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Chapter Text

1

After the accident, James spends the first three days barricaded in his hotel room with the phone receiver off the hook, drinking himself to oblivion whilst the storm outside -  the most vociferous rainfall in Germany this last decade – hammers at the shutters and howls their accusations at him.

James listens very carefully and agrees with everything the storm says, takes his dues like a man and pours two glasses, one of which he drinks on Niki’s behalf.

On the forth day he finally succumbs to Alastair’s threats and his own brother’s begging and ventures back into the pits, driven by self-disgust and the stench of his own reeking bedsheets; the vomit that didnt quite make it to the sink. James makes sure to keep away from the TV and radio stations. He sulks in the shadows, avoiding the reporters baying for blood; and anyone 'friendly' who thinks it’s a good idea to update him on Niki’s condition that day suddenly gets to renew their appreciation of the racer’s extensive retention for swearwords.

James already knows that Niki’s not dead, and that’s more than enough to know. He drinks, he fucks, he wins races. He listens to the rain that doesn’t stop. He thinks he hears the rain in his head even when the skies are clear; a statcato hum like white noise that keeps him woolly and wrapped up from the din and industry of talking and shitting and eating and racing and moving on that everybody else seems to be getting so caught up with.

On day nine he goes to the hospital.

Marlene is there, and she ascends the corridor and moves towards him like a wraith; her hair mussed, slim shoulders encased in mourning clothes, eyes like open wounds on her face. She’s quietly intense; graceful under preasure as a willow is in a storm, the way Niki is, but infinitely more compassionate the way Niki is not. She thanks him for coming. James ducks his head and mutters his sympathies to the floor, unable to meet her eyes.

Marlene would know who had been responsible for that race, for that accident. She'd know who was really responsible for Niki’s half-dead state and he can’t face her, he can’t bear to look up and have her read the guilt in his eyes so he hides behind his hair and clears his throat until she touches his shoulder, and it is a gentle, almost motherly touch.

It does more to settle James than anything else in the last nine days.

It is she who takes his hand, and her hands are cool and slender and strong as she leads him to Niki’s private rooms as if James was a little public school boy who had found been crying in the stairwell because he lost his way to the infirmary, and  James knows why Niki had choosen her, and he knows why Niki is better.

Before she closes the door she touches his shoulder again, like a blessing; like permission. Cry here. I wont tell. 

Left to his own devices his eyes begins to rove and he’s lucky because the Austrian is sleeping, probably drugged to the gills. He’s lucky because Marlene was there to take his hand before he could turn tails and walk out of the hospital with his hands in his pockets like some adolecent. He’s starting to realise his life has been all about luck, the events that takes place around him that brings him from point to point, from finish line to finish line. That’s all James is, really. Luck and madness – and enough charisma to get away with being the arsehole that Nikki always saw through; was usually the only one who saw through.

There’s not much to Niki now that isn’t covered with gauze or bandages or hospital sheets, and James is dismayed to see even the pad of his fingers and palms are burnt, wrapped in gauze down to the fingertips. Probably an attempt to push the burning metal coffin he’d been trapped in.

A coffin James had put him into.

The skin on Niki’s forearm is unburnt however, and this is the only visible area which isn’t covered in bandages. The skin looks a little raw and pink but it's pristine, and James can’t tear his eyes away from how flawless it looks. How pale it is, and fragile; scored with blue veins.

And he can't get over how he’d taken everything about Niki for granted, right down to the only visible patch of skin that isn't blistered off on his forearm, like some sort of momento into the past. A calling card; here, Niki Lauda used to look like this, before James opened his mouth and almost killed the running world champion and one of the most talented racers to walk the earth. 

Strange, how blankets and bandages can bring out a previously unsuspecting perfection. How Niki’s eyes are closed in sleep, but James feels like he's the one who’s been blind.  

*

Chapter Text

2

Luck seems to hold Niki Lauda in winged arms when the doctors publicly announces that the Austrian would eventually recover the use of his lungs, a striking overturn from the original diagnosis of ‘hopeless’ on the eve of his admission.

James meanwhile manages a succession of hospital visits that goes thankfully undetected, both from the media and from Niki himself. He visits under the cover of heavy rain or dying sunlight, or the quiet hours preceding some big celebrity-studded after-party when everybody is busy getting ready; that is everyone except James.

Still, his lack of discovery is nothing short of a miracle in a hospital crawling around the clock with reporters and fellow racers, but Marlene’s predictions have so far been flawless, so James shows up whenever she tells him to and loiters in the stairwell of the seldom used south-west corridor, smoking and waiting; until Marlene unerringly finds him and guide him to the now-familiar hospital wing where Niki would inevitably be asleep.

Even with precedence, the visits are difficult on James. Some days Niki would look bruised and exhausted, with dark purple rings circling eyes that are swollen into slits. Most days he looks completely knocked out and Marlene would whisper that Niki had spent the whole morning fighting for his life. Or fighting doctors. Or fighting Ferrari, or fighting pain.

The worst days are when James arrives before the bandages are changed and stares aghast at the blood and plasma seeping through the white strips. The combination of that and the hospital always serves to make Niki look like a cast extra in a war movie; gruesome to the point of unrealness, and those are the days James only stays for minutes before finding an excuse to leave the room. 

There are days he leaves early, shoulders hunched under a shame so deep and so heavy it's a wonder to James that he can still walk. But he always comes back.

* 

‘Kind of pointless don’t you think,’ he says to Marlene on one of his surreptitious visit. ‘-my being here.’

‘You don’t want to be here?’

‘No, of course I do,’ James pulls at his hair, unaccountably nervous; displaced by his surroundings and the weight of Marlene’s sombre gaze. ‘I’m probably not helping by- stomping around while he sleeps. If he wakes up he’d have such a fit.’

‘He sleeps better when you come.’

James snorted. ‘I really doubt it.’

‘He is my Niki, so I know,’ Malene corrects him softly, eyes veiled and tender upon her husband, and James is instantly ashamed.

‘Yes of course. I’m sorry.’

‘Perhaps you’ll sleep better too,’ Marlene says, and closes the door softly behind her, leaving James trapped in the room with her words sinking into his chest.

Niki's hospital room is always peaceful and cold, although James suspects its only peaceful because its occupant is unconscious. He’s relieved to see the doctors have finally disconnected the breathing machines they’d hooked up earlier to save Niki from drowning in the fluid of his own lungs. Left alone, James allows his eyes to roam anxiously over Niki’s sleeping form, cataloguing every minute improvement with an attention for detail he never knew he possessed. Niki had suffered a profussion of burns ranging from first to third degree, on top of a charred scalp from a helmet that had melted off during the inferno. James knows that his right ear has completely melted off, cartilage and all, but he has not seen what remains, a fact he remains thankful of.

He doesent think he's ready to see what has been done to Niki’s head, not yet; and god willing not for a long while to come.

Somebody had removed the bandages from Niki's hands, and James devotes his attention at them for a long while. Niki's hands are puffy and raw looking, so swollen that they look more like badly made prosthetics than real hands, and completely purple where his left wrist is broken.

But they are still beautiful hands, is all the conclusion his mind seems to be willing to supply. James would roll his eyes at himself if such were possible. Ever the optimist is James' inner voice where Niki is concerned, covering his discomfort at what he really sees: how small and helpless Niki's broken hands seem, compared to James' own. How strange that they did the same work, yet his own fingers are large; as stocky and wide as a bear, whilst the man in the hospital bed being dwarfed by white cotton and stainless steel had hands that makes him think of butterflies. Of fishes darting through shallows waters.

He looks down at his own fingers, whole and perfect and unburnt. They look dull to him, like a blunt instrument, not good for much, and this isn’t an emotion James is used to associating with himself. People generally find him charming, reporters and fans find his words witty and cleaving and relectantly amusing even if they didn’t like him.

But Niki had a completely different sort of intelligence: sharp, brutal, solid. An anchor. A knife.

James had earlier overheard his own boys talking about Niki’s by now infamous and much celebrated blaspheming of the priest who had been bought in to administer his last rites. He’d listened with one ear to their hushed, impressed whispers. He’d seen Clay striding about the pit, clearly jittery with too much energy as he recounted the recovery trials of ‘that fucking daredevil rat’ with ‘balls like cannonballs’ who’d probably ‘tell St Peter himself to fuck off’ - stories that grew larger in the telling, performed to increasingly larger crowds of jostling well-wishers  and usually ending with a solid round of rousing curses thrown at Ferrari, and a lot of slapped backs.

He wonders what the Austrian would have made of all his new cult status, had he been fit to enjoy it. Niki being Niki, would probably have paid it no attention.

Niki Lauda had never been popular with the circus. Now he is the circus, the populist hero of the day, and James can’t help be dread what might be waiting for Niki out there, when he finally gets out of hospital, into the overwhelming tide of reporters camping out in every crevice of workplace and home, attempting to record his reaction to the news of Ferrari having already hired themselves a replacement.

And he dreads what the proud Austrian's reaction would be.

*

Chapter Text

3

Once Niki recovers enough to cease his stone-cold, morphine induced dozes, James stops visiting the hospital. Instead he smokes cigarette after cigarette and attempts to contain the urge to hang around the Ferrari paddock and eavesdrop on Clay Riggazoni.

He doesn’t always succeed.

Clay and the Ferrari pit boys doesn’t bat an eyelash when he skulks over but the new upstart that Enzo Ferrari just hired; Carlos Reutemann, stares at James as though he’s some moorish heathen traipsing through the sacred temples of Jerusalem with a mind to steal the ceremonial silver. In retaliation James takes an instant dislike to the newcomer and pointedly turns his back on him more than once, a move that doesn’t go unnoticed by Niki’s team mates. James doesn’t care, because Enzo is one dumb fuck if he can’t see the impending fireworks that's just waiting to be set off between Carlos and Niki once the later gets back into the races, even if it will be some months yet.

Dissatisfied with Clay’s updates, he finally caves in and calls Marlene, who tells him that the skin graft is not taking well and the doctors fear that the newly grafted cells might die, which will necessitate another operation; another patch of skin from Niki’s inner thigh which has to be removed. Meaning more pain, longer recovery lengths, less guarantees and more infections. More and more risks, all because James had laughed at the initial 20%.

Some days, James thinks it should have been him in that car.

It’s all very depressing, to say the least. James never knows what to say, but Marlene always thanks him for calling and never asks why he no longer visits. It’s on the tip of his tongue to confess he’s been writing letters, sometimes. Pages of lengthy prose detailing the continuation of the races, how it doesn’t feel the same without Niki, how he frets about his stubborn recovery. Pages of rubbish. Reams of it.

He throws them all away.

In a fit of morbidity he calls his doctor brother one day, to get an idea of what skin grafting entails.

‘Excruciating, with his level of burns,’ is Peter’s succinct reply; ‘-coupled with the fact that grafts take months to recover. Then there's this evil tendency towards infection, overstressed and raise blood vessels, in some cases the whole skin dying off completely. Its going to take a long while, James, a good long while - and the way the lot of you make a living sweating like pigs and breaking out in rash at every race; there’s simply no chance of proper recovery. Poor bastard might have been better off dead-’

James slams the phone down without saying goodbye. Peter might be working on a cure for Myeloma and a damn sight more useful to the world (and their parents) than James himself will ever be in multiple lifetimes, but he could also be an arrogant arsewipe. James should know, after all they’re all Hunts.

Frustrated, he broods into whiskey bottles and thinks of alternative treatments. Western medicine is efficient, but it has its limitations and James should- perhaps he should do some research, find out what people did in other parts of the world. Peter might know something, but he doubts he’d be very forthcoming after the unceremonious ending of that last call.

He can’t help but reflect that Niki would have been good at finding such things out. Much better than James.

He stops by a couple of tents, pokes around and asks the drivers and their medic teams what they think. For all James knew, there might be some herb out there that works much better on skin regeneration than calamine or whatever crap cure they fobb off in the hospitals.

Everyone he speaks to raises their eyebrows and spouts some nonsense about doctors knowing best and how everything that could humanly be done was already being done. Crap platitudes from crap people, now James knows how Niki feels on a daily basis surrounded by people who wasted his time. It's constantly on the tip of his tongue to tell them to fuck off. James manages to hold back his vitrol only by virtue of the speculations he would cause, blowing a fuse on behalf of Niki Lauder of all people. Instead, he propels his anger into getting him from the next tent to the next, but a part of him knows he’s simply banging his head against the same wall, expecting a different result.

He feels stupid, some days. People like to call him intelligent, but Niki would have been much better at these things.

