purely ironic

YESSS they’re not enemies, they’re not friends! they’re UNCOMFORTABLE COLLEAGUES WHO RUB EACH OTHER THE WRONG WAY IN SPITE OF ALL INROADS.

in the words of carlos himself:

I was checking some of your fics in this link https:// www.trickster(.)org/speranza/stories(.)html and next to the titles there is a number like for example Eight Sessions (270K) -my favorite dS fic ever- and I was wondering what is the number? I thought it was the number of words but I didn't remember that fic being so long so I checked ao3 and yeah it says 34,432 words. Then, I checked other fics' word count in both pages and at least some of them don't match. What is that number then?

LOL - I love this question, even though it makes me feel OLD AS DIRT.

In the olden times of the dial up internet, the number you put next to a story was NOT the word count but the FILE SIZE - it was 240k in size, this is to say, a quarter of a mb--and this told the reader how long it would take to LOAD in your BROWSER. Now of course 240k is not very much, but understand me when I say that my first computer/word processor was an Atari 130, which had as its total system memory, 130k!! (Which was double my dad's computer, which was an Atari 65, which had--yes--65k total memory!)

Anyway Eight Sessions was written in--hm, looks it up, May 2002! Which means that only 20% of people had broadband internet at that time - so 80% would have had dialup and have to get the story through a modem. I posted the story to the F/K email list in parts, and then when it was only you wanted to make sure people knew how big it was so that they could anticipate the loading.

They're fucking but have not defined the relationship and both think the other doesn't want it because of complementary insecurities (hehehe 🚬).

Carlos is obvs frustrated because of the general Williams malaise.

Oscar is frustrated because he somewhat yielded last year with the promise of better years to come and McLaren aren't really in it this year. But he's too proud to say this.

Oscar made a glib comment about Williams this morning that was unfortunate but not that bad but Carlos is feeling so shitty about his season that he snaps back and things are tense.

The on-track incident happens and then Oscar DNFs.

They have fight about it and break up that evening. Oscar says "then we're clearly not compatible so we shouldn't fucking be together," and Carlos says "we're not together, I'm just fucking you," and Oscar says "clearly" and then walks out.

Oscar goes to sleep sad and angry but mostly sad and then wakes up and it's race day--classic being late for a meeting because he doesn't realise it's Sunday again.

Oscar doesn't make the glib comment that morning but he's weirdly quiet and Carlos takes that the wrong way and they're still testy going into the race.

As Oscar is in the formation lap he realises he can avoid the crash and he can win and then also he won't fight w Carlos.

He avoids the contact w Carlos and doesn't dnf and then makes a comment afterwards at their standing post-race fuck--"you can fuck my face because you didn't fuck my race"-- and this makes them have a fight and they break up again.

Over like 20 loops, Oscar manages to sometimes not fight w Carlos before the race, and sometimes not fight after the race, but never both. He never loses the race now that he knows about the contact.

He tells Carlos about the time loop a few times in the morning but it never makes a difference.

He has one loop where he has contact with someone else and DNFs and when he's with Carlos afterwards he can see the directions out of the fight but he doesn't take them because if the loop resets he won't win the race.

Over the loops Oscar comes to understand more about how Carlos is feeling; Carlos is really proud of his own driving in the Williams and he has become conflicted about sticking with Williams through its alleged ascension (as it was sold to him) vs bailing to a better team.

Similarly, over the loops Oscar gives Carlos bits of his own insecurities about sitting back in second place to Lando and fearing that he made the wrong choice and that he'll never have another chance at a wdc.

Eventually Oscar accidentally lets the contact happen again and it's Carlos's fault and Oscar dnfs but he apologises to Carlos afterwards about everything that's between them and they make up and don't break up, but the time loop still resets again and it's still Sunday.

But that was the best day Oscar has had this whole time so he does it again and dnfs but tells Carlos about it after the race and it's weird but Carlos believes him and they spitball about what they're misunderstanding to keep the loop going.

Oscar realises that in all of Carlos's proposed solutions Oscar still wins the race. He realises Carlos respects his right and will to win, that Oscar simultaneously realises and says out loud that he'd rather dnf than lose Carlos.

They do not break up.

"It's a long story."

Except ☝️when a combat SecUnit or combat bot shows up

Ilya was just about to light up when he realised that there was someone in sight; an old man who was peering into the hood of a car. It was a battered old Jeep which looked like it shouldn’t be on the road - not that they had proper roads here anyway, there were less people than fucking Siberia, they’d flown in on a terrifying little plane that felt like it was going to fall out of the sky. The old guy glanced up at the same time Ilya spotted him, and Ilya saw him do the double-take of is that Ilya Rozanov?, but he just lifted a hand and went back to whatever he was doing.

Ilya shrugged and lit his cigarette, and smoked it for about thirty seconds before curiosity overcame him. He walked over. “Why are you bothering? That car looks like a piece of shit anyway.”

“Annie Saddler asked me to take a look,” said the guy, with an amused look that said I’ve talked to a lot of young guys like you. To Ilya’s surprise, his accent was American. He looked exactly the same as all the other old white guys Ilya had seen up here, all bundled up. “Real pain to get new cars up here. You gotta run them till they drop.”

Ilya made an unimpressed noise. “That is the fault of people who choose to live in this Godforsaken place.”

“It’s their home, asshole,” the old guy said, but not like he was looking to start a fight. He wasn’t bitching about Ilya’s cigarette, either, which put him in Ilya’s (extremely temporary) good books.

“Not your home?”

“Give it another twenty years or so.”

Ilya surveyed him. “You’ll probably be dead by then.”

He laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“What makes an American move up to the worst part of Canada? You used to work in mining, or something?” The guy had to be retired.

“Same kind of reason you moved to the worst part of Canada,” the guy said, with a glint in his eye. Ilya tensed, but it didn’t feel like he was going to get called a cocksucker, and was he implying -

“At least Ottawa has roads,” he said airily. “You have uptight Canadian hockey player boyfriend, then? That’s why you’re here?”

The old guy grinned, shutting the hood of the Jeep. “Uptight Canadian Mountie husband. Close enough.”

Ilya snorted, to indicate he didn’t think it was that close, but it did something funny in his chest, thinking about this guy, who had to be the same age as Ilya’s father would have been, moving to the fucking Northwest Territories twenty years ago with his uptight Mountie boyfriend, and still being here, and Annie Sadler - whoever the fuck she was - asking him to take a look at her Jeep. Being normal. Just another old guy in the middle of freezing nowhere.

He transferred the cigarette to his other hand, held his right hand out. “Ilya Rozanov. I play hockey.”

“I’ve heard,” said the old guy. “Ray Kowalski.” They shook.

Ilya jerked his head back towards where he was supposed to be. “I better get back before the uptight boyfriend comes looking to yell at me about smoking.”

“Good luck with that,” said Kowalski. He nodded to Ilya, and started off in his own direction.