through his shorts, and… yeah. He’s missed this. So much.
Lance stills at the contact before shakily sitting back in Fernando’s lap, reconnecting their lips as he grinds down on his thigh, erection not quite full but so, so obvious. It reminds Fernando that Lance has missed this, too, because his breath hitches in a soft moan at the sensation.
Grabbing his shoulders, Fernando encourages him and Lance apart. “We take this to the bedroom, yes?” he breathes.
“Mm,” hums Lance, grinding his hips down once more before standing up. He holds a hand out to Fernando and lifts him up—but not before undressing him with his eyes, his gaze searing as it roves over Fernando and settles on his erection. Lance swallows audibly.
Fernando squeezes Lance’s ass playfully, making him jump a bit and grin brightly at Fernando. “Is all for you in a minute, cariño,” he promises. It seems to make Lance get his wits together a bit, as all of a sudden Lance is grabbing Fernando’s wrist and yanking him impatiently to the bedroom.
On a normal day, Fernando might give Lance a bit of half-baked grief for his impatience, but today is not a normal day. What Lance wants, he gets. Fernando will bend over backwards to make it happen.
So he lets himself be dragged down the hallway (it’s far from graceful as they both try to tug off their clothes as they move, which just makes them stumble and giggle at each other) and into the bedroom. Most of their clothes have been haphazardly tossed about the hallway with the exception of their boxers and a team-kit tee that for some reason remains on Lance, shoved up to his underarms. Fernando laughs and grabs at it, pulling it up over Lance’s head and taking advantage of the half-second where Lance is disoriented by it to swoop him up bridal-style and carry him to the bed. He carefully places Lance down, watching his eyes flutter closed as he sinks into the pillows and settles into the duvet. It’s so sweet, so angelic, and the warmth that blooms in Fernando’s chest is so Lance that he can’t help himself. Sitting carefully on his knees between Lance’s spread legs, Fernando leans down to meet him in a kiss. Lance wastes no time opening his mouth for Fernando, sighing as their tongues intermingle.
Fernando pulls back just a few inches. “What do you want, cariño?” he murmurs.
Lance smiles up at him, looking all too innocent for what he says. “Your mouth on me, please?”
“Mmm.”
“And then I want you to fuck me.” It catches Fernando so off guard that he can’t help but groan at the thought. “Please, papi?” adds Lance, as if Fernando needs any convincing.
And, well, if he did need any convincing, that is a damn well placed papi and Lance knows it.
“Anything for you, my Lancito. Anything.”
Lance chuckles. “You sound whipped.”
Fernando grins at him. “I kind of am.”
It halfway-kills Fernando’s erection, joking with Lance, but he’s soon fully hard again as he toys with the elastic of Lance’s boxers for a second before dragging them down his hips and letting his cock spring free. Of course, the break in the mood hasn’t done anything to hurt Lance’s arousal. Fernando’s mouth waters.
He doesn’t waste any time, pressing a kiss to the sensitive head and licking his lips to disperse the drop of precum now on their seam before taking Lance into his mouth. The salt of him on his tongue feels like it consumes Fernando entirely, and he chases more, flattening his tongue and pressing Lance’s cock to the roof of his mouth; it twitches in time with a heady moan from above Fernando that threatens to swallow him whole. “Fuck,” Lance curses. “So hot like this.” And that just spurs Fernando on more.
After pulling off to catch his breath and brace his hands firmly on the dip of Lance’s waist (and, of course, to press kisses and kitten licks all over his spit-soaked, twitching cock in apology), Fernando takes a deep breath and takes Lance in one fell swoop, reveling in the feeling of the sweat-damp, dark curls against his nose that means victory. Evidently Lance is surprised by it, because he moans sharply and bucks his hips up; Fernando chokes at the sudden movement but regains his composure quickly, turning the momentary break in rhythm into a steady up-and-down bob that he tailors to Lance’s every reaction. Fernando’s hard—achingly hard, actually—against the bedspread, but he barely even registers it, too focused on Lance’s sweat-soaked, high-pitched pleasure.
Fingers—Lance’s—snake into Fernando’s hair and slide to the nape of his neck, almost like he’s about to fuck Fernando’s throat—Fernando likes that, sometimes, when Lance is needy and they’re in a rush or something and rough will make him come faster—but instead Lance just lets his warm palm sit there, steadying Fernando or maybe himself as Fernando continues to suck lewdly.
Lance whines and his muscles tremble, hips disobeying their orders to stutter up reservedly into Fernando’s mouth. “‘M gonna come, fuck,” pants Lance, voice just bordering on a whimper. Fernando eases up, understanding, but this time Lance pushes him back down ever-so-gently. “No, keep going… wanna come again, Nando,” he babbles.
Fernando has no idea how he got this lucky.
“Joder,” Fernando moans—or at least tries to—around Lance’s cock, but all it does is create a bit of vibration that pushes Lance over the edge. He stutters and whines, coming down Fernando’s throat; with practiced ease Fernando swallows most of it, although, fuck, Lance came a lot, the little minx.
After letting Lance’s softening cock slip from his mouth, Fernando crawls up the bed and traps Lance’s lips in a filthy kiss. Lance’s hands grasp at Fernando’s back, his ass, his neck; needy and wanting, trying to find purchase. Fernando pulls back. “That feel good?” he asks, before diving down to mouth at Lance’s jaw.
“Feels so good, Nando, fuck. And—and look at you, you’re still so hard for me.” Lance pauses to nudge Fernando’s dripping erection with his thigh, startling him into bucking his hips forward into the muscle. “Can you fuck me now, I wanna feel you so bad…”
“Mi vida, anything for you.” The ache of want that thrums through Fernando’s body is strong, but not as strong as the warmth of love that envelops him.
Fernando grabs the bottle of lube that is a fixture of their bedside table and gently opens Lance; it’s not terribly difficult, but it still takes a minute or two, especially because of how slowly and carefully Fernando goes. He doesn’t even look—normally he would want to, but today he prefers to use his other hand to steady himself as he kisses Lance slow and deep, pulling back to breathe the occasional does this feel good, cariño, into Lance’s mouth. Lance bites his lip and whines and nods, breath hitching with it when Fernando grinds the pads of his fingers against Lance’s prostate.
“‘M ready,” moans Lance, drawing out the vowels.
“You have been for long time, Lancito. Am having fun, though.” In truth, it’s less about fun and more about Fernando’s hopes that he can somehow make up for prepping Lance roughly before. Maybe Lance knows that, because he doesn’t beg, doesn’t brat. He just looks up at Fernando with a smile that reaches his eyes as he arches his back into the sensation.
Finally Fernando’s patience wears thin—Lance has been more than ready for a while now—and he slicks up his cock, the long-awaited touch making his breath hitch with how overwhelming it feels. Slowly he lines himself up, and with one final kiss to Lance’s leg, hooked gently over Fernando’s shoulder, Fernando sinks into Lance, inch by careful inch until he bottoms out.
“Is okay, Lancito?” he breathes.
“Yes, fuck, move, move, please.”
The tight heat of Lance clenching around him is almost overwhelming, but Fernando wades through the sizzling pleasure to grant Lance his wish, fucking into him with measured, deep thrusts; ones that will make every drag of heat on heat so blindingly good that Fernando will never go a day without tracing his finger over the signature that those thrusts have etched into his brain.
He gets a bit lost in it, he does; all Fernando knows is that he’s fucking Lance and it’s so good and he’s chanting I love you, I love you, I love you, almost like a prayer—that’s what it is, he’s praying at Lance’s altar; Fernando’s not religious but he’s sure that he’s just found his belief. Because this is what he knows—Lance angelic, spread under him, breath heaving with pants and chest flushed and slick with sweat, cock red and leaking precum—and if he knows, he doesn’t need to believe. It’s a certainty. Lance is everything, and Lance is a certainty.
And then Lance is crying.
Every single moment of the last few weeks crashes down around Fernando, and urges seem to pull him in every direction. He wants to pull out, to run away and close himself off, or to get angry, or to hold Lance close and kiss the tears away, but above all he just doesn’t know; the uncertainty of it all feeling like when the track is wet and the tyres lose grip and all of a sudden Fernando’s spinning, spinning, and all he can do is hope that he’ll come out of the barriers in one piece.
It comes to him just as quickly. It’s suddenly clear what to do. It’s so obvious.
Fernando is so glad he listened.
Fernando stills his motion and catches Lance’s gaze, confused and worried, with his own. Tears streak Lance’s cheeks, and his hair sticks to his forehead with sweat.
“Your color, Lance?”
Lance smiles so widely that Fernando wishes he could frame the moment. “Green. Please, keep going.”
Good tears. Good. Because Lance cries when he likes it, and now Fernando knows that for sure.
So Fernando picks his rhythm back up, thrusting with an intensity aided by Lance’s pleas for more and harder and Fernando and, sometimes—even better—love you. It’s not long before the rhythm is lost, though, as Fernando falls to his own pleasure roiling in his gut and chases it, fast; tightening, tightening, tightening, until the string snaps and he comes hard, stars decorating his vision as his hips stutter to a stop against Lance’s ass.
Despite his legs threatening to give out under him, Fernando reaches instinctively for Lance’s cock… but when he does, he finds it quickly softening, cum hot on Lance’s heaving chest.
Fernando is many things. But he is not stupid.
“Joder,” he breathes, like he’s in awe. “Did you…”
“Mmm,” hums Lance. “Didn’t even need your hand. So good, no one else could fuck me like you…” He trails off, and Fernando knows that cleaning up is hopeless and he should enjoy his few minutes of blissful, post-coital Lance before sleep claims him. (Fernando had mentioned it one time, and Lance had poked him and chided him playfully for being jealous over sleep of all things, and, well, Fernando couldn’t exactly deny it. Fernando chuckles recalling the memory.)
As gently as he can, Fernando pulls out. Lance whines at the loss, seems to melt even more into the mattress. All of a sudden, Fernando knows how to make it up to him.
Summoning the last bit of strength in his legs, Fernando stumbles over to his suitcase in the corner of the room. He unzips it and digs through it, completely careless as to which of his belongings end up on the floor, until he finds it stuffed at the bottom right where he had left it.
The blanket. The blanket Lance had gotten him in Mexico. The blanket that waited for him to fix things and then appeared in his mind like an emblem of what he can now have.
Fernando tucks it under his arm and only quickly stops by the doorway to flick off the light before returning to bed, snuggling in next to Lance as he drapes the blanket over the two of them. Lance rolls over, and Fernando can see the wheels turn in his sex-soaked, sleep-addled brain as he realizes. Then, Lance’s eyes widen as he flashes a smile so bright that it seems to light up the entire room.
“You kept it,” he says simply.
“I love it. Thank you, Lancito. I never got to thank you.”
“‘S okay. You don’t need to.”
“I want to. Thank you so much, Lancito. I love you.”
“Love you too, Nando. Always.”
Lance rolls again until his back is turned to Fernando, who accepts the invitation and snuggles into his position as big spoon. Despite the buzzing of his mind, sleep comes for Fernando more easily than it has in weeks.
Notes:
it seems so great and so happily-ever-after until you realize that there are 9 more chapters left in the fic. Don't get too comfortable lol those 9 chapters have looooooots of plot and angst and piss-poor communication left in them...
Chapter 7
Summary:
Kink discovery can be such a horrible thing if you can't communicate about it.
Notes:
thanks for waiting, guys!! as my life cleared up a bit, writer's block hit me full force. i can't get any reprieve it seems lol. enjoy the chapter!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When they wake up, the world feels like it’s in the right place again.
Fernando hugs Lance close, then rolls onto his back; Lance crawls between Fernando’s legs to kiss him softly, morning breath be damned.
They shower under hot, hot water, feeling too filthy from last night to do anything more. While they’re brushing their teeth, they bump elbows and grin.
Lance makes French toast and Fernando helps, although he’s not the best at it. He sets himself to soaking the challah in egg while Lance slices strawberries—Fernando’s favorite.
Over breakfast, they talk.
“Would you feel better if… y’know, if we planned something out ahead of time? So we both know what’s gonna happen?” Lance asks.
Fernando chews slowly and swallows his bite. “Sì, yes. Is good idea to do when I have free use. So I’m never hurting you.”
“Ah, you’re not. But sure.” Lance smiles congenially. “Today, maybe… I could grab you after that engineering meeting and…”
Fernando chuckles. “Lance, did you forget? We have flight right after. Is a private jet, though…” He raises an eyebrow suggestively.
Lance flushes just a bit. “Shit. You’re right. Uh… canIsuckyouoffontheplane?” The last part of the sentence sounds like it’s all one word, like it took some strength to say.
Fernando keeps his voice even and confident. “Sì,” he says, smiling. “Once we are cruising, you get between my knees, and…”
“This is the shittiest BDSM scene ever,” interrupts Lance, laughing hard. And, yeah, when Fernando thinks about it, it is pretty absurd.
“Is for the best, though,” Fernando replies, voicing the last bit of his thought out loud.
“Mm,” Lance affirms.
“So, on the plane?”
“Deal.”
-
They arrive at the paddock like any normal travel day, bags slung over their shoulders and dressed in the softest hoodies they have. It’s only an afternoon flight, but that’s still late enough for the team to squeeze in some meetings for both of them and a sim session for Lance before setting out, citing the need for new data.
Fernando should be exhausted, but he’s buzzing with energy. He’s been exchanging flirty little looks and bitten-back giggles with Lance all day; it makes him feel like a teenager again, like they’re planning to get away with this.
He gets some weird looks from guys across the table. It only makes it more fun.
Lance’s sim laps run long—some issue with the seat—so Fernando gets the chance to make small talk with Henry while they wait.
“How are Lance’s times?”
Henry smiles and gives Fernando a look (that look almost seems knowing, but Fernando pushes that thought out of his mind as quickly as it comes in). “Good. Very good,” he says. “Set his personal best in Miami, actually.”
