He guessed croissant #6
“Sparkling wine.” Thomas is nothing if not French. “But, yes. And sweat. I want all of you, so do not wash.”
Don’t get hard, don’t get hard. “Yeah, no, yeah. I’ll just—I won’t. Yeah, cool.”
Sam doesn’t realize Lucas has returned until a microphone is shoved into his face. The interview passes in a blur and he barely even registers any of the Italian fans booing at him.
After he hands the microphone off to the reporter, Sam falters on his way back to the other podium-sitters.
Lucas and Thomas perch on opposite sides of their stands, unreasonably far apart. They don’t seem to be fighting, exactly—Thomas drinks from his water bottle and Lucas fusses with his gloves—but there’s still a weird tension in the sheer distance between them.
They notice him at the same time, both heads turning and smiling in unison. Sam would be stupid to laugh, but he grins in return and nods over towards the cool down room. Obviously he’s just imagining it.
For the first time this season, Thomas lets Sam sit in the middle chair. He still pulls it as he walks by, angling it towards the third-place chair before retrieving his podium hat.
Lucas must also have a passion for interior design. He pointedly pushes the second-place chair until it’s in line with the middle one again, parallel to the screen.
Sam might be reading too deep into something that doesn’t matter. There’s no way either of the drivers are petty or childish enough to fight for his attention, right? They probably just wanted a better angle of the TV.
Sam climbs up into his chair and watches the replay with his water bottle in hand. “Oh fuck, which Ashton pulled that one off?”
“Probably Giovanni.”
“Laurent has the fluoro T-cam.” Thomas points to the top of the car during the slow-motion replay, as if they needed help identifying which camera he meant.
“Of course.” Lucas scoffs. “Only the young ones make these flashy, dangerous moves.”
“Maybe the old ones are too cautious.” Thomas’s eyes don’t leave the screen, but it still feels like a jab. “We lapped Giovanni at the end, after all.”
The next clip is a Ferraro and Red Boar fighting through the chicane. The red car puts up a good defense, but it’s the navy one that pulls ahead.
That sure wasn’t Sam’s overtake.
“Old ones don’t look too cautious to me.” Lucas leans back in his chair and braces his hands behind his head. “Maybe the young ones are too cocky to recognize good racing.”
Okay, so Sam isn’t imagining the tension. “Wow, that Wilhems is something.”
“Cocky? When I was ahead at the apex?”
“That is not what the stewards say.”
“If it was good racing, the stewards would not need to say.”
The screen fades to the Monza GP logo and Sam can only hope it means the broadcast has cut to somewhere else.
Lucas casually unlaces his fingers and lets his hand drop to the backrest of Sam’s seat. Thomas must notice, because his hand whips out and clutches Sam’s thigh.
Being between the two would have been such a beautiful fantasy only a few months ago, but Sam has a sick sense he's being used.
“I need to talk to you,” Lucas says as he holds Sam back after the press room.
Thomas continues past them, but tosses an unbothered, “I will text you later,” and a wink over his shoulder.
“This can’t wait ‘til we’re back in the garage?” Sam deserves an apology more than anyone, but the hallway isn’t exactly private.
The reporters who trickle out of the room pause for a moment and watch the teammates, waiting for something juicy to happen.
Lucas lingers until Thomas turns the corner, out of sight, before he says, “You’re right. Let’s go to the garage.”
Inside his driver’s room, Sam peels the layers from his body. His race suit, his Nomex shirt, his long johns. Once all of the sparkling wine-soaked garments are off, he redresses in the dry clothes he arrived in.
“You were the one who wanted to talk. What’s up?”
Lucas watches the whole thing from Sam’s massage table, his eyes shamelessly roaming over every inch of exposed skin.
Sam’s gut says he has to be interested—that no guy watches another man so hungrily if he doesn’t want him—but Lucas has already denied that. Denied him.
But where is his sudden disdain of Thomas coming from, if it isn’t jealousy? Why, after years of being rivals, are these feelings only surfacing now?
If Lucas hated him, Sam would be able to move on, but these little moments string him along, and leave him helpless to do anything more than fawn over the man he’s admired for years.
“Yes, I…” Lucas sighs and leans back, against the wall. “I wanted you to hear it from me.”
That doesn’t sound good. “Hear what?”
“I am retiring at the end of this season.”
“No, you’re not.” Sam is tired of this ‘will he, won’t he’ bullshit.
“It’s official now.”
“Nothing is official until a contract’s been signed.” Sam would’ve heard if a Red Boar contract for next year existed. Managers talk. Teams talk.
“The contract is being written.”
