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supernovafics · 6 months ago

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𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃

"i'll be there for you" universe masterlist

pairing: bestfriend!roommate!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 1.4k words

warnings: explicit language, fluff

summary: in which steve’s parents are out of town for the weekend so you and him decide to have a barbecue at his house

author's note: i’ve been in a bit of rut with this universe/series lately so i wanted to just write something short and fun for these two<3333

general note: everything in this universe/series can be read as standalone oneshots but to understand the full “lore” it would prob be best to read the other stuff too<333

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Summer 1986

It was probably obvious that both you and Steve didn’t need to go inside to grab the buns and ketchup— that was definitely just a one-person job— but nobody questioned either of you as you headed inside to the kitchen.

The kids were swimming in the pool, and everyone else was sitting around the patio table. You were pretty sure that Eddie was about to start an impromptu game of truth or dare that Robin seemed enthused about, but Nancy and Jonathan seemed the opposite. All in all, it was safe to say that no one was really paying attention to you or Steve right then.

His arms were circling around you from behind right as the door fell shut behind you both.

You let out a soft laugh at the abrupt action, but still immediately leaned into his touch. “I’m starting to think that you didn’t wanna come in here just to grab the stuff for the burgers.”

“Yes, I’ll admit that I had an ulterior motive,” His mouth brushed right against your ear and you could practically hear the smile in his voice. “It’s just been really hard to keep my hands to myself for the past few hours— especially seeing you in this bathing suit— and I wanted us to finally be alone for a second.”

Everyone knew about you and Steve, and they had for months at this point, but you both still liked to try and keep the PDA in front of your friends to a minimum. Mainly because of the collective playful groan in disgust you two would receive whenever you kissed for a second longer than was considered decent or when you’d get a bit too handsy with one another in front of everyone.

That didn’t mean that it was easy to not be so outwardly affectionate with each other. And you knew that if it hadn’t been Steve coaxing you into the kitchen, away from everyone else to steal a kiss or more right then, it probably would’ve been you doing it.

You shifted around to face him and the towel that you had draped around your shoulders slipped off as your arms came up to rest on his bare shoulders and then circle his neck.

“I’ve had this bathing suit for practically forever.”

“Yes, and probably every time I’ve seen you in it, I’ve almost exploded.”

You playfully rolled your eyes but still smiled. “That’s definitely not true.”

“It’s very true,” He told you as he guided you backward so that you were pressed up against the counter. “We may have been just friends back then, but I wasn’t blind to how hot you are.”

You could feel your face warm at his words and you only smiled wider at him. “You’re very, very hot too.”

The sound of everyone talking and laughing outside faded away when Steve’s head dipped down a bit and his lips slotted against yours. His hands found your hips, fingers pressing into the exposed skin. He quickly lifted you onto the counter, which made you let out a surprised yelp against his mouth, but you didn’t pull away from him. Your fingers carded through his damp hair and any thought of getting what you were supposed to grab from the kitchen was long forgotten.

Even the thought of what was happening outside slipped from your mind— the barbecue that Steve had suggested doing as a celebration of sorts because Summer had just started, the kids finished their first year of high school, and everyone else had graduated just a few days ago.

You weren’t thinking about that or the fact that it was the first weekend of many that his parents would be gone for the Summer, so days like this would definitely be happening more often than not.

All you could focus on was Steve’s mouth on yours and his fingers beginning to teasingly slip inside the waistband of your red and white bathing suit bottoms; he so easily turned your mind into a pile of mush. You let out a soft sound that only egged him on further and you were certain that he would’ve pulled the damp fabric right off of you if it wasn’t for the sound of the door that led to the backyard opening.

You were detaching from each other immediately and you hopped off the counter, quickly reaching down to grab your towel that had fallen and place it back around your shoulders.

Max squinted at you both for a second and then she shook her head. “Ew, I don’t even wanna know what you two were just doing.”

“We’re just grabbing the buns and ketchup,” Steve said with a quick shrug and you simply nodded in agreement.

“Mhm, yeah, right,” She deadpanned before heading off in the direction of the bathroom.

You stepped away from Steve and went into the pantry to finally grab the hamburger buns and ketchup.

“Do your parents come back tomorrow or Monday?”

“Monday.”

“Okay, that gives us more than enough time to clean up then,” You said as you turned back to face him and handed over the ketchup. “Because this place will probably be a mess after everyone stays over tonight.”

“Very true,” He nodded. “Y’know, I’m just realizing that we’ve never… done anything in my old room.”

He didn’t outwardly say what he meant, but you read through the lines pretty easily.

“And we definitely aren’t going to do anything tonight,” You told him with a shake of your head. “You’re way too loud for that.”

He softly laughed. “I think that’s all you.”

In all honesty, it was probably equal, but you didn’t want to admit that right then.

Steve leaned in to kiss you but you turned your head at the last second so his lips grazed your cheek instead.

“Come on, we need to head back outside,” You told him, but before you made it anywhere near the door, he placed the ketchup on the kitchen counter and pulled you back toward him again.

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh at his eagerness. “Steve.”

He placed the sweetest kiss against your neck and then your cheek. “Just one more second.”

That was a complete lie and you were certain of it; one second, one minute, one anything, always turned into much, much longer. But you still felt yourself finally nodding at him anyway.

“Okay,” You mumbled, maneuvering around to face him which made your towel fall again. He didn’t waste a second to lean in and kiss you, and his hands quickly found your waist, softly stroking the parts of your skin that your bathing suit didn’t cover. Your free hand went up to the nape of his neck so that you could push yourself closer to him; chest to chest, skin against skin.

You had a feeling that he was going to lead you over to the counter again and lift you back onto it, and then settle himself between your spread legs again for the time being— which would completely go against his “one more second” statement, but you honestly would’ve been fine with that.

But then, you heard the bathroom door down the hall open and then shut and you two were abruptly pulling away from each other again.

“Okay, we actually need to head back outside,” You told him as you reached down to grab your towel.

“Fine, fine,” Steve said and started following you out the door. He helped you adjust your towel back over your shoulders and then placed the quickest, and probably most chaste, kiss against your cheek. Still, though, you felt your heart warm at the action and you were smiling widely at him.

“Hey, lovebirds, truth or dare?” Eddie asked as you and Steve headed over to the patio table.

You shrugged as you placed the buns down. “I don’t know, truth, I guess.”

“What were you two just doing in the kitchen?” He asked, the tiniest of a smirk on his face.

You hesitated for a second— a second that actually felt like so much longer— before responding. “Oh, um, we were grabbing the ketchup and buns for the burgers, duh.”

Steve nodded. “Yup.”

Eddie shook his head, laughing a bit. “Horrible, horrible liars. Where’s the ketchup?”

You turned to Steve— because you remembered that you had handed the ketchup to him when you were back inside— and immediately noticed his empty hands. “Steve.”

“Shit, my bad.”

Seconds later, Max was emerging from the house, bottle of ketchup in hand. “You guys forgot this.”

She placed it on the table and then headed back over to the pool.

“So, the question still stands,” Eddie said. “What were you two doing in there?”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

let me know ur thoughts<333

(requests are open for stuff you wanna see in the universe/series!🫶🏾)

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington smut #steve harrington x you #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x fem!reader #stranger things fluff #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington series #stranger things smut #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine

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major-trouble · 2 months ago

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There's this book I want to talk about. About a Perfectly Normal Spaceship (lol) and the adventures of its crew.

So, I know I keep harping on about this, but I finished my reread this evening and I have to say - it's better the second time through.

There were a lot of things I missed on the first round, mainly because I was devouring it as fast as I could in a wide-eyed rampage of unbelievably hyper-focused attentiveness that nearly made me mess up the start of the academic year for a major post-secondary institution.

But anyway.

Taking a much calmer, more measured approach, I still found myself drawn deeply into the story and anticipating the next plot point with glee and amxiety. I could clearly see the foreshadowing now. And it made the experience richer.

