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disneyprincemuke · 1 year ago

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kiss all your tears away

alternatively: we haven’t talked in almost 4 days (next)

in which she and logan don't walk into the paddocks together for the first time all season and sends everyone speculating about the status of their relationship friendship

(series masterlist)

she hikes her bag up her shoulder, pushing the sunglasses up her nose. she taps her card against the reader before she can step into the paddocks.

when she'd woken up this morning, she laid in bed with two packs of ice over her eyes to try and reduce the swelling of her eye area. when she’s gotten up to look at herself in the mirror, it did depuff but didn’t entirely erase the evidence of all the crying she did.

she dropped george a text message early this morning, asking if it was okay to be wearing sunglasses everywhere on the paddocks without looking like a complete fool — it’s just a rehearsal, after all.

george simply assumed she’s hungover or something of the sort, so he didn’t ask questions. he just told her he does it all the time.

so, here she is walking into the paddocks by herself. with her stupid bag on her stupid shoulder and a pair of sunglasses over her eyes to hide away from everyone.

oscar, who comes in right after her, almost walks right past her before he realised who she is. he just almost barely recognises her entering the paddocks with a bag on her shoulder and logan next to her.

oscar taps her on the shoulder gently, flashing her a bright smile. “alone today?”

“yeah,” she answers simply, a smile of gratitude stretching her lips when oscar slows his pace down to walk with her.

“oh,” oscar nods to himself. while he’s been slightly out of touch with her out of respect of their relationship, he still did grow up with her. he still knows her telltales when she’s got a problem. “fought?”

“yeah.”

“that bad?”

“pretty bad.”

“i won’t ask about it. but are you okay?”

“i guess.”

“i’m sure it’ll be okay.”

“hopefully.”

“let me carry your stuff,” oscar mutters, circling around her to her other side. he doesn’t wait for an answer — he just slides her backpack off her shoulder and throws it over his shoulder on top of his bag.

she opens her mouth to protest, but oscar is quick to shut her down. “i used to do it before logan. don’t act like it’s so new to you,” oscar laughs, shaking his head. “and it’s weird seeing you with a bag in the paddocks.”

“that’s true. i haven’t walked into the paddocks with my bag on my shoulder since i joined you guys in f2,” she grins shyly.

“let’s put your stuff down then come and hang at mclaren? lily’s just got a taxi to arrive from the airport.”

“oh, she’s here this weekend? she didn’t tell me that…”

“she was going to surprise you after the rehearsal,” oscar giggles. “so, what do you say?”

“okay, but only if lando makes me a cup of coffee.”

george tilts his head at the empty seat alex has left in the corner. “move to the corner, we’re going to hog the space and be shat on for acting like boyfriends.”

“logan’s sitting with us tonight,” alex answers simply with a shrug. “can’t fully commit to being your boyfriend tonight, mate, i’m sorry.”

“oh, how come?” george asks, furrowing his eyebrows. typically, logan would sit in the middle rows with his girlfriend. “doesn’t he usually sit with (y/n) or oscar?”

alex shrugs, bottom lip pouted out. “think they had a friendly squabble a couple days ago. he’s been weird since he arrived in vegas the other day.”

george surprisingly held on to the unspoken agreement he has with them. he hasn’t told a soul about seeing her in the gap between his door that one time. nor has told alex about it.

but he does talk to lando, which wasn’t a great conversation to start when he came up to him with a 50 pound bill in his hand. they danced around the information of knowing something particularly specific, and lando eventually blurted excitedly that he saw them on a date a few days back.

so maybe they fought. or worse, have they broken up?

logan arrives literally a second after the worst thought passes his mind. he takes the empty seat next to alex, greeting george with a small smile before leaning in to start a conversation.

he watches the door, curious at what’s exactly going on. he completely tunes out from the conversation, feigning intelligent answers and short reponses. his eyes dart over to the door whenever it’s pulled open, and sighing when it’s not the driver he expects.

he looks down at his watch. there’s about 10 minutes before the briefing starts for them. and, vegas is a race that had them come in a couple days prior to be briefed and conduct a short rehearsal for the opening ceremony.

luckily, there’s not much media around today, which would make tiptoeing around this issue a whole lot easier.

when the door is pulled open again, george lifts his head quickly, as he’s genuinely quite invested now. he raises an eyebrow and is taken aback by the girl holding the door open with a pair of sunglasses resting on her nose.