“¡Ay, maravilloso!” Fernando says, smiling.
The lap is one thing, sure. But it also gives him an idea.
His mood lasts about a second until Henry starts talking again.
“He’s a good boy,” he says, chuckling.
Fernando feels his face heat up with the scalding flare of possessiveness that accompanies Henry’s words, but he forces himself to stay neutral. “Of course. Thanks, Henry.”
“No problem.”
-
Eventually, Fernando is able to reconcile with it a bit. Lance is a good boy. He deserves a reward. And Fernando knows just how to reward him.
He’s occupied with these thoughts as the plane taxies down the runway and takes off, reaching cruising altitude in a matter of minutes. The seatbelt sign clicks off, and Fernando is ready.
He has a plan. They have a plan.
Lance is fidgeting with the material of his seatbelt, clearly impatient. Fernando won’t make him wait any longer.
Fernando leans in to whisper in Lance’s ear. “Heard you had a quick lap, no?”
Lance shivers. “Record, yeah. For me, at least.”
“So good, cariño. So fast.” Fernando nips at the shell of Lance’s ear, making him gasp.
“Yeah,” breathes Lance.
“My Lancito deserves a reward, no?”
Lance’s grip turns white-knuckled on the seatbelt as he turns to face Fernando. “What were you thinking?”
“Here. I show you.” Fernando spreads his legs as far as he can in the seat and pats the fake leather between them, inviting. Waiting.
Lance moves with barely-contained excitement as he unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs over Fernando’s knee to settle onto the floor of the plane, leaving his head right where it needs to be. Fernando’s half-hard in his sweats, and Lance nuzzles his cheek against the bulge sweetly. He shifts to mouth at it, making it Fernando’s turn to gasp.
“So eager. You want?”
“Mmm,” sighs Lance.
“Come and take it then.”
Lance obliges, untying the drawstring of the sweatpants before dragging them and Fernando’s boxers down in one fell swoop. Fernando’s core tightens as Lance takes his semi into his mouth, the wet heat overwhelming.
Fernando’s cock fills out as Lance sucks and bobs, mouth made soft by experience that Fernando is happy to give. Lance doesn’t even need the hand that Fernando tangles in his hair to take up the rhythm that always works so well.
Only problem is, it doesn’t.
It all feels a little too stilted, a little too much like they’re fulfilling a requirement. Fernando’s body is stiff like it was during those stupid shirtless photoshoots Renault had made him do—like he’s standing in front of a camera and the person behind it is lying to him that he looks good and Fernando is lying back that he feels good when in reality it’s all just a charade anyway.
Fernando would be a shitty porn actor. It doesn’t work if he just goes through the motions.
It feels good, like, objectively—it always feels good, Lance’s mouth on him, but it’s not enough, won’t be enough. So he tries to settle in, to relax his tense muscles a bit, but it feels hopeless. Fernando’s forgotten his lines in front of his audience, and the knowledge that he won’t be able to improvise it makes him want to run off the stage.
Fernando doesn’t really know how to tell Lance, but. He’s going fucking soft anyway. So his dick does it for him.
He eventually has to pull Lance off, though, because it doesn’t deter him. Which Fernando shouldn’t have really expected it to, honestly. Lance seems to have this sixth sense for when Fernando is vaguely horny but too lazy and tired to do anything about it, and he’ll come over and nip at his neck and with his hands and that sinful mouth coax him to full hardness, through the ebbs and flows of it that come from the exhaustion fraying the edges of the sensation.
It would be nicer to remember some other time. Right now, it just feels like a punch to the gut.
So Fernando eases Lance off by the hair, a bit more roughly than intended, and averts his eyes from Lance’s confused gaze. Fernando swallows dryly. “Uh. You can stop. I am not going to… you know,” he mutters, gesturing, face going red.
“Oh. Uh. Sorry.”
“No, no, is not… just stop. I cannot do this right now.”
“Mhm.”
“Do you need to…” Fernando gestures again, the words feeling like they’re clogging his throat.
“Uh, I… kinda?” Lance sounds sheepish, hesitant. “Ah, I’ll just…” He trails off, opting to get up and move towards the little airplane bathroom instead of finishing his sentence. Fernando doesn’t blame him.
When Lance returns, the only evidence of his deed is a slight flush to his face and a drop or two of sweat at his hairline. Only Fernando would notice at a glance that anything had happened. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse, Fernando doesn’t know.
Fernando wants to say something, anything, to make it all okay somehow, but there’s nothing. It’s not that the words are clogging his throat anymore. Quite the contrary: they’re gone, and they don’t seem to have been there to begin with.
-
They don’t talk about it.
In a way Fernando would like to. But the wound from the past few weeks is still too fresh, Fernando’s edges just a bit too raw. So he lets it blow over.
It’s all fine and forgotten, swept away in the whirlwind of media and practice and jet lag that is only to be expected from a race week.
The fact that they’re in Miami doesn’t help matters. Lance’s well-known love for American football (Fernando will never understand it, but it makes Lance happy, so he deals) makes for good marketing, what with the track being right around the Dolphins’ stadium. So Lance is drowning in media duties that only he can take part in while Fernando speaks endlessly with his engineers, just trying to kill time.
With all of that, they rarely see each other. So it blows over.
It’s probably for the best. By the time free practice comes around, Fernando has forgotten all about the plane ride and can focus fully on racing.
By all means, the race goes well. Fernando qualifies P11 while Lance qualifies P12, locking out a points-chasing row in bright Aston Martin green. The race itself is lively, with the copious DRS zones in Miami being put to good use throughout the grid. After an early retirement from one of the McLarens, the race is smooth-sailing, and Fernando can sit back and let instinct take over.
Maybe their freshly-mended relationship really does help their performance, because they both—Lance especially—drive the hell out of the car. By the time they cross the chequered flag, Fernando sits in P9 and Lance in P7.
The team celebrates maybe a bit too much that night—a P7-P9 performance isn’t exactly anything to write home about—but it seems momentous after the car’s wild changes in performance over the past few races, and double points always feel incredible, so, hey. Someone’s pulled strings to get that fancy wine Lance likes in copious amounts, and libations get passed around the venue like candy canes.
It’s nice at first, but soon Fernando’s a bit loopy, a bit too warm. Head throbbing in time with the music, he sits on one of the benches and rests his head in his hands, letting his eyes fall shut and waiting for the first chance he can get to excuse himself and head to the hotel. Maybe he’ll cite the need for extra sleep to get to the airport early tomorrow… or maybe he’ll just leave because damn it, he’s old and tired and can’t do the whole party thing like he used to.
The sudden feeling of Lance damn near falling on top of him punches a breath out of his throat. Fernando glances up—slight flush, lopsided smile… yeah, Lance is properly plastered. He’ll go back with Fernando, then.
“Mmm… guess what, Nando?” mumbles Lance into Fernando’s neck. He doesn’t even wait for a response to continue. “I won, baby! Yes! Now–now you’re mine, hahaa…”
Fernando gulps. “Ay, Lance, you are drunk. I take you back now.”
Lance makes a noise of disapproval, then lifts his head up to pout at Fernando. “No, but… can’t sleep in that cold bed all by myself. Fuck me, make me warm.”
“No. Back to hotel room,” chokes Fernando.
“But Fernandoooo…”
There’s a part of Fernando that would like it—more than like it, would snatch at the chance. Blame it on the alcohol.
But there’s a much louder part that wants to hide so far in himself that he won’t get out. He won’t embarrass himself if he stays there.
Fernando Alonso, wanting to hide. He laughs.
Maybe he’s just going through the motions of being Fernando Alonso too. Maybe that’s why he races badly. Maybe that’s why he’s lost himself to something as stupid as ink on paper.
It’s almost like he doesn’t recognize the name anymore. He barely associates it with himself.
Fernando Alonso is ruthless, conniving. Fearless. An unreachable goal, immortalized among the likes of Schumacher and Senna. Unreachable simply because he doesn’t let anyone reach him. He steps on them, plays with them. That’s where half his power comes from. That’s who Fernando Alonso is.
Whoever the hell he is… isn’t.
God, he’s sick of thinking. Hates it so much.
Fernando gets up, pulls Lance up by the wrist, and guides him out of the venue with a firm hand on the back of his neck. There’s already a car waiting to take them back. He doesn’t even need to give the address.
-
The next thing he knows, it’s morning.
Fernando fumbles with his phone, trying to turn the alarm off. Flight back today, yeah, that’s what’s happening. Hence the alarm.
Lance is in bed next to him. That he remembers. As soon as Lance had hit the pillows, he had been out—as he usually does when he’s been drinking, despite what he tends to confess—and Fernando, honestly, didn’t want to go to his own cold room when he had a human furnace right there.
Through all of the haze, he had wanted Lance. So badly.
Not for sex, no. Not then. Just to have with him, pressed close at night.
Fernando still does. Still wants. It’s so warm. His heart is so full.
He is warm, but the world is cold. The world that he now has to face.
If only it was physically possible for Fernando to go more than a few hours without the phrase free use clause echoing in his mind.
“M’ head hurts,” mumbles Lance, bringing Fernando out of his thoughts.
“You drank too much. I go get Advil.”
Lance doesn’t respond, just sits up, rubs his eyes, and stretches his arms over his head. “Sorry ‘bout yesterday,” he says suddenly.
Despite the sleepiness in his voice, it makes Fernando wake right up. He turns to face Lance, who’s resting his head on his shoulder, looking nonchalant. He yawns.
“I know you probably didn’t wanna talk about the clause. And I brought it up anyway. I was drinking, but that’s not really an excuse. So. Sorry, Nando.” Lance stands up and stumbles towards Fernando, senses still a bit miscalibrated from sleep. He nuzzles his face into Fernando’s neck and softly kisses his cheek as he pitches into him, leaning on Fernando with all of his weight and warmth.
Fernando stumbles backwards a step or two, but steadies himself by wrapping his arms around Lance’s waist. “Ah. Is fine, churri. Thank you. I did not want to think about it, yes, but you did not know. And I like when you tease, anyway. So not a big problem.”
Lance’s body shakes as he chuckles against Fernando. “I like to tease, so it all works, I guess.”
“Such a brat.”
“You love it.”
Fernando pinches Lance’s ass at that, making him yelp and jump back. Eventually, though, he relents. “I do,” Fernando admits, looking at his feet.
“Was gonna ask you, though.” Lance suddenly sounds serious, so Fernando shifts his focus back towards his face. He’s surprised, though, to find Lance taking a turn to look at his feet as he runs his hand through his hair and rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Should we, like… plan it out again? It wasn’t… I mean, last time… but it might still be better?”
Fernando thinks about it. He really does. It doesn’t take him long to decide that he sure as hell isn’t going back.
“You won fair and square. Have me however your filthy mind wants me.”
Lance chews on his lip, and his face flushes red; it can’t hide the way his eyes flick up, though, sparkling with interest. “Dangerous game, Fernando. You sure?”
Instead of speaking, Fernando nods—just long enough for Lance to see it—before he surges forward and pulls Lance in for a kiss by the nape of his neck.
-
The gazes of the engineers around them seem to pierce right to Fernando’s core. He feels like he’s under a microscope.
Fernando wants to ask why, why here, why are you still doing this when we just fix it?
But he knows he can’t.
What had he said? It comes to him easily. You do whatever you want, Lancito.
He had promised Lance. He had sealed it with a gentle touch of hand to hand.
Hijo de puta, Fernando chastises himself. Fucking stupid. All the work he thought he did, and he still couldn’t say something so simple.
And now, on his knees with Lance in his mouth, it’s too fucking late to say anything.
What gets Fernando is that when he replays the scene in his mind, agonizes over the ways he could have done it differently, something that he can’t quite name—or doesn’t really want to, yes, maybe that’s it—makes him not want to change anything.
He’s spent so long wishing that he could have a do-over. That he could just say Please keep it somewhat private, Lance or I do not like being embarrassed. But when he imagines it, it feels bitter as a lie on his tongue.
It’s not really a lie, but in some fucked-up way he doesn’t regret not saying it either.
All of his years of experience, and Fernando still can’t figure out how he can feel every possible thing at the same time.
It’s just… he hates it, yes, the stabbing clarity of it all, the all-too-acute awareness of the eyes on him. But also… something about that awareness, about the eyes on him, makes heat pool low in his gut.
Fernando really, really doesn’t want to say that he likes it. But it’s sort of becoming harder and harder to ignore.
It becomes even harder when Lance knots his big hand in Fernando’s hair and cups the back of his head with a gentle firmness that feels inescapable.
Fernando tries anyway, squirming in Lance’s grip. But Lance’s hold only tightens.
“You have your safewords, if you need them,” rasps Lance. “Tap my leg and I’ll let you off, okay?”
Fernando nods around Lance’s cock, the movement causing a bit of saliva to run down his chin.
He thinks about it, he really does.
But he just doesn’t want to. To take his out.
It’s too good. The eyes around him are too searing, make sparks zip too hot across his flushed skin, make his hips stutter too much against Lance’s leg, the grip Fernando has on his self-control fraying more with every awkward shuffle and clearing of a throat around him.
Fuck, he’s disgusting.
Lance cups Fernando’s jaw, swipes at the trail of saliva with his thumb, and brings the thumb to his own mouth, sucking lewdly. There’s a moan that gets too close for comfort to clawing its way out of Fernando’s throat.
It sort of ends up escaping, anyway, when Lance suddenly tightens his hold on Fernando’s hair to stinging and rolls his hips forward roughly, stuttering a gasp as he does. It’s—fuck, that sound is doing something; Fernando grinds his hips against Lance’s shin, desperate, and, objectively, it’s humiliating, but Fernando honestly doesn’t care. In a way, he wishes he had it in him to care.
