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Contrary to his general overwhelming Americanness, Logan was not an overly loud person (no matter what the Europeans all expected).
As a general rule of thumb, Logan tried not to be inconvenient. His parents had always seemed so stressed about his and Dalton's careers, Logan hadn't wanted to cause any more problems for them than he already had.
Sure, he went through a phase where he bit people, but it wasn't like his parents even really had to deal with the few consequences of that. It'd only taken one time being yelled at for little toddler Logan to stop biting people in front of his parents. Dalton only encouraged him and he always provided an alibi. Their parents always believed Dalton.
His very sweet demeanour also really helped sell the whole thing. Except for the biting issue, Logan was by all reports sweet and quiet. He said 'please' and 'thank you', and he rarely whined. He helped tidy up and stayed out of the way. Okay, maybe there was a slight problem with his tendency to vanish, but the adults should have been paying attention, so he didn't think that that was his fault.
At the heart of it, he just wanted to be good.
When Logan had made the move to Europe in order to pursue karting, he'd stopped being his parent's problem for the most part. His guardianship had been given to some law firm every time he switched countries, and he had a performance coach or mechanic who made sure he got to races and didn't fail out. His parents always made sure he had enough money and well… he was an independent kid.
As an American — blond and blue-eyed at that — he stood out in Europe way more than he ever had as a weird kid in Florida.
The other karting kids all thought he was weird and they didn't like his accent. He learned that he couldn't let his laugh be the loudest in a room, and it really was just better if he didn't talk too much. No one liked the loud American, and he'd always been good at knowing when he wasn't wanted.
Logan gained a reputation for being friendly but quiet. He matched Oscar's snarky but equally quiet energy, and they just clicked.
(It hadn't stopped him from biting people, but he got away with it because wasn't he a bit old for that kind of thing? Besides, who would believe that sweet and gentle Logan Sargeant would bite someone?)
Basically, Logan raising his voice for anything but cheering was not only unusual, but completely unheard of.
Logan was nowhere near as unflappable as Oscar, but people tended to assume that not a lot got him riled up. That wasn't exactly true. Logan was just really good at not getting into situations where he would break and do more than snap at someone.
One thing that would get him going without fail was someone doing or saying something that Logan perceived to be stupid. He had a very low tolerance for idiocy, and he tended to do a rather poor job at hiding his lip curls of disdain — not that he ever tried all that hard. Sometimes, people deserved to know that he was irritated or disgusted by them. They should feel ashamed.
Idiots were a dime a dozen, but there had only been one person that had ever gotten Logan screeching to the point of incoherence, and no, it wasn't Oscar. He thought everything Oscar did was endearing; even when he pretended to be a car up until he was 10.
No, it was Arthur Leclerc who had been sent by God to test Logan.
Despite not having all that much of their careers overlap, they'd seen more than enough of each other at tracks and on the paddock to not only have formed a passing acquaintanceship, but actually a solid friendship. Arthur was kind and loyal. He didn't even resent his brother or his family for prioritizing Charles and his career over Arthur. He was just a genuine guy.
He was also exactly the type of airhead that blonds were stereotyped as.
Logan didn't know how to deal with it. Some of Arthur's greatest hits included walking right into glass doors repeatedly (as in not just many different door, but also the same door more than once), tripping over his own shoe, letting Charles convince him the Earth was flat for at least 6 months, and accidentally eating a dozen dog biscuits thinking that they were cookies. Every new instance of unfettered stupidity was both baffling and impressive.
Once Arthur got an idea in his head, it was nearly impossible to convince him otherwise, no matter how much evidence he was shown. It drove Logan absolutely mad when the thing he was convinced of was so painfully wrong it was comedic. It kept Logan up at night sometimes.
Of course, their little quartet — Oscar, Logan, Fred, and Arthur — split up somewhat as their careers all went in different directions. They kept in touch and they spent time together, just less so after Logan and Oscar got in F1 — Oscar because he deserved it and Logan more out of a fluke.
With Fred signing on as a reserve driver with Mercedes and Arthur more often than not being Charles' guest, they suddenly had much more time that they could sneak away together. Not often, but enough that it left Logan rather nostalgic. It was decided that they'd mostly do this in the bowels of Mercedes.
Arthur insisted they would stand out too much at Ferrari and after Spygate, they'd really cracked down on who was allowed inside the red hospitality. Oscar was in good standing with McLaren, but the papaya gave Logan a headache when it was plastered everywhere, and there was way too strong of a possibility of Lando showing up uninvited and refusing to leave.
Logan was walking on eggshells at Williams ever since he'd signed his single year renewal with Williams, and he didn't want to risk it with how they all seemed to lose brain cells as soon as they got too close to each other. That really just left Mercedes. They had a huge team and a pleasant colour scheme, so they had a higher chance of going unnoticed and not giving Logan a headache.
Fred was also a reserve driver, so he didn't exactly get a driver's room of his own. That was fine. The Mercedes hospitality was full of strange empty meeting rooms. None of them really knew why and Fred didn't ask. It worked out well for them anyway, so Logan wasn't about to complain.
