Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

        Watching Senna pick up girls is… something to say the least. He’s so suave, it seems like he doesn’t even need to say anything before they’re all over him. Maybe it’s just the fact that women love fast sportsmen, but Alain’s never seen anyone captivate an audience so quickly and wholly as him. Tonight though, at yet another party celebrating yet another Mclaren, more specifically a Senna win, the atmosphere feels decidedly different despite Ayrton’s decisive victory earlier on the track. The fact that he won should mean he’s got a golden touch for the rest of the night, but the craziness with which he seems to lean into the countless women at the club they’re all holed up in after the awards ceremony seems even a little too presumptuous even for him. He’s drunk, Alain realizes after he watches him order what seems to be his third or fourth Mai Tai after another girl leaves him in the dust for the dance floor, and the speed with which he drinks it down makes something akin to fear course through Alain’s veins. Even with how enraged the man has made him this season, he can’t help but think of the man he knew in ‘88— bright-eyed, vivacious, naively confident instead of sneering egotist. He still wants to protect that man, befriend him and look out for him, even if he never had actually existed. 

       It’s incredibly surprising and just a little sad watching him stumble slightly as he makes his way towards him, of all people after striking out with a fifth gorgeous brunette, something almost… pathetic. He hates ascribing that word to anything that Senna does, not even after watching him lie and obfuscate without blinking in interviews, and knowing his normal abstinence towards alcohol and anything else Alain is mostly just concerned for what could have brought this on for the other man.

       He finds out later, in a confessional whisper to his ear when they’re in the hotel corridors leading to their adjacent rooms (Alain had tried to leave, but Senna had just followed him out like a lost puppy into the cab that he hailed) as Ayrton leans in and whispers, “I just didn’t know a way to talk to you, otherwise.” 

       He can feel his heart break a little despite all the seemingly unforgivable grievances he holds towards him. He doesn’t know how to help, doesn’t think of himself as such a formidable opponent as to warrant intoxication, but thinking about it he can’t think of a time they’ve talked longer than when he’s still been high off the rush of podiuming. That, or rage. He guesses that’s what this must be like for Senna, knowing how composed he tries to stay even after first place after first place. He asks him something along those lines, Lord knows he’s drunk enough to be a little out of it himself, and maybe those two or so beers he'd been nursing are why Ayrton’s dark eyes seem so large when they owlishly blink up at him through the gloom. They’re shining and eerily captivating in the dim lights of the hallway when he answers “Yes, yes. I knew you would… understand.”

  He seems like he wants to continue, his breath hitches in a way that in the moment, for some inexplicable reason, seems all too familiar to Alain with his various season-long liaisons, but he falls silent in their remaining stumble to their rooms and it’s soon out of his mind. 

       They come to an intermission in Alain’s suite, he’s in the process of undressing but can barely manage more than tearing off his tie and suit jacket, and Senna seems resigned to splaying himself across the room’s provided armchair. After a few moments of only marginally embarrassing struggle, Alain gets his dreaded gala pants off and flops himself onto his bed, and he would say something to break the silence but it’s so eerily reminiscent of their first meeting in ‘84 that he’s alright with taking Ayrton’s role and dozing off intermittently; reclined and relaxed and... natural. He can see from the corner of his eye that Ayrton’s restless, shifting in his chair and opening his mouth occasionally as if to talk, but there’s not a lot either of them can say considering the circumstances. Maybe whatever they want to say can’t really be expressed with words anyways, maybe the pregnant silence of the room is saying more than either of them can. Or maybe that’s just the beers talking, Alain has never been one to hold his alcohol well and Senna is definitely out for the count. They both opt to lay in silence, letting the faint sounds of traffic and jubilant crowds in the streets below carry their imaginary conversation for them.

       He can’t tell how long it’s been but he doesn’t really mind, neither of them have moved but they're loose around each other, too languid and maybe a little too drunk; something has finally calmed between them nonetheless. Senna, Aryton, is still draped on the armchair across from him, much less restless now, and Alain feels five seconds away from sinking into the bedsheets. Despite his exhaustion, he can’t help the need to keep his eyes on him —‘for safety’ is what he tells himself— so he twists himself around until he hits his head on the bed frame and can look at Ayrton’s placid expression upside down. It seems… romantic, almost, painted in the tepid hues of the hotel lamps and the sharp glow of the streetlight outside, and Alain feels the giggle rise up through his throat before it escapes unwittingly. Ayrton gives a soft huff of laughter at that, and isn’t his smile so incredibly pretty, and before he can even begin to process that thought that he’s watching him move across the room and sit on the bed next to him. It’s only natural, from there, for Alain to move his head into Ayrton’s lap. At this point, almost everything seems natural. 

       Even feeling soft hands in his hair doesn’t cause him any more than a moment of pause, and it’s been so long since anyone had done that to him that he can’t even really manage a protest. It’s so hard not to close his eyes and drift off to sleep, but Alain can’t stop looking at Ayrton’s face. His eyes are fixated somewhere to the left of him, and his hands keep moving in Alain’s hair, and his face looks… well Alain can’t decipher it, really. He’s still trying to figure it out when his eyes lose the battle with his brain and begin to shut. When he wakes up in the late morning, alone and safely under the covers, there’s still the faint scent of Cederwood and cinnamon on his pillow.

       In the harsh light of day, things go back from natural to normal and neither of them mentions that night again. And with what happens later that season? It’s like it never even happened in the first place. 

Chapter Text

       There is in fact a first time that It happens. It gets lost to both of them, later on as things pile higher and higher in the burning garbage pile that is whatever their relationship is for a long time, but there is a distinct moment where things… change.

       The night starts pretty innocuously as far as things go, it’s the night after a race that Alain won so he’s feeling pretty good even if the season hasn’t gotten off to a roaring start so far. Being at Ferrari is… different. He misses the relationships he had with the Mclaren team, but even thinking about them only serves to put a sour taste in his mouth when his mind immediately jumps to Senna. Senna, who’s been on a hot streak that doesn’t seem to be diminishing, no doubt made easier by the fact that the engineers no longer have to pretend they’re making equal set-ups for the cars. Just thinking about the man makes Alain’s stomach churn and do a terrifying dive, and he’d be filled almost entirely with rage if it wasn’t for the insistent and unnamable stone in his stomach that accompanies his anger every time. It’s a heady mix that’s made him sick to his stomach multiple times this year, and it’s almost as bad as whatever liquor is being poured at the bar. 

       The lounge that the teams are congregating in that night is loud, the drinks (however dubious they may be) are flowing, and Alain would be remiss in saying he’s completely miserable. But like a thorn in his side, the more he drinks, the more he’s aware of Senna across the room from him with some nameless brunette on his arm.

       Strange. He remembers it always being blondes.

        Regardless, Alain’s more preoccupied with testing the upper limits of his tolerance and maybe even finding some hard-body to take home than letting his former teammate’s neuroticisms ruin his night. He firmly downs whatever drink is in his hand at the moment, he’s forgotten what it is but at least it tastes decent, and makes a pointed line in the direction of the dancefloor. This is his night, he’s the race winner, and he’s not going to let Senna under his skin.

       These naive assurances are all the more awkward when later, it ends up being just the two of them alone outside the lounge getting some air. It must be some kind of divine punishment, to always somehow end up crashing into Ayrton Senna. They notice each other immediately but both stand pointedly apart, and Alain sure as hell has no intention of getting any closer than he needs to be. If Senna wants to say something to him, the way he’s fidgeting with the flute of champagne in his hand certainly implies he does, well, he can be a man and do it himself; Alain has nothing to say to him anyways. He wishes he smoked, though, or had a glass himself, if only to have something to do with his hands. He’s steadfastly refusing to look over at him, and Alain half-hopes that Senna will just turn around and go back inside and nothing will happen. He’s almost disappointed at the thought, he could feel his blood pressure spike as soon as he realized Ayrton was outside, but realistically another brawl won’t do him any good. There’s movement out of the corner of his eye though, and Senna strides over with an intake of breath where he starts to say something, finger already pointed…

       …And they’re yelling at each other. Alain can’t even tell what words are coming out of his mouth: he just knows how angry, how betrayed, how absolutely beside himself he feels every time he even thinks of the name Ayrton Senna. Ayrton is spitting things right back in his face, going blow for blow but he can’t understand any of it either, it’s all just an unintelligible cacophony of all of their vitriolic hate. It’s like there’s a live current running through him, and he isn’t usually a violent person but before he knows it Alain is grabbing the lapels of Senna’s stupid oversized shirt and yanking him in. He doesn’t exactly know what that would accomplish but he doesn’t exactly care, and he’s most of the way there on deciding to punch him when the streetlamp catches the tear rolling down his cheek. 

