(⁠･⁠–⁠･⁠)⁠ ⁠\⁠(⁠･⁠◡⁠･⁠)⁠/

So maybe you bought a Eurostar ticket to Amsterdam after the race. And maybe once you got there you took a cab you couldn’t afford from the city to a hotel room you definitely couldn’t afford by the sea. And maybe now you’re at the club the girls mentioned, wearing a dress you know Isack used to love on you — short, black, silky, with a neckline that dips low enough to be a problem. He’d fucked you in it more often than he ever took it off you, bunching it up around your waist with his fingers digging into your hips. You have a distinct memory of him pushing the straps off your shoulders in the back of an Uber in Paris, his mouth hot on your neck as his other hand slid up the fabric of your skirt, the driver trying very hard not to notice. 

That fabric is sticking to your thighs for an entirely different reason now, damp with sweat from the heat of too many bodies in a room that wasn’t designed for this many people. You prop yourself next to the bar closest to the VIP section with a drink you don’t really want, scanning the crowd while you try to pretend you’re not looking for anyone in particular. 

You don’t have to lie to yourself for long. You find him instinctively, your heart a compass tuned to the magnetic north that is your ex-boyfriend. He’s with the whole group of them behind the velvet rope, looking so unfairly, devastatingly hot that you have to take a long sip of your drink just to have something to do with your mouth that isn’t biting through your own lip. He’s got a drink in one hand — dark liquid, a Coke and Bacardi, probably, the same thing you know he’s been ordering since he was old enough to get into a club.

The other is around a girl. 

She’s tall, tan, beachy waves falling artfully over bare shoulders, leaning in just a little too close to be casual, fingertips trailing along his forearm as she says something that makes him laugh. It’s your favorite laugh, you can tell even from here: low and easy and warm, the one that makes his eyes crinkle a little at the corners. The one that used to belong to you, and is currently being wasted on some girl in a cheap going-out top from Zara who probably thinks pole position is one of the tips to drive your man wild from the latest issue of Cosmo.

You hate her with a violence that surprises you; hate the perfectly done nails, the long wispy eyelashes, the extensions that you genuinely want to rip out of her fucking head. But the thing you hate the most is that Isack looks happy. He looks like someone who’s been doing just fine without you, actually, which is the one outcome you’d somehow failed to plan for, and your stomach twists so badly at the thought of him moving on that you consider running out as fast as your heels will carry you and flying home and blocking him on Instagram like you’ve been promising yourself for months that you would. 

That’s when Liam’s girlfriend spots you. You see it immediately: the double-take, the dawning horror that she’s about to be solely responsible for ruining a podium sitter’s night. She grabs Ollie’s girlfriend’s wrist, tugging her into a frantic, whispered conversation. You lift your hand and flutter your fingers in a little wave — hi girls, remember me? — and watch the blood drain from their faces. Ollie’s girlfriend turns and hisses something to him, and then Ollie bumps Kimi and points (completely indiscreetly) right at you, and then Kimi punches Isack in the shoulder and says something urgently into his ear, and then Isack’s gaze drifts sideways until it lands on you and the smile drops off his face so fast it’s like it was never there at all. 

The lights in the club keep flashing, painting everything they touch in vivid blue and purple. The bass is pounding so loud in your ears you can barely think. But it’s not the volume that makes the floor feel like it’s shaking, that makes your glass tremble in your hands. It’s the sight of your ex-boyfriend, standing across the room staring like he’s just seen the ghost of girlfriends past. 

You don’t go to him, though. You stay exactly where you are, hip cocked against the bar, and wait. Because if there’s one thing you know about Isack Hadjar, it’s that even when it’d be better for him, he has never, not once in his life, been able to leave you alone. 

Sure enough, it takes about forty-five seconds before he’s stalking towards you, and you try not to be too satisfied by the annoyingly pretty pout on Beach Waves’ stupid face when he brushes her aside without a second glance. He cuts through the crowd like a knife, shoulders set and laser-focused, the way he gets on track, the way that used to make you weak at the knees.

Up close, his stare is ablaze, dark eyes trained on you. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Hello to you too, Isa,” you purr, letting your gaze flick up and down his body. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Don’t,” he snaps, cheeks flushing. His jaw is tight, hands shoved in his pockets like he doesn’t quite trust what they’ll do if he lets them free. “Don’t call me that. Don’t do this. Don’t act like —” 

You blink innocently. “Like what?”

“Like — like you have any right to be here,” he splutters, cheeks flushed. 

“It’s not a private club,” you say, shrugging and taking a long sip of your drink. The liquor burns horribly at the back of your throat. “I bought a drink. I’m a paying customer.”

He stares at you for a long moment and you can see the frustration radiating off of him. Let him be angry. Angry Isack is easier to deal with than the alternative — the soft woundedness he seemed to carry around by the end, the kind that made you feel like the worst person alive.

You are the worst person alive when it comes to him. But at least this way, you don’t have to let his face remind you of it.

“Did you at least watch?” he asks flatly. 

“Watch what?”

“The race,” he says, a little too quickly for someone who’s trying very hard to pretend he doesn’t care. “Did you watch the race?”

You could tell him the truth. You could tell him you watched every single lap with a pit in your stomach and your heart in your throat. You could tell him you cried when Lando retired and you knew, you just knew he would cross the line in P3. You could tell him that when he lifted the trophy above his head on the podium, you had to press your hand over your mouth to keep from making a very undignified sound. A sob, if you’re being honest with yourself.

But that would be giving Isack Hadjar something you can’t afford to lose.

“No,” you lie airily instead, twirling a strand of hair around your finger. “Don’t really follow F1 these days. Why, did something exciting happen?”

Something flashes across his face — raw hurt, quickly buried under the heat of his anger — and you feel a sick little twist of satisfaction. If you came here to stand in front of him and feel like your chest is caving in, you might as well make him feel it too.

“Fuck you,” he says, voice unsteady. 

You smile, slow and venomous. “Maybe later. If you’re lucky.”

He steps closer, close enough that you can catch the familiar scent of his cologne, the Tom Ford you bought him for his birthday two years ago that still makes your head turn every time you smell it on the street with some sort of ridiculous hope that it’ll be him. “Why are you here? Really?” 

“Let’s say I missed you,” you say, letting your voice drop into something softer, more intimate, so he has to lean in to hear you. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes,” he bites out, but his eyes flick traitorously down to the dark crimson of your mouth. “You broke up with me, remember? In November. The week before —”

“I know when I broke up with you,” you snap. The week before Abu Dhabi last year, is what he was going to say. You’d done it over the phone, too much of a coward to break up with him to his face and too selfish to do it earlier, when it might not have wrecked him right before the most important race of his life. He’d called you seventeen times in a row afterward; you cried on the cold tile of your bathroom floor and let them all go to voicemail, because you knew if you picked up even once you’d take it all back. Six days later, you sat in your hole-in-the-wall apartment in Paris and watched his car stall before it could start, watched the chance of a championship slip right through his fingers. When the cameras found him climbing out of the car afterwards — helmet off, jaw set tight enough to crack a tooth, eyes rimmed red — you’d thrown up in your kitchen sink. 

So yes. You know when you broke up with him.

“Really?” he says, voice going harsh and jagged. “Because you’ve done a good fucking job of forgetting everything else for the past nine months.”

“I wish I could forget you,” you blurt, the words slipping out before you can stop them in a way that makes you actually, genuinely hate how pathetic they’ve made you sound. You cover it by taking another sip, longer this time, trying to wash the bitter taste of your own honesty out of your mouth. “I didn’t — that’s not what happened. Isack. You have to know that’s not what this is.”

“Then what? What is it?” he asks, accent thickening. “Because I haven’t heard a thing from you since that night, and —” he exhales shakily, casting his gaze to the ceiling. “I had the best day of my entire life today. I have been dreaming about this day since the first time I got in a kart. I should be celebrating. And instead I am standing here and letting you ruin everything all over again.”

“That’s not fair.”

A laugh punches out of him, but it’s not the one you heard earlier, the one you still know like your favorite song. It’s something darker, something hollowed-out. “Fair?” he echoes derisively. “You want to talk about fair? You dumped me over the phone. You didn’t even block my number, you just — you just stopped answering, like I was too insignificant to even bother cutting me out. Nine months, quiet, and then you show up here like it’s nothing. Like I am nothing to you. So don’t fucking ask me for fair when nothing is fair with you.”

Your voice goes small. “Isa, I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come,” he says, so cold that for a moment you’re right back there on the bathroom tiles listening to your phone ring and ring and ring.

“I came because I —” your voice splinters horribly around the words, and you watch Isack’s face soften. It’s small, barely perceptible unless you know him the way that you do, the twitch at the corners of his mouth, the warmth bleeding into his dark eyes. You hate it. You hate that even now, even after everything you’ve done, his first instinct when you break is to reach for the pieces. “I don’t know what I’m doing, okay? I don’t, I just —”

His hand flexes at his side like he’s physically stopping himself from touching you. “You just what?” he interrupts. He’s close now, too close, in your space enough that you can see his pulse beating high and insistent in his throat. “Finish the sentence.”

“I don’t know,” you whisper, throat tight, and for once in your miserable life you’re not lying to him. It’s worse than a lie, because it’s the most pitiful truth that you have to offer. 

“Conneries.” He steps even closer, hips nearly brushing against yours, mouth curling into a sneer. “You always know what you are doing. That’s the worst part, no? You know exactly how cruel you are to me, and you do it anyway.”

“What, and you’re so innocent?” you snap, sickly grateful for the anger surging to fill the space where your honesty leaked out. “I saw you earlier. Letting a girl in a Shein haul with grown-out acrylics hang all over you. That’s who’s replacing me? Really?”

Isack blinks, caught off-guard, and you can see the surprise written all over his face. “Are you — is this what this is all about? This is why you show up here? You’re fucking jealous?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” you reply coolly, even as you feel your cheeks heat.

“Fuck,” he exhales. “You are — you’re fucking crazy, you know that? Je ne te comprends pas. If you still want me this much, why did you leave? Explain it to me. Make it make sense. Because I have spent nine months trying to understand how someone can look at me the way that you’re looking at me right now and walk away, and I —” he scrubs a hand over his face roughly. “I can’t do it, chérie. I can’t figure you out.”

Because you were going to leave me first, you think and think and think and do not say. Because you were about to be somebody, and I couldn’t stand the idea of becoming the girl you outgrew. Because I can’t let anyone love me without hurting them. 

“Does it matter?” you reply instead, keeping your tone carefully level so you don’t do something completely embarrassing like burst into tears. “I left. It’s over. Done.”

He looks at you, really looks, and something flashes in his eyes again, desperation ebbing away and leaving something crueler in its place. “If this was really done,” he says, voice dropping dangerously, “you wouldn’t be standing here wearing this fucking dress.”

Your breath catches in your throat, and the corner of his mouth quirks up the second he hears it, like he knows exactly what it means. Gone is the boy from a minute ago, wounded and angry and unsure. In his place is an Isack you know well, the one who used to pin you against the wall of his driver’s room and tell you exactly what he was going to do to you before he did it, the one who could make you forget your own name with nothing but the sound of his voice in your ear and the heat of his gaze.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” you reply, but it comes out a second too late and embarrassingly thin. 

“No?” he says, gaze dropping to your neckline, not even bothering to pretend he’s not ogling your tits. “You want a reminder of what happened last time you wore this dress?”

“Isack —”

“My birthday, last year,” he says, tone conversational. “You were fucking desperate. Couldn’t even make it to the bedroom, just begged me for it as soon as we got in the door. I remember the sound you made when I got on my knees for you in the hallway. You pulled my hair so hard I thought you were going to rip it out, told me nobody had ever made you come like that. Remember that?” He leans in, breath warm against your ear. “And you’re telling me you didn’t put this dress on thinking about me taking it off?”

“You’re delusional,” you lie, thighs pressing together involuntarily.

“And you’re wet,” he says, so matter-of-factly that it makes your cheeks burn, lips parting for a fraction of a second before you can regain your composure. He hooks a finger under the thin strap on your shoulder, tugging it a fraction of an inch out of place, knuckle dragging slow across your collarbone. “Dripping, probably, under this slutty little thing. I know you too well for you to think you can get away with a lie like that. So you can tell everyone else whatever you want, chérie, but you and I both know you didn’t come here for a fucking drink.”

“Why am I here, then?” you breathe, heart pounding. “Since you know me so well.”

“Because you still want me,” he says, and the smile curving his lips is so infuriatingly smug that you want to slap him and climb him in equal measure. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“Make me,” you whisper back. 

He lets out a growl, low and frayed, pupils blowing so wide his eyes go black. You can see him try to fight it, muscles tensing, the visible effort of a man trying very hard to be rational about the woman who ruined his life. And then you watch him lose in real time, and it’s terrible and exhilarating all at once, knowing that no matter how smart Isack is, no matter how fast he drives, no matter how hard he tries to protect himself, you will always, always be the thing he crashes into.

“Outside,” he mutters finally, jaw ticking. “Now.”

You tilt your head and try not to smile. “Why?”

He presses his lips together. “Because I am about to do something I will regret, and I’d rather not have an audience for it.”

You hum noncommittally, tracing a finger along the edge of your glass. “And if I don’t want to go outside with you?”

His hand closes firm around your wrist, tugging you off the barstool. His thumb presses into your pulse point and you think wildly that he must be able to feel how fast your heart is beating, to feel how much you still want him, laid bare under his fingertips. “I wasn’t asking,” he says, low enough that only you can hear, and the words zip hot up your spine.

“Careful, Isa,” you say, smirking as he pulls you through the crowd. “People are going to think you actually like me.” 

“Ta gueule,” he snaps, fingers tightening around your wrist as he weaves you through the crush of bodies on the dance floor. “For once in your life, please, just shut up.”

You catch the faces turning as you pass the VIP section like a lowlights reel, varying degrees of horror and resignation written all over everyone’s expressions. Ollie’s at least had the decency to turn away. Kimi hasn’t, his arms crossed over his chest as he glowers at you like a sullen teenager. Liam’s girlfriend is practically hyperventilating in the corner. Beach Waves is the last to see what’s going on, standing stupid, glossy lips slowly parting as the understanding dawns. You catch her eye over your shoulder as Isack drags you past, letting your gaze travel pointedly down to the hand that was on his arm fifteen minutes ago then back up to her face, slow and deliberate. Then you press two fingers to your lips and blow her a kiss.

Isack doesn’t look back at her. Not even once.

Poor her, you think deliriously, triumphantly. She got the laugh, the charm, the arm around her shoulder, whatever mid conversation she'd been making about whatever mid thing she probably cares about. She got to touch him for one night. Big deal. She’ll never touch the rest of him.

The night air is cool on your flushed skin when Isack shoulders through the fire exit and yanks you into a side alley, a rush of briny salt and stale cigarette smoke filling your nose the second you get outside. You stumble over the threshold onto the uneven ground, door barely swinging shut behind you before he’s crowding you against the opposite wall and bracing a hand on either side of your head. When you get your first proper look at him, no chaos of the club left to distract you, you almost laugh out loud. He’s wearing a plain white shirt and dark jeans, the fucking Amazon Basics of outfits, nothing designer, nothing curated, and he still looks like that. You want to call every luxury brand you know and tell them to shut down the operation; nothing they could put together could ever come close to Isack Hadjar in a plain white shirt looking at you like you’re the only thing in the world worth being furious about.

“Tu me rends dingue,” he mutters, and then his mouth is on yours.

Isack kisses you how his worst critics say he drives — reckless, aggressive, all instinct and no patience. His hands find your waist, shoving you back against the wall, stucco pricking against your skin. His fingers push into the skin at your hips, hard enough to leave marks, and you’d be lying if the thought didn’t make heat pool dangerously low in your stomach. You kiss him back just as viciously, mouth hot and demanding, because if it’s a fight he’s looking for, you’re going to give it to him. Your teeth clash messily against his, nails raking down the back of his neck as he hisses against your lips. You feel his hand tighten in your hair in retaliation, tugging your head back so he can lick into your mouth at the exact angle he wants, and it’s not a nice kiss but god, it’s so good you feel dizzy with it, the sheer taste of him after nine months, the furious want radiating off both of you like a fever that won’t break.

“I hate you,” he gasps against your lips, every hard plane of his body pressed against yours.

“Apparently not enough to keep your tongue out of my mouth,” you mutter back, fingers reaching up and pulling hard at his close-cropped curls.

His hips grind helplessly into yours at the contact, lashes beating a frenzied rhythm against the top of your cheekbone. “Je te déteste.”

“Saying it in French doesn’t make it truer, Isa.”

He makes a frustrated, animal noise, borne somewhere in the back of his throat. “I said don’t call me that anymore.” He bites your lower lip, hard enough to sting, and swallows the gasp that erupts from your lips. His thigh slots between yours, pressing you harder against the wall, and your head falls back, eyes fluttering shut as he drags searing open-mouth kisses down your throat. He sucks a painful little mark there, into the juncture of your neck and shoulder, and you hate him for it and push into it at the same time, hand fisting at the front of his stupid fucking t-shirt like you want to claw right through it.

“Hotel,” you manage, breathless. 

He pulls back, chest heaving, pupils blown so wide his eyes glitter black. There’s a smear of your lipstick, blood-red at the corner of his mouth. He looks wrecked, staring back at you without a word, and for a moment you think this is it. The end of the road, the moment he realizes he needs to take the last exit before he drives himself off the edge of the earth again.

When he speaks, he sounds like he hates himself for it. “Where?” 

You walk the five blocks back to the hotel in silence. There’s nothing safe left to say, walking side by side with nothing but adrenaline crackling in the empty inches between you. You keep your eyes pinned on the sea, pretending he’s not close enough to touch, pretending you’re not desperate, aching, out of your mind with the need to feel his calloused fingertips against your skin. The elevator climbs five floors before the back of his hand brushes the back of yours, accidental and barely-there, and the contact sends an electric thrill straight to your throbbing core. 

You barely get the keycard in the door before he’s on you. 

His mouth attaches to your neck, kicking the door shut behind the both of you so hard that it knocks the generic art off the wall. Hands slide up your waist, cupping your tits, thumb flicking over your nipple. You gasp at the sensation, back arching, pushing your chest into Isack’s touch, and you hate how you can feel his infuriating, cruel little smile against your neck. He pushes you back against the wall with one hand braced to your hip, the other rolling your nipple between his fingers, friction of silk against the stiffened peak. It sends a sharp jolt straight to your cunt that makes your knees buckle. He shoves his thigh between yours immediately, holding you up, and the pressure of the ropy muscle beneath you drags a moan out of you that you’d genuinely kill to take back.

“Sound so fucking good for me,” he mumbles against your neck, teeth grazing your pulse point.  He’s hard, absurdly so, pressed tight against you. You can feel his cock throbbing against your hip through his jeans, and when he shifts his weight back to tug his t-shirt over his head his hips push into your thigh so deliberately that it makes your head fall back against the wall. 

He crowds into you again, one hand sliding up to plant on the wall next to your head, the other wrapping around your thigh and hitching it up around his hip. He grinds against you like that, slow and filthy, the muscles of his stomach tensing every time he rolls forward. He’s harder than he used to be, his shiny new F1 physique on display: broader across the shoulders, thicker through the arms. You can’t stop yourself from mapping the changes with your palms, your fingernails, your teeth against his collarbone, marking all the places that are new and hating every single girl who got to see him become this when you didn’t.

“I hate — putain,” his voice cracks into a whimper when you pull him forward by the belt loops, cock pressed hard against the crease of your thigh as he ruts into you. “I hate that I still want this so much.” “Then stop,” you gasp, rolling your hips to meet his. “I can’t.” He pulls back just enough to meet your gaze, and even in the darkness you can see his eyes are wild, desperate. “That is my problem. I’ve never been able to stop wanting you.” 

“Go tell that girl that,” you snap brattily. “Sure she’d love to hear it.” 

His expression shutters, and for a second you think you’ve actually, properly miscalculated; finally pushed him too far, hit the wrong nerve. And then he smiles coldly. It sends a strange thrill through you, knowing there’s something he can do now that you wouldn’t predict. “Get on your knees.” 

The words land humiliating, heat flaring between your thighs so fast it makes you dizzy, clenching around nothing. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he says, flat and almost bored, sliding his hand into the hair at the nape of your neck and tangling his fingers through it. “You want to run your mouth, no? I can think of something better to do with it.”

You should tell him to go fuck himself. You should walk out that door and never speak to him again and leave him here hard and wanting with the taste of you still on his lips.

Instead, you sink to the carpet.

His hand stays in your hair, loosening just enough to let you tilt your head back and look up at him. The sight of him from this angle — jaw set, chest heaving — makes your cunt throb. He’s already undoing his jeans with his other hand, overeager, zipper tugged down with a sharp metallic hiss. When he frees himself from his Calvins you have to swallow hard, mouth watering in a genuinely humiliating way. He’s bigger than you remembered, weeping at the tip.

His thumb strokes across your cheekbone, almost tenderly, before slipping over your bottom lip into your mouth. “Open,” he says, voice low.