For the record, I fucking hate reading first person narratives. They drive me up the wall for personal reasons. And first person present tense?? Fucking hell. This story blows my mind with how well the author takes these elements and makes them work. I want to hug Aspen and kick them in the ribs. I want to listen to Tal talk about shit forever. I want to understand Celti's motives and give Hive the opportunity to see butterflies.

The characters are real and grow in ways I was expecting.

Anyway, please go read this story. It's not going to change your life, but it will definitely cause a time dilation effect and make you late for something. Also go check out the rest of the @derinthescarletpescatarian stuff. You won't regret it.

#time to orbit: unknown #book recs #derin edala #I'm so enthralled and I'm taking you all with me

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mecachrome · 10 months ago

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pre-mclaren oscar piastri primer (ft. maxf, landoscar)

0. introduction

for a few months now i've been wanting to make both an oscar primer and a timeline of pre-mclaren landoscar moments, but i couldn't figure out which one to prioritize… then after some deliberation i finally realized i could just combine the two things together! so. here is an oscar-centric timeline that is mainly about his racing background, moving to the uk, and how he became acquainted with other members of the rfm pack—aka lando, maxf, and logan. i don't know whether any of this information is useful or even vaguely interesting, but i mostly just wrote it for myself and thought i'd share what i had in case anyone else wanted to check it out. please feel free to comment or shoot me an ask if anything here is egregiously incorrect; i've checked and linked as many sources as i could but it's of course possible that some errors remain :)

1. background, rc racing, early karting days (2007-2015)

oscar piastri was born on april 6, 2001 in brighton east, a suburb of melbourne not far from albert park circuit, as the son of chris and nicole and to-be oldest brother to 3 younger sisters. a love for all things automotive ran deep in the piastri family: both of his grandfathers were mechanics and his father had also co-founded his own vehicle diagnostics software company, hp tuners, aka oscar's sponsor throughout his racing career. thanks to his father's business, oscar's family was objectively well-off and managed to contribute a fairly substantial amount of support toward his junior career, but they also weren't swimming in cash by multi-millionaire motorsport standards either.

(L-R) edie, mae, hattie, and oscar, from nicole's twitter — each sibling is ~2 years apart (source)

while most drivers on the current grid were introduced to motorsport through go-karting, usually at or before the age of 7, oscar's path to single-seaters differed slightly. he first developed an interest in racing via remote-controlled cars at the age of 6, when his father brought him a monster truck as a souvenir back from a business trip in america. oscar began racing them that same year, eventually moving to safer electric track vehicles and even winning the second class of the national titles in 2010, at the age of 9. he was so small then that he often needed to stand on a milk crate to see the cars on track, and the next-youngest competitor at the time was twice his age. (source)

youtube

oscar on the podium at age 8 (nov 16, 2009)

oscar with his father chris, who often competed alongside him in a separate class (dec 21, 2010)

by 2011, oscar and his father were seriously considering his potential of pursuing rc racing as a viable career path, but things changed when he was introduced to karting via a friend's daughter in the rc community and his aspirations slowly shifted toward racing from inside a car. oscar was an unsurprisingly sporty and competitive child growing up; he'd played some cricket and aussie rules football and knew that all he wanted to do was race professionally, full-stop, at the time thinking along the lines of australian racing categories like v8 supercars. he was still competing in remote car racing as late as 2013, but he began karting seriously within australia in 2014, placing respectably in the junior categories of several regional karting series against relatively senior and more-experienced racers, and even going to france for a one-off event where he finished on the podium of the iame international junior x30 final. this outing affirmed his potential to his father and motivated the two of them to split time between australia and europe in 2015 as they juggled his karting future; plans for two more european events that year fell through, including the cik-fia world championship at the kfj level (which logan sargeant would go on to win), but at this point they were officially looking to take his career to the next level and commit fully to european karting in 2016.

this is when ricky flynn (and the hypothetical idea of lando norris!!!) comes in. before we get into rfm and karting professionally in europe, it's important to note that the defining aspect of landoscar's junior careers is that their pathways never once intersected. in fact, they don't even seem to have met properly before oscar entered the f1 grid as alpine reserve, although they'd spoken over social media and oscar was familiar with several people around lando's life—for example, maxf, logan, guanyu, and even lando's older brother oliver, who had also raced for rfm.

in short, you could say that landoscar's biggest hindrance was their parallel excellence. oscar was good enough to catch up and even surpass everyone else at lando's level, but lando remained untouchable throughout the years. oscar is only 1.5 years younger than him, but their f1 careers are offset by 4 years (2019 vs. 2023 debut) because of exactly two things: oscar's 2022 gap year in alpine and his two attempts at formula renault eurocup. on the other hand, lando sped through all of his junior categories in blistering fashion, falling short of the championship only once: the year he placed 2nd in f2 behind george russell. this is significant because many talk about the clinical nature of oscar's rapid single-seater ascension and three b2b2b victories (still very impressive, especially given his limited karting career!), but all of that speaks equally to the illustrious nature of lando's junior success and the sheer magnitude of faith placed in him as mclaren's "golden boy" coming up the ranks. to put things into further perspective, lando was teammates with maxf and jehan daruvala at rfm until 2014, jehan competing in the same class and max one below, yet by the time oscar was racing max and jehan—in f3 in 2020 and f2 in 2021, respectively—lando was already into his 2nd and 3rd years of f1. here's a chart that hopefully makes a bit more sense:

majorly simplified timeline showing lando, guanyu, maxf, logan, and oscar's junior careers + the karting classes they primarily competed in each calendar year. maxf did not complete his 2nd f3 season and many of them contested multiple/different formula renault series, but this is just a rough overview of their feeder series experience.

2. moving to europe, rfm, regional formulae (2016-2019)

back in australia, oscar was a member of the oakleigh go-kart racing club and being actively mentored by james sera, a multi-time australian karting champion and fa kart dealer who worked with young karting talents alongside his cousin david. in late-2015, he presumably helped oscar and his father reach out to ricky flynn, who ran ricky flynn motorsport (rfm) and whose team was at the time enjoying exorbitant success in the karting scene; lando had won the world championship at the kf level the year prior, and logan would soon clinch the kfj title in 2015, results which further drew oscar's interest toward the team. ricky flynn agreed to take oscar on and have him and his dad move out to europe, and by november 2015 oscar announced on social media that he would be joining rfm the next year. in january of 2016, he and his father moved to hertford, uk, so that oscar could begin a 100-day karting program and travel extensively around europe to attend races. this is where he met logan sargeant, who was in his final year on the team but competing a class above, now at the ok (previously kf) level. oscar himself was only competing in the okj class.

not oscar-related, but as you can see guanyu, logan, and maxf were already acquainted before oscar and logan met, since the three of them and lando had been in rfm together as of 2014 — (may 11, 2014) & (feb 6, 2015)

oscar and logan in 2016

in an interview published on june 7, 2023, oscar reflected on leaving australia and committing to his racing dream, saying:

"i think if there was a turning point, it was probably when i started finishing towards the front in australia, and i started winning a couple of races here and there and finishing in the top three of championships and stuff, and then went to europe and fully committed to going down that route. [...] there's obviously a very big commitment at that point when you move halfway across the world without family and stuff. so i knew at that point that i really wanted to become a professional because, firstly, that's what i want to do anyway, but, secondly, now i'm sacrificing seeing my family, and stuff like that to be able to do this — which was a sacrifice i was more than willing to make."

