#but honestly ive been so good about her i swear i think finals & the dread of going home is making my head spin | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dear-ao3 · 1 month ago

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riddle me this. what does a 50 million dollar drive, a giant helmet made from recycled materials, the british media, safety infringements, an aborted start, six red flags, rain, team orders, the first black flag in seventeen years, the dutch national anthem and ayrton sennas 1990 mclaren all have in common?

stumped? well i’ll tell you.

it’s the 2024 brazilian grand prix.

the last race of our second to last triple header. a sprint weekend. and chaos in its highest form.

today is november 23, 2024 and make sure you get a snack because this is a long one.

we started the week off pretty strong with lance stroll getting broken up with on his birthday.

well, maybe.

his girlfriend deleted all of the pictures of him off of her instagram account on his birthday, which really doesnt look good. and this really set the tone for the week of bonkers shit that was now upon us.

things like lando being asked about the dreaded Last Week With Max incident. in an interview he was asked (told?)

“Are you aware that people watching at home don't want to see the fight between you and Max for the world championship ending in radio messages, tedious steward inquires, time penalties? They want to see you racing nicely and cleanly.”

lando was in agreement clearly because he said

“And so do I! And I do.”

max on the other hand still remained max about the situation

he was asked during the press conference: “a lot has been said since mexico. are you going to change the way you go racing this weekend?”

and max said, like a badass:

“yeah, ive heard that before in my career. its my tenth year in formula 1. i think i know what im doing!”

christian horner brought receipts, as in actual data sheets, to his mexico gp media session about how max’s penalties from mexico were unjust. i don't think that anyone really listened to any of this though because the penalties were never unturned.

one penalty that they did figure out what charles’s swear penalty from the press conference in mexico. the fia finally made a decision. charles will be pleased to know that he does Not have to do community service with max. but honestly (and this is now my own opinion here) why give one guy community service and not give it to the other? max apologized for his language Before he said “the car is fucked.” charles apologized After once he realized what was going to happen. not really sure here why the fia is out to get max but whatever i don't make the rules. also. the fines and the community service seem to Only be confined to the press conferences because as we know. people have cursed in the cool down room (lando in singapore notably) and also many have over the radio (checo, franco, charles, george, etc etc) and they have not been told anything. hm. in any case though, we have more important things to focus on than weird swear bans.

like charles leclerc nation going insane when this video was posted, which is a new contender for best weird yet still sexy video of charles on the ferrari page

liam lawson told everyone that he is “not here to make friends, im here to win.” following his Incidents with fernando and also checo at the us and mexican gps. which is interesting for a few reasons. 1. hes in a vcarb and statistically they have not won a single thing all season because they are vcarb and 2. he was soon after seeing being besties with yuki.

oh and also. max reacted to (was asked about?) the whole liam flipping checo off while they were driving in mexico thing, and max said “Checo, I think if I did that to you, I would be quite afraid leaving the country.”

and there were also the usual “this is checo’s last race weekend” general threats. weve seen these before. so theyre not worth wasting typing space on because i cant imagine that theyre going to fire him this late into the season. and why would we talk about the goofy red bull rumors that always are swirling everywhere when we could instead talk about lewis hamilton and franco colapinto.

lewis hamilton praised the crap out of franco colapinto. at the press conference on media day. as we all know franco is a lewis fangirl. so. he honestly might still be in a state of shock.

“It's always great to see young people, young talented individuals get the opportunity to come through and shine, and he did that in the first race. We had a great little battle and it was super safe. It was hard but fair. [...] He's saying it's not for him to decide, but my advice would be - I would be pushing on my side to make sure I'm doing absolutely everything. At the end of the day, he's got to continue to focus on doing his job every weekend, as he is, and hopefully, he's got good people behind him who are doing the right job to make sure that he's here racing next year.”

and low and behold a few hours later franco did make a fangirl post about it.

also. brazil is Not franco’s home race, but they are now officially in south america, so it was like a home race adjacent for him (hes from argentina) and the crowds were definitely in agreement. we will get back to that later.

there was a fan at the race who saw him in the paddock and yelled at him “FRANCO. CAN YOU SIGN MY SHIRT? IT’S A KNOCKOFF ONE. FRANCOOOOO” and he lost his shit over that. because remember a few weekends ago he told everyone to buy williams knockoff merch cause it was just as good and not as much money?

we also had some helmets. valtteris had coffee on it because its something that brazil is known for.

oscars had funny little androids on it that were all different hims (he also said he only recently learned that it was polite cat and not sleepy cat)

esteban had some brazil themed stuff

lewis had a senna/brazil tribute helmet

lewis was also going to get to drive ayrton senna’s 1990 mclaren after qualifying on saturday.

oh and of course we had stake do a funny little meme thing on their twitter because theyre quite known for their funny little meme things.

is this a terrible glimpse at media day? yeah absolutely but u know what i have 7 pages of notes front and back from the races themselves so deal with it i suppose. unlike what some of you may think, i 1. do not want to be writing this post forever and 2. also have other things i need to do.

one person was not at media day though and it was fernando alonso and it was because he was in the hospital im pretty sure somewhere in spain for what im also pretty sure was intestinal issues. he had also been out last week for media day due to sickness, but he was back for the race. between this and lace’s probable breakup it was shaping up to be a banner weekend for aston martin, and it was only going to get worse!

someone who definitely didn't miss media day though was sebastian vettel. if you don't know who sebastian vettel is, he was a four time world champion, menace, shit stirrer and boy toy twink esque guy who is now mostly unreachable and is the epitome of “hey i cant do nothing to nobody no more” and comes out of hiding maybe twice a year to subject the grid to a new arts and crafts project. but do not be fooled. this is the same guy who was asked, after winning his first race, if it was the best moment of his life and he said, and i quote “you obviously weren’t there when i lost my virginity.” anyway, this time his arts and crafts project was a giant helmet made from recycled materials paying tribute to ayrton senna. and yes, he made the whole grid get in the helmet. his whimsey is still off the charts.

he was also wearing really terrible shorts. as in they were long, over the knee khaki shorts. some things never change.

he also tried to make a bet with sky germany about max winning the championship. sky germany refused.

ok im not even going to Pretend to know what happened during the practice session. max got a 5 place grid penalty for sundays race because he took a new engine. i think george’s car briefly broke? idk. he did get it fixed tho and ended the session in p2, behind lando who was p1. and then we had a special guest in p3.

who was it? well i will give you a clue. it was NOT kevin magnussen!!! why? because he wasn’t feeling well.

so, everyones favorite (team dubbed) “super sub” jumped back in the cockpit once again.

you guessed it, it was ollie bearman!!! originally i think he was supposed to just be in for practice (and yes he did get p3 in practice). but since its a sprint weekend (yeah, i forgot that too) that means theres only one practice session and then sprint qualifying later that day. and so. the way formula racing works. is that whatever driver drives the car for qualifying also needs to drive the car for the race. they cant get replaced if the car has already qualified.

ollie by the way had never driven in brazil before. he said that he did it once in a video game. and now he was about to do it irl in a real car. he also got a phone call at 6:45am saying heyyyyy buddyyyy you wanna jump in the car this weekend? we happen to have an opening! and well that's not the exact quote but that is what happened.

and then haas announced that kevin was not going to be racing that weekend due to sickness. ollie responded in a definitely very normal way which was “of course condolences…i mean, give my best to kevin.” and then he was officially In The Car for the weekend. what could do wrong???

well lets just say that a Lot happened:

starting with lovely and wonderful Sprint Qualifying. yes that’s right. this is a sprint weekend. why does the fia do this to us guys.

two things were important to note.

there was a slight threat of rain

2. the track had been resurfaced and it was bumpy, which is not great when you're driving over 200kph. it really can affect your vision and also your back

lewis had trouble with the car a few years ago when it was porpoising and he was also not doing great at this race. but merc said that he was “all good.” he was not the only driver complaining about the bouncing though. it was extreme and it was dangerous and we will hear more about it later.

i think that franco took a nap at some point. at least its in my notes so it must have happened. and i think that it was also in the car. unfortunately i don't have a photo. like many other things on this post you will just have to trust me.

aston martin had decided that their car sucked to massive degrees and rolled back their upgrades all the way to suzuka. u know, just to see if they could figure out what the fuck was wrong with their car. Unfortunately though they could not because both of their drivers got out during sq1.

one team was pleased with what was happening and that was mclaren. they had a new rear wing that was brazil specific and also apparently legal unlike the last one and they were Flying. in sq2 lando took the fastest time with a 1.09.0. on medium tires. last years fastest time was 1.10 on soft tires, so in the words of the commentators, “norris is on another planet!” this was good for them because they hadnt actually been sure they were going to be able to race. theor freight for their car (and some other teams cars) had all been delayed cause they were shipped in wooden boxes and you cant ship things in wooden boxes to brazil because they need to protect the rain forest.

the commentators, mostly karun, also lamented about the swear bans, which they rightfully thought were stupid as hell. he brought up a good point though which was “are you going to have translators for every language? how are you going to monitor it?” because very few of them speak english as their first language and most speak more than 1 language so it is possible they could just curse in Not English

but we don't have time for that right now. not when ollie bearman had just knocked checo out of sprint qualifying. that’s right, ollie went just slightly faster, pushing checo from p10 down to p12.

liam and checo also almost crashed. which wasn't a surprise but it was still funny.

also surprising was that oscar pulled out a pole lap at the very end of sq3, a 1:08.899, only a few thousandths faster than lando.

“where did that come from?” karun asked. “was he saving something in his pocket away from his teammate? that is a very fernando alonso trick”

regardless of what it was, he was still on pole. for the second time during a sprint.

“very very happy,” oscar said in his interview. “try and win obviously…starting from the best seat in the house, make sure it stays that way.” which is an important surprise tool that you should all remember for later. later being the sprint race.

they all lined up

oscar, lando, charles, max, carlos, george, pierre, liam, alex, ollie, lewis, nico, checo, franco, valtteri, fernando, esteban, yuki, lance and guanyu.

and before we get into the sprint, lets get a little reminder on the championship standings.

1 Max Verstappen 362

2 Lando Norris 315

3 Charles Leclerc 291

4 Oscar Piastri 251

5 Carlos Sainz 240

6 Lewis Hamilton 189

7 George Russell 177

8 Sergio Perez 150

9 Fernando Alonso 62

10 Nico Hulkenberg 31

11 Lance Stroll 24

12 Yuki Tsunoda 22

13 Kevin Magnussen 14

14 Alexander Albon 12

15 Daniel Ricciardo 12

16 Pierre Gasly 9

17 Oliver Bearman 7

18 Franco Colapinto 5

19 Esteban Ocon 5

20 Liam Lawson 2

21 Zhou Guanyu 0

22 Logan Sargeant 0

23 Valtteri Bottas 0

so max, lando and i believe also charles and maybe oscar?? were still in contention for the championship title. and as a reminder. oscar was starting on pole, with lando, charles and max all behind. lando was able to knock some points off of max in mexico with the time penalties that he racked up and was really hoping to continue to do that in brazil. so max needed to get around charles at the start asap so he could start duking it out with the mclarens.

and speaking of mclaren, there was some good speculation that we might get faced once again with the “papaya rules” aka mclaren team orders. as in, oscar might have to let lando past.

and so. lets see what happened on lap 1.

well. max did not pass charles. lewis dropped several places, ollie dropped several places, and the two mclarens started to pull away from the rest of the pack, especially oscar who managed to get half a second ahead of lando.

so we had a slightly new running order:

oscar, lando, charles, max, carlos, george, pierre, liam, nico, ollie, alex, checo, franco, lewis, esteban, valtteri, yuki, fernando, lance and guanyu

and then max and charles started battling on lap 3. by lap 4 charles had taken the fastest lap. and by lap 6 he had closed the gap to lando and was in an epic drs train because lando had also closed the gap to oscar.

george had also started struggling, probably because he was in a mercedes, and was trying to get passed by pierre gasly, in a alpine.

lando meanwhile, was still up in p2 and not entirely pleased.

“yeah, im not sure what were doing here i thought we talked about this” he said over his radio right before he locked up and fell out of oscars drs and into charles and then also max’s drs. he was probably referring to, why the hell hadn’t mclaren done their team orders business yet?

well, his race engineer, will jacobs, had absolutely no information to offer for him, he instead said. “understood keep doing what you’re doing.”

“yeah whatever,” lando said, unimpressed.

there was some announcer speculation that oscar might give it up to him on the last lap, on the last corner, similar to what lando did to oscar way back in hungary. hungary? idk. its been a long season. and its still even longer.

anyway. checo had been stuck down behind nico hulkenberg in 11th for a very solid nine laps, unable to pass him. he finally managed it on lap 9. his reward? another haas to pass! ollie bearman! he managed that a few laps later and was met with quite possibly his biggest foe: liam lawson. who, just to add even more insult to injury, was in the last points position of the race.

mclaren meanwhile had decided to do some team orders, but not the ones that lando wanted. they told oscar to drop back to give lando some drs, to rescue him from the charles and max inferno that was chasing him. and oscar did. the top 4 though were still separated only by 4 seconds.

and charles, he understood the assignment. he was racing absolute balls to the wall, elbows all the way out. doing anything and everything to keep max behind him.

max was though, unimpressed.

“ah come on charles man, so many mistakes,” he said over the radio.

charles was told about this post sprint, and he had a funny little reaction. unfortunately i could only find that reaction in gif format.

in any case, i believe this was a clip from sky sports, possibly probably alex jaques who said after that radio "that is max verstappen urging a rival that he's had since his childhood to stay with the McLaren because he wants the ferrari to stay there. but that error has created now two battles instead of a four car battle for the lead."

to make it worse for max, lando could have gotten ahead of oscar here, but alas there were no team orders. so he could not. and also he was still slightly too close to charles and max to not be under threat from them. still, oscar was told to floor it to open the gap between lando and charles, for the potential swap.

and there was nothing that charles could do about it cause he had absolutely no battery power.

will jacobs finally decided to mention the team orders threats on lap 17. “we are happy to hold these positions until the last lap.”

to which lando said “yeah i will overtake.”

and so it seemed that the commentators were correct. there was a prophesied last lap swap coming from mclaren.

in case you're tired of this mess, checo was still battling for 8th place with liam. he managed to get it very briefly. and then he lost it because he locked up.

oscar went fastest on lap 18. and then max also passed charles.

so it was game fucking on at the front of the grid. and everyone, including gp, max’s race engineer, knew it. because he told max on lap 19 “cmon mate, lets chase em down.”

mclaren responded as anyone would. by telling oscar “verstappen we believe is faster than leclerc” on lap 24. which is like. fork found in kitchen. max is the king of putting that red bull in places that it should never be allowed to go and that is the front of the grid.

speaking of red bulls, checo finally managed to pass liam lawson for 8th. and he did it cleanly without locking up this time. and liam didn't even flip him off.

and mercedes, to no ones surprise, had no race pace.

then! interestingly! there was a yellow flag! but the cameras didn't quite cut fast enough so we didn't really see what happened. turned out that nico hulkenberg had pulled off with an exhaust issue. he was technically off the track, but it was not in an overtaking spot (can overtake during yellow flags) and he seemed to still be trying to maneuver the car further away from the track, so the announcers said that this would not hurt the overtaking battle that was looming between the mclarens and max. the cameras then jumped back to that, kind of ignoring nico.

they had still not swapped, and max was gaining.

then the cameras cut Back to nico hulkenberg. and he was now out of the car. standing on the grass near some barriers. and this picture doesnt really do it justice but he is about 15 feet from a live race track

(there was still a yellow flag in that specific sector but he was OUT OF THE CAR next to a FORMULA 1 TRACK with NO SAFETY CAR)

there was now though a Threat of a safety car. gee i wonder why. his car was stopped not too far from the track and he was standing on the track, it was a massive disaster waiting to happen.

and so, mclaren gave the team order to swap positions.

lando and oscar did.

and immediately.

and i MEAN IMMEDIATELY they called a virtual safety car.

oscar had dropped back into the clutches of max verstappen and max had just revved up to pass him when suddenly! no no! safety car!

which was interesting.

but we will get back to that in a minute.

now, under a virtual safety car, cars need to keep the gap between them, but the track can go green at any moment and without any warning.

and max was on top of that. “pay attention to this!” he said over radio “because if hes (oscar) on purpose driving slow (to give lando a bigger gap) report it!”

oscar though seemingly remained on his best behavior.

and on the last lap the virtual safety car was announced to be ending.

max was getting antsy behind the two mclarens and pulled up next to oscar in preparation for the track going green, but it went green a second too late and oscar was able to pull away and make a beeline all the way to the checkered flag while still keeping max behind.

lando came in first, followed by oscar, max, charles, carlos, george, pierre, checo, liam, alex. lewis, franco, esteban, ollie, yuki, guanyu, and lance and nico DNFd.

oscar was clearly very disappointed about the result (remember he said after sprint qualifying that he wanted to hold onto his p1). and karun wondered aloud if “mark webber will negotiate a bonus for oscar with that, he should.” cause remember, mark webber was the infamous number 2 red bull teammate to sebastian vettel who was forced to pretty much give up anything and everything for him. and, need i remind you, this weekend seb was running willy nilly around the paddock getting drivers to get in his giant recycled helmet. all very distressing things for one mark webber.

oscar also said that it was “a bit tricky….bit bumpy….learned a lot for the race tomorrow.”

lando said that “we work well as a team together….i thanked oscar….he deserved it but you do what you have to do.”

later, in the press conference, an interviewer congratulated oscar on his win. oscar, confused, said “i don't know what i won but thank you”

max said that he “had to wait for some mistakes and luckily they came” in regards to overtaking charles. “it took a bit too long with charles…but whenever hes on the drs, hes very hard to attack!”

charles said in a later interview about max “i think max was a lot more on the reserve at the beginning then started pushing at the end. he had more pace, he did a better job with tire management”

lets remember that these two are Not Teammates.

max though was brought to the stewards though for a vsc infringement (when he pulled next to oscar) because that is Not Allowed. and he ended up with a time penalty that demoted him to fourth. so charles ended up finishing third. and he got a penalty point on his super license.

but what about that safety car call?

well i am so glad that you asked.

the post race show opened with one will buxton talking to one andrea stella, the mclaren team principal. and here was what he had to say about the mclaren 1-2:

“very good news, a mclaren 1-2… [we had a ] clear conversation with both drivers [before the race]” here he then called them both number 1 drivers again (which everyone thought we were past) “[it was] very risky swapping even with 1.5 seconds [to max], we were waiting for a few more seconds to materialize, but it never did”

will buxton, ever the shit stirrer and also as we know, probably the number 1 person pissed at mclarens team strategy this year, then asked why lando was so upset over the radio.

andrea was having none of it. “well i already answered the question didn't i? when you're a number 1 driver you get nervous when you are behind…we needed to do a very good job to stay ahead of him [max].”

he then departed and james hinchcliffe quite literally Stumbled into frame with his own thoughts on the mclaren swap. “it ended to plan, it didn't go to plan,” he said. “they got very lucky with the vsc.”

he then talked about the vsc. “the timing of the vsc was weird to me” you know with the driver being a solid 10 feet from the track with zooming cars? “i don't think it was done the best it could have been done.”

and this seemed to be the general consensus everywhere else online. why on earth wait to call a safety car when quite literally we had a driver who was out of the car and standing next to the track? that is quite literally a Safety Problem. and given the timing of the mcalren swap, it seemed Possible that perhaps race control had been waiting for mclaren to swap before calling the car. which is, as im sure you could all figure out, kind of weird and sketchy.

but aside from that. there was still much praise for max. “max played it so smart today,” james said, referring to max selectively murdering charles’s tires by fighting with him for the first half of the race. “with not the best car on track hes still performing above expectations.”

there was some proper francomania in brazil. so much so that flights from argentina to brazil had sold out. franco said on the post race show that “the rivalry between brazil and argentina is in football not motor racing.”

pierre had scored a p7 which he was happy with. mostly because it was a points position and those are kinda hard to come by at alpine.

lewis though just about wanted to quit. they asked him how his race pace was and he said “horrendous. one of the worst races ive had” which is really saying something when you remember that he has had 353 race starts. he wanted to change the car entirely before quali.

and lance stroll also winked at esteban ocon while they were interviewing ollie bearman.

most notable quote from the post sprint was this, by max:

the interviewer asked him: “lando said ‘i don't have to change my driving style, if anyone has to do it, it's max.’ do you agree? you won't change it?”

and max said: “[im a] three time world champion. i don't have to change anything.”

max, as some of us may forget, is a very good driver, he’s just in a shit car this year and other people are very very fast. finally. but he is in fact a 7 time world champion. he won every race except 3 last year. he’s insane and he loves this sport. it never pays well to underestimate max verstappen.

and with that absolute banger of a line, let’s get into qualifying.

what's that? its delayed? why is that?

oh! cause its raining!

like comical, almost biblical amounts of rain.

during the delay we had one will buxton and one james hinchcliffe speaking to us about all the current drama.

for example: is checo doing enough? apparently christian horner has dialed back the intensity of his support, so whos to say! but then again, this is red bull, they drop people for anything and everything

and they briefly mentioned the audi seat cause everyone is in contention for the audi seat apparently, including gabriel bortoleto, who is currently leading the f2 championship and a mclaren academy driver.

but they mostly debated their favorite topic: what the ever loving fuck is going on at mclaren.

specifically, this edition: Why Didn't They Swap Cars Sooner????

(please know this conversation was had in rain jackets in the pouring damn rain and it looked like they were like uh we got no broadcast happening cause downpour we need to fill the time we need to fill the time hmmm what to do oh! we got will and hinch! give then a microphone and let them go for it! and that they did)

james thought that they left themselves exposed to max and charles for too long, and apparently mclaren said that it would swap the cars at the first opportunity originally but then they didn't swap when they said over the radio that the gap to leclerc was significant.

will buxton had a theory: “they’re trying to do it without upsetting either driver”

he then, in true will buxton fashion, went completely and totally off the rails about it:

“andrea stella wrote the guidebook for team orders when he worked at ferrari. where is that? [why aren’t they saying ‘you work for us, you do what we say’?]”

“the team [the drivers] needs to understand who pays the bills here” james added.

“if they don't lay down the law now they put themselves in an awkward position or later” will said about how this would affect the future of mclaren because if they were already starting to win now and be in contention for the championships then whos to say that they couldn't do it again next year?

and then, somewhat inexplicably, they stopped talking to us and we had no screens no nothing no view on anyone for about 40 minutes. all we could assume was that qualifying was delayed.

and that it definitely was.

once we finally got a visual on the track again it was in fact still raining, and only getting worse.

but if theres one thing about formula 1, its that they know how to have fun in the rain.

like how they let ted loose in the pit lane and he stalked through the mercedes garage, and proudly told the whole world that bono, lewis’s race engineer, has a carbon fiber cup of tea. and then the camera zoomed in on it.

he then also tried to talk to toto by picking up a headset and shouting into it “we miss you toto!” but instead of getting to toto the message went to jack, toto’s son?

and then someone, i don't remember who, perhaps it was karun, told ted to “look at fred vasseur, hes a handsome man most of the time.”

the crowds were shouting “ole ole ole franco!” which was different from their usual chant of “ole ole ole senna!” and will buxton told franco that “flights from buenos aries to sao palo have sold out, that's the affect you are having” franco was impressed.

ollie bearman, who has objectively, by the way, been thrown now into three increasingly more insane race weekends (saudi arabia with like a few hours notice, singapore, and now the hellscape that was the giant rain storm in brazil) decided to do the sensible thing and take a nap.

"at his age it's gonna be his bed time soon, right?" one of the servus tv announcers said about ollie.

lewis decided to brave the rain to take some aesthetic rain pics

which he then posted on his instagram story

kimi antonelli was not so lucky. he got shoved into the rain by some mercedes mechanics. for sport.

george meanwhile was off jumping in puddles

instagram

and looking like a polite bowling pin wearing maybe some toe nail polish

and jack doohan made everyone tea in the alpine garage

instagram

oscar had a lovely little chat with fernando alonso

and then so did mark webber

perhaps the most insane part of this was that no one and i mean no one knew how they were going to decide the grid order, should qualifying not happen. and as it got progressively more and more delayed, that was looking like it was going to be the case.

the race director told everyone at one point that it was “not really possible to qualify” which was you know, a problem, since that needs to happen in order for them to race.

hilariously, there was nothing in the regulations for if someone like this were to happen.

next years regulations said that championship standings could be used for qualifying order if qualifying was not able to occur, but that's not this years regs so they couldn't do that. there were though regulations for what should happen should qualifying for a sprint race not be able to occur and that was use the standings from practice 1. and there was also regulations for what should happen if qualifying could not occur on a normal race weekend and that was use the standings from practice 3. but this was a sprint weekend in the main grand prix. so should they use the standings from practice 1? that would be particularly advantageous to haas who had ollie bearman come in third. should they use the standings from the sprint race? that would benefit mclaren.

