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« Alors, Calamar ? » (All right, Squid?) Pierre called out, smiling.
« Ça va, ça va, » (Okay, okay) Charles replied. « Toujours en vie ? » (Still alive?)
« Pour l’instant. » (For the moment)
French flooded the paddock in Montréal, but it was too rounded with the wrong syllables, too slow at the edges. Pierre imagined the alien words were only familiar on paper.
Charles’s French was familiar in the way an old jacket was familiar, worn soft by time and memory alike. Monaco lifted the melody of his vowels, but it was familiar because it belonged to Charles.
So much of the paddock stayed familiar even while it changed constantly. They raced so many of the same circuits, year after year. Team principals survived scandals that should have buried them alive.
Red Bull’s game of musical chairs had become depressingly familiar over the years. The same faces kept moving seats while management insisted each move was a fresh opportunity instead of what it usually was, survival.
Liam remained at Racing Bulls for another season, condemned to mentor the next rookie in line much the same way Pierre had after his own demotion years ago. Yuki, poor Yuki, had finally been shuffled out altogether, reduced to reserve duties while waiting for a phone call that might never come.
And Isack—Isack got the coveted seat beside Max Verstappen.
Pierre had occupied most of the seats at one point or another. He had been the reserve driver waiting in the wings, the promising rookie, the chosen successor, the disappointment. He was later the demoted veteran tasked with teaching the next generation how not to make the same mistakes. Now Liam sat in that chair. And Isack had risen to another.
They all left one season to return in new kits, new liveries, racing towards a fresh start at three hundred kilometers per hour. And somehow the whole circus still smelled the same at six in the morning.
This year, though, Pierre found himself finishing in the points consistently for the first time in years. The strange thing was how quickly his body remembered success once it returned. Confidence snuck up on him, convincing him to brake a little later, to trust more on exits. His attacking got equal work as his defending for once. New regulations had somehow turned the tides, and Alpine felt like a new team.
Isack was new too. Pierre knew the sound of his laugh, the temper lurking just beneath his skin, and the dangerous ambition that lit him from the inside out. But this version of him felt unfamiliar, undiluted, maybe. He seemed more volatile under the new pressure of Red Bull proper.
Isack’s soft edges had disappeared somewhere between the promotion announcement and flights to Milton Keynes. The last traces of teenage awkwardness had burned away under factory lights and simulator sessions and whatever psychological warfare Red Bull packaged as driver development these days. The kid carried himself differently now. It was as if he were constantly trying to predict the version of himself the team wanted to see before they had the chance to decide he wasn’t enough.
He barely came around anymore. There were no more FIFA nights sprawled across Pierre’s sofa with Isack’s sock feet on the coffee table, screaming at PSG’s midfield. Pierre hardly ever saw him around the paddock at all, not even with Liam.
Everything in Isack’s life bent toward survival now. Max sat in the other Red Bull seat, which was enough to turn promising young drivers into nervous wrecks before summer break. Pierre had seen it happen over and over again. The team fed ambition like petrol to open flame and then stood back to see who survived the explosion.
Isack had always been competitive. Frustration flashed hot and visible across his face whenever things went wrong. But now the feeling seemed to go deeper than anger. Now it looked like self-destruction. Pierre saw it clearly in Miami when Isack looked ready to put his head through concrete.
Isack managed to clip the wall like they had all done a dozen times, except Isack had done so in a Red Bull. In the same lap, somehow, Isack’s former teammate turned himself into a fucking missile in Turn 17 and launched Pierre clean over the barrier.
Afterwards, Pierre tried to catch Isack while the race continued without them. He saw Isack deep in the Red Bull garage, jaw tight while some engineer tried to talk him out from whatever spiral he had fallen into internally. For one miserable second, Pierre saw himself there instead. He pictured his own screaming frustration from the pressure and exhaustion and proximity to Verstappen’s standards. He had spent entire weekends convinced one bad session would cost him everything. He had lived terrified of disappointing men who measured human worth in tenths of a second. The rage looked identical, and so did the self-hatred underneath it.
Maybe Pierre should have left him alone that night in Montréal.
