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BAHRAIN

FIA Thursday Press Conference

Q: So, Charles, I’ll start with you. First race of the season, and it’s new colors for you this year.

Charles LECLERC: Yes. New colors.

Q: How has it been adjusting to your new team?

CL: It’s been good for sure. The team has been very supportive of my move, and they’ve been quick to get me up to speed with how things work at the factory and in the paddock. It is very different.

Q: Different? How so?

CL: Well, I mean, I was with Ferrari for six years. I think it would be strange if it did not feel different. For one, my Italian has not been of much use lately. (laughs) But otherwise the year before me is, it’s exciting. Challenging, for sure. But good.

Q: And the car, how is it?

CL: Amazing. The sessions I had during testing… I did not want to stop. It is incredible, driving a car like the RB-21.

Q: A big upgrade from your past cars?

CL: Ah, well… I am not here to compare.

Q: Fair enough. More about your move to Red Bull, I assume you’ve been spending a lot of time with your new teammate, as well.

CL: I have. Mostly in Milton Keynes, but, let’s just say we have spent some time together off the track.

Pierre GASLY: (laughs)

Q: Pierre? Anything to add?

PG: Uh, no.

Q: Okay… Well, last question from me, Charles. I have to ask. I know that Red Bull has publicly stated that you and Max would be on equal status this year. Is that true, from your side?

CL: Of course. First, it is very good for the team that we are in a position where me and Max are allowed to race throughout the season. Development over the winter was very good. We are confident that we will be strong from the start. As for Max, he has proven himself to be an amazing driver over the years, we all know that, but I think that I have proved myself also. We’ll see how it goes. Naturally, it will be hard. Max won four championships with Red Bull, after all, but… hopefully I will bring an end to that, this year.

“How was the press conference?” Max asks when he finds Charles in the back of his garage, sitting atop a stack of metal crates, his Red Bull cap sitting beside his thigh.

Despite being in the same team now, their schedules have been both filled to the brim with interviews and miscellaneous media obligations, and, being teammates, off-set from one another. This is Charles’ first time really seeing Max all day.

“Painful,” Charles answers, leaning back against the wall behind him, watching as Max sips from a Red Bull. When he sets the can atop the crate next to Charles’ discarded Red Bull hat, Charles instinctively scrunches his nose. He has never been a fan of caffeinated drinks. The irony isn’t lost on him.

“Yeah?”

“They asked me so many questions,” Charles complains, relieved that he’s finally free from all the mics and all the cameras. “Pierre was yawning next to me, Logan and Yuki were on their phones, and George was asked only one question the entire conference. It was not fair.”

“Well,” Max says, snickering, “that is a bit expected, no?”

He isn’t wrong. Expectations are high. Charles has barely been in the car, hasn’t even raced yet, but he’s already assumed to be a strong contender for the title this year. Red Bull are projected to be a full second quicker per lap than Ferrari, Mercedes, and Aston in Bahrain. Mercedes, unexpectedly, had struggled with winter development. Everyone is expecting it to be a runaway season for Red Bull. The question is whether it will be Max or Charles.

“Sure, but it’s all the same. How is Red Bull different from Ferrari so far? Do you think that you can win your maiden title this year? How did you spend the off-season? Like that. They should get more creative with their questions.”

“Maybe,” Max says, placing his hand on the edge of the top crate, just centimeters away from Charles’ thigh, “they should have asked whose hotel room you stayed in last night?”

Charles rolls his eyes. Max likes to think he’s smooth when he flirts. He really isn’t, but Charles finds it impossibly charming anyhow. He lightly nudges at Max’s shin with the toe of his shoe. “Not that sort of creative.”

Max laughs breathily, like he always does after his own jokes, always so expressive about it: he throws his head back, the skin around his eyes creases, and his mouth pulls into a big smile. Despite himself, Charles feels something hot curling in his gut.

“How was the TV pen?” he asks, more for himself than out of genuine curiosity. He needs to keep their conversation going, so as to not do anything stupid—like grab the collar of Max’s polo and pull him into a kiss, right here, in the garage.

“It was okay,” Max answers with a shrug, “I got a lot of questions about you. How you are compared to Checo and my past teammates, if I think you’ll challenge me for the title. That sort of thing. Also very repetitive.”

“And? What did you say?”

“Of course,” Max starts, smirking, “I said I think it’s a bit early to say. But I think you’ll do alright.”

Charles is a little offended. “Just alright?”

“Yeah, just alright,” Max says, eyes bright and mischievous as he closes the gap between them; pushes a knee to the stack of crates, between Charles’ dangling legs; tips his head to the side; gives Charles a look. And Charles knows what that look means. Max always has the same look on his face when he wants Charles to kiss him.

And Charles—wants to. Charles wants.

He licks over his mouth, then glances around the garage: none of the mechanics or team personnel are looking at them, like they don’t even care that Max is in Charles’ garage instead of his own.

Even so, they shouldn’t.

It’s been hard, to be honest, keeping it all a secret. Outside of training and spending time with family, they spent most of the winter break together, but it had to be in private, at each other’s apartments, day trips to some obscure town in the French countryside, and a few disastrous, fruitless attempts to get Max into golfing, tennis, and padel.

Still, there was something good about it. Knowing that this belonged just to them, that no one needed to know, that he didn’t need to post on Instagram to appease nosy fans or assure his mom that yes, yes, we’re doing alright.

They never did end up telling their families over the winter break like they had planned, too caught up with obligations, both social and professional, and with each other, just enjoying the time they had just with each other, before the season started.

Pierre is the only person Charles has told. He has a feeling that Joris and Andrea know, or at least have an inkling that Charles is seeing someone, but officially, all either of them can really do is extrapolate and speculate. It—would be too much of a conversation. He doesn’t think that he could handle having to explain himself and their relationship to either of them just yet, especially not with the uncertainty of the season to come.

Lando knows also, not because Max ever officially told him, but because Max had given Lando a spare key to his apartment years ago when Lando had first moved to Monaco. One day he showed up completely unannounced to play CoD and caught them on the couch in a—compromising position.

“Max,” Charles says.

“Yes?” Max asks, pouty about it. He tilts his head to the side for good measure. Cute, Charles thinks.

“We are in public,” Charles reminds, starting to feel how close Max is. It’s like the air between them is filled with static electricity. He has to fight the urge to grab a fistful of Max’s racesuit and tug him closer.

Max feigns ignorance. “I know. I wasn’t doing anything,” he claims, backing off and removing his hands from the crate and himself from between Charles’ legs. Then, with an impossible amount of sincerity, he says, “I just like being close to you.”

Charles still can’t quite believe it. It’s been four months since Brazil, since this whole thing started for real, and it’s—it’s too good, being with Max. Too easy. Charles is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He hopes it never does.

The thing is: Max always says things like this, out of the blue. How much he likes Charles, enjoys being with him, how happy Charles makes him. He never holds back, doesn’t see the need to. It’s scary for sure, his brutal honesty, but Charles is starting to learn how to embrace the fear. Starting to learn that it’s actually rather nice, knowing that Max will never try to hide how he feels from him.

I like being close to you too, Charles doesn’t say. I want you closer. As close as we can be.

But he isn’t as brave as Max, when it comes to things like this. Still, however, he likes to think that he’s found his way around it. “Hey,” he says, hand reaching out to grab the end of Max’s jacket.

“Yeah?”

Charles gives the garage another glance; no one is looking at them. He purses his lips. “Come closer.”

Max looks a little confused, but he walks forward, back to where he was. Charles smiles as he reaches for Max’s cap. Max’s hands fly up to his head, but Charles is too quick, stealing the hat from Max’s hair and putting it on his own head.

“How does it look?” he asks, grinning. He has every intention of racing with the number 1 next year.

Max’s eyes go soft. He doesn’t answer the question, merely hums thoughtfully and says, “You should go out like that. See how long it takes for them to notice.”

Charles raises a brow, then loosely loops one of his legs around the back of Max’s thigh, ankle trapping Max close. “Yeah?”

Max smiles, looking fond. “Yeah.”

And then Charles spots Gemma running into his garage, looking a bit frantic. Instantly, Charles freezes, freeing Max’s leg. Max notices, takes a careful step back, and turns around.

“Max!” she says once she reaches them, catching her breath. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re late for your Ziggo Sport interview.” She glances at Charles, brows furrowing a little in confusion. Even though Max has stepped away, the proximity between them is—not incriminating, but not subtle, either. Plus, Max has no reason to be in Charles’ side of the garage.

“Charles,” she greets.

“Gemma,” Charles replies. He hides his disappointment that the moment has been interrupted, and he flashes her a polite and agreeable smile.

If she notices the red 1 on Charles’ cap, she keeps it to herself. She turns back to Max and shoots him a glare. In response, Max rolls his eyes and waves his hand dismissively.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, reaching over to grab Charles’ cap and putting it on his own head. Both Charles and Gemma raise a brow at this, but neither of them say anything. “I’m coming.”

Charles watches as he leaves. It isn’t until Max is gone that he realizes that Max left his Red Bull can on the crate.

He picks it up. It’s still cold, half-full, and condensation drips from the side. For a few seconds, Charles thumbs at the logo, then out of morbid curiosity, he takes a sip.

It doesn’t taste as bad as he remembers.

Friday morning, as Charles is driving from the hotel to the paddock, separately from Max, of course, he gets a call from Seb.

Charles fumbles to accept the call, one hand haphazardly swiping at his phone propped up on the dash, the other on the wheel.

“Seb!” he greets, a little too loud and a little too excited. It’s been years since they were teammates, and even longer since Charles was fresh-faced and starstruck by the one and only Sebastian Vettel, but it’s hard to break old habits.

And it’s not like they don’t talk. Ever since Seb retired, he and Charles have had dinner a couple times a year, and they call a bit more frequently than that.

Seb was one of the first people who called Charles after the Red Bull news broke.

“Hi Charles,” Seb says, and Charles can hear faint voices in the background. His girls, probably. “I just wanted to wish you good luck. For today and tomorrow.”

“Will you be watching?” Charles asks, but that isn’t the question he’s really asking. Are you in Bahrain? is what he wanted to ask.

“From my TV, yes,” Seb replies, then laughs, squashing Charles’ ill-fated hope. Seb never comes to races, hasn’t stepped foot in the paddock since 2022, Abu Dhabi, his last F1 race. “I had to fish out my old Red Bull gear for my kids, you know.”

Charles nearly misses the turn, quickly hitting the breaks as he turns the wheel to the right. “They’re cheering for me?” he asks.

“They could be cheering for Max, for all you know,” Seb responds smugly. Charles is smiling before he realizes it. He’s long gotten over the grief of not having Seb in the paddock, not having someone to go to for advice, just around the corner, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss Seb, still. “But, yes, they are cheering for you. I think I’ve influenced them a bit too much.”

They chat for a little while, catching up as Charles drives to the track. Eventually, inevitably, Red Bull gets brought up, and Seb asks, “How is it so far?”

By this point, Charles is no stranger to this question. His answers tend to vary, depending on who he’s speaking to. He’s vague with the media, emotionally straightforward with his family and with Max, but it all boils down to this:

“It is different.”

Charles doesn’t try to explain. If anyone is going to get it, it would be Seb.

“Of course it is,” Seb says, comfortingly. “It’s always hard, leaving home for the first time.”

But that—that’s not what Charles meant. Not even close.

The truth, the secret he’s been keeping from everyone, is that it hasn’t been hard at all. When he says that Red Bull feels different from Ferrari, what he really means is: it has never been this easy.

Qualifying is electric.

Charles wins pole, outqualifying Max by just under a single hundredth. The Red Bulls are fully ahead of the rest of the field, far stronger than pre-season testing had predicted, with George qualifying third behind Max, more than three-tenths behind. Behind him is Carlos, and then Alex, Ferrari’s new driver.

The race itself is. It’s—

Max has a messy start and loses five places in the first lap, and though he makes it up easily, Charles is able to build the gap between them to a manageable five seconds by the time he cuts through the rest of the field. And for the first thirty laps, they’re racing. Trading places and fastest laps. Nearly driving each other off track. It’s fun. Charles thinks of Brazil, last year, except right now there’s no one ahead of them, no one to get in their way. The nearest car to them is thirty seconds behind.

On their second pitstop, Charles gets the undercut and he leads the race for the next twenty laps, just barely keeping Max behind on each turn.

It’s odd, being on the other side of it all, being a part of a truly dominant team in a truly dominant car. He had a taste of it, in 2022, but he knows that that wasn’t the real thing.

Finally, Charles thinks. Finally, this is it. This could be it.

And then, on Lap 50, there’s a hydraulics failure, and he has to retire the car.

On the plane ride back to Monaco, Charles thinks about the conversation he had with Christian, just at the start of winter testing.

Christian had pulled Charles away and into his office. There was a polite, yet long stretch of small talk and platitudes about Charles’ move, but it all lead up to this:

“I believe in your driving skills. I believe you could win us a drivers’ championship. I want you to know that we are serious about you and Max being on equal status,” Christian had said. “We want you two to race. It’s good for the sport, for the fans, and it’s good for us. But we are not idiots. We will not, under any circumstance, compromise the championship or let the good work of the people back at the factory go to waste. You’re on a multi-year deal, and Max is contracted with us until 2028. We took a gamble, taking you on. Having two number one drivers on the same team. We need this to last. So race on the limit, but not any further than that.”

It’s not a good start to the season, a DNF at the first race, where he was leading for most of it. To make things worse, his teammate ended up winning the race. Charles wonders if this is what Christian had in mind, with that warning.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Max says from beside Charles, not looking up from his phone. Charles glances at Max’s screen, and sees that he’s already watching on-boards. “If you had been able to go to the end, maybe you could have ended in P2.”

Charles rolls his eyes. “P1, more like it.”

Max chuckles. “Yeah, yeah.”

But for all Charles’ big talk, and though he knows that the race win would’ve been his if it weren’t for reliability, he still can’t help but be worried that maybe this year won’t go as planned. He knows he’s good, knows that he deserves this seat, but his luck has never been there.

Yet Charles knows better than most that there’s no use dwelling over the past. All the what-ifs and the should-have-beens. He also knows, better than most, that championships have been won from an even greater gap. It’s just one bad race, and Charles is no stranger to bad races.

One good day doesn’t make a good life. One bad race doesn’t make a lost championship.

Between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Charles flies to Milton Keynes and talks to the engineers about what went wrong, about improvements they could make in the car. He trains, harder than ever, desperate to prove that he made the right choice. To Red Bull, to the racing world, to his family, to himself. He gave up on his childhood dream for this.

He’s not at Red Bull to win races. He’s at Red Bull to win championships.

This is the real thing.

When Jeddah comes along, eyes are all on him, and expectations are at an all-time high.

Are you still hungry? they seem to ask.

I am, Charles wants to scream as the lights go out. I am, I am, I am.

MIAMI

FIA Thursday Press Conference

Q: This one’s for you, Charles. You and Max have shared some brilliant battles this year, and we’re only three races in! How does that feel?

Charles LECLERC: Haha, yeah. Me and Max have a good relationship. This was not always the case, but I am happy that we are teammates, now, and can push each other to the limit every race.

Q: You’ve been trading wins also. Him in Bahrain and Melbourne, you in Jeddah and, hopefully, here in Miami?

CL: That is the goal, of course, but we still have the rest of the weekend to go.

Q: How confident are you, in terms of this weekend, and the championship at large?

CL: As for the weekend, we are looking very strong. Hopefully we can get maximum points. A one-two with Max is obviously ideal. And I would of course like to win, but I'll just focus on my driving and see what comes out of it. It’s a long season. We have more than twenty races to go. Anything can happen. Especially against Max.

Q: You and Max. You’ve been a long time coming, haven’t you two?

CL: (a brief pause) Yes. We have.

Just as the press conference ends, Charles gets shuffled out of the TV pen by some Red Bull personnel, and into the room inside the Red Bull motorhome they use to film videos for the channel. The cameras are all set up, as well as a few assistants.

Max is already sitting on the couch, elbows propped up on the table, flipping through a set of flash cards.

“More filming wasn’t on the schedule,” Charles points out as he sits down beside Max. Gemma runs back upstairs to grab Charles’ set of flashcards.

On the way here, Charles was briefed about the game they’re meant to play. Each one of them is given a set of flashcards. Each card has a question either about the US or themselves that they need to ask their teammate. A pretty standard game, the type Charles had to play with Seb and Carlos all the time at Ferrari.

Max taps the edges of his cards on the table. “Yeah, well. I think they think we have ‘chemistry,’ ” he says, emphasizing chemistry with air-quotes.

There’s a bit of a story to it.

In the last two laps of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, after leading the majority of the race and narrowly fending off Charles, Max went wide coming out of Turn 17. Charles, who had been pushing and pushing, while still trying to save his tyres, pounced on the opportunity, overtaking him into Turn 18. But with DRS, Max quickly took back the place. What occurred next was the two of them trading places up until the final moments of the final lap. As they came into the last corner, Charles pushed Max off the track; he had to, had no other option. Max had turned into him, though Charles had left him the space. They bumped wheels, but Charles won out. The move was legal. Hugh and Christian had assured him of that.

Charles had reached the chequered flag first, parked his car in the number one spot, with Max trailing behind. He got out of the car, jumped on its nose, and screamed. The crowd of Red Bull engineers and the stands of fans were all screaming with him. He was on top of the world.

You asked me where my hunger went. It is here. It never left.

He jumped off the car, high on victory and adrenaline, then he saw Max climbing out of his car. Charles had little time to process the win, let alone what had happened in the last lap, had even less time to figure out if he needed to apologize, if that was something they did now, before Max was going toward him, wrapping his arms around his waist, and picking him up off the ground.

Their helmets knocked together, and Max had to let Charles go quicker than either of them would have liked. Max pulled him into another hug, tight, tighter, like he couldn’t get close enough, then said into his ear, loud enough that Charles could hear it through all the cheers, “You deserve this. I am so proud of you.”

And they stood there, holding each other tight, laughing and breathing. It could have been minutes and it could have been seconds. Charles can’t be sure. All he knows is that when they pulled away from the hug, he could see Max’s blue-grey eyes crinkling with a smile through his gear. He looked so earnest, so happy.

Charles leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Max’s, helmet-to-helmet, and held back a sob that he didn’t even know was coming.

It was all recorded and captured by a million photographers. The clips and photos spread around social media like wildfire. The fans can’t stop talking about them. F1 can’t stop talking about them. Charles can’t count the number of times he’s been told in an interview, It’s so nice, refreshing to see two rivals get along as well as you and Max do.

If only they knew, Charles couldn’t help but think.

Charles pulls his feet up onto the couch and smirks, starting to get comfortable. “Your fault for making a scene in parc fermé.”

Max rolls his eyes, and says, “You’re the one who fed me in the last video.”

Charles chews on the inside of his cheek, face hot. In Baku, they were trying out local delicacies, and Max was making a big deal about the more—adventurous dishes. One thing led to another, and Charles was shoving food into Max’s unwilling mouth. His fingers may have lingered on Max’s mouth, enough to feel the soft flesh of his bottom lip, the scruff dotting his chin.

The fans loved it. Maybe a little too much. Red Bull’s marketing team praised them for it, told them to keep it going, but the thing is—Red Bull doesn’t know, and Charles isn’t sure what would happen if they found out. If they got caught.

Charles is pretty sure that there’s nothing in their contracts that prohibits intra-team relationships, but at the very least, he has a feeling that protocol requires any intra-team relationships to be reported to HR. Because, however, they are at the front of the team, as public-facing as can be, they can’t risk it.

They had a long talk about it, back in December, after the season had ended. Charles knows that they need to be careful about hiding their relationship in public, even more so at Red Bull—but sometimes, it’s hard to keep his hands away.

The thing about Charles is that he is all want when it comes to Max. And it’s okay to want now, let it ferment in bone marrow, sit raw in his chest, settle down in his feet, cracking the earth with each step he takes, since they’re together.

The real phenomenon is the enormity of it, how much he can want things he already has.

Charles is pretty sure Max doesn’t even know the half of his want. He isn’t sure what Max could do, if he knew the enormity of it.

Before Charles can think of anything to say in response, Gemma is back with the game cards. She goes over the rules again, and the cameras start rolling.

Friday morning, FP3 is hard. Charles nearly bins it into the wall at least four different times, and at the end of it all, he barely makes the top three. Max, on the other hand, is on the top of the score sheets by more than five-hundredths.

It’s strange. They have the same car, and the same set-up, and Charles loathes the thought of it being a skill-difference, so he spends the hours before quali going over the data, figuring where he needs to do better and figuring out how he needs to do better.

An hour before qualifying, Charles caves and asks one of his engineers, Andy, for Max’s data to compare driving lines and data points. He knows he’s lacking somewhere, but he’s just short of figuring out what it is.

Andy comes back with a tablet full of graphs and colored data scribbles, but also news, as well.

“So I talked to Max’s camp,” Andy says, looking grim, “and he’s on a different set-up, mate.”

“What?” Charles demands, looking up from his notebook. He plucks the tablet from Andy’s hand. “Why didn’t he tell—I mean, why wasn’t I told?”

“We didn’t know until now. It was a last minute decision. Before FP3, he had insisted, I think.”

It doesn’t make sense to Charles, why Max would want to change his set-up. Sure, they have had their small differences in set-up over the past few weekends, but they’ve always talked about it, and from looking at the data on the tablet—Max has changed a lot, sacrificing tyre life for speed and grip. It will be good for qualifying, but not necessarily for the race.

Andy has been talking, and Charles narrowly tunes in for when he says, “…we don’t have enough time to change your set-up before qualifying, but if you want, we can change it to match Max afterwards, if you think his set-up is better.”

“No,” Charles hears himself blurt, even before he’s internally made a decision. “We stay with what we have.”

Andy lifts a brow. “Are you sure?”

It’s only the fourth race of the season, but Charles is twenty-four points behind Max. He can’t let that gap grow.

He weighs the pros and cons. The set-up he has is manageable. It’s not the best for qualifying, but it’s no doubt the best for the race.

“Yes, I am sure.”

Sunday night, after the race, and after the respective team afterparties, Charles and most of the other F1 drivers relocate to a VIP club. For the most part, Charles is present for appearances, but also to get belligerently drunk, after that race. He’s still working on the latter.

Charles hasn’t seen much of Max tonight; they went their separate ways after the race debriefing, and Charles has spent most of the night with Pierre, whom he snuck into the Red Bull party. Alpine parties are boring, calamardo. Boring.

At the bar, Charles orders him and Pierre gin-tonics and shots. They down their shots and move to the smoking area, where it’s quieter. They haven’t done much talking—Charles has been in too terrible of a mood for that—but at this point in the night, they’re both drunk enough that Pierre stops walking on eggshells.

After a pleasant silence—as pleasant as it can get in a nightclub where the music vibrates through the floor—Pierre blurts out, like he couldn’t hold it back anymore, “I just—you’ve lost to him before. This year. Why is this one worse?”

Charles grips his glass harder. It is worse than Bahrain and Australia. That’s the problem. He can’t even deny it. He ends up just not responding.

“I mean,” Pierre goes on regardless. “I get it. It can’t feel good. Losing to your boyfriend.”

Charles bites down on the inside of his cheek, frustrated that he’s having this conversation with Pierre again. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Genuine surprise erupts on Pierre’s face. “You two are still on that?”

Him and Max have been together and exclusive for six months now, but it’s not—they’re not boyfriends. They’re dating, they go on dates, they have sex often, they practically live in each other’s apartments, they like each other, but it’s not—there’s a difference. He isn’t to Max what Kelly was to Max, and Max isn’t to him what Charlotte was to him.

“We’re in a relationship, but we’re not—like that.”

Pierre doesn’t try to hide his disappointment, mouth pinching up, brows screwing together. “Alright.”

After that, Pierre thankfully drops the topic of the race.

