#db8

The team has somehow managed to drag the two of them to a bar somewhere just east of the track. Luke doesn't blame them, of course; it's only natural to want to celebrate after a race like that.

It's a nice bar, too, nothing like the dingy, underfunded bar on the ground floor of the Hitech hotel. No, this place actually knows how to make a cocktail, and they actually serve nice, ice-cooled drinks, and not a can of Vermouth hardly chilled enough to elicit any level of condensation.

But they still have a race tomorrow; no matter how sweet a 1-2 feels, this was only the start of it, so Dino and Luke have been crowded into a booth in the far corner, as far enough away from the bar as possible to avoid them getting any ideas.

They've been allowed one drink each, though. Well, technically, they've been allowed up to a certain amount of fluid ounces by their trainers, which Luke is sure they've already fucked up considering they've been sharing each others drinks the whole night. Oh well, most of it has been water, anyway.

Dino's entire right half is pressed up against Luke's left, and their feet occasionally kick against each other, ankles twitching every time the waitress brings them a fresh pitcher of ice and water, or one of their team members comes by to chat.

They've been left alone for a while, though. It seems the team has gotten their fill of them, and has decided that it's time to celebrate themselves.

Which Luke is totally fine with; they deserve it– this is their 1-2 just as much as it's he and Dino's– and if that means Luke gets to spend more time with Dino, then he won't complain.

It's warm, but not warm in the sticky, migraine inducing way that a bar like this normally is, what with the low, purple tinged lighting and foggy atmosphere, bodies crowding up each wall and warming the air with their alcohol sticky breath.

No, it's warm like Dino is radiating something soothing, like water over rocks, like he's grown his own sun and has tucked it away into the bend of his ribs, a sun that glows a bit brighter each time he leans in close to murmur something into Luke's ear.

Realistically, he knows that Dino is an affectionate person. He's always greeting people with hugs and other forms of contact, but it's still a funny feeling when Luke throws his arm over the back of the booth and Dino doesn't move, doesn't even react at all, even when Luke eventually tucks his arm right around him, pressed together in even more places than one.

No, Dino doesn't move. If anything, he shifts closer, leans in a bit more, and turns his body so that they're basically forming a ring with their bodies, a tight circle of heat and mounting tension.

And Dino continues to lean in when Luke momentarily tucks his face against the narrow line of Dino's throat, “mistakenly” nosing against his skin as he scoots closer to check out whatever Dino wants to show him on his phone.

And it goes on like that until they're basically chest to chest, and Dino's phone has been tossed onto the table, still lit up and buzzing with a random Instagram reel, forgotten in the tangled tangent of their bodies.

Dino makes a sound, a small, inquisitive thing that jingles from his closed mouth like a question, a dot and a dash, a quotation before a statement.

“Are you going to kiss me or…?” He finally says, voice tipping with glee, like he's been expecting this.

Luke hums, an amused sound. “I dunno. Would you like me to?” 

Dino laughs, something that has him tipping his head back against the booth. “It seems more like you want to, but eh, I wouldn't mind it,”

He's grinning something wolfish throughout the entire thing, and Luke's face twists up into an odd thing that sits between a compliment and a challenge.

Luke then shifts so he's sitting fully on Dino's lap, calves trapping thighs until it becomes a tangle of limbs, before gripping the front of Dino's loose T-shirt and dragging him into a slow kiss.

It's languid, tempting, but neither of them bite, not yet, anyway. Dino's hands snake up Luke's body, starting at his thighs and slithering up until they're bracketing the widest part of Luke's ribs.

It causes his stomach to flinch briefly, muscles twitching when Dino's thumbs flick at the velvety cotton of his shirt, rubbing at the flinching skin underneath.

They pull away for a second to breathe, but it's quick, hardly enough time to catch a reasonable amount of air before they're on each other again, hungrier, this time, thorough and mouthy.

Luke's hand slithers from Dino's shirt into his hair, gripping it and reveling in the pleased grunt it pulls from him. His other hand finds Dino's neck, and it rests there heavily, thumb casually swiping over his Adams apple every now and again, weighty and present.

