[Nico’s POV]
The ritual has no name. We don't discuss it, don't negotiate timing or logistics.
It simply exists now—an inevitability that settles over race weekends like barometric pressure before a storm.
I just know that today he’ll find me, because the race is tomorrow, and this is just a new normal in both of our lives.
What I notice instead are the margins after our last night a few days ago.
The way Soren lingers in shared spaces—the motorhome kitchen, the debrief room after engineers have cleared out, the corridor between our bedrooms where he'll check his phone for minutes longer than any message requires.
His body gravitates toward mine even as his words maintain distance. I notice because my body tracks his without permission—registers his proximity like telemetry I can't stop reading.
Final practice ends at half four and the garage empties in stages. I stay longer than necessary, reviewing data I've already memorised, aware of anticipation building low in my stomach.
The kind I used to feel only on the grid.
Now it has a second context.
The communal showers at the track facility are industrial—white tile, open plan. At this hour I expect the space to be empty, but the sound of running water tells me otherwise.
Soren stands under the far showerhead, back to the entrance, steam curling around him. Water streams down the ridge of his spine, follows the channel of muscle along his lower back, cascades over the curve of his ass.
The sight hits my bloodstream before I can catalogue it—a pulse of heat that tightens my groin and dries my throat. He hears my footsteps and his shoulders tense.
He doesn't turn. Nor does he leave.
I choose a showerhead two down from his, hot water hits my chest and I close my eyes, but the darkness only sharpens the awareness.
I can hear his breathing over the spray. Feel the charge of his proximity conducting through wet air, and my cock thickens steadily against my thigh.
Responding to nothing but the knowledge that he's a few metres away. Naked and waiting without admitting he's waiting.
The shower room amplifies everything, and the openness makes the air reckless.
Anyone could walk in. The danger sharpens everything, and the risk makes the arousal worse—a low, insistent ache spreading from my groin into my hips, the base of my spine.
I hear him move—wet feet on tile, the shift in water pressure, and when I open my eyes, he's closer.
One showerheads away, body angled toward mine, and the sight of him—water running over collarbones, dripping from the tip of his half-hard cock—makes my stomach clench with a want so precise it borders on pain.
I close the distance and my hand finds the back of his neck as I turn him, pressing his shoulders against the tile.
Cold ceramic against heated skin makes him hiss, his back arching into my chest, and the contact sends a jolt straight to my cock that makes me grip his neck harder than I intend.
He doesn't fight for control. No hands grabbing for dominance, no attempt to flip us. His palms press flat against the tile, fingers splayed, and he lets himself be held.
Diferente.
The trust implicit in his stillness cracks my composure along a fault line I didn't know existed.
I lean forward and kiss him under the spray without words. Water fills the spaces between our mouths, and when his lips part the taste of him floods my senses—clean and stripped of pretence.
His tongue strokes against mine and heat pools heavy in my pelvis, my cock fully hard and pressed against his hip, the slick friction making my breath stutter into his mouth.
My free hand tracks down his body. His cock is rigid against my thigh, and when I wrap my fingers around the shaft the groan he releases bounces off every tiled surface.
But it's the throb against my palm—the urgent pulse of his arousal—that makes my own cock jerk in response, a sympathetic surge that has me grinding against his hip before I can stop myself.
I stroke him deliberately, thumb dragging over the swollen head on each upstroke. His hips roll into my fist, and each noise he makes lands somewhere between my ribs and my groin, tightening the coil of my own need until my hand trembles with the effort of maintaining rhythm.
His nails dig crescents into my shoulders, and I turn him back—face to the tile, my chest against his broad and muscled back. Water runs between us, slicking every point of contact.
I reach between his legs from behind, wrapping my hand around his cock again, and press my own against the cleft of his ass—not entering, just the thick slide of my shaft between his cheeks with each thrust.
The friction is devastating. His cock leaks over my fingers, hot and slick, and my own aches with every stroke—the pressure of his body, the tight heat of the space I'm sliding through, narrowing my vision to sensation.
I bite the junction of his neck and shoulder, tasting water and salt, and he drops his forehead against the tile with a sound that's half moan, half surrender.
"Nico…" My name reverberates off wet walls, and the sound detonates something in my chest—possessive, primal.
My hips snap forward hard enough to shove him against the tile. My cock throbs between us, leaking against his skin, and I'm close—closer than I want to be, control dissolving under the specific alchemy of his body and his voice saying my name like it's the only word left.
I stroke faster, thumb circling the sensitive ridge below the head while my hips drive against him in a rhythm becoming erratic, need outpacing precision.
His body trembles—thighs, stomach, back muscles contracting against my chest—and when he comes it's with his whole body, cock pulsing thick over my fist and the tile, spine arching into me, a guttural cry the shower room throws back from every surface.
The clench of his body drags me over the edge. The orgasm tears through me with a force that buckles my knees, my cock pulsing between us, spilling against his skin in hot streaks the water dissolves instantly.
I bury my groan against his shoulder, teeth finding the mark I already left, and for a few shattered seconds there is nothing.
No past, no rules, no architecture of distance. Just his body against mine and the demolishing relief of letting go.
Stillness. Water drumming. Steam swirling. Both of us breathing hard.
Soren's forehead drops to my shoulder. His wet hair presses against my collarbone and the weight settles with a trust so quiet it barely registers.
Five seconds. Long enough that something in my chest expands—dangerous, tender, a feeling I have no framework for containing, and I don't move. I don’t want to.
Não estrague isso. Don’t ruin this.
Then his shoulders stiffen, his famous sky-high walls reconstruct vertebra by vertebra, weight shifting to his own feet. He steps under his own showerhead, and the distance refills with steam.
"We should conserve water," he says, reaching for the tap. "Environmental responsibility. Very on-brand for the team."
His voice aims for lightness—close enough to pass, hollow enough that I hear the scaffolding as he walks out without looking back. Footsteps fade down the corridor until the only sound is water hitting tile where no one stands.
I stay under the spray. My palm presses flat against the wall where his back was—ceramic still holding warmth, fading. The tightness in my chest is anticipation for tomorrow's race.
Só isso—that’s it.
Professional focus manifesting as tension. Nothing that requires a name.
I turn off the water and stand in the silence, hand pressed to the wall, and almost believe it.