he’s absolutely forgotten the fact that she had texted him this morning about this issue.

she takes a step forward, but then takes two back. instead of walking in, she stays back outside the room with the door in her hand. pierre and charles walk in, thanking her softly before returning to their conversation.

there’s a momentary pause as she looks inside, where they’re seated, before she looks at somebody who’s in the hallway with her. oscar appears, motioning for her to walk in, but she shakes her head and simply points inwards to the room.

alex has chosen to settle for the wrong seats today, obviously. having logan sit right next to the door might be a bit more detrimental than he thought. but what would alex know? he doesn’t even know of their relationship.

oscar tries to fight with her, but she simply purses her lips. the australian slumps his shoulder before sharply turning on his heel and just walking into the room, followed by a distressed looking lando.

lando looks around, catching george’s curious eyes, so the man in orange simply shrugs tiredly at him.

she beckons for someone else in the hallway to walk in, but it seems that it’s a losing fight by the way that she’s continually waving her hands in the air to persuade them.

sighing, she just visibly sighs and winds her hand back to act out a punch. she drops her hands before finally turning around to take a step forward again.

if there’s any way that she announces her arrival, it’s typically by the scent of her strong perfume. her floral scent fills his nose, and it’s obvious that logan finally takes notice of her arrival.

because logan turns around, eyes trained on her as she walks in with an orange paper cup in her hand. what’s made everything stranger is that she simply walks ahead: she doesn’t spare logan another look as she walks down the side aisle to join max, oscar and lando who unfortunately only landed the front row seats.

george watches logan’s eyebrows furrow and press his lips together. logan shifts in his seat uncomfortably before turning back to continue their conversation.

“did you catch that, mate?” alex asks, nudging george’s arm with his elbow.

“what?” george tears his eyes away from the girl in front to look at the two men next to him. “sorry, i didn’t catch what you were saying.”

“right, so basically…”

she looks up at the giant yellow circle in front of her. she momentarily lifts her sunglasses to gawk at the ever changing expressions of the emoji face being projected.

“that’s so adorable!” she points out, reaching out to roughly pat max’s shoulder to get his attention. “look, it’s looking at us!”

“hey, your hands are not as light as you think!” max scolds, his arm darting out to catch her wrist in his hands. “you’ve got to make up with logan.”

she pouts, retracting her hand roughly from the older man’s grip. she drops her sunglasses back down to her nose and folds her arms over her chest. “what do you mean? you don’t like hanging out with me?”

“i do. trust me, i have the time of my life annoying the shit out of you,” max laughs dryly down at her. “but you are all over my hater hours. gawk at this… thing,” he points at the sphere, “with your boyfriend.”

“no,” she scoffs, simply shaking her head. she huffs and tries to walk past him. “forget it — i’ll just go and find yuki and hang out with him. he doesn’t try and push me away when i try.”

max sighs, rolling his eyes. he grabs her elbow and drags her back to him. he puts her in front of him, hands on her shoulders.

max reaches out and takes off the sunglasses, clipping it to the collar of his shirt. “you’ve got to talk this whole fight out with logan. stop ignoring him.”

“i’m not ignoring him. he’s ignoring me,” she insists, throwing a hand into the air.

“no, he’s not!” max cries, pinching the bridge of his nose. honestly, he didn’t want to enjoy this race in vegas. in fact, all he’s done leading up to this grand prix has been openly hate on the thought of even being here.

he didn’t factor in that he’d have to suddenly play the part of being an older brother and a therapist to the girl standing in front of him.

he has grown to be fond of her, yes, but he very much preferred not being put in the middle of all this.

“what?”

“yeah! he was literally boring holes into you when you walked into the rehearsal briefing earlier,” max points out. “and then he only left the room after you left; after you just walked right past him again without a flinch!”

“okay, listen! if you had the fight that we had, you wouldn’t make up so easily either, okay?” she rambles, hands on her hips in frustration. her puffy eyes are finally nowhere in sight. “you don’t even know what we fought about.”

“fine, then enlighten me.”

“we fought about this,” she circles her hands around them, motioning to the track setup around them. “about all of this! formula 1! it’s caught up to us!”

max furrows his eyebrows. “what do you mean?”

“i mean like i literally had the sebastian vettel vouching for me to get a seat this season,” she sighs, shaking her head as she recalls the fight they had before flying to vegas. “i mean like i’ve been in the points consistently since i crashed in baku and he’s struggling to even be on par with alex!

