I Cried. So Much. Curses And Cheers

I cried. So much. Curses and cheers

TRUE LOVE OF MINE

LINE BY LINE ᝰ.ᐟ "You with the dark curls, you with the watercolor eyes / You who bares all your teeth in every smile" - Lady Lamb, Dear Arkansas Daughter

ᝰ PAIRING: lando norris x reader | ᝰ WC: 5.5K ᝰ GENRE: best friends to lovers (we cheered!), reader = ex karting driver + med student, you have loved lando since the day you met etc etc etc ᝰ INCOMING RADIO: fun fact - the colors used in the title/headings on this post are actually the colors of lando's eyes from this post // this was a behemoth of a fic to write and i'm still nto entirely pleased, but the people yearn for lando norris ꨄ requested by anon!

send me an ask for my line by line event.ᐟ

The first time you see Lando Norris, he’s face-down in the mud, crying because someone called him a posh baby in the paddock, and you think he’s the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen.

There’s mud crusted on his cheek like it belongs there, curls pressed damp to his forehead, and his whole face is crumpled like paper in a storm. He’s got one sock half off and a fresh scab on his shin, and still, somehow, he looks like he belongs in a painting. The messy kind. Watercolor, probably. Something soft and bleeding at the edges, impossible to frame.

He’s eight and you’re eight and a half, which means you get to say things like “it’s okay, babies cry,” even though you don’t really mean it. He wipes his face on his sleeve and looks up at you with blotchy cheeks and kaleidoscope eyes, like someone spilled a little too much green into blue, and says, “I’m not a baby.” You believe him.

You sit next to him on the curb, knees knocking together, watching his kart like it’s some sacred thing. The sky is gray, threatening rain, and he’s all flushed skin and scraped palms and frustration. 

“They’re just jealous,” you mutter. He doesn’t look at you. “Of what? That I cry like a baby?” “No,” you say. “That your eyelashes are stupid long and you drive like the kart owes you money.”

That gets a huff out of him. Half-sob, half-laugh.

You offer him your juice box. He doesn’t smile, but he bares his teeth when he takes it, all crooked and endearing and real. That’s the thing about Lando. He’s always been real.

He holds out a sticky, dirt-streaked hand.

“I’m Lando.” “I know,” you say. “Everyone knows.”

You shake his hand anyway.

A month later, you beg your parents to sign you up for the junior karting class — not because you like cars (you don’t, really), but because you like him. Or maybe just the way he lights up when he talks about apexes and engine sounds like they’re things that breathe.

You come home smelling like oil. Your knuckles blister from gripping the wheel too hard. You cry once when you spin out and hit the barriers; but he’s there, pulling your helmet off like you’re made of glass, telling you, “You looked cool, though. Like, action movie cool.”

He makes you want to win. So you start trying.

When you’re eleven, he wins a race with his hair slicked back by sweat and wind, curls flattened into chaos. He leaps from the kart like he’s weightless, helmet swinging from one hand like a trophy of its own, and the grin he throws at you — all teeth, no restraint — nearly knocks you over.

“Did you see that?” he shouts, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Did you see?”

You did. Every lap. Every line. You saw the way his hands tightened before the last corner, the way his shoulders settled like he’d already decided to win.

You hand him his water bottle.

“You were okay.”

He gasps. “Just okay?”

“You’ll be cooler when you stop smiling like you’re showing your teeth to the dentist.”

He grins wider. Shoves you lightly with the back of his hand.

“Admit it. I looked sick.”

He did. He always does. Even like this, eyes stormy and pale all at once, flushed with the kind of joy that doesn’t need to be explained. He’s not handsome yet, not in the way the magazines will call him later. But there’s something about the way he holds a moment. The way you can’t look away when he’s in it.

Later that summer, you win.

It’s not a big race. Junior category, barely a crowd —but he’s there. Leans so far over the barrier during your final lap the marshal tells him to get down before he falls in.

