fmu: chapter thirteen ;p (Patreon)

fill (me) up

synopsis: he's stubborn. he's cocky. and he's unfortunately stupidly in love with you. not that you've noticed. you went from being his biggest fan to being too busy chasing your own acting career to pay attention to him or his wins. that is, until your agent and his PR manager suggest an affair between everyone's least favorite actress and racer that lands you directly in his lap once again.

pairing: grumpy!f1 driver x actress f!reader

content: angst/fluff, PR relationships, past toxic/controlling relationships, complicated feelings, slower build, reluctant/avoidant reader, jealousy, HEAVY PINING, so much yearning its insane, grumpy but soft f1 driver, HEAVY ANGST IN THIS ONE, obliviousness, reader is bed rotting and is depressed

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Missing you was miserable. 

“Can I borrow your phone?” 

He’d spent the past eight hours on a flight – miserably failing to comfortably fall asleep and shifting in the seat while shitty movies played on the screen. It would be monumentally better if they had you in it. If he could see you smile and giggle, even if it was all fake and forced. 

“Did yours die?” His teammate snickered, reclining back across from him as he drank something fruity and bubbly. Comfortably leaning back, totally relaxed while he resisted the urge to throttle the jerk every time he tried to pry into his personal life right as he started to drift off. 

“Forgot it,” he grumbled, teeth gritting as he felt a vein throb across his forehead. 

“Guess you’ll just have to focus on winning this weekend,” his team principal chimed in from the row behind, no doubt on his own phone.

How the hell was he supposed to focus on anything else when he wouldn’t even be able to check in with you? 

No. 

He would borrow someone else’s after they landed. His assistant or one of the guards, god, a stranger’s phone was better than nothing if he had to stoop to that. 

“You wanna call your girlfriend or something?” 

“Yeah,” he begrudgingly admitted, leg bouncing as he glanced out the window at the descending plane and the thinning clouds. 

“So, like, how serious is it?” His teammate pried, lips pressing together in a thin line as he tilted his head to the side, trying to assess…something. Where or not he was being genuine?

If it was just for PR? 

He had seemed annoyingly interested in you when you first met. Maybe he was sporting a little crush. Convinced he had a chance if your relationship wasn’t real. The jagged edge of jealousy dragging across his heart as he haughtily held his head higher. 

“It’s not really your business,” he heard himself snap back, more irritable than he had any real reason to be. 

He wanted to know what you were doing. If you were curled up in your own bed right now, frowning at your phone waiting for a reply he had no way to send. 

Maybe he shouldn’t borrow his teammate’s phone. 

Not if he’d probably just save your number and shoot his shot the second it looked like there was so much as a simple fracture between you and him. 

What he was really annoyed with was himself. 

Replaying the last few minutes before he left his apartment, scrounging his memory and wondering how the hell he fucked and forgot his stupid phone when he was shoving his stuff in his bag. 

Their team principal showed up after his workout shower, barging into his apartment like he owned it – although he supposed he technically was the one who signed his paychecks, rushing him to pack the rest of his stuff up and get on the private plane to make it to the next round of racing in time for press. 

He guessed it must have just slipped his mind. 

And now he was paying the price of wishing and wondering and waiting for his next little slice of you. Starving to see your face, to feel your skin, to hear your voice when he was pointedly aware of every second that passed without you there. 

“Dickhead,” his teammate muttered, just to get scolded by their team principal as the plane finally landed on the tarmac. 

In his head, he was already thinking about what a goddamn relief it would be when he got you on the phone, shoulders slumping as he covered up his mouth to yawn. 

He wanted you. 

But it currently felt like his body might give out if he didn’t get some sleep first. 

Although, falling asleep to the sound of you in his ears might be precisely what he needed. 

Shuffling his stuff into a car, sitting in the back as he leaned against the thick tinted glass as they travelled to the fancy hotel he’d be stuck staying out the next few days.

It felt like there were even more stupid paparazzi than usual waiting for him around the entrance, calling out his name and questions he tuned out, jaw tensing as he rushed through the doors, security guards stepping in to shield the way as he walked over to get checked in. 