“how is that my fault, max? it’s not my fault!”

“you’re right: it’s not.”

“why does it feel like it is? i hate that this is happening to him, of all people! but how is it my fault that i’m delivering and meeting everyone’s expectations of me entering the sport?”

tears rush into her eyes. she presses the bottom of her palms into her eyes as her voice cracks, shaking her head hopelessly. “like, it’s not my fault we’re performing differently. i’m literally driving for my reputation and seat — i’m on probation with my team just as much as he is.”

max suddenly regrets poking her button. from what oscar tells him, they’re not typically the couple to have very big fights. it seems that he has misread the severity of the situation.

“oh, (y/n),” max frowns, stepping forward to wrap his arms around her. he puts his hand on the back of her head, gently letting her nuzzle his face into his arm. “i’m sorry. i didn’t know.”

“it just gets increasingly difficult to comfort him weekend after weekend. i’m at a high, and he’s just-“

“i’m sure it’s not easy for him either,” max cooes, swaying side to side in an attempt to comfort her. “i am sure that it is not his intention to… make you ‘feel bad’ of what you’ve achieved thus far.”

“it’s just so hard,” she cries harder into his chest. “i want to be there for him, really. but it’s hard! it’s hard when my team is out celebrating after every race because of my points finish and he’s down with what’s happened with his race.”

max looks up at the sound of footsteps against the gravel, catching lando and george trying to make their way towards them.

he holds up a thumbs up to them, nodding gently enough for her not to feel it, to send them the other way. it’s bad enough she’s crying at the f1 track four days before a race with majority of the teams still in the paddocks.

he turns his head to the side, by the grandstands, catching oscar and sebastian’s stare of concern. he simply flashes them a smile and a reassuring nod. in return, he gets a firm nod from the race engineer and a thankful smile from the young driver.

from what he knows, she hasn’t told anyone about this issue. perhaps that’s why she’s stuck to him all evening?

“i don’t think we’ll get past this, max. that’s the worst part,” she sobs, pulling away to rub her eyes. she heaves as tears flow out of her eyes, lips quivering and voice cracking with every word she speaks. “how can we even? i don’t know what to do.”

max frowns. he pushes her head into his chest again, this time, resting his chin on the top of hers. he doesn’t exactly know what to say.

their situation is so unique, that even he — with as much trauma as he carries around — does not know anything he can say that would make her feel better. so, he just rubs circles on her back as he sways.

“i’m sorry this happened to you,” he sighs, readjusting to now press his cheek on the top of her head. “i really don’t know what to say. there wouldn’t be any words i can string together to make you feel better about this.”

from the distance, he can see alex walking out of the pitlane. the bright blue shirt didn’t really make him hard to spot in the first place.

alex is the least of his problems. because behind alex is logan trailing behind him quietly, completely taken a step away from the conversation alex holds with some of their team members.

“do you want to go somewhere more private? teams are coming out to scout the track, i think,” max whispers, moving his head to look at her face. “let’s go?”

“okay. it’s kinda weird i’m crying here anyway,” she manages to mutter a joke. “my sunglasses.”

max almost wants to laugh when she cries even harder, reaching out for the sunglasses he’s confiscated from her a while ago. she removes it from his shirt, then replaces it on her face.

while she had paraded about with her chin in the air all evening, now she walks with her head down. her hair is out of the braids that blythe had styled her with, now falling to her cheeks to hide her away from everyone else.

if max could have continued walking the other way to simply avoid the williams racing team, he would. but if he did that, they’d have made a complete round of the track on foot. which doesn’t seem like a good idea at all with her state.

max slings a protective arm around her shoulders, walking around her body to hold her away from the prying eyes of those that walk past them.

as they slowly approach the team in blue, alex grows mildly concerned at the weirdly silent girl. “is sh- oh, okay.” alex nods understandingly, holding a hand up to wave max for an apology. all because she’s heaving silently in her sob in max’s arm that immediately told alex to not intervene. “sorry.”

and max just knows they’d eventually find a way out of this fight they’re in. because he turns around to gauge logan’s expression: he’s stopped dead on the tracks with a lingering stare on the crying girl.

max just gives him a small smile, to which logan forces a grin before turning away to catch up with alex who calls out for him.

surely, there’s a way around this. right?