You don’t hear the cheering. You don’t even feel the medal when they hang it around your neck. All you feel is Lando barreling toward you at the speed of light, helmet in one hand, arms wide, like you’re the one who gave him wings.

“You were flying,” he breathes, practically vibrating. “You were magic.”

You pretend to scoff. “Guess I’m not just here to hand you water bottles.”

He pulls you into a hug anyway. No hesitation. Just heat and sweat and the faint scent of petrol and whatever soap he uses. His heart’s pounding against your shoulder like he’s the one who just won.

Later, when you look at the photos, you don’t care about the trophy in your hands. You care about the boy behind you — curls wild, smiling so hard it looks like it hurts.

At fifteen, you start noticing the way other girls notice him.

It starts in Italy, or maybe Spain. Somewhere with sunburnt afternoons and the scent of burnt rubber curling off the asphalt like smoke. The girls linger after his heats now. They lean too close and laugh too loudly. Twisting their hair, asking if he’s going to the after-party, the lake, the whatever.

You stand beside him in the hoodie he gave you two summers ago: faded navy, sleeves chewed at the cuffs. It smells like sunscreen and old fabric and something unnameable that has always just been him. You pick at the hem while they talk, eyes on his profile.

The same boy you’ve known since he was sobbing on a curb with gravel in his socks has started to shimmer, like something just out of reach. Something made of light and speed.

His hair’s longer now, curling wild at the edges of his helmet. His smile’s the same, though. All teeth, all instinct. It still takes up half his face like he hasn’t learned how to hide anything yet.

But he doesn’t smile at them. He never does.

He looks at you. “You’re quiet,” he says, tugging at the drawstring of your hoodie. You shrug. “I’m always quiet.” “Not with me.”

He says it like a secret. Like he likes that about you — that there’s a version of yourself reserved just for him. You don’t say anything back, because you're not sure your voice would work even if you tried.

That night, you find yourselves walking the hotel parking lot, drinking vending machine soda that tastes faintly like metal and sugar. The sky's a navy bruise, and everything hums: the street lamps, the asphalt, your pulse.

“You’re kind of becoming a big deal,” you say, finally.

He laughs, low and a little shy, like you’ve caught him off-guard. “Don’t say that,” he says. “I’ll get cocky.”

“You already are.” You bump his arm with yours. It’s too dark to see his face clearly, but you know he’s smiling wide, teeth and all, like he’s baring it just for you.

And maybe he is.

Because even now, even with sponsors circling and flights booked across Europe, even with interviews and mechanics and the way his name sounds over loudspeakers, he still comes to your races.

He’ll show up between practice sessions with a baseball cap pulled low and sunglasses that don’t do much to hide him. You’ll spot him first, sitting on the pit wall like he’s always belonged there, one leg swinging like a kid with too much energy.

“Why do you still come?” you ask him once, after you’d placed second and felt like it wasn’t enough.

He shrugged. “Because I like watching you win.”

You think about that now, under the flicker of a buzzing lamp, watching the way his lashes cast soft shadows on his cheeks when he looks at you. His eyes are still that strange in-between — not quite blue, not quite grey, always shifting like skies about to storm.

Like watercolor left out in the rain.

You look away first.

You always do.

At sixteen, you run until your lungs burn. You don’t stop until your fists hit his front door, nails bitten down to nothing and eyes already stinging. He opens it in a hoodie three sizes too big, and the second he sees your face, he doesn’t ask.

He just pulls you in.

You’re crying too hard to speak at first, shoulders shaking, throat raw. He closes the door behind you and guides you to the stairs like it’s muscle memory, like this has happened before, and maybe it has, in smaller ways. Skinned knees. Lost heats. Bad days.

But this is different.

“They’re making me quit,” you finally get out. “They said— they said I have to focus on school. On real life.”

You say it like a curse. Like “real life” is something you never asked for.

Lando’s quiet for a moment. His hand curls around your wrist, thumb brushing a soothing rhythm over your pulse. His eyes — moss green in the dark — watch you without blinking. Always watching. Always knowing.