“i’ll add this to the list of reasons why i’m glad im not a steward,” karun said.

they continued to debate. everyone went back and forth. theyre going to use practice 1! theyre going to use the sprint! they’ll use sprint qualifying!

they got a hold of mike krak (the aston martin tp) who said that it was “a bit too dark and a bit too gloomy and a lot wet” definitely too wet for racing.

sure enough qualifying was then switched from “delayed” to “postponed” perhaps indefinitely.

there was a chance that they could move qualifying to sunday morning. but the weather was not good for then either. and so the session ended, with no one knowing what the fuck was happening and sir lewis hamilton interrupting f1 ceo Stefano Domenicali’s interview saying:

"I wanna go out give us better wet tyres and warming blankets so we can go out!"

and that was it

now, rain at the interlagos circuit is not exactly unheard of. mostly because it is literally interlagos (between two lakes, in portuguese)and theres been some insane rain races here before. namely 2016. max, who was still nearly a rookie and only in his first full year at red bull at that point had qualified fourth but ended up down in 16 with 15 laps to go due to some oversteer and pit stopping. he managed to make it all the way up to 3rd by sheer willpower and insanity alone and toto wolff called it “the verstappen show” because it was “physics…being redefined.”

another infamous rain race was the one in 2008, the season finale race and where lewis hamilton won his first world championship title at mclaren. he almost lost the title to felipe massa at ferrari. felipe won the race, and lewis was running in 6th around the last few corners to the checkered flag when the person driving in front of him, timo glock, started going slowly and he managed to pass him for 5th place, which was all he needed to get to win the championship. but there were a few minutes of celebration in the ferrari garage where they thought they had won the drivers championship, until lewis crossed the line. and “is that glock going slowly?” is one of those very famous facing quotes

and last year at qualifying in brazil it ended with an absolutely biblical storm (according to crofty) and we got the infamous max verstappen storm lap for pole position

the running fan theory though as to why there was such massive amounts of rain this year was that nelson piquet was in the paddock. why does this matter? well. nelson piquet (a three time world champion and also father of max verstappen’s current girlfriend kelly) was fined 1 million dollars and banned from entering an f1 paddock again as punishment for racist and homophobic comments he made on video about lewis hamilton. and he was just there. in the red bull garage. like nothing was wrong. (this is made infinitely worse by the way that f1 drivers have since been banned from making “political statements” on the track and etc, mostly because lewis in 2020/21 did a bunch of advocating for black lives matter and got some other drivers in on it (he was stopped by the fia for wearing a shirt that said “Justice for Breonna Taylor” and sebastian vettel did some other advocating for the environment and also lgbt community, so they cant really even complain too much about this)

lewis did though tweet this tweet after that whole incident.

but anyway. qualifying. what was to come of qualifying??

well. let me tell you.

qualifying was postponed until 7:30am on race day, local time. and the race was moved up to i think 10:30 ??? am? to try and avoid as much weather as possible. which was good progress for f1 cause usually they don't do this.

it wasn't great for the drivers though who had to be awake at about 4am, barely ate food and jumped into the cars. esteban ocon set his alarm at precisely 4:31.

and george had coffee on an empty stomach. lando had a nutella sandwich. and off they went.

and by off they went i mean, it was still raining. “wetter than a fisherman’s boot” according to crofty.

but they were qualifying.

ollie had never driven an f1 car in the wet before. which he was about to get a whole lot of experience doing.

some drivers though really love the wet. rain at at f1 race, while scary, is sort of a neutralizer because it really comes down to the skill of the driver and not so much the car. george loves the wet (a la spa 2021 when he managed to qualify a shitbox williams in p2) and so does esteban and lewis and max among others.

lance also likes a good wet race. “well hes canadian, lance stroll,” crofty said. “he’s rather good on the ice.”

and to make it extra fun, theres no tire warming blankets for the wet tires to save money, which seems a little counterintuitive, but they don't really get used very often.

everyone was whipping around, dodging the puddles as best as they could, trying to clear the track of water a little, and we had some interesting people up in the top 5. as in the top five was esteban ocon, fernando alonso, yuki tsnuoda, checo perez, and lance stroll.

and then, could it be? in this economy? a red flag???

it indeed was! and it would not be the last!

it was franco, he had found the wall. he was okay. but the car was not.

and there was not a lot of time to fix it.

karun took this time to tell everyone that he thought that franco could not possibly get the red bull seat (which was a thing that was being debated hotly in the paddock despite franco saying that he was not in talks for a seat last weekend) because of incidents like this due to his own inexperience.

crofty brought up a separate but interesting point which was that in all the previous times that we have had qualifying on a sunday, a german has been on pole.

he is of course, correct.

japan 2004: michael schumacher

japan 2010: sebastian vettel

australia 2013: sebastian vettel

texas 2015: nico rosberg

japan 2019: sebastian vettel

and there was of course only one german on the grid right now. nico hulkenberg.

“its written in the stars!” crofty proclaimed loudly and to the general annoyance of karun, who did not want there to be a german polesitter this race because then crofty would be “insufferable” about it.

while they were debating that, the red flag had cleared and everyone went out again. including george russell, who was so impatient to get out that he overtook in the pit lane and despite being impeded a few times, still managed to put his mercedes in p2.

max got his lap time deleted and was now stuck down in 12th. lewis still needed to get out of the bottom 5 and lando was stuck in 15th.

everyone had one more lap.

lewis managed to only go 14th. then got pushed to 15th.

lando managed an okay first sector but needed “a middle and final sector of his life here” in order to clear the elimination zone. and he got a personal best in the middle sector but still only managed to go 14th. he was safe, but lewis was out. along with ollie, franco, nico and guanyu.

(“your run of german poles on a sunday is gone,” karun happily told crofty)

lewis, as could be predicted, was very unhappy with his car. as he should have been. according to crofty he is “one of the top 3 drivers of all time in the wet” and yet. here he was. in the wet. out in q1.

at the start of q2 it was not actively raining, which was good news. but it was still slippy and people still had on wet tires for the most part.

george went for a little spin but he was okay. no damage and no walls for him.

carlos was not so lucky.

he found the barriers. another red flag.

later he said that he had clearly misjudged the grip.

his crash was pretty big, bigger than francos, and again, theres less than 5 hours until the race.

everyone was ushered back into the pit lane as the track was cleared and repaired.

at the time, oscar was leading, followed by george, lance, max, liam, checo, valtteri, fernando, charles and carlos with lanco, pierre, alex, yuki, and esteban in the drop zone. 5:51 to go.

when they came back on track fernando alonso somehow managed to go fastest. could it be his first pole in over 4000 days???

and as everyone was on their final flying lap, including lando and max and checo, the yellow flags came out. it was lance stroll, he had gone off.

again, like in the sprint, the cameras did not immediately cut to him. but the announcers said that “i think race control are waiting for these laps to count before calling the red flag.” because several people were on flying laps and it was the end of the session, so it would not be resumed after the red flag.

lando crossed the line. he went fastest. almost immediately the red flag was called. max and checo were unable to finish their flying laps.

the red flag has had to be called cause lance was in “a dangerous position”

later, there was a half baked excuse that they thought that lance was trying to get the car moving which was why they did not call the red flag. this, by the way, was the state of lance’s car:

it was clearly not in any state to be driven.

and yet. it took them 40 whole seconds to call a red flag for this. the previous two red flags were called in under 5 seconds.

and, need i remind you, that the delay of this red flag allowed for lando to get himself out of the bottom 5 and also knocked max and checo out of the qualifying session.

now might also be a good time to mention that max had a five place grid penalty for changing his power unit. so he would be starting all the way down in seventeenth.

and he was fucking pissed.

because remember. the 40 second delay of this red flag allowed Everyone to finish their flying lap Except for max and checo. so q2 ended with lando in first, followed by fernando, oscar, liam, alex, charles, esteban, george, lance, and yuki with valtteri, max, checo, carlos and pierre all getting eliminated.

also this is a very very valid safety complaint. it should not take that long for a red flag to be called when the car is not moving, had three clearly broken wheels and is also 15 feet from the track. all the worst accidents in f1 happen when there is a car that is already not moving from an accident or a problem and then it gets hit by another car. there have already been people who have died this way. it does not need to happen again.

aside from the bs flag call, checo was also pissed at red bull for entirely separate reasons and those reasons were because red bull had waited really long to go out for the final run which was part of the reason why they were not able to finish.

“cmon guys,” he said over radio. “we gotta do that better…if everyone is already waiting at the end of the pit lane why don't we go?”

fans were outraged at this. one commented on instagram under a post about the teams qualifying positions “what is checo's garage doing? seriously???” and a red bull mechanic named greg commented underneath it saying “giving him the same tools as max.” then, a second red bull mechanic named charlie commented responded to greg, saying “why you lying for”

so. shit is certainly hitting the fan in more ways than one at red bull.

but back to qualifying.

there were no red bulls. which was odd. but we did have nine cars: both mclarens, both rb’s, and one aston, one mercedes, one williams, one ferrari and one alpine. what an interesting mix.

and it was about to get even more interesting because fernando alonso found a wall.

another red flag.

“red flag was much quicker that time,” crofty said. “19 seconds instead of 40.”

and another wrecked car.

the standing order, with 6:59 left on the clock was lando, alex, oscar, esteban, george, charles, yuki, liam, fernando and lance.

and the rain could be coming back.

but there was good news for some people! like alex albon who was, according to crofty “on course for his highest start” as he was currently sitting in p2 rather comfortably.

and in anticipation for the rain to re start, everyone had already queued up in the pit lane, despite the fact that the track had not yet been green flagged.

“it’s like the post office on a tuesday morning. you go down to get a box of stamps and they're already queuing up!” crofty said, making absolutely no sense.

thankfully there was no need to dwell on it because the track went green and they all spilled out again.

yuki went off and into the gravel, but was able to get out. so there was no red flag.

that came a few minutes later, for one very, very unfortunate alex albon.

yes, the same alex albon that had been on course to have his highest ever start. that alex albon.

and it was a big crash. he ping ponged right across the whole track like a very expensive and very broken ping pong ball.

he had no idea what happened either. over the radio he asked if the brakes failed.

and now williams had two very, incredibly broken cars to fix in just about three hours. remember that this team is held together by an excel spreadsheet.

three minutes, thirty one seconds to go.

and esteban ocon was seated at the front of the pit lane, waiting. behind him, the remaining six cars still left in the qualifying session from hell. remember this was all before ten am. at least two of them were running on only coffee and nutella.

“if i were him [esteban ocon], i’d select first gear and then wait ten seconds,” crofty said, speaking about how to impede lando and waste time, who was behind him, when coming out of the pit lane.

“oh you’re naughty,” karun said. then he went on a rant about how you physically cannot lie to the stewards because they will find out out. he apparently knew this from experience.

esteban did not impede lando and oscar upon exiting the pit lane. they all came out as they should.

“glad to see esteban found his first gear no problem and is out on the track,” crofty said. “[this is] quite the day in the championship battle.”

and that it really was. five red flags, seven cars still standing, max verstappen starting p17, lando finally starting to really close the gap to him in the championship, qualifying at 7:30am on a sunday, race in three hours, rain, back end of a triple header, no one’s been home in a month, and everyone was awake at 4am.

still, lando managed to improve his time, staying on provisional pole. oscar locked up and didn't finish his lap, he stayed p3.

liam lawson was gaining. he went second.

he was then replaced by yuki. for second.

then esteban ocon pulled out a third, splitting the two racing bulls.

lando extended his pole lap a second time.

and then george pulled out a p2.

charles unfortunately did not get in on the p2 fun. he stayed 6th.

and so. 1 hour and 45 minutes and five red flags later, with only barely 3.5 hours to the race. we finally had the starting order of the 2024 brazil gp.

p1: lando norris

p2: george russell

p3: yuki tsnuoda

p4: esteban ocon

p5: liam lawson

p6: charles leclerc

p7: alex albon

p8: oscar piastri

p9: fernando alonso

p10: lance stroll

p11: valtteri bottas

p12: checo perez

p13: carlos sainz

p14: pierre gasly

p15: lewis hamilton

p16: ollie bearman

p17: max verstappen

p18: franco colapinto

p19: nico hulkenberg

p20: zhou guanyu

one person wasn’t satisfied with their position and that was charles leclerc.

“that's p6” his race engineer told him over the radio.

“that's fucking shit” charles said.

the top three were definitely pleased though.

“a lot going on today,” lando said, accurately. “a little surprised.”

“really pleased to be lining up p2,” george said. “i loved it [coming in early] to be honest. maybe this is the format for sunday morning.”

“very tricky,” yuki said. “certainly enjoyed it. feels much better than yesterday, good pace.”

yuki also ran into all of his mechanics in victory.

and we got this hilarious picture.

and i know what you're thinking. did everyone manage to repair their cars in time for the race?

yes. everyone except for alex albon, that is, who had to withdraw from the race due to significant damage.

what? that was not what you were thinking?

oh. you want to know if lewis got to drive sennas 1990 mclaren??

yeah! he did! before the race! and he did it no handed, in the rain. not to be biased here, but that's my fucking seven time world champion.

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and. finally. without any further ado. the race. or more accurately, the drivers parade.

charles was standing with pierre and then Yanked his had away from him so that he could shake hands with max. they seemingly developed somehow even more of a soldiers bond here, having a weird unspoken agreement that they were going to stop mclaren at whatever costs, because honestly what else could these two be yapping about, looking like they were teammates? especially when max was one minor inconvenience away from burning down the entire paddock?

meanwhile george and alex were causing all kinds of problems, completely oblivious to the scheming going on around them

and that about sums up the drivers parade.

onwards.

to the race.

it was still slightly raining when the cars all pulled off for their formation lap. and unfortunately that was where the chaos began.

with lance stroll going off during the formation lap. he then turned out of it and got himself stranded in the gravel after boinking into the wall and was effectively stuck.

and so there was an aborted start. some drivers, the several at the front, started to go around the track again, but their was confusion from others (like max) if aborted start meant that they did go around again or if they just sat on the grid and waited for the mechanics to come back out. in any case, everyone ended up going around again.

in the end, it ended up being that lando, the polesitter, was not supposed to go around again. and he did. and a lot of people followed him around. and no one knew if anyone (like his engineer) told him to go around again or he just did it on his own. he was still noted for going, and the whole mess was going to get brought up to the stewards later.

because what were they supposed to do in that instance? penalize everyone?

“yet another reason why im glad im not a steward,” karun said.

one thing was for sure and that was that lance definitely should buy his mechanics dinner that night as an apology because they had worked very hard to fix his car only for him to bin it again. (though the car had been in several pieces not too long again and there was a chance something was not connected correctly, he did say later that the car had felt pretty bad to dive in the formation lap)

this isnt even the first time that a car hasnt completed the formation lap in brazil. just last year charles leclerc crashed on the formation lap due to steering failure.

once they all arrived back on the grid after formation lap 2 the mechanics came back out and started rechecking the cars and etc while they waited for lance’s car to get cleared. and the mercedes mechanics made a sneaky little adjustment to the tire pressure, hoping that no one would notice. unfortunately, they noticed.

onto formation lap 3! and thank god! everyone made it this time!

so with 18 cars and a rainy race ahead, lights went out and away they went into lap 1.

george was able to hold onto the lead!

and at the end of the first lap (which everyone blessedly survived) we had the following order: george, lando, yuki, esteban, charles, liam, oscar, fernando, pierre, lewis, max, franco, ollie, valtteri, nico, guanyu and checo.

that's right. max made up seven places. seven. and lewis had made up five. they were coming. max especially

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checo meanwhile had briefly gone spin, hence why he was now down in last place.

max passed lewis for 10th, already back into the points by lap 2.

george took the fastest lap on lap 3, already leading by 1.5 seconds. lando took it from him on lap 4. there was no DRS due to the rain, so lando was going to have to pass george the old fashioned style.

ollie bearman briefly went off the track after a small incident with franco, but he was able to rejoin.

and max passed pierre for 9th on lap 5

and then was up to 8th on lap 6 after passing fernando

meanwhile, along with lando, george, yuki and liam were all also noted for the starting procedure infringement at the beginning of the race. they would have to go with lando to the stewards after the race to hear their fate. meaning that no matter what the outcome of the race was, there was still a chance that they could get slammed with penalties after, so who knew if the real winners would in fact be the winners.

max, who had followed the rules for the starting procedure, took fastest lap on lap 7 as he started to close the gap to oscar in p7.

lando had started to eat into george’s lead a little, and george was now only .8 seconds ahead.

and the stewards noted the incident between ollie and franco. ollie received a 10 second penalty for causing a collision. which didn't really make a lot of sense to people as franco didn't really even have any damage.

max was declared to be the fastest man on track, faster than george, as he still zoomed up to the back of oscar.

meanwhile, lewis’s car had started bouncing, but george seemed unaffected as he took the fastest lap again on lap 10.

max passed oscar on lap 10, now in 7th. “he came from so far back,” oscar said, entirely not expecting it.

“max has tremendous confidence,” karun said.

and might i remind you all that it is RAINING

and then he passed liam for 6th on lap 11. unsurprisingly, liam was more compliant with max passing him than he had been with checo passing him in mexico). he was only 2.5 seconds behind charles, who was in p5. he had already made up 11 places in 11 laps in the pouring freaking rain.

lewis was not having as good luck. he went off the track and then got passed by franco.

“if i was haas i’d be annoyed with the penalty,” the announcers said, referring to ollies 5 second penalty. “nothing is wrong with that williams.”

by lap 15 there was a four way battle brewing for third. yuki, esteban, charles and max. who again i will remind you was 17th a mere 15 laps ago. this performance was starting to put even his 2016 brazil rampage to shame.

lewis was still not doing nearly as well, he tried to pass franco and failed.

lando was still in second behind george on lap 17 and said that he was struggling to overtake and that they were slow on the straights.

and to top it all off. the rain was set to get heavier in 15 minutes time.

charles, meanwhile, was managing to keep max behind. maybe he had brushed up on his skills since yesterday when max had called him out during the sprint for making so many mistakes over the radio.

no one had boxed yet. and the rain was starting to come down a little heavier. “getting slippery with these worn tires in the wet” nico said on lap 18.

and now as we know, its a crapshoot at best figuring out when to box for tires when its not raining. all that gets compounded into a fuckshoot when its raining. because it its expected to rain more soon, you'd want to put on new tires closer to then so that you have a better chance at clearing the water. plus theres always a chance it could get red flagged and then you could get a free pit stop. so the teams needed to get to the point with the big rain and then box for tires and hope that that was the right choice and that no one went off before then.

lando was back to gaining on george on lap 18

and ollie passed lewis for 14th

hamilton was clearly struggling in the mercedes, but george was leading? so was it a lewis problem? was it a car problem?? no one knew

max, meanwhile, was still under a second behind charles, no drs, on lap 20. charles had managed to hold him up for 9 laps and counting, which was a true feat when you remember how many places he has already made up.

“car’s not driveable mate,” lewis said on lap 21. “locking up, bouncing everywhere.” apparently the mercedes had some kind of a brake problem, but george was managing it just fine. he was still leading.

on lap 22 max tried to pass charles

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charles, clearly, did not let him

“that was charles leclers knowing exactly where max was going to go and defending it a long way out!” karun said.

“he was squeezing me!” max complained. “he didn’t leave a car’s width!”

no one else seemed to have this view though because the stewards did not note the incident.

carlos was seemingly having some kind of car problem as he stopped behind ollie and lewis after going off the track briefly.

and this was all looking like it might be a good time for some new tires.

by lap 24, with heavier rain rolling in any minute, here were the standings:

george, lando, yuki, esteban, charles, max, liam, oscar, pierre, fernando, nico, ollie, lewis, franco, carlos, checo, valtteri, and guanyu.

the drivers had to make the call for the tires to go to the wets, according to the announcers. its something that the driver has to feel, not really the team, because the driver is the one in the car.

charles pitted for inters on lap 25.

not full wets, which was interesting (wets have more groves on them, inters have less, and they were about to have a shit load of rain)

lando asked to box to overtake george on lap 26. mclaren wanted him to stay out, despite his protests that he wanted to box for new tires. so he stayed out.

liam lawson meanwhile went off the track due to contact with oscar. he came back on in 9th.

nico hulkenberg pitted for inters on lap 26

lando was half a second behind george on lap 27

and apparently those inters didn't work too well for nico hulkenberg because he went off track and managed to get stranded on some banking.

a virtual safety car was called on lap 28, though not before esteban ocon managed to pass yuki for third.

again, who knew why it took them so long to call the safety car.

many people decided to pit.

oscar, fernando, lewis, ollie, carlos and checo.

and at this point, mercedes was finally reported for adjusting their tire pressure on the grid, which is not allowed! and also very bad news for george should he win the race because usually that behavior results in a disqualification and i don't think that george could handle another dsq after winning this season.

nico hulkenberg, meanwhile, was able to get back on the track

and the virtual safety car ended.

right as george and lando went to pit. which was incredibly unlucky

prior to this, george came on the radio to say that he thought that it was now red flag conditions. and he was probably correct.

“i think this is going to go red mate,” he said on lap 28. “this should go red. we cant keep a car on the road like this. theres going to be big crashes. theres a big puddle through 4 and 13. there will be a crash there. i think stay out. it should go red.” and that would be good because then george could get his free pit stop and also maintain the lead of the race.

“understood, understood,” his engineer said. “so box, box.”

“i think, no, its going to go red,” george repeated.

“box box. box, box. box, box. we need to box,” his engineer said. and so george had no choice but to box.

someone who didn't box was esteban ocon. he chose to stay out and with both lando and george pitting he was now leading the race on lap 29.

liam lawson and yuki tsnuoda pitted.

and after all the pit stops, we had:

esteban, max, pierre, george, lando, yuki, charles, oscar, fernando, valtteri, lewis, carlos, checo, ollie, franco, guanyu and nico.

“after a truly awful season,” crofty said. “alpine is 1 and 3.” that they were. somehow. maybe it would stay that way.

and after all that. lando finally managed to pass george. but only for fourth, not for first.

and the safety car was deployed for rain.

so now no one could pass anyone.

esteban ocon had a 7 second lead on max verstappen.

and franco colapinto took this opportunity to pit for new inters.

oscar got a 10 second penalty for causing that collision a way long time ago with liam lawson.

and merc were still under investigation for the tire pressure thing.

and then all the others were still under investigation for the start procedure mishap as well.

at this point, max had gained 15 places. pierre had gained 10.

and behind the safety car they all pootled along. esteban, max, pierre, lando, george, yuki, charles, oscar, fernando, liam, lewis, valtteri, carlos, checo, ollie, franco, zhou and nico

that was, until franco had a huge crash.

and once again, there was the return of the red flag.

so now williams had crashed three whole times during the weekend. remember, they have no money and hardly any parts. and the mechanics were distressed beyond belief.

lando hopped on radio, annoyed with the mclaren strategy error because now everyone at the front (two alpines and max) would get free tires and he would not have the opportunity to get back to the front after they pitted.

george on the other hand….

“so, red flag, red flag,” his engineer said.

“fuck!” george cursed. “i fucking said it! shouldve stayed out!”

yuki got a pep talk immediately after getting out of the car from team principal laurent

and oscar jumped out of his car and immediately apologized to liam lawson for the incident.

“theres a proper variety bag of pick and mix penalties that need investigating,” crofty said.

including nico hulkenberg who was being investigated for restarting his race after getting assistance from the marshalls pushing him back onto the track

and the results were in. he got a black flag. meaning he fucked up so bad he was disqualified. he was out. and it was the first black flag in 17 years. team haas was really doing it different this year. cause remember kevin got the first race ban in 12 years this season as well.

and ted just happened to watch nico get told this. he felt very awkward about it.

“i cannot watch this anymore, it’s too depressing,” ted said, turning away.

it was then announced that the race would be restarted as a rolling start. in 10 minutes.

max sprinted down the pitlane. meanwhile george and lewis peacefully scootered. they might still get disqualified for the tire pressure. they didn't seem to care.

george even stopped to get his boots cleaned as he stepped into the car (which yes i know is a thing cause they were wet with water but it looked so funny to see the mechanic wiping his feet like he was a princess)

and alpine, as we know, would be starting 1 and 3. they had not been in the top 5 all season at all whatsoever.

george did not like that there would be a rolling start. “that’s more dangerous than a standing start,” he said over the radio.

and carlos thought that they needed 2 or three laps behind the safety car to decide. cause remember it is still very much raining.

but it was officially a rolling start. in six minutes. a rolling start meaning that they wouldnt line up on the grid, they’d go out and do a slow lap and then just zoom! go!

carlos had a problem with his tires as they pulled out onto the track. “ricky,” he said. “these are not new inters. which ones are these? ….hello?” ghosted by his own team.

and they went racing

zhou and bearman ended up in the grass pretty quickly, but they were able to get back on.

lando also went off and came back on just ahead of george. george took the position back.

and charles briefly went off.

on lap 34 esteban was still leading and had managed to stay 1.5 seconds ahead of max

hamilton overtook alonso for ninth.

ollie went spin spin spin into the barriers on lap 37. he was able to get going again but he had boinked his front wing. which had already been replaced during the red flag.

and yuki suddenly didn't have pace anymore because he was down in 8th. and getting hunted down by lewis.

ollie went off again. “interlagos is really testing him,” crofty said. yeah no shit. prior to this race he had only driven the track once in a video game (not even the sim!) and he has no experience with f1 cars in the wet, much less this much wet.

on lap 39 esteban ocon was still leading by 2.8 seconds now.

and then carlos ended up in the barriers. no red flag, just a safety car.

he was okay. but he didn't get out of the car. it then became clear that he was trying to get the car out of the barriers before getting out. and thent here was a tractor on track. with a safety car. in the rain. cause that's safe and totally didn't happen at all during the fatal 2015 japanese gp.

it was at this point that they realized that most people who had gone off track had done so because they had gone over the white lines. and remember, the track had just been resurfaced. and despite the anti slip paint, they were still slipping. hm.

also, the last time that alpine had gotten a double podium was back when they were lotus with kimi raikkonen and romain grosjean in 2009 (?)

and, because this race wasn't already interesting enough, there was potential for more rain at the end of the race.

the safety car ended and they all went racing again on lap 43. ocon, verstappen, gasly, russell, norris, leclerc, piastri, tsnuoda, hamilton, alonso, lawson, perez, bottas, zhou, and bearman. the remaining 15 cars.

and max finally managed to get in the lead. all the way up for 17th place at the grand prix from absolute weather hell.

lando went off! dropping all the way down to 7th!

meanwhile liam passed fernando for 9th

and fernando went off the track, triggering a brief yellow flag.

max was already 1.5 seconds ahead of ocon. doing what he does best and making a gap. no one had ever won from 17th before at brazil either

and he took the fastest lap too, on lap 45

so our new order was:

max, esteban, pierre, charles, george, oscar, lando, yuki, liam, checo, lewis, ollie, valtteri, guanyu and fernando

mclaren popped on the radio with some infamous papaya rules and told oscar and lando to swap positions, so now oscar was in 7th and lando was in 6th, minimizing the damage to the gap that lando had just managed to close in the drivers championship very very minutely.

charles was noted for rejoining unsafely

and max took another fastest lap on lap 48

“massively impressed with the alpine’s pace in these conditions,” karun said.

the last time that two french drivers finished on a podium was in 1997 in spain

on lap 50 checo and liam lawson started to battle for ninth. the commentators brought up the ever present talks that checo might not be in f1 next year.

oscar briefly went off the track, but managed to stay ahead of yuki, who was chasing him down.

and lando, despite the swap, was still quite stuck behind charles, despite having more pace. and we had already seen charles keep max behind for many many laps, so there was no doubt that he would continue to fight with lando. he and max were low key now teammates, after all

and yet, there still might be more rain

checo was still trying to pass liam lawson. he was still failing.

fifteen laps to go (finally)

max was still leading esteban, pierre, george, charles, lando, oscar, yuki, liam, checo, lewis, ollie, valtteri, guanyu and fernando on lap 55

and checo still could not pass liam

max had an 8 second lead

and even if the race ended up getting red flagged and not resumed for rain, everyone would get full points because the race was more than 75% complete

checo and liam had a minor incident. it was noted. “he drove into the side of me!” liam complained

on lap 57 ted popped on to give his Insignificant and Unnoticed Award of the Day “to fernando alonso, he was 20 seconds down and now hes cut it down and is going to overtake zhou.”

max took yet another fastest lap, he was now 10 seconds ahead of ocon

“hes never changed one iota since he came in,” crofty said about max. “sometimes when you get penalized for the same thing over and over you do need to change.” though honestly, max was proving that he really didn't need to change, because he went balls to the wall with confidence unlike any other, and was leading a race he had started in 17th by 10 seconds. in the rain.

and george had managed to get within a second to pierre gasly

if pierre could hold onto third, alpine could jump from 9th to 6th in the constructors championship. which was estimated to be a difference of 50 million dollars in prize money.

lando was told over the radio to go close to leclerc. “i am!” lando said. “what do you think im doing?”

by lap 63 max was still leading. this time by 13 seconds.

max was set to get 18 points more than lando at this race, and that was before any start penalties that lando might get awarded.

and he took another fastest lap

on lap 66 max was leading esteban, pierre, george, charles, lando, oscar, yuki, liam, lewis, checo, ollie, valtteri, fernando and zhou

“looking like he [max] will be a 4x world champion and hold off the threat of mclaren,” crofty said.

and then, fernando alonso’s radio crackled to life.