He’d done it all before. 

The monotony of providing information and getting the key cards and grunting that he really didn’t need anything sent up to his room before going up to the elevator to find it. But this time he paused, glancing over to his guard before grinding his molars, “Can I borrow your phone?” 

“It actually just died,” he awkwardly muttered back. 

Of fucking course. 

That was just his luck, wasn’t it? 

He knew it was going to be a long weekend. 

But he hadn’t expected it to be so spectacularly awful. 

He slept like shit. He drove like shit. Barely making it in the top five each practice session and getting snappy with the stupid interviews they forced them to do. And to top it all off, every single time someone finally let him borrow their phone and he tried to call you, you wouldn’t fucking pick up. 

It wouldn’t even go to voicemail. 

Were you pissed at him? Or just busy? 

His manager kept him fucking booked the entire weekend, dragging him from event to the social media team to training and barely giving him enough time to fucking eat. By the time he got back to his room in the evenings, he was too exhausted to do anything other than sleep. 

Part of him tried to say it was for the best that you were too busy to come this weekend. 

He’d feel even shittier if you were here and he couldn’t find any time to spare for you. 

God, he couldn’t even find more than a handful of moments to sign shit for a few fans. 

Even if it was killing him to not be sleeping next to you in the too-big bed, bored of staring at the ceiling and dozing off when the only tv in his ridiculously expensive hotel room was apparently broken too. 

He had to catch a break soon. 

Maybe the universe was just giving him a bunch of bad luck because something better was on the way. 

A summer break he could actually spend doing something fun with you. 

Could you get away from work long enough to go on a cruise? 

Spend a week by the ocean by his actual apartment? Let him show you a part of his life that was stable? 

Still, beneath all his suffering, something started to strike him as…off. 

He didn’t know what it was. At first. 

The way people looked at him with almost pity all weekend? How there was almost always a team member sticking by his side when he wasn’t in his car, coming up with excuses to never let him have even five minutes on his own except to take a piss? 

But it wasn’t until a fuck up during qualifying got him stuck in P4 that he figured out it wasn’t just suspicion when some douchebag reporter shoved a microphone in his face and started a question with given everything he must be going through. 

It took everything in him not to ask back what the fuck did he think he was going through. 

But it was how everyone else nervously glanced away that gave it away. 

The entire fucking team was hiding something from him. 

He didn’t know what he said. 

Just some bullshit to get away, storming back to the garage before anyone could intercept him, zeroing in on the first person with a device out. 

“What the hell is going on?” He grumbled, snatching the phone out of the fucking social media admin’s hand – and all it took was clicking on the stupid news app to see it. 

“Wait-” 

His breakup being proclaimed to the public in an obnoxiously vague headline. 

Differing Interests. Conflicting Schedules. 

No no no no. 

“Is this a fucking joke?” 

He knew it wasn’t. 

But he couldn’t stop scrolling, ignoring the stammered protests of people trying to calm him down before he blew up. 

And the next thing he saw was enough to light the fuse. 

Your asshole ex-boyfriend was kissing you. 

And not for a scene. 

Right by your car, his mouth on yours, the words below it painting a secret love affair of former lovers still pathetically pining for each other and brought back together by fate again. 

He didn’t need to read more to know who was responsible for it. Who paid for it to be posted and printed. 

His heart dropped. And his stomach sunk down into the concrete right there with it. 

All his frustrated feelings bubbling up and burning through him as his eyes irritatingly picked up on details that just dragged him deeper into blind rage. 

That goddamn creep was even cupping your face, kissing you like you were his to keep, your shoulders tense and frozen, surprise written all over your face – not that the news story bothered to point that out. 

He must have caught you off guard. Done it when you weren’t expecting it – and when he knew someone was lurking to capture it on camera.  

It wasn’t the first time he wanted to kill him.

But it had never hit him quite so viscerally, blind rage locking and loading in his veins as someone grabbed his arm and started to drag him somewhere that him losing it wouldn’t be videoed or shared. 

The only thing keeping him remotely calm was thinking of you. 

Where you were or how you were feeling right now, how upset you had to be facing the reception of this all alone. 