like the majority of oscar's karting career, his time with ricky flynn can primarily be summarized as decent. none of his performances were particularly stellar, and in november 2016 he placed 6th in the fia world championship final behind the likes of victor martins and théo pourchaire (he mainly competed against guys like them, dennis hauger, caio collet, etc… once again logan was a class above and lando/maxf had already graduated to single-seaters), but he showed promising racing foundations and a great capacity for improvement, especially given that he'd moved to europe the same year and was still adjusting to life and racing on the opposite hemisphere. about 6 months into his new karting venture, oscar had settled in reasonably well and his father decided he would return to australia to continue on with his life, so they made the joint decision that oscar was to begin boarding at haileybury's uk campus and continue racing in europe entirely on his own. uk and australian school years are misaligned, so my personal understanding is he moved to europe after finishing year 9 in australia, attempted online school/took a few months off (he says he did online coursework here, but mentioned here that he was out of school, so it sounds like it must have been a very half-hearted effort…), came back to australia over the uk summer to do some more karting, then began boarding in september 2016 as a year 10 student. he spent ~4 years there and eventually received his a-levels in 2020, except his final year was disrupted by covid and he never sat his exams. (blog post mentioning his a-levels + btg transcript excerpt about his exams; his website says he attended haileybury from 2016-19, but i think this mainly encapsulates his boarding period, as he was still doing remote work in april 2020.)

oscar in f4 with his gcse revision guide, 📸 sebastiaan rozendaal (may 20, 2018)

2016 is also when oscar began his well-documented super-liking of several of lando's social media profiles. i think understanding oscar's time in rfm and his extremely british single-seater origins helps better paint his history with lando and maxf; my personal understanding of pre-mclaren landoscar is that while oscar never formally met lando or maxf during his karting days, he knew of them quite well through rfm and thus followed them on instagram/twitter after moving to the uk. of course, oscar has a fairly active social media presence in general, so young oscar quietly liked instagram posts and tweets from many different people, but i do feel compelled to note that in the early days he liked lando, maxf, and logan's posts with seriously impressive frequency compared to anyone else on the grid (or anyone in general, really); after creating his twitter account in may 2016, some of the very first tweets oscar liked were from maxf, and he also liked a multitude of mundane lando tweets from 2016 until… today, while on the other hand he didn't start liking george's tweets—another similarly-aged young british talent—until late 2017. (he does have some fun george-admiring moments though, but that can wait for another time!) outside of rfm, other people oscar was familiar with during his early racing years were british f4 teammate ayrton simmons, to-be series champion jamie caroline, and old australian karting friend christian pancione, who appears to still be one of his best mates (if not his best) as of today. fun fact is that christian raced for the carrera cup as a support event to the australian gp in 2023; here's oscar allegedly checking the quali live timing at lunch during his own media day.

so, to conclude, oscar's early lando focus basically traces back to the motorsport path he took at the behest and guidance of his early rfm connections in the uk. the thing is that despite growing up in australia and vaguely admiring several aussie drivers in f1 as a child (read: mark webber and eventually daniel ricciardo), oscar has never had a specific driver he consistently mentions when pressed for his racing "idol," likely since his personality inherently resists idolatry and he instead views successful people more as actionable benchmarks or reference points for self-improvement rather than as unattainable paragons of accomplishment. as a kid forced to grow up almost entirely on his own, the majority of his racing aspirations were molded independently in the uk—he completed his karting career in the uk, boarded at haileybury for 4 years (fun fact: other drivers to attend include jehan, callum ilott, and clément novalak; callum was a few years above oscar and finished school in 2017, but the two would later become quite talkative over social media anyway), raced in british f4, became a brdc member, contested eurocup under a british license and therefore had the british flag raised and british national anthem played during his wins, stayed in the uk even at alpine since the factory is based in enstone, etc. oscar basically moved to the uk from australia without having really met anyone significant in the racing scene (other than jack doohan, or more importantly jack's father mick, but jack is younger and did an extra year of karting) and pretty much didn't have anyone specific to "look up to" at the time. oscar's first acknowledgement of lando's online existence was in december 2015, when he liked one of lando's instagram posts prior to moving to england, so it can be assumed that lando basically functioned as his most accessible reference point in the junior ladder as a 14 year old dipping his toes into the european racing scene for the first time. that is my highly subjective analysis of the situation!

select quotes re: oscar's inconsistent responses to his motorsport "hero" (or his favorite driver / a driver he looks up to in general):

(f1fs; mar 9, 2022) "i started watching f1 in… 2009 was the first season i properly watched. so when brawn came in, obviously mark was the only aussie on the grid at that point, so i was kind of naturally going for him. then joined by daniel, so obviously going to support the aussies, but i think watching lewis has been nothing short of spectacular, and a very good role model. [...] i think when i was first watching, i supported mark, but, you know, and i hope he takes no offense to this—vettel was winning everything at that point. so i was supporting mark, but vettel was doing most of the winning. i think now that i understand more about racing though, i would say [the driver i look up to the most is] lewis, mainly. the way he goes about things on and off the track is quite exceptional."

(mcl youtube; mar 29, 2023) sporting idols mentioned: ayrton senna, alain prost, michael jordan (see also ultimate athletes list)

(p1; aug 10, 2023) "i would say i never had like one specific idol. when i was growing up watching mark webber was at red bull, and obviously being australian, red bull being very quick at the time, i kind of naturally followed him. i mean—even like some of the guys in the junior ranks above me. like lando was always kind of two, three years above me, winning… most things on his way up. so i guess kind of him in some ways?"

(eff won; dec 4, 2023) "i don’t really have like one specific [idol]. i think what lewis has been able to do in terms of getting to seven world championships was incredibly impressive. i think what max is doing now is also very impressive…"

the first lando post oscar liked on instagram (dec 21, 2015)

the first maxf posts oscar liked; instagram (feb 26, 2016) & twitter (may 9, 2016)

anyway, back to british f4! despite his initially unconventional foray into motorsport, oscar's journey progressed in a much more orderly fashion once he stepped up to single-seaters. his actual debut was in f4 uae, which he ran 3 rounds of between 2016 and 2017 (another fun fact: this is where he briefly acquainted himself with mclaren indycar driver david malukas, who would later recall him being very intelligent and whom zak brown allegedly spoke to oscar about before appointing to their indy team). after cutting his teeth on actual car-racing for the first time, oscar decided against moving up to the ok class as he felt confident in his ability to be competitive in single-seaters. his first full season was therefore the 2017 british f4 championship, during which oscar signed with arden while logan went to reigning champions carlin (lando had won with them in 2015, then maxf in 2016). oscar made his way to the top step 6 times in the season and placed just barely above logan for 2nd in the championship, finishing behind the considerably more experienced jamie caroline. arden was also founded and is currently owned by red bull team principal christian horner, so it was during oscar's time there that christian took note of and interest in his talent; oscar reportedly did a few runs in the red bull simulator but was passed over for joining the academy, which christian later voiced regret on. (source)

maxf, logan (center), and oscar (to max's right) on a day maxf was visiting the 2017 british f4 grid (april 11, 2017)

linus lundqvist, oscar, and logan on the podium at snetterton (jul 30, 2017)

jamie and oscar, who were… er, mathematically in the main championship fight. for some reason they made them take these photos (sep 30, 2017)

after a successful f4 outing with arden, oscar returned to the team for his first season of formula renault eurocup in 2018, a renault series that ran in its specific configuration until 2020 before merging with the parallel regional series frec to become what is today known as freca. this season proved to be less competitive for oscar, as arden was relatively inexperienced in this series and oscar's three teammates were afflicted with what can colloquially be referred to as a "skill issue," making it difficult to collectively develop the car throughout the season. (blog interview) the series was thus returning driver maxf's to lose, who at the time was racing for reigning champs r-ace with teammates that included oscar's fellow rookies logan and victor martins.

despite the unideal environment, oscar managed to prove his worth by placing a respectable 8th in the series, scoring 110 points as a rookie driver and capping the season off with 3 podiums and a top-finish of 2nd place—a jarring contrast to his teammates' joint total of 12 points. this result attracted the attention of r-ace and granted him a seat with them for the 2019 season, at which point maxf and logan both graduated to f3. thankfully that wasn't too much of a concern for oscar since he'd always intended to do two seasons of eurocup, and now he finally had a chance to win the first serious championship of his racing career with an established racing outfit.