“i will finish this race for the mechanics, they did a very good job today,” fernando said. “but my back hurts so much, there is so much bouncing. this is not normal.” and he did sound very in pain saying that. this re brought up concerns about the porpoising on the track. lewis had complained about it earlier and its been at no other track this year, meaning that it must be a track thing. meaning further that the track was probably resurfaced badly. because this is not normal. and yes, fernandos been having a terrible time during the triple header. hes been sick, he was in the hospital, he missed media day. this is still not normal though and cant be attributed to that.

lap 68. nearly to the end now. and max was leading by 18 seconds.

“he’s got more god given talent in a finger than some drivers every have,” karun said,

and meanwhile his teammate was down in 11th, trying to pass lewis for 10th. and failing.

last lap! finally!

and max won by 19 seconds! and he broke the record for most consecutive days leading a championship, breaking the record previously set by michael schumacher. and made it from 17th to first in the rain, despite all odds, in a car that barely worked, no drs, just spite and rage and pure talent. a true world champion

one by one, everyone else crossed the line

p2: esteban ocon

p3: pierre gaslu

p4: george russell

p5: charles leclerc

p6: lando norris

p7: oscar piastri

p8: yuki tsunoda

p9: liam lawson

p10: lewis hamilton

p11: checo perez

p12: ollie bearman

p13: valtteri bottas

p14: fernano alonos

p15: zhou guanyu

“brilliant for alpine today, disastrous for mclaren,” crofty said

max, predictably, was absolutely thrilled saying that it was "SIMPLY LOVELY"

he sprinted to his mechanics, screaming and celebrating everywhere. he kissed kelly. he did not kiss christian.

this was only the 5th time, in this history of formula 1. 1125 races. that a race had been won from 17th or lower.

alpine was also thrilled.

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the funniest part was esteba ocon’s radio, where they asked him “did you think we were going to be here?” and he said “funnily enough, no!”

ruben barichello did the post race interviews.

max said that he “stayed out of trouble, made the right calls.” he had 17 fastest laps. which you can watch here.

and you can watch all of his overtakes here.

esteban was also thrilled. “what a day that was after a difficult season! very happy to be on the podium!” they didn't know that the car would perform this well in the wet.

and pierre was equally as excited. “its incredibly for the whole team…in these conditions everything was possible. im absolutely buzzing right now….would have been easy to just give up but we never give up.”

because lets remember where alpine started at the beginning of the season. heaviest car on the grid. and also the slowest. and now, here they were, with a double podium. and scoring the most points out of any team at the brazilian gp (35)

alpine even made a little graphic, reminding everyone of this:

also, id like to remind you, that pierre and esteban don't really get along. they used to be friends and now theyre not for complex reasons, and they were so overcome by the emotion of their double podium that they effectively ended the french civil war

the cooldown room was quite excitatory. never had we ever seen a podium where everyone was so insanely happy to be there. max said in the cooldown room to esteban that "You were fast. You were so fast I was happy to settle for second."

and of course. we got our dutch national anthem. she was back ladies and gents! she was back!

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and we had the goofiest looking podium selfie

esteban and pierre dropped their champagne bottles down to their mechanics. they celebrated. they were on top of the world.

prior to today, esteban had 5 points. today he scored 18.

“red bull might feel a bit more back in the game, but they still need 2 drivers,” crofty said. “mclaren are leading by some 46 points.”

max though, now had a 62 point lead on lando.

and so lets see what our favorite dynamic duo, james hinchcliffe and will buxton, had to say about all of this in the post race show.

“i don't know what we were missing,” james said. “we had everything.” and he was right.

starting off with the fact that max absolutely showed who was boss and now lando has to score 21 points every weekend in order to beat him in the drivers championship. prior to this weekend max hadnt been within 20 seconds of the winner at all in the last ten races. and today he won by almost 20.

and alpine hadnt finished in the top 8 all season!

“i take my hat off to them” will said. “they were 19th and 20th in bahrain, their car was overweight, there was no hope and they got their heads down and they got it done.”

then we were joined by yuki and liam lawson.

“it was like floating around!” yuki said about the conditions.

“i nearly crashed probably 10 times,” liam said. “i came into the pitlane and i tried to stop nad i wasn't stopping. crazy race.”

the two of them said that they just didn't have good luck today and got stuck behind others in dirty air. “shame pierre got p3 and they overtook us in the championship,” yuki said. “but we keep going.”

then they examined the start. lando, george and yuki all went for the second formation lap. esteban ocon asked over the radio if he was supposed to say where he was and the tea, said yes. but then they eventually told him to go. james said that this was not great and someone from the team should have reminded the drivers of the procedure.

lando, george, yuki and liam were all going to see the stewards about the start.

then they moved on to discussing lando. “lando did not have his day when max showed his absolute best,” will said.

lando said in his own interview that he was “just unlucky with the vsc pit. just that's life sometimes, not talent, just luck….still made a couple of mistakes in the end, little unfortunate….4th was the best anyone who boxed could do.” which, its unclear what hes really talking about here. if hes saying max just had good luck or if he had bad luck. in any case, insane to call a run from 17th to first just luck and not talent. and will buxton agreed.

“verstappen proved once again that he is the best in this sport. to beat the best you need to be better than the best.” and today lando wasn't.

james was in agreement with will, saying that mclaren did make some bad calls and also that max has a habit of putting his car where it doesnt deserve to be

first lando lost to george, then the safety car pit, then his mistakes on track, then he lost position, then he swapped positions and still couldn't get past charles. it was “enough mistakes that it does come down to his driving,” will said. “max was ruthless today. there was no drs and he [still] found it.”

“doesnt take many mistakes to lose to max” james added.

mclaren also posted one of the strangest post race videos ive ever seen. usually theyre like somewhere in the paddock or whatever. this week they were in what appeared to be a weird dark closet, with lando and oscar only half in frame. oscar sitting on a desk and lando sitting in a spinny chair next to andrea. and it vaguely looked like they were all being held hostage. oscar aso said that “lando has one sock on inside out and that sums up our weekend.”

then they moved on to mercedes.

“my take is that iv we stayed out we would have been at the front,” george said. “i was pretty angry at the time cause i wanted to say out” because he was confident despite the conditions and thought it would get red flagged.

by comparison “lewis hamilton looked like he was having a horror show today in the first half,” will said.

“hes been unsettled with the race car,” james said. “his highlight was before the race even started,” as in driving sennas car. and it was.

lewis had this to say on instagram about the whole thing

“Grateful for the team and the engineers, we did our best out there but it was a hard race throughout in really tough conditions. This could’ve easily been a weekend to forget but the energy and passion from the fans have made it memorable for me. I still can’t put into words how it felt to drive Ayrton Senna’s car. To share that with this crowd means everything to me. Thank you Brazil for the support and the love. I feel it, even on days like this, and I send it back to you 🇧🇷🫶🏾”

checo, they said “was having a good comeback drive, but then that incident with lawson threw him off.”

and ollie “equipped himself pretty well.” he said that it was a “tough race…finished p12, quite close to the points…really tough day, learned a lot that's for sure…racing in these conditions the water is quite rare and valuable.”

will was disappointed in the stewards decision with his 10 second penalty. and they gave him two penalty points as well.

will tried to also look on the bright side for sauber by saying they could have gotten their first points.

james was unimpressed by this take.

“i’m trying to out a spin on it, i just want them to get one point this season!” will said.

they then moved to feranndo alonso, commenting on the amount of pain that he was in at the end. “very 2022,” james said. “havent heard that in awhile, especially with the wet” so it was definitely the track surface itself.

there was also a clip of fernando getting out of the car post race where he almost needed help from the mechanics.

and they were unimpressed with lance. “he had the ability to get it onto the black and he drove it into the gravel.”

and nico, to them, very obviously got disqualified because he had help from the marshals, something he should have known would happen.

they agreed that it was a tough day for williams. especially losing a place to alpine in the championship.

ferrari also have a “tough day…at the end of two brilliant gps” and charles was “kind of in no mans land today.”

james agreed. he said they “just never had that spark….salvage what you can kind of weekend.”

“all good things just come to an end,” james said, realistically.

also on the not having a great day list was oscar. though he thought his penalty was deserved. “it was tricky,” he said. “just trying to stay on track was difficult at some points”

they also spoke with oliver oakes, the alpine team principal. “big result today,” he said. “we were confident [staying out] was the right chouse but we werent sure [about other peoples choices to stay out]. today is a bug result, doesnt chage what we are doing….gotta stay humble and keep pushing.”

and alpine were definitely humble about their win

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but they also hula hooped in the trophy

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“i just want to say so many words but i need to calm down first,” pierre said. “unbelieveable, its historical for the team….its been difficult..at the end of the day we never give up…no one thought one alpine could make it onto the podium this year and we made it two…there is so much to say but from p13 to p3 im so happy.”

and esteban said “i don't know ig we are in reality right now it this is just a dream…my alarm rang this morning at 4:30 and we had no idea….[ive kind of been] thinking when is my rime going to come, if we all had the same car…the cars they level out in some tracks.”

and finally, we had max. “I was very frustrated in qualifying, but tried to use it as motivation in the race….made all the right calls again…was hoping for two points so this is amazing.” he was also asked how driven he was and he said “we had moments, but after that quali where i knew we'd be fast, i nearly destroyed the entire garage. i was barely able to hold myself in. but i started the race very driven. i think i'm the best when i driven, i don't show it an awful lot, but usually yes.”

he was also asked about lando and he said that “if you look a few hours ago it was the other way around…three hard races to go, we need to make no mistakes.”

so turns out, after all that, max’s quote from earlier in the weekend was correct. he is a three time world champion and he doesnt need to change how he drives.

this though was too much for the british media to handle and they didn't bother to show up to the press conference. which max called them out on.

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in the end, no one ended up getting penalties from the start and mercedes did not get disqualified. mercedes got fined 5000 euros for each car. and the stewards agreed that "The gate to access the grid was not immediately opened. The FIA accepted that given this short notice it was extremely difficult if not impossible for the teams to follow the procedure prescribed in the technical directive"

which meant. this was our current championship standings.

for the drivers

max verstappen: 393

lando norris: 331

charles leclerc: 307

oscar piastri: 262

carlos sainz: 244

george russell: 192

lewis hamilton: 190

checo perez: 151

fernando alonso: 62

nico hulkenberg: 31

yuki tsunoda: 28

pierre gasly: 26

lance stroll: 24

esteban ocon: 23

kevin magnussen: 14

alex albon: 12

daniel ricciardo: 12

ollie bearman: 7

franco colapinto: 5

liam lawson: 4

zhou guanyu: 0

logan sergeant: 0

valtteri bottas: 0

and the constructors

mcalren: 593

ferrari: 557

red bull: 544

mercedes: 382

aston martin: 86

alpine: 49

haas: 46

rb: 44

williams: 17

stake: 0

“fun to watch it all, cool to watch it all, but at the end of the day you have to congratulate max verstappen for another championship win,” james said. “by far most dominating performance of the year and one of the most ever.”

“we leave you with one message resonating louder than ever,” will said, staring directly into the camera. “mess with the bull, you get the horns. we will see you in las vegas.”

the 2024 formula 1 silly season and drama master post, part 2 (part 1 here)

Hello and welcome to ah fucking fuck auto caps fuck fuck fuck how do i turn off auto caps AHA there we go okay. take 2

hello and welcome to the great and very insane formula 1 2024 season drama post, part 2. if you are new here or are just looking for part one (which contains the previous 16 (?) races, the off season, pre season testing and everything else, that can be found HERE. (a word to the wise: open it in a browser, not the app, and preferably on a computer to avoid crashing. its fucking long).

what the hell is formula 1? car go fast. fastest cars in the world zoom around tracks at top speeds of over 300kph, piloted by the top 20 drivers in the world. it might not sound dramatic, but oh man. you will Not be disappointed. this post focuses on the drama, the insanity, the sheer what the hell how is this a serious sport. no legitimately. we've just about seen it all this year. grindr, dogs, watersports, ice cream brands, its all here.

the point of this post? to educate, to catalog the insane drama, and to just have a good time. people like to gatekeep this sport, there is also a lot happening. i try to make it easy to understand. again, probably best to start at the beginning of the post because it does a pretty good job of explaining things, which i began way back in january, and can be found HERE (again, shes long, be careful)

and, as usual, if you do not want to see this post EVER AGAIN, block the tag #saph explains silly season 2024

and a second caution, i assume this post will be getting long as well. including this one we have minimum 9 updates left!

anyway, those of you who have been following along the whole time, welcome back! i know we got a little delayed. and i know we’re on a new post, so lets just briefly take a second for me to explain what the fuck happened. first i had an anatomy test, second i work 2 jobs with fuck ass hours, third tumblr decided to stop letting me look at any of my drafts, fourth tumblr support ghosted me about the drafts issue and the post was half saving half not so i just decided fuck it, were going with post 2, electric boogaloo, and fifth, i decided to start typing this instead in a google docs so. many changes. if you're new here i am usually more on top of this.

but here we are. were back on street circuits. we’re in baku, azerbaijan, for the start of the last third of the season. 8 races remain, world championship titles are still within grasp of multiple people. the drama is dramaing. and today is september 22, 2024 and lets fucking go.

first and foremost, on account of the fact that this post is late (again, see above), were going to have to do a bit of a speed run. if you're new here, i promise that this is not representative of my normal dedication to the update post. and for those asking, yeah, ill probably compile it somewhere better than a tumblr post after its all said and done, but we don't have time for that now.

what we do have time for is the Off Week (and like some of the media stuff). and it was filled with silliness:

george russell decided to wear what can only be described as slightly ugly yellow short shorts with his taylor swift shirt that he got at the eras tour. this was baffling for several reasons, the main reason being that i don't think the internet knew that he was capable of wearing a graphic t shirt

fernando alonso got his aston martin valkyrie finally. in case you are unfamiliar, a valkyrie i think is the worlds fastest street legal car. he posted tweets about this that made it seem like he wanted to fuck the car. hilariously, the car broke down an hour later.

we also had the very thrilling conclusion to grill the grid. oscar won and he somehow managed to look more pleased about his grill the grid win than his first race victory.

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nico rosberg went to the green awards and he wore a fantastically insane teal blue suit. yes i know hes not a current driver. but you all like hearing about him so ask and you shall receive. unfornunately i cant find a picture of it though

and also not a current driver is mick schumacher, but my roommate asked me to include that he was seen on his girlfriends instagram being bad at golf. like. exceptionally bad at golf. like he hit a tree 20 feet in front of him.

also playing golf was lando norris. except he managed to look like try bolton from high school musical 2.

he also talked about the world driver championship with his friend max fewtrell while they were playing golf. unfortunately i lost this link in the sea of technical difficulties, but the gist of it was that he was saying that there is still hope for him to beat max in the championship (hes about 60 points behind right now). lando doesnt usually talk about the championship because he doesnt want news outlets to paint him as “desperate” so this was interesting

charles leclerc had an insane off week. first he rear ended someone in monaco. then he spoke at a yacht conference. he was not scheduled to speak at said yacht conference, he was there doing something else and they were like hey you're cool people know you, heres a microphone. he alsp ended up on a weather channel while promoting a karting event he was doing for the jules bianchi foundation (his god father, the one who died during the f1 race in japan 2014). he also changed his instagram pop and re centered it because some random tiktoker told him it matched his aesthetic better.

oscar piastri posted a photo of himself sitting in the cockpit of a plane and then promptly deleted it. because he posted it on 9/11. for anyone who doesnt know what that is, that was when some terrorists hijacked commercial planes and few them into the world trade centers in nyc and the pentagon in washington dc

max verstappen also posted a plane pic with himself and lando norris, but he did not delete it.

we also had the return of daniel ricciardo’s jpg instagram account, which is kinda like a finsta for photos that hes taken. i think lando started this a few years ago.

heading into the race week we certainly got a weird ass batch of pr. including but not limited to:

lewis hamilton was back on top and slaying in the fit game. as was yuki.

lewis hamilton also exposed george russell as listening to katy perry pre race. katy perry and taylor swift (this was after he claimed that he liked listening to old school rap music.) though, lewis then started singing wrecking ball???? confusing vibes all around

george was not off the hook yet tho because some intern definitely make him say skidibidi toilet or whatever the thing is idk, i might be gen z but im not insufferable, okay? actually george in baku was just all kinds of unhinged

george and alex also got up to something, what it is no one knows but it is clearly something

max pulled up to the paddock de aged about 10 years. picture one is of him in baku in 2015 (i believe he was 17) and picture 2 is this year. no i am not kidding.

and franco walked into the paddock telling everyone about argentinian mate (which is a drink, not a friend)

and max shoved a microphone out of the way so everyone could gossip

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then of course, we had some slightly more relevant drama

haas announced that ollie would be replacing kevin at baku. in case you forgot, kevin magnussen received a total of 12 penalty points over the season so far, which means he gets one race ban. how did he get the points? well he was mostly wreaking havoc on everyone else so that his teammate, nico hulkenberg, could drag his car into the points. lets all remember the time in saudi arabia where he managed to get 20 seconds of penalties by basically driving like a mad man just to make sure that nico could keep his position after he pit stopped. anyway, nico was kind of pissed about the race ban situation and said “maybe the guidelines for F1 penalties need to be reviewed as the stewards ‘want to get involved’ no matter the contact.”

in any case though, k mags was out. and ollie was in. we’ve seen ollie before. notably he subbed in for carlos sainz at the saudi arabia gp when carlos had appendicitis. he managed to get points as well. since then, he has been announced as a haas driver for 2025 and is now subbing in for k mags (haas, later in the week called him a super sub. clearly no gen z person read that over.) he can do this because ferrari has a haas engine so they share reserve drivers.

adrian newey finally got employed. i know! i can hardly believe it either! but he did! and youll never guess where!

ferrari? no that would be too obvious.

mercedes? nah

williams? no too much of a shit show

aston martin? ding ding ding! just the right amount of shit show!

that is right. newey is going to aston for 2025.

apparently he was offered a “good package” according to himself, which i assume means pay and also the fact that lawrence stroll made him a shareholder? stakeholder? whatever its called. in the team itself. basically he has a lot of power.

he said that he always wanted to work with fernando and lewis. and he couldn't do both. and aston had a better package than ferrari.

fernando looked positively evil during all the announcement pictures. and called the team "definitely the team of the future" and for those of you who don't know, fernando is positively evil. hes just been stuck in a shit box and we havent seen very much of him, but man does he know how to evilly slut it up. so that will be fun to see.

by contrast, people said that lance was not excited enough. and well. lance 1. has resting bitch face and 2. never really looks excited about anything. also he lives in a world where take your child to work day somehow became his job. (his dad owns the team).

lewis hamilton was asked what he thought about adrian not going to ferrari, and here's what he had to say:

"i feel like, while I have mentioned before that it would be an honor to work with adrian, i have been privileged to work with two championship winning teams that didnt have adrian."

mclaren announced pato o ward would do FP1 in mexico. who is pato o ward? hes one of mclaren’s indycar drivers and one of the f1 reserve drivers. he is incredibly charming and definitely runs his own social media as seen here:

mclaren Also claim they figured out who their number 2 driver is and they claim its oscar. i say they claim because the statements were a lot more complex than that. essentially, according to andrea stella, the priority is to the team first, then lando and then oscar. so they didn't outright say that oscar is the number 2 driver and i am willing to bet real money that this is because mr mark webber, oscars manager, has something in oscars contract that prevents him from being a number 2 driver. this is of course because mark webber was one of the most infamous number 2 drivers in f1 history to none other than menace war criminal sebastian vettel, who in their time as teammates, managed to win 4 back to back world champions. or, top to bottom if you're mrs darbus from high school musical.

lando was asked about this and he said that yes, the team does support him. though he would not expect oscar to give up a win for him and that it is more complex behind the scenes. i suppose we will see if there are any papaya rules coming out this weekend….

and oscar said "i think the main point is its not purely just going to be me pulling over for lando every single race, because thats how none of us, including lando, wont want to go racing, if we feel that someone has done a much better job on a weekend, whichever way it is, we want that person to be rewarded."

max verstappen commented on the mclaren situation as well. which was funny mostly because red bull has one of the most defined number 1 and number 2 drivers of any team. he said "you look at it form oscar's perspective, he is closer to lando than lando to me. they have to deal with that."

and allow me to put on a tin foil hat as we are about to talk about the future of the red bull seat. because all i have to offer here is a baseball hat and a red bull can.

a long time ago we talked about the red bull cans. the ones that red bull makes to promote f1. at the end of last season red bull put max and checo on the red bull can. this season at the start it was just max on the red bull can. well. now checo has reappeared on the cans too. and i will tell you what i think this means. it means that checo is not getting swapped this season, which was a possibility for awhile.

but! there is more!

daniel ricciardo made an instagram post this week. and it was very interesting. but most interestingly he was wearing a red bull hat.

which he does occasionally, no big deal really. he did race for the for several years, he technically does currently. BUT then he showed up TO THE PADDOCK wearing the red bull hat.

which is Big Interesting. usually you show up in a statement outfit or wearing the team kit. and daniel is not a red bull racing driver. he is a visa cashapp racing bulls driver. they might be owned by red bull but they are Not the same team. so why the red bull hat. in the paddock. well, the rumor is that hes taking checos seat for 2025. and the rumor is that this will be announced before mexico. so checo can have a proper send off.

and with that. the baku lore.

theres a lot that has happened at baku. as i said its a street circuit. and i think its the fastest street circuit. but over the years theres been some notable events.

such as the great kimi raikkonen radio for gloves and steering wheel:

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they gave mini kimi this week gloves and steering wheel in honor of that

the max and daniel crash in 2018 when they were running p1 and p2 respectfully

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and of course. how could we forget. charles’s infamous “i am stupid” radio.

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speaking of charles, he crashed again in fp1. not quite in the same spot, but nearly. he took a picture with the marshalls.

then in fp2 he rage quit, basically saying that the car sucks.

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but he was back and better than ever in practice three because he managed to top the time charts. welcome back fuck ass ferrari.

some other teams definitely experienced the lows but not really the highs of baku during practice. like lance stroll who came on the radio to say “this is not a car” (good thing they have adrian newey now, right?

franco colapinto also cut his ear before practice on the neck strengthener stretcher thing that they all use and the team wanted to give him stitches but he was like no no no i need to be in the car in about 5 minutes im not doing that. so he jammed on his helmet and jumped in the car. he also crashed and when he went to the medical center he took off his helmet and there was blood everywhere and they were like no no no you cannot race! and he was like no! this is not from the crash! and then explained it and they let him do qualifying.

also im pretty sure? ollie bearman crashed? in practice? but frankly i don't have time to google it so whos to say.

but alas. qualifying.

i know i know this is kind of a shitty update. i promise ill go all out in singapore. i PROMISE.

so as i said. its a street circuit. high speed. 90 degree corners. and also windy as hell. we also had the dynamic duo of karun and harry in the commentary box.

max led the first practice, george led the second and i think charles led the third. or some order like that.

slipstream here is almost essential (slipstream: going behind another car to reduce the wind drag so you can go faster)

charles has the last three pole positions (first in qualifying) here in baku, but he has never won. by comparison, red bull have never had pole here but they have won.

and franco has never been to baku before.

i think that's all the exposition that we need here.

q1 started with max complaining about his car. “the car is jumping around like crazy on the rear axle” he said. despite this he was sitting in p3.

the mid field battle though….the mid field battle was heating the hell up. mostly because none other than franco colapinto, who if you will remember, has never been to baku before, had split the two ferraris. he was in third for the moment, .109 seconds behind carlos sainz and .159 seconds ahead of charles leclerc. we still had a lot of qualifying left to go, so this was probably not going to stay, but it was still insane. he was pushing insanely hard, nearly kissing the walls. clearly he had learned from his crash in practice.

the two mclarens waited until the very end of q1 to do their final flying push lap, and oscar made it through, but tragedy struck for lando.

lando was in the middle of his last flying lap, time was ticking down, and there was a Very Brief yellow flag on the track. now, according to rules, you cannot complete your flying lap if there is a yellow flag. so lando pitted and was stuck down in 17th and out of qualifying. this would be the first time that he was out in q1 since vegas last year (which if i remember correctly was also not his fault)

now though, of course nothing is ever that cut and dry. people thought that there had been a mis showing of a flag. yellow flag means that a car is stopped on track, white flag means that a car is going slowly on the track. and people thought that there had been a yellow flag shown when it was actually supposed to be a white flag (if there had been a white flag then lando would have been able to keep doing his flying lap) lando himself said that he had no idea what people were talking about because there is a light on the steering wheel that lights up when flags are called and he had a big yellow light. so it was clearly a yellow flag.

if you're concerned about lando being able to pull it out of the bag, id like to point you in the direction of the mexican gp last year where lando qualified 17th and finished 5th. on a track that was hard to overtake on. he can be absolutely insane when he wants to be. worry not gentle reader.

in any case. also out in q1 was daniel ricciardo, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu and esteban ocon.

and notably, williams, who was on fucking fire this weekend as we already saw, finished q1 with alex albon in second (ahead of oscar) and franco colapinto in 8th. pierre gasly had somehow managed to also get into 4th. and nico hulkenberg was in 7th with ollie bearman in 13th. i told you the mid field battle was heating the hell up.

q2. everyone zoomed straight out of the gate. they didn't want to get lando norris’d. but, speaking of that, if lando managed to get no points in the race and charles managed to win, charles would overtake lando in the drivers championship. mark webber himself told this to charles, who was absolutely baffled.

in any case, charles was kinda suffering right now and that was because he was not getting slipstream from carlos to make his lap faster. meanwhile, carlos seemed to be actively trying to give charles the slipstream because he came on radio to say “he keeps missing the tow”

and amazingly, franco colapinto was 4 tenths AHEAD of alex albon. alex albon who had not been unqualified by his teammate once since the start of 2023. ex red bull driver alex albon. that alex albon.

max topped the times in q2, followed immediately by charles. insanely, fernando alonso managed to drag the aston martin to fifth. and franco was right behind him in 6th. by comparison alex albon was in 10th.

and from q2 we lost ollie bearman, yuki tsunoda (who has never qualified lower than 8th in baku), pierre gasly, nico hulkenberg and lance stroll. so yes, ollie bearman managed to outqualify nico hulkenberg. this is ollies second ever f1 race.

steaming on forward to q3.

we had, for review, in q3 the following:

both ferraris, both red bulls, both mercedes, both WILLIAMS (has not happened since vegas 2023), plus fernando alonso and oscar piastri.

right out the gate it was wild.

