Chapter Text
- Pierre -
It’s a drowsy Saturday afternoon and Pierre is relaxing at the Alphatauri motorhome on their dusty, white canvas couch. Throughout his time on the team, people have tried to get rid of the couch, saying it’s too dirty, but every complaint has been shut down. It’s become a beloved member of the team.
He stands and shuffles into the kitchen which is separated from their sitting room by a half wall. His socks slide on the polished fake wooden floor and Pierre cringes when he feels grains of sand that are probably dirtying his white socks. They’re cheap, but still, he likes to be presentable. Not to mention the potential for scratches on the floor.
It was most likely Yuki who traipsed the sand in, and yep, he sees Yuki’s infamous orange sneakers left haphazardly knocked over in the middle of the floor, sand spilled out. He’s such a child.
In the kitchen he reaches for the shiny, red kettle’s handle and walks it over to the sink, phone in hand playing some video he’s not really watching. What he is watching is his teammate. Yuki has now stretched out on his stomach into the space on the couch he just vacated, giggling, legs kicking. About what? Well, Pierre doesn’t know, he thinks resentfully. Pierre pulls down the tap handle and listens to the water as it slowly fills up. He flicks the tap off when his ears tell him it’s full, then slots the kettle back on its base and flips on the power.
While he waits for the water to boil, he checks what video is actually playing on his phone. It’s a fan made edit of his teammate. Pierre watches for a few seconds, momentarily forgetting what he was doing. Saliva leaks into his hanging open mouth as he admires the fan’s impressive capture of Yuki’s washboard abs and the sharp contour of his jawline.
Coming to reality, Pierre fumbles his phone, embarrassedly trying to pause the video. He sighs in relief, glad that Yuki is in the other room and therefore wouldn’t’ve heard it.
Saves in shame silently.
He snatches opens the team cupboard and takes out two mugs; Yuki’s favourite mug with the little, cartoon design on the front, given to him by his Pierre, and Pierre’s one from Yuki that he received for last year’s secret Santa. Unfortunately, Yuki didn’t understand to joke on the front of the mug, but Pierre loves it just the same.
The mugs are handily placed at the front of the cupboard, and Pierre delicately puts them both on the bench. Out of the tea box comes a bag of a new herbal tea he is trying out and into his cup it goes.
Pierre pulls out the hot chocolate powder and spoons large spoonfulls into Yuki’s mug. He hears the familiar ping of the kettle, telling him that the water is boiled. He fills up his cup and sets it back, leaving it to steep and pours a little into his friend’s cup, stirring to dissolve the powder. The milk is frothed and heated in a small pot, extra frothy just for Yuki before being poured into his cup. He opens the cupboard and rustles in the back for the bag of mini marshmallows. Knowing that 5 is his favourite number he places 5 in Yuki’s mug. He often hears Yuki trying to argue with others that the pink marshmallows are the superior colour, so he makes sure they are all pink.
He slides his tea and Yuki’s drink off the marble counter and delicately places his mug on the low coffee table after giving his friend his drink. “Here you go, mate,” he says as he hands the other drink to Yuki, taking care not to spill the overfilled drink. “Yay! Hot chocolate, my favourite. I didn’t even have to ask,” Yuki receives his drink and cups it in both hands, cross legged, smiling excitedly. He takes a large slurp and lifts his head up, giggling to show Pierre his milk foam moustache. Pierre chuckles fondly at him and ruffles his hair then plops down onto the couch. He is secretly glad that Yuki noticed how he knew his favourite drink down to the number of marshmallows on top.
Yuki licks his lips and puts down his drink with the intention of picking up his previously abandoned phone. He hunts around next to him, patting the couch before awkwardly hunching over while still sitting to look underneath the table and sofa where he finds it, dropped into the plush, beige carpet.
Pierre, noting Yuki’s lack of comments decides that he too shall find something to do on his phone. He opens Instagram and mindlessly flicks through just wishing that the other man on the sofa would talk to him. Yuki seemed oblivious to this. They both scroll through their social media laughing every so often when one of them finds a funny post. Occasionally one of them (usually Pierre) flips his phone around to show the other a funny post. They take sips of their drinks each time wincing as the china chinks against the glass table.
“Hey, Pierre, check this out,” Yuki says lazily, as he scrolls on his phone after a while.
“What is it, Yukino?” replies Pierre.
“Look how cute I look in these. My soulmate must really love me. Their history is just memes and cute photos of me. It is a shame I don’t know who they are because they certainly seem to know who I am,” he trails off, sadly.
Pierre scrambles over to Yuki’s side of the couch, tripping on his feet, and Yuki’s assorted blankets that had one by one been dumped on the floor when he decided he was too hot. “Show me.” He comes to sit behind Yuki, pulling him into his lap, his legs on either side of the other man.
Yuki angles his phone up so that they can both see. “Look,” he laughs, turning his head up to look at Pierre to gauge his reaction. Pierre chuckles, he has to admit it was pretty funny. Yuki is encouraged and opens a folder entitled ‘waiting for you’.
Pierre shows him a smile and a laugh and pats his head fondly. But as time goes on, and Yuki keeps scrolling through more, and more posts about himself Pierre finds himself feeling less and less happy. His smiles begin to fade behind Yuki’s back, and he absentmindedly fiddles with Yuki’s fluffy hair. What is this strange emotion? He thinks, while his fond pats, turn to nervous tugs at Yuki’s hair.
Yuki laughs once again, obliviously, overwhelmed with joy and says, “Oh, Pierre, I love my soulmate. I just can’t wait to meet them.” He hugs his phone to his chest and closes his eyes, with a smile on his face. He looks to happy, thinks Pierre.