Fuck it, it’s good. He can admit that. In the height of passion, Fernando figures, anything he thinks probably isn’t valid.
How could it be, when his thoughts are so overcome by Lance’s cock hitting the back of his throat in short, sharp thrusts? How could it be, when Lance has grabbed hold of Fernando’s head and fucks his throat like a sex toy? How could it be, when all those eyes are on the two of them, all those ears on the noises Lance punches out of him?
Fernando barely even registers the ache of his knees on the floorboards, the sting of his fingernails digging through his thin pants and into his thighs as he puts all of his focus towards making sure he doesn’t choke. He screws his eyes shut with the effort of it.
What Fernando doesn’t realize, though, is that without vision, the rustles of the team members around him go from what his vision supplies—awkward shuffling—to what his brain supplies. And his brain supplies worse, or maybe better—he swears he hears a zipper somewhere, a belt buckle somewhere else, a noise that is certainly not from Lance, because Lance doesn’t grunt, he whines.
The Aston garage, hands down their pants. The Aston garage, enjoying the show. The Aston garage, relishing in the sight of the two drivers they’ve put so much time and energy into debauching each other without a care in the world.
“Fernando,” gasps Lance. In Fernando’s mind, the room echoes him.
It doesn’t, that’s the thing. When Fernando opens his eyes again, he sees exactly what he expects—the people still in the room trying as hard as possible not to notice what’s happening right in front of them.
It’s not exactly disappointment that hits him, no… but it’s similarly tear-salty. Maybe Fernando wants it; wants the room to echo Lance. Wants the engineers to wade through the memory every morning when they don their team attire.
Lance tightens his grip on Fernando’s nape, warns him of his impending climax. Normally Fernando would spit at work—it seems a bit safer that way, the same way any tenderness seems vulnerable, leaving their little secret exposed to the elements.
Maybe Fernando is stupid, or the blood is gone from his head, but the exposure strengthens him now. So when Lance comes, hot and salty-bitter on Fernando’s tongue, Fernando closes his eyes and swallows as well as he can. He feels lightheaded and giddy and hot all over, like the blood pulsing through his capillaries has been superheated.
Let them watch. Let them see what they can’t have.
It all sort of stills, it does. Some cum drips down Fernando’s chin, so Lance pets his hair, praises him, and wipes the stray droplet from his chin and replaces his softening cock with his finger in Fernando’s mouth.
Fernando sucks easily. All for him.
Suddenly, Fernando’s aware of a pressure between his thighs; the way his erection presses against it makes his whole body seem to throw itself forward into the sensation. It’s Lance’s leg, firm under him.
He grinds against it shamelessly, all rational thought inhibited. His Lance.
It’s pathetic. Who cares?
Different, strange, maybe. Some power dynamic shift that Fernando doesn’t know if he’s keen on. But too good to stop. Fernando lets himself go, relinquishes the control that he’s only really been pretending to have this whole time.
He comes like that, grinding—no, humping Lance’s leg like a desperate dog as Lance hums softly and strokes his hair, his cheeks, his chin. Really, Lance tilts Fernando’s chin up to meet his gaze, to put Fernando on display to him as his hips continue their motion.
It’s more than letting the engineers see. Let Lance see. Lance deserves to be shown off, and he deserves to know it.
When Fernando finally stutters to a stop, breath heaving as the world comes rushing back to him, Lance offers a hand to help him up. It’s only once he’s taken it that Fernando realizes that Lance has other plans, continuing the motion into something that pulls Fernando in for a kiss, deep and warm and not exploring as much as knowing, remembering.
Lance doesn’t say anything as he leaves. He doesn’t need to. Fernando is warm.
-
It’s only when Fernando gets back to his driver’s room to change his filthy pants and clean himself off does that warmth start to fade. It’s replaced with heat—a strange heat of all different variants. On one hand, he shivers as he traces a finger along his inner thighs, over the jut of his hip, down into the thick expanse of pubic hair but no farther. In his mind, it’s Lance’s hand. In a corner somewhere. In hospitality. In the middle of the paddock.
On the other hand, his eyes are closed as he touches himself. It’s—Fernando doesn’t think he could bear to see the proof of his sick visions. Disgusting fantasies that he can only admit to himself when he shuts the rest of the world out.
Yet again, he thinks of Lance. Lance’s hot breath ghosting over Fernando’s skin. Lance, eyes wide and wanting. Lance, watching him right here, right now, as Fernando murmurs to him, tells him everything plaguing his mind.
All of a sudden, Fernando tears his hand away. Something like disgust curdles in his gut.
To think like that—to involve Lance in his fantasies. Fernando’s… defiled him, somehow. Somehow, some way, his mere thoughts have the power to do that. He hates it.
It would be so easy to deny, to turn down. But he’s been doing that for a while now, hasn’t he? And it’s clearly not working. All of the denial in the world can’t cool the searing heat of the gazes of onlookers. In Fernando’s mind, he just needs to try harder. All he needs to do is remember again and again the truth he knows—that he is disgusting.
That’s it. Disgusting.
Fernando was raised well, that’s the thing. His parents’ sex talks, where they would sit an unsuspecting Fernando down at the table and speak seriously to him about consent, and privacy, and how to do it right—Fernando can recite those, word for word. He believes them, would recite them back to his own children should he have them.
So it’s no secret to Fernando that this little… preference of his is disgusting. Maybe telling himself that over and over again will stop it.
It butts heads so harshly, though, with the other side. The devil on Fernando’s shoulder, enticing him with sin. When… earlier, when he had simply given in to the sensation like some sort of sexual deviant, the indulgence of it was addicting. It felt so right, and for fleeting seconds Fernando couldn’t help but wonder why he can’t have this all the time.
The more he tries to convince himself otherwise, the better it feels to give in.
The high road, the morally correct option, is to stop. To somehow deny this feeling. But Fernando can’t help but feel that the high road is unreasonable, that there’s no reason he should deny himself something that makes him feel so good.
It reminds him of being a teenager again, unable to tear his eyes away from the men in underwear advertisements. He always knew it was something more, but he refused to admit it to himself. See, if he admitted it, he would have to confront so much more. He would have to come to terms with being gay, and somehow that seemed more difficult than simply bottling up the urges again and again.
But after all, hadn’t accepting himself in that scenario been for the best? He was simply so happy, so comfortable in his own skin. Looking back, he would go through the struggle a million times over to have privy to the joy that every day now brings. It doesn’t feel indulgent or wrong anymore—it just feels like Fernando.
If he hadn’t come out to himself, he wouldn’t have Lance.
And there it is again—that disgust, that self-loathing, that knowledge of being something he hates and feeling powerless to change it. Lance will no doubt be even more horrified than Fernando is, understandably; he’s just become an object in Fernando’s sinfully good fantasies. In Fernando’s mind, Lance is uncaring of his own emotions, simply indulging Fernando because Fernando wants it.
His phone pings with an alarm, bringing him back to the present. Adrian wants the drivers in fifteen minutes—something with the floor of the car.
Fernando is going to freshen himself up, make sure his hair is presentable, but it takes a fair bit of courage to look in the mirror.
Look, Fernando. What’s the worst you can see? he thinks.
He’s lying to himself. He knows what he’ll see. When he looks in the mirror, it’s right there.
His hair is fine, sure, but shame and guilt are plastered all over his face. Lance will read him like a book.
Fernando needs time, time to stop these awful urges. A day or two to collect himself, to hide from Lance the look on his face of disgustingly indulgent guilt. But he doesn’t have it.
How he’ll face Lance in fifteen minutes, he doesn’t know.
Notes:
i realized the other day how many spanish speakers read this fic, and i'd like to issue a formal apology to all of you for my absolute mangling of the spanish language. i am trying my absolute best. pls lmk where i can improve :)
Chapter 8
Summary:
They can in fact talk about their kinks, but of course they have to do it in the worst way possible.
Notes:
this chapter is a bit of a clusterfuck of things that will become more important later. bear with me. hope it's still enjoyable :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Fernando takes in nothing the whole meeting.
He tries to focus, he does. But whatever data they’re going through—none of it is important, not right now.
Fernando stares hard at Lance, as if willing him not to do anything. Not now, not here. It’s—Fernando would want it too badly. He would like it too much. Just thinking that, knowing it’s true, makes Fernando feel like he’s slipped and he’s falling into the jaws of some beast he can’t quite make out.
Maybe the worst part is how easy it would be to fix. All he would have to do is go to Lance and say something along the lines of please don’t do anything with too many people around and it would be over. But it’s only easy in theory; in practice Fernando knows it’s impossible.
How could he, with a straight face, say that? Ask that of Lance? Nobody caters to the needs of criminals. Nobody caters to the needs of sexual deviants. So why should Lance cater to the needs of Fernando? He’s too disgusting, too wrong on a fundamental level to make a request. He forfeited that privilege the first time—when Lance had grinded on him in a meeting and he had gotten all hot under the collar. Now, all that’s left to do is live with his decision.
Maybe Fernando’s mental pleas do work, because Lance barely looks at him the entire meeting. Instead, he spends it taking notes and asking questions—the way a driver is supposed to.
-
Fernando mulls about the garage for a bit, but soon decides to head for the gym, certain that it’ll help him get out of his own head. Today’s cardio; it’s rainy out, so he’s on the treadmill.
Maybe it would help him get out of his head, if Lance wasn’t there at the same time.
There’s nothing too unusual about that. Normally, Fernando would simply enjoy the view.
Unfortunately, today it appears that Lance’s workout is not his own. Henry is there, guiding Lance through a set of planks. It’s clearly been a tough workout, as Lance is bent upwards, taking the strain off of his abs. Henry tuts at him; breathily, Lance apologizes, claiming that he wasn’t even aware of it.
“It’s fine. Finish strong, though,” comments Henry. Lance tries to shift, but he’s really struggling now; his body trembles and his eyes are screwed shut. Evidently this doesn’t satisfy Henry, as he—
His hand is at the base of Lance’s spine—at his ass, basically—and he eases Lance into the position. Lance chokes on a gasp, surprised, but stays where Henry guides him.
It would be fine—it would just barely be fine—if Henry didn’t keep his hand there. He doesn’t need to—Fernando is certain that Lance would hold the position without it—but still Henry lets it rest there, right where Fernando’s staked his claim over and over again.
The final straw is when Henry praises Lance, tells him he’s doing well, and Lance preens, smiling through his grimace and nodding.
Fernando pauses the treadmill as a formality; he doesn’t even wait for it to slow before stepping off. His breath comes fast, his face feels hot. It’s like there’s not enough air in the room to sate whatever beast has clawed its way out of Fernando and taken control.
“Henry. Don’t touch him.” Henry glances up, startled, but obeys, tearing his hand from Lance like he’s burned it. Lance collapses to the ground, panting.
“Fernando—” Henry starts.
“No. Lance is in pain, you do not hold him there,” spits Fernando.
“Fine.” Henry sighs exasperatedly. “Lance, we’re done. See you tomorrow.” He turns to leave. Lance rolls over and gets up. He looks at Fernando expectantly—but a little more than that; he’s demanding an answer with a look of annoyance-tinged confusion.
“He was touching your ass. Is mine; no touching what’s mine.”
Lance’s eyes flash, reacting before his face, but he relaxes his jaw and sighs tiredly, relenting. “You don’t need to freak out on Henry, okay? Stop going all possessive old man on him. He was just holding my plank.”
Fernando grits his teeth and nods. Lance smiles weakly back, snaking a hand around Fernando’s neck and leaning against him.
Somehow that smile breaks something in Fernando. The realization hits him like a truck.
He shrugs Lance’s arm off and turns on his heel, rushing out of the room. Everything seems to hit him at once; right after he hears Lance’s confused Nando?, he nearly slams into Henry, who’s filling his water bottle at the fountain right outside the gym. Fernando is honestly expecting a verbal barrage, but Henry opts for a strangely suspicious look instead. There’s a glint in his eyes that Fernando can’t quite figure out.
As quickly as possible he returns to his driver’s room, not even bothering to change before he collapses onto the bed. If he’s honest with himself, well and truly honest, Fernando can’t take any more thoughts. But he’s not, so the thoughts come anyway.
That he’s repulsive, and in addition to being repulsive, he feels entitled to the very person he’s stained with his sickness. That he could somehow let the part of him that blazes with possessiveness and the part of him that is fundamentally misaligned live and work in tandem.
It’s that he has no control over himself—that’s it. He can wallow in self-loathing as much as he wants, and it won’t change the fact that when push comes to shove, his instinct takes over. And his instinct is wrong, and his instinct traps Lance, and… his instinct treats Lance as a toy. His instinct is to violate Lance again and again and tighten his grip each time so Lance is always ready for him to play with at his faintest whim.
But he’s changed now. Fernando’s changed. He can control himself—he can learn that. He’s not going to hurt Lance anymore. He promised that to himself, and more importantly, he promised that to Lance.
And he’ll do it. He’ll do it if it kills him.
-
For all of his determination, Fernando can’t seem to get himself to do anything but wait.
Because determination implies that he should call upon the strength to do something—not abstain from it. Yet this seems to be what takes the most courage: to stay back, keep himself in check, let Lance come to him. Fernando convinces himself that he’s giving Lance an out. If Lance had read the shame so clearly plastered on Fernando’s face—and there’s no doubt he had—he can abstain, too. It would be different, though. Justified. A wolf can leave its pack behind if it is being chased by a bear.
Again and again, Fernando tells himself that it’s for Lance’s sake. Lance is young, he thinks. I must protect him from myself. Again and again, it doesn’t feel true. But it’s the only way he can bear to hold such a distance, so he repeats it to himself again and again in hopes that it will.
The first time is the hardest time. Lance catches Fernando in a hallway and asks casually if Fernando would like to grab lunch. There’s this new place nearby, Lance tells him, that just opened, and he wants to try it. Fernando’s never turned down the offer of a lunch date until then.