You let your lips part, jaw dropping just slightly. He groans low and guttural, tugging you forward, and you let your tongue flick out to catch the bead of pre-come gathering at the slit. Isack hisses out a breath through his teeth, flush rising high in his cheeks. You take your time, making him wait, pressing slow, open-mouth kisses down his length, tongue tracing the thick vein on the underside, feeling him pulse against your lips. 

“Don’t be a fucking tease,” he grits out. 

You look up at him through your lashes, holding his gaze defiantly before you do exactly as he asked. Stop teasing, and take him in properly.

He whines, stomach muscles tensing and trembling under your fingertips, hips jerking forward involuntarily when you hollow your cheeks around his length. His head tips back, throat bobbing, lower lip caught prettily between his teeth as you pull back, swirling your tongue lightly around the tip before taking him deep again. His hand flies back to your hair, fisting into it, hips rocking into your mouth deep enough to hit the back of your throat and make you gag around his length. 

“Come on, take it,” he says, voice rough, fingers crushing tightly into your tangled locks. “This is what your pretty little mouth should be for, no? You wanted it, you came all this way, so take it.”

You moan around him in response and his hips stutter at the vibration, fucking forward in short, brutal thrusts. He sets a rhythm that is nothing like the boy who used to pet your hair and tell you how good you were for him, how pretty you looked. This is mean, has your jaw aching and mascara streaming, spit pooling at the corners of your mouth and drooling down your chin. It sounds fucking obscene, the slick thrust of his cock against your tongue, your choked breathing around him, the low, frayed groans he keeps letting slip like he can’t stop himself. Your hand drifts between your thighs, barely a conscious movement, just needing the friction, but you barely make contact before his hand snaps around your wrist. 

“No,” he pants, wrenching your head back by your hair with his other hand until you’re fully off him, a mess of spit and pre-come strung between your swollen lips and the head of his cock. “Did I say you could fucking touch yourself?”

You stare up at him, wordless, overwhelmed, a frisson of want running through you as he tugs both your hands up, placing them on his thighs. “You want to come tonight?” he asks mockingly, eyes dark. “Then you come when I let you.” 

You barely have time to breathe before he’s feeding himself back in, faster this time, hips snapping forward until your nose presses against the coarse hair at the base of his length and your nails are digging perfect half-moons into his thighs and you can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but relax your throat and take all of it. He keeps you there, holds your head until your knees burn against the carpet and your throat aches with it. You can feel him getting close, though, his muscles tensing under your fingers, grip going white-knuckled in your hair, dick throbbing on your tongue, breath coming in quick, desperate bursts until he pulls you off him again. 

You make an indignant noise at the loss, jaw still slack while Isack hauls you up by your upper arms hard enough that your stomach flips. He steadies you against his chest before pushing you back through the dim room until you stumble against the mattress, pitching backwards unexpectedly. 

The feeling of falling is brief before his hand flies up behind your head, instinctive and tender, palm cradling your skull a half-second before it hits the headboard.

You freeze, blinking up at him, and watch the realization hit — his hand stiffening against your hair when he catches what he’s done, the hot flush of humiliation crawling up his neck. He snatches his hand away too fast, jaw flexing, something furious and mortified in his eyes like you’ve caught him doing something unforgivable. 

“Don’t,” he snaps, compensating immediately for it. Overcompensating, really, grabbing the neckline of your dress with both hands and pulling it down your body so roughly the silk catches. You hear something rip, a stitch giving way around your hips. You’d care if you could think straight, but his hands are on your bare skin now, running feverish down your body like he’s trying to burn the gentleness out of his own fingers. 

The dress catches around your thighs and he drags it the rest of the way off, tossing it blindly behind him as his face goes blissfully, thrillingly slack. “No panties?” he asks, breath shallow. 

You smirk, propping yourself up on your elbows, letting him see exactly how wet you are, pretty and swollen, slick coating the inside of your thighs. “Huh. Must have forgotten to pack them.”

He exhales long and slow through his nose, and you watch his cock twitch, flushed dark and shining with your spit. Then he climbs over you, hand sliding up your legs, tracing delicately around your entrance. 

“Fucking soaked,” he groans, more to himself than to you as he drags the pad of his index finger through the dripping mess. “Pathetic. Knew you would be.” 

He pushes two fingers inside without warning, and the stretch of it is insane, pulling a high-pitched moan from your lips as your back arches off the mattress. “Fuck,” you whine, hands fisting into the sheets as you let your legs fall open, wider, hips jerking against his hand. 

He moves slowly at first, methodically, thumb zeroing in on your clit and pressing down in heavy, deliberate circles until your breathing is coming out in shaky little gasps. He slips a third finger in, your cunt so embarrassingly wet that there’s barely any resistance. The sound of it is filthy, echoing through the room, squelching in and out of your wetness, his breathing going rough and uneven above you like fingering you is doing something to him too. The familiarity of it all, the exact right pressure in the exact right place like the past nine months never happened, makes your nerve endings sing.

Then he twists his wrist, scissors his fingers on the next stroke, hitting a spot that makes your entire body jolt off the bed. You know every move Isack Hadjar has ever made on you by heart, recognize them like your own name, and this one is infuriatingly, stomach-turningly different.

“Stop.” Your hand clamps around his wrist, holding him perfectly still inside you. “What the fuck was that?”

He doesn’t move, just watches you squirm underneath him like you can’t decide whether to pull away or get closer. “What was what?”

“What you just did,” you swallow hard, voice coming out thin. “That — that’s new.”

It’s silent, for a moment, Isack’s face shifting from confusion to guilt to a satisfaction so cruel you can barely look at him. “Yeah,” he agrees finally, crooking his fingers and doing the same move again. “It is.” 

The jealousy comes white-hot, visceral and choking as soon as you let yourself think about it: someone else’s thighs around his hand, some other girl’s sounds in his ear, some bitch smart enough to pick up the thing you tossed away. And the absolute worst part is your body doesn’t care, hips still canting against his palm, riding his fingers desperately. You’re writhing, furious, soaking his fucking hand, and you can feel the orgasm coiling in the pit of your stomach, building fast and sharp, thighs shaking, right there on the precipice, so close your vision is starting to white out at the edges, and then he pulls his fingers out. 

The noise you make is barely human. “No — fuck, Isa, don’t you dare —”

“Not yet,” he says, and holds up his hand, fingers glistening in the low light down to the knuckle. He grins down at you, cocky, bringing them to his mouth tantalizingly slow. He sucks them clean just like that, tongue flicking around his fingers, eyes locked on yours the entire time, and the sight of it makes you moan high and needy. “Not until I say.” 

“You’re a fucking asshole,” you snap, watching him, cunt fluttering around nothing. 

He laughs, a real one, surprised out of him, and the sound of it after so long hits you somewhere unbearably soft. “Yeah,” he breathes, staring down at you. “Well. Takes one to know one.”

You look back at him. For one terrible second,  you can see it — the boy underneath all of this, the one who laughed like that when you stole his chips at three in the morning, the one who used to fall asleep with his face tucked in your neck — and the tenderness of it is so awful that you have to look away. He doesn’t let you, though, hand finding your jaw, tilting your face back to his. Then he kisses you again, deeper this time, tongue sliding slow against yours and making your chest ache worse than the roughness ever could.

He breaks away and shifts over you, settling his weight between your thighs, one hand planted firmly beside your head. You can feel him against your core, hard and heavy, but he doesn’t push in, just holds himself there, jaw tight, watching your face with dark, patient eyes.

“Isack,” you breathe, frustrated. “Please.”

“Please what?” he asks, voice low and almost amused. He rolls his hips forward gently, the head of his cock catching at your entrance, and you bite back a whimper. “Come on. You were so good at using your words earlier.”

“I’m not going to fucking beg you,” you breathe, but your hips are already tilting up, trying to take him in, to take what he won’t give you. 

He pins your hip flat to the mattress, thumb caressing against the jut of bone. “Really?” he murmurs, lips brushing the hinge of your jaw. He drags himself through your folds again, grinding the thick line of his dick against your clit, close enough that you can feel exactly how full he’d make you and not nearly close enough to give you what you need. “You sure?”

You last approximately five more seconds before whatever’s left of your pride rolls over and dies. “Fuck. Fine, you win, please,” you choke out. “Please, Isa, I need you to fuck me. Need you inside —”

He pushes into you before you finish the sentence, one long devastating thrust burying himself to the hilt, and it whites out your brain so completely that you forget your own name, forget every reason you ever had for leaving him, forget everything except the feeling of being full after nine months of emptiness that nothing else could touch.

“Jesus,” he rasps, voice wrecked and ragged, heartbeat hammering against your chest. “I forgot — you feel so fucking good, chérie. Still so fucking tight for me, fuck —” 

You wrap your legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back. “Fucking move,” you hiss. 

His eyes go black, pulling almost all the way out and fucking back in hard enough to crack the headboard against the wall. He doesn’t give you time to adjust, hips snapping against yours with a force that shoves you up the mattress, hitching your leg higher and opening you up so he can fuck into you at an angle that has you keening, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room.

“Perfect fucking pussy,” he pants against your neck, driving deep into you. “Taking me so well, like it was made for me.” He pulls back to look at you, hair damp against his forehead. “Better than anyone else. Better than — putain, none of them even came close, you know?”

“Shut up,” you snarl, and sink your teeth into his neck so hard he yelps, hips slamming forward gracelessly, on reflex, making you see stars. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare tell me about them.”

“Fuck,” he gasps, hands shaking next to your head. You think for a second he’s going to push you off, but instead he presses you closer, and the sound he makes when you suck hard against the bite mark, tongue laving over his skin, is something you’ll replay behind your eyelids for another nine months. “I didn’t —”

“I don’t care,” you mewl, voice cracking around the lie. “I don’t care how many girls you fucked, Isa, because none of them are here right now, and none of them are ever going to be here. I’ll never let you get over me,” you breathe, and it’s insane but you can feel his cock throb inside you at the words, feel how he starts fucking you harder, deeper. “Not ever.”

Isack smashes his lips back to yours, furious and bruising, fucking you into the mattress like he’s trying to crawl inside you, like if he just gets deep enough he can reach the part of you that keeps running away.

“Dis-moi que tu es à moi,” he whimpers against your mouth. Begs, really — raw and desperate, still fucking into you ruthlessly — and you hate it, hate him for even asking it of you. As if you could ever belong to anyone else. As if there is a single version of your sorry, fucked-up life where you don’t end up right here, wrapped around him, ruining him all over, loving him so hard and so much that it feels like getting torn completely apart and put back together with your most important piece missing.

“À toi,” you sob, high and keening, hot tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, humiliating if you weren’t too far gone to care about anything but the heavy, thick stretch of his cock inside you and his gaze on yours. “Yours, Isa, fuck, you know I’m yours.”

His hips lose their rhythm for a moment, jerking frantically before he buries himself to the hilt again, grinding in tight, shuddering little circles against you as his thumb works your clit. You’re so close you can feel it everywhere, your walls clenching around him, eyes rolling back, every desperate thrust of his cockhead dragging against your sweet spot, drawing you closer and closer to the edge.

“Look at me,” he grunts, forehead pressed to yours. His eyes are glazed over, fucked-out. “Look at me while you come for me.”

Your eyes focus on his face, and that’s it, really. Your orgasm tears through you, almost violent in its pure sensation — your back arching off the bed, toes curling, body locking up and spasming around him. Isack doesn’t stop for even a second, just keeps fucking you through it, drilling into you with deep unsteady strokes that draw out every aftershock until you’re gasping, feebly clawing at his back and babbling his name like a prayer.

When he follows, spilling into you seconds later, he breathes your name back like a curse.

Isack falls asleep the same way he always used to, a switch flipped quick and absolute, one arm slung heavy around your bare waist like even unconscious he knows you’re liable to bolt at any time. You used to tease him about it: you sleep like someone who’s never done a single bad thing in their life, you’d said once, fingers carding through his hair in the dark. He’d laughed dreamily and pulled you closer, mumbled maybe I haven’t against your skin. In sleep, the hard edges of him soften, furrow between his brow smoothing out, lips parting slightly, breath going slow and even. He looks younger that way, unguarded. More like the boy you once loved. 

You trace the sharp line of his jaw with a softness you’d never allow yourself in the light of day. There’s a mark on his neck where you bit him, pink scratches from your nails already raising over his shoulders and the muscles of his back. Bruises on you, blooming purplish-blue over the sharp jut of your hip where his fingers found a hold. You catalogue it all like evidence: proof that you were here, that for a few hours you let yourself have the one thing you want most and are least equipped to keep.

Isack shifts closer to you, face pressed against your hair. “Reste, chérie,” he mumbles, barely conscious. Even in sleep his hand gravitates to yours, fingers intertwining. “S’il te plaît.”

You don’t answer. Can’t answer, really. You don’t trust yourself to speak, not when you can already feel your throat closing dangerously with emotion. So you close your eyes and don’t sleep. You just lay in his arms and let him hold you, let yourself pretend you’re the kind of person who knows how to stay.

When the sun rises, pale morning light flooding through the curtains, you know you can’t lie to yourself much longer. You slip out from under Isack’s arm inch by inch; he stirs, making a confused, half-asleep sound that feels like a knife shoved directly into your stomach, but he doesn’t wake up. You pull yourself back together quietly, slowly, like completing the steps of a checklist you don’t really want to reach the end of. Dress: crumpled on the carpet, slipped over your head and smoothed into semi-presentability. Heels: kicked off somewhere between the door and the bed, buckled back on despite half-formed blisters because you deserve the pain, at least a little bit. Dignity: lost too long ago to even bother looking for it.

You order the Uber from the lobby, put the pick-up point a block away from the hotel because you don’t want the engine sound to wake him. You’re already halfway back to Amsterdam Centraal by the time your phone buzzes in your lap. 

isack  [ 4:47 AM ]  :  Of course isack  [ 4:47 AM ]  :  Of course you left

You stare down at the messages, chest going tight. Thumbs hover hesitantly over the keyboard, typing and deleting and rewriting until you settle on the only honest thing you can say.

you  [ 4:51 AM ]  :  you knew i would

isack  [ 4:52 AM ]  :  I guess I did isack  [ 4:52 AM ]  :  Doesn’t make me feel any better though

you  [ 4:53 AM ]  :  i’m sorry

isack  [ 4:54 AM ]  :  No you’re not isack  [ 4:54 AM ]  :  Don’t lie isack  [ 4:55 AM ]  :  You would do it again tomorrow

you  [ 4:56 AM ]  :  and you would let me you  [ 4:56 AM ]  :  so what does that say about both of us

isack  [ 4:56 AM ]  :  I don’t know isack  [ 4:56 AM ]  :  That we are both stupid? That we have never learned? isack  [ 4:57 AM ]  :  You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me

you  [ 4:59 AM ]  :  i know

isack  [ 5:00 AM ]  :  And I still love you anyway isack  [ 5:00 AM ]  :  That’s the stupidest thing

Some sick, horrible part of you lights up when you see the messages. He still loves you. After all of it, after nine months of hurt, after you walked out on him again. You want to press your phone to your chest like a girl in a silly rom-com. You want to screenshot the message and frame it so you can look at it forever and remember what it felt like to know that even though you’d done your worst, he still wanted you. 

you  [ 5:01 AM ]  :  please don’t say it if you don’t mean it  [ unsent! ] you  [ 5:01 AM ]  :  i still love you too  [ unsent! ] you  [ 5:02 AM ]  :  it’s not stupid, isa you  [ 5:02 AM ]  :  it’s just not enough

The early-morning light catches on the water as you speed past, coloring the sea golden as you stare down at the three dots, disappearing and reappearing over and over again. You hold your breath and count the seconds, wondering if this is it, if this is the time he finally wises up and stops replying to you for good. You wonder, too, if it’s not all you deserve from him. 

isack  [ 5:05 AM ]  :  Maybe someday it will be isack  [ 5:05 AM ]  :  À bientôt chérie

You stare at your screen until the words blur together, until all that’s left is the smudges of blue and grey through the tears you steadfastly refuse to let fall. 

Not goodbye. Because it never will be, with you, and you both know it. You’ll stay away for weeks, maybe even months if you’re feeling particularly strong, and then something will happen — another podium, maybe a win someday when he makes it to Red Bull like you know he will, some other sick excuse you’ll manufacture when the real reason is that you just want to be wanted again — and you’ll show up in another city, in another dress, and he’ll let you in because he can’t help himself. 

And then you’ll leave again, because you can’t help yourself either.

à bientôt, isa, you type back, smile curling the edge of your mouth. 

some extras i cut out from the comic + silly unrelated doodle based on what my friend said when i was drawing this comic on call:

prologue ⭐︎ what’s two plus two?

chapter 1 ⭐︎ strangers, again

chapter 2 ⭐︎ the wake

That was two months ago.

Two months of Pietra's color-coded spreadsheets, vendor calls with Italian florists who didn't speak a lick of English, and approximately sixty-three emails about whether the napkins should be ivory or ecru. (They're the same fucking color. You didn't say that, though, you're a an actual professional.)

Now you're standing in Cifonelli, a tailoring house in London where the building is approximately 300 years old and the man at the door eyes you up and down about twelve times before letting you come in. You arrived fifteen minutes early because that's what professionals do, tablet in hand, ready to make sure Max Fewtrell doesn't accidentally pick the wrong shade of midnight blue and give his fiancée an aneurysm.

Max is already here, standing on the fitting platform in his shirtsleeves while a tailor who looks approximately one hundred years old circles him with pins. The groomsmen are scattered around the room—Max's his brother is scrolling through his phone in the corner, and the other three groomsmen are huddled by the window arguing about something that sounds football-related but you're not paying attention.

And Lando Norris, the best man, is in one of the leather chairs, legs stretched out in front of him, watching you.

He's been staring at you for the last twenty minutes while you've been in the checking suit orders. You felt it. Ignored it. Felt it again. Kept ignoring it, like a professional.

Now you've got his garment bag draped over your arm and you're done pretending you don't notice.

"Norris," you call out.

He doesn't move right away. Just lets his eyes drag up from wherever they were—unhurried, unbothered, like you've interrupted something he was very much enjoying. "That's me," he says, and the smile that follows is the kind that knows exactly what it does to people.

"Dressing room two," you say, already walking toward the hallway. "Let's get you fitted."

You hear him get up. Hear him follow. The hallway is quieter, away from the chaos of the main room, and dressing room two is all dark wood paneling, it's exactly the kind of place where people spend obscene amounts of money and feel good about it.

You hang the garment bag on the hook, unzip it.

"Jacket first," you say without turning around. "Then trousers. If the shoulders don't sit right or the sleeve length is off, don't adjust it yourself. Just tell me."

When you turn around, he's in the doorway. Not coming in. Just leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, watching you with this look—eyes slightly narrowed, mouth not quite smiling, like he's just confirmed something he suspected and now he's deciding what to do about it.

"You're very good at this," he finally says.

"At my job?" You raise an eyebrow. "Revolutionary concept."

"No." He pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room, slow, like the space belongs to him now that he's decided to enter it. "The whole—not looking at me thing." He tilts his head slightly. "You've been doing it since I walked in. It's very disciplined and I'm a little impressed, actually."

Your jaw doesn't move. Your expression doesn't either. "The suit, Norris."

"See, that." He stops close enough that you have to consciously not step back. Close enough that you catch his cologne—something clean and expensive and quietly devastating. He's taller than you clocked from across the room, and the way he's looking at you isn't rude, isn't aggressive. It's just certain, like he's already several steps ahead and he's being generous enough to wait for you to catch up. "That's the thing. You do this—" a small gesture toward you, vague, like he's indicating everything, "very professional, very unbothered. But you felt me looking at you."

"Everyone in the room felt you looking at me."

"Sure." The corner of his mouth pulls up. "But only you ignored it that hard."

The silence sits between you. He doesn't rush to fill it, just watches you with that quiet, completely unearned confidence, chin tipped down slightly, eyes steady, the kind of eye contact that doesn't shift or flicker, the kind that makes you aware of exactly where your hands are and whether your face is doing something it shouldn't be.

"Are you going to try this on," you say, "or are we wasting Pietra's fitting appointment?"

He reaches out and takes the jacket from the hanger himself. Doesn't look away from you while he does it.

"Quick question," he says and the pause that follows is long enough to be deliberate. "Are you single?"

You've got to be fucking kidding me. You shake your head, "That is not a quick question."

"It's three words." He shrugs the jacket on and takes his time with the second button. "Pretty quick to me."

You step forward and fix the collar before you've put any real thought into it. Professional and an awfully horrible fucking habit you've developed because right this second your fingers brush the back of his neck and you feel him go very still.

"Shoulders are good," you say, stepping back. This is absolutely fine. So absolutely not fine.

"You didn't answer."

"Because it's not relevant, Norris."

"To the fitting?" He turns to face the mirror, but his eyes find yours in it immediately. "Probably not. To me?" The corner of his mouth pulls again. "Little bit relevant."

You crouch down to check the trouser break. He looks down at you. You can feel it without looking up.

"You do this with all your clients?" he asks.

"Check the fit?"

