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Predictably, Sky is all over the announcement like sharks smelling blood.
Esteban knows better than to take the bait, but Pierre has always been more loose-lipped and bitey about these things, going on long, unselfconscious tangents that make him feel scooped out from inside.
Still, he can’t look away. It’s like a crash, how he can’t look away.
“Are you going to be okay next year?” His mother asks over Christmas dinner. You plural.
The food is too good to be hers—they must’ve hired someone new since the last time he was home. Esteban takes his sweet time chewing his strudel, separating the layers of flaky pastry with his fork. Pre-season grinding starts next week. He’s going to savour this while he can.
“We’re not kids anymore,” he says finally, which is true enough. They’re different from back then.
Both different and the same.
It plays behind his eyes like a film fraught with cliché. Pierre will say: Esteban, whatever is between us, we have to put it aside for the sake of the team. Esteban will say: And what is between us, pray tell? Pierre will get angry. Esteban will grow distant. Otmar will say: This is not Mercedes. Rinse and repeat, forever.
All for p4 in the Constructors’. At best.
One of the family cats brushes up against his ankles. Esteban bends to scratch behind her ear.
Still, he can’t wait to jump back in the car.
Pierre comes to him in Sweden.
"Listen," he begins, eyes dark and serious. That's the thing about Pierre, he always wants to talk. If the thought of touching him in any capacity wasn’t such a freighted ordeal, Esteban would’ve grabbed him by the shoulders by now and intimated that no, through isn't the only way out.
"Yes, listen. I just spent three hours driving a rally car in the snow," Esteban interrupts, throwing in a yawn for emphasis that Pierre sees through instantly. "Whatever this is about, can it wait till morning?"
"Ice, not snow. You didn't cut across the mountains like a viking."
"Semantics."
Pierre's fingers flex at his side. "Fine, we don't have to get into this right now. As long as you understand what's at stake."
Esteban leans against the doorframe, the toasty warmth of the lodge heater inviting him to sink under the covers for a million years. Maybe he is tired. Conversations with Pierre always demand more of him than he’s willing to give.
"Of course I understand. It was my team first."
Pierre grunts, turning to take the left down the corridor to his own room. He gets about halfway before pausing to double back like he just can't help himself: "I also spent three fucking hours in the snow, by the way. I was there too."
Esteban noticed. How could he not? Tearing down that frozen lake with Pierre in the passenger seat, he’d felt at once both displaced and overly inhabited in his own body—hyperaware of the thrum of the engine, the wheel under his gloves, Pierre’s swearing corporealized in hot little clouds. It had only gotten worse when they were out of the car and the shoot was winding down, all attacks against the Solbergs abandoned in favour of trying to take each other out.
“You’re supposed to be working together,” Oliver had cried, ducking behind his father as another poorly made snowball sailed past.
“Things are a little different in Formula One,” Esteban said, out of breath and twitchy from having his back to Pierre for so long.
The kicker is, somehow they still won in the end. And as the sun slipped below the Scandinavian peaks, Esteban looked over at Pierre—laughing, pink-nosed, indistinguishable from another Pierre in his memory—and for a burning second he couldn’t remember why they never talked anymore.
That’s dangerous thinking. The kind that gets you overtaken around the outside.
Pierre exhales. “Also, I guess. I just want to know,” he shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweats. They don’t look nearly thick enough for the weather, but Pierre has always run hot.
“Did you—at the meeting, did you pull for me?”
It’s not what Esteban was expecting. He chooses his words carefully. “I pulled for Mick. I thought you knew.”
Pierre chews his lips, which despite the weather aren’t dry or cracked. “Because Otmar—” he cuts himself off, squaring his shoulders. “I’m a better driver than Mick. Over one lap, over a season. You know it.”
All of a sudden, Esteban’s exhaustion is bone-deep. “If it’s just about who’s a better driver then they would’ve stuck to their double-world champion, no?”
Pierre snorts. “I mean, they definitely tried. Okay, whatever. I just wanted to get that out of the—yeah. Anyway.” He turns and this time Esteban senses the discussion is over. He should be glad. “Goodnight Esteban.”
“Goodnight Pierre.”