“For who? The kid?!” Sam throws up his arms. “He had one okay year and what? Suddenly he’s worth more than a world champion?”
“Nobody is worth more than anybody else.” Lucas speaks with his gentle voice and it makes Sam want to scream. “Adam asked me to stay until one of them could handle a Red Boar. We think he can—with you guiding him.”
“I don’t want to guide anyone.” It’s not Sam’s job to teach, it’s his job to race. “What happened to your home race? You don’t care about winning anymore?”
“I can win in Germany for another series.”
“Oh yeah, you can win on that famous German FASCAR track.” Sam spits the name with disdain. “You want to drive in ovals for the rest of your life? See if I fucking care.”
Sam snatches his phone off the table and stomps out of his own driver’s room, slamming the door behind him hard enough to shake the structure.
Adam lurks just outside, watching him in silence. He must’ve known what Lucas was going to say, and now here he is to see the reaction.
Well, Sam has a reaction for him, alright. He points to his driver’s room door and yells, “You can’t replace a world champion with a fucking child!”
Heads turn towards the noise, but Adam doesn’t budge. “Sam.”
No. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t need to be managed. Sam needs to blow off steam and he knows exactly where to do so.
Sam knocks on the hotel door and impatiently shifts his weight from side to side.
His clothes stick to his still-tacky skin, peeling away when he moves, then sticking again.
It draws too much attention to hours earlier, to sparkling wine podiums and the moments before he knew Lucas had given his seat away.
Thomas opens the door with a sly smile, but his face falls. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” Sam didn’t realize he was so easy to read. “Y’gonna let me inside or are we fuckin’ in the hallway?”
Thomas holds the door open as he steps to the side, his face still shadowed with confusion.
Sam kicks off his shoes and finally pulls his stupid, sticky shirt off. “So what’ll be? Forwards? Backwards? You could even ride me—get a little cowgirl action going.”
He’s not even sure what he’d prefer, as long as it’s distracting.
“Um…” For how bold he was at the track, Thomas hesitates. “We could also talk first?”
“That’s not what we do.”
“It is what we could do.”
Sam doesn’t want to talk, he wants to bury his dick in a hole and pass out. Maybe if he keeps taking off his clothes, Thomas will get distracted and drop the whole having-a-conversation thing.
He’s got his fly down, but Thomas keeps pushing. “What did Lucas say? Is he why you are like this?”
Sam’s hands still before zipping himself back up. Adam doesn’t want him to tell anyone, so maybe he should. Why would Sam care about what Adam and Lucas want? They’ve never cared about him.
“Lucas is retiring.” Admitting it out loud sucks the air out of his lungs. Still, he grinds out, “This is his last year in Form 1.”
Thomas nods. “This has been known, yes?”
This is why they don’t fucking talk. People hear a rumor and think they know everything when they don’t know the first half of it.
“He changed his mind. I had changed his mind.” Sam juts a finger into his chest. Nobody ever understood how close they were. Nobody. “He was going to stay for me, for years until a VFIbr kid could learn how to fucking drive.”
Thomas is uncharacteristically quiet, taking it all in. When Sam pauses, he asks, “The rookie?”
“He’s not even a rookie, it’s his second year.”
Thomas nods slowly. “But he has driven well this season.”
“Last year he made zero points.”
“Mercenary made him an offer. I know Finn was concerned.”
“Concerned? The kid made zero points! The entire year!” They have a ranking system for a reason—it shows who can drive and who can’t. “Number twenty on debut? Worse than Sobber? It’s pathetic. He’s not Red Boar material. I can’t be strapped to an anchor dragging me down to the back of the field.”
“You do not really think that.”
Sam clenches his jaw. “Don’t tell me what I think.”
“You just do not want to lose Lucas.” Thomas doesn’t know when to take a hint. “Teams change, drivers retire, it is part of the sport.”
“You don’t know me!” Sam hates that his voice cracks. “I don’t need Lucas—I just hate the kid. He’s not ready for the Red Boar, and I’m not ready to lead some stupid child who doesn’t know which pedal to push!”
Thomas stares up at Sam silently, judging him like what he said was idiotic. But Sam’s right! He doesn’t want to haul some incompetent baby around the track—he wants to race alongside someone with experience.
The reason Red Boar dominates is because the teammates can rely on each other, work together. He can’t rely on a rookie. Sam needs someone who knows what they’re doing—someone who can run at the front of the pack.
Someone like—
“You,” Sam breathes.
Thomas blinks quickly. “Me? What me?”
“You.” It’s perfect. “You could join Red Boar.” It’s the perfect solution.
“I—? Samuel, that—”