“Come on,” he says.

You frown. “Where?”

“Just— trust me.”

He doesn’t wait for you to agree. He just grabs his keys and your hand and pulls you out into the night. The wind has teeth. The sky hangs low, indigo and velvet. When you realize where you’re going, your heart breaks all over again.

The track sits behind the hill, silent and sleeping.

Lando hops the gate first, then turns and offers you his hand. You take it, fingers cold in his. He pulls you over like it’s nothing.

The lights are off, but the moon’s enough. It glints off the asphalt, pale and silver, the same way the sun used to gleam on your helmet when you’d throw it off at the end of a race, breathless and laughing. Back when your name had a number next to it and your dreams had engines.

Lando walks the edge of the track, then steps aside, gestures toward the start line like he’s offering you a crown.

“One more,” he says. “For old time’s sake.”

You laugh, watery and shaking. “There’s no kart, idiot.”

He shrugs. “Run it.”

So you do.

You take off, sneakers slapping the track, heart thudding like it’s trying to break through your ribs. Your hair whips behind you, tangled and wild, and you run like you used to race: reckless, full tilt, like the only thing that’s ever made sense is forward.

The wind hits your face and the tears dry on your cheeks and the world blurs around the edges. You run with everything you are; for every lap you’ll never finish, every podium you won’t stand on, every flame they’re trying to snuff out of you.

When you make it back to him, gasping and breathless, Lando is watching like he always does, with something quiet and fierce behind his eyes. Like he sees not just you, but the version of you the world won’t let exist anymore.

You collapse next to him, panting. He says nothing for a long time. Just sits beside you on the track, knees pulled to his chest, hoodie sleeves swallowed over his hands.

“You’ll come back to it,” he says eventually, soft like the curve of a turn. “I know you will.”

You don’t answer. You can’t.

He glances over, and for a moment, he looks like a boy again: the same boy with curls damp from rain, whose smile could split the sky. A boy who’s watched you win, lose, burn, rebuild. A boy who’s carried your dreams in the quiet way he carries everything.

“Besides,” he says, nudging your knee, “I’m still gonna win stuff. Someone’s gotta keep me humble.”

You laugh, finally — a real one. It cracks through the ache like sunlight through smoke.

“Always with the fast mouth,” you murmur. “And an ego the size of an engine.”

He grins. All teeth. Unashamed. Something ancient flutters in your chest, something that’s always been there but has never had the nerve to speak.

You don’t say you are the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, but you think it. You don’t say I’ve loved you since I was eight and a half, but maybe he knows.

Maybe he always has.

By eighteen, Lando’s face is in magazines. He’s a headline now, a profile shot under stadium lights, a name that doesn’t need explaining anymore. He smiles with his whole face — wide and unguarded — and sometimes you see a photo that feels so much like him you have to close the tab and sit with your hands in your lap, breathing slowly.

You still see the boy who once spilled chocolate milk all down his overalls at Silverstone and sobbed so hard he hiccupped for twenty minutes. The one who used to braid daisy chains into the laces of your boots between heats. But now there are articles that say things like rising star and British darling, and he fits in their glossy pages better than he should.

He FaceTimes you after qualifying P1 for the first time. It’s late, past midnight, and you’re still in the library, alone but for the hum of the vending machine and the ache behind your eyes. You almost don’t pick up.

But then you see his name flash on the screen — 🚦LAN-DON’T CRASH🚦 — and your stomach flips like it used to before lights out.

He’s still in his race suit, curls a mess of damp ringlets, cheeks flushed like he’s been running. There’s something in his eyes, too: watercolor green, vivid and blurred around the edges, like adrenaline and disbelief have soaked into his skin.

His smile breaks the second you answer. Wide and wild and so familiar it stings.

“Did you watch?” he says, already breathless.