Exactly a week later, the little rat shows up at the Grand Prix.

Niki Lauda, Austrian bastard extraordinaire, shows up at the Ferrari paddock, shaking hands and signing autographs, ridiculous red cap jammed over still-wet bandages, and announces his intention to compete, a mere 41 days after one of the most horrific accidents in racing history.

And James is absolutely furious.

*

Chapter Text

4

James finds himself striding to the Ferrari enclave without thinking and bellowing for Niki before any inkling of consequence occurs to him, and then it is too late, because everyone is  turning around to gape at his presence in the tent, whole minutes before the start of the race.

Clay reaches out an arm as he barges in. ‘James, Niki is with Alistair; you know he’s still recovering-‘

‘Then the rat bloody shouldn’t be here in the first place,’ James raises his voice, making sure it’s audible to the little rodent hunching into the table with his back to them, examining the track bends on a map.

The tent is already full of curious bystanders but James knows his larger than life presence would cut through them like a knife through butter, and he uses it to his advantage. Even he falters, however at the edge of the invisible barrier that seems to surround the diminutive Austrian racer as he converses quietly with his manager, somehow by posture alone keeping everyone at bay.

‘Niki,’ James says, softer this time, and he doesn’t know what he puts into his voice that makes the other man tense up so dramatically. When Niki finally turns slowly around, he does so very stiffly with his entire body rather than his head, and James can hear his own involuntary hiss of breath.

The silence between them stretches.

‘Well?’ Niki finally says, raising his arms. ‘Come to gloat? Or come to protest that I shouldn’t be allowed to beat you today?’

There should be a response, a cutting down of such patently ludicrous comments from a man who can barely even move, much less race. But James just stares at Niki, feeling like his entire oxygen supply has just been cut off. It was the first time he’s seen Niki’s face up close; with a minimum of bandages. First time he'd seen him awake, and Niki's sharp-edged vitality, those intense chocolate eyes staring out at James from the ruin of his face made him light headed. Actually light headed.

Niki is- Niki's face is-

God his face. James wants to cover his eyes with his hands; he wants to never have walked into this tent and come face to face with what he’s done to his rival.

The wounds are still clearly bleeding, suffocating under the weight and constrict of the cap he wears to obstruct the worst of his injuries from view. James wants to rip the offending cap off his head; he wants to shout at all this pointless vanity that surely comes with no small amount of pain. Niki's head is still swollen, looking like an over broiled chunk of meat. The complete absence of one ear is thankfully, covered up. By rights the Austrian’s mobility should be zero, nursing as he did a broken collarbone and several shattered ribs. How would he even put on his bloody balaclava?

The whole sight of him turns James' stomach, makes his gag flex tickle as if it was about to be beset by ants.  

‘You shouldn’t be here, with all those broken bones’ James says, and he tries to make it casual and cutting but it comes out all wrong. ‘Hell, even your cheekbones are broken, it’s a miracle it isn’t poking out of your face like some badly pitched tent.’

‘You keep track of your enemies. Good for you,’ Niki says. ‘But remember this: rats aren’t afraid of fire. And they don’t need to care about how they look.’

With that James realises Marlene hadn’t said a word to her husband about his secret visits. She had left it up to him to decide. But time James has spent rearranging his prejudices was the time Niki had spent either in coma or unconscious from pain, so he gets to see Niki resuming their combative relationship of the past and glaring at him from under his cap, suspicious and hostile.

Waiting for James to make light of his suffering.

He understands why Niki looks at him the way he does so it shouldn't cut this deep to be the recipient of his hostility, but it does.

'What about painkillers? You cant drive on those.'

'I took none, and pissed into a cup to prove it,' Niki snorts, before adding; 'you have to try something more bad ass than that to disqualify me. But even then I'd still beat you.'

'You have to be able to move first,' James says almost on automaton, because a substantial  part of his brain is stuck on processing the way 'bad ass' sounds coming from the Austrian's mouth. And the way the tent seems too small, all of a sudden. Too many people. And Niki suddenly too near, too real.

 All those horrible injuries and disfigurement, too real. Niki is cool under pressure, but this was no normal challenge he was subjecting himself to. And he might be outwardly calm but James can see the false bravado on his face, it’s a mask he has worn himself too many times before.

‘You think I cant compete because of how I look?’ Niki hisses, completely misreading his expression again.

‘Of course not, I-‘

‘Whilst everybody is busy gaping at my face, that’s when I overtake and they eat my dust. You especially, James Hunt. Now get out.’

James stares into angry chocolate eyes in frustration, opens his mouth for a sharp retort, then clamps it shut and marches himself out of Ferrari’s tent. If there was a wall nearby he would hit it, but all he sees is canvass and grass and tarmac and its stupid, this whole race is pointless and stupid-

His team dashes out to cluck at him about being late and James waves them irritably away as he changes into his racing overalls. He feels the familiar fear that takes place just before a race, but it has a new edge to it that he doesn't recognise.

He zips up just in time before dashing over to the side of the tent to vomit, and even that feels different today, and James is moving towards his car and and wiping his mouth and trying to figure out what has changed for him when he turns around to check on his rival and their eyes somehow collide-

-and suddenly James knows what his body is telling him; that he is worried, bloody fucking worried about the Austrian’s safety at the tracks today. A rival whom incidentally, is showing him the middle finger in, an unnaturally aggressive display that wins Niki cheers of approval from the crowd.

Fine. Fine. Race today in a stupendous amount of pain. Stupid rat.

*

Chapter Text

5

James doesn’t want to care. He has a race to finish – not to finish; he has a race to win. Yet he finds himself looking back to ensure that the bleeding arsehole could actually get into his helmet, swollen as it is with as much pain as pride.

That Niki looks at nobody, cares for no one and nothing but himself and the impending race is not lost upon James, leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

When the race finally takes off, James is barely surprised to find he can’t concentrate; that he can barely make out the colour of the flags waving from the periphery. Everything feels wrong; the speed of his downforce and drags, the pedal under his foot. He makes mistakes; negligible ones that nobody else can detect and on an ordinary day James would shrug it off, but too much about the current race feels off. The whole fit of James in his car feels off. The fit of his own skin on himself feels off.

When he finally disqualifies and it taken out of the game, it’s almost a relief. And by the time the chequered flags are raised and Ronnie takes the finish line, Niki ends up out-qualifying both Clay and Carlos Routerman with the most outstanding 'fuck you' calling card to Ferarri James has ever seen. He finishes fourth, on half a dozen broken bones and no painkillers and half his face burnt off. Forth. James can hear the 120,000 strong podium screaming Niki’s name, he can hear the surging emotions of the crowd before him, carrying his own heartbeat with it, a ring of drum beats echoing and expanding upon itself: a battalion.  

In all his years of racing, James had never seen such intensity or triumph expressed by racing spectators. Nobody gave two hoots about Ronnie Petterson’s win; all lines had been erased, all thoughts of competition ceased. The crowd is no longer celebrating the triumph of competition, it is celebrating the victory of sheer human achievement. Today's victor is Man and his constantly race with himself; to seek, to strive even onto the end of human horizons.

To seek. To risk. To win against all odds.

A triumph worthy of immortality, James somehow knows. As everyone who stood in the racing ring that day somehow knew.

The tracks crackles with thunder, with stamping feet as the people roar Niki’s name, almost blood thirsty in their approval. As if they were in Carthage, and James is transported to another time and space, the years of urban patina stripped away as if no time has passed. As if Niki is a gladiator who had felled an insurmountable enemy; and he had.

Niki had grappled with every man’s enemy - fear. Grappled and emerged victorious, and is declared hero for it.

James finds himself moving forward, joining the crowd attempting to surge forward to the stationary Ferarri. His walk turns into a jog, then a full legged sprint. He doesn’t think of why; it doesn’t occur to him to question why he feels so compelled to look upon the Austrian’s face as he clumsily climbs out of his car. The crowd roars around his ears, cameras almost hitting him as they spin around, attempting to capture the unprecedented clamour.

When Niki finally takes off his helmet, he is covered in blood and pus. His entire body is trembling, but the Austrian is given little chance to recover before the crowd catches up with him. They literally catch him, hoisted him up on their shoulders and parades him around the tracks like some sacred object, like he’s the bloody shroud of Turin. James is jostled back by fathers who carry their sons on their shoulders; urging small fingers to upward towards the sun.

Towards the sun.

James takes another step back, and another, and tries not to stumble. He spots Marlene standing in a corner of the garage, watching her husband. As if she could sense the direction of his gaze, she turns towards him and inclined her head once, the smallest of smiles on her lips.

His gaze returns to the spectacle, right in time to see Niki give him the middle finger, a look of angry triumph on his face, riding on the adrenaline and pain and beating James to keep himself from falling over.

Their eyes meet over the crowd, and he can almost hear the Austrian’s voice in his ear, intimate and soft against the receding white noise of the crowd.

Eat my dust, arschloch.

The crowd overwhelms the tracks, and the security finally pulls back, recognising the futility of control. James thinks he hears the Italian national anthem blaring from somewhere. Cameras whirl in front of a hundred foreign languages, recording every detail for posterity. Nobody had ever seen anything like it; James knows they were witnessing history in the making.

James steps away, and watches them carry Niki Lauda out of sight.

*

Chapter Text

6

Its during the after party that James learns from the gossip mills that Marlene had spent most of the weekend resewing Niki’s balaclava to protect what was left of her husband’s skin. It hadn’t really worked, from what little he had seen of Niki’s skin before the race – James suspects that the only way they could have removed it post race was by cutting it off Niki's blood-sticky face, scrap by scrap.

The after party, predictably, is full of Niki – his name on every lips, the topic of every conversation, every reporter’s question. Suddenly Niki has a million friends, bossom buddies crawling out of the woodwork. People who claimed they had to stay away to give him his space, because geniuses do their best work alone but they had always been around, silently giving Niki Lauder the support he needed. As for the man himself, he is nowhere to be found at his own celebration, but James sourly observes that the room is fast to forgive him for it – fast to celebrate on his behalf. Without Niki, the champange could pour freer, and people can say whatever they want about him with no fear of contradictions or gainsay.

Only Clay has ever been anything more than passing acquaintance with his notoriously close-mouthed team mate, and even he has been missing so far.

Intrigued, James looks around the room and notices that Carlos Reutemann is absent as well. As is the entire Ferarri enclave. Huh. Interesting. An entire party venue is decorated in Enzo Ferarri’s colours, and not one of them present tonight.

He takes another turn about the floor, slaps the backs of half a dozen people he doesn’t care two hoots about, and dismisses the brunette who sidles up to him at the bar as too much of a bother.

On second thought, screw this party. James had better venues to greet the bottom of a bottle with.

*

Of all the people to come barging into McLaren’s garrage at one am in the morning, he had not anticipated Niki Lauda, darling of the masses. James blinks watery eyes against the assault of harsh white lights when the lights are switched on despite his protest. Ruthless prick.

‘You’ve had six weeks to take all my points. You should be out celebrating, not sulking here by yourself.’ Niki’s accented lilt smoothers James, judgemental and brusque and hiding Niki’s distinct brand of cool concern in plain sight.

‘You haven’t cornered the market on sulkiness. Came to sabotage my car?’

‘I saw lights,’ is all Niki says, instead of baiting James like he always does. ‘You are usually not here at this time of the morning.’

'So kind of you to notice,' James rubs his eyes. ‘S’only one am give or take; its nothing.’

‘Correction, it is now four am; and you are drunk out of your mind as usual,’ Niki snips as he shrugs carefully out of his jacket. ‘You stink worse than a corpse.’

‘You should know, having almost been one.’ James watches the smaller man move with careful, deliberate moments, trying to minimise the pain, and his jaw tightens with ever wince or involuntary exhalation that the Austrian makes. ‘You should have stayed in hospital.’

‘Should,’ Niki grunts. ‘If you asked my grandfather, I should have never been born.’

This is his cue to laugh, James knows. This is where he’s supposed to say something about the familiar habits of rats, but what comes out of his mouth is unscripted: ‘I’m glad he was wrong on worldwide TV in front of thirty million people, then.’

Niki opens his mouth to reply, and James is treated to the sight of seeing absolutely nothing come out of the sharp tongued Austrian. He laughs low in his throat. ‘How now, have I succeeded in making Niki Lauder speechless for once?’

‘I made you speechless at the tracks today, you make me speechless here. We take turns, ja, and now-‘ the dark haired man shrugs his shoulders, eyes darting around the McLaren space he seldom enters. ‘You should go home and get some sleep.’