It soon gets chaotic and packed in the smoking area. Charles isn’t sure how it happens, but Pierre gets pulled away to the main area and Charles stays at the table. He quickly knocks back the rest of his gin-tonic and orders another one, double. He isn’t drunk enough to party tonight, but he’s in Miami, and he’s supposed to be celebrating another Red Bull 1-2.

“May I join you?”

Charles looks up from his already half-finished glass, and sees Nico Rosberg.

Nico was commentating during the race and conducted the post-race interviews with the podium finishers. It’s not Charles’ first time talking to him today, but it’s still strange to see him in a place like this.

“Yes,” Charles says, mostly out of shock, “of course.”

“Jenson dragged me here,” Nico explains, setting his drink down on the table, and he pulls out the seat across from Charles, where Pierre had been sitting. “He said I needed to get at least one drink since we’re here, and the dude abandons me as soon as we get our drinks! Imagine that! I have been looking for an open table for forever.”

“Yeah, that sucks,” Charles replies dispassionately. He doesn’t really know what else to say. It’s all just small talk, anyway, and it’s not like he and Nico are friends or around the same age, let alone ever had any other meaningful conversation with each other. The only thing they have in common is racing, and Nico doesn’t even do that anymore. But Charles doesn’t leave, nor try to make an exit—it’s either talk to Nico, or sit at his table in silence.

“Sorry about the race,” Nico says after an awkward beat. “I was rooting for you, you know?”

Charles shrugs, and tells Nico the same thing he told him in parc fermé, when all the cameras were on him. “I was unlucky with the red flag.”

Nico narrows his eyes. “And Max was lucky.”

Max’s speed-focused set-up worked for qualifying, but Charles was right: it didn’t work that well in the real race, given the slippery nature of the track. Max, who was on pole, had to pit for new tyres earlier than expected, and came out behind Charles. He was struggling to keep his tyres alive for the majority of the race, and Charles was cruising, building the gap between him and Max to almost twenty seconds. But then Logan crashed into the barriers, and the race was red flagged. With only a few laps to go, Max didn’t have to care about saving his tyres and could push as much as he needed to.

At the restart, Charles lost the lead.

When it comes down to it: yes. Max was lucky. And that’s the most irritating part of it all. Max had the wrong set-up, had insisted on the wrong set-up, struggled during the race, and still came up on top at the end of it all.

Charles hums, stirs his drink with his straw for a couple moments, then says, “I made the right choice. I know I did.”

It was a flawless drive. Charles didn’t make a single mistake. He should have won it, but he didn’t.

Nico laughs, then shakes his head. “You made the safe choice.”

Charles frowns. He’s drunk enough that he has to actively focus on Nico to stay with the conversation. “What does that mean?”

Nico sips on his drink, some fruity cocktail, then says, “I also thought he made a mistake, prioritizing a qualifying-focused set-up for this track where it isn’t super difficult to overtake. I guess he thought it was important to get pole over you. And maybe it was a mistake, but he won anyway. He won because he took the gamble, and luck rewarded him for that. Fortune favours the bold, and whatnot.”

A cloud of smoke from the girls smoking at the table beside them blows between Charles and Nico. “I didn’t take you for a superstitious person.”

“I’m not superstitious,” Nico denies with a laugh. “I only think that some things happen for a reason.”

Charles doesn’t believe in fate or destiny. He believes things happen for a reason, but not the reasons that Nico is thinking about.

“You know what you have to do when you find yourself out of luck?” Nico continues, smirking like he’s about to say something clever. Charles purses his lips, hesitant to give Nico the satisfaction of getting to explain. But Nico is a world champion in his own right. Charles decides he should at least hear him out, so he shakes his head. “You have to make it. You don’t only take the gamble. You make it.”

It’s all complete nonsense to Charles, honestly. He can’t help but wonder if this is the sort of thing Nico talks about on his YouTube channel, thinning truths into charming ambiguities in an attempt to cling to relevance. Being a retired world champion will only get you so far.

Before he can think up a response, there’s a chair being pulled out beside him, an arm sliding across his waist. Charles knows who it is even before he turns to look.

“Charles! I was looking all over for you.”

Max looks: drunk, gorgeous, sweaty, and happy, in that order. Just looking at him, the bright and sloppy smile on his too-big mouth, the mole dotting his upper lip, Charles can’t bring himself to be frustrated about the race anymore. Warmth materializes in his chest. He smiles back, and before he even realizes it, he has a hand on Max’s thigh.

Remembering that they’re not alone, Charles turns his head back forward, and sees Nico, brows raised slightly, forehead creased with lines, eyes wide with something more than surprise.

Nico quickly schools his face into neutrality, then smiles politely. “I’ll leave you guys to it,” he says. His chair screeches backward against the floor as he stands up to leave. Charles doesn’t say goodbye.

Max only acknowledges Nico’s presence once he’s already gone. He starts, “Okay, what were you doing with Britney?” His words are slurred slightly, and he’s pouting. It’s awfully endearing.

Charles has no reason to not be honest. “Talking.”

“About what?”

Charles feels a little embarrassed about it, but he drinks the last of his gin-tonic, then he tells Max the truth. “The race.”

Max laughs and squeezes Charles’ hip. His hair falls over his forehead. He looks more blond in this light. He shaved this morning. He looks impossibly young. “Come dance with me.”

Charles can’t have heard that right. “Dance?”

Max is never the one who wants to dance. But right now, he’s slipping out of his chair, grabbing Charles’ wrist, and dragging him up onto his feet.

The race is over, anyway, and he and Max are flying back to Monaco in the morning. Regardless of what happened today, all Charles can do is keep moving forward.

Charles lets himself get dragged away to the dance floor, and when they’re tired of that—the hotel.

He can do this. He can separate Max Verstappen, four-time world champion, his Red Bull teammate, his title rival, his main competition, from Max. His Max.

Charles has back-to-back victories in Imola and Baku. In Imola, mixed conditions and a botched pitstop had Max falling to last place in Lap 25. He recovered to fourth: a mega-drive for sure, but not a win. Charles crossed the chequered flag first, with more than twenty seconds to spare. It felt less earned than some of his other victories, but a win is a win.

In Baku, well—

Charles was simply the better driver that day.

After Baku, Charles is only six points from leading the championship.

A few days before the Monaco Grand Prix, Max’s mom and sister come to Monaco to see Max, and they all have dinner together.

At the end of the night, Max messages Charles to tell him he’s back from dinner, and he asks if Charles wants to come over. So after a quick shower, Charles heads to Max’s apartment. When the door swings open, Charles is met with the sight of Max wearing that stupid pineapple shirt Charles had borrowed all those months ago, and loose gym shorts. Charles will never tell him this, but he likes Max the best like this, all soft and smooth around the edges.

“You should have come today,” Max says once they’ve relocated to the bed. “Luka and Lio were there. They are both growing up so fast.”

Charles tries his hardest not to flinch. “But your family doesn’t know about us, no?”

He and Max have been together for eight months now. But they still haven’t told their families. Charles doesn’t see this thing, whatever it is, between him and Max ending anytime soon, maybe not ever. He wonders how long they can keep putting it off.

You’re not even my boyfriend. What would we even tell them?

Max hums. He has a hand on Charles’ hip over his shirt, and they’re both lying on their sides, facing one another. “No, but you of course could have come anyway, as a teammate. I think my mom would really like you. She already really likes you.”

And that’s an especially high compliment from Max.

Max is not religious, but his father is God, Old Testament God. Destructive and all-powerful, involved in all corners of Max’s life.

His mother, though. Max sees her differently: she’s a deity in her own right, but she isn’t like his father. She lights a candle for him before each race. She prays for him. She looks after him from far away, a benevolent god. She is Max’s role model.

Before winter testing, he and Max had flown to a private island in Greece, owned by a Red Bull sponsor who was happy to let Max bring a plus-one onto the island while he was away. They were renting out a small yacht, and Charles was driving. Charles can’t remember how they started talking about it, but he remembers what Max had said:

I like kind people. Like my mum. My dad, at least when I was growing up, was angry all the time. I thought that that was normal. I used to put my anger onto the track but—I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m very angry anymore. Life has been very good to me. I at a point realized there was no use being angry about things out of my control. Maybe I got that from my mom, even if I did not see her a lot after the divorce.

She must have raised you well, Charles said, his throat tight, in the years she had you.

Max had smiled fondly. She did.

“Yeah?” Charles asks. His heart feels so full. Like his ribs are about to crack open. “Did you talk about me?”

“Only a little, of course,” Max says, a dimple puncturing his right cheek. “She asked me about what it is like being teammates with you. She is still very surprised, given, you know…”

That we hated each other for all the years she knew you, really knew you, because she only knew you as a boy and still doesn’t know you as a man, is still getting to know you, the person you have become without her.

“What did you tell her?”

Max tends to smile with his entire face. It’s one of Charles’ favorite things about him. “That you are a lovely teammate,” he answers playfully, and Charles doesn’t miss the way Max’s eyes flick down to his mouth.

“What else did she say about me?”

“She thinks you are very handsome. My sister does too,” Max says, and then he smirks. “I of course also think so.”

“Ah,” Charles says, starting to feel embarrassed. He knows how attractive he is; how could he not? But when it comes from Max, he’s surprised every time. He suddenly becomes very aware of Max’s hand on his hip that, at some point, slipped under his shirt.

Charles brings a hand up to Max’s ear. The shell of it is searing hot. He notices that Max’s hair is getting long; he should be due for a haircut soon, but Charles likes it this way, likes it when there’s enough hair for him to run his hands through, to pull on. He gets distracted like this for a while, and when he brings his attention back to Max’s face, he sees Max chewing on his bottom lip, cheeks pink, eyes dark. When he notices that Charles is looking at him, Max releases his lip from between his teeth, but his mouth stays slightly parted.

They’re so close like this, their foreheads almost touching, that when Charles takes his next breath, his nose brushes against Max’s. When he flicks his eyes up, he sees Max looking at him.

There’s that look. Charles knows what it means; he knows what Max wants. Charles never doesn’t know what Max wants. He’ll give it to him tonight, let Max win on this front tonight. He slides his hand down to the side of Max’s neck, pulling him in closer, closer, closer. It’s the only win Charles plans to give him this weekend.

Monaco is always busy. Busier than all the other race weekends, even with all the fuss they make about Miami and Las Vegas.

To make things even busier, Red Bull has packed his schedule and is following Charles around the whole weekend, planning to put out a home race special for him on YouTube. Thursday morning, they film him with his mom and brothers, and in the afternoon, he and Max are tasked with a scavenger hunt around the city. That night, Charles, Max, and Christian attend a sponsor function, mingle with tipsy CEOs for a while, then head home for the night.

The day was packed, but when Charles finds himself in bed just before midnight, he realizes how it was a blessing, all the distractions.

It isn’t his first race with Red Bull, but it’s his first home race with them.

Every year, Monaco is an event, glitz and glam, yachts and celebrities, warm sun and blue skies, but for him especially, it’s a spectacle. He is the spectacle. Bad luck, mistakes, poor strategy—

Last year, however, 2024, he won here. He knows he can do it again. He has always been the better qualifier. Even this year, in the same car, he has out-qualified Max five out of six races. In Monaco, qualifying matters just as much as the race.

He’s filled with nerves. He decides he’s going to play this weekend safe. He knows how good he is. He doesn’t have to risk it, push past the limits. The smallest of mistakes here is punishing, race-ruining. Charles knows that better than anyone.

Saturday morning, when it all starts to matter, when the sponsor functions and TV interviews and pre-quali press conferences all start to wind down, Charles can’t help but notice how in the garage, the mechanics and staff are looking at him differently. They have only a few hours to go before qualifying. Charles worries if there’s something wrong with his car, if there’s bad news that everyone is too afraid of telling him, if he and Max got themselves found out, if—

After reviewing the data from FP3, Charles heads straight to his driver room to avoid the eyes and clear his mind. If it really is bad, someone will tell him. Max will tell him.

Speaking of Max, Charles hasn’t seen him all day. Because of the constant filming, they decided to stay away from each other in the paddock to keep things easy.

It’s harder than expected. He has gotten so used to always having Max around. Coming home to his own apartment and finding Max there, on the couch playing a video game or cooking a barely edible meal in the kitchen that Charles will pretend to love. Sometimes Max brings his cats and they make a complete mess of Charles’ apartment each time: once, Jimmy crawled inside Charles’ piano, and he and Max had to pry Jimmy’s claws from the strings. Max sat down on the ground with Jimmy in his lap. Frowning, he cupped Jimmy’s face with his palms, stroked behind his ears, and said, No, no, you cannot do that. Say you are sorry to Charles. Then, he picked Jimmy up and turned him around to face Charles. And Jimmy said, Meow!

With just two hours to go before qualifying, Rachel knocks on his door and asks him to come to the garage.

It’s real, he thinks. Oh god, it’s real.

Charles follows Rachel silently. He spends the time theorizing what it could be, a crash, how he should react, who was it this time, how he will come back from this, I won’t.

By the time they reach the Red Bull garage, Charles has already prepared himself, and it’s—

It’s Max, standing at the center of his garage, surrounded by most of Charles’ team and holding a small cake, red and white frosting sloppily smeared all over the sides, imitating Monaco’s flag. There is icing on the top that reads: WELCOME HOME!

Charles’ eyes flick up. Max’s cheeks are flushed a rose pink, blotchy with color. His eyes are a butterfly blue. He shaved this morning. He looks so young. Charles’ chest feels tight.

“What is this?”

Max grins, then promptly smashes the cake in Charles’ face.

“So,” Charles says, when all is said and done, and he’s wiped the cake off his face, “that was all for the cameras, right?”

“No?” Christian says, sounding confused.

By the time Charles reacted to the fact that there was cake smashed all over his face, Max was fleeing from the garage. Charles ran after him, but Max had already disappeared and escaped the crime scene completely.

“Then why…?”

Christian shrugs. He puts his hands on his hips. “It was Max’s idea. He said he wanted to make you feel at home for your home race. I thought it was harmless enough, so we had the team prepare something small. It’s good for the marketing team, obviously, but that isn’t why we did it.”

Charles swallows hard. “Oh.”

It’s always been hard to read Christian. For years, he was just Red Bull’s team principal to Charles. A drama loving enemy of Ferrari. Shit stirrer of the paddock. He’ll do anything for his drivers but even more than that, he’ll do anything to win a championship. Anything for Red Bull. He’ll cut, he’ll cannibalize. There is no too far with him. Charles saw what Christian and Helmut did to Pierre and Alex.

Christian smiles, warmly and convincingly friendly, but when he pats Charles on the shoulder and says, “Let’s keep this up, yeah?” Charles hears what he’s really saying:

Don’t fuck this up. You and Max. Don’t fuck it up.

I’m trying, Charles wants to say. Don’t you think I’m trying?

Charles gets pole position in Monaco by over two-tenths. He’s home. And he’s going to fucking win it.

MONACO

Charles Leclerc’s Radio Transcript: Lap 75

Hugh BIRD: Verstappen 0.4 behind. 0.4 behind.

Charles LECLERC: What the fuck is he doing?

BIRD: He has been ordered not to fight. Save your tyres. He will not fight.

LECLERC: What the fuck? What the fuck was that?

BIRD: We told him, mate. We gave him orders.

LECLERC: This is a fucking joke. A fucking joke.

MONACO

Post-Race Interviews - Hosted by Nico Rosberg

Nico ROSBERG: Wow, Charles, wow. What a race. I thought this was going to be in the bag for you, and I guess so did you. Take us through it, the overtake Max made on you in the closing laps.

Charles LECLERC: Obviously I am. I am not happy with the move Max made. It was a good race at first, starting from pole, getting away clean. At the chicane—I don’t know what happened. The stewards, they are still investigating. But, um, I, yeah. Yeah. Maximum points for the team is always good. That’s all I have to say.

ROSBERG: Alright, thank you. Onto Max now, our race-winner, after a controversial move on Charles in the last laps. Max, congratulations on the win, and wow, what a move!

Max VERSTAPPEN: Ah, well, yeah. Thank you. Extremely happy for the whole team. It is always special to win here in Monaco of course for an F1 driver. It’s simply incredible.

ROSBERG: Tell us about that overtake! I can’t say I’ve seen an overtake like that in Monaco in years. It must have taken quite some nerve.

VERSTAPPEN: Charles went wide coming into Turn 11. There was a gap. I went for it. That’s all.

ROSBERG: I’m sure you were told that the move is under investigation by the stewards.

VERSTAPPEN: Yeah. I mean, it was a fair overtake. I know the rules. I was within them.

ROSBERG: We heard the team ordering you not to fight. What did you think when you heard that?

VERSTAPPEN: Bullshit.

After the post-race press conference, but before the team debriefing, Charles drags Max into his driver room.

They haven’t been able to talk, not really, not with the cameras and mics in the cool-down room, or all the reporters trying to get statements from the both of them in parc fermé. Here and now, they’re still sweaty and sticky with champagne. Charles takes his hat off and throws it onto the couch. He wants to do more than that. He was able to hold his anger back in the cool-down lap, in the cool-down room, up on the podium, but—now they’re alone. Now it’s just them. Charles wants to punch the wall. He wants to scream. He is so angry and he doesn’t know what to do with any of it.

“What the fuck was that?”

You knew this was coming. You had to have known.

By the look of shock on Max’s face, it doesn’t seem like he knew. Charles isn’t sure if he knew, either.

Max pinches his lips, his brows furrowed under the visor of his cap. Balaclava lines are still pressed into his skin. He is so gorgeous it makes Charles furious. “We were racing,” he says, and then he adds, “Like always.”

“Like always?” Charles spits back, shaking. “You didn’t leave space. You nearly ran me into the wall.”

I would never do this to you, Charles wants to say, but doesn’t.

“It’s not—”

“The team ordered you not to fight.”

Max’s shoulders fall for a moment, then he recovers, letting his entire body go stiff. He tilts his chin up and looks at Charles. “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t let what happens when we race affect us,” he eventually says. His voice is firm, but there’s still a softness to it. Charles isn’t sure if he’s imagining it. “That we wouldn’t fight over the races.”

Charles blinks. They did say that. They did agree to keep these parts of their lives separate, but—

“Max,” Charles says. “Today was… It was…”

He swallows as soon as he realizes what he was going to say: It was my home race.

He doesn’t end up saying anything at all.

“We were racing,” Max says after a long moment of silence. He starts to play with the brim of his cap.

Another long moment of silence ensues.

There’s nothing else to say, really, but Charles has never been good at letting sleeping dogs lie. He asks a question he already knows the answer to. “Are you even sorry?”

Max frowns, places his hand around the back of his neck, and asks, “Why should I be sorry?”

Charles was expecting an answer along those lines. He just wasn’t expecting it to hurt that much.

“Yeah,” he sighs, not looking at Max. He picks his cap up and puts it back on. It feels like armour. “We should head to the meeting room,” he announces, and starts to head toward the door. But then—Max’s hand is on his wrist, pulling him back into the room.

“Wait, Charles,” he says.

“What?” It comes out more tired and frustrated than he planned. He watches Max’s Adam’s apple bob, watches the creases in his forehead smooth out.

“Are you coming to the afterparty?”

Charles lets his jaw drop. “Seriously?”

“It won’t look good if you don’t go,” Max says. The pink on his cheeks does nothing to soften the sharp cut of his jaw.

“Yeah, well,” Charles says, swallowing. The afterparty was the last thing on his mind, but now that he thinks about it—it’s the last place he wants to go today. He turns the knob on the door, and as he walks out, he adds, “It won’t look very good if I do.”

The worst part about this whole thing is that, back when they were kids, not only did Max used to pull off moves like this all the time, but Charles did too. Not just daring moves, but ones that run the risk of penalties, of being disqualified, all for a race win. Anything to win. Those days, winning was all that was on Charles’ mind. Keep an eye out for any gaps, any mistakes, then take it. Have no fear. Do what you must. Drive the boy into the puddle. Force him into the gravel. He’s the competition. You’re better than him. You have the entire world in your palms. You may be just a boy, but boys can be hungry too.

Charles is not a boy anymore, but he is still hungry.

Isn’t he?

Even last year in Brazil, when he had everything to lose, he raced with Max, and it wasn’t clean, but it was beautiful.

Still, it was different. It was full of joy, the racing, the yearning.

There is no joy to this.

Is this how it’s supposed to be? Is this really what it takes?

At around 9 PM, Charles is at his apartment, watching some Netflix show he isn’t paying attention to, a bottle of wine half-drained sitting on his coffee table, and a glass pinched between his fingers.

He hears keys clanging around inside his front door, so he pauses the TV and sits up on the couch. A few people have copies of his keys: Arthur, Lorenzo, Andrea, Pierre, and—Max. He isn’t sure who it’s going to be, but he’s really hoping it’s not Max.

From down the hall, Pierre’s voice rings clear. “Trouble in paradise?”

“What are you doing here?” Charles asks, slow from the half-bottle of wine he’s drunk.

Pierre rounds the corner to Charles’ living room. In his left hand is a bottle of white wine, in his right, a bottle of red. “Thought you could use some company. You weren’t answering my texts after the race so I checked your location.” He glances around the room, eyes fixing on the small wine spill on the table that Charles hadn’t bothered to clean up, as well as the container of half-eaten leftover pasta. Scrunching his nose, he says, “This is a low, even for you, Charles.”

“Shut up,” Charles grumbles, cheeks-hot. “You should be out partying.”

In reality, Pierre doesn’t have much to celebrate. He got fucked on strategy, as Logan crashed and the safety car came out the lap after he pitted, and he not only didn’t finish in the points, but he finished behind his teammate.

Thinking about it, Charles feels bad about lamenting over second place.

Pierre ignores him and looks at the TV. “What the hell are you watching?” he asks, gawking at—

Oh, that’s embarrassing. As it turns out, Charles was watching one of Netflix’s reality TV dating shows.

“I don’t know,” Charles says. “It just started playing.” It’s the truth, but he doubts Pierre believes him. He doesn’t care enough to try to convince him.

“Hand me the remote,” Pierre demands, plopping down on the couch beside Charles and making grabby hands at the remote. Charles gives it to him. “I started watching this new show. I think you’ll really like it. It’s about this…”

Hours later, once they’ve binged half the season of Pierre’s show, drained the rest of Charles’ wine, and made their way through the two bottles that Pierre brought, lying on opposite ends of the couch, Pierre finally brings it up.

“I heard Max threw you a little party before qualifying,” Pierre says, poking Charles’ thigh with his toe. “Crazy mind games, huh?”

Charles wants to smack the smirk off Pierre’s face. If he wasn’t so drunk, he probably would have done it. “That’s really not funny.”

Pierre’s grin falls, and he looks sheepish when he apologizes. “Sorry. It was a good race, though. I saw the replays. The car control it took to keep yourself out of the wall was impressive.”

Charles has had enough of people praising him for keeping it clean. For not fighting back hard enough.

“You’re not helping,” he says, thinking about how Max had gotten to jump into the pool, at the end of the race.

Pierre sits up and covers Charles’ knee with his hand. “I want to help. Talk to me about it, calamardo.”

Charles pinches his lips together, hesitant. Pierre did come here for him, skipped out on all the parties and yachts and beautiful girls he could’ve taken home, and it’s not like Charles can talk to anyone else about this; it’s not like any of his other friends know.

He picks up his wine glass and drains the rest of the liquid. “I feel pathetic,” he admits. It’s the truth about today: more than anger, more than disappointment, he feels shame.

“Why?”

“Because I—” He winces, feeling the words he’s about to say on his tongue, the sticky weight of them. Once he says it, he can’t take it back. He says them anyway. “A part of me was expecting him to—to go easy on me. Because it was my home race.”

At that, Pierre laughs. “It’s Max,” he says. “Boyfriend or not, he would never go easy on you.”

“I know that,” Charles snaps. Don’t you think that’s why I feel so pathetic right now? “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

Pierre lets out a heavy, frustrated sigh. “What is that whole thing even about? You’re sleeping together, you’re exclusive, you have feelings for each other, and this room is filled with Max’s things.”

