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ssentimentals · 7 months ago

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f1 pairings as famous love tropes: alex albon x logan sargeant

there was only one bed!AU

'and honey, don't you know that you and i were meant to be? sooner or later, in any universe, it's you and me'

'how are you dealing with this?'

oh, what a great question. alex glances around, checking if someone is out there. 'peachy, georgie. just peachy.'

'yeah? not freaking out?' george asks in a tone that implies he knows the answer already.

'of course not,' alex huffs. 'why would i be freaking out? yes, hotel is overbooked and apparently i don't have a room anymore because of some system lag, but my good friend logan kindly offered me to stay with him. what is there to freak out about?'

and if alex doesn't add a tiny detail about his raging crush on said good friend then it's only because george knows. and because george is a very caring individual, he asks the question alex fears the most: 'is there only one bed?'

usually alex is the one who makes fun of george and his love for dramatics, but he's not doing any better now. alex knows that he's making a big deal out of nothing - it's okay for mates to share one bed when circumstances call for it. and even when they don't - it's also fine. everything is fine, but alex can't convince his stupid heart that everything is strictly platonic so if not to count this fact then he's good. he tells george as much and receives a surpisingly serious: 'alex, just go to another hotel, really. if this is too much for you, please don't- do you want me to check availability of hotels nearby? send me the address.'

it's very sweet. george's care wraps around him like a blanket and alex breathes out, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension. he takes few more deep breaths before replying: 'no, i- it's really nothing and i'm just freaking out for not reason. and it'd look weird if after agreeing i just leave to another hotel. besides, i slept in the same bed with you million times and it should be the same, right?'

'have you ever had a crush the size of great china's wall on me, albono?' george teases. 'anything you want to confess?'

'idiot. i'm fine,' alex repeats, chuckling. 'but thanks for the offer, mate. appreciate it.'

'of course.' george sighs, yawning. it's around two am in england and time difference really sucks because it's only nine pm in thailand but alex is already barely standing upright. 'you'll be fine, mate. maybe you'll even get lucky, who knows?'

alex highly doubts this prospect but doesn't voice it out loud. instead he says his goodbyes and goes back to the reception desk, where logan is signing some papers. alex has to pause because it's really unfair how good logan looks after seven hours flight and alex does not think so of his own bias: every single girl in the lobby agrees with him, eyeing his american friend up like he's some candy. well, alex supposes he is but-

'all done!' logan announces and looks up, sending brilliant smile alex's way. 'i've got the keys, let's go? or you wanna grab something from the bar first?'

'no, fuck, i'm absolutely knackered, let's go.'

it's not a spacious suite. which is not to say that it's bad, but the bed is certainly not a king size one and bathroom doesn't look like it'll fit two grown men brushing their teeth together there. alex hovers unsurely, not feeling very comfortable with taking not his space, but logan washes away his worries with: 'hey, this is your room too, okay? you're not intruding, i promise.'

and it's so earnest and sincere that alex lets himself unpack more confidently, even going as far as be the one to shower first. (which is the choice he made because he wanted to shower first, not because the thought of being in the shower that smells like logan's favorite citrusy shampoo is unbearing for him). he changes into his pj and takes left side of the bed, trying to figure out how both of them can fit here without touching. (and it's not like touching is bad per se, logan is okay with physical contact but touching is bad for alex's heart, which still refuses to see this all as a purely platonic thing).

'we are like two fifty years old men, going to bed at ten pm,' logan says, coming out of the bathroom. his citrusy scent carries on with him, invades the room and alex grips the sheets pathetically in response. god, where is the book on getting over unrequited crush on a friend? that'd be a great night time reading. 'but i think we can use jetlag as an excuse.'

alex tries not to stare. it's not like he's never seen logan's naked upper body but right now he kind of has nowhere to go and his eyes find toned muscles on their own. logan is stupidly fit. he looks like fashion magazine slapped him on the face, like he can do modeling as a solid job. he has shiny smile, sparkling eyes and unfortunately for alex, extremely kind and likable personality. alex thinks he was doomed from the start, to be honest.

'are you a blanket hogger? i think they have another one,' logan muses out loud, drying his hair with a towel in haphazard motions that send water drops flying everywhere. 'air-con on or off?'

'on.' alex replies, twisting uncomfortably and forcing himself to lay still. 'what about you?'

'hm?' logan turns and pauses, staring at alex on the bed. his eyes widen a little and alex is not sure but it looks like he's blushing even in the poor lightning. it takes few awkward seconds for logan to unfreeze and he stumbles away from his suitcase, almost tripping in the process. 'i'm fine! yeah, i'm fine with everything!'

alex blinks. he's not sure whether to comment on logan's high-pitched voice at the end or not; his friend steps closer and his face is as red as a tomato, so alex mercifully decides to say nothing. something twists in his gut, something akin to hope and it's dangerous, he can't afford it; even a silver of hope will make his heart grow bigger and if alex can't fit it in his chest already, what he'll do then?

'i can go,' alex blurts out suddenly. he catches logan's surprised inhale and adds: 'it's really no bother, i can just go to another hotel-'

'you're not comfortable?' logan interrupts, voice small and hesitant. when alex turns to look at him, his whole expression screams of a kicked puppy and that tugs at alex's heartstrings horrifically. 'with me?'

how does alex voice out his feelings? that he is afraid of how too comfortable he is with this whole ordeal? how this feels too domestic, which does unspeakable things to his heart and he's too damn young to have a heartstroke. how can he politely tell logan that he has to protect his heart from breaking and therefore the most logical solution is for him to leave? how can he tell him that when logan looks at him with those big grey-green eyes, clutching at the towel in his hands with the most miserable expression ever? answer is he can't and alex has never been logical when it comes to logan, so what he ends up saying is: 'of course i'm comfortable with you, mate.'

logan breathes out then, tension sips away from his posture and his bright smile is on: 'ah, you're still worried about like intruding and such? i told you to forget it, alex. i'm all good!'

that you are, alex thinks miserably, watching logan practically skip to the other side of the bed. you are very good. and usually it's never silent with logan, they share banter easily, conversations flows naturally but right now alex can't seem to focus on anything because logan apparently sleeps only with boxers on. american dream climbs into the bed with him and it becomes painfully clear how this is not a king size - fuck, not even a queen size - but is just a bit wider version of a simple single bed. alex is pretty sure if he or logan were on a bigger side then it would've been impossible to fit; now they fit just barely, arms and legs touching due to zero space. alex is hyperaware of logan's hairless leg pressing up to his - he has to will himself not to flinch at the contact.

'wanna watch something?' logan asks, evidently being the only normal one out of them two now. 'or you gonna sleep?'

tiredness practically weighs alex down, but logan is next to him, smelling good and looking happy for having alex with him and he clearly has some videos he wants to show, so alex indulges him with a nod. logan perks up at this - puppy, he's like a puppy - and shuffles close, closer, until his head is pillowed comfortably on alex's shoulder and his hair is right up alex's nose. 'so okay, i have few videos i wanted to show you.'

alex's arm is in the way. it's very obvious and yet alex hesitates, unsure if he can do what he desperately wants to - free his arm and wrap it around logan, pull him even closer until their joined body heat won't make him start sweating. it's for comfort, alex repeats like a mantra in his mind, when he moves his arm as casually as possible. logan is all on board with this, he instantly lifts up his head to give alex more room and shimmies closer with a contented sigh like he waited for this and- what alex can do with this information? how can he not read too much into this? logan presses play and giggles at the very start, saying something that alex doesn't catch. alex, in fact, doesn't catch anything what's happening, too focused on logan, who has no idea of turmoil happening in his friend's mind. george always says that alex can get too into his head but he thinks he has valid reasons to, especially now. logan's wet hair, logan's warm body, logan's scent, logan's laugh - he can't be blamed for what he does next, he'll blame it on tiredness and jetlag if anyone asks. alex leans in and places small kiss on logan's wet head as his hand moves from where it was wrapped around logan's shoulder to much, much lower, until it wraps comfortably around logan's middle, fingers touching the hem of his boxers. logan freezes at first - stops midsentence, doesn't move for few seconds. alex holds his breath, wondering if this is it, if he crossed the line; apology is on his lips, when logan suddenly shits and practically melts into him. he starts talking again and does unthinkable - grabs alex's waist and pulls it closer, silently asking alex to wrap his arm around him tighter. this is - crazy. alex can't hear anything apart from loud beating of his heart, he can't fucking breathe, when logan starts playing with his fingers, all while explaining some video to him.

'logan,' he calls out, voice raspy and tense.

'hm?' logan doesn't look up at first but when alex doesn't say anything, he raises his head a little, turning to the side to see alex's face better. 'yes?'

say something. alex just stares for a while. really drinks in logan's handsome features that he learned to love over the time they know each other. stares and stares and maybe he's delirious with want and his desire for it to be real, but he thinks he sees his own feelings reflected back at him in logan's stormy eyes. alex lets go of logan's hand and moves lower in a bold move, squeezing his hip. run away, he thinks, run away or i won't stop. logan, apparently, also has his logical mind turned off when it comes to alex, because he doesn't move. no, what he does is angle his hips just slightly so in an inviting manner and oh. oh.

'logan,' alex whispers and this name sounds like a prayer from his mouth. with other hand he reaches out to take a gentle hold of his chin. 'do not indulge me if that's now what you want.'

logan leans into the touch like a kitten, watching alex with a mix of awe and excitement. he pushes his leg in between, gets even closer to alex and stretches his neck uncomfortably all to grin at him widely: 'why don't you ask me, hm?'

alex swallows. 'that's not a game for me,' he says because he needs to say it, he needs to look out after his own heart.

logan's grin fades, gets replaced with a serious frown. 'i'm not playing.'

and- can alex dream? can he have this? can he be bold and selfish and just take-

'ask me,' logan asks, no, demands. 'because if you ask me then i'll be able to tell everything.'

'what you'd tell?' alex asks, getting lost in his eyes.

logan smiles softly, taking his own hand to gently cup side of alex's face, caressing his cheekbone. 'i'd tell you that i liked you from the second you smiled at me. i'd tell you that being your friend is the biggest honor, but i'd also add that just being your friend would've never been enough. i'd tell how happy you make me, how proud of you i am, how i want you around, always.' logan leans in, brushing their noses together. 'i'd tell how much i want you.'

'how much?' alex speaks into his mouth, not breathing.

'so much, alex,' logan shivers, plastering himself all over thai guy. 'you have no idea.'

alex's hand moves, cupping his neck. 'i think i do, actually.'

the kiss is everything. it's slow and deep, it's exploring each other's mouths with tongues like devouring one another is a good option, it's exhilirating and murderous. alex thinks he won't ever be able to kiss anyone else again. he leans back, pushes their foreheads together and smiles at the way logan's pale hands try to touch him everywhere they can reach. 'i was going crazy,' he whispers, making logan stop. 'with how much i want you. how much i want to be more than friends.'

logan giggles, blushes adorably and hides his face in alex's neck. 'we are idiots. we could've been doing this for- wait, how long have you been pining for me?'

'long enough,' alex mutters, not even correcting the 'pining' thing. it's true, anyways. 'how long you have been pining for me?'

'oh no mister, that's not how it works!' logan laughs and gets on top of him easily. 'you don't get to turn this around!'

alex grabs a hold of his hips and looks at him with a smile. he's not even ashamed of the fact that he basically is pulling out full on heart eyes on logan because logan looks exactly the same way at him and it's - amazing. brilliant. perfect. logan is perfect.

'i did get lucky in the end, huh,' alex mutters to himself, thinking about call with george.

'what?' logan asks, leaning down. he finds alex's lips and yeah, alex can get used to this so, so easily.

'nothing, babe,' he says, smiling at logan's blush at the petname. 'nothing.'

a/n: if you think that this looks unfinished then it's because i can't stop and will get carried away writing it, so i had to pull a stop somewhere. hopefully this was good, let me know! - nini

my other formula 1 works are here

my seventeen works are here

#lolex #sargebon #logan sargeant #alex albon #alex albon/logan sargeant #alex/logan #f1 #formula 1 #williams f1 #williams racing #f1 fic #f1 fanfic #formula 1 fic #formula 1 fanfic #aa23 #f1 imagine #i became so sad when i finished this because oh these two are no longer teammates and :(#prayer circle for alex to appear on some indy car race to support logan

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luckythesneakyfox · 2 days ago

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Ghost’s Spirit

my spelling might be an ass sometimes. There will also be pictures here and there because I am a visual person, and sometimes it's nice to have cute visuals.

I hope people find and like this not sure if I will add the next one...

The car ride was long and quiet. I spent most of it looking out the window while this ghost guy drove my cat T'challa and me. He slept on my chest for the whole ride.

My mom said that Ghost is very capable at his job. Which du! This guy is wearing a fucking skull mask! Like it is Halloween every day for him! No, but she didn't tell me he was going to be intimidated!!

When I first flew into England, I felt his eyes on me. I didn't know who was staring until we were introduced to one another, and that was when it clicked. He definitely isn't a talker. Well, I'm not much of one, either. I get so nervous when talking to others that I never know what to say.

I don't know him, and I don't know what to talk about! WHAT IF I SAY SOMETHING THAT PISSES HIM OFF! My mom made him out to be so nice. Maybe she said that so I'd go, but she and Ma couldn't stop worrying. Understandably, they both did so much for me. It's the least I could do for what happened. The reason I'm here. I sigh, it causes Ghost to glance at me.

"That's your fifth one this whole ride?" His deep, thundery British voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

"What? No, it's not?! Don't keep counting!" I say, looking over at him.

He hums, and it's silent again, and I go back to looking out at the England countryside. I wonder where we are going. All I was told was that it was a safe house or some shit like that? I sigh again.

"Sixth."

Ignoring that, I put my headphones on over my ears and listen to music. I scroll through the playlist till I find one that chases my attention: "E-GIRLS ARE RUINING MY LIFE!" by Corpse, Savage Ga$p. I sigh again and look out the window. Ghost doesn't say a thing but he's definitely counting in his head! God I wanna punch his guy but I'll just end up getting my ass kicked but he's being such a "jackass."

"Excuse me?!"

I hear Ghost stern voice rumbling from in the driver seat. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.Oh shit I said that stupid thing loud! I glance over to the him and was interrupted by a meow. THANK GOD!

"Mreow?"

The black form on me looking up at me as I look down into his cute green eyes looking up at me I smile and pet him behind the ear. I ignore the glaring glances I'm get from Ghost. God why am I so fucking stupid!

We finally get to our destination a cute cozy looking house in the country side in England.

...wait? am I still in England? For all I know I could be in Scotland or Wales? I wasn't paying attention to any signs or I'm in Wales? Hm? might be a good thing not to know? But I am stuck alone with a man I don't know? With a mask...I hope no horror movie shit doesn't happen.

I open the door T'chala jumps out he stretches and I do the same once out of the car. I look around I was about to head into the house.

"Hold it! i'm not your maid, I'm your bodyguard. Now help me get your stuff out of the boot?!"

"Okay! But what's a boot?" I say walk to him.

"It's what you American call the trunk?"

"That's odd?" I say grabbing my bags from the "boot"

Ghost scoffs "says the filthy American."

I look up at him and narrow my eyes at him.

"Then that also makes you a filthy Brit."

"Fair." Ghost says gruffly and walks away to the house.

I go pick up T'Challa and he gets onto my shoulders as I carry one of my bags. I wonder what why he started to wear the mask in the first place? Before he gets to the door I say:

"Can I ask you a question?"