‘Sleep, what the hell is that?’ James snorts, and then relents at the look the smaller man shoots him. 'I'm going. But riddle me this before you send me to bed, nursie; where was everyone from your team tonight?'

Niki's mouth presses into a thin line. 'Sorting out an argument.'

'Over Carlos Reutemann?'

'Also none of your business.'

'You're a better driver than him.'

'Of course I goddamn am!' Niki bursts out before remembering himself. 'But thank you for saying that.'

James blinks, suddenly embarassed. 'Hey. You're welcome.' Then their eyes meet and the words are out of his mouth before he can stop it. ‘Niki, when I saw you this morning-‘

‘I don’t want your apology,’ the Austrian’s voice grew sharp. ‘Shut up, James Hunt.’

‘I wasn’t about to apologise,’ James can feel his teeth gritting as he pulls himself off the floor and staggers towards his archival.

Clearly Niki doesn’t believe him. ‘Of course. Please carry on.’

‘Fuck. Fuck. So maybe I do want to apologize, but it isn’t because of- all this.‘ James waves a hand over Niki’s face. ‘If anything I think it’s an improvement, you know? You’re the only guy I know who could get his face burnt off and come out looking better for it.’

Niki knows he’s lying of course. His arms are folded, defensive. His eyes are somehow clearer, easier to read now that his facial features are so vague, smoothed out by fire into each other, as if somebody had tried to erase his face.

James steps closer, into the electric air between them and forces his tongue to work despite the lump in his throat. ‘Look. I do need to apologize. For my hand in- what happened.’

‘You blame yourself?’

‘I might as well have nailed the coffin cover shut.’

Niki’s nostrils flares as he inhales and looks away. ‘I knew the risks.’

‘Fuck you and your risks.’ James growls, hands drawing into fists. His rib cage is tight and he wants to punch something.

‘So what do you want me to say?’ The sharp chocolate gaze drifts back to him. ‘You want me to say it’s your fault? It wasn’t.’

‘You know I swayed that room.’

‘So you’re an arsehole,’ the smaller man shrugs. ‘What’s new?’

‘I-‘

‘You’re responsible for many stupid things, James. Many. But you know what you didn’t do? You didn’t put me in that car,’ Niki points out with infuriating calmness, as if they are talking about somebody's negligent housework and not the goddamn life he almost lost.

James bites back the snarl in his throat and yanks his hair back so hard he thinks he ripped some out. ‘Fucking infuriating Austrian rat! How can you be so goddam generous?’

‘I walked onto the track with these two legs, James, and God let me keep them. It’s not me who’s generous.’

‘I’m talking about how you almost lost everything and you’re telling me about God’s glory?’

‘Stop shouting,’ Niki says calmly, and only then does he realise he’s raises his voice.

‘Niki, I-’ James breaks off again, and his fingers grip his forehead in an attempt to restore some sanity. ‘Jesus. Jesus Christ what’s wrong with me.’

He almost filches when a gentle hand squeezes his shoulder. ‘It’s all right James. I’m still alive.’  

‘Are you comforting me? When you’ve just come out of the worst-‘ James huffs with incredulity, with admiration, a whole cocktail of emotions he barely processes. ‘-because that’s fucking hilarious, Niki, that just takes the cake.’

‘Cakes are sometimes funny,’ Niki says with perfect seriousness, and James burst into laughter.

He howls. He couldn’t help it, and it’s gratifying, it’s like forgiveness; like the strangest sort of hunger James hadn’t know he possessed until it was satiated to the sounds of Niki chuckling softly beside him. As they clutch each other and throw back their heads and laugh.

James lets the mirth die reluctantly, conscious of the fact that he’s felt happier in this moment than he remembers in forever. More comfortable now, than any other occasion his short term memories could provide. As his breath settles, James finds his gaze falling on the lines of Lauda’s throat, mapping of the pristine skin there. A movement; a swallow interrupts his half-conscious perusal, and James found his gaze moving up, following the ripple-

Comes to rest on Niki Lauda’s mouth. A mouth still slack with shared mirth, lips parted. And his eyes takes in those lips and finds them inviting.

-finds them terribly, disastrously inviting.  

For the rest of his life, James would be able to recall with clarity the moment everything changed between them. The moment the air suddenly disappeared, sucked out of the room as both men tensed under the sudden, electric change.

James pulls back as if electrocuted, in time to see Niki do the same like a twin reflection. His chest is racing within its ribcage, like the tense, surreal seconds before a race.

He sees Niki swallow again, feels his own throat tighten in response.

No. No no no NO, not this, not now. Not him.

‘I need you to go back,’ James announces, and he thinks he’s saying this earnestly and intelligibly, so he doesn’t understand why Niki puts two fingers on his knuckles, as if he’s the one who needs comforting. ‘I-I need you to be a rat again.’

‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘Everything’s changed,’ James chokes, and he knows he sounds ridiculous, he sounds like a wet engine spluttering oil, lungs rattling out of body.

Before this Niki was just disturbing periphery; spears of light in his eye, a stray root tripping up his shoes. Now, the Austrian is all he can see. Now everything else is in his way, and Niki is too far away. Niki is too near. Niki is nowhere near enough. Niki’s intensity seeps under his skin and turns into something else completely. Something live, something electric and dangerous, and James isn’t able to root it out with all the normal tools. 

‘James, listen to me-’

‘Everything’s changed,’ James says again, and this time Niki doesn’t contradict him.

*

Chapter Text

7

Getting to know one’s self, James is beginning to understand, is not necessarily a pleasant thing. And getting to know the true nature of one’s sexuality at four am in the morning only makes it that much more unpleasant.

So what does James do with the sudden knowledge that he might just not be as straight as previously presumed? What does he do with the jaw-dropping knowledge of being suddenly and irresistibly attracted to one’s archrival? One whose hubris and conceit he can barely tolerate on a normal day?

Worst of all, one who had been condemned to suffer debilitating and lifelong deformities because of James?

And for that matter is he really attracted to Niki? Or just suffering an advanced and twisted form of guilt? It's hard to tell, when all they had was one small moment of staring at each other in the McLaren shed before Niki had turned tails and run away; and the voiceless longings that James had experienced from then have long since vanished like smoke into the ether.

That, and James doesn’t dare to discount that he might have imagined the whole thing. After all, he’d been drinking the better part of the evening and morning.

He spends the rest of the morning and afternoon hiding in his hotel room, evading phone calls and alternating between bouts of panic and frustration. He picks up the phone numerous times, thinking about calling Niki, calling Marlene, calling Suzy, calling quadruplets of double jointed Japanese girls. He ends up yanking out the phone and throwing it into the cooling bathwater, then regreting it when the urge to ring for room service hits.

It takes several more hours of brooding before he manages to convince himself that everything is ok.

It’s fine. Its all going to be fine. Yesterday had been a night of madness because it's Niki’s first day back at the tracks; and James had been dealing with six weeks of mindless worry which had gotten the best of him and turned for one brief moment into something else, something confused  - but now he’s fine again.

James Hunt is in perfect possession of himself, and now that he’s gotten it out of his system, everything will be fine.

Motivated by this, he starts dressing for a night out. Best way to get over a funk is to drive headlong into another one. He starts to whistle as he lays out his plans for the evening; attend the Hilton’s bash, stay up all night, grab some breakfast of champions in the morning before heading back to track practice.

At least, that was the idea. Fate has other ideas, because James is so intent on congratulating himself on a well-formed plan that he walks into the elevator without looking up- and only when the doors close with a ping behind him does James raise his head and look right into the horrified eyes of Niki Lauda.

‘Fuck,’ is all that the British man can think to say. If he hadn’t been certain before about the great deal of something strange taking place between them last night, Niki’s reaction to him just brought it to the front row and laid it supine on a table. 'Niki.'

James watches the dark haired man wet his lips and calls him ‘James’ in a low, confused voice and immediately feels a horrible sort of pleasure-pain in his gut. The very low part of his gut that is suddenly roiling, half in panic and half aroused; and a part of his brain thinks hyterically to himself, this is just not happening. 

No no no. Not Niki Lauda. A dog, a horse, hell he’d fuck Enzo Ferarri himself, just not Niki – he doesn’t, he cant-

‘James,’ Niki speaks his name again, and James wants to groan, he wants to tell the Austrian that the only way they were both going to survive a ride in a confined space is by shutting up and not rolling out the vowels of his name in that horrifyingly alluring accent.  

So of course the last thing James gets is what he wants, because Niki licks his lips and say his name again.

‘James, about last night- I think I was very tired ja, and I had to rush off,’ Niki says this staring with great determination at a spot somewhere above the taller man, and his words comes out very fast, obviously rehearsed and awkward and somehow registering in James’ brain as devastatingly adorable. ‘Marlene was waiting.’

James opens his mouth to agree. Agree at least in theory. Agreement and avoidance would be the best way to resolve the new- complication- between them.

What he says in lieu of agreement is, ‘I don’t think it was tiredness that made you rush off, Niki.‘

And then he wants to shoot himself.

‘I was tired and you were drunk. That is all,’ the smaller man insists, and then his eyes darts to the lift doors as it opens and he is squeezing past James like an alley cat escaping a pound catcher before James can even blink.

Looking back, he should let the Niki go that one time with the last word. Should have let him slip away, and then everything that subsequently happened would never have happened.

But then James had never mastered the art of leaving well alone – a trait he always knew to be his downfall, just not quite like this.

‘Niki, wait-‘ He follows the Austrian down the basement corridor that leads to the hotel parking, which only serves to motivate Niki to walk even faster.

‘Beat it, Hunt.’

Finally he lengthens his stride to overtake his archrival and holds out a hand which has the effect of unintentionally crowding Niki into the wall.

‘God stop. Just stop.’

‘What? What do you want?’ Niki blusters, all red cheeks and snarling lips. This close, James can make out the rapid movement of his eyes, almost taste the smaller man’s apprehension as he is backed reluctantly into the corridor walls.

‘I just want to talk, ok? Stop running away.’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Niki says, defiant and very clearly afraid. His face is pale, eyelashes flickering like moths trapped under glass, and the small action leaves James famished, puts in him a desperate need to feel them flicker against his knuckles, the back of his hand - and fucking hell, this pull between them is real because he’s never seen the other man so unravelled before; and suddenly James is sure there’s a similar expression on his face he can’t seem to do anything about. His heart is knocking about as if he’d just taken a plummet off a bridge in his car.

‘This is not happening,’ James mummers to himself, and realizes he must be moving because Niki’s breath hitches as his shoulders draw up, back shrinking into the wall as James presses into him, and his head is titled up in a way that James is sure Niki doesn’t know looks completely vulnerable on him.  

‘What are you- James nein,’ the dark haired man croaks hoarsely, even as his arms seem to hang loose and useless by his side. ‘We’re men, we, nein bitte-‘

The trapped air between is scorching, all the oxygen long burnt away.

James has never been good at obeying orders. He’d only ever known to follow his instincts; most of all his mating instincts, and as Niki’s small huffs of breath and whimpers of 'nein’ ghosts between their faces the only thing he knows to do is slant his mouth over the the other man, cutting off a gasp that could have come from either of them.

He wants to curse Niki for being such a shit actor. For staying at the same hotel, and getting into the same elevator.

He wants to curse those lips for being so shockingly soft that he groans into them, rubs them with his tongue first in surprise, then with an eagerness that’s almost embarrassing.

He can feel Niki’s lips quiver against his, but he doesn’t pull back, nor does he open his mouth. The smaller man seems frozen in place, until James finally draws away to suck in some much needed air, and then Niki suddenly, finally bursts like a overstretched tire.

‘Why the hell did you do that?’

‘Do what,’ James says this flatly, almost angrily. And then he kisses Niki again, hard, before the Austrian can reply and they both fall silent for a good many minutes except for small breathy noises that James knows neither will admit to making. Niki’s lips part a fraction of a inch wider and takes to rubbing back against James but still stays stubbornly locked up. James doesn't care, as long as he’s allowed to continue.

It is Niki who finaly breaks off first, panting. ‘I’m married. I’m fucking married.’ Then he raised his voice. ‘I’m not a girl, Hunt!’

‘I’ve noticed that.’

‘Don’t touch me again.’

Somehow the smaller man found the strength to finally escape the swollen, magnetic field around them, and James watches him slip away again, pale of face and red of lips, almost stumbling in his haste to get away.

His voice is hoarse, but he throws it anyways, watches Niki wincing at the words vibrating in the hollow spaces of the parking lot. ‘This isn’t just me and you know it.’

‘I mean it James. No more.’