“Obviously,” you say, tipping your phone back so he can see the chemistry notes scattered across the desk. “Had it up on mute during organic synthesis. You’re lucky I didn’t scream when you took the final sector.”

“You think I was okay?”

“You were sick.”

He pumps a fist and flops back onto some impossibly white hotel bed, still grinning like a kid who’s snuck past curfew. The camera wobbles, then steadies on his face again: flushed and freckled, sweat still clinging to his jaw. He looks happy.

You used to know that feeling. That kind of high. The kind that only came with rubber and gasoline and the blur of corners taken clean.

Your helmet lives in the back of your closet now, tucked behind winter coats and forgotten notebooks. You’ve traded it for lab goggles and timed exams, for ink-stained hands and the quiet sort of excellence no one applauds. Your medals sit in a shoebox beneath your bed, and you haven’t opened it in over a year. You tell people you’re pre-med now. That it’s what you’ve always wanted.

Two years have dulled the ache. Sandpapered it down from a blade to something you can live with. Sometimes you still dream of the track, of the smell of rubber and the scream of engines, but you wake up and make coffee and keep studying until the want quiets again.

Lando watches you for a second. He sees things other people don’t — always has.

“You good?” he asks, voice soft now, like it used to be when he’d sneak out to meet you by the tire stacks after dark.

You nod, a little too fast. “Yeah. Just tired.”

He raises an eyebrow, not buying it. “What are you working on?”

You sigh and flip your notebook toward the screen. “Chemical compounds. I’ve got a practical on Monday. Enantiomers, ketones, the whole gang.”

He makes a face. “Nerd.”

“National treasure,” you correct, dryly. “And future doctor, maybe.”

He lights up at that. “Sick. You can be my medic when I crash.”

You roll your eyes. “So I’ll see you, what, every weekend?”

“Exactly,” he says, smug. “We’re soulmates, remember?”

You want to say, you with the stupid grin, you with the disaster curls, you with the heartbeat I could always find in the noise.But instead, you shake your head and say, “God help your insurance.”

He laughs, throws his head back, bares every tooth like he always does. There’s a soft curve in the center of his front two that never straightened out, even after braces. You used to tell him he looked like a Labrador when he smiled like that. You still think it now, but it feels like something tender and sacred, like a memory you keep pressed between pages.

“I miss you,” he says, quieter now.

You don’t say I miss the version of me that only exists around you.You just whisper, “Yeah. I know.”

The call ends eventually. It always does. But you sit there for a while after, your notebook untouched, watching the ghost of his smile in your screen’s reflection.

You’re twenty-one and a half when Lando sneaks into your college graduation. You don’t see him at first. You’re too busy sweating in your robe, clutching your diploma like it might disappear, wondering if your cap looks stupid in photos. Your parents wave from the stands, your friends cheer, and you try to hold still long enough to soak it in — but it never lands quite right. Everything feels too big, too loud, too fast.

Until he finds you.

Until he hugs you from behind and says, low in your ear, “Told you you’d look cool in a cape.”

You twist around, and there he is, in a hoodie pulled low over those unmistakable curls, sunglasses at night like the world’s worst disguise. His smile is crooked, tired. Familiar.

“What the fuck,” you whisper. “Aren’t you supposed to be—”

He grins wider. “I skipped media day.”

Your jaw drops.

“Shhh,” he adds, holding a finger to your lips. “I’ll get yelled at later. Worth it.”

You don’t know whether to laugh or hit him. So you do both —thump his arm, then drag him into a hug, still warm from the sun and whatever it means to grow up.

He stays through the party, tucked into the background, stealing finger food and smiling like he’s always belonged. He doesn’t pull attention the way he does on track. Here, he just… exists beside you. Quietly. Constantly. Every time you turn around, he’s already looking.

Later, long after the music dies and your parents have gone to bed, the two of you end up on the grass in your front yard, barefoot, robes ditched, diplomas crumpled somewhere behind you. The stars are blurry, a little from distance, a little from everything else.

