Chapter Text
Alain woke up, gasping.
Well, that's not right. It's more like a choke and a sigh with the fear of a scream and the misery of a cry mixed together into one strangled noise. What he means is he woke up in a shock.
Which, in itself, is not very shocking (haha, pun intended—Alain is hi-laaar-ious). He’s been waking up like that for the past few years, and while it has been getting better, it still happens every once in a while.
Alain doesn’t know if he wants to stop waking up like this or not, because to stop the nightmares might mean forgetting him, and he doesn’t want to forget. He can’t.
The most surprising thing is that he woke up in an office. That was flying. In the sky. And unless he had suddenly become Sleeping Beauty and had slept through a century of human development, he is pretty sure that this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Suddenly, a knock comes from the door, and Alain shoots up from the chair. He wiped his hand across his face to get rid of the drool (yes, sue him, he drools, there is nothing wrong with it—Ayrton, stop staring at me) before asking, “Who is it?”
“Alain,” said a female voice that he vaguely recognizes. “Are you ready?” A blonde woman walked in with heels and a suit, looking tired and exasperated.
The Frenchman’s mind went blank. Was he supposed to do something? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember anything, now that he thinks about it, and definitely nothing about why he would be in an office in the trocking sky.
He scrambled for a way to say he doesn’t remember a thing when the woman answered the question for him. “The press conference, remember? About the last mission?” She sighed. “You know, Prost, I expected Ayrton to be the one to forget about this, not you.”
Oh yes, a press conference. Alain doesn’t remember anything about a press conference, but it's more familiar to him than a floating office. “Oh yes, uh, I was just get—”
He froze. Ayrton. Why would she ever say that name like that, the name of a dead man, with such casualness that goes against the name the public had made for him for the last years?
“What do you mean by Ayrton?" he asked, slowly. Even saying his name sends a pang through his heart. Why is he even here?
The woman looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here. She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if you already forgot the name of your partner,” (partner, what an interesting word that Alain doesn’t ever want to think of again), “and his tendencies to forget every team meeting and conference we have. But please stop changing the subject. It doesn’t work on me. The press is already here, and you look like a mess.” She scanned him head to toe and back around again, clicking her tongue in a judgmental way. “Did you just wake up?” She checked her watch. “You got ten minutes, Alain, and you better look like the president when you get to the press room.” With that, she left the room.
His head ran a mile a minute. Alain must be dreaming. Yes, there is no other explanation for this. Did he accidentally put some weed in his tea last night? He doesn’t know where he would’ve gotten the weed from, but at least that sounded more probable then whatever he was doing here.
He looked outside to a city that must’ve been a million meters under him. He threw up.
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Ayrton spots him across the sea of reporters. He glared.
Trocking Prost. This whole conference was his fault in the first place. If his partner hadn’t messed him up, they wouldn’t have let Lauda go. Then he would’ve gotten the champagne, the glory, and they wouldn’t be in this whole mess. And now, he has to talk to reporters. For an hour straight.
It was always Prost, wasn’t it. On top of all this, he was late to the conference. The one where Ayrton actually showed up on time (only because Judy had dragged him here, but still).
Alain's eyes met Ayrton’s. What the Brazilian saw there, however, stilled him. Alain's eyes are filled with shock (which is a given, it happens every time the Frenchman is met with the amazing presence of Ayrton). It changed to confusion, and then to something that confused him—
A barreling force came to Ayrton’s chest. It knocked the wind out of him, which says something, considering that this is the hero who had to face a million airblasts from whatever Ferrari sent at him. He instantly reached for his knife to whatever had just attacked him out of pure instinct, when he saw who it was.
He choked.
There it was, the mess of curls in all its french glory. The shorter man’s hands were wrapped around him, tight—tighter than whatever professional colleague should hug their coworker—not to mention whatever tense relationship they had with each other. He heard the click of cameras and saw the flashes of light out of the corner of his eyes. Oh lect, the reporters.
“Prost, Prost—” Ayrton tried to snap his partner out of whatever funk this was. “What are you doing—”
A hand went to his face. What? It brushed against his eyes, then his nose, and landed on his lips. “You sound like him too.”
Ayrton grabbed the frenchman’s hand. “What the trock is wrong with you Prost?!” The hero got his first good look at his partner, not hidden among the reporters (or in his chest, blergh).
Prost looked like he has aged ten years since the battle yesterday. His posture was crooked, tired, his hair was a mess (more than it usually was), and his eyes were filled with weariness.
Well, actually, they’re filled with—
“Prost, are you crying?!” Aytron didn’t mean for it to come out, but he tended not to have a filter on his mouth.
Prost looked at him, meeting his gaze. “No.”
“I’m pretty sure you—”
Alain Prost broke down.
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After half an hour of dragging a short Frenchman off himself and fighting a bunch of reporters, Ayrton emptily stared at the empty press room.
What just happened?
His helpful mind supplied no answer to a stupid question, and he told it to shut up. No, he knows what happened. It just didn’t feel real (and Senna faced plenty of wacked up stuff that Ferrari cooked up). Just yesterday, Prost had been glaring at him full of hate and anger, and Ayrton had met him with the same fire. Now though, the same man had just hugged him in front of a room full of reporters and started crying.
Almost like Senna had died.
Ayrton laughed at his partner’s absurdity. This man just felt like messing with the Brazilian. First, yesterday's mission with Lauda, and now this. Prost didn’t feel like giving him a break, huh? Whatever, that wasn’t his problem, at least until Monday.
He hoped he had his partner back on Monday. Despite the terrible mess he made of things, Prost was a better partner than whatever McLaren tried to put on him.
Yes, Prost better fix whatever mess he was in over the weekend, or else Ayrton is going to kill him.
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