The door slams shut on Niki’s hired Mercedes, and James watches it roar to life and push away as if its driver’s life depended on it.

*

Chapter Text

8

Well. All things considering James felt that things had gone rather well.

Well-ish. At least nobody died.

The busty lab assistant he’d taken home that night hadn’t shared his optimism when James fails to maintain his erection even after several rounds of oral gymnastics, but James pleads a combination of binge-drinking (true) and too much sex (false). And then he heroically insists on trying again. And again. Which ultimately results in a half-hearted finish with his left hand and both of them only too happy to be done with each other for the night and forever.

‘At least you must be flattered about the kind of stories the media makes up about your prowess in bed,’ his companion says to him drily as she blows smoke rings into the room, leaving the rest of her meaning – and her disappointment – to linger in the hazy air with the scent of burnt nicotine and sweat.

James has nothing to say to that, so he rolls over with a grunt and goes to sleep.

*

And now back to the programme, James says firmly to himself the next morning, zipping into his test driving overalls. He does have a plan after all, and the key element of that plan involves the next grand prix trophy accruing to James instead of Lauda, regardless of the cost.

That plan is for James to settle for nothing less than World Champion.

It’s the only thing in the world he'd ever really wanted. All else is dust. 

He squares his shoulders and marches out into the sun, helmet under one arm. James isn’t a rodent; he’s not going to be the one scurrying back into his hole and peeking out between cracks, quivering with fear just because a member of his own sex looked at him improperly.

Now if only he’d believe the way it sounds in his own head. Straight forward. Easy. A clean incision, to separate the infection that Niki Lauda had worked under his skin.

Still, he wasn’t a bloody coward, is James Hunt. And James can console himself at having learnt the nature of the monster now. He needs never allow these strange feelings to grip him again. Previously he’d let himself be swamped by emotions before he had fully recognized them, but now that he knew and could name them, he could control them.

He passes by William Crow, one of the Ferarri handlers on the way to the tracks and greets him congenially.

‘Flying the other way today, Billly boy?’

‘Birds can smell a storm coming. Heard tell that the rat is rabid today. Broke a few of Carlos’s things over his head,’ Bily grinned.

‘Rodent is as rodent does,’ James drawls and rolls his eyes. All the same he quickens his footsteps to the Ferarri enclave and arrives just in time to catch Niki weaving around the tracks swearing a blue streak at Ruterman with his hands gesturing like an Italian, the two of them inches from coming to blows.

He’s not thinking when he steps between them. ‘Break it up, guys, wrong industry for wresting.’

‘Mind your trap, Hunt,’ the Argentinan racer spits. ‘This is Ferarri business.’

‘No, this is disturbance of the peace, my peace in particular,’ James retorts, and caught Niki by the shoulders as he went charging past him. ‘You were just in one accident, are you in a big hurry for another?’ He makes sure to look over the smaller man’s shoulders and catch Reuterman’s eyes with a meaningful gaze, however, until James can see the dawning understanding on his face and the anger leaching away, as the Argentinian looks around him and sees the half-raised cameras around them; reporters circling them like sharks scenting blood.

Rueterman can kiss his career with Ferarri goodbye, if anyone takes a photo of him beating his disfigured and barely-recovered team mate who’s the current media darling for the F1.

Niki however, reacts as if James had poured acid on him. ‘Don’t touch me!’

‘Ok, ok,’ the blond holds up his hands, blocking the Austrian’s view with his body whilst he gestures for Rutermann to get lost.

‘You. Don’t touch me, don’t fucking touch me.’

‘Niki, stop,’ he says,but his ploy works because Reuterman leaves with one last look, and Niki has completely forgotten about his fight in favour of over-reacting as usual to James’ presence.

‘Niki, Niki hey-’ James calls again as if to a skittish horse, even though his rival’s name is like smoking velvet on his own tongue. ‘Hey. Calm down.’

‘Shut up, I’m calm.’

‘Come on,’ James gestures for Niki to follow, and at his suspicious glare, rolls his eyes. ‘Do you see the cameras? You can’t go back into Ferrari unless you want to start another fight, now come on.’ The Englishman stuffs his hands into his overall pockets and walks ahead without waiting. After a solid minute, he finally hears Niki’s footsteps behind him, probably inspired by the encroaching cameras more than any real desire to follow James.

As soon as they are in the relative privacy of James’ private cabin however, Niki pokes a furious finger into his chest. ‘You don’t come near me anymore.’

James raises an eyebrow and then proceeds to turn his back on his rival. ‘Yet you followed me back here on your own.’

He could feel Lauda’s sharp eyes drilling into him. ‘You invited me, arseloch.’

‘And you’re exactly the sort of bashful guest who’s too polite to refuse, is that it? Stop biting everybody’s head off and maybe you might actually be left in peace after all.’  

‘It is you who won’t leave me in peace!’

James breaths. Tries to summon irritation, anger, righteous indignation – anything that would help him break the tension between them and shove off back to his own corner of the world, back to his own life. All he gets is an unpleasant roiling in his gut, and an ache that is probably much lower down in his body than it should be.

A mixture of exasperation and exhaustion propels him. ‘Just can it Lauda, with all your little prissy and oh-so-violated outrage. You’re a fucking rodent, not a delicate flower. Go back to the media and rat on yourself. Or go see a priest and pour your poor little homophobic heart out if you're so traumatised by what happened. Christ. ’

Those cold brown eyes are studying him now. Hard as granite. ‘Is that what you think,’ he says.

James works his throat loose, dislodging the ball of bitterness there. ‘Of course. The great Niki Lauder is a lot of things, but he’s certainly no faggot. He wouldn’t dare-’

He is surprised, however, when Niki cuts him off with a fury that rises like a sudden high tide. ‘Is that what you think of me? You think- you think this is because I’m.. homophobic?’

That reaction sucker-punches the wind right out of James. ‘Niki-‘

‘Shut up!’

James takes another step back, since the smaller man looks on the verge of attacking him (again) with his bare fist. He’s completely flummoxed by Niki’s response. Whatever James has been expecting the Austrian to yell at him about, it certainly wasn’t this- this outburst of ruffled pride about his offended sense of liberalism, of all fucking things.

He watches, open mouthed as the smaller man works himself into a fine froth.

‘Fuck you James Hunt, fuck you to hell. I am not a fucking phobic, I am not homosexual but I’m not phobic. I don’t kiss men-‘

He’s cut off when James grabs him without thinking and smashes their mouths together.

Moments later when the blond racer pulls away the Austrian’s eyes are still hard and angry, but black and dilated with arousal. ‘You-‘

The rest of his sentence is pushed back into his mouth by James's tongue. It turns out to be a surprisingly efficient way to shut a rat up. But Niki rapidly recovers his fighter’s spirit and doesn't miss a beat, pushing right back into James mouth with the aggressiveness of somebody definitely not female. This time James can feel the other man’s arms pushing against him, shoving him against the wall, and he can barely keep the bone-deep groan of satisfaction down. Niki ends up being the aggressor of their kiss, mouth fierce and blindly angling each subsequent slant of their lips ever deeper against each other other. The feel of his smaller hands fisted in James’ tunic was more arousing than it had any right to be.  

Christ but James wants this. Wants whatever fucked-up pervert shite was going on between them. So bad.

His hands ends up fisting into chocolate curls, softer and more malleable than he ever imagined, the sound of the moving mouths between them breathless and lewd and fucking unreal. James tries to make the low noise in his throat go down or at least reveal less, but it rises out of him from a deep place, nothing he’d ever felt or knew before. A groan of want that is almost primordial, and its almost fitting because James can just about feel how every single thing he once thought he knew about himself shattering around them, fragments of an old life he knows he can never go back to.

And yet somehow amidst this horror show, this… incredulous un-maning of himself, a part of James has never felt more exultant. Nor more viciously male.

Niki pulls away at last, panting and angry and beautiful. A corner of James’ mouth wants to twitch at the sight, but he holds it in because there’s no doubt that Niki really will punch him otherwise.

Deliberately he softens his voice. ‘I didn’t intend to cause you a sexual identity crisis.’

‘I don’t have one,’ Niki immediately refutes. ‘I’m married.’ .

The reminder stabs James like a knife in the guts. ‘I know.’

Niki is staring at him with a complex mix of trepidation and distrust, the events between them and all the things they aren’t ready to admit – never ever want to admit – turning the air thick. Full of invisible traps and pitfalls.

‘Marlene is-’

‘I know.’ James steps away, looks for a place to put his hands before they reach out again for the man in front of him. ‘She’s great; she’s really something else.’

‘Is that so.’

‘I always liked her; clearly she’s good for you.’

A low guttural snarl comes out from Niki’s throat before the thick words that follow it. ‘Fuck you, James Hunt. Fuck you to hell, and don’t ever speak to me again.’

And then he is gone, the door slamming shut with a finality that James wishes is real.

*

Chapter Text

9

All things considered, he’d never have expected Niki to look for him out of his own violation.

But a week had passed, a week of the most tormented sleep and and inadequate wanking James had ever experienced, a week of staring at the city through the rain streaked window of his limousine as James eschewed the party lights and told the driver to take him home instead, all the while wondering what the hell was happening to him.

A week of slowly going mad.

And now he was hurrying down the staircase three at a time, because that was Niki Lauda standing on the precipice of McLaren’s downtown office with the cap that James was starting to hate rammed low over his forehead and shielding his eyes, looking like he was seconds from either punching the administrative personnel or turning around and rapidly walking away. The Austrian looks up and immediately looks away again, and James heartbeat stutters in his chest. 

‘Niki,’ James says with a nod, mildly relieved he didn’t stumble in his haste down the remaining stairs. There was a filming crew present at the McLaren office today, and they had picked up on Niki Lauda’s uninvited presence with a great deal of curious interest.

‘Hunt-‘

James immediately takes Niki’s hands (which flutters in his fingers, flutters like a trapped bird, god help him) and pumps it vigorously before proceeding to lie through his teeth. ‘Thanks for showing up on such short notice, I know it isn’t the most ideal of timing and location-‘

Niki raises an eyebrow but plays along. ‘Indeed. Of course I can come back later-‘

‘Nonsense, let’s just pop out for abit and pick up where we left off. ’

A female voice held them back. ‘Mr Hunt, your 2pm shot-‘

 ‘Can wait a couple more moments whilst I conclude some personal business, surely?’

‘Of course,’ the assistant director flusters. ‘We’ll bump up the schedule for some of the executive interviews.’

‘Atta  girl,’ James practically assaults her with his most high voltage smile as he ushers Niki away from prying eyes.

Niki’s eyes are darting around, slightly wild. He looks to be mildly in shock, like he didn’t know what he was doing outside McLaren, like he had been sleepwalking and just woke up. James finds he can relate. And that he’s suddenly invested in keeping  Niki in that state, because maybe- maybe he’d get to-

Maybe things could loosen up between them and James would get to-

Fuck. Fuck.

Abruptlly he finds something black thrust out before him and takes a step back to find Niki unceremoniously holding out a Montblanc pen he thought he’d lost weeks ago.

‘You dropped this.’

James takes it, wondering how Niki knew it belonged to him when there are no initials on the pen. He watches the Australian run his fingers through his hair several times, leaving furrows that rise in their wake and resists the urge to swallow.

Could he be anymore pathetic, trying to hold it in amidst a roomful of people, some of them in very short skirts that his eyes should have been skimming appreciatively up and down? But he couldn’t even see them. All he can see is the object of his obsession, eyes like dark chocolate and skin like pale cream, and swallow the famished lump in his throat.

The object of his obsession shuffles and stuffs his hands into his pocket. Clearly Niki had though they’d have more privacy downtown than at the tracks, but he’d inadvertently chosen the worst day to pop by – a filming day.

Desperation prompted him to cast about for a topic, any topic. ‘Did you drive?’

‘No. I took the train. You should keep your things better.’

‘I should,’ James hums in agreement, and then there was nothing to talk about, but it was obvious that Niki wasn’t in a hurry to leave but there’s hesitation in his eyes and James-

James is going to screw this up like he does everything else.

‘Hey you want to grab coffee?’ It comes out very fast, faster than James had time to think.

‘Yes,’ Niki replies just as fast, and for a full five seconds they simply look at each other, dumbfounded by the situation they found themselves in. Held in place almost helplessly by the electric tension licking the air.

‘I’m sick of the powdered shit.’ Niki finally blurts out, breaking the spell through sheer force of will.

‘Good.’ James is an arse, and an idiot, and he’s never been so bad at this- this kind of thing before. ‘I know just the place, and I- I can drop you back afters.’