Ghost glances back at me.

"Depends on your question."

"What got you to wear the mask in the first place?"

It was silent he stood there for a bit at the front door then he just opened the door. Well I'm not asking that question again?! I flow behind him into the house. I then notice that...I didn't see any of his bags in the trunk? I swallow before asking another question.

"Where are your bags?"

"I got brought my things here a few days before to get a feel for the land and know the area. In case the worst happens."

"Oh, okay."

"Viola? I'm setting some ground. rules first."

Ghost says putting my bag down and walks over to me as he towers over me.

"First you don't leave this house without me, ever! Second when going outside you will stay by my side at all times. You got that?"

He say looking down at me. I nod and swallow.

"Use your words."

"Uh?"

"Tell me you understand?!"

His eyes narrow at me. I look up at him a little confused, "I...umm? I understand?"

"Not convincing enough but it'll do. Your room is up stairs and to the left. The rooms are not that big. The bathroom passed my room to the right."

Jeez this man can be so intense, I nod just head up stairs and to the left To my room. I open the door. He was right it was small, but it was cute and cozy!

(I feel like this is what it would look, like possibly.)

I put my things down and unpack. I realize that T'chala wander off some where in the house. I then flop onto the bed. I look up at the ceiling, my brain starts to wonder to that night I was streaming. When I heard a bang at the front door I went to go check but then the intruder had open my door to my room he had a knife. I mean I dealt with him and called the police. My mom made me take self defense class and stuff. But here I am...in a house with someone who works for her. He kinda a weirdo...but I am to so who am I to talk, I am too. I feel my eyes start to close.

"Viola?" It's Ghost. I'll just ignore him till he leaves.

"Shorty?!"

"Hm?" I slowly sat up. "What?"

"Dinner? What do you want?" He asks as he stand in the door way.

"What do we even have?"

Ghost stares at me for a moment the speaks.

"Just get your ass down stairs to the kitchen so we can figure this out."

He then left while I slowly followed him down the stairs to the kitchen. I see T'Challa laying on the chair all curled up in a frying pan next to the stove. I smile at how cute he is. I can't help be smile I go over to him and give him scratchies! Ghost opens the fridge.

"We don't have much for dinner?"

"Great. Is there anything nearby?"

"Hardly?"

I look at Ghost for a while.

"is there anything in the cabinets?"

"Just pasta."

"I can live with that for tonight?"

"Alright, don't go anywhere you're helping me."

"Hm? Alright."

I help Ghost cook. We weren't really talking much mostly just quiet and T'Challa purring or meowing. I bend down to him.

"Hungry buddy?"

"Mreow!"

"Okay, I'll get you your food."

I give him a head pat and go get his cat food and his bowl and set it down in a corner. I then walk back over to the stove. Ghost is now at the sink straining the pasta. I then go to turn off the stove. I watch Ghost and my eye start to wander up his arm. I wonder how much he works out or what's it's like to have thoughts arm wrapped around-

"Viola? Earth to shorty?"

Ghost says snapping his finger in my face as I snap out of my daydreaming.

"Uh? Is dinner ready?"

"Yes...help yourself."

I nod, getting a plate and sitting down. I then notice Ghost sitting down but with no plate. weird? I chew and swallow my food then ask.

"Are you not eating?"

"Not hungry." He says as we watched me eat.

"Okay...uh...what's it like being in the military?"

"It's a difficult yet rewarding experience. Missions, training, and operations- it can be tough to get use to."

"Rewarding? Like...your ranks is rewarding?"

"Yeah that too."

I look up at him in response I take another mouthful of pasta. Once I chew and swallow I think of anything question.

"Why did you join?"

"Yes."

"W-what?...That's not answer?"

He sits there with his arm crossed staring at me not even blinking once.

"Finish your dinner."

I huff, not satisfied with his answer but what ever! Still a bull shit answer. finish my dinner, then head up to get ready for bed. I get my pjs on and get in bed and see my feline friend all curled up and cute. This Ghost guy is strange? But I part of me want to get to know him while I a stuck here with him. I lay down and when my head hits the pillow I was out like a light.

I don't know what I am doing I am just going with the flow for this! 🙃

#cod mw2 #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader stories #ghoap x reader

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writtenjewels · 2 years ago

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Family

Hope-tober Day 21

Charlie still couldn't quite get over what his mother confessed to him. He was not an only child as he grew up believing. When she was just a teenager, his mother got pregnant and gave birth to another child.

“I was scared, Charlie,” she explained to him. “I was barely more than a kid myself; I knew I couldn't take care of a baby. So I gave him up for adoption.”

Him. Charlie had an older brother.

“Do you know what happened to him after that?” Charlie asked.

“No.” Pam let out a tired sigh. “I asked for it to be a closed adoption. I only know he was taken in by Americans.”

“Well, that narrows it down, doesn't it?” Charlie rolled his eyes. “Mum, that was over sixty years ago. Did you never think to look for him in all that time?”

“I was a stupid kid when I gave him up. Once I was mature enough to consider it, you came along.” Pam reached out to take his hand. “I wanted to be a good mum for you.” Charlie could sense she was waiting for him to tell her she was a good mum, but considering the discussion, it was hard for him to get the words out. All he could manage was a squeeze of her hand.

“Can't you tell me anything about him?” Charlie persisted. “Where you gave birth, or where you left him?”

“Darling, it's been so long I can hardly remember,” Pam admitted. After a moment, she added: “There was one thing. I asked for him to be called Anthony, after my father.”

It wasn't much to go on, but Charlie had good people working for him. Jamie seemed the best person for the job, so Charlie gave her the information. She lit up, excited to be a part of researching something less macabre for a change.

“I found him,” she announced the next day.

“What, already?” Charlie gaped.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, Charlie,” she teased. “Can't say they kept amazing records back in those days, but it was enough to find the adoption agency that handled your brother's case. And you're really going to love this one: he was adopted by some folks who lived in New England.”

Charlie couldn't help laughing a little at the irony.

“I did a little more digging and found a recent photograph of him that he took for an employee I. D.,” Jamie went on. She slid out a printed page and set it face-down on the table. “What do you say, Charlie? Are you ready to see your brother?”

Charlie took a deep breath. He reached for the picture and pulled it close. “I'm ready.”

#charlie lonnit #the devil in me #jamie tiergan

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blackkat15 · 1 year ago

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Rant about America by an Australian:

Trigger/Content warnings?: Me actively hating America.

The Americanisation of Australia is fucking scary.

I get jumpscared by Americans on the news over here. Particularly when they're complaining about gun reforms. My parents are always like "GO BACK TO AMERICA YOU YANK!"

All of these American companies are also getting into legal battles with businesses over here for naming/trademarking shit.

Burger King became Hungry Jacks because we already had a Burger King. When the AUS Burger King went under they had the opportunity to take the name but they didn't because everybody liked the name Hungry Jacks.

American Wendy's is in a fight with Australian Wendy's (Wendy's Milk Bar [they have churros in their fudge sundaes which are bomb as hell]) over their name. Wendy's wants to expand to Australia but they'll most likely have to change their name.

US Fanatics is fighting AUS Fanatics and US Fanatics is a big corporation wheras AUS Fanatics are a longstanding business in Australia.

Not to mention the media we consume over here.

Nine times out of ten all the stuff we see on our TV's here (FREE TO AIR MIND YOU) is American shows with another portion coming from England.

It's jarring.

Every other news report we have is about another school shooting in America or the Super Bowl or another celebrity doing something stupid. What the fuck even is a Super Bowl? I only know about Aussie Rules Football and Cricket.

We don't have much here left that is truly Australian.

Our car industry died with Holden.

Pretty much all of our actors and music artists have fucked off to live in America.

A bunch of our foods have been discontinued in favor of American alternatives.

I bet none of you Americans have even HEARD of Starburst. Well guess what?? They died.

It makes me physically sick to think about the American economy and the American health system and how DENSE you are. It's not communism or socialism. It's called looking after people so they don't fucking die.

You bitches got medicare?

You bitches get job seeker payments?

You bitches get student payments?

Does your Government put laws in place to protect cultural heritage?

No? I didn't think so because your government is run by a bunch of greedy crusty old white dudes who need to die already.

The Australian Government is run by a diverse range of people, young, old, male, female, white, Asian, Aboriginal.

I am so sick of America. You have a crappy economic system and a crappy health system. But you also have a bunch of nice things too which I am immensely jealous of.

#kat says stuff #I hate it here #The Americanisation of Australia is awful #Australia #America #just me being an America hater #Thanks to Michael Moore for his amazing documentaries #Kat Rants About Trash

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dear-ao3 · 7 months ago

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welcome back once again. i feel like im just screaming into the void at this point guys. is anyone still out there? is anyone still reading? i don't know but we’re back. i know we were just back but were back again cause we’re in triple header hell! but we are in mexico, so at least we get the cool f1 song! today is november 3, 2024 and here we goooooooooo

and im going to let you all in on a little secret here. i have pretty much no idea what happened this weekend. like i know things happened. i have notes written down. but this is going to be a surprise for the both of us. in my defense, i had an anatomy test and a work trip. so apologies if this one is a little rough around the edges.

charles leclerc became a fighter pilot. or at least he did on instagram, as a brand deal/partner thing. sorry that's not descriptive. let me try again.

he got to go on a rafale fighter jet to take part in a french air force training mission and its going to be in the documentary called supersonique.

he also ate what seems to be mcdonalds after

franco colapinto was in a forbes magazine. he was talking about being a driver from south america just ahead of the central/south american leg of the f1 season:

"I know that the Argentines are enjoying having a driver back in Formula 1 as much as I am; seeing when I do well and being just as happy as I am when we get good results… that is something that we all enjoy. I feel that we are a team with all the Argentines, who pushed me a lot to get to where we are; and what we achieved is also part of them. I love that they are happy with everything that is happening this year. I am very happy to see them enjoying what I am doing. Obviously, continuing down this path, seeing that I have so much support from Argentina, is something unique"

oscar was also in a forbes magazine. they somehow managed to make him look like a giraffe.

and it was lewis hamilton’s dog’s roscoe’s birthday he is 12. lewis lightly demanded that everyone wish him a happy birthday and you cant possibly say no to sir lewis hamilton.

valtteri bottas is also selling a piece of his mullet??? i swear im not making this up.

and im not sure if this was during this exact week but one of the williams mechanics? engineers? said that they only just recently got franco to stop taking the bus (like a real. commuter bus) from the hotel he stays at to the williams factory in england. franco thinks that its stupid to waste a car to drive him to the factory when he can sit on the bus and get a nice view. but you know, safety and all that.

one person was not gracing us with his presence this media day was fernando alonso. he was not feeling well and did not go to media day. he did show up later in the weekend, which was good cause it was his 400th gp this weekend. no one else has ever gotten to this many before. he had a cool helmet and everything.

and you know, everyone was well and truly impressed because holy shit. 400 races.

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everyone had only good things to say about him in his 400th race (thats a link to another video that it wont let me insert) ��

yuki and liam built a giant jenga tower (with the help of standing on a chair)

charles made a second, more unhinged, instagram post, showing off his helmet for the mexican gp. ill just let you watch it.

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then he showed up in his suit, slaying, and trying to speak spanish.

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oscar and lando did a fan stage with franco and alex. oscar told franco that he wants to learn spanish just to understand his interviews because apparently they are really funny.

max reacted to the grid recreating the inchident video. actually hold on this may in fact be from last week. you know what i don't care. its a good video. its going in.

george was also asked about the penalties from the texas week, namely his that he got for his incident with valtteri. he was very GPDA president about it. he said:

“when you watch an incident in slow motion, or you pause it at any given point - my penalty with valtteri, the rule states if you're not ahead of the apex and you push someone wide, you get a penalty. so by the letter of the law, my penalty was correct. but anybody who knows racing, and anybody watching it, knows it was not correct. i don't really know how we move forward. i think we’d probably all want to see the probably the same stewards all year long, so that the drivers and the stewards can all be on the same page, and that we can apply common sense when needed, rather than having to really follow the letter of the law.”

he also said that he could not speak about the other penalties that were given out because he had not thoroughly reviewed them yet. but aparently the driver guidelines are going to get gone over in qatar.

and now, for everyone’s favorite part. the silly season update.

this week it came in the form of a quote from valtteri bottas, saying that should he wind up with no seat at the end of the season, he would consider going back to mercedes as a reserve driver for next year.

why is this interesting??? WELL

mercedes currently has two reserve drivers as we know. one is frederik vesti. who i never really talk about, mostly because mercedes pretty much just kinda locks him in the simulator and that's about it. but hes charming in the sense that he reminds me of this kid who was in one of my algebra classes in high school who asked our teacher if he ate a gummy worm off the floor if he could get extra credit. the teacher said no. the kid still ate the gummy worm for fun.

anyway.

the other reserve driver we have talked about quite a bit and it is mick schumacher.

mick has been reserve driving for merc for two years now, following his untimely exit from haas at the end of 2022. and by untimely i mean he was apparently told during the last race weekend in a hotel lobby that he wasn't signed for the next year. anyway. mick is one of the reserve drivers, yes, but he is also racing for alpine in the WEC (world endurance championship) series this year. his WEC contract was for one year and as of now, when i am typing this, he has not re signed any contracts with WEC. despite the fact that everyone on the team has pretty much said that they would give both their right arm and their first child for him to re sign with them. but, mick is waiting for any news of a formula 1 seat before he signs another WEC contract.

aside from that though. mick did say that if he cant get a seat back on the grid then he wants to stay with mercedes as a reserve driver. so then why. is bottas saying. that he wants to go to mercedes as a reserve driver.

i have no idea. but this is formula 1. so it could either mean everything or it could mean nothing.

and the silly season rumors also continued to swirl around one franco colapinto. who, if you will remember, has no contract for next year. james vowels had this to say about franco: “even if hes taking points away from us [next year] he should be racing in f1.” which is to say that williams would release franco from his contract with them (cause he was in their drivers academy) so that he could sign with another team. and currently only two teams have seats open: vcarb (though they might be locked down with liam lawson) and audi/stake (who everyone seems to be in contention for).

speaking of rumors. helmut marko was back running his mouth (if you're surprised about this, clearly you haven't been paying enough attention to this post) this time about oscar coming to red bull should max leave or retire (like he is presently threatening to do every now and then due to a potentially expanding race calendar and also tighter regulations). and oscar shut that right down in a very oscar way:

“definitely not [going to red bull]. i’m very happy where i am. im under contract for the next two years after this and im certainly not looking to go elsewhere. it wouldnt be a week in f1 without some comments from helmut.”

he was then asked if he was surprised that helmut would say that oscar is going to sign with red bull and oscar said

“not massively. its a nice compliment i would say. but again i am very happy with where i am. they [red bull] have quote a bit pool of drivers they can choose from if they want.”

and zak brown conferred this:

"We're obviously very happy with our two guys and got them signed up for quite some time." though. as we know. contracts don't really mean too much in f1. so whos to say.

but helmut marko wasn’t done talking about the mclaren drivers. he still had shit to talk about lando:

“we know norris has some mental weaknesses. ive read some of the rituals he needs to do to perform well on race day.”

this was in relation to lando fighting for the championship with max, and why helmut thought that max was superior, despite having the inferior car.

andrea stella, the mclaren team principal, responded to this, saying that

“max was addressed for swearing. for me, this is much more severe.”

and zak brown said

“i read marko’s comments. poking at that situation i think is pretty inappropriate and kind of sets us back 10-20 years.”

and of course, helmut responded to them.