“red bull! theyve re found their mojo! or have they!” karun said. red bull were in 5th and 6th and not entirely sucking for the moment.

everyone did one flyer and then came out at the end for a second flyer.

here were the standings:

charles, carlos, oscar, george, checo, max, lewis, alex, franco, fernando

and everyone was making it to the line and all was going smooth until-

wait a second what is that

could it be! alex albon! with the air box fan still on his car! surely not!!!

oh but it was! and harry and karun were like oh wow so unfortunate for williams tisk tisk

meanwhile ted jumped on the radio to Loudly announce to everyone that this was insane and if i have time here i will put the rant he ranted cause it was Fantastic.

and what do you know i have time

so we had 3 minutes left qualifying and everyone was pulling out of the pits for their last flyer when oscar hopped on the radio to say

"the williams still has the air box fan in"

"oh what an error! disaster for williams!" karun and harry said. they speculated if the marshalls could get it or if the session needed to be red flagged. but alex threw the fan off the car.

and then they asked "ted have you ever seen that before?" and ted did not hold back:

"ITS A MASSIVE YELLOW FAN HOW COULD YOU MISS IT???!!! HOW COULD THE MECHANICS MISS IT???? I CANT BELIVE THEY WOULD MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE DOWN AT WILLIAMS! SUCH AN EXPERIENCED BUNCH OF GUYS AND GIRLS! WHAT IS GOING ON AT WILLIAMS OPERATIONALLY? HOW COULD YOU SEND A CAR OUT LIKE THAT?"

alex, obviously, got fined for an unsafe release 5k euros. he also had to throw the fan off to the side and got slightly covered in dry ice. he did not get to the a second flying lap.

franco did tho!

and here were out qualifying results:

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: checo p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: fernando p9: franco p10: alex p11: ollie p12: yuki p13: pierre p14: nico p15: lance p16: daniel p17: lando p18: valtteri p19: zhou p20: esteban

oh ho ho but we werent done yet. because pierre gasly got disqualified from qualifying. for failing fuel flow regulations. and lewis was going to have to start from the pit lane for changing his power unit.

everyone, and by everyone i mean oscar max and checo, pretty much said that charles was going to get pole no matter what, they knew this coming in and the best they were trying for was second

onto the race.

notably, this is considered a checo track. this was one of the three races that max did not win last year. because checo won it. its a track that he does well on, evidenced by the fact that he qualified above max in qualifying. so people were expecting big things from him.

and so, we head into lap 1.

charles managed to hang onto the lead. checo passed carlos straight out of the gate for third and max managed to pass george to take fifth. lando had managed to get ahead of nico and up into 13th. notably, franco held onto 8th and ollie was able to hold onto tenth.

someone who was not doing well was lance stroll, who came on the radio saying that he had a puncture. this was from contact with yuki. lance had to pit for fresh tires and was pretty immediately thrown to the back of the grid.

by lap 2 lando had managed to get past daniel and was in 12th, he was trying to get past yuki next, which he managed by lap 3. yuki also lost a spot to nico.

also slaying in the mclaren was oscar, who took fastest lap. then charles took fastest lap.

and lewis hamilton, who had started from the pit lane, was up to 16th. already. somehow. though he was displeased with the tires, sayig that “this tire is pretty bad” over the radio.

yuki meanwhile was clearly having a problem because he had started going very very slowly. thought the pit wall said that he had no problems. this would later turn out to be false but we will indulge them for the time being.

franco was STILL ahead of alex albon on lap 6. STILL.

lando on lap 8 managed to push his way into points positions, overtaking ollie bearman for 10th. though this was where things were about to slow down for him because in front of him were alex, franco and fernando, who were all very close together and would be hard to get past.

george was back in bad luck hell as a plastic bag entered his airbox. will he ever catch a break.

on lap 11 nico hulkenberg finally caught up with ollie bearman and passed him for 11th.

and max’s car was not working. to potentially no one’s surprise. “i have zero bite in the car” he said. and this was probably true because checo was a whole 6.5 seconds ahead of him. insane gap.

several pit stops later that i will not detail out because we simply do not have the time, alex albon ended up in 4th and lando ended up in fifth. and oscar was about to get undercut by checo.

“mojo seems to be back for checo perez” harry said, correctly.

mojo was back for him indeed. and now he was right behind lando.

and if you will recall, according to mclaren themselves, priority at mclaren is the team first, then oscar, then lando. but oscar was ahead of lando. so what did mclaren do?

they asked lando do hold up perez, but not compromise his own race.

remever a long time ago when i said mclaren wouldn't have any internal drama this season? man how i was wrong.

lando managed to hold up perez for around a lap or two before he got past. this was crucial because this was during when oscar was in the pits.

thanks to lando and the power of the papaya rules teamwork, oscar ended up coming out in 4th, only .706s ahead of checo.

mclaren are working together everyone! mclaren are working together!

meanwhile, turns out that yuki did indeed have problems because he retired on lap 17 with a hole in his sidepod from the contact with lance on lap 1. this was now two races in a row where he had had to retire for reasons out of his control.

several more people pitted. and eventually charles was back out in front, oscar was in p2. until he wasn't. no, he didn't dnf. he overtook charles! he was in p1! he popped out of nowhere! nowhere being 2 car lengths back and just flooring it to spring around charles like a little silly slinky! karun called it a “good, fair and robust defense,” which sounds like its descibing notes in wine. but this was not wine. this was the baku gp. and we were only half done.

ollie bearman was defending against lewis hamilton, holding on tightly to 14th place.

charles was still behind oscar and he could not get past, despite the fact that he was still very much in spitting distance. “they are pushing like crazy or they have more grip than us” he said.

carlos got past both lando and alex albon and was up into 4th

this brought max up behind lando. max was on 11 lap old tires and lando was on 24 lap old tires. but lando still defended like hell and managed to hold onto sixth. max was 0.632 seconds behind lando on lap 25 when he said that “my brakes are not working.” this was hardly a surprise. max has hated the car since china.

also experiencing technical difficulties was sir lewis hamilton. he was stuck down in 14th and was first told to do “everything you can do to get the surface temp down” of the tires. he said “im trying” then several laps later on lap 29 he came on the radio to say “are you seeing how i have to drive this thing?” “yes,” bono, his engineer said. “quite effective though.”

max was still half a second behind lando. mclaren faked a pit stop call over the radio to get max to pit. he did not.

but, george russell did manage to pass him. which was “not good for max’s world champion aspirations.”

this was also when ted very bafflingly said that “if i had a sofa in the pit lane i would be jumping up and down on it” im not sure what that was in response to.

meanwhile, ollie was still holding off sir lewis hamilton. and charles was trying to get oscar to pit again by lying over the radio. it was not working.

lando did a pit stop finally and came out a whole 15 second behind max. he was hoping to catch max by the end of the race. but it might be tight. lets go last lap lando.

“lando, imagine andrea on your shoulder saying ‘zero wheel spin’ in every exit,” lando’s race engineer said. if you're confused, everyone else was too.

10 laps to go and here were the order of affairs:

oscar

+.449s charles +1.865s checo +2.989s carlos +16.530s george +1.909s max +11.535s lando +9.715s fernando +2.589s alex +2.451s nico +4.667s franco +1.590s lewis +1.261s ollie +1.791s pierre +9.205s daniel +23.919s esteban +.789s lance +3.862s valtteri +3.631s guanyu

lando was determined. he took fastest lap on lap 43 and was 8.8s behind max

at this point, the leaders were starting to lap the cars in the back. “the back markers are starting to come up,” checo’s engineer said to him. “its going to get messy.”

“hold onto your hats and if you don't have one go get one and hold onto it” harry said. harry would turn out to be correct.

we had the top 3 all running very close to eachother, that was oscar, charles and checo and “welcome to the party carlos sainz!” who was now 1.2 seconds behind checo in the four way battle for the lead.

definitely not leading was lance stroll, who retired on lap 47 with a brake problem.

oscar managed to pull ahead of charles by 1.5 seconds, finally knocking him out of DRS range. so now it was a three way battle for second. and charles had “no rear tires. no rear tires at all.”

and, just like i said he would, lando managed to pass max on lap 49. he was closing the gap slowly in the championship.

“verstappen’s day goes from bad to worse,” harry said. because lando still had fastest lap, so he would score 3 more points than max. which is important if lando wants to beat max in the championship (though i think hes still like 60 points behind)

meanwhile! franco managed to pass nico hulkenberg for 10th! he was in the points!!!! at his second race!!!

but this was short lived because there was a crash! a big smackeroo! between carlos and checo!! checo was mad, carlos didn't know what happened.

what happened was that carlos was trying to pass checo but checo did not move over. it was deemed an equal fault accident. both of them were utterly confused at what happened and apparently spent 20 minutes in the medical center being utterly lost and aparently saying that sometimes this sport sucks. and! contrary to what several people said! checo did not bang on carlos’s helmet after the crash.

the crash actually caused chef's dad to have a heart attack. he is stable now.

and well. this clip of george from the post qualifying interviews definitely didnt age well:

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but! since we were a matter of a few laps from the end, this meant that the rest of the race was finished under a virtual safety car.

which meant

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS THE AZERBAIJAN GP

and george inherited p3!

and on his own merit too! no safety cars, no team orders, no weird shit!

“yes!” he whispered over the radio.

he almost fell getting out of the car, then gave us all the “one moment” hand gesture before properly celebrating.

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he also got driver of the day!

(this was marginally better than george russell, who said over the radio “i cant get any rubber (to pick up on his tires) all im getting is leaves”)

gunther steiner also hosted the post race interviews. which was interesting.

george said that the most difficult part of the race was “driving full gas into a wall of carbon fiber on the penultimate lap…the vsc should have come out sooner”

charles bashed ferrari because they didn't do any high fuel runs in practice.

oscar was entirely pleased. “i managed to overtake and hold onto it for the next 35 laps..one of the better races of my career.” and honestly, oscar winning a race straight after mclaren basically announcing that he was their number 2 driver is nothing short of hilarious.

and! mclaren was now leading the constructors championship by 20 points! for the first time in ten years!!!!

the top three had a moment outside of the car that was filled with baffled:

and oscar's engineer tom got to stand on the podium with him. he usually takes a selfie with oscar after each race he podiums at, but he was too excited to so george took this picture for them

(george also aparently demomished oscar in a game of uno on the plane, immediately humbling him)

george also shielded himself from the champagne on the podium

the cooldown room reacted to the crash in a very straight forward manner:

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and very quickly cause its midnight and the singapore gp starts in 8 hours, the post race, speed ran:

-mark webber told off laura winter for thinking that oscar didn't have good tire management

-alex albon was “super happy, that's a lot of points for us” (williams finished in 7th and 8th). he cut his own interview short when ollie bearman arrived, saying “I can go, im happy to go” and then waving comically.

-williams was so pleased with this result they blasted everyone with champagne. and they overtook alpine in the constructors championship! this was also their best race finish all season

-(and a quick note, if youre going to really blame logan for being that shit of a driver here, please remember that the car he was driving was several rounds of upgrades behind alex's pretty much the entire time he was driving it)

-ollie became the first driver to ever score points in his first two races for two different constructors because the double dnf pushed him up to 10th place. he said that there was not much difference between the haas and the ferrari, the ferrari was just red

-franco continued to charm everyone and flirt with the reporters.

-they interviewed george and lewis and the camera had to be adjusted for george's height. it was comical and resulted in my favorite edit so far of the season (sound on)

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-lando looked pleased and happy for once. he said about holding off checo that “i didn't hold him up i just had to cool my tires a little.” he was delighted to be leading the constructors for the first time in ten years and he defended alex albon saying “i struggled to get past alex for a while, which is common, alex doesnt make mistakes.” he also ratted on max for going to fast during the VSC and said “i didn't complain, facts were stated.” and to sum it all up he said that “im executing things well, i’m very quick…i’m not going to be the happiest guy, but i am never the happiest guy….car is performing well everywhere…some red cars behind us seem to be our biggest competitors right now”

-by comparison george insulted all of pirelli. the tire people. “pretty infuriating that it (the pace) changes this so much….its black magic, people who make the tires don't understand the tires…..for 20 laps we had a car not worthy of points and for 20 laps we had a car fighting for victory and the only difference is the tires.”

-lewis was notably upset after the race and walked through the paddock with his helmet on, not wanting to talk to anyone. but he did talk to franco and ollie and congratulate them on a job well done defending against him and racing against him. franco even fangirled over this on his instagram.

-charles was clearly upset with ferrari. he was so upset he posted a thirst trap.

-and oscar. oscar was very happy this afternoon. and his mom was there! she doesnt usually come cause it scares her, but nicole was there today!

-mclaren celebrated with a hell of a lot of champagne. both oscar’s wina and lando’s insane recovery, and the fact that they were leading the championship. red bull have been dethroned, at least for now.

-there was so much champagne that lando took off his socks to spray it. all seems well at mclaren.

-at least one thing is for sure, oscar had a better time here this weekend than last year when he got food poisoning and only ate four pieces of toast

and with that. we head into singapore. quite literally as it is starting in a few hours. again, i apologixe about this post. its a little sad, but the next one will be better. pinkly promise.

see you all soon!!!

#not a tag #from saph #saph explains silly season 2024 #brazil gp 2024 #it was insane it was wild and im glad im done writing this lol #THREE MORE LETS GO #Instagram #Youtube

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twoidiotwriters1 · 4 years ago

Text

Written In The Stars LXV (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: I’m soft and EXCITED cause we’re starting book four next week and you guys have no idea what’s coming -Danny

Words: 1,798

Warnings: None! Tooth rooting fluff

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Book IV

Chapter Twenty-Four: Good Omens.

Dumbledore left when Harry walked out of Lupin's former office, he stopped when he noticed Mel was outside.

"Oh," He said, "I thought you'd be with Ron and Hermione."

"I was talking to Dumbledore," She replied simply. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," He moved to where she was standing. "I talked to him too, when you left the office..."

"You did?"

"I was... I told him that I felt like our mission hadn't made a difference," He explained. "He told me I was wrong... sort of."

"Sort of?" She smiled.

Then Harry told her everything. Including the prophecy Trelawney had told him on their last day of exams. She had to admit, it sounded terrifying, but their teacher was known to be a bit dramatic. Still, the part about the dark lord rising... she didn't like that bit at all.

"What he said about the people that loves us never leaving..." Harry frowned, trying to put his thoughts in order. "They help us when we're in trouble, one way or another... I'm lucky to have you, Ron, and Hermione. Emily, and Sirius... they care and they'd help me if I needed them to... Not everyone is that lucky, though."

"I suppose so," Mel tilted her head, patiently waiting for the rest of whatever he was trying to say.

"Erick," It was the second time he'd mentioned the boy's name and it still sounded completely strange coming out of his mouth. "What you said about his family... he doesn't have many people helping him. I guess... I understand why'd he go out of his way to talk to you... You're brilliant and all..."

"Thanks?"

"What I mean," Harry pressed on, having a hard time expressing himself. "What I want to say is, I think you're a good friend and you're right– I shouldn't judge people without knowing their story first, that's what made me think Sirius was trying to kill me... I'm sorry I reacted that way, my interactions with the Slytherins haven't been nice, but I get that not everyone has to be the same. I trust you–"

Harry's speech was interrupted when Mel threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly (no kisses this time, though- She wasn't going to do the same mistake twice) and apologized profusely.

"I know... Mellow, I can't breathe!" He complained.

"Sorry!" She stepped back. "Sorry..."

"So... I'm your hero now, right?"

"What?" She frowned.

"You said that whoever made the dementors disappear the other night was your new hero, turns out it was me," He smirked.

"I was also there!" She exclaimed. "That was my Patronus too!"

"Well, you can't be your hero!"

"Says who?"

"It doesn't make sense!"

"I say it does. I'm my own hero," She teased. "For all I know, I saved your life this time."

"I've saved your life before," He pouted.

"Now you're just being pretentious..."

"I went to see Professor McGonagall this morning, just before breakfast. I've decided to drop Muggle Studies," Hermione commented once they were settled on the train's compartment.

"But you passed your exam with three hundred and twenty percent!"

"I know, but I can't stand another year like this one. That Time-Turner, it was driving me mad. I've handed it in. Without Muggle Studies and Divination, I'll be able to have a normal schedule again. Besides, I asked Erick and he told me he'd be happy to tell me all about what he studies in class."

"I still can't believe you're friends with him," Ron rolled his eyes. "And I still can't believe you didn't tell us about the time-turner. We're supposed to be your friends."

"I promised I wouldn't tell anyone," said Hermione. "And you know how important it is to keep secrets when you're not the only one involved..."

She looked at Mel, who was looking at Harry, who was looking out the window with a sad expression.

"Oh, cheer up!" said Hermione.

"I'm okay," Harry jumped lightly. "Just thinking about the holidays."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about them too– Mel, Harry, you've got to come and stay with us. I'll fix it up with Mum and Dad, then I'll call you. I know how to use a fellytone now —"

"A telephone, Ron," said Hermione. "Honestly, you should take Muggle Studies next year..."

"Or ask us more about muggle life, like Erick does," Mel teased.

Ron ignored them.

"It's the Quidditch World Cup this summer! How about it, Harry? Come and stay, and we'll go and see it! Dad can usually get tickets from work."

Harry did cheer up at that.

"Yeah, I bet the Dursleys'd be pleased to let me come... especially after what I did to Aunt Marge..."

"I'd love to see the World Cup!" Mel said excitedly. "I can picture it already, all the wizards from around the world..."

They wasted a whole hour playing and talking when Hermione pointed out to the landscape.

"Harry– What's that thing outside your window?"

It was the smallest owl Mel had ever seen. It dropped a letter onto Harry's seat and began zooming excitedly around the place. Hedwig clicked her beak while Grey and Crookshanks sat up, following the owl with their eyes. Ron caught the owl safely and threw a disapproving look their way.

"It's from Sirius!" Harry said happily.

"What? Read it aloud!"

'Dear Harry, I hope this finds you before you reach your aunt and uncle.

I don't know whether they're used to owl post. Buckbeak and I are in hiding. I won't tell you where, in case this owl falls into the wrong hands. I have some doubt about his reliability, but he is the best I could find, and he did seem eager for the job.

I believe the dementors are still searching for me, but they haven't a hope of finding me here. I am planning to allow some Muggles to glimpse me soon, a long way from Hogwarts, so that the security on the castle will be lifted.

There is something I never got around to telling you during our brief meeting. It was I who sent you the Firebolt —

"Ha! See! I told you it was from him!"

"Yes, but he hadn't jinxed it, had he?– Ouch!"

'Crookshanks took the order to the Owl Office for me. I used your name but told them to take the gold from my own Gringotts vault. Please consider it as thirteen birthdays' worth of presents from your godfather.

I would also like to apologize for the fright I think I gave you and Mel that night last year when you left your uncle's house. I had only hoped to get a glimpse of you before starting my journey north, but I think the sight of me alarmed you. I am enclosing something else for you, which I think will make your next year at Hogwarts more enjoyable. If ever you need me, send word. Your owl will find me.

I'll write again soon. Sirius

P.S. Mel, if Remus tells your mother what happened during the school year, will you please send her my regards? I miss her, I'm hoping I'll find a way to communicate with her soon.'

"I absolutely will," Mel smiled widely. "What else did he send, Glasses?"

Harry looked inside the envelope. She saw his eyes grow in surprise and then he was grinning, handing the small piece of parchment to her.

'I, Sirius Black, Harry Potter's godfather, hereby give him permission to visit Hogsmeade on weekends.'

"That'll be good enough for Dumbledore!" said Harry. "Hang on, there's a second P.S."

'I thought your friend Ron might like to keep this owl, as it's my fault he no longer has a rat.'

Ron's eyes widened.

"Keep him?" he repeated.

He looked closely at the owl for a moment; then, he held him out for Crookshanks to sniff.

"What do'you reckon?" Ron asked. "Definitely an owl?"

Crookshanks purred.

"That's good enough for me," said Ron. "He's mine."

"You know," Mel said to the boy once they arrived at the station. "I'm really sorry you can't live with Sirius, but there's a good side!"

"Which is?"

"I'll still be your neighbor!"

"I thought you'd be happy," He teased. "Finally getting rid of me, a well-deserved break."

"I was happy because Sirius cares about you and you would've had a good life... besides, I get to see you in school, which is almost the whole year."

"Well," Harry put an arm around her shoulders. "We'll still have to stand each other for the years to come."

"I think I can live with that," She chuckled.

"I'll call about the World Cup!" Ron yelled after they parted.

Mel saw her mother standing a few feet away from the Dursleys and ran to meet her.

"Hello!" She said cheerfully. "Do you think we can stop by that place we like to get lunch? I'm– You know everything, don't you?"

Emily was looking down at her with such a severity that Mel prepared herself for the impact.

"Time-turners, dementors and sneaking out of the castle after curfew," Emily whispered angrily. "Helping a convict escape, attacking a Professor–"

"Snape had it coming!"

"Are you trying to drive me insane?" Emily hissed. "I swear, every time I get a letter I feel like I'm about to hear you murdered a teacher!"

"You're exagerating–"

"Watch me overreact all the way to our house, young lady!" She retorted.

"Very well," Mel sighed. "Can I tell you two things first?"

"What things?"

"I spent a whole year having a normal period -dreadful and gross, not reccomended– but that means I can take the potion now! Second, Padfoot says hi."

Emily's mouth opened and closed, her eyes never leaving her daughter's face.

"How do you–"

"Didn't they tell you the whole story?" Mel asked. "I'll have to do it myself, then..."

"What's that?" They heard Mr. Dursley spat at Harry while they walked past. "If it's another form for me to sign, you've got another —"

"It's not," Harry smiled brightly. "It's a letter from my godfather."

"Godfather? You haven't got a godfather!"

"Yes, I have– He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though. Keep up with my news... check if I'm happy..."

Mel and Emily shared a look and left quickly, holding back their laughter until they were safe inside their car. There, both of them laughed until their stomachs hurt.

"You know," Her mother said breathlessly. "Prongs would've been so proud of his son..."

"I know," Mel smiled, looking out her window and watching Harry's gleeful face as he walked out of the station with a terrified uncle following close. "We all are..."

Next Part —>

Taglist.

@tiphareth2018 @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @stardusthigh @mikariell95 @omiwashere @steve-thotgers @kylosleftbuttcheek @tomshollandz @thesuitelifeofafangirl @reverse-hxlland @bloodorangemoonlight

#twoidiots writing #hp fanfic #Harry Potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter xoc #hermione granger #ron weasley #WITT fic

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soobiniebaby · 5 years ago

Text

Angels & Devils Part IV: Can You Tell Me

Tomorrow x Together Fanfiction

~ p a r t s : main post || prologue || part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 || part 5 || part 6 || part 7 || part 8 || part 9 || part 10 || part 11 || part 12 || part 13 || part 14 || part 15 || part 16 || part 17 ~ p a i r i n g : love triangle involving choi soobin and choi yeonjun ~ g e n r e : high school au | some social media au | some fluff & angst | childhood friends | love triangle ~ l a n g u a g e : English ~ w a r n i n g : contains swearing, alcohol, kissing (?) and may contain mature themes (angst, etc.) ~ a / n : This will be my first fanfic (go easy on me pls) and i’m just writing this as I go along, so bear with me juseyo The setting (place/country) of the story is up to the reader’s interpretation ~ s u m m a r y : What should she choose? Han Baby: the new girl with a troubled past MO Academy: her new high school Choi Soobin: student council president, member of the Ecosave club, volunteer at the Humane Treatment of Animals, member of the Honor Society, a vocalist in the Jazzed club, the school’s all around golden boy Choi Yeonjun: leader of the Dance club, star of the Jazzed club, the school’s it boy with a bad rep 5 best friends, 1 new girl, 1 childhood friendship, 1 epic love triangle? What will this school year bring?

B’s first week at MO Academy had been going smoothly so far.

She rarely found herself lost around the campus since she always had Kai or at least 1 member of the student council by her side, she was able to get to know a few other people in her classes, she was able to keep track of lessons and deadlines so far, she had grown to enjoy her walks to and from school with Taehyun every day, and she was able to adjust well to living alone without her parents to watch over her or without anyone else to help around with household chores.

She actually really liked living away from her parents for the first time. The one downside was that she was starting to feel a bit lonely, especially since the apartment had 2 bedrooms, which was obviously meant to be occupied by at least 2 people. The spare room was also set up like a bedroom with a bed and a wardrobe and a desk, but she didn’t have any use for it so she never really went in it since she moved in. She mostly used it to store extra clothes.

Today, Wednesday, the boys had their first student council meeting of the year to finalize things for club recruitment day, so B walked home alone, which she didn’t really mind.

Her week was going smoothly until she received an unusual message that night, while she was lying in her bed after finishing some household chores.

B smiled as each boy sent a selfie, and laughed when she realized that all of them were holding up peace signs in their photos. She quickly saved the pictures and set each boy’s contact photo until she saw Beomgyu send more photos to the group chat.

B locked her phone and turned over in bed, her head full of thoughts of what they could do for Kai’s birthday. If it were up to her, she would take Kai to someplace special and out of the way, like the beach so that they could reminisce about their childhood memories spent along the beaches in Hawaii. But considering that there would at least be 4 other people celebrating Kai’s birthday with them, she knew it was out of the question. She was also curious about what the other boys had in mind, and she was wondering what gift she could get for her best friend.

She checked her phone one last time before shutting her lights off and drifting off to sleep.

•°•

Soobin put his phone away once the other boys sorted out their plan to keep Hyuka busy while he, B and Yeonjun stayed behind. Their last period had already ended, and they were preparing for their meeting.

“So, where do you guys wanna talk?” B asks, grabbing her bag and getting up from her seat. “I’m guessing the 3 will be hanging out at the café, so that’s not an option.” she says, referring to the café that Taehyun’s family owns and runs, which they’ve hung out at everyday after school so far, except for yesterday when the boys had their student council meeting.

“There other cafes nearby, but they’re really not as good as Kang’s.” Yeonjun says, leaning back in his seat.

“You know, there’s one place we could hold our little meeting, and we won’t even have to leave school.” Soobin says.

Yeonjun and B look at him then, curious and interested.

“Well come on then, let’s go. You can lead the way, Mr. President.” B says teasingly. Soobin visibly cringed as she did so. It wasn’t a nickname, but it was something she seemed to enjoy calling him by.

“Alright, follow me.” Soobin says, and the three make their way across the campus.

Walking across campus with Soobin and Yeonjun by her side made B remember the times in the past when she would be escorted by bodyguards hired by her parents. The dark days. She had yet to fill Kai in on the specific details, and a part of her was secretly afraid of spending one on one time with her childhood friend, dreading the moment when she would have to recount the memories that she would rather just forget.