But he does, because as the yes is forming on his tongue, natural as anything, Lance casually brings a hand to rest on the small of Fernando’s back, and all of Fernando’s muscles tense at once. The guilt and stress come back in a tidal wave, and his body is impossibly taut with it. So he chokes out a hurried no and tries not to focus on how Lance’s shoulders slump right before Fernando turns to leave.
He’s off to the simulator to put some laps in at Bahrain, their next race. It’s a solid week from now, but Fernando’s not one to be underprepared.
As quick as Fernando is on the track, he’s even quicker to shower after the simulator, carelessly tossing his phone on the bed in his driver’s room before shirking off his uncomfortably sweat-sticky clothing, then letting the running water coax off the sweat that feels embedded in his pores. The last thing he expects when he exits the shower, hair still damp and towel hanging loosely around his waist, is for his phone to chime with a notification—and then another, and then another. He grabs his phone. It’s Lance.
Lance: no problem that we didn’t get lunch, but it left me kinda hungry
Lance: you should come over so i can taste ;)
Lance: [image.jpg]
Fernando damn near chokes on air and throws the phone back on the mattress, humiliated at how quickly blood starts rushing south. It takes all of his self-control not to open the image; he needs to be smart about this, and seeing—God, Fernando can guess; the mental library of photos from Lance makes it a minuscule task to come up with a new one—seeing that, and reacting to it like he knows he will, would shatter what remaining dignity he has left.
Fernando: I am tired Lance
That feels more true than I don’t want to, at least. That would be a lie, because more than anything, Fernando wants to. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he can’t—that’s the difference.
Upon reconsideration, Fernando realizes that his response is true after all. He’s too tired from his mind running amok over something as simple as a text that he can no longer imagine doing anything but throwing his phone out of the nearest window and collapsing into bed. If he hadn’t left that fucking blanket at home, maybe he’d hold it close and pretend that it’s Lance. That might be nice.
-
Fernando yawns.
He doesn’t get out of bed yet, though. He had just sort of crashed, and he refuses to give himself grief over it. An old man needs a nap every now and then.
Groaning, he feels around the bed for his phone. He’s at the fucking garage and there’s no doubt he’s slept through a meeting or two. Although, someone would have probably come to get him…
Speak of the devil, there’s a knock on the door. Rubbing his eyes, Fernando lets out a mumbled “Come in.” The door slides open, and—oh. Lance is there.
Immediately, Fernando is awake, hackles raised not in aggression but in fearful defense. Which, he notes, is a strange response, but he doesn’t get the chance to think about it, as Lance immediately starts talking.
“Meeting’s in 5. Got sent to wake you up.” Lance says, a bit offhandedly.
“M’kay,” mumbles Fernando in response.
Lance doesn’t say anything to that, just slides the door shut and leaves Fernando to his peace.
-
The rest of the day seems to go by in a blur. Meeting, then another, then running the simulator until Fernando’s vision swims… although maybe, Fernando considers, the mind-melting qualities of the simulator help more than they hurt. It’s the only way he can forget what had happened at the second meeting.
It had been, by all accounts, unremarkable. Fernando, Lance, and Adrian had stood around one of the cars, joined by a group of engineers, as Adrian described details of the car’s new floor and asked for the drivers’ feedback on how else to proceed. When Adrian had started asking after the other engineers’ thoughts, Lance had casually—oh so casually, and in the way he has done a thousand times before—slipped an arm around Fernando’s waist and let it rest at the jut of his hip.
Normally Fernando would enjoy the contact; hell, between the two of them Fernando is the one more likely to initiate any sort of casual touch. But this time—immediately, in a knee-jerk reaction—Fernando’s entire body had gone tense and his skin had prickled with awareness of wherever Lance’s skin touched the fabric of Fernando’s shirt.
Lance clearly felt it, as he immediately dropped his arm and gave Fernando a quizzical look. “You okay?” asked Lance, under his breath.
Fernando could feel his jaw clench. “Is nothing.”
The worry had dropped from Lance’s expression and a mild irritation took the place of it, furrowing his brow and tugging the corners of his lips into a frown. “It’s not nothing, though, is it?” he hissed. Lance turned to the engineers, some of whom had regarded the pair with quizzical looks of their own. “Sorry—can you give us a minute?”
Adrian had nodded, so Lance strode out of the room, Fernando at his heels. Lance stopped right outside the door and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, with a look of disdain. He gave Fernando an expectant look.
Somehow, the look caused a lightning bolt of stress to flash in Fernando’s brain. He had started rambling: “Am fine, Lance, I swear, is nothing—”
Lance had cut him off. “Why are you acting like this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fernando claimed, trying his best to keep his voice even (although some of his rising panic had definitely seeped into it).
Lance had let out an unimpressed huff. “I give up. We should get back.”
“Oh—okay,” stuttered Fernando, flustered.
He hadn’t taken in anything else during that entire meeting; the car seemed vastly unimportant in comparison to wracking his brain for why he had been so scared. The answer hadn’t come.
-
It does now, after the meeting, when he’s alone again; when, by all definitions, he should have some peace and quiet, but the incessant spiral of his thoughts is giving him anything but that.
Well. Not quite alone. Fernando has managed to carve out his own little space in the corner of the bustling garage, yes, but now Lance is here, hand heavy on Fernando’s shoulder and mere seconds away from pushing him to his knees. And warmth pools and muscles tighten and Fernando has no idea what he could do.
He’s afraid of it. Afraid of what he might do to Lance if he lets himself want.
It takes one big burst of effort to tear himself from the desire. It’s not something that could build over time and slowly crescendo into a peak, no. Everything in Fernando has to be saved for this very moment.
This very moment, where he grits his teeth and shoves Lance back.
Lance stumbles back, barely regaining his balance in time. There’s a burst of anger, like a solar flare from the roiling sun. “What the fuck, Fernando?” he nearly shouts.
Now Fernando can feel anger nipping at him. “Stop it! Just stop.” Is for your own sake, he wants to add, but can’t.
“Why? What did I do?” demands Lance.
“You are always embarrassing me, doing what you know is humiliating. You know you are and you never change.”
“Fernando, I… you have to tell me what you want!” Lance drags his hands over his face, exasperated. He sighs. “I know you well, but I’m not a fucking mind reader. You can’t just, like… leave me hanging. Come on, man.”
“I am not doing this today,” Fernando warns. “I am not deserving of you, Lance, I know this. No need to rub it in. I go now, I need peace.”
“No—please!” The tone is so jagged, the please sounding so desperate, that it makes Fernando stop in his tracks even before Lance grabs his wrist. When Fernando turns around, though, Lance’s set jaw and determined expression betray his voice. “Come with me. We’re… we’re figuring this out.”
-
Before Fernando knows it, he’s whisked away by the wrist. Lance slides his driver’s room door open and urges Fernando in before joining him and sliding the door shut behind him. Fernando stands still as a statue. He doesn’t know if he can touch anything without… without staining Lance further. It reminds Fernando so much of the first time Lance had stayed over, long before they bought an apartment together and built a home around the two of them. The night had been eventful, and when Fernando was tidying after Lance’s departure, he had found one of Lance’s hoodies tossed haphazardly into the corner of the room. It was only team kit—Lance surely had a closet full of identical ones—so Fernando kept it.
At first, it was just Lance’s lingering scent on it that comforted Fernando. He would press his face to the hoodie when he returned to the apartment and let himself get lost in it; let it ground him. Even as the scent faded into the nondescript scent that is one’s own, Fernando had kept it close. The hoodie had become an extension of Lance; it was more than just branded fabric, it was a part of Lance that Fernando got to have to himself before the real Lance had thrust himself into Fernando’s arms.
Standing in the middle of the driver’s room, frozen, Fernando feels the same way. That the room and everything in it is a part of Lance—or, more reasonably, Lance’s touch has graced all of his possessions with a sort of divinity, a sort of holiness. Like a Torah, only a touch once removed is safe. You kiss it only by placing a kiss to a hand that has touched it, otherwise you risk defiling it, dirtying it with your impurities. Even looking at it all feels like a risk, so Fernando stays still, paralyzed with fear that he might ruin something even further than he already has with his mere touch.
“Sit down. Let’s talk.”
Lance’s decisive tone drags Fernando out of his thoughts, so he sits, obeying Lance without even noticing. Once he feels the driver’s room couch under him, however, he kicks himself internally for dirtying it. A nondescript apology claws its way out of him before he can even realize it.
“What are you sorry for? Just tell me what’s been up with you lately, and we can figure this out,” replies Lance, all in one breath.
The impatience in his voice doesn’t escape Fernando. “If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to. I can leave.” Deep down, more so than he’d like to admit, Fernando wishes for a yes. His heart is pounding in his chest; suddenly, the prospect of enduring this for God knows how much longer seems easier than the nameless, faceless inevitability he seems to be accelerating towards.
No such luck, though. Instead, Lance takes a breath; on the exhale, his face softens. “Fuck, okay, bad way for me to start, eh?” He pauses, chuckling, but Fernando can’t reciprocate, so he continues. “I just… you said you don’t deserve me. Why?”
Fernando gestures, but the sort of dissonance between what a gesture can convey and what he wants to say is far too great, so he drops his hands. “How could I? You are… what I am not. I ruin things again and again and you keep coming back. In…”
“I am lucky to have you. I don’t deserve you.” It’s good that Lance cuts Fernando off when he does, because finishing that sentence was hopeless. Fernando is walking up to the cliff’s edge, not ready to jump yet; he’s only got that first rush of adrenaline that isn’t quite enough to drag out the full send.
Fernando settles for, “But you are angry.”
“I am,” replies Lance. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“Why you are angry, Lance?” Safely far from the precipice, but still taking that one step forward even though Fernando knows he won’t have the guts to jump when he reaches the edge.
“Because… fuck. You keep pushing me away. You told me… you told me to do what I wanted, and I did, and that became a problem, so clearly you don’t want that, but you aren’t telling me what you want and you’re just leaving me alone and…” Lance trails off, skirting a nervous gaze around Fernando.
“I don’t deserve to tell you what to do. Have not earned the privilege.” It’s a bigger step than intended. The drop looms; the inevitability starts to come out of the shadows.
“What—Fernando, no. We’re partners, right? Partnership?” Lance waits for Fernando to nod before continuing. “Okay, so we each get an equal half. There’s no earning. Especially with this—it’s so much better for me if I know you’re liking it too. You know that, right?”
And, well, Fernando isn’t expecting that question, and he certainly doesn’t know the answer to it. For better or for worse, he lets the first thing that comes to mind go straight to his mouth. “Am defiling you, Lance. With… with my thoughts. You do not know how disgusting I am. Person like me… I am too sick in the head to have any say. To say I am an equal partner is to say that you are so much less. Is not true.”
Lance’s face crumples so quickly—whether with disgust, or anger, or something else entirely, Fernando can’t tell—that Fernando flushes bright red, balling up to hide his face in his knees. He’s finally here—teetering on the edge. The face is clear; the name is thick and heavy on his tongue.
“What? What’s wrong? Please, tell me what’s wrong?” There’s worry in his voice; so much of it and so unexpected that it practically gives Fernando whiplash.
“You would not want what I want. I use you as object, Lance. Not even a person.” The push of the legs, the stillness of the air, the final fall past the event horizon and into the singularity.
“No, no, that’s wrong. I have never felt that way, not once. Do you trust me?” The panic in Lance’s voice is unmistakable, but even without seeing him Fernando can tell how hard he’s trying to keep his voice even.
Fernando feels tiny, what with how he’s burying his face in his knees and arms in a little Nando-ball on the couch. Eventually, summoning all of his courage, he nods.
“I trust you too. Now, tell me what this is.”
Finally, Fernando works up the strength to lift his head up and look Lance in the eyes. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, but stammers; the words won’t come out. Lance puts a firm hand on his back.
What the hell, Fernando will try.
The jump.
“I could not say to you, because I did not know until recently when I… when I imagined you, your hand on me in middle of the paddock. Uh… when you, you know, with people watching… is nice, makes me feel good,” mumbles Fernando, face blazing, before he succumbs to the embarrassment and buries his face back into his arms. He draws every limb as close as he can, tightening all of his muscles so much that they feel like armor. Fernando’s falling—falling towards the water or the hard concrete of the sidewalk, he doesn’t know.
Lance is silent. It feels like forever before Fernando finally works up the courage to peek over his forearm.
Lance’s eyes are wide, and his expression is something Fernando doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. A beat of silence passes. Then, all of a sudden, Lance laughs.
Fernando can’t tear his eyes away for a second. Lance’s laugh is so loud, and his whole body trembles as he throws his head back.
Raw humiliation licks up Fernando like flame. Out of all of the reactions he was expecting, amusement certainly isn’t one he had planned for. He buries his head back in his knees, and would be intent on staying there forever if it wasn’t for Lance.
He pokes Fernando’s forehead, voice shaky and breathy as he gasps, “Hey, Nando, no, I’m not laughing at you, ‘m sorry—Nando, can you look at me?”
Fernando shakes his head as much as he can in his position.
“Please?”
Sighing, Fernando relents, peeking shyly at Lance’s face. Lance bites his lip to hold back more laughs, but his smile is wide and his eyes sparkle with affection and mirth. He pulls Fernando into a tight hug—not claiming him, not yanking him from his thoughts, but letting him sit there with them while reassuring him that he’s by his side.
“‘S just… well, that makes two of us!”
Notes:
pretty busy the next few weeks so may be some slight delays in chapter updates---sorry :( i'm so glad you guys are liking the fic so much!! every kudo, bookmark, and comment is food for my soul, trust me (even if it takes me a while to respond haha, i promise i'm not trying to be rude and i simply have no spoons)
Chapter 9
Summary:
In which we take a turn for the horny in a chapter entirely carried by the Plot via Porn tag. There's some character development in there if you look closely.
