It was almost 4 PM when I stirred awake in Atlas's bed. There was a warm spot beside me where he'd laid, but he was gone. As I rubbed sleep out of my eyes and got a better grip on my bearings, I heard the shower running in the master bathroom.

I bit down on my lip as I slid myself out of bed and tip-toed across the carpet to the bathroom door, where steam curled up and out through the gap in the door. I peered in without opening the door any further, and through the thick, fogged-up glass of the shower door, I could make out Atlas with his back to me. While any person with eyes could easily be distracted by the water rippling down his overly toned shoulders and back, I caught the sound of humming just over the cadence of the running water, and I smiled to myself before turning back into the bedroom.

I opened the blackout curtains, allowing streams of warm light to spill across the room. I leaned forward on the windowsill, counting the sailboats that sporadically dotted the harbor. The ocean took on a blazing orange hue as the sun began its descent down to just kiss the horizon.

"Oh good, you're up."

I spun around to see Atlas, water still glistening on his chest with a towel clinging on for dear life around his waist. I exhaled a tight breath, trying to keep my mind and my eyes from wandering too far adrift.

"I was going to wake you earlier..." he continued as he ducked down into a dresser drawer to pull out a pair of jeans. "But you just looked like you really needed a good rest, and you're quite lovely when you sleep."

"You're quite lovely always," I replied with a smirk. "But especially when you're in just a towel."

Atlas walked over to me, slowly and methodically, before putting his hands to my hips and gently pinning me between him and the dresser. I felt the towel against me shift ever so slightly. "Are you objectifying me?"

I dragged my teeth along my lower lip. "I might be."

He leaned in closer, just close enough to taste the toothpaste on his breath when he spoke again. "You should start getting ready, we have places to go."

"Places to go?" I scoffed as he pulled away, effectively dissipating the crackling tension between us. "Go where?"

Atlas gave me a silent, knowing smirk before pulling off his towel and tossing it aside on the bed.

"These diversion tactics won't work now," I gave a sweeping gesture to his perfect, bare physique. "You're really not gonna tell me where we're going, are you?"

He shrugged again as he pulled on his jeans. "Dunno, mate. I'm not the right person to ask."

I scoffed again. "Who should I ask then? Phantom?"

"Phantom is very good at keeping my secrets - he'd never tell you."

Atlas threw on another tight designer t-shirt - one that I was sure would tear right across his shoulders if he stretched his arms out too far.

"So you're just wearing that?" I gestured to him as he slipped on a pair of far-too-white Nike Airforce 1s. "What should I wear then? I need to at least know the important things."

"Just wear whatever's comfortable for you. Stop fussing. Now I'm going to the garage to get the car, just take the elevator down and then that hallway I brought you though before. I'll meet you outside in the alley."

I rolled my eyes, but he smirked back at me until he closed the door behind him. With my heart hammering against my ribs, I tied my messy, slept-in hair up in a braid and grabbed a sweater from my duffle before doing as Atlas instructed. I hadn't the faintest idea what he had planned, but something about the way he spoke made it feel like I was floating, despite still hobbling around on a busted ankle.

I walked out into the building's lobby, shifting my weight off my ankle and trying to seem as aloof as possible. I couldn't pretend I didn't feel peoples' eyes on me, and suddenly I was hyper-aware of how out of place I looked in my tattered jean shorts and my bright yellow Surfhouse pullover. There was also a serious possibility I still had sand in my hair, despite having showered yesterday and not been in the water for the last five days.

Thankfully, Atlas was already outside waiting for me, big shiny Porsche SUV and all.

"You ready to go?"

He leaned against the rich, glossy navy door of the car, and for a moment he looked out of place in his messy hair and faded jeans and his tight t-shirt pressed against a vehicle worth a quarter of a million dollars, but I had accepted by now that Atlas was just a living, breathing contradiction. Veins full of ice, soul full of fire.

The short answer was no, I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready for him. The spell that his eyes had me under was a stark reminder that as close as he was to me, and as real as his skin felt against mine, there was a level of inhumanness to him that felt intangible to me.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I finally sighed out, giving him a faint smile. "Is this your version of a soccer mom car?"

"Well, we're going to need the room," he replied with a coy smirk. He pushed himself off the door and opened it for me, every movement as graceful and fluid as a person could be. He slid into the driver's seat beside me and slipped on a pair of wayfarers. "It is still a Porsche though, so you better hang on."

Before I could take a breath, he took off into the dusk.

"I don't really think I need to say this, but you're in charge of music," he grinned, flipping through settings on the car's dashboard and hooking the bluetooth up to my phone.

"Obviously," I threw him a smirk. "And good thing too, because I have the perfect playlist for this."

"Of course you do," he chuckled.