“i never talked about mental health. i just said that max is mentally stronger. they are deliberately causing unrest.”

and that may be so. it may not be so. it all depends on how you spin it.

you know what doesnt depend on how you spin it?

alex albon bonking oscar on the head with a boom mic

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and also whatever the hell george is doing here

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now. this is potentially i think the third time that george has had to defend himself saying that he is Not dating another driver (im not sure, my resident George expert is asleep). hes done it before with alex albon (entirely unprompted i might add. in a twitch stream. when people were asking if alex was going to go live. and george said “we might be best mates but he is Not my boyfriend.” which was something no one was accusing him of) and i don't remember what the other time was. but i know that this has happened before. and george. if you’re defending yourself against allegations that no one is making well. that kinda says something.

but lets get on to practice, i say, as it is now 12:30am on brazil race day. really. how do i get myself into these situations.

idk

but alas we had practice. i don't really know what happened, i didn't watch any of it. but! pato o’ward with mclaren was in fp1, along with ollie bearman at ferrari, felipe drugovich at aston, kimi antonelli at mercedes and robert shwartzman at stake.

it was a proper big deal for pato to be in for fp1 because hes mexican and everyone there was really really excited for him to be in. he currently races in indycar and hes a pretty big deal. hes also the mclaren reserve driver. and he put on face paint. really, he is quite funny and i would recommend at least glancing at his social media, its off the walls.

alex crashed into ollie and went spin.

robert saw it happen and his radio was just a tad unhinged:

robert then also got a five place grid penalty for overtaking under a double yellow flag. which is really interesting because that penalty can only be served in a formula 1 race and guess what, robert is not a formula 1 driver. but at least he can now join the club with jenson button for Drivers Who Have Grid Penalties That They Cannot Serve.

then in practice 2 we had a rather large crash from george. by rather large i mean 35g. straight into the barriers. and the way that he hit the barriers, he almost went directly into the concrete.

which is why when he got out of the car and whisked off to the medical center, he was clearly limping and also couldn't breathe.

(if you're new to the world of formula 1, yes this is less than ideal, but he did come on radio saying that he was fine, which is always good and did get out of the car himself, which is also always good. sometimes they just get the wind knocked out of them during the big high impact crashes. lando had a worse one in vegas last year)

still. there was a red flag as they extracted george’s car from the barriers. and we didn't hear anything from mercedes about whether or not george was okay (usually this is something that comes through pretty quickly when a driver has to go to the medical center post crash because sometimes they get sent to the hospital for precautionary checks)

but we did hear from the admin on the LN4 twitter account (?) (one of lando’s official accounts) and they posted something to the extent of “is it in bad taste to say we’re so back” right after george’s crash. it was quickly deleted.

eventually, we found out that george was in fact okay, back in the hospitality, and probably complaining about how his car didn't really work too well.

forward into qualifying we go.

one of the ferrari mechanics decided to do some acrobatics

and lando took one of his famed mid quali naps.

and it had been 4,480 days since fernando alonso’s last pole position in germany 2012.

oh you wanted to actually know about what they did? in the cars? my most sincere apologies. without any further ados:

well there was not a lot of grip. because this is a high altitude track. the highest altitude of the whole season.

it was also checo’s home race. somehow i forgot to mention that. but he is in fact mexican and he is also a HUGE deal in mexico. last year he did not have a good race weekend here, he got shoved off the track at the start by charles leclerc (i think it was a no fault thing but i do not remember, neither of them had anywhere to go) and ended up dnfing on turn 1 lap 1. which was not great. and he definitely did not want a repeat of that this year.

unfortunately he was off to a bad start. in his first qualifying lap he managed only a 1:18.5 and martin brundle said “what did he do there? oh dear. not particularly fast”

he said that he had braking problems and was stuck down in p19.

meanwhile george russell.

they had had to rebuild the car for him after his crash in practice the day before and he had all kinds of old spec parts going on his car. no one was really sure when it was exactly from. some said miami. some said silverstone. in any case, it was not up to date.

oscar piastri was also having a time of it. he only managed to go 13th fastest and then it got deleted for track limits so he got shoved back down to 19th. he had time to go out again though and he did. he needed at least a 1:17.2. he did a 1:17.5. “this is not a cracking lap” said martin brundle.

checo meanwhile got knocked down into the bottom five by charles leclerc. which was slightly cruel after last year. “ah shit,” he said over the radio. “Indeed,” martin agreed. and oscar got knocked down to the bottom five by franco.

“similar position from lando last year, so ill make sure to do my homework to see how he moved through the field” oscar said later. i think last year lando started p17 and finished p5. it was slightly insane.

haas meanwhile, the 300 person team, had both cars through. this year they were really, really making the upgrades work for them. and also bottas was through. hes never not made it to q3 in mexico.

q2 was mostly uninteresting except for when yuki tsunoda went crash. he was okay, but it ended the session slightly early. so himself, liam lawson, fernando alonso, lance stroll and valtteri bottas were all out.

meanwhile. alex albon had almost all but matched the pace of the mercedes. which was really interesting because need i remind you that alex albon drives a williams. and williams is definitely mid field, despite being mercedes powered.

in q3 max made it to provisional pole. but then carlos took it from him. and carlos kept it. he was on pole!

“what a lap,” carlos said

“two laps,” his engineer said.

he also had a great secret third lap where he smacked lando in the nuts

and so lining up for thee start of the race we had

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

and once the race started, yuki was very nearly immediately in the wall. he retired. as well as alex albon who was also involved in the incident.

max had picked up the lead from carlos somewhere and carlos ended up going off track and passing max, but when he rejoined he gave the position back.

so heading into lap 2, max was leading, then checo, lando, charles, lewis, george, jevin, nico, gasly, liam, lance, fernando, perez, colapinto, valtteri, zhou, ocon and albon

which meant that checo had somehow gained five places.

the fia thought that this was slightly too good to be true. turns out that he was being investigated for a false start.

checo did not agree with this. “no, no it was a great start,” he said over radio. “have a look because i don't think we were.” apparently he was though, and he got a five second penalty for it.

meanwhile, carlos passed max in a move that surprised everyone, even carlos himself.

“mate,” max said over radio. “what a can i do with a fuck empty battery? what is this stupid mode.” the team did not really look into it, but it became clear that carlos saw the car recharging its battery and still sent it and somehow it all worked out for him. max had had no battery from previously fending off carlos.

next up it was lando’s turn to get through. he passed, then max kind of ran him off the track. lando did not give the spot back. a few corners later max ran both him and lando off the track and charles took that as an opportunity to zoom right past them. i cant insert the video because f1 is blocked on tumblr, but you can watch the moment if you click here

“i was ahead at the corner! same as the last time, he keeps forcing me off i was just trying to avoid a collision! hes dangerous.” lando said over the radio.

this time it did seem to be actually dangerous.

“he overtook off track and pushed me,” lando repeated again.

both incidents were reported up to race control. but lando still got two track limits strikes, which would count against him if he went off again.

almost immediately, max got a 10 second penalty for forcing another driver off the track. “im sorry mate but that was outrageous,” martin brundle said.

max was told about the penalty. he was unbothered. “yeah, quite impressive.”

meanwhile charles got the fastest lap. and george, on his old spec car, potentially from miami, managed to pass lewis hamilton for fifth.

and then fernano alonso had to retire, on his 400th race for i think it was an exhaust issue. or a brake issue. a something issue. which was unfortunate.

also unfortunate was max getting Another 10 second penalty. for the second time that he managed to force lando off.

george’s engineer told him that max managed to get 20 seconds worth of penalties. “wow” george said, speaking everyone’s thoughts.

meanwhile, liam lawson and checo had an incident.

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and then he and lance stroll nearly smacked into eachother as well. checo ended up going into the pits after it (and i think served his 5s penalty) but then came out fine. despite a slight hole in his side pod. the incident did end up going to the stewards, but no penalties were given.

what was hilarious about this though is that it was the second week in a row where liam lawson was picking beef with one of the “old men” drivers on the track. first fernando alonso and then checo perez. and liam did flip perez off (at least i think it was) here.

liam did later apologize for this, saying that "he [checo] spent half the lap blocking me and trying to ruin my race, so i was upset."

after the race, checo said that it was a "i dont think it was a very clever move" and liam said "im not just going to get out of his way"

liam also said, much later on, potentially actually in brazil "im not here to make friends, im here to win"

cause remember that liam is trying to get checo's seat.

still, this was incredibly bad luck for checo at his home race, especially after wanting to get redemption for last year.

max also ended up pitting on lap 27 and served his 20 second penalty.

by lap 30 this was what we were working with:

p1 carlos p2 charles p3 lando p4 george p5 kevin p6 nico p7 liam p8 oscar p9 franco p10 lewis p11 valtteri p12 esteban p13 max p14 guanyu p15 pierre p16 checo p17 lance

this was excited because we almost had a HAM, BOT, VER in the timings, which was very typical of a few years ago when bottas was still at mercedes and max was constantly chasing them down. a few laps later, we did indeed get HAM, BOT, VER

carlos, who was still leading, was told to box a few minutes later “one more lap, one more lap,” he pleaded with his engineers, trying to become his own engineer again as he sometimes does when he is leading a race (a la singapore)

george had also pitted, but he was displeased with it. “why have we done this? surely we could have done 1 or 2 laps more,” he said, wishing that he had put his foot down a la carlos.

conversely, oscar piastri was practically begging to pit. “mate think about pulling me out of this shit,” oscar said, stuck in a drs train as he had been for the last many several laps, unable to overtake and just kind of stuck between haas, rb and williams.

oscar was at this point, sitting in 6th, in front of liam lawson. max was in 8th at this point, but quite a bit behind oscar. and the thought was that they, mclaren, were going to leave oscar as a sacrifice to fight with max to protect lando, who was trying to take as many points off of max as possible.

carlos was still chilling in first, 7.7 seconds ahead of charles.

and george had an asymmetrical front wing. not quite broken but also kind of broken. but still usable. so he kept using it.

max verstappen passed liam. he was now right behind oscar. and oscar had yet to pit.

franco had something wrong with his steering. “something is wrong with the steering mate. something strange. it goes soft stiff soft.” and yet, no one made a that's what she said joke about that.

oscar was finally pulled out of hell and into the pit lane. he came out 13th and very very behind max.

“is it me,” crofty said. “or is it suddenly getting cloudy.”

because that was just what this race needed. rain.

“its getting really dark!” max said.

rain was not expected to hit the track, but it was getting close.

“ive got very small rain drops on the visor,” george said.

“check for sweat george, check for sweat,” crofty said, calling back to that race i don't remember which one where george reported rain but it was really just sweat falling into his eyes.

oscar was meanwhile fighting back through the grid, he was up to 10th.

lando was now putting in the fastest laps, trying to catch charles. he was 20 seconds ahead of george at this point so he was in no danger from behind, but he definitely wanted to try to catch charles.

carlos and charles, because of this, had been told to speed up.

carlos did not agree with this “my opinion is that we are pushing too hard, absolutely no need for the team.” he was saying this because he was about to start lapping cars and thus be in traffic, but lando was too close for ferrari (4 seconds behind charles) to back off. and so they went.

franco took the fastest lap now.

and lewis was still trying to pass george (who, i remind you, is driving a car potentially from miami in terms of upgrades and has a broken front wing) by still i mean that this had been going on for a solid 5 laps at this point.

lando was only 1.5 seconds behind charles at this point.

“i need your best driving now, lets go” charles’s engineer said. ferrari were also having brake cooling problems at this point. and lando put in the fastest lap.

on lap 63 he was half a second behind charles

and then charles went off the track! nearly slammed head first into the barriers but managed to just barely catch it! but it was enough to send lando through to p2!

charles meanwhile was telling his team to “think about the fastest lap”

and george was still ahead of lewis. lewis had been half a second behind him for a long while. and the two mercs were in no mans land in a race with eachother. and lewis finally passed on lap 66. it took him 12 laps. and lewis has the most upgraded version of the car lets remember.

later on george claimed that there was nothing “better” about his car and its version than lewis’s so either, lewis’s car is fucked (as he has been saying this whole year) or! the miami upgrades and a broken front wing were actually better. ill let you decide on that one.

franco and liam meanwhile had an incident. franco’s front wing got smashed and liam claimed that he had nowhere to go.

checo was told “might be debris in turn 12” from the liam and franco incident. “i guess its the same idiot that crashed again?” checo asked.

“you can watch the highlights later,” his engineer said.

checo giggled and said “im watching them now.” so at least he got a little satisfaction from that.

but liam lawson pitted after his scuffle and went fastest.

then charles pitted and went fastest.

and then checo pitted and tried to go for a fastest lap attempt and then failed. probably because he still had a slight hole in his side pod.

so charles ended with the fastest lap. and who won?

CARLOS SAINZ

he was followed by lando, charles, lewis, george, max, kevin, oscar, nico, pierre, lance, franco, esteban, valtteri, guanyu, liam and checo.

he got his “one last win” in ferrari (but didn't sing smooth operator over the radio. sad.) and also! ferrari are now ahead of red bull in the constructors championship!

the standings are

mclaren: 566

ferrari: 537

red bull: 512

and according to one laura winter “ferrari are on a charge”

but lets hear from the drivers first

charles said that “it was a difficult one….race was the best we could achieve on my side today.”

lando said that he “tired to avoid any crashes, carlos did well!....i didn't want to expect such a thing [max’s driving] because i respect max as a driver but i was expecting it and i avoided it” he later elaborated on this, saying that

“i don't want to complain about it, you know. cause you know, this is what i love. i love going into races and knowing like ‘we’re gonna have a good battle today and hes [max] going to put up a good fight’ and all of those things. and i look forward to it. but things like today are just a bit too far in my opinion and obviously in the stewards opinions too and i would say pretty in the majority of people’s opinions. and that's just not how i think many people like to go racing. but i respect max a lot. i want to race hard against him but if i didn't do what i did today and avoid him, id probably be out of the race you know, so…its tough but i played my cards well i knew what to expect in many ways and yeah. points are good for me at the minute. and we just keep our heads down.”

max had a totally different view

“well i mean at the end of the day, if you agree with it or not, it doesnt matter because the penalties are given. so honestly that's also not my biggest problem of the race. my biggest problem was just that we had no pace. yeah, just struggling a lot on the tires. yeah, couldn't really attack and i couldn't follow ferrari and mclaren.”

he was then asked if he would do something different next time. and he had an interesting answer again:

“uh. maybe get a drink in the pit stop.”

so as usual max remains unbothered. you cannot pay him to be bothered because its not in his nature. he just wants to go racing.

one person though was happy with his result and that was carlos sainz.

“i just really wanted this one, i wanted it for myself….with four races left i just want to have fun.”

he was also asked about his overtake on max and he said that

“i needed to surprise him one way or another, i was a bit far back but i had nothing to lose so i sent one down the inside.”

