apocalypse | charles leclerc ✓

chapter 2 | trying your luck

«Didn't they tell us 'don't rush into things'? Didn't you flash your green eyes at me? Haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds?»

---

It shouldn't have surprised her that he found her. At the end of the day, Sloane did almost spell her last name for him, letter for letter, and as Charles found out later that night when he went back to his friends, the one person connecting them somehow was Pierre, who could recognise Sloane's name coming from his friend's mouth right away after he mentioned her name. The French driver doubted there were too many Sloanes running around the club that night, things were too coincidental for him not to be able to do the maths.

Pierre, after a few jokes about how he was planning to hit that and Charles was ruining it for him, even helped with the last name situation, clarifying it was Devrij and not Drevij as he initially had thought.

The unexpected thing for her, she guessed, was that he'd tried to do it, reach her that was, in the first place. And exactly the day after the night they met. He was fast — no pun intended, really.

It started simple. Some flirting over Instagram messages — 'How bad of an excuse would it be if I say I want to learn Dutch?' 'Oh, are you planning on visiting soon, can I know when?' 'Whenever you're free' — just clumsy words and casual back and forth between two people who clearly found each other attractive. Then all of it led to exchanging phone numbers and text messages, early in the morning and late at night, at any hour of the day really. On occasions, her manager Vivianne had to ask her to please leave the phone alone and focus, all Sloane could do was give an apologetic smile and try to ignore the messages, her eyes stealing quick glances at the phone whenever the screen lighted up with a new text. She felt the excitement in her chest.

When it seemed they both were starting to get more comfortable with each other, there were phone calls, as well as video calls. He showed her the installations in Maranello, the sunsets in Monaco, and everywhere else. She shared her favourite coffee shop in Rotterdam and her days at the studios when she had to work in other countries around Europe. Everywhere they went they shared with each other. Sloane liked to see it as digital postcards, that was how she called it and he'd chuckled at it, agreeing with her.

It was fast but thrilling. Fascinating actually.

Finding each other engulfed in another phone call wasn't really strange at this point. There was an invisible string holding Monte Carlo and Rotterdam together apparently.

"The night we met, you mentioned your friend works for the team...does this mean I get to see you around races sometimes?" He asked, the increasing interest in his voice was very noticeable.

Sloane chuckled as she passed around her flat searching for a jacket, only taking a moment to look at him through the phone camera. "She just started working this year so she's spending most of the time in Maranello. Also, Aurora doesn't like to mix her personal life with work, and I've tried to respect that." She gave him a meaningful look, to which he responded with an innocent grin knowing he'd managed to get that rule broken just a little. "But she has invited me to races before, no special passes or anything like that, normal stuff, but I've never taken her up on the offer."

"How so? Not a big fan of fast cars?" Charles raised his eyebrows.

She smiled and shrugged one shoulder. "You could say." All the knowledge she had about it, which wasn't a lot anyway, was thanks to Aurora and her ramblings. Not to get her wrong, Sloane enjoyed those even if she didn't understand what her friend talked about most of the time.