The 2 boys had been chatting about their term project for their creative writing class, Yeonjun whining about getting paired with someone other than Soobin and Soobin in turn comforting him, and B had been so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice where they were.

“Ah, I see. Nice thinking, Soobin.” Yeonjun says, as they walk down a familiar hallway.

“What, why? Where are we going?” B asks, the hallway wasn’t familiar to her at all. It was at a part of the school near where the faculty rooms and offices were, so it wasn’t really part of the tour.

“Actually, I just remembered that I had to stop by to sign some forms that I left after the meeting yesterday, but I figured we might as well have our meeting here.” Soobin says, as they reach a set of double doors at the end of the hall. He takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket and takes a moment to sort through them before taking one and unlocking the doors.

The sign above the door read “Student Council Office.”

“Oh wow, I haven’t seen your office.” B says, realizing where they were.

“Well then, welcome to our lair.” Yeonjun says, before Soobin pushes both doors open in a dramatic fashion.

The three step inside, and B takes a moment to scan the room. There were 5 desks situated along the walls of the room, 2 desks each on 2 opposite sides of the room and 1 desk at the very end of the room, which was bigger than the other 4. Each desk had an assortment of files, papers, trinkets, and frames on them. In the center of the room was a long conference table lined with office chairs. There were 2 whiteboards on the walls filled with scribbles from past meetings with a bulletin board full of reminders and notes, and a projector screen at the end of the conference table hanging from the ceiling. The only windows in the room were behind the 1 desk at the end of the room.

Soobin goes straight to that desk and shuffles through some papers, opening the drawers as well and sorting through documents.

Yeonjun sits at the edge of the conference table and beckons B over. “Come on, Baby. Take a seat.”

“Where, though? This place is huge. And I know we’re sort of having a meeting, but isn’t a conference table for 12 a bit too much?” she says, her eyes still scanning the room. “This place is…pretty cool.”

Soobin makes his way over to the 2 with a stack of papers in his arms. “I think it’s my favorite place in the campus. We come here all the time, and we’re free to use it as much as we want, so please, just take any seat. Make yourself at home.” he says, smiling sheepishly.

“Alright, I guess.” B says, taking a seat close to the end of the table. Soobin takes the seat at the end and Yeonjun sits between the 2.

B notices that the boys seem a bit different as they take their seats. When they were seated in class, Yeonjun was usually slouched in his seat while Soobin had an elbow on his desk and his head resting on his hand. Now, seated at the student council office, they were both sitting upright. Yeonjun had both elbows resting on the table and was leaning forward, while Soobin was sitting up straight with one hand on the table and the other on his lap.

“So, B, we just wanted to talk about Hyuka’s birthday. It’s tomorrow, and we were wondering if you could help us plan something as a surprise.” Soobin says, beginning their meeting.

B felt a bit intimidated, so she found herself sitting up straight as well. “I’ll help you as much as I can, but I haven’t celebrated his birthday with him since we were kids, so I’m not sure what we can do.”

“I’m sure anything you suggest will be a big help, really.” Soobin says, smiling warmly at her.

“Okay, well honestly, I already had an idea but it’s nothing grand, I just thought it would be nice.” she admits. When she sees that Soobin and Yeonjun are focused on her intently, she continues. “I was thinking I, or we, could greet him right at midnight? Maybe drop by his place and surprise him with a cake and stuff so that as soon as his birthday begins, we’ll be there to celebrate it with him. But if it seems too hard to pull off, we don’t have to do it. Or I can do it myself, since I grew up with his sisters too so I could ask them for help.”

“That’s actually a brilliant idea.” Yeonjun says. “I’m up for it.”

Soobin nods. “So am I. We can let the guys know about it in the group chat to see if they can come with us, and B you can coordinate with his older sister Lea to see if we can come over to surprise Hyuka.”

“Alright, I’ll get in touch with her and if she gives us the go signal, I’ll let you guys know right away. I’ll buy a cake tonight, maybe you guys could bring those pop out streamers or something so it’ll be a mini celebration.”

Yeonjun nods. “Great idea, Baby. I’ll deal with food and snacks, maybe a pizza?”

“Or 4?” Soobin says, grinning sheepishly at him.

Yeonjun’s face softens as he says “You know I can’t say no to you.”

Soobin laughs and says “Thanks, Yeonjunie. I’ll try to see if I can get my hands on streamers and stuff too.”

B nods. “Okay, that’s good. Is that all you guys wanna do? I’m sure you have something in mind.”

“A party. Let’s throw him a party.” Yeonjun says. “Tomorrow’s Friday, and we don’t have school or anything the next day, so it’ll be perfect.”

Soobin nods. “I was thinking of a party as well, but where? And how will we set it up?”

“Friday’s club day, but we won’t have club meetings yet since recruitment day will be on Monday, so we’ll just have homeroom in the morning then we’ll be free for most of the day. Plus we can come in school in casual wear, since Fridays are our washday.” Yeonjun says, stating facts.

“Wait, what’s wash day?” B asks.

“It’s the one day of the week where we’re allowed to wear casual wear to school. It’s on Friday cause the school thought it would be more convenient for club day.” Soobin explains. “If we throw a party on Friday, I think we could do it at my place. It’s always available.” he offers.

“Won’t your sister be home?” Yeonjun asks.

Soobin shakes his head. “She started at University this year and moved into a dorm, and you know my parents only come home a couple of times every year, so I practically live alone now. Except for the household staff, of course.” he explains.

So he lives alone too. Like me. B thinks to herself. “At least you have household staff to keep you company. It’s actually a bit lonely, living alone.” she says wistfully.

“It really is, especially since I’ve always been close with my family. It’s a big adjustment, having everyone move away now.” Soobin admits. “You guys are always welcome to come over, though, so I’m hoping I won’t be too lonely often.” he says hopefully.

“You guys are always welcome to come visit me too, though I doubt my apartment is as big or as grand as your house.” B says teasingly. “What about you, Yeonjun? Do you live with anyone?” she asks suddenly.

“Nah, my house always feels crowded, even though it’s just me and my parents, plus the household staff. I don’t like being at home though, and I think I’d actually prefer living alone, or at least away from them.” Yeonjun responds candidly.

B was surprised by how straightforward his answer was, and by how easy it was to ask him about it. “I’m an only child too, but as much as I love my parents, I wanted nothing more than a bit of freedom, so I think I understand.” she says, sympathizing with him.

Yeonjun gives a small smile. “At least you got your freedom, Baby. And at least you can say that you love your parents. I mean, my mom’s not bad I guess but my dad is just…” he says, shaking his head. “Anyway, yeah alright, I guess we’re having Hyuka’s party at Soobin’s place.”

Soobin nods. “Yep, that’s settled. Uh, we have to think about setting up now and stuff. Decorations, food, drinks, guest list, that sort of stuff. Gifts will be handled individually, of course.” he rambles, a bit flustered from the sudden change of mood in the conversation.

“I think the main problem is keeping Kai distracted while we’re setting up the party?” B says, offering her opinion. “It’s nice that we’ll be out of school early so we’ll have more time to prepare, but that also means that we’ll have to keep him distracted for longer too.”

“Well, we could do what we did today? Split up the group, 2 of us can distract him while the rest help with party prep.” Yeonjun suggests.

“No, we’re gonna need as much hands on deck as possible with the preparations, plus I don’t think splitting up the group will be necessary. One person is all we need, and I think I know the perfect one.” Soobin says.

B raises a brow at him when she notices him staring at her with a pointed look, until it clicks in her head.

“Oh… you mean me.” she says. Looks like she’d be having her one on one time with Kai a bit sooner than she thought.

•°•

“I can’t see anything.” Beomgyu says.

“SHUSH! Hyuka might hear us.” Taehyun shushes him.

“Wait, I’ll light up the candles so we won’t be in complete darkness.” B whispers. “Hold this for a sec, please.” she whispers, passing the cake to Yeonjun as she shuffles through her bag for the lighter. She lights the candles and pokes them into the top of the cake one by one then takes the cake back into her hands. “Thanks, Yeonjun.”

“Sure thing, Baby.” he whispers, and with the candles lit she could now see that he was smiling at her. She smiles back.

“Okay, are we all ready to go? Hyuka’s room is down this hall, the 2nd door on the right.” Soobin whispers.

“We know where Hyuka’s room is, Soobin.” Beomgyu scoffs.

“I, uh, was talking to B? Are we all re—oh wait! Everyone, put these on!” Soobin whisper-shouts, opening a pack of party hats and passing them around.

“We should’ve done all this before we snuck upstairs. The lights were on in the foyer.” Taehyun whispers while securing the party hat on his head.

“Too late now.” Beomgyu mutters. “Ouch!” he then whisper-shouts, as Taehyun grabs the elastic of Beomgyu’s party hat and releases it so it slaps against his chin

“That’s enough bickering, now let’s go!” Soobin whisper-shouts, holding up his huge pop out streamer like a bazooka.

“Ah, wait, shouldn’t Baby be in front since she’s holding the cake?” Yeonjun whispers.

There’s a moment of silence as everyone thinks it through.

“Okay, cake then pizzas then egg tarts then pop out streamer then camera. So that’s me then Yeonjun then Taehyun then Soobin then Gyu at the back so he can capture everything.” B whispers, getting everyone into formation.

“Why do I have to be at the back.” Beomgyu whispers, pouting as he takes his phone out to start taking the video. “Uh, guys, it’s 12:01 already. We missed midnight.”

And with that everyone runs down the hall and barges into Kai’s room.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!” they shout as they burst through Kai’s bedroom door.

“What the—?” Kai exclaims groggily, sitting up in bed and pulling the sheets up to his shoulders.

“Hyuka, were you, um, sleeping naked?” Soobin asks awkwardly.

Kai’s face flushes red as he says “No, of course not! I’m wearing underwear!”

“Oh yeah? Prove it.” Beomgyu smirks behind the camera.

“I can’t show you my underwear.” Kai says, flustered. “Wait, are you filming this?”

“Everyone sing!” B exclaims, which the boys happily oblige to.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you!” they sing as they walk further into Kai’s room and surround his bed.

B leans forward, putting the cake as close to Kai as she could, and says “Make a wish, Ningning.”

As flustered and red as he was, Kai squeezed his eyes shut before whispering something under his breath and blowing the candles out.

Soobin lets the pop out streamer rip as Kai blows the candles out, which causes everyone to jump and someone to scream in surprise.

“Uh, that wasn’t me.” B says, as they all look each other, trying to identify who screamed.

Soobin sighs. “Okay fine, it was me.” he admits.

“But you’re the one who popped the streamer.” Kai says.

“Yeah but I wasn’t expecting a loud sound to come out so I was surprised as well.” Soobin says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Anyway, happy birthday Hyuka!”

“Thanks, everyone.” Kai says as they all start to greet him. “How’d you get in here, by the way? And what time is it?”

“I asked Lea if we could come over to surprise you, so she told one of the maids to let us in beforehand.” B explains.

“And it’s 12:13 now.” Beomgyu says.

“Oh wow, you really came over here just to greet me at midnight? Thanks, you guys.” Kai says, smiling warmly at all of them. “It means a lot to me.”

“It was B’s idea.” Taehyun says, setting the box of egg tarts on the bed and wrapping an arm around B’s shoulders. “You’re lucky to have a best friend like this one.”

B blushed, surprised by the sudden show of affection from Taehyun. “Thanks, Taehyun. I couldn’t have done this without you guys.”

“Quick, group selfie before we devour the pizza?” Beomgyu says, holding his phone up.

As everyone moves closer together around the bed to fit into frame, Kai asks “Can I at least put a shirt on first so it won’t look weird?”

“Nah, it’s fine. Everyone say Kimchi!” Beomgyu exclaims.

Kai wraps the blanket tighter up to his neck as everyone says “Kimchi!” and Beomgyu takes pictures.

“Okay, now let me put a shirt on so we can do this properly.” Kai says. “Baba, please look away.”

B scoffs. “Oh please, it’s not like I haven’t seen you shirtless before. We lived in Hawaii, remember? Beach days? Sunburns?”

Kai’s face starts to burn red as he explains, “Yeah, but things are a bit different now, Baba. We’re not kids anymore.”

“Aw, is Ningning shy?” Beomgyu says teasingly.

“Just look away for a sec, please, Baba?” Kai pleads, giving the girl puppy dog eyes.

B sighs. “Fine, because I believe in consent and respect your adolescent boy body.” she says before burying her face in his sheets. “Just let me know when it’s safe to look.”

The mini celebration went on until 1:30 in the morning, with the boys exchanging funny stories about Kai and B in turn telling the boys embarrassing childhood stories about him. The 4 pizzas were easily devoured, the egg tarts were saved by Kai for later, more pictures and videos were taken, and they had to remind themselves that they had to be at school at 8 AM, and that’s when they decided to put the birthday celebrations on pause.

Yeonjun offers to drive Beomgyu home since the two of them live in the same area, while Soobin offers to drive B and Taehyun home since he lived closer to the 2, which they happily accept.

Before B falls asleep, she remembers to put together a quick birthday greeting in the form of a tweet.

And as she wakes up the next morning, she smiles when she sees Kai’s reply, but her smile drops a bit when she remembers what she and the boys had planned for the day, and what her role in the plan was.

•°•

“No offense to MOA, like this school is great and all, but are Friday mornings always this boring?” B asks Kai and Taehyun.

They were sitting in their homeroom, which was scheduled every Friday from 8AM to 10AM. Since it was the first homeroom of the school year their teacher didn’t have much to discuss, and on a normal Friday, homeroom period was used to prepare for afternoon club activities, but since club days haven’t started yet, so they were basically just sitting and waiting to be dismissed now.

“Kinda? Don’t worry, it’ll be less boring next week since we’ll be having club day by then.” Taehyun says, trying to reassure her.

“Hang in there, Baba. There’s only 15 minutes until the bell rings anyway. After that, we can do whatever we want.” Kai says cheerfully, trying to fight the boredom.

“You mean we can do whatever you want, birthday boy.” B says, nudging his arm playfully. “Seriously, anything you wanna do? I’ve got you for the whole afternoon, right?” she asks him. She was able to guilt him into spending the whole afternoon with her by playing the ‘I’m your best friend and I’ve missed you so much and I haven’t had quality time with you since we were kids and we need to catch up’ card. It was the perfect opportunity to keep Kai distracted from the 4 other boys.

“We could hang out at my place, maybe watch a movie or nap for a bit? We kept you up pretty late earlier so I wouldn’t mind a quick nap.” B suggests. She was feeling pretty sleepy, and she wanted to feel energized for whatever the boys had planned for tonight.

“That actually sounds really really nice. I wouldn’t mind taking a quick nap, plus we can finally catch up one on one, just me and you.” Kai says, grinning at B.

“You and I.” Taehyun says, correcting Kai’s grammar. “Honestly, I’ll probably spend the whole day sleeping as well, then I’ve got to work a night shift at the café.”

Kai pouts suddenly. “Aw, what? I was hoping you guys would be free tonight, we could all have dinner together or something. My treat.” he offers.

Taehyun fights the urge to smile at how adorably clueless his friend was. “No, it’s fine. I’m glad we were able to celebrate earlier today though. But still, you can ask the other guys if you want to but I think they might be busy too.” he says.

Kai pouts, nods, and takes his phone out to text the other boys. While he’s distracted, B takes the opportunity to communicate to Taehyun.

“Night shift? Really?” she asks, mouthing the words to him behind Kai’s back.

Taehyun shakes his head at her, mouthing back “No. Made it up.” Then he holds up his hand, showing her his fingers crossed which meant he was lying when he told Kai about it.

She nods, understanding him and then gives him a thumbs up.

Just then, the bell rings. B groans and says “Finally!” as she stretches her arms above her head. “This period was a long moment of nothingness.”

Kai nods his head in agreement. “You got that right. Let’s get out of here. Tyun, you gonna walk with us?” he asks, turning to Taehyun. “You guys walk together all the time, right?”

“Yup, let’s get going. I can’t wait to spend the afternoon in bed.” Taehyun says, gathering his things. And with that, the 3 of them leave school together.

•°•

B sent a quick update to the boys as she and Kai step into her apartment. All she had to do now was make sure that he stayed within her sight for the rest of the afternoon, plus she wanted to make sure she was appropriately dressed when they left for the surprise party later. How she could get all dressed up without Kai suspecting anything might be a bit of a challenge, but she was sure she’d come up with an excuse.

“Welcome to my humble abode! When I moved in, I decorated and organized everything by myself, so sorry if it’s a bit of a mess.” B says as Kai’s eyes scan the surroundings. Upon entering the front door, the living room was the first thing that greeted everyone who stepped in. There are 3 doors on the left side, the kitchen to the right separated from the living room by a counter with bar stools set up, and there was a round table with 5 seats set up in front of a pair of sliding glass doors that led into a small balcony at the back.

“Baba, this place looks great. Not bad at all, considering it’s your first time living alone. It’s pretty spacious, too.” Kai says, stepping further into the apartment. “Quick question, how have you survived living alone? I don’t think I could do it, I’m not a very good cook.” he says as he surveys the place, trailing a hand on the kitchen counters.

“It hasn’t been very easy, and honestly I don’t really know how to cook either, so I end up having food delivered a lot or getting takeout instead.” she admits. “I swear, I tried to cook here once on the day I moved in, and I almost burned the kitchen down, so I’m probably never gonna do that again.” she says, laughing sheepishly.

Kai’s eyes widen at her revelation. “Baba! What happened? What did you do?” he asks, almost screaming at her in surprise.

“I tried to cook and then the next thing I know, my smoke detector starts beeping nonstop, then I got so distracted by trying to shut it up, I didn’t notice that the food I was cooking was burning, then the sprinklers came on and my superintendent called to ask what was going on and I had to beg him not to tell my parents about it. It was pretty funny, but yeah, I’m probably never gonna try to cook on my own ever again.” she says, laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing sounded.

“Hey, if you want, we could try cooking a quick meal now? For lunch? I’m no seasoned chef, but I know a thing or two. You deserve to eat a homecooked meal at least once in your own home, after all.” he offers, as he starts rummaging through the fridge. “You got any rice?”

As Kai starts to scrap together ingredients from B’s almost-bare kitchen drawers and shelves, he goes into full focus and even puts on an apron. Whenever B asks him if there was anything she could do to help him, he just waves her off.

She takes a seat on one of the stools at the counter and snaps a quick picture of her bestfriend and she composes a tweet.

“Hey, remember that one time when we were still kids and we tried to cook eggs?” B asks as she puts her phone down. “I think we were at your place, we snuck into the kitchen while the maids weren’t looking, and we had to stand on stools just so we could reach the stove.”

Kai nods, though he still had his eyes focused on his cooking. “I remember you ended up with a burn on your arm cause it accidentally brushed against the pan, and when the maids caught us, you were trying so hard not to cry so they wouldn’t see your burn.”

“Oh yeah, I did get burned that day.” B says, then she lifts the sleeve of her sweater until she spots the barely-there mark just above her wrist. “Ah, memories.”

“You know, I still regret doing that.” Kai admits.

“What? Why? That was such a fun day, I miss being able to come over to each other’s houses and just playing around.” B says.

“Yeah, but the cooking was my idea, and you got hurt because of it.” Kai says, looking at her then with regret. “I know I said it a million times that day, but I’m sorry Baba.”

B scoffs, dismissing his apology. “Come on, it’s fine. I barely felt it anyway, and that was ages ago. Look, it’s your idea to cook today too, and I don’t think anything could go wrong since you’re not letting me do anything to help around the kitchen.”

“That’s cause I wanna make sure that nothing like that happens again.” Kai admits. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Just keep talking to me so I won’t feel too bored.” he requests.

“Alright then, anything you wanna talk about?” B asks, resting her elbows on the counter and leaning forward.

“What exactly happened to you last year?” Kai asks suddenly. B’s heart drops and she feels the knots in her stomach start to form, even though she knew he’d want to hear about it soon. “All you said was something about your family and your dad’s job and stuff, but I could tell you were having a really tough time so I didn’t want to push you into telling me all about it back then. And I guess I understand if it’s still something you’d rather not talk about, but as your best friend I’m just worried about you.”

B takes a deep breath, preparing herself to recount the bad experience. “Okay, I’ll tell you now, but to be completely honest with you, the whole thing was a bit of a blur for me too.”

Kai looks at her with his brows furrowed. “What do you mean? Like, you don’t remember what happened?”

B shakes her head. “No, it’s not like that. I remember what happened, I guess I just don’t understand why or the reason behind it? Or what exactly was going on?”

“Okay, I am very confused right now. If this is your way of saying that you’re not comfortable with talking about it, then it’s fine with me, you really don’t have to tell me.” Kai says, trying to sound comforting.

“No, Ninging, I promise I’m gonna tell you everything I know. The thing is, I don’t know much. How do I begin to explain this…” B wonders aloud, sighing before saying “Okay, do you remember what my dad’s job is?”

Kai nods, his eyes focused on his work in the kitchen. “He’s a lawyer, right?”

“Yup, he’s one of the most high-powered lawyers in the country, he works at CNK, which is a globally recognized law firm. He deals with a lot of high profile clients and is one of the most sought-after attorneys for classified cases, usually for big companies with dirty little secrets.” B explains.

Kai nods again, keeping his eyes focused on his work. “Okay, so what does your dad’s work have to do with you?”

“Everything, I think. At the time, my dad was working on a big classified case. I could tell it was big cause he only went home to sleep, shower, and then he was off to work again. I’ve never shown interest in the cases he works on because it’s his business, and it’s not like he’s allowed to talk about them anyway cause they’re usually classified.” B sighs as she realizes that she was starting to ramble, subconsciously stalling.

“Anyway, he was working on this one case, and I didn’t think it was a big deal, but one night he came home looking really shaken, like he was terrified. We usually have dinner together, me and my parents, but when he got home that night he and my mom immediately went up to his office. I tried my best to listen from outside the door, but at first I could barely hear anything, as if they were whispering. Then suddenly, I can hear my mom start to shout things like ‘drop this case right now,’ ‘what am I supposed to do’ and the one that sent chills down my spine was when she said ‘what about our Baby, what if they come for her?’” she says, trying her best to keep her voice stable.

“‘What if they come for her?’ What’s that supposed to mean?” Kai asks, his brows pulled together as he was trying to process everything she was telling him.

“I think there was a death threat.” B forces herself to say out loud.

There’s a moment of silence as Kai’s hands freeze, and B swore she could hear her heart pounding. She started counting her breaths, trying to slow them down as Kai looks up at her, his eyes meeting hers.

“You think there was a death threat?” he asks, repeating her words.

She nods slowly. Taking a shaky breath before continuing. “Yeah, that’s the only explanation I can think of for what happened, because since that night I’ve had bodyguards with me everyone I went. Outside my bedroom, at the dining table, they’d even be waiting for me outside my classroom and walking with me around school. Not only that, my parents put me on complete lockdown. I was only allowed to go out to school, then I’d be taken straight home. I mean, my parents were always a bit strict, but this was insane.”

“That sounds really rough, Baba. And it sounds scary.” Kai says, looking at her full of concern.

“It really was. I felt like I was suffocating, cause I never got a moment to myself. The bodyguards wouldn’t leave me alone, and of course everyone at my school started to act like total dicks because of it. Stories started going around, my friends started avoiding me because of the rumors, everyone probably thought I was a criminal or something because they all started treating me like an outcast. And I really felt like I was.” B says, remembering the stares she got at her old school.

“The kids at your old school are all idiots for judging you like that.” Kai says.

B sighs. “I don’t blame them, if a student at school suddenly showed up flanked by 2 bodyguards everywhere, I’d probably be weirded out too. But the worst part is, I don’t know why it all happened. My parents were very adamant about not telling me anything. All they said was ‘it’s for your own good.’”

“Oh wow, so they never explained anything to you? They put you through that shit without even telling you why?” Kai asks in disbelief. “I always knew uncle and aunty were a bit strict, but that’s just cruel.”

“Well if it was really a death threat, I guess they just didn’t wanna scare me. It got better once my dad’s firm won the case though. Again, I don’t know what exactly happened, but at the end of the school year my dad won the case, my parents eased up on my bodyguards, but the damage was done. I lost my friends, I was seen as a weirdo at school, and I felt so frustrated and suffocated that I just wanted to get away.” B continues. It was the first time she had said all of this out loud, and as shaken as she was, she felt a lot better to finally let it out.

“So that’s why you begged your parents to let you transfer schools? And move out of the house?” Kai says, finally understanding.

B nods. “Wow, I feel much better letting it all out now.” she says, taking a deep breath. “I’m just glad my parents let me do it. I think they only agreed because they felt bad about the whole thing, but ever since you mentioned when you walked me home the other day, I really do think that they might have secretly hired security to look after me.” she says, laughing at how ridiculous the whole situation sounded.

“You know what? Come here.” Kai says, motioning her over to his side of the kitchen. She stands and walks over to him and is surprised when he suddenly pulls her into his chest and wraps his arms around her.

“Ningning? Wha—?” she starts, but then he hugs her tighter and shushes her.

“Shut up and let me hug you for a moment, alright?” he says, and she feels his body rumble as he laughs. “Listen here, Baba. While I’m around, I promise I won’t let anything hurt you. You got that?”

B tries to relax into the hug, but he was so tall and he was holding her so tight that her face was buried in his chest and she was starting to have a hard time breathing so she lifts her head up and takes a deep breath before saying “Got it. Thank you, Ningning. That means a lot to me.” she says, smiling up at him.

They stay that way for a while longer before she says “Um, I think your food is burning.”

Kai jumps and screams then, panicking as he tries to save his cooking.

The two of them spend the rest of the afternoon picking out the unburnt parts of Kai’s cooking to eat, lying around the couch and chatting with some cheesy Netflix series playing in the background before they fall asleep.

B wakes up when she hears her phone ringing. She notices that the sky was much darker, and she panics when she sees the time and the notifications from Soobin.

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dazaily · 4 years ago

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karasuno first years using pick-up lines on their s/o

soo.. i’ve been wanting to write a karasuno head canon for ages, and i gonna write a hc which turned into a short fic that i’ll probably never finish... so this is the replacement. enjoy!!

description: so the the karasuno boiz were playing truth and dare in their changing room. and tanaka and nishinoya had dared your bf to use a pick-up line on you.

warnings: implied nsfw. gender neutral reader. fluffy but sprinkled with swears. i was stressed writing this. long af. not proofread.

. ⋆ 　 * . 　· 　 ✫ 　 ⋆

hinata shoyo

i’m sorry but, did u rlly expect our lil cinnamoroll to know what’s a pick up line?

he babie 🥺❤️

n e ways, it was finally his turn on their little game of truth and dare and nishinoya had dared him to use a pick up line on you.

“a pickup line??? what’s that? will it improve my volleyball skills??”

like i said a bABIE!!

nishinoya and tanaka needs to stop tainting my bbys mind.