He gestures wildly around the living room, not at any particular thing, but Charles could point them all out by heart: the Red Bulls in his fridge, the cat toys scattered around the carpet, the backpack on the loveseat, and uncountably more remnants of Max in his bedroom that he has inevitably started to think of as theirs.

Charles bites his lip, avoiding Pierre’s eyes when he confesses, “We never talked about it.”

“What?”

“If we should label it. What we could label it. We never talked about it.”

Charles wishes he could say more, but the truth of the matter is that during the winter break, it’d been bliss, him and Max. A state of liminality. Seat-fittings, sim work, photoshoots—none of it was real. None of it had mattered. So in their free time, they went on dates to the countryside, drove up to beaches in the middle of the night and watched sunrises together. They couldn’t get their hands off each other.

And they talked. They talked about a lot of things. How Charles’ dad would arrange little pizza parties for Charles and Pierre and their other karting friends. How the first kart Charles ever drove was Jules’, and he crashed it in the backyard. How Max never saw much of his mom or his sister after the divorce, how Max still thinks about the day he said goodbye to them both. How the three of them went out for ice cream, just the three of them, and Victoria had cried. She wailed so hard, embraced her only older brother, the only brother who would really matter, and spilled her chocolate cone all over his back. He didn’t think much of it at the time, but now he realizes—that was it. That was goodbye.

He only realized that he would never get those days back years after they were already long gone.

Charles finds himself picking at a hangnail on his thumb, thinking about the time Max had told him that story. They’d been in bed, and Max’s phone was lighting up with texts from Victoria, photos of his nephews.

Those days, Charles was itching to race, to be in the car, but now, he realizes he should have cherished that time. When everything was good and easy and simple.

“Why?”

Justifying that non-decision was easier over the winter break. There wasn’t any need to put a name on what they were when things were that good.

It’s not like they avoided talking about it—they just didn’t need to, not to mention that neither of them were in any rush, just wanted to sit and soak in what they had with each other.

“Is it because you are two men?” Pierre asks when Charles takes too long to answer.

And that—that’s something, for sure. It’s something that Charles hasn’t been thinking much about, and it’s not something that he wants to think about tonight. He also doesn’t think it matters very much, in the grand scheme of things.

“I don’t—I don’t think so. Maybe,” he admits, because he’s drunk enough wine tonight that he doesn’t have it in him to lie. “I don’t know. It’s just that—labels make things complicated,” he decides on.

Pierre shakes his head and sighs. “That’s true, I guess. But the thing is, they also make things real.”

Pierre leaves a little after 2 AM. Charles drunkenly showers, drunkenly brushes his teeth, and drunkenly gets ready for bed. He’s half-asleep when he hears keys jingle in the lock of the front door, followed by some clamor, his shoe rack was knocked over perhaps. Charles will deal with that in the morning. Pierre must have forgotten something.

When the bedroom door opens, however, Charles realizes that it’s not Pierre.

Charles doesn’t move from where he’s lying on his side, doesn’t open his eyes, but he can hear it when Max opens up the drawer and picks out the pajamas he leaves at Charles’ place, can hear it as he pulls off his clothes and gets changed, feels it when Max gets on the bed and crawls under the covers, slings an arm around Charles’ waist, and presses his cheek to Charles’ neck.

Charles can’t suppress the gasp that leaves his mouth. Max must know he’s awake.

“I missed you tonight,” Max says quietly. He smells like alcohol, sugar-sweet with a sourness to it, and cigarettes too.

There are so many things that Charles wants to say. Why are you here? I missed you too. I hate that I missed you. I’m so angry with you. I’m so angry at myself for being angry with you.

He doesn’t say anything.

Max shifts closer until his front is completely pressed to Charles’ back. He’s so warm.

Charles might as well let this happen—it’s always easier sleeping when Max stays the night, or when he stays the night at Max’s.

He’s just on the precipice of sleep, can feel his grip on the crag of consciousness beginning to weaken, when Max says, “I’m not going to say I’m sorry for beating you, because I’m not.”

Charles swallows over the hurt. I know you aren’t, he wants to say. Almost says. But Max isn’t done.

“But I am sorry.”

“About what?” Charles manages to mumble, but he’s asleep before he can hear what Max has to say.

Max is gone by the time Charles wakes up. On his phone are the following texts:

Max
Sorry about last night
I was really drunk and not sure what I was thinking

Charles doesn’t respond.

After Charles showers and gets dressed for the day, he steps out into his living room, prepared to clean up the mess that he and Pierre had made of his apartment, but the thing is:

The coffee table has been wiped clean, the empty wine bottles have been deposited into the recycling bin, and all the glasses have been washed.

The shoe rack by the door is all neat and tidy, not an item out of place.

They don’t talk about it, not actually, but Max comes over on Tuesday night with takeout from Charles’ favorite restaurant. Charles takes the olive branch. On paper, they’re alright by the end of the week.

In reality, Charles can’t help but feel like something has changed.

Max wins in Spain and South Africa too. The gap widens to thirty-three points.

They still have sixteen races to go, Charles tells himself. Anything can happen. It’s all to play for.

SILVERSTONE

Post-Race Interviews - Hosted by Jenson Button

Jenson BUTTON: George, stunning drive today. Congratulations on the win! The first non-Red Bull win of the year! You must be proud.

George RUSSELL: I am—wow, wow. I was really not expecting this today. I knew we had pace, but given how dominant Red Bull have been this year, I didn’t have much hope for a win. I just want to say thank you so much to the team, to all the lads at the factory. Just, wow. I still cannot believe it. Mega result. Goodness gracious. It is so special to win a home race. I have never felt anything like this.

BUTTON: Take us through the double overtake on the Red Bulls!

RUSSELL: I mean, obviously it helped quite a lot that Max and Charles were going at it. I could, you know, sort of—sneak through on the outside while Charles was doing his damndest to keep Max behind. I’m very proud of that move. Honestly, I reckon that they didn’t even see me because they were so focused on each other. For around twenty laps, I was just watching them battle, keeping an eye out for where it was possible to make a move. It got so intense, I almost forgot to drive flat out.

BUTTON: Their championship battle is really heating up! I can’t say I’m not enjoying it.

RUSSELL: Well, if it means I’ll have more races like today, I’ll welcome it gladly.

He and Max don’t talk about the race, afterwards. They don’t talk at all, afterwards.

Hungary and Austria fall in Max’s hands too. Both times, Charles parks his car in P2 and watches as Max jumps onto the nose of the car, watches as he throws himself into the mechanics’ receiving arms, watches as all the grandstands erupt in orange smoke.

Charles is forty-five points behind Max in the championship. He has finished second place six races in a row.

For what it’s worth, that must be a record, or something.

Max
Are you free tonight?
We can watch a movie or something

Charles
sorry i can’t tonight
my mom invited me over for dinner
rain check?

Charles doesn’t wait for Max’s response. He puts his phone on silent, then he puts it face down on the table. He picks up the packed meal his nutritionist dropped off at his apartment this morning, unpacks it, grabs his TV remote, and presses play.

Charles’ mom calls him the day before the Belgian Grand Prix. Charles is on autopilot for most of the call; he feels guilty at the end of it, when a whole hour has passed and he realizes that he can’t remember a single thing they were talking about. He reels himself in and focuses for the goodbyes, because Charles has had far too many conversations that he didn’t realize at the time would be the last. He has learned to make his goodbyes count.

No matter what happens this year, she tells him, I’m proud of you.

Once the call ends, Charles is left staring at his black phone screen, thinking, What the hell is there to be proud of?

Max doesn’t win in Spa, but neither does Charles.

Lando does. A maiden win in Belgium for a half-Belgian Brit. Fitting, Charles thinks.

He and Carlos complete the podium.

It’s not much to write home about.

And that statement, well, Charles feels like it describes his whole season so far.

Max, who finished eighth and scraped a measly four points, having dropped from first to tenth after a racing incident with George in the closing laps, finds it in himself to celebrate for Lando’s sake, but it becomes clear throughout the night that he isn’t happy.

You’ve won eight races this season, and I’ve won three, Charles thinks. What the hell do you have to be unhappy about?

Once Charles is back in Monaco, he phones Seb. Charles had planned this whole conversation out, but when Seb picks up the call after a few rings, he forgets it all.

The other end of the line is silent for a few long seconds. Charles picks at his fingers, trying to keep his breathing under control. In and out. In and out. He looks at the window of his living room, at the moon shining bright and clear up in the black sky.

“Charles, are you alright? I can hear you breathing.”

Charles puts the call on speaker and lets his phone down on the couch cushions, dropping his head into his shaking hands. He doesn’t say anything.

After some silence, Seb speaks up again, his voice is soft and gentle, like he’s speaking to a frightened animal. “Charles, what’s wrong?”

Charles sits up, and he rests his skull against the top of the couch, looking up at the ceiling. It’s awfully embarrassing, what he’s about to say, to admit it to Seb and the world and to himself, but if he doesn’t say it now, when will he ever admit that it’s the truth?

“I feel—” Charles swallows over the bile in his throat. There’s a fraught edge to his voice when he says, “I feel like—what is the saying? I am playing a losing game. I feel hopeless.”

Underneath all the shame of the admission is relief. Someone knows. Someone knows how I am feeling.

“I don’t know what to do,” he adds, and he knows that Seb hears the unspoken request: Please tell me what to do.

At this rate, Charles has lost count of how many battles he’s lost against Max this year.

In 2013, Sebastian Vettel had only won three races before the summer break. Then, he came back and won every single race that was left. If anyone knows how to make a comeback, it’s Sebastian Vettel.

Seb hums, like he’s thinking about it, but his words come out firmly, “There’s really only one thing you can do.”

“What is it?”

“Win,” Seb answers, which is the most unhelpful advice in the universe. “Despite your teammate,” he adds. And then, softer, “You’ve done it before.”

Charles makes a noise, sputtering at all the memories from when they were teammates in Ferrari rising to the surface, when he was younger and Seb was still hungry, when he had nothing to lose and Seb had everything to lose. This isn’t about that, he wants to say, why are we bringing up old history, he wants to ask, but instead of any of that, he says, “That’s not—that’s not easy.”

And Seb laughs again, says, “It’s not supposed to be easy.”

Charles shakes his head even though there’s no one to see it. “I don’t know how. It feels like—I feel like I have forgotten. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I know that I can win. I know that I can do better than this, but I—I don’t know what to do.”

The silence before Seb speaks is unbearable. Charles closes his eyes and counts to ten, ignores the way his knee won’t stop bouncing, ignores the rapid thump thump thump of his heart. “Look. You have the car. That’s half of it. The other half is you. I can’t tell you how to win because you already know. It’s in your blood, because winning is not something you forget how to do. Trust me on this. You know what to do.”

After that, Seb has to end the phone call. “I’m really sorry about this, Charles, but you actually caught me at a bad time, can we continue this later perhaps?” he asks. Though Charles’ heart sinks, he gives a noncommittal answer, and a hasty thank you. His head is too filled with all the things he wanted to say, all the things he wanted to ask.

Winning is not something you forget, Seb had said.

But it has been seven races since I last won, Charles had wanted to say. I cannot remember the weight of the first-place medal around my neck, I cannot remember what it feels like to reach the chequered flag first, I cannot remember what it is like to jump onto the nose of my car, look up at my father in the sky, and scream, scream, scream.

Max inevitably wins in Zandvoort, and Charles crosses the finish line 0.8 seconds behind.

Charles fought. He called the right window for pitting, he made no mistakes, he raced his fucking heart out, and he still didn’t win.

It’s Max’s ninth win of the season, and Charles’ tenth second-place finish. Eight second-places in a row. There are only ten races to go in the season, and they’re going into the summer break.

In the cool-down lap, Charles does the math. He is thirty-eight points behind Max. As he parks his car in the P2 spot, he watches Max throw himself into the arms of the mechanics and embrace his father, and he thinks to himself, I am losing another championship.

I am losing another championship, he thinks when Max pulls him into a hug after a race.

I am losing another championship, he thinks when he steps on the weighing scale.

I am losing another championship, he thinks as he chugs an entire bottle of water, his head ringing with something he can’t put a name to.

I am losing another championship, he thinks in the cool-down room, as he tries to make small talk with Max and Carlos.

I am losing another championship, he thinks as he steps onto the podium and accepts the second place trophy, as he looks out into the crowd and his eyes instinctively search for the people he knows are not there, will never be there again.

I am losing another championship, he thinks, after the post-race conference, after their obligatory TV pen interviews, but before the team debrief, when Max pulls him into his driver room, and pushes him against the closed door, and kisses him, and says, “Oh, I love you so much. That race was amazing.”

Everything stops. “What?”

“I really thought, you know, at Turn 1, you would take the outside line, so I tried to cover you off, but then you breaked so early and of course you came through on the inside. And then, at Turn 3, I think it was in Lap 60, you…”

Charles doesn’t hear the rest of it. All that’s going through his head are the following things, on repeat:

You love me, and I am losing another championship. This is the first time that you have ever said that to me, and I am losing another championship. We haven’t really spoken since Monaco, and I am losing another championship.

You choose now, of all times, to tell me that you love me?

And it’s here and now that Charles realizes: The Max that he races against and the Max that he is with. They are one and the same. They have always been the same.

You are the reason why I am losing another championship.

“Charles?” Max asks, breaking him out of the spell.

Win, Seb said. That’s not—that’s not easy, Charles replied. And Seb laughed and said, It’s not supposed to be easy.

You know what to do, Seb had said, and Charles hadn’t believed him. But maybe Seb was right. Charles has been looking for answers all season, but he’s known all along.

The words come out of his mouth before he even registers what he’s saying, “I can’t do this anymore.”

It isn’t until he gets the sentence out that he realizes it’s the truth. A truth that he didn’t want to face and could not face. He cringes when Max steps back.

“Do what?” Max asks, pouting. He tilts his head to the side.

“Us,” Charles says, his voice cracking. “Being together. It was a mistake.”

Max just looks confused. He doesn’t know what’s happening. Charles barely knows it himself. “What?”

“I’m getting distracted. I’m losing focus. I’m not—I’m not concentrated anymore. I can’t fight you for the title if we’re—I just can’t. Not properly.” Not flat out. Not on the limit.

I can’t have you and the championship. I can’t have you both.

Charles needs to make his choice. One or the other.

He knows what the right choice is, but just because the right choice is right doesn’t make it any easier.

Sometimes, Charles is still learning—he has been learning this lesson all his life, and he will forever be learning this lesson—the right choice is to let go.

Max snorts and rolls his eyes. “Of course you can. We’ve been fighting all year.”

I have been losing all year, Charles wants to say, but his pride keeps him from saying it. “You—don’t understand. You have four championships. You can—” He bites his lip. You can keep things straight. I can’t. I really, really can’t. “This might not be a problem for you, but it is for me.”

Max regards Charles for a long moment, with careful eyes and a slight frown. His voice is soft when he says, “I don’t think you realize quite how good you are.”

But it’s not enough, Charles wants to say. Wants to scream. “I can’t do this anymore,” he repeats. “Not with you.”

A crease forms between Max’s brows. His mouth pinches. “There’s still ten races to go in the season.”

There are only ten races to go in the season. If Charles is going to have any shot at this championship, something needs to change.

“That’s why,” Charles says with a small voice.

Max is silent for a moment. He looks angry. He looks confused. He looks disappointed. But he’s taking it better than Charles would have thought. He turns around and goes to sit on the couch.

“So what are you going to do?” he says, punctuating it with a sigh. “Retire? Leave for a different team? Where would you go? Back to Ferrari? Mercedes?”

Dread starts to fill Charles’ chest.

Max doesn’t—he thinks—

“Next year, of course, I don’t know how good we’ll be, with the new regulations and the new engine, but it is not like that matters,” Max continues. “Your exit clause won’t even apply this year. There is no way we are falling to fourth in the standings this year, of course. Wait, have you been talking to other teams?”

“Max,” Charles breathes out, starting to feel sick.

“If Christian hears you’ve been talking to other teams, he’ll be pissed. And Christian hears everything. One time, I…”

“Max. Stop,” Charles says, with as much force as he can manage, and that finally gets Max’s attention. “I mean,” he says, swallowing over the lump in his throat. “I can’t do this.”

Us, Charles means, but doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to. He knows that Max knows what he means now.

“Oh,” Max says after a few seconds. His face goes stone-cold, rigid like a marble statue. He doesn’t say anything else.

“I think we need to stop this,” Charles says.

Max blinks, void of emotion. There’s nothing on his face. It feels like—there’s nothing there. Just a few minutes ago, Max had told Charles that he loved him.

“Is that what you want?” he asks quietly.

And what does Charles want?

A championship. Forever and always. More than anything. Above all else.

“Yes,” he says. If this is what it takes. I will pay any price, even if the price is you.

Max doesn’t take his eyes off of Charles. Time passes. Seconds, minutes, maybe. Charles isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of anything right now.

“Alright,” Max says, robotically.

That’s it?

After a beat, Max adds, “I think you should go. We have the debrief soon.”

You’re not going to fight?

“Yeah,” Charles says, in disbelief. The debrief? That’s what Max is focusing on? “Yeah, I should.”

You’re just going to let me go?

When he’s at the door, however, he can’t help himself. He turns around and asks, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“What you said,” Charles answers, starting to feel crazy. “That you…” He can’t say the words. But it’s clear what he’s referring to.

Max barks with laughter. It almost sounds genuine. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

Charles looks at him, just looks, because he’s incapable of doing anything else. And then he goes, and goes, and lets go.

INTERLUDE

Whenever he’s asked, Max tells everyone that his first memory is the first time he drove a kart. He was four years old, he and his dad were in the driveway of their family home, just outside the garage, and his dad had picked him up and strapped him into the go-kart he assembled himself. It was so much fun, Max always says. After that, all I wanted to do was race.

Max doesn’t remember this. He remembers his dad telling him, years after, You had so much fun. After that, all you wanted to do was race. And Max believed him.

For what it’s worth, it was probably true.

But this is the real truth: his first memory is hiding under his dad’s desk, holding Victoria’s hand—tight, tight, as tight as he could—as she whimpered into his shoulder, frightened by the sound of their parents screaming at one another in the bedroom, about what, Max can’t be sure.

He was five years old, and Victoria three.

It wasn’t a surprise when their parents separated three years later.

Still, he barely understood what was happening. He understood why he moved in with his dad, Victoria with her mother, but he didn’t understand why that had to be the case. Why they all couldn’t live together, why he couldn’t have a happy family like all the boys on the karting tracks.

But it didn’t matter. Not really. Soon, Max realized he didn’t want to be like the other boys.

They weren’t winning races.

If this is what it took, this is what it took.

Max’s second real memory is from 2007, when he started racing outside of Belgium. His first race ended terribly after he hit the apex too hard and spun out into the run-off. It was too late in the race to make up the places he’d lost, and he’d finished dead-last.

Max doesn’t remember crying, but he remembers his father, in the car, telling him, Stop fucking crying. I will not have a loser for a son. You’re a winner, aren’t you? That’s what you do. You win races. You’re my son, so you win races. Fucking act like it, and start winning again.

So Max did.

2007, 2008, and 2009, he won nearly every competition he entered. His dad didn’t celebrate his wins like the dads of all the other boys he raced against—he didn’t jump to his feet and cheer as loud as he could when Max crossed the finish line first, didn’t hug Max after his victories or tell him he did a good job, didn’t take him out for ice cream or organize pizza parties for him and his friends.

Instead, he helped Max disassemble his kart, clapped a firm hand on his shoulder, and led him back to the car. And that was alright: Max knew that his dad was proud of him, he didn’t need to hear him say the words. Max was strong like that, different from the other boys. He didn’t crave approval from his father: he knew he already had it.

He saw it in his father’s mouth, the way it would sometimes twitch with a suppressed smile in the car rides back to Holland; he saw it in his father’s eyes, the way they would look a little brighter after he had a good race; he heard it in his father’s voice, when he would zip up his racesuit before a race and say, Let’s bring another one home, because he knew that Max could.

His father was strict and mean and even cruel at times, only because he cared. He was only hard on Max because he believed in him. No one understood that, those days, but Max didn’t care what they thought.

He was a winner. He was his father’s son.

Winning was easier and harder than Max thought. Racing, that was easy, and it was fun. Everything else was hard. The long journeys in the car, quitting football, sliding through a wet track in the pouring rain for hours and hours and not being able to leave till he found grip where there wasn’t, not seeing mama or Victoria for months at a time.

It was hard making friends, too. After he started winning, and winning, and winning, no one wanted to be friends with him anymore. You’re too fast, the other boys told him. It’s not fair, your father raced in F1, they said, because even if they couldn’t beat him, they could try to get under his skin.

Max didn’t care. He was proud to be his father’s son, even though he knew his father didn’t amount to much when he did race in Formula 1.

His father never said anything like, You’re going to be a champion one day. Not with words, anyway. But in the silence, Max heard it, and he believed it.

It would all be worth it. It wouldn’t all be for nothing.

He doesn’t know when it happened, but at some point, his father’s dream became his own. He wanted it for himself, and no one else.

In 2010, Max started competing internationally. This meant longer car rides. His dad didn’t like it when he talked on the way to races, even if the drive took an entire day, so Max saved up as much money as he could from the fraction of his victory money he was allowed to keep for himself. At a gas station on the way to northern France, he bought a small geography book. It contained a map of the world, maps of each continent, and general facts about each major country.

The world was so big. If he was going to become an F1 driver, he should know about all the countries he would race in, where they are, what they look like, feel like on the tip of his finger, tracing the shapes of each country, all of the major rivers of the world, the roads from Amsterdam to Brussels, to Paris, to Berlin, to Vienna.

He’s always liked maps, so this book kept him busy in the car. He would challenge himself to memorize the flags and country capitals. He would quiz himself on blank maps. He would stare at road signs and relate them onto the maps in his little book.

Max likes identifiable borders. He likes clear-cut definitions. This is that. That is this.

Before he learned that Chile was the skinny little country on the west side of South America, it wasn’t real to him. Before he learned that Madagascar was the island east of Africa, it wasn’t real to him. But when he gave them names, they became real.

He still didn’t understand why his parents stopped loving each other, but he understood that the capital of Zambia was Lusaka; that the capital of the United States was, bizarrely, a city that didn’t belong to any of the fifty states; and that Monaco was a tiny city, and an even tinier country.

The world is big and scary, but if you cut it into little pieces and give those pieces names, it becomes a little less big, a little less scary, and a little more real.

All this to say, when Max entered Formula 1 in 2015, he didn’t know much of what the future was going hold, but he carried three fundamental truths with him:

One. At one point in time, his parents loved each other enough to promise they would love each other forever. Promises like that don’t mean anything in the real world.

Two. He would be world champion one day. That wasn’t a promise. It was an inevitability.

Three. Once you give something a name, it becomes something real. Something you can lose.

In 2018, Charles Leclerc joined the paddock. Max remembered him from their karting days. How could he not? Charles was the only one who ever gave him any real competition those days.

Charles didn’t like Max very much at first. Max didn’t care. Max was a race-winner, he had been racing in F1 for three years, going on four. He had beaten Sebastian Vettel, he had bested Kimi Raikkonen, he had terrified Nico Rosberg into retirement, and even Lewis Hamilton was starting to look at him like a threat.

If it wasn’t for his car, he was sure that his championship standings would reflect these truths.

Anyway, Charles was an infant in F1 years, even if he was only sixteen days younger than Max.

When Charles was announced for Ferrari, Max had bigger things to worry about, like Daniel leaving the team, like the ongoing sexuality crisis Daniel had kicked off in 2016. When Charles started to actually race for Ferrari, Max had bigger things to worry about, like stepping up to be the new team leader, like starting to be comfortable with himself enough to fuck men just as much as he’d fuck women.