"Go all quiet and professional when someone makes you uncomfortable."

You stand. "You're not making me uncomfortable."

"No?" He turns from the mirror to face you properly. You become aware of your hands. "Then why haven't you answered?"

The room feels smaller than it did five minutes ago. You're aware of the door behind him, the mirror to your left, the very small amount of air between you.

"The sleeve length is off," you say. It's a lie, but you reach for his wrist anyway.

He lets you take it, doesn't say anything while you pretend to check the cuff, while your fingers brush the inside of his wrist.

"You're single," he says.

You glance up and he's already looking at you, which is unfortunate considering how attractive the fucker actually is. His lip is quirked upwards at the corner, and his eyes are squinting in that specific way that tells you he is enjoying this very much.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." He's still letting you hold his wrist, still watching you with that same certainty. "You would've shut this down immediately if you weren't."

You drop his hand and step back. "The jacket fits."

"Good." He shrugs the jacket off, and you watch the fabric slide down his arms, watch the way his shoulders move underneath the sweater. He hangs it back on the hanger with more care than you expected, smoothing the lapels before turning to the mirror. His hands go to the hem of his sweater, tugging it down, adjusting it. The movement pulls the knit tight across his chest, his shoulders, and his eyes—those fucking eyes—find yours in the reflection.

He doesn't look away. Doesn't pretend he wasn't waiting for you to look. "So when are you free?"

Your throat is dry. "I'm not."

"For dinner." He's still watching you in the mirror. Still standing there with his hands resting at his sides like he's got all the time in the world.

"I know what you meant."

He turns around. The movement is slow, his weight shifts, his hips turn, and suddenly he's facing you instead of the glass. "That's not a no."

"It's not a yes either."

"But it's not a no." The smile that spreads across his face is different from before—softer, more genuine. It makes him look younger, less like him and more like someone who actually wants to know your answer. And somehow that's worse. "Which means you're thinking about it."

"I'm thinking about how to get you to try on the trousers."

His hands drop to his belt.

The metal clinks as his fingers work the buckle loose and you freeze. Actually freeze, every muscle in your body locking up as you watch his hands—tanned, long-fingered, confident—slide the leather through the silver.

"What are you—"

"Trying on the trousers," he says, like it's obvious. The belt slides through the loops with a soft whisper of leather against fabric, and his shit-eating grin only widens. "That's what you wanted, right?"

"You don't have to—" You turn around and face the wall. What the fuck is going on? "There's literally a changing screen right there."

"There is." You hear the zipper, the metallic sound seems impossibly loud in the quiet room. Then fabric sliding down his legs, the soft rustle of denim pooling at his feet. Oh my god, oh my god. "But you're already in here."

Your stomach drops. Heat floods your face, your neck, your chest. You draw in a breath—too sharp, too quick—and try to compose yourself. Try to remember that you're a professional, that you've handled difficult clients before, that this is just a suit fitting.

Except it's not. You both know it's not.

"I will actually leave," you say.

"Why?" He sounds amused. You can hear the smile in his voice, can picture exactly what his face looks like right now without even seeing it. "You're the wedding planner. Don't you need to check the fit?"

Your face is on fire. Your hands are clenched at your sides and you're staring at the wood paneling on the wall like it holds the secrets of the fucking universe. "I can check it when you're dressed."

"I'm getting dressed right now." A pause. Then, quieter, "You can turn around. I'm not naked."

You shouldn't. You should walk out of this room, find another tailor, maintain some semblance of professionalism.

He's in his boxers, black Calvin Kleins that sit low on his hips, and that stupid cream sweater that's ridden up just enough to show a strip of tanned, toned stomach. The jeans are pooled at his feet and he's just standing there, holding the suit trousers, legs long and golden like he spends half his life in the sun.

Which he does. Because he's a fucking Formula 1 driver. And you're trying very hard to look at his face, at the trousers in his hands, at literally anything except the very obvious bulge straining against the black fabric of his underwear.

Your eyes drop. You can't help it. The Calvin Klein waistband sits just below his hip bones, and the fabric is doing absolutely nothing to hide how well-endowed he is. Or how hard he's getting. Jesus Christ.

"Well?" he says, and his voice has dropped lower, rougher. Like gravel and honey mixed together. "Should I put these on, or are you going to keep staring?"

Your eyes snap up to his face and the grin there is absolutely wicked. Victorious. He knows exactly what he's doing to you, knows exactly where your eyes just were, and he's loving every second of it.

"The trousers," you manage. Your voice sounds strange—tight and strained and breathier than it should be—and you quite literally want to rip your vocal cords out. "Put them on."

"Say please."

Your brain short-circuits. "Excuse me?"

"You want me to put them on?" He tilts his head, and the movement is casual, easy. Still holding the trousers in one hand, the other resting against his hip, thumb hooked into the waistband of his boxers. Still standing there like this is completely normal. Like he stands half-naked in front of wedding planners every day. "Ask nicely."

This is insane. This entire situation is insane. You're alone in a dressing room with a half-naked Formula 1 driver who's asking you to beg him to put his pants on while he's very clearly hard and very clearly enjoying watching you try not to look.

"Please," you say, and it comes out quieter than you meant it to. "Put on the trousers."

His grin widens. "See? That wasn't so hard."

He steps into them. One leg, then the other, and you watch—you can't not watch—as he pulls them up slowly and deliberately. The fabric slides over his calves, his knees, his thighs. Golden skin disappearing inch by inch beneath midnight blue wool. Over his hips. Over that bulge that's still very much visible, still obscenely obvious even through the suit fabric now.

He doesn't button them. Just leaves them sitting low on his hips, the zipper undone, the waistband gaping open enough that you can still see the black elastic of his Calvin Kleins.

"How's the fit?" he asks.

You can't speak. Your mouth is completely dry, your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it in your throat, and you're very aware that you need to actually do your job now. Need to check the hem and the break and the waist, which means getting close to him again. Means kneeling down in front of him. Means being eye-level with—

"I need to check the break," you hear yourself say.

"Go ahead."

You move before you can think about it. Drop to your knees in front of him, and the position is—it's—don't fucking think about it.

Your hands reach for the fabric at his ankle. The hem is perfect. You both know it's perfect. Pietra sent the measurements three times, the tailors here are the best in London, there's no way it's wrong.

You can feel him watching you. Can feel the weight of his gaze on the top of your head, on your hands, on the way you're very carefully not looking up. But you smooth the fabric anyway. Adjust it against his shoe. Check the length with fingers that are definitely not shaking.

"You know what I think?" he says, voice quiet.

You don't answer. Keep your eyes on the hem.

"I think you're single. I think you've been single for a while. And I think—" he pauses, and you feel him shift slightly above you, "—you're going to go to dinner with me tomorrow."

Something snaps into place in your head. A brilliant, terrible idea.

Fuck it.

You let your hand slide up from his ankle. Slowly. Palm flat against the fabric of the trousers, fingers spreading wide as you move up his calf. The muscle is solid beneath your touch, tense. You feel it twitch as you pass over his knee, and you keep going. Higher. You feel his leg go rigid under your touch. Hear his breath catch—sharp and sudden.

"You think so?" you ask, still not looking up. Your hand keeps moving. Up his thigh now, and he's gone completely still above you. Not moving. Not breathing. Just frozen.

"Yeah," he says, but his voice has gone rough. Strained. "I do."

Your hand reaches the very top of his thigh. You pause there and let the moment stretch. Then you slide your palm over the bulge straining against his trousers and squeeze.

He makes a sound—sharp, shocked, something between a gasp and a groan. You stand up slowly, keeping your hand exactly where it is. Keeping pressure. His hands come up like he's going to grab you, touch you, pull you closer, but he freezes when you press harder.

"Fuck," he breathes.

You're close now. Close enough to see his pupils blown wide, close enough to feel the way his breathing has gone uneven. His hips shift forward into your touch and you can feel how hard he is, how much he wants this.

"You were saying?" you murmur, tilting your head up. Your mouth is inches from his.

"I—" He swallows hard. Can't seem to finish the sentence. His eyes drop to your lips and you lean in closer. So close your breath ghosts across his mouth. Your hand moves slightly, rubbing through the fabric, and he actually groans this time.

"What was that about dinner?" you whisper.

"Tomorrow," he manages. "Eight. I'll—fuck—I'll pick you up."

"Mm." You lean in like you're going to kiss him. Let your lips almost brush his.

Then you let go, step back, and knee him directly in the dick.

Not hard enough to do real damage. But hard enough.

He doubles over with a choked sound, hands flying to his crotch, and you step around him calmly. You pick up your tablet from where you left it on the chair, and take one final look at Lando Norris.

"The trousers fit perfectly," you say, voice perfectly professional. "I'll let the tailor know we're done here."

You ignore Lando Norris for the rest of the fitting.

It's not difficult. He stays in the dressing room for a solid ten minutes after you leave, and when he finally emerges—fully dressed, thank fucking god—his face is doing something between amused and aroused and genuinely shocked.

You don't look at him. You focus on Max's final adjustments, on coordinating with the tailor about the timeline, on making notes in your tablet about pickup dates and alteration appointments. When Lando tries to catch your eye in the mirror, you turn away. When he opens his mouth like he's about to say something, you start talking to the elderly tailor about mother-of-pearl versus horn buttons.

Your hands only shake once you're in the car back to your flat. That evening, you send Pietra a follow-up email:

You don't mention Lando. There's nothing to mention, it was a fitting. He tried on a suit, everything went fine. Pietra responds within an hour with twelve exclamation points and a gif of someone crying happy tears. You close your laptop and don't think about Lando Norris for the rest of the night.

Or the next day.

Or the day after that.

Three weeks pass.

Three weeks of vendor calls and seating charts and a truly deranged argument with the florist about whether "white" and "ivory" roses are actually different. (They are, apparently.) Three weeks of normal, professional wedding planning work where you successfully do not think about Lando Norris or the fact that you kneed him in the dick in a Cifonelli dressing room.

You're good at compartmentalizing. It's a necessary skill in this job. You've dealt with difficult clients, bridezillas, grooms who show up drunk to their own rehearsal dinners. One overly confident racing driver who doesn't understand professional boundaries is nothing.

Except he keeps showing up in your email thread with Max and Pietra. Little comments on the group chain about the bachelor party planning, questions about the timeline, a truly chaotic suggestion that they do sparklers at the reception that Pietra immediately vetoed. You don't respond to him directly. You address Max only.

You're fine. Everything is completely fine. It's a Wednesday night—11:00 PM, to be exact—and you're on your couch in your pajamas with a pint of Häagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream that you've been working through for the better part of an hour. Some reality show is playing on your TV. You're not really watching it, too busy scrolling through the seating chart for the reception, trying to figure out where to put Pietra's uncle who allegedly had an affair with Max's aunt's best friend in 1987.

Your phone rings. Unknown number. London area code and you ignore it, taking another spoonful of ice cream. It rings again thirty seconds later. Same number.

You sigh, set the pint down on your coffee table, and answer. "Hello?"

"So, I've been thinking about you."

You freeze, spoon halfway to your mouth. That voice. You know that fucking voice. "Norris?"

"Lando," he corrects, and you can hear the smile in his voice. Hear the way he's settling into this conversation like he's got all fucking night to terrorize you. "And before you hang up—which I know you're about to do—I need to tell you something."

"How did you get this number?"

"Max," he says easily. "Told him I needed to coordinate some best man stuff. He gave it to me, no questions asked. Great guy, but a bloody terrible judge of character."

You close your eyes. "It's eleven o'clock at night."

"I know. I waited aaaaalllll day to call you." He pauses. "Didn't want to seem too eager, ya'know."

"You're calling me at eleven PM. That's the definition of eager."

"Fair point." He sounds amused. "Sooo, are you wearing panties right now?

You choke on your ice cream. Actually choke, coughing and sputtering into your fist while he laughs on the other end of the line. The pint nearly tips over on your coffee table and you have to grab it with your free hand, still trying to catch your breath. "Are you—" More coughing. "Are you fucking serious right now?"

"Completely serious," he says. "It's a yes or no question. Pretty straightforward."

You set the ice cream down. Hard enough that the spoon rattles. "I'm hanging up."

"No you're not." And the worst part—the absolute worst part of all of this is that he's right. You're still sitting here, phone pressed to your ear, face burning, while this man asks you about your underwear at eleven o'clock at night like it's a perfectly normal thing to do.

"Why are you like this?" you ask.

"Like what?"

"Insane. Mmm, iInappropriate, I don't know maybe the completely lack of boundaries."

"I prefer 'direct,'" he says. "And you still haven't answered my question."

"I'm not answering that."

"So that's a yes." He sounds pleased with himself. "Good to know."

"That's not—I didn't say—" You stop and take a breath. "What do you want, Lando?"

"I told you. I've been thinking about you."

"Then stop thinking about me."

"Can't." He says it simply, like it's a fact he's already accepted, like it's a facet that you're supposed to also accept. "Believe me, I've tried. Spent three weeks trying to forget about the dressing room. Didn't work. So now I'm calling you at eleven PM like a psychopath because apparently that's what you've reduced me to."

Your stomach does something stupid. You cannot do this right now. Seriously, you cannot. "I reduced you?"

"Yeah." There's rustling on his end, like he's shifting position. You picture him sprawled out somewhere—on a couch, maybe, or in bed—phone pressed to his ear, that insufferable grin on his face. "You put your hand on my dick and then kneed me in it. That's not something a person just forgets."

"You deserved it."

"I did," he agrees immediately. "Completely deserved it. I was inappropriate and pushy and I basically stripped in front of you. Very poor form. My mum would be horrified."

Despite yourself—despite everything—your lips twitch. "Your mum doesn't know?"

"God, no. She thinks I'm a perfect gentleman." He pauses. "She'd probably like you, actually. You seem like the type who'd keep me in line."

"No one can keep you in line."

"You did a pretty good job with your knee."

You close your laptop. Pull your knees up to your chest, phone still pressed to your ear, ice cream forgotten on the coffee table. This is insane. You should hang up. You should block this number and email Pietra tomorrow and tell her you can't work with her best man. But you don't, because despite every alarm blaring in your brain, you're enjoying this. "What do you actually want?" you ask quietly.

"Dinner," he says. No joke this time. No flirting, just honesty. "One meal. You pick the place, you pick the time. If you hate it, I'll never bother you again."

"You'll bother me anyway. You're the best man."

"Fine. Then I'll be professional. And completely appropriate. I'll call you 'ma'am' and everything."

"You're not calling me ma'am."

"See? You care." He sounds pleased. "That's progress."

"That's me stopping you from being weird."

"I can be weirder." He pauses. "Much weirder. Want me to prove it?"

"No."

"No, I think I can," he goes silent for a brief second. Then, "Uhhhhhhh, oohhhhhhh, mmmmm—" Your brain short-circuits. "What the fuck are you—"

"Oh god, yes," he moans into the phone, and it's so obscene, so deliberately pornographic that your face catches fire. "Just like that!"

"Stop!"

"Okay, okay! Say you'll will go with me!" he says in a higher pitched voice, clearly imitating you, before dropping back to that low groan. "Oh yeah, baby, just like that!"

"Oh my GOD, Lando!"

"Right there, don't stop, don't fucking stop."

"Goodbye, Lando!" You're already pulling the phone away from your ear, face burning so hot you might actually combust.

"Friday, eight PM!" he shouts before you can hang up. "Wear something nice! I'm taking you somewhere expensive!"

You hang up. Sit there on your couch, ice cream forgotten, staring at your phone like it personally betrayed you.

Friday comes too soon.

You spend Thursday trying to convince yourself to cancel. Draft three different texts saying you can't make it, that something came up with work, that this was a mistake. Delete all of them. Pietra sends you an email with fourteen exclamation points about linens. You have a call with the florist that somehow turns into a forty-minute argument about garden roses versus peonies. You confirm the string quartet for the ceremony and the DJ for the reception and the backup generator for the lights because Pietra is convinced there will be a power outage even though Villa d'Este has never had a power outage in its three-hundred-year history.

You don't think about Lando Norris. (You think about Lando Norris constantly.)

Friday morning, you have a dress fitting in Knightsbridge for another bride who can't decide between two nearly identical shades of white. Friday afternoon, you meet with a new client in Mayfair to discuss color palettes for their engagement party—"We're thinking sage and blush, but like, elevated sage and blush, you know?" You nod. You take notes. You smile and say yes, you can absolutely source elevated sage napkins.

You don't cancel. By the time you get back to your flat in Monaco—you live here because half your clients are here and the tax benefits are obscene and you can pretend it's a practical decision and not because you've always wanted to live somewhere beautiful—it's 6:47 PM and you have one hour and thirteen minutes to get ready.

You shower. Stare at your closet for fifteen minutes. Pull out four different dresses and hate all of them. Settle on a black slip dress that's simple and elegant and shows just enough without being obvious. Nice black Manolo heels, with your hair down and makeup that looks effortless but took thirty minutes. You look at yourself in the mirror and try to figure out what the fuck you're doing. Your phone buzzes at 7:52 PM.

After rushing down the elevator, you push through the glass doors and step outside into the warm evening air. And there it is.

A Porsche GT3 RS. Forest fucking green, parked directly in front of your building like it belongs there, which it absolutely does not. The engine is running, that distinctive Porsche rumble that turns heads even in Monaco where supercars are background noise. The driver's side door opens and Lando Norris unfolds himself from the car, and—fuck. He's wearing a white button-down, sleeves rolled to his elbows, tucked into dark trousers that fit him obscenely well. No tie. Top two buttons undone. His hair is slightly messy in that way that's definitely intentional, and when he sees you, his entire face lights up.

"Hi," he says.

You stop on the pavement. "How did you know where I live?"

His grin is shameless. "Max."

"Of course."

"Also—" he gestures at you, vague and all-encompassing, "—wow. You look incredible."

"Your selfie was terrible."

"I know." He doesn't look embarrassed. "But you responded, so it worked." He walks around to the passenger side, opens the door for you. The interior is all tan leather and you might come just from sitting inside of it.

"Shall we?" he asks.

You should turn around. Go back upstairs and text him that this was a mistake. Instead, you get in the car, he closes your door, walks back around to the driver's side. Slides in and the door shuts with that solid, expensive thunk that only German engineering can achieve.

"Seatbelt," he says, already reaching for his own.

You buckle in. The belt clicks into place and he's already pulling away from the curb, the Porsche responding to the slightest touch of the accelerator like it's been waiting for permission to move. The streets of Monaco blur past. He drives fast—not recklessly, but definitely confidently. Like he knows exactly what the car can do and exactly how far he can push it. His right hand rests on the gear shift, fingers drumming against the leather. The left is on the wheel, relaxed, assured.

Then his right hand moves and lands on your thigh. It rests there, warm and solid through the thin fabric of your dress. His fingers spread slightly, thumb brushing against the inside of your leg. You look down at it. Then at him. He's watching the road. Completely focused like his hand isn't currently on your thigh, like this is totally okay to do upon meeting someone for the second time.

"What are you doing?" you ask.

"Driving." He glances at you briefly, grin tugging at his mouth. "Why, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Your hand?"

"What about it?" He squeezes gently, once, then goes back to that light, proprietary touch. "Problem?"

"Yes, actually."

"Hm." He doesn't move it. "Want me to stop?"

You should say yes. You should absolutely say yes. "I didn't say that."

His grin widens. "No, you didn't." He shifts gears and his hand moves with it, then returns to your thigh. Higher this time. Not quite at the hem of your dress, but close enough that you're very aware of how little fabric there is between his skin and yours.

"You're very presumptuous," you manage.

"Uh-huh," He takes a turn smoothly, the Porsche hugging the curve like it's on rails. "Also, you haven't moved my hand. So clearly I'm doing something right."

"You're doing something, that's for sure."

"Is it working?"

"Is what working?"

"This." His thumb moves, a slow stroke against your inner thigh that makes your breath catch. "Me being charming and forward and completely shameless."

Your face is burning. "You're not charming."

"Liar." He glances at you again, and there's something predatory in the way he's looking at you. Something that makes your stomach flip. "You wouldn't be in this car if I wasn't at least a little bit charming."

He's right. You hate that he's completely right. "I didn't agree to let you feel me up in your car."

"You didn't disagree either." His thumb moves again, and this time you can't quite suppress the small inhale. He notices, and you want to grab the wheel and crash the fucking car. "Besides, I'm being a gentleman. My hand is barely moving."

"Where are we going?" you ask, trying to redirect.

"Dinner." His hand stays exactly where it is. "I made reservations at Le Grill. You know it?"

"At the Hotel de Paris?" Your stomach drops. "Wait—aren't people going to see us?"

He looks at you. Actually looks at you this time, taking his eyes off the road for longer than is probably safe. "People?"

"You're—" You gesture vaguely at him. "You're you. You're Lando Norris. People know who you are."

"So?"

"So, we'll be seen together. You and I."

"Good." He says it simply, turning his attention back to the road. His hand doesn't move from your thigh. "That's the point."

"The point?"