‘Ja,’ Master of the one-syllable response, Niki was.

‘Cool. I’ll meet you out by the parking entrance.’

‘Ja, ok.’

James watches the elevator ping open and close, swallowing Niki with it. 

He doesn’t admit he doesn’t have a goddamn clue where they’re going to drive to.

*

It’s a good thing flim crews somehow always know where the cool artisan coffee joints are, because James  would have been screwed otherwise.

And it’s a good thing these places didn’t have complicated menus, because his attention span was completely shot to pieces by the man sitting opposite him.

When they’d arrived, James had breathed a sigh of relief that there weren’t many other patrons in the alfresco dining area, only two other occupied tables with patrons more concerned with inhaling as much nicotine as possible than spying on motorsport celebrities.

James watches Niki evaluates the tiny al fresco tables with a drink in each hand, looking for one that afforded them most privacy before he takes things into his own hands and picks up one of the table, stooping to sling two chairs over his arm. Niki gapes at him as he walks them to a spot some distance away from the other patrons.

‘Here good?’

The Austrian nods bemusedly. ‘Yes. Good coffee.’  

They both shift restlessly around on tiny folding chairs, sipping lattes and trying to get comfortable whilst ignoring the mounting suspicion that what they were doing could possibly, in some very remote alternate universe, be construed as a date.

As the realisation creeps in James stares at the space between them, expression twitching. It looks and feels suspiciously like a date, albeit one neither had planned.

Dark lashes flicker up as Niki’s eyes rises to meet his. ‘What?’

James shrugs, non-committal, and forced his shoulders to stay down. ‘Nothing. It’s nice to be out.’

He ends up stirring too much sugar into his coffee and trying not to stare at the dark tendrils curling into a red collar. He never knew it was possible to suddenly find dark hair so incredibly alluring as to take wipe away all capacity for his palate to appreciate anything else, but apparently that’s what’s happening, whether James likes it or not.

Who knows; sanity might come back one day, but for now, James is tired of fighting it. And it feels good, so horribly good to sit across the dark haired Austrian and be silent and amicable and not fight.

Not to mention sneak glances from behind his coffee cup.

‘So tell me, how long have you been driving supers?’

‘Longer than you,’ the Austrian instantly shoots back.

‘Definitely longer than me,’ James grinned. ‘I used to think I’d end up in squash, not racing.’

It was great fun to see Niki’s mouth fall open in shock. ‘Squash.’

‘Very good at it too. Almost went professional. But can you imagine me with so much white laundry to deal with? No thank you.’

The Austran blink, clearly still recovering his equilibrium. ‘What else did you almost do?’

James took a deliberately long sip off his cup, enjoying the half dozen flittering expressions on Niki’s face that he’s sure the other man had no idea he was revealing.

‘Tell me about your supers first.’

The dark haired man shrugged elegantly. ‘By 18 I was already running 200 kilometres. I got my super licence when I was 20.’

James whistled, impressed. ‘How the hell did you get Daddy to pay for it?’

He blurted it out without thinking, but James knows he’s royally screwed up when the colour drains from Niki’s face.

‘I should have known,’ the Austrian says, standing up and staring down at James like he’d squandered his first and last chance for any semblance of normality between them.

James wants to kick himself.  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. That was dick talk, and I’m sorry,’ James swallows and modulates his voice until it falls just short of inaudible. ‘Please sit down?’

Niki is looking at him as if he’s grown two heads, but after an excruciatingly long moment he takes a deep, clearly difficult breath and sinks back into the chair whilst James refreshed his coffee, slack with relief.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, as sincerely as he can manage. ‘Truly.’

‘I’m not a girl, you don’t have to take care of my feelings.’

Actually James thought he was much worse than any girl, but hes got better sense than to point that out, even as a joke. He was beginning to get a sense that Niki has had a lifetime of keeping in hurt feelings.

James frowns, suddenly realising that he knew next to nothing about Niki. Deliberately he clears his throat and resumes talking. ‘What does your family do back in Austria?’

‘They own paper factories.’ Niki informs him coldly, his emphasis unmistakable.

‘Bo-ring.’

Thin lips reluctantly quirk. ‘Yes. And racing was too exciting, so they cut me off when I said I wanted to take my super.’

‘You knew that by the time you were twenty?’

‘Younger. But I wasted two years failing college, and racing is expensive, so I took out a loan with my life insurance as security to get into formula two. My family was… unhappy.’ The stiff set of his shoulders and the way he holds himself upright, very carefully, makes it clear that a part of him still carries around the scars of that experience.

James is busy trying to keep his face neutral at discovering this new rebellious and unscholarly Niki. His life story had sounded almost like James himself, minus the paper factories. And the fact that James was luckier, in a sense, to have met Alexander Hesketh.    

‘When you were twenty,’ the blond echoes softly. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of anyone to go through.’

‘Nineteen,’ Niki corrects. ‘By the time I was twenty I had already passed.’ They sit in silence for a long moment before finally speaking again. ‘I made it, but it was a close call. Luck. My life could have turned out very different.’

‘I don’t think so,’ James said, and deliberately sips at his cup as Niki’s head shot up to stare at him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Twenty, twenty five, thirty five; you would have found your way to the tracks eventually. Racings in your blood.’ James clarifies, raising his cup in a salute.

Niki says nothing. But the way he stared at James, half hopeful and half disbelieving, makes James want to find whoever was responsible for putting that look on his face and punch the living daylights out of him, family or no family.

As for Niki, his eyes flicker away, far-off and unfocused. Soft and unhappy. James wants nothing more than to touch him, to turn him back to the present and remind him of all that he’s achieved from sheer bloody mindedness alone. To show him he was desired, no matter how he looks or what his family thinks.

Instead he bites back on the emotion and stares blankly into his the murky black of his paper cup.

Has James ever wanted to court anyone, ever? Wanted to whisk them away from prying eyes and jealously hoard that person for himself - for yes, even someone like him can recognise the way his own hackles had risen at the smile the barista had given Niki at the counter. Could James honestly say he’d ever met a person whose flesh he wanted not just to chase the salt from with his tongue, but also to get under his skin, to know his mind? 

Had James truly wanted that with anyone, ever?

‘Are you always this rude?’ Niki asks, staring right back at him, and James finally snaps out of it.

‘Only when I’m contented.’

Correction: only when he’s bewitched.

*

Chapter Text

MOONSHINE

10

As soon as he gets through the hotel room after dropping Niki off something crazy and reckless prompts James to head straight for the phone.

‘James?’

Niki’s voice colours over the phone in ways he cannot identify, but he gets an instant electric image of Niki’s mouth shaping his name, and twitches.

‘Yes. It’s James.’

‘You’re calling me,’ the lilted voice is incredulous, but also softer, and that's all the encouragement James needs.

‘I believe that’s what a conversation on the phone is called, yes. Drinks tomorrow?’

‘What??’

Niki’s voice goes several notches higher, and James discovers that it is apparently possible to grimace and grin at the same time. ‘You heard me.’

There's a brief pause before the Austrian recovers his equilibrium and flattens his voice. ‘This is stupid.’

‘Why is it stupid?’

‘Because I will see you on the track. And no.’

‘Come on, one drink.’

‘No, Hunt.’

James chuckles because his quarry is just so predictable, and because a single cup of coffee had clearly made him high as a kite. ‘Come on. You called me James just a minute ago.’

There is a stunned silence, followed by a thoroughly confused ‘Why are you-’ before Niki abruptly cuts himself off and clears his throat, clearly unable to finish.

James allows the silence to drift for a moment before taking pity on the flustered man. ‘It’s not like we can be ourselves on the pitch. I gotta go pose for the posse, you gotta go hate the haters, it gets pretty rote, doesn’t it. Tell you what. I’ll even let you buy the first round.’

The reluctant chuckle he surprises out of Niki, more genuine and unguarded without Jamie’s physical presence sends fissures up and down his spine.

‘You are fucking unbelievable, James Hunt,’ Niki says but there’s a smile in his voice, the voice that James is rapidly acquiring an addiction to.  

‘I know,’ the blond man shrugs, but then he has the pleasure of hearing Niki downright laugh in reply. The intimacy throws James, arouses in him images of how close Niki’s mouth must be to the receiver to sound the way he does.

His hands clench around the receiver. ‘Splendid. I’ll see you behind the stalls. Five o’clock,’ James says, and briskly disconnects before the other man could refuse.

Victory, James thinks giddily to himself, and then grinds to a screeching halt.

Fuck. What the flying fuck did he just do?

James rake his hands over his hair and stares at the receiver as if it had been instrumental in deceiving him.

He’s screwed.

*

Five o’clock comes and goes behind the stalls. The air starts to cool, drying up the sweat beading in his hair, and James has had enough of waiting.

He stalks off, wishing he felt more vexed about being stood up. But it isn’t a surprise, not really. It’d actually be more surprising if Niki had really showed up.

He should go to the his favourite pub or go for a swim, it’s something he’s been aching for. But his footsteps take him to the Ferrari enclave instead.

There are bird sounds in the Ferarri tent: it appears that someone had gifted the team a cage of yellow and red parakeets. They came in a huge golden cage too, festooned with spirals of red ribbons. James shakes his head and pets Clay Regazzoni commiseratingly on the arm, gesturing at their latest acquisition.

‘The gifts just keep getting crazier huh?’

‘Nah this is tame,’ Clay says with a big bemused grin on his face, the secret sap. He’s holding a can of bird feed in his oil-stained hands so clearly the cage is going to stay awhile. ‘We got ourselves a monkey delivered once. Came dressed in a vest and all; stole Fittipaldi’s car keys and took it up a lamp post. You should have seen the guy’s face. Know much about birds?’

‘A bit. I used to have a couple of parakeets.’

Clay snickers. ‘Are we talking about the two legged ones or-‘

‘James,’ Niki says, appearing suddenly in front of them, and James sucks in his breath. Their eyes meet, instantly locking down the space between them, and James can feel his heartbeat stutter.

‘Hey Niki. You’ve been sweating and flushing all day, man,’ Clay says with some concern. ‘Best get it checked out, you don’t want an infection.’

‘I was just coming,’ Niki blurts at James, completely ignoring his teammate. There’s red on his face, and his hair is sticking up in cockscrews. The Austrian turns away and begins shoving stuff into a back pack, avoiding everyone’s eyes. ‘I have allergies.’

Allergies huh. James wishes he could get away with something like that. ‘Best get some antihistamines then.’

‘Yes,’ Niki says, still stuffing his backpack with what appears to be utmost concentration. ‘Yes, I’ll get some on the way home.’

‘I’ll drive you, I’m going off early today,’ James says with a deliberately casual shrug. ‘You keeping the birds? It’s a good look for the team.’

‘Yeah maybe,’ Clay says. ‘We could use a lucky mascot.’

‘Ah, I thought your mascot was a rodent.’

‘Let’s go,’ Niki snaps, and marches out of the tent ahead of James, who squeezes Clay’s shoulder in farewell.

That’s why we need a new one, the Swiss man mouths at James silently, and he can feel Clay’s shoulders shaking in laughter.

He winks goodbye and follows Niki out into the cooling air with a smile.

*

James remembers his first bugie. There’d been a pair of them; sky blue in colour with delicate markings like porcelain, beautiful as moving paintings. James still remembers the time he’d been so charmed, so beguiled by their petite and unconscious grace that he tried to pick one up in his hands.

It had been the one and only time he’s touched one. And then it had died in his hands; his large, stupid hands, and James had learnt that all the love and good intentions in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if you break everything you touch.

He’d stuck to watching from the safety of cages, after that. And if sometimes James had imagined opening their cages and letting them fly out, fly free, uncurling their tiny, brilliantly coloured wings and and tucking their feet into their chest to tumble through the cage doors and fly the way they were meant to fly-

Well he didn’t, because he knew they wouldn’t come back.

And that was the wistful truth of it, wasn’t it. Cradled like a stone in his body. The secret he couldn’t speak.

They wouldn’t come back.

*

Chapter Text

RUSH

11

They had such a good time tonight, it was almost unbelievable, especially given the fact that alcohol barely featured.

Once they had gotten into James’ blue Corvette and the dust had eaten up the view of the tracks behind them, Niki had managed to shake off his paranoia and embarrassment and started to loosen up, even occasionally responding to James’ random observations of the buildings and scenery they sped past.

They’d gone to dinner in a quiet countryside restaurant after Niki had called Marlene to tell her he’d be meeting Enzo for a private one-on-one tonight. The atmosphere in the car had been sombre after the final ‘ja tschüss Marlene,’ with only the radio sounds of Bob Dylan blaring from James’s speakers and the thicker than treacle tension between them.