But that—whatever his sexuality was, whatever people wanted to call it—didn’t end up mattering for a while.

At the end of 2020, Max fell in love with Kelly Piquet and the idea of the life they could have together. She was perfect. She was everything he wanted. And so, for the next three and half years, she and her daughter would be Max’s world.

However, as time passed, they had to start thinking about the future.

So Max told her the truth.

At the start of 2024, he confessed, I don’t want to get married. I don’t ever want to get married. He didn’t see the point in vowing to be together for the rest of their lives. If they stayed together, they stayed together. There was no need to make promises. He had seen what it did to their parents. He had seen the promises they weren’t able to fulfill.

Commitment doesn’t need a name. Stability doesn’t need a vow.

Kelly didn’t see it the same way.

So they fought, they fought, and they fought. They fought for each other, and they fought for the lives that they wanted with each other, but then it started to hurt, and then Penelope started to notice that they were fighting all the time, and that—that was the end of it.

At the end of it all, Max realizes that the fighting hadn’t been worth the hurt.

June of 2024, it was decided that Red Bull wouldn’t be renewing Checo’s contract. Surprisingly, Checo had been fine with it, had been ready to retire and spend time with his family. Christian asked Max if he had any preferences for his new teammate: Yuki, Liam, or perhaps a driver from outside the Red Bull family.

Pierre would never drive for Red Bull again, nor would Alex. But maybe Carlos, Max thought, and that kicked off an idea—

If they were going to steal a Ferrari driver, they might as well take their number one.

Christian had been against it. I saw how crazy it drove Toto, having two number one drivers. There is no way we are risking that. But Max couldn’t get the idea out of his head. The sport was changing so much, and Max was struggling to keep his head on straight. His contract wouldn’t end until 2028, and he didn’t need to win any more championships.

The first was emotional. The second was beautiful. The third was—expected. The fourth—inevitable.

Nothing would ever feel like the first, nor the second. No one can take those away from him.

He wanted more championships, sure, but Formula 1 wasn’t everything.

Max wanted a family. He wanted kids. He wanted to fall in love again.

He knew that with a good car, he could bring Red Bull as many championships as time would allow, but he wanted to enjoy racing more than anything.

He’d always enjoyed racing against Charles.

Max had been racing for his whole life, all the years that mattered at least, so he knew how to pick his battles. He would only pick the ones he stood a chance at winning, and he knew he could win this one.

And where one story ends, another begins. At the start of the summer break, Lewis Hamilton announced his retirement.

Max knew that Charles was speaking to Mercedes. Everyone and their mother knew that he was speaking to Mercedes throughout the season. They had to act fast if they wanted him, and Max wanted him, but he didn’t know what to do. He and Charles were amicable, at that point, but they weren’t friends.

As luck would have it, that afternoon, Max happened to come across Charles at some hole-in-the-wall bar in Monaco. He wanted to know what Charles was going to do: sign for Mercedes, renew for Ferrari, or maybe—

And so, he got Charles drunk in an attempt to see where his head was at. But then Charles was throwing up in the bathroom, then breaking down in the streets of Monaco.

You need this, Max thought to himself. You need this just as much as I want it.

So he told Charles there would be an empty seat, convinced him to call Christian and make his case for why they should sign him. By the end of the summer break, Charles had signed, and the Formula 1 world exploded with excitement and expectation.

Max hadn’t been expecting what came next.

Since ending things with Kelly, Max hadn’t let himself have any fun. So at his birthday party, he decided to let loose. He found a guy at his party: a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, some vaguely C-list actor who had just as much to hide as he did. Max can’t remember his name, but he remembers he was pretty, had dimples, was some sort of European, and Max wanted him.

Shortly after talking and flirting a bit, Max sent him off to the bathroom and said he’d be there in a moment.

Man the door for me? he asked Daniel once he found him shotgunning Hookah with a model. Daniel had owed him from when they were teammates: when he and Max had to share a room, Daniel often sexiled Max, and Max either slept in the bathroom and had to hear them have sex in the adjacent room, or sleep on the couch, and also had to hear them have sex in the adjacent room. Back then, Max really hadn’t minded, had even offered several times. It took him a long time to realize why he was so okay with listening to his teammate have sex through the wall. But that’s beside the point.

Daniel sighed, said goodbye to the girl he was talking to, downed the rest of his drink, and followed Max to the toilets.

And as he was in the midst of getting sucked off in the dirty club bathroom, Charles, of all people, walked in. After that—nothing would ever be the same.

I love you, he thought, but had the sense not to say, in his driver room in Brazil, gasping red-mouthed with his back to the window, looking down at Charles on his knees. He never imagined this would ever happen: he was sure Charles was straight, after all, thought he’d been torturing himself by crushing on a straight guy for months.

When Charles was leaving his driver room, his mouth swollen-pink, his hair messed up, his eyes glassy and light, smelling like sweat and champagne and sex, This is love, probably, that’s the name I would give this, Max thought to himself, and he pulled Charles in for another kiss.

Afterwards, Max made a promise to himself, because those are the only promises that count. I will not give this that name. I cannot be the one to say it. Because if I say it, it becomes real, and it becomes something that I can lose. I will not lose this.

When it slips out, eight months later, rushed and impulsive after another win at the Dutch Grand Prix, and Charles immediately breaks up with him—Idiot, he thinks to himself, watching Charles walk away. You lost him anyway.

It hurts more than anything he has ever known, but all he can do is watch.

Max Verstappen is a child of divorce. He was taught to stop fighting when it starts hurting.

MONZA

Thursday Press Conference

Q: Welcome back after the summer holidays. Charles, why don't we start with you? First up, how were those holidays?

Charles LECLERC: It was a well needed break. This first part of the season has been amazing, and I am so happy at Red Bull, but it was nice to go on holiday with my family and friends, and go away for some time.

Q: We heard you went all the way to New Zealand! Tell us all about that.

CL: Ah, yes. Me and my brothers went on a trip there for two weeks. We all love the outdoors. We went to the desert, went ziplining, bungee jumping, skydiving, and we went to many caves. We did basically everything we could! We all very much like adrenaline.

Q: Wow! Busy break, then. I assume now you’re recharged and ready?

CL: Yes. Very much.

Q: So, to bring it back to F1, you’re thirty-eight points behind Max in the championship. Could you tell us how you plan to go about the next ten races?

CL: I am still planning to win the championship, if that is what you’re asking. That hasn’t changed.

Q: You need to do what Sebastian Vettel did back in 2013, and win every race after the summer break like he did.

CL: Haha. Yeah. That would be great, wouldn’t it?

Q: Indeed. Lastly, we should talk about Monza. Obviously, this track is very special to you. You got your second Grand Prix win here in 2019, and you were the first Ferrari driver to win here since Fernando Alonso in 2010. Any thoughts or feelings you want to share about this track?

CL: (smiles) I can think of no better place to bring the fight back to Max.

Coming into the first race after the summer break, Charles knows what everyone is saying about him: he’s lost his edge, he’s Red Bull’s second driver, he’ll never win a championship until Max retires. But they don’t know how hungry he is.

They don’t know what it is like to starve.

Charles spent six years as a dog starving in a cage, licking scraps off the floor, never daring to bite the hand that kept him fed—until he saw a way out.

Red Bull will never let you starve, Charles has learned. Instead, they’ll throw you to the wolves, but at the very least, they’ll put a weapon in your hands.

But this is the important part. Pay attention:

Charles never forgot it, how to starve. He never forgot the pain. He never forgot what it feels like to die. He never forgot how his only weapon was his hunger. When a wild dog is starved, they kill to eat. In those years at Ferrari, Charles learned how to control the ache, how to weaponize his hunger.

He never stopped wanting, but he found himself in a cage of his own, one that he had walked into. He drew the shackles around his own ankles, turned the key in the lock, and put it in his pocket.

The difference between this cage and the last was that he was fed, fed, fed, and he grew accustomed to excess. He still wanted, wanted, and wanted—but it wasn’t enough. What he wanted lay outside his cage.

It wasn’t until Zandvoort that he realized what that cage was. It wasn’t until Zandvoort that he undid his chains, pulled the key out of his pocket, and let himself out.

Now, he has nothing left to lose. Nothing, except for the championship.

Charles is not at Red Bull to win races. He is here to win championships, no matter the cost. Even if it means he will have to starve.

He made his choice.

You need to do what Sebastian Vettel did back in 2013, and win every race after the summer break.

Fine, then. Fine.

Friday morning, Charles changes his car set-up to one that is completely race-oriented. He asks the engineers not to share the data with Max’s camp. Saturday, he lets Max set the fastest FP3 lap time. He even lets Max win pole position.

Sunday afternoon:

Monza. Red sea spray rising above the crowd, teeming blood and screaming bodies. It is Ferrari’s home ground, and even though Charles is not a Ferrari driver anymore, he feels like he can make Monza his.

Formula 1 is looking for a story. A narrative. A show. It’s like they’re telling him: You finally have the car. You finally have the team. Don’t tell me we’ve wasted it all on you? Don’t tell me you’ve lost your hunger? Pay up now. Pay your dues.

Alright, Charles decides as the lights go out. I’ll give you a story. I’ll give you a narrative. I’ll give you a show. I will give you a title fight for the ages.

Max might have taken Monaco away from him, but Charles wins in Monza.

He gets the fastest lap point too. Hah.

He goes into Singapore thirty points behind Max. For the first time in months, he feels confident. Feels good.

Conditions, however, are not good in Singapore. It poured throughout the morning, leaving the track damp and slippery by the time quali rolls by at night, worsened by humidity.

Charles needs to do well today. Singapore is like Monaco: it’s hard to overtake, and strategy matters. If Max qualifies better than him, strategy will de facto prioritize him, and it will be almost impossible for Charles to win.

They both make it into Q3 with ease.

Once he and Max have both completed their first flying laps, Charles asks Hugh what Max’s time was.

“One forty-five point four two,” Hugh answers. “Yours was point four eight.”

Goddammit, Charles thinks. He asks Hugh where he’s losing time, where he can improve, and prepares mentally and physically for the next flying lap.

“Max is still two-hundredths faster,” Hugh informs at the end of it.

Fuck. Charles needs to go faster, but he isn’t sure if he can. He’s giving it everything he has, but Max is still faster. They aren’t sharing set-ups anymore, not after Charles refused to share his in Monza, so he can’t be sure if he’s underperforming, or if Max’s set-up works better in damp conditions.

“Five minutes left,” Hugh says in Charles’ out-lap. “What do you want to do?”

The real question is, what can Charles do. If he doesn’t get pole today, he’s throwing away tomorrow’s win.

He thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks. He looks at the track, feels the curves as he tries out different lines on the out-lap, and then as he’s going into Turn 10, he realizes—

“The track is drying up, I think,” he says, then lets go of the radio button.

Hugh is silent as Charles goes down the straight. Charles thinks about it even harder: he can see the dry spots ahead of him on the track, he can feel it under the car.

“You want to go on slicks?” Hugh asks, sounding hesitant. “No other driver is on them,” he reminds.

Everyone in Q3 is on intermediates, but a handful of drivers had tried it in Q1, and hadn’t been able to make much of it. Mick had even spun out and caused a yellow flag.

“You have to make the call, Charles. We’ll only have time for one lap.”

Charles thinks about it. He really thinks about it. He’s comfortably two-tenths ahead of George in third place. If he takes the gamble and it doesn’t work out, he’ll finish in P2 regardless. However, if he tries another lap on these tyres, there’s still a decent chance he could beat Max’s lap time; for some reason, though, that doesn’t feel likely.

And then he remembers what Nico had said to him, back in Miami: You know what you have to do when you find yourself out of luck? You have to make it. You don’t only take the gamble. You make it.

Charles has never believed in luck. He believes in probability and chance, and he believes in God more out of habit than out of faith, but he does not believe in a force that causes good things to occur. What you might call luck, Charles Leclerc would call opportunity.

If you find yourself out of opportunities, you will just have to make them yourself.

2025 is Max’s championship to lose. 2025 is Charles’ championship to win.

“I need this, mate,” Charles says, easing up on the throttle.

“Okay,” Hugh says. There is something like resolution in his voice. “Box box. We’ll be ready for you.”

“Verstappen threw everything at him tonight, but Leclerc continues to chip away at his championship lead! He won in Monza, and he wins in Singapore!”

Yeah. He fucking wins. He gets a fucking Grand Chelem too. In the hardest race in the calendar.

He feels fucking unstoppable.

Beat that, Max.

Charles is watching a replay of the latest Juventus vs AC Milan match over pre-made pasta Andrea had stocked his fridge with, when Pierre breaks into his apartment and comes into the living room, dragging a suitcase behind him.

Before Charles can even get a word out, Pierre near-shouts, “When were you going to tell me that you broke up with Max?”

Charles blinks, pauses the TV, and puts his dinner down. It hasn’t even been a full day since Singapore, and he’s barely settled into his apartment. Pierre must have come here straight from the airport. He’s wearing loose joggers and some designer button-down.

“Um,” Charles says, stalling. His cheeks feel hot. He picks at the holes of his jeans. “How did you find out?”

“Charles,” Pierre sighs, in that tone of his that lets you know he’s disappointed. “I rode home on Max’s plane. Do you know how awkward it was when I asked him why you weren’t coming? Lando kicked me. I felt like a fool.”

After a lifetime of living out of each other’s pockets, Charles has gotten used to telling him everything. But this, this has felt like something—not insignificant, but not relevant. Not something that matters. It was the same, that time after his F2 championship victory that he’d slept with a man for the first time. He’d only told Pierre about it years later. It was a big deal, but—it wasn’t. He didn’t want it to be. So it wasn’t.

He broke things off with Max, yes, but it’s not—it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.

So it isn’t.

“I’m sorry. I just—I’ve been busy,” he says.

Pierre’s mouth twitches. He leaves his suitcase by the entrance at the living room, and comes to sit on the loveseat by the sofa.

“You broke up with him in Zandvoort, and we went to Ibiza together, the next week. When I asked you how you and Max were doing, you said you were fine.”

Which is—it’s true. They had gone to Ibiza together, just the two of them, the week before Charles left for New Zealand with his brothers, but Charles hadn’t lied. Him and Max are fine. They are.

“We are fine. We’re just—not together anymore.”

Pierre has never liked Max, not really. Not since they were teens competing in the same categories, and Max was a giant, a titan, inevitable. It got worse once they were all in F1 together, and Max was a race-winner, then Pierre’s teammate, then Charles’ title rival. Pierre hated him because Max was arrogant, and immature, and fast, and—for Charles’ sake.

But after Brazil, after Charles told Pierre that he and Max were together—Pierre worked himself up to be okay with it. To accept it.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Charles says, and it’s the truth. He’s tried, really tried, to locate the moment it all started to go wrong in their relationship, but—the one moment just doesn’t exist. It was never just one moment. It was never just one turning point. There had been Monaco, sure, but it wasn’t—there had been more to it. “I just—”

Decided that I wanted to win more than I wanted to be with him. And I can’t have both. I know now, after these two races, after this whole season, that I can’t have both.

“It wasn’t working,” he says instead.

Pierre’s face screws up. He looks at Charles for a long moment. He’s looking for something, Charles can tell. You won’t find anything, he wants to say. You won’t find what you’re looking for.

“Are you okay?”

There is too much sincerity in Pierre’s voice. Too much care. Too much worry. Charles feels sick with it. He can’t do this. He hates it.

Charles doesn’t want sympathy. He doesn’t want someone to worry about him. What is there to worry about?

“I’ve won two races since.”

Pierre’s mouth pinches. “That’s not what I asked.”

Charles looks to the side and chews on the inside of his mouth. “I’m fine.”

Really. Charles means it. He’s fine.

Sure, it’s been different. Sure, it’s been—lonely, without Max. Without someone to come home to. But he made his choice, and so did Max.

Max. Pierre flew back with him. Out of curiosity, merely curiosity, Charles asks, “Do you know how he’s doing?”

Charles looks at Pierre again, and sees a knit between his brows. “You’re his teammate. Shouldn’t you know?”

The thing is, Charles doesn’t know. Outside of mandatory team meetings, Charles hasn’t seen much of Max at all. They haven’t had PR to film since before Zandvoort, and they’ve been avoiding each other after qualifying, on the podium after the race, in the TV pen, in the cool-down room, in press conferences post-race. They don’t talk. They don’t congratulate each other. They don’t even look at each other. Charles tries not to look at him, at least.

The fans have started to notice. Even Christian has noticed—he pulled Charles aside before Singapore and asked him if he and Max were alright, if there was something he should know about. It’s just, you know, I thought you two were good friends, he said. We still are, Charles lied.

Charles isn’t sure if they’re anything, anymore.

“We haven’t been talking, exactly,” Charles says, and Pierre keeps that knit between his brows, silent for a long moment, before he sighs, leans back into the loveseat, and shakes his head.

“He seemed fine on the plane,” he answers, then shrugs. “But maybe that was the champagne.”

“You’re drinking on planes with Max now?” Charles asks, bewildered. He quickly reels himself back in. Reminds himself that this doesn’t matter.

Pierre shrugs. “I think he felt bad for me,” he replies, and Charles remembers how Pierre had a power unit failure and had to retire in the last few laps. “But he didn’t say anything about you. Just that you took a different plane back to Monaco, and that you broke up with him.”

Charles isn’t sure if that makes him feel better or worse, that Max isn’t talking about him. That Max is fine. That Max is fine too.

“So,” Pierre says after a moment. “You two are not even friends?”

Because, right. He and Max were friends first, before all this. Before they were more than friends, they were friends, and before they were friends, they were rivals.

They’re right back where they started. Maybe, Charles thinks, this is how it was always supposed to be.

Charles Leclerc is no stranger to grief.

He has lost and he has grieved and he has lost and he has grieved. He will not let himself grieve this.

You cannot grieve something you never had.

“It’s better this way,” Charles says. To Pierre, to himself, to the PR team who have no friendship left to capitalize on, to everyone mourning things that they have never really known, never really understood. “It never would have worked out. I could never have both,” he says, his chest feeling too tight with the confession. “I should have known that.”

He wasted half a season on things he shouldn’t have been feeling. He knows better now.

“You’re allowed to want things you can’t have,” Pierre says. “You know that, right?

Charles Leclerc has spent his whole life wanting things he can’t have. People he shouldn’t want. People he can’t get back. Championships he never had the car for. He knows what it is to want, to want and to want and to want, better than anyone else.

He doesn’t say anything, only absently stares at the paused football match on his TV. He wants—a part of him wants Pierre to leave, now that they’ve got everything sorted, now that Pierre doesn’t have any real reason to be here. But when Pierre goes, Charles will be alone again.

He can’t bring himself to ask.

But Pierre doesn’t go. He only picks up the remote from the table and presses play.

“I haven’t watched this match yet, and my flight to Milan doesn’t leave for another few hours,” he says when Charles looks at him, shocked. “Is that okay?”

Charles nods. Pierre staying with him this afternoon may not be enough to quell the loneliness dwelling in his chest, irritable and angry like a little god, but it soothes the growing and infinite hurt inside him, the craters left behind by everyone who has left him.

He isn’t watching the match, not really. He is thinking of the championship. He is thinking of the next race. He is always thinking of the next race—always, always, always.

Twenty-two points, Charles thinks to himself. I am only twenty-two points behind.

In Suzuka, they have Charles and Max try go-kart racing. There’s a lot of buzz about it. Before it, they do a joint interview, where they go over an uncovered recording of one of their races from when they were kids. Their laughter is stilted and comments dry, and they barely look at one another throughout the whole filming. There is no heart to it.

The actual racing is hardly any better. Max wins one round. Charles wins the other. They battle as hard as they can, they push each other off the track, but it isn’t—this is just a job they have to do. Nothing less, nothing more.

The PR team asks them to go another round, to make it more fun, to pull off some silly moves so that they’ll have something to laugh about. So Charles does just that. At the first corner, he drives into the side of Max’s kart and shoves him into the deep pit of mud left behind by the rain last night. Max can’t drive out. Charles races the rest of the track alone, and says nothing. He watches as Max abandons his kart, climbs out of the mud pit, removes his helmet and hands it off to Gemma. When Charles reaches the finish line, Max has already gone back to the car they drove to the circuit in.

The video gets scrapped. Charles ignores the disappointment on everyone’s faces.

I cannot have both, he thinks to himself. He bites down on his bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood. And neither can you.

They both qualify at the top of the timesheet. Literally, and to the thousandth.

Charles gets pole, though, because he completed his lap first. Hah.

Before the race, Charles catches Max talking to Lando, Alex, and Yuki. He has his cap on backwards and he’s making motions with his hands. Alex and Yuki are listening raptly, nodding their heads and cutting in every now and then to add something. Charles wants to walk over and join the conversation, but at a point, Max throws his head back with laughter, shoulders coming up to his ears. The shells of his ears are pink, and the back of his neck is red. He looks happy.

There was a time in Charles’ life that he could’ve walked over without fear, a time in his life when Max’s happiness was something that he was privy to. He reminds himself, though, of what they are, and what they are not, that those days of making Max happy are long gone.

Charles doesn’t want to ruin that happiness. But he wants still. He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

More than anything else, however, he wants to win today. He wants Max to lose.

And he does win in Japan. He wins it in the rain, no less. He wins, he wins, and he wins.

It doesn’t matter that Charles is so exhausted that he has to be pulled out of the car after the race. It doesn’t matter that he can barely stand on his own. It doesn’t matter that he’s so dizzy he wonders if he lost blood, somehow, during the race. And it doesn’t matter that his chest hurts and swells with an anger undeserved and unwarranted and uncontrollable when he makes the mistake of glancing at Max in parc fermé, watching as he pulls Lando in for a hug, congratulates him for his P3 finish.

None of it matters.

This is what matters:

Charles is only fourteen points behind now. He is closing the gap, little by little.

He knows what he’s losing, to get it that way. He knows what price he has paid.

They have one weekend between Japan and Qatar. Charles gets invited out by Joris and some of their other friends for drinks. Charles hesitates. The last time he’d gone out with them, they kept trying to set him up with girls. You’ve been single for long enough, they said, as they scoped out the scene and tried to find pretty girls who seemed like Charles’ type. None of them knew, and none of them know.

The last time he went out with them had been in early April, before things had started to go wrong and he and Max were still together. He wanted nothing more than to go home, or to Max’s apartment—those days, it didn’t feel like there was much of a difference between the two. He could imagine it: Max on his couch watching Netflix with the volume low, wearing loose joggers and an old Red Bull shirt, Jimmy climbing the fridge, Sassy nudging at Max’s ankle.

Instead: Charles was at a bar, laughing off another attempt to get him to talk to the girl who’d been sneaking looks at him from the other side of the bar. He caught Joris looking at him. He was the only one who’d never play the game of trying to set Charles up.

You’ve been seeing someone, haven’t you? he said once the others were all caught up in conversation.

Charles had blushed, awkward from the few beers he’d drank, fumbling with what he wanted to say: I, no, it’s not—I mean—

And Joris had clapped a hand around his shoulder. You’ve been happier lately. She’s good for you, isn’t she? You’re happy?

And Charles had swallowed, peeling at the Heineken label of his beer. She is, he said. I am.

Now, in mid-September, it’s over between him and Max anyway, but Charles doesn’t know if he’s ready to do the dance again.

No, no. He knows that he isn’t.

There was a time in his life where he thought he wouldn’t ever want someone more than he wanted a championship, and he was right about that. He needs to keep his head straight. He doesn’t have time for this, nor the emotional capacity for a partner, a fling, or even a one-night stand. He had someone and he let him go—for a reason. A good one. And it’s been good.

Charles is happier than he thought he was, back then. Happier than ever. If he keeps his winning streak up, he will be leading the championship in no time.

He texts the group chat and tells them he can’t make it because he has an early flight to Milton Keynes to work on the car a little more. It’s a lie, but at the end of the day, sometimes all you can do to keep yourself floating is lie, lie, and lie.