oscar, max, and yifei ye on the hockenheim r2 podium (sep 23, 2018) [full gifset]

oscar's second season of eurocup is when he truly started proving himself as a driver, or at least to the people whose names, money, and opinions mattered around the paddock. his main competition in 2019 was again victor, who was now racing for mp and had been made a member of the renault sport academy back in 2018 after a strong performance in french f4. despite a close title fight, oscar managed to hold him off for the championship in the final race of the season, kicking off what would soon become an impressive string of consecutive single-seater series titles. even sweeter was the fact that all eurocup champions were awarded a renault sport academy spot that could be left or taken as they pleased, and of course—while the finances weren't nearly as impressive as alpine would later proclaim in their baseless smear campaign—oscar's connections in the racing world were limited as an australian driver almost exclusively managed by his father, so he gladly accepted the offer for the many venues of support renault presented to him.

see also: bby oscar briefly mentioning lando after winning eurocup in 2019 (@ 1:10)

oscar being lifted by his team (r-ace) after placing 4th in the abu dhabi finale and winning the title by 7.5 points

3. renault sport academy, lockdown, f3 (2020)

many things happened in 2020. one: oscar became an official member of the renault sport academy, joining the likes of max (who'd been picked up on merit after winning british f4 in 2017), guanyu, christian lundgaard, caio collett, and fellow new recruit hadrien david (victor had been strategically demoted after oscar's win because renault is a notoriously unserious organization, but again this is not the post). two: by the time oscar was ready for f3, moving up the ladder proved to be exorbitantly expensive, and he realized he needed better funds and managerial support to sort his career out. he'd been offered a spot in prema's f3 team by team-owner rené rosin at the end of his eurocup season, who'd named him for the post-season test before the championship was over and stressed that the spot was his no matter where he finished. (source) prema is unquestionably one of the top—if not frequently the top—teams one can drive for in most junior series (though there is also somewhat of a self-selection bias; if you ask oscar he is not a significant beneficiary of prematax!), having absolutely demolished the f3 competition that same year and achieved a clean sweep of the drivers' standings with rob shwartzman, marcus armstrong, and jehan at 1-2-3 consecutively. oscar completed post-season testing with them in spain alongside to-be teammates logan and fred vesti in october (source), before confirming on jan 26, 2020 that he would be joining them for the f3 season as a renault junior.

so, where does mark webber come in here? apparently mark's trainer from red bull and wec had also been oscar's trainer since 2016 (i'm pretty sure this is australian physiologist simon sostaric), and it was through their joint connection that oscar was introduced to mark. according to mclaren's 2023 season preview, "the pair hit it off, and webber took his countryman under his wing," signing oscar to jam sports management, aka the management agency he runs with his wife ann. mark's support would become a major factor in helping oscar progress through the feeder ranks and establish himself in f1, mainly because he had actual connections and could help oscar network with sponsors and negotiate his way during future signings. of course, more on this later.

as an aside, here are a few things mark has said about oscar:

"he’s got that white line fever when he puts his helmet on and turns into a different character, which is sensational." (mar 1, 2020)

"one of oscar’s biggest strengths by a mile, compared to everyone he is competing against — and this will be a huge string to his bow when he makes it to f1 — is his composure. he has immense levels of composure. [...] if you are weak mentally you won’t make it. he was on his own from an early age. he did brilliantly with his studies. but the racing disease would not go away, he wants it very much." (sydney morning herald; dec 11, 2021)

"he’s a prost, mate. he’s such a thinker and so calm. at first i thought i needed to inject a bit of urgency in him, but actually no, he’s got his own frequency. that’s just where he is." (the race; oct 7, 2023)

estimates provided by chris piastri on the cost of oscar's junior career, stressing the million-dollar commitments of running a single season of f3 or f2 (source)

anyway, back to the chaotic events of 2020. i think something that's good to keep in mind when discussing oscar's time in the renault sport academy is that he was actually a relatively new recruit, as in he only participated in a single training camp with the other juniors in 2020 and most of them (max, christian, guanyu, the temporary ghost of victor) already knew each other before. oscar essentially met with renault's factory team in early 2020, filmed promotional material with other juniors in january before attending the season opener together in february and then heading to winter training camp later that month, after which he and max left early for f3 pre-season testing in bahrain on march 1—a blessing in disguise, seeing as caio, hadrien, and christian remained behind and would soon be stuck quaranting in a hotel in tenerife—then briefly spent a week at school before returning home for what was meant to be a quick pit stop at the australian gp, which at the time had yet to be canceled.

then, of course, lockdown happened.

simplified breakdown of renault junior stints, notably showcasing the academy's struggles to meaningfully promote any of its juniors

oscar at the 2020 renault season opener alongside then-academy director mia sharizman, then-tp cyril abiteboul, alain prost, f1 drivers esteban ocon and daniel ricciardo, and the other academy juniors: fewtrell, lundgaard, zhou, david (feb 12, 2020)

oscar and maxf behind the scenes of the same event (feb 12, 2020)

stuck in australia for three months, oscar would end up participating in two fia virtual races, one for f2 and another for f1 (jun 7, 2020). a fun landoscar tidbit is that he finished 5th in the virtual gp right behind lando, so they technically had raced each other before 2023, depending on... well, whether you count a 2020 sim race wherein george russell and alex albon lead the pack as a real race. nevertheless, this was a time when drivers were becoming much more active online, seeing as streaming was the best way to keep their images relevant and connect with fans, and despite oscar expressing little interest in streaming on twitch he would still experience a considerable uptick in his online activity and twitter reach that year.

racing resumed on july 4 at the red bull ring in austria; oscar had been granted an exemption to travel to the uk and complete a 2-week quarantine back on may 27, a reassuring indicator to the motorsport world that the f3 season would run after all. now that he no longer had to attend school, having received 2 b's and 1 c for his maths, physics, and computer science a-levels, oscar relocated from hertford to oxford in june to be near the renault facilities, which he visited nearly every day to train at, and began living independently (as in in a flat) for the first time since 2016, rooming with fellow renault junior caio collet.

as i said before, this season is when oscar's online presence and "memeability" began to really conceptualize, enabled primarily by the fact that he was a) finally living outside of a school dormitory, and b) now, of course, signed at prema, a team notorious for its social media visibility, literal family atmosphere, and frequent youtube pandering. according to this f3 article, his twitter followers jumped from 795 at the start of the season to 11.6k by the time he won the championship, an audience built significantly off the self-deprecating string of jokes he used to tweet regarding drs and general reliability issues faced throughout the season.

what i guess i want to touch on here is how oscar's online presence has always been concentrated around the bare fundamentals of his personality: dry humor, candid words, sparing emojis, a few humorous photos detailing the mundane reality of his everyday routines, and at most the occasional inopportune meme or reaction gif (#thepiastri 🤷‍♂️, f2 in baku, jetpack guy, so on). he's bantered frequently with callum on twitter and near-obsessively liked memes, videos, and other updates lando shares with his audience, but he also has seemingly little interest in building up his own "brand" the way lando so smartly has with ln4 and quadrant, and quite frankly seems viscerally incapable of wanting to engage one-to-one with fans or otherwise leveraging the popularity of his material image. basically what i like to say is that oscar enjoys being adjacent to "lad humor" and will happily enable it, but he really has no interest in being the one to initiate it himself!