       That ends up being the last dam to break between them. His hand moves up, thumb catching the lone tear before Ayrton’s face is right against his and they’re kissing— tearing each other apart more like, considering the fact it’s mostly teeth nipping at lips. There’s a ringing in his ears and Alain feels like he’s having an aneurysm, everything in his body feels like it’s shutting down and running at 110% all at once. All he can register is hands; both their hands grabbing desperately onto anything they can find, the inferno of Ayrton’s mouth, and the faint dampness of that one tear still on his thumb. It’s just like being on the track, riding on pure instinct. Exactly on the limit.

       The noise from the lounge suddenly gets louder, and they both spring apart as someone comes outside— presumably also to get some air, although probably not in the way the two of them just were. They’re thankfully half-hidden in shadow, and with how drunk the other guy looks to be he won’t be asking either of them for autographs any time soon. Alain is immediately sobered though as the man lights up a cigarette, and it seems like Ayrton too is more lucid. With a huff of breath, he storms off, and Alain is left to lean up against the brick wall of the building and sigh. His head is still spinning, and he feels like he just got through a cold— feverish and shivering all at once. He can’t wrap his head around what just happened, it’s like he’s refusing to let himself come to terms with it, so he calls it a night right then and there. The thought of going back to the pounding music of the party, the oppressive heat of bodies, the thought of chatting up a woman after all this and taking her home makes his stomach turn. He’s definitely had too much to drink. 

       He’s just got back to his hotel and started changing when there’s a pounding on his door. Alain’s halfway done locking whatever happened at the afterparty in the tightest safe in his mind, so he’s genuinely confused as to who could be knocking on his door at —he looks at his bedside clock— half-past two in the morning. He’s left in just his dress shirt, his boxers and socks but if he’s completely honest he doesn’t think he could feel even half as raw and exposed if he were fully naked in front of room service, as he did with Senna’s mouth on his. So, he plods over to the door, is in the motions of opening it when who else but goddamn Ayrton Senna is barreling past him, turning around, and backing him up against the wall. And it’s like no time has passed, Alain is thrown right back into that supernova of heat and senseless anger.

       Their kisses have no finesse, their hands like claws digging into each other like dogs in a fight, the snarling beast in Alain’s chest beating at his rib cage to be set free. Alain thinks he finally gets what Ayrton meant when he said he was beyond the limit, that one day in Monte Carlo. This feels like flying blind, pure instinct, nothing but burning white emotion coursing through him at 250 kilometers an hour. It’s like winning a race, the same tingling sensation all over, the same pinpricks of light like bubbles of champagne in his throat and everything is so hot. This must be what Icarus felt like when his wings melted, but Alain would make the same mistake if feeling the sun felt this good, this right, this divine. It's like they're one terrible being; drivers and cars and God all melded into one terrific form, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. They are on fire, molten, like the burning hot tarmac of the track, and it feels like they will never slow down. 

        And he knows it’s like this for Senna too, is so sure about it that it feels like a revelation, and only licks himself further into Ayrton’s mouth just to try and get that little bit closer to him. He’s only too compliant, opening his mouth with a pained exhalation that’s penitent, broken and thankful all the same. It only makes Alain want to take him apart more; to disassemble him with his bare hands, and expose his soft insides to his hungry eyes. Instead he just digs in harder, drags blunt red lines down his back with bitten off nails and presses himself impossibly closer. Ayrton just pushes back into him, still matching him like they’re fighting on the track again, and the feeling of their feverish skin against each other is made all the more electrifying. Somehow, it's easier to submit his body to collision and bruising like this, when the pain being dealt comes straight from a man’s hands. It feels more real, more genuine, just as solid and true as the bulge between Ayrton’s legs he’s currently feeling up. When Ayrton bites down on the meat of his shoulder, bright blooming pain sending sparks behind his eyes, it only spurs Alain on further, and he doesn’t hold back when he wrenches himself from where he’s thus far been boxed in by the other man and presses him into the same place on the wall that he just was. Wrists pinned, Ayrton doesn’t look any more cowed, and before he can react he’s being barreled across the room and pushed back onto the bedspread. There’s a moment where Ayrton is towering above him, a dark mass with sharp, glinting, hawkish eyes, and their shared pants ring out harshly in the stillness of the room. Neither of them crack even a hint of a smile. They may be a lot of things to each other, but none of them include that kind of tenderness. 

       Suddenly, Alain’s staring up into the popcorn ceiling of the hotel room and Senna’s looming form moves out of sight, and he’s so busy trying to get his vision to stop spinning that he barely comprehends the feeling of his shirt and briefs being pulled apart; the sensation of being now mostly bared. His brain catches up pretty quickly though, when he feels the hot vacuum of Ayrton’s mouth around his cock and he can’t help but let out a sharp punch of breath. His briefs aren’t even totally off— he can feel Ayrton’s surprisingly cool hands against his thighs holding them down, and he’s sprawled on the bed like some conquest while Ayrton, he can only assume, tries to literally suck the life out of him. At least that’s what it feels like, still feeling five or something drinks deep.
       Intoxication, it seems, hasn’t hampered Ayrton’s… abilities at all: Alain feels a little like a passenger in a rally car, being driven around corners at breakneck speeds with his heart in his throat. Senna’s tongue is precise, relentless and unceasing in its movements, and Christ, where did he have time to practice this… 

       Brain still slack, Alain only realizes he’s starting to buck up into Ayrton’s mouth when there’s a gag from between his legs and a cold rush of air as the man pulls off for a breath. Not infallible after all. He’s about to go back down but Alain puts a hand out to stop him, he’s too close anyways and he can’t have whatever this is end quite yet. Instead, he sits up to pull Senna up on the bed, but stops short cradling his face in his hands.
        It’s a beautiful sight. Big brown eyes, long eyelashes glossy with tears, swollen pink lips and a high blush under countless freckles. It’s like a painting of a saint staring up at him, tears rolling down his cheeks in repentance. He can’t help but kiss him again then, doesn’t care that he’s using too much teeth and probably cutting his lip, because the urge to consume this man whole hasn’t abated even an inch. He does pull him up the rest of the way onto the bed though, pausing for a moment to actually take his shirt off where it’d been half unbuttoned before swinging his leg over Ayrton to straddle him. His hands immediately take almost bruising grips on Alain’s hips, like he’s holding the car wheel before a race, and the callouses that Alain can feel brushing over his skin make the identical ones on his own hands burn. Seeing Ayrton’s face beneath him is no less exhilarating the second time, and he can’t help the way he grinds down to chase after the delicious pressure that’s still sitting in his gut like a hot stone. Ayrton is more than receptive and only pushes back up against him, and reaches up to clasp the back of his neck before pulling Alain down again. The heat has been steadily building back up between them, blurring the lines between hate and friction, but when Ayrton angles his hips up to meet against Alain’s ass he feels a frigid stab of fear go through him. 

       He’s undoubtedly enjoying this, it’s embarrassing to admit but more embarrassing to try and deny, but the reality is that he’s never done anything like this with another man. He can go toe-to-toe with Senna on the track any day, but he knows where his limits are— both in a car and in a bed. He’s not ready for this.

        Ayrton, who’s been continuing with his movements thus far slows down, and when he notices that Alain’s stopped kissing back removes the hand he has on his neck and nudges him upright. There’s a moment of silence between them, Ayrton’s looking up at him with a probing look on his face, but Alain can’t form the words. Can’t form the phrase, can barely speak it in his mind. Ayrton cocks his head, questioning but suddenly calm, and all Alain can do is bring his hands up to cover his face and softly shake his head. There’s a beat, for a second he thinks he’s about to be thrown off the bed and left alone in his shame, but hands come up to grab his wrists and move his hands off of his face. He still refuses to open his eyes, is unwilling to meet Ayrton’s gaze for fear of what it holds, but he’s being moved down gently onto his side and they flick open anyways in confusion. They’re now laying side by side, Ayrton still holding his gaze, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was never broken in the first place. He smooths a hand over Alain’s shoulder, before bringing it back up to cup his cheek and kiss him again. It’s slower this time, less harried and aggressive, and enough of the red haze of adrenaline has faded for Alain to actually appreciate that this feels nice. It’s comforting, to be kissed slow and deep and meaningfully, and it’s nice to be held with intention. So it’s him that ends up shifting closer, closing the space that he realizes Ayrton had intentionally left for him to breach. When Ayrton’s hand moves lower again, first to his hip and then painstakingly inward, there is no fear. At the very least, Alain knows how this part goes. 