He lies flat on his back, arms spread like a kid making snow angels, and says, “I’ve got a flight in two hours.”

You hum. “FP1?”

He nods.

You both fall quiet. The silence between you has never been uncomfortable. It stretches like elastic, worn in with years of knowing — from tire stacks and afterschool karting, from night tracks and vending machines, from every version of growing up that had the other curled into its corner.

“I’m scared,” you admit, finally. “For med school.”

Lando turns his head to look at you. You’re lying close, your hair fanned out against the grass, fingers plucking gently at the blades. You don’t meet his eyes, but you feel them on you. The color of seafoam, soft in the dark. The kind that still knocks the breath out of you when you're not bracing for it.

“You’ll be great.”

You scoff. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Why?”

There’s a rustle of denim and hoodie fabric, and then he’s sitting up, pulling something from his pocket. A worn-out square of photo paper, crumpled and soft at the edges. He presses it into your hand.

You blink. It’s a picture of the two of you, age nine, arms thrown around each other in the pit lane. His curls are messy and stuck to his forehead, flushed cheeks stretched in a grin so big you can count every tooth. You’re buried in his side, beaming up at him like he hung the sky. Lando’s holding a trophy, but even then, he’s not looking at it. He’s looking at you.

“You gave me your gummy worms right after that,” he says. “Said I earned it.”

You run your thumb over the crease down the middle. The image is faded now, but you remember the moment like it’s stitched into you.

He says it like it’s obvious. Like gravity. “Because we’re soulmates. And I feel it in my bones.”

You don’t answer right away. You can’t.

The stars above you scatter like sugar across navy velvet. Your eyes sting.

“You know,” you say after a while, voice low, “If you crash, I’ll be the one stitching you back together.”

He grins. Not his media-trained one — not the sharp, rehearsed smile he wears under paddock lights — but the real one. The one that splits across his face without warning. That bares all his teeth like he’s never learned to hold anything back. That’s lived on every page of your memory since you were old enough to chase him across a track.

“That’s hot,” he teases.

You roll your eyes. “You’re a nightmare.”

“But I’m your nightmare.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?

It’s always been him. Him with eyes that shift with the light, that catch everything, that still find you first.

You with your goggles and your notebooks. Him with his fireproof gloves and nowhere to land.

You, who traded circuits for classrooms.

Him, who never stopped circling back to you.

He looks at you like he always has, like you’re the only thing that’s ever made sense. You think maybe you believe him.

That you’ll be okay.

Because he said so. Because he always shows up. Because he’s flying across the world in an hour, but somehow, you’ve never felt more grounded.

At twenty-three, he invites you to Monaco.

You’re dead on your feet when he calls. It’s nearly midnight and you’re cramming for your pathology exam, cross-eyed from the fluorescent lighting in your apartment. You don’t even remember what you said exactly; something like “med school is killing me and I swear to God I haven’t seen the sun in four days.” Laughed it off with the tired grin he knows too well.

You forgot it by morning.

He didn’t.

Now, a week later, you’re barefoot on his balcony, letting the gold-tinged air sink into your skin as the sun sets over the Riviera. The track lies sprawled beneath you like a secret. The sea beyond it glints like something ancient, something wild.

Your breath hitches without meaning to.

“I used to dream about racing this track,” you say, barely above a whisper. “When I was fifteen, I’d watch the onboard cams on my laptop and try to memorize every corner. I knew the lines like poetry.”

Beside you, Lando is quiet. But when you glance over, there’s a glint in his eye, the one that always spelled trouble. Or magic. Or both. His curls are pushed back haphazardly, like he ran a hand through them too many times on the flight, but there’s still that boyishness, untamed and familiar.

“What?” you ask warily.

He doesn’t answer. Just grabs your wrist. “C’mon.” “Lando—” “No time. Let’s go.”

You barely have time to yank on your sneakers before he’s dragging you out the door, past the sleepy concierge and down the quiet streets like he’s done it a thousand times. He takes sharp turns with muscle memory, his fingers tight around yours.

