When Atlas had asked me to come to the race in Singapore (admittedly while I was still drunk from my Halloween escapades in London), I'd said yes without hesitation knowing I had an off weekend, and it was the first opportunity I'd had to see him in over a month. I let my heart take the wheel, but after the initial euphoric excitement wore off, my head had caught up, and I'd come to realize two things -

1. This was the first race I would be attending without Gemma, who'd gone to enough by now to know what the hell she was doing. I had no idea what I was doing.

2. The Singapore Grand Prix was where Atlas's father died in 2008. To this day, Atlas has professionally raced three times at Marina Bay (once in a specialty Porsche Carrera Cup and twice in F1) and has not managed to finish a race on the circuit yet, due to crashes, mechanical failures, or some kind of divine intervention. I looked it up.

So now, standing alone in the Singapore Changi airport, my heart was in my throat, and I was worried if I'd so much as opened my mouth, it would come spilling out onto the floor and get trampled by the hustling bustling stampede of tourists, business people, and airport staff. I barely had an opportunity to take in the atmosphere of the airport itself as I tried not to get swept up in the swell of people trying to get to wherever it was they were going.

Atlas had arranged a car to pick me up from the airport and take me to the hotel. Photos were nothing compared to seeing the Marina Bay Sands in person as it towered over the rest of the bay, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. We drove along an overpass past the paddock, tucked away beside the street circuit, where elaborate trailers were already erected, and crew from every team dashed around to get their drivers ready for practice laps.

There were flowers waiting on my bed when I arrived at my suite. But it wasn't like any flower bouquet I'd ever seen in my life. For starters, it was bigger than my head and probably could have housed a whole cult of bees and their queen.

Violets cascaded over the side of the white box it sat in, with fully bloomed purple and white roses exploding upward like floral fireworks. Little strings of lights tangled themselves around stems and leaves, ever so slightly flickering as I turned the bouquet to inspect it more. Sticking out of the arrangement was a little stick with a note attached to it. I ran my finger over his thick blocky handwriting.

be ready at midnight.

- av

ps - wear sneakers

"This fucking asshole," I grinned to myself as I shook my head. Everything Atlas Vaughn did took ambiguous and elusive to another level, but I'd be lying if I said I was starting to enjoy it. It fit his personality too well, and I'd also be lying if I said that wasn't one of my favorite parts of him. Being able to peel back the layers of him and tuck myself underneath like a warm blanket made me feel special to him in a way I'd never felt with anyone else.

I looked down at my phone. 9:14. Enough time to shower off all the airplane ick and stress over an outfit for at least an hour. At least including wear sneakers in his note provided a sliver of sanity, assuming wherever we were going and whatever we were doing could be perceived as more casual. I'd packed one casual dress, a strapless floral one from For Love & Lemons that could be passable with my white slip-on Vans. It still had the tags on it even though I'd bought it months ago, because months ago I was only shopping for temporary serotonin instead of...well, a date?

I was ready to go by 11, so instead of staring at myself in the mirror and stressing over every stray flyaway hair, I sat on the bed and pulled my old Gameboy out. It was my go-to on long flights since I was a kid, and somehow had survived all these years despite being abused by 13-year-old me when I had a less than ideal finish at an event.

"Come on you stupid, stupid dragon. Just get in the ball and stay in the ball." I grit my teeth as I held down the A button as my character sprite through another ultra ball, and even though I didn't believe in the old fictitious glitches the way my pre-teen self did, I was still superstitious when it came to Pokemon. I watched the little pixelated pokeball rock back and forth, but before I could revel in Dragonite's capture, a knock at my door stole my attention away.

I slid myself off of the plush duvet still folded neatly on the bed, and with my heart in my throat I walked to the door, stopping in front of it to steady myself. It wasn't like Atlas and I hadn't done this a dozen times by now, stealing glances and touches and time where we could, but this felt entirely different. This was free diving into the unknown.

When I opened the door, he was leaning against the doorframe in jeans and a black cap under his pulled up hoodie. How he always managed to look as good as he did even in the most casual attire astounded me, but I was starting to realize maybe it wasn't him at all. Maybe it was just how I saw him.

Atlas leaned his head down to give me the gentlest kiss on my cheek, but it made the fireworks go off in my chest all the same.

"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" He grinned at me as he pulled away. "You ready to go?"

"Yes, but..." I pinned him with a sly grin and looked down at my phone. "It's 11:55, and you interrupted the very climactic capture of a Dragonite I've been hunting for an hour."