       His boxers actually do go down this time, not just pulled out of the way, and the only moment of pause comes from when Ayrton brings his hand up to Alain’s mouth. At first, he thinks that maybe he’ll be muffled, and blushes before he remembers there’s almost no way Ayrton could know that about him, but soon realizes that a completely dry handjob is not exactly enjoyable. So with a touch of hesitation, he licks across the broad, salty palm before lightly spitting into it. From there, it’s just blinding heat contrasted with Ayrton’s gentle lips back on his and God, he’d never think to try it but the fact that it’s his own spit, lathered on Ayrton’s hand and on his cock makes it so much better, and he’s close to finishing way earlier than he expected. He’s not really aware of it but he knows from experience whatever noises he’s making must be getting louder, so he’s expecting Ayrton’s kisses to get more aggressive to swallow his moans. Instead, he pulls fully away just as a high whine wrestles its way out of his chest. Ayrton’s big, bottomless eyes are locked back on him and it puts every sensation into overdrive, Alain can’t help but bury his face in the pillow because his unabating stare combined with the delicious drag of calluses over his dick is going to make him cum in five seconds flat. As it is, panting and whining into the edge of his pillow, Alain makes it to about 15 before he can’t hold back any longer and he’s unspooling into Ayrton’s hand. It’s surprisingly intense, and he doesn’t register the fact that he’s shivering until he feels strong arms wrap around him and hold him close. He’s rocked through the aftershocks, Ayrton solid and steady against him, but he feels bad that he’s gone completely boneless when he feels the still solid bulge between Ayrton’s legs. He knows it’s impolite not to… return the favor, but if he’s honest he’s seconds away from falling asleep. He makes a move to reach down, begins to feel him up again, but a gentle hand moves his away and instead turns his face up to meet eyes again. Half-lidded, Ayrton’s figure blurred and hazy against the dim street lights filtering in from outside, Alain can only stare helplessly into the bottomless pools of black as he watches Ayrton’s face twist and turn as he brings himself closer and closer to completion. It’s indescribable, his face like a statue come to life as the planes of his face morph and shift in ecstasy, and Alain almost starts to get hard again when finally, with a choked-off groan and squinted eyes that haven’t left his once, he feels warm splatters hit his torso.

        It’s… Alain has no words for it. He can only reach for the other man, bury his face in the warm fuzz of his chest and cling onto him, nursing him through it in the same way that Ayrton did for him. It’s the least he can do, after everything.

       They’re just like that when they fall asleep, and wake up still tightly intertwined in the early lights of the morning. It settles some flighty thing in his chest he didn’t realize he had, coming to with a warm mass still wrapped around him. He doesn’t know what it would do to him to wake up, after everything that’s happened to them this season and last night, only to find the other side of the bed cold and Ayrton just as frigid. Instead, surrounded by a strangely familiar scent of cinnamon and wood, he’s okay with falling back into a dreamless, peaceful sleep. When he wakes up next, along with Ayrton this time, they don’t talk when they clean themselves up but the silence is peaceful instead of loaded. They meet eyes one more time before Ayrton goes through the adjoining door to his own room, and it melts Alain a little bit to see the tenderness glinting like amber in the Brazilian’s eyes. Coming together for a final kiss and swallowing the soft noise of content right out of the other man’s mouth, it’s so easy for Alain to believe that maybe, just maybe, everything might turn out okay. 

Chapter Text

[HUNGARY: 1991]

       Things are not okay, except they are. 

       There’s nothing to yell at, Senna just doesn’t say his name anymore. Their fights on track feel leaden, rehearsed, both of them treading through the same old dance: Ayrton, because he has to, doesn’t know anything else in that animal brain of his, and Alain because he needs to. He doesn’t say his name either, they’re both each other’s other guy now, but his tongue feels heavy with the way it still sits there in his throat. The racing doesn’t change though, things are still in their proper places: Senna, at the front, and him; chasing, always trying to catch up. It’s hard, sometimes, to remember a time when his vision wasn’t filled with red and white. 

       It’s even worse, this weird silent stalemate that they have, when all Alain can think of is that one night from the year before: the bruising grip of Senna’s hands on his waist, the tender look in his eyes and how gently he’d held him afterwards. His soft whines play over and over again in Alain’s head, in meetings, at home, in his dreams. The only time he can drown it out is when the car is roaring, alive underneath and around him like some wild beast, his helmet like a cocoon from the haunting memory of Ayrton murmuring in his ear. But the car this year is barely controllable, weak and feeble like his own constitution, and he’s waiting for Ferrari to sack him any day. In short, there’s almost no reprieve from the memories that haunt him every hour of every day, and even the track doesn’t provide the same salvation it once did. Maybe he’s just sour; he's not in contention to win. 

       It doesn’t seem like Senna’s doing any better though, he’s obviously in the lead for the championship but it seems like his car is also trying to rebel, running out of fuel and malfunctioning randomly. He’s making silly mistakes, but with costly prices: Mexico is a nauseating weekend for him, and he’s not even the one who crashes with an outstanding head injury. Having to watch him argue back and forth with Balestre in Germany is almost just as nauseating, even if it is for reasons he begrudgingly agrees with. 

       The one bit of petty satisfaction he can get is this: if they do happen to cross paths and meet eyes, Senna can’t hold his gaze. He looks for a second like a deer in headlights, shocked and afraid, before he turns and the world begins spinning again.

       There was never a second night. Alain hopes he’s a little ashamed about that.  

       Right now they’re sitting, silent and stony, Senna’s been tapping his foot for the last ten minutes and it’s doing a lot to drive Alain up the wall. He’s got that pout he always has, the one that makes him look like a toddler tantrumming when he doesn’t get his way, and Alain’s always been weak to that habit in his own children but he refuses to entertain it in a grown man. FISA dragged them into a meeting room twenty-something minutes ago, locked the doors and drew the blinds, told them both in no uncertain terms to “sort things out”. Alain almost lets out an audible snort, because he can’t think of a more ridiculous solution to let off steam than seal them both in a glorified pressure cooker. But Senna’s already tried the door twice, jiggling the obviously locked handle like an obnoxious kid, and no wonder Alain feels insane around him when he expects different results from identical actions.

       Senna gets up for the third time, Alain looks at his watch —just under 25 minutes, Jesus, they’re not going to open the door for him just because he whines hard enough— and the thin thread of patience he’s tried to weave for himself snaps. He’s opening his mouth to tell him to knock it off and act his age, when Ayrton’s already interrupting with his own rebuttal— something he’d probably been brewing up in the span of their silence and God, isn’t that so typical of him: constructing an argument without even knowing what the other person is going to say, and barreling on with it anyways. Alain sighs and just leans further back in his chair. Senna stalks over to him from his place by the door, sitting back down haughtily in the chair opposite Alain’s, finger already pointing. He’s honestly so dissociated from it all that watching Senna’s face twist and ripple as he gets angrier and angrier is a little funny, like a clown making faces at a children’s show. 

       “You know, it is so typical— the audacity you have Alain, honestly, you have no morals! You go and accuse me of things, accuse over and over, when you know it is you who is wrong! And when I try to express my upsets, my concerns, you just… steamroll and tell me I am overreacting!”

       Alain rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he sees Heaven. The audacity of him? After all of Senna’s mind-games, his tantrums, his borderline schizophrenic emotional episodes, he has the gall to call Alain the one with no morals? He can’t believe him, can’t believe he’d say something like—

       “You know, I wish sometimes that I were simply your wife— maybe then you would actually listen to me! And do what I say!”

       And that makes both of them pause. 

       Ayrton looks like he swallowed a lemon, face pinched in a way that would be even funnier than his anger if the whole thing weren’t so acutely mortifying. Alain can’t even begin to imagine what his own face is doing, probably something even more horrendous, and his ears are ringing with the abrupt silence that’s suddenly choking the room. 

       There’s about thirty seconds of complete silence. Senna seems like he’s trying to figure out how to crawl out of his own skin, slowly sagging forward and cradling his head in his hands. Alain can’t exactly blame him. But then, he begins to speak.

       “... Sometimes, I look at you and I see the rest of my life,” he starts softly, he’s still not looking at Alain. “I see us together in Brazil, retired, Nico and Bruno playing together in the sun. And I cannot find it in me to find it wrong. It’s the only time I can imagine anything for myself outside of the car.”

       Alain’s frozen in his seat, he doesn’t know what any of this means. They were arguing one minute and now, in a split second, they’re in completely uncharted waters. 

       “I do not think it would be so wrong to be your wife, or for you to be mine.” His voice is so quiet now that it’s barely even audible, now hoarse and thick with the sound of tears Alain knows he has trouble holding back. He has absolutely no idea what the fuck is happening right now. 

       He clears his throat, straightens up a little in his seat but his head’s still down, continues on: “But then you say these things, these things that, you know, hurt me, and I just don’t know what to do when you cannot even look at me.”

       But Alain hasn’t taken his eyes off him. Hasn’t been able to ever since that car ride in ‘84, even when he feels like he’s being torn apart from the inside out with rage just looking at him. Ayrton’s still looking down and he knows it’s because he’s tearing up, looking down because he won’t let Alain see him cry after that one idiotic conversation with a reporter. Alain feels the tiniest bit like an asshole.

       He slowly rises from his chair, crosses the scant space between their two recliners and takes a seat on the arm of the seat. He places a hand tentatively on his shoulder, just a light touch, but with the way Ayrton’s head snaps up it could have been a death grip; his eyes are glassy, his bottom lip is doing that little twitch he’s seen in meetings when he isn’t getting his way, and now that they’re so close together Alain realizes he doesn’t really have a plan for what to do next. But Ayrton’s looking at him with a pleading look, begging him to say or do anything, and so Alain does the first thing that comes to mind: place a gentle hand on Ayrton’s cheek, brush his thumb lightly over the small tear that’s just started to roll its way down his face, and lean in to brush a feather-light kiss on his lips.