He leans into Pierre, happily, just thinking about the good times he will have with his soulmate. Not a care in the world, or anything can spoil his mood.
He picks up his phone again and continues to look at the folder. Pierre shuts his eyes, trying to will it out of his brain. He can’t be jealous, can he? But jealous of what?
Yuki laughs especially loud at a post of some silly new f1 meme and Pierre cracks open an eye. It’s just another meme. He tries to stand up and maybe go for a walk, to stretch his legs, but mainly to get away from his best friend.
“But I’m cold, Pierre,” whines Yuki, turning his head upwards and batting his eyes when Pierre tries to leave.
Pierre groans and Yuki takes this as a sign of agreement. He cheers and wriggles further under Pierres legs and into his lap, Pierre’s legs either side of him. He grabs Pierre’s wrists and pulls them down so that he can see what is on his phone too.
They sit together for a couple more minutes, separately on their phones when they hear the sound of footsteps outside the room. The door creaks open and they see a few spying pairs of eyes. When the eyes spot them, they light up with a glint and in barges the Netflix crew. Yuki glances up before looking back down again, uninterested. Pierre puts his face in his hands embarrassed about being caught with Yuki in his lap. The memes and twitter posts about them are bad enough already, he doesn’t need to add more fuel to the fire.
“Just stay there,” the lady with a clipboard and headset says. “We’re just filming a few things and then we’ll be gone. Pretend we aren’t here.” Pierre looks down at Yuki and tries to shove him off again, he can already see tomorrow’s headline with some stupid alphatauri meme.
Why are people so obsessed with trying to put them together? All he wants is some space from the guy, especially after he has found out about Yuki’s new soulmate interest. Like, who even is this girl that’s so obsessed with Yuki? He may be cute, but he’s just not really a standout driver to anyone. You don’t need to take ‘rooting for the underdog this literally’. They are also the same memes that Pierre looks at. He is secretly disgusted to be looking at the exact same things. What kind of a person even looks at these things anyway? And Yuki even likes and wants to meet this girl? Pierre finally settles on annoyance. He is annoyed that the girl looks at the same things as him. He scowls.
“Hey, you. Yes, you. The French guy,” the lady says as Pierre points to himself, “Stop shoving him. Go back to doing what you were before. We need this to look natural.” Pierre accepts what she says as stops trying to push Yuki away. She huffs and rolls her eyes, “now that you’ve stopped, wrap your arm round him and put your phone back out in front. There, perfect.”
They noisily take photos and videos and keep directing Yuki and Pierre. Pierre tries to distract himself by looking on his phone at his social media. He smirks at the fact that the girl doesn’t get to have Yuki sit in her lap, or even next to her. She is probably just a nobody that will never get to meet Yuki.
When the cameras leave Yuki asks Pierre, “what are you smirking at?” to which Pierre replies, “oh, just something funny I remembered.”
Pierre shoves a few blankets away before he says, “let me look through your phone. Mabey we’ll find something in their history. I mean, they must know you well enough to be this obsessed.” He doesn’t skip over the fact that Yuki has a whole folder on his phone dedicated to things his soulmate has looked at. Although, he was one to talk, he thought, with his top secret, private, password protected, folder dedicated to Yuki. I guess that these both were just normal thing to have, he rationalised.
Yuki blushed, “umm… no. You can’t look through my phone. But good suggestion.”
“But why Yukino…?”
“You just… can’t. I’m sorry.”
“What, are you scared I’ll see your porn? I’m a man too Yuki, I’ll live.” At this Yuki blushes.
“Why can’t you just accept a no, Pierre?” Yuki says frustratedly as Pierre watches him walk over to his room. He tries to stomp, but Pierre thinks he’s too cute to.
What is the point in being in this room if Yuki isn’t here. It’s to quiet, thinks Pierre. He stands up and notes both their discarded drinks yet choses to leave them behind and goes to his room. Pierre angrily flops down onto his bed. He doesn’t like how obsessed Yuki is with this girl. He needs to know who she is; who his competition is. Not like that, he thinks, but just… competition for Yuki’s attention, for his laugh, for his time.
- Yuki - (timeskip)
He cringes at himself. Why did he say that? “You just can’t.” Like what kind of a reason is that? He needs to find something better. He can’t tell Pierre the real reason. That his history is just him. Every moment not spent dreaming of his F1 goals, he is dreaming of his F1 teammate. He hated lying to Pierre. But he would hate telling him the truth more.
His thoughts continue to spiral as he looks out from the shared apartment window at the city. In the dark he can almost make out the track.
He scrolls though his history, embarrassed. He can’t show Pierre what his soulmate was looking at without revealing his own, very incriminating evidence.
What was he even thinking, looking at these things? Ugh. He should be so embarrassed – he’s nothing better than those obsessed people online trying to buy gripper water and whatever else they do. Except Yuki knows what they do because he does it too. He cringes again as he scrolls past a very revealing picture of Pierre.
He hears the distinct jingle of keys and fast, sneakered footsteps matching through the living room and sits up from his bed. He checks the time on his phone – 0048. He peeps his head out of his door and catches a glint of light falling across Pierre’s face, just before he hears the door slam. How strange. What is Pierre doing at this time?
For the next hour Yuki turns and tosses trying to get back to sleep, but he can’t. Where the hell could Pierre have gone?
Finally, he manages to go back to sleep, but when he does, after a few hours he wakes again. He hears Pierre's socks scuffling on the floor and the sound of… is that a girl. Yep, he can definitely hear a heeled shoe clacking on the floor.
So, that’s what his teammate has been up to; picking up another girl