Why hello Guilt my old friend, James thinks wryly to himself as the car ate up the miles in silence. Long time no see.

‘Hey. You OK?’

‘Ya,’ Niki says quietly. ‘I know what I’m doing. Do you?’

James takes time to think about this. ‘I guess as much as somebody like me can.’

He can tell without looking that Niki hadn’t expected an actual answer, much less an honest one. Well, he hadn’t expected honesty to be this easy either.  

‘Then it’s good you know I can’t afford to fuck things up,’ the Austrian finally says after clearing his throat. And James does. He knows that the cost is higher for the dark haired man. That he isn’t the one with something to lose.

Bob Dylan gives way to Patsy Cline singing Crazy and James finds that he can identify.

‘Why are we listening to this,’ Niki grouses, crossing his arms.

‘What? Patsy Cline is great. She’s dead you know.’

‘I know, I know. There was a plane crash, it was all over the papers. Tragic.’

And just like that, it suddenly becomes too much for James. The music, the memory of Niki’s car catching flames. The hospital. The rain. The smell of antiseptic and iodine, the smell of coffee, of alcohol, the smell of his own vomit. Every single fucking thing that’s brought James to this point at twilight, speeding down a dark highway with a man he suddenly wants more than anything he’s ever wanted in his life.

Niki shifts in his seat, clearly sensing a change in the air. ‘James?’ 

‘Just one minute,’ James tersely replies. His grip tightens on the steering wheel as he slams the breaks down, and the Corvette screeches to a skidding halt with Nick wild-eyed and bracing against the dashboard. James kills the engine and unsnaps his seat belt, breathing hard.

‘What the flying fuck are y-‘

He doesn’t finish, because James climbs out of his seat, reaches over, and shoves Niki’s words back into his mouth with his own.

He’s done with going slow, with figuring things out. He’s not prepared, he’s never been the type to prepare, and he doesn’t care anymore what anyone thinks; not even himself, not even Niki.

Patsy Cline croons I’m crazy for tryin, and crazy for cryin, and I’m crazy for loving you and for once in his life Niki stops fighting back and melts against him like hot butter, his mouth pliant beneath James’ famished exploration. James shoves away the awkward backpack stuck between them and curls an arm around the other man’s waist, molding them closer despite the small hiss of pain Niki doesn’t quite manage to stifle.

He wants a motel. He wants Niki already undressed, his skin bared to the moonlight, open and ready for James to lose himself in. He wants to see that sharp mouth falling open with lust, he wants hot cries and hitched breaths; he wants them pressed together so tightly that they disappear into each other.

‘James-’

‘Did anybody ever tell you,’ James whispers as he sucks on a bottom lip, ‘that you really. Talk. Too much.’

‘Maybe,’ the dark haired man exhales, breath stuttering and eyelashes trashing like moths above blown out pupils. ‘But Patsy Cline didn’t write this song.’

‘What,’ James starts to pull away, irritation mounting; ‘-the fuck are you talking about.’  

‘Willie Nelson wrote it.’

‘I don’t care who wrote it!’ James shouts. He can feel the veins bunching up in his throat. Shit. He’d lost control again, hadn’t he- he’d-

‘James, calm down.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Right.’

James shifts awkwardly back into his seat, willing his heartbeat to settle. His loins are tight, adrenaline washing through his bloodstream like a drug, but he’d be damn if he didn’t at least salvage some dignity. ‘OK. I’m sorry.’    

Beside him Niki is blinking, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with himself in the car. His eyes are wildly blown and aroused but his voice is calm as he speaks.

‘James. I got hurt ja. But I didn’t die.’

‘I know, I know. I’m-’ the blond man exhales, knowing that he’s wound up tight as a toy about to snap. ‘I feel like I could have lost you, you gotta give me that. I could have lost this.’

The notion that he could have lived a life never having known how it felt to want another person this much. He couldn’t imagine a future without Niki. Not Niki. 

Their time together would hurt, James has no illusion of that. The present was a hot mess. The future he’s equally likely to fuck up. But he’d take it, dammit, because he’s a betting man, and maybe for the first time in his life James is actually clear on what he wants.

He’s jarred out of his thoughts when he feels the smaller man’s hand covers his own, cool against burning skin, and James thinks this might be the first time Niki has openly touched him since back when whatever the hell this was begun.

Niki is staring at his own hand on James, clearly navigating new territory in his own mind. But he doesn’t draw away when James twines their fingers twined together, clasped between the seats.

The foolhardy Austrian plunge on, although Niki's face is a study of morbid fascination as he continues staring at his own hand clasped in James'.

‘I’m here. I’m here and I didn’t die. So you’ll still be eating my dust for years to come.’

Strange how its almost always Niki that ends up comforting him in these moments. Strange, but not surprising.

‘Is that so?’

‘You better believe it.’ Then Niki’s expression cracks. ‘Let’s go home, James.’

A sigh escapes him. OK. OK, because reality calls, and they have to pay the piper. James has to go home and pretend that everything is OK and he still recognises himself in the mirror. Niki has a bunch of lies to tell his wife and friends.

He starts the car again. ‘Go somewhere with me next week. Before we break camp for Canada.’

Niki spends several long minutes looking out into the darkness of the exterior before he answers.

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere.’ James keep his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road, but it takes effort. ‘Somewhere private to figure this out.’

Niki shakes his head. ‘You know what we do is madness.’

‘We’re racers. Do you suppose we’d ever do normal well?’

The thing is. The thing is. They both know they’re too stubborn-natured not to admit the truth, even if neither of them could say it out loud. That it isn’t in either of their natures to be hiders. And he seriously doubts if Niki is even any good at lying.

The half hour drive continues in silence until they reach the front of Niki’s home of the last few months. James kills the engine and after a brief pause, the lights and radio as well. Somewhere beyond those stripped seafoam curtains stood Marlene, waiting for her husband to walk through the door.

‘I suppose the correct answer would be to say no and walk away of this car and away from you,’ Niki finally says.

‘But you’ll say yes. Because it’s the only way we’ll know.’

‘Know what?’

James simply looks at him.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Niki finally says, and James suddenly feels his skin hang looser and his lungs expand. It isn’t a yes, but it isn’t a no either. And if he knows anything about Niki, regardless of his personal hesitancy he had a tendency to see things through to its conclusion.

Admittedly the man did so in a resigned kind of way, but James is an opportunist by breeding, having no other breeding what so ever. He’ll take what he can get.

James knows he’s going to hell in a handcart. He’s been told often enough in life, he just hadn’t suspected that the ride would turn out to be so sweet; with a want that feels a little too much like pain; a want that is also a wound, a bruise that he keeps pressing because it felt so good even though it hurts like a bitch.

If Clay Rigazonni wasn’t going to allow any handler to take his cage of birds away, James isn’t going to relinquish his rat; not without a fight.

*

Chapter Text

RUSH

12

James comes in early the following week to hide his luggage in the McLaren lockers, ready for the night time departure where they both jump into a hired car and drive to the airport, heading for Toronto. Sleep has become a rarer commodity than ever since their surreptitious agreement to spend five days together: someplace far from everything familiar and nobody the wiser for it. The week leading up to this has seen most teams in various states of packing and dismantling; in fact the Lotus team had already up and left for Moss Port like the over-eager pricks they are. Nobody would notice their absence in this kerfuffle.

It’s a plan that makes James feels rather pleased with himself: everything to gain and nothing to lose, just the way he likes it.

That said, he’s grateful for the final practice laps that grounds him in dust and sweat and eardrum-breaking noise, the smell of tar and burning rubber that forces him out of the anxious roiling that had been sitting at the pit of his stomach these last few weeks. He didn’t drive particularly well; didn’t bother, to be exact– but then most drivers don’t have their hearts in final practices anyways: if not for Niki’s recently exerting influence on James, he was certain he’d have invested his time a lot differently, like lying in a pool of his own vomit surrounded by sweat stained sheets and naked limbs.

He’d called Alastair on a Saturday night to inform him of his impromptu holiday, knowing that he’d be shouting down the disco crowd and that Caldwell himself would be too high to do much but agree. But he hadn’t dared ask Niki how it went with Marlene, or what excuse he’d used. He couldn’t think of Marlene at all without bile building up at the back of his throat.

Plenty of racers cheat. It’s almost inevitable, with sixteen international races, too much ego, too much money, drugs and partners changing hands, and virtually no moral shepherding to speak of – there’s been no level of depravity that James hasn’t witnessed before in his long and cynical career of motor GP.

But Marlene and Niki are different creatures; lived different lives. And thanks to James, Niki is now about to sink to his level of depravation-

The door rapping jolts him out of his own stewing thoughts, and James yanks the door open with some relief to allow Niki to slip in from the cover of the night, radiating tension from every pore. He had on a hunter’s green turtleneck, dark slacks, and a neat white duffel bag by his side, and James finds himself staring hopelessly, drinking him in.

‘I’m here,’ Niki says shortly, lifting his arms. ‘Now what?’

James grins crookedly at the tense, unhappy man clearly a mere hairline from jumping out of his own skin. ‘Look at us huh? Sneaking out into the night like a couple of thieves.’

‘Everything’s a joke to you,’ Niki scowls.

‘Well darling you do make it easy.’

‘Are you certain no one saw you?’

‘Relax will you?’ He holds up his hands as Niki opens his mouth again, radiating outrage. ‘Look. I packed, I had dinner with Alastair and Jochen. They dropped me off at home and I took a cab back here. Everyone’s either going for parties or going their own way, Niki. Besides. If someone sees us that scowl’ frighten the cameras right away, don’t you worry.’    

But Niki is too anxious, behaving like a wild animal expecting to walk into a trap, and his voice is strident as he demands; ‘Who knows besides Hesketh and your team? Did you tell anybody else?’

‘Christ Niki, if you’d just stop being so fucking suspicious for-‘

He’s not prepared for Niki’s voice to rise to a sudden shriek, the Austrian’s completely feral response.

‘Suspicious? You wonder why I’m suspicious?’ His eyes were wild and trapped, swelling with sudden tears the man couldn’t control. ‘All these years and you couldn’t say anything; your timing is shit!’

Shock locks away any response James can conjure and dries up his tongue; he’d never seen the other man hyperventilate like this before.

‘Niki-’

He reaches out a hand but Niki moves back like a recoiling snake, and then abruptly turns towards the lockers and punches one of the locker doors with his fists. The sound is like sheet thunder in the room, vibrating in circles around them like a gong and making James’ heart stop.

‘You stupid fool,’ Niki all but shrieks at him, ‘I’m asking you why now, when I look like this?’

He should do better, he knows. Say better; after all, they tell him he’s good with his mouth, his fist, and not much else. But all he can do is look stupidly at the man shaking before him, at Niki’s tattered face and the masks they’d both relied on for years lying in pieces all around them. At the evidence of Niki’s desperation and loss of control, brought and laid bare before them. 

‘I don’t know, Niki,’ James says hoarsely as his hands falls to his sides.. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

But he knows his answer isn’t good enough, because Niki rounds up on him, spittle flying in his face.

‘You don’t know? You don’t know? You think this is a game? Look at my face!’

‘Niki.’ James swallows. ‘I see it. You think I don’t, but I do.’

Truth be told, he hadn’t seen Niki’s face properly in some time now. He sees Niki, the unholy, life-defying idiot who’d get back into a race car after it buries him in a coffin of living flames. He sees Niki’s audacity, the passion and dark defiance, the tightly leashed sense of control, the surprisingly soft and vulnerable undersides of the man, that helpless twitch of a smile that sometimes escapes him. But none of that helps, because Niki is standing here cracking like an egg before him, and James hardly knows how to stem such a tide of emotions.

James hardly knows what to do with himself on a good day, much less hold the beating, shaking, passion-driven heart of Niki Lauda in his clumsy hands and not somehow do something terrible and irrevocable to it.

He take Niki’s face into both his hands, and tightened his hold when the Austrian begins to struggle. ‘Fuck, I don’t know how to convince you. Niki, I don’t know how to convince myself, half the time I feel like we’re both dreaming, and- Niki, Niki don’t run again.’

James reached desperately out again as the dark haired man slipped out of his grasp.

‘Please. Let’s do this. Its just five days. We’ll figure it out.’

The Austrian looked at him from several steps away, breathing hard. Niki does not take his hand, but neither does he run. It says enough that he hadn’t refuted James, and they both knew it.

‘Get into the car, Hunt.’

