Is This Not Your Speed (Charlie and Shelby)

[tripledeke]

This really wasn't the kind of place Charlie would normally find himself on a Sunday afternoon, he would much rather be on the rink - especially in this weather - but Banksy had won some radio competition or other and got himself two tickets to the race and a chance to meet some of the drivers, so of course Charlie had agreed to be dragged along for the day out so that Adam didn't have to go on his own.

The race had been okay, he guessed, but it hardly compared to a hockey game for interest. Maybe it would have been different if he'd met any of the drivers before the race and was actually rooting for someone, but as it was even when the leaders changed he didn't really feel any particular enthusiasm.

Now was the part that was a little more bearable, the hospitality tent. Free food, drink, even champagne being handed out by people who were none too fussy about age limits (he was only 20, it wasn't that bad to sneak a glass or two), plus they were supposed to be mingling with the drivers but Charlie had no idea who was who. Banksy had disappeared somewhere in the crowd, so Charlie was left hovering near the buffet table, sipping champagne.

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[shelbycobra]

Shelby was possibly one of the only people not drinking alcohol as she leaned against the wall near the buffet table. She didn't drink a lot in general but she had a superstitious policy of not drinking champagne except for when she was in Victory Lane. And on this particular day having finished second she'd just gotten showered with it by Will Power anyway.

Her mind was a bit distant as she was still coming down off the high of two hours in a race car, replaying those final laps in her head and ignoring the muscles that were tired and wanting a nap rather than to stand around and appease the Team Penske sponsors and the track bigwigs. But she did it because she understood PR was as much a part of the job as driving. You didn't sign up for one if you couldn't accept the other.

So here she was and then she'd just go back to the host hotel and faceplant the bed.

"You look about as bored as I feel," she commented to Charlie, who may or may not have recognized the blonde from being the only woman announced during prerace driver introductions. She did tend to stand out like that.

[tripledeke]

"Not really my kind of thing," Charlie admitted before he had chance to think about it, turning to look at the woman as he spoke. As soon as he met her gaze he froze, because while he hadn't been paying huge amounts of attention he had noticed the pretty blonde driver and unless he was very much mistaken it was the very same woman standing in front of him now, and he'd just admitted he didn't like car racing. To a race car driver. That... that was some special level of stupid, Charlie Conway, good job.

"I mean..uh...I..." he groped for an explanation and came up short. A waiter passed by and he grabbed a glass of their tray, offering it to her with a lopsided, hopeful smile "Champagne?"

[shelbycobra]

"No, thanks. I only drink champagne when I win." Shelby chuckled, she wasn't going to give him that hard of a time. He was a kid and he wasn't being a prick about it so she'd save him the speech about how he didn't have a clue what she did or what she put herself through to do it every week. She just continued to nurse her soda, favoring him with a polite smile.

"So if you don't like racing," she commented, stating the obvious, "what are you doing here, anyway?"

[tripledeke]

"You didn't win?" Oh, nice one Charlie, you should probably know that. He cast his mind back to the winner announcement and remembered, dimly, that she had not been in the centre of the podium "Oh, no, you came second didn't y-oh. Uh, sorry, sometimes my foot just kinda lives in my mouth," he admitted. Second might have been a bit more impressive, but for a team sport like Hockey second place just meant losing. Even in a tournament it was a so-close-yet-so-far kind of place.

"Oh, well, my friend Banksy, I mean, Adam, he's over there," he waved one of the two glasses of champagne he was now holding towards Adam, briefly visible through the crowd. Now overly conscious of both glasses, he drained one and deposited it onto another passing tray. He didn't drink a lot of alcoohol, that had probably been a bad idea. "he won tickets in a competition and he wanted someone to come with."

[shelbycobra]

"And he chose you," Shelby said, her voice a little amused and a little annoyed. She loved her sport with a passion - it wasn't just what she did but who she was and what she fought for. For him to freely admit that he didn't care for it, and thus maybe have taken an opportunity away from someone who did, irked her slightly. But she barely let it show outside of a slight shift in tone. "There's a lot you could learn about auto racing. Most people don't have a clue how complicated it is."

[tripledeke]

"Yea, well, I'm his best friend... and everybody else was busy," he admitted, Fulton had actually wanted to go but he'd not been able to get the time off work. He felt sort of bad, catching the irritation in her tone, and besides, he knew he'd be pretty pissed if somebody showed up at a hockey game with the same attitude he had. Despite knowing that, he still struggled to conceal his surprise at her statement about the complexity.