       He can feel the aborted little noise Ayrton makes reverberate through the skin of his lips and he moves in closer to swallow it down, dips his head fully as Ayrton’s hand wraps around the back of his neck and pulls him down into his lap. All of a sudden, with nothing more than a soft gasp of breath, they’ve collided; Alain’s not sure who’s fault it is this time. It’s all interia, all entropy and they’ve just been stars circling each other’s orbits before collapsing in, lips moving against one another in a deceptively calm form of calamity. The pull between their lips, their tongues trading spots licking into one another’s mouths, it’s all an extension of their battles on track. Always seeking a better line, always trying to find that edge to give them the upper hand. But leaned half-over Ayrton, still and placated in his recliner, it’s so incredibly easy to imagine that they’ve finally found balance. 

       But that’s not true, is it? 

       The thought washes over Alain like an ice-cold rain. All of a sudden he can’t stand the almost oppressive heat of Ayrton’s body underneath his, intertwined and choking around him like a snake, and he has to sharply pull back. Ayrton’s expression is straight up debauched, there’s no other way to put it, lips kiss-swollen and eyes heavy-lidded and unfocused. It takes every ounce of strength Alain has not to give into the absolute sin that’s laid out for him. 

       But he remembers Suzuka the year before. He remembers the way the warm amber eyes blinking sluggishly up at him turned flint-sharp and dark even through the camera lens, remembers the smug put-on naivety in his single-shoulder shrug, remembers the twisting sneer of his mouth— mocking. Remembers how the lack of remorse, the insufferable righteousness that seeped from him that weekend. The man beneath him right now, no matter how soft and pliant and supplicant he looks, is inseparable to the man who knowingly crashed into him at hundreds of kilometers an hour. The man who’s so willingly bearing his underbelly can’t be detached from the man who looked at him with nothing but cold contempt. Alain can’t make the same mistake twice: he can’t let Senna reach into him again like this. 

       He realizes he’s been frozen, looming over the other man for a couple loaded seconds, half-lidded eyes are blinking wider open and if Alain doesn’t create a space between them right now he knows Senna will just press closer. After Japan, he knows what he’s capable of. So he straightens up despite the soft animal within him aching to be wrapped up in that closeness again, and moves slowly backwards to the arm of his own chair. Senna, slowly straightening up and fixing wide, penetrating eyes at him, reminds him of a leopard. A predator, playing cute and dumb, a predator he had almost just willingly fed himself to. 

       A wave of nausea murmurs low in his gut— It’s a horrible complement to the simmering arousal that welled up at the mere proximity of their bodies. He has to take a deep, shaking breath to try and reset. 

       “That I can’t look at you, Senna? That I say things that hurt you? ” The nausea and lingering arousal are joined by a hot current of anger. He can’t even bear to look at Senna’s face.

       The other man reels back like he’s been hit, shifting in his seat, but Alain’s not going to let an overgrown man-child, a heartbreakingly beautiful asshole, the man who’s completely uprooted everything in his life reel him in again before he’s had his say. He can’t let this be another Suzuka, they can’t just keep slamming into each other over and over again— someone will die, and Alain doesn’t have enough of a death wish, enough of a belief in God, to keep testing things. Thinking about dying, about taking his last breath in that claustrophobic cocoon of metal and knowing that the man in the steaming car beside him was the one to deal the death blow, it makes him shake with something straddling rage and pure terror. 

        “Do you even hear yourself, you insane man? You have been trying to kill me for three years now, I feel nauseous every time we race, you’ve made your entire mission to tear me apart and you call me mean! Maybe you did not walk away from Suzuka with bruises but the world doesn’t begin and end with what you want.” 

       “Then why don’t you look at me? If the world bends to my wishes then why won’t you– why do you stare through me like you don’t, like you don’t give a fuck?!” 

       The harshness of the swear, stilted and shaking like the rest of him, emphasizes how little Alain’s heard that word come out of his mouth. The rarity, the severity of it is what shakes Alain the most. He’s at his breaking point, undone in a desperate way that feels just like seeing Ayrton disheveled underneath himself in the chair just minutes ago.

         “If you took a moment to look past yourself, Ayrton,” A small inhale, Alain realizes it’s the first time he remembers saying his first name in a while. “You can see I can’t take my eyes off of you. But sometimes… Sometimes you’re like the sun to me, I have to look away. You make me feel too much, good and bad, and I can only take so much. It’s not just about what you see and what you feel— other people exist too.” 

         And he knows this next part will be mean, but doesn’t he deserve to deal a blow? He’s tired of just having to take Senna’s abuse, he wants Ayrton’s hands back on him but not until they are on equal ground. He knows now to fight hard for that. If Ayrton won’t meet him as an equal, won’t be willing to take a little of what he gives, then Alain might as well just try himself to break down the meeting room door. 

       “...Maybe if you bothered to know me for longer than a night, you would see.”

       He’s expecting a burst of rage, tenses preemptively for Senna exploding on him with a volley of rebuttals and insults, but what does happen is something Alain is way less experienced in dealing with: the other man deflates, sags back into his chair in a similar position to how he was before. Head down, curling into himself, he puts his head back into his hands. 

       “Alain… ”

       He’s no longer a leopard in front of him, transformed from roaring beast into something more subdued and dismayed, but Alain won’t move until he offers himself up to him. Ayrton owes him that much, at least, and Alain has always had more patience out of the two of them.

       It takes a while before Ayrton lifts his head up, his eyes are watery and Alain’s heart can’t help but break. He’s expecting him to start talking, but Ayrton just sits there, silent, eyes fixed unblinkingly towards him. His lips are moving, just barely murmuring something. Alain realizes he’s praying. Alain doesn’t break their gaze. Finally, he shuts his eyes with a deep inhale, and fixes his gaze back on Alain. 

       “ ... I meant it when I said I wanted to be your wife.” A strange thing to lead with, but Ayrton’s never done things normally.  “It was difficult, to me, after that night to come to terms with myself. You know we cannot lie together, not like we are. This world, our lives… ” he trails off for a second, the minute lip tremble returns but he continues on.

       “But I can't not want it, I wish I could have you every night, Alain. I want to have all of you, I want you to have me. In my dreams, when we are hidden in Brazil, I give myself to you over and over and I am glad for it. You know how I feel about you, Alain, don’t you? ”

       And does he? Does he know how Ayrton feels about him? He knows how his head feels in his lap, he knows how his cock feels against his, he knows how his car feels, slamming over and over again into his own. He knows how his gaze feels, locked heavy and murderous and soft and aroused on him, he knows how his words, hands, lips feel, he knows how the calluses on his palm feel because they mirror his exactly. He knows that when Ayrton kisses him, it feels like a crown of laurels being placed on his shoulders— like the sun has turned its rays only onto him.

       Maybe, maybe Alain is also capable of being a little blind sometimes. They’ve always been cut from too similar a cloth. He’s about to open his mouth to answer, but Ayrton holds up a hand. 

       “No, one more thing,” Alain raises his brows. 

       “I— I’m sorry, Alain. I’m sorry… for not seeing you again, that time. ” 

       And the force it takes for him to say that should be laughable, but it’s more overshadowed by the fact that Ayrton Senna apologized to him. Alain knows not a lot of people in their profession are good at admitting they’re wrong, hell, Anne-Marie would always get on Alain’s case about how stubborn he could be himself, but hearing the words right from Ayrton’s mouth is as sweet as getting back into the car for testing after a long break. 

       He knows it’s never going to be perfect, both of them are too proud and too stubborn and too good at what they do to ever be domestic. But knowing that Ayrton is capable of apologizing, knowing that Ayrton himself realizes he’s capable of it, it feels like enough. It’s what gets him to stand up again, walk the scant distance between the chairs again and look down at Ayrton, still and wide-eyed and so open. And he looks. Looks at the glassy brown eyes, the long lashes, the lips slightly parted —in anticipation, in fear, Alain doesn’t quite know— and really sees Ayrton Senna for the first time in a very long time. He wants to say so much, wants to tell him that it doesn't matter what his God says, that if he wants Alain —wants to give himself to Alain— he is the only one who can decide it. But that's another conversation, for another day that they will talk to each other again in.

       Cupping a hand to Ayrton's cheek, identical to before yet in a completely different light, Alain knows when Ayrton leans up into him with a sigh and lets him press his lips to his that Ayrton can be convinced. It's a strange feeling, knowing he has more sway than God on the matter. He pulls back briefly, cups his face with both hands, and just marvels at what he has in his grasp.

       “Thank you.” He murmurs, and leans down to kiss him again. 

Chapter Text

[MONACO: 1992]

       When Ayrton suggests a shower, Alain has to laugh. They’re lying in bed, sweat staining them and the sheets, but Alain’s been drifting off regardless when the warm mass lying curled up to him shifts and turns to face him.