Esteban closes the door to his room, careful not to slam it. As Pierre’s footsteps fade down the hall, he lets his forehead hit the warmed wood with a soft thunk. God.
Lance texts him the L'Équipe piece with three laugh-crying emojis, like a millennial. Esteban politely sends back a gif of a raccoon flipping him off.
The team goes out to dinner to celebrate the end of testing. Truth be told, it’s an imposition. There’s still so much to do—charts to analyze, things to sign, data to pick apart and piece back together. The energy in the room is restless, electric. At the end of the day, they’re all workaholics.
Despite everything, Esteban feels cautiously optimistic. The car had felt good under him, and Pierre isn't the baseless contrarian Fernando had been when it came to comparing feedback. They're still a long way off the top teams but provided the stars align, maybe this'll be the year they finally steal the odd trophy or two. It’s about time they heard La Marseillaise on the podium again, Laurent says in his toast. Esteban raises his glass, a churning in his stomach that’s equal parts anticipation, hunger, and dread.
The restaurant is a departure from their usual fare, with sloping false ceilings made of fabric and scale models of sailboats on every table. There's a signed poster of a shirtless Mansell by the entrance, personally addressed to the owner. Esteban vows to get a closer look before they leave.
He’s directed to a seat to the left of Pierre, whose face—flickers, when he draws near.
Pierre has gotten better at schooling his expressions since his Red Bull stint, but his mouth still gives him away, moving like it does, like it’s got a mind of its own. Esteban used to hate that about him. Why say something you didn’t mean if you were just going to be found out?
One side of it quirks up now, and Esteban blinks, gaze snapping back to his plate.
All in all, it shapes up to be an enjoyable, forgettable evening. He sips on sparkling water, watching everyone around him get louder and looser as the alcohol starts to flow. If Pierre registers their shoulders jostling when he tries to pass him a dish of caramelized leeks, he doesn’t let on. For his part, Esteban chuckles at Pierre’s jokes, only rolling his eyes at the ones that are too crass for polite company.
They make it to dessert without event.
“Christ, that’s good,” Evie from Marketing exclaims around a mouthful of pudding. “Boys, have you tried this? Tastes like Christmas!”
Christmas is maybe Esteban’s sixth favourite major holiday. “We need to be able to fit into the cockpit next week,” he jokes. Unfortunately, Tom overhears from his seat opposite Esteban and launches into a spirited, intoxicated spiel about the dangers of over-restriction. A bite won’t hurt anyone, Este.
He sighs inwardly as she pushes the bowl in his direction. Ah, well—
“Esteban does not eat pecans,” Pierre interrupts, grabbing their attention. Despite the wine-warm flush on his face, his eyes are clear.
“Really?” Evie says, visibly surprised. She looks between them, unsure, the serving spoon still hovering over Esteban’s plate. “I could’ve sworn—I mean, when Louis brought crumble to the factory tour, he took seconds and everything, so—”
Pierre makes a noise like an aborted half-laugh, the unsaid of course he did clear as day. “Give it to me,” he tells her with an animated flourish of his spoon. “Cheers, that will be all.”
“Don’t finish it!” Evie protests as their side of the table dissolves into laughter. Esteban catches Pierre’s eye, strangely touched.
The corners of Pierre’s mouth twitch again. His arm settles on the back of Esteban’s chair and stays there for the rest of the night.
It’s the most disastrous season opener of his career.
Esteban so badly wants to skip media, just pay whatever bullshit fine they want and be done with it. He can fucking afford to now.
Maybe someday when he’s champion, he’ll look back on this night and laugh—but that's not any time soon. Right now, the best he can do is head onto private property and drown his disappointment in something stronger than rosewater. Find a dartboard with the faces of the stewards who seem to harbor a personal grudge against him and just. Go to town.
He’s still feeling sorry for himself when Pierre corners him in the shadow of a loading truck.
He’s breathing hard, like he ran, and his blue eyes have something wild about them that Esteban can’t read. He opens his mouth to speak but then Pierre says,
“If you want to kiss me, now’s a good time.”
Esteban stills. His ears had been blocked for a solid six hours after they landed in Bahrain, but they’re fine now, he’s pretty sure. “I— what?”