Maybe he should’ve taken the hint when Isack opened the hotel door and didn’t look particularly happy to see him standing there. He looked tired in some deeper way Pierre recognised too well, hollowed out.
Pierre should have left well enough alone after that. He should have offered some easy excuse and gone back downstairs to his own room instead of asking quietly if he could come in, instead of asking if Isack was all right.
Isack had changed in the last year. His emotions arrived sanded down, compacted into harder, more dangerous things. Exhaustion shadowed just beneath his eyes. Even his smile looked wrong sometimes—too many teeth.
Pierre looked at him now and felt like he was staring into some distorted mirror. Isack was starving himself on pressure and expectation until ambition became impossible to separate from self-destruction. He should have tried harder to make Isack talk.
He should have sat beside him on the edge of the hotel bed and dragged something honest out of him piece by piece if necessary. They could talk about Verstappen, about Red Bull. Pierre knew about the endless fucking pressure cooker of Milton Keynes, and he should have asked whether Isack slept properly these days.
But old habits were easy. Familiarity was easy. Pierre remembered too clearly what Isack’s mouth felt like against his own, what it felt like to be wanted with that kind of reckless intensity. The warmth in Isack’s eyes was harder to find now, but the hunger remained.
Maybe Pierre should have walked away the second Isack kissed him. The second those strong hands grabbed at the front of his shirt like letting go might kill him outright, Pierre should have realized what a mistake it was.
He thought of Yuki, hanging on by the reserve driver thread Red Bull liked to string desperate drivers up by. He thought of Charles, eyes always bigger than his stomach, loyal to an incredible fault to maintain that perfect façade. He thought of George, working himself to death for half a shot at a championship when his own team refused to put him first. He thought of Liam, desperate for a chance to prove himself when the one he had been given was snatched away too early.
They all deserved better than this, to feel wanted. Pierre realised with a dull ache somewhere beneath his ribs just how long it had probably been since someone touched Isack with tenderness instead of expectation.
He stopped trying to be careful and simply let instinct take over, all the deeper, uglier parts of himself that wanted to soothe and possess in equal measure. Isack kissed him with the same frantic hunger Pierre remembered from before, rough hands already dragging impatiently at Pierre’s shirt halfway through the walk from the door to the bed like he couldn’t bear another second of distance between them.
Pierre let him, even answered him with equal intensity. He kissed Isack the way he ought to be kissed: thoroughly, attentively, like Pierre wanted him there and had no intention of pretending otherwise. Pierre could feel all that terrible restless energy in the way Isack clung to him, like wanting and panic had tangled together somewhere inside his chest months ago and never fully separated again.
Pierre caught him by the waist and pulled him down fully on top of him between his legs, groaning into his mouth when Isack pressed desire into his hip.
When Isack kissed too hard, all urgency and bitten-off breaths, Pierre answered him with patience instead of matching the desperation outright. He stroked up the length of his back until Isack shivered for it, pressing wet fingers into him with little finesse.
Pierre hissed and moaned for the stretch, clinging to broader shoulders, hard lines of muscle beneath his palms when he slid his hands across Isack’s back and held him close. Isack gripped Pierre’s hips in return with almost bruising force, like he was afraid the moment might vanish if he loosened his hold for even a second.
Pierre stroked him with one hand between them until Isack was practically folded into him, panting hot into the hollow of Pierre’s throat between rough kisses while Pierre wrapped one leg around the back of his thigh instinctively to keep him there. Fingers were soon replaced by slick cock, their edges soon blurring into one.
Pierre’s fingers dug into the expanse of his back, pulling his hips deeper despite the burn, forcing his forehead into Isack’s neck. The kid’s breathing had a frantic edge, his grip on Pierre’s waist more desperate with every thrust.
Isack mouthed at his neck between breaths, words lost to the heat of the moment. His hips suddenly pushed harder, warmth filling Pierre in the deepest way. Pierre chose very deliberately not to think too hard about what he might have said, about whose eyes he might’ve pictured. Instead, he only tightened his arms around him and kissed the damp curls at his temple, letting the sound disappear between them unanswered.