Work Text:
“Ah, ah,” Mika says, grinning. His face is shiny with sweat and champagne. “Rule two.”
Michael rolls his eyes and leans forward just a little, to feel Mika’s fingers tighten in hair, before pulling away. “I know. I know.”
He mouths at Mika’s neck instead until his head falls back with a groan. His skin is cool and damp. Mika’s nails dig into the base of his skull, a dull blunt pressure.
“Hey,” Michael asks, knocking his foot against Mika’s. He is lying flat on his back on a metal cabinet, legs dangling off the side. It has been raining for the past half hour, sheets of water pouring down from the sky, and it doesn’t look like it is stopping anytime soon.
Mika lifts his arm away from his face and raises his eyebrows.
“Is spitting in your mouth like kissing?”
David makes a short choking sound, and goes bent double at the waist as he coughs. Michael rolls his eyes. Mika grins. He sits up after a moment, and thumps his teammate on the back. The air smells of water and tarmac, hanging heavy.
“And, okay?” Michael says, arms crossed. His fingers are tucked in under his armpits. Spa is fucking freezing this year. “Is it? Does it break the rule? I saw the film a long time ago, so.”
Mika squints at him like he is being particularly difficult, which, while it is a look that Michael is used to being directed at him, it is not usually coming from Mika. Mika has always known Michael, even when he didn’t like what he saw.
“What film?”
Michael exhales, shifting onto his other foot. “Pretty Woman. You know, the film with the rule.”
“Michael,” Mika starts, his face doing something complicated that Michael isn’t able to read. His stomach curdles. “Are you saying you thought of this rule because you watched a film with Julia Roberts?”
Michael frowns. “You said to say one.” It comes out as more of an accusation than he means it to be. It is not like he wanted any rules in the first place. He had just wanted Mika and with Mika came rules. Simple as that.
“Jesus Christ,” David says, eyes wide. “You’re both fucking insane.” Michael ignores him. Mika only laughs, loud and startling. It is a little bit sharp. Sometimes Michael misses the days when nothing he said hurt Mika.
These are your rules, Michael thinks. Yours.
“No,” Mika says. He sounds almost fond, and his tone is gentle. Michael swallows back bile. “It doesn’t break the rule but I don’t want you spitting on me so it is still no.”
Michael shrugs, and looks onto the track, out of the open garage doors. He hopes it comes across at least somewhat casually. He will think of something else.
“You know,” Michael starts, propping himself up on his elbows. “All day people ask me what I want. How they can help me celebrate.”
Mika hums, resting his cheek against the side of Michael’s knee. Michael watched him shave this morning but he already has stubble growing in, scratchy and ticklish. Mika presses his mouth lightly on the skin there. “Have they?”
“Yes.” Michael watches the shadow Mika’s eyelashes make along his nose. “But not you. You have said nothing.”
Mika laughs. He has been chewing at his mouth all day, lips chapped. Michael’s knuckles ache as he laces his fingers together behind his head. He bites the side of his cheek.
“I already know what you want,” Mika says easily, and it is a warning for all that it comes out very soft.
Rule number two. Michael hates rules. His mouth tastes of blood. It sits sour and sticky on his tongue.
“Okay,” Michael gestures with his chin, smiling. “Show me then.”
Mika scraps his teeth along the curve of Michael’s thigh, eyes bright. There is something grateful in the slant of his eyebrows. Michael closes his eyes as he swallows him down, mouth hot and wet and sucking. His breath catches in his throat and stays there. His chest feels all tight and warmly sore.
(Years ago, when they first started this and Mika came up with The Rules, Michael jerked himself off in a shower after a race picturing Mika’s face when he stood on that top step, champagne sliding down his neck, Mika’s broad shoulders in white, Mika’s sweat dark hair, Mika, Mika, Mika, Mika. He had licked his hand clean before it could wash away. The water had gone cold by the time someone came knocking.)
(He can’t look at Mika like this. Not when he knows, for once, what Mika’s mouth tastes like.)