Notes:
i played with like 8 kjhgpillion kinks in this chapter that may or may not be revisited... we will see
mild painplay, mild degradation, a lot of exhibitionism (like. a lot. this deserves its own warning), probably a lot more that i've forgotten
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“So… anything?”
“Yeah,” Lance sounds uninterested, but he bites his lip in a way that would suggest he’s simply deep in thought. It hits Fernando just how badly he’d like to recreate whatever is going through Lance’s mind.
“I… are you sure you want this?” confirms Fernando.
Lance has a soft, contemplative look to him. “Only if you do. If you don’t, we stop. I don’t really care what the team has to say about it, not anymore.”
Fernando grins. “Ay, Lancito, if only you knew what you do to me.”
Lance grins back. “I think I have an idea.”
-
It starts slow. It doesn’t stay that way.
Lance is walking alongside Fernando the following day, and maybe Fernando should know where they’re going, but he doesn’t. He’s far too focused on how Lance’s hands twitch, how his gaze roves over Fernando when he thinks Fernando’s not looking.
It hardly even surprises him when Lance slips an arm around his waist and pulls him close, tilting his head to whisper something into Fernando’s ear. (Fernando can’t quite tell what he says, but he barely needs to. The tone—a warm, velvet-thick timbre, hot against the thin skin there—says more than enough.)
Lance’s touch doesn’t need to be forceful to have an effect. With just a gentle tap to his shoulders, he brings Fernando to his knees.
“Knees alright down there, old man?”
“Is fine. You want my mouth, Lancito?” Fernando draws out the last o into something teasing, if nothing else then to feel Lance’s thighs tense against where Fernando’s nuzzled his cheek against them.
“Not sure… you’re a bit old for this, but you’re my only option, so. I guess.”
It’s a game they play when Lance pretends he doesn’t really care. Fernando likes the challenge.
“I show you just what an old man can do.”
Fernando is deft, strategic with how he pushes Lance’s shirt up, drags his fingernails ever-so-lightly along his sides, tracing over his Adonis belt. The muscles there are firm, strong, yet they twitch beneath his touch. Fernando wants to bite.
He does, busying his mouth with nipping and kissing farther down, down, down as he makes quick work of Lance’s pants and boxers, letting them fall to the floor in a puddle around his ankles.
Lance bites back a noise when Fernando’s stubble brushes his cock. Fernando can’t have that.
“No, no, no. Let me hear you, pretty boy. Chico bonito.” He emphasizes each few words with a wet kiss to the junction between abdomen and thigh; Lance preens at the praise, half-hard cock twitching against Fernando’s cheek, as he tangles his fingers in Fernando’s hair and tries to bring him where he wants him. Fernando resists.
“Use your words,” Fernando murmurs. He presses kisses to the insides of Lance’s thighs, right where he’s sensitive, and Lance moans. When Fernando brings his finger to lightly tease his perineum, Lance nearly cries out.
“You know—you know what I want,” Lance deadpans (or attempts to, at least; it’s rendered completely ineffective by Fernando brushing against him in all the right places).
“No, am not sure.” He grins at Lance, looks up with glittering eyes. “Tell me.”
Lance furrows his brow and looks down, pouting.
Fernando returns his gaze, grinning. “Or do you want me to tell you?”
When Lance doesn’t respond, Fernando continues: “You want me to suck you off. Hold you up as you fall apart above me. Do not need anything but my mouth to make you mine. You want it so badly, sì, cariño? To forget it all and let me make you feel good?”
“Please. Please, yes. Touch me, I can’t wait any more,” Lance admits between gasps.
Fernando likes to play with his food before he eats it.
“So good for me. Only for me, yes?” Fernando brings his hands around, lets them rest around Lance’s cock, waiting.
“Yes. Yes. All for you. All for you.”
Fernando grins. He feels predatory.
“Good boy. My obedient little slut. So desperate to be in my mouth. I give you what you want, since you ask so nicely.”
He presses kisses to the sensitive head of Lance’s cock, keeping a hand wrapped around the shaft and another on his hip, gentle but firm, holding him there. Lance is wet like always, and Fernando licks his lips of the precum he’s gathered, savoring the taste—salty, tangy, a faint hint of musk. Fernando would taste him day in, day out, drink him in like the finest wine.
Lance’s cock twitches when Fernando takes the tip into his mouth, flattening his tongue against it and sucking gently. A trembling hand finds its way into Fernando’s hair, pulls, and the sting of it makes a wave of pleasure roll through him. It takes all of his restraint and then some to not rut into his hand.
Letting the head slip from his mouth, Fernando focuses on the shaft, licking a wide stripe up the underside. Lance shudders and gasps a moan. Loud, just like Fernando wants.
“So good, Lancito. Being so good,” murmurs Fernando, breath hot against Lance’s now-neglected cock. Lance moans so loudly it’s almost pornographic—which it certainly becomes when he whispers a please under his breath. Fernando can’t say no.
He takes Lance slowly, hollowing his cheeks as he works down inch by careful inch. Lance’s hips cant forward—beyond his control, as his murmured fuck reveals—and Fernando gags, pulling off to cough.
Lance laughs shakily, ruffles Fernando’s hair. “S-sorry,” he stutters.
“No reason for it. So pretty when you let yourself go.”
He takes Lance deep again, lets him sit on his tongue, hot and heavy and dripping pre into the back of Fernando’s mouth; he’s forced to swallow, and the feeling of his throat working draws from Lance a sound that Fernando didn’t know he could make.
“Nando—fuck. Gonna come if you keep doing that,” pants Lance.
Fernando pulls off, looks up. “So I keep going, then,” he returns, grin wide on his face.
When he finally takes Lance fully into his mouth, nose brushing thick, dark curls, he moans around him and bobs his head, creating a slow rhythm that has Lance feeling every single thrust, every gentle, pressureless scrape of Fernando’s teeth that he likes.
The sound of footsteps getting closer makes something hot and stretched-tight zing through Fernando; it makes him all too aware of his own erection, throbbing, the thick curve of it obscene between his legs even if he can’t look down. He brings a hand to palm himself desperately, not even bothering to undo the drawstring of his shorts.
The footsteps are right behind them now. Fernando can’t stop his hips from seeking his palm.
For maybe two steps they get quieter, as whoever it is leaves. Then Lance speaks.
“Henry, stay. Can you—can you watch? Fernando’s—fuck!” The footsteps stop.
Fernando moans lewdly, makes a sound he didn’t know he was capable of, and the sensation of it has Lance coming without any hint of a warning—right down Fernando’s throat, filling his mouth. Salty, hot, astringent. Lance.
It almost brings him over the edge, too, but not quite; his body freezes like he’s going to come but remains teetering on the brink of his orgasm, hands gripping the fabric of his pants for dear life.
“Only Fernando, okay? ‘M Fernando’s, only he makes me come so hard. His.”
The silence in the room is loud for a good few seconds until Henry mutters something that sounds like fucking hell under his breath. He relents: “Okay, yeah. Sure, Lance. Fernando’s, okay, got it.” The footsteps retreat.
And Fernando, well, he might as well be on another planet.
Fernando pushes himself up on legs that feel like jelly to trap Lance’s lips in a filthy, messy kiss, careful but not gentle in the way he shoves his tongue into Lance’s mouth and pushes him by the shoulders against the wall. Eventually, panting, Fernando draws back.
“Cariño, how much do you care about who has… control?”
“Not much, why?” breathes Lance against Fernando’s lips.
Fernando leans close and nips at Lance's earlobe, cock twitching at the way Lance shivers beneath his touch. “Because I like making you see how good you taste.”
“Fuck!” moans Lance, surprised. “You can’t say those things!”
“Ah, but I can, no?” Fernando pauses—just enough to let Lance listen, not enough to let him respond. “I fuck you when I want, you fuck me when you want. To hell with the race results. Sì, cariño?”
“Yes, yes, fuck, yes. Now ruin me.”
“What’s that, Lancito? Want to go again so soon?” Fernando smirks. “Beg for it,” he murmurs, low and sultry.
“You—” starts Lance, before simply grabbing Fernando by the back of his shirt collar and dragging him in for a kiss.
-
Fernando fucks Lance against the wall, legs straining but strong. He lasts longer than he thinks he will, murmuring filthy praise in Lance’s ear the whole time until he comes and Lance follows.
Once Lance has been cleaned and given juice and wrapped in something warm, Fernando sits with him on the couch in one of the lounges, bringing Lance’s head to rest in his lap and scratching slowly at his scalp. Lance looks at him with such fondness in his eyes it makes Fernando want to melt right there.
“You don’t fuck like you’re 43,” he remarks, chuckling softly.
“Need to keep up around here. I learn.” Fernando replies, smiling. “Do you think Henry will kill me now?”
“No. He might kill me, though.”
“Doubt it. He stayed.”
“I wouldn’t let him leave without a reply. ‘S simple, really.”
Fernando brings his hand to cradle Lance’s cheek. “Pout and doe eyes, Lancito. Irresistible.”
Lance grins. “No, I save that look for you.”
Fernando grins back. “Are too nice to me, cariño. If you are not careful I might start to like you.”
“You do already, you goof,” Lance replies, reaching up to flick Fernando’s nose. “And if you don’t, I just scarred my personal trainer for you. That’s gotta earn me something.”
It’s almost embarrassing how Fernando’s dick twitches at that. He lets his hand tighten a bit, brings it down to Lance’s jaw, his neck. “Sì. I have reward for being so good.” He leans in ever so slightly, pinning Lance under his gaze.
Lance bites his lip and smiles coyly. “Can’t wait.”
-
Fernando is home late that night. He has to stop by one of his favorite stores.
When he gets home, Lance is in loose pajamas and an apron, stirring something on the stove. The sight is so wonderfully domestic that Fernando can feel his heart squeeze.
For now, though, he comes up behind Lance and snakes his arms under Lance’s, squeezing him tight in a hug. Lance sighs, and without even seeing him, Fernando knows he’s smiling.
“I was thinking, cariño,” he starts. “You told me about new place for lunch. We try tomorrow?”
This gets Lance’s attention. He puts the spoon down to the side of the pot and turns to face Fernando.
“That sounds perfect, chéri.” Lance tips Fernando’s chin up for a tender kiss, the sort of kiss that promises more but leaves one utterly satisfied nonetheless. Fernando takes the opportunity to pull Lance in for a hug, and he sways him, dancing him to a song that neither can hear. Soon he tips Lance back and holds his leg up, kissing him passionately. Lance giggles and smiles into it.
“Hi, Prince Charming,” jokes Lance, once he’s firmly back on his feet. “My advisors tell me you’re here to request my hand in marriage?”
Fernando snorts a laugh. “I have dowry ready. A flock of goats for my fair Lancelot.”
Lance laughs with him, until suddenly his eyes narrow. “You’re being too charming, I can tell,” he says, breaking character. “What did you do?”
Fernando’s eyes narrow, too, but not with suspicion—with mischief. “Nothing, cariño. I just… I have something for you, and it goes well with praise.”
Lance flushes red. Fernando smiles indulgently, and in lieu of saying anything more, slips the little paper bag into Lance’s hand. His blush gets even deeper as he brushes aside the tissue paper and peeks inside.
“Fuck. You mean… tomorrow? At lunch?”
“Sì. I have remote.”
The reaction that crosses Lance’s face is nothing short of beautiful, spanning every emotion from shock to joy. Eventually, though, he settles on looking down at Fernando with half-lidded eyes, pink blush dusting his cheeks. Fernando squawks in surprise as Lance grabs him by the waist and pulls him in, relegating the bag to the counter and bringing the pair face-to-face in one whirl of motion.
Lance leans in. “Fuck me. Pregame.”
“Good boy.”
-
“Lancito, you are walking funny.” Fernando lounges on the bed, an amused look on his face. He’s been ready for a while now, while Lance scurries around the bedroom in various states of undress. Given his extra steps, though, Fernando can’t give him too much grief—just enough to keep himself entertained.
“You shove a vibrator up your ass and try to walk normally!” Lance retorts. “It’s hard, okay?”
“It sure will be,” teases Fernando. That earns him a hoodie to the face.
-
In the car, Lance shifts endlessly around in the passenger seat as he tries to get comfortable, and Fernando wants.
In the garage, when Lance bends over to examine something on the car’s rear wing, Fernando knows he’s feeling it, and he wants.
On the way into the restaurant, when Lance has managed to successfully hide the hitch in his step, Fernando remembers how obvious it was that very morning, and oh, he wants.
It seems to take forever for a waiter to take their order and even longer for the food to arrive. The whole time, Lance shoots Fernando wary looks from across the table, and Fernando knows he has to wait just a little longer before he can have.
-
Lance chews slowly and reclines in the chair. Unguarded.
Naturally, Fernando chooses that moment to press a button on that evil little remote.
“They do the—” Lance is cut off by how his body freezes, tensing against the sensation. “Fernando!” he grits out, brow furrowed in concentration.
“Is only the first setting, cariño. Already you have my name on your pretty mouth?”
Lance pulls a face.
Fernando is unbothered, leaning in on his elbows to admire Lance like he’s a piece of fine art—not dissecting, not evaluating, simply enjoying for its beauty.
“I love the sounds you make. Could listen to you saying my name all day.” In his pocket, under the table, Fernando finds what he needs.
Up a level. Lance’s eyes widen as he bites back something high-pitched and breathy.
It’s only for a second, though, before Fernando cuts the power, turning the thing off. Across from him, Lance slumps, every muscle in his body relaxing at once. Fernando leans back, all too aware of the satisfied smirk on his face.
“Stop looking like that,” says Lance, although there’s no heat behind it. He’s not panting, not quite, but his chest is slightly heaving and Fernando knows he’s trying his best to keep his breathing even.