“What’s the harm?” He’s grinning, the bastard, as if contemplation of moving isn’t a gargantuan task for him. As if even when his bones are liquid, the urge to run never leaves him.

       Cracking open an eye against the rich yellows of the afternoon, Alain fixes him a small glare and turns over on his side; wrapping Ayrton’s arm back around where it was at his waist, cocooning himself back into slightly damp bed sheets in hopes to sleep off this lovely post-coital haze. Luck, or God, is not on his side however, because it seems like Ayrton is incensed with the idea of them showering together now and won’t stop tugging on his shoulder to rouse him from bed. Alain puts up a fight, even now with everything between them he’s still a little unwilling to acquiesce so easily, but eventually —eventually— he lets himself be rolled to the edge of the bed and takes the tanned hand that’s shoved under his nose. He almost doesn’t even do anything in retaliation, seeing the beam of Ayrton’s smile split his face when he realizes he’s got his way, and Alain’s glad for a moment that they wear helmets on the track because it’s hard to deny the man anything when he looks so goddamn happy. But old habits die hard, so he’s unable to resist jabbing a finger to the space between Ayrton’s ribs while they’re shuffling together through the flat. He gets a yelp and a jump for his troubles, both hilariously high, and suddenly he’s backtracking through corridors and doorways as Ayrton threatens him with his own shockingly cold and clammy fingers. 

       So they’re chasing each other, going ‘round and ‘round the twists and turns of the Monaco flat they’ve been holed up in since the start of the ‘92 season, and though he’s only been there for two and a half weeks, Alain feels like he could walk every hallway with his eyes closed. Or maybe, with a pair of tanned and somehow chilly fingers holding them shut, he could be led around to make sure he remembers, and if he does, well, then…

       He’s snapped out of his rogue daydream by the sound of the shower coming on. Ayrton’s face peeks out from behind the corner of what he realizes is the bathroom door, and if he were a softer man he’d call the grin on the other man’s face fond. He shuffles inside, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, even if the steam already fogging up the bathroom mirror means that the temperature inside the small room is closer to the comforting heat of the bed than it is to the still chilly spring air outside. 

       The sun is just beginning to set over the horizon, a burning halo that’s steadily falling in the window overlooking the shower, and the tips of Ayrton’s hair look like they’re embers. He’ll never get bored of seeing him like this, blessed by nature’s most holy light, and Alain doesn’t think there’s ever been someone more born to be bathed in sunlight. It’s the closest Alain gets to understanding Ayrton’s proclamation of holiness, because how can someone so dripping in daylight not be blessed? And how can he, in turn, not be blessed as well to be able to look at such a sight head on? All of this time spent around the other man has made him soft, and somehow all the more spiritual. But sue him: there, before him, naked and licked by the flames of the late afternoon, Alain falls a little bit in love with Ayrton Senna just like he’s done every day since they’d met. Or somewhere around there, anyways. He’s not a stickler for detail. 

        Fingers are being snapped under his nose as he snaps back into himself, he’s really come off his rocker on this sabbatical , and he quickly sheds his clothes before stepping in under the spray—

        —and realizing that whatever plan Ayrton had for this shower, it won’t go his way. Alain doesn’t care too much after his appearance, certainly not like Ayrton with his Adonis figure and model hair, but one thing he does take pride in are his curls. His curls, which are currently sopping wet around his shoulders, and which will absolutely dry into a frizzy mess if he doesn’t immediately start putting in product. Ayrton, however, is too busy laughing at him, eyes creased and bent double, and Alain rightfully grumbles out something about him slipping in the shower if he’s not careful like that. 

       “We can’t have our future four-time champion losing his head, no?” 

       Ayrton simply swats at him with a hand and continues laughing, so Alain angles himself so the other man is also doused in water. From there, it’s mostly a game of keeping Ayrton from getting him distracted while he suds, his hands wandering and inviting down the planes of his body. He does let them get carried away while he’s letting his conditioner sit, Ayrton’s breath even hotter than the steaming water on his neck as Alain leans back into his broad, soapy chest. 

       He’s just about to reciprocate, kneel down like a believer at the only altar he’s ever worshipped in this way, when the water suddenly runs ice cold and he lets out a loud yelp. Ayrton’s laughing again above him, golden and perfect, and he scrambles out of the shower sopping wet and thoroughly out of the mood. 

       “Don’t look so crass, don’t you know this is how I finish all showers? It works the blood vessels, it’s very stimulating!” 

       And if it weren’t such a douse on his plans to draw out those pleasant little sounds from his throat, Alain would find that fact incredibly in-character. 

       “Maybe for you, you crazy man! I am not so masochistic though, you could not have warned me beforehand?!” 

        Ayrton only lets out another thrilled laugh. From the glimmer of his eyes, the little trick was probably his way of getting back at Alain for ruining his initial plans.

        They do finish eventually, Alain turns the heat back up to wash his hair out, letting Ayrton get back to his self-flagellation when he’s safely away from the freezing spray. Now, clean and warmed again by the last of the sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows, Ayrton doesn’t say a word when Alain backs him up to the edge of the bed and starts again his prayer. Safely ensconced between powerful, tanned legs, hot mouth on hotter flesh and the rhythm of Ayrton’s soft pants above him, time turns liquid with his eyes closed; before he knows it the hands in his hair are tightening with that pleasant burn thrumming in his skull, the sounds raising to a higher and higher pitch, and finally: the moment where the man above him unravels, when Alain knows his face goes lax and his eyebrows raise and lashes flutter shut in a holy kind of repose.

        And after, time still moving like honey and wrapped up in each other's arms in bed, that’s a whole other holiness. 

Chapter Text

[PARIS: 1993]

     Alain’s not sure how he feels, arriving to the stadium. It’s cold, winter in France has never been one of his favorite things; chilly and damp, the chill seeping through his sweater and trousers, through the insulating fireproofs he already has on underneath. It feels like just another race weekend, reporters and spectators milling around, but the podium at Adelaide is still fresh in his mind. Standing up there, looking into the sun and the endless sea of cheering fans, feeling the weight of the trophy and the spray of the champagne and knowing it was the last time. Feeling the clenching pressure of Ayrton’s hand, hauling him up to the top step. Alain likes to think that maybe, he’d wanted him to have a proper view of everything— from the highest platform, where he’d been so many times, but so vague in his mind now. He’d never thought, all those times, to really savor it.

      It’s even weirder, knowing Ayrton’s going to be here too. It really does feel like just another weekend racing, just another race of 1993 where they studiously avoid each other. Where the only thing running through Alain’s head, clanging around his helmet like it’s his skull, is Ayrton’s comment at the start of the season. Coward. It’s a low blow, it was meant to be, but the worst part about it is that it’s entirely true. Or at least, truer than any reporter thinks.

     He’s a little glad the race is being held in France, even with how many bad memories are buried in its soil for him. He’d been worried, for a second, when Phillipe had first broached the idea to him, that he’d want to hold it somewhere famous to racing like Monaco. Alain still hasn’t been back to his apartment there, not since 1992 had turned over and the air in that house had curdled with the new year. He wonders if the cleaners have been by, he can’t remember if he’d called them before he left, or if some of Ayrton’s shirts and his stupid Senninha mug are still strewn around the place. If his smell still lingers, or if the air’s just stale and sour now from the imprint of their final argument.

     Their shouts are probably sealed into those thin plaster walls, the papers from Williams are purposefully still sitting in his desk drawer there. He knows Ayrton’s pen, his nice, black and gold one that he uses (used? Alain doesn’t know if he bothered to get a replacement) to sign official documents, is still sitting in his cupholder.  Alain has a sudden itch to go back and check his signature, see if he can match the ink to it.

     Despite the strange limbo Alain’s in, one foot out of racing and one foot dipped back in, the reporters and the various —soon to be former— friends and colleagues dial him back into the racing mindset whose grove is still carved deep into the neurons of his mind. It’s strange, stepping back in his head; walking along the neural pathway of sparks that’ve been honed over the past decade and change, savoring the familiar spark of adrenaline of getting behind the wheel before he forgets. One day, far away from his comprehension, he’ll touch on the long-healed scar of this addiction, find it smoothed down and weathered, and he’ll wonder why it ever appealed to him. It’s hard to believe this wound will ever heal, but he’s still young: his life, his real one, is just about to start at the ripe age of 38.

     He’s walking through the footsteps of a ghost, going through the stretches he still knows by heart, zipping up his suit —Williams blue, it’s the best one he has, for better or for worse— with a muscle memory that’ll atrophy over the coming decade. But when he sees Ayrton, it really is like seeing a ghost. Clad all in white, he shines under the hot arena lights like an angel. He’s still as strikingly beautiful as Alain remembers him, hair set in the same curls he can feel the phantom softness of on his fingertips. It reminds him of how he looked in Alain’s apartment, when they’d wake up from falling into bed together at one in the afternoon, unable to keep their hands off each other after a weekend of Alain watching, worrying, waiting desperately to have Ayrton back in his arms. Ayrton would wake up later, but faster than he did, and he would always get more alert the closer it got to the end of the day. The setting sun always seemed to motivate him, and with how he looked, silhouetted and golden by the heavy sun shining through the windows, Alain got the sense he was moved intrinsically to be illuminated like that.