The kiss persists as tongues and lips, their teeth never making an appearance despite how ravenous they might seem from the outside. It's charged, but careful, an animal on a leash.

They have to pull away eventually, though, and when they do, they breathe in unison, and Dino has to lick away a mix of their saliva that has gathered in the corner of his mouth.

Luke's eyes watch the motion sharply, and Dino smiles up at him once he's done, sleepy and pleased.

Luke sits up and rests his arms on Dino's shoulders, trapping his head in a ring of his arms, letting his hands fall limp off the back of the booth.

“I've liked you a long time,” Luke eventually says thoughtlessly through carefully drawn breaths, still trying to get enough air in his lungs.

Dino hums, that smug smile never leaving his lips. “Yeah, I know,” 

Luke chuckles, glancing away briefly. “You know?”

“Yeah,” Dino shrugs casually, and the motion jostles Luke's arms around a bit. “I was waiting for it to go away, and I honestly thought it would, after Imola,”

He pauses to reach around Luke to grab his water and take a sip, and Luke decides he might as well do the same, but when he's about to move to grab his own glass, Dino is stopping him by offering his.

Luke thanks him in a chuckle before finishing it off, setting the empty glass down with a hollow clatter.

“But then it didn't, and I don't really mind it, anyway. Not anymore, at least,” Dino continues his previous statement, then, voice fresh with chilled water and ice.

“You don't mind it?” Luke asks, tipping his head forward slightly, quirking his brow in question.

Dino shrugs again. “You're nice, you pay attention to me a lot,” Luke tries to pretend he can't feel his face heat up at that. “You couldn't be the worst person to ever go out with,”

That gets a laugh out of Luke, a sharp bark of a sound that leaves his cheeks feeling a little strained.

“Alright, alright, I'll take that,” he says, shaking his head fondly and nearly purring at the way Dino scrunches his nose up when the tips of Luke's hair tickle his forehead. “But, uhm, I didn't know you liked guys?” 

Dino tilts his head back a bit, and Luke doesn't understand what it means, whether it's just him trying to get away from the tickling wisps of Luke's hair, or something else entirely that he can't decode.

“Eh, I never really made a big deal out of it, plus it's kind of recent. Honestly, I didn't know you did either,” Dino says, and for the first time all night, Luke can convince himself that Dino's cheeks are also dusted a light color.

Luke grumbles, Dino's previous teams briefly flitting through his head, and a few faces jump out at him. 

“Recent? …Did you and Gabi ever get up to anything?”

It's a stupid thing to ask really, kind of similar to the way Luke’s mom tried to get him together with every gay guy she knew after he came out to her. She'd bring up how one of the kids Luke used to know in grade school recently came out, and he’d grimace; even if it's coming from a good place, he does not want to date someone he knew when he was nine, thanks.

Still, it's a strange thing to say, and Luke mentally pinches himself for it.

Dino doesn't seem phased, though, humming thoughtfully. “We talked about it, but we never really did anything,” he shrugs, and it's a bit of a relief that this seems to be an easy conversation for him and that Luke didn't overstep. “He helped me figure out a couple of things, but that was all through talking, not…”

Luke chuckles, mumbling an affirmation at Dino's insinuation before the conversation lapses into silence, the pair of them glancing around the room and at each other's faces.

“Well then, where would you like to go on our very first date?” Luke suddenly says teasingly, looping his fingers together behind Dino's head so that he's fully encased in a ring of his arms.

Dino hums dramatically, tipping his head to the side to really sell it.

“Well, you already took me to the beach that one time, so really, it would be our second, no?” 

Luke giggles, fiddling with his fingers absentmindedly. “That didn't count, that was also sort of a team event,”

“Fine,” Dino tsks, grinning with his teeth as he begins smoothing his hands up and down Luke's torso. “I'll need time to think, then,” he says suggestively before pulling Luke back down into another slow make out session.

This one lasts a considerably shorter amount of time seeing how tired both of them are at this point, although it's still probably longer than is necessary, especially in such a public place, but Luke can't find it in himself to care.