In short: Charles isn’t sleeping with anyone, hasn’t slept with anyone since Max, but—

He wonders. He wonders if Max is sleeping with other people.

Whenever the thought crosses his mind, he brings his hand to his mouth, bites over his knuckles, hard enough that when he pulls his fist back, he sees imprints of teeth sunk into his skin.

Qualifying in Qatar goes, well—it goes.

Charles gets provisional pole, but then he makes a mistake and immediately bins it into the wall on his out-lap, right when Max was going for his last flying lap. Q3 gets red flagged, but Charles’ car is mostly fine save for the front wing. Max is left screaming, furious on the radio, and has to settle for second.

All’s well that ends well.

QATAR

Post-Qualifying Press Conference

Q: Max, on the radio, we heard you were a bit—agitated that your lap had been interrupted.

Max VERSTAPPEN: It’s unlucky, of course. It was a shame since I had the pace for pole today, with that last lap. But things like this happen. It is what it is.

Q: Your teammate was the one who caused the red flag, I’m sure you know. Coming back from the summer break, he’s really put the pressure on you! Are you surprised by his performance these past few races?

MV: Well, of course Charles is very fast and very determined. We all know that. He always has been, ever since we were little kids. So no, not really.

Q: How happy are you with him as a teammate?

MV: (a brief silence) I mean, I was the one who asked for him to come to Red Bull. Of course I want him here.

(intense whispering among the reporters)

Q: You asked for him to come to Red Bull?

MV: Yes. Last summer.

Q: Charles? Anything to say about that?

Charles LECLERC: (stilted) Max is telling the truth. Why he has said this, I don’t know. It is in the past.

MV: Is it, though?

Charles finds Max after the press conference, takes hold of his wrist tight enough to leave a ring of bruises, and shuffles them both into the nearest empty room. Max goes without a struggle. Charles won’t deny it, the power he feels when he shoves Max against the wall, and Max doesn’t even try to fight back.

Max knows rage. He knows it better than most. Which is why he knows how to let it go.

Charles, though. Charles is still learning.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, hand twisting around a handful of Max’s racesuit, keeping Max pinned.

Max looks at him with cold, distant eyes. They are so close right now. Physically, there’s practically no space between them, but Max has never felt this far away.

“I was being honest,” Max says levelly, like he isn’t pinned to the wall, like Charles isn’t here, furious and belligerent.

“You didn’t have to mention the contract,” Charles hisses. His heart is racing, blood roaring in his ears. He knows that Max doesn’t play mind games, but what the hell is this? “It sounded like—” Charles cuts off, swallowing.

Max lifts a brow, like he doesn’t know what he did. “Like what?”

Like you wanted the world to know that I would not have my seat if it wasn’t for you. Like you wanted to hurt me. Like you wanted me to bleed.

I won’t let you, Charles thinks. I will not let you.

Since Zandvoort, Charles has been doing everything he could not to look at Max, too afraid of what he would see, what he would find, but right now, he has no other choice but to look. He looks into Max’s eyes, trying to find something, but he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. An apology? Rage? Pain? Love?

He can’t see anything.

But he can feel Max’s body stiff but firm under him, where he’s pressed to the wall. His knuckles press to Max’s chest through his racesuit. He can feel the way Max’s heart beats, beats, beats, can even feel the way his blood circulates hot throughout his body, how his flesh coils tight around his bones.

Solid, warm, familiar. Real.

It frightens him, almost how much he can feel. He lets go and takes a step back.

“Forget it,” he says, but Max makes no effort to get off the wall.

It’s here that he notices the bags under Max’s eyes. He looks haggard and thinner than he usually is. Have you been sleeping alright? Are you eating alright? Charles would have asked out loud, in another world, in another life, in a world where he was a champion and Max was a champion and they weren’t fighting for anything but each other. Please, he would say, let me take care of you.

“You know,” Max says, his voice calm and unaffected. His lips are bloodless and chapped. And he looks miserable. “I should be the one who is mad. It’s almost like you crashed on purpose.”

Charles recoils at the accusation, blood rushing to his cheeks. “I wouldn’t—I don’t do that.”

“Are you sure?” Max asks, cocking his head to the side, his face stone-cold and unemotional. “You seem willing to do anything to win, these days.”

This is not Max, Charles thinks, with horror. This is not the Max I know.

Max wouldn’t—the Max Charles knows wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t accuse Charles of playing dirty. He wouldn’t speak in tongues. He would say what he means. He would be honest and open. He would have this fucking conversation without throwing around accusations. He would ask Charles where he made a mistake, laugh about it, and tell him where he could do better.

He would have—he would have trusted Charles. It was all about trust.

“Don’t do that,” Charles spits back, taking a step forward. “Say what you really mean, Verstappen.”

Max barks with a laugh, mouth pulling up into a cruel grin, sharp like a blade. “The last time I did that, you broke up with me.”

Now you want to talk about it?

“You didn’t have any objections when I did,” Charles points out, his jaw wobbling over the words. And isn’t that the crux of it all? Max Verstappen wears his heart on his sleeve—if he wanted Charles to stay, he would have said it. He would have shown it. He would have fought.

“I am just saying,” Max says with a shrug. “You don’t have any right to be mad at me.”

Charles pauses and thinks about it. They’re in a championship battle. They’re rivals more than they’re teammates, more than they are anything else. This is what you do. This is what is supposed to happen, he reminds himself.

“You’re right,” Charles says, turning around to exit the room. “I don’t. And neither do you.”

It took him half of the season to realize what game they were playing. Now, he’s all-in.

The next day, after the driver’s parade but before the race starts, Charles happens to come across Max as they’re both heading back to the garage. He’s hyper-aware of the cameras on them, as well some of the mechanics around them, watching.

“Max,” Charles greets with a nod, an obligatory tone to it.

Max’s face stays empty. “Charles,” he greets back, his hand clutching the Red Bull in his hands a little tighter. There’s a stilted beat of silence before he adds, “Good luck today.”

Charles smiles placidly. “I don’t need luck,” he says, and he doesn’t.

He just needs to do what needs to be done, even if it means conceding no ground to Max at the start. They make contact, sparks fly and metal screeches, but Charles wins out. Max spins out onto the grass and barely misses the gravel, barely misses the other cars. He drops to last place, and has to fight his way back to the front.

Charles gets a ten-second penalty for the move. But it doesn’t matter.

He wins the fucking thing anyway.

The gap is only six points now, back to where they were before Monaco.

“It’s dangerous driving, at the end of the day,” he hears Max say to Sky Sports after the race. Charles cuts his own interview short to listen. “You see, if Charles thinks that a championship is worth putting other drivers’ lives at stake, then—I don’t know. I thought there was more respect between us. I was wrong. Clearly.”

“On that note, how has this latter half of the season been affecting you and Charles? Not in terms of racing, but in terms of your friendship. We all know that you and Charles are good friends, so—”

“We’re not friends,” Max says, then he smiles, closed-mouth, and walks away.

It was all about trust. I trust that you’ll give me space. I trust that you’ll race me with respect.

That’s why they worked—they could only race so dirty with each other because they respected each other’s skills, knew that the other could handle it. Charles knew that if he pulled a dirty move, Max would return it with one of his own.

Once that’s lost. Well.

“You’re a sore fucking loser,” Charles hisses. They’re in the men’s bathroom nearest to the TV pen. Max had gone in first, and Charles had followed him. “Saying that I wanted to kill you on the track?”

Not the exact words Max had used, but close enough.

“I was just telling it like it is,” Max replies. He crosses his arms before his chest and leans into the sinks behind him.

“Slandering me to the media is not how you’re going to win the championship.”

“Driving like an idiot isn’t how you’re going to win it either.”

“You would have done the same,” Charles maintains firmly, because he and Max are cut from the same exact cloth, because before Max Verstappen was a world champion, he would have done anything to be a world champion. Charles was there in 2021. He knows what Max was like when he was hungry.

“No, Charles, I wouldn’t have,” Max says, cheeks pink despite the air-conditioning in the bathroom, sweat running down the side of his neck, face blotchy with Middle Eastern heat and his erratic stubble, dirty blond hair matted-down and ugly-looking under his baseball cap. “Do you know why? Because I am not nearly as stupid as you are.”

The air between them is so thick he could choke on it. He can see himself in the mirror behind Max. He looks like a mess, balaclava lines are still pressed into his cheeks and his hair is sticking out in awkward places. The face looking back at him is unfamiliar.

“It’s hard racing,” Charles sneers haughtily, rolling his eyes. Max flinches, and Charles takes a step forward. “But isn’t that what you wanted? Is that not why you brought me to Red Bull? For me to push you? For me to give you a challenge?”

Ever since the summer break, Charles has been winning, and he is no stranger to the cruel lengths that he has gone to make it that way.

If cruelty is what it takes, he thinks to himself, I can be cruel.

“Or,” Charles says, closing the gap between them, until there’s just a breath’s distance between them, “or did you ask me to come to Red Bull because you had a crush on me? Because you thought you loved me?”

He knows that it’s not true, knows that the thing between them started months after Max asked him to join Red Bull. But still, still. Charles knows how to twist the knife.

And he is ashamed to admit that when he sees the hurt on Max’s face, the way his mouth twitches and his eyes wince, that it feels—

He feels—

It feels good. It feels good that you are hurt. It feels good to use what you think is love against you. If I can’t make you happy anymore, at least I can still hurt you.

“Is that what this is about?” Max asks, his voice quiet and trembling and—vulnerable. Charles has never seen Max this vulnerable. It’s sick, the satisfaction he gets from it. “You’re driving like an idiot because I told you I loved you?”

If it was love, Charles thinks, you would have fought.

“You don’t love me,” Charles laughs, his ribs tight with it. “You never loved me.”

It doesn’t matter if we would’ve had a happy ending or not. It doesn’t matter if we would’ve broken up anyway. It would have mattered that you fought. That you tried. But you didn’t. You let me go.

I will not grieve you. I will let you bleed.

Charles watches as Max’s fingers curl around the edge of the sinks behind him, his nails white, knuckles red. He watches as Max’s lip coil before he snarls, “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”

Max keeps his eyes on him when he takes in a heavy breath. They’re standing so close that Charles can feel Max’s chest expanding with it, can feel it come out through his nose. Something is different from yesterday. Yesterday, Max had been distant and far away, every word that he spoke sounded like it was coming from a different continent. Today, though, today, Charles can feel his heart as if it’s beating in his own chest. Can feel the flesh wrapped around Max’s bones as if it were his own. Can feel the blood roaring under his skin as if this aggression were a monster they shared.

“Now,” Max says, voice low, “what the fuck do you want?”

I want you angry. I want you hurt. I want you to bleed.

I want you to understand how I am angry, how I am hurting, how I am bleeding, because I cannot even understand it myself.

Charles can barely remember any of the podium celebrations since Monza: the cheering of the crowd or the taste of the champagne. Before the summer break he was mourning it, the weight of the first-place trophy in his hands, the rush of reaching the chequered flag before anyone else, the sight of mechanics hanging on the pit wall fences, the sound of his engineer over the radio, telling him, And that’s P1. He has won four races in a row, won all the fastest lap points too, but he can’t remember the joy. He can’t remember any of it.

This is what Charles remembers:

The weight of Max’s body over his, trapping him into the bed like he wanted to keep him there forever. The feel of Max’s lips on his, tongue licking into his mouth, running over his teeth like he wanted to taste every part of him. The twist of Max’s fingers in his hair, forcing Charles to swallow him deeper, deeper, like he wanted his body to become a part of Charles’, like he wanted to become one with Charles.

Sometimes, in the aftermath, when they were both sticky with sweat and cum, boneless and exhausted and curled over each other, breathing in tandem, hearts in sync, Charles felt like Max had succeeded.

This, he never forgot. But the thing is, Charles Leclerc is an expert in grief, so he also happens to be an expert in compartmentalization.

He knew how to shove this part of himself, this part of Max, this part of their past—because yes, yes, yes, this is part of the past, they don’t do this anymore, and they will never be what they were again. He has learned to shove it aside, bury it in the earth, all tender and raw, wrapped up in blood-soaked bandages. He has learned to grow a garden over the grave, to put his organs back into place and sew the wound closed, to wipe his hands clean of a tragedy too heavy and jagged for a mere human being to bear.

And yet—there is a ghost living under his skin, there is an echo ringing in his ears, there is blood on his palms.

Charles’ body feels like a marionette on a string, when he brings a hand up to Max’s face. Max doesn’t flinch, only breathes out through his nose as Charles cups the side of Max’s face. He is not gentle about it, not sweet, not loving. He presses his thumb into Max’s cheekbone, grips his cheek so hard a part of him thinks he might leave a bruise.

“If you want something from me,” Max says, his eyes never leaving Charles’, “don’t be a fucking pussy. Fucking take it.”

So Charles does.

He takes and he takes and he takes—because that is what he does. He took victory in Baku as grief ate away at him, he took victory in Spa as grief ate away at him, and he will take victory in this championship battle, even if it kills him, even if it hurts.

And it does hurt. It hurts, how Max bites into his bottom lip when their mouths meet. It’s barely a kiss, all anger and aggression. It hurts, how Max’s hand flies up to his head, fingers twisting in his hair, the other coming down to his hip, squeezing him over his racesuit hard enough that Charles gasps in pain. It hurts, when Max pushes off the sink, shoves Charles forward. It hurts, when Charles hits the opposite wall and Max rams his knee between Charles’ leg, caging him in. It hurts, when Max pulls back, one hand gripping the side of Charles’ neck, his thumb pressing hard into his windpipe, not hard enough to stop his breathing, but enough to remind him that he could, if he wanted to. It hurts, when he sees Max’s eyes bore into his own, searching for someone who is no longer there.

Max always thought that Charles was beautiful—he told him that, many times. While they were fucking and after, while they were scrubbing each other clean in the shower, when they went on dates to some secluded spot in the countryside and Max was looking at him and not the beautiful scenery behind him. Charles wonders if Max still thinks that, after all he’s done.

He’s hard against Max’s thigh. Max notices, and he snorts like Charles is disgusting for being turned on right now. And maybe Charles is disgusting for this, but then Max is too: Charles can feel him heavy on his hip, can see his ruddy mouth, slightly parted, heaving breaths in and out. It’s a familiar sight, but the anger in his eyes—that’s new.

It hurts, how familiar and unfamiliar this is.

Max always liked to fuck him face to face. He’s a bit of a romantic like that. He liked to see Charles’ face. He liked to kiss gently, to hold hands, palm pressed to palm as they made love sweet and slow. Sometimes, he even would call it that, making love. Charles always thought it was ridiculous, but he never corrected him.

Was it that, though? Was that what they were? Was that what they made?

Will you only love me if I am second to you? Did you ever love me? Did you mean it? Do you still?

Charles tries not to think about love. He loved his father, and he lost him. He loved Jules, and he lost him. He loves his mom and his brothers and they love him back, but he barely sees any of them these days. He loved Ferrari, and he still does, but he tries not to. His love for them has only ever hurt him.

Charles tries not to think about love. Sometimes, it feels like if he loves something too hard, he’ll just be left with another thing to grieve.

Charles tries not to think about love. Sometimes, when Max was pressed to his back, big and full inside of him, pressing gentle kisses to his nape, whispering praises into his ear, heavy and solid over him, the realest thing he’d ever known— Sometimes, when they were watching a movie on the couch, and Max would fall asleep on his shoulder or on his thigh, snoring quietly and drooling onto the fabric of Charles’ clothes— Sometimes, at the beginning of the season, when he and Max would race wheel-to-wheel, he felt like he could hear all of Max’s thoughts, brake late, anticipate his line, get to the apex first, need to sure my tyres are okay, need to push, downshifts aren’t working, how many laps left?, oh that was a great move, fuck, he has DRS, I want to do this forever, I want to race against you forever, and he thought that he might— Sometimes, at the beginning of the season, after each of their races, before everything started to go wrong in Charles’ head, back when they would hug, shake hands, and smile at each other through their helmets, back when they could bear to look at one another without the hurt, back when they would target each other with the champagne spray on the podium, running away from each other, chasing each other like little kids—

Charles stops that train of thought. What they’re doing here, what they’re making here—it’s not love.

This is not that. This is not love.

This is not tender. This is not gentle. This is teeth and flesh, bones and blood. This is about rage. This is about the hurt. This is about how I have hurt you and how you have hurt me. This is about how we will continue to hurt each other.

Max shoves his knee up, keeping pressure on Charles’ crotch as he slides a hand up to the zipper of his racesuit, tugging it down as far as it goes. His mouth slides wet across the side of Charles’ face, down to the crook of his neck, kissing sloppily, leaving marks that he can’t leave, not with the incoming press conference they have to do together. Charles lets him, anyway, arching his head to the side to give Max easier access.

Maybe you did love me, Charles thinks as Max’s hand slips past his fireproofs and curls around his dick.

Maybe you did love me, Charles thinks as Max’s teeth graze along his carotid, mouth closing over each of his heartbeats like he wants to swallow them whole.

Maybe you did love me, Charles thinks as he brings his hands up to the front of Max’s racesuit, grabbing a handful of the fabric to keep himself steady, as he bites down on his lip, refusing to give Max the satisfaction of hearing him moan. His mouth tastes of iron, and he is surely bleeding. The problem is, he isn’t sure where the wound is.

Maybe you did love me, and maybe I—

“Max, fuck,” Charles hisses when Max’s thumb digs into his slit, mouth flying open, cold air striking the back of his throat, “you—”

“Yeah,” Max hisses, rough against his neck. “Fuck you, Charles.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut, knocking all the air out of his lungs and all the blood from his brain. Charles’ head falls and he’s gasping into the crook of Max’s neck and coming hot-white into Max’s hand, dick pulsing against the curl of crooked fingers like a wild animal thrashing in a trap.

The orgasm doesn’t feel good. Not really.

Clinically, Max pulls his hand out of Charles’ racesuit and takes a step back. He isn’t looking at Charles. He isn’t looking at anything. He’s still hard in his racesuit.

Charles’ legs wobble with the strength needed to stay upright on his own, even with the wall behind him. Max walks over to the sink, rinses his palm with steaming hot water and scrubs it with soap, grabs a paper towel to scrub his hand dry, obsessive and violent about it, like he needs to get every remnant of Charles off him.

Don’t you realize? Charles thinks weakly as the bathroom door clangs shut without a single word. Now that Max is gone, now that there’s no one here to see, he falls to the ground, back sliding against the wall. It’s too late for that. I am part of you and you are part of me and there is no way to undo what we did, what we have done to each other.

Once he’s a bit less stupid from his orgasm, he notices his and Max’s hats lying on the floor by the sinks. Charles doesn’t remember them falling off.

He stands to his feet, feeling a bit like he might throw up or pass out—or both. Regardless, he leans over to pick them up. They feel sharp, like broken shards of glass. He looks at them for a long time, like if he stares at them hard enough, he’ll end up seeing his own reflection.

Charles does the post-race press conference with the biggest hickey known to man on his neck, but if anyone notices, no one comments on it.

All of Max’s answers are clipped short, none of the anger from the TV pen, or even from the bathroom, is present. He barely talks about the incident. It is what it is, he says whenever he’s pushed for more comments. It’s like nothing even happened, neither on the race track nor in the bathroom. He doesn’t look at Charles, or even anyone at all. It’s like Max isn’t even there. It’s like he’s already gone home.

In the meantime, Charles spends the full hour defending the move that he made on Max. The stewards may have deemed him to be at fault, but up until now, he was sure that Max had a part to play in that incident too.

At the end of it all, he isn’t sure, anymore, if he was the one in the right.

As for the racing bit—well, Charles will go to the grave defending that he only did what was necessary.

Two days later, it’s Max’s birthday.

Charles doesn’t wish him a happy birthday, but he thinks about it. The entire day, he wonders if Max is waiting for a message, or a phone call, or a visit to his apartment. They still have each other’s keys.

He thinks about it, really, really thinks about it.

If he said happy birthday, then maybe that would open up an opportunity for him to apologize for everything that happened in Qatar. By the time that he’s gotten in his head that it would be a bad idea, that there’s no point, that he’s still wanting things he can’t have, that Max doesn’t want any apologies, and that he isn’t even sorry, it’s October already.

Six points, Charles reminds himself.

One more win, and he’ll be leading the championship.

“It’s a shitty thing you did to Max, you know,” Pierre says when they see each other next.

Really, Charles hadn’t been expecting that. He had flown to Paris for a sponsorship photoshoot, and had met with Pierre for lunch afterwards; they had already finished their food and had been waiting for the waiter to bring the check by the time that Pierre brought it up.

Charles sips on his water, maintaining eye contact with Pierre over the rim of his glass. He puts it down on the table then says, absently, “I served my penalty in the race, and I already got lectured by Helmut and Christian.”

Not to mention that he’s already dealing with how the media is portraying him after Qatar. His formerly pristine image is in shambles, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s so close. The championship is at his fingertips. It has never felt more real.

Pierre narrows his eyes. “I don’t mean that.”

Charles freezes, and his heart rabbits in his chest. “He told you?”

Pierre purses his lips. “I asked him why on earth you showed up to the press conference with a gigantic love bite that was not there before the race. Because I knew that you wouldn’t tell me the truth.”

It meant nothing, Charles wants to say. It was a mistake. A misjudgment. It was a moment of weakness on both our parts. It will never happen again.

Charles doesn’t say anything. His eyes glance at the window, watching people walk by. It’s nice to be in such a big city. Monaco is so small that fans walk up to Charles wherever he goes, asking for photos and hugs and signatures. Charles loves it, meeting those who are cheering him on for the championship, but it’s a bit of a relief to fade into obscurity when he can.

“He was important to you,” Pierre says. “God, he is important to you. Can’t you see that? And you are important to him. You can’t—”

Charles’ eyes return to Pierre. His voice is sharp and ice-cold when he hisses back, “The championship is important to me.”

Pierre’s eyes are wide with shock and something that looks like horror. “Oh, Charles. Do you understand how crazy you sound right now?”

“You don’t get it,” Charles interrupts, frustrated because Seb and Lewis and Fernando have all retired, because the only other person on the grid who gets it is Max, and Max is—

Anyway, there is no one left who understands. “You have never been in a title fight,” Charles spits out, “and you never—”

He stops himself once he realizes what he was about to say.

It’s too late. Pierre knows him too well. And besides, only an absolute idiot wouldn’t hear what Charles barely had the sense not to say.

“Never will?” Pierre says, mouth twitching, eyes wobbly with hurt. Charles quickly looks away. “Really, Charles. I hope you win this championship. You deserve it more than anyone. I just hope you remember who you are by the time you win it.”

Charles doesn’t have any time to react. Pierre is already getting up to his feet, pushing back the chair, pulling out his wallet, and dropping a vague stack of euros that definitely covers more than what both their meals cost onto the table.

“Most of all, I hope you remember who you are winning it for,” he concludes, and then he’s gone.

In between Qatar and Vietnam, Charles thinks a lot about Ferrari.

He spent so much of his life with Ferrari, so many years with Ferrari, but these days with Red Bull, that part of his life, all the many years he spent with a noose around his neck, waiting for a half-decent car that could bring him a championship—it all feels so faraway.

Once upon a time, Charles Leclerc was the saint of Ferrari.

That title belonged to many before him: Ascari, Fangio, then Lauda, then Schumacher. There have been many after those four, lesser saints: Raikkonen, then Alonso, then Vettel. There will be many after him, too, maybe not Carlos or Alex, but maybe one of the boys in F2, in the Driver Academy, dreaming of things bigger and harder than their small and tender bodies, dreaming to carry burdens heavier than anything they have ever carried before, to seize victories crueler than they could ever imagine. They might be boys, tender-knuckled, red-cheeked, but they are racing drivers, and every racing driver has a dream.

To win a championship. It is only once you have the honor of fighting for it that you realize it is not much of an honor at all. It is a duty.