"there's some things you want to share, some things you don’t. in today's age and sort of having the profile that us drivers do, we kind of just have everything shared,” piastri said. “but (social media) can be used for good, certainly within the profiles that we have. but in some ways, it can be negative, and there's always going to be people out there that don't like you for being you.” piastri tries to write as many of his posts as possible, and he checks those written by his team to be sure they sound authentically him. (the athletic; jun 29, 2023)

along these lines, oscar does enjoy the spotlight, only he seems to prefer it concentrated in a specific lens toward a specific productive end. he's endlessly capable of seeing the objective upside of a situation, joking after he was made a meme in baku following his f2 sr1 collision that he was all for it if it got him popularity. after his eurocup championship he also said: "i think everyone loves a bit of spotlight on them. i think that's just human nature, so a bit of attention's always nice." which is interesting to me!

but back to racing. this season would unexpectedly become two things: maxf's last competitive season in motorsport—especially disappointing considering that he'd gone into the championship expecting to put on a second-season title charge, instead failing to gel with the hitech team to the point that each increasingly poor weekend made him spiral mentally—as well as oscar and logan's last season racing against each other before f1, since logan would later encounter financial difficulties that left him stranded in f3 as oscar catapulted himself to f2 victory. 2020 was obviously a weird season in general because of covid and the gap from pre-season testing, so it also meant that oscar had gone into the season fairly rusty; he managed to win the first race of the season, but on top of his drs rollercoaster he did struggle with middling results in qualifying and was met step-by-step throughout the championship by logan.

maxf's last race in f3 was the barcelona sprint race on august 16, with three rounds left to the end of the season. he dnfed in an unfortunate first-lap incident mere moments after oscar charged his way up from 5th on the grid to the front of the pack, where he would eventually breeze his way to victory and pull himself near-level with logan for the championship lead. i recognize that this is an oscar post and not a maxf post, but i think their time in f3 during an extremely isolated and covid-affected period speaks to both an interesting dynamic between them (the little kid who always lagged a series behind you suddenly beating you on merit) and their respective temperaments toward racing. while at renault, max reportedly lived with jack aitken during the week but would return to his family home on weekends, so it makes sense that he struggled to adapt when covid hit and drivers were collectively forced into very regimented sporting bubbles. mark webber, who worked for channel 4 as a commentator and had access to the f1 paddock, basically couldn't see oscar in person and instead spoke to him over the phone every day on race weekends. maxf said of his decision to quit:

"normally [...] i’m able to stay calm under pressure and i don’t let many things get to me but when you have a bad qualifying result and you see guys up there that you know you’re capable of beating, it definitely takes a dig at you inside and it’s been a lot to process throughout the year." (source)

while then-academy director mia sharizman, who worked closely with the renault juniors, spoke of oscar's inherent propensity for independence and how he adapted well to the pressures of living on his own:

"if you look at oscar piastri, he has been living on his own, [away] from his family who are in melbourne for the past five to six years. because he has been living on his own in boarding school, he learns how to live on his own, and he thrives in that. we have to force him... 'have you spoken to your father?!' it's just things like that, but he thrives in that. that's why he thrived in those weekends racing. he loves being on his own without anybody. on the other hand, we had max fewtrell, for example, who can't – he couldn't survive the 11 weekends racing, because he always needed his family to be around him. so those are the things that suddenly you see and, i think that that we see now, after a few years a driver who is quick, a driver who has the talent, and then the driver who is stable." (source)

2020 is also when lando and oscar spoke to each other on twitter for the first time. yay! after lando went semi-viral for having a meltdown over a hornet on three separate social media platforms, oscar first joked with him about it on august 24 (this was incidentally also the day maxf announced his functional retirement, which oscar liked as well 😭), before referencing the incident again a few weeks later in september.

(aug 24, 2020) / (sep 10, 2020)

outside of drs tweets and trying desperately to banter with lando norris, oscar's popular tweets at the time included several food-related mishaps and home appliance tragedies. while this isn't actually a lando moment, he was also slandered by the LN4 twitter account a month later on october 17 for reasons that remain a mystery, resulting in this set of interactions:

(oct 17, 2020) / (oct 19, 2020)

bonus: maxf's tweets @ oscar (when you aren't close enough to just text him.......)

but back to f3. similarly to his second season of eurocup, oscar would go on to clinch the title in only the final race of the year, this time even more stressfully—he never got pole that season and won arguably off of consistency, benefiting from errors and unfortunate collisions involving his primary competitors. after a hectic qualifying and string of contentious grid penalties set for the before-last round in monza, he began the feature race 15th on the grid but put on an impressive performance to finish on the podium, buffing his points lead after logan was tapped by clément and put out of the points. he, logan, and fred all dnfed in race 2 (read: the novalak pendulum swung away from oscar's favor to maintain stringent cosmic equilibrium, while logan and fred threw away a points opportunity with a teammate4teammate love tap), and oscar went into mugello with only an 8-point lead over logan and a 24-point lead over pourchaire. this weekend proved equally hectic, as is frequently the case with f3 racing standards, but in short oscar and logan entered the final sprint race level on points, with théo approaching terrifyingly near in their rearview mirrors. logan was unceremoniously taken out of contention on the first lap after contact with zendeli, and oscar managed to squeak his way to 164 points in the championship by placing 7th in the race; théo finished 3rd, with 161 points, two positions away from claiming both the race and the championship title.

a succinct summary of an eventful season! (posted jun 30, 2021)

despite winning the f3 championship in far-from-dominant fashion, oscar's career was now steadily on an upward trend. on october 30 he was rewarded with a private test in the r.s.18 at bahrain alongside christian and guanyu, and a month later confirmed that he would be racing for prema again in f2 (december 1, 2020). as a rookie f3 champion there was a moderate amount of interest in him, but no one really expected him to carry home the f2 title on his first try and so one of the main favorites going into the next season was his second-year teammate and 2019 f3 champion rob shwartzman.

4. f2, alpine reserve duties, #piastrigate (2021-2022)

at the start of 2021, fernando officially took daniel's place at renault and the team rebranded itself as alpine, parting ways with team principal cyril abiteboul and functionally replacing him with new ceo laurent rossi—part of a no-tp management structure, frankly a self-evident infrastructural faux-pas from a million miles away. the renault sport academy was then also renamed to alpine academy; again i know that this is an oscar post so i won't get too into the details of Alpine Being Alpine, but understanding how the academy functioned does help better contextualize the inevitable unfurling of piastrigate.

the main issue, really, would always be laurent rossi, or at least the values laurent rossi had been hired to represent and which he willingly peddled during his controversial tenure at alpine. after rossi's appointment it was reported that "the renamed alpine academy was now being tugged in two directions between director mia sharizman's ideal as a creator of future f1 drivers and alpine's chief executive officer laurent rossi's commercially-led preferences." (source) mia directed the academy from january 2016 until may 2022, and had been the one to restructure its recruitment process by demanding better funding and robust testing programs to cyril:

"when we first restarted the team in 2016, it was, we didn't even have a two-year-old car program at that time. we had to use a 2012 program using the [lotus] e20. [...] then in 2018, i went through it, and i said to cyril abiteboul, "look, let's try and do this." we needed financial resources. i needed a head start with financial resources to kick start the program whereby you entice drivers, and you offer [a place] to the academy drivers. it was more to see how they are... it was more of an evaluation process... that was what the first idea was. then we developed the program to develop the drivers to suit their formual 2 program." (source)

(note: mia also believed that 2020 was a disappointing year for all of his juniors save for oscar's performance in f3, which is a whole other thing. but rossi's greatest shortcoming was that he had singular, insulated vision, and he resisted any external input to the detriment of reactionary business decisions, a fact that alienated alain prost and soon led to his exit from the outfit in 2022. not a good look!!! prost would later call rossi "the best example of the dunning-kruger effect, that of an incapable leader who thinks himself able to overcome his incompetence with his arrogance and lack of humanity toward his troops." 🤌)

so basically, the cracks of mind-boggling incompetence within the team's leadership structure were long evident. on a brighter note, oscar's 2021 f2 season would quickly become his strongest single-seater contest ever (f1 youtube has a good summarizing video of his season, if interested); because of covid, f2 was experimenting with a three-race format this year in which quali set the reverse grid for sr1 and sr1 results then set the reverse grid for sr2, which essentially meant high qualifiers were rewarded for simply maintaining composure in the first sprint and running cleanly in the top 10 in order to secure a favorable grid spot in sr2. oscar adapted well to this format, building off his reputation of smooth, consistent driving on top of slowly improving his qualifying results over the course of the season, finally breaking through with his first feature-race win in monza.