(as a side note they kept calling carlos the “king of mexico” which just. feels wrong? given you know? colonialism and columbus and the conquistadors and all that that pillaged the crap out of mexico and south america? but maybe that's just the history major in me talking)

but it was also good news for ferrari itself because of how much they have gained over recent races and carlos had this to say about that

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by absolute contrast. charles called max “my max” in the press conference

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and then accidentally swore

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and immediately got approached by an fia official after

jury is still out on his punishment, he may need to do community service with max.

aside from. all of that. haas! had a great run of points, p7 and p9, and are now in front of alpine in the constructors championship. kevin said that the upgrades that they have brought recently “have just worked….sometimes we surprise ourselves.” which i think really well and truly sums up the entirely of haas.

he also said that he is at peace with this potentially being the end of his career, though he has been in this position now twice before and has come back. so. jurys still out on kevin magnussen.

and we also heard from franco colapinto. who said that the fans here really motivated him. “in football we are fighting with eachother and that doesnt happen here” he said. but he also said that he didn't have anything else left in the car today.

he was asked about his plans for next year and he said himself that he does Not have a seat for 2025 and there have not been talks. he wants to come back in 26 or 27. but, remember, this is the kid who likes to fuck with everyone. so whos to say. also his team apparently have been talking to people and there is a Chance that he could be in for the RB seat for next year. we will see what happens.

“everybody is tired,” james hinchcliffe said “but everybody is having fun.”

and especially having fun were mclaren and ferrari, specifically zak brown and carlos sainz, who photo bombed eachother.

oscar called lando landito during one of the post mclaren videos

and then lando and carlos celebrated their podium together

they actually went out together with a bunch of people at what seems to be a big fancy dinner thing. and carlos was sitting. next to lando. but across from his own girlfriend. which is kind of hilarious.

and then they went out and carlos sang smooth operator. because what else did you expect him to sing. he’s carlos sainz.

we have one more race in this triple header, and that is brazil. and since i am coming to you from the future, i can tell you all that you’re going to want to tune in for this one. its off the walls in more ways than one. and i promise it will be a much better update than this one. see you all soon :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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then of course, we had some slightly more relevant drama

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

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

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

ferrari? no that would be too obvious.

mercedes? nah

williams? no too much of a shit show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but! there is more!

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

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

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

and with that. the baku lore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but alas. qualifying.

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

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

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

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

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

and franco has never been to baku before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

steaming on forward to q3.

we had, for review, in q3 the following:

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

right out the gate it was wild.

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

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

here were the standings:

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

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

wait a second what is that

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

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

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

and what do you know i have time

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

"the williams still has the air box fan in"

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

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

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

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

franco did tho!

and here were out qualifying results:

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

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

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

onto the race.

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

and so, we head into lap 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mclaren are working together everyone! mclaren are working together!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oscar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

which meant

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS THE AZERBAIJAN GP

and george inherited p3!

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

“yes!” he whispered over the radio.

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

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he also got driver of the day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

george also shielded himself from the champagne on the podium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

see you all soon!!!

#not a tag #from saph #saph explains silly season 2024 #got up at 5:30am to finish this monstrosity lol #mexico gp 2024 #its mediocre i promise im better than this #Instagram

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talenlee · 2 years ago

Text

Y'know What, I'm Fond of Donald Norman

Donald Norman is the author of a book called The Design Of Everyday Things, which came out in 1988, 2008, and 2013. It is a book that has been pored over and referenced and cited and reconsidered for all sorts of disciplines, many of which come up in my PhD literature review, which is why it’s on my mind, and one of the things that keeps coming up in that – two things, really – is that Donald Norman is pretty sweet and people don’t seem to do much to dilute that.

Norman’s original book was, the story goes, about time spent in England as an American, and learning the way that the interface of common objects worked. From this grew a discipline of considering the everyday in terms of how people are meant to interact with them. It even got a term coined, of Norman Doors.

A norman door, if you’re not familiar with the 99 Percent Invisible Podcast video that got shared around about it, is a door where you remember enough about engaging with it because it’s wrong or badly designed, but you forget enough about engaging with it so you don’t route around the bad design. Say you have a door in your office that you only sometimes go to, and you know you need to do something different with it, but every time, you get it wrong as to whether you need to push it or pull it. Or it opens into a space you need to stand, but you never remember where to stand. You forget about it once you’re done, because that door isn’t regular or important. People often feel stupid or blame other people for messing up with the door, ignoring the greater reality: The door is probably wrong.

This is the principle of a Norman Door; a door that violates Donald Norman’s principles for everyday interface design.

I’m not about to just replicate the chunk of my literature review here, though because that should be done on an academic blog, and instead I want to talk about something that isn’t important to the academic side of things, which is: I like Donald Norman.

Donald Norman writes about interfaces with a sense of human engagement that I find personally, very sweet. It’s optimistic, too; there’s a real feeling to me that Norman’s design sensibilities want to put information in the hands of people using things, wants to empower people who are engaging with the design. It is important, in Norman’s vision of design, for people to know what the thing they’re using does, and why it does it that way, and it should be communicated to them that way. A disk drive should have a slotted handle to lock in place, not just because the disk needs it to be safe and secure, but because the person using it should be able to go ‘oh yeah, this is how I have declared this act done.’

But it’s how in he specifically has pushed away from User Centered Design as a terminology to Human Centered Design. It’s the same idea, generally speaking, but just the idea of referring to people as ‘Users’ positions the whole engagement as being about a machine, a system of some sort and that the human showed up to use it. They were still, in a way, being regarded as part of something.

When writing about human-centered design, Norman provides an example of throwing a basketball into a hoop at the free-throw line. This is something humans, even the best humans for the task, fail at. It involves throwing consistently accurately and accounting for variables. This is something machines do well. In the description of Human-Centered Design, then, Norman suggests the creation of a free-throwing machine that can do it perfectly, and:

“Why, that’s wonderful,” you should be saying. “Between us and our machines, we could accomplish anything. People are good at the creative side and at interpreting ambiguous situations. Machines are good at precise and reliable operation.”

Unfortunately, comma.

This is the plight of our now, this is the design failure of our landscape. The devices people are using are not made with interfaces to let the machine do the thing the machine is good at and the person do the thing the person is good at. Your machines teach you how to use this machine, and it’s an explicitly stated point of pride that many designs are good at getting you to use the related machines that are only made by one company. Apple devices behave the way apple devices behave because apple devices want you to use more apple devices. The inteface is not a door you pass through, it is a lock you must pick.

But Norman writes about it like it’s very obvious, and sensible, and good to make designs where the human gets to do the things the human wants to do, and the precision of the machine is the thing the machine is there to do. It’s hard to imagine interfaces like that – even for things like paint programs, I have a hard time imagining a painting interface that’s capable of (say), allowing free, sloppy colour selection and then fine-tuning it later once it’s all been determined. That seems to me bananas.

Thing is… I could do it.

Even as I say it, I’m thinking about ways I could do it.

I know how to do it.

But it’d involve constructing a bunch of nested folders in GIMP and moving them around depending on what I wanted them to do. I could make the interface there, but only because I’ve learned how to engage with it, after a long time building up practice.

Reading Norman talking about how designs should be is sweet and refreshing. He seems to like people, people with all types of access needs, and want them to have the best tools for their own interfaces. And that’s sweet to have, since he doesn’t then frame everything as being about success, as determined by money.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Academia

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olderthannetfic · 2 years ago

Note

The anon talking about (defending?) scammers who get American names and -isms wrong didn't represent the conversations unfolding on this blog. Also, this kind of TLDR-style, fingerpointy response usually reads as defensive to me, which makes me want to tune it out even as I am about to commit the exact same sin.

Anyway, I do think that Anglophones have a unique experience on the Internet because everyone else speaks their language and exists in their spaces, creating the illusion of sharing their culture more than they actually do. The next part is going to be about football, which I know has a fandom here. I always get annoyed when big international sports tournaments roll around, something like the World Cup or the Euro. English football fans get really butthurt when they see a lot of anti-England sentiment around their national team, mostly because of their colonial history and terrible fan culture. They vacillate between overcelebrating minor victories against smaller teams and feeling entitled to a win because they "invented" the game, have the most valuable players and the Premier League, and are generally a rich and populous Western country. There is an unspoken and maybe unconscious expectation that the English players should be the best in the world because they are the most highly paid in the world. The reason for that is that the Premier League needs each club to have at least eight homegrown players, meaning that the clubs overpay for local players who show promise. When England repeatedly shows that it's not among the very best footballing countries, many fans turn on the team or pretend that were underdogs all along and just lucky to qualify. And when others call them arrogant, some claim that they were singing that stupid fan song about football "coming home" ironically and how no one else understands what the song means because English humour is too subtle for foreigners.

Oh yes, I don't care if people send long-ass asks. I just care if they brag about not spending the time to understand what other people are talking about. That's not righteous: it just makes one look like a dumbass.

And yes, I do think there's quite a lot of that effect where lots of non-native speakers pass well enough in text that people are unaware of the true makeup of the community.

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multifandomfern · 3 years ago

Text

Who Stole Romano’s Pasta?

Romano angrily slammed the fridge door. He pulled his phone out and hit his brother's contact. Italy quickly answered.

"Did you come over?!" Romano questioned.

"No I've been at Germany's all day!" Italy replied, happily. Romano felt himself get even more angry. "You idiot! Why do you insist on staying with that potato bastard! And why do you sound so happy?! That damn potato bastard is..." Romano proceeded to rant while Italy ignored him. The younger Italian didn't feel like listening to his angry brother's ranting. "Alright that's great, fratello, but I gotta go! Addio!" "Don't you dare hang up on me!" Beep! "Bastard."

"What was that, dude?" asked America. He opened up the fridge and pulled out a leftover McDonald's bag. Romano whipped around to the American. "Are you the thief that stole my pasta?" He growled. "Uh, no. Why would I want pasta when I have hamburgers?" America asked. "Oh right I forgot you're the bastard with no sense of taste." Romano said, sourly. "Hey I have a great sense of taste! McDonald's is the best!" protested America. He pulled hamburgers from the bag and unwrapped them. "In your dreams you stupid American!" Romano yelled. America took a huge bite of his burger. "C'mon just try some and you'll agree!" He insisted, handing a burger to Romano. "I already have, and it's awful! Even if I wanted it, I wouldn't want it cold, asshole!" Romano exclaimed, slamming the burger down. "Geez dude, how many things are you going to call me? Maybe I should start calling you names too!" America shouted. Scout walked in getting impatient with her husband.

"Heating up burgers shouldn't take so long...what is going on here?" Scout asked. "He insulted my taste!" America exclaimed, glaring at Romano. "I was just stating a fact!" argued Romano. He sent a death glare back at the bigger nation. Scout sighed, "Alfred, has there ever been a day where you didn't fight with someone?" America sheepishly smiled, and Romano smirked. Scout crossed her arms and turned to Romano. "Has there ever been a day where you weren't angry about something?" She asked. Now America was the one wearing a smirk. Romano huffed, "I'm done dealing with you American bastards." He hurried out of the kitchen to find someone else to question. Scout looked at America. "Did you even heat up the burgers?" America put them on a plate and into the microwave. Then he gave Scout a kiss as an apology. Scout quickly accepted it.

Romano stormed into the living room where Kat and England were watching TV. "Did one of you two bastards steal my pasta?!" He asked, madly.

"No, why would you think that?" England inquired. "Because your food is so fucking terrible that it would drive one of you to steal mine!" retorted Romano. Kat held in a laugh while England's face turned red with anger. "It is not that bad! I mean it's not bad at all! In fact it's better than your bloody pasta!" He scowled. "How could your burned whatever the fuck it is be better than pasta?" Romano asked in horror.

"Romano! Neither of us took your pasta! I made myself a sandwich, and England had his, uh, shepherds pie." explained Kat. She hoped she had guessed correctly on what England had made himself. England cooled down and put his attention back on the TV. He pulled his wife closer to him. Romano left muttering about horrendous English food. Kat snuggled into England, proud of herself for guessing her husband's food correctly.

Romano found himself going to the basement. When he got down there he found Ari and Canada playing Mario Kart. Romano grinned devilishly then stepped in front of the TV. "Which one of you bastards took my pasta?!" He questioned.

"I didn't take it, and I doubt Matthew did. Could you get out of the way?" Ari asked, irritation in her voice. "What did you have for lunch then?" Romano asked.

"We took some of Alfred's leftover McDonald's." answered Canada, who was struggling to see around Romano. "Ugh I don't know why anyone would want to take food that bastard eats." Romano said, grumpily. "NOO! Romano can you please get out of the way?!" Ari exclaimed seeing black appear on the screen. "Why should I? If I'm unhappy, you two can also be unhappy." Romano grumbled. His anger was fizzling out, and he was just feeling grumpy over not having his pasta. "Can you PLEASE get out of the way?" Canada asked. He had used the loudest voice he could muster. Romano glowered. "Fine I'll leave you two bastards to your dumb game." "It's not dumb! Don't you play this too?" Ari pointed out. Romano moved out of the way and went back upstairs, sulking.

He noticed Norway and Fern start going out the door. He rushed in front of them. "Which one of you was it? Or was it both of you?!" Romano hissed. He was feeling tired out and had forgotten to say an insult.

"Which one of us was what?" Norway asked, calmly. "Which one of you stole my goddamn pasta?!" asked Romano.

"It wasn't me." Fern said, quietly. "And it wasn't me, so it would be nice if you let us leave." Norway stated. "And where the hell would you be going?" Romano asked. "To get coffee." replied Norway. Then the couple headed out the door leaving an irritated Romano. As soon as she was just with Norway, Fern became very talkative. Romano slammed the door realizing that someone must've been lying. The short tempered nation felt too tired to question everyone again, so he went to his room. He was looking forward to relaxing with the love of his life. As he walked in he saw Eli, eating his goddamn pasta.

Yay my first fanfic! I hope @a-dorky-american @koolkat9 @piscesgirl2020 and @elithegnome like this! Sorry if any of you were out of character, but it’s kinda hard to write your personalities when I only communicate with you on Tumblr.

#Hetalia #Hetalia Romano #Hetalia Italy #Hetalia America #Hetalia England #Hetalia Canada #Hetalia Norway #fanfiction #The Fam

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rei-does-stuff · 3 years ago

Text

HELLO IM BACK WITH A CH FIC

Nothing historical or dramatic bc fuck that, I wanted to do something fun

So here’s countries arguing about a fictional tv show bc ITS FUN

JUST CHARACTER SHIT BC IM BORED MAN

—

America was heading to the EU building’s breakroom. They always had better snacks in the vending machine so he always went there for lunch. As he was putting money into the machine he heard the faint arguing of Germany and Japan who was slowly getting louder as they got closer.

“No! You’re wrong! You’re literally misremembering the scene!” Germany said.

“No! You just have the worst media literacy ever!” Japan argued.

“You’re talking to me about media literacy??? Have you looked in a mirror????” Germany exclaimed, appalled.

America knew exactly what they were discussing. It was a murder mystery drama called ‘The horrors at Manor Du-k’all’ it was about a bunch of aristocrats who get invited and eventually stuck in a old abandoned mansion that belonged to the host’s uncle. The host dies in the mansion and the show is about, well, who killed him. Every weekend the two would visit eachother to watch the newly aired episode. The finale was tomorrow where they’d reveal who the murderer really is. America had binged watched the show recently so it was still fresh in his mind. It was clear the two had…Differing opinions about who the real murderer really was.

“It’s Barry! I know it, the characters know it we all know it! If you actually PAID ATTENTION to the scene he’s clearing faking his reaction to Juliet’s backstory so he can get on her good side! It’s obvious!” Germany said, they both were in the break room at this point.