He didn’t want to race tomorrow. 

He didn’t want to do anything, actually, other than get his ass back on a plane and go to you. 

“Look, before you say-” 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he hissed, ripping his arm away just to look up and realize it was his team principal, pulling him into a private room – his engineer and publicist following in, all ready to deescalate this, to turn this into something that could be smoothed over. 

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me-” It hit him before he even finished shouting. Reality snapping in as he froze mid-question, jaw going slack as he stared down the team that was supposed to be supporting him. 

“We didn’t want there to be any distractions for you this weekend,” his team principal sharply spoke, trying to assert his authority as if he’d ever given a shit. 

Pieces of the past few days coming together in his head, his gut churning as a fresh wave of disgust washed over him. 

“You stole my phone,” he bluntly said, dark eyes narrowing as the depth of their deception started to sink in. 

They had known – and didn’t say shit. Went to wild lengths to hide it from him.

You weren’t useful to them anymore. 

So they cut you off at the first opportunity. 

They would do the same to him too one day, wouldn’t they? 

“I was just looking out for you,” his principal muttered, his nose scrunching up in disdain as he sighed. “She-” 

“Don’t say another fucking word about her,” he spat. 

“This drama is not good for you, or the image we’re-” 

“I don’t give a fuck,” he argued, refusing to give him an inch to spout out a mile-long excuse filled with reasons that didn’t matter. 

Not when he already knew the truth. 

They decided they didn’t like you. That you were a liability. 

And the goddamn second a chance presented itself, they snatched it to say that you weren’t his anymore and that the whole thing was over. 

“The paparazzi photo invalidated the contract,” his publicist tried to explain, offering a small sympathetic smile as her mouth opened again. 

“I guess I should go see if there’s anything that makes my contract invalid,” he threatened, pushing past all of them to leave before he said something he would never be able to take back. 

Or punch his boss in the face for looking at him like he said something ridiculous. 

He wanted to throw everything in his bag back at his hotel and leave. 

But he knew they’d do something to drag him back. 

Forced to just pace his floor, wishing that you’d pick up that goddamn phone when he picked up a cheap one from the closest store and paid for a new phone plan just for it to do the same thing it had all weekend. 

Ring endlessly with no answer. 

Would he actually have to show up at your door to speak to you? Would you let him in? Forgive him for the idiotic shit his team had pulled? 

He was still thinking about it the next day – sitting in the cockpit of his car while the engineers checked a thousand things. 

His team principal tried to speak to him. His manager and publicist both attempted apologies he refused to acknowledge. 

Not when he had a single goal to get through. 

Get to the top step on the podium and peace the fuck out. 

He couldn’t afford to think about you. 

Not here. Not behind the wheel of one of the world’s fastest cars.

Off track, he could sort through everything else. Fix everything your ex-boyfriend broke. 

Or, at the very least, make his life miserable too.

He didn’t fucking lose. 

He would win this. 

And then he’d tell the first fucking reporter who asked how it felt that it would be even better to go home to you. Take the soonest flight to your city and show up to your door to figure this whole thing out. 

You might cry. Might throw something at him and tell him you were sick of this back-and-forth and up-and-down shit too. 

But he would stand there and refuse to leave until you were in his arms and he was in your bed. 

All he had to do was get through today. 

Locking in to watch the lights go out, every sense turned up all the way as the car in P3 stalled and he managed to beat out the first two by a razor’s edge of a margin around the first corner. 

The first lap was clean. 

Even if he cut it close a couple times. 

Doing his best to stretch out the gap between him and second place, despite how annoyingly often it appeared he was starting to catch up, following a cleaner racing line than he was currently capable of considering how far from clear-headed he was. 

Sweat starting to drip down his face, his stupid cooling vest hardly fucking working as he pressed down as hard as he could on the pedal, shifting through gears and grimacing through his helmet as he eyed the car catching in his rear view.

His engineer’s voice kept crackling over the radio, feeding him some bullshit he didn’t want to hear about tire wear and degradation, issuing warnings that weren’t making it through his brain, knuckles clenching the wheel as he eyed the apex, ready to break late and keep his rival behind him. 