"Of taking you to a nice restaurant. In public. Where people will see us." He shifts gears smoothly, accelerating through a turn. "I'm not hiding you in some basement bistro. You agreed to dinner with me, so we're doing it properly."

"I didn't agree to being photographed."

"Then don't smile at the cameras." He grins. "Or do. You'll look good either way."

"Lando, please."

"Relax." He squeezes your thigh again. "It's just dinner. People eat dinner all the time. It's a very normal human activity."

The light ahead turns red. He slows to a stop, turns to look at you fully. His hand is still on your leg, thumb still doing that maddening stroke against your inner thigh. "Besides," he says, eyes locked on yours, "I already told Max I'm into you. He laughed. Said I should go for it. So if anyone asks, we're just two single people having a meal. Nothing scandalous about that."

"You told Max—"

The light turns green. He's already accelerating before you can finish the sentence.

There were photos taken outside the Hotel de Paris. At least six people with their phones out, asking for pictures, calling his name. Lando handled it the way he probably handles everything—with that easy charm that makes people feel like they're the only person in the room, even when he's already moving on to the next one. His hand never left yours except to pose for photos, and when he was done, it came right back.

Dinner goes well. Too well, actually. The restaurant is all art deco elegance and Lando is—fuck, he's good at this. Charming without being smarmy, confident without being obnoxious. He orders wine without looking at the list, pulls out your chair, makes the kind of casual conversation that feels effortless even though you know it's not. He asks about your work, actually listens when you answer, remembers details from Pietra's emails that he has no business remembering. And he's gorgeous in the dim lighting. That's the worst part. The candles catch the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth when he smiles, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when you say something that amuses him. His shirt is still unbuttoned at the collar and you keep noticing his throat, his collarbones, the way his hands move when he talks.

He catches you looking. Grins like he knows exactly what you're thinking. "See something you like?" he asks.

"Don't push it."

"That's not a no." His hand finds your knee under the table. Stays there through the rest of dinner. Through dessert—which he insists on ordering even though you're full. Through the coffee. His thumb traces lazy circles against your leg and you're very aware of every single point of contact. By the time you're back in the Porsche, it's past eleven and the streets of Monaco are quieter. He drives slower this time, his hand back on your thigh like it belongs there.

"I had a good time," he says.

"Shocking."

"You did too. Don't lie." You don't answer, and instead you look out the window instead at the city lights blurring past. He pulls up to your building too soon. Puts the car in park but doesn't turn off the engine.

"So," he says.

"So."

"Can I come up?"

You look at him. He's watching you with that same intensity, that same certainty, like he already knows what your answer is going to be. "That's very presumptuous," you say.

"I prefer forward." His hand squeezes your thigh. "And you haven't said no yet."

"I haven't said yes either."

"But you're thinking about it." He leans closer, and you can smell his cologne again, that same expensive scent that's been driving you crazy all night. "Aren't you?"

You should say no. You should thank him for dinner, get out of the car, go upstairs alone. "Just for a drink," you hear yourself say.

His smile is dangerous. "Just for a drink."

He turns off the engine and the encompassing sudden silence is loud. You hear your own breathing, hear the way his shifts slightly as he unbuckles his seatbelt.

"Come on then," he says finally.

You get out before he can come around to open your door. He manages it anyway, meets you on the pavement, and his hand finds the small of your back as you walk toward the entrance. The lobby is empty, just silence and the night security guard who nods at you as you pass. The elevator is at the far end, and your heels click against the floor with each step. Lando's hand stays on your back, warm through the thin fabric of your dress.

You press the button. Wait, and the elevator arrives with a soft chime. The doors slide open. You step inside. He follows anf the doors close and suddenly the space feels much smaller. You're very aware of how close he's standing, how you can feel the heat radiating off him.

"Which floor?" he asks.

"Seven."

He presses the button. The elevator starts moving.

You watch the numbers climb. One. Two. Three.

"You're quiet," he says.

"I'm thinking."

"About?"

You look at him. He's already watching you, leaning against the elevator wall with his hands in his pockets, looking entirely too comfortable. "About whether this is a terrible idea," you say.

"It definetly is." He doesn't sound concerned. "But you're still bringing me up."

Four. Five. Six.

The elevator slows. Stops. The doors open. You step out into the hallway. He follows, close enough that you can feel him behind you as you walk to your door. Your hands are shaking slightly as you dig for your keys in your clutch.

"Need help?" he asks, and his voice is closer now. Right behind you.

"I've got it." You find the keys. Unlock the door. It swings open into your flat—dark except for the light you left on in the kitchen. You step inside and he follows, closing the door behind him with a soft click that sounds impossibly loud.

He doesn't move further in. Just stands there in your entryway, hands still in his pockets, watching you. "Nice place," he says.

"You haven't even looked at it."

"I'm looking at you."

Your face heats. You turn away, set your clutch down on the console table by the door. Slip off your heels. The relief is immediate but also makes you shorter, more aware of how much taller he is. "I'll get us something to drink," you say.

"Sure."

You walk toward the kitchen. Hear him follow. When you glance back, he's looking around now—at the open floor plan, the windows overlooking the other buildings, your cream-colored Cloud couch and the art on the walls.

"Wine?" you ask, opening the fridge.

"Whatever you're having."

You pull out a bottle of white. Realize your hands are still shaking when you try to open it.

"Here." He's suddenly right behind you, taking the bottle from your hands. "Let me." He opens it easily. Pours two glasses then hands you one.

"Cheers," he says. You take a sip and the wine is cold and crisp and does nothing to settle your nerves. Lando leans against your counter, glass in hand, still watching you with that same look.

"You're staring," you say.

"I know."

"It's rude."

"I know that too." He takes a sip of wine. "But you look good so good right now, I can't help myself." He sets his glass down. "Come here."

It's not a question. Not quite a command either. Just—an invitation. A test and you should tell him to leave. Should remind him this is a terrible idea. Should do literally anything except walk toward him. You walk toward him and he doesn't move. Just watches you close the distance, watches you stop right in front of him. Close enough to touch but not touching.

"Hi," he says quietly.

"Hi."

His hand comes up. Slowly. Gives you time to move away if you want to. Cups your jaw, thumb brushing across your cheekbone. "I'm going to kiss you now," he says. "If that's not okay, you should probably say something."

You don't say anything and he leans in. His mouth finds yours and it's—fuck. It's nothing like you expected. Softer at first, almost careful, his lips moving against yours like he's learning you. His hand stays on your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek, and his other hand comes up to your waist, pulling you closer. Not demanding. Just guiding.

You kiss him back and feel him smile against your mouth.

"There she is," he murmurs, and then the careful is gone.

He kisses you harder, deeper, his tongue sliding against yours and his hand tightening on your waist. You make a sound—something embarrassing and needy—and he swallows it, uses it as permission to crowd you back against the counter. The marble is cold against your lower back but he's warm, solid, pressed against you from chest to hips.

His hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers threading through your hair, angling your head exactly how he wants it. The other hand moves lower, gripping your hip, thumb pressing into the hollow there through your dress. You can feel how hard he is already, the thick length of him pressing against your stomach, and when you shift slightly he groans into your mouth.

"Fuck," he breathes, pulling back just enough to look at you. His pupils are blown wide, lips already swollen, and there's something feral in the way he's looking at you now. "Bedroom. Where's your bedroom?"

You point vaguely toward the hallway. Can't quite form words.

"Show me." You take his hand. Lead him down the hall, past the bathroom, to your bedroom door. It's dark inside but you don't turn on the light. Don't need to. The city lights through the windows give enough illumination to see the bed, to see him closing the door behind you with one hand while the other pulls you back against him.

He kisses you again. Hungrier this time, one hand fisted in your hair, the other sliding down your side, over the curve of your hip, gripping your ass through the silk. He walks you backward toward the bed, doesn't break the kiss even when your legs hit the mattress.

"This dress," he says against your mouth. "Been thinking about taking it off you all night."

"Then take it off."

His hands find the zipper. Slides it down slowly, deliberately, knuckles dragging against your spine. The dress loosens, falls open, and he peels it off your shoulders. It pools at your feet and you step out of it, standing there in just your underwear—black lace, matching set, the expensive kind you told yourself you definitely didn't wear for him.

He steps back. Looks at you.

"Jesus Christ," he says quietly.

You reach for his shirt. Start unbuttoning it, fingers fumbling slightly because he's watching you so intently and it's making your hands shake. He lets you get three buttons undone before his patience runs out and he pulls it over his head, sends it somewhere across the room. And—fuck. You knew he'd be fit, he's an athlete, but seeing it is different. Tanned skin, defined muscles, the sharp V of his hips disappearing into his trousers. You put your hands on his chest, feel his heart racing under your palms, feel the way his breathing has gone uneven.

"Your turn," you say, fingers going to his belt.

He doesn't help. Just stands there watching you unbuckle it, unzip his trousers, push them down his hips. He steps out of them and then it's just his boxer briefs—black, tight, doing absolutely nothing to hide how hard he is. You look up at him. He's grinning now, that same cocky grin from the dressing room.

"See something you like?"

"Shut up."

"Make me." You kiss him again and he makes this sound—low and pleased—before his hands are on you, one sliding up your back to unclasp your bra while the other grips your ass, pulling you flush against him. The bra falls away and then his mouth is on your neck, your collarbone, trailing lower.

"Bed," he says against your skin. "Get on the bed."

You do. Climb onto the mattress, lie back against the pillows, and watch him watch you. He hooks his thumbs into his boxer briefs, pushes them down, and—

Oh. He's—fuck, he's big. Thick and hard and already leaking at the tip, and when he wraps his hand around himself and strokes once, you forget how to breathe.

"Still want to tell me to shut up?" he asks, climbing onto the bed, caging you in with his arms.

You can't speak. Can only stare at him—at the way his muscles shift as he moves, at the cocky tilt to his smile, at the heat in his eyes. His hand slides up your thigh. Slowly. Taking his time. Fingers tracing patterns against your skin until he reaches the edge of your underwear.

"These," he says, snapping the lace against your hip, "need to come off."

He doesn't wait for permission. Just hooks his fingers into the lace and drags it down your legs, tosses it somewhere behind him. Then his hands are on your thighs, spreading them apart, and the way he's looking at you—hungry and focused and completely shameless—makes heat flood through your entire body.

"Fuck," he says quietly, almost to himself. "Look at you."

His fingers trace up your inner thigh, feather-light, getting closer and closer to where you need him. But he doesn't touch you yet. Just keeps tracing these maddening patterns against your skin while you try very hard not to squirm.

"Lando—"

"Yeah?" He's grinning now. Knows exactly what he's doing. "Something you need?"

"Touch me."

"I am touching you."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?" His fingers move higher, so close now you can feel the heat of his hand. "You might need to be more specific."

You grab his wrist. Guide his hand where you want it. His palm cups you and you both make a sound—yours is relief, his is something darker. "Fuck, you're already wet," he says, and then his fingers are sliding through your folds, finding your clit, circling it with just enough pressure to make your hips jerk. "Is this what you've been thinking about? All through dinner?"

You can't answer. Can only arch into his touch as he works you with his fingers, slow and deliberate, learning exactly what makes you gasp.

"Answer me," he says, leaning down to kiss your neck. Teeth scraping against your pulse point. "Have you been thinking about this?"

"Yes." It comes out breathless. "Yes, fuck—"

"Good." He slides one finger inside you and you both groan. "Because I've been thinking about it since the fucking dressing room."

He adds a second finger, curls them just right, and you see stars. His thumb finds your clit and works it in rhythm with his fingers, and you're already embarrassingly close, already fisting the sheets because it's too much and not enough all at once.

"That's it," he murmurs against your throat. "Let me feel you."

You come hard, sudden and sharp, your back arching off the bed. He works you through it, fingers never stopping, prolonging it until you're shaking and trying to push his hand away because it's too sensitive. He pulls his fingers out slowly. Brings them to his mouth. Sucks them clean while maintaining eye contact.

"Jesus Christ," you manage.

"We're not done." He's already reaching for his trousers, digging through the pockets. Pulls out his wallet, then a condom. "Not even close."

He tears it open with his teeth, rolls it on, and then he's positioning himself between your legs. The head of his cock presses against your entrance and you both freeze for a second.

"You good?" he asks, and there's something almost vulnerable in the question. Like he actually cares about the answer.

"Yeah." You pull him down into a kiss. "I'm good."

He pushes in slowly. Just the tip at first, letting you adjust, and fuck—he's thick. Thicker than his fingers, stretching you in a way that's just on the right side of too much. "Breathe," he says against your mouth. "Just breathe."

You do. He pushes in deeper, inch by inch, until he's fully seated inside you and you both have to take a moment because it's overwhelming. He feels enormous like this, filling you completely, and when he shifts slightly you make a sound that's almost pained.

"Okay?" His hand cups your face, thumb stroking your cheek. "Talk to me."

"Move." Your hands grip his shoulders. "Please move."

He does. Pulls out slowly, pushes back in, sets a rhythm that's measured and deliberate. His eyes don't leave yours, watching every reaction, every gasp, adjusting his angle until he finds the spot that makes you cry out. "There?" he asks, doing it again.

"Yes—fuck—there—"

He grins. Picks up the pace, driving into you harder now, and the bed frame starts hitting the wall with each thrust. His hand slides down between your bodies, finds your clit again, and the combination of his cock and his fingers is going to kill you.

"Come on," he says, voice rough. "Want to feel you come on my cock."

You're already close, can feel it building at the base of your spine. His rhythm never falters, just keeps hitting that spot inside you over and over while his fingers work your clit, and when you come this time it's harder than before, your whole body seizing up as you clench around him.

"Fuck—" He groans, hips stuttering, and then he's coming too, burying himself deep and grinding against you as he rides it out.

For a moment, neither of you move. Just breathe hard against each other, hearts racing, skin slicked with sweat. Then he pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and collapses next to you on the bed.

"So," he says, still catching his breath. "That was—"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Whatever you're about to say. Just—don't."

He laughs. Rolls onto his side to look at you. "I was going to say that was worth the three-week wait."

Despite yourself, you smile. "It was pretty good."

"Pretty good?" He looks offended. "I just made you come twice."

"Twice isn't that impressive."

"Give me ten minutes." His hand slides up your thigh. "We'll go for three."

For a second, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together last night. The restaurant. The car. Your apartment. Your bed. Lando.

You sit up. The sheets are tangled, your dress is still pooled on the floor by the door, and there's a dull ache between your legs that confirms last night definitely happened. But Lando's not here. His clothes are gone. His shoes. The only evidence he was ever here is the faint smell of his cologne on your pillows and a note on the nightstand.

You reach for it. Hotel de Paris stationery, which means he had it in his pocket.

You shower. The hot water does nothing to settle the uneasy feeling in your stomach. When you get out, you pull up his contact—the number he texted you from with that blurry selfie—and type out a message.You hit send. The message sits there for a second, then: Not Delivered

You stare at it. Try again. Not Delivered

He blocked you. Or his number's disconnected. Or something. You wait a day. Try calling. It rings once, then straight to voicemail. The generic kind.

"The person you are trying to reach is not available." You hang up. Stare at your phone and think, what the fuck?

The weeks blur together in a haze of spreadsheets and vendor calls and forcing yourself not to think about Lando Norris.

You throw yourself into work, you finalize the floral arrangements for the ceremony—white roses and peonies, exactly as Pietra specified. Confirm the string quartet for cocktail hour and the DJ for the reception. Coordinate with the Villa d'Este staff about the timeline, the seating chart, the fucking napkin placement. You email Pietra approximately four hundred times about details that probably don't matter but keep you busy enough that you don't have time to feel pathetic.

You don't tell anyone what happened. Not your friends, not your assistant, definitely not Pietra. What would you even say? I slept with the best man and then he ghosted me? It sounds stupid even in your head. You see his name in the email threads. Max and Pietra's group messages about the bachelor party, about travel arrangements, about the rehearsal dinner. Lando responds to everything—quick, efficient, and never directly to you. Always just replies-all to the group.

You stop trying to text him after the first week. Stop checking his Instagram after the second. By week three, you've almost convinced yourself it was just a one-night thing that you both silently agreed to forget about.

Almost. Then Pietra sends the email.

Wonderful, this is going to be absolutely fucking wonderful.

You arrive at Villa d'Este on Sunday afternoon with your tablet, three different backup chargers, and a determination to be so fucking professional that Lando Norris will feel like an absolute idiot for whatever game he's playing.

The villa is stunning—which is not surprising given that Pietra wouldn't settle for quite literally anything less. Terracotta and cypress trees and Italian sunshine that makes everything look like a painting. The staff greets you at the entrance, and you're shown to your room: a corner suite with a view of Lake Como that would be romantic if you weren't here to work.

You unpack. Check your timeline. Confirm with the florist about tomorrow's delivery. Send Pietra a message letting her know you've arrived. She responds immediately with approximately forty heart emojis. The welcome dinner is at 8 PM on the terrace. You spend an hour deciding what to wear, which is stupid because this is a work event and you should just throw on something professional and call it done. Instead you try on four different dresses before settling on a linen midi dress in cream—elegant, appropriate, and coincidentally (totally not planned) makes you look incredible.

At 7:38 PM, you step onto the terrace. It's exactly as beautiful as you expected. String lights overhead, long tables set with flickering candles, the lake shimmering in the background. Pietra spots you immediately and practically runs over, pulling you into a hug that smells like expensive perfume and champagne. "You're here! Oh my god, thank you for coming early, I know it's a lot but I just—I needed you here, you know?"

"Of course," you say, and you mean it. Pietra's one of the good ones. "Everything's going to be perfect."

"I know. Because you're here." She squeezes your hand, then gets pulled away by one of her bridesmaids. You grab a glass of wine from a passing server. Scan the terrace. Max is by the bar with his brother. The bridesmaids are clustered near the railing, taking photos. And then—

There.

Lando's at the far end of the terrace, leaning against the stone wall with a beer in his hand, laughing at something one of the groomsmen just said. White linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair messy like he's been on the beach. Even from here you can see the way the fabric pulls across his shoulders when he moves. Beautiful bastard.

He hasn't seen you yet. You turn away and head toward the opposite side of the terrace. You can do this. You can be in the same space as him for one week without it being a thing. You're a professional for fucksake.

"There she is!"

Max appears at your elbow, grinning. "The woman who's going to make sure my fiancée doesn't have a breakdown over napkin colors. We owe you our lives."

You laugh despite yourself. "Just doing my job."

"Well, you're doing it incredibly well." He gestures toward the bar. "Come on, let me introduce you to everyone. Well—everyone you haven't met yet."

Your stomach drops. "Max, I've already—"

But he's already steering you across the terrace, toward the group of groomsmen, toward the bar, toward him. "Lando, mate, have you met—" For half a second—just half—something flashes across his face. Something that looks almost like oh fuck. But then it's gone, smoothed over, replaced by that easy smile, and he's extending his hand like you're strangers.

"Don't think we've been properly introduced," he says. His voice is perfectly friendly. Perfectly casual. "Lando."

You stare at him. At his outstretched hand. At the complete absence of acknowledgment in his eyes. "I know who you are," you say.

"Right. Wedding planner." His smile doesn't waver. "Pietra talks about you constantly."

He's still holding out his hand. Waiting. You shake it. His grip is firm, professional, and he lets go immediately—no lingering, no recognition, nothing. Max is already talking. Something about the bachelor party itinerary, about the boat they rented, about someone's girlfriend who couldn't make it. You're not listening. You're looking at Lando, at the way he's nodding along to Max's story like this is completely normal, like he didn't fuck you three months ago and then disappear.

"—right?" Max finishes.

You have no idea what he just said. "Absolutely."

"Perfect! I'll let you two sort out the logistics." Max claps Lando on the shoulder and wanders off toward Pietra, leaving you standing there with a man who's currently pretending he doesn't know what you look like naked.

The silence stretches. Lando takes a sip of his beer. You grip your wine glass hard enough that you're mildly concerned it might shatter. "So," he says finally. "Bachelor party logistics, huh?."

You stare at him. "Are you fucking serious right now?"

"What?" He has the audacity to look confused. Concerned, even. "Did Max not fill you in on the timing? I can send you the—"

"Stop."

He stops. The casual mask slips just slightly—something sharper underneath, something that looks almost like guilt but you're not sure because it's gone before you can name it. "You blocked my number," you say quietly. The terrace is loud enough that no one else will hear, but you keep your voice low anyway. "You left a note that said you'd call. And then you blocked my fucking number."

"I didn't—" He stops. Looks away. Jaw working. "It's complicated."

"Complicated." You laugh, and it comes out brittle. "Right. So complicated that you couldn't send a single text that said 'hey, this was a mistake' or 'I'm not interested' or literally anything besides complete silence for three months."

"It wasn't like that."

"Then what was it like?" You step closer, and he actually takes a step back. Good. "Because from where I'm standing, you spent weeks pursuing me, convinced me to have dinner with you, fucked me, and then disappeared. So please, Lando, tell me what it was actually like."

His hand tightens around his beer bottle. "Can we not do this here?"

"Oh, now you want to talk?"

"I—" He glances around. The terrace is full of people, but no one's paying attention to you. "Yes. Just—not here."