They agreed on times via cursed group chat (it was titled 'Besticles') and then all made their way into the Mercedes hospitality as sneakily as possible.
For the most part, these little meetings were short and just a chance for them to bitch about their grievances together and relax where they wouldn't be found by their respective teams. Well, theoretically Fred could be found, but as a new reserve driver when the team had Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and also Mick Schumacher, it meant that he wasn't exactly in high demand during the day. He just had simulator hell on the off hours.
If Logan was going to be honest, he had no idea how they'd gotten to this topic of conversation. Oscar was running late, having briefly been waylaid by Lando because the Brit had been giving him shit for something or another. That meant that Logan, Fred, and Arthur were left to their own devices. This wasn't great, because 9 times out of 10, Oscar had the collective brain cell.
They'd been having a perfectly pleasant time right up until Arthur managed to sneak in the fact that he thought hammerhead sharks had two heads.
"—you know the sharks with 2 heads."
"Hammerheads?" Fred suggested.
"Yes! Those."
"I'm sorry, what?" Logan interrupted. "Pause. What do you mean you think hammerhead sharks have two heads?"
Arthur looked at him with that puppy-like confusion of his. "Because they do?" he said, tilting his head.
Logan gaped at him for a long moment. Arthur had said a lot of stupid shit — the 'Tupperware' vs. 'Tubberware' debate could be excused due to Arthur not always having the best grasp on English — but for some reason, this statement floored Logan.
"No, they don't," he said.
Arthur frowned. "Yes," he countered. "Look at the heads. It is two." Arthur reached for his phone, tapping away for a moment, tongue trapped between his lips. Then he flipped his phone to proudly show them a picture of a hammerhead shark. He pointed at the two sides of the head.
Logan could not believe that he was actually having this conversation.
"That's two halves of the same head," Logan said in exasperation.
Arthur shook his head. "No, see? One, two heads," he said as he pointed again.
Logan scrubbed a hand down the side of his face and took a small moment to regret his existence.
(Fred remained wisely silent.)
"They have one brain."
"No."
Now Logan was pulling out his own phone and googling pictures of hammerhead shark diagrams. Unbelievable.
"Dumbass, look," he snapped, now realizing that Arthur was very serious about this and Logan was subsequently very annoyed with his inability to accept reality. "Look at this. There's the fucking brain," he said, pointing at the singular blue blob at the center of the head leading pretty much directly to the spine. You know, like most vertebrates.
Arthur squinted at the picture on Logan's phone for way too long. "The brain is that yellow line," he declared.
"That's green, you colourblind fuck."
And from there it really devolved. Logan didn't know who started yelling first, but within seconds they were both screaming at each other. Admittedly, Arthur's screaming was a lot more in confusion while Logan's was an unreasonable amount of anger at Arthur doubling down on his stupid and incorrect take.
Logan had really begun to reach an impressive pitch on his 'hey dumbass' when Oscar came through the door, eyes wide.
"What the fuck?" Oscar asked as he quickly closed the door behind him. "I could hear you from down the hallway.
Fred perked up. "Really? I thought that these rooms were pretty soundproof." He turned to smile at Logan. "Really impressive set of lungs there, Sarge."
Logan pointed a single finger at him. "Don't."
"What could you have possibly been arguing about?" Oscar asked, his voice exasperated and long-suffering. "I don't think I've ever heard you get like this before."
Logan huffed. "Arthur thinks that hammerhead sharks have two heads."
"One head plus one head equals two heads," Arthur added helpfully.
"No, half a head plus half a head equals one head," Logan grit through his teeth. "Animals don't just have two heads! If they do, it's because they ate another fetus in the womb. They're an anomaly, not an entire fucking species, you absolute donut."
Oscar groaned. "Arthur man, come on. You can't actually be serious."
Arthur shrugged a little helplessly, still obviously a little confused about how they'd gotten here. This was very much like the time that they'd gone in circles because Arthur had not been able to comprehend accordion doors — he'd apparently been lying about knowing what an accordion was.
Oscar just sighed and turned to look at Logan. "And Logan really? Is it that serious to be screeching about?"
Logan nodded, setting his jaw. "It absolutely is that serious."
"It was very funny," Fred chimed in. "He started with good arguments and then it was just yelling. I didn't know he could make those noises."
"Yes, thank you Fred." Oscar said.
"I still do not understand," Arthur grumbled. "The shark has two heads."
"We are not doing this again—"
"Well, it was nice to see you," Oscar cut in, interrupting Logan before he could go off again — which was probably for the best. "But I think it's best if we stop it here. Both Logan and I have to be going." Oscar reached forward and grabbed Logan by the elbow to drag him towards the door. Fred waved cheerfully while Arthur said 'bye' with decidedly less gusto.
They managed to sneak out relatively Scot-free, only bumping into a single intern.
The next day, there were rumours of a screaming match coming from the bowels of Mercedes. The only video floating around had only caught muffled yelling — nothing identifiable — so the story didn't really catch any traction. The big story was really the disaster happening down at Williams.
It was just another weird little rumour to add to the list for the race weekend.