Only when the city’s noise has thinned and the streetlights spill onto the famous asphalt do you realize where you are.

“Lando,” you whisper. “We can’t—” “We’re not driving,” he grins. “Just running it. Like when we were kids, remember?" “FIA—” “Would fine me until my hair turns gray.” He pauses. “Still worth it.”

Your heart kicks against your ribs, but your legs are already moving.

You run.

Past Sainte Devote, hair flying behind you. Past the casino, your laughter ricocheting off elegant facades. You’re breathless by the tunnel, aching by the chicane, but he’s still pulling you like he did when you were kids and he insisted you could make it to the top of that hill if you just didn’t stop.

The air smells like salt and speed.

By the time you reach the harbor, your lungs are burning and your face is flushed and he’s glowing, cheeks pink, smile wide, teeth bared like he’s daring the night to find a brighter joy than this. He looks every bit like the boy you fell in love with fifteen years ago.

The one with grass stains on his overalls. The one whose curls never obeyed a comb. The one who grinned like mischief itself. The one whose eyes — not blue, not quite green — shimmered like someone had taken watercolors and washed them into something soft and stupidly beautiful.

You stop, breathless. He does too.

And for a second, it feels like everything’s still. Like the world just pressed pause.

Later, you sit at the edge of the marina, legs swinging over the water. Your shoes are abandoned on the dock. The air is heavy with the scent of engine oil and sea spray. The waves slap gently against the boats, like applause winding down after a show.

Beside you, Lando says nothing. But you feel him watching. And when you turn, he’s looking at you like he’s never seen you before.

But of course he has. He’s seen you in worse light: that post-rain haze in your old garage, your hair frizzed to hell and braces catching on your lower lip, oil on your jeans and mud on your ankles. He’s seen you bleary-eyed on FaceTime at 3AM. He’s seen you panicking over exams, crying in the paddock, snorting over bad pizza and better jokes.

Still, he looks at you now like he forgot the color of your laugh until this exact moment brought it back. His hair hangs loose over his forehead, still damp from the run, and the way his mouth twitches — almost a grin, almost not — makes your stomach turn over.

He bumps your knee with his.

“You okay?” he asks.

You nod. “Better than okay.” “You looked happy back there.” “I was happy back there.” “Good.” He’s quiet for a beat. Then: “I miss that.”

You glance at him, surprised.

“Miss what?”

“You. Like that.” He exhales, eyes trained on the moon's reflection on the water. “Laughing. Running. Being ridiculous with me.”

You don’t say anything.

He does.

“I miss you all the time,” he says, voice low. “Even when I’m with you.”

Your breath catches.

“You’re always somewhere else now. In your books. In your head. In hospitals I can’t pronounce.”

Your heart tugs at the edges. He doesn’t sound bitter. Just tired. Honest.

“I get it,” he adds. “It’s important. It matters. But sometimes I think about that summer when we were fifteen, and you stole my hoodie, and we made fake pit passes just to sneak into the garage.”

You laugh, quiet. “We were so stupid.”

“We were so happy.”

The silence after that isn’t awkward. It’s full. Like the city’s holding its breath.

You look over at him. Really look.

His lashes are darker now. His jaw’s sharper. A lock of hair curls against his temple, untamed. But he’s still him. Still the boy in the mud, the boy who taught you how to drift on your cousin’s farm, who shared his Capri-Sun at the track because you forgot yours, again. Still the one who taped your wrist when you wiped out in the rain and told you you’d make it to Monaco someday.

And here you are.

“Lando,” you murmur. “Yeah?” “I missed you too.”

He doesn’t wait this time.

He kisses you like he’s been waiting years to remember how.

And maybe he has. Maybe you both have.

The world blurs for a moment: the moon climbing higher, the boats bobbing gently below, the buzz of the city dissolving behind you, and all that’s left is him.