Pierre levels him with a look, not breaking it even as a dusting of pink settles high on his cheeks. A warm desert breeze ruffles his hair. “You know.”
Esteban knows—and he doesn’t. He’d thought he was doing a better job of hiding it, anyway. Apprehension seizes him like the sea swallowing a shrinking coastline. There’s blood pounding in his dubiously fluid-free ears.
“Now?” he hears himself say.
Pierre nods curtly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’s all done up for a night out in one of his three-hundred identical white shirts and baggy dark jeans; a stack of silver bracelets on his left wrist. Would they end up on someone’s bedside table tonight, or—or did Pierre keep them on the whole time? He imagines the clink of metal against a wall, a headboard, teeth.
The sounds of Alpine mechanics laughing and razzing each other float down from the other side of the truck. He wishes he was in on the joke.
Esteban’s got to hand it to him—if this is a ploy to get in his head, it’s a good one. But the grand prix is over. Pierre brought home points in his first race for his new team while Esteban was slammed with half a dozen bullshit off-book penalties and didn’t even finish. He’s already won. What’s the point?
Unless... unless it’s pity, which is just. Worse in all the ways because Pierre should know—he of all people should know Esteban would rather walk onto a live track than have anyone pity him ever again.
The longer he lets the silence go on, the deeper Pierre’s frown gets. Finally he scowls, kicking a piece of gravel in frustration. It bounces off a tyre and disappears into the darkness.
“Este, you,” he runs a hand through his curls like he wants to tear them out. “Never mind. Jesus. I’ll just leave you to wallow, then. Like usual.”
He pushes past Esteban. “Forget I said anything.”
Esteban watches him storm off towards the strip, a growing knot in his chest that’s half sick satisfaction, half something else. Come back. Good riddance. Come back.
It’s a pyrrhic victory. They don’t talk about it again.
People underestimate the good times we had, Pierre says to a tanned and gleeful Rosberg onscreen. Nobody really knows what happened except us two.
What had happened. It’s hard to pinpoint an isolated incident. Feels like a disservice to try.
Esteban locks his phone, placing it facedown on the other side of the bed. He’s angry at a lot of things, but mostly at himself.
“Aren’t you getting in?”
Jack abandons his surfboard and flops down on a pull-out beside him, hair plastered to his forehead in thick chunks. He shakes it out like a big dog, and Esteban makes appropriate noises of mock outrage at getting splashed. Jack’s a good guy. Reminds him of Mick, in many ways.
“I think I will stick to racing, thanks,” he says, shielding his eyes from the midday sun. This country is always so fucking hot. He could never live here. “Me and the water, we don’t get along.”
It's some kind of promotional thing, the wave pool. Esteban will do a lot for his team, but making a fool of himself trying to pile his inefficiently long limbs on a piddly piece of wood is not one of them.
They've got the world number one to themselves today, a Red Bull guy. Even if Esteban somehow missed all the logos plastered across his board, Pierre took the liberty of saying You know, I spent nine years there twice within the span of a five-minute introduction.
You're with us now, Esteban joked—in English, for the benefit of the crew. Testing the weight of the words by how they landed. Don't forget and tell him all our secrets.
Pierre had just rolled his eyes before walking off to get changed. Things have been different since Bahrain.
Jack pokes him in the side. “Sounds like cowards’ talk to me.”
Esteban smiles. “Maybe I am a coward, then.”
Both different and the same.
A few feet away in the shallows, Pierre is listening carefully to Robinson’s instructions, his brows furrowed in concentration. It's almost annoying how hard he's trying, at this stupid marketing thing that doesn't even matter.
Pierre has never been able to handle not being the best at everything. Back when they were kids, he gave up football the minute they switched him over to second string. Second string, for the Pierre Gasly? Blasphemy. It was the final push he’d needed to commit to karting and become Esteban’s problem full-time.
(If you want to kiss me—)
He swallows in his too-dry mouth. The dark wetsuit clings to every divot and curve of Pierre’s frame, stretching across the breadth of his shoulders, the narrow cut of his hips. They’re not kids anymore.
Jack says something else, interrupting himself with a loud, infectious laugh. Esteban tears his eyes away and pretends he was listening.