Atlas sputtered out a laugh. "A what?"

I smirked and shut my Gameboy off. "Why do I get the feeling you did not play Pokemon growing up?"

"Yeah no, I was fixing go karts when I was 12," he replied with a chuckle.

"Like a normal preteen, of course." I sighed and turned on my heel. "Let me just get my bag and my jean jacket and you can whisk me away to a secret cave full of dolphins and rainbow crystals, or something adjacent to that."

Atlas took my hand and led me down the hotel hallway. "Oh come off it, don't act like you don't like our surprise trips. Besides, we're not going far."

We made it down the hallway to the elevators, and the moment the golden doors closed behind us, Atlas was on me. My back against the wall, his hands on my waist, my fingers in his hair, and our lips colliding like heat seeking missiles.

"Have I mentioned that I missed you?" Atlas pulled away momentarily, his words breathless.

"You could stand to mention it more," I replied with a soft chuckle.

We kissed each other explosively, like it had been not a month but an eternity, until the bell on the elevator rang and forced us back down to reality. We exchanged faint grins as the doors opened, where an older couple smiled at us as they stepped aside to let us out, and I wondered if they noticed our flushed cheeks and messy hair.

Midnight seemed to be a period of transition in the hotel's massive lobby. Most patrons were either back in their rooms in bed, or had just left for their night out, leaving Atlas and I virtually alone in this corner of the hotel, our footsteps squeaking across the pristine waxed floor. Moonlight filtered down through the sky high floor-to-ceiling windows, giving ethereal light to some of the blown glass fixtures that adorned the space. Atlas gave the night manager (that eerily resembled Tom Hiddleson) at the front desk a subtle nod before we walked through the revolving doors and out of the hotel, where warm air tickled my bare legs.

In the cut of the night, it felt like we were alone...nothing more than a speck on the map. I couldn't begin to imagine how tough being here was for him, but the fact that he'd chosen to spend that time with me made my heart swell.

I reached down and squeezed his hand. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I'm fine. Better now that I'm with you."

I smiled at him as he led us down the sidewalk and around the side of the hotel away from the water, where it opened up into a sprawling green park. Artful towers of lights woven with strings of vines jutted up into the sky, throwing purples and blues across the grass. They reminded me of the plants in Ferngully, this old animated movie I liked as a kid, that looked like giant magical light up mushrooms to the little fairies that inhabited the rainforest even if they were just normal to a regular human. The irony was that I felt more like a regular human here than I had in a long time, and from the way Atlas gazed up whimsically into the lights, I think he did too.

"Alright, we'll come back but we have a stop to make first," He told me as we walked through the empty center of the park, and the moment we stepped out of the park and into the street, it felt like we were in another city entirely. Throngs of people darted through a street lined with food stalls. I couldn't pinpoint an exact scent, but the combination of everything cooking made my stomach groan.

Everyone seemed to just mind their business, and nobody even gave us a second glance. We were faceless strangers in a crowd, just like everyone else, and I'd never been happier to be nothing but a drop in the ocean.

"So, I read somewhere that Singapore is one of the only places where street food vendor stalls get Michelin stars the way that some of the best restaurants in London and Paris and places around the world get them."

I bit down on my lip. "You really do know the way to my heart, huh?"

Atlas responded with a shrug, though it wasn't hard to catch a faint grin out of the corner of my eye. He took my hand and led me through the crowd, pointing out a few stalls for us to get food from. We grabbed a little bit of everything, from curry puffs to beef satay, and a drink so vibrantly pink it didn't look real.

We found a secluded spot back in the light garden and sat down in the grass. As Atlas started to unpack some of the food, I glanced up into towers of lights, transitioning into prisms of color bright against the midnight sky. When I looked back over at Atlas, he was already looking at me, smiling.

Sometimes when you connect with a person, you just get this feeling that they might become important to you. Maybe it doesn't happen right away - maybe it was the way they laughed at a bad joke you told, or an offhand act of kindness that catches you off-guard, or just the way you catch them looking at you when they think you're not looking. For all the talent I had and all the things I'd won over the years, I'd never truly felt special...until I noticed the way he looked at me in that moment, that was when I knew. I knew no matter what, my life would never be the same again.

"What?" I asked with a sheepish chuckle as he handed me a takeaway box, still smiling.

"Can I tell you a secret?" he asked.

"You can tell me anything you want," I replied.