     In reality, he’s only paused in his tracks for a second. He keeps moving, keeps double and triple checking his straps and helmet even though he knows he’s done everything right, he’d go and talk to Nigel, maybe Sid, but he doesn’t know if he can actually speak. He doesn’t quite feel like throwing up, mostly just empty and hollow and conflicted, but stranger things have happened. He’s made worse outcomes out of his own ignorance before.

     Ayrton moves like a wraith across the floor, he’s already completely ready. He’s moving towards the water table, the warmups have already started but Alain’s part of the last heat, and his feet leave the ghostly footprints of races past as he moves towards the water table too. He can tell when Ayrton senses he’s behind him, his back is turned but his shoulders tense, it’s near unnoticeable but Alain’s seen that same movement before: Ayrton, standing over Alain’s desk when he’d gotten home from the supermarket, feeling him standing in the doorway with the bags still in hand. He had left out his contract signing with Williams. The clause had been stapled on the Thursday of the week prior, his copy of the agreement had arrived that morning in the mail.

     He has to keep moving though, so he does; crossing to the right of him, around to the other side of the table, picking up a water cup and drinking even though he’s barely thirsty. He lets himself flick his gaze over to Ayrton once before casting it towards the track, finds he’s already looking at him from over the rim of his cup. His curls are slightly stuck down, he must have gone in the very first warmup group. They both turn, watch the racers go around and find the lines of the hastily made circuit in silence. The cups of water form an ocean between them on the little fold-out table.

     And then another form is swooping into the periphery of Alain’s vision, he sees the wall of white at the corner of his eye move out of his sight. He turns; it’s Adriane, she’s come over and is hugging him tightly, running her hand through Ayrton’s curls despite the sweat. She’s delicate with the way she pets them, Alain imagines you could barely feel her touch was even there. Ayrton definitely feels it though, he leans into her slight figure and buries his head briefly into the side of her hair.

     She’s blonde: it’s been a while since he’s seen Ayrton favor those. Somewhere around 1989, he’d inexplicably switched to brunettes, and around 1991 Alain had found out why. He doesn’t know what’s worse: seeing Ayrton pick someone so conspicuously different, or the idea of him wrapped around someone suspiciously close to his own image.

     He’s never seen him be this so affectionate in public, even in the tabloid photos he’d caught a look at they’d never been photographed doing anything more than holding hands, small pecks on cheeks and arms wrapped around shoulders and waists. Alain wonders, selfishly, if maybe this is a show for him alone. After all, Senna had never had anything to prove to the cameras: he only ever used them to prove a point to Alain.

     He thinks, again, about the press conference comment. Alain had been a coward. Living with Ayrton had been so good, something so out of a dream he hadn’t wanted to ruin it. When Alain told him he was coming back to race he’d been so ecstatic, that big, crooked, toothy grin hadn’t left him the whole day and he’d gathered Alain in his arms and fully spun him around. He remembers the dinner they had that night, pasta because Ayrton always won in terms of meals, but with a nice salmon side that the man had fretted over for hours and still managed to overcook. But it didn’t matter, not at all, because seeing Ayrton so happy after so much dejection was as good as taking a corner perfectly, as good as the sun from the top step of the podium. 

     The season had been hard for him, Nigel and the souped-up Williams, and Alain had held him every weekend when he cried. He’d taken the tears as intimacy, as trust, and he’d kissed them off his cheeks until they dried. Ayrton had given him his tears and his trust, and Alain had swallowed all of it and turned it into a contract with Williams.

     It’s dumb, now, to think that the clause would’ve saved them. But Alain was dumb then, caught up in the dayglow dream of the two of them wrapped up together in Monaco. And it didn’t seem so bad, to be racing against each other now that there wasn’t a championship to steal back. All he knew then was that he couldn’t have a repeat of the collapse between ‘88 and ‘89, that no matter how close they were personally the demon of racing would lead them both to ruin again. He mentions the clause thinking of Ayrton’s big, lumpy grin, and signs the addendum with the feeling of his arms around him. 

     Seeing him now, wrapping his arms around Adriane’s waist, is a gut punch; a gust of wind through a hole in his sternum he’d just barely had time to plaster over. He knows exactly how it feels to be her— he had Ayrton’s hands in the exact same grip on his own waist just a year prior. 

     It stings. But, Alain remembers Bernadette at home; remembers Nico and Sacha, they’re getting so big now, remembers his bicycle and his slightly pitiful attempt at a garden. Maybe Ayrton isn’t the only one who’s moving on. Ayrton may have shed the old, abandoned the McLaren red and the dark-haired lovers, but Alain’s shed racing— shed him. Picking up a blonde pales a little in comparison to dropping an entire life.

       Ayrton’s wearing white, the symbol of rebirth; Alain’s wearing a mourning suit for the last 20 years of his life. Only one of them is getting back in a race car after this show.

     The race itself is inconsequential. In the kart one second, out of it the next, Alain barely registers the sweat because somewhere between seeing Adriane wrapped up in Ayrton’s arms and pulling on the helmet, the preemptive nostalgia’s really worn off. It feels like getting off a shift at work, the past however many hours a complete blur. Completely meaningless. 

     He remembers being younger, he’d taken up smoking briefly in high school when cigarettes weren’t the antithesis of athletics. He remembers the smoke breaks with his soccer team just as clearly as his best wins, the feeling of passing around a couple cigarettes and talking about plays and doing tricks with the ball. When he’d taken up karting seriously, he’d stopped at the insistence of his coach. But in his first few years in Formula 1, before everything, he’d been at a bar with some other drivers when Keke Rosberg took out a pack and offered him one. Daniel hadn’t been sick yet, cancer wasn’t an ever-present specter looming behind him like a shadow then, and the memories of soccer had gotten him to take it. But the taste was nothing like he remembered it being, sour and hot and tarry in his mouth, and he immediately stubbed it out and coughed. Keke had laughed, but for Alain it was completely incomprehensible: it was only later that he realized that the smell of the pitch, the faint taste of coke from the nearby vending machine, the overwhelming glare of the sun beating down on him and the wonderful burning in his muscles were what he was remembering when he thought of cigarettes. He didn’t touch a cigarette again after that realization— and he knows now, with the memory of that acrid tang in his throat, that he’s never touching racing again either. What good is racing to him, when every fond memory is just the things surrounding it? Like cancer had taken Daniel, racing had taken Gilles, Elio, and Didier from him. And now it had taken Ayrton, used the ever-hungry and idiotically naive beasts within them to tear them apart. Alain’s tired of feeding that beast, not when it only wants flesh and blood. 

     The podium is only memorable because it feels like a desecration of Adelaide, Alain on the top step but not a single touch from Ayrton to bring them together. Ayrton’s smiling this time, unlike his stony and conflicted face in Australia, but the smile means nothing without the presence of a touch. All racers know how to fake their smiles, anyway. The trophy he gets is meaningless, he makes a note to shove it deep into a closet when he gets back to Switzerland, and he’d reach out for Ayrton’s arm and pull him up like he did to Alain but Ayrton’s always been the one to initiate contact. Since the brief time he had the privilege, Alain’s sure he’s permanently banned from ever having it again.
        Journalists need their photos though, after everything is said and done they push all the racers together for a group photo. He and Ayrton end up on the top step together anyways. They smile, they turn, and for a second Ayrton’s eyes catches his and the glint in his eye almost makes that pasted-on smile of his feel real. 

     But that spark is just that: a momentary neuron firing, a last flare of the neural pathways reserved for racing. Ayrton leaves with Adriane on a red Yamaha and a crowd of photographers trailing after him, and Alain leaves alone in his Peugeot with a final wish of good luck from Sid. It feels pathetically apt.

     When he finally gets home it’s late, he thanks Bernadette for the dinner she saved him and eats without tasting a thing. He’s so tired, he’s so glad it’s over, he wants to live today over and over and over again and never move on. He wants to go back to Adelaide, stand on the podium forever, he’s already forgetting it even though he promised himself he wouldn’t. He wishes he had picked Nelson over Ayrton. He wishes he could go back and do it all again and change everything, do it all again and not change a thing. He goes to bed numb, he’s home with warm arms wrapped around him, but it’s the wrong home and the wrong arms. He’s thankful when sleep comes; it feels a little bit like slipping into a quiet death.

     And then he’s shocked awake: the phone, inexplicably, is ringing. He shifts out of bed as quickly and quietly as he can, shuffles into his office in the next room and hisses in pain when he hits the doorframe with his foot in the dark. He’s still rubbing the pain out of his foot and the sleep from his eyes as he answers:

     “Hello?” 

     It’s almost three in the morning, Bernadette is still thankfully asleep in the next room over. Maybe some reporter wheedled his number out of someone, someone in a different timezone and ignorant to other people’s lives. He’s only half right.