“He’s just bad at expressing his emotions! I don’t call you a murderer for your reactions! I’m telling you it’s Maria! She had every reason to kill the Host! Especially after he literally cheated on her!” Japan argued.

“That’s what they want you to think! It’s clearly bait! Barry had good reason too! The Host literally threatened to put his father onto the streets if he fell out of line!” Germany retorted. He then saw America. Germany called out his name.

Oh great, he’s gonna be dragged into this. “What’s up ya twinks?” He asked. “We need you too—wait did you just call us twinks—?” Germany was interrupted by Japan. “Forget that! We need you to settle this!” He began. “You’ve seen ‘The horrors at Manor Du-k’all’ right?”

“Yup! Binged it a few nights ago!” America replied. “Great! Can you PLEASE tell Germany he’s being fucking delusional!” Japan exclaimed, crossing his arms. “What! No! You tell Japan he’s a fucking idiot!” Germany argued.

“Look gays, as entertaining as it watching you squabble you’re both wrong. It’s obviously Juliet! The set-up is clear and she’s the ugliest member of the cast soooo-“ America trailed off.

“WHAT??? Firstly what does attractiveness have to do with anything???” Germany said flabbergasted!

“Yeah don’t be a fucking misogynist!” Japan added!

“Hey! Hey! I’m no misogynist! In every TV drama the member of the cast who isn’t as conventional attractive as the rest is always the villain! That’s TV 101!” American argued.

“OH CMON!”

“THATS FUCKING HORRIBLE!”

“YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!”

Their arguing continued until Portugal and England walked through the door. “Holy fucking shit, what are you guys screaming about?! You’re so loud!” Portugal said aggravated. “They’re talking about that show I showed you!” England told her. “Oh that? That show was stupid! It was obvious the killer was Barry!” She said.

“HA I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” Germany said excitedly.

“What??? No! The killer is clearly Maria!” England retorted.

“HAH FUCK YOU GERMANY!” Japan said in a triumphant glee.

“Okay! Okay! Before we all start arguing again…” America paused. “Japan when’s the last episode?” He asked. “Tomorrow night!” He replied.

“Alright, Germany’s house is the closest so we’ll all go there and watch the episode. Then you’ll see I was right!” America explained. “Pfft please! I can’t wait too see your face when you see I was right.” Germany said.

“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!”

Today was the day of the finale! Everyone was at Germany’s house. Plus an extra guest. “UK? What are you doing here?” Germany asked. “I’m bored and I wanna see you all scream at each other about a mediocre tv show.” He said. “Plus I wanna see the ending.”

They all sat on the couch. And turned on the tv.

“I have finally figured out who the culprit behind our host’s murder! The killer is….”

“Me!” A voice called out. The ground started to shake, the paintings were falling off the walls. All but one, a painting of the Host’s uncle. Something started to come out of it, slowly at first, then was springing and jolting to get out of the painting. It was Du-k’all! Well his spirit at least! “Y-You killed the Host!” Cried Barry. “That bastard deserved it after he murdered me! His own uncle!“ The guests tried to calm the spirit down. “Burn this place, straight to ashes.” It said. “Only then will I be at peace.” The last scene of the show was the rest of the cast stumbling out of the building as it went ablaze.

Everyone was staring at the tv in shock. Not even being able to say anything. “Are you SERIOUS?? That was the ending???” Germany finally said in frustration. “That’s was fucking bullshit! A complete cop-out!” Japan added. “That doesn’t even make any fucking sense! It never said shit about the supernatural before this!” Added America.

The UK chuckled. “What are you laughing at?” Portugal asked. “Your petty arguing is amusing. I saw that ending a mile away, the show-runners knew that pinning the crime on any guest would result in someone getting pissy, so they did this, plus a twist gets ratings.” He explained.

“I guess I’m just smarter than you all, since none of you figured it out.” He said with a shit-eating grin. Everyone was silent for a moment before England said, “All in favor of kicking the UK out in the rain and review bombing the show’s website?”

“Yeah.”

“I can get behind that.”

“Fuck yeah!!!”

“Shit—” The UK said as he stood in the pouring rain. “I actually thought the ending was good—“ He shrugged. Walking home. Don’t mess with countries and their tv shows he supposed.

—

OKAY YEA THATS IT BYE

#rei says stuff #countryhumans #ch #countryhuman #long post #my writing

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uswntxfootball · 4 years ago

Text

wonderland (kristie mewis x uswnt!reader)

all the memories and suppressed feelings flood back when she gets called up to the national team again.

word count: 2624 ish

rated D for dumb idiots. also F for flustered reader. and A for a little angsty.

——

it was tuesday morning when you had a near death experience.

jordan thinks that you’re being overdramatic but you don’t listen to her anyways.

on your off day of training the team decided to go out to have a nice breakfast together at a cafe.

there was the usual banter, disgusting couple moments (you constantly made gagging noises at them), and general stupidity.

after a bit the conversation dulled a little, but spiked again when jordan said:

“hey doesn’t the uswnt roster drop today?”

oh crap you forgot about that.

“oh crap yes it does.”

you were pretty sure you were going to make it again.

you’ve been very constant with your playing, scoring goals nationally and at the wsl alike.

still you couldn’t help the nerves that crept their way up your skin, and you handed your phone to jordan to have her read the list .

“read the list of midfielders aloud for me would you?”

the forward accepted it without hesitation, this being a usual exchange between the two of you.

jordan scanned the page a few times before smiling:

“i am proud to present the midfielders for the 2020 netherlands camp-“

“oh stop it just get on with it.”

“well i was before you rudely interrupted me-“

“alright whatever well keep going then.”

“julie ertz.”

“ditto.”

“lindsey horan.”

“also a given.”

“rose lavelle.”

“obviously.”

“catarina macario.”

“i’m not surprised.”

“sam mewis.”

“uh huh”

“and yours truly, y/n y/ln.”

the table cheered a little and you blushed, taking a bite of your avocado toast to hide your smile.

“oh and kristie mewis.”

and then you inhaled sharply, choking on your bite of food.

“who?” you managed to get out through a fit of coughing.

your inquiry was met with an array of exclamations.

“do you not know who kristie mewis is?”

“sam mewis’s sister?”

“won the challenge cup with dash?”

“dated rachel daly?”

“how do you not know who she is?!”

“you’re american for god’s sake!”

you ignored them all and instead said to jordan:

“can you hand me the water?”

jordan furrowed her eyebrows and handed you a glass of water as you coughed away.

you shot her a thankful glance before it was broken again by your nonstop coughing.

daan turned and slapped you a few times on the back which helped slightly.

for the rest of the breakfast jordan noticed you were much quieter, resorting to staring off into space instead of filling the silences with bad jokes.

after breakfast she caught up with you.

“alright spill.”

you shot her a look of confusion.

“spill about what?”

“you and kristie.”

“there’s nothing to spill.”

“that’s a lie and you know that.”

“i- hey would you look at the time i gotta go!”

you glanced at your wrist quickly before running off.

jordan shook her head before yelling out:

“you don’t even have a watch on!”

steph watched the two of you and shook her head.

you and kristie were bickering about something across the field, too caught up in your own world to pay attention to the fact that training had ended.

steph and kristie were both boston college grads, and the two had been close friends before signing together.

kristie had taking a particular liking to you, and within the first week of training you found yourself included in everything the they did.

the three of you played for the boston breakers, sharing an apartment, a car, and consequently all your personal spaces as well.

and so it was only fitting that the three of you bickered.

a lot.

you and kristie more than anyone.

“that is the worst show in existence!”

“no it is not the cinematography is fantastic it’s-“

“no the acting is so bad!”

“no it’s not i-“

“you just have bad show choices.”

you gasped in offense.

“take it back.”

kristie grinned and stuck her tongue out at you.

“never.”

“well then you better run.”

kristie’s eyes widened when you lunged at her.

she took off but you, being faster tackled her to the ground.

your fingers dug into her sides and through a fit of laughter she relented.

“okay okay! i take it back! you have good taste in shows!”

you grinned triumphantly and stopped, your hands on both sides of kristie’s head as you looked down at her.

kristie’s cheeks were flushed and her chest heaved slightly as she looked up at you.

you were briefly aware of the pounding in your ears and butterflies in your stomach.

your eyes locked onto hers and unbeknownst to you you were leaning in but kristie was very, very aware of it, and just as she was about to lean in as well, steph’s yell broke the two of you out of your trance.

“hey training is over idiots!”

you shoot up so fast that your vision goes a little bit black.

you stumble a little bit before finding your balance.

“shut up mccaffrey you almost gave me a heart attack.”

you look down to see kristie still on the ground before you stick a hand out to help her up.

“what were the two of you even fighting about?”

you gave kristie a pointed look before saying:

“this idiot said my show choice was bad.”

steph thought about it for a minute.

“well i mean she isn’t wrong.”

kristie lets out an exclamation after hearing that.

“see?! i told you!”

“hey! you took it back!”

“doesn’t mean it isn’t true!”

“i’m being bullied.”

“oh shut up y/n.”

adjusting your mask and sunglasses, you made your way out of the plane with a few of your teammates.

you had just landed in the netherlands, and coming from england you had a shorter flight compared to most of the team, who would be landing in an hour or so.

you were brimming with excitement at meeting up with your us teammates, as you hadn’t seen them since the beginning of the pandemic.

even then you didn’t get to see them often as you played in the wsl.

you had signed with arsenal in 2017, after the league folded and the boston breakers disbanded, as you were done with the american soccer system.

england had welcomed you with open arms, and you soon made a home there, flying back every so often for national team camps and games.

so when the pandemic hit and a handful of your teammates signed for international clubs, you were ecstatic.

even if they signed for opposing teams.

at least none of them signed for chelsea.

christen gave you a little tap when she saw your suitcases, and you gave her a thankful look before going to grab them.

when everyone was settled, you made your way to the bus and set off on your way to the hotel.

“sam how excited are you that kristie is coming?”

your head snapped up at the mention of the midfielder’s name, an action sam noticed but didn’t comment on.

“i’m so happy! she’s happy too on being called back and can’t wait to see her old teammates again!”

your cheeks flushed a little when sam’s eyes met yours at the end of her statement, and you suddenly found the ground very interesting.

it was a little later when you arrived at the hotel and rose kicked your foot that you looked up.

making your way into the hotel was an interesting experience.

on one hand you were beyond excited that you were back with the national team, yet on the other hand the prospect of seeing kristie made you want to throw up a little bit.

it’s not that you didn’t want to see her.

you were nervous because you liked? like? her.

of course this you realized way after you had left the us.

or rather, just as you were about to leave.

you stood, heart racing as you stood in front of kristie’s door.

your hand hovered above it for a little bit as you tried to swallow and breathe normally.

you had already told steph and the rest of your friends but why was it so much harder to tell kristie?

were you afraid of what she was going to say?

that you were going to leave the country, leave the nwsl, and leave her?

you take a deep breath to calm down and you gave it a little knock.

the door flies open in less than a second.

“y/n! what are you doing here?”

kristie’s cheery demeanor rattled you a little bit.

upon seeing your face she frowned.

“what’s wrong?”

“i-“

your mouth was so dry and it trembled a little.

you could feel your heartbeat in your ears, tears threatening to spill.

kristie’s looking at you with a face full of worry now, and you couldn’t get the words out.

“i-“

you close your mouth again and take a second to look at her.

noting the ways her eyes sparkled and the way her hair was falling out from her bun in little curls over her shoulders.

and then it comes out in a hushed whisper when you least expect it.

“i’m moving to england.”

kristie looks at you too stunned to speak.

she whispers:

“when are you leaving?”

you look down at the ground.

“tomorrow.”

you keep your eyes trained on the ground, too scared to look up at her, knowing that when you look at her the tears you’ve fought so hard to hold back are going to spill.

the silence that falls between you is too heavy. too thick. too constricting.

you find yourself lunging forward towards the midfielder, wrapping her in a hug as the tears spill.

“i’m so sorry i didn’t tell you sooner.”

kristie doesn’t say anything.

she just hugs you harder.

you break away when you have to, but as soon as you turn kristie grabs your wrist.

you turn to ask her what’s wrong but her lips are on yours in an instant.

before you can even process what happened she pulls back.

“you’re going to kill it in england.”

and then she walks into the apartment and shuts the door.

ironically you walk into a door when you see her.

to be fair it wasn’t your fault.

it was hers.

well maybe it was yours.

your head had been all over the place in the past few days, ever since the prospect of seeing her was brought up.

when you had left five years ago, you couldn’t help but replay that kiss over and over in your head.

you couldn’t believe all the signs you had missed.

so yeah.

you were nervous.

and so with music blasting in your headphones, you were prepping for a run, and subsequently not paying any attention to where you were walking and she opens the door right in your face.

you stumble a little bit backwards, before falling down.

you haven’t even looked up, instead sitting on the ground rubbing your forehead and cursing.

it’s when a pair of sneakers appears in front of you that you look up.

and you actually choke on air.

before you stood the woman you had been thinking about, sporting an amused smile and quirked eyebrow.

she says something you don’t hear and it’s only when she leans down and takes your headphones off that you notice them.

your cheeks flush and you mutter an embarrassed “oops” which elicited a chuckle from the midfielder in front of you.

she extends her hand out to you and you take it, sparks shooting up your arm at the contact.

she pulls you into a hug and the two of you quickly fall into conversation.

here up close, you can spot all the changes and similarities of the girl you left 5 years ago.

the five years had been great to her, she was now even more breathtaking than before, no longer the awkward kid but a gorgeous woman.

she almost looks like a completely different person.

almost.

but you notice the same ways her eyes sparkle when she talks, the way the corners of her mouth tug up slowly when she smiles, and the way she tucks loose strands of hair behind her ear and you know this is the same girl you were so smitten with 5 years ago.

“you done checking me out now?”

your gaze snaps back up to her face and blush, a little surprised by her statement.

kristie gives you a teasing smile before saying:

“come on i’m just joking.”

she even has the audacity to wink at you.

and this behavior continues.

for the whole training camp she flirts with you.

you’re a little taken aback by the confidence in the girl.

with the constant winking and flirting and fleeting touches you’re pretty sure she’s trying to kill you.

“y/n. y/n!”

sonnett’s voice snaps your gaze back onto her face.

“sorry what?”

“you were so far into la la land i almost had to get ryan gosling to come get you.”

you shoot her an annoyed look.

“oh shut up no.”

your eyes drift back to the other side of the field, to where kristie was.

sonnett rests her chin on your shoulder and says:

“so who are we checking out today?”

you turn to her and scowl.

“no one.”

“you’re no fun.”

“no.”

“come on you love me.”

“no.”

and of course she scores.

of course.

no matter how hyped the game was.

or how difficult the netherlands defense was.

of course she scores.

she had been on for less than two minutes when she did so too.

you’re so excited you almost trip over your own feet.

she runs to you and you catch her as she jumps, and soon the rest of the team comes to envelop the two of you in a hug.

“i’m so fucking proud of you,” you whisper, and when everyone has relaxed a little, she kisses you.

it’s firmer and more insistent than the one from five years ago.

it’s almost like she knows what she wants and what you want.

you pull away after a few seconds, but only because you have a game to win still.

“come on kris let’s kick some ass.”

you let go of her and the two of you make your way back to your positions.

a few of your arsenal teammate shoot you teasing glances, and you blush when you meet them.

and when the whistle blows thirty minutes later, they make sure to tease you about it after the game.

you see kristie walking towards you and you grin, but before she gets there sam steps in front of you.

you look up at her, and when she doesn’t speak you fill the silence.