"Why not?"

"Because—" He stops. Runs his free hand through his hair, and there it is—the first crack in the facade. He looks actually frustrated, like an actual fucking human being. "Because Max and Pietra don't know. About us. About—" He gestures vaguely between you. "Any of it."

"There is no us," you say. "There was one night. That you pretended never happened."

"I'm not pretending."

"Then what do you call this?" You gesture at the space between you. "The handshake? The 'don't think we've been properly introduced'? What the fuck was that?"

"I was trying to—" He stops. "I didn't know what else to do."

"You could've been honest, Lando."

"Yeah, well, I'm trying to be honest right now."

"Three months late."

"I know." He steps closer and his voice drops, quiet enough that it's just for you. "I know, and I—look, can we please just talk about this somewhere that isn't the middle of Pietra's welcome dinner with forty people around us?"

You open your mouth to tell him no, to tell him there's nothing to talk about, to tell him he had three months to have this conversation and he chose silence instead. But before you can get a single word out, someone calls his name.

"Lando!"

You both turn. There's a woman walking toward you—tall, blonde, short hair, absolutely stunning in a lilac slip dress. She's smiling, bright and easy and completely unaware that she's just walked into the middle of something, and when she reaches Lando she rises up on her toes and kisses his cheek like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Your stomach drops so fast you actually feel dizzy.

"There you are," she says, her hand landing on his arm. The touch is light, casual, but it stays there, definitely stays there. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Pietra wants to do a champagne toast before dinner and she's panicking because she can't find the speech she wrote."

Lando's face does something that looks like dread and resignation and guilt all at once. "Magui, I—"

And that's when it clicks. When your brain finally catches up to what you're seeing, to who this is, to what this means. Magui. Magui Corceiro. Portuguese model, Lando's ex-girlfriend, and—according to Pietra's meticulously organized bridal party spreadsheet that you've reviewed approximately three dozen times in the last two months—the maid of honor. She turns to you now, still smiling, still completely oblivious to the fact that you're currently having an out-of-body experience. "Hi! You must be the wedding planner. Pietra showed me all your photos of the ceremony setup—it's going to be absolutely gorgeous."

You can't speak. Your brain has completely short-circuited because Lando's ex-girlfriend is standing in front of you being lovely and friendly and probably a genuinely nice person, and she has no idea that you slept with him three months ago. That he left a note on your nightstand and then blocked your number. That he's standing here right now looking like he wants the terrace to open up and swallow him whole.

"Hi," you manage. Your voice sounds strange, like it's coming from very far away. "Yes. The planner."

"I'm Magui." She extends her hand and you shake it on autopilot, and her grip is warm and her smile is genuine and you kind of want to die. "I'm so excited for this week. Pietra's been planning this wedding since I met her, I swear."

"Yeah," you say. Very articulate. "She has."

Magui's hand is still on Lando's arm. She's not holding on tight, not being possessive, but it's there—a casual point of contact that speaks to history, to familiarity, to the kind of comfort you only get with someone you've known for years. And suddenly, with a clarity that makes you feel physically sick, everything makes sense. The Hotel de Paris, where he took you to dinner. Where people saw you together, where phones came out, where he very deliberately chose somewhere public and high-profile instead of some quiet bistro where you could've had privacy. The ghosting that came after. The blocked number. The three months of complete silence. He took you there to make her jealous. He fucked you and then he went back to her. And you were stupid enough to think it meant something.

Wow, what a fucking joke.

You look at Lando and he's staring at you like he knows exactly what you're thinking, like he can see the entire realization playing out on your face. There's something desperate in his expression now, something that looks almost like panic, and his mouth opens like he's about to say something, like he's going to try to explain or defend himself or ask you to just wait, just give him a second to—

You don't wait. "Excuse me," you say, and your voice comes out perfectly level, perfectly professional. "I need to check on the seating arrangements."

You turn and walk away before either of them can respond. You don't run—running would draw attention, would make it obvious that something's wrong—but you walk fast enough that you're through the terrace doors and into the villa's cool interior within seconds. The hallway is blessedly empty. You make it around the corner, out of sight of the terrace, and then you stop. Just stop, press your back against the wall, close your eyes, and try very hard to remember how to breathe.

Fuck.

You avoid Lando Norris for the next four days. Monday is vendor deliveries and a conveniently timed florist crisis. Tuesday is spa day for the bridal party, which you skip because you're "confirming final counts with catering." Wednesday is the rehearsal dinner and you plant yourself next to Pietra the entire night, keep Max's brother between you and Lando during dinner, and do not make eye contact. Not once. Not when he gives his speech and everyone laughs. Not when you feel him watching you from across the table. Not when Magui's hand is on his thigh and you have to pretend you don't see it, don't care, aren't replaying that night in your apartment on a fucking loop.

It works. For four days, it works.

Then it's Thursday night—the night before the wedding—and you're alone in your room. You've showered, changed into an oversized t-shirt, pulled your hair into a messy knot. Your tablet is open on the bed next to you, tomorrow's timeline pulled up even though you've memorized every minute. Ceremony at 4:30. Cocktail hour at 5:45. Reception at 7:00. Everything is confirmed, everything is perfect, and you should be asleep because tomorrow is sixteen hours of nonstop work.

Instead you're staring at the timeline trying not to think about the fact that tomorrow you'll have to watch Lando stand at the altar in that Cifonelli suit. Watch him give a speech about love and commitment while Magui sits at the head table looking beautiful and oblivious.

There's a knock at your door. 11:47 PM. More likely than not, it's Pietra panicking about something last-minute, or hotel staff with towels you didn't ask for.

It's one of the groomsmen. Tom, maybe, or the one whose name you keep forgetting—one of Max's childhood friends who has been aggressively normal all week and therefore completely indistinguishable from the others. He's still in his dinner clothes with his tie loosened and he's holding his phone out to you.

"Sorry, do you have the groomsmen timeline for tomorrow? Mine cuts off after the ceremony and I can't find the—"

"Yeah," you say. "One second."

You go back to your tablet. Pull it up. AirDrop it to him. The whole thing takes forty seconds. "Brilliant, cheers," he says. "Sorry for bothering you."

"It's fine."

You close the door. Stand there.

The room is exactly as you left it. Tablet on the bed, timeline pulled up, lamp on the nightstand casting the same warm light it's been casting for the last two hours. Nothing has changed. Everything is fine and confirmed and in its place and you did not just spend the walk to the door composing your face into something that wasn't—

You were going to fix your hair. Your hand was actually moving toward your hair. You go back to bed. Turn off the lamp and stare at the ceiling for a while in the dark like a normal person who is completely fine and definitely not lying in a five-star suite on Lake Como having feelings about a man who couldn't be bothered to text.

You're asleep by one. Probably.

You're up at six. The florist calls at 6:04 because she's psychotic, and there are, apparently, too many peonies. You stand on your balcony in yesterday's t-shirt and handle it, because that's what you do, and also because handling it means you can't think about anything else, which is the closest thing to a coping mechanism you have right now.

By eight you've redistributed the surplus flowers, confirmed the string quartet's arrival, talked Pietra down from a weather spiral (partly cloudy is not rain, it has never been rain, clouds are not an emergency), and eaten something standing over the sink. By ten you're in your dress and moving through the villa with your tablet and your timeline and your entire personality held together by a thread.

It works. Right up until the ceremony. The groomsmen are already at the altar when you do your final sweep from the back of the terrace. You're checking sightlines. Checking the musicians. Checking that the flower girl hasn't eaten the petals out of her basket again.

You find him anyway. You weren't looking and you find him anyway, which is really just your life now. The suit fits exactly as well as you knew it would. You stood in that dressing room and checked every seam yourself. Midnight blue, peak lapels, the mother-of-pearl buttons Pietra specified in the email she sent at 11 PM on a Tuesday. His hair is neat for once. He's laughing at something Max just said, head tilted, and he looks, well, he looks beautiful.

You look back down at your tablet. He looks up. You feel it without seeing it, that same thing you felt across the room at Cifonelli four months ago, and you keep your eyes on your screen and breathe.

The ceremony starts one minute late. You note it and say nothing. Pietra comes down the aisle and she looks so genuinely, stupidly happy that something in your chest does a thing you weren't prepared for. Ten meters of Italian lace and she's crying already and Max looks like a man who cannot believe his luck, and you're standing at the side of this terrace with your tablet and your earpiece and your professional remove, and it still gets you. It always gets you. It's the only part of this job that still surprises you every single time.

You watch from the periphery, same as always. That's where you live at weddings—just outside the frame, making sure everything inside it stays perfect. You check the musicians. Check the timing. Check that the rings are where they're supposed to be.

You don't mean to keep finding him in the crowd. It just keeps happening. He's watching Max the whole time. That's the thing—there's no performance to it, no awareness of how he looks. Just him, actually present, actually feeling something, and when Max's voice breaks slightly on his vows Lando looks down at his shoes for a second like he's trying to get it together.

You write 4:47—ceremony concluded in your notes.

When they kiss the whole terrace erupts and Lando is the loudest, clapping with his whole body, grinning like an idiot, and Max grabs him first before Pietra and they do that thing men do where they hug and immediately try to make it funny and Pietra throws her arms around both of them and the photographer is getting all of it and you are standing fifteen feet away writing transition to cocktail hour—on schedule.

Completely fine. Cocktail hour is yours. This is where you live—moving between vendors, checking the canapé timing, making sure the string quartet transitions correctly, solving the three small disasters that happen at every single cocktail hour without exception. You're good at this part. You're good at all of it actually, that's the whole problem, because being good at your job means you're always just present enough to notice things you'd rather not.

Like Lando, at the edge of the terrace, with a drink in his hand, not talking to anyone. You notice it the way you notice everything—peripherally, catalogued, filed away. He's been stopped twice for photos, laughed at something Max's brother said, done a full loop of the terrace. But right now he's standing at the stone railing looking out at the lake and he looks like someone who is also trying not to look at something.

You go check on the canapés. The reception starts at seven on the dot, which you will feel smug about for at least a week. The room is everything Pietra wanted and you knew it would be—candlelight and white flowers and the lake through the open doors, and when the bridal party is announced and everyone floods in you let yourself have exactly four seconds of satisfaction before you're back on your tablet checking the dinner service timeline.

You're at the coordinator's table near the kitchen entrance. Good sightline, close enough to intervene, far enough to be invisible. You've eaten half a bread roll. You have a glass of water and a glass of wine and you've touched neither of them in forty minutes. This is normal. This is what weddings look like from your side of them.

The speeches start at eight. Max's father goes first. Then Pietra's sister, who cries through the whole thing in a way that is genuinely charming and gets the room crying with her. Then the maid of honor—Magui, composed and warm and funny in exactly the right measure, and you watch her at the microphone and feel nothing except a vague and distant acknowledgment that she is, irritatingly, very likeable.

Then Lando stands up. The room shifts the way rooms do when someone walks into them with a specific kind of energy. He gets a cheer before he's even said a word, someone whoops from the back, and he grins and waits for it to die down with the patience of someone who has been in front of crowds his entire adult life.

"Right," he says. "So I've been told to keep this under ten minutes."

Someone shouts something. He laughs. "Which is generous, actually, because I had a whole thing prepared and then Max told me Pietra's sister was going first and I watched her speak at the rehearsal dinner and I've scrapped it completely because there's no following that."

More laughter. Pietra is already crying again. You are looking at your tablet. "I've known Max since we were kids," Lando says, and his voice shifts—still easy, still him, but quieter now. This was more real. "And I can tell you that for a long time he was the most annoying person I'd ever met, which is saying something because I work with some genuinely difficult people—"

Laughter.

"—but the thing about Max is that he has never once, in fifteen years, pretended to be someone he isn't. Not for anyone. And I always thought that was just—I thought that was just who he was. That it was easy for him."

He pauses. Looks at Max.

"And then I watched him meet Pietra."

The room has gone very quiet. "And I realized it wasn't that it was easy. It was that he was waiting. For someone who made it—not easy. Just—worth it." He picks up his glass. "I've never said this to your face because you'd be insufferable about it, but you're my best friend and I love you, mate. And Pietra." He turns to her. "Thank you for making him this annoying to be around. He smiles all the time now, it's disgusting, we all hate it."

Pietra laughs through her tears.

"To Max and Pietra." The room rises and you raise your water glass and you do not look at him and your throat is doing something completely unreasonable that you are going to ignore. By nine-thirty the dancing is in full swing and your job has mostly become logistics maintenance—checking the cake is ready, confirming the late night snacks are on schedule, fielding a minor situation involving someone's elderly aunt and the wrong seat assignment. Small things. Manageable things.

Which means you have too much space in your head. You slip out through the side door onto the smaller terrace, the one that wraps around the north side of the villa. It's quieter here, just the music drifting out from the reception and the lake below and the night air which is warm and still and completely wasted on you. You lean against the railing and look at the water and let yourself have five minutes of not performing.

You hear the door behind you. You know before you turn around and turn around anyway. Better to get it over with. He's loosened his tie at some point, top button undone, and he's holding two glasses of wine which is either presumptuous or optimistic or both. He holds one out to you.

You take it. You're too tired not to. He comes to stand next to you at the railing, not close enough to be a thing, just—there. Looking at the lake. You look at the lake too. The music from inside is muffled out here, something slow, and the water is doing that thing it does at night where it looks completely still even though it isn't.

"Good speech," you say, because you're a professional and it was.

"Thanks."

Silence. Not uncomfortable exactly. Just weighted. "The flowers looked incredible," he says.

"They did."

"Pietra cried when she saw the ceremony setup. Like, before anyone arrived. Just walked in and started crying."

"I know. I was there."

"Right." He turns his glass in his hand. "You're always there."

You're not sure what to do with that so you don't do anything with it. The lake does its thing. The music does its thing. You finish half your wine and let the silence sit because you're too tired to perform and apparently so is he.

"Magui and I have been on and off for four years," he says finally. Not looking at you. Looking at the water. "On when it was easy, off when it wasn't, back on because it's familiar and familiar felt like enough when you're never in the same place for more than two weeks." He pauses. "It wasn't enough. It hadn't been for a long time. We both knew it."

You don't say anything.

"The night I took you to dinner," he says. "We were off."

There it is. "And after," he says. "When I left yours. We were still off." He pauses. "And then I got back and she called and we were," he stops. "We were on again. By the time I thought to reach you it had been two weeks and I didn't know how to." He exhales. "There's no good version of this."

"No," you say. "There isn't."

"I should have told you. Before dinner, before any of it, I should have told you it was complicated and let you decide if you wanted to be anywhere near it." He turns his glass in his hand. "I didn't because I didn't want you to say no."

The music inside swells for a moment then settles. Someone laughs, loud and bright, and then it's quiet again out here.

"So right now," you say. Carefully. "You and her."

He doesn't answer immediately, which is its own answer. "It's complicated," he finally says.

"You said that already. At the welcome dinner."

"I know." He looks at you then. Really looks at you, and you wish he wouldn't because it's much easier to be angry at someone when they're not looking at you like that. "I'm sorry. For the record. Not because I need you to forgive me or because we're stuck at the same wedding. Just—you didn't deserve any of it. The dinner, the note, the silence. None of it was fair to you."

You look at him for a long moment. He means it. That's the worst part. He's standing here in the suit you watched being fitted four months ago and he means every word of it and it doesn't change a single thing.

"No," you say. "It wasn't. You should sort it out," you say. "Whatever it is. Just—sort it out."

You mean it as exactly what it is. Not an opening, not a door left ajar. Just the truth—that four years of on and off is no way to live and you can see it on him and whatever else he is he doesn't deserve that either.

You pick up your tablet. Turn toward the door.

"Hey."

You stop. He's stepped closer. Not by much—just enough that you're aware of it, the same way you've been aware of him all night, all week, across every room you've had the misfortune of sharing. His tie is loose and his eyes are doing the thing they do and he has absolutely no business looking like that.

"What," you say.

"Nothing." The corner of his mouth pulls up. "Just — you look really good tonight."

"Lando."

"I'm just saying."

"You're just saying," you repeat.

"The dress is—" he gestures vaguely, "— it's a good dress." You look at him. At the half smile and the careful eyes and the very deliberate closing of distance that he's doing so slowly you're almost supposed to not notice.

"Don't," you say.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're doing something."

He takes another half step. You don't move back, which is either confidence or stubbornness, and at this point you genuinely can't tell the difference. He's close enough now that you can smell his cologne, the same one from the dressing room, from your kitchen, from the one night you've been trying to stop replaying for four months.

"Sort it out first," you say quietly.

He stops. Something moves across his face. The half smile fades into something more honest, and he looks at you for a long moment in the dark with the lake behind him and the music leaking through the doors and forty people thirty feet away who have no idea.

"Yeah," he says finally. Quietly. "Okay."

You hold his gaze for one more second and then you go back inside.

The cake goes out at nine fifty-two, eight minutes behind schedule, which you will think about for days. Pietra doesn't notice. Nobody notices. The room is candlelight and dancing and white flowers and everything she asked for, and you stand at the edge of it with your tablet and your earpiece and watch it all run exactly the way you built it to.

Max dips Pietra on the dance floor and she shrieks and the whole room cheers.

You write 2147—reception on track in your notes. You don't look for him. That's the thing—you don't look. And somewhere between the cake and the late night pizzette and the moment Pietra throws her bouquet directly at her maid of honor's face, you realize you've stopped bracing for it. Stopped waiting for him to appear in your peripheral vision. Stopped doing the thing where you feel him in a room before you see him.

Maybe that's something. Maybe that's enough for tonight. You're in the car to the airport by noon on Monday. Your inbox has forty-three unread emails, a voice note from Pietra that is mostly crying and the word perfect repeated several times, and nothing else.

You fly home. You make coffee. You open your laptop.

You don't check for anything specific.

He calls on a Wednesday. Three weeks after the wedding, 9 PM your time, and you answer on the second ring which you will think about later with some irritation.

He calls two weeks after that, and then two months later.

It's October when you finally have the balls to properly ask.

You don't mean to. You've been on the phone for forty minutes about nothing—his race in Japan, your nightmare client in Paris, an argument about whether peonies are actually better than roses which you're winning handily—and it just comes out.

"Are you and Magui still off?"

Silence. Two seconds, maybe three.

"Yeah," he says. "We're off."

"Okay."

"Okay," he repeats, and he's quiet again

Neither of you says anything for a moment. "The peonies thing," you say. "I'm right."

"You're not right."

"I'm always right."

"Okay, you're right about flowers and wrong about everything else."

"Name one thing."

"You told me Austin was always loud and last weekend it was completely fine actually!"

You're laughing before you can stop it and he sounds pleased about that, insufferably pleased, and you talk for another twenty minutes about nothing and when you hang up you sit with yeah, we're off for a long time in the dark.

He doesn't call for another two months.

You don't call him either. That's the thing you come back to, later—you could have. You have his number, he has yours, there's no rule that says it has to be him. But you wait, and he doesn't call, and you tell yourself it's fine because it is fine, it was always going to be fine, you knew what this was.

You get through November on spreadsheets and a particularly chaotic engagement party in Cannes. December on a destination wedding in Marrakech that nearly kills you professionally but produces the best photographs you've ever seen. January on sheer spite and very good coffee.

He calls in February. A Sunday, 11 AM, like no time has passed at all.

You answer on the third ring. Progress.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"I'm in London."

"Okay."

"It's raining."

"It's always raining."

A pause. "I know I went quiet."

"You don't have to do this, Lando."

"I know I don't have to." His voice is even. "I just wanted to say it. I went quiet and I'm sorry."

You look out your window at Monaco in February, grey and still, the harbour flat and cold.

"Is everything okay," you ask.

"Yeah." A beat. "It's getting there."

You believe him. You always believe him, which is its own problem.

"I have a bride in Tuscany," you say. "She wants the entire wedding in shades of terracotta."

"Is that bad?"

"It's not bad it's just—it's a lot of terracotta, Lando."

He laughs and something in your chest unknots quietly and you talk for an hour about nothing and when you hang up you don't sit with it this time. You just go make coffee and open your laptop and get on with your day.

He calls the following Sunday. And the one after that.

By spring it's just—a thing. Your thing. He calls on Sundays when he can, Wednesdays when he can't wait until Sunday, random Tuesday nights from airports when his flight is delayed and he's bored and you're the person he wants to talk to apparently, which you have filed under not my problem and left there.

You know his schedule better than you mean to. You know Bahrain is always chaos and he hates the Monaco GP for reasons he won't fully explain and that he's been trying to learn to cook since January with limited success.

"The pasta was fine," he says, from his kitchen in Woking on a Wednesday in April.

"You said that last time and then you told me you ate cereal for dinner."

"The pasta was fine and then I had cereal for dessert. Two separate things."

"That's not what dessert means."

"That's exactly what dessert means."

"Lando."

"What, it was good cereal."

You're smiling at your kitchen table over a glass of wine and you are absolutely not thinking about what this is.

He doesn't call on Sunday.

Or the Sunday after that. You don't call him either. You tell yourself you're busy, which is true—there's a wedding in Vienna in November and a corporate event in Paris that's somehow become your problem and a bride who has changed her color palette four times in three weeks. You're busy.