oscar with mia sharizman

this is also around the time when lando mentioned oscar in official f1 media for the first time, reading off a question about him to daniel in an interview posted in october:

"this one's not even about formula one. it's about oscar piastri. oscar pias-tree! [...] he's been on it this year." — (full video) (oct 1, 2021)

of his own f2 campaign, oscar said:

"i thought that i could challenge for race wins, but i probably wasn't expecting to be so consistently at the front. consistency is something that i’ve had as a trait throughout my career, and i was expecting to be consistent in my results this year — but maybe a bit lower down!" (source)

not only did he end up being consistently at the front, he became virtually unstoppable in the second half of the season. on december 11, oscar clinched the title in abu dhabi with two races to spare, ending the season with 5 consecutive poles and 4 consecutive feature wins, 60.5 points above his previously-favored teammate in the standings. #notbadforashitqualifier!

by now oscar was a hot commodity in the paddock; the only problem was that alpine didn't really care, mainly because rossi had enthusiastically re-signed ocon to a three-year deal in 2021 and held zero intention of actually promoting any of its juniors to one of the race seats, plus the one open spot at alfa romeo had instead gone to guanyu and his considerable financial package (though oscar has always been vocally defensive of guanyu's appointment to his detractors). instead of moving to another series, such as indycar or super formula, oscar recognized that he'd proven everything he needed to prove within the feeder system and opted to remain on the grid as alpine's reserve driver, mainly so that he could embed himself in an f1 team environment and—most crucially—avoid being left "out of sight, out of mind," because once you go to america you usually don't come back.

i'll keep the rest of this post brief since i feel like everyone already knows What Went Down, but a quick highlight for fellow landoscar enjoyers was the 2022 australian gp on april 10, during which oscar accompanied rosanna tennant for the post-race show and awkwardly participated in a chaotic lando & alex interview. as far as i know, this was landoscar's first time interacting on-camera!

o: "i haven't raced either of them, no." l: "not yet!" o: "not yet. hopefully soon." — (full video) (apr 10, 2022)

then silly season started, and everything was thrown into disarray when sebastian vettel announced his imminent retirement and fernando subsequently took his place at aston martin; alpine scrambled to recover from this blindsided move and prematurely promoted oscar to an f1 seat, to which oscar eventually posted The Tweet—claiming he'd never signed a contract with alpine and would not be racing for them in 2023, thus kicking off #piastrigate. or the piasco, or whatever you prefer to call it.

here's a good article that properly summarizes the crb ruling, but tl;dr: mclaren and alpine had come to an agreement back in march to loan oscar to mclaren's stable of reserve drivers after daniel contracted covid; mark webber, who was close to andreas seidl from their time at porsche in wec, quietly negotiated a contract with mclaren for 2023 that oscar would then sign on july 4, which was reportedly initially a reserve deal with an upgrade clause to a full-time drive given a dr buyout; alpine's legal team turned out to be essentially one overworked legal director who mishandled the situation thanks to a lack of organizational support, while a concrete williams deal never actually existed no matter what people continuously allege, and any proprietary right to oscar's services that alpine purported to have for the 2023 season would soon be voided by crb rule on september 2. in other words, they dun goofed.

because tumblr dies when i try to include it in this post, here's a link to a condensed chronological timeline version of this post.

that's it for now. i'm sure you know how the rest goes!!!

#oscar piastri #*m #quite possibly the dumbest thing i've ever written and most likely of no use to anyone at all. but i had fun so no flames pls 🥲☝️#there's so much more i could have said this is quite frankly the condensed version... scrapped a whole separate section on just his psyche #i need 2 be normal.........#op meta

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slvtforfiction · 1 year ago

Note

Can we get a Soft Dom!Johnnie smut?? It’s cool if not tho <3

“Johnnie,love.”

☆ Yesss!!

☆ I love this ask tysm!!! ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

☆ Johnnie Guilbert X Reader ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

☆ Smut! :)

☆ Porn w/ no plot tbh ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

☆ Sorry it’s short ml ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

☆ Masterlist

☆ Hey guys! Before anything else I would ask you to request anything you want because I've lost a lot of motivation and it would really help! :D (Please look at pinned post to see if requests are open.)

☆ Creds to @cafekitsune for dividers :)

I left my apartment walking over to Johnnies and smiled as I knocked the door,he quickly opened it,happy to see me.

“What’s up love?” He asked smiling down at me, “Nothing I just wanted to cuddle and watch a movie with you?” I asked him and he smiled moving out of the way and letting me into his apartment.

Me and Johnnie were tied up in his bed watching a shitty romance movie,our legs intertwined and faces pressed together in a kiss.

Me and Johnnie had barely watched any of the movie,mainly deciding to make out instead,which I’m sure was a better option than watching whatever movie we had reluctantly put on the tv.

We both hummed into the kiss as I grind on his thigh,to which he soon ended on top of me.

He kissed down my neck softly,as I whined out for his touch. “Johnnie,love. Please.” I whispered,my hands falling down to his scalp out of pleasure.

He moved his hands down,exploring my curves before coming back up to break contact with my neck and pull down my shirt.

“This okay?” He whispered,asking for my consent, “Ofcourse.” I replied and with that he continued to explore my body,his hands eventually removing my bra as he kissed in between my breasts.

“Johnnie!” I whined out trying to find friction in any way I could,almost finding solace on his knee.

“It’s okay love,I’ll take care of you.” He said softly, whilst making his way down my body until he he reached my sweatpants,butterflies already forming in my stomach as he kissed down my stomach.

He untied my sweats and pulled them down slowly along with my panties. He took a quick lick at my clit before making his way down to my hole and back up.

“Please love.” I muttered,I didn’t know what I wanted,but I wanted some form of release.

He slipped his tongue inside of me and it felt like bliss. He kept a fast enough pace but not enough to be considered rough.

He bought his fingers up to my clit,rubbing figure of eights as I moaned louder.

He bought his tongue out,sucking at my clit as his lanky fingers stretched me out. I moaned louder as he sped up his fingers pace whilst continuing to gently suck at me.

I felt stars in my eyes as he gently pressed down on my stomach,I felt like I was about to burst.

“Johnnie,m’ close!” I moaned out in a daze, “It’s okay love let it out.” He said popping his tongue of my clit before putting it back.

I felt myself burst out and squirt down his arm as he rubbed my waist with his hand,helping me ride out my high.

I panted and whined out as he removed his fingers before he began to removed his jeans.

He licked up his arm where my cum had splattered across it and I whined out,missing his face in between my legs.

“It’s okay love.” He whispered to me,pulling me into a kiss as he rubbed his cock between my folds,gently easing himself in.

I moaned into the kiss,which had given him leeway to slip his tongue in,quickly taking dominance which I complied with.

He thrusted in and out of me gently whilst I became a moaning and over stimulated mess beneath him.

“It’s okay baby let it out.” He said as tears rolled down my cheeks from pleasure,cumming on his dick as he kept his pace.

Something about Johnnie was that he never cared if he finished,only if his partner did,something I had taken into consideration when letting him use my overstimulated cunt.

He took his hand off my waist,wiping my tears with his thumb whilst he slowed down his pace,pulling out of me.

Cum rolled down me thighs and I got off the bed,my legs wobbling as I got on my knees for him.

“Please Johnnie,come here.” I whispered as he sat on the side of the bed.

“Love you don’t have to-“ I cut him off as I popped his tip into my mouth,working my way down his length.

He moaned out and I smiled,taking the rest with my hands. He gently held the back of my head,making sure not to press down too hard.

My eyes watered again as I pressed them closed,sure that my shitty mascara had already run far down my cheeks.

I smiled around his cock feeling it twitch,knowing he was close I went faster.

He groaned out,holding my head down gently as he came inside my mouth. I smiled looking up at him from the floor as I swallowed it obediently.

“Good girl,do you want to go to sleep?” He asked softly and I smiled at him,nodding.

