Chapter Sam Campbell #11
Sam pulls up Thomas’s contact and notices the Frenchman hasn’t sent his room number yet. It’s not weird to reach out first, right? They’re casual. They can text and shit.
Dinner tonight? You choose the place.
Something French tho, not some rando pizza place
Actually, pizza sounds pretty good.
Sam mindlessly scrolls his socials as he waits for a reply and likes all of the posts about his win. There are a lot less French people online. A lot less booing about his super-impressive overtake.
Once he’s seen enough, Sam hypes himself up to peel the champagne-sticky Nomex from his body. It’s a frustrating consequence of a podium, but he’s willing to suffer it over the pain of not winning at all.
When his shirt’s halfway off, he hears the vibration of a text and wills his heart to settle down.
It’s not a date or anything—it’s just dinner. Sam has had dinner with so many people throughout his life. It didn’t mean anything in particular, it’s just food. People eat.
It’s not a date.
Sam leaves the stiffened fabric in a pile on the ground and reaches for his phone.
I have plans tonight
Sorry
Oh.
He should’ve seen that coming.
Thomas is French, of course he’d have family and friends in town. Of course he’d want to spend time with them—to eat dinner with the people he loves instead of some guy he’s been fucking every race weekend.
Especially if that same guy stole his home race from him. Sam is probably the last person Thomas wants to see right now.
He leaves the text on read and changes back into his civilian clothes before knocking on Lucas’s door.
“Come in.”
Sam opens the door, but stops at the threshold.
Lucas is stripped of everything but his boxer briefs. He faces away from the door, his thighs resting on the floor while his chest is upright, pushing backwards and stretching. The ground is carpeted, sure, but it’s not a comfortable carpet.
It’s kinda disgusting, actually.
“Why are you on the floor?”
Lucas shifts to one arm, twisting his torso to look back at Sam. He’s weirdly flexible. “I am stretching.”
“You don’t own a yoga mat?” Surely he has enough money for one.
“You came here to ask me about my ground?”
Oh, yeah. “I just wanted to see if you wanted to grab dinner with me? I was thinking French, but whatever you want.”
Did that sound desperate? Sam probably couldn’t handle two rejections in a row. He hasn’t struck out so hard since his growth spurt back in secondary school.
“French is fine.”
Lucas turns back to face forwards and shifts his weight to his toes, using his hands to push himself up and back.
Downward Dog. See? Sam knows yoga things.
He’s not ashamed to admit he’s watching Lucas like a hawk, cataloguing this moment for a future wank session.
He might, however, be a little ashamed to admit the first thought that popped into his head when his hero and crush shoved his ass up in front of him.
Thomas is sexier.
It’s so stupid. Sam’s so stupid. The comparison is just easy to make when they’re in similar positions.
Lucas’s gorgeous, muscular body just seems a little stiffer, a little bulkier than Thomas’s slender, willowy frame. He clomps a foot forward to lunge into another pose while Thomas seems to roll from one position into another.
Also, Lucas doesn’t have any moles. Like, any of them.
Of course Lucas is flawless, that only makes sense, but Sam has come to like the moles on Thomas’s back. They’re like constellations, and there’s a set of four arranged in a nearly-perfect line on his side, which is kinda neat.
There’s another one that can only be seen when Thomas’s cheeks are spread. That’s neat too.
“Are you okay?”
Sam looks up as Lucas wrestles on a shirt. “What? Yeah, of course.”
It’s okay to have preferences.
People marry ugly people all the time. It doesn’t mean ugly people are their preference, they just love their ugly person the most. And Sam loves Lucas the most, so it doesn’t matter that—
Lucas isn’t ugly! God, no, he’s gorgeous.
But let’s just say Sam prefers the look of Thomas bent over, nearly breaking his back with how far he can stretch it, wiggling his ass like he’s starving and Sam’s cock is the only thing that could satiate him.
That’s a completely normal visual to prefer over a raggedy carpet man.
Right?
Freshly showered and changed, Sam and Lucas meet outside their hotel rooms, hop into Wayne’s SUV, and set off towards the French restaurant with the highest rating in their vicinity.
They ask for private seating, but they still have to trudge through a restaurant full of patrons aiming their phones at them. Several people scowl at Sam, who smiles on reflex.
Pizza would’ve been a better idea.
Though he walked in full of confidence and adventure, Sam chickens out. He orders the house white and skips the snails for steak frites.
Lucas is a braver man than he is. “I would like your most French dish.”
The waitress lists a couple of different options, but she says them in French, so Lucas nods and says, “That sounds good.”