Fernando bats his eyelashes innocently. “Like what?”
Lance doesn’t get to reply, though, as Fernando immediately turns the vibrator to the third level; instead, what comes out of Lance’s mouth is a barely-disguised moan.
“Are you going to tell me?”
Lance bites his lip and shakes his head no, the white-knuckled grip he has on the table’s edge robbing him of his ability to gesture. If he could, Fernando’s certain he would get flipped off.
“Use your words… Can you do that for me?” There’s an unspoken Be good? tacked on to the end of Fernando’s sentence. Although it’s left unsaid, it hangs between them in Fernando’s charged gaze.
Lance shifts his weight nonstop in the seat, trying to move the pressure off of his prostate, but evidently he fails, if the near-constant wriggling he’s doing is any indication. And Fernando thinks it is. Oh, Fernando knows it is.
“You know what you’re doing,” Lance manages to say, forcing the words from between gritted teeth.
“Mm, and you like it, no? Squirming in your seat like you’ll die if I don’t—” he lowers his voice to a whisper, leaning in close. “—fuck you right here,” he finishes.
Lance glares at him. Fernando makes a mental note to punish him later.
Now, though, he waves over the waiter and requests the check and a takeout box, leaving Lance to bite his lip and suffer in silence.
-
Fernando switches off the vibrator when Lance gets up from his seat and offers him his jacket to tie around himself for decency. Lance clings to his arm as they walk to the car, breathing deeply.
Once they’re buckled in, Fernando asks, “Lance, can you tell me your color? Was a lot.”
“Green, yeah,” replies Lance. “You’re good at that. Dirty talk, I mean.” He gestures south, voice sounding a bit strained.
“I give you break until we get home. Cannot finish before the main event, if you say I am that good.” Fernando smiles cheekily.
Lance nods and leans over the console to press a kiss to his cheek—all too innocent for the situation, but appreciated nonetheless.
-
Of course, by home, Fernando means the garage.
Despite his strongest urges, he brings Lance to one of the slightly-less-shitty garage driver’s rooms. Lance follows eagerly, like a dog at his heel.
As soon as Lance slides the door shut behind him, Fernando’s on him, kissing him hard and fast like they’ll run out of time. Because he needs this—Lance’s full, soft lips on his own thin ones—like he needs air.
Their kiss only breaks when Fernando finds the remote in his pocket and switches on the vibrator, causing Lance to positively crumple to the ground, whining something obscene. He looks up to Fernando, eyes wide and glassy, face flushed, and the sight of it is something Fernando wants to frame–-Lance, like the piece of art he is.
“Stay here. Don’t touch yourself, and don’t come.”
“But—”
Fernando doesn’t respond, just kicks the vibrator up a setting and walks away. Lance lets out such a gorgeous, breathy, surprised moan that for a second, Fernando’s resolve almost snaps.
It doesn’t, though, so he goes through the room, keeping Lance in the corner of his eye as he takes way too long to wash his hands, hangs his jacket carefully on the hook instead of shrugging it onto the bed, and pretends to misplace the lube. He roots through cabinets and drawers, taking more-than-occasional breaks to palm himself and sigh in relief if only to see the way Lance’s eyes widen with petty jealousy as well as something thicker, darker.
The lube is, of course, right where he left it—atop a cabinet—and with a faux-confused how did that get there? he sticks the bottle of lube in his pocket.
Lance is a sight, sitting on his hands as he tries to grind down on the vibrator. He heaves a wet sigh at the inadequacy of his shaky movements and looks up and then down as Fernando squats in front of him, getting on his level.
“So pretty like this, so good,” Fernando murmurs, making Lance moan, before he cups Lance’s jaw in his hand and drags his thumb across the seam of his lips. Lance opens his mouth almost on instinct, jaw hanging slack and eyes half-lidded to form a countenance that can be described as nothing but arousal; pure, unadulterated arousal presented with a ribbon on top just for Fernando.
So he sinks his thumb into Lance’s mouth, exploring in a way he rarely does; he presses the pad of his thumb into his tongue and traces it along his teeth, sharp and hard in comparison to the rest of his mouth, which is velvety-soft around Fernando’s thumb. And his cock, but, well. That isn’t his plan for today.
Instead, he pulls back, string of saliva connecting Lance’s mouth to his hand for just a second before Fernando moves it to cradle his cheek. “I prep you now, sì?” Lance nods frantically, letting a breathy please slip from his spit-wet lips.
It’s awkward considering how Lance is sitting, but he manages to slide his pants halfway down his legs, giving Fernando room. Fernando stops the vibrator—to Lance’s combined disappointment and relief—and slips it gently from his hole, watches him shift around, chasing it, as if he would get it back.
The vibrator itself is an inconspicuous little thing, one of those small ones designed to target the prostate, and the minimal prep it had taken that morning had been far from enough for Lance to be stretched enough to take Fernando. The feeling, though, of Lance already stretched and dripping lube right when Fernando wants him?
Fernando decides to save those ideas for later.
Now, he inserts a finger, then two, crooking them just right even at the less-than-ideal angle. He scissors them, fondling Lance’s walls, and Lance whines, begs for three, and who would Fernando be to say no?
“‘M good. Ready. Please, Nando, I want to feel you inside.” Lance’s voice is shaky, but becomes completely pathetic as soon as Fernando pulls his fingers out completely, leaving Lance empty and clenching around nothing. “What? Why—”
“Get up, we leave now.”
“What?”
“I bring you out, show you off. My pretty Lancito, they can look but not touch.”
Lance shivers, bares his neck.
And, well—Fernando wasn’t planning on it, but now that he sees it, he can’t turn it down.
He pounces on Lance, pressing a muscled thigh between his legs for him to grind against (with an admonition not to come murmured against sensitive skin), and plants kisses—just kisses, just to start—over Lance’s cheeks, ears, jaw, neck, like he’s dusting him in powdered sugar, drizzling him in honey. Lance shudders when Fernando’s lips meet his neck, hips canting forward into Fernando’s thigh of their own volition, his movements becoming more frantic when Fernando begins to nip and suckle.
Marks bloom one by one—a dark mauve, sweet and warm like a Columbine flower, sultry and luxuriant like the thickest velvet. Lance paws at Fernando’s chest whenever he lets up, wanting more, more, more.
Lance loves to be claimed. Fernando loves to claim him.
He groans against Lance’s skin. “So worked up and I haven’t even touched you where you want yet.”
Lance can barely reply, but his expression—face flushed, eyelids drooping over blown-wide pupils, tears already welling, jaw slack in an open-mouthed pant—says all that Fernando needs to hear. He pushes himself off the floor, hoists Lance up by the wrists, and with a firm hand on his lower back leads him to one of the garage’s many conference rooms.
It’s the closest one to their rooms, and as such is not used particularly often, what with it being far from the actual cars and offices. Despite that, it’s identical to all of the other AM conference rooms—spacious, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a backlit Aston Martin crest prominently positioned behind the head of the table. The interior windows are floor-to-ceiling as well, a thin strip at eye level decoratively frosted over.
The door swings shut behind them, and with nothing more than a wayward glance Lance follows Fernando’s lead and sits up on the table. Obedient.
Fernando follows, clambering onto the table with a bit more difficulty due to his stature. Without a word, he lays back, propping himself up on his elbows. He gestures with his chin towards the bulge in his jeans, made all too obvious by the angle.
Lance stares openly, legs folded under him and arms behind his back like he’s afraid to touch, and, well, Fernando can’t have that.
“Come and get it if you want it so bad, Lancito. Take it for a ride.” Fernando smirks.
Something blazes behind Lance’s eyes as he crawls forward to sit between Fernando’s legs. “So open, Fernando. Shameless of you. Anyone could walk by.”
It’s damn near impossible for Fernando to keep his voice even as Lance leans over and takes the zipper of his jeans between his teeth, but he does. “You would love that, no?” he challenges.
Lance doesn’t miss a beat. “You’d like it more, I bet.”
It’s all a song and dance of power. Having grounded himself a bit, Lance has Fernando in the palm of his hand, and he knows it, and he knows that Fernando knows it—and best of all, he knows that Fernando likes it. “You love when people know I’m yours,” he says softly, bringing a hand to his own neck to press at the bruises starting to form; he gasps at the sensation, then bites his lip and continues.
“You love when people watch. When they see that nobody could fuck me like you can.”
Lance places wet, openmouthed kisses to the shaft of Fernando’s cock. Fernando thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.
“The team is one thing. Nothing we could do they haven’t seen. But imagine…“
Precum drips from Fernando’s tip, which Lance dips his head down to lick at. He takes the tip into his mouth, cutting himself off; Fernando arches his back with a loud groan, and, fuck, he can’t remember the last time he felt this good.
“Imagine the paddock—just in the middle of the paddock during race weekend. Forget the garages. Right where everyone can see.”
He drops the tip from his mouth and gestures to Fernando, who passes him the bottle of lube stored in his pocket with shaking hands. Lance slicks him up, a bit unsteady with how he’s not very used to doing the work.
“What people would say if they saw the Fernando Alonso fucking his boss’ son. If they knew you wanted me like this.”
Lining himself up, Lance sinks onto Fernando’s cock smoothly, moaning prettily through a bitten lip. It punches the words out of him—something Fernando is thankful for, as he wouldn’t have lasted much longer if Lance had kept talking.
Lance recovers quickly. “Do I make you feel good? Am I good for you when I’m like this?”
Fernando smiles indulgently. “So good. So perfect.” His voice is rough, sex-soaked in the way only Lance can bring.
Lance rocks on him, bounces, and Fernando can barely take it; only pain grounds him, fingernails digging into the heels of his hands. And—maybe he’s a top, maybe he’s a dom, but seeing Lance atop him, using him like a toy is—it’s something else.
“Will not last like this, cariño, not when you look so pretty riding me,” he breathes, resolve fraying. Lance flushes impossibly more and moans, lost in his own pleasure; he’s too focused on using Fernando to chase his own orgasm to form anything coherent.
“Won’t either, I—“ gasps Lance, cutting himself off as he wraps a hand around his own cock, flushed red and thick, drooling pre, and his hips shove forward seemingly of their own volition, thrusting into his hand in time with his frantic bouncing. “Fuck,” he cries—literally cries, throwing his head back as tears stream down his cheeks.
“Tell me that you’re mine. Tell me nobody else could fuck you like this,” Fernando demands, voice rough. He’s given into the desire and thrusts up into Lance, matching his rhythm as he lets the warmth build to a fever pitch deep inside of his gut.
“I’m yours. Yours, yours, yours!” Lance has become frantic, desperate, as his desire to come eclipses everything else.
“When everyone’s looking, you’re mine.”
“Want them to see how—how good you are. Need it so bad, Nando, you showing me off—“ Lance comes without warning, eyes screwed shut as he rocks and strokes himself through his orgasm. He decorates Fernando’s chest with thick ropes of it; the last ounces of his release drip through his fingers, and Fernando wants nothing more than to wear Lance’s cum every day of his life—his favorite outfit.
Lance clenches around Fernando as he comes, the intensity of his orgasm creating a damn near spasm that brings Fernando over the edge with him, coming hard and deep into Lance in a mind-melting orgasm that doesn’t wash over him so much as it delivers a punch.
Something about it is like their first time again—how time freezes, how they look into each other’s eyes and breathe each other’s panting breath, how Lance whines gently as he lifts himself off of Fernando’s spent cock before surging forward for a deep kiss, uncaring of the cum smearing between their chests, and Fernando wants forever, through the highs and lows and arguments and makeups and slow mornings and rushed quickies. How Fernando wants Lance, in every way possible. Every part of him, always and forever.
“I love you. It’s no one but you,” murmurs Lance against his lips.
“I know, mi vida. You are only one for me.”
They breathe together, not kissing as much as leaving lips pressed to lips, until Fernando holds Lance tenderly, like he’s a piece of fine china, and carries him bridal-style back into the driver’s room, uncaring of the mess left behind on the table.
Lance’s eyes are glassy as he looks through Fernando—he’s deep in subspace, and pride swells in Fernando’s chest as he grabs a warm washcloth to clean Lance gently, reverently even. Worshipping him, as Fernando was made to do.
He produces a juice box from the little fridge in the corner of the room and brings the straw to Lance’s lips. Lance looks at him curiously.
“Drink, cariño. Then you tell me how you are feeling.”
Lance obeys, taking small sips from the straw as Fernando praises him and strokes his sweat-damp hair. Eventually, Lance speaks.
“So good. Perfect. Thank you, Nando. I love you.”
“Not too much?”
“No. Can you—we’re doing that again, actually.”
Fernando smiles fondly as a new warmth blooms within him. “Not now.”
“No.“ Lance yawns. “‘M tired. Later.”
Fernando snuggles against him and holds him close as he drifts off to sleep, after which Fernando can succumb to his own exhaustion. Fleetingly, somewhere deep in the recesses of Fernando’s mind, in something soft and tender that he’s forced down for so many years, he never wants this moment to end.
-
As always, another day means another hour or two in the sim. The engineers are tireless not only in their work on the car but in their pursuit of the drivers to test every minute tweak.
Of course, that hadn’t happened immediately. Fernando had taken Lance right home after they had woken up (and Fernando had braved the conference room, armed with every cleaning supply he could get his hands on, and scrubbed the table again and again until he had probably taken the varnish right off. Which wasn't ideal, and definitely would come out of his paycheck, but it's better than cum and sweat and lube, so. He'll take it). The untimely end to his nap was much to Lance’s irritation at first, but kisses and the promise of a more comfortable bed soon won him over.
Fernando had left him bundled up in the covers with a glass of water and some painkillers on the bedside table while he dozed beside him, getting up only to collect the food he had ordered—Lance’s favorite takeout, because Fernando knew better than to attempt to cook.