And everyone wants to drive for Ferrari, win a championship with Ferrari, except for those few and rare drivers, past and present, who do not buy into the myth of Scuderia Ferrari.

Lewis, who believes in a god greater than himself. Max, who believes in no god, no one, other than himself.

Charles wonders if he can list himself with Lewis and Max, now. He might not have a championship, yet, but he will. He will.

And he doesn’t need Ferrari to achieve that, anymore. He doesn’t need anyone.

There might be a tragedy here, somewhere. But Charles has no time to grieve.

He has a championship to win.

The night before the Vietnamese Grand Prix, Charles wakes up to a phone call.

Weary-limbed and barely conscious, he rolls over to the side of his bed and unplugs his phone from the charger, accepting the call and putting it to his ear without checking the caller ID.

“Would it be selfish to say that I miss you?”

Charles reels at the voice. It’s Max. Max is—calling him. It’s the middle of the night, and Max is calling him to tell him that he misses him. This can’t be right. This can’t be real, not after what happened in Qatar.

Max asked him a question. Charles needs to answer it.

“Yes,” he hears himself say. His chest hurts. His head aches. He thinks he’s going to be sick. There is a hole in his chest that will never be filled. How could you even think of saying that to me? I cannot miss you. I cannot risk it.

“Then I will be selfish,” Max says, and Charles cuts him off before he can say anything more.

“Max—”

“I miss you,” Max says regardless. He sounds drunk. He sounds—distraught. “I miss you a lot.”

Charles dwells in the silence that ensues. He feels sleepy and slow and horrible. Everything hurts. He is supposed to be used to this, the hurt, the grief, but one thing he’s learned over the past decade is that it never goes away, really, the hurt, the grief. He decides to be honest. “You didn’t fight it. When I said that we should stop.”

Max’s voice is quiet and grainy on the other line. “Was I supposed to?”

Yes, Charles doesn’t say. Yes, you were supposed to fight.

“How was I supposed to know that?” Max asks. “How was I supposed to know if you never told me?”

The call cuts, and Charles goes back to sleep.

In the morning, the first thing Charles does is check his text messages to see if Max said anything. An apology, maybe, an I’m sorry I called you last night, forget this ever happened. There’s nothing. Only the usual good luck texts from friends and family. Then, he checks his missed calls in case Max called him again. Nothing.

With horror, Charles realizes his phone was still plugged in. With dread, he clicks on his call history.

There’s nothing there from last night. The last time he and Max called was in July.

Charles wins in Hanoi. Max finishes in second, which is easy considering the rocketship of a race car they have, but he finishes over fifteen seconds behind Charles. He and Max don’t race at all. On Max’s part, it’s just embarrassing, that’s what it is. He’s been off the pace since the summer break, but with this in particular, he’s starting to draw attention. Is he losing his edge? they ask. Why is he struggling so much with the car? they ask. Is Max Verstappen’s reign over?

Nonetheless, with their Red Bull 1-2, they have clinched the constructors’ championship.

And more importantly, with this win, Charles is leading the drivers’ championship by one point.

The tables are starting to turn. This is Max’s championship to lose, and Charles’ to win.

It’s everything he’s ever wanted. And yet—

It doesn’t feel good. Not really. Not at all. In fact, he’s never felt worse.

Austin, Texas. Cowboys and horses and gunslingers.

Thursday, media day. Charles’ flight was delayed a few hours, so he’s one of the last drivers to arrive in the paddock.

After checking in with Red Bull, he comes across Alex and George chatting by the fences in the pit lane and he goes to join them. George has sunnies on, as well as his white Mercedes-AMG Petronas polo. Alex, on the other hand, isn’t wearing his Ferrari kit, but a loose graphic tee with Japanese writing on it, and pink shorts with alligators on it.

“Oh, hey Charles,” Alex greets, and before Charles can get a word out, George cuts in to ask, “Did you hear that Lewis is in Austin?”

Charles’ jaw drops. “He is?”

“He wanted to come to Silverstone, but he was busy, and he can’t make it to Brazil. He happened to be in the States this week, so Toto invited him,” George explains, bouncing with excitement.

Charles hasn’t thought about Lewis in a long time. Lewis, along with Fernando Alonso, was the last of the old guard to stay in the sport. He is an old god. A giant. A titan. His legacy casts a shadow on the entire paddock. With each step he took, he left a hollow crater behind. It is strange, for someone who left such a massive impact on the sport, whose retirement was the biggest story of 2024, second only to Charles’ surprise move to Red Bull—it is like he vanished. He doesn’t come to races, and he doesn’t keep in contact with any of the other drivers. The most Charles has seen of him since the prize giving ceremony last December has been on Instagram.

He left the racing world, happy with his legacy, aware that he will never be forgotten to time, aware that he has been mythologized and written into the canon of F1. He is bigger than Ferrari, bigger than Mercedes, bigger than all the world champions who have come before him, and maybe bigger than all the champions to come after him. Bigger than the sport itself. He’s been living his life ever since his retirement: composing music, working on his fashion line, traveling to remote corners of the world, even. Last Charles heard, he’s even writing a memoir.

“You’re acting like he told you all this personally,” Alex snorts, rolling his eyes. He turns to Charles and reveals, “He just wants to show off. Toto told him this.”

“Wow,” Charles says. He turns to George. “Do you know when he’s coming?”

“I think he’ll be in the paddock tomorrow morning, and he’s staying for the entire weekend—”

George is cut off by a swarm of photographers rushing into the pits. They halt their conversation to see what’s going on. Charles heard that Taylor Swift was coming to Austin, so maybe—

The crowd opens up, and Charles’ heart drops when he sees what’s causing all the commotion.

“What the fuck is she doing here,” Charles hears himself whisper over the roar of blood in his ears.

Kelly Piquet. Max’s ex-girlfriend. They broke up. They’re not together anymore. She shouldn’t be here. Why is she here?

George shrugs, looking disinterested. “Maybe they got back together?”

“Aw, look,” Alex coos. “She even brought her kid.”

Charles feels like he might throw up as he watches as Kelly and her daughter make their way to the Red Bull garage, surrounded by reporters and photographers.

Max is talking to Helmut, but when he notices all the commotion, he turns around and—

His face lights up with pure joy. The skin around his eyes crinkles, and his pink mouth curls into a wide, happy grin. He goes to embrace Kelly first, pulling her into his body. The hug lasts twenty-two seconds. Charles counts. After he lets Kelly go, he crouches to his knees and picks the girl up—Penelope, Charles vaguely remembers, is her name. She squeals and wraps her arms around Max’s neck as he bounces her up and down. They’re all talking to each other now, but Charles is too far away and the paddock is too loud for Charles to hear what they’re saying.

Max looks happier than Charles has seen him since Zandvoort. Since their break-up, if Charles can even call it that.

Now that Charles thinks about it, Max never told him why he and Kelly broke up. Do they still feel for each other? Do they still love each other? Max has a big heart. Charles knows he loved Kelly. There’s no way he didn’t. Did he ever stop?

Alex hums contemplatively. “Well, He certainly looks better for it. Happier, for sure. He’s been moping around the paddock since the summer break. You really did a number on him, Charles.”

“What?” Charles asks, head whipping to look at Alex. He’s been staring at Max, and Kelly, and Penelope this entire time.

Alex narrows his eyes. “With the championship, I mean.”

Charles swallows the bile in his throat. “Yes, yeah, right. That. The championship.”

George narrows his eyes too. These days, he and Alex are like conjoined twins. Wherever one goes, the other follows. Whatever one does, the other does too. It’s a little freaky, honestly, but it’s also none of Charles’ business.

“Are you alright?” George asks, brows furrowing.

No, no, Charles thinks. I am not alright. His mouth feels cottony and wrong. He can barely keep himself upright and standing. He can’t remember how to breathe. He’s livid, he’s furious, he’s sick. His heart is beating so fast that for a moment, he worries that his ribcage might shatter. He’s bleeding out, and the wound is nowhere to be found.

He turns his head back to look at the garage. At Max, Penelope sitting on his shoulders and playing with his hair. At Max, smiling at Kelly and telling her something. At Max, who looks up for a moment, just a brief moment, but that single moment is enough for him to, by a stroke of unluck, find Charles looking at him. Max looks back. His smile drops. They stare at one another for what feels like an eternity.

Max is the one to look away first.

Charles is going to be sick. He runs away and ignores George and Alex shouting, concerned. Where are you going? they ask. What are you doing?

The secret is, Charles has no fucking idea.

He doesn’t get very far. He’s barely made it out of the pit lane before someone knocks into him, and he finds himself falling to the ground.

“Ow,” he groans at the impact, then he looks up and sees—“Daniel?”

“Fuck, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was—Charles? Oh my god,” he apologizes, a flurry of words. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. The other comes down, outstretched to Charles.

Charles takes the hand. Daniel helps him up to his feet, and then pulls him into his chest. “C’mon, give Danny boy a hug,” he demands, even though they’re already hugging. Tentatively, Charles’ hands come around his torso. It isn’t till Daniel lets him go that Charles realizes he’s been shaking this whole time—not from the impact of the fall, but from an impact nonetheless.

“I have to say,” Daniel starts, clapping him on the shoulder, his signature bright smile plastered all over his face, friendly as ever, “you’ve been killing it since the summer break.”

“Thanks,” Charles says weakly, shakily. He doesn’t want to be here, talking to Daniel. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He just wants to—fuck. He doesn’t even fucking know what he wants. But Daniel has always been so nice to him. Charles owes it to him to at least make conversation.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

Daniel is dressed in an I HEART TEXAS shirt, shorts printed with the American flag, and a special edition bucket hat from Red Bull’s Austin Grand Prix clothing line. He’s a bit of a spectacle, but Charles knows that Daniel basks in the attention.

“I wanted to surprise Max,” Daniel explains with an embarrassed laugh, “but it seems someone’s stolen my spotlight.”

Right. Right. That’s why Charles is running away. Because Kelly is here. Because Kelly is here with Max. Because Kelly brought her kid here too. They’re like a happy fucking family in the Red Bull garage, the picture-perfect nuclear family that Max has always dreamed about.

“Are you okay?” Daniel asks when Charles doesn’t respond.

Charles is getting awfully sick of people asking him if he’s okay. He’s leading the drivers’ championship. He’s won five races in a row. Why wouldn’t he be okay?

And yet. He can’t help but ask, “What is she doing here?”

Daniel raises an eyebrow, then he smirks. He appears amused. “Worried about the competition?” he asks, and Charles freezes at the implication. “Yes,” Daniel says, answering the question that Charles hadn’t even been able to transfer from his brain to his mouth. “I know about you two.”

“Max told you?” Charles asks, voice hoarse and shocked.

“I had a feeling that something was going on between you two last year,” Daniel responds. “Since, you know, Max gets a certain way when he has someone he cares about.” Charles fights the urge to drop his head in shame. Instead, he bites down on the inside of cheek. Iron fills his mouth. “We caught up a bit after Qatar,” Daniel goes on. “I saw a few clips of his interviews, and he—I was fucking worried about him. And then he told me everything.” He pauses and looks at Charles carefully, smile flattening into a thin, displeased line. “He also told me that it’s over between you two.”

Charles might throw up. The Texas sun burns on the back of his neck. He hasn’t drank that much water today. He feels lightheaded and dizzy. Sick. “It is over,” he says, and it feels like the words are coming from somewhere outside of his body.

“Then why are you so bothered?” Daniel asks, cocking his head to the side.

“I’m not.”

Daniel hums and shoves his hands in his pocket. “They’re not back together, if that’s what you’ve been wondering.”

Charles can’t keep his head on straight, doesn’t have the sense to prevent himself from asking, “Did Max bring her here to make me jealous? Because I’m not.”

“First of all,” Daniel replies with a roll of his eyes, “I don’t believe you. Second of all, it’s not all about you. I don’t know how much Max told you about the breakup, but it’s not like it ended poorly. They still care about each other, and Max was always close with P. And thirdly, Max wasn’t the one who asked her to come. Christian did.”

“Why would Christian—”

“Max hasn’t been doing well lately. Mentally, I mean. Christian called and asked her if she thought it would help, her being in the paddock. Honestly, it was a good idea, I think. For Max to have a friend in the garage, considering…”

Beneath Daniel’s friendly, lighthearted tone, Charles hears what he means by the silence.

“They still could,” he says, mouth pursing. “Get back together.”

Because now that he and Charles are over, what’s stopping Max?

Max doesn’t want more championships. Charles knows this better than anyone, better than Max, even. Max wants a family, the stable home he was denied as a child. He wants a partner he can hold in the hard nights, the quiet ones, a person he can talk to, excitedly, and for hours, about cat food brands, about downshifts, about all the different lines you take in races. He wants kids he can give the childhood he never had, kids he can strap into his old kart to show them what their father had loved more than anything, before they came along.

And he wants love. He wants to love gently, tenderly. He wants things that Charles cannot give him.

He could have that, with Kelly. Even though it didn’t work out then, maybe it could work out now.

Daniel cackles. Throws his head back. Makes a show of it. His smile is cruel when he says, “If you think that Max is ever getting over you, you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”

Right. Daniel was Max’s friend first. Daniel has picked his side.

Charles doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of getting to say anything else. So he goes, goes, and he goes.

He goes to the Red Bull hospitality unit; he still has some time left before his first interview of the day, and his driver room is a safe bet for solitude, but because the universe hates him, and because the Red Bull motorhome is inconveniently located across from the Ferrari motorhome and the McLaren motorhome, he runs into Carlos and Lando.

“Charles!” Carlos calls, beckoning Charles over with his hand.

Charles walks over, not because he actually wants to talk to them, but because he has to pass them to get to the Red Bull motorhome.

“Not now,” he grumbles, shoving past Carlos with his shoulders when he cuts into Charles’ path. Carlos stumbles back, barely saved from falling to the ground by Lando.

“Okay, wow,” Carlos scoffs. Charles slows down, but doesn’t stop or turn around, when Carlos goes on to say, “It is funny, Charles. How you were so worried, last year, if we would be friends still, when you joined Red Bull, and yet you have barely made any effort to actually be friends with me all year.”

Which is—true. Carlos has regularly been inviting him out on race weekends, or when he happens to be in Monaco. At the beginning of the season, Charles was too busy with Max, so he’d politely decline, ask for a rain check that never came. By the time it was over between him and Max, Charles was too busy getting his head straight to make time to go golfing, to fly to Madrid, or to stop by Carlos’ apartment. Charles hasn’t responded to any of his texts recently.

“Don’t, Carlos. He’s not worth it,” Charles hears Lando say, and even though Charles can’t see him, he can feel the glare Lando is sending him. Right, Lando knows too. He has made his choice. He has picked his side.

It’s only once Charles is alone in his driver room that he asks himself: Is anyone on my side?

He hasn’t called his mom in weeks. He hasn’t talked to his brothers since the summer break. He hasn’t seen Joris in person in months. He hasn’t talked to Pierre since Paris. And Max—

No, Charles realizes. He had been asking the wrong question. This is the right one: Do I deserve to have anyone on my side?

He knows the answer. But it isn’t one that changes anything.

The next day, Lewis Hamilton shows up to the paddock. His arrival causes a great stir, but he stays mostly inside the Mercedes garage, so Charles really only sees him in passing.

Come Saturday morning, however, just before qualifying, as Charles waits outside the garage for the mechanics to finish up with his car set-up, he sees Lewis exiting the Mercedes garage, just as Nico Rosberg happens to walk by, a microphone in his hand.

With the chaos of the pit lane pre-quali or pre-race, there are only a few ever-changing paths you can take to get across it. You have to carefully weave yourself between people and autoparts. You have to stay conscious of who is around you.

All this to say: Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are not strangers, but looking at them, how they brush shoulders as they walk along the same path in opposite directions, yet still manage to not acknowledge each other—it would seem like they were never part of each other’s lives.

Was it worth it? Charles wonders. Was it worth the price you paid?

Of course it was, a small voice in the back of his head answers. Of course it was.

Charles tries his hardest to believe it.

He makes it six on Sunday.

He doesn’t feel anything, when he steps up onto the top step of the podium, when he raises the trophy high above his head, when he kisses his gloved fingers and points them up at the blue sky.

But it doesn’t matter, because he won.

He won, he won, he won.

He tells that to himself, enough times that I won, I won, I won starts to sound like his beating heart.

Days later, Charles turns twenty-eight.

Since the entirety of the triple-header—Austin, Mexico, Brazil—is located in the western hemisphere, Charles doesn’t go home to Monaco. He doesn’t celebrate it either. Pierre doesn’t even wish him a happy birthday. He video chats with his mom and brothers, though, and it feels like enough.

Really.

The night before the Mexican Grand Prix, Charles has a nightmare.

He’s at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, on the track, he’s in the RB-21, and he’s chasing down Max on the long straight before Turn 1. Max gets to the corner first, but he breaks so late that he leaves a gap. He leaves a space. Charles reacts instantly, switching to the inside and diving down, trying to reach the apex first, and—

Charles loses control. His left front wheel makes contact with Max’s right rear wheel. Max’s car lifts up, flips over, and slides, slides, slides into the run-off area, then into the barriers. The guardrails fall, and crush him and his car.

Charles watches the crash from his mirrors. He keeps driving. He wins the race. As he crosses the finish line, Christian comes onto the radio to inform him that Max was pronounced dead on impact.

He wakes up gasping, body flying to sit up straight. His chest hurts. He cannot breathe. It hurts to even try. His hotel room is so dark that he can’t tell where his body is, if he’s even inside of it. He brings his hands up to his face and they come back wet.

He crawls off the bed, then stumbles to the bathroom, knocking over a lamp and a chair and a table on the way. He finds the toilet with his hands. He drops to his knees, and he spends the next half-hour dry heaving.

Once he feels less sick, he cleans up his face and returns to the bed. His heart is racing so fast he isn’t sure if he can go back to sleep. His heart is racing so fast that he can’t even feel it.

He grabs his pillow, soaked through with sweat, shoves it into his face, and screams—as loud as he can.

The next thing he knows, it’s morning.

Charles tries not to think about it as he showers. He tries not to think about it as he gets dressed in his Red Bull kit. He tries not to think about it as he drives over to the paddock. He tries not to think about it when he sees Max in the garage, still alive, you’re still alive, you didn’t die, it was just a dream. He tries not to think about it as the hours before the race tick by. He tries not to think about it during the drivers parade. He tries not to think about it as he straps himself into the cockpit. He tries not to think about it as he leads the formation lap. He tries not to think about it as he’s waiting for the lights to go out.

But he does. He thinks about it. He can’t stop thinking about it. The grotesque screech of metal, the sparks sputtering out from Max’s upside-down car shrieking against splitting gravel, the radio message, Christian’s voice informing him of yet another tragedy, yet another person that he has lost, yet another person he has to mourn.

Lights out, away we go.

Charles stalls. From pole, he falls to seventh place. He has to fight his way through. He recovers to second by Lap 11. In Lap 17, a safety car is called for excessive debris on the track. Charles pits for mediums and the gap between him and Max falls from twenty seconds to four.

The hunt is on. By Lap 38, he has DRS.

Charles tries not to think about it as he chases down Max along the long straight before Turn 1, riding through the slipstream, but he braces himself anyway.

When Max doesn’t break late, doesn’t leave a gap, Thank god, Charles thinks. Thank god.

But Charles still has a race to win.

Coming out of Turn 3, he doesn’t think about it. Coming up wheel-to-wheel to Max on the next short straight, he doesn’t think about it. He has the pace. He can overtake here. And he does. He makes it stick. Turn 4 is clean, and so is 5 and 6, then 7, 8, 9, but going into Turn 10, where DRS is activated again, he sees Max in his mirrors. He knows what move Max is about to try, even before he does.

He goes to cover Max off, but he reacts a millisecond too late, and Max is already there, and—

Do you want to sit? I got into a fight with Christian over the phone. Are you going to sign for Mercedes? Ferrari is my dream. Dreams are irrational. Ferrari or Mercedes? They’re both shit. Are you happy at Ferrari? Drink. Mate, I knew you were a lightweight, but not this much of a lightweight. Shut up. I’ll walk you home. Monaco is small. I like maps. Maps are cool. Maps are stupid. I hate you so much. Do you really? No, not anymore. I’m not happy with Ferrari. I’m not happy. I want to leave. I want to win. It’ll all be okay. You’re okay. You love someone so much their dreams become yours. Mercedes are good, better than Ferrari, for sure, but they’re not your style. What’s my style? On the limit. I’ll tell you a secret. Red Bull has an open seat for next year. I think it’d be fun. I’d only make things harder for you. Exactly. I won’t be racing forever. I think it’d be a shame if we did not try being teammates at least once. You do look better in red. Blue would just be odd. But you want me anyway. I do. I would never be your second driver. I wouldn’t want you to be. I think I was born to do this. And so were you.

MEXICO

Charles Leclerc’s Radio Transcript: Lap 38

Hugh BIRD: Are you okay?

Silence.

Christian HORNER: Charles, that was a big crash, are you okay?

Silence.

Charles LECLERC: Is Max…?

BIRD: Oh, thank god.

LECLERC: Is Max okay?

Silence.

LECLERC: Hugh. Christian. Someone. Please. Is Max— Someone tell me—

HORNER: Can you get out of the car by yourself?

Silence.

LECLERC: Yeah, I, yeah— I think so— Is Max—?

Silence.

HORNER: Max is okay. We just heard him on the radio. It’s alright, Charles. Max is okay.

The race is red flagged, and Charles is slow to get out of the car. By the time he’s out, the medical car has already taken Max away. A marshal comes to Charles’ car and drives him to the medical center. He barely registers anything: the sight of both their mangled cars post-crash, the questions the FIA doctor asks him, or any of the despondent answers he gives. It all happens to him; it’s as if he’s a ghost inside someone else’s body.

The conscious part of Charles replays the crash, experiences the G-forces over and over. He’s slammed around inside his body as if his flesh were the RB-21 and he’s stuck inside the cockpit, ramming into the barriers again, again, again. He can’t stop trembling: his atoms are all in the wrong places. Everything smells like sharp metal, leaking fuel, exhaust fumes.

It isn’t until the doctor has finally cleared him and given him a clean bill of health, telling him to wait in his private room for Christian to come and talk to him, that he feels like he’s finally in control of his own body, can feel himself present in the moment.

He doesn’t, however, wait in his private room.

A part of him doesn’t believe that Max is okay. Even though he knows, sensibly, that it’s not the case, a part of him can’t help but worry that they told him to wait because Christian lied on the radio, because Christian needed to be the one to break the news that Max isn’t really okay. Charles gets up on shaking legs with his heart in his throat, and exits the room.

Charles doesn’t know where Max is, but he must still be in the medical center—the crash was bad, but not bad enough for either of them to have been transported to the hospital.

Charles doesn’t know where Max is, but—he has a feeling. He just does. He finds the right door easily, and when he opens it, Max is sitting on the bed, chugging a bottle of water. He spills it all over himself at the intrusion.

His cheeks are rosy, eyes bright and wide with confusion. His hair is matted down with sweat. Balaclava lines are pressed deep in his cheeks. His chin is shiny with the water he spilled. His mouth is parted, his neck and ears flushed blotchy-pink. He shaved this morning. His skin looks smooth. His racesuit dangles loose at his waist, fireproofs tight against his skin.

He’s okay. Thank god, he’s okay.

“Charles,” he says, but he can’t get more words out, because Charles has crossed the room and closed the distance between them. He throws his arms around Max’s neck and hugs him as tight as he can, just to make sure that the Max in front of him is Max. That he is real. That he is safe. That he really is okay. Charles won’t let him go. He can feel all of Max’s warmth and his bones and his flesh. He can hear each of his heartbeats, feel each of his breaths. His body. Solid. Familiar. Uninjured. Alive.

