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There is a wave of slowness in the air, golden sunbeams that dip everything in a warm honey colour and make the world seem slow. Even the birds are too calm to bicker around, only very few pull languid lines across the golden sky.
It’s comfortingly silent, they are alone in the garage. It’s a grimy old thing, rusted metal on every cabinet door, matched by dents and paint spills that color the garage in this personal, private lived in atmosphere.
Ayrton is elbow deep in some just as beat up car. It’s his baby, he is working to get it on whatever track doesn’t care for any safety precautions, but Alain doubts it’ll ever make more than one turn of the wheel. He doesn’t comment on that though, it’s a nice thing to spend his time on and usually Alain even helps, just to have anything to do with his hands, but the warmth of late summer has settled into his bones and he is too lazy to fumble around with the warm oil and dirt thats crawling up Ayrtons arms and ruining another one of his shirts.
Both of them are tanned to no end, the summer had been long, and Alain likes watching the younger man. Theres a streak of dirt on his forehead, brows furrowed in concentration, it must have come there when he had rubbed his hand over the sweat pooling there. Some is surely in his hair too, Alain figures.
He’s less sitting and more slumped on one of the very few bare cabinets, the cold metal smooth against his bare thighs, but his lower legs are still warmed by some of the late sun falling in through the opened garage gate.
He’s in his smallest shorts and one of his loose garage shirts, no more, or he would properly sweat his ass off. Ayrton had complained when he got rid of his shoes, no way he could work like that, but it was not like he planned to do that anyways.
“You’ll ruin another one of your shirts”
Alain can’t help but laugh when Ayrton seems to remember he’s still around and almost hits his head on the hood of the car.
“What do you suppose? Want to see me undress?”
“You could just bring garage shirts, like I do”
Ayrton peeks up, at Alains shirt specifically, some ratty old thing, maybe it had been Ayrtons at some point, but covered in all types of spills, color and faded by the sun he couldn’t distinguish it from a picture of a proper crash.
“That old thing smells like death, i’d be rather naked than put that on my skin”
“Then maybe you should get naked,” Alain shrugs “I’m not spending more money on shirts for you just to get them dirty like this”
Bickering over such idiotic things is their favorite thing. Alain considers to recommend overalls, but Ayrton would just find some irrelevant other detail that puts him off. Thats how they are, and Alain wouldn’t change it for a thing.
“Is there a lot left to do?”
Ayrton is ready to go off on a tantrum about every little screw that sits in the wrong place, tubes to be reconnected, metal parts that are rusted through and whatever chaotic design he wants to put on once he can think of the finishing touches. But he sees that thats not what Alain is asking for and even Ayrton can be sensible, once in a while, when he feels like it.
He has all the time in the world left to figure it all out. They aren’t brash, young men anymore. Although Ayrton acts like it, sometimes, when he looks over at Alain he can see the lines on his face, the signs of so many summers kissed by the sun, scars and the history of work on his shoulders and in his hands. Scared knees and the tired but content way in which his shoulders are dropping and he looks all ethereal in the golden light of the late sun.
He walks over, and even if he pulls a face, stands between Alains face.
“Maybe you should get rid of this old thing, for good”
He pulls on it, with just two anyways dirty fingers, but lets it fall as if its burning.
“And you are sure it’s not just a lazy excuse to get me naked?”
It is, truthfully, but Ayrton doesn’t ever just admit when Alain is right, and anyways Alain doesn’t fight it when he wrangles the shirt over his head and leaves his hair even more chaotic. Ayrton wants to tame it, like he sometimes wants to wrangle with all of Alain to fit him into his life like a puzzle piece, but Alain is all too much for that and his hands are still covered in grease and what not, so he ignores the hairs sticking out.
The old shirt makes good to wipe the most surface dirt off. It doesn’t get rid of the stain still sticking to Ayrtons arms, the lines in his hands or under his nails, but it doesn’t make it all the more agreeable. Specifically agreeable to Alain, when he leaves his hands on the counter, away from the colorful shorts, to lean in.
Alain is familiar. So are his lips, his taste and the feeling of him all around. It’s nice, really, slower than Ayrton had anticipated. Still anticipates - Alain likes to play with him, once in a while, and they are always keen on pacing around each other. No matter how old they get, it’s something neither of them can ever think of stoping. But it’s fun, keeps them on their toes, so why should they?
Sitting on the cabinet, Alain is the same height as Ayrton. Neither point it out, for it has been said a million times before.
“Will you ever finish that, honestly?”
Alain doesn’t have to point to the car for Ayrton to understand.
“Well, it will take a while, but it wouldn’t be fun if it was fast”
Alain groans. “I thought, maybe we should get a camping van instead” Ayrton pulls a face “not for the track, you dimwit! But it’s not like your baby will see a track anytime soon either. We could travel. See more cars, places”
“Why do you propose this?”
The golden sun had dipped beneath the hills, barely a bit before, and the sky is painted in all the war colours; from the pinkish hue of Ayrtons lips to the yellow he has to put on every car.
“It’s nice, just like this. You can still work on one of your cars, but it doesn’t have to be the only excuse for us to go out”
The evening pulls into their life, too, Ayrton knows. The lines on their faces aren’t smoothing out again and their days are limited. Days like this, enclosed in amber. It makes sense, to see more of the world, as long as they still can, he supposes.
“Lets do it, then. But only tomorrow. We need a shower”
“We? I have hardly worked?”
“Even thinking of that shirt makes me feel dirty!”