All sun-warmed skin and trembling fingers and eyes the color of every good memory — soft-washed, warm, like light bleeding through a window at golden hour.

He pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against yours, breath mingling with yours.

“I didn’t think you’d let me do that,” he whispers.

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

You both laugh. Just a little. Just enough.

You’re twenty-five when you catch him watching you from across a hotel room in Japan. There’s a storm outside, low thunder rolling through the glass, and Lando’s shirt is damp from the run to the lobby. His curls are still wet, clinging to his forehead in loose, chaotic swirls. He should be tired — hell, you’re tired — but he’s watching you like you’re something new.

It’s not the first time he’s looked at you like this. Not by a long shot.

He’s never been subtle about it, not when he warms your hands in his pockets on cold walks back from the paddock, not when he lights up the second your name shows up on his phone. He’s the kind of boy who leaves his heart in plain sight, who grins with his whole body, who never learned how to want quietly.

You feel his gaze before you meet it. The kind that makes your chest go a little soft, like the edges of a photograph curling with time.

“You’re staring,” you say, without looking up from your textbook.

“I’m allowed to,” he replies. “I’m in love with you.”

You blink. Not because you didn’t know — he’s never been subtle — but because of how easily he says it. No drama. No orchestra. Just him. Lando, who once stuck gum in your hair during a twelve-hour drive to Wales. Lando, who whispered you’ve got me into your hair the night your grandmother died. Lando, who still trips over his own shoes in hotel corridors and grins like a child when room service arrives.

You toss a pillow at him. “Say it prettier.”

He catches it one-handed, kaleidoscope eyes glinting in the dim light. Smirks. “You make me want to write poetry, but all I know how to do is drive.”

That shuts you up.

His eyes crinkle at the corners, a blue-green haze in the lightning glow, and he grins wider, like he knows he’s just won something. Like he’d lose a thousand races and still call this the prize.

“Told you,” he murmurs.

There are races, years, chapters.

Seasons where you barely see each other, where you wake up to hotel ceilings and unfamiliar time zones and forget what city you’re in until he kisses your shoulder and mumbles something in a sleep-heavy voice like, It’s Thursday. We’re in Austin. His curls are flattened from sleep, his voice rough at the edges, and his arms still warm from whatever dream he was having.

Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he doesn’t. You never love him any more or less.

He still gets grumpy when he’s hungry, still laughs at memes from 2014, still buys you the weird flavored gum at petrol stations because you used to love this stuff, remember? Still leans into your space like gravity’s something personal. Still has a grin that cracks through your worst moods like sunlight.

There are cameras. Headlines. Speculations. But you’ve always known who he was.

You know the versions of him that never make it to the press: the quiet frustration of a red flag, the way he presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek when he’s nervous, the silence he sinks into after a loss. The way his curls flop over his forehead when he finally takes off his helmet. The way he says your name when he’s scared. The way he finds you in every crowd like it’s instinct. How his eyes — storm-colored, sometimes soft, sometimes sharp — flick to you the second anything starts to feel too loud.

And you’ve always let him. You always will.

He’s thirty-one when you find an old photo in a drawer: the two of you, muddy and grinning, barely ten years old. His curls are a mess, more fluff than form. You’re wearing his jacket, sleeves bunched up to your elbows. Neither of you have front teeth. You’re both sun-drenched and ridiculous.

“God,” you mutter, holding it up to the light. “We were a disaster.”

From the kitchen, he says, “Still are.”

You hear the clink of a spoon against ceramic. The rustle of his socks on the tile.

“You still love me?” you call, teasing, but not really.

He appears in the doorway, hoodie half-on, spoon in his mouth. He’s older now — jaw more carved, eyes a little softer around the edges — but the grin he gives you is the same one from every memory that matters. That lopsided, toothy thing like he’s always one second from bursting into laughter. A single curl falls against his temple, and for a moment, it’s hard to tell what year it is.

He swallows and says, “I’ll love you even when we’re bones.”

You believe him.

You always have.