You're always busy, so it's fine.

October becomes November. November becomes December and you're at your parents' house on Christmas Eve standing in the kitchen when your phone rings.

Your stomach does the thing before you've even looked at the screen.

"Merry Christmas," he says.

"It's not Christmas until tomorrow."

"Merry Christmas Eve then."

"That's not a thing."

"I'm making it a thing." A pause, warm and easy. "Are you with your family?"

"Yes."

"Good." Simply. Warmly. "Good."

You're standing in your childhood kitchen with two glasses of wine in you and Lando Norris is wishing you a Merry Christmas Eve from wherever he is and you are so far from fine it's almost funny.

"Merry Christmas Eve," you say.

He laughs. Soft and real. You talk until your mum calls you for dinner. You hang up and go and you don't think about it and you are not fine and that's just where you are now apparently.

He doesn't call in January.

Or February. Or March. Or April or May.

You stop expecting it around March, which feels like its own small achievement. You get through February on a wedding in Marrakech and sheer stubbornness. March on a nightmare engagement party in Geneva and very good chocolate. April on nothing in particular, just the ordinary machinery of your life clicking along without him in it, which is how it was before and how it will be after and that's fine.

You're fine.

It's June. A Thursday afternoon, sun coming through your kitchen window at that specific Instagramable angle, coffee going cold on the counter. You have fourteen unread emails and a call with a florist in an hour and approximately zero feelings about anything.

Your laptop pings.

You stop. Go back.

Read the CC line again like it's going to say something different the second time.

It doesn't.

You close the laptop.

Sit there.

The florist call is in thirty-eight minutes. The seating chart is still a disaster. Your coffee is cold and the sun is coming through the window and Monaco is doing its thing outside completely unbothered by the fact that you are sitting at your kitchen table doing the math again and this time it's adding up to something very fucking specific.

Six months of silence and this is what he was sorting.

You sit with that for a while. Let it go where it needs to go. The Christmas Eve call. The easy Wednesday. Sort it out first. Him saying yeah, okay on a terrace in July like it was a promise.

And maybe it was. Maybe this is just what okay looked like from where he was standing.

Your laptop pings and you open it without thinking.

From: Lando Norris To: You Subject: Re: Wedding Planning Inquiry

One line.

I can explain.

You stare at it for a long time.

Then you close it. Open a new email. Type:

Hi Magui, lovely to hear from you—congratulations on your engagement!

He can fucking wait.

you already know how to build a fire; your father taught you years ago during one particularly bad winter when the power kept cutting out for hours at a time. you remember sitting cross-legged on the floor wrapped in blankets while he explained airflow and why flames suffocate without enough oxygen. you remember the gray in his head more than the instructions.

still, you let lars explain it anyway.

“dry leaves first,” he continues, focused entirely on the tiny structure he’s building between the logs. “then smaller branches. then bigger pieces after it catches.”

his personality changes when he teaches things. care reveals itself in strange ways, you suppose. sometimes it’s simply someone believing you’re worth explaining things to carefully. you hadn’t realized how long it had been since someone last treated you gently enough to teach you something without irritation. years, maybe? no. longer than that.

lars’ house is comfy. it's not really a house; it's more like a modified garage, but you never cared about that.

your mother used to say calling a house “comfy” was just a polite way of admitting it was small. but lars’ house isn’t small; at least you don't think so, and your mom used to be more wrong than right most of the time.

lars’ house feels safe in quiet ways your apartment never has. you find yourself lingering longer every visit. gus didn't believe you the first time you explained the way his house made you feel, thinking you were making a bad joke.

“he doesn’t even turn his lights on,” he said slowly, fork suspended halfway to his mouth. “that’s insane.”

you shrugged a little, suddenly embarrassed by how defensive you felt. “i don’t either.”

across from you, karin looks delighted. you think she genuinely loves how similar you and lars are.

which is a little concerning, honestly.

the snow has started melting by now. ice dripping from rooftops and patches of dead grass reappearing.

no matter how many layers you wear, you still feel cold when you’re alone. you’ve started suspecting the feeling has very little to do with temperature.

ever since meeting lars, you’ve been spending less time by yourself. you're careful about not being too pushy; you can tell lars needs space the same way animals need quiet after being startled. too much pressure, and he retreats into himself immediately, gaze darting elsewhere, shoulders tightening beneath his sweaters, and an uncomfortable smile.

you knock exactly three times whenever you visit; routine makes the behavior yadda yadda, and he opens the door almost immediately now.

still awkward. still avoiding direct eye contact most days. his eyes usually land somewhere beside your shoulder instead, or on the floorboards, or briefly towards the trees outside before flickering back again.

but he opens the door.

sometimes, while stepping inside, you catch the curtains moving in karin and gus’ house across. you know they’re watching.

you know they think the two of you are already together. you aren’t.

probably.

the distinction feels blurrier lately than you’d like admitting.

you don’t actually do much at lars’ house. that’s the weirdest part. you sit at the kitchen counter while he cooks dinner quietly beside you. you fill the quiet, telling him about fabrics at the shop. which materials retain heat best. which textures people buy most during winter. you explain how velvet catches dust embarrassingly fast and how wool shrinks if washed incorrectly.

lars listens carefully to all of it.

sometimes you don't have more fabric to tell him about, so you talk about the weather instead.

“think it’s gonna rain tomorrow,” you say one evening, chin resting against your sleeve while lars stirs soup quietly at the stove.

he glances towards the window automatically. “yeah...”

“i hope it’s not a storm," that catches his attention, and you shrug awkwardly under the weight of his gaze. “i hate storms.”

you don’t tell him thunderstorms used to keep you awake as a child, convinced every sound outside your window meant something terrible approaching. you don’t explain how loneliness worsens during storms—somehow, every room suddenly feels too small and too loud at once.

lars doesn’t ask for explanations anyway.

after dinner, he suggests scrabble quietly. you always say yes immediately.

the two of you play for hours sometimes, knees accidentally brushing beneath the table before both of you subtly readjust in opposite directions. lars becomes strangely competitive during the game, focused intensely on every letter, brows furrowed with concentration severe enough to make you smile.

you didn't even know you could get your ass kicked at scrabble, and you think lars likes winning more than he likes speaking.

you’re not even sure if what you feel for him is romantic, but you know your body feels colder after leaving his house.

that evening ends earlier than you want it to.

you linger by lars’ doorway longer than necessary, coat already on, keys in your hand, while neither of you seems particularly eager to initiate the goodbye. lars stands there half-hidden beneath the warm yellow light from the lamps inside his house.

your boss advised you about this.

“give the man some space,” she’d told you once while folding some clothes behind the counter. “leave him wanting more.”

you hated that immediately, because she didn't seem to realize that you leave wanting more too.

you wave goodbye from your car anyway. lars lifts his hand back awkwardly from the porch.

and then you drive home alone.

making dinner for one person feels different now. the apartment feels too quiet while you stand over the stove. every sound is exaggerated: water boiling, the refrigerator humming faintly, and forks clinking against ceramic plates.

you thought about adopting a cat sometimes. you’d almost gone through with it once, months ago, after seeing a little gray kitten sleeping in the pet shop window downtown. something small and warm waiting for you at home sounded nice back then.

now the idea feels wrong, egoistical.

your mother used to say pets were like permanent babies. you’re not that good with babies.

you know this because karin and gus once asked you and lars to babysit theirs.

you’re still fairly certain it was a setup, karin practically radiating happiness. but they’d both looked so exhausted, pleading that they needed some time alone that refusing felt cruel somehow.

so, there you were, standing awkwardly in their living room, holding an actual human infant against your hip.

“i don’t think i’ve ever taken care of a baby before,” you admit carefully, bouncing the baby gently the way you’ve seen people do in movies.

the fact gus doesn’t immediately correct your form feels encouraging.

“they mostly eat, poop, and sleep,” he says casually while wrapping a scarf around his neck.

“they’re also incredibly fragile.” you remind him. “does lars know how to take care of one?”

“oh, god, no,” gus says instantly, laughing softly. “he is the baby of the family.”

something twists unexpectedly in your stomach at that.

the baby coos suddenly in your arms, tiny hands flexing against your sweater. without thinking, you press your nose gently against theirs. you’ve seen karin do it dozens of times by now; she looked cute doing it. you hope you look the same way.

your mind wanders briefly to what lars looked like as a baby.

“what was he like?” you ask, eyes looking for gus’s ones. “as a baby, i mean.”

“oh.” he smiles to himself as the memories flood his mind. “lars cried constantly. drove our dad and me insane.”

the answer lands strangely inside you. a small heavy feeling settling beneath your ribs, deep into your stomach.

you imagine tiny baby lars crying somewhere in the middle of the night, sensitive to everything already. too cold, maybe. too lonely. wanting comfort badly enough to scream for it.

the image hurts more than it should.

“mhm.” you murmur softly. “yeah, i was a crybaby too.”

“you don’t seem like one," he says, barely giving you any attention while he looks for his coat.

you don’t know why the comment bothers you immediately.

you shift the baby slightly higher against your chest. “my mom used to say i cried every time she left the room,” you admit quietly. “i was always attached to her side.”

you aren’t entirely sure why you say it. maybe to defend yourself. maybe to defend lars.

gus only nods vaguely, already focused on finding his keys. you realized he stopped listening to you entirely.

the front door opens. karin steps inside first, cheeks pink from the cold air outside, lars following close behind her.

your entire body notices him immediately, straightening your posture at the mere sight of him.

“hi,” you say. you would wave, but there’s a whole baby occupying both of your arms currently.

“hi,” lars answers softly, lifting his hand awkwardly instead.

karin looks thrilled. “you both know where to find us if anything happens,” she says brightly while pulling on her gloves. “good luck.”

you press your cheek softly against the baby’s. “say bye to mom and dad,” you murmur playfully.

you see by the corner of your eye lars closing his eyes tightly for one brief second before reopening them again.

a second pit forms in your stomach, this time different. heat rising towards your cheeks. you hope that you imagined that, because the idea of lars liking the image of you with a baby is too much to handle at the moment.

so you say nothing.

——

you were right about the rain. unfortunately, you were also right about the storm.

the sky had looked wrong all afternoon, heavy in a swollen gray. customers at the shop kept glancing towards the windows nervously while wind rattled against the glass.

“i can drive you home,” your boss offered while locking up for the evening. “your car looks like it dies out of spite.”

you narrowed your eyes immediately. “that was unnecessarily mean.”

“it’s also true.”

you refused anyway. partly because accepting help still embarrasses you in ways you haven’t outgrown apparently and partly because you trust your car despite everything. it’s old and ugly, yes, but loyal. your car has seen you cry before; that has to count for something in your opinion.

so naturally, because your opinion doesn't matter, it breaks down halfway home.

you stare ahead in silence for a full five seconds after it happens, hands still gripping the steering wheel tightly as rain pounds violently against the windshield.

“well,” you mutter finally.

thunder cracks somewhere nearby. the sound is so sudden and close your entire body jerks instinctively.

you hate thunderstorms.

as a child you used to think lightning existed specifically to reveal terrible things hidden in darkness. murderers, monsters, and people that walked too slow.

the church nearby only makes the fear worse. its lightning rod cuts sharply against the storm-dark sky now; you feel every thunder deep into your ribs. you inhale slowly, then exhale, and you try again.

your car is not restarting.

of course it fucking isn’t.

rain batters loudly against the roof while you debate your options. karin and gus’ house is close enough to walk to from here. you know they wouldn’t mind helping.

but then your thoughts drift automatically towards lars. and immediately recoil again.

you saw him yesterday, and showing up unexpectedly during a thunderstorm feels dangerously close to becoming too much. too needy. too attached. you know people can grow tired of being needed eventually.

the possibility terrifies you more than the storm does.

because you genuinely don’t know what you’d do if lars ever started looking exhausted by your presence.

you sit inside your car for another two minutes listening to rain hammer against metal. then finally step outside.

your coat darkens within seconds, rain clinging heavily to your hair and your sleeves, soaking through denim at the knees almost immediately. spring rain is different from winter snow: less sharp, but somehow more invasive. you shiver hard.

you hate how afraid you still are of storms at your age. every lightning flash still turns the world briefly unreal around you, empty streets appearing and disappearing in violent white bursts. the neighborhood is completely deserted.

your socks are already wet despite your best boots. at least it isn’t winter anymore; you think snow might actually kill you in weather like this.

you reach karin and gus’ porch first. your hand lifts automatically towards the door, about to knock. your eyes can't stop themselves from stealing a look at lars’ house.

across the road, his porch light is on.

your brain thinks it before you can manage to stop it: home.

thunder cracks again over your head, and before you can fully think better of it, your feet are already moving towards lars’ house instead.

you knock three times, as always. then again, louder. you knock a third time before realizing you’re dangerously close to beating his door down entirely.

then you hear movement inside, quick shuffling footsteps. the lock turns.

lars opens the door and stares at you openly for a second, surprise completely unhidden across his face.

“you’re wet.”

you blink at him. “there’s sort of a thunderstorm happening,” you point out gently.

a smile slips onto your face despite the cold. lars standing there half-awake and startled somehow immediately eases the panic sitting beneath your ribs.

“my car broke down,” you explain. “sorry.”

your teeth chatter slightly around the last word, “god, i’m freezing.”

instinctively, you almost reach towards his hand to prove your point, but halfway there you remember yourself and pull your hands quickly back against your chest instead. lars notices anyway.

without hesitation, he steps aside immediately to let you inside.

warmth hits your body all at once. not enough to stop the shaking yet, but enough to hurt slightly. your soaked clothes cling heavily to your skin as water drips onto his floorboards. the house smells faintly like cedarwood and laundry detergent and burnt wood from the fire earlier still lingering in the air.

you suddenly feel horribly intrusive.

“i’m sorry,” you say quickly while pulling your shoes off awkwardly by the door. “i was actually going to go to karin’s house, but…” but what?

but your body chose him automatically? but thunderstorms make you want comfort in embarrassing ways?

you say nothing instead.

“i’m glad you came here.” he says, softly.

your entire body reacts immediately, warmth rushing suddenly beneath your skin despite the freezing rain still soaking through your clothes. it’s humiliating how much power simple kindness has over you.

“do you maybe have a towel?” you ask, squeezing water absently from your sleeve. “or— i dunno, maybe i could shower or something? i really don’t want to bother you, i just—”

“yeah.”

lars answers so quickly you stop talking entirely.

“yeah,” he repeats, already moving slightly towards the hallway. “i’ll make you a bath.”

you smile at him instinctively despite still visibly trembling. “i’m probably going to need some clothes too,” you admit.

lars nods once.

“i think i still have some things from bianca.”

of course you know who bianca is. you know most things about lars by now, collected slowly over evenings at his kitchen table. bianca. the doll. the breakdown, then the funeral. you’d never make fun of him for it.

“okay,” you say gently. you give him a small thumbs-up even though your fingers are still shaking violently from the cold.

lars immediately starts moving around the house afterwards with hurried awkward energy. he looks slightly lost, but he’s trying so hard.

and there’s something devastating about watching someone unfamiliar with caretaking attempt it carefully anyway just because you need them to.

lars disappears down the hallway for several minutes. you stay there, standing near the front door, rainwater slowly collecting beneath your boots while thunder rattles faintly through the windows.

when lars finally comes back, he’s carrying a towel folded carefully over one arm and a pile of clothes against his chest. he extends them towards you without fully meeting your eyes.

you take them gently. “thank you.” the sweater on top is soft-looking, pale blue. slightly oversized. “they’re cute.”

lars blinks hard at that.

“i’ll—” he swallows once. “i’ll fill the bath.”

his hands are shaking a little. you notice because you’ve started noticing everything about him now. the way his breathing changes when he’s overwhelmed. the way he clenches his jaw slightly before speaking difficult sentences aloud.

you nod softly. “okay.”

you stay put after he leaves, partly because you’re worried about dripping water all over his floors. you glance absently towards the kitchen and you wonder if lars owns a mop. thunder cracks outside again. you wrap the towel tighter around yourself instinctively, breathing slowly until the shivering stops slightly.

lars returns a few minutes later.

“bath’s ready.”

he sounds slightly breathless. you immediately hope it isn’t because of nerves.

“okay,” you say, again. without meaning to, you mimic his tone exactly out of breath.

the bathroom is small. like everything in lars’ house. you’re oddly surprised by the bathtub. for some reason you always imagined lars as exclusively a shower person.

you place the folded clothes carefully on the sink cabinet. then you turn towards him, waiting for him to leave.

lars stays exactly where he is, watching you. his hands are curled tightly into fists at his sides. shoulders stiff. eyes fixed somewhere near your face but not making eye contact.

he looks terrified suddenly, though of what exactly you can’t tell. your stomach twists uneasily.

“lars?” you say his name gently, confused.

the rain continues softly outside while the bathroom light hums faintly overhead.

“can i…” lars’ voice catches halfway through the sentence. you wait quietly. “watch you bathe?”

your eyes widen slightly in surprise.

you know lars well enough by now to recognize that whatever this is, it isn’t casual. nothing about him is casual.

“oh,” you say softly.

your mind tries to fit the pieces together; lars standing rigid in the bathroom doorway. lars avoiding touch but watching your every move. lars admitting once that he’d never actually seen a woman naked before. not even bianca.

“oh, lars,” you murmur gently now, understanding dawning slowly. “is this because you’re curious?”

his shoulders tense immediately, eyes closing with force.

“about bodies, i mean,” you clarify.

he nods softly.

“that’s okay,” you say softly. “i’m curious about your body too.” the confession leaves your mouth before you fully think it through.

your eyes widen almost immediately afterwards.

“not like—” heat rushes painfully into your face. “i mean, i would never ask you to— not that there’s anything wrong with—” you stop yourself before embarrassing yourself entirely.

you inhale once slowly, then nod. “okay,” you murmur. “yeah. you can… watch me bathe.”

the soaked fabric hits the bathroom floor heavily when you drop it. cold air brushes immediately against newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps along your arms and stomach. standing in your underwear in front of someone who isn’t technically your boyfriend should probably feel more scandalous than this.

but lars doesn’t feel like not your boyfriend either.

you wonder what this means to him. surely lars wouldn’t ask this if he didn’t imagine some future between you both eventually. unless he trusts you this much because he sees you as something safer than romance entirely: a best friend, someone comforting precisely because desire isn’t involved. your stomach twists uneasily at the possibility.

your fingers linger uncertainly against the clasp of your bra. you hesitate, and think briefly about bianca: perfect plastic proportions, smooth untouched skin, impossible symmetry.

your body is painfully human in comparison. real skin, stretch marks against your thighs, tiny scars you barely remember getting, and texture everywhere.

you hope lars doesn’t notice any of it. and immediately feel guilty for hoping that at all. as if insecurity itself is a betrayal against the female body.

“do i…” you glance towards him for the first time since you dropped your clothes, doubtfully. “keep my bra on?”

lars hasn’t looked away from your body once. he’s barely blinking, expression fixed in intense concentration, like he’s terrified of missing even a second of your skin.

“lars,” you say again softly, trying not to laugh despite your nervousness. “my underwear?”

that finally seems to break him from the state he was trapped in. he nods quickly, almost alarmed by the alternative.

you think that if he sees anything more, he might actually die on the spot.

it feels strange stepping into a bath while still wearing your underwear, but the warmth reaches you so quickly you stop caring almost immediately.

the bathtub is smaller than you expected. your heels brush the porcelain when you shift slightly, water lapping softly against your stomach. lars keeps watching you.

your body notices him immediately; you should probably feel nervous sitting half-dressed in warm water while someone watches from beside the bathtub, but instead you just feel… seen gently.

you close your eyes for a second, letting your head rest lightly against the edge of the tub. the warmth sinks deeper into your muscles now, softening places inside you that have been tense for months.

suddenly, water spills softly across your shoulder.

your eyes open immediately; you see lars crouched beside the bathtub, holding a small plastic cup in his hands. he looks deeply concentrated while carefully pouring warm water over your skin, his movements slow enough not to startle you.

you stare at him quietly; his brows knit together with focus. the nervousness is still lingering visibly in his shoulders despite how gentle he’s being. you want to thank him, but speaking feels wrong, like words might shatter whatever delicate thing exists in the room.

your eyes settle on the bathroom tiles instead. you want to watch him, but you know lars startles easily around attention sometimes, especially the direct kind, so you keep your gaze lowered instead.

“that’s nice,” you admit softly, sighing relaxed.

lars pauses beside you. “yeah?”

you nod.

from the corner of your eye, you notice lars moving again. his hand hesitates near your shoulder for half a second, then moves to your bra strap.

your breath catches, and his fingers hook gently beneath the damp fabric strap, pulling it slightly lower against your shoulder. your stomach fills with an overwhelming warmth, so intense it almost hurts.

you think suddenly, helplessly: my lars.

The warm air lazily caresses his bare skin, tracing every muscular contour, making his flesh hypersensitive, amplifying even the slightest movement and his hands remain restrained behind his back, the handcuffs just tight enough to remind him of your presence, to keep him in place even as the rest of his body leans subtly forward in relaxation.