Mika doesn’t think about Michael when he is driving. Or, well, no, that is not quite the truth. Of course, he thinks about Michael. How can he not when the man drives around in that stupidly bright red car and does things that should be impossible but aren’t because he does them and dares Mika to follow along.
And Mika is many things and some days he even thinks most of them are good but being able to let Michael Schumacher go without following is not one of them.
So, yeah, he thinks about Michael when he is driving but not like that . Not like how he knows Michael thinks of him when he climbs out of his car after a race, sweating and alive and still hungry. The cars and racing and winning doesn’t do it for him, not how they do for most of the others, Mika knows. It is not bad, especially after a podium, but it’s just – more Michael’s thing than his.
Still, he can’t help but think of Michael when he overtakes him in Spa, only barely registering Zonta afterwards. Can’t help but laugh and wonder if kissing him would feel like this — exhilarating and fast and so caught up in one another that they don’t notice anyone else.
Michael asks him to go skydiving a number of times throughout the years. Mika has never known how to tell him he has to leave danger behind in the car.
“You are leaving,”
Michael’s mouth is in a flat line, jaw tight. It is not the first time Mika has looked at him and wanted. It is not the first time Mika has looked at him and hated him. It is not even the first time both of them have happened at the same time.
It is the first time, however, that he has hated him more than he wanted him.
“Yes,” Mika tells him. “I am.” Michael’s hand has stayed curled around the door handle, knuckles white. He doesn’t step inside. He doesn’t say, why didn’t you tell me. He doesn’t say, how dare you not let me know before everyone else. He doesn’t say anything. Only stares at Mika, the door wide open, letting all the cold air in.
Eventually, he nods once, and leaves. Mika rests his head on the cool floor for a moment, eyes squeezed shut so hard that his head aches, before going back to his pre race stretches.
Mika isn’t sure what it says that Aryton never once asks him about Michael. He doesn’t avoid mentioning him, before and after they pick up what is between them. Mika has never been one to leave blood in the water.
Aryton has never been one not to find some anyway.
Aryton refers to Michael exclusively in racing terms, and not in the way that he does when talking but not quite talking about Alain. He talks about Michael like he bothers him, like he respects and dismisses him in the same hand, as a colleague and stranger and friend of a friend. He never throws him in Mika’s face. Not once.
Decades later, Mika will wonder if this is out of kindness or mirrored sympathy or maybe Mika just wasn’t enough of a competition for him to bother. It will prick at him more than he likes.
But you love him, Mika will say, when he is older and no longer racing. His knees ache sometimes now, in the mornings or when there is rain in the air. Lewis will shrug, eyes familiarly soft, and will say, so?
Mika will look at him. Look at the broadness of his shoulders covered in black lace, at the careless bend of his wrist, fingers wrapping around a stem of his champagne glass, at the nine little stars curling behind his ear, at his hollowed out cheeks under the gala lights. On stage, Sebastian will tell a joke, hosting Lewis’s last FIA reward ceremony, and Lewis’s smile will widen.
He loves you. Mika will keep his voice low.
Lewis will frown at him then and laugh. So?
So, Mika will think. So. So. So.
Mika , Lewis will say, leaning forward, drink sloshing dangerously close to the rim. Valtteri has noticed them from two tables over. His face is shadowed. Love is not enough, man. You need — you need to want it too. Want it more than, well. You know.
Mika will go to say no, he doesn’t know but he will stop. The only thing Lewis has ever asked from him has been honesty. Want it more than what?
Michael had only asked about the rules once. They had been nagging at him, scratching nails behind his eyes for the past few weeks. It was the first time they have had sex in months. Michael refuses to sleep with him while Mika is entertaining his yearly girl-next-door.
Mika’s skin had tasted of salt and heat under his tongue. He was squirming as Michael plastered himself onto his back, chest pressed up against Mika’s spine, lube and sweat drying between them.