That was the plan, at least. 

Until his left foot hit the brakes — and they locked up. 

♡

“Open the door.” 

You didn’t think you budged from your bed rotting position since you woke up. Curled up sideways on your mattress, buried under your blankets as you used your phone as a tv remote to switch between apps, only to end up switching to the race broadcast in the end anyway. 

Watching the cars line up on the grid and biting the inside of your cheek until you could taste the blood on your tongue, wondering whether or not the man starting from the second row had even thought of you at all this weekend. 

You didn’t want to believe everything that happened between you this time was a lie. 

That he hadn’t meant a word he breathed when it was just you and him and your bodies pressed together in private. 

But fuck, he looked pretty fine from the shots they’d gotten of him the over the past two days. 

Annoyed, sure, but no more than usual anger glinting in his eyes in the post-qualifying interview after he fell behind and got stuck in P4. Although he did brush him off and rush back into his garage like he didn’t have the time for more than a couple questions. 

“Let us in,” another familiar voice continued to plead outside the door, probably your publicist or some other assistant out there with your manager despite your refusal to get up and speak to them. 

They were supposed to protect you. 

And now the only person who actually tried to help you was now a continent away probably thinking you cheated on him. 

Or well, came as close to cheating as you could in a relationship that wasn’t real. 

You wanted to think he had to know you didn’t want it. That you didn’t want your ex. 

But if he did, would he really be acting like you didn’t even exist? 

After waiting around a day for him to say something and only getting silence, you just shut your phone off. Unable to deal with the barrage of begging from your team members and strangers who all really just wanted to capitalize on your suffering. 

Why should you let them? 

Why continue to exist for people who wanted nothing more than to rip you to shreds and push you on a stage raw and ruined? 

A few people had tried to show up. 

Your ex boyfriend included. 

Knocking on your door half past midnight like some fucking stalker, asking to be let in and swearing that he only leaked it because he still loved you. You puked in the closest trash can. Listening to him call you baby through the door as you resisted the urge to grab the pepper spray off your keychain and yank it open to show him that you didn’t fucking care what he did or how he felt. 

You pretended to not be home. 

Not even speaking no matter how long he stayed out there. 

He was gone in the morning. 

Although the doorbell camera showed an obnoxious bouquet of flowers and a big box of chocolates left by your mat. 

You didn’t open the door. 

Instead, you texted your downstairs neighbor that she could come up and take them if she wanted. 

God, the whole thing just made you feel gross. All slimy and disgusting inside and out, unable to wash the grime off of your skin no matter how long you spent scrubbing yourself raw in the shower or how much soap or body wash you used. 

You didn’t have the energy to get out of bed. To crawl and do something useful with your day even when your stomach was grumbling and your chest hurt and every piece of you felt broken beyond repair. 

Watching your former fake boyfriend as the race started, wishing you were there and that things were different as he managed to undo his string of bad luck to land himself back at the top, leading the race as the others tried to catch up to him. 

An awful petty voice in the back of your head suggested that he’d probably win the world championship this year too – and you would still be stuck finishing this stupid fucking movie that would be overshadowed by the gossip and rumors surrounding it.

Who would care how good your performance was when they were all whispering about whether or not you cheated on your boyfriend? 

You didn’t know what you were mourning more. 

The inevitable death blow your ex had done to your career. Or the relationship you could’ve had if he had just stayed the hell out of your life. 

You shouldn’t have taken the movie role. 

You should’ve clung to what little popularity you had just pretending to be the WAG of an F1 driver and waited it out to land something that had nothing to do with your ex. 

But you’d gotten greedy. 

You dreamed for more. 

And all you had right now was the blanket around you and the broadcast on the TV, watching him through a screen instead of in-person as he clawed for distance between him and his rival. 

He still made you hold your breath, nails digging into your palm as he took turns harder and faster than he usually did, his engineer’s voice playing on the screen – and getting no reply.

Was he okay? 

Did he feel as awful as you did right now? 

You swallowed hard, throat constricting as he took another tight corner just for the car to suddenly jerk to the side. 

And go straight into the goddamn wall. 

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