"Well...honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing," he admitted, running his hand along the scruff collecting at his jawline. "I don't know how to do this. I...I've never been on an actual date before."

"Okay, I find that impossible to believe," I barked out another, more confident laugh. "You had flowers sent to my room, and you've taken me to a light garden and food stalls with Michelin stars - all of this effortlessly, I might add. I think you know exactly what you're doing."

"I guess I just...I know you, Savannah," Atlas sighed out. "The rest I'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants."

"Well, then flying by the seat of your pants has been a great strategy so far. I mean it." I smiled again. "You've really never been on a real date before?"

Atlas shook his head. "I mean sure, I've hooked up with a few girls. Lost my virginity too early to a random uni student on spring break in Nice, where I definitely lied about my age and my virgin status. Otherwise...I don't know, I guess I've never really wanted to. Go on dates, I mean. I thought I was just so grown, so cool...but I had no fucking idea what being grown up was."

"It's okay, I lost my virginity to a stock boy at fucking Trader Joe's in San Diego," I offered up my own confession with a grimace. "Shit, I thought I loved him...but I loved surfing more. I ghosted him and left for an event in Hawaii the next day. Rinsed and repeated that with basically any guy I'd met...until you."

Atlas scoffed. "Oh you tried to."

We shared a laugh, and as we finished up our food, sharing satay and making up stories for people we gazed at from a distance, I realized I wasn't done confessing to him. I couldn't pretend Atlas and I were still separate entities, like satellites in orbit programmed to never touch - only passing by each other every so often in a cosmic dance. We'd come crashing down to Earth and somehow hadn't burned up in the atmosphere. We'd survived...together.

"Okay so...my turn to tell you a secret." I exhaled a tight breath. "I was at the race in Silverstone."

"I know."

"I'm sorry I..." I paused when his response finally registered in my head. "Wait, you know?"

Atlas chuckled. "Yeah, Jane may have accidentally let it slip when we were at Spa."

"Spa?" I let out an incredulous gasp. "Like the Belgian Grand Prix? God damn it Atlas, that was months ago. You knew this whole time?"

Which also meant that Gemma had known that he'd found out. That sneaky minx.

He gave me a half shrug. "I was waiting for you to tell me."

I let the unexpected revelation sink in, more came rushing in like the tide. "That was when you messaged me, wasn't it? About the music."

"Yeah, it was." Atlas looked down at his sweatshirt sleeve, where he pulled at a stray string on the cuff. "I think in that moment I realized that maybe I hadn't been the only one who regretted the way we ended things in Miami. And the only thing worse than losing is losing and realizing you didn't do everything in your power to win. I guess I just...didn't want to admit defeat with you yet."

I let out a sigh and laid back onto the grass, trying to differentiate the lights at the top of the towers from actual stars. "Honestly Atlas, seeing you just being you...it had scared the shit out of me. I wasn't at a place with myself where I could look at someone being successful and kickass at what they do without feeling bad about myself. But then I started to realize that the way I felt about you outweighed my self-doubt. The way you make me feel...I've never experienced anything like it. And I kind of love it."

Atlas reached over and brushed a strand of hair off of my cheek. "Give yourself a little credit. I think you've also learned to tell self-doubt to keep its fucking mouth shut. But just so you know, I kind of love the way you make me feel too."

He ran his hand down my cheek and let his fingers linger on my lips for just long enough to make my heart flutter. He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "As much as I could sit here just like this all night, we have one more place to go."

I sat up. "Atlas, it's like 1 in the morning, don't you need to get to sleep?"

"Well that's the beauty of a night race, isn't it? Practice tomorrow isn't until 5, it's not like I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn." Atlas stood up and stretched his arms up over his head, exposing a little sliver of his stomach between the bottom hem of his hoodie and the top of his jeans. My heart fluttered again, and I felt like someone in Regency-Era London going near feral over the sight of the smallest bit of skin.

He offered me his hand , and we continued our past-midnight stroll through the streets of Singapore. We walked in the direction of the hotel until we hung a left and slipped down a few empty streets, and it wasn't until I saw the security gate that I realized he was taking me to the track. He swiped a pass to get us in and led us through the paddock to the starting grid. Looking down the straight-away at a dark, empty track felt almost foreboding, but the beaming smile Atlas gave me could have lit up the darkest chasm in the world.

"We all usually do track walks at the start of a grand prix weekend," he explained, leading me down the track. "But I wanted you to accompany me on this one."