"I mean, I affectionately call it my sanity drive." I thumbed through my Spotify before hitting shuffle on the playlist. "You know, when you just need to get out of the house, go for a drive, and clear your head. That's a sanity drive."

"Actually yes, I know exactly what you mean."

I was tempted to reach for his hand resting on the gear shift, but I dug my nails into my thighs instead. I glanced out the window and watched the Mediterranean Sea whiz by in a blur of glowing oranges and pinks as the setting sun set the water ablaze. I rolled the window down, desperate to smell the ocean. I could feel him looking at me, my hair a windswept mess and my cheeks pink.

"What?" I asked with a subtle smirk.

"What, what?"

I barked out a laugh. "Seriously, what?"

"Nothing, Savannah." He sighed and raked a hand through his hair, the streak of white catching all the light of the setting sun. "It's nothing."

Most people outside of my family called me Sav, but I didn't think I'd ever get tired of hearing him say Savannah.

The song switched over to Motorcycle Drive By by Third Eye Blind, and I instinctively reached over to turn the volume up. Out of the corner of my eye, he was back to grinning that brilliant grin.

"Just so you know," I flipped my hair over my shoulder, rather unsuccessfully in the surge of wind blowing through the car. "This is the greatest song ever. I mean, in my unprofessional opinion."

"Why hasn't this been on any of the playlists you've made for me so far?"

Because some things were still far too sacred. Giving them away meant giving a piece of myself away, and I wasn't sure I was ready for that. Not until that moment when the music surged, and Atlas Vaughn reached over and held my hand.

I smirked. "Just shush and listen. Your life is about to change."

And maybe mine was too.

I felt his fingers gently brush against my bare thigh as he gave my hand a gentle squeeze, and even the simplest touch made me shudder.

Summer time, and the wind is blowing outside in lower Chelsea, and I don't know what I'm doing in the city. The sun is always in my eyes.

"Are we leaving Monte Carlo?" I asked. We turned off the main road, and the sea began to disappear behind us, almost like it was being swallowed up into the oncoming night.

"Sort of." He paused when I threw him a sideways glance. "Remember I told you, I have your change of scenery."

And there's this burning like there's always been. I've never been so alone, and I've never been so alive.

He hit 90 in what seemed like an instant, and my heart careened into my throat. We zipped up a windy road in the mountainside, leaving the lights of the city behind us that began flickering to life in the night. He pumped the car in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to 50, only to immediately gun it back up to 90, fast then slow then fast and faster, expertly whipping around every turn like he had carved out the roads himself.

I stole a glance in his direction, his eyes trained on the road ahead. I drank in every angle, every freckle, and every out of place lock of hair, like I'd go blind tomorrow. He had the axis of my whole world on a tilt, literally and figuratively whisking me away to parts unknown.

After enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I'd been prepared to handle, he dipped off the main road and onto a smaller offshoot, a road of lightless coves, taking us up to edges of the city that I didn't even expect to exist.

Atlas pushed further along, until he got us to the secluded spot he'd been looking for, where the trees cleared, and the night sky was a sea of stars. The entire city seemed to live and breathe below us as the lights from cars and windows trickled in between buildings like little rivers. He turned around in a patch of dirt so the back of the car was facing the city, then killed the engine. I turned the music down until it was nothing more than a whisper against the night.

Summer dies and swells rise, the sun goes down in my eyes.

"Alright, let's go." Atlas jumped out of the car, then came skittering around to open my door, extending his hand out to me. When he took us to the back of the car and opened the trunk, the back row of seats were already down, with a blanket draped over them.

"You said you wanted a change of scenery, so...here's your scenery." He scooped me up and gently placed me down in the trunk, then hopped up beside me. He gave me that crooked, dimpled half smile, the brilliant white of his teeth bright in the dark.

"You know when you said you had scenery, I kind of thought you were joking," I chided him with a grin. I leaned into him, and he slung his arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer still, but god it was never close enough.

"My mum used to take me up here when we first moved, if I was overwhelmed or upset after a race weekend. This sport...it takes a toll on you. Not just physically but...mentally too."

I gave his hand a gentle squeeze, a silent reminder that I was still with him, and that I understood.

"Up here, I felt like I could really reset," he continued. "I...I still do, from time to time. When everything down there feels like too much."

In Greek Mythology, the titan Atlas was burdened to hold up the heavens forever. Maybe sometimes it became too much to bear, even for a god.

I inhaled deeply, trying to take it all in - the silence, the light from the stars and the city, the magnitude of where I was and the situation I was in. I was injured - again - and my future was at risk - again - but I swallowed all that down. I was looking down on a beautiful city, sitting next to a beautiful guy I could no longer deny my feelings for, and in a moment like this, that was all that really mattered.