“i promise not to hurt her.”

sam quirks an eyebrow and leans in to whisper:

“you better not. or i will tear off your arm and beat you with i-“

“sam!”

kristie gives her sister a little slap in the arm before pulling you away with her.

“hey.”

“um h-hey,” you stammer, rubbing your neck nervously.

“you’re so cute.”

you blush a bit, your heart racing.

kristie catches your hand when it comes down and intertwines her fingers with yours.

“go on a date with me?”

you blush even harder and nod enthusiastically, not trusting your voice at this point.

she gives you a look before leaning in and connecting her lips with yours.

“hey please don’t bang my sister on the field!”

#kristie mewis #kristie mewis x reader #kristie mewis imagine #uswnt imagine #uswnt x reader #woso imagine #woso imagines

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 5 years ago

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“How can we best promote world peace? As always, Thomas Friedman has a stunningly original answer: by building more McDonald’s. Here’s Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” from his new book The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

…[A]s I Quarter-Poundered my way around the world in recent years, I began to notice something intriguing. I don’t know when the insight struck me. It was a bolt out of the blue…. And it was this:

No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.

That’s what passes for an insight, in what passes for the mind of Thomas Friedman. Please note that this man is the possessor of what he himself calls “the best job in the world”: Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times. He is paid a huge salary to Quarter-Pound his way around the world producing “insights” like this. That’s the most interesting aspect of the whole Friedman phenomenon: not that Friedman is a bear of very little brain (because after all, there are a lot of Poohs in the woods) but that this Pooh is a leading writer for America’s newspaper of record.

Why would a hegemonic world power hire an outright halfwit as spokesman?

The very stupidity of Friedman’s analyses must somehow serve the Empire’s purposes. Once you admit this possibility, you can see that it fits an historical pattern. Again and again, the truly powerful Empires hire mediocrities; it’s the marginal empires which generate the great sloganeers – Mao, for example. Whatever else may be said about him, Mao came up with some great lines, from “paper tiger” to “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” When those five-million-strong crowds chanted in Tienanmen, they were quoting some first-rate poetry. That little red book they waved enclosed some of the best lines of the century.

Friedman, slogan kommissar of a much stronger Empire, couldn’t get drunken Manchester United fans chanting. Consider his use of numbers. This was one of Mao’s favorite mnemonic devices; “Smash the four olds!” “Destroy the Seventh Snake!” All Friedman has to offer is “The Three Democratizations” – but Friedman’s three D’s are so uninspiring that two days after finishing his book, I can only name two of them. If this guy was working for the Chinese Propaganda Ministry, he’d soon find himself collecting glowing camel-dung in the most radioactive districts of Sinkiang.

But the US, like nineteenth-century Britain, is so strong that it doesn’t want talented poets working for it. Think of the intentionally flat slogans of the British Empire:

“England expects every man to do his duty.” “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

Dull lines – meant to be dull. The British, in their glory days, revelled in their dullness, associating real poetry with women, the French, and other lesser species. There was an element of gloating in the very dullness of their slogans: let the conquered know that they are ruled by mediocrities.

The slogans Friedman develops in this book have the same triumphant dullness. Their purpose is not to inspire Americans, but to convince everyone else that there’s no way to stop “Globalization-Americanization” (his term). Take his favorite oxymoron, “The Golden Straitjacket,” his name for the state-model created by Thatcher and Reagan. It’s “Golden” because if you implement it, your country will supposedly get rich. It’s a “Straitjacket” because, as Friedman says over and over again, it takes away all your freedom. He compares this straitjacket to the Mao suit, evoking those grey-clad crowds in the great Tienanmin Square rallies:

‘The Golden Straitjacket is the defining garment of this globalization era. The Cold War had the Mao suit, the Nehru jacket, the Russian fur [sic]. Globalization has only the Golden Straitjacket. If your country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon.”

Friedman comes up with dozens of glib, sloppy metaphors implying that there is no way out of “globalization-Americanization,” and that anyone who tries to resist will be stampeded. He refers to the wired-up leaders of the movement as “the Electronic herd,” which tramples anything in its way. He takes the cattle-herd metaphor further, dividing the wired American elite into “long-horn” and “short-horn” cattle, and adds that the herd is served by the “bloodhounds” of financial-rating services like Moody’s.

Friedman doesn’t seem to know that cattle herds aren’t usually guided by bloodhounds. But the clumsiness of his metaphors is part of his job. He’s here to threaten those who seem reluctant to join the herd. Who wants subtlety from a leg-breaker? The cruder the metaphor, the more frightening. Good poets don’t make good goons. And Friedman is pure goon, brass-knuckled platitudes all the way. Like a Naked Gun voiceover, he lets his violent metaphors stampede where they will. One of the most ham-handed metaphorical panics is what happens to this “electronic herd.” Within pages of its introduction, the “herd” is transformed from cattle to wildebeest, grazing the Savannah. Ah, but that’s only the beginning. You have to read it to believe it, so take a deep breath and follow Mr. Friedman into the Serengeti of international finance:

Think of the Electronic Herd as being like a herd of wildebeests grazing over a wide area of Africa. When a wildebeest on the edge of the herd sees something move in the tall, thick brush next to where it’s feeding, that wildebeest doesn’t say to the wildebeest next to it, “Gosh, I wonder if there’s a lion moving around there in the brush.” No way. That wildebeest just starts a stampede, and these wildebeests don’t stampede for a mere hundred yards. They stampede to the next country and crush everything in their path. So how do you protect your country from this? Answer: You cut the grass, and clear away the brush, so that the next time the wildebeest sees something rustle in the grass it thinks, “No problem, I see what it is. It’s just a bunny rabbit.” […] What transparency does is get more information to the wildebeests faster, so whatever they want to do to save their skins they can do in an orderly manner. In the world of finance this can mean the difference between having your market take a little dip and having it nosedive into sustained losses that take months or years to recover from.

Is he TRYING to be ridiculous here? I don’t think so. Friedman is a perfect spokes-beest for the entire herd. His endless Mister-Ed monologues comfort the other ruminants, reminding them of their hegemony.

But that doesn’t make for great Imperial poetry. In fact, by the end of that paragraph, with its African bunny rabbits, transparent wildebeest and brush-clearance program, poor old Mao is banging his head against the coffin-lid. Mao’s corpse is praying to Marx, Stalin, and Kwan-Yin for one day back on Earth, just time enough to liquidate this Friedman, whose hack-work shames ideological poets everywhere. In fact, seismologists detect widespread vibrations as Imperial poets from Virgil to Kipling batter their coffin-lids, screaming in agony, as Friedman drones on.

But there are horses for courses, and this garrulous Mister Ed is perfect as mouthpiece of the gloating, swaggering American Empire in its moment of triumph. Because Friedman’s not just dumb; he’s mean, too. He just loves to tell those about to undergo “Globalization-Americanization” that the process is going to hurt:

Unfortunately, the Golden Straitjacket is pretty much ‘one size fits all.’ So it pinches certain groups, squeezes others….It is not always pretty or gentle or comfortable. But it’s here and it’s the only model on the rack this historical season.

But of course he has to offer something which passes for evidence. So, to fill the time between “insights,” he recounts inspirational anecdotes gleaned from lickspittles and Uncle Toms the world over. Friedman meets the son of a leading PLO general, and is gratified that the boy is now working as a software salesman with no hard feelings over the fact that his father took a hundred bullets from an Israeli hit team. He is told by Anatoly Chubais, that herd bull of the Russian Young Wildebeest herd, that it’s Russia’s own fault entirely that the country is in ruins.

Russia, in fact, is the villain of this book. Friedman hates Russia – truly hates it, with a mealy-mouthed venom which does not make pleasant reading. His book begins with a quote from an American businessman whining that it’s “aggravating” that the Russian crash actually affects his profits. When he needs a bad example, it’s always Russian. He tells the hoary anecdote (an “insight” in this case, naturally) about the Russian elevator with misnumbered floors, and the equally venerable anecdote about the Russian who drives his tank to town because he doesn’t have a car. Oh, those funny, funny Russians, with their aggravating habit of starving to death just when we want to celebrate. Like many of the Empire’s leg-breakers, Friedman hates Russia for all sorts of reasons: as a child of cold-war America; as an Israel-can-do-no-wrong Middle-East correspondent; and above all as a popularizer of the get-with-the-program hegemony of the Golden Straitjacket. Russia doesn’t fit into the Golden Straitjacket very well. In fact, the Straitjacket made Russia so uncomfortable that by 1998, its screams were audible even in the offices of the New York Times. Friedman and his masters will never forgive Russia for ruining the gloat-fest with that discordant scream.”

- John Dolan, “THOMAS FRIEDMAN: THE EMPIRE’S USEFUL IDIOT: AN EXILE CLASSIC.” The eXiled. June 8, 2000. Issue 92.

#john dolan #thomas friedman #the lexus and the olive tree #american empire #ideology of empire #foreign correspondent #new york times #pundit class

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starbuckie · 4 years ago

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𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤

challenge: time travel challenge by @justagirlinafandomworld

prompt: “we’re divorced?”

pairing: sirius black x reader

words: 5.7k words

warnings: FOURTH WALL BREAK!!(sorry im very excited about that), lots of angst, almost smut(hehe), sirius lowkey has a breeding kink, sirius is an asshole for a bit, the smallest bit of fluff, fix-it, and the same time travel theory as back to the future

summary: an unnatural occurrence lets a woman go back in time to try and change everything she’s known for the past twenty years.

a/n: wow, i normally don’t write for harry potter so this was a nice change. anyways, this is for yvette’s time travel writing challenge, and everybody say HAPPY BIRTHDAY YVETTE! i’m so sorry this is late, it got deleted and i needed to re-edit, but i truly appreciate your friendship and your lovely, amazingly beautiful self, and I’m so so glad that we became friends :) this fic is not beta-read at all, so if you see any mistakes tell me, but otherwise i really hope you enjoy this fic<3

main masterlist || harry potter masterlist

It still wasn’t over. After all she had lost, more specifically everyone she had lost, and the shitty cycle that she had to call her life, it still wasn’t over. The people she had watched the life drain from, the screams of those suffering from the loss caused by the Dark Lord, and yet life still hadn’t had its fill of torturing Y/N. Grimmauld Place felt empty without the kids, without the Weasleys, but they had gone back to their home and soon enough she would have to as well. Harry had gone back to Hogwarts with Dumbledore, though she’d argued to hold onto him just a bit longer after-

After Sirius had died.

Time had passed, maybe two or three weeks, but no matter what the woman couldn’t bring herself to get out of Sirius’ old bedroom, simply staring at the ceiling with her tears at bay. Her and Sirius had been a complicated thing, to say the least, a topic nobody had brought up since 1983, when she had banned it. Not as if there was much to talk about after the divorce and Sirius going to Azkaban. After Lily and James had died, after she had fought with Dumbledore for custody of Harry, after she had become a professor at Beauxbatons and moved to France without a second thought. Sirius had been locked up after he’d hurt her in the worst possible way, and Y/N’s heartbroken soul found no other reason to return to England.

But, she pushed those bad memories to the back of her mind. It seemed so trivial, looking back on it. Not the broken house, of course, that had been his own mistake. But Y/N had many regrets, all of them seeming to revolve around the mischievous black-haired man who she had fallen in love with as a teen. The night it went down, the night their relationship had fractured at the seams and fallen down, was her greatest one however. It had been so stupid, so, so stupid, but they’d both gotten caught up in the moment, and Y/N had let him die without knowing how much she was sorry for that night that they let their fears consume them.

The cries that she had tried so hard to contain finally broke free from the restraints of her heart. “I’m so sorry, Siri,” she whispered into the air, “I couldn’t save you this time.” As the hot, salty tears ran down her cheeks, Y/N shuffled across the room, letting her feet drag her to the old Black family room, the dark green walls embracing her rainy emotions.

A little gasp escaped her lips as she looked at the portraits among the wall. The Black family tree was faded along the age-old wall, but what she was really looking for was the burned out image of her raven-haired love. There, right next to Regulus, was a black spot, scorned and scarred by the prestigious family for being a blood traitor. Y/N smiled and traced the burn with her finger, remembering their fourth year when she had accompanied him home for the holidays so he wouldn’t be completely alone in the hellhole he had to call his house. Sirius had snuck them up to this room and spent the night talking in hushed whispers sworn secrets. “I’ll be yours forever, Siri, and I’m sorry for fighting with you. I wish-” she sniffled, glaring at the spot in the wall as she tried to garble out her words, “I wish, I could go back in time, and just fix it. Just me and you, and that stupid night, with the bloody fight about children because you deserve it all, darling.”

“Ah, I think you can.”

Y/N turned around, her eyes wide with fear. That was not Kreacher’s voice. There stood a younger woman, around nineteen, a scroll of paper and a quill in her hand. There was a whisper of a smirk on her face, brown eyes glittering even in the dimness in the room. “Who the hell are you?” Y/N looked at the door, which was still closed as she left it. She cast her wand out, pointing it at the stranger who did nothing but smile. “How did you get in here? Are you with the Lord?”

“With Voldemort?” The woman simply laughed. “Dude, I’m not with ‘the Lord’,” she added with air quotations. “Also I’m not really even here, so don’t you worry about that. My name’s Malia.”

Malia held her hand out, but Y/N kept her guard up. “You’re American. What brings you here? Are you a muggle?”

“Oh, nope, not a wizard, I’m just the author of this story.” Malia confided. “I’m here to tell you that you can fix this.”

“Fix… what?” Malia just rolled her eyes and sighed, staring up towards the ceiling as she spoke.

“God, did I write you to be hard of hearing now, too? I ought to fix that when I get back.” The woman blankly stared at the strange girl, wondering what the actual fuck she was talking about. “I can give you the chance to go back in time, Y/N. It won’t be for long, it’s really not gonna be interesting for more than two hours at most, but that should be enough time to tell the gang about what’s to come with Voldemort.”

“Like... time travel?” Y/N asked. The only way she knew how to time travel was the time turners. “But all of the ti-”

“Time turners were destroyed in the Department of Mysteries, I know, I know. Trust me, I’ve read Harry Potter more times than I’ve said ‘I love you’ to my parents.” Malia smiled. “I’m the author, I make the rules, and my rule is that I’m giving you two hours in 1978 to talk to Sirius so he can fix the emotional fucking mess left behind by J.K. Rowling.”

“Who’s J.K. Rowling?” Malia shuddered at the name.

“A raggedy-ass, transphobic bitch who wrote y’all into existence, but she’s not of importance right now.” She checked the small, rectangular box in her hand, which glowed and provided little light in the darkened room. “Let’s see, it’s currently eleven-forty, so you have until one-forty to find the Marauders and fix this future. It may not be fixed in the books in the future, but if you are able to do it here that’s all that matters.” Malia’s brown eyes were downcast, her bright and loud personality dimming for just a moment before returning to Y/N’s confused gaze once more. “Try not to screw up too much while you’re there, just enough that you defeat the Dark Lord the first time. Tell Sirius all you know and that should be enough for him to fix all the mistakes, but do not under any circumstances let him or anyone else know who you are. I wish you luck, Y/N, it was nice to meet ya in person.”

And with a peace sign in front of her face, she disappeared into a flash of neon pink light.