“udk whats a pickup line??? how did u even end up with y/n.”

nishinoya is in shock.

and then the plan commenced.

their lil game of truth and dare ended up as a lil plan on getting u hinata to use a pick up line on you.

that night, u were walking home w hinata after club activities ended.

with noya, tanaka and kageyama trailing you, but we pretend they don’t exist.

“soo,, y/n”

“sup? y u acting all weird for? ur usually rambling abt volleyball by now.. u okay?”

“hoW DO THEY KNOW?? WHAT AM I GONNA DO NOW?? THEY TOLD ME TO SOUND NATURAL BUT THEY ALR KNOWS!! uGh my senpais are watching me, i gotta do them proUD!”

hinatas mind ran at 1,000km/h, it was insane. especially for someone who doesn’t usually use their brain.

“um, uM, Y/N! CAN U HELP ME HOLD SOMETHING?!?”

confusion.

that was the only thing u felt at the moment.

i mean u were alr infront of ur house, what’s the point of holding smt when u were leaving??

“whut”

conveniently, during ur moment of confusion, the only word u could form was “what”.

“m-m-mm-mY HAND!!”

hinata screeched at ur face

...

silence. whilst noya and tanaka facepalms in the bg

it took a moment, but ur brain finally computes what ur bf just said

“pFFFFFTT,”

ur first instinct was to release the phatest snort/wheeze. shane dawson is jealous.

“y/nnnnnn~~ stop laughinggggggg”

hinata was now suffering from crippling embarrassment, as u wouldn't stop laughing no matter how much he pleaded.

omg imagine him all blushy and shiz akdkkoaw-- ok lets not get off topic

“ok,, okay, first of all, u could've just held my hand without asking? we’re dating? you don't need my permission to do smth we do everyday?? and, more importantly, who taught u that line u just used???”

u said half wheezing, half talking, struggling to convey wtv ur trying to say to ur bf.

lucky for u, he was strangely able to understand what u were saying, and he replies with a lengthy explanation of the entire situation.

“ooo, so that's why noya, tanaka and kageyama have been following us,,”

“hOWD U KNOW??? NOYA-SAN OUR HIDING SPOT HAVE BEEN EXPOSED!!!”

as u left to go in ur house, he stops u by holding ur hand and gives u a peck on ur forehead.

as he separates from u, he had the biggest smile plastered on his face, brightening the entire neighbourhood.

“goodnight y/n! i love you!”

kageyama tobio

erm, lbr this man would have 0 ideas in the field of flirting.

knowing this, our lovely 2nd year duo, decide its time for them to step in and help their junior in his dating life

despite it flowing extremely smoothly w/out their intervention

n e ways, so they forced the 1st years to play truth and dare w them.

when it finally came to tobio’s turn, the unfortunate child unknowingly picks dare which causes nishinoya to spring up.

“i have the perfect dare for you.”

commencing plan...

so nishinoya dares kageyama to say a pickup line to you, but since kageyamas a big baby in disguise, he dk any pickup lines.

bet he didn't even know any pickup lines, but that's not the point.

so, being the mastermind he is, nishinoya told kageyama a perverted pickup line.

being the clueless innocent baby he is, kageyama decides to recite the pickup line he received from noya to u outside ur class.

“hey y/n,”

“hmm?”

“do you like dragons?”

“eh? why the sudden question? i guess so?”

“cuz i can see me dragon my balls on ur face.”

processing...

what the fuck.

it was like god hit the pause button on earth, like literally everyone just paused for a literal second, turning their head towards kageyama, trying to figure out who tf was the brave soul who said that.

while still in shock, kageyama just stood there confused, as he was suddenly placed in the centre of attention for no reason. o there's a reason honey, a very good one.

“why's everyone looking at me,”

with that one sentence, the world went back to normal as if someone had hit the play button all of the sudden, leaving u to deal with the weirdly awkward situation u found urself in.

“ummm... tobio.. do u have any idea what u just said.”

“uhh yeah, a pickup line.”

at that moment, when he said that, it hit u.

“what did they do.”

“huh, what are u talking about??”

*insert confused kags*

“nishinoya and tanaka told u to do something right?”

“r u a psychic???”

despite being amazed at ur ‘psychic powers’, he immediately explains the situation, causing u to face palm so much ur face may be concave.

there are times where u appreciate ur dumbass bf being a ignorant qt, but times like this makes u wish he was a tad bit smarter..

debating ur options, u decided to explain the meaning of the pickup line he just used on u in public.

once hearing and understanding the meaning of the pickup line he used on u, his face lit up like a matchstick, shining bright red, stuttering madly, struggling to get even a word out.

“oh, um, well, im sorry for saying smtg so indecent to u in public, um ill make it up to u somehow,”

understanding him was a struggle due to the severe stuttering he was suffering from, but u managed somehow.

“nahhh, its cool, i should go lecture nishinoya for corrupting my precious baby though~~”

“b-b-b-bABY!?!?”

“hehe, yes ur my baby <3″

tsukishima kei

ugh this salty ass mfcker

honestly can't imagine him being forced into using a pickup line on his s/o

cuz, despite hw much we try to deny it, he is one smart mfcker,,,

but i think he would be curious how his s/o will react, so he would do it on his own will anyways.

umm, so this is how the situation went down.

it was another boring day, and the 2nd year duo was having none of that and decided too ensue a game of truth and dare with the 1st years.

this was how the c h a o s started.

he was trying to leave the game discreetly before he had to sell his soul to the devil.

unfortunately for him, lady luck was not on his side, as he was chosen to do the next dare.

“but wait a fucking minute, when the fuck did this become a game of dare or dare, when tf did freedom of choice decide to fuck off like that?”

plot convenience

so he was forced into a dare.

the moment of dread came when tanaka stood up shouting he had a brilliant idea. and it all went downhill from there.

so tanaka dared tsukki to use a pickup line on his s/o. and his first reaction was no.

“o come on, u never do anything romantic, i bet u haven't even held hands, sometimes i wonder how y/n’s still with u.”

“says the person who has never dated.”

tanaka shut ups.

so somehow, he managed to get himself out of the situation.

later that night, he couldn't stop thinking about pickup lines. he almost spent the whole night thinking about ur reaction. cuz volleyball is just a club, am i right..

he decided to use a pickup line on u tmrw, just to see ur reaction, not like he wants to use one, lmao that's lame, haha. a fucking tsundere.

the next day, during lunch, he left yams with the 1st year duo to go find u.

when he saw u, he immediately calls u.

“hey, where's yams, u didn't tell me u wanted to eat with me today,”

“nah, i just had something to tell u.”

at this moment, tsukishimas heart was beating faster than ushijimas spikes.

“you know if u think about it we never stop tasting our tongues.”

“hmm, now that u said it ye--”

“how bout i taste urs for a change.”

since it was so unexpected, u had no idea how to react.

as u returned to reality, u notice a slight pink on his cheeks.

u were gonna come back with a snarky comment, since it was rare he was so vulnerable(?)

but ur plans were ruined when he glanced at u making eye contact, to check ur reaction.

ur face bursts into the brightest red, hes ever seen.

seeing ur extremely delayed reaction, he lets out a laugh, but immediately recollects himself.

“it was a dare from tanaka.”

you were still bright red, but u felt the blush on ur face reducing after hearing the reasoning behind the line.

“oh, haha, i was wondering what's up”

u said slightly dejectedly.

he felt like he was just punched in the gut by guilt.

“i was also curious about ur reaction, and i am satisfied to say the least.”

he leans down to ur height to whisper in ur ear, before initiating the kiss.

ur blush returns almost immediately as u returned the kiss.

since yall were in school, he separed from the kiss after a few seconds. this is a place for knowledge, y'all nasties.

“welp, bye loser,”

after the kiss, he immediately return to yamaguchi, leaving u alone with ur thoughts. trying to escape from embarrassment.

he may be equal to the condiment on ur kitchen cupboard, but he still tries to make u happy, so appreaciate him and his efforts <3

yamaguchi tadashi

a babie uwuwuwu

pickup line what's that? hehe omf he's so cute

so how this about to go down.

so truth and dare bla bla bla... ive written this exact thing 3 times please excuse my behaviour.

since he was bored, yamaguchi forced tsukki to join in on the fun together, a decision he would regret.

soon it became yamaguchi’s turn, and everyone turned quiet due to the lack of dares they had or yamaguchi.

that was until the one and only nishinoya stood up.

“hEY, u have a s/o right, how about u use a cheesy pickup line on her!!” *eyebrow raise*

while processing what nishinoya just said, yamaguchi’s face morphed into one of dread and fear, as he turns his head to tsukishima for help.

“u dragged us into this mess, i aint helping u.”

and there goes his only help, well it was his fault in the first place dragging him and his best friend into this mess. tsukishima u tsundere.

yamaguchi was on the verge of tears, thinking of excuses and ways he could get out of the god forbidden situation he brought upon himself.

but the only thing he could think of was the worst case scenario, which was u breaking up with him.

looking at his senpais, he slowly faces the fact that there's no escape and accepts his fate.

if this is the cause of the end of ur relationship together, it just means the gods don't want y'all together.

“idk any pickup lines....”

this was his last attempt of escaping as he bids ur relationship farewell, already aware it was not gonna work.

“thiS IS WHERE I COME IN, don't worry yamaguchi i am the encyclopaedia of pickup lines.”

ofc his senpais would know the cheesiest lines on the surface of this earth. despite insisting the earth is flat.

and so the dreadful event began.

after school ended, otw to his club, he met up with u. with his senpais trailing behind stalking y'all, to see ur reaction.

“ugh out of all the pickup lines, they had to make me use the most overused one... im gonna cry,,, y/n i hope u don't leave me after this.”

well here goes nothing...

“hey y/n,,” extreme stutters that im too lazy to type out.

“hmm?”

“k-k-kiss me if im wrong,,, b-but dinosaurs still exist right?”

before he could even cringe at himself, u gave him a peck on his lips while smirking afterwards.

yamaguchi proceeds to poof into redness after processing what had just happen, as u laugh maniacally in the background.

“u could've just asked for one, and tsukishima already told me everything so u don't need to explain,"

yamaguchi did not have the brain power to comprehend the situation at hand, as he was still affected from the kiss from earlier.

“i can't believe u think i would breakup with u because of something so trivial.. im kinda upset..”

finally coming back to reality, yamaguchi finally realises the situation he's in.

“o-oh, i didn't mean to make it seem like i didn't believe in our relationship, its just that w--”

he gets cut off by u kissing him again.

when u separate, u began to laugh again.

“hAHAHHA, ikik, i was just joking around, don't worry ill love u no matter what, now off u go to ur club ill see u tmrw.”

not knowing what to do or how to react, yamaguchi felt the need to do smtg before u left.

“i love u, ill call u later tonight!”

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years ago

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[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Fifty-Five: Timer ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Hyūga Hiashi, Uchiha Itachi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

She’s always thought of it as some kind of pseudoscience, like astrology or basing personalities off of blood types. While many of the other girls she grew up with looked forward to their sixteenth birthdays like it was some kind of rebirth, Hinata just...couldn’t bring herself to put much stock in it.

“Everyone in my family swears by it!” Ino gushed at one point. “It’s how my mom met my dad, and several of my aunts and uncles! And guess what? My cousin’s timer is up in like...three weeks. He’s so nervous he can barely stand it!”

“Doesn’t it seem a bit, y-you know...self fulfilling?”

At Hinata’s quiet interjection, several girls turned to her with disbelieving expressions. “...what’s that supposed to mean?”

Squirming a bit under their gazes, she’d gone on. “...it’s just...people look at their countdown, and they trust it implicitly. Doesn’t anyone t-think for themselves? Or...or want to find love on their own, rather than be shoehorned into it…?”

Ino scoffed. “Y’know, ever since they figured out how to make these timers work, divorce rates, like..cut in half! People are meeting those they’re meant to be with and staying with them!”

“...if it’s so great, then...why are there still divorces at all?”

That earned a cacophony of squawking replies about disbelievers ruining the statistics, and...Hinata quickly removed herself.

She just...had her doubts, was all.

Her parents, and her only aunt and uncle met through their timers. Her uncle, sadly, died when his son was only four, and Hinata three. Therefore, she has no real way to know how their marriage had worked.

Similarly, her mother died not long after having her sister. Hinata was five. All she really has to go on are blurry childhood memories...and her father’s current attitude.

And she really can’t see how the woman she recalls being so kind, so soft, so gentle...could love and marry a man like Hiashi. Cold, calculating, and seemingly emotionally stunted. He rarely if ever smiles.

...she remembers her mother’s smile. So warm…

...so how…?

It’s why, as her sixteenth birthday looms closer, Hinata gets more and more knots in her stomach. The implant isn’t required, but her father has made it very clear that she’ll be getting hers. Likely so he can marry her off as soon as her timer hits zero, and be rid of her.

While so many girls in her year have looked forward to their birthdays...Hinata can do nothing but dread hers.

Like many young people, she attends a school segregated by gender. It’s meant to help avoid fraternizing with the opposite sex and therefore affecting a timer’s readings. Of course...not everyone is attracted to said opposite sex. Hinata herself doesn’t really mind if a person is one or the other, but...she keeps that to herself. Admitting as much would make just about every girl who isn’t highly uncomfortable.

...and yet she wonders what will happen if she’s already met her soulmate.

Will the timer just...not work? Will it already be at zero? If so...then how is she ever to know who they are? Not that she believes it...it’s really all a bunch of nonsense…

...and yet…?

Each day that passes in December sees her more and more anxious - more and more depressed. Hiashi has already arranged for her to have the day off from school, her surgery to implant the timer set for early in the morning. Set into her left wrist, it will allow her to return to school the next day, her dominant hand unaffected and allowing her to write.

The day before, she finds herself at the last stage of grief: acceptance. There’s no fighting it. No use in trying to say no.

This is just how things are.

“Good luck with your procedure!” Ino and Sakura call as classes let out for the day. “See you Thursday!”

She doesn’t answer, just waving farewell. While there’s excitement in her friends’ voices...she can’t bring herself to feel it, too.

Just...get it over with.

Once home, she works on her assignments, numbly browsing social media and not really taking anything in. All she can think about is the surgery. The stupid timer…!

Part of her wants hers to be broken. To prove that it’s wrong. But the rest - despite her stubborn belief that it’s all rubbish - is afraid, so very afraid that it won’t work.

That she’ll always be alone.

Too restless to do much else, she finishes the entirety of her homework, turning in to bed early...and yet unable to sleep, mind too full. Worries eddy in her mind like a slow-moving whirlpool: around and around, always circling back and starting all over again.

By some grace she falls asleep for a few hours, snapping awake at her alarm. Heart fluttering and stomach churning, she gets up, has a light breakfast...and then gets in the car for Hiashi to drive her to the hospital.

The ride is completely silent. Only once they park does he turn to her, expression - as always - unreadable.

“I know you’ve been dreading this...but best we just get it over with. Best to know for sure.”

Hinata doesn’t reply, just exiting the car and following him inside as they check her in. Prep doesn’t take too long. Dressed down in a powder blue gown, she’s wheeled into the surgery suite, given anesthesia...and then goes blissfully blank.

Waking is a slow process. First thing she notices is a dull ache in her arm, eyes dragging open to peer down at her wrist.

It’s wrapped in gauze, her IV in her other arm. The urge to peer at it itches like the skin beneath the wrappings.

Looking groggily around the room, she finds herself alone. Of course her father wouldn’t be here - probably off hounding a nurse somewhere, badgering them about releasing her so he can head home.

...the hospital has bitter memories, after all.

Going lax with a sigh, Hinata stares up at the ceiling. Well...it’s done. No going back now, unless she wants to try digging it out. But she’s not that desperate. She could keep it covered...never look at it...but even now, the temptation is great…

Why does it have to be so repulsive, and yet so enticing? It isn’t fair!

“Hinata.”

Glancing to the door, she finds her father. “...yes?”

“Once the anesthetic has worn off, we can go home. The nurses say an hour or two. Do you...need anything?”

The question surprises her, even more so given his awkward tone. “...no, I’m all right. Um...thank you.”

As he goes, she wonders if he’s been made aware of what her timer said when it was fully implanted. Or maybe they weren’t allowed to tell him…? But something about him just now seemed...odd.

With nothing to do while she waits, Hinata does her best to doze and make up some of her lost sleep. After nearly two hours, a nurse checks on her status, and gives her the clear the go. Hinata changes back into her clothes, moving to leave on her feet...only to have another nurse approach with a wheelchair.

She immediately balks. “Oh, I...I don’t need that -?”

“It’s a precaution for anyone coming out of anesthesia to prevent falls. Just until you get to your car, miss.”

Rather embarrassed - it’s not like she can’t walk! - Hinata sheepishly obliges, head ducked as they pass by other patients, visitors, and staff. As they go, her bowed face is turned to her wrist. Maybe she can just…

Carefully fiddling with the gauze and trying not to be noticed in case she gets scolded, Hinata nibbles her lip as they approach the elevator to the main floor. Easing the material back, she doesn’t look up as the door opens, two other figures in the lift already.

That’s when it happens.

With a soft series of beeps, Hinata flinches back from her arm, holding it aloft as though it’s suddenly on fire. Both Hiashi and the nurse balk, turning to her in question.

And inside the elevator comes a responding chorus of sound.

Time seems to slow.

Looking up, Hinata finally sees the other occupants of the lift. At the front is a young man in a wheelchair like herself, arms loosely folded atop his lap. And behind him, pushing the chair, is a boy more her age.

But he isn’t looking at her. He’s looking at his wrist, which is rapidly trilling.

...oh...you’ve got to be kidding.

The little group remains frozen, half in and half out of the elevator. Hiashi’s face is aghast, looking between his daughter and the stranger opposite them.

Said stranger then looks up, clearly just as taken aback.

The only one calm is the man in the wheelchair, who simply quips, “...Sasuke, I believe you should introduce yourself.”

.oOo.

So it occurred to me that I've never written a soulmate AU. Like...ever. At least that I can recall? Admittedly I have a slightly sketchy memory, but...yeah. As soon as I saw the prompt, I remembered seeing this AU floating around, and was like...okay sure, lmao I know it's a cliffie, but I think I can make tomorrow's prompt work for a part two! So you won't have to wait long, lol - also...with this one done, we're officially down to just ten days left to catch up. It feels a bit weird, admittedly, but I know it'll be even weirder when we're all caught up! Finally xD It's honestly a bit embarrassing having it drag on this long, but...well, couldn't help Life's interruptions. On that note tho, I really need to get to bed! Thanks for reading~

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #hyūga hiashi #uchiha itachi #best years of your life [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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sweetbyte · 5 years ago

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Title : Say When Part VI

Previous Chapters | I | II | III | IV | V

Pairing : Shouto Todoroki | Momo Yaoyorozu

Rated : T

The halls seem too quiet for a place that is usually bustling with activity Momo thinks as she slowly shuffles down them. This could possibly be due to the early morning hours, she muses.

At first, she had planned to check up on Jirou and Hagakure, both who are scheduled to be released later today, but again she remembers how early it is. The two lean closer to being late risers, so it’s more than likely that they are still sleeping. The last thing she wants to do is wake them up too early and disrupt their much-needed rest.

In an attempt to kill time, Momo paces for a while in the halls deciding if what she had originally planned out was a good idea but even then, her feet mindlessly take her to the dreaded destination. When she finally makes it to the front of Bakugou’s hospital door- someone who is guaranteed to be up, alert and most likely confrontational- she lets out a deep breath trying to steel her nerves. She’s just checking up on a classmate, there was no need for her to feel this nervous. Except this classmate could possibly be her soul mate…

“Are you going to stand there all fucking day!? Its pissing me off!” Momo freezes at this voice from the other side of the door, already irate. She has two options; she can disengage and he would never know it was her, or she can continue into an awkward situation already looking like a fool.

A loud huff makes it clear that Bakugou is getting impatient, and Momo gathers that if there was ever a moment she would use profanity it would in this instant. She ultimately decides to run away after embarrassingly letting too much time pass. However, before she can execute a swift retreat, the door swings wide open and she’s rooted into place. Her head drops quickly, part in shame at getting caught, and part to brace herself to the reprimanding to come. Except it doesn’t come.

Bakugou just snorts and Momo hears him walk away, grumbling something she can’t make out. Surprised that he didn’t throw a fit or slam the door in her face, she slowly chances a view. Though there is no sign of lack or sleep with his alertness, the way he slumps his way back into the cot reveals his state of exhaustion. Guilt sets in for making him get up and she finds the strength to enter the room, gently closing the door behind her. She briefly wonders if it was a smart idea as she comes to face the glare being directed at her.

“What the hell are you doing here this goddamn early? It’s excessive even for you. And spare me that, ‘I was in the area’ bullshit would you.”

“I came by to assist Jirou and Hagakure, as they are getting discharged today, and decided to take advantage of my time here and check on your disposition.”

“I’ll be a hell of a lot better when I’m outta this bitch. This shit was ridiculous”

“Hardly. You where kidnapped! Of course they have to take the proper safety procedures to make sure you’re physically and mentally stabilized and well!”

“Since you’ve verified my state of wellness, tell me why you’re really here.” His tone is stern and Momo knows the time has come.

“It’s come to my attention, that uh…” She trails off caught in the intenseness of his glare and she ends up gulping in nervousness.

“What? What has come to your attention? Spit it fucking out already!” He barks impatiently and she stops thinking.

“I think we may be soulmates!” Momo ends up blurting out and despite the rushed delivery, her chest feels so much lighter. He is left speechless for a moment, his jaw clenching, and her nerves start to come back under the scrutiny of his gaze.

“Let me see if I can wrap this shit around my brain or however the fuck that expression goes. What you’re saying is that you think we are fucking soulmates?” He’s giving her one of the driest looks he’s has, and she can’t but feel silly right now. “Ponytail, what kind of shit are you on, and where can I get some up in this bitch.” He snorts while letting his head fall into the pillows returning his attention to the ceiling of the hospital room.

Momo frowns at his choice of words. This has been plaguing her thoughts restlessly and for him to dismiss it so easily. Truth be told, she knew this was a plausible outcome, but she was betting on him getting upset and all but demand for all the proof she could provide, to which she had practiced and prepared on delivering.

“I wasn’t implying that we were soulmates, per se, it’s just my mark rather reminds me of you and your quirk, so…”

“So you find yourself thinking about me often, is that what you’re saying” He lifts his head up again and smirks, appearing much too smug and her face heats up immediately.

“I would just like to know if it’s a possibility.”

“And what, we fall in love and live happily ever after?” He sneers mockingly and she tries not to let it bother her. She knows his cynical nature and just shakes her head. “No. I’m not looking for a partner. If I’m quite honest, I would like closure. I’ve always been curious of how the marks work, but I’ve never felt anything until UA. I’m fully aware that this mark does not define my future, but I’m curious to see at what extent this mark does affect me.”

There is a moment of silence as he regards her almost curiously before he sighs with something akin to frustration.

“We are not.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not my fucking soulmate.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because I know who it fucking is, and its not you. Trust me, my life would be a hell of a lot easier for me if it was you.” He mutters looking away from her, causing her to slightly frown in disbelief.

“I don’t mean overstep any boundaries, you are obviously not required to tell me, but would you mind showing me your mark?” His eyes snap back to her and she realizes the extent of her request.

“You do realize how incredibly intimate that question is right? It’s like the equivalent of you asking to see my dick, which sorry to disappoint, I’m not pulling out. Unless, you plan on finishing anything you start.” He laughs loudly at the look of disgust on her face and she further blushes and stutters when he starts to pull up his shirt.

“Relax, ponytail. This is what you wanted to see right?” He badgers as his mark becomes visible nested on the right side of his lower abdomen above his hip bone. She can’t make out what it is, so she walks closer to his bedside to get a better view.

It’s a book. She barely has time to register the scarring around it, or the fact that she’s reaching out to touch it for they are interrupted.

“You cannot just barge into rooms uninvited! You have to be mind-” Iida begins to lecture the impatient and concerned redhead, but it dies as the Bakugou rescue squad freeze at the doorway.

Momo’s reflexes have never been so quick, as she jerks her hand back and jumps away from Bakugo. She takes in the various looks of shock and surprise from the group and wants nothing more than to disappear when she finally sees Todoroki. She can’t make out the look on his face but she hears Bakugou mutter “Fucking hell” and for once she can’t help but to fully agree.

A/N: I swear i haven’t given up on this series. Honestly I’m trying yo wrap this up in a couple more chapter. I’m not good at all with long term fics, as you could probably tell. I re-wrote this chapter 5 times, and I’m still not too keen on it, but i am glad I’m mostly over the block I had and was able to finally post it even though its shorter than my others. As always, thank you for reading, and especially my favorite Pumpkin, for showing nothing but love and support!

#Say When #jots #my writes #my fics #todomomo #soulmate au

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resetmypatientviolence · 7 years ago

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How (Drake x MC x Liam)

How– Part 12 of “Supposed To Be”

Part 1: Not Yet Part 2: Wait Part 3: Confused Part 4: Didn’t (NSFW) Part 5: I’m Pregnant Part 6: Choice (NSFW) Part 7: Future (NSFW) Part 8: Fight Part 9: Show (NSFW), Part 10: It’s Yours, Part 11: Please

Word count: 5,018 Pairing: Drake x Jaela x Liam

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Language; Sad things happen

Summary: After waking up and facing Liam for the the first time since the Homecoming Ball, with red eyes, he tells her the news she’s been dreading to hear since the moment Drake crashed into her, foolishly taking the bullet meant for her.

Suggested Song Accompaniment: The Night We Met– Lord Huron

Notes: Hey-ho Supposed To Be is BACK! This chapter, if you can believe it, was supposed to be longer… but I cut it short since a) it’s long already, b) I said in my artist statement I like to organically let plot flow, so why rush this? and c) my mom is coming in town next week so I need to clean my apartment. That said, I planned to do another hiatus… but I think I’ll try to get the next part up next week for you. Hurrah! So, as usual, thank you ALL so much for your support! It means the world.

** There IS a read more attached to this, I swear. Tumblr mobile just hates everything, if it’s still being annoying.

Tag List: @boneandfur @mariawalkerwrites @ninamckenzie22 @hhiggs @drakesfiance @umccall71 @mrswalkerreynolds @youwontlikewherewewillgo @mfackenthal @zarina-x-zig @ahteneah @tmarie82 @viktoriapetit @theroyalweisme @heatherfilliez @bobasheebaby

“Jaela, Jaela, you can’t—your IV, you have a concussion—” Liam’s hand held and searched for hers as she attempted to remove her IV, frantic. Liam’s gripped hers tight—when he got it in his grasp—and his other on her shoulder as she kicked her legs under the tight sheets.

“Liam, please—” She gasped, tears steaming down her face and staining her hospital gown.