“I thought—I thought—” Charles chokes on a sob, embarrassed when he feels tears pressing hot to Max’s neck. He trembles, shivers, holds onto Max tighter. He doesn’t ever want to let go. He isn’t even sure if his words come out in English, or come out at all when he starts, “They said—they weren’t telling me if you were okay and I thought—I thought I— Because last night, I had this horrible dream that you— That I—”

Charles can’t say it. He’s afraid that if he says it, he’ll make it real, that he’ll wake up from this dream and he’ll find himself at the chequered flag, with Christian’s voice on the radio, telling him that Max—

Max’s arms are slow to wrap around Charles’ torso, tentative about it, like he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to be gentle, but they come, fingers flexing on his back, pulling him in closer, eradicating any distance that Charles had left between their bodies. He presses his face to the crook of Charles’ neck, breathes in, breathes out, breathes, then says, “It’s okay, Charles. I’m okay. You’re okay.” Max shudders against Charles’ shoulder as Charles lets out a heaving, wet sob, not unlike the wail of a wounded animal, and he says, “We’re okay.”

Minutes pass, or maybe seconds, maybe days. Charles pulls back once he feels more calm, less frantic. Max keeps his hands around Charles’ waist as Charles runs his hands down Max’s arms, just to feel him through his fireproofs, all solid muscle beneath flesh coiled around bone. He moves his hands to Max’s chest, his right palm over Max’s heart, feeling how his heart beats, trying to memorize and internalize the rhythm. When he looks up at Max’s face, Max is looking at him. Max watches. Maybe Max has been watching him all this time.

When Max brings his hand up to cup his cheek, he is gentle. Max looks at him. Charles looks back. Max lets his thumb brush along the contours of Charles’ face, his nose, his cheekbones, his mouth. It takes Charles a long moment to realize that Max is wiping his tears away. Carefully. With care, with so much care.

You are real. I am real. This is real.

Charles keeps his right hand over Max’s heart, and brings his other to Max’s hip. He is resting his entire body weight on Max, he realizes now, and Max is still sitting on the bed. Charles’ head is tilted back to meet Max’s eyes. He wonders what he must look like: tender-knuckled and red-cheeked, tear-streaked and heart-wounded, grief-stricken even though he hasn’t lost anything today.

Even when Charles’ face feels dry, Max doesn’t remove his hand from his cheek. Only curls it around the side of his face, his fingers coming below the shell of Charles’ ear. Max’s eyes drop to his mouth, parted because he can’t breathe through his snot-stuffy nose. His thumb pulls at Charles’ bottom lip. His other hand comes up to the side of Charles’ neck.

Charles knows what’s going to happen even before Max makes any signs of moving. He closes his eyes in anticipation, and lets himself be kissed.

Moments later, Charles is flat on his back, on the bed. Max is on top of him, the weight of him solid and sturdy, his knees caged around Charles’ body, kissing him slowly, gentle about it. His hand is around the side of Charles’ throat, thumb pressed to his carotid, not enough to inhibit his breathing, but enough to make him feel dizzy. Charles has both his hands in Max’s hair, fingers brushing the hot shells of his ears, then flexing against the curve of his skull. Neither of them say a single word.

They keep kissing for what feels like an eternity; Charles wants and wants and wants.

Too engrossed in one another, in having each other for the first time in months, neither of them notice how the door opens, the footsteps that follow, or the closing of the door.

But then there’s a cough. A sharp ahem.

Max reacts first, graceless and clumsy about it, jumping back in shock, falling off the bed, to the floor, and banging his head against the cabinet behind him. The impact of his skull against the wood makes a sharp thud! noise. Charles would have laughed, then helped him get up, in that order, if it weren’t for the fact that, when he turns his head to the side, he sees Christian Horner.

“Are you two done now?”

Max climbs up onto his feet, cradling the back of his head with one hand, just as Charles flies to sit up straight, thankful that, at the very least, he doesn’t have a boner.

He glances at Max: his hair is a mess, clumps sticking up in odd places where Charles was tugging at it; his lips are swollen and plump; his cheeks are bright red and blotchy with embarrassment; and his eyes are wide open with horror. Then he glances back at Christian: his arms are crossed over his chest, and frown lines press into his forehead. To say that he doesn’t look happy would be an understatement.

Charles drops his head and stares at his feet, dangling from the bed. He vaguely remembers being told that Christian was coming to talk to them.

“I came here to see for myself that you two were alright, and to let you know that I got you both out of media,” Christian says, his voice robotic and distant. He takes an uncomfortable pause. “However,” he continues, punctuating it with a heavy, tired sigh, “the stewards still need to see you both, and you are not exempt from the team debrief. So follow me. We have a long day ahead of us, and we have a lot to talk about, boys.”

All things considered, the stewards meeting and the team debrief go—okay.

Both the FIA and Red Bull deem Charles and Max to be at equal fault for the crash: there wasn’t nearly enough space for Max to try that move, and Charles reacted too late and far too defensively. At least, Charles thinks that’s what they conclude; he spends the entirety of both meetings thinking about how Max had kissed him, how he had kissed back, and how their boss saw them making out.

Only a handful of people in the world know that Charles likes men. Christian Horner is on the list, now, Charles guesses. At the very least, Christian has known about Max for years and has only ever been supportive; Max had told Charles that a year ago.

Oh god, Charles thinks when he remembers that Christian has been Max’s team principal since Max was eighteen. Ten years have passed since then. Max must be like a son to him, at this point. Charles wants the earth to swallow him whole. This entire day has been a never-ending emotional rollercoaster.

What makes it all worse is that, following the incident in the medical center, Max has been by Charles’ side the entire time, literally sitting next to him in both meetings, but they haven’t been able to talk about it. Where they stand, after the crash, after the kiss.

At the end of the team debrief, Christian asks Max and Charles to stay behind in the conference room.

Christian is sitting at the head on the other side. Charles and Max are sitting together at the far end of the table, but Max is closer to Christian, so he’s vaguely in Charles’ line of sight. As the room clears out Charles stares at his hands in his lap, cheeks burning, manically counting the seconds before they have to talk about it. The Big It.

“So,” Christian starts, barely a millisecond after the door slams shut behind the last person. “How long has this been happening?”

Charles winces. He looks up from his lap and glances at Max. Max doesn’t look back. He keeps his eyes on Christian.

Well. Max would have to be an idiot if he’s thinking of telling the truth, so Charles is comfortable about lying. If they pretend it’s just a one-off, they might be able to get out of this quicker, cleaner. He turns his head to face Christian.

“It was only today,” he answers, at the same time that Max says, “About a year.”

Charles’ head whips to the side. He gawks at Max, jaw hanging open, and thinks, What the hell?

Still, Max isn’t looking at him, but Charles can see the way his neck colors pink, a blush dusting the side of his face that Charles can see.

“Great,” Christian says under his breath. “So anywhere between a couple hours and twelve months.”

“Christian,” Charles says, reacting to the disappointment in Christian’s voice. “We’re not—anymore.”

Christian’s brows furrow. He narrows his eyes and purses his lips. “Then what did I see?”

Charles doesn’t think about it before he answers. He just opens his mouth, and the words come out: “A mistake.”

It’s practically imperceptible, the way that Max’s mouth twitches, the way that his face goes stiff, but Charles has known Max since they were little kids; he’s been trained to pay attention.

He can’t take it back, can’t say anything else, because Christian is already responding, “It wouldn’t be the first mistake you two made today.”

Charles grimaces. Max lowers his head and stares at his lap.

Christian sighs again. “Look, boys. Putting the crash aside, your personal lives are none of my business. The details and the timeline—I couldn’t care less. It’s a private matter. But as your team principal, if I had seen this earlier in the year, I would have had my doubts about your abilities to keep—whatever it is off the race track, and it would have been my responsibility to take whatever measures necessary to ensure that you weren’t putting the championships at stake.”

Whatever measures necessary. Ominous. Charles isn’t even sure what that means. He doesn’t have any time to dwell on it, though, because Christian continues:

“However, the drivers’ championship will be won by one of you, and we’ve already clinched the constructors’ title. There are only three races left in the season. I doubt the team needs any more internal stress than we already have. I won’t be doing anything, nor will I be telling anyone. You are both adults. I trust that you can handle this by yourselves.” He looks at Charles for a long moment, and then at Max for an equally long moment. “Most of all, I trust that you will not let an incident like today happen again.”

Charles isn’t sure if Christian is talking about the crash, or what happened at the medical center. Both, probably, he figures.

And then he realizes what Christian is saying. “You’re not going to… do anything?” Charles asks, shocked. He was expecting a variety of things: Christian telling them he’s reporting them to HR, demanding to know the details, or maybe he’d even fire Charles.

“Not at the moment,” Christian answers. “You both are contracted for the next few years. I will check in at the end of the season and reassess if you are still capable of racing against one another. That’s all from me. Understood?”

“Yes,” Charles says, still incredulous that after everything that’s happened today, the only consequence is a slap on the wrist.

“Max,” Christian says, glaring at Max, whose head is still lowered. He’s staring blankly at his hands. It’s clear that he hasn’t been paying attention. “Understood?”

“Yeah,” Max grumbles, finally looking up. “Understood. Am I free to go now?”

Christian looks like he’s sucking on a lemon. “Yes,” he says after a hesitant moment. “You both are.”

“Great,” Max says, voice clipped. His chair screeches against the floor as he goes to stand and he’s out the door before Charles is even out of his seat.

“Max, wait—”

Charles chases after him, but by the time he’s made it to his feet, Max is already in the hallway. By the time he’s gotten to the door, Max is at the stairs. And by the time that Charles has made it to the back entrance to avoid reporters and fans, Max is already outside. Charles feels like Achilles, and Max is the tortoise. He will never catch up.

But he has to. He has no other choice.

It’s dark outside the Red Bull motorhome. The sun has set, the air is cool but humid, and the paddock is quiet. All of the other teams must have packed up and left already.

“Max,” Charles shouts at his retreating back. He sprints to catch up, as fast as he can, grabbing hold of Max’s wrist once he’s close enough. “We should talk—”

Max violently shakes his hand off. Charles flinches when Max turns around, when he sees the cold look in Max’s eyes. “What is there even for us to talk about? It was a mistake, right? Just like Qatar. Just like all of it. It was all a mistake, right?”

Charles’ heart drops. The hand that was on Max’s wrist comes to his thigh, fingers twitching and flexing before he curls them into his palm, nails leaving moons in his flesh. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah? You didn’t mean it?” Max asks. His eyes are so crazed that Charles can’t believe that just hours ago, they had been looking at him so gently. “What else didn’t you mean? Last winter, this year, before the break—was any of it real? Or was I just a way to pass the time?”

That’s not—that isn’t—

“It wasn’t—” Charles shakes his head, dizzy with it. He hasn’t eaten any food since the morning, hasn’t had the time to. He feels the G-forces again, feels the shunt slamming inside his own body, the violent rattle of it, brutal and incessant, over and over and over. “It was real,” he says quietly.

Max cocks his head to the side and lifts a brow. “Was it?”

Yes, Charles wants to say. It was real when you kissed me last year in Brazil, in your little driver room, and I got onto my knees. Yes, Charles wants to say. It was real days after Brazil, when you came to my apartment, and we stayed in my bedroom for what felt like an eternity—I wanted it to be an eternity. Yes, Charles wants to say. It was real when I won in Jeddah, and you picked me up off the ground, and hugged me, and pressed your helmet to mine in front of all the cameras. Yes, Charles wants to say. It was real hours ago, in the medical center, when you kissed me, and I kissed you back, and everything was okay. We were okay. We were real.

He can’t get any of the words out.

“Or was it all just a way to fuck with me?” Max goes on. “Because congratulations. You fucking won. Okay? You won. I hope it was worth it. I hope this championship is worth it.”

The championship. Right. It was all about that, wasn’t it? This, everything, all of this—it was all for the championship.

Charles hasn’t even won it yet, he doesn’t even know if he will win it this year, but he’s close, so close. Closer than he’s ever been.

And yet—all he feels is loss.

He has lost something today. Maybe he has been losing all this time. The points have been wracking up, he has been closing the gap, little by little, but—he has lost something, each time.

Is it worth it? Will it be worth it?

“Max,” Charles says. It’s the only thing he can get out.

Max closes his eyes and takes a deep breath; his hands are balled up into fists by his sides; he opens his eyes slowly. They come back wet, but steadfast. His lower lip wobbles before he says, “You know, after today, when you came to my room, I thought… For a second, I really thought that you—” Max shakes his head, doesn’t finish his sentence but Charles knows. He hears it all.

“Max—”

“What do you even want, Charles? What do you want?”

There are a lot of answers to that question.

He wants Max back. He wants to be a champion. He wants to be holed up in Max’s apartment in Monaco with his stupidly expensive cats curling up in his lap and pawing at his chest and shedding hair all over his clothes. He wants a world title. He wants his father and Jules back. He wants his mother and Arthur and Lorenzo to live forever. He wants to eat the world whole and make it fall to its knees. He wants to be worshipped and he wants to be loved. He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

Charles can’t find his voice. Can’t seem to say anything at all.

“I’m done playing games. Please just… Just… Let me go, okay?”

What happens if we crash and burn? Charles had asked one year ago. Then we crash and burn, Max had replied. At least we’ll have given it a shot.

Max stares at Charles. Stares and stares and stares until Charles finds his voice again.

“Okay,” Charles whispers, dropping his head to stare at his feet, wondering how the hell he managed to fuck this up too. By the time he lifts his head, Max is long gone.

Charles has forty-seven missed texts, and twenty-three missed calls.

Exhausted from the day, but too wired up to sleep, he goes through them once he’s in his hotel room.

Most of the text messages are from his friends back in Monaco, telling him that they were watching the race, how scary it seemed, how relieved they are that he’s safe and uninjured. He gets a text from Seb too, expressing the same sentiments. Charles doesn’t have the emotional energy in him to reply to any of the messages, so he decides to leave it for the morning, before he’s scheduled to fly to New York for a charity gala. After the kiss in the medical center, the meeting with the stewards, the post-race team debrief, the conversation with Christian and then the conversation with Max—the race itself, the crash, it all feels so far away.

However, when he sees the three missed calls from his mom, followed by a text, asking him to call her back, he knows that this is something he shouldn’t put off.

By the time he’s worked up the courage to call her, it’s 10 PM in Mexico City, 6 AM in Monaco.

He doesn’t expect her to pick up, but she does on the second ring. It’s—it’s a lot. Today’s crash was the worst crash that Charles has ever been involved in—it’s nothing short of a miracle that he and Max both came out of it completely uninjured. Charles has seen the replays, seen how Max’s car went skidding into the barriers, how a wheel popped off and went flying onto the track; seen how his own car flipped over and luckily landed right-side up, losing half its bodywork in the process.

She doesn’t ever say it, but Charles knows that she’s thinking of Jules.

After they’ve tired themselves of the you nearly gave me a heart attack; I’m okay, I promise loop, she tells him sternly, “No more crashes like that, okay?”

Charles laughs weakly. “Okay,” he mutters, his heart heavy and swollen, pressing into his ribs as if it’s trying to escape.

She’s quiet on the other line for a long moment. Charles looks up at the ceiling from his bed, his cell is sitting face-up beside him, on speakerphone.

“I know you’re going to win it this year,” she says, her voice warm like sun and clear like Monaco’s sky.

Charles takes a deep breath. It’s not the first time someone close to him has told him that, but it’s the first time that she has told him that. Before now, it’s always been: you can do it, you can win it. Before now, he’s never heard her say it with so much certainty, no if’s, no can’s, no but’s. He himself believes he’ll win, he really does, he knows, he can feel it, it’s just that after today, he isn’t sure if it’s going to be worth it.

“How do you know?” Charles asks. His chest feels so tight that it’s difficult to get the words out, even more difficult to keep himself present.

“I just do,” she says, her voice gentle but sincere. “You’ve been different this year. More serious.”

Really, Charles, Pierre said, I hope you win this championship. You deserve it more than anyone. I just hope you remember who you are by the time you win it. I hope you remember who you are winning it for.

“I am so proud of you,” she says, “I know that your father is proud of you too.”

No matter what happens this year, she told him months ago, I’m proud of you. Charles wonders if she would be proud of him, still, if she knew what’s done, the people he’s hurt.

“Thank you, maman,” he replies, his voice scratchy and choked out. His heart feels all cracked open, feels like someone’s taken it in their hands, peeled the skin, and sliced it apart. The thing is, Charles Leclerc is all out of blood; he’s been losing blood all this time, shoving his own hands in his chest and prying his ribs open and pulling his own heart out over and over and over, each time he feels the hurt. He dug too many holes and held the beating thing over each one, wrung it dry then shoved it back in, tucked under his sternum like another thing forgotten, dirt shoveled back into the ground to cover up the crime. His chest has scars, too many. Some are white and healed, but never gone; others red and puffy and bleeding, stitches pulling open.

“This year has been hard on you,” she says, knowing, because all mothers know, in the end. “It’s been hard, hasn’t it?”

Yes. Yes, Charles wants to say. Yes. You don’t even know the half of it.

Instead, he sucks in another breath, trembling and calamitous. He chokes on it, the back of his throat wet with words he can’t say, his heart heavy with words he can’t even understand. He can’t keep it in any longer; it might kill him, if he keeps going like this.

“Oh, baby. Are you okay?”

“I…” he starts shakily, blinking away the stinging tears he didn’t even know were there.

His mom knows the worst parts of him—his pride that had him stomping his feet and throwing slices of pizza after second places at karting competitions; the greed and gluttony teeming beneath his skin that had him throwing away sure podiums for a taste of victory; the stubbornness and selfishness that got him to where he is today; his beating heart that was once gentle and filled with hope, now hardened by grief and burdened by the promise of a championship, closer and realer than ever—

What is one more?

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“You can tell me anything,” his mother says.

“It’s… It’s a long story,” he responds, hesitantly picking at his fingers in his lap. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

His mom laughs and says, “Well, I have time. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

Okay, then, Charles thinks. Okay.

He closes his eyes, starts from the beginning, and lets himself unravel.

She is silent as Charles tells her about last summer; Max’s twenty-seventh birthday party; how Max had convinced him to celebrate his own birthday; about their first kiss and the aftermath; about how Max is a terrible cook, but always tried to make breakfast when he stayed over; how Max always tried to make him laugh, about his cheesy sense of humor, and how Charles liked it anyway, how happy he would look when Charles laughed at his jokes, how he started laughing even if his jokes weren’t worth a laugh just because he liked it when he smiled; about his cats, how Charles hated them, how he couldn’t tell them apart for the longest time, but how he learned the difference after Sassy threw up in his shoes the one time, how he saw a stray cat the other day, and thought of them, thought of Max, how he wanted them gone at first, but he saw how much Max loved them, and he started to love them too.

“Oh, baby,” she says. “It sounds to me like you loved him.”

He thinks of all of Max’s annoying habits. How he doesn’t clean the sink bowl after brushing his teeth. How he leaves the dishes out to “soak,” which is code for leaving them out for Charles to take care of. How he doesn’t fold his laundry and shoves them into his drawers, leaving all his shirts wrinkled. How Charles loves all of it. All of him.

“Yeah,” Charles says, exhaling a trembling breath over the tears in the back of his throat. “Yeah. I did. I do.”

He doesn’t know when it happened, when he started loving Max, but it did, and he does.

When he says it, it doesn’t feel like a weight off his chest, it doesn’t feel good, but it feels—better. He curls his knees closer to his chest.

“But I think—I think it’s over now. Really over.”

I’m done playing games. Please just… Just… Let me go, okay?

“What happened?”

“I had—” He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm, then breathes in, then breathes out. “I had to end things because my racing was affected. I was getting distracted. But I hurt him. I really, really hurt him. And I thought—I thought I was making the right choice. But now… I am not sure if I made the right choice.” Charles thinks of the winter break, thinks of the first few races, how happy he had been, how happy they had both been. “He—a few months ago, he told me he loved me. And I broke up with him. I was—I was afraid. That if I stayed with him, I would never—”

Win a championship. That was always Charles’ justification, but that’s not—that was never it. If it was just about the championship, the points and the victories, he’d be happy. It would have been worth it. But he isn’t happy, and this—this is not worth it. It isn’t worth it, all this pain, the price he has paid. It was never about the championship. It was never about Red Bull or Ferrari. It was never about proving himself to the world or to himself, it was—

“I was afraid that I would never make Papa and Jules proud,” he says for the first time, understanding it, for the first time.

Charles left Ferrari. He will never win a championship with them. He has already failed his father and Jules in that respect, but he thought, if he won a championship, it would have been worth it, it would have been enough.

“But they are proud,” his mother tells him. “Don’t you know that?”

“I don’t—I don’t know about that.”

“Well,” she says. “I do, and I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Whether you win this championship or not—and I know you will—they are proud of you. They have been proud of you all this time.”

“Maman…”

“You know, I admit, I was very hesitant, when you told me that you and Max would be teammates this year, but you have been so amazing all year. And—” She laughs softly; the sound makes Charles’ heart feel warm. “I am still… surprised about—all of this, but—I think that your father would have approved. You would get so worked up, when you two were little kids. When he would finish first and you second, or when he would have a good race and you had a bad one. He would too, when it was the other way around. And I still don’t understand it, the way you love racing, but your father did, and he knew Max, how good he was, how much that boy loved to race, and I think… I think he would have been happy to know that you have someone who understands it too. Who loves it just as much as you do.”

The truth of the matter is, Max and Charles don’t have much in common—they never have. Max hates golf, padel, swimming, all sports except motorsports and football, he doesn’t listen to music, he likes partying, he likes cats, but racing. That was the only thing they have ever shared, the only thing they still share. And it was enough. To have racing, and to have each other.

“But I don’t,” Charles says, heart heavy, “I don’t have him anymore.”

“You will always have him,” his mother says. “You know, when you love someone, you’ll always keep a piece of them inside of you. You can love someone you’re not with. We do it all the time.”

We. You and I. We love and we grieve, we grieve and we love. We are tied together by the people who have left us left behind and the people we live on without.

Charles doesn’t want to grieve any longer. Doesn’t want the months he was with Max just to live on as a memory, because memories are only approximations, the edges blurred and the details forgotten and lost to time.

But does Max want that too?

“He didn’t fight it,” Charles says, addressing the hurt, the hurt from months ago that has never healed, never gone away, “when I said that we should stop.”

His mother is silent on the other end for a long time. “I admit, I don’t know Max very well,” she starts softly, “but from what you’ve told me, how kind and good he is to you—I think… I think he just wanted to do what was best for you, because he loved you.”

“But if he—if he loved me—wouldn’t he have fought for me?”

“But you loved him, didn’t you?” she asks. And you didn’t fight, she doesn’t say. You broke up with him instead. “I don’t think that our actions capture the extent of our love, sometimes. And that’s when our words come into play.”

And Charles realizes: today, Max had told Christian they had been together for a year, and Charles had said it had only been the one kiss—Charles had said it was all a mistake. His words have all been wrong and prideful in order to save his own skin rather than to save whatever he had rebuilt with Max, in that medical center, with that kiss.

After today, when you came to my room, I thought… For a second, I really thought that you—

“I had a chance, today,” he tells her. “To fix things. I think—I think that I could have fixed things today, but—I think I only made them worse. I don’t think I deserve him anymore. I have been so horrible.”

“Oh, Charles. You can be so hard on yourself sometimes. I think you deserve to be gentle with yourself for once. No matter what you have done, or what you have said, you deserve to be loved. You deserve to let yourself love.”

“I don’t—I don’t know if I can…” Fix this, he doesn’t say. If this is something that can even be fixed.

“Do you remember when you and Arthur were kids, and we told you that you both had to stop karting because we didn’t have the money?” his mother asks after a few moments of silence. How could Charles forget? “You told us,” she goes on, not waiting for an answer, “you would get first place in the next race, and in the next race after that, and the next race after that. And you made us promise that if you did, we would let you keep racing. And you did. You kept winning, and then you told us that you would be a world champion one day, and—that’s when I knew that you were something special. All this to say: it’s not like you to quit when things get hard, to not fight for the things that you want.”