*

Chapter Text

RUSH

13

The flight to Toronto ended up long and tiring; the terminals too busy and the space feeling cramped despite the business class seats that James had secured them. They quickly start getting on each other’s nerves and slid into full bicker mode barely half an hour after the plane took off.

Sometimes James forgets that Niki Lauda can be as tiresome as fuck.

After all, it’s all too easy for himself and Niki to find something to insult each other about: if it isn’t the difference in their personal lives or an opinion of racing colleagues, then it’s about driving styles. Or James’ less than savoury drinking habits. Or Niki’s notoriously cold temper. Or one of a hundred different infinite things they disagree on.

After arriving in Central Toronto  they find the city much larger and more bustling than he or Niki is comfortable with, and James remarks that they finally agree on something together. They  decide to drive the hired jeep out to Muskoka, where Niki tracks down and rents them a remote cottage in the Georgian Bay, taking advantage of his foreign accent over the phone to cook up false identities.

James drives the jeep, blaring Jimmy Cliff and Johnny Nash and ignoring Niki’s road map instructions until his irate passenger grabs hold of the gear stick and refuses to relinquish it until they get off on Highway 11.

They pass lakes and cottages and watch the towns grow smaller in size, until the jeep finally climbs up a solitary hill overlooking the sea to the front of a small house built on an outcropping, and finally putters to a stop, spraying a small avalanche of pebbles over the cliffs.

They get out of the car as evening falls over the silver water, broken by the low outlines of tiny islands below. The place is hauntingly beautiful and remote, with a silence that feels like a balm after months of racing white noises.

The wind blows their hair flat and their eyes half shut, and the view takes the breaths from their lungs. James takes advantage of the silence to drop his chin on the other man’s shoulder, breath tickling warmly.

‘So are we far away enough from the world to suit even you? Can I kiss you now? Will you let me?’

Niki simply harrumphs and wraps his arms around himself, heels digging into the rocks as he stubbornly surveys the scenery and refuses to react. The blond man chuckles and takes advantage of the mellow evening to press his lips against the junction of Niki’s ear.

‘Feels right to be here, doesn’t it.’

‘You don’t need to romance me, James, I’m no girl.’

‘Yes. Excellent. No romancing at all.’ He’s certain Niki is scowling, and he’s not sure if he’s ever been so happy in his life.

‘Dick.’

‘Got one of those too,’ James whispers suggestively wrapping both arms around the smaller man’s waist. ‘Wanna see?’

Good think he’s always standing behind Niki, James thinks to himself, hiding a grin of epic proportions as the Austrian groans out curses in his native language and slaps his forehead.

But he doesn’t push away.

*

Night falls swiftly in places like these, nestled like forgotten cobwebs caught between dark nettles.

Exploring the small split level cottage had given rise to kissing in various rooms over various pieces of furniture, with Niki putting a stop to things whenever James started getting carried away. He tries to understand that, he really does. He’s just as new to this as Niki is, if far more enthusiastic and far less liable to stop before his brain goes too far ahead of itself.

As attracted as he is to the other man, James has yet to truly be able to imagine going all the way without flinching. It’s something they’re going to have to face, talk about, whatever. But there’s time. They can figure out what goes where. How hard can it be?

Down on highest level of the house, he stands at the observation windows for a while, watching the dark waterfall of the starless sky and listening to the waves murmuring in the distance. He feels like sighing, like leaning his head against the cool glass. Sooner or later Niki would wander in here, looking at him askance and asking what the hell the matter was. James will have to say something blase and then distract him with an outrageous quip.

He’a in a strange mood tonight, like his body’s in one zone and his mind in another. Torn between a thousand dissenting feelings, with his blood humming in his veins and his heartbeat calm, yet strangely erratic. 

He’s never been so happy. He's never been so sad. He’s never felt this safe and at the sane time, this scared. 

He feels like taking Niki’s hand and walking them into deep waters, further and further out until they vanished forever from sight. Until the world itself hides them, and then James won’t need to think about hiding anymore. With both of them so out of depth, things can go rapidly to hell in a handcart, and he isn’t sure if he can bear to pay the price of failure.

‘There you are,’ Niki says appearing on the landing and James looks down at him and thinks: I could love you.

‘Hey,’ he says instead.

I could love you more than I’ve ever loved anything el-

‘You’re too quiet,’ Niki interrupts, a look of caution on his face.

‘Am I.’

‘So you must be scheming,’ Niki says, ‘and that makes me nervous.’

‘Maybe you’re nervous because of all this,’ James gestures to himself smugly. ‘Always knew you fancied me.’

‘Like a worm inside my head.’

‘Is that Austrian for ‘I’ve got you under my skin?’ James starts to sway towards the smaller man, crooning. ‘He’s got me, under his skin.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Niki says, diving for his default scowl.

‘Dance with me,’ he catches the smaller man and pins them together in a twirl with a laugh. ‘Come on, don’t be chicken. Nobody can see us.’

‘You stupid Englishman,’ Niki scolds, although it’s hard to take offense when all James really wanted to do is pin him to a wall and slowly unbutton his shirt whilst Niki mock-beats at him in a laughable attempt to recover his pride.

He can’t even begin to decipher how good it feels to have Niki this close to him, this mellow. Nothing in the air but the smell of pine needles and sea breeze, nothing before them but days of slow exploration; of the space, of each other.

And behind all this, like a prickle, his blood murmurs with a lazy sort of want, content to lie in wait for now, but wanting. James bites it back, this lust; he cages it with iron bars and puts it away. He would have Niki like this, sleepy and happy and contented to be in his arms; he’d draw out the moment as long as he humanly could because he doesn’t know how long something that felt so achingly, incomprehensibly beautiful could possibly last.

So yes, James can settle down forever with this moment. He can be content, rare and untrustworthy as such sentiments tend to be.  

‘Are you going to be like this for five days,’ comes Niki’s muffled complaint somewhere against his shoulder.

‘I think they call this the Honeymoon period,’ James whispers against his temples, and is rewarded with a soft huff of laughter.

Oh yes, James can learn the art of contentment.  Even though he knows he’s holding onto a mirage.

*

Chapter Text

RUSH

14

It isn’t that James hasn’t shared a room and a bed before with a teammate, and he’s always been comfortable with sharing his space with a lover.

But Niki is the whole ball of yarn, all the nine yards, and he blurs the edges of every boundary James has ever drawn in his life. Niki’s prowls the bedroom like James does and the stuff he leaves lying around is undeniably masculine in nature. It feels like a formal ritual, rife with unidentified tensions and strange unspoken laws. A mating dance between two predators.  

From the periphery Niki’s eyes flicker up at him, simultaneously sensual and rife with warning; full of come hither but also an equal amount of I’ll kill you. It turns James on to no end, but also makes him feel like one wrong move and he could lose both his dignity and his balls.  

A lesser man would have given up, but James is no lesser being, and he’s always had one major advantage; a sense of humor, and enough practice at irrelevance to make everything look disarmingly natural. So when Niki’s toiletries start rolling about haphazardly on their bed, James immediately pounces on a jar written in German with a rather suggestive logo.

‘What’s this?’

Niki snatches it back before he can blink. ‘Nothing’

‘It this some kind of super-lube? Looks exciting.’

‘No, it’s just barrier cream for chaffing. I just wanted it around for emergencies.’

‘Emergencies, ’James echoes, pulling the other man closer as he purrs; ‘the type that chafes, hmmm?’

‘I mean real emergencies, James. You’ve seen my scars.’

‘You can show me all your scars. I could rub some of that.. anti-chafing lube all over you.’   

Gobsmacked followed by reluctant amusement was a good look on the Austrian, he thought. ‘You’re unbelievable, ja?’

‘I know the sheer perfection of this face is hard to believe, yes,’ James says smugly.

Abruptly the mood changes. ‘James. I’ve never been good at this. Letting go.’

‘No shit.’

James grins up at him, but his smile dies when the smaller man scrubs at his forehead, hiding the vulnerable expression of his eyes from James as he continues;

‘No. I’m bad at this. I just act tough. I bark a lot, like a small dog.’ The Austrian shook his head. ‘It was always Marlane who lead. ’

‘Niki. I don’t want to misunderstand. You know we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’

‘I know that.’ There was a faint line between Niki’s brows, the line that meant he was trying to puzzle something out. ‘I trust you, James Hunt.’

For some reason, the weight of those words hurt. ‘Thank you.’  

‘So if you still want me then- but I’ll never change,’’ the mercurial Austrian warned sternly.

‘I should hope not.’ He pushes away an errant brown curl on Niki’s forehead  grins somberly. ‘I do want you Niki. And well… at least you know you’re not just another pretty face in my bed.’

The other man turns his face away with a laugh, but it seems more like a sob. ‘Kiss me, you idiot. And let’s see if what all the girls whisper behind the stalls about James Hunt is true.’

*

In the morning, they wander aimlessly around bay area, looking for restaurants and exploring the lonely pine tree-lined roads. Honey Harbour like much of Muskoka is filled with fenced, whitewashed cottages and a great many provincial camping parks. In the later afternoon they napped on grass and walked the rocky inlets and wood-lined shores, looking for swimming holes.

It was an idyllic time. Almost innocent. James finds the whole thing patently ludicrous, and utterly heart breaking. Because James has been married before. But he isn’t sure if he had ever been so happy with another human being. He doesn’t know what that says about his life.

So instead of thinking too much about it he pours his attention on Niki instead, dragging the smaller man off to as many remote corners (and admittedly there were many) for a surreptitious grope or five every opportunity he had.

And Niki gave into him: that really didn’t help. Like goddamn moonshine, he went down deceptively smooth, peeling the skin off your bones. It goes down so warm, that honeyed, secretive gaze. So smooth and so liquid and James knows he’s turned into a fucking addict. He makes James feel both alive and dying, he provokes such violent feelings of dread and desire that he sometimes feels on the verge of blurting out the words ‘I’ve never wanted someone this much before’ and ‘I want you like this forever.’

James had never felt the need to be gentle; and although he had never enjoyed pain in bed either he has never hesitated to touch, to yank and pull and rearrange things to suit his satisfaction and aesthetics. He’s always liked things hard and fast. He’d always told himself he is a racing man – that this was simply who he was, the nature of the beast.

But Niki too, is a racing man. And somehow that made it, somehow-

Somehow with Niki his touches are always feather light – afraid of pressure on the puckered, delicate skin, afraid of Niki drawing away or having their stolen time drawing to a close. His breath is always stuttered, always constricted as if waiting for the moment to be snatched away, for daylight to flood the room and James to find himself clutching thin air and a figment of his imagination, or somebody to yank open the door one day and discover them together, doing this.

It’s strange how life turns out, sometimes. It’s strange that only when he’s together with a man for the first time that James learns the joy of going slow, the rewards of being gentle.

It’s strange how not surprising the whole thing has been for James – as if in some dark part of him, he’s always known he’d been waiting his whole life for these stolen moments to set him free.

That he’ll always have the rat to thank for this priceless and inadvertent gift.

*

The sun at brunch was blinding, but luckily they’d picked up cheesy straw hats whilst walking along some kind of street fair.  

‘James you’re not listening. Listen, ja.’

James gazes at Niki from the rim of his coffee cup, and finally admits with cautious sort of truculence; ‘Yeah maybe my mind wondered a bit, sorry. What were you saying?’  

Niki gives him a once over and says solemnly, ‘You’re still shitfaced from last night.’  

‘No, I swear I’m not. Now what were you saying again? Comeon, or I’ll kiss you in public.’

His lover gives a surprised bark of laughter, and its both incredulous and deliriously happy. He’d assumed he said honeymoon yesterday in jest, but watching the sun glinting off Niki’s sunglasses and the smell of sea and grass rising from the earth, he wasn’t so sure a part of him hadn’t been perfectly serious.

His lover, James realized with a shiver; that’s a word he can use with Niki now. Lover.

‘No laughing,’ Niki says again.

‘Fine, fine. If you could eat one item off my body, what would it be?’

‘You’re a filthy plate, I would never eat off you.’ But despite his words the dark haired man smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners, adorable in ways James would never dare to admit to his face.

Chocolate curls and chocolate eyes, Niki was his desserts, his delight. James rolled his eyes heavenward at himself. Might as well admit it- Niki was his addiction.

‘Come on, work with me. One item.’

‘Coffee.’ NIki finally says, hesitantly, as if it’s a test. ‘and strawberries,’

‘You only get one and-‘ James frowns. ‘-coffee?’

‘And strawberries,’ Niki insisted. ‘Together.’

