Asphyxiate (Lando Norris/AU)

Chapter 5

Chloe

When do you know you're fucked? Is there a scale I should know about? Is there some secret society that has a set of written ground rules sitting on some pedestal in a dusty old library somewhere?

This whole day has been absolute bullshit. From seeing Lando this morning in that meeting, to yelling at him in the hallway, to being completely and utterly aroused by his demeanour in his office. All bullshit.

I'm frustrated beyond belief. I'm mad as fuck for not being able to keep my cool and just be... Indifferent. Like he clearly was.

I can't actually blame him. I haven't seen him in almost two years. We didn't keep in touch. We didn't talk. At all. We fucked. Once. Drunk off our asses at a party after the season ended. The season he became World Champion. The season where we shamelessly flirted, even though I thought he was too young and too much up his own ass.

He was cute though. And innocent, and I liked his charm and his energy.

And then he went ahead and tried killing himself in that stupid orange car afterwards. The audacity.

So how could I be so frustrated and mad at him for not acknowledging me? Stupid is what it is. Absolute fucking stupid. I just had to suck it up. I just had to will myself out of having any kind of attraction towards him.

He was different now, too. Closed off. He actually seemed kind of mean and self-centred. Like nothing except him mattered any more. He was like this closed shell of a person when you watched him. And it just made me so uneasy that I didn't know where I had him when I interacted with him. It made me uncomfortable that I didn't know how he reacted to my words or my actions. And that made me act irrational. It made me act like a lunatic.

I never pictured myself as a person standing in the hallways at my office screaming at a co-worker because he pissed me off. Or getting so frustrated that I had to walk out of his office and run a 5K on a treadmill to calm my heart rhythm down.

I'm here now. In the gym in the basement of MTC, trying to will my thoughts about Lando away.

But it didn't work.

I'm still thinking and have been doing so since I left his office 45 minutes ago. It was still in the middle of the workday, but Hannah didn't actually care what I did during the day. As long as I got all my work done, she didn't care when I did it.

So I worked out. I pushed myself till the lactate in my muscles almost seeped out of my pores. I always did this. Not thinking about how I was feeling and instead focusing on what I could actually feel on my skin, in my muscles or in my stomach. So I wouldn't have to face what was going on in my brain or in my heart.

I'd had a fucked up life...

NO.

I push myself even further until all I can feel is the burn in my legs and the rush of blood pulsing through my veins. To a point where I almost collapse on the treadmill and have to jump away to keep myself from face planting.

I bend over and try to catch my breath for the next 5 minutes, relishing in the high the adrenalin gives me. Silencing my brain completely for those blissful 5 minutes.

"Oh Chloeeeee?" The Spanish accent soothes me right away. I turn around and give a reserved smile to Carlos in the other end of the gym.

"Hello sugarplum, what are you trying to run away from, hm?" He continues. If only he knew the war in my head alway trying to repress the constant urge to just.. Run. As far away as I could possibly get.

"What can I do for you, Carlos?" I dryly ask, ignoring the nickname completely, before I take a big gulp of my water.

"It's not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you." Did he just wiggle his eyebrows at me?