#cuetheviolins

"Do you have a guest bedroom?" Lewis asks. "There was a fuckup with my hotel reservation and apparently everywhere in the entire city is booked. I guess everyone else also flew in for the Met Gala..."

When Seb told Mick that Lewis was coming to New York for the week, and that he should get in touch, this hadn't been what Mick expected. He'd just hoped for a chance to get coffee and talk about getting involved on the business side of one of Lewis's diversifying-the-karting-pipeline projects.

"I have a futon," Mick confesses. He would have felt wrong spending too much of his family's money on rent, when he could have just been living in the NYU dorms. "That I would sleep on, I mean. Shit. Sorry. I wouldn't make you sleep on a futon. Jesus."

Lewis laughs through the phone. "Are you calling me old?"

"There's no right answer to this question," Mick says diplomatically. "I'll text you my address."

Lewis shows up two hours later--the JFK traffic--with five suitcases. "Sorry about all the bags," he says, almost sheepish, as Mick carries them two at a time to his third-floor walkup in alphabet city. The weather is sweltering, unseasonably warm for the first weekend of May. The heat of summer is already baking into the pavement and the humidity that's going to linger until September--Mick learned that lesson last year--is already consolidating.

"Met Gala, I know," Mick says. He's just a little bit out of breath. "Seb told me. It's tonight, right?"

"Tomorrow," Lewis corrects. He clears his throat. "I actually didn't have anything planned for tonight, if you wanted to hang out. I mean, I don't mean to crash your party, if you've got somewhere to be, but if you're free..." he trails off. "Nobody I wanted to see is coming to the Met Gala this year."

Mick is weirdly grateful for the sting of Lewis's admission. He'd have rather killed himself than have Lewis hang out with him out of a sense of pity or obligation. A lack of better options? That, he can work with.

"We could get a drink," he says.

The end up at the Coal Yard, a dive bar Mick discovered in his first weeks in the city that fit his three criteria for a local: close enough to his apartment to be convenient, far enough from his apartment to confuse stalkers, and dark enough that nobody there ever recognizes him. They don't recognize Lewis, either, he realizes as Lewis orders both of them a round of whiskey shots and beers (the $10 Wednesday night deal). He smiles, wondering when that last happened.

Lewis holds Mick's gaze as they toast their whiskey shots. "Seb taught me about the German rule," Lewis says, before he throws it back. Mick almost coughs whiskey up his nose. "What is it, seven years of bad sex?"

"I wouldn't think bad sex would be a problem for you," Mick says. He licks his lips, tastes the alcohol on them. He reaches for his beer to chase with.

"You'd be surprised," Lewis says. "What about you? Still with the same girlfriend?"

Mick dumped her six months ago, but he's surprised Lewis even remembered that he'd been dating anyone. "Nah, we broke up," he says.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," Lewis says. "The long distance too hard?"

"It turns out I actually prefer men," Mick admits.

Lewis eyes him again, carefully. "I didn't realize."

Mick shrugs. "I didn't want anyone to," he says. "I haven't actually even told Seb yet. Fuck, don't tell Seb, he'll never forgive me for telling you first."

"I'm flattered, man," Lewis says. "But I'll admit that I'm a little surprised I'd be the one you'd trust with this."

Another shrug, this one involuntary. "It feels easier to be honest about stuff in New York. I don't know. It's a different world here, away from racing, in a city where people are just living their lives. It makes me wonder what I was so afraid of."

"It sounds nice," Lewis says. "You look happy. Is there a special gentleman caller we can blame for that?" He makes a pretentious hand gesture as he asks, and Mick giggles.

"No, my interest in men is, thus far, purely theoretical," he says. "There's a lot of guys who are kind of weird about guys who have never done anything with a guy before, like they either don't want to bother teaching you what to do, or they're really, really keen to teach you what to do, which is even worse..."

"What would you want to learn how to do?" Lewis asks.

Mick feels his face flush. "Well, you know, the usual stuff," he says, then reminds himself that he's Michael Schumacher's son, and once was a professional race car driver, and doesn't have to be afraid of saying words out loud. "I'd like to learn how to suck a dick."

"The bathrooms of this place are in the back, right?" Lewis asks.

The subject change catches Mick by surprise, and he has to take a second to process. "Yeah, back that way," he says, cocking his head.