     “Alain? Alain, it’s me.”

     Alain sighs. He’d pinch himself, but it’s just too strange to be a dream. No, Ayrton Senna is way stranger in fact than anything his mind could dream up.

     “A— Senna? Why are you calling me, it’s three in the morning— how did you get this number?” 

     “Come back.”

     He pinches the bridge of his nose, the ache in his muscles is all too evident now that they’ve had a chance to cool. Ayrton had come up to him before, at the race after he initially announced his retirement and at Suzuka, of all places. And now he’s even wormed his way down Alain’s telephone line: moving on, apparently, means a very different thing to him.

     “Don’t call me about racing, Senna, don’t call me at all. I’m not coming back, asking me over and over isn’t going to change it.”

     “Alain, please, you cannot, you can’t abandon your life like this, I saw you today and you won, you’re not getting old, we— you can do it like it was before—“

     “Ayrton. Stop.”

     It takes him a second to realize why his words actually have shut Ayrton up. It’s been too long of a time since he’s said his first name. It’s opened a bit of a floodgate, apparently, because suddenly the words that’ve been choking his throat, his heart, tumble out.

     “Racing is your life, Ayrton, and I am not racing: you know you cannot conflate the two. Please, Ayrton, do not make less of me after all this time.”

     Ayrton stays eerily quiet. Soft breaths are coming crackling through the speaker, Alain can’t tell if they’re shaky or if it’s just the connection. “...But I am nothing without you, Alain. I cannot even be a man.”
       
        He takes another pause. “God made me to race, you know. It is what I was built for. But he did not build me to be a man, I am thinking not even Adriane, she cannot do that. I do not know how to take off the helmet without you, Alain. I do not know how else to be, how to not, not just be Senna.”

     “Teach me, Alain. Teach me how I can be Ayrton too. Remind me, I can be someone else.”

     Alain —maybe he’s still too asleep to put his walls up— lets himself think about that someone else again. Opens up the other neural pathway that’s not yet scarred over, so adjacent to racing and yet so wildly different. He thinks about Ayrton in his apartment, Ayrton wrapped up in his arms, Ayrton spread out on his bed and on his couch and in his kitchen, the man suddenly so pervasive in his life that was entirely different from the racer he’d fought against for years. It’s a little sad to think Ayrton doesn’t remember how to access that man within himself, remembers vaguely a similar fear being revealed to him years ago. It’s disheartening to know he never really figured it out, because that version of him was one of the kindest and sweetest men Alain’s ever known. But after every visit, after every week’s worth of love and tenderness, God had called Ayrton back to the track, back into the clutches of the yellow helmet. Alain’s not stupid enough to think he’s special enough to lure Ayrton away from that desire.

     “But what about… What about God’s will for you? What about, if you can’t go back?”

     He feels a little silly asking it, but he knows by now how seriously Ayrton treats his conversations with God. Even if he doesn’t necessarily believe him, or in Him, he knows that Ayrton does and he’s finding it hard to believe he can so easily reconcile his life’s purpose with indulging in direct sin.

     “I can find my way to be both again, like when I was young, I will talk to Him and show Him I can.” And he sounds so confident, so sure that it will work, that he’ll be able to convince God —hell, himself— that he can have everything. It’s an innocently sweet notion. Alain is worried that innocent and sweet things are not in either of their destinies, God-given or not. 

     “The track, it used to be all for me. I would live and take my last breath on the track, I dreamt it and I knew it. But now… now what is left there for me besides my destiny? It is such a small thing, in the grand scheme.”

     “It is. Small, I mean. It’s a little funny, to be honest, how little of your life stays racing once you find other things.”

     “Like clocking in at a job.”

Alain laughs, a soft breathy thing. “Yes. Like clocking in for a job.”

     “Is that why you left? Because it felt like that?” There’s something vulnerable in his voice, like he’s asking in hopes that it wasn’t him who’d driven Alain away from the track. 

     Saying no is only half a lie; Ayrton was, at that point, one of a multitude of reasons for him deciding to leave. He’s now one of a multitude of reasons as to why Alain can never come back. It’s a half-lie he feels okay with telling, though, because the person who’d made that decision with all those reasons feels like an entirely different being. 

     “How did you do it? Find other things. How did you enjoy any of it?”

     There’s layers to that sentence, something fearful and fiendish and desperate that is still wholly irreconcilable with all of the different Sennas he’s known throughout his life. The now-dormant beast in Alain’s chest stirs at the sound, remembering the raw agony of being unleashed, free to wreak havoc on any stability he’d ever known. It’s the gnawing craving of an addict, one he’s worked hard to bury, and it’s unsurprising that Ayrton’s so hooked on the concept— he’s glutted his own monster on victory and success, with zero restraint or admonishment. 

     During his sabbatical, when everything had been so perfect and he never had to interact with Senna, only Ayrton, it was easy to forget they both didn’t house poorly trained monsters in their hearts. That they could be other people, someone other than themselves. Better people. Kinder people. But it’s impossible to separate Ayrton and Senna, Alain’s own monster was still freshly sober then and looking for a hit, and they’d ripped their carefully constructed daydream apart. There was truth in it, though: not just in the nuclear meltdown of their relationship, but also in the hesitant growth of it. The good parts that made him want to keep working towards something better. The feeling that Ayrton wanted the same.

     “I had other people to distract me. Other lives to promise my own to. It gets difficult chasing glory when you’re beholden to others, you hate yourself every minute for having made promises you don’t feel like keeping.”

     “Why didn’t you just break them then?” 

     Simple, a question too innocent to be malicious. He remembers who he’s talking to, and can’t fault him for being so naive. Ayrton Senna is the paragon of racing drivers, because he is more selfish than most men ever learn to be. It’s why Alain was so drawn to him, he thinks, because he saw in Ayrton a version of himself; freed from any societal etiquettes, any petty rules that had ever been drilled into his brain. 

     “Because the people I made promises to were ones I would have been ashamed to lie to. Shame is a powerful tool, not that you’d know it well.”

“I know shame better than you think, Prost.” 

     An ugly little thing settles itself in Alain’s chest. It was a petty, ugly jab and he knows it. There’s a split second where he rethinks the narrative he has of the last year, of everything since the end of his sabbatical. He wants to ask, but isn’t sure if he’s allowed to know that much anymore, and he doesn't really know how to respond otherwise. The line crackles in the suspended silence.

     “You were one.”

     “…What?” Ayrton’s the one caught off-guard this time, such a genuine note of confusion in that one word that Alain almost laughs.

     “You were one of the people I made promises to. To be better.”

     “I don’t remember you saying anything like that to me.”

     “It was when you were asleep. I whispered it into your back.”

     He can hear how Ayrton’s breath hitches on the other end of the call. Feels a bit proud that he can still elicit that kind of reaction in him, and wonders if it’s just an innate response. A bodily reflex, done unthinkingly and automatically. 

     “...You never had problems lying to me before.” 

     He sounds petulant now, and it would be enough to annoy Alain again if he didn’t have Damon’s words from Bercy still in his mind: He never stopped looking at you, Alain. I swear, the whole time, looking up at the screen just watching you drive. He had a weird little smile on his face. Yeah no, didn’t look away once. 

     He takes a deep breath, lets the pinpricks of anger wash through him like a tide. This is what he’s trained himself into, now that he’s not allowed to be even apologetically selfish anymore. It’s still a little bit of a fight. 

     “That was when my days still began and ended with racing, when I still had to contend with you on track, not just off of it. You’ll notice I’ve stopped doing it, now that I don’t have a reason to.”

     Ayrton’s silent at that. It goes on long enough that Alain’s sure the call has been implicitly ended, Ayrton retreating back into his cocoon to lick whatever wounds Alain’s just opened up. He doesn’t want to hang up though, because the quiet sound of breath over the phone reminds him of when he heard it directly behind him, curled up in the quiet of night. His heart aches in a way he can’t describe, hearing that sound: it’s oddly fragile, one breath as ephemeral as the next one.

     “Can I make, the promise, can I make it to you?”        

     The question catches Alain off-guard, he’s been too caught up in picking out the sound of Ayrton’s breathing so the loudness of words startles him.

     “Even if I break it, will you forgive me? Alain, you’re the only one I respect enough, the only one I–” Alain cuts him off with a weary sigh. He knows what the next word would have been anyway, doesn’t want to hear Ayrton throw it out unthinkingly over the phone as some kind of convincer. It doesn’t flatter Alain as much as it used to, knowing that Ayrton Senna loves him, but he places a lot more stock in it.

     “Ayrton, I have too much dignity to forgive something that doesn’t deserve to be. Don’t reduce me to that, you know me better than to expect something like that from me.” 

     Ayrton starts to speak again, probably another inflammatory response he’s not thought out, but Alain continues talking over him. This is how you have to learn to shackle yourself, to make room for others in your life. He knows the bitter annoyance that’s flooding Ayrton’s mouth like adrenaline, knows the way his lips pucker at being interrupted because he’s seen it play out right in front of him in countless meetings. But he’ll just have to learn to wait: Alain considers this a first test of the promise he’s just implicitly made.

