#cakefics

It was like playing chess.

Not a real game.

There had never been a board between them, but the feeling of it had always been there.

Pierre with the white pieces.

Esteban with the black.

The game stretching across years instead of minutes.

Across karting paddocks and junior formulas and eventually the polished, ruthless world of Formula One.

Move after move. Position after position.

A quiet, invisible match that had been unfolding for almost a decade now.

Pierre shifted slightly on his stool, the metal leg scraping faintly against the stage.

If he was honest with himself - truly honest - they had both lost a lot of pieces along the way.

Some had been small losses.

Forgettable ones.

The equivalent of a rook lost early in the game.

But others had mattered.

Others had carved deeper marks.

Pierre could still remember the moment his own bishop had fallen.

The day the call had come from Red Bull.

The polite words.

Demoted.

Replaced.

A piece quietly swept off the board.

But Esteban had lost something bigger.

Pierre knew that too, even if neither of them ever spoke about it.

The year Esteban had been pushed out of Formula One entirely had felt like watching someone’s queen disappear from the board.

Sudden.

Devastating.

For a while it had looked like the game might end right there.

Because in chess, when your opponent loses their queen, the board changes.

The balance shifts.

And for the first time in years Pierre had found himself wondering if maybe - just maybe - Esteban’s king had finally fallen.