Mika laughed when he asked why they have them, what’s the point, and only said, “Maybe you scare me, hmm? They protect me.”
Michael’s nails left little red half moons in his palms. Mika shoved him off when he messed with his hair. “If you aren’t serious, just say so, Mika. Don’t joke.”
Because it was a joke. Mika scared of Michael? Impossible. Michael couldn’t make him afraid even if he tried.
Want it more than not wanting, Mika will think, hours later, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Want it more than the fear. Want it more than being scared that you’re not actually able to love him like that, to be with him like that, while you are losing and he is winning and he is loving that so very much. Want it more than the dread that, maybe, just maybe, he only loves you, he only lets himself love you, because five, seven, eight times out of ten, he can beat you.
“You have….rules,” Aryton says, leaning back on the driver’s parade railing.
Michael shrugs. “Don’t you?”
“Me.” Aryton narrows his eyes at him.
“Yes, you and Prost. You don’t have rules?”
Michael had assumed it was the way things went. He never pays much attention to anything outside of racing. He is never quite sure how these things work. Normally goes along with whatever Corinna or Mika tells him to do.
“No,” Aryton says, the word slow and careful. “But then, we are not fucking.”
Michael frowns. He turns to face him fully. “Really? Hmm.”
“What.” Aryton is glaring, the set of his shoulders sharp and vicious. Michael smiles at him and doesn’t even try to hide his pity.
“I was wondering. Thought you were just bad, you know? For him to be so mad at you when you suck his dick. I see now.”
Aryton blinks at him. Michael plants his feet, waiting for the fight that he knows he’ll get. He flexes his fingers in his pockets and swallows. Aryton only tilts his head, considering, before laughing. There is something softer to the line of his mouth than there normally is when he is talking to Michael.
“Ah, maybe, maybe, but you know sex does not fix everything?”
“It doesn’t make things worse.”
Aryton laughs again and does that thing with his face that he knows Michael hates, all condescending and knowing. “It really really does, but who cares. No matter.” He waves a hand in the air between them. Michael eyes it, teeth heavy in his mouth, wondering if he will try to squeeze his shoulder or something, like he has seen him to do Mika. Aryton must pick up on something in his face because he pulls it back quickly.
“You will see,” he says. “You hate him, or he hate you, it will be the same. What this sport does.”
“No.” Michael’s toes curl in his shoes. The ground shifts beneath him. This is why he never talks to Aryton. Nothing good ever comes out of it. “No, we are not you. I will never hate him.”
“Why,” Aryton asks, eyebrows raised. “Because you suck his dick? Or he suck you? Don’t be stupid, Schumacher, not a good look for you. Maybe you not hate him, but you will want to and this is enough.”
“You are a champion,” Aryton tells him and Michael has no title but he knows it is true. “You take and what — you think you stop here? You think you not take from him? You think he not take from you ?”
“He can’t take if I give it.” Michael snaps and then bites back a wince. Aryton only shrugs, turning away. Michael doesn’t think about the conversation again until, years later, he is fucking Mika in his hotel room. Mika’s bony ankles dig into the small of his back and his hands are pulling are Michael’s hair. It is the first time they do this face to face, and they are pressed together so completely Michael has little space to move. He grinds his hips in tight and close, making Mika groan. The sound ruffles Michael’s hair.
Michael’s third championship trophy gleams in the corner. Mika’s pokadotted sock dangles off its edge.
“Any regrets?” he is asked the race before his last one. It is not the first time he is asked it and it is not the last but it is the first time he hears the question when Michael is there, one person away.
“No,” he says, grinning. He flicks his hair out of his eyes. “I have done it all, yes?”
The reporter, tall, curly brown hair, glasses, English, just laughs. Two time Formula One World Champion, twenty time Grand Prix winner and one of the few drivers Michael Schumacher openly respects. What more could Mika want?
He catches himself staring at Michael’s mouth later on during the drivers briefing and is never more sure in his decision to retire — take a sabbatical — than in that moment.