Australia hurts. Not as much as Paul Ricard all those years ago, but it’s different now that there's no room for unfettered blame. Laurent calls and says think of the hundred and forty thousand people you let down. You, plural.
Racing incident or not, in the briefing afterwards Pierre apologizes to the packed room himself; a clear admission of guilt. It doesn't undo the crash, but in the end, he supposes Pierre had had more to lose. Esteban knows what it's like to want something so bad you lose track of the moving parts.
It feels like the beginning of something big. Maybe not bigger than he’s weathered before with Pierre, but. Bigger than the team can handle.
Surreally, they end up splitting a tiramisu about it.
The air is just awkward enough to taste, settling thick on Esteban’s tongue under the coffee liqueur. He’s a marvel of multitasking—moving spoon to mouth, counting the mosaic tiles on the floor, doing complex geometry with his legs so they don’t brush Pierre’s under the table. The city winks and honks below them, blissfully unconcerned.
“Stop that,” Pierre says after a while, and Esteban doesn’t know what he’s referring to, so he stops all three.
It’s Pierre who texted him first, asking to meet at the hotel restaurant. The nice one too, with the view. His diet is strict and their flight leaves in three hours. He’d come anyway.
“Thinking,” Pierre clarifies. “You’re so loud, for fuck’s sake.”
The childish retort is out before he can stop it: “Not all of us can turn it off as easy as you.”
Pierre stares at him for a second, then snorts. “What are you, six?”
Esteban was six when he first met Pierre. He can’t help but regress back to it from time to time.
There’s a bit of cream caught on the fine brown hair above Pierre’s cupid’s bow. He's finally stopped landscaping it to shit, which the sponsors will appreciate. It makes him look older. They're not old, far from it—but they haven't been the hot young things on the paddock coasting by on raw potential for a while now. Something twists in Esteban’s chest.
He catches himself from reaching out, just barely. Slides a tissue across the table instead. Pierre doesn't take it, choosing to use the back of his thumb. Esteban looks away. Fine.
Then Pierre sighs noisily, like he's profoundly irritated by the world at large. "God, you’re so— okay, here."
Esteban turns back to a spoon hovering inches from his face. He stares, incredulous. There aren’t even cameras around. Just them, an older gentleman sipping coffee at the only other occupied table, and the comically serious look Pierre gets in his eyes when he's made his mind up about something.
A beat passes, then two. He knows he’s missed his cue somewhere when Pierre cracks a wry little half-smile, like he's used to having his olive branches burned. Maybe he is. And maybe that’s Esteban’s fault.
"What, are you waiting for aeroplane noises—?”
Esteban grabs Pierre's wrist and guides the spoon to his mouth. It’s not— it doesn't feel like the wrong thing to do. He keeps his eyes closed anyway and swallows.
"It's good," he hums around the mascarpone, because it is. He knew that already. They've been eating off the same plate.
"Yeah?" Pierre says. He sounds odd, the syllable taking on a new, strained affliction. Not irritated or upset, though. Esteban figured he’d lost the ability to differentiate between those microexpressions a long time ago, but apparently not. Parts of Pierre are still as familiar to him as the smell of a kart track, his mother’s mediocre cooking, the crunch of snow underfoot. Perhaps they always will be.
“We should order another,” he says. “There’s a whole month until Baku.”
Pierre huffs out a low laugh. “Might as well. What’s one more thing to get our asses kicked for at Enstone?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Esteban says. His fingers stay like that, wrapped loosely around Pierre’s wrist.
On the plane, Evie makes them film a painfully contrived message for the fans, an "it’s all good, we’ll come back stronger" type of thing. It’s awful. They’re going to get crucified online anyway, memed to boot.
Pierre grimaces and complains the whole time, but he winks at Esteban over her head so he knows it’s not at his expense. And Esteban—ah, fuck—smiles back. For the first time in years, it’s like they’re on the same side. No, not like—they are.
It's a long season. There are all sorts of ways this can go. Luck or lack thereof might mean they're tied on points now, but it's Esteban’s seventh year in the game. He's too impatient and hungry to play second driver to anyone—least of all Pierre.
Still, when Pierre nods off on his shoulder twelve thousand meters above the Indian Ocean, Esteban doesn’t pull away.