     “But, I’ll still be there, even if I won’t forgive you. Just come back, and make it to me again.”

     “Doesn’t that defeat the point of a promise?”

     “The most important part of a promise is that you do something with it. I’d rather have a thousand promises from you, Ayrton, than one that’s broken and tossed away.” 

     His heart feels soggy, waterlogged and aching. 

     “Not everything is about winning or losing. Living, being off the track, is… everything in between.”

     They lapse into silence again, not hostile or stifling like at the water table but… nervous. Tentative, like the first shoots of a flower poking above grass at the start of spring, hoping against hope that it will thrive even through the remaining snow. 

     “I promise you, Alain. I want to see, what is beyond the track. I want you to show me.”

     “And what if you’re lying?” It’s a little rhetorical, but also too raw in its truth. He’s still afraid, after all this time, that Ayrton will humiliate him, make him feel like a fool for wanting to assume the best in people.

     “Why would I have any reason to lie to you? I’m not racing against you anymore.”

     What a perfectly Senna thing to say. Alain can’t help but laugh, is still chuckling as he acquiesces. It’s such a youthful feeling, knowing you might be a fool for trusting someone, because that kind of trust can only come when you haven’t had it broken hard enough to scar. It’s just an intimation of what can possibly happen, one of millions of possible futures, and it’s exciting. It’s been a while since Alain’s had exciting in his life, just a little over a year, but it’s knocking at his door again and he welcomes it in like an old friend.

     “Call me tomorrow, then. And tell me how it is back home— what Bruno’s doing, what you do when you’re not in the car. Tell me about what Ayrton does.”

“Okay.” It’s barely a whisper. 

     “Okay.”

Chapter Text

       “It’s like a drug… it is something so strong and intense, and once you experience it, you keep searching for it all the time.” His voice breaks slightly, the only ounce of give or admission he’s let loose over the past two days. 

A truth too simple to be tried.

       They’re sitting together in the stands, news has gotten back about Ratzenberger a few hours ago. The mood is… grim, to say the least. Alain at least is used to feeling numb, it seems like Ayrton is trying not to choke on it. 

       He wants to scream at Ayrton how crazy this all is, how insane he is for even thinking about getting in a car after how hellish this weekend has been so far, after he saw with his own two eyes a man die in one of those metal beasts… but he knows it’ll be a futile argument. He wants to ask Ayrton to run away with him, slip out a back door and go somewhere, anywhere but this coffin of a racetrack and never touch a car again. Alain wishes that argument had even a chance of working. All of the kisses Ayrton has ever pressed into his skin seem to burn all at once then, and selfishly he allows himself to be angry that Ayrton would never really mean it when he said I love you. Not while he’s still racing.

       Looking in his eyes, suddenly just as stubborn and heartbroken himself, it’s as serious as it was back in 1988 and he’s sure that look won’t leave Ayrton’s eyes even in death. Though dimmed now, in the face of something truly terrible and vile, the flame is still there just out of spite: smug superiority, righteous fire– It’s completely hollowing, knowing that after everything Alain’s importance will never even come close to rivalling the championship’s while Senna is on the grid. It’s enraging; the naivety, the arrogance, the goddamn stupidity to hold a piece of gold over any living, breathing human being. How can someone so warm, full of life, think that the cold metal of a trophy or a medal supersedes the embrace of another being? With Ayrton’s steadfast belief in God, however, Alain thinks maybe believing in some reliquary isn’t too far-fetched.

         But still, it’s only he who crosses the “Absolutely No Admittance” sign into Ayrton’s motorhome that night, it’s him who joins the ranks of a room full of those cold metal reliquaries and who cradles him that night like they haven’t in ages. And it’s only him who is hurt, not those medals he’s put beside, because he is not the one who’s had to fight tooth and nail to get this final scrap of tenderness. Those medals have never had to prove themselves to Ayrton Senna.

       So he only holds on tighter, leaves the kind of gouges and scars they haven’t inflicted on each other in years to last longer than his memory ever will, and it’s only on the morning of the 3rd of May that he wonders if any of those marks were still on Ayrton when he… made contact. 

       When he died, goddamn it, when the steering column of his car impaled him at over 150 kilometers an hour. When he died. 

       It’s just a goddamn shame, is all he can think. 

...

       He wishes he could remember it differently. In truth, there’s not even all that much to reflect on, just a couple of months of actual, unburdened friendship, the constant verge of a true relationship never realized and schizophrenically sewn together with intimate moments that rivaled Alain’s marriage any day. He wishes there was more concrete material he could cradle in his arms, more substantial evidence than a handful of stolen nights to legitimize his agony. He doesn’t know what to do with himself— all of the ‘what-ifs’ are crushed. 

       He writes when he’s not drinking (and boy isn’t that one of the most French things he’s done, down a bottle of wine a night 5 out of every 7 days because Anne-Marie isn’t around enough to stop him). Dozens of letters; some filled with stories about current events, his family, yet another tribute put up in Ayrton’s name, some just angrily scrawled questions of why, why, why crossed out and ripping the paper in places. 

       ‘You killed me when you ran yourself into the wall you selfish bastard, you left me even though you knew about my brother and I would give anything to put my arms around you again. Yours always, Alain.’

       It’s at least a step up from him laying, curled up alone on the far side of his bed, and whispering down an empty telephone line for hours on end. It’s pathetic, he knows, but he doesn’t know what else to do anymore. Doesn’t remember how to make his mind stop skipping over that sickening crush of metal, again and again. Doesn’t remember how to get himself unstuck. 

       There’s a note he has from Ayrton, from back in their McLaren days, just something small and quick scrawled on the back of a redundant spreadsheet from a meeting he doesn’t remember ever sitting through. It’s inviting him to lunch, meet me in the parking lot when you see this. Have fun with Ron. Alain must have been asked to stay later that day, must have had to hash some things out. He thumbs over the worn paper over and over, trying to recall anything from that day, but instead he can only remember Ayrton’s face that final morning over breakfast. 

       Completely hollow, only a flicker of that fiery stubbornness he had loved and hated in turn. He’d bet that if he remembered that lunch in ‘88, that fire would have been intoxicating. But that bright May morning, they hadn’t really said that much to each other: not anything of import anyways. He thinks of things, now, that he could’ve, should’ve, said instead, but he’s never been fast enough where it counted— not off the track, anyways. 

       Ayrton had often told him that they were made from the same mould, sculpted from the same materials because he could see his own passion reflected back in Alain’s eyes. He’d heard something similar once, from Didier, a couple years after Gilles’ death, where he’d said his gaze reminded him of Gilles. That there was a spark in there, ready to catch fire. 

       His voice had been heavy and leaden, and Alain had attributed it, at the time, to the fact that any mention of Gilles still put Pironi into a comatose state, but thinking about it now he understands why that spark was so foreboding to Didier: Alain had seen the same thing in Ayrton, and look where it had brought him. Staring into his own deadened reflection in the mornings now, he finds it impossible to believe there was ever anything dancing in his eyes at all; maybe Ayrton had simply extinguished it before he’d ever thought to look. 

       Alain remembers one of their little makeups (before he’d retired, but after they’d… come to terms with things), Ayrton told him that the reason he wasn’t scared of crashing was because God protected him. That the reason why he wasn’t afraid of the two of them crashing was because he knew God would protect Alain as well, because Ayrton had prayed to him to do so. He was fiddling with his cross then, half-reclined in the mussed up sheets of their shared hotel room, and though Alain couldn’t look away Ayrton never met his gaze. He just watched the lamplight bounce off the gold metal of the necklace, and said again in that low, steady voice that only came when he talked about God— when he was absolutely sure. 

'He will protect me because he loves me, And he will protect you because I love you.'

       But Alain wonders if maybe, at that moment, Ayrton wouldn’t look at him because the flame in his eye went out. He wonders if maybe, he was hoping that the reflection of the cross would light it again. He wonders if maybe, Ayrton wanted to believe anyway— even if he knew what he said wasn’t true. He said from the start that he would break the promises he made to Alain. And now Alain is still here, waiting to forgive someone who will never be able to make that promise ever again.

...

        Why is he the one to stay, after all this wretched time? Why is he cursed to watch everyone around him die, from Daniel, to Elio, to Gilles, Didier, Ayrton? Why has he been spared? Because God didn’t protect Ayrton, and Ayrton could never love him as much as he loved racing. He’ll survive, somehow he always does, and maybe it’s his curse to outlive every single person he’s ever loved because he dared to shake his fist at God at the age of 27. Now, at almost 40, he just wants to go home. (where that is, he doesn’t quite remember.)

So, this is how it is then. Ayrton is dead, Alain is alive and alone, and he can’t believe he ever let Ayrton kid him into thinking that someone up there would keep them safe from anything at all. 

It’s just a goddamn shame.