Not with Dino's tongue licking a line up his teeth, and their hands growing sweaty around each other's bodies the longer they grab and hold each other.

But, after a few jaw aching minutes, Luke has to pull away; if he doesn't now, he might lose all feeling in his tongue, at this rate.

When he leans back, Dino, surprisingly, chases him, sitting up straight to attach himself to Luke's throat. He moves one of his hands to the back of Luke's neck to hold him there, to pull him closer until they're chest to chest and Dino has himself buried into the cleft of Luke's jaw.

Luke tips his head back and to the side to give him a bit more room, and it earns him a pleased hum and a warm hand sneaking up his shirt, clammy against his bare waist. Dino is clearly not aiming to mark Luke up at all, choosing to instead smother Luke's skin with messy, wet kitten licks, his teeth nipping every now and again to send a shiver up Luke's spine.

Dino seems to be growing twitchier by the minute, his hands roving hungrily, like he's somehow gotten some kind of second wind. The race today left Luke feeling utterly knackered, but Dino? Not so much, it seems.

After Luke lets out a frankly embarrassing whimper when Dino nips at his Adams apple, he clears his throat in a half hearted attempt to cover it up.

“Have you got any ideas yet?” Luke says, voice hoarse as a result of the angle his head is tipped at.

Dino grumbles against him and licks a long stripe up Luke's jawline, eliciting a gasp and a shiver from him that jostles them both around a bit, something that has Dino huffing a laugh into Luke's flesh, a puff of breath that cools the trail of his saliva.

He finally pulls away, though, and he looks so smug about it, tipsy off of the last hour they've spent together. His cheeks are vaguely flushed, and his lips are damp with spit.

“Eh, I'm a romantic. Dinner somewhere, maybe a few drinks, I'm not picky,” he says with a heavy shrug that nearly dislodges Luke's arms from where they're still resting on his shoulders.

“Okay. Tomorrow?” Luke follows up casually, adjusting his hands so they're clasped right at the back of Dino's neck, his fingertips tickling at the cropped hair there.

Dino hums and glances away quickly, but not quick enough that Luke can't follow his sightline and find that he's looking at a whole lot of nothing.

“Mm, when do you fly out?” Dino asks, and his fingers begin fiddling with the lower hemline of Luke's shirt, something that steals his attention away.

“Monday morning,” 

Luke feels his shirt get tugged harder than before, and when he looks down, he finds Dino's fingers pulling on the fabric until it stretches into a couple of long, smooth wrinkles.

“Okay, tomorrow evening, then,” Dino says after a short while of fiddling with Luke's shirt. It seems like he's coming down from whatever sporadic high he found himself in, and Luke finds himself feeling strangely disappointed.

In a last ditch, greedy effort to spend more time with him, Luke clears his throat again, this time to catch Dino's attention.

“Want to go back to my place?” My place, he says, as if he isn't staying in a company paid hotel, a hotel that they're both staying in, just a floor apart. It makes him feel stupid enough that he begins nervously twiddling with the collar of Dino's shirt.

“Maybe we can do something,” he offers vaguely when Dino doesn't reply immediately, and it receives an odd reaction, a cheeky smile and a crooked eyebrow raise.

“‘Something’?” Dino echoes sassily, obviously understanding what Luke is insinuating and clearly choosing to act clueless on purpose, and Luke groans at him, tipping his head back to really sell his faux annoyance.

“I mean, we still have a race tomorrow, so it couldn't be anything too crazy. We still have to sit in a race car for an hour and a bit, so,” Luke can't help but glance away at the implication, even if it's one he's just shot down.

“Maybe another time,” Luke continues, pausing to watch for Dino's reaction to the suggestion of them having another time, and he mentally celebrates the small twitch of his lips, something like anticipation between his brows.

“But tonight… Blowjob? Something simple?” The suggestion leaves Luke's mouth feeling like it's dripping something crimson and suede, too sensual and too alluring for whatever he's dealing with between them.