“Bloody hell! Fix my future? Talk to Sirius? If this even is time travel, then how am I supposed to get there- AH!” Y/N’s body felt like it was turning inside out, her guts being torn from her stomach and back into it again. A delirious giggle arose from her lips in the black void she was pulled into, and a soft chatter could be heard, like voices at the end of a tunnel.

“Blimey, looks like we got ourselves a nutter on school grounds.” Y/N’s arms flailed around, desperately seeking some sort of grounding surface to hold on to when her back hit a rough surface. There was an audible crack somewhere in her body, but she felt so sick that she couldn’t tell where.

“Are you okay, ma’am? You just appeared from the sky and hit the ground.” Warm, brown eyes met Y/N’s, a familiar mess of black curls resting atop of the boy’s head. Large, rounded glasses sat perched on the tip of his nose, and an impish smile, one she used to know so well before he died, met his lips.

“James,” she sighed. The boy stared at her strangely, and only then did she notice the three other boys and girls each behind them. Remus, Peter, Sirius, Lily, Marlene, and Alice.

Sirius.

The sight that met her eyes made her nearly emotional. It had technically been only three weeks since she had seen him, but here was the young boy she had fallen in love with. The one who charmed her with his smart words and witty retorts to her brush-offs, who used to hold her in his arms in the most intimate and gentle ways. His grey eyes sparkled with curiosity, the infamous Marauder mischief swirling within the silvery pools.

Seeing him so young tugged at her heartstrings, and though she wanted nothing more than to hold him in her arms and never let go, a small, niggling feeling at the back of her head held her back. Was there something wrong?

“You know me?” Oh right, she was currently thirty-five. Looking around she noticed that she was outside the quidditch pitch, and there were other students, staring at her with widened eyes. No one knew she was Y/N L/N, their fellow schoolmate and probably one of the very few of them that survived the Death Eaters attacks. None of them were aware how it ended, or how it was currently going for them back in 1996, and in this time there was the first Wizarding War going on and they had every right to be terrified for their lives.

James now took a more defensive stance, standing tall and holding his wand out. “Who are you?”

She couldn’t give him the answer, instead letting her mouth gape open as she stared at him with wide eyes. Y/N looked across the grounds for the nearest exit, which was down by Hagrid’s hut and into the Forbidden Forest. It was her only choice at this point, to hide in the dark, creepy space, maybe just until the students went away so she could find Sirius and talk to him alone. It’d be hard to separate him from the boys, but if Lily were occupied with James it sure would be easy.

Her younger, seventh-year self didn’t seem to be in the audience, thank Merlin, and with that knowledge, she got up and ran, ignoring her screaming muscles. That time travel really did a number on her.

As she ran through the crowd, shoving people aside, she heard the students mutter, too much in shock and disarray to stop the crazy, old woman who knew James Potter.

“This is dodgy.”

“Someone ought to tell Dumbledore about this.”

“She kinda looks like Y/N L/N.’

“Don’t insult the poor girl like that, that wonker is ages old.”

“Come back here! Who the bloody hell are you?” Y/N’s heart beat quickly in her chest, threatening to burst out. Only three minutes in the past and it was all going straight to shit. “Stupefy!”

Shit. “No, James, please don’t-“ Her body hit the ground and her eyes closed, the last thing she saw being the pumpkin patch by the hut.

“I see you’re awake now, Ms. L/N.” Dumbledore stood above Y/N in the hospital ward bed, his grey beard dangling in front of her face. Her first instinct was to start blaming him for everything that had happened, starting from Lily and James’ deaths to Sirius’, already opening her mouth to call him an old, senile cow, but then she realized that Harry hadn’t been sent to the Dursleys yet, much less been born yet, so none of it would have an effect on him. Y/N’s second instinct was to question how Dumbledore knew who she was in 1978, but her former Headmaster started to speak before she could do so. “I must admit, it’s very courageous, that stunt you just pulled. I don’t think Ms. Louie will be too happy about that.” Y/N sent him a questioning stare. “Malia, the girl you met earlier. Malia Louie.”

“Headmaster Dumbledore, how did you know it was me?” She was dressed in a white gown that went to her knees, and behind him she could see her blouse and jeans folded and clean. Ah, the Hospital Wing. She had brought the boys here more times than she could count in her years at Hogwarts. “I don’t exactly look as young as I used to.”

“Ah, don’t worry Ms. L/N, you’ve kept your good looks quite nicely, even in your older age.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully, his wrinkled eyes sparkling with joy. “And speaking of young, if you are still worrying yourself about your younger self, you can put that to a stop. I am aware that you are not able to tell anyone who you are, and time travel is exceptionally dangerous if you are seen by the other version of yourself. I’ve already told the students that you were just a stray witch, misguided in your ways and that you were well taken care of. However, I think that brings us to the question of what your intentions are in the past, Ms. L/N.”

“Headmaster, I don’t think I can tell you about my business here. I’ve already messed up by letting the school see me by letting everyone see me, I don’t know why that girl even sent me here, it’s clear that this was a mistake.” Y/N sat up on the headboard, feeling her eyes fill with tears once again. The tall arches of windows let the sun in the room, and she could see the specks of dust swirling around in the golden light. It had to be close to the end of the year for them, maybe sometime around April or May, near the end of N.E.W.T.s at least. She could imagine that it’d be easy for her to get out of Hogwarts for the day, with all the students studying for the stressful exams in the library, maybe she'd make her way to Hogsmeade and walk around or visit Hagrid under a false name to have some tea. He was always open for a nice cuppa with strangers on any free day he had. “Thank you Headmaster, for your kindness, but I really ought to be going. I-it was nice to see you.”

Y/N started to help herself out of the bed, swinging her feet over to touch the cool stone ground. Bones cracked with pain and fatigue, her muscles stretching sluggishly. Merlin, that she was not expecting that much hurt from the fall, but she should have never underestimated James Potter. No one ever should if they want to keep their good mind and sanity.

Dumbledore handed her her clothes, cracked lips set in a straight line as he nodded solemnly. “I hope you accomplish whatever it is you are here to do, Ms. L/N, but I have no doubt that you will.” With a sly wink, he added, “You were always one of our most ardent and bright students.”

Y/N let herself smile, and with a wave, swiftly brought herself to the door. “Thank you, Headmaster.”

After slipping outside, she ran down the corridors, echoes of her feet ringing lightly behind her. The courtyard proved to be empty and she quickly ducked behind a column and tugged her jeans on hastily, making sure that no professors came walking past. Though the sky proved to be bright and cheerful, a slight breeze carried through, making her fall off balance and fall on the cemented ground.

“Are you okay, darling? You look like you’re in need of a little help.” Y/N looked up to the speaking figure, one that she both loved and dreaded to see.

She gathered herself quickly, her mind running fast and heart beating out of her chest as she tried to get out. “Yes, I am okay, thank you for asking. I think I’ll just get up and going now, I don’t need to take time out of your day like this-”

“I know who you are, Y/N.”

Y/N came to a full stop, going against her brain that screamed at her to run away. Sirius looked downtrodden, his grey eyes watering despite the small hint of a smirk on his face. Though he was always one for playing around and not taking anything seriously, she knew when it was time to stop pretending and get real. “How’d you know it was me, Sirius?”

“You really don’t look bad for your age, darling.” He offered her a hand to help her up and she took it graciously, eyeing him nearly guiltily and forgetting about her promise to Y/N. But that was useless now, this moment with her first love was much more important. “Also you have the tattoo on your chest. I knew it was you the moment you landed on school grounds.”

She traced his gaze to her left collarbone, where a paw print, just barely visible beneath her low-cut blouse, sat. It was his, or Snuffles’, paw print, and at this point in time they had probably gotten it done about three months before. He had one for her too, a horseshoe for her horse patronus, right on his left side of his chest too. So they’d always be right next to each other’s hearts, as cheesy as it seemed.

But they were dumb, lovesick teenagers, and they acted the part well too. Their love was all-consuming, shagging in under the bleachers at the quidditch pitch and making out under the stars. It was fast, everything was fast, decisions, ideas, classes, all of them under the impression that they had to do everything right then or they’d be dead before they got to actually live. They had dreams of marriage, and a big, big family, obviously so far away from his family so they could never hurt their children’s lives the way they had hurt his.

They were fantasies, Y/N had known that well enough when she and Sirius got divorced, but it was something that eighteen year-old Sirius Black held close to his heart. No matter how shitty his life got, he was always a firm believer in a happy ending. In their happy ending.

“How am I right now?” They now stood over the Black Lake, staring into the glittering depths of the water where some mermaids could be seen sneaking peeks at the handsome boy and the strange lady who had fallen from the sky.

Sirius stared at her questioningly for a moment. “How are you doing right now? I mean, I believe that I should be asking you that ques- oh, Merlin, I’m such a git, you meant your younger self.” Y/N laughed at that, her heart lifting with the goofiness of the old Sirius relieving an ache in her heart that she had had for so long. Not that old (it felt weird to say that) Sirius had been anything less than silly and snarky, but it was never directed towards her. It was nice to have the resemblance of their old relationship back, even if it was just for a fleeting moment. “I suppose that you’re okay. You didn’t see, well, your big moment on the field, but at this point Lily has probably opened her big, fat mouth and told you. N.E.W.T.s are just finishing up, so you’re much more light-hearted than during the study season.”

“I really did have a stick up my arse during exam time, you always told me to loosen up-”

“Y/N, cut out the small talk, I think it’s okay for me to ask how and what is happening.” Sirius cut in.

So she told him. Y/N had always been upfront with people about everything. Or rather, she had learned how to be upfront with people after her and Sirius’ divorce. Without details of the deaths, she explained how she was sent back into the past to fix it in some conceivable way. However, she did tell him about the fall out. Maybe she wanted him to understand her pain, even though it was a younger him, but she had to admit to herself that it was because she just wanted Sirius, in whatever form life gave her to hear out her grievances and apologies.

Since her Sirius was dead before she could.

“We’re divorced?” Sirius looked about ready to break down into tears, almost as if the concept of them breaking up or separating was foreign to him. “What exactly did we fight over, Y/N? That doesn’t seem normal for the two of us.” Sirius asked.

“Well, to be fair, it wasn’t a normal predicament for us. either…”

Sirius slammed the door shut, efficiently pinning her against it with his white button up ruffled up, navy tie hanging from his neck loosely. Y/N’s arms were held down tightly against the oak wood, the sensation of the cold door burning into her rather warm skin making her squeal. Her husband’s tongue worked its way through her parted lips, low groans rising from the back of his throat from the way she moaned in tandem with his hips pushing into hers. Legs wrapped around his tapered waist, the pink, floral skirt Y/N wore rising high on her thighs, revealing more of her flesh to the lust-filled man. Both of their giggles echoed off the hallway walls of their small cottage home, just four miles west of their best friends’.

As the twenty year-old man threw his wife unceremoniously on the bed, he shed himself of his shirt and swiftly unbuttoned his slacks, throwing them haphazardly across the room. Merlin, Y/N looked ethereal laying spread out on the bed, panties around her left ankle, swollen lips parted with short puffs of air leaving them. “You just get right down to business, don’t you, Black.”

Crawling over his body, his hot breath hit her neck as he growled against her skin. “Could say the same thing about you, darling.” Sirius’ lips made their way down every inch, every curve, nook, and cranny of Y/N’s body, smoothly slipping her clothes off as he did so. Her sweet gasps filled the bedroom, back arching off the bed to meet his chest. “I’m going to put a baby in you tonight, sweetheart, we’re-”

Y/N sat up straight, her eyebrows trained in confusion at her husband. “What? A baby?”

Sirius’ heart pounded in his chest. “Yes.” He remarked in a clipped tone. “Is that not what you wanted?”

Her mind recalled her words from earlier that day, as she chatted happily with Lily about the news of her pregnancy. “Siri, I said I may one day enjoy having a kid of my own. Not right now, of course, but later. After all, we only got married a few months ago, don’t you think we should hold off a bit on that? We’re twenty years-old, Siri, there’s so many years for that.”

Rage filled Sirius’ blood like a spreading fire. In all honesty, it wasn’t so much about his anger as it was his hurt and fear. Fear that she had realized how fucked up he truly was, fear that she realized what he had known all along- that she deserved better than him. “So you don’t want a baby with me?”

“I never said I didn’t want that, Sirius, I just said that I’m not ready!” Y/N yelled back. At this point both of them stood on opposite sides of the bed, faces hot with tears. “We’re in the middle of a bloody war, people we know, people we love, have lost their lives, and it is not the ideal environment to raise a child, Sirius! Just because James and Lily are ready to have one doesn’t mean that I am too!”

“When will you be ready, Y/N? When will it ever be enough time for you? When will I be enough for you?” The heartbroken girl tried to interject, but her voice was cut off by her husband’s quickly enough. Sirius climbed onto the bed, holding her chin harshly with one hand. “Tell me, did you ever want to be with me in the first place?”

“Yes, Sirius, of course I wanted to be with you.” His heart hurt looking at the love of his life in tears, but even that was able to melt his cold facade. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

“Then fucking prove it, Y/N.” With that declaration, he removed his hand from her face and gathered his clothes, slamming everything in their shared room as Y/N quivered, knees ready to buckle on the spot. “I’m going out, don’t wait up for me.”

As soon as the front door shut, she fell to the ground in tears, the laughter that once filled their home replaced with the sound of her shattered heart.

Y/N had done her best to not tear up during her explanation of the events that had taken that night, but Sirius' eyes watered, refusing to believe the truth. “No. No. I didn’t do that. Y/N, tell me,” he gripped her biceps with trembling hands, “please tell me I didn’t really do that. I can’t believe that I-I, that I-”

“You were drunk, Sirius, I don’t think you truly knew what you were saying at the time.” She sighed, “But people always say that drunken words are just sober thoughts.” Y/N rubbed her arms, just shivering slightly in the Scotland breeze. “You came back two hours later punching the wall and breaking it, and that’s when I knew that we wouldn’t last.”

The raven-haired boy’s head started to shake, even more mortified of the actions that his future self, the man he’d be in just two years' time, had done. “I packed up my things, not that there were many, we’d only moved into the house a month before, left, and I sent the divorce papers a week later. It was probably better that way, you would’ve divorced me if I hadn’t done it first.” Y/N had gotten used to telling her sob story to colleagues at Beauxbatons, to her family, but it felt different with pre-divorce Sirius. Of course, she had never thought she’d be in this citation either, so no one could really blame her for feeling weird. “You signed them easily, and my lawyer made sure that I never had to see you again.” Until Lily and James died.

“Until…” Sirius led on.

“Merlin’s beard, Sirius, you’ve always been able to read my mind. Shouldn’t have doubted it for a second.” He smiled at the sentiment, gesturing for her to continue. “I can’t tell you, Sirius, I hope you can understand that.”

“Why, Y/N, what happens that can be any worse in the future?” Oh dear, Sirius, you really do not want the answer to that question. She needed any way out of this conversation, after all running away was what she did best, and her eyes already searched for several routes to which she could run. Not that Y/N could ever outrun Sirius in his animagus form, but it was nice to have the belief that she could. The boy sensed her distress and grabbed hold of her hand. “You don’t have to tell me, darling, but I have to admit that I am a bit worried, just in the slightest.”

Y/N let herself calm down, squeezing Sirius’ hand and noticing his watch. She had actually given him that watch, gold-plated and dark grey metal, but it wasn’t the beauty of the gift that caught her eye, but rather the actual time on it. One-thirty.

