helloooo there 👋 i’m phoebe! (aka quietrumblings on ao3)

i post a lot of stupid content! a LOOOOOT of stupid content. so here’s a quick reference post for those of you who want to filter through the batshitness <3

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It's never been weird between them, Pierre swears, not once: they've been friends since they were small, growing up together on the same street, playing in the same parks as they'd agreed to be paleontologists or astronauts or footballers, and it'd never mattered once to him that Charles was a girl in all that time--even when they'd gotten shipped off to different high schools across town, it hadn't changed their relationship.

But now...now, as Pierre stands out in front of Charles' house waiting with his shitty Honda parked out front, all but trembling in this oddly-tailored suit for prom, he thinks the line of weird may have finally been crossed after all these years.

It's finally been crossed because Charles in her dress looks beautiful--not covered in dirt or wearing ragged clothes she'd stolen from her older brother, or even in her usual baggy jeans look, but really elegant in a way that Pierre had never even imagined her in before; red fabric that has to be satin spilling down her legs, tapering off at her ankles, a bunched up flower nestled in the perfect center of her chest. Her hair is curled intentionally and not just from humidity--ringlets spilling over her shoulders, a stunning red bow peeking out from behind her head to tie some of it back, and oh.

"What are you looking at," she deadpans, but her mouth is curved up in that usual smirk she gives him, and Pierre realizes that her lipstick matches her dress; he clutches the corsage case tighter and shakes his head, trying to play it off, but it's no use--she's caught him red-handed as she starts making her way towards the car, and when her smirk stretches into a full-on grin, he knows he's doomed.

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Pierre can see the way Charles' muscles are straining as he's using the last of his strength during this bench press set; admittedly, they're almost at the end of his usual workout routine that's been so carefully put together, so this really just extra because Pierre finds that nothing makes you a better personal trainer than being a bit of an asshole--but Charles responds well to it, and he pays him for it, so at the end of the day, that's become part of his job, too.

"Fuck," Charles grits, and his arms are about to start shaking from where Pierre is standing, so he steps in: with a grunt, he sets the bar back where it belongs as the athlete he's training gasps and heaves in relief below, chest rising and falling, face shiny and shirt an entirely different color from the amount of sweat that's poured off him today. "That was--"

"You made it through a couple more reps than I thought you would," Pierre interrupts, grinning down at Charles' exhausted expression that's too tired to even react the way it should--"but catch your breath, Cha, and we can move on to the cooldown routine."

With a strangled noise, Charles scoots forward on the bench and pushes himself upright once more; his face is soaked with sweat, hair dripping down into his eyes, and Pierre works with at least fifteen different other athletes across a variety of sports but none of them do this exhausted elegance bit quite like the driver hunched over before him.

"Let's get some water in you," he hums, grabbing the bottle from where it's clattered over on the floor and handing it to Charles, who takes it gratefully; he guzzles at first, still not quite having caught his breath, and Pierre has to grab his shoulder gently to remind him--"easy, Charles, don't drown in--yeah, there we go, good boy--"

Charles' eyes fly open suddenly, wide and almost spooked and darker than Pierre thinks he's ever seen them.

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Charles' heart is slamming in his chest as he walks through the currently-empty restaurant floor: they're going to open to the rest of the world tonight, in a few short hours, and he knows the chefs in the kitchen have done everything in their power to prep and plan for the onslaught of opening night, but it doesn't stop the panic from rising in his throat like bile. Tonight is when the first critics are going to roll through and taste the dishes they've all worked so hard on, tonight is the night his waiters are going to be put to the test by a crowd of people not considered friends or family, tonight is the night that the little doodle his father had made what feels like a lifetime ago in a tossed-aside notebook is coming to life, and it's...

"Chef," Pierre's voice cuts through the chaos in his head immediately and Charles can feel the way his shoulders sag in relief.

Pierre is here--which is why Charles hasn't spiraled out of control a thousand times already, the steadying presence of his best friend like an anchor night after night as they tested recipes and argued over ingredients and prayed that the gas lines were hooked up right.

Pierre, who's now made his way to Charles' side and has hooked an arm over his shoulder, warm even through the Le Calamar custom whites he's got on; he squeezes Charles' shoulder reassuringly, and the heat bleeds from his palm, too, leaving Charles helpless and like putty as his best friend continues, "don't wear a hole in the floor, Cha, we need to look nice for the people tonight."

It's absurd--so absurd that Charles laughs, surprising himself and Pierre as it bursts out of him, the idea that Pierre Gasly, perhaps the second most meticulous chef on Earth next to himself, is telling him to relax on their opening night--

"Fuck off," he says back, not even trying to sound annoyed as Pierre tugs him closer by the shoulder, and it's not--tonight is the biggest night of their lives, bar none, and yet somehow Pierre's answering laugh is the thing that backs him off the edge.

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Pierre is half-asleep out on the unbearably sunny patio when Lance comes rumbling through--too loud as he slides the back door open and then closed at full strength, too loud as his flip-flops slap aggressively against both his feet and the stones beneath them, too loud as he collapses in a heap beside Pierre on the lounge chair that definitely should not be for two people.