"I never realised," he admitted "I mean... isn't it just driving in circles? What's more complicated about it?" he didn't mean to sound so clueless, and he did his best to sound genuinely curious rather than skeptical.

[shelbycobra]

Shelby took a deep breath to keep the expression off her face. Charlie had no way of knowing it, but she got that question a lot and it always hit a nerve because of how deeply passionate she was about her work. But while the Shelby Manning of three years ago might have bit his head off, the Shelby Manning of 2016 was aware that he just didn't know any better and even if he did, she was at a public function where the reigning IndyCar champion was not allowed to chew someone out.

"Let me show you something," she said instead, reaching into the back pocket of her jeans for her phone. She pulled up her schedule and let him see what it looked like. She had been up since six AM that morning for garage time, an engineering briefing, a mandatory autograph session, sponsor meetings, and a final practice session before the race. Then two hours of driving in the race, a press conference and now this. She'd be lucky to see her hotel room before six PM.

"And that's a light schedule."

[tripledeke]

He looked a little confused when she reached for her phone, but dutifully looked at the screen when she showed it to him. He was surprised to see something that looked... kind of familiar, not exactly the same obviously, but definitely recognisable.

"Oh," he said after a moment studying the schedule "I guess I never knew, looks a bit like my schedule.... maybe not quite as physical, but definitely just as busy." a lot more people around as well, sure he had team practices but a lot of his training time was a chance for him to be alone and focus by himself, he wasn't sure how well he'd cope being surrounded by that many people that long - his team were bad enough.

[shelbycobra]

"Most people don't. But I get up at five, six in the morning and sometimes I don't come home until ten, eleven at night. It's far from a cakewalk. And that's not counting the fact that I get to spend half my year living out of suitcases and hotel rooms."

She leaned up against the wall and shrugged. There were things about the lifestyle that she did not like and made no secret of that, but at the same time she just acknowledged that and moved on because she knew what she'd gotten into when she chose this line of work. She'd accepted the whole package.

"And then when I'm not doing this, I'm training martial arts when I can. So yeah. It's not as easy as you might think." She chuckled. "But that's a common misconception."

[tripledeke]

"That... pretty much sounds like how I'm expecting my life to be," Charlie admitted "Less of the hotels just now, but if things go right it'll be that way eventually." and honestly, he couldn't wait for it.

"Hold up," he laughed slightly, lifting his hand "That's cheating, you can't claim martial arts training as part of your hectic race car life, what have they got to do with driving?"

[shelbycobra]

"Everything. How do you think I look this good?" Shelby laughed. "There are so many different aspects that I have to keep in perfect shape. My neck strength, my grip strength, my hand-eye coordination, my stamina. So I work out four days a week. MMA helps me with all those things and it trains me to react faster and smarter to anything that might come my way. Plus, it's just fun to hit people."

[tripledeke]

"Well, I, uh.." he turned a little red at the comment about her looks, quickly distracting himself with more champagne, but she soon returned to safer topics, and he found himself nodding along with her explanation of why she needed the physical training. It made a lot of sense.

"Okay, okay," he said eventually "I will concede that your job is very difficult and busy. I mean, it's not as cool as hockey..." he's teasing now "but it still seems like a lot of work."

[shelbycobra]

"It is. But if you want to be the best, you have to put in the work. I didn't win a championship last season by just going fast." Shelby chuckled. Hopefully she'd soon be saying that sentence again but like any racer she wasn't going to count her chickens before they hatched. It only took one screw-up somewhere to ruin the whole thing.

Satisfied that she'd made her point she moved on. "So, hockey, huh? How'd you get started in that?"

[tripledeke]

"Well, I guess not," Charlie agreed, he was privately pretty sure she did win it by going fast, or at least faster than the others, but he could understand what she was getting at even if he didn't quite understand the nuances of it. There was a lot more to hockey than hitting a puck, he'd said it himself, and it was pretty much the same principle

"Oh, well, I was a kid growing up in Minnesota, so, hockey's just what we do," he laughed "but with me it kind of stuck, I've been playing since I was old enough to hold a stick."

---

[shelbycobra]

"Kinda sounds like me and racing. I've been driving since I was ten. Five if you count the Power Wheels in my Dad's garage." Shelby nodded, she could completely understand. Her father had been in the sport before her so she had grown up into it. It wasn't exactly what you did in Daytona Beach but for her it may as well have been. She didn't know anything else.