He had sent Henry a vaguely threatening text message, insisting that he go easy on Lance the next day. Sure, he hadn’t specified why, but when Lance woke up and peeked at the message, he had laughed, given Fernando a playful shove, and assured him that Henry would have no trouble figuring it out.
The next morning, once they had awoken and it had all begun to feel real—the emails to reply to, the strategy to discuss, the goings-on of laundry and dishes and household chores—it became apparent.
“Sleep well?” asks Fernando groggily. He rolls over, expecting to find Lance’s warmth for him to steal, but finds nothing but cold covers instead.
That rouses him. He sits up in bed and rubs the sleep from his eyes to find Lance pacing the room.
Lance walks gingerly towards the bed, testing his limp. “Destroyed my thighs yesterday, shit,” he says absentmindedly, rubbing at one.
Fernando’s stomach drops. “You are—”
All of a sudden, Lance has Fernando’s jaw in his hand. He taps his thumb to the seam of his lips. “Nope. Bup. Your lips are zipped. I’m not letting you worry about me.”
“But—”
Lance kisses him. “Zipped.” To his credit, it does shut Fernando up, so Lance continues: “I’m fine. Really. Nothing’ll affect my training. I know you’re too old to remember anything but bloodletting, but in the modern day we have medicine and it’s pretty cool.”
Fernando laughs despite himself, and Lance joins in, grabbing his phone and pretending to call a nursing home for the “weird, hot old man escapee in my house.” Fernando yanks it from him, bringing Lance down on top of him, and they laugh together, nose-to-nose, hot breath tickling Fernando’s skin as he feels some of the weight on his shoulders lighten just a little.
-
It’s all back in full force now, though, maybe heavier than ever. Lance’s laps are slow, sloppy even, and that all-too-familiar tension, the stomach-twisting sensation of stress, seems to seep into his very bones.
Lance sees it immediately as soon as he steps—no, limps—out of the sim chair. “Hey, hey,” he starts, like he’s calming a timid dog. “I’m fine. Just the change in routine. I’ll get used to it.”
“I worry, cariño. I cannot hurt your pace, would not be right. You need to be in peak racing condition,” admits Fernando.
“Appreciate it, Nando. But please don’t worry about me. I’m fine, I like it, and once I adjust a bit, I’ll race better than ever.” Lance finishes the remark with a nudge and a wink that make Fernando’s lips curl into a smile as his stony-faced stress begins to crack.
He takes a deep breath, swallows down the anxiety, and for once, it dissipates, leaving nothing but a faint wisp of the thick, viscous thing it had been before.
Notes:
ITS BEEN A MONTH AND FINALLY IM BACK!! so sorry for the wait; i don't even have an interesting reason, writer's block has just been hitting me hard and life has been hectic. thanks for the sweet comments as always, i love each and every one of you and all of your kind words always motivate me to keep going <3
can't lie, ever since the planning stage this chapter wasn't intended to have too much plot in it... there is a bit but it's mostly just sweet loveydovey and freaky because i need to recover before i hit them with hammers for the last few chapters. #letfreakswritefreak2025
thanks again for all your support for my silly little rpf barbies and i can't wait to get back in the rhythm of this fic again!!!
Chapter 10
Summary:
Lance is Fernando's, even if sometimes he has to be reminded.
Notes:
plot via porn againnnnn who cheered (i prommy there will be more plot after this)
kinks touched on but not tagged: mild somnophilia, bruising, biting, objectification if you squint
also to be clear, there's zero infidelity on lance's part, as nando knows well. nando is just Like This. normally i wouldn't address it b/c unreliable narrator but just want to clear that up b/c it's really not my cup of tea (but hey, if you want to read it as infidelity, go ahead!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When it happens at home, Fernando can finally let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
It’s a simple thing, really. It’s the weekend and they’re back at home, idly chatting about the next race and how they really should start packing while knowing neither intends to do a damn thing about it until the day before they leave.
Eventually, they fall into a comfortable silence. Lance catches up on some show he likes while Fernando watches him watch it, lost in thought.
Lance twitches in half-doze, stretching so his shirt rides up just so. He’s toned, slim but strong muscles enveloped in pale, smooth skin. It’s not all pale, now, though; it bears the yellow-purple blotches of bruises about to fade. Pretty.
They’re additional, those bruises. The ones on his neck have mostly faded; the remaining ones had bloomed the night after Lance had ridden him in the conference room, where Lance had rolled over in bed and kissed him and nipped his earlobe and asked—no, demanded—to come one more time, and Fernando, incredulous, had marked every inch of Lance’s body that he could reach before jerking him off between them, his own dick twitching in a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful effort to get hard again.
It’s later, now, though, and Fernando has recovered from what was for all intents and purposes a sex marathon. And Lance is a beautiful dichotomy: peaceful innocence from his dozing form clashing with the marks of his debauchery.
Fernando gets up from the chair and drapes himself over Lance, pressing chaste kisses to his jaw while he palms Lance’s soft cock through his shorts. Lance twitches and startles, but as soon as he sees Fernando above him, the muscles in his face relax. He presses his hips up into Fernando’s hand; his movements careful still, sluggish with sleep, not yet threatening to quiver or tremble.
Faster the kisses come—harder, more insistent. “Move up,” commands Fernando.
Lance grumbles about being comfortable. Fernando moves to the side of his neck and bites.
“Fine, fine,” relents Lance, rubbing at the bite mark as he scoots to sit against the couch’s armrest. His calm demeanor can’t hide the flush on his cheeks, however, or how the sensation of teeth on skin had made his cock twitch where it’s hardening beneath Fernando’s palm.
Fernando is gentle when he undresses Lance. Too often is it when Fernando has to simply tear off what he can; most of the time it’s all he can do to get his dick out of his boxers and Lance’s pants halfway down his legs. Today, though, they have time. So he unwraps Lance like a present, slow but quivering with anticipation.
There’s a beautiful flush on his smooth chest. It’s almost a shame how Fernando has to cover it, moving forward to sit on his sternum and bracket him with his legs, awkwardly stripping off his clothes so he can put Lance face-to-face with his cock, mostly hard already, thick and red, bobbing in midair.
Lance tracks it with his eyes, and, oh, how Fernando loves when he does that.
“So pretty, Lancito. So pretty. Watching like all you want to do is pleasure me.”
Lance simply nods, nods almost sagely. The sleep still fraying his edges takes the bratty side off of him. It’s because he lets go, Fernando thinks. Lets go and submits.
It’s too rare, too precious, this side of Lance, that Fernando doesn’t try anything complicated. He simply sits on his haunches and lets Lance take his cock into his warm mouth, inch by careful inch until he bottoms out and begins to bob shallowly.
Fernando groans, pets Lance’s head. His hands need Lance’s thick, luxuriant hair, but he won’t let himself pull it. Not today, when Lance is so calm. When he just wants to give.
When he wants to be, Lance is efficient. Not today. “All the time in the world to taste you,” he murmurs, pulling off to let his breath ghost over the tip. It takes all of Fernando’s self-control not to let his hips thrust forward.
“Ay, Lancito,” he warns. “Don’t be a tease.” He moves a warm hand to Lance’s nape, pushes ever so slightly.
“Mm.” When Lance takes Fernando back into his mouth, Fernando’s hands fly back to his messy hair, fisting it, tightening and releasing his grip so everything else stays still. Moans fall from him, uninhibited, raw.
He throws his head back when Lance starts to suck him in earnest, pressing his tongue to the sensitive spot beneath the tip, lifting off to suckle before diving down to swallow around him. Fernando’s hips lift in quick little jerks as his abdomen warms, tightens, and his body separates from his mind, becoming a carnal, primitive thing, its only focus being on its own pleasure.
“Off, off,” he pants. “Inside.”
Lance obliges, letting up. He licks his lips, red and puffy.
There’s a half-full bottle of lube stashed in the drawer of the end-table that both Fernando and Lance have gotten far past the point of being embarrassed about. Fernando grabs it on weak legs, tells Lance to get on his hands and knees.
“Color?” he asks, once he gets back.
Lance moans, nods his head frantically.
“Words, Lancito. Words.”
“Green. I—green. Need you.”
Fernando only wonders for a second how Lance has gotten so worked up so quickly before he spots it—Lance’s hand wrapped around his cock, frantic.
The sound of Fernando’s hand on Lance’s skin seems to echo as he brings his palm down against Lance’s ass. Lance whines, jerking himself faster, pushing into it. Needy.
“Don’t touch what’s mine,” Fernando says, calm still, before he slaps Lance again, this time on the other cheek. Lance complains, but he does so with a whine, and drops his hand back to the floor. Fernando continues, knowing: “Did not need to tell you, no? You wanted another hit, is why you didn’t listen.”
Lance nods, whimpers even, far past anything but need. “So bad, Nando. So bad.”
“Is just a warning, not a punishment. You want proper punishment, brat?”
“Yes, yes, shit—give it to me!”
“Later. Wait.”
Lance nearly sobs. Fernando feels like he’s floating.
He pushes a finger in, meets some resistance; Lance is tense, impatient. “Relax, cariño,” Fernando placates. “Cannot fuck you if you do not.”
To his credit, Lance does, letting Fernando push in farther, add a second, scissor. He crooks them, pressing hard against his prostate. Lance trembles and whines, making the droplets of sweat dotting his back roll delicately down as he grinds against the fingers, insistent.
Fernando adds a third, watches him rock back as he stretches him slowly, torturously so. When Lance is good and ready, Fernando replaces the fingers with the blunt head of his lubed cock, pressing slowly, watching himself disappear into Lance as Lance clenches—spasms, almost—around him. If Fernando was ten years younger, he thinks, he could get off on the sight alone.
Bent over Lance’s back, hands braced on his hips, Fernando thrusts with measured precision, making sure Lance feels every inch, every millimeter, as he falls apart under him. Fernando feels it too—all around him, tight, hot, the heady feeling of it making him plunge forward with renewed vigor every time he sees his cock half-slip from Lance’s fucked-out hole. He’s drowning in it, completely enveloped with sharp, insistent want, and each thrust, cock disappearing inside Lance as Lance grinds back against him like some heaven-sent nymph—each thrust, it feels like a gasping breath of air, like something that, every time, tethers him to this mortal plane for just a bit longer.
“Faster, faster, please,” Lance gasps. Fernando feels generous.
He quickens his pace, trying not to become sloppy even as his breathless moans give him away. Fernando’s already so worked up from Lance’s sinful mouth that he knows he won’t last; his muscles tense with the effort of trying not to come—a trivial venture, as the flames of arousal lick up his body, and he burns inside, heat coiled tight, electricity crackling. He’s lost in his own pleasure, truly, grounded only by the beautiful noises Lance makes whenever Fernando angles his hips just right. He’s getting close, he is, feeling his movements become less and less his own as pleasure sparks hot throughout his body as he becomes nothing but an animal, incapable of comprehending anything beyond his own needs. Lance is perfect—sounds perfect, feels perfect, looks perfect—under him, and Fernando has never been more grateful.
That Lance is his. That they can talk, get through things together. That they’re a pair to the very end.
“God, I love this. Feeling like a toy.” Lance’s voice is breathy, hitching at the apex of Fernando’s every thrust.
Fernando damn near comes on the spot.
Lance can tell. “Love when you use me,” he pants, and that does it.
After, once they’re clean, Fernando kisses Lance slow and indulgent, like he has all the time in the world.
-
The next day is, as all getaway days are, rushed. There are bags to pack and planes to catch and all of it has to be done with heavy eyelids and aching backs.
It’s not even that Fernando’s old. Those bags are heavy.
All for the love of racing, though. That’s what Lance says, when he notices Fernando drooping in the security line and swings an arm over his shoulder, putting on a bit of overwrought jauntiness for Fernando’s sake.
Fernando snarks him and shoves him gently, right in the center of his chest. Lance smiles widely and throws his hands up in surrender, and it’s all Fernando can do to not kiss his grinning teeth.
Instead, he presses his fingers into Lance’s traps in a facsimile of a massage, making a mental note to get on Henry about the amount of knots he can feel. He digs at one, easing the tension, until he hits the remainder of a bruise, and Lance’s gentle groan becomes a hiss of breath.
“Ay, lo siento, lo siento. Sorry, Lancito,” Fernando hastily apologizes, letting up on Lance’s muscles. Lance’s taut face and furrowed brow relax.
“No problem, Nando. Just give your canvas a break for now, eh?” Lance tilts his head and smiles good-naturedly.
Fernando nods and switches to lighter contact, tracing circuit layouts along Lance’s shoulder where he’s slung his arm around it. Lance squirms away, ticklish. Fernando pulls him back in and kisses him ever-so-softly on the temple.
-
After a few years in F1, getaway days all become the same. When you’ve been in the sport as long as Fernando has, getaway days don’t even require a second thought. He doesn’t really think he exists during getaway days; it’s all so repetitive that it takes zero effort on his part.
He only really notices getaway days when something different happens, which is why it’s so surprising to him when, after they’ve taken off and he’s about to run down the aisle to try to find a flight attendant who might be willing to give him some almonds or something, Henry stops him in an empty part of the aisle, face tight.
Fernando can’t hide his groan of annoyance. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see Henry, exactly, but he’s tired and hungry and this isn’t supposed to happen on a getaway day, so maybe he doesn’t make the best impression. Sue him. “What do you need?” he asks.
“Uh, it’s… well. Sorry to get in your way, it’s just…” Henry stutters.
Fernando watches him intently, his frustration turning to concern. For all that he is, Henry is one of the most sure people Fernando knows, all firm determination. To hear him sounding so shaky is… strange, to say the least. “Say it,” demands Fernando—he’s trying to reassure Henry with a steady presence, but it definitely comes off as rude, and, well, shit.
Henry drags his hands across his face, rolls his shoulders like he’s resetting. “Listen, man, I… As a trainer, you know, I have to always put him first.” Henry doesn’t need to clarify who him refers to, nor does Fernando have to ask. “And, well… you’re… treating him right, correct?”