“You need to calm down—”

She stopped moving. Liam squeezed her hand and touched her cheek. “How can I?” she breathed, staring into his eyes—right before another wave of debilitating sobs ripped through her, his words of the last two minutes already haunting—because of course, why wouldn’t they haunt?—her. How could she forget the way his lips formed to say the words about Drake, the final images of the Homecoming Ball so clear—Drake bleeding out, dying there alone—

Dead.

“Shh, Jaela…” Liam sat on the edge of her bed best he could, arm wrapped around her.

“Liam… I…” How could she tell him her world fell apart, and everything she knew and loved and cared about and thought fell apart with one simple word? Dead, dead, dead—

“You didn’t let me finish,” he whispered. A pause. Jaela raised her red and puffy eyes to him, so small under his arm. She said nothing, the shuddering sobs melding into sniffs and silent tears—for the meanwhile, at least.

Tenderly, Liam brushed a tear from her cheek. It was replaced by another seconds later. “I was saying… yes, he… he died… but it’s not like that.” There she was back at the Homecoming Ball, Liam’s face far away, holding Drake’s bloodied hand, staring into eyes that were losing their life, second by second.

“How can it be anything but?” Their I love you’s—it wasn’t supposed to be like that. Voices weak, covered with his blood.

“Yes, he did die, when he was brought here. But the doctors,” Liam breathed. “They brought him back.” Her breath caught, eyes wide. His voice, strong as he told Liam, his sacrifice for the woman who didn’t deserve to be saved. “He… he just got out a surgery before you woke up.” Liam looked away, at her stomach. “But… they… they don’t know what’ll happen if he wakes up.”

Jaela gulped, blinking slowly. “If?” Liam’s look of fear—Drake saying the only thing that could make Liam abandon his friend—and his strong arms carrying her away from Drake’s body, still and lifeless on the ballroom floor.

“He… he lost a lot of blood. They… they don’t know how much brain damage happened because they don’t know how long he was…” He sucked in a breath, a silent tear falling down his cheek too. Jaela raised a shaky hand to touch it, brushing it away. The hand she held last limp, blood like spilled ink. “He’s not in pain, in a coma… that’s the only good thing they said to me.”

“He’s alive?” she whispered.

“In a way, yes.”

“Can… can we see him? Please?” Liam sighed, slowly standing up. Lower lip trembling as he didn’t answer, Jaela clutched the railing. “Liam,” she pleaded. “Please. I… I need to. I need to see him for myself.”

Running a hand over his head, he turned from, staring at the floor. “I think we have to talk about something else, first.”

Shaking her head quickly, Jaela sucked back a breath. “No. I won’t. Not until… until I can see him, Liam. I can’t. I love him. I need to see for myself.”

Turning, blue eyes wide and face aghast, he stared. “You… you don’t want to talk to me about our child—or how I was the last person to know about the pregnancy—until you see him? We can’t do anything, Jaela. They wouldn’t even let me in the room.”

She flushed with anger, tears, and an emotion she couldn’t quite figure out. “I love him,” she repeated, locking eyes with him. “I need to see him. I… I want to try and see…”

“It won’t—”

“I don’t care,” she snapped, touching the IV again. Liam moved fast, holding her hand away from it. “Please,” she uttered in a broken whisper. “Just a… just for a few minutes. Then we can talk about everything. I-I can’t think about anything else until…”

Liam’s jaw locked, then he released her hand and pressed the nurse call button. “Thank-you,” she whispered, sitting back while he went to the window, looking out at the world, sky too blue for the terror of the night, and not at her as the nurse came. Jaela tried to explain why she needed it removed, but she wouldn’t budge. “But—”

“You’re recovering, Duchess. You nearly split your skull. All the unneeded stress for you and the baby won’t be good.”

“Can we see him as a favor for the King, just this once?” Liam said, pulling out his King tone. Strong, stern, yet gentle. He walked back to Jaela, setting a hand on her shoulder. “He’s our good friend—” Good friend? She bit her lip. Ah, back to putting on a show, always. What were they to this nurse? Lovers who would announce their engagement soon? The Queen-to-be? Liam seemed to think so. But first, Drake. “—and took a bullet for the Duchess. Even if he can’t hear us… we’d like to give him our deepest thanks before….” He trailed, Jaela gulped, touching her stomach. Was that for show, too?

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The nurse glanced between the two of them then finally nodded. Removing and capping the IV, Jaela wincing as the needle came out. A bandage pressed on her skin and she was free to go. To see Drake, barely alive. To… the nurse left and Jaela slid to the end of the bed, throwing her legs over and slowly lowering them, legs shaky.

Liam was at her side, arm around her as her feet touched the cold floor. Straightening up, Liam’s hand didn’t leave her, pressing softly against the small bump that was there, the curve on her lower abdomen. When she stood tall and faced him, his hand moved to the front of hers, fully touching what was hidden within her.

Shouldn’t she feel something, having the father the of her child touch her stomach with both of his hands, eyes staring directly at the miracle or mess that they made? Instead… it was nothing. Numb. Numb to his kind touch.

“Liam…” she said, brushing his knuckles. No charge. No jump. No fire like there used to be at his touch, nothing like when she’d come to him like a loyal dog when called to his side. Is that really that far from the truth of what she was, on the Engagement Tour? His pet? Neville wasn’t wrong. The secret that everybody knew but never spoke about? How much gossip had she missed, how their eyes would judge, glance between her and the King whenever they spoke, hands and touch too close between King and Lady? And now….

“One question before we go,” he said, sliding his hands to her hips, the hospital gown rubbing against her skin. “Why?”

A question that didn’t need completion. His eyes, so focused on her body, said it all. Why didn’t you tell me? “I… I don’t know,” she whispered, gently removing his hands from her. “Denial, maybe? Because I was scared of what you’d think? I can’t think of an answer that… that works right now, Liam.” They locked eyes. “How… how are you feeling?”

Sighing, he rubbed his face. “Honestly?” She nodded, spotting white slippers by her bedside. By the sonogram. She went to move, but froze when he spoke, voice low. “I’ve never been this angry, Jaela.”

“Oh.”

“Angry at you, at whoever attacked the damn palace and shot my best friend, angry at Drake for taking you away and for getting shot, happy you and the baby are okay, surprised but happy that you’re pregnant, sad because I could have lost you both, sad because Drake could die, and—”

Maybe wrapping Liam in a hug was a bad idea. Hell, having the audacity to ask how he was feeling was a bad idea. How could anybody process everything that happened in the period of three days? She couldn’t even give him a reason as to why she didn’t tell him about his own child. She couldn’t even process… Drake. He could die. He died for her.

Jaela clutched his white shirt as he held her back, hand wound in her hair, like so many times before. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “What if he…”

“Maybe your voice will wake him up,” he murmured. “He did seem to always find you in a crowded room.” After they separated, Liam tilted up her chin. “You’re right. Let’s talk about… everything… afterwards, okay?”

Sounds were magnified as she put on the slippers and Liam handed her a white robe to wear, pulling the rope too tightly around her waist, heart beating out of her chest. They exited to room together, the hall empty. “Private wing,” Liam murmured, hand on her lower back. Bodyguards trailed them until they reached a small lobby, Hana and Maxwell asleep across rows of chairs. Their eyes flew open once Liam and Jaela entered, Hana running right to her, pulling her close.

“Oh Jaela… we were so scared—”

“Me too, I couldn’t find you two. I thought… I thought….” she whispered into Hana’s soft hair. Maxwell rubbed her back.

“I tried to get back and help,” he said, Jaela turning to him and pulling him into a hug. “We couldn’t get back in. I just got Chance and then… that was it. We came here as soon as we could, once Liam let us know where you were.”

“I know.” Pulling from Maxwell, Jaela turned to Liam, gulping. “Drake…”

“Just around the corner.”

And she followed Liam, tugging at the ends of the rope, chest tight, stomach twisting. Not from the morning sickness. Because of him, because of Drake. Dying. No, alive… still, remember. Alive. Barely. But not even she, her voice so small, could convince her otherwise. How alive was alive?

The room came into view, blinds shut, and two doctors whisked out of, speaking in Greek, the chipper nurse waving them in. Couldn’t they wait just a second longer? “Liam I need a…” Liam grabbed her hand and pulled her in without a word, without a second to—

She gasped, Liam catching her fall, holding her up at the sight before them, forced upon them without warning, without thought, without… without a reason to think anything other than the word: dying, dying, dying.

“No, no, no…”

“You… you…” But even Liam’s words were stuck, caught at the sight of Drake Walker. The man who’d take a bullet despite hearing the woman he loved saying moments before she’d chose another man over him just because she was pregnant with his baby; the man she’d made love to not an hour before, all promises they made put into their bodies, their mouths, their touches; the man loyal to his best friend, until she entered the picture; the man trapped in a world he detested but only remained because of the people he loved.

The man… man too good for her, hooked up to countless machines, tubes in and out of his body, tape and bandages covering skin she bruised, hair matted, skin pale, hands neatly placed over the sheets—him, lifeless, the only sounds of the respirator forcing his chest to rise and fall, the beeping of his heart, and Jaela’s quiet sobs.

“Drake… pl-please….”

Feet steady, she shuffled to his side, afraid that even holding his hand could break him, the final blow to the man who loved somebody who didn’t deserve it. Yet, she reached out, Liam on his other side, blinking back tears. Jaela’s fell freely, landing on the crisp sheets. Cold compared to the sheets of her bed, tangled up with him, his breath in her ear.

Hand, lukewarm. Limp. No strength, nothing like when he held her, or how he pressed against her in a final shudder, hands holding her tight, whispering his confession of love to her, unbeknownst—but was it really?—to her.

“Drake… why did you… why…. It should have been me… should of….” Words, a tangle of nothing and everything all at once poured from her, holding his hand just tight enough where she could feel the warmth that was there but not enough to hurt him anymore than he was. Breathless, she spoke in hushed tones, pushing back his hair with a shaking hand, the weight of the world crushing her, second by second.

“I’m so sorry Drake, I’m so, so sorry. I love you… p-please come back, squeeze my hand, anything—let me know you’re still there and not…” But nothing. Beep… beep…. Not even when she asked again. And again. And again until his knuckles were against her forehead, Liam bringing her a chair as she sat, asking—no pleading—for him to convince her he was there. Nothing, and her desperation grew. Events from the night before replaying in a loop, over and over, unable to stop. How he held her, kissed her, moaned with her, slammed against her, his blood staining her, how he said he loved her–

“Drake, please wake up,” she begged, standing up. She kissed his pallid forehead, chapped, lipstick stained lips lingering on his skin. Still, nothing. She pulled back, fresh tears leaving tear tracks. “I… I know it’s selfish. I know you don’t deserve me. I don’t deserve you, god, I don’t… either of you… but please come back to me. I didn’t mean it.” She kissed his fingertips, tasting her own tears and not the sweet salt of his skin, shuddering every few seconds, breathy. “I… I can’t go on without you, I just can’t. I need you. Please, Drake, I love you….”

Beep, beep…. Liam gulped, appearing in the corner of her eye. Jaela look back to Drake, only Drake. Lifeless Drake. “Please…” Was it just her, or did it sound like his heartbeat was speeding up? She raised her brows.

“Jaela, I think we need to get going.”

Shaking her head, she gripped Drake’s hand tighter. “N-no, I’m not leav-leaving him. I can’t. Not when I-I should be here instead, Liam. Don’t try and tell me I didn’t deserve that bullet.”

“You didn’t, you can’t beat yourself up over—”

She didn’t want to turn away from Drake, because he was the only thing that mattered in the moment, but she did to face Liam, still holding Drake’s hand. “You’d rather have your best friend be laying here than the woman who led both of you on, thought she made a choice, and then got all confused because discovered she was pregnant, and was a complete fucking coward by not telling you— all while still letting you both believe that there was a future with me because I couldn’t figure out my own feelings, even after I told you what they were? I don’t think my actions deserve a tap to the head.”

“It’s not about deserving, Jaela,” Liam sighed, exasperated. More beeps, louder, almost. “He saved you and the baby. Don’t you care about that at all?”

“No.”

“What?” He tried to touch her face but she batted his hand away, stepping closer to the hospital bed. “But, Jaela—”

“It should have been me,” she whispered. “And if I lost the baby then… then that would be apt punish—”

“Don’t say things like that, Jaela,” he snapped, anger tingeing his voice but deep concern and worry in his blue eyes and frown. “You’re not thinking right. We need to leave and discuss this situation we’re in.” His arm wove around her waist, but she didn’t budge, only turning back to Drake.

Beep, beep, beep…. The heart monitor was definitely moving faster. She squeezed his hand. “Drake, please…”

“Jaela—”

Liam’s desperation to have her alone. How fast he talked at her bedside. How he wanted—no assumed—she was to be his Queen. Yes, he deserved the time. But… but she couldn’t leave Drake. No, she just couldn’t. Not now. “I’m not leaving him,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can’t.”

“Jaela, it’s not a matter of can’t or want. You have to. You’re still recovering, too. ”

An exhale. Nothing from Drake except for a heartbeat. “I’m not leaving him because I know the moment we’re alone you’re going to tell me I need to be your Queen and…” The words, ready to spill. Could she do it? Finally? “I don’t love you like I love him, Liam. I can’t.”

In a matter of a second, there were two broken hearts in the room.

Liam’s touch stiffened. “I… I know that, Jaela,” he whispered. Raising her eyebrows, she turned to face him. Eyes, shiny and jaw clenched, but he didn’t look as she expected. Not upset… knowing.

“But…” Releasing Drake’s hand, giving it a final, gentle, rub of her thumb, she crossed her arms. How did Liam know? Or understand when everything he did… proved otherwise.

“Everything made sense once you told me. I noticed but never could put the pieces together until the truth was there in front of me.” Heartbeat, faster. Wait—Drake’s or hers?

“But why didn’t you give up?”

Jaw clenched, Liam shook his head but pulled her closer. “I love you. Isn’t that a reason enough?” Heart dropped; breath caught. How could he still? Beep, beep, beep—“We need to leave. There’s nothing we can do… and talking about the details of us and the next steps—there’s almost too much—here isn’t where it should be. He needs peace.” Jaela tried to move out of Liam’s gentle hold, but he tightened his grip on her side, starting to move towards the dreaded door. “Jaela…”

Us. Us. Us. He said us. She froze, looking away from Drake on death’s doorstep, to Liam, brows furrowed. “Us,” she said, the short word slow, elongated. Foreign. “Us,” she repeated. “Do you think there’s an us to talk about?”

Liam winced. “You’re pregnant, Jaela. And…” Don’t you dare say it, Liam. She wanted to say, the thought screaming in her head—along with the offense that he believed she would go along with everything. That she didn’t have a say in the matter of them. That because of the baby, they were meant to be. Maybe she believed that notion last night—but it was a new day and she’d do everything all over again and again and again if that meant she got one more second with Drake.

“Don’t I get a say about who I want to be with?” she snarled.

He sighed. “You need rest. I… I can go over everything with you afterwards, okay?”

“Liam, I’m serious,” she said, frowning. “I don’t give a shit about the monarchy rules or ideals for situations like this. I… I can’t be Queen—”

“Jaela, you don’t understand what’ll happen if—” Beepbeepbeep—

“You’re the goddamnned King!” she shouted, hot, angry tears replacing the sadness. “Change the rules! I don’t want to be Queen. Didn’t I always say I saw you for you, Liam?”

Something tugged at his lips, pain in the corners of his eyes. “Yes but… but this is different, J—” … beep….

“I’m a damn American and I’m having a say over these outdated ideas, okay? I’m the one who’s pregnant. I don’t care that you’re King, I care that you’re Liam and we need to f—” Jaela froze, the room—quiet. Too quiet one second before the flat line.

“Drake?!” They said together, heart monitor nothing but one perfectly straight line. Nothing. Drake, gone.

Within one moment, the world sharp around the edges, Jaela screamed reaching out for him, and Liam pulled her back, his hold taking her breath away, as the doctor’s poured in, their words fast and furious as his body—because that’s all it was—disappeared among the white coats.

“Let me go, let me go, let me go!” she yelled, trying to free herself from Liam, but to no avail. His jaw dropped; staring in shock at the reality that Drake’s heart stopped beating—again—right before them. Dead. The words he said brought to life. Jaela fought, screaming and yelling, trying her hardest to break free while Liam stood still, muscles tense while the doctors worked, the flat line screeching louder by the second, filling her head with nothing but that. Not the rush of Doctors shouting, not her yells and sobs—just that. A flat line. The flat line.

Jaela gripped Liam’s arms, trying to jump forward and he pulled back hard. “No! No! What are you doing? What’s happening what’s—” A doctor turned as more equipment was wheeled in. “Is he alive is he—”

“King Liam, get the Duchess out of here—now! You shouldn’t have been in here and she’s hysterical.”

Wordlessly, Liam nodded and moved, muscles tightening against her—he was always so strong—and pulled her out of the room, the tears and shouts of protest unable to stop. No, no, no, I need to know I need to know he needs to live he needs to fucking live. We had so many plans, so many ideas, so much left to do. In the doorway, she gripped the edges, holding tight, preventing Liam from moving her into the hall.

“Jaela, we have to go, we have to—”

“We have to see if he’s alive! Let me go, Liam, ple-please!”

Fingertips, straining against the cool metal, cool like his hand will be—was—when she held it and—a doctor appeared, quickly pushing off her hands, her last attempt to stay with Drake, to try and amend the fact that it should be her laying there instead of him. To say I love you’s until he’d wake up, if only that was to cure, to tell him she’d be waiting, to tell him everything she couldn’t, caught in a world of confusion and nobility, to just… to just say something. Anything. Anything to spend one second, one moment, longer with Drake Walker, the man she loved.

Loved. Past tense.

A shot through her heart, too. Reality rushed in, body shuddering with tears and screams, Liam trying to quiet her as he pulled her down the hall, arms taunt against her body as she fought against him. “Drake’s dead, Liam and—”

“We don’t know that. They’re trying to save him. Calm down, Jaela, please.” How was he so clam?

She turned in his arms, Liam taking the chance to move her into the lobby, Maxwell and Hana standing up, eyes wide. She gripped his shirt, everything heavy and light and twisted at once and all too much. Drake dead… dying… coma—was there a difference?—and Liam, telling her she has only one option. Be with him or… or what else? How could he do this? Didn’t he understand? How much had the crown changed him—the man who couldn’t wait for their escapes and when they could only be Liam and Jaela, not Prince or King and Lady of the Court?

She stared into Liam’s face, the fine lines evident. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, did she want to be with the man who changed, the one who had to put on a show for the most of his life? How much of the real Liam would she see—and would she want to put on the show beside him? Could she?

No.

Liam tried to pull her closer, comfort in his voice. “It’s okay, Jaela, it’ll be—”

“It won’t! He didn’t deserve this! I do! Drake shouldn’t be the de-dead one in there, I should be!” she yelled, pushing against him, hard.

Liam gasped, but didn’t release her, only holding her closer. “Jaela, don’t you ever say that—”

“Let me go! I need to see—”

His hold was too much. She didn’t deserve him, either. Neither of them. She jumped, using that momentum to separate herself from him, but that only lasted a second, breaking free and taking two steps towards the hall, but he caught her wrist, bringing her back to him, Jaela noticing the fresh tears on his cheeks too. “We can’t, we—”

“Let me go! Liam, let me go!” she screamed, trying so hard to break free from his arms again, tears flowing once more, voice raw and horse as she sobbed over and over, each one like a wave, rolling over and crashing against her, throwing her against hard sand, unforgiving yet deserving.

“Jaela, I—I can’t—” He gasped, pulling her back to the center of the lobby. She struggled against him, pushing against his chest. A doctor, walking out, pausing to stare at them. There was where he’d say it: Drake, dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. “We can’t do anything—”

“Liam,” she gasped, chest heaving, eyes pleading. “Let me go!” With a final push, Liam released her and she stumbled, vision blurred, and hit a white wall. Nobody moved, the shock of pain in her arm stopping the tears—but only for a moment. One sweet moment when reality was blissfully ripped away, the world folding back to her bedroom with him, staring into his warm, dark eyes as he held her—but it was just that. One moment.

Jaela slid down the wall, curling her legs to her chest, sobs ripping through her entire being. “It… it should’ve been me,” she managed, clutching her robe, staring at the speckled floor. Nobody, not Liam nor Hana nor Maxwell answered or touched her. “It was supposed to be me…”

“No, don’t touch her. Let her be…”

Did time matter when grieving? Jaela didn’t think so, sobs turning to silent shudders, then to sniffs and finally, to nothing, voices murmuring all around her, feet shuffling, eyes shut as she sat against the wall. Maybe it was five minutes. Maybe it was a few hours. She didn’t know. All she heard over the quiet, distant sounds was that of still heart. Heartbeat, gone from right behind her—and what was she doing? Arguing with Liam if she gets a choice in what they’re going to be now that he knows about her pregnancy, something they could have tried harder to prevent… but didn’t. Never even talked about it. Just… made too many mistakes.

“Thank-you, Doctor. I’ll get her back to her room.”

Hands, warm, picked her up and carried her back to her room, Jaela looking at Liam’s shirt pocket, the sonogram peeking out. Her stomach dropped. He loved the baby, already, and she… she didn’t know what to feel, still.

Liam set her on the bed with care, and she stared at the door, knees to her chest. There was silence. She couldn’t even cry. Had the tears run out? Had reality shocked her still? “Does Savannah know?” Her voice, barely above a whisper.

“Know what?”

“That he’s… he’s…”

“He’s alive, Jaela.” Liam walked around into her view, pulling up a chair. She could only stare, mouth open. Everything seemed to say he was dead. Everything. But… he was… alive? How? “Barely. But he is. He’s a fighter.” Frowning, Liam reached out his hand to hers. Tentatively, she took it. What was next? “But… it’s not looking good. The… the doctors said they don’t want you in there with him until… until he wakes up. Or at least stabilizes to a point where they’re comfortable.”

Oh, how she wanted to protest and scream that it wasn’t fair, that she wanted to sit by his side and tell him everything and then the world—but she meekly nodded. “Okay,” she said, then somehow, pulled herself up to a sitting position.

“No fighting?”

“No,” she sighed, removing her hand from his, tracing the lines of her own palm.

Drake did that once, one night in her cabin, both a little whiskey drunk. Her, more than him, of course. Sitting crossed legged like kids, she pretended to read his palm, then he to her, saying sillier things than she could even think of. How warm he was, how many shocks and tingles he sent through her, just by tracing little lines. How hard she kissed him that night. How he laid her against the floor, the vibrations from the train running through her body, his lips on her neck. How she nearly begged him to touch her, pressing her hips against his, teeth grazing against his ear as she whispered exactly what she wanted, but he pulled away, as always, saying he needed to go. How even if he did that every time, she fell more and more in love with him.

“Liam,” she whispered, looking up, closing her hand around her finger. “You’re not serious about me becoming Queen, right?”

Matching her gaze, he nodded. “I am. There’s… there’s not a choice, Jaela. Not if you want our child to be considered a…”

“I don’t want to talk about what’ll happen to our kid if I say no to you,” she said, voice growing stronger. This was important. “We… can we just be Liam and Jaela, figuring out where we—as two regular people—go from here, without thinking about the monarchy or the baby? Can we just figure out… where we stand and what we want?”

Liam grimaced, shaking his head. Chewing on her lip, Jaela took his hand again, looking into his eyes. “We owe it to this baby,” she started, touching her stomach. “To figure out what we’re going to do with us before we figure out what to do with it.”

“What to do with—”

“One step at a time, please, Liam.”

Taking a deep breath, he stood up, still holding her hand. “Okay, yes, you’re right. One step at a time,�� he paused. “So… where do we begin… with us?”

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixelberry Studios.

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ladyvivienneloyola · 6 years ago

Text

Challenge #6

Alternately Titled: Last Night

((a/n: hello hello hello, hopefully I’m not late to the party right now. LOL. Anywhos, I had a jampacked few days lately and well I just managed to finish this now. My arms feel like jelly from all this typing but anyway, hopefully you guys would like this. As always I’d like to thank the wonderful people who RPed with me for this challenge @opheliagardinier and @benjaminschreave and also YALL there’s supposed to be another fic in between my challenges but again, I was just kinda too busy with personal stuff to write both things on time. The fic shall come soon I hope. also shout out to everyone for writing bomb ass fics!!! THEY WERE SO GOOD AND IT MADE ME NERVOUS WITH MINE LOOOOOOL. Anyway that’s it for now. Hope you guys like it and again a warning for swearing cause lol, what would you expect from Viv?))

Confession time and here’s what I got, I was really getting tired from all this standing during this ball. Guess you could say that I couldn’t really stand here anymore. There were a few tables and all but most of the ballroom was basically full of those cocktail tables that left most of us standing. Thankfully the ball was soon dying down, or at least I think it was going to after the toast the king and queen were about to give so I was willing to stay a little longer before crashing in my room and giving my feet sweet relief from the shoes I was wearing.

I was pretty stuffed after eating some cake with Fee, but somehow I guessed that I still had a little room for drinks when she handed me the flute of champagne from a passing waiter.

“More alcohol, excellent.” she smiles as I accept the glass and press it to my lips as I return her amusement.

“You know I’m starting to like balls even more now.”

Fee somehow snorts at the comment, and I choose not to react to the probably poor taste in words for the sake that I was not too excited to really start an argument.

“You and me both, Viv.” I watch as she takes a sip from her glass, and knowing that she was the alcohol expert between us, her comment and the way she held the glass close to her was interesting to say the least. “Hm, interesting choice.”

I follow suit, taking a sip from the champagne to see why Fee would react in such a way to the drink, noting the bitter after taste that the champagne leaves on my tongue. “Why?”

“Tastes like the regular shit rich people drink at these kinds of stuff.” From everything I’ve ever tasted here in this palace, most of the drinks I’ve tasted have always left a similar aftertaste, most alcohol tasted like shit anyway.

The wine connoisseur leans a little towards me and says with a shrug, “Honestly, I would have expected something a bit better.”

“Right.” I take another sip and feel my stomach do a flip, and I’m not talking the good kind when you see your crush with a new hair cut. It must be because the champagne was a more concentrated unit of alcohol but I wanted some confirmation from the expert herself. “Say, would you think this drink has a pretty high alcohol concentration?”

She shakes her head in reply, “No, maybe 12%.”. Fee glances over to me as she adds, “Hey are you okay?”

That’s when the screams start. I couldn’t tell much since it was as if there was a sudden block on my senses. The nausea hits me again and I place my hand on Fee’s shoulder to try and steady myself.

I glance over to Fee looking around in confusion and can only watch as she throws her glass of champagne at someone with a gun. Holy fucking shit, wasn’t that a waiter? I only watch as the glass crashes against him, spilling champagne of him as it was soon followed by the sound of a gun discharging.

I instinctively yell over the gunfire. “What did you do that for?” Oh god, what even gave Fee the idea that a fucking champagne glass was going to stop a gun. Who the fuck did she think she was? Chuck Norris in a fucking ball gown? Amidst the adrenaline that was starting to seep into my system, I keel over again.