"I'm going to guess it's not true what they say. About hockey being mostly fights and then a game might happen?"

[tripledeke]

"That's pretty cool," If there's one thing he can understand, it's a sport taking over your life since you were knee high to a grasshopper. Hockey was just who he was, he couldn't imagine doing anything else.

"Well..." he laughed slightly "Actually it depends on the team. Or the game. But also, no, it's not true, there's a lot more to hockey than fighting."

[shelbycobra]

"I would imagine. If I wanted a fight, I'd go call my trainer, and he's a former UFC middleweight who can still break me over his knee." Shelby chuckled. She'd been on the receiving end of a missed punch from Peter once and had a lovely bruise under her eye for a week after that, which had caused a media firestorm.

"So are you playing in a league of some kind? You look a bit young to be in the NHL."

[tripledeke]

"I wish," he sighed longingly "NHL is the goal, obviously, but right now it's just college hockey, I'm on a sports scholarship." he lived for the day he'd get to go in for the draft, had idle daydreams about being first pick or having teams fighting over him. He knew it wasn't that likely, but he could pretend.

"Who knows though, maybe one day you'll see me on TV."

[shelbycobra]

"Being on TV is not all it's cracked up to be." Shelby laughed, she could say that from experience. Of course there were the times her colleagues had been on American Ninja Warrior and Family Feud, but she had yet to be invited.

"But that's good for you," she continued. "Going to college and getting a degree. It's all a learning experience and that way you have something to fall back on. Not all of us make it and not all of us can stay there. I went to one of the best schools in the country in my field, and I know it made me better at my job plus I know I have a fallback plan."

[tripledeke]

"As long as I'm playing hockey, I don't care if I'm on TV or not," he admitted. Sure, it was great when one of his games was televised, it was actually a really good training tool to analyse his own moves, but even though NHL was the dream it wasn't about being on TV or being famous, it was about the game.

"Oh I'm going to make it," he grinned "I don't need the fallback, it's hockey or nothing."

[shelbycobra]

"You realize every single person says that, right?" Shelby replied, giving him a look. She didn't want to burst the kid's bubble; after all that was the exact same way she'd approached her career. She had set a goal and done everything she could to achieve it. But the last few years had taught her that the world didn't always work out that way.

"It doesn't matter how good you are. All it takes is one accident, or one fluky thing happening out of your control, and you're done," she said. "I have a friend of mine. Just crashed at Texas Motor Speedway. It wasn't even his fault - another car hit him, his car flipped and he got dragged sideways down the track, head first. He broke his hand and his collarbone. He's healing now, but there's the chance he could have never raced again.

"You have to never take this life for granted and be prepared for the possibility that it could end at any given moment. It has nothing to do with how talented you are. There are so many other external factors and fate...you never know." Spoken with the weight of experience. Had she ever expected to be racing for Penske? Hell, no. But here she was.

[tripledeke]

"I'm really sorry about your friend," he replied, genuinely sincere "But please, we've been having a nice conversation, don't spoil it by being that random stranger who gives me the important life lessons pep talk that I never needed or asked for, do you really think I haven't heard it a million times before? From everybody?"

"I appreciate that you're just trying to be helpful and speaking from experience or whatever, but I was mostly just kidding. I mean, sure, hockey is my life and it's what I'm going to do with the rest of it no matter what, even if I get horribly injured and have to coach instead of play it, hockey is who I am."

"Oh, and by the way, I'm studying law, so, you know, I think I'll be fine." Charlie may have grown up in a lot of ways, but he was still pretty hot headed.

[shelbycobra]

"Good. Because you don't need to turn into me." Shelby finished her soda in one last drink, tossed the bottle into the recycle bin and checked her watch. If he could be hot-headed he was talking to someone who'd previously been described as a spoiled little girl so it was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

"In the interest of not raining on your parade," she continued, giving him the same tone he'd just given her, "I have a car in the garage that needs to be loaded up. You can stick around and enjoy the champagne."

Of course, why was she even bothering to go back and work in the garage at all? That'd be the million dollar question, one she did not give any hints to as she rolled up her sleeves and walked off toward the paddock. Championship or no championship she worked like she was still that mechanic in an upstate New York garage.

[tripledeke]

He backed down a little when she returned the tone, realising that he'd been a little harsh - she was just trying to help, offering advice, and even if he hadn't asked for it he should have just accepted it with grace instead of getting snippy at her. He might still be as quick to anger as he was when he was younger, but he was at least getting a lot better at admitting he was wrong.