His lips part slightly without conscious thought, releasing a silent breath and his pupils are so dilated, obscuring the color of his pretty eyes, leaving only that dark, intense gaze as it scans you with a shameless, undisguised hunger.

He shifts slightly in the chair, a restless movement, a held breath that never releases, anticipation is coursing through his body eating him alive, waiting for you to decide what comes next.

He feeds on the intense disgust in your eyes, that hatred that seems to emanate from you in waves so dense they could drown you and he absorbs it in the most complete and starving way possible, letting it settle under his skin like fuel and your hatred would only become a problem for him when the ritual breaks and you suddenly start seeing him as a person rather than what he wants to be to you.

Dex knows you too well for someone you claim to despise.

He understands your particular inclination towards cruelty, your tendencies to inflict pain, the intense thrill that courses through you at the sight of freshly spilled blood. He has seen how your breathing changes, how your attention focuses, how the sickening darkness seeps through the cracks of any self-control you pretend to have.

You give, he takes, and it works because there's no one else who fits this space like him.

No one else can handle this balance of repulsion and longing that is ugly and deeply uncomfortable.

And perhaps that's the most pathetic part of it all... That out of everyone, out of all the possibilities, he's the only one who understands how to satisfy it, in the end, he's the only one who can please you in this way, however pitiful that may sound.

He licks his lips, watching intently as your finger slides across the table, testing how smooth and resistant the surface is.

“Aren't you going to ask me my safe word?” he purrs playfully, his voice husky, low with excitement and amusement.

Your eyes shift from the table to rest on those pools of hazel.

You remain stoic, ignoring his joke, “how many?” you ask softly, nothing like what you're really thinking, reaching closer and raising your hand to place it on the back of his head and he's immediately tensing as your fingers tangle and tighten in his hair.

Dex swallows, unable to control how the blood rushes to his groin too quickly and his useless hands clench, taking a breath before replying.

“Until I wish I had a safe word.” he mutters, listening to his heart pounding so loudly in his ears.

There's a tingle traveling beneath your skin, and your hand tighten his hair.

“Breathe.”

Just as he's about to inhale, you roughly force his head back and slam his face against the table and the sound is so loud, echoing through the place and Dex gasps from the pain that starts in his nose, spreading like flames across his face and you keep it pressed against the surface, the first blow leaving you breathless.

And you don't stop.

You do it again, lifting his head, smashing it against the smooth wood.

One, two, three, four, five blows, each one harder than the last and he's shivering in the chair, thighs tensing beneath his black cargo pants, hands shaking behind his back.

You're panting for breath now; each blow resonates more deeply in your ears, lodges itself in your brain.

And Dex?

He's in heaven.

The table breaks his nose, there's warm blood gushing from his nostrils as his lips are split, he feels his gums burn and bleed, smiling widely at such delicious feeling and each blow widens the split on his cheekbone caused by the impact and his forehead is aching.

He wonders what his fresh bruises look like, and the mere thought makes his cock throb and leak untouched and sensitive inside his clothes.

You let him breathe after the eighth impact, pulling his face away from the filthy wood, now darker with blood that belongs to him. You let out a little huff as you watch the deep red strands of saliva connecting his split lips to the table before it snaps from the shake you give his head to make sure he hasn't passed out.

He's grinning with his eyes closed, so ecstatic and pretty it makes you sick to admit it, so writhing in pain that burns his swollen wounded face, then you grip his hair tighter and you need to see him die like this, quivering and panting in agony until he just can't take it anymore.

You want his indestructible skull to crack because of you, you want that adamantium to damage his brain somehow, you hope he stops breathing once you've finished off his pretty and perfect nose.

The fact that he can still endure more infuriates you, and he's begging you for more as you stare at the fresh and inviting blood adorning his disfiguring face.

“P—Please, more, more more,” he babbles, drooling as he keeps his mouth agape to pray to you, and you want to know if his teeth are loose, you want to see if you damaged them enough for him to spit one out.

You bite your lip hard until it's bruised and return to your task with more fervor than before, smashing his face again but with more force, maintaining a solid grip on his now sweaty hair and his shoulders go slack. You don't need to look to know he's pushing his hips up for some sweet friction.

You just continue, harder, a tenth time, frowning at how starving you feel for more, clenching your teeth when he lets out an agonizing groan on the tenth blow. His head even slips from your grasp from the force, and you have to place your hand on his neck and grip it to lift his face again.

Then your hand travels to his hair, tilting his head towards the light and he's so broken, he can't even keep still and he has a satisfied smile on his blood-soaked face, bruises adorn him beneath the sticky deep red, his half-open mouth drools nonstop, his eyes are no longer open and you hope he has a weak pulse now, you hope his brain hits his skull.

With the finger of your free hand, you caress a cut on the bridge of his nose, smearing your finger with his blood, and bring it to his mouth, just to test how conscious he is.

Slowly, his pink tongue peeks out, his mouth barely moving because he can't even feel it anymore. He wipes the blood from your finger using his warm tongue, humming at the metallic taste, and you can't help but smile with satisfaction. Then, as your final display of pleasure, you grip the hair that falls over his forehead and pull down, his face slams back against the surface with a loud blow, listening to something breaking that makes you gasp in fascination.

Dex tenses all over and not a single sound escapes him, and you see him squirm slightly after a few seconds.

Such a whore for pain.

So adorable, he came inside his pants, making a mess inside the fabric that sticks to his weeping, thick cock. His torso is covered in sweat, every muscle glistening making you so hungry, wetness adorning his freckled flesh that must taste so salthy and good.

You push him off the chair effortlessly; he falls to the ground with a heavy thud and weakly settles onto his back, huffing in need, groaning in pain that intensifies when he feels air hit his raw face.

You're standing in front of him, staring at how dark the faded fabric is in his crotch.

So wet.

You stare more than you should, fascinated at how he's so big and worthless, too easy for you and you are licking your lips, your shoe slides into his groin without any little gentleness, reveling in how hard he remains even though he's just finished.

Dex whines silently, pushing his tired hips against your shoe, arching his back when you press too roughly, eliciting a guttural moan from his dry throat; poor, sweet boy can barely breathe.

His cock hurts so much it's not even pleasurable anymore, but he's so delirious by it. He's drugged by the excruciating pain, choking when you press a little harder right where his aching tip is, and then you pull your shoe away when you realize that not satisfying him will only make him feel worse.

Which is all that matters.

You take a step back, admiring the work of art before you.

He looks like a masterpiece, blood trickling down his neck, his face perfectly disfigured, his chest rising and falling so gently it seems he's not breathing anymore, perky nipples hard and sensitive adorning his tits, thick thighs spread, his cock waning before you and his muscles are loose, adjusting to the discomfort of maintaining his hands behind his back.

You feel the urge to touch him, to dig your finger into his swollen cheekbone, but you're disgusted by the thought. So you just reach into your pocket, pull out a pair of small keys, and toss them aside.

“You have ten minutes to leave. Clean my table,”

You mutter, not caring if he heard you or not, and you hope he didn't.

© machiavelliam | masterlist | 28 / 04 / 26

This is all your fault.

You vaguely remember waking up in the middle of the night about three weeks ago to the sound of the door opening. You saw him walk into the kitchen and reach under the sink for cleaning supplies. He had dried blood on his hands and a smug smile on his face, murmuring goodnight when he saw you, but your brain was disconnected because all you could see was the blood on his hands.

And that's when you made your mistake.

“Damn, Dex, I bet you did good. You should start counting how many good things you've done out of the goodness of your heart until you reach, I don't know, a big number,” you joked.

By "good things," you meant the number of people he'd killed, and by adding "goodness of his heart," you made it clear it was all a joke.

The problem is, he didn't hear it that way.

It started small, that new hobby of his, if you could even call it that.

You'd heard him muttering it to himself, so it wasn't important to pay attention until he started telling you directly.

You were brushing your teeth when suddenly he walks past you, leaning against the doorframe as he watches you. The space is already too small for him to be there so you hope that whatever he had to tell you was going to be relevant.

“Hold the door open for someone today. Plus five,” he says after a long while. You don't quite understand what he means, so you frown, spitting out the minty foam from your mouth.

“Five what?”

“Points.”

You turn to look at him, and he stares at you as if he's seeking your approval, simply in his natural habitat.

“...Right.”

Not even five seconds after you look back at the sink, Dex continues, “Didn’t push a guy onto the train tracks, I think that’s plus ten.”

You sigh, pausing your rinse for a second so you're able to speak. “Dex—”

“Fifteen total,” he adds, thoughtful, and you decide not to ask anymore because you just can't stand him.

By the second week, he already has a notebook dedicated specifically to his calculations, along with other materials that are completely unnecessary.

You arrive at the apartment exhausted, and the first thing you notice as you approach is him sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Papers, books, drawing axes, and graph paper are meticulously arranged in front of him and three pens of different colors are positioned right next to his hand, when you get close enough, he lifts the page he's working on.

“There's a curve,” he says, tapping the thin paper. “Morality isn't linear”

You look at him intently. “Obviously,” you say, hoping your response will cut him off, but it doesn't.

“No, listen.” His eyes turn away from the flawless graphic to look at you again, and it is unpleasant how sharp and intense his gaze is, practically forcing you to pay attention to him. “Good actions have diminishing returns if they’re repetitive. But high-impact actions... Those spike the graph.” he savors the last words with delight and you can’t deny you’re a little curious about how his system works.

So you play along.

“What counts as high-impact?” You raise an eyebrow, and Dex grins, glancing down to find another sheet of paper in the lower left corner. He holds it up so you can see it clearly.

It’s a rather long list; you don’t even want to read it completely, so you focus on the highlighted sections, which are the most impactful.

Saved a child from being hit by a gray Kia Forte: +80

‎ Didn’t kill the driver afterward: +15 bonus restraint.

And then, further down the list, underlined with a fluorescent highlighter:

I ate your leftovers without asking: -10

You stare at the sheet of paper, and he watches you, waiting.

“…You could have asked for them.”

“I did, you ignored me though.”

By week three, which is now, there's a small whiteboard hanging on the living room wall, which you definitely don't like having there, but he's already dragged you into it.

The whole whiteboard is covered in numbers; it's more structured than the notebook, but less detailed, so you assume what you're seeing now is the basics.

You focus on the numbers and the categories written in capital letters.

MINOR GOOD (1–10 pts)

MODERATE GOOD (10–50 pts)

MAJOR GOOD (50+ pts)

And then, further down in a different color:

JUSTIFIED NEGATIVE ACTIONS (VARIABLE)

You raise an eyebrow, curious. “Dex,” you begin slowly, “What's that section?”

He turns to you, taking the cap off a green marker and a black one. “They're not really negative” he explains, “Context matters”

And now he's writing something new.

Eliminated armed mugger: +50

Then underneath:

Occurred in front of 8 civilians: -25 (public distress penalty)

You sigh, shaking your head in disbelief and then glare at him. “You killed someone in front of eight people and you're calling it a net positive?”

Dex lets out a hoarse laugh “When did I say that, huh?” he asks defiantly. “And they were grateful, stop bitching... Don’t mess with my numbers,” he warns firmly.

“Don't you talk to me like that, fucking freak.” After these words he's just smiling at you, and that's a reminder that you can't even insult him because, for some sick reason, he seems to enjoy it.

All you can think about at that moment is that you should move out, hell, you should have moved the moment you found out who he really is. But you always end up hesitating because the rent is cheap, and he, let's say, pays eighty percent of it and doesn't ask for much.

And surprisingly, nothing bad has ever happened to you because of him, even though he mentioned several times in vulnerable moments that everyone around him ends up leaving him or getting hurt.

That's when you realized it's best not to even think about leaving, so thanks to all that, you now find yourself putting up with his antics.

“Good news,” Dex says one night, collapsing onto the couch next to you while he's wearing his Bullseye costume, and if he’s sprawled out like that, it means he hasn't done anything yet and the suit is brand new again, which you mentally thank him for.

You keep staring at your phone screen, but you pay attention anyway, knowing he’s referring to his score thing. “Did you get a new high score?”

“Mhm,” he hums contentedly.

“I see, how much?”

“Two hundred.”

That’s impressive enough for you to turn and face him just to find him grinning like the Cheshire Cat and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes are more prominent, which fully awakens your curiosity. “Since when?”

Dex shrugs. “Cumulative adjusted.”

You roll your eyes at his response, letting out a long, exaggerated sigh. “That’s not how it works.”

“It is now,” he replies in a relaxed manner, leaning back on the sofa with his arms outstretched, sighing delighted while showing a conceited smirk that he definitely shouldn't have and you think for a few seconds about how you once believed he could get something worthwhile out of all this because he was "trying"—in his own twisted way—and perhaps in the very, very distant future he would realize that being good means something quite different than what he believes it means now.

How naive you were.

Of course he would change his own rules from time to time for his own benefit and to adapt them to his orthodox methods to obtain results that make him feel like he's doing good things that do not harm good people.

“Been making better decisions,” he adds after a few seconds, nodding toward the whiteboard and you turn your head and glance at it.

You hadn't even noticed that it now includes complex equations too, they're something about weighted morality coefficients.

And suddenly your attention is solely drawn to those red letters, written to be more noticeable and legible than everything else.

Your eyes widen as your brain registers the information. “Dex…” you say carefully. “Why the fuck does it say '+20; I didn’t kill my roommate'?”

When you finish speaking, you look back at him, and he looks genuinely confused, but there’s a spark of amusement in his eyes.

“Haven’t killed you yet.”

You don’t even care anymore.

“Okay, man,” you exhale, sinking back into the sofa with your phone in your hand, and Dex moves closer to you, snuggling in your side settling in to join you in your peaceful scrolling.

“So glad I’m contributing to your growth.”

“Mhm you are,” he purrs sweetly, and you roll your eyes.

Fucking sicko.

As Dex settles into his seat, he tries to not get frustrated over the fact he can't recall the name of the Governor’s Head of Security. Whatever his name is, he sucks at his job. There aren't even metal detectors set up at the entrance of the theatre and the stationed guards are only carrying tasers. He highly doubts the men even know how to use the weapons -  they'd probably shit themselves at the first crack of gunfire, instead of doing their job and protecting the Governor. 

Part of him wants to shoot her and the Mayor by her side, but that would distract from his message and he can't have that. 

He needs to send his message. 

But, maybe, if the universe is kind to him, the old hag will have a heart attack from the shock of his display or she'll die of boredom from having to watch her granddaughter perform. He has no idea how that woman is still in the company, but it must be nepotism. She is probably the worst one on the stage and it is clear her lack of skill is not proportional to her ego - he has seen her bitching about favoritism to the crew during rehearsals when the star of the show was on stage. 

In his very humble opinion, you more than deserve to be the Swan Princess. 

You are extremely dedicated to your craft and Dex may be a tad bit envious of the control you have over your body. You make leaping around the floor look effortless and there is a smoothness to the way you dance that has him almost understanding why people come to the theatre. If everyone was even half as good at conveying their joy and sorrows through movement alone, without it looking like they are concentrating on their choreography, the stories they are trying to tell might actually be entertaining.

You move like fabric in the wind - organic and without any sort of stiffness. It is a little bit mesmerizing to him because it almost reminds him of fighting. When you pirouette, he can visualize you extending it into a kick - your legs are extremely strong and he can almost feel the bruise he would get if he were on the receiving end of one. 

You make it all look so easy and he may have more than one recording of your various performances so he can study you.

He could spend hours watching you dance. 

He has spent hours watching you dance.

Everyday for months - every early morning practice and every time you’ve stayed late at the studio. He’s watched you move through every perfectly memorized placement and he’s watched as you lost yourself to music in freestyle. You’ve performed ballet, ballroom, hip-hop, and all sorts of things he doesn’t know the technical names of for him and he’s admired all of them. You have a deep passion for the arts running through you and it's clear you've poured your soul into expressing yourself through movement.

He’s almost sorrowful he’ll be losing the routine of following you, but that is more than overshadowed by the thrumming under his skin he gets before he finally gets to enact one of his plans. 

Dex’s eyes flick down to the center floor seats, a few rows in where there is a single gap waiting to be filled, a scowl forming on his lips. 

It is almost curtain call and Matt Murdock is nowhere to be found. He’s come to accept that the blind lawyer has a chronic issue with being on time, but one would think when his girlfriend is the prima ballerina on opening night for the New York City Ballet season, he’d be there before the doors close. But as the lights begin to dim, the seat remains empty - the reserved sign probably visible from the stage. 

Dex clenches his jaw to tamper down his annoyance and part of him feels offended on your behalf. Not because he views you as anything beyond a target - but Murdock’s tardiness is disrespectful to all the time that you’ve put into training for this night and that is something that resonates in his chest. It has taken so much planning and preparation, on his part and yours, to get to this point and the man has the audacity to roll in late? 

Maybe Dex needs to send a different type of message.

But that will be for another time. 

For now, his eyes stay glued to the empty seat until you float on stage, and only then does he look at the performance. 

It really will be a shame that this will be your final one. Dex has seen all the dress rehearsals, but seeing you dance in front of an audience is a different experience. Everyone’s attention is on you, but you move like you are truly Odette and are none the wiser to their gaze. 

Even if Murdock wouldn’t be able to see how you are twirling, he knows the man would hear how each attendee’s breath is being held in awe, too caught up in your spell to remember basic bodily functions. He would know that no one, not even Dex, can keep their eyes off of you. 

That is how the night continues - Dex alternating between glaring at where Murdock should be and watching you weave your tale. 

And when the grand moment comes, when Dex should be sending his message and piercing your heart while Odette falls to her death, he stays rooted in his seat, letting the curtains close to applause instead of screams. 

The buzzing in his head is so loud and so overwhelming that he does not process getting up and leaving the theatre with the crowd - he goes from glowering at the covered stage to standing in front of the fire exit you always use to sneak away without anyone seeing you. His fingers twitch at his side, wanting to throttle something as his carefully laid plans crumble around him. 

Dex cannot believe Murdock truly just did not show up at all. If there had been some sort of disastrous event that required him to suit up, the Mayor would have been notified in some emergency manner, but the man had been there at the standing ovation. There are no alerts on his phone  - nothing to signal the Devil is out on the town, dealing out Justice. 

There isn’t even a sighting of him tagged on social media. 

So where the fuck is he?

Is Matt Murdock really so bad of a boyfriend he neglected to show up for your opening night? 

Dex thinks back on all his time following you - trying to recall if Murdock had come to any of your studio sessions or if he had even stepped inside the theatre before but nothing comes to mind. You’d gone on dates, mostly during the weekends when the law office was closed, and you practically lived at the man’s apartment, but the more he goes down the rabbit hole of your and Murdock’s witnessed interactions, he doesn’t come up with an instance where Murdock has been around when you dance. 

Does Murdock even care about you? 

Did he just waste months coming up with a way to torment the Devil for it all to mean nothing? 

Would killing you even matter? 

Hot white rage pulses through Dex and he decides he will make it matter. He will just need to improvise.

The gears in his head turn as he waits for you to emerge from the building - he is confident you will not be attending the after party and that you will be slinking away into the shadows the moment you are able to. 

Dex is not the only one Murdock has betrayed and he doubts you are in any mood for celebrations. Beyond your one true passion, Murdock seems to be the only other thing in your life. You don’t go out with friends, you don’t have any other hobbies, and you seem to yearn only for his approval. He can’t really fault you for that, as he understands that sort of devotion, but it is why you were selected to be his target instead of Foggy Nelson or Karen Page. 

It was meant to be a significant blow to the Devil.

And, in a fucked up way that only recently come to light, it was meant to be a gift to you. 

Your dancing has brought some joy to Dex’s life the past few months and he had planned to repay your kindness by taking away your pain. 

He does not need his FBI training to see you are actively suicidal. He recognizes the same Darkness that wrapped itself around his head tightening around your throat. He’s seen the blank, empty stares and the way your leg muscles twitch when the subway rolls into the platform, wanting to launch yourself in front of it. 

Seven times he’s seen you stop yourself from crossing that yellow line and each time he wondered if he would have interfered or let you go. Three times he’s seen you sit with a bottle of pills and Jack on your dinner table. He saw you pick up a paring knife and trace it up and down the veins of your forearm, just needing a little extra push to draw blood. 

You aren’t going to survive until morning and Dex needs to control that narrative. 

The minutes stretch and drag and he stands there waiting until the metal door opens and you step into the cool night air. 

You are no longer the beautiful swan captivating a crowd - you’ve changed into a sad black sweat suit and have scrubbed your face raw removing your makeup. Your eyes are exactly as he expects them to be - hollow and red rimmed. 

You don’t scream when you realize you aren’t alone on the small fire escape. You stare at him for a moment, before your gaze flicks up and down his frame before settling in the center of his chest. 

“Oh,” are your first words to Dex, “it’s you.”

The blandness of your words shock his system - he was so prepared for fear and for having to restrain you, but here you are, just standing in front of him like he’s anyone else in the world. 