I looped my arm around his elbow and gestured outwards with my free hand. "Lead the way, oh speedy one."

One lap was a little more than three miles total, and we followed along the track counterclockwise. As Atlas flipped the switch to driver mode, going on about this incident that happened at turn 3, or where his engine failed at turn 6 last year, or how much downshifting needs to be done at this point or that point. He was in his element, and he was magnificent.

Until we hit turn 10. I went to continue along, and Atlas gently tugged on my wrist to stop me.

"Over here," he tilted his head in the opposite direction, away from the track. I took his hand and followed him to a little open split in the barrier wall to access the areas immediately surrounding the track.

We stopped by another wall not too far off of the track, and when I looked down at the large bronze plaque embedded in the asphalt, any oxygen in my body whooshed out into the night, like someone had punched me in the gut.

TAREN VAUGHN
1976-2008
Y prinder gorau yw prinder geiriau

There were already small bouquets of flowers and other tokens left to show respect to someone that had passed, some of which looked like they'd been placed there very recently. Atlas reached down and laced his fingers between mine.

"He wanted to be cremated," Atlas explained. "But we felt like this is where he would have wanted to be memorialized."

"It's beautiful," I mused, watching a few fallen petals dance across the plaque in a gentle nighttime breeze. I gestured to the saying at the bottom. "It's Welsh, right? What does it say?"

"The best shortage is a shortage of words," Atlas translated. "It's like some old Welsh proverb, and he always used to say that the best things in your life should leave you speechless, short of words, breathless, all that good stuff. That's how he felt about racing, literally until the day he died."

I leaned into Atlas, and I felt the tenseness in his body dissipate ever so slightly.

"I think I understand why you wanted to do this alone," I said.

Atlas let out another sigh. "Well, I did do my official track walk yesterday with my team and everything before first practice, but this part in particular...yes, I generally prefer to do this alone. Just not this time." He pressed a gentle kiss to my temple, but in the silence of the night, I heard his voice crack.

"Well I'm really glad to be here with you," I responded, trying not to let the faint glassiness in his eyes choke me up.

"You know...I've never even finished a race here." He reached down again and brushed a few more stray petals away from the plaque. I did in fact know that, but I wanted him to be able to tell me himself. I knew how it could be to vocalize your own setbacks - painful, but liberating. "It's always something. I used to think he was trying to tell me something, like some kind of genuine divine intervention was stopping me from finishing the race."

He kept his hand down on the plaque, and I knelt down beside him and put my hand to his shoulder. "I don't necessarily think so. Maybe he just wants you to get out of your own head, not let this place intimidate you and figure this track out yourself. You're strong, and he knows it. He knows you can do this on your own, so show him."

Atlas leaned his head into mine and said softly, "I think he would have really liked you."

"I'm sure I would have liked him too," I replied.

After another moment or two of silence, Atlas rose to his feet, running his hands down the sides of his face to no doubt shake himself back into driver mode. "Alright, well...we gotta finish this track walk."

I let out an exasperated groan as I stood up. "And here I thought we'd just transcended that responsibility. Walking is hard."

Atlas laughed and slung his arm around my shoulder. "Hey, I told you to wear sneakers, didn't I?"

Hearing him laugh made the tension in my shoulders drop, and as we continued our nighttime stroll, I realized I didn't need to be a meteor, or a satellite, or anything cosmic and larger than life. I could just be Savannah, and Atlas Vaughn made me feel like I was still soaring.

the singapore mixtape
by sav allen on spotify • 16 songs, 1 hr 8 min

i wanna burn through the atmosphere
soar like a meteor tonight
'cause i think it could be love

satellites / enter shikari

(yes i know sav is blonde-ish but i could not pass up the sweet lil huggie gif O K ~ also if you spied the night manager easter egg, you're my bff)

the 'singapore sling' was actually a real part of the track that was remodeled in 2013. while thankfully nobody has actually died on that corner, many f1 drivers at the time called it the most dangerous turn on any track (& most damaging to the cars), which is why eventually it was changed. yes, i do in fact do my research on occasion.

in that same vein, big shoutout to crazy rich asians for providing me with so much aesthetic assistance and info for the light garden and food market scenes (& if you haven't seen that movie yet, you must). food is in fact the way to sav's heart. i did a bit of searching up on that part of downtown on my own as well, but please feel free to (politely) point out anything that is incorrect. unfortunately i have never been to singapore.

they make my cold little heart thaw, and yes i missed writing sav and atlas scenes! who agrees?