Despite his promise James couldn’t help it, he threw his head back and laughed. ‘Is that the breakfast of champs back in Austria? What do you do, dunk your strawberries into your cup like oreos?’

‘I take a bite and then a sip,’ Niki says primly, ‘and I like it.’

‘By golly, then’ James announced once he caught his breath again, matching Niki’s pedantic tones with a great deal of amusement. ‘you’ll have to show me one day.’

‘Maybe I’ll show you tonight,’ Niki whispers from the rim of his coffee cup, and then reaches over and helpfully pounds James on the back when the Englishman chokes on his coffee.

*

Chapter Text

15

On their second last morning, James is swept into wakefulness by a bolt of fear, followed by the roiling edge of nerves he usually gets before races. For a brief moment the morning sun feels threatening, and he doesn’t remember where he is, adrenaline spiking his blood. 

Then he hears the soft huff of the man sleeping next to him, and sanity returns. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, James sternly tells his body that it will under no circumstances, humiliate him by attempting to vomit. Then he rolls over and wakes his lover up by kissing up his shoulder, towards the nape of his neck.

‘Nggggg nein James,’ Niki complains with his eyes still squeezed firmly shut. Undaunted, James crawls on top of him, ignoring the grunt of protest.

They still have the whole day together. A whole sunset. He isn’t about to relinquish its potential.

He wasn’t going to waste a drop.   

‘Wakey wakey, time for breaky.’

Hands crawling up Niki’s stomach, James noses lazily into the soft material whilst Niki swats at him ineffectually, still indolent with sleep and resisting the idea of being towed towards wakefulness.

‘You’re heavy, idiot.’  

James trailed kisses down a slim, scar-filled sternum, following a trail of sparse dark hair, then sinking his teeth gently into his stomach muscle. ‘Hmmm. The better to maul you with.’

‘Why do I put up with a half bear?’ the Austrian mutters to the ceiling.

‘Must be my unspeakable charm.’

‘Unspeakable is right,’ Niki snorts before suddenly shrieking with shocked laughter as James bites his thigh.

*

Acutely aware of the passage of time, the late morning found them picnicking in an open field away from town, after James had driven them to the farmers market to pick up supplies.

And James knows he’s a sap but he can’t breathe, watching Niki lying supine on the grass picking at cheeses, figs and grapes. Amidst all this bucolic nature, deep in the grass with his dark heifer’s eyelashes shuttered against the sun, Niki looks like a minor god in the Elysium field. Beautiful and grotesque. Damaged and pure. Cursed and blessed in equal measure. Yes Niki looked like he belonged to the old gods, the old worlds. 

He looked like he belonged to the field, and not to James. For wasn’t such fields meant only to be a haven for the virtuous? Isn’t heaven meant to exclude the likes of him? And yet-

And yet James remembers a line he’d read once, from… something. Perhaps a sonnet. He recalls nothing but hazy lines, but it had a…mood that stayed with him, because of the power and consolation of its opening line.

‘You’re thinking too loud,’ Niki informs him. ‘Stop spoiling the mood.’

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles, repenting.

James pelts him with a grape. And then another. ‘Am I now.’

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

Love what it loves.

‘Come on arshloch,’ the smaller man splutters, grabbing a handful of nuts. ‘Lets see who wins.’

‘Dem’s real fighting words,’James grins, and pelts his lover with three grapes in quick succession, earning a splutter of rage and an onslaught of macadamians.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely

The world offers itself

James howls with laughter as macadamias turn into almonds, then pelting of cut fruit, and finally a block of melted brie splatters on his face.

Over and over announcing your place

‘Ouch! Mercy! Mercy! Niki!’

In the family of things.

‘Not so tough now with cheese on your face, ja.’

James licked some of it off. ‘At least its not egg.’

‘Keep it up and it will be. What do we do with these?’ Niki asks holding up a stack of the holiday brochures they had accumulate wandering around the little township – Honey Harbour might be a sleepy place but its inhabitants certainly knew how to jostle for sales. 

‘I donno, is there anything interesting?’

‘Not for us,’ Niki flippantly replies as he thumbs through random material, tossing them around. The one in his hand has a giant pink heart on the back.

James snatches the pink flyer over Niki’s spluttering protests and begins to read.

‘Honeymoon Gondola, Canada’s only Venetian gondola service. Our treasured guests enjoy a romantic, relaxing, exclusive cruise around this spectacular Little Lake in Port Severn-’ he ignores the newspaper that whacks him on the torso and continues reading. ‘-we will provide you and your guest with the use of ice, ice bucket, wine glasses, opener and bottled Italian water; warm blankets are also available.  Well it sounds perfect. We’ll do it of course.’

‘Are you mad?’

James knows of course, that he is descending into madness, has been for some time now, and by now feels quite matter of fact about it.

‘Easy. We’ll be surrounded by oldies and crocheted vests. Hiding in plain sight.’ He pulls at Niki’s old fashioned jumper playfully. ‘You’ll fit right in, grandad.’

Niki just looks at him. There’s something surreal about his features and shuttered expressions that could look like sleepiness or brooding mysteriousness, depending on the angle and light.

‘James.’

‘Uhuh.’

The pause in the air between them feels like a stone skipping on the lake.

‘Why didn’t you visit me? At the hospital.’

‘I did.’

‘Don’t bullshit me,’ Niki scoffs, his voice hiding oceans of vulnerability behind the bitten out words. 

‘I did come. I visited you when you were dead to the world. When you changed from ICU to HDU. I was there when they took out the stitches. I knew you had to lie on your side for two days after they removed the skin from your thighs.’

Again Niki looks at him, a full gaze that James feels in his chest like a knife cutting through butter. Another stone skipping through the water.

‘How many times did you come?’

‘God knows, it took a lot of alcohol to put up with your-’ his voice dies away when his lover lifts himself until he hovers above, one arm pressing him back into the grass.

‘James,’ Niki says and its marvellous, sublime, how effectively one small hand on his chest could trap him thus. How those eyes could pull him down like a stone, down, down without any effort, without a single sound, a single ripple in the lake.

‘How many times did you go to the hospital.’ It was no longer a question.

There’s a long moment where James is not certain if he really could answer truthfully, give away so much of himself. Then his eyes flicker away from Niki’s, severing their intense connection. ‘Eleven.’

‘Eleven times,’ Niki repeats quietly. ‘And I didn’t see you once. Why was that?’

With superhuman effort he lifts his eyes back up to meet Niki’s. He owes him at least this much.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles, repenting.

‘I- I hid. Because I couldn’t imagine you forgiving me.’

Niki hummed. ‘And. Do you still think this?’

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

'No,’ James swallows, licks his lips, and watches Niki’s gaze drop to his mouth and stay there. ‘No, I no longer do.’

Love what it loves.

*

Chapter Text

16

James mechanically moves eggs around a sizzling pan as he watches Niki coming down the staircase with his packed white duffle and the same green turtleneck he wore the night they made their escape from the real world. A world they would now be returning to.

He'll will never forget this shade of green yarn, he thinks duly. That’s all the colour will remind him of after today; how painfully close they’d gotten to... something, only to let it go again.

He doesn’t dare to put a word on it.      

The Austrian looks put together and ready to go, and James can feel his heart clenching at the sight; the sense of a clock being wound back to midnight. Already the evidence of their time together is vanishing into the ether; the holiday that will never be spoken of again, the rendezvous that never happened.    

Niki’s eyes are guarded as he approaches; likely from the surprise of waking up to an empty bed so early in the day.

‘You cook?’

‘Your eyes do not deceive you; for I am a man of many talents.’

‘We could have bought a sandwich on the way.’

‘That we could have,’ James agrees amicably as he pushes the eggs onto two plates and douses it with ketchup. ‘Voila. Eggs de la Hunt.’

They move to the breakfast table covered with red and white chequered squares, overlooked by large bay windows. The morning sun glints off the waters beyond the trees, the sounds of rippling water occasionally breaking through the cotton wool numbness of a final illicit morning.

James watches the dark haired man restlessly push his eggs around the plate, posture carefully straight. Hiding behind walls as thick as stone.

Breakfast feels like a funeral.

He feels humorously morbid. Maybe he’d felt like making eggs this morning because he wanted to break something fragile and irreversible.

‘Come on, my cooking can’t be that bad.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

I'm not hungry could be code for so many things. James doesn’t know how to decipher any of them.

‘I know! I could read you a breakfast sonnet.’

He watches Niki’s carefully neutral eyes darken with truculence, still avoiding his gaze.  

‘We have no time for poetry, Hunt. So don’t try to be a poet.’

So it’s back to Hunt now. He almost snorts at how very predictable Niki could be. 

'Fine.'

Ah yes, the bitterness of running out of time; James spares a moment to consider how differently they react to closure. James wants consolation, secret smiles, one last lazy wank together. Goodbye but not forever. So long Vegas, we’ll be back. 

Niki wants-

What does Niki want? On that pale, bloated face with its icy, forbiding expression, those scars seem to scream at James in Technicolor.

Unbidden his mind goes back to the early days of the accident, when the world wasn’t sure yet if Niki was coming back to them alive. Something snaps like a rubber band in his chest as James leans forward and grabs the other man’s hand. There are scars there too, tiny silvery snakes that open their mouths and scream at him.  

‘Niki. Look at me.’

There must have been something in his voice. Perhaps in his face, that makes those dark eyes look up. The fear he sees there stutter his heart.

‘Listen. What if we're more than this? What if I’m-‘ he breaks off because the air seems to be choking him, holding a warning hand up when the other man looks like he would interrupt. He needs to finish. He’s in a race with two different finishing lines, and James needs to rush ahead before he loses his nerve.

‘I can’t let it end like this.’

‘James, nein-’ Niki’s features starts to scrunch up with a familiar frustration but James speaks over him.

‘What if I’m in love with you? No stop, stop just don’t freak out-’

‘I said nein!’ the other man shouts, pulling back his hand.

He stops speaking. His heart sinks - no it cracks. He can feel his heart actually cracking open, desiccating like grounded eggshells as the other man stumbles to his feet and wrenches himself from the table, face rapidly draining of what little colour he’d acquired over their four days of frolicking in the sun.

James goes to him, because he has always been able to tell when Niki is on the verge of a panic attack. Mixing German words into his babbling without even being conscious of it.

‘Wenn you say one more time you are in love mit me-‘

‘Shut up and listen.’

‘James, I- I will punch you. I’m not- like that.’

‘So help me neither was I!’ Frustration makes him throw up his hands. ‘This is new to me too!’

‘Was, is, I don’t care,’ Niki bites out, eyes vicious, words like bullets. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘Look, I just want you to know how I feel. You’ve made me- you make me- don’t you think about the odds we overcame? Don’t you think that’s something?’

But he can see the Austrian becoming more and more averse to his words, at the way James couldn't seem to control his cool. He tries to swallow but there’s still a tennis ball lodged in his throat. James is giving away too much, he knows. All those shaky, aggressive inflections that he can’t hide. A tone that’s all shattered glass, cutting when it should have been smothering the other man in warm honey. Disarming him. 

But Niki is brittle, defensive. His face reflects a hurt and aggrieved confusion that’s hard to watch.

‘Why are you doing this? What aim does it serve?’

Stalling for time, James takes a bracing sip of coffee for want of something to do. The bitterness helps.

There's nothing he can do. Niki is already back in the real world, whilst James is trying to hold on to a quicksand.

The Austrian has always been good at finding and holding on to real value, he thinks bitterly. Discerning chaff from wheat, discarding things that wasted his time and energy.

He clearly doesn’t think James has anything more to offer him, which granted is true. Fun times, a roll in the hay, an experiment. The knowledge congeals in his stomach. 

‘Sometimes my hobby is just throwing my heart repeatedly over a cliff, just to see which way it breaks.’

Sombre chocolate eyes meet him, then slides away. Those eyes had been so warm yesterday. 

‘James, when we get back-’

The seconds tick away, precious, irreplaceable, inconsolable.

‘I’m going to- I’m going to tell Marlene.’

James had just been thinking that he didn’t think his heart could hurt anymore; so of course he was wrong. He can only shake his head weakly and say ‘What?’

‘I said I’m going to tell Marlene.’ Niki's gaze is straight for the first time that morning, open and direct and defiant. ‘And you can’t stop me. I’m doing it.’

‘Niki what we have is- ‘ he breaks off and tries again, knowing he’ll fail. ‘Surely you don’t want to set everything on fire before its had a chance.’

Niki leans in. Lowers his voice in a brutal imitation of the intimacy they'd shared these last five days and whispers;

‘This is the fire, James.  You are the fire.’

*