Pierre doesn't mind it that much. "Lance," he groans when his lover shimmies close to drop a wet, shapeless kiss to his jugular, "I was taking a nap," as if that'd be protest enough for him to stop what he's doing--as if Pierre wants him to stop.

Lance doesn't, although he pulls away enough to chuckle when Pierre whacks his side halfheartedly: "sorry," he mutters, and Pierre can feel the shape of the word against him, "couldn't stop thinking about you out here during that fucking call with the board, but I'll knock next time, I promise." Pierre knows he doesn't mean it, really, but can't bring himself to fight it--not when Lance's teeth are half sunk into his neck already, still in his meeting clothes while Pierre's got the barest hint of a bathing suit on to maximize his time out here in the sun as the sugar baby of this relationship.

send me a ship and a word and i'll write you five sentences <3

Charles isn't used to waking up alone these days: even being the morning person in their relationship, Pierre always lies around in bed until Charles stirs awake, still so sleepy but awake enough to lean over for a sweet, chaste kiss to start their day. But this morning...

Well, this morning, Charles rolls over to faceplant into Pierre's chest and is sorely disappointed when there's nothing but air beside him, sheets haphazardly thrown off the way Pierre only does when he's really rushing to get somewhere; it takes a few moments of confusion before he registers the sound of music coming from somewhere deep in their apartment.

Charles rubs at his eyes but pushes up out of bed nevertheless, groggily pulling his pajama pants back on and shuffling through the bedroom and towards the melodic sounds drawing him forward, delicate piano music--a tune he doesn't recognize even though he probably should--growing louder and louder as he gets closer and closer to the source.

The source, of course, being Pierre: standing in his boxers, back pin-straight, Charles watches as his fiancé moves around their living room with his arms out like he's dancing, a sight that would be more graceful and less amusing if he weren't sliding around on their wood floor in the socks he'd worn to bed.

Charles is good enough not to say anything...but not good enough to not laugh when Pierre turns around and yelps, stumbling backwards into the coffee table--Charles is standing close enough to grab him before he destroys it altogether, keeping him upright while also keeping him close when he mumbles, teasing, "getting ready for the wedding, squid?"

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Pierre has had the exact same routine every day for the last two months: collect his materials from the podium in the lecture hall, lock his office up, and then drive across town to Charles' apartment, where his fellow teacher has been laid up nursing his--no, their pup since she was born.

He has to keep reminding himself of that--that the baby is his, too, not just Charles', because no matter how many nights he spends in Charles Leclerc's kitchen fiddling with formulas and frozen dinners and adding sweatshirts to the nest in his bedroom, Pierre still can't quite wrap his head around everything that's happened between them.

He slides the copy of Charles' apartment key into the lock and doesn't even make it through the doorway before Charles is there, looking soft-eyed as he says, bashfully, "I could smell you out there and wanted to..." then trails off, gaze flickering away before returning to Pierre's face, eyes glittering with unspoken words Pierre isn't sure he's ready to try and understand.

"I figured you'd be with the baby," Pierre says after a moment--still standing in Charles' doorway, breath caught in his throat at how beautiful the omega standing before him looks, even as wrung dry as he must be from parenting their little one by himself for most of the day and through the night after Pierre leaves.

But Charles shakes his head, still not looking away: "No, she's asleep in the bedroom, and besides..." there's that hesitancy again, and Pierre's got half a mind to ask what's wrong before Charles continues, "I wanted to do this," and then surges forward, loops his arms over Pierre's shoulders, and kisses him square on the mouth.

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Pierre, lounged an appropriate distance away on the couch, almost tumbles off the cushions as he says, disbelieving, "you picked up magic during the pandemic?"

Charles nestles further into his corner of the couch, legs crisscrossed as he fiddles with the deck of cards in his hands, and shrugs--the look on his face is bashful but not quite embarrassed when he shrugs Pierre's question off: "I couldn't spend the whole time on Twitch with George and Alex and Lando," he answers after a beat; his face scrunches up in distaste, and Pierre laughs at it, kicking his leg out to try and get his best friend in the knee. It's like a switch flips, though, out of nowhere: Charles lights up like a Christmas tree and he lunges towards Pierre out of nowhere, knocking his foot off as he asks, excitedly, "do you want to see a trick I've been working on?"

It's funny, that they've spent the better part of the last year texting--that they'd spent the entirety of both of their bouts of Covid blowing each other's phones up out of boredom--and yet this is the first Pierre is hearing of this new talent of his; he wonders if maybe Charles had been saving it as some kind of surprise.

The thought warms something deep in Pierre's stomach, that this was something that Charles wanted to share with him like this: dressed down in his apartment while they're together in person again for the first time since they'd probably gotten each other sick back on Abu Dhabi...

"are you going to make me disappear, Cha," is how he ends up responding, and the color that floods his best friend's cheeks as he laughs, loud and bright, is impossible to look away from.

send me a ship and a word and i'll write you five sentences <3