We curled up together in bed,watching YouTube,saying our ‘i love you’s’ before falling asleep in each others arms,his hands raking through my messy hair.

#spotify #smut #song #romance #cute #fluff #colby brock smut #sam and colby #sam and colby fluff #colby brock #johnnie guilbert smut #johnnie guilbert #johnnie guilbert x reader #Johnnie Guilbert fluff

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sluttywonwoo · 8 months ago

Text

instead of you [part forty] || l.mh

pairing: [best friend’s brother] lee minho x college!reader ft. han jisung

summary: you didn’t expect to spend your summer pretending to be your best friend’s girlfriend- then again, you didn’t expect to fall for your best friend’s brother, either.

warnings: swearing, alcohol, mentions of sex (18+ ; mdni)

word count: 3.4k

a/n: revamped my tom holland series from my main blog ( @wazzupmrstark ) to try and motivate myself to finish it!!

That night, you turned Jisung’s words over in your mind over and over again. He was wrong, you were convinced. You would love him the same no matter what. No matter if he asked you to end things with Minho or not. You told him as much but he didn’t seem to believe you.

You went back to your room shortly after your talk. You had walked a little more, stopped for dessert at a little shaved ice stand on the beach, and then turned back. Jisung showered first, then you, but only after going over your agreement again. What you did with Minho was your business, but it had to be kept a secret. You were still Jisung’s girlfriend for the duration of the trip. It was mainly about his parents anyway. Jisung hadn’t explicitly told you why having a girlfriend was so important to him but after spending so much time with his family you could guess why.

The next day, everyone piled into the cars and took the forty-minute drive back to Honolulu where you’d landed. Traffic was awful. You knew it took everything in Minho not to honk at the cars in front of him. You could see his knuckles turning white around the steering wheel from the back seat.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he cursed as another F-150 cut him off.

You and Jisung traded looks but neither of you dared to say anything out loud. Even Felix’s grip on the armrest tightened when Minho swerved into the next lane to speed past the truck.

“We’re not in a rush,” you reminded him. You wanted to touch his arm, reassure him somehow, but you couldn’t.

“Yeah, Mom and Dad are way behind us now.”

“It’s not about speed,” he muttered. You weren’t really convinced about the speed thing. “It’s about the principle. These assholes shouldn’t be able to get away with driving like maniacs.”

“And what are you doing right now?” Jisung asked carefully.

His twin brother turned around in his seat to give him a warning look but to everyone’s surprise, Minho took a deep breath and actually stepped on the brakes. He only slowed down a little bit, less than five mph, but it was better than nothing.

“Sorry, I’m just so used to being late all the time.”

“We know,” Felix joked.

“You should see my girlfriend drive,” your best friend joked.

“Please, I passed my driver’s test on the first try,” you scoffed, making eye contact with Minho in the rearview mirror.

He shook his head at you and mouthed low blow. Next to you, Jisung was also shaking his head.

“Yeah, and I want to talk to whoever passed you because there’s no way they weren’t under the influence of something.”

“You’re in the fast lane to never getting a ride from me again,” you muttered.

Jisung raised his hands in surrender.

“Apologize,” Felix demanded, cutting in on your behalf.

“Yeah, apologize to me,” you agreed.

Jisung sighed and turned his full body toward you, taking both of your hands in his. “I’m sorry, my love. Please forgive me.”

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever.”

Jisung turned back toward his brothers. “I think I’m in the clear, guys.”

You smacked the back of his head.

The first stop in Waikiki was the ABC store. There was one on almost every block so you stopped at the first one you saw to buy snacks and drinks for the beach.

“How many musubis do you want?” you asked Minho, who was in charge of alcohol.

“How many are you getting?” he asked back with a grin.

He looked ridiculous with his arms full of beer, smirking at you like that.

“Two,” you said flatly.

“I’ll get two as well.”

You asked the others how many they wanted and raided the mini warmer for them before dumping them at the checkout counter with the rest of what the boys picked out. Dom paid and had the four of you take the bags back to the cars.

The next step was to find parking somewhere on the streets that were within walking distance to the beach. You had to split up from Jisung’s parents to do so because there was no way you were going to be able to find two open parking spots on the same road.

Once Minho parked, put money in the meter, and double-checked that the car was locked, the four of you slowly but surely made your way down to the shore where you met up with Nikki and Dom who had already picked out a spot in the sand.

You had never seen a beach so crowded before. There were people everywhere. And all of the available space was being taken up by beach chairs and umbrellas that you had to rent from one of the several stands stationed behind them. Some of the different colored umbrellas even overlapped with each other in an apparent turf war. You could only imagine what conversations between the rival attendants must be like.

The beach was still beautiful, of course. You were in Hawai’i. Any beach here was going to be breathtaking. Waikiki Beach attracted so many tourists because of its beauty.

“We rented four chairs,” Dom explained. “We figured not all of us would be sitting over here at once so we wouldn’t need six.”

Jisung nodded in understanding.

“Are you going to surf?” you asked.

“Probably,” he answered, looking over to his brothers. “I assume you won’t be?”

“I think I’ll sit this one out.”

You turned your foot over to look at your toe. Even though all of the sea urchin spines had dissolved, the marks from the injury were still fading. You couldn’t see yourself back on a board any time soon.

You were content to lay out in the sun with your book until Jisung wanted to wade in the water.

The boys left to rent surfboards and their parents headed in the opposite direction for a walk along the beach, leaving you alone with all of the stuff. You joked to Nikki and Dom that you would protect it with your life but in reality, you would hand it over if someone so much as looked at you threateningly.

You went to dig your book out from Jisung’s backpack but accidentally grabbed his instead. It was the one you had already read and annotated for him. Out of curiosity, you opened to where he left off to see what part he was at and were surprised to see his handwriting scrawled in the margins of the most recent page.

He hadn’t stopped annotating it. Even after everything, even when he was simmering with anger, he was still writing you little notes and responding to the ones you had left. You weren’t supposed to read them before he was done so you quickly closed it back and shoved it into the bag again before retrieving the book that was actually yours.

You took a brief look back up at the water to see how the boys were doing but there were so many surfers that it was hard to pick them out.

“Which one’s yours?”

The voice beside you startled you, making you jump a little before you realized someone had taken the seat next to you.

You weren’t sure where she had come from but a girl who looked to be about your age was perched on one of the chairs the Hans had reserved. She was pretty, really pretty. Head full of curls and freckles dusted across her cheeks. The tangerine-colored bikini she was wearing looked amazing against her skin and you weren’t sure whether you were more jealous of her or attracted to her.

“Huh?” you asked.

“Which one’s yours?” she repeated.

“Oh.” You squinted at the waves, trying to zero in on Jisung. “Uh, blue wetsuit in the group of three off to the side.”

The girl followed your gaze and nodded when she found him. “They just got out there, right?”

“Yeah, we only got here a few minutes ago.” You noticed the camera dangling around and realized she must be out there for someone too. “Um, which one is yours?”

“Long hair, kind of far out. He’s in the big cluster of surfers in the swell.”

Her boyfriend was easy to spot. He was paddling in the direction of an upcoming wave.

“Do you guys come out here often?” you asked.

She nodded, curls bouncing. “David’s lived in Kaneohe like all his life, which is like fifteen minutes from here so it’s super convenient. The North Shore isn’t as crowded but the waves are practically nonexistent in the summer,” she explained. “What about you guys?”

“We’re on vacation.” You were embarrassed to admit that but it wasn’t like you could lie. You didn’t know the island at all. You also didn’t want to risk mentioning that it hadn’t been your choice to come here and offend her if she thought you were implying that her home state was the worst or something.

“Oh, how fun!” she exclaimed. Ok, well that was a positive reaction at least.

“My boyfriend’s family was nice enough to invite me along,” you added, wanting at the very least to establish that it hadn’t been your idea.

“Holy shit, that is nice of them.”

“I know,” you agreed.