Dex quickly regains his composure before leaning in slightly to make himself seem even bigger, even more threatening, and confirms in a low voice, “you know who I am?” 

“Bullseye,” you mumble, still not looking him in the eyes. “Benjamin Pointdexter.” Your hand tightens slightly around the bouquet of roses in your arms before you relax back into a state of aloofness. You seem to sway with the wind for a moment before you continue on, your voice barely audible, “I don’t know where he is.” 

“I’m sure you don’t, sweetheart,” Dex replies, knowing he sounds like he’s taunting you, “but we’re going to find him together.”  His hand shoots out and takes your bicep into a vice grip. You don’t even flinch at his touch - just slowly tilt your head down to see where he’s wrapped around you. 

There’s no protest as he drags you down to ground level and begins to guide you through the alley ways to stay away from any lingering crowd. Surprisingly, you keep pace with him and the only noise that comes from you is the jangling of your water bottle against your keys in your bag. When the boundaries into Hell’s Kitchen are passed, and Dex diverts into the main roads, you comply with his threats to not call out to anyone for help. You are basically a doll he is puppeting around. 

Only when Murdock’s apartment building looms over you, do you seem to come out of your dissociative trance - you turn your head to look at him, lips dipped into the slightest of frowns. 

“Are you going to kill me?” you ask, not sounding scared at all. It's like you’ve already accepted your fate and just want confirmation. 

“Yes.” 

“Okay,” is your response and Dex wrinkles his nose at that, because even he can be bothered by such a blase attitude. 

“You’d be dead either way,” he points out as he pulls open the door and pushes you into the lobby. “It will be quicker and neater than jumping in front of a train or trying to OD on some over the counter shit. I’m doing you a favor.”

You actually hum at that, going towards the stairs without him having to direct you there. He keeps his grip tight on you as he follows you up the steps, ready to use you as a shield if need be. “I was going to go to the bridge. Get washed out to sea.” 

Dex huffs at that, because that sounds like a highly ineffective plan. “They’ve upped their patrols along the good spots - someone would have grabbed you before you could make it over the railing. And even then, there’s no guarantees the fall would kill you. You’d probably break your legs and back when you hit the water and you’d drown. Then wash up along the river and end up on the front page of some tabloid.” 

“Maybe I want to drown,” you counter, some semblance of something finally in your voice. 

“We can arrange that.” 

The rest of the hike up to the apartment is silent and your hands are steady as you unlock the door to Murdock’s apartment. 

Dex expects the unit to be empty - Murdock would have been on his ass otherwise - but he orders you to sit on the couch as he clears the space, bringing out his gun to do so. From the corner of his eye he watches you take a seat, dropping your bag and your flowers on the floor by your feet. He supposes you don’t care to put them in a vase if you won’t be around to admire them. After securing the area, he takes a few long steps towards you, holding out his hand and demanding your phone.

You dig it out from your hoodie pocket and give it to him without fuss. He drops it to the floor and stomps the life out of it, while you look on with disinterest. When he is done, he turns to fetch the broom hanging by the kitchen trashcan and gathers the mess into the dustpan to toss out.

Dex’s new plan is to wait for Murdock to return home and then execute you. He knows there is a blindspot in the kitchen, so no billyclubs will be able to fly through the window to disarm him before he can react. The Devil will not be able to stop him this time.

He will be sending his message tonight: that Dex is going to take everyone Matt Murdock has ever loved and force him to break his stupid code. Fisk couldn’t get Daredevil to kill, but he will. 

Dex will. 

He takes his position and lets himself relax into the waiting game - it is something he is very good at. Being a sniper -  being a soldier - means needing to have patience and waiting to strike seems to be the only time he has an abundance of it. 

Across the room, you sit like a statue, head tilted up towards the roof access door but otherwise completely checked out. Your posture is perfect as you wait for your end.

He's going to make your death quick. You won't even know it happened - one second you'll be there, then you won't be. There will be no pain. It will be merciful.

He's being merciful. 

Dex wants to say something to you, but he knows he can't. Even the smallest of noises can alert Daredevil and he isn’t stupid enough to let himself be caught because he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.

He knows what he would say to you, if he could open his mouth. 

That's more than most people get. He’s never wanted to engage with a target before - he doesn’t see the point of taunting them before putting them down - why would he waste the breath talking during a fight? They wouldn’t even be able to process his quips - they’d be dead before he could get through any of his words.

But with you, he wants to make sure you hear him before you disappear into the Darkness. 

He doesn't know why that bothers him. 

Dex presses his tongue against the back of his front teeth and tells himself to get out of his own head. He needs to focus. Any lapse in focus can ruin what he’s worked so hard for.

He has not come this far to fail. His message will be sent. He will break Murdock.

The billboard outside flicks between ads, bathing the apartment in different neons for a perfectly silent and still three hours, forty seven minutes, and twenty seconds. 

Gravel crunches under boots on the roof above them and Dex raises his gun so his bullet will go sweetly right into your brain stem. His finger brushes the trigger, but he waits to flex - needing for the perfect moment to occur so he can get his point across clearly. He listens as uneven footsteps drag their way to the access door, his brows knitting together just slightly. The Devil is clearly limping. 

The buzzing in his head shuts off and everything narrows down to the room around him in anticipation for the fight that is about to occur.

The access door rattles as Murdock reaches it - probably needing to reach out to grab it to steady himself. Time slows to a crawl as Dex waits for the metal to fly off its hinges, but instead of any screeching or buckling, it is a muffled, but very frustrated, “fuck!” that echoes through the night sky. 

Confusion courses through Dex, because in all his fights with Murdock, he’s never reacted like this. It has always been raw fury and wasting no time trying to pummel each other into a pulp. The man still behind the door is clearly extremely pissed off, but he is not using his ‘I’m pissed off but very specifically at Bullseye’ voice.

Is he too injured to realize that someone else is in his kitchen?

Dex’s gaze flicks to you and only because he has watched you for long and Knows you so well does he see that you have become alert. You are still not moving a muscle - just barely breathing as your eyes stay locked on the roof access - but you are once again Aware of your surroundings.

To your credit, you do not react at all when the door finally swings up and bounces off the wall with a tinny ‘clang’. The Devil stalks into the open concept apartment in his decidedly armor free Man in Black get up. 

Or what is left of it. 

His shirt barely qualifies as such anymore - it’s been shredded by some bladed weapon and it does nothing to hide the new deep clean cuts carved into the man’s torso. His left pant leg looks like it might have gotten caught in a fire - the multiple holes there have a distinct burn pattern and Dex can smell the lingering smoke from where he is standing. Blood coats the lower half of the Devil’s face, fresh from where his nose broken and still dripping like a faucet.

He’s barely holding himself up as he stumbles onto the landing, but he had clearly won whatever battle he had been in, so woo fucking hoo for him. 

“Really?” Murdock croaks out, his speech slightly slurred from his beating but not lacking any in its bite. “You came here instead of going out?”

Daredevil never fails in his ability to be unpredictable, because in every scenario he had playing in his head, Dex had never ever thought of the possibility of being completely ignored. Even if he can’t smell an intruder with his face bashed in - shouldn’t he be able to hear him? He doesn’t fully understand what the fuck Murdock’s deal is, but he knows enough that it has to do with heightened senses and being able to detect heartbeats.  

He feels like he is short circuiting - like he is frozen and he doesn’t know what to do because he cannot comprehend his plans failing because Murdock is not playing his part correctly for a second time that night.

For the first time in hours, your voice breaks the silence. You aren’t emotional - you don’t waver or wobble with your words- you are quiet and devoid of any other signs of life.

You’re waiting for Dex to pull the trigger. 

“Where were you?” 

It is the wrong thing to say and the wrong tone to use - even he knows that. The man in front of him is too caught up in his own rage and his own issues that he can’t tell you aren’t trying to pick a fight. You aren’t trying to do anything - you’re already as good as gone.

A sharp bark of laughter fills the air as Murdock starts to move forward, “where was I? Where was I?! I was out keeping the city safe, sweetheart! That’s where I was! I was where I was actually needed!”

He makes it down two steps before his ankles give out under his own weight and he has to grab onto the bannister to keep himself up. Murdock leans heavily into the railing, dripping blood everywhere, and you react in concern for him, standing up in an instant and going towards the stairs with your hands out like you could possibly catch him if he fell. 

Dex tracks you with his eyes and gun, but the rest of him stays still as, despite everything he's not done, you try to help your boyfriend. 

“Where were you?” you repeat, still just barely audible, but now there is a hint of a plea in your words. Dex has the feeling that the question you are asking does not equal the meaning you are intending. He is not good at picking up on that sort of thing usually, but he has studied the inflection in your voice. He knows what the different pitches mean - how you emphasize words to get your point across. 

Murdock snarls at you like he’s some sort of cornered dog and Dex presses his tongue harder into his teeth. Daredevil is the most dangerous when he’s injured and angry and it will be any moment when he’s registered on his radar and the battle begins. To an outsider, Bullseye has the clear advantage, but he knows that isn’t the truth.

There’s a reason both men are still alive.

The Devil stumbles down more steps towards you, managing to keep himself up by sheer willpower alone. You rush forward, prepared to cushion his fall with your own body, but you stop short when you are swatted at. The dirty muay thai ropes don’t come close to connecting with you, but the message of ‘stay back’ is clear. 

The repositioning of his aim is automatic - a hair up, a breath left and a bullet would find home in Matt Mudock’s skull. It is the intensity of his training that keeps Dex from pulling the trigger and removing the threat that is in front of you. 

“You don’t get to do that,” the man hisses at you, the blood trapped in his nose making his words thick and stick together. “I told you - I told you I couldn’t promise anything with what has been happening with the Hand!” He makes another motion towards you, jabbing his grimy hand to point at your chest, like he’s accusing you of something. “You’ve seen what they’ve been doing - what they did to that woman! You expect me to - what? Sit there while they tear the city apart because you put something on my schedule?”

For what it is worth, you stand your ground and don’t back down from the raging man. You stand just steps below him, poised to keep him from crashing to the ground. Dex can’t see your face and he wonders if you are crying. 

If the Devil is able to tell, he isn’t affected by it. 

Your right hand raises up, your fingers shaking so badly you probably wouldn’t be able to hold anything, and you try to reach out to cup Murdock’s cheek. 

Daredevil catches your wrist before you can even extend your elbow just as you yet again whisper out, voice cracking, “where were you, Matt?”

The two of you stand there, caught in something Dex doesn’t understand as he watches the scene unfold in front of him, his own mind confused about what he should do next. 

He should be fulfilling his plan. 

He should be ending your suffering and starting Daredevil’s. 

But he once again can’t pull the trigger.

Without any idea of the situation he is truly in, Murdock distances himself from you, pushing your hand away with too much force and starting to climb the stairs backwards, “No. No! I’m not doing this with you. Not after tonight!”

The Devil turns, his feet thundering down as he reaches the landing again, and with just as much effort as he used to open it, the door is slammed shut, leaving you and Bullseye once again alone in the apartment.

The air is thick with tension as Dex tries to work out what had happened in the last minute and a half. 

Murdock hadn’t been able to tell someone with a gun was in his kitchen because he had been too injured and too pissed off. Beyond the broken nose, he must have had a serious concussion or too much blood loss because Dex can’t think of another reason that Daredevil would just walk away from him. 

If he was in his right mind or not completely fucked up, he would not leave anyone alone with Dex, especially his fucking semi-famous girlfriend. 

But there Dex was, standing stock still with his weapon still aimed at where Murdock had just been, eyes locked on the door, waiting for it to reopen. 

It doesn’t. 

Forty two seconds pass, then the billboard across the street switches to a new ad, and the room goes from being a moody purple to being illuminated in a bright sunny orange. Dex feels like he is trapped in a dream or he is experiencing a new type of hallucination because nothing around him feels real.  

As he moves to reholster his gun, his head starts to throb over the force of the anger washing through him. The disappointment and resentment he felt towards Murdock when he failed to kill Fisk pales in comparison to the rage building inside of his chest. This level of emotion is something Dex has never experienced before and he doesn’t want to just scream or kill Murdock.

Dex wants to sever his cochlear and olfactory nerves. He wants to put Murdock into True Darkness, to let him experience True Fear before ripping him apart limb by limb. 

A quick and easy death is not in his future. 

The world is pressing down on Dex, closing in and becoming overwhelming as the monster he has always tried to keep at bay roars to life inside of him, desperate to destroy everything around him. 

Then, for the upteenth time that night, he is mentally knocked on his ass by you turning in place, like you are on a clock work gear and can only make minute movements, and looking right at him. 

Tear tracks are highlighted by the remainders of your mascara, with fat drops still falling from your lashes. Your red glassy eyes lock with his, and even though you are feet away from him and he feels like his head is underwater, Dex hears you perfectly. 

“Can I make a request?” your pretty pretty lips ask, barely parting to do so.

“A request?” he parrots in a croaky voice as everything that makes up Dex narrows down to you. The rest of the world - Murdock, Fisk, anything outside the four walls around him - disappears and there is only you and him left in the Darkness. 

You barely tip your chin down in a nod, eyes darting away from his like you are expecting a similar outburst from him for daring to ask a question. 

“Request away,” he finally manages to say, just before his feet start to act on their own and takes a step towards you.  He has no idea what you could possibly want from him, but he hopes it is a desire to drown because maybe, maybe, you’d let him hold you under the water until you stop struggling instead of wanting to jump off a stupid bridge. 

“Can…can I get some cheesecake before you…?” you gesture vaguely out to the room and Dex realizes that you still expect him to kill you. 

He had told you he would, but he isn’t sure if he is still going to.

He doesn’t have a plan anymore.

-----

New York truly is the city that never sleeps because thirty minutes later, Dex is sitting across from you on a bench by the river, poking at a piece of cheesecake with a fork. You are taking small delicate bites of your own slice around the closest thing to a smile on your face he’s seen all night.

You have no qualms about him staring you down, memorizing everything about you he doesn’t already know as you enjoy your snack. His jaw ticks as his eyes keep going to darkening bruise encircling your wrist. It mars your perfect skin and is another glaring reminder of just how badly Murdock has hurt you tonight. 

You might need a splint - Dex can already see the swelling happening and you don’t need physical pain on top of all the emotional and mental suffering you are dealing with. There is a pharmacy only a block away and if it is not a twenty-four hour joint, he’ll just break in to take what he needs. As he starts to wonder if wearing something on your wrist will hinder your dancing, he remembers the words he wanted to say to you all those hours ago. 

Dex wets his lips with his tongue, then in a low, calm voice, tells you, “you were perfect tonight.” 

Your fork freezes midair as your eyes go wide at his admission, like you have no idea what he is talking about and him breaking the silence will cause more to crumble down around you. He is quick to follow up with more, wanting to tell you exactly what he thinks of your dancing.

“You didn’t miss a mark. You’ve been practicing and practicing and you pulled it off. You were perfect. The spins, when you were the Black Swan - the um,” Dex snaps his fingers as he tries to remember the correct word - none of them are English and they all sound the same to him. 

“The fouettes?” you supply, soft and sweet. You are searching his face, a hint of something positive in your features and no sign of fear or dread. Just curiosity. 

He feels himself start to smile and he commits the term to memory, “yes, those. Thank you. The fouettes. That was impressive - and adding in the little improvised flair at the end made the crowd go wild.”

Your cheeks start to color and something in Dex crows at being successful at something that night. You look back down to your cheesecake, rolling your bottom lip between your teeth before giving a shy, “thank you.”

He lets you bask in his praise - something that is not easily given - as he takes a bite of his own dessert. He doesn’t remember the last time he stepped outside his pattern for food, and he’s glad he did. You actually know where to get good cheesecake. 

You keep your eyes downcast as you boldly make more conversation with him, “were you…going to kill me during the show?” 

“Yeah,” Dex tells you, not hiding who he is at all, shoving another forkful into his mouth. “The finale, when the White Swan throws herself in the lake. I figured it would be Poetic or some shit.” 

You laugh at that - the smallest huff and your cheeks pushing up into soft mounds. He is quick to latch onto the feeling it gives him because it is so different from everything else he experiences. 

He likes whatever you are doing to him. He likes you responding to his words with a smile instead of indifference. He likes this fluttering in his chest instead of the buzzing in his head.

“That would have been a nice way to go.” 

“Better than jumping?” he prompts, curious the know where you are mentally in your journey towards suicide. 

Dex knows the moment he leaves your side, you will be taking matters into your own hands - Murdock might have well signed the declaration of death himself before running off into the night. He’ll offer his services to you, free of charge if that is the road you want to go down, but he will not be taking your life to get some reaction out of Daredevil. 

He’ll help you out of the Darkness on your terms, no one else’s. 

You shrug at his question, eyes flicking up quickly to look at his face for just a second before going back down to the table. “I…don’t really like being cold…and with all the increased patrolling…” You trail off, but the little furrow in your brow tells him you want to say more. 

So Dex waits, letting you mull things over as he finishes eating. Only when he tosses his trash away do you find yourself again.

“I had it all planned, you know? Not…not that. That came after…but before, when…” You wrinkle up your nose as Dex hangs on your every word, wanting anything you will give him before he has to let you go. “Before the show? All my life? This was my dream role, you know, ever since I learned about it? It’s all I wanted to do. I know it’s stupid and cliche, but…” You duck your chin so it is almost touching your chest, then admit to him, voice dropping so low he can only just hear it. “I promised myself that if I ever got it, my night would be cheesecake and a hot bath. And I have cheesecake. So, thank you. For that.” 

Dex searches your face, not knowing what he is looking for. He thinks its sad that your reward for achieving your dream is something so mundane and thing inside him that is so fucked up is latching onto the fact that he has the ability to fulfill your second desire. 

He can make sure you get a hot bath before you pull the preverbal trigger. 

He can make you smile again before the sun comes up and the reality of everything sets in. 

Dex will do that for you and it won’t be something merciful of him. He’ll do it as a proper thank you for giving him such a wonderful show.

For giving him such a wonderful night. 

----

He means to just give you the keycard and let you be on your way. 

He’s already slipped one of his knives and the bottle of muscle relaxants he took from the pharmacy into your bag. There’s plenty of liquor in the minibar. You will have everything you need to slip off to sleep, never to wake up again after you soak to your heart’s delight. 

But, somehow, without his consent or initial approval, Dex finds himself in the suite’s bathroom, leaning against the counter while you test the temperature of the water before you fill the tub. You are probably about five minutes from passing out from the intensely physical and emotional night you’ve had, but for the moment, as he looks you over, you appear content. Your good hand is swirling through the shallow water as it heats up and your attention is on some romcom playing on the television that hangs in the room. 

He never understood why there would need to be one in the bathroom, but he’s not going to comment if it is helping you relax. 

Eventually, you plug the tub so it can fill and oh so gracefully push yourself up into standing. His eyes crawl up and down your form, taking in how your muscles sit on you and where your different strengths lay. He was not bullshitting about being impressed with your Black Swan performance - your athleticism is something to be admired. In your thirty two turns, you could stay centered, not tilting forward or moving about the stage as you twirled. You have control over your body that Dex could only dream to achieve. 

You watch him examine you, tilting your head slightly as you do. He has no idea what you could be looking for, but you seem to find it because you turn away to start to unzip your hoodie. 

“Do you want to join me?” 

Dex thinks that to anyone else, it would sound like an invitation for sex or some other lewd act, but he knows that is not what you are asking of him. He has no desire for that and he thinks neither do you - you just do not want to be alone and in that moment, neither does he. 

He doesn't want to lose you just yet. 

So, his response is to start stripping and you are quick to follow suit. He keeps his eyes away from your intimate areas out of respect, but he can't help but zero in on the now purple ring on your wrist. 

He should never have let Murdock touch you. Dex should have put him down the moment he had raised his voice at you. He had never respected or cherished you in the way you deserved. Murdock thought it was acceptable to lash out at you over his own mistakes. 

It wouldn't be happening again. 

Whatever you desire, until the moment your heart stops, will be yours, Dex decides. You like sweet, mundane things so it won't be difficult to spend the night with you. You want to take a bath and watch a movie and stop hurting. And if you get hungry, he'll order you room service and get all the cheesecake you want. He has nothing else to spend all his money on.

The water is near boiling when he steps into it, and only when he is mostly emerged does he understand exactly why you wanted a hot bath. He did not know his body was so sore.

He does not hold back his pleased groan. 

But he does hold back his surprise when you settle against him, your back to his chest. You are a warm, pleasant weight against him and you show no hesitation in getting comfortable. He is no longer a stranger to you - he is a presence in your Darkness.

It's been so long since anyone's touched him in a kind way and between whatever it is you have bloomed in him and the streaming water, he finds himself relaxing back into the tub.

Your head finds his shoulder, turned so your nose is brushing his throat. Your breath skates across his collar bone, already evening out as you drift off into an unconsciousness you'll return from. You are sinking into him and the water like you just plan to float away. 

He finds himself smiling at that and he drops his arm to wrap around your waist and keep you snug against him. He places his chin on top of your head, feeling like maybe the universe had smiled on him this night.

The Devil has lost the Swan Princess and Dex has gained an Angel. 

---