All I wanted to do was close my eyes and cover my ears, not even sure what had happened with the glass I was drinking. I’m pretty sure it was lost among the sound of the dozen other things crashing to the ground and the smell of gun fire around us. I wanted to curl up and get away from this place, but I keel over again as the sensation of my stomach doing one of those weird flips does it again, and suddenly my chest was getting heavy. I couldn’t breathe, this all felt so wrong. The sound everytime a gun discharged made me jump, at the expense of feeling my limbs get heavier and heavier. Maybe if I just closed my eyes I’ll be fine. This just could be my reaction to all of this. I needed to get a grip of myself.

I feel Fee lean in close to me, her weight only making my bones feel even more like lead than ever. She coughs and I open my eyes and look up and see the red blooming out of Fee’s chest. This was a gunshot wound. Oh fucking hell, I knew this bitch was going to end up getting shot. I scramble for an answer in my mind, to try and remember what first aid measures that were possible if one had gotten shot.

I’m trying to think, I’m thinking, I’m thinking and thinking. But my mind was becoming duller and duller. What I do remember though that the leading cause of death after gun shot wounds is blood lost and I do my best to try and stop the blood flowing out of her shoulder. I use most of my strength to move my hand and press it against the wound. There could be better things to stop it. A cloth, a dress. Thinking. I must think. I must breathe, but I can’t breathe. I could- the nausea hits me again.

“Don’t freak out but we need to get out of here and get you some-” I let out another labored breath before I suddenly feel my legs give out from under me, and try to catch myself before falling fully to the ground. I was not feeling so good, I didn’t want to let whatever was overtaking my bodily functions overpower me. An emergency. This was my emergency. I couldn’t. I can’t. There were probably more people like Fee who needed the medical attention. “Go… find… help…” I manage out as I try to collect myself but the waves hit me more and more and I can’t seem to find anymore strength to hold myself up. Everything hurt, my mind was a blur, and I couldn’t breathe. It feels like I was dying and I might as well have been.

From the corner of my eye, I see Fee in a fruitless effort kneeling down next to me before she falls forward and lets out a cry of pain.

Inutil. I am nothing but useless now. This was not happening, but it is. I don’t know what feels worse now. This

feeling of everything hurting all at once now. I gasp and clutch my chest as I spare everything going around me one last look. Fee’s bloody shoulder, the glass and the other people on the ground. The screaming, the guns, and the royal family nowhere in my line of sight.

This was it. This madness could be the last thing I see. It is a disappointment.

I can only feel the last wave of nausea before I let myself fall,

and fall,

and fall.

I kept on falling. A part of me knew that I wasn’t dead, because if I was I’d probably be seeing a white light or feeling the flames lick my feet in hell. (I mean, it was only a matter of time until I did get there.) In fact, I only felt this heavy emptiness in my chest that seemed to contrast the oddly weightless feeling of all this. Everything was dark around me as I continued to fall. There were voices I could make out, or at least those were real voices and not ones in my head- but their words were all jumbled and I was left disoriented as ever. I wait for this all to soon end- and I hope to hit the bottom soon. If there was a bottom.

It was hours of falling until I feel impact of hitting the ground and I seem to open my eyes and gasp. It was bright, so bright but all I couldn’t make out anything else other than the light. Two thoughts immediately come into mind. Oh god, was I really dead- and holy shit, did I actually make it to heaven?

I blink once, blink twice, blink thrice and my vision seems to get a grip of itself. The smell of this place is familiar, and I think to myself… heaven definitely shouldn’t smell like antiseptic. I close my eyes again, try to steady my breath despite feeling like mercury filled my lungs. I bring my hands in front of me and I feel my right hand heavier as I feel like it’s tugging something. An IV.

There was an IV in my hand and I follow the line to see a bag of dextrose hanging over my head. Holy shit, I wasn’t dead. I try to look around again with my eyes finally adjusted to the light, I realize where I am. Of course I’d know what this is, I’ve been in one so many times before. I choke back the feeling that made me sick to my stomach. It was a hospital room. Fuck this shit, I was in a hospital room- and I have no idea why. I push myself up from my bed a I try to find the button that could call a nurse on duty as I try to put together pieces of my memory back together.

The smell of gunfire, the sickly sticky feeling of blood on my palm, the shattering of glass, a bitter taste on my tongue.

I try to remember, but everything I see comes only in bits- and it only takes bits for me to feel a sense of dread that makes me want to scream. As if the universe didn’t want to hear me freak out, a nurse comes in and rushes to me. Immediately, she places her hands on my shoulders to calm me down before I can do anything. Her tone is calm, her eyes are tired- I can tell she’s had a rough time lately. I try to process her words as she sets me back down on my bed as if she’s said her speech a dozen times already- maybe she has. She tells me everything I needed to know, and I hang on to every key detail I needed to know.

Last Night. Attack during the ball. Guns turned on the guest. More than a dozen people dead. None of the Selected died. Poison in the drinks. The drinks. Poison. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach again.

“We found you in time to pump your stomach and administer the antidote before the poison worked its full effect.”

Her voice sounds cautious as she tells me that. I didn’t even ask what the poison’s full effect was. The look on her face said it all.

The explanation doesn’t make me feel anymore comfortable, but it has helped calm my nerves down enough for the nurse to trust me to be alone before she shortly leaves my room and comes back with a tray of food before a pager seems to beep from her pocket. Just as quickly as she explained everything to me and brought me my food, she seems to rush out before she mentions that the prince had visited me earlier while I was asleep. One weight seems to lift off my chest at that news. At least Ben was okay, at least I know he had managed to become 21 years and 1 day old.

One small relief. Another 99 more worries to tackle later. Another problem has to do with the rumbling of my stomach and I uncover my food to find a bowl of porridge.

I sigh. What was I expecting? You don’t exactly serve someone who just got poisoned and got their stomach pumped a michelin-star worthy dish. I pick up my spoon, contented with what was in front of me and try to get some food in me.

Eating was going to be harder than I thought. At the first spoonful of porridge, my mind seems to play a trick on me and imagine the same bitter taste of the champagne I had drank last night.

The thought makes me want to vomit again as I pick up the cover of the tray and end up spitting out the porridge and feel the non-existent food in my stomach try to climb up my throat again. I shut my eyes and start to feel myself tear up as a similar nauseous feeling returns.

I take a few breaths and try to calm myself down. The food’s not poisoned. There is no poison in this food. You will not black out again.

This happens several times over and over again, all with the same results. At the taste of food, the bitter taste on my tongue returns. I spit it out, and the nauseous pit in my stomach grows even more dizzying. Come on. Food. It’s just food.

It happens even more, with more attempts to tell myself that I could do it- but I can’t seem to convince myself that the porridge has the same bitter taste as the champagne does. My body seems convinced that it wants to reject whatever food I try to take in. I wanted to cry. I hated this, I’ve never felt any hungrier, I’ve never felt anymore pitiful than this moment, but I was tired too. I push the tray and table away from me as I settle with grabbing the glass of water set beside my table.

The first sip was just as bad as the first spoonful of porridge, but after feeling so nauseous these past few minutes- I’ve seemed to at least gotten used to it and managed to drink a glass. Hopefully a glass would get me by as I allowed myself to lay back down and close my eyes. Sleep could distract me from how hungry and nauseous I felt at the same time.

I should have stayed awake instead.

Unlike the last time I was unconscious, my new knowledge of the attack seems to only create a nightmarish version of the events that had happened last night, or rather my own last night.

Everything is the same at first, I’m in the same red dress, I’m with the same people- I bring Ben his surprise happy meal. But when everyone is preparing for the toast, the madness I remember so easily returns. It begins with a glass crashing to the ground as a bullet flies to the king on stage, the monarch instantly falling down before everyone starts to panic as bodies drop one by one. In this version, I only feel worse with the knowledge of my ingestion of poison but instead of collapsing- I am frozen instead. My muscles tense all at once as I watch everyone around me either collapse from the poisoned drinks or fall victim to the flurry of bullets flying from the guns of people that looked like the waiter last night. I see everyone I knew from the palace run in terror, pushing past each other in their panic.

While I’m still standing beside Fee as I watch her shoulder get shot and see her fall to ground with no one to support her. She calls out my name to help her, but I was powerless, my muscles frozen as I watched in my own terror more injuries. I wanted to grab her and drag her out of here, or at least use anything to stop the bleeding. I take my eyes away from her, not willing to see someone I personally knew bleed out. The poison doesn’t seem to take away my voice, and my voice joins the many yelling for help. There’s yelling, so much yelling that it makes my head hurt as I try to search through my meager line of sight. I look for Ben, and for a second, I can imagine hearing his voice, his usually calm voice yell out something before he seems to be cut off.

I can’t even turn around to see what happens to him before I feel the sharpest of pain in my abdomen, and my body feels heavier on one shoulder- as if a weight was on it and I’m suddenly falling again, only this time I quickly hit the ground.

For the second time, I gasp awake with my throat dry at what I had just saw. I try to tell myself that I was fine, the things I saw in that dream weren’t real- but the world feels topsy turvy and the room suddenly smells like roses. I blink a few times to make sure I was out of that dream- only to feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to see Ben standing by my bedside- his features a little blurry in my vision as I try to greet him.

“Hey Ben.” I lift one hand up to place my hand over his. Yeap, he was real.

He seems to greet me with a frown as takes a seat on the edge of my bed. “Hey. Bad dreams?”

I try to push myself up from my bed to sit up. Bad dream was an understatement, I thought as I push some hair out of my face- feeling that I had broken a cold sweat while dreaming. I try to shake the unease off. It was just a dream.

“No, I was just… resting my eyes.” I try to be as funny as I tried to make myself be, maybe it would help convince me that everything was alright again.

“Apparently, whatever they're giving me includes a pretty heavy sedative.” I add as I lift up my hand with the IV on it and blink again- my vision finally clearing up for me to really see Ben’s face and I feel something in my chest drop at the sight of a huge bruise on his cheek, and I reach over to tilt his chin to see a few more blooming on his jaw and smaller ones on his face. My brows furrow, “What happened to you?”

“I got bruised.” He attempts to add a teasing tone to his voice and smile, but all I could catch was how dead tired he was.

“Yes Ben, I can obviously see the bruising.” I avoid making a poorly thought out bruised Benana joke as I push his face away and roll my eyes at him trying to be cheeky at a time like this. “I didn’t see what had happened to you last night. Are you okay?”

Ben nods once with a simple, “Better shape than you all.” before he presses his lips together and he seems to give me a closer look. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“Don't give it too much thought.” I try to shrug it off. Everything heals eventually. Heart attacks, kidney failures, even poison. Despite how heavy my body feels, I try to push myself to act less weak than I felt. Perhaps that would convince me that I was better and not poisoned. I am healthy. I am healthy. Mhmmm, yes, that’s the spirit. “Probably is the most action I’ll ever see happening during a ball.”

I’m so good at being positive. Wow. I’m positive that was the worst comeback ever. The guy’s birthday was ruined by a goddamn attack and people died- and you’re here mentally complaining about being slipped poison into your champagne. Stop making this about yourself, for christ’s sake.

“Sorry to hear that this happened to you.” I sigh at the thought, as I try to sympathize with what he could have possibly experienced. I wish those bruises on his face could tell me the story of what happened to him.

Ben sighs too, “You shouldn’t... What happened to isn’t minor. Not that I want to see you upset, but it’s okay to admit you are. Especially to me.”

I blink as I try to mull over his words. They were the words I wanted to tell him too. “What about you?” Sitting up was tiring as ever so I leaned back against my bed, but manage to find his hand as I continue. “If I tell you how I really feel, will you stop putting on this put together shtick and tell me how you really feel?”

He seems to pause before he starts to nod slowly.

“An eye for an eye.” a small tired chuckle escapes him, and I’d frown too if his laughter weren’t that infectious.

A chuckle escapes me too at his humor before I try to sober my expression and ready myself to tell him how I felt.

“I've never felt worst in my life.” I curl my lips in before continuing that thought. Sharing your feelings sucked. “I don't like being on this side of the hospital bed, Ben, and I hate how I wasn't able to help out when there was an opportunity for me to help out during an emergency.” I huff out a breath, feeling most of the things I worried about earlier come crashing down on me.

There’s a moment of silence as I watch him, his eyes somehow analyzing what I had said. Then I feel his hand take my own and squeezing it once he says with a hesitant expression, “Can I help you move side?”

I can’t help but let out a small laugh at his offer, shaking my head as I try to explain what I truly meant by that.

“I meant I don't like being the person in the hospital bed. I was typically the one sitting on the bedside waiting for my dad to get better.” It wasn’t too long ago I was sitting on the edge of my father’s bed as I tried to nurse him back to health after his last accident. The memory pulls the corners of my mouth down before I add, “ I always made sure I was in tip top shape and avoid being in this particular position.”

It was true. I have never been admitted to the hospital in my life. There goes my perfect health record.

“This particular time couldn’t be helped, though. Don’t... don’t feel bad for something that was out of your control.”

It’s my turn to consider his advice. “I'm trying not to. The keyword is trying.” I pout at the thought as I swipe my thumb over the back of his hand, and allowing myself to glance at our hands momentarily. I knew how I felt, or at least I guessed I did- but Ben as always was this little mystery I try to figure out everytime something happens to him. All I know is that at a time like this, it was best to just try to comfort a person. That what I needed on the early days after the accident.

“Neither should you. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your stress levels at the moment?”

“12.” Ben answers without even taking a second to think about it before it left his mouth, but now he winces as he adds. “That sounds bad.”

My eyebrows shoot up at the lack of hesitation with his answer, but I shake my head at the out of scale number.

“Bad, but definitely understandable. You of all people would be pretty stressed about what happened.”

He runs his hand over his face as sighs again with a nod. “More than you know.”

“Do you want me to know? Or are you going to just try and bear it all without telling people about it?” I ask him, though I’m more than curious of what was going on in his head. A part of me needed to know more about Ben, somehow to connect to him and make sure that I wasn’t the only one who experienced problems.

“You sure you want to be burdened with my many problems?” He makes an attempt to smile at me again, and I lean forward closer to him and shrug my shoulders.

“I’ve got tons of them, what’s a few more?” I smirk back at him.

He seems to take my smirk as a go signal as he start to explain things.

“I guess... I don’t know where to start. Making sure you’re all okay, dealing with this politically, publically, figuring who exactly did this and why, the future of the Selection.” The thought of the future of this Selection makes my throat even drier than it is- but I let the thought go as I watch his shoulder slump a little but a corner of his mouth tilt up. “Apparently, I do know where to start. And the list only goes on.”

I reach over to put my hand on his shoulder, “See? Was that so hard?” I shake my head a little as I continued. “It's good that it seems you've got your priorities straight but I think you're missing something.”

“I just-well I don’t want any of you worrying about what you don’t have to. Not after all this.” He explains and briefly pauses before he tilts his head. “Missing what?”

“You know fully well that us, girls especially, worry about everything.” I joke with a smirk before I answer his question. “And what you're missing is one really important detail: Checking if you are okay.” I poke his chest with my free hand. “When was the last time you gave yourself a break?”

“Uh, Gabby made me take a nap this afternoon if that counts. Still need to check on a couple more girls before I head to an actual bed.” He retaliates by poking my arm back as I bobble my head in consideration with the nap.

“Okay the nap counts, but be careful- your eye bags are looking pretty heavy right now.” I reach over to swipe my thumb under his eye for the effect. “Looks like you’re in need of some beauty sleep, stud.”

“My studness lacking today?”

“A lot, but maybe it’s because you’re older now.” I snort out a small laugh. “Poor you not aging gracefully. The potency of your studness wearing off.”

He scoffs a laugh, “And the only way to regain it is with beauty sleep right? Return to my youthful radiance?”

“Mhmmm, that seems to be the only cure for the way you're aging. Oh wait,” I point to his hair jokingly, “Is that a gray hair I spot?”

His eyes narrow, his eyes playfully glaring at me. “A trick of the light. My hair is thick, and brown, and grayless.”

“Are you sure?” I lift an eyebrow in return as I reach over to run a hand through his hair and immediately find a silver strand in his hair. “AHA! I found a gray strand.” I smirk at him. “So much for your thick, brown, and grayless hair, stud.”

He maintains his glare, “Liar liar pants on fire.”

“Don’t believe me? Fine.” I reach over again to pluck the gray strand I had seen earlier, a small ow coming from Ben before I show it to him. “Proof of my utmost honesty, your highness.”

Ben blinks at the strand I hold before him a few times before his eyes widen, “Oh my God.”

A loud laugh escapes me, “I’m not a liar, Ben. I’m a complete…” Shit. What’s the opposite of liar? “truther.”

Fuck that was not a real word.

He laughs loudly at my use of such an amazing word. “I’m in the presence of a true scholar.”

I scrunch up my nose as the words leave my mouth without a second thought, “I feel like whatever was in that drink has decreased my brain function a little.”

I had the poor taste to even laugh at that joke before Ben’s face falls flat.

“That’s not funny.” He admonishes me and I feel my stomach twist at that look on his face and a twinge of guilt at the stupid joke. It wasn’t really a good time to joke about getting poisoned, Viv.

“I know.” I sigh, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

I see him stare at me a little before his face goes into a grimace. “That… came out harsher than I meant. I’m sorry.” he says before he reaches for my hand again and squeezes it lightly. Leave it to him to apologize for berating me when I did something wrong.

I squeeze his hand back as I shake my head. Not the best joke, and this time I understood his point.

“No, I understand. I have to watch what comes out of my mouth now,” I click my tongue, “be a little more sensitive.”

Ben bobbles his head, “Usually yes. Especially now, and probably indefinitely.”

“Right, I'll be sure to put a filter on it.” I sigh again at the thought of having to really put a filter on my words, politeness was never my forte. “That’s gonna be a walk in the park.”

“Considering it’s been part of your lessons, it should technically be easy.” He manages out an amused smile.

“Easy. Sure, avoiding making side comments during lessons sure is easy.” I add a little sarcasm before I snort out a small laugh. “How does one avoid using sarcasm when they were born to be sarcastic?”

Suddenly, I feel Ben put both of his hands on the sides of my face, turning it to his direction and brings it close to his as he gives me this intensely serious look. “No Idea, But I believe in you.”

The lilt in his voice seems to betray his serious portrayal, making me realize he was only joking- but I wish you could tell my heart that. I suddenly feel my face flush at the sudden closeness between our faces- and my embarrassment only worsens when the heart monitor connected to me seems to be beeping uncontrollably as I try to manage a few words out.

“I’m trying okay?” I lean my forehead against his and move my free hand to rest it on the back of his neck. “Turns out that being nice to people isn’t that bad at all.”

Surprise, I’m not as bad a bitch as I thought I was.

Ben raises both his eyebrows, “Are you saying you’ve been nice to me? Because I don’t really remember that.”

“Then it seems like your memory is also getting affected by your aging, old man.” I joke.

“Or you never actually said it. My memory is superb.” he argues back.

I lean back and scrunch up my nose at him. “I think I’ve been nothing but the nicest person to you.” I chuckle at the thought.

Aside from my initial thoughts and expression to him at the beginning of this Selection- I think was a pretty decent human being towards him.

“Besides the happy meal and intelligence comment I can’t say you have.” he smirks at me knowingly and I glance to the side guiltily, because yeah… maybe those were the only stand out moments of my kindness but he should know all the things I held back from saying. That’s part of being nice, right?

“What? Would you want me to completely lose my prickliness? I thought you liked that characteristic.”

“Oh I do, believe me. But it’s also nice to hear how much you like my hair every once in a while.” He grins at me and I roll my eyes before indulging him with a smile and reach over to run my hand through his luscious locks.

“I think you have the loveliest almost-grayless chocolate brown hair.” I say before I give him a flat look, hoping he’s satisfied by the compliment.

An eye-crinkling smile appears on his face, “Aw, you think so? How nice of you to say so out of the blue.”

“You know what us nice people do, we just love to compliment people spontaneously.” I say non-chalantly before I smirk. “Particularly for studs like you.”

“Mmm, what else you got?”

I scoff at him trying to push me even more, but it only fuels me to use my most patronizing tone.

“You put the sun to shame whenever you smile, and” I pause before dramatically speaking as I glide my hand up his jaw, “Oh-my-god, This could just cut.”

I notice his smile, it was softer than usual as he replies, “So I’ve been told. That and my cheekbones.”

“Hmmm,” I reach up to poke his cheekbones and I jokingly flinch at little. “Ow! It’s most definitely sharp.” I grin one last time before I pull my hand away from him , musing at the one thing I realized I liked about him.

“I like your hands.” I blurt out and that sounded way too sincere to sound like my last few jokes, but I roll my eyes and throw whatever sense of dignity I had as I continued my thought. “They’re always warm when I hold them.”

His hands immediately take both of mine, his thumbs brushing across the back of them. “I run very hot, I’m a walking furnace.”

I resist the urge to snort before I look down at both of our hands, I was right- he had warm hands. “Mhmmm, because you’re just so hot.” I look back up at him with a smirk, picking up where I left off with my jokes. “The hottest prince around.”

Well, unless you count Prince Zuko from Avatar, but he wasn’t real.

Ben lets out a short laugh, “You flirt like you were born to do it.”

“Oh you know it's part of my charms- definitely a full proof tactic in winning you over.” I tilt my head a little with a smirk.

“And you’re so sure winning me over is working out?” He asks, and something hits me again.

It’s that small pang of jealousy and insecurity you feel whenever you’re being compared to another person, only this time, it was me comparing myself again to all the other girls who remained in the Selection.

“I can only really do so much.” I lift a shoulder, “You tell me.” I briefly answer before letting out a laugh. For now, I wasn’t quite sure I could compare to the remaining girls.

He smiles at me as his hands squeeze mine again, “I’d say so.”

I return his smile as I brush my thumb on the back of one of his hands, “Keep doing what I’m doing then?”

“Times ten. Plus the compliments.” He gives me a cheeky grin. “Please.”

I bobble my head as I go along and mimic his cheeky tone, “If you insist, stud. Flirting, unli-compliments, trying to be nice... all of those are duly noted.”

“I’ll be sure to remind you in case you forget.” He says before he leans in and quickly gives me a kiss, a smile forming on my lips as I instinctively put a hand on the side of his face before I lean back.

“Busy day today?”

“Enormously. I don’t see it becoming less busy any time soon either.” A small sigh escapes him, and I start to feel his own tiredness. I feel a frown curl on my lips before I find his hand and give it a squeeze.

“A wise old man once said this to me ... five minutes ago... “ I pause before I echo his words back to him, only this time in a more sincere way. “But I believe in you, you can get through all of this.”

A soft smile appears on his face. “Let’s hope its that easy, Sparrow.”

“Come on, you can be a little more positive than that.” I tilt my head and give him an encouraging soft smile. I’ve never heard him be like that before.

He shrugs, “I can. But for a moment it’s easier to be realistic than positive.”

My brows knit together at his shrug, and it’s odd to see him sound this way before. I know the past few days have been rough for him, but I didn’t want his spirit to break any time soon. Having gone through day like his before, I somehow muster up the words I wish someone told me years ago.

“Life is tough, I think the two of us are very familiar with that fact.” I then bring my hands to hold both sides of his face as I look at him intensely, trying to convey every word sincerely “You're tougher, though. This, like every struggle, will pass.”

Life is tough, but I’m tougher. Life is harsh, but I can be harsher. I wish I didn’t have to learn those things the hard way.

Ben only stares at me for a moment, his brows knitted before he nods slightly and quietly thanks me- his eyes not leaving mine just yet. I can only hold his gaze as we let the quiet sink in between us. I meant every word I said- and maybe I said those words out loud just to remind myself of that too.

I brush his cheek a little before I make a small remark.

“How’s that for a compliment huh?” I crack a small smile before I lean in and bring his face close to mine, kissing him softly. I felt like I needed this, this kind of contact with him right now and I’m pretty sure a bunch of other girls have attempted, have, or will kiss him today- honestly that’s their business, but for now, Ben was with me and goddamnit I wanted to kiss him. I had no idea why, or I’d rather not admit the reason why just yet. I can feel him smile as he kisses me back, his hand putting itself lightly on my waist as he leans closer to me, and a part of me hopes that he’s kissing me too for the exact same reason why I wanted to. I liked Ben. What a surprise, right?

I loosen my hold on his face and leave a hand to rest on his cheek before I moved the other to rest on his chest, maneuvering myself closer to him as I kissed him a little longer. I just had that one feeling in my chest that only got warmer when I did, and it felt like his hand holding mine- but better, somehow so much better. Even if I was in the hospital with an IV in one of my hands and I was in a gross hospital gown, this was better. The kiss stays this way a little longer, and I wish it did last longer when he leans back to rest his forehead against mine. I lean my forehead against his, keeping my eyes briefly closed as I calm the small lump I feel in my throat before opening them to look at him.

“Make sure that you’re okay too, Ben.”

He presses his lips together before he nods, “Alright.” he gives me a smile, and I try to be reassured that he would take care of himself.

I pull away from him slightly and give him a quick kiss on his cheek, careful to avoid his bruise. “You may want to do some warm compress if you want this,” I lightly tap the bruise on his cheek as I smile back at him, “to disappear soon.”

“Eh,” he leans back and stands from my bed. “Makes me look tough.” he says with a grin.

I can only smirk up at him before I lean back on my bed. “You’re already tough, I think I’ve made that very clear.”

Ben snickers before remarking, “Then the look stays.” I roll my eyes a little before he leans down and I feel him kiss the top of my head. “Sleep well.”

I turn to my side but continue to look up at him, “And you should take care of yourself. Don't make me get out of this bed just to hunt you down and make sure you've eaten.”

Wow, yeah Viv- you could definitely hunt people down for not eating. You’re totally not a hypocrite~

The corner of his mouth turns up as I watch him start walking to the door, “I’ll even set alarms just to indulge you.”

“How sweet of you, Ben.” I laugh, “I’ll see you later?”

He nods at me with a grin over his shoulder as he opens the door to my room. “Be on the look out for a slightly less tough prince.”

Again, my mouth runs faster than my brain.

“Oh, so I’m gonna be seeing Wyatt around then?” I lift an eyebrow as I grin back teasingly at him, hoping he doesn’t take any offense that I maaaay have slightly insulted his brother.

“Kidding, I don't actually know your brother.” I try to save myself before snorting out a laugh. “Bye Ben.”

Ben seems to get my humor as a loud short laugh escapes him. “I’m telling him you said that.”

And like that he gives me one last grin before disappearing behind the closed door of my room and I close my eyes, momentarily forgetting everything just for a while. All of that talking and interacting with Ben was more tiring than I thought. It was worth it though, but there were things that still unsettled me from last night. I still felt as useless as the moments I was keeling over with nausea in the ballroom. I suppose there were some things I’d have to do to make up for it.

#vivienne loyola #viv fics #selection oc #selectionoc #challenge #ben tag #fee tag

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