Fernando’s stomach drops, skin going clammy as the first tendrils of panic grip him. He tries not to let it show. “Ah. The bruises, no? I will… tone down.”
Henry’s face contorts in a way that would suggest that he just walked in on his own mother with Lawrence Stroll. “No, it’s not even… he’s getting through the training, so, you know, that’s not important. It’s just… he’s, uh, always on the bottom—I think that’s the term—even if he wins, and… you’re not forcing him, are you?”
“No, no, of course not. We have system. He prefers.” Fernando knows his voice is shaky, and maybe Henry feels some solidarity with their shared stress, because his shoulders relax just the tiniest bit. Fernando allows himself a deep breath, too, trying to get his head back on his shoulders.
“Okay, I also… in the airport, you kissed him, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t… you know…” Henry trails off, gesturing. “Together,” he finishes.
Whatever calm Fernando had managed to gather is shot as his gut falls into his shoes. “What?”
Henry’s eyes go wide. “Not that, like, that would be a problem if either of you were gay, I really don’t care, but I thought, for the team, and the clause, it might, you know, not work as inten—”
“Stop.” Fernando cuts off Henry’s panicked rambling. “I am not gay. As far as I know, Lance is not gay. We are not together,” he confirms, trying and probably failing to fill his voice with faux authority.
“But the airport—” begins Henry.
“Was nothing,” lies Fernando.
Henry sighs. “Okay. Just, appearance’s sake, you know? If any of this leaked…”
Fernando puts a heavy hand on Henry’s shoulder, cutting him off. It’s not that he doesn’t want to hear what Henry has to say—it’s that he already knows.
If even a sliver of this were to become public, the team and everyone on it would crumble. Lance would crumble.
Lance would crumble, and Fernando wouldn’t know how to put him back together.
-
It’s especially relevant because just a few hours later, the plane touches down in London’s Luton Airport. Silverstone, the team’s home race, is this week.
England as a whole belongs to Lewis and Lando; to Mercedes and McLaren. But Silverstone? Paint it Aston Martin green.
There’s this twisting feeling in Fernando’s gut that he identifies as knowing that Henry is right. The attention on Aston certainly doesn’t help. By the time practice rolls around, Fernando is a bundle of nerves. It’s like it’s his first race all over again.
The engineers give him weird looks when he retreats to Lance’s side. Whatever. Let them. Fernando’s fucking anxious and he needs his emotional support Lance, thank you very much. (Which, okay, maybe that’s the problem. He’s sort of glued to him. It’s fine.)
Maybe it’s Fernando or maybe it’s the instinct of every racing driver, but when he does get in the car, it all falls away. It’s just him and the roar of the engine, separate from the rest of the world. And the Astons have pace. It’s nothing outrageous—they stick around the lower half of the top ten—but it’s a relief knowing that they (probably) won’t be blown out of the water at their home race.
For how much buzz is around it, Silverstone shapes up to be a normal race after qualifying. The McLarens are in front with George’s Mercedes nipping at their heels. Max and the Ferraris fight for a spot behind them. Aston, Williams, and VCARB battle it out for the last few spots in Q3. Sauber, Haas, the rookies… it’s rough.
It’s normal enough that any old idiot could have predicted the starting grid, and the looming rain doesn’t throw a wrench in anyone’s plans. Rain at Silverstone is pretty much a given, so the fact that all of the practices and qualifying had been bone dry is unusual, to say the least. Some people will jump up—Max for sure, maybe some others—and some will fall to the back.
(The night after quali, after Lance had trekked over to Fernando’s hotel room as usual, Lance had waggled his eyebrows after Fernando showed him the forecast. “‘Rain puts the cars on the same level,’” he recited, laughing, “‘but not the drivers.’ Senna!” So Lance will jump up too. Fernando is sure of it.)
(Fernando also gets an elbow to the gut if he dares mention anything about “master in the wet” during sex. Which is unfair, if you ask him. Lance is quite naturally gifted in both ways.)
Lance lightens the mood, as he always does. By the time Fernando’s strapped into the car to race, his anxiety has faded and in its place lies excitement.
So it’s unfortunate that he spins out on lap fourteen. Right into the wall, too. No gravel to save his dignity. To put it lightly, it’s not a good look for the team.
Although it leaves Fernando bitter and frustrated—at himself, at the media, at whoever happens to be in his line of sight—the blow is softened by Lance putting on the performance of a lifetime. He drives beautifully, like he’s a Senna incarnate, and turns a P11 start into a P4 finish. So close he can practically taste the champagne.
Fernando celebrates like he’s podiumed anyway, picking Lance up and spinning him around as soon as Lance jumps out of the car in parc fermé. It’s sort of strange looking with the height difference and all, but Fernando couldn’t care less.
Oh, and Ocon is there.
He had pulled off a masterclass as well, starting from the back of the grid and ending up on the podium. P3. Arguably the best drive of his career. It’s whatever. The Haas is, like, probably illegal anyway.
Lance doesn’t celebrate with Fernando for long—in fact, as soon as Fernando sets him down, Lance is off to crush Ocon in a hug and grab him by the helmet, as Ocon also does to him. He’s on the receiving end of Ocon’s champagne spray despite only being in the crowd, grinning brightly and shielding his eyes, his own happiness forgotten in his excitement for his friend.
Fernando tries not to scowl. Cameras looming, and all of that.
He can be as jealous as he wants after debriefs, though, which is handy. So he practically sprints out of them and heads for his hotel room, sending Lance a quick text to come over before hopping in the shower. His text is basic. A command if Lance has ever seen one.
Fernando: Come to my room
So Fernando can’t help but grit his teeth when he exits the shower, hair dripping and towel thrown haphazardly around his waist, to find the room empty. He checks his phone—Lance’s reply.
Lance: gonna go out with este. stop being a possessive old man lol. rain check? ;)
Fernando kind of, sort of screams into his pillow. He types out a message and hits send before he can think too hard about it.
Fernando: Lancitooo
The reply is almost instantaneous.
Lance: nandooo it’s fine we are having fun. este’s not so horrible, you know
Fernando throws his phone across the room.
If he hadn’t already been spiraling, possessiveness sinking like a red-hot stone into him, the images his brain conjures up would do it.
Of Lance smiling that languid smile of his that he only does when he’s had a few drinks, and Ocon being the appreciator, as if that smile is for him, as if it’s not Fernando’s to admire like art.
Of Ocon throwing an arm around Lance and Lance leaning into it—loose, easy. Inviting in the way only Lance can—by saying I’m not asking for it, I’m letting you have it. Accepting, not seeking; Ocon all too aware that the acceptance is rare enough to be treasured.
Fernando’s phone pings. He drags himself off of the bed to get it. It feels like a Herculean effort, but he pushes through. Could be some team emergency. Or Ocon’s disqualification. Anything.
It’s a text from Lance, and even though Fernando knows it’ll only worsen things, he can’t stop himself from opening it.
Lance: [image.jpg]
Some club somewhere. Doesn’t matter which. Lance and Ocon, drinks in hand, the framing messy and the image blurry. It’s a selfie; Lance holds the phone with an unsteady hand, and Ocon uses his spare arm to hold Lance in a playful headlock. The club lighting does almost nothing to hide their expressions: they’re both smiling so widely that their eyes almost close.
And Fernando’s skin feels like it’s on fire, and that ugly thing that rears up in his chest snaps at the air, the click of its teeth a warning of its greed.
When they’re alone together in the club, loose-lipped and inhibition gone, have they ever…?
It’s a thought Fernando hates thinking. It’s a thought he can’t prevent.
No one else deserves Lance. He’s too good for guys like Ocon, too pretty, too sweet. Too tough, skin thick where his heart is thin. No one deserves the cut of his jaw, the lines of his abs, that sinful mouth. Fernando Alonso is the one and only person to know what Lance Stroll tastes like.
Ocon touches Lance so casually, and the logical part of Fernando’s brain says of course, they’re good friends, no reason not to. But logic is never as convincing as the raw, searing emotion that zings through him and screams and shouts and leaves destruction in its wake—the emotion that says there’s more, says Ocon’s hitting on him, or maybe it’s already happened, at some other dingy club years ago…
The storm has barely cleared when Lance lets himself into the hotel room. He freezes when he turns around before relaxing his posture a bit, letting his eyes rove over Fernando’s chest and arms and lower, flicking up and down his body, ripping that towel off with his gaze alone. He wolf-whistles, makes a show of grabbing at his crotch like they’re in a bar and he’s hitting on Fernando, hoping to get lucky. “Didn’t know you were so impatient, Nando. You coulda told me what I was missing out on!” Lance chuckles, smiles playfully. He knows how to play their game.
It’s only a second before Fernando’s across the room to meet him, pinning him up against the door. “You let Ocon touch you,” he says, low like a growl. There’s fire in his veins, and whether the heat is from arousal or anger he isn’t really sure.
“Fernando!” Lance looks more than a bit amused. “As friends! For the last time, he’s straight. And even if he wasn’t, I’m not interested. You can stop being a creepy old man, I promise.” He laughs a bit breathlessly.
Fernando pins him tighter, hands gripping his hips hard as he leans in and lets his breath brush against Lance’s ear. “You let Ocon touch you,” he repeats. It’s different this time, though—it’s something with an iron will.
“You gonna do something about it?” Lance smirks. Game on.
“Gonna remind you who you belong to.”
The breath that Lance sucks in is cut short by Fernando grabbing his jaw and yanking his face down for a kiss that isn’t a kiss as much as it is a bite, all teeth on lips and tongue shoving in like Fernando will eat Lance alive.
Maybe he will.
Fernando doesn’t pull back as he walks Lance to the bed—which, he’s glad that he even remembers where the bed is, because Lance is sucking his tongue and sliding his own hands into the small of Fernando’s back, and Fernando’s so fucking dizzy with it that he barely knows his own name.
Lance gasps as Fernando comes down on top of him, pressing Lance into the mattress, and kisses him harder, messier, a bit more heat behind it. Biting to claim.
The way Fernando tears Lance’s clothes off is sort of like how a predator takes the fur off of its prey—and maybe Lance is prey, then, because Fernando devours him like a starved animal, sucking mark after mark all over his chest, biting down on skin until he tastes iron, Lance moaning the whole time under him and grabbing weakly at his back.
When Fernando nips and sucks at just the right spot—under Lance’s jaw, right where his pulse is—Lance bucks up into him, seeking friction, just the pain enough to flood his body with arousal. It’s beautiful. It’s Fernando’s.
And maybe he’s a bit too mean, because Fernando will grab those pretty hips of Lance’s hard enough to bruise and guide the motion—as Fernando sits up and pulls away, helping Lance find nothing but air.
“Ah, fuck, Nando,” Lance says through quick breaths. “Give it to me, God.”
“Brat.” Fernando bites around a nipple, hard. Lance makes a noise Fernando didn’t know he could. “Am not done.”
With careful nips, trying not to bruise any more than he’s intending to, Fernando traces out a little A, right in the middle of Lance’s chest.
An artist always has to sign their masterpiece, after all.
And Lance is a masterpiece all on his own—all firm muscle, but soft, pliant; slender curves and broad, angular shoulders; lips that Fernando would move mountains to kiss. But marked up and panting, all pretty like this? He’s not just a masterpiece. He’s Fernando’s masterpiece.
“Does Ocon know you like to hurt? Does Ocon know how pretty you sound when you come?” Fernando practically growls, hand splayed over Lance’s sternum and lips brushing against his ear.
“No, no, no, it’s just you, Nando, just you.” Lance is breathy, whining, begging without saying please.
“Say it.”
“It’s you. Only you. Ruined for anyone else. I’m… I’m yours, Nando. Always.”
“Good boy.”
-
By the time Lance wakes up the next morning, Fernando has already called to reschedule their flight.
He doesn’t know how many rounds happened last night. What he does know is that it was a damn impressive number for a 44-year-old. At a certain point, Lance was practically shooting blanks; soon after that he had been swept up in subspace so deep he barely knew his own name—only Fernando’s. And Fernando had pressed sweet kisses all over him, and held him close, and given him a painkiller and sips of water (he had paid the exorbitant price for the bottles from the hotel mini fridge, even, just so it would be cold) until Lance drifted asleep, uncaring of the mess.
This morning, the proof is everywhere—sheets absolutely disgusting with cum and lube and spit, clothes scattered around (and a tee of Lance’s that had been literally torn in half overnight, God only knows how that happened), lube bottle damn near empty, room smelling like sex even with the windows wide open. But that proof is short-lived. The proof that will last is Lance.
Lance is covered. There’s barely an inch of him that isn’t bruised or bitten. He’s a collage of teeth-marks and scratches and hickeys and handprints and he’s beautiful.
As soon as Lance stirs, Fernando is right by his side, a second dose of painkillers at the ready. “How you feel, churri?”
“Mmm.” Lance rolls over. “Sleepy.”
Fernando crawls over him so he can look him in the face. “Words, cariño.”
“Sleepy is a word,” gripes Lance, pouting. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips; Fernando can see it clear as day.
“Hey, hey, Lancito.” Fernando pecks him on the forehead. “Tell me, please. Was not too much? You were saying green last night, but…”
“Well, I couldn’t do it every day, but… that was the hottest thing to happen to me, ever.” Lance yawns, scrubs the sleep from his eyes. “And that it was you was the best part. You take such good care of me—of course I’m okay.”
Lance smiles as brightly as the morning sun streaming into the hotel room, and Fernando’s heart melts.
He wants this to last forever.
(Once he’s alone, Lance having run out to pick up some food, Fernando buys a ring.)
Notes:
yeah fuck the upload schedule ig... just getting chapters out when I can now lol
expect delays as well b/c I have another strollonso fic cooking... hehe
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