Drive me Wild, Rival(BL)

Alaric

The bedroom was cold after the shower. Nico pushed the glass door open and the air conditioning hit my skin, and I shivered hard enough that he laughed at me.

"You are shaking," he said.

"It is freezing in here."

"It is twenty degrees."

"Then twenty degrees is freezing," I said, and he laughed again.

The lamps on either side of the bed were on and the curtains were drawn. The bed had not been touched.

We did not go to it.

I sat down on the stool in front of the vanity with a towel around my waist, and my legs felt so loose I was not sure I could have walked much farther anyway.

For ten days I had been sleeping three hours a night. I had driven a whole race in Miami with a knot in my throat that would not go away no matter how much water I drank. Now it was gone, and I did not know what to do with myself without it.

Nico stood behind me. I had already dried his hair, badly, and it was sticking up on one side.

Without the steam I could see us both clearly in the mirror. He looked normal like this, without the fireproofs and the team polo and the careful face he wore for the cameras.

There were red marks on his neck and one on his shoulder that I had put there, and looking at them made my chest feel too full.

"Lean back," he said.

I rested my head against his stomach and closed my eyes.

He dropped a clean towel over my hair and started working it dry, slowly, his thumbs pressing into the base of my skull.

Twenty minutes ago he had me pinned against the shower wall. Now he was being careful with me, and somehow that was harder to take.

"I thought I lost you," I said. My voice came out rough. "After Miami. I really thought that was it."

His hands stopped. He pulled the towel back and looked down at me, not at the mirror.

"You did not lose me."

"You stopped answering my messages, Nico."

"I know." He let out a breath. "I was scared you would find out what I am and look at me the way everyone looks at Enigmas. So I made sure you could not look at me at all. That was stupid."

"It was very stupid."

"You are supposed to say it was understandable."

"It was understandable," I said. "And very stupid."

He huffed out something close to a laugh. I reached back over my shoulder and caught his wrist.

"I do not care what you are," I said. "I do not care what the paddock says about it. I care that you are here."

He swallowed. Then he bent and kissed the top of my head and stayed there, his mouth pressed into my wet hair.

"No more secrets," he said. "Whatever comes next, we deal with it together."

"Together," I agreed.

He lifted his head. In the mirror I watched him hesitate, which Nico almost never did.

"What if we told them?"

"Told who?"

"Everyone." He came around the stool and crouched in front of me so we were level. "No more hiding it. No more checking into hotels under fake names. We walk into the paddock together in Canada and let them work it out."

I wanted to say yes. I wanted it badly enough that it scared me a little. But I knew what the press did with a story, and I knew exactly what they would do with this one.

"Not yet," I said.

His face fell, only slightly. "You are worried about the backlash."

"I am worried about the championship." I pushed his hair off his forehead. "If we tell them now, nobody will ask us about tires or setups for the rest of the year. Every time you pass me, they will say I let you. Every time I pass you, they will say you let me. We would stop being rivals and turn into a storyline."

He went quiet. I could see him working through it, the same way he worked through a braking point.

"We finished the season," I said. "We race each other properly. And after Abu Dhabi, we tell them however we want."

He dropped his forehead onto my knee and groaned. "I hate that you are right."

"I know."

"The second the season ends, I am kissing you on live television."

"Fine."

"In front of your team principal."

"Especially in front of my team principal," I said, and he laughed into my knee.

When he stood up, he tossed the damp towel onto the vanity. It landed next to my watch. He leaned his hip against the counter and folded his arms, and I watched him turn back into the man I raced against every other Sunday.

"So," he said. "Langose City."

"Do not start."

"Your favorite place in the world."

"It is a street circuit designed by someone who hates drivers." I picked up the comb. I was only half joking. Langose was all concrete walls and no run-off, and Turn 9, the hairpin everyone called the Widow-maker, had put more cars into the barrier than any other corner on the calendar.

"Tight corners," Nico said. "Heavy braking. No room for mistakes. Sounds like a good weekend for me to take the pole off a certain blond princess."

I turned on the stool and knocked my knee into his hip. "I won two years there, Park. We are bringing a new front wing just for that hairpin. Your car is heavy at the rear this season and you know it. You will be staring at my gearbox by lap fifteen."

"I won Miami," he said. "Where were you in Miami?"

"That is low."

"Somewhere in the midfield, I think."

I pressed my hand flat against his chest. His heart was steady under my palm. "You really think you can beat me on the straights?"

"I think I can beat you anywhere."

For a second his eyes went dark and I thought he was going to haul me over to the bed. Then his face softened, and he put his hand on my cheek instead.

"I have a lot to make up for," he said quietly. "Not the points. You. I spent ten days thinking about everything I never told you. I want to do this properly this time."

"You do not have to prove anything to me." I leaned into his hand. "Just drive like the reckless idiot you are. I want my rival back."

"I am going to beat you in Langose."

"You can try." I kissed him. "If I win, you are buying me dinner."

"And if I win, you wear my Red Bull jacket in front of the cameras."

"Ferrari would have me killed."

"I know," he said, grinning. "Imagine their faces."

I opened my mouth to tell him that Red Bull navy made him look like a flight attendant, and a phone started ringing.

The sound came from the armchair in the corner, where he had thrown his jacket when we came in.

Nico let his head fall back.

"If that is Dami checking up on you again, I am throwing it off the balcony."

"I think that is your ringtone," I said.

He sighed and walked over, his bare feet quiet on the rug, and dug the phone out of the inside pocket.

I turned back to the mirror, expecting him to decline it and complain about some engineer wanting feedback at eleven at night.

From where I sat, the mirror caught the corner of the room where he stood.

He did not decline it.

He stood there looking at the screen, and I watched his shoulders come up, slowly, until he was holding himself the way he had held himself all last week. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

I got up from the stool. "Nico? Who is it? Did someone see us come in?"

He did not answer right away. When he finally lifted his head, he found me in the mirror, and he had gone pale. His thumb hovered over the red button, but he did not press it.

"No," he said. "It is my mother."