“Well, while you’re here you should definitely check out the Pillbox hike. It’s a little brutal if you aren’t used to hiking uphill but the views are totally worth it.”

“I’ll be sure to mention it to him! We have a free day tomorrow so maybe we’ll do that, thank you.”

You would not be going on the hike. You hated hiking and heights but you would still mention it to Jisung in case the boys wanted to go.

She smiled but then something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she was standing up to leave.

“Sorry, I promised my boyfriend that I would get some shots of him today and he’ll be pissed if I miss these waves.”

She threw you a wave over her shoulder as she jogged off. You waved back, calling out that it was nice to meet her. You never got her name.

You only managed to get through a couple of pages of your book before another person approached your chairs. This time, it was Jisung. He had come up to check on you.

“Make a new friend?” he asked as he shook water out of his hair like a dog.

“Oh yeah, did you see that girl talking to me?”

“Thought she might be trying to put the moves on you.”

“Oh my god, how many times do I have to tell you I’m not Bella Swan? Not everyone who talks to me is into me.”

“She was your type, though.”

“You say that about all girls.”

“Because that’s your type.”

You rolled your eyes at your best friend. “Either way, she wasn’t interested. She has a boyfriend. She was just asking me if I had a partner out there too.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t think you were cute,” he pointed out.

“You’re so annoying,” you groaned. “I don’t need a wingman anymore.”

He made a face. “That’s right, you’re fucking my brother,” he said, sounding disgusted. You couldn’t blame him.

“Do you have to announce that to the entire beach? I’m supposed to be your girlfriend, remember?”

Jisung shrugged and plopped himself down on the chair next to yours. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to get it out of his eyes. Because it was wet, it had taken on a mind of its own. You had witnessed Jisung try to tame his hair after a shower on several occasions. It usually ended with him just waiting for it to dry so that he could style it and then making you late to wherever you were supposed to be going.

“Are you going to go back out there?” you asked.

“Probably. Wanna join?”

“Very funny.”

“I was being serious.”

“Oh. Well, no thanks.”

“I figured but I just wanted to make sure.”

“You’re sweet.”

The boys surfed for a couple of hours before coming in to eat the musubis and snacks you bought earlier. Their parents returned around the same time and you all ate together.

Afterward, Jisung offered to wade around in the shallow water at the edge of the beach with you.

“You have to get in,” he insisted. “It’ll cool you down.”

“Okay,” you agreed.

You didn’t need any more convincing. You had wanted to get in anyway.

“Lix, Minho, do you want to come with us?” Jisung asked.

They looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure.”

The four of you wove through the sea of beach chairs down to the shore where the remnants of bigger waves lapped at the sand. The water was crystal clear, apart from the frothy white foam atop the waves. It fizzled against the hot sand when the waves crashed against the beach, lingering still even when the water subsided.

There were several groups of people in the ocean as well but it was less crowded than the beach. Families with small children were gathered right by the shore, the parents mingling with each other as the kids played with wet sand and beach toys. You wished you could remember what it was like to be that young. To meet a stranger and be best friends in the blink of an eye.

There were less and less people the further out from the shore you got. Fathers teaching older kids how to boogie board, teenagers jumping in the waves as they gossiped with each other.

You weren’t sure how long you spent in the water but before long, Nikki and Dom were waving from the beach to get your attention.

“They’re either saying it’s time to go, or they’re ditching us,” Jisung said, squinting and making a ‘what?’ gesture with his shoulders.

“It’s really a fifty-fifty shot,” Felix added.

“I think they want us to come in,” Minho guessed.

Minho was proven right mere seconds later when Dom beckoned you to join them.

The latter half of the day was spent walking around the city. Being the center of tourism on the island meant Waikiki had a lot of shopping. You had never seen so many high-end stores in one place before. You did some window shopping while the Hans did some shopping shopping. Practically everything in every single shop was out of your price range. You weren’t expecting otherwise but seeing the numbers on the backs of the price tags still hurt your heart.

You could tell a few of the sales associates recognized Minho from the way their eyes would get big when they saw him. They’d lean over and whisper to each other behind his back. Even though he couldn’t hear them you knew he knew it was happening. It made you feel kind of bad for him. Kind of.

You ate dinner at some restaurant attached to the lobby of a hotel. It was on the water, which was nice, but it was just as crowded as the beach had been. The poor servers were so swamped that it took over an hour to get your food. No one minded, of course, but by the time Minho laid his credit card on top of the bill it was dark outside.

“Do you remember where we parked?” Minho asked you as you

“Yeah, but I don’t know how to get there from where we are right now.”

“So you don’t remember where we parked.”

“No, I remember where we parked. But we’ve walked around so much that I don’t know how to get there.”

Minho shook his head at you. “You should always pay attention to where you’re going. It can be dangerous if you don’t know where you are.”

“Why should I? That’s what I have you guys for.”

“What if we weren’t here?”

“There’s a parked car option on my GPS.”

“What if your phone was dead?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I just want you to be safe!”

You didn’t want to hear any more. “Jisung, your brother is being an asshole!”

Your best friend, who had been walking alongside Felix, jogged up to meet you when you called for him.

“What’d he do?”

“I was just trying to-”

“I didn’t ask you,” Jisung cut in, glaring at Minho.

“He’s giving me a hard time because I don’t know how to get back to the car from here,” you explained.

“We can just use the GPS app,” Jisung said.

You turned to Minho with a smug grin. “See?”

“I can’t believe you told on me,” he muttered under his breath.

“Get used to it,” you hummed.

The last day on Oahu was a free day. You told Jisung about the pillbox hike that the girl from the beach had suggested and he woke up early to do it with Felix and Minho. He came back raving about it and showed you a bunch of pictures that made you feel a little sick to your stomach because of how high it looked.

“Thank god I didn’t go with you guys,” you sighed. “I’d be freaking out even if I stayed at the bottom, just thinking about you up there. There aren’t any handrails or guards to keep you from falling-”

“We were fine,” he assured you. “I didn’t even show you the pictures of us on top of the box.”

“You climbed it?”

“I mean, we’d already climbed the mountain. What’s a little concrete box? Everyone else was doing it.”

You held a hand to your heart like a scandalized middle-aged woman. “I don’t think I want to know anything else.”

Jisung took one look at you and laughed. “That’s probably for the best.”

You did some pre-packing at the hotel before joining his brothers to do some exploring. Like Jisung, they had showered after their hiking expedition. All three of them were sporting still-wet hair that was dripping onto their shirts like kids sitting in church service after their baptism.

You walked around the resort first, checking out all of the pools and hot tubs for later that night. Jisung told his parents that he’d cook for the family and he’d dragged Felix and Minho with him to get groceries earlier. Apparently, Minho said he would help grill while Jisung made some of the side dishes upstairs. You were interested to see how that would turn out. You didn’t have to wait long to find out.

You walked by the lagoons next, slipping into the resorts along the shore to scope them out. You were surprised to see that some of them were nicer than the one you were staying at. You assumed the Hans had chosen whatever the best money could buy was but maybe they were a more financially conscious family than you’d thought.

“This is the Disney hotel,” Minho whispered in your ear as you passed one of the pools. “It’s crazy expensive to stay here for just a night. Like a standard room is over six hundred dollars.”

“Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately. I mean, we probably could have gotten a discount but someone would have to pull a lot of strings and then a handful of people would know exactly where I’m going to be and when and we would have had to hire security... it was just easier to book somewhere else.”

“Isn’t it kind of dangerous to be walking around here in the open then?”

Minho shrugged. “I like to live life on the edge.”

You snorted. “Clearly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ji showed me the pictures from your hike earlier.”

His eyes widened. “He did?”

“Uh huh.”

“Shit.”

“You know, I could point out how hypocritical it is to lecture me about safety one day and then do shit like that the next, but I won’t.”

“You’re the one that told us about the hike!”

You ignored him. “Does your agent know you were climbing mountains this morning?”

He narrowed his eyes at you and leaned closer to your face. “No, and she never will.”