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have snapped... you don't have to go. Unless you do have to go, in which case I'm sorry for keeping you, but it was nice to meet you, and, um, well done on your racing today?" he wasn't sure the etiquette for exactly what one said to someone who had come second, but he did his best.

[shelbycobra]

"Thank you." Shelby stopped at that and chuckled softly. She had no shame in finishing second, especially when the person who had beaten her was a teammate that she knew was talented and himself a former series champion. "Will puts up a pretty good fight."

She did actually want to get back to the garage at some point (she always insisted on helping with the grunt work even if it was not necessarily in her job description), but the apology made her turn and face him. "All you can ever really do is the best you can. Once you accept that most of it is out of your control, things get a lot easier."

[tripledeke]

"Yea I guess so," he agreed with a nod, "As long as you and your team are giving their all, what more can anybody ask? Though I guess... I don't know, do you have a team or is it just you?" he had assumed the latter, but he didn't want to make any assumptions after being so wrong before, maybe there were more people involved, there were pit crew and things right? Did they count as team to her?

It was also another part of his apology, asking questions about her interests to show he wasn't quite so self-absorbed as he'd probably come across.

[shelbycobra]

"I have a team." She nodded slightly, settling her hands on her hips as she relaxed (though not realizing that might not look relaxed; that's just how she always tended to stand if her hands weren't occupied). "A strategist, a spotter, a chief mechanic and a pit crew."

Of course if he wanted to talk about beyond the racetrack then he could add everyone at Team Penske, her personal trainer, her lawyer who was basically her business manager, and a bunch of other people but she didn't think he was asking that far.

[tripledeke]

"Five including you... that's almost enough for a hockey team. I mean, you'd have to play the whole game, but still, you only need one more to be goalie," he commented, and it was really a mark of how obsessed with hockey he was that it was the first thing he thought, the words out of his mouth before he even realised it.

Admittedly in a real hockey team there were a lot more than six of them, but six was enough to play, and he didn't think she would be interested in an extended explanation of how hockey teams worked.

[shelbycobra]

"The pit crew is actually more than one person," Shelby chuckled. "And I'm not sure any of those guys know how to skate." Shane especially. He was a big guy and she just didn't see him skating. Not that she knew how to either. If it did not involve racing or MMA, she had probably never tried it. She had a one-track mind to the max.

"I'm sure Hinch knows how to though. He's Canadian so he probably has to." Referring to one of her fellow drivers and good friends who came from the Great White North. Like most people she just assumed that was one of those things people did in Canada. "All I know how to do is drive and if necessary hit somebody."

[tripledeke]

"Even better. They can be taught to skate," Charlie grinned. After all, Fulton had been awful when they first got him on the ice, but now look at him.

"Oh, yea," he laughed "I'm pretty sure Canadians are born with skates on. He's probably into hockey too, I don't think I've met a Canadian yet who wasn't." admittedly that might have something to do with the fact that most Canadians he met was because of hockey, but why ruin a good joke with clarifying facts?

"Well, swap drive for skate and that's basically hockey," he grinned.

[shelbycobra]

"Hey, then maybe I'm not hopeless." Shelby chuckled. She would not be getting into the Octagon ever but she did like to believe she was a good enough fighter to defend herself. At least her trainer told her that she had skills and she knew Peter well enough to be aware he wouldn't lie.

She took a glance down at her watch and realized that she really ought to get back to the garage. Not that she had to help with the load-out, in fact her team would probably not mind if she skipped it, but she would mind. She did everything she could to lessen her team's workload. "I really should get back and help them pack up," she said. "But listen. I'll give you my phone number and if you're ever in town again, why don't you give me a call. Maybe I can come out and watch one of your games sometime. Return the favor."

[tripledeke]

"Definitely not hopeless," he grinned back.

"That'd be great," he smiled brightly, a little surprised that she'd be willing to talk to him again, but pleased as well. And hey, maybe he'd make a hockey fan out of her - of course, he thought anybody who came to see a game would leave a fan, he assumed hockey was just that awesome.

"It was nice meeting you."

[shelbycobra]

"You too." She wrote down her phone number with the pen she had in her pocket, and handed it to him with a small smile. She could kind of sense they'd gotten off on the wrong foot and didn't want him to feel like she hated him or something. That wasn't the impression Shelby liked to leave. "Maybe I'll see you around sometime, after the season is over."