How had that much time gone by so quickly? She was going to be sucked into the black void of time travel again in ten minutes, and that wasn’t nearly enough time to unload nearly twenty years worth of history onto Sirius. No, he would go insane from that much knowledge, which was exactly against what Malia had advised.

“I don’t have enough time to tell you everything that happens in the future, Sirius. But what I am about to tell you is vital, absolutely vital for the good of all of us in the future.” Sirius nodded with a serious sort of smile on his face. “Don’t let Peter be Lily and James’ secret keeper. When the time comes that they move away, I’m not going to tell you where yet, do not under any circumstances let Peter be their secret keeper. I know he’s one of our best friends right now, and do not tell anyone about this, but he’s going to betray us in the worst way possible.”

While Sirius was shocked, he nodded solemnly and ran a hand through his long hair. “I won’t tell anyone, Y/N. Can I fix us, Y/N? I don’t know if you should be letting the key to a happier future rest in my hands.”

“I full heartedly trust that you’ll do some good, whatever the outcome may be. As for fixing us, I hope you can, but depending on what happens we’ll just have to wait and see.” She sighed, “If you want my opinion on it, I think that we both should have waited longer to get married. It was right after James and Lily got married, but we aren’t and never will be them. We both had a lot of growing up to do, so I would take it slowly. Communicate your wants and needs in the relationship and in the end it may not even be us together. But I know you, Siri, don’t let this get in the way of your entire life. The most important part is that you tell James and Lily about Peter.”

She glanced back up the school grounds where students could start to be seen leaving their classes. “You better get back to the castle, Sirius. McGonagall is going to come for your arse and this time the boys aren’t going to be able to cover for you.”

“If they knew where I was, darling, I don’t even think they’d believe me.” Sirius chuckled.

Y/N nodded in agreement and pulled Sirius into a tight hug. “You can do this, sweetheart, and even if you can’t, it will not stop me from loving you any less. Maybe the future wasn’t meant to be changed, but regardless of whether that is true or not, I know that you will try your hardest, Sirius. Just try not to die, okay?”

The boy was still clutching onto her tightly, his tears soaking her rose-colored blouse. “I’ll do my best, darling.”

With one last kiss on the forehead, she smiled at him. “I know you will, Siri.”

Y/N’s arse hit the floor once again, her spine cracking once again. “What’s the year?” She yelled out, reaching for the walls of the black family room.

But it wasn’t there. Upon opening her eyes, she saw James, Lily, and Sirius sitting at a wooden table in her old white cottage. A nice tea set, her grandmother’s as she realized later, sat in the center, along with a large stack of letters. “Y/N, what the bloody hell happened to you, I’ve been worried sick!”

Her red-headed best friend scurried over to her, brushing invisible dirt off her shoulders and pulling her up abruptly. James fixed the glasses on his nose, cleaning them off with his striped jumper. “You look a little disheveled right now, Y/N, what ran you over?”

“You know who she reminds me of right now, Jamie? That crazy witch friend of Dumbledore’s that made her way onto campus back in seventh year.” Lily giggled as she hugged Y/N.

“Merlin’s beard, you’re right!” James walked over to the woman of the hour, ruffling her hair with a smirk on his face. “If you were about twenty years older I’d have no trouble believing you were the same person.”

While Lily and James recalled their memories from the strange woman all those years ago at Hogwarts, Sirius pulled Y/N aside, an arm wrapped around her waist. The warmth radiating from his body was nice, embracing her in a comfort she hadn’t felt in so long.

“I’m going to go ahead and believe that I did something right?” Sirius grabbed her hand, and only then did she notice the coolness of metal sitting on her left ring finger. There sat the single band of gold, a small ruby encased in its plating. She had once joked that diamonds were too overrated, and he went out and got her the most vibrant gem he could find, claiming that it was just like her. But regardless of its shape, size, or type of gem, it was there.

“Yeah, Siri,” Y/N replied with tears in her eyes, “you did good.”

“Oi, Blacks, stop making out and get over here, we got a letter from Minnie!” James yelled, making both wives chuckle. “Harry’s gotten himself in detention for punching Malfoy again.”

“Oh, thank Merlin, the boy deserves a few more good hits.” Sirius laughed.

“McGonagall still talks to us?” Y/N asked in amazement. “You’ve got to get me caught up.”

“Don’t worry, darling, we’ve got all the time in the world.” Sirius gently placed his lips onto hers, and for once in nearly twenty years, Y/N felt at peace. There were no more hasty warnings of the future, no psychotic old men coming after her family, no young girls rushing in to tell her how to fix her screwed up life. Cracked, pink lips moving against her own, his tongue delving into her mouth, and Y/N knew she was finally off the clock.

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hwrryscherry · 4 years ago

Text

The one where Y/N is a princess.

characters: HARRYxPRINCESSY/N

blurb: Y/N is the youngest daughter of Prince Charles and Princess Diana which makes herself the youngest sister of William and Harry(the duke of Sussex). Harry(Styles) and she meet at the Dunkirk premiere when Y/N attended with her brother Harry. This time, Harry(Styles) is in London and show Princess Y/N what it feels like to be just a girl called ‘’Y/N’’ for a day.

word count: 2.4K

warnings: fluff, a little sad in the end.

author’s note: I received a request about Y/N being a heiress and my mind just go directly to royalty so I guess this could be cool? I tried lol. If you’re british and you felt ofended by any way while reading this I’m extremely sorry!!!! I hope you guys like it as much as I do. And also, I just wanted to share that I wrote this listening to ‘’Ophelia’’ by The Lumineers and ‘’The Book of You & I’’ by Alec Benjamin.

You and Harry scheduled to meet in the British Museum situated in the Bloomsbury area of London even though it was a public space, it wouldn’t be a surprise as people already knew that you and harry new each other. You both met on the Dunkirk premiere which you attended together with your brother Harry. Harry(Styles) was such a gentleman, he actually were nervous. As a British man he respects the royal family as much possibler than he can, and he would never want to make neither you nor your brother to feel uncomfortable.

But anyway, you both scheduled there because Harry had been in England for a while and as you stayed friends it just felt right to meet up. You actually felt really tired, emotionally tired. You were so used to traveling the most amazing places with friends and now being basically locked up at The Buckingham Palace because of the corona virus felt draining for you. So when Harry came up with the meeting you were so glad to finally be leaving home, and Harry has always been the type of person who you felt like you could talk openly and be exactly who you want to be, and we don’t even have to say that the British museum it’s probably one of your favorite places in London. You were enamored by art, and there were so many interesting things in there and every time you’ll go there you’d find something new.

It was 9am and the museum it’s actually closed now but you did have some perks. You were in the Egyptian part accompanied by your bodyguard Jasper, when you suddenly listened the rough voice of you dearly friend coming closer to you making you turn yourself to look at him getting closer. He greeted you with a simple hug in which you reciprocated by opening a slight smile looking at him.

— Hello, darling — Harry said while using his hands to style his short and messy hair with a smile on his face. — How are you?

— Hi, I’ve been good, just tired! But what about you? — You asked as you both started to walk through the beautiful masterpieces — How’s your mom and Gemma? — You had that really strong British accent, which Harry understood completly, and he really likes it. He thinks it’s the cutest thing. Actually, Harry thought everything about you were extremely cute, you both have a little crush on each other but as you already told him a lot of times before, just the thought of how many things he’d have to leave for because of the royal regulation made you sad for him. You’d never ask him for something like that.

— They’re good but... — Harry stopped walking looking fixedly to your face trying to analyze your emotions by their expressions — Why are you tired? I mean, I understand it must be really bad living in a castle but anyway, what happened? — Harry said smirking at you and your reaction of laughing and rolling your eyes at him.

— Haha, really funny! You should be a humorist — You answered mocking a bit and running your right hand through your hair as you started walking again — And I asked you how were you, you won’t answer? I’ll lock you in the dungeon for your audacity! — You both always joked like this because when you first started being friends, Harry had all that idea about the old royalty with dungeons and prisoners so you’d always make fun of him for that.

— Alright, alright! I'm good, they're good, we're all good. Now, tell me! — Harry said putting his right hand slightly on your shoulder making you stop walking and look at him with all your attention. You sighed trying to form your words to explain exactly what you were feeling to him.

— I don't know, I'm just... I'm so tired of the routine, you know? I wish I could just go out to do the craziest things and not be recognized. — You were looking straight to Harry's green eyes, it felt like they were watching your soul because e was giving you his full atention. The boy really did care about you. He stayes quiet for a while in complete silence, it was a comfortable silence though. It never felt like you and Harry needed to talk all the time when you got together because it was nice just to stay together and enjoy each other's company.

— Let me take you out! — Harry suddenly said after a few seconds making your eyes widen up as you looked at him.

— Excuse me? — You asked.

— Let me take you out! We can put on some disguises and take the best London tour we can find, I bet you've never done it! — Harry said with a little smirk in the end. He was right, you never took a tour through your own city which seems crazy — You know... I really like you and if you wanna have fun this could be great! You'll be just a girl called Y/N and I'll be just a boy called Harry. — He said trying to argue with your thoughts thinking if this would actually be a good thing to do. But you didn't really have anything to lose, did you? — So, do you wanna do a bunch of fun things with me today? — Harry held out his right hand to you indicating that as soon as you shake his hand you would leave that museum and probably have the best day of your life, and so you did.

So as soon as you could, you both were out of that museum with the most ridiculous disguises, if I might say. Harry changed his fashionable clothes for some neutral grey hoodie and you changed your cute black dress to a jeans and hoodie as well. Your heart raced a bit when you both left that museum, the fear of being recognized was in you. It's not that you don't love the people of this nation, it's just... a day off could fit you pretty well.

It was hard to convince Jasper to leave you both alone though, it was his job to keep you safe and actually you don't even remember the last time you left your home without him, you just needed freedom for a while but you did convince him. He spent some minutes actually talking to Harry tons of rules about keeping both of you safe and how he couldn't risk your life and all that stuffs.

For the first time in your life, you were on those big, red and popular British bus. You and Harry entered by the back door and within minutes, you both were on the upon side of it on the last chairs. You looked through the window admiring this city and thinking about how much you would never want to live anywhere else. Harry was making a lot of dad jokes beside you though. You tried to laugh as lowly as you could but it was almost impossible, come on “What's the name of a man with a rubber toe? Roberto” it's so bad that it turns out to be funny. But anyway, the bus took both of us to King Cross where you entered a very popular fast-food place called “Five Guys” as Harry guaranteed you was the best he'd ever had and even though you'd doubted it so much, you agreed to go with him. When you were there, you ordered the biggest burger it had on the menu, which actually surprised Harry, but he surprised it too as he ordered it on the name of “Archie and Eleanor” so you could maintain your disguise.

— So.. Archie and Eleanor? — You asked smirking when you finally took the first bite of your burger. It was delicious but Harry was definitely lying, this is not the best one ever, but yep, all for the experience.

— Come on, you loved it! It's very charming, don't you think? — Harry asked as he took a sip of his coca-cola. It's crazy how these stupid disguises was working, is it really that impossible to recognize someone with a hoodie, cap and sunglasses? You didn't want to know because you were having a nice time.

— You know what, I think we need to get those Chinese cookies because I wanna read my luck! — You commented making him shook his head in reaction to your ask.

— Ok so we need to dinner Chinese food so bad! — You argued taking Harry from surprise as he didn't thought you'd stay this late with him.

— You'd have to buy actual Chinese food, you can't just buy the cookie! — He answered raising his eyebrows at you taking his last bite of his burger.

It didn't take much long for you both to be moving again. It was definitely the best day you've had in a while. You both went to Kensigton High Street and bought the most stupid UK theme hats. Harry bought a fake glasses too; it was blue and had a UK flag handed on it making you laugh every time you looked at his face.

— Come on, I still look cute! — He said putting his hands on his hips and posing like a model, on the middle of the street.

— If you say so!

Next you both went all your way up to Abbey Road which is the famous street from The Beatles photo, and you and Harry as the great fans you are had to copy them. You asked to a random person to take a photo of you two with the best American accent you could impersonate to her. The photo looked so cool and a car almost hit you two but you were fine and for some reason you both laughed and ran to the woman with your phone.

— Oh, to be drunk in love! You both are a really cute couple. — The old lady said giving your phone back to you and walked away before any of you could contest her. You both looked at each other and Harry smirked at you.

— Oh, we're such a cute couple! — Harry said blinking his eyes on a very cute way and you just rolled your eyes at him and started walking again.

— Come on, Styles! I wanna go to the Queen's Gallery — You said walking your way up to the bus stop. Harry had a big smile on his face, he didn't remember the last time he actually had that much fun. He loved England. He loved those places and he loved having this much fun with you.

In the Queen's Gallery, you and Harry tried to not make that much of a noise, it was a museum right? But it felt hard to keep it quiet because you both were taking the weirdest and funniest photos with the arts in there, for a moment you even thought you both were going to be expulsed of the location, but you didn't. None of you realized how much the time was flying and it was probably 3 pm now.

The next step was the Columbia Road Flower Market. It was probably the coolest thing of your day. You both ran around taking a lot of photos and videos. You bought one of the most delicious breads in there. You were looking at some flowers when Harry came back to you with a bunch of pink tulips on his hand, it was your favorite flowers and he knew it.

You both went to so many places actually; you went to HMS Belfast, Battersea Park, Albert Memorial, Old Spiralfields Market, Serpentine Lake, Carnaby Street and Holland Park.

When it was closer to the sunset, you went to Princess Diana Memorial Garden. It was a hard place for you. It has always been and Harry even asked if you really wanted to go there, but you did. You needed to sit down for a moment on your life and miss your mom. You were little when she died so you're probably the only one of your brothers that remember her the least.

You both lied down on the grass. It had a fresh breeze in the air, but the sun was still out, it was that golden hour moment. You rested your head on Harry's thorax looking up to the sunset orange sky above you.

— You know this can be great... If we're willing to try! — Harry said in a very low tone. He was caressing your hair with his hand analysing your face, so he could get any reaction for you.

— It would be for a while. — You said sitting up to look at his face, your faces were a few inches apart, the golden coloration on his face giving him the glow he did have naturally — But what would happen 3 years from now when someone tells you that you couldn't perform anymore? Or you couldn't release your songs? It's not right, I can't ask you this! — Harry looked away for a moment, probably trying to contain his emotions and think, just think — But we have today, we have now. Maybe we should just enjoy what we have now!

He looked back at you, directly into your eyes and again, comfortable silence. The comfortable silence Harry thought was so overrated felt right any time he was with you. He put himself closer to you if that even it's possible. His ring handed touched your cheek, eyes never distracting, you leaned in and your lips touched his. It felt magical, it felt quiet and it felt right.

The sun was out now, bringing the night and the sky full of stars. You both were by The Mall avenue, running, and dancing to the song playing backwards; it was Ophelia by the Lumineers, after that day, this song was your song and any time any of you listened to it, each other was brought up to your minds. You called it a night when you both were by the top of the London Eye, where all the big lights inspired you. When the cold breeze hit your hair and the height scared you but Harry made you feel safe.

Harry dropped you off at the castle's gate at midnight, just as he promised. You stayed by the balcony of your room until the sunrise looking at the sky because you knew that Harry was on the other side looking at the sky too thinking about how you'd never get to finish the book of you and him, and if you weren't faded to end together at least you had today.

#harry x reader #hwrryscherry #harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #harry and y/n #harry styles and y/n #hwrryscherryxreader

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