"Anyway..." Atlas sighed out, running his hands down the sides of his cheeks like he was trying to rub off the emotion wearing on his face. He scooted towards the back of the trunk and reached over into the back seat, pulling out a plastic white bag with a few food containers. "Obviously I got us food, and I know you like Taiwanese food, so this is from the best place in Monte Carlo."

"You really know the way to a girl's heart, don't you?" I chuckled as I took a container of noodles he passed to me.

Atlas shook his head, another faint smile tugging at his lips. "Not all girls. Just yours. It's the only one that matters, really."

I smiled as I leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek. We ate in a comfortable silence, sharing noodles and chatting about the movie we watched last night. Something so ordinary was still extraordinary with Atlas.

The only indication that time was passing was the slow and steady fading of the lights down in the city as people began to end their nights, but eventually Atlas let out a heavy sigh. "I actually really needed this. I feel like I can breathe now."

"Me too," I leaned closer into him. "Thank you for doing this. It's beautiful up here."

"You're beautiful."

His words pumped through my heart and made it swell, like a balloon with too much air. I squeezed his hand a little tighter.

"Atlas..." I sighed out.

"Am I not allowed to say how I feel?" His words flicked off of his tongue in his thick accent.

"No, I'm sorry, of course you are," I replied, slowly running my fingers over his knuckles. "It's just...you say things like that, and sometimes I don't think you're real."

He kept his gaze down at our hands, gently running his finger over the colorful braided bracelet I'd been wearing since I was 14. I made it at a surf camp in San Diego, back in a time when things were just simpler. "Well, it's easy with you. You're like the only person who treats me like I'm real, and not some...frigid, animalistic being-"

"Well I like the real you," I cut him off and shifted my body in the seat to face him. "I mean it."

He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, and my heart rattled in my chest like a caged animal, desperate to be set loose. The lights from the city dotted his face, and suddenly he seemed human again. Gravity pulled us closer, like asteroids ready to collide, and before I knew it, I was close enough to him to count stars in his eyes.

"I mean it too." His words softly danced along my cheek. "God I've never meant anything more."

Despite the lust burning between us, he was as gentle with me as ever, running his hand up the crook of my neck and brushing his thumb over my lips before pulling me in to kiss me. I ran my hand up the sharp angle of his jaw, feeling the little pulses of his heartbeat under my fingers. He raked his hands through my mess of hair, and the softest moan escaped his lips when I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer, our tongues exploring each other's mouths as if we were just learning each other for the first time. Even though there were times I thought I knew him better than I knew myself.

"Now I know you didn't just bring me up here to have sex with me in the back of your fancy soccer mom car," I joked.

"No, but it's a bonus." He spoke into my neck in between kisses, reaching up and pulling the trunk door shut. "At least you know now we really won't be interrupted."

It was like we'd been put in a bubble, the sounds of the city now so muted and far away. Pale moonlight spilled in through the moonroof of the car and turned his eyes to crystal blue, like the kind of ocean you wanted to fall into and drown in.

As we moved to lay back against the blankets he'd put down, I inadvertently brushed my hand over the exposed sliver of skin below the hem of his t-shirt, and another wistful moan escaped his lips.

"Sorry," I breathed out.

"Don't be," he replied, reaching down and gently bringing my hand back to that place on his stomach, guiding my hand along the waistband of his jeans. "I like it when you touch me. Even just the faintest bit...it drives me wild."

Keeping my hand to his cheek, I brushed my thumb across his lower lip. "Well, I like touching you."

That was all he needed to flip the switch. We twisted each other up in a storm of sensations and sounds, his in many languages and mine in the only one I knew. We'd crossed this line before, but this time it felt different. He felt warm, the way a person should feel when you're too close and too comfortable and too much of everything that sends your heart careening into another universe.

sanity drive
songs i scream in the car (in monaco)
by sav allen on spotify • 20 songs, 1 hr 9 min

careening through the universe
your axis on a tilt
you're guiltless and free
i hope you take a piece of me with you

motorcycle drive-by / third eye blind

so fun fact for y'all - the scene where atlas and sav drive up to the outskirts of the city is the VERY FIRST scene I wrote for this story, back in AUGUST OF 2020. I was adamant this was just a random scene that was a product of alcohol and it wasn't going to become anything ("like what even is this"), but my soulmate/best mate w1ldflow3r is a world-class enabler, and she even kept photographic proof! back then sav was just girl™️ ("who is this woman lol"), and look at her now. it's seen a few tweaks and edits since then obviously, but the core of that scene will forever have a very special place in my heart.

anyway, please for the love of all that is good in this world, listen to motorcycle drive by by third eye blind (it's linked at the top) and reread that scene again, because it IS actually the greatest song in the history of forever. there's no music like this anymore. sav is serious when she says it'll change your life.