A sommelier pours a splash of wine and hands it to Sam to test. He smells it, twirls it around, and swallows a bit before announcing, “It tastes like a red wine.”
“It is our house red,” the sommelier says, filling the glass with the blood-like liquid.
“I ordered white.”
“You ordered steak.”
He leaves the bottle and walks away before Sam can ask for ice. He doesn’t know shit about wine, but he prefers cold drinks and the red is disappointingly room temperature.
“You wanted the French experience.” Lucas gestures broadly to the room.
“You’re not wrong.” Sam takes another sip of wine and makes a face. “This explains so much about how Thomas is.”
Lucas hums and switches Sam’s wine for his ice water. “I prefer red.”
Sam’s so grateful to have something palatable that he sucks half the glass down.
“So have you reconsidered your retirement yet? Stickin’ around?” Sam says it like a joke, but he’s not joking. They’re a third of the way through the season and nobody has given him an update on Lucas’s plans.
“Actually… yes.”
“Yes?” Sam repeats. Maybe the red wine has affected his hearing somehow. “Yes, you’re sticking around? You’re going to drive for Red Boar again next year?”
He needs to keep his voice down—people are nearby—but he can’t help his excitement.
Lucas shrugs. “Maybe a year, maybe two. Enough to get the VFIbr kids up to speed.” He takes a sip of the wine. “And to win Germany, of course.”
“Of course.” Sam could kiss Thomas for his contribution. “So you’ve signed the contract? Everything’s set?”
“I’m still arguing with Adam about it. You know how that goes.”
No, Sam doesn’t know how that goes. Usually, he’s grateful to receive a contract at all. He always signs it immediately, before Adam can snatch it back.
The food arrives, and the food runner rearranges the table while he sets the plates down in front of each driver. By the time he leaves, the wine glass is in front of Sam and the water cup is full and back in front of Lucas.
Sam looks at his plate, then Lucas’s, then back up.
“Is this the first course?” Lucas asks, rearranging their cups. He has a pinkish patty in front of him that screams of processed meat.
“I don’t think so.” Sam’s steak is so tiny, it fits snugly in the hole he makes between his thumb and middle finger. “Look at this thing, it’s smaller than my dick.”
Lucas laughs as the sommelier returns with a chilled wine bottle and another glass. “Care for a glass of wine with your meal?” he pointedly asks Lucas.
“Sure.”
He pours a taste of the white, then a glass, before topping off the red wine and setting it in front of Sam. As soon as he leaves, the drivers switch glasses again.
“Next time, I’ll get whatever that thing is.” Sam nods towards Lucas’s plate as he cuts his steak into quarters. Any smaller and he might not be able to catch it with his fork. “How is it?”
Lucas pops a chunk into his mouth and chews. After a second, he makes a surprised face. “Pretty good. Tastes like Leberk?se.”
Sam doesn’t have a reference point for that, so he takes a bite of his own. Despite its laughable size, it’s actually very good. The fries too, which is a surprise for such a hoity-toity place.
“How is your cock steak?”
Sam guffaws. “Well, it tastes more like steak than cock, so no complaints.”
“Small blessings.” Lucas cuts another slice off his meat patty. “Speaking of French cock, how’s it going with Thomas?”
Sam’s knife slips and screeches against his plate. He clears his throat with a cough before responding. “I dunno what you mean.”
“You’re having sex with Thomas.”
Sam wasn’t asking for a definition. “I…” Was this thing with Thomas secret? “Um…” They probably should’ve talked about that. “Uh…” Especially since every moment Sam stalls, he’s practically confirming it. “No?”
“Things are not good?”
After today, Sam’s not sure about the answer to that question either, so he shoves another piece of steak in his mouth instead of replying.
“I see.” There’s pity in Lucas’s voice. “These things are hard to navigate, especially when there are feelings involved.”
“It’s just sex.”
Whelp, there’s the confirmation.
“Sure.” Lucas shrugs and turns his attention back to his mush. “If it’s just sex, make sure that’s clearly communicated. To both of you. You don’t want to fall on the wrong side of that.”
“Yeah.”
It really is just physical between Sam and Thomas.
Only, the line gets a little blurred when it’s Sam and Fake-Lucas—or when it’s Fake-Rafael and Thomas.
Then the line practically disappears after Thomas comes and he’s just so Thomas that there’s absolutely no doubt as to who Sam is fucking. How are they supposed to navigate that kind of relationship?
The first step might be to stop talking about it with one of the men in question.
Lucas pays and takes the rest of the bottle of red. Once they’re outside, he asks, “Want to head back to the hotel?”
This time, it sounds more like “Would you like to share a ride?” instead of “Come up to my room and finish this bottle with me.”