Charles shakes his head, even though she cannot see him, even though she is ten thousand kilometers away. “I don’t even know what I want, at this point. If it would be a good idea to fight for this. He told me to let him go, and I have hurt him so much that—”

“And that’s why I think you should fight,” she insists, and maybe that’s where he got his stubbornness from. “Or at the very least, tell him how you feel. He’s hurt too, isn’t he?”

Charles bites his lip. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” she says. “Sometimes, you have to fight for it, the good things in life. Love, and the people who love you.”

“I don’t know if he still loves me. Or likes me.”

Even Charles doesn’t like himself very much right now.

“Well, there’s only one way you’re going to find out, right? If you’re honest with him, he will be honest with you. It’s worth a try, and I think it’s your turn to fight.”

“But what about the championship?”

“Oh, Charles. I meant it when I said I knew you were going to win it. I don’t think it really has anything to do with Max. I think… I think you just need some confidence. I think you can fight for two things at once. Just remember that even though it might feel like it sometimes, the world isn’t out to get you. If you’re kind to it, it might just be kind to you too.”

Kindness doesn’t come easy to Charles. He is angry. He is angry at the world for taking his father away. He is angry at Max for not fighting. He is angry at himself for wanting. Wanting so much. For wanting a championship and wanting Max at the same time.

I like kind people. Like my mum. My dad, at least when I was growing up, was angry all the time. I thought that that was normal. I used to put my anger onto the track but—I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m very angry anymore. Life has been very good to me. I at a point realized there was no use being angry about things out of my control.

The want has never been in his control, Charles realizes. There is no use being angry about it. The only thing he can do is try to be kind—to himself, to the world, and to all the people he loves.

“Also, I’ve been meaning to ask,” his mother starts again, “what’s this I hear about you and Pierre not talking anymore?”

Charles flushes. His and Pierre’s moms have always been close friends. Of course she’d hear about their fallout.

“I said something to him,” Charles confesses, ashamed. “Something that I regret.”

“I think,” she says, “before anything else, you should fix that. I think you need someone in your corner right now.”

Charles swallows. “How?”

“Well,” she says, and Charles can hear her smile. “Telling him that you are sorry, would be a start.”

“I don’t know if he’ll forgive me.”

She snorts, like he just said something ridiculous. “You two have been friends for twenty years. I don’t think anything you could have said to him is bad enough that you’ll stop being friends.”

Charles chews on the inside of his cheek, staring at the black TV screen of his hotel room. “He won’t—I doubt he wants to talk to me.”

“Do you know what happened today, during the red flag?”

“No, I… I don’t.”

“He called me. He was so shaken up about your crash,” she reveals, laughing softly. “He said he didn’t want to race. I was the one who had to comfort him and convince him to get back in the car. Just call him, or see him if he’s still in Mexico. I think you’ll be fine. You two have been through worse together. You’ll get through this too.”

For the first time all day, Charles thinks to himself, maybe we will get through this. Maybe it all will be okay.

“You are very loved, Charles, and you deserve every bit of that love.”

And Charles—is still, still, trying his hardest to believe that.

He looks at his phone and sees that it’s almost midnight, that he’s been talking to his mom for two hours now. She notices that the conversation is starting to taper out, and they start their goodbyes, the I love you’s, because you never know which conversation will be your last, and you never want to leave yourself questioning whether or not you said I love you, in the end.

“Promise me, okay?” she urges at the end of it all. “That you’ll keep fighting. You’re a fighter, Charles. Don’t forget that.”

Charles breathes in deep. “I won’t. Thank you. For this, for listening to me, for everything. I love you,” he says again just for good measure.

She laughs. “I love you too. Now go fix things Max and Pierre, alright?”

First things first: Pierre.

Charles messages Esteban, as Pierre’s teammate, and asks for Pierre’s hotel address and room number. Esteban simply sends the information without any questions, and Charles immediately grabs his phone, wallet, and keys, and heads to his car.

When he knocks on Pierre’s door, no one responds, and it has Charles questioning whether or not Pierre is awake, or even in his room, but he knocks again, and waits a few minutes, then he knocks again, and waits a few more minutes, and eventually, the door opens to reveal Pierre, half-awake, hair mussed up by sleep, wearing a plain loose white shirt and grey joggers. It takes him a long moment to react to the fact that Charles is in front of him. Charles is holding too many words in his mouth, so tired from—from the conversation with his mom, with everything that happened before, with the season. With all of it.

Pierre’s face, at first tense and awkward, loosens, and he raises his hands from his sides. “Come here,” he says softly, opening his arms, and—

Charles goes. Throws himself into them. Sometimes, he forgets that he’s taller than Pierre now. For all the years they were children, Pierre was always taller. Charles buries himself in Pierre’s neck, Pierre’s arms slung around his waist, and sniffles.

“I’m sorry, Pierrot. I shouldn’t have—in Paris, I didn’t—I didn’t actually mean—”

“I know,” Pierre shushes, bringing a hand up to stroke the back of Charles’ head. “I know, calamardo,” he says, “I’m just happy you’re okay,” and leads Charles into his room, quiet and patient and loving.

Charles is so loved—he hasn’t thought about it much, until now. So many people love him, and he—he loves too.

“I love him,” Charles confesses, his voice breaking, once they’re both on the bed, once he has his face tucked in the crook of Pierre’s neck, his cheek pressed against Pierre’s heartbeat. “Does that make me an idiot?”

The scruff of Pierre’s chin is rough against Charles’ forehead. “Yes,” he says, running his hand through Charles’ hair. “It’s Max.”

Charles laughs wetly and lets the warmth of Pierre’s body and the silence of his hotel room settle into and under his skin.

Once he feels a little better, a little more calm, he confesses into the silence, “I feel so alone.”

Pierre snorts and pinches his side through his shirt, and Charles grumbles in annoyance. “Of course you do. You have been pushing everyone away. You have been so mean. Such a jerk to everyone. And don’t think you’re getting out of your apologies just because you had a bad crash today.” Then Pierre goes on about all the things Charles has done wrong since the summer break. Pierre holds him tight throughout. Charles has never felt more loved.

“Can I stay tonight?” Charles asks him once he’s done, pressing his body up against Pierre’s, feeling like a little kid again.

“Honestly, Charles,” Pierre says, hugging him tighter. “I am offended that you even have to ask.”

The next few days go by in a blur. Monday, Charles flies to New York and spends the day at sponsorship events, the afternoon in his hotel room calling his therapist for the first time in months, and the evening at a charity gala. Tuesday, he flies to Los Angeles for a commercial filming, and stays until Wednesday afternoon. Max, on the other hand, flew straight to Brazil from Mexico, so Charles doesn’t see him until Thursday morning.

In the meantime, Charles keeps up with all the headlines from the Mexican Grand Prix. Alex’s first win is wholly overshadowed by headers all along the lines of: LECLERC LOSES IT & VERSTAPPEN LOSES OUT!

His own radio message goes viral, but not only that—Max’s does too.

MEXICO

Max Verstappen’s Radio Transcript: Lap 38

Gianpiero LAMBIASE: Max, are you okay?

Max VERSTAPPEN: (groaning) Fuck. Fuck. Is…

Silence.

Christian HORNER: Max?

VERSTAPPEN: (heavy breathing) Is Charles okay?

Silence.

VERSTAPPEN: Christian?

HORNER: We’re trying to get him on the radio, mate.

VERSTAPPEN: What the fuck? Just fucking tell me if Charles— (garbled noises) Don’t fucking lie—

LAMBIASE: Easy there. Christian’s trying to get a hold of him right now. We’ll let you know right away. Are you okay?

VERSTAPPEN: I’m fucking fine. Fuck you— What the fuck are you doing? If he’s not okay, fucking—

HORNER: He’s alright, Max. I was just talking to him. Charles is okay.

Even before any racing, Brazil is a shitshow.

Having skipped all the mandatory post-race media in Mexico, all the attention is on him and Max. They spend all of Thursday getting hounded by reporters and getting mics and cameras shoved in their faces. Charles doesn’t even remember the events leading up to the crash very well and can’t say much about it other than what the team and the stewards told him; all of his memories of Lap 38 are reconstructed from the recordings he’s seen. He only knows this: the screech of splitting sharp metal, the harsh smell of leaking fuel and exhaust fumes, endless G-forces slamming within the confines of his flesh.

Throughout the day, Charles can’t get a single opportunity to talk to Max one-on-one. At the very least, he and Max get out of sponsor events, ordered to rest their bodies as much as possible before getting in the car, as if Charles hasn’t spent most of the past week on airplanes. Max’s hotel room is right next to Charles’ but—it doesn’t feel right to ambush him there. He’ll just have to wait until after the race.

Friday morning, they have the driver briefing. Charles sits with George and Alex, who seem to be about the only drivers present, except for the rookies, who can stand him, seeing as Pierre has a mild case of bronchitis and is resting until he has to get in the car for FP1. On the opposite side of the room sit Max, Lando, and Carlos; the latter two glare at Charles for half of the meeting.

Sometimes, he forgets that Max was teammates with Carlos first.

The free practices—well, they’re fine. He and Max trade spots at the top of the timesheet, and neither of them do anything special with their set-ups. By the time night rolls around, Charles is too exhausted to do anything but shower and crawl into bed.

Saturday hardly goes any better. Charles makes it into Q3 just fine, and he has the pace to beat Max for pole, but various issues with brake balance and suspension have him unable to complete a lap. He goes into Sunday P10, while Max starts from pole.

For all the grief that Ferrari gave Charles in his last few years with them, when he thinks about it, the first few years were some of the happiest of Charles’ life. He had the longest contract ever with them, everyone’s dream team, his father’s, Jules’, his own; he was teammates and rivals with a living legend, and he learned so much. It was his second home; it was his family.

Charles makes it to P5 by the end of Lap 8.

His Italian is getting rusty; he barely uses it these days, only ever gets the chance to speak it with the handful of Italian engineers and mechanics at Red Bull. The Italian media collectively doesn’t like him very much anymore, so Charles tries to stay away from reading what they have to say about him.

Lap 23, he pits for mediums, and comes out P7.

His mom and brothers had been disappointed when he told them, last summer, that he was in contract negotiations with Red Bull. They tried to stay as neutral as possible in the first half of the season when Charles was talking to Mercedes, but even then, he could see the defeat on their faces, the saddened acceptance that Charles was outgrowing Ferrari, that the Italian team would never be able to give him the championship he deserved. Still, they were happy for him, and supportive of his move. They were worried about him and Max, but Charles did everything he could to reassure his family that they would be fine, that they were good now, and they did their best to believe him.

By Lap 26, he’s back in fifth place.

It’s strange how easy it was at the start of the season. The RB-21 was great in winter testing, and it has only gotten better throughout the year. The team accepted him and helped him adjust, poured as many resources to his camp as they did Max’s, and celebrated his victories and podiums with the same vigor and excitement and pride as they did Max’s. When Seb said, It’s always hard, leaving home for the first time, Charles hadn’t understood what he meant.

By Lap 39, Charles has charged through the field and has made it to second place, ten seconds behind Max.

He was happier than ever back then, winning Jeddah, Baku, and Imola, confirming that he didn’t need Ferrari, that he could flourish in a new team, even if it wasn’t ever a team he had dreamed of being in. The rest of the first half of the season was hard for sure, but coming back from the summer break: he was in full form, top shape, excellent condition. He won six races in a row. With this season alone, he’s almost doubled his career-total win tally. Even after the Mexico crash, he’s still the title favorite, but he sometimes thinks about the what-ifs.

Lap 42, Max pits for new mediums.

What if he stayed with Ferrari? Well, Charles wouldn’t be winning races—at least not as many as he has this season, and he wouldn’t be a title contender. Max would have had a runaway season for sure. Max. If Charles hadn’t happened to come across Max during the summer break, he would still be with Ferrari most likely. Or maybe Max would have found him anyway or would have worn Christian down enough to call Charles and offer a seat. Charles isn’t religious, isn’t superstitious, doesn’t believe in fate or luck, but it’s a comforting thought—that he was always meant to come to Red Bull. But if he hadn’t, if it all was just coincidence piled on coincidence, he wonders, would any of this have happened with Max?

There wasn’t always something between them; it all started early on in the summer and then picked up after Max’s birthday. Everything since then can be traced to those two events. If Charles hadn’t gone to Max’s birthday party, he wouldn’t have walked in on Max getting blown in the bathroom, wouldn’t have found out that Max liked men. If Max hadn’t been in that bar in Monaco the day that Lewis revealed his retirement, Charles wouldn’t have signed for Red Bull, and probably wouldn’t have even bothered to go to Max’s birthday party.

If none of this had happened, Charles wouldn’t be hurting.

Lap 43, Carlos kisses the wall and blows his tyre. A yellow flag is called, then the safety car. Charles is in luck; they call him in to pit. It’s his chance to win the race.

It has been ten months since Charles joined Red Bull, fifteen months since he signed. It hurt the most in the hours, days, weeks, and months following each step. And after some time, he stopped thinking about it, forgot about it, almost. Learned to live with it. But sometimes, Charles finds himself looking at his car, at the dark blue paint, and thinks about how red had once been the color that defined him. Sometimes, Charles finds himself up on the podium, looking out into the crowd, looking for the Tifosi, looking for the spray of red, the beating heart of the people. Sometimes, Charles finds himself in the paddock, hearing faint Italian chatter from inside the Ferrari garage and wishing he was there instead, because it was familiar, because it was home. Sometimes, Charles finds himself at home or on a plane or somewhere that has nothing to do with racing, nothing to do with either Red Bull or Ferrari, and it still hits him. Hits him all the same. That he left home, that it hurts because it doesn’t hurt at all, not really, at least not like he expected it to; that he is alone in foreign territory; that he’s on the brink of winning a world championship with a team that is not Ferrari, a team that is not and never will be his family. Red Bull is right, but—

Sometimes, he thinks of Monaco, thinks of Maranello, and wonders when they both became home. He was supposed to bring the championship back to them. That was always the plan. That was always the dream. It was his father’s first, then Jules’, and then it was his—until it wasn’t.

He hadn’t thought about it before, he tried his hardest not to—he had enough on his plate trying to win each race. Who has time to grieve in the midst of a war? But Charles is three races to the end, and just nine points ahead. Leading. He is leading this championship. He is leading this championship, but still—

Still, he is yearning for something that he has lost. Something that he gave away.

He is homesick. He is—

“Charles? What are you doing?”

Charles takes a millisecond to take in his surroundings.

Red, no one’s working on his car, red, he can’t hear the wheel guns whirling, red.

“Fuck, fuck,” Charles curses, driving away from the Ferrari box and into the pit line. He missed the Red Bull box; he’ll have to box again in the next lap. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes once he’s back on the track. “I’m—”

Here is a secret about grief: you carry it with you, even if you aren’t aware of it. It is the one thing you can never escape, and it will hit you when you’re least expecting it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because it is the only thing he can say. “I—I am so sorry.”

“Charles?” Hugh asks. “Are you okay?”

“I…” Charles’ head is a mess. He thinks of Max’s crumpled face when he told Christian that the kiss was a mistake, thinks of the hurt in Max’s eyes in Qatar, thinks of how Max hadn’t realized that Charles was breaking up with him at first in Zandvoort. Thinks of how cruel he has been to Max, to his friends, to all the people who care about him.

“Car is okay,” Charles says. “I’m sorry.”

“Box the next lap,” Hugh orders. “And you don’t have anything to be sorry about, Charles.”

I do, Charles thinks. I do.

He finishes the race P5. It’s the first time all season he’s finished a race and not been on the podium.

Meanwhile, Max wins, and he retakes the championship lead by seven points.

The afterparty is insane.

It’s a Red Bull Racing event, but more specifically, a Max Verstappen event—it’s almost as big as the post-Abu Dhabi 2021 party, and definitely bigger than anything he or even Red Bull have thrown in recent years. They’ve booked out the entire club, Martin Garrix is DJ’ing, there are Aston mechanics, Ferrari engineers, influencers and models, and several drivers of different teams. Charles thinks he might have even seen Toto Wolff and Christian Horner downing shots together.

Max, however, is nowhere to be seen.

Charles drinks only minimally: a beer, a gin-tonic, and a shot of vodka. Pierre can’t drink because he’s on antibiotics, and he offers to drive Charles back to his hotel at the end of the night.

Charles isn’t in the mood to party—after a race like that, who would be? But he wants to find Max. To congratulate him. To talk. They have two weeks before Las Vegas, and even though he knows that he and Max are both going back to Monaco tomorrow, if Charles doesn’t manage to talk to him before then, he isn’t sure if Max will give him any opportunities to see him during the two week break.

He finds Lando by the bar, however, chatting up a girl with pretty brown hair, and decides to interrupt.

“Hey, Lando,” he says, grabbing him by the arm.

Lando doesn’t make any attempt to move. He stays facing the girl and shouts over the music, “A little busy here, Charles!”

“I just want to know where Max is,” Charles reveals, and that gets Lando’s attention.

He shakes Charles’ hand off his arm, turns around to glare, then turns back to the girl. “Sorry, this will only take a moment,” he tells her with an apologetic smile. Once he’s back facing Charles, his annoyed glare returns, and he says, “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. For the longest time he was so fucked up over you. You really fucked him up.”

“Lando,” Charles says. “I know that. I just want to talk to him.”

“Or,” Lando says, mouth curling meanly, “you’re not leading the championship anymore, and you want to fuck with him before Vegas.”

Charles frowns and furrows his brows. “I’m not fucking with him. I promise.”

They spend an entire song chorus staring each other down. And in that time, the girl Lando was talking to decides that it isn’t worth it to wait, and she slinks into the masses of the crowd, toward the dance floor, with her cocktail.

“Oh, fine,” Lando groans, giving in. He leans against the bar table in defeat. Charles grins. “On one condition: If he asks, George told you.”

“I can do that.”

Lando huffs and grabs his own cocktail and sips on it before telling Charles, “I think Max is in the toilet. The handicap one upstairs.”

Red flag. The last time that Max was in the toilet during one of his parties, he’d not been alone.

“Is he… with anyone?” Charles asks, his heart starting to race in panic.

Lando rolls his eyes. “Oh, calm your tits. He’s just doing blow with—”

“Blow?” Charles asks, voice embarrassingly shrill. He hopes he didn’t hear that right; the music is loud, and it takes conscious effort to shout over it, to hear Lando’s voice woven into it, to not get distracted by the strobing lights. “Like, a blowjob?”

“No? What?” Lando snaps. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, just go to him,” he says, then pushes, literally pushes, Charles away.

Well then.

Charles weaves his way through the crowd: the party is getting more and more packed. He’s pretty sure that it’s not even midnight yet. It takes him a long time to cross the dance floor to get to the staircase, since he keeps running into drivers—Oscar and Logan, then Mick, Esteban, and Lance—on the way there, but he makes his way upstairs with great effort. Just as Charles spots the handicap bathroom across the room, he sees it opening, and—

Oh, he thinks. Oh.

He hadn’t been aware that Kelly was going to be here; she hadn’t been at the race. But it makes sense, Charles supposes. They’re in Brazil after all. But still, it—hurts. Max has a hand over her wrist, and he’s leading her into the floor, and he’s smiling, and he’s so gorgeous, and he looks so happy, and—

She brings her hand up to curl around the back of his neck, at the base of his skull. She’s smiling at him and he’s smiling back. He tilts his head down. She pulls him to her. And then they’re kissing.

Charles watches. He is always watching. She runs her hands through his hair as he puts his on her waist. They move to the beat of the music; they don’t pull apart until the end of the song, some sensual Latin trap music. They look good together. When they pull apart, they’re both laughing. Max throws his head back with it; he looks out into the crowd, and by chance—

He catches Charles’ gaze. His eyes widen. He looks at Charles, and Charles looks back. After a moment, Max returns his gaze to Kelly, leans in, and kisses her again. Deeply. Intense. Hungry. Bruising. Like he’s trying to prove a point, like he’s trying to say, Look how happy I am without you. Look how happy I will be without you. You have made your choice. Look how I have made mine.

Or maybe he’s not trying to prove anything.

Charles isn’t sure which is worse.

Alexander the Great was a great conqueror, but not a great king.

His empire stretched from Macedonia to Egypt, from Mesopotamia to the Himalayas. He conquered Asia Minor, he killed kings and slaughtered peoples, but he never stayed in one place long enough to rule. East, east! He kept going east, until his homesick troops demanded they return west. But Alexander alone wanted to reach the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea. And he wanted to conquer Arabia, so there he went.

There was a man named Calanus, whom Alexander met in India and brought to Persia as one of his advisors. Calanus soon grew ill, and he decided that he would rather die than live a half-life. Alexander was outraged, or maybe he was heartbroken. He fought, he argued, but he gave in eventually—who can talk a man out of death? Who can promise that this life will be better than the next? So Alexander gave Calanus a good death, watched as his friend burned on the pyre, marveled as Calanus did not flinch nor scream—the only sounds were bugles, elephant stomps, and the battle-cry of the troops.

His last words were, Alexander, we shall meet again in Babylon.

No one knew what he meant.

At that point in time, Alexander had no intention of marching toward Babylon. Nevertheless, weeks, or maybe months later, he had a change of heart and decided to try his luck at conquest there.

It was only there, in Babylon, once Alexander grew sick and died, that everyone realized what Calanus meant, the prophecy that he had made—the promise to see his friend again in the afterlife.

All this to say: even conquerors mourn their friends. Moreover, even kings can die of alcohol poisoning.

“Didn’t he die of a fever?”

“No, no, you’re being silly,” Charles tells Alex, not Alexander the Great, but Alex Albon, who’s starting to look a bit blurry. “I think you should drink more. Barman! Four more shots of tequila for us,” Charles demands, then he loses purchase on his stool, and Alex brings his hands on his shoulders to steady him.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Alex says once Charles is safely deposited atop the stool. Charles grabs onto the bartable, keeping one heel on the floor, and the other on the base of the chair. “Charles, how much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough,” Charles says, then perks up when the bartender slides four shots between him and Alex. “I’m just saying,” Charles says, then downs the first of the shots, “poor Alexander. Hey, are you named after Great Alexander? Is Great Alexander your great-grandfather?”

The tequila tastes like water, but it burns in the back of his throat. Charles feels so warm. Everything is so good right now.

He plucks the second shot glass from the table, only for Alex to grab his wrist. The tequila spills down Charles’ arm and onto the floor.

“Hey!” Charles shouts. “What are you doing?”

“Mate,” Alex hisses, putting the now-empty shot glass down on the table. “You’re making a scene.”

“You’re making a scene,” Charles retorts, picking up the third of the shots. He tries to bring it to his mouth, but Alex wrestles it out of his hand, and it falls to the floor, and the glass makes a high-pitched sound as it shatters. “Alexander! What the hell?”

Charles reaches down to grab it, but Alex is grabbing his arm, and Charles’ foot slips from its spot on the base of the stool. It all happens so fast—the next thing Charles knows is he’s on the ground, flat on his back and just centimeters away from the broken shot glass. His head hurts. He’s so dizzy. He thinks people might have their phones out.

“Oh god,” Alex says, rushing to the ground to help Charles up.

“Crikey,” he hears someone say. Definitely George.

“What’s going on?” Another. Probably Lando.

“Is Charles okay?” It’s Carlos this time, Charles recognizes.

Alex helps Charles onto his feet and slides an arm under Charles’ armpits, keeping him upright. Charles leans his body weight against Alex. He wants to be back on the floor. It was easier like that. It’s so hard to stand.

Charles opens his mouth to say something, but then he has to fight the urge to hurl. “I think I am going to throw up,” he says, then makes a retching motion, barely managing to keep it in.

“Jeez,” Alex says, “does anyone know where his hotel is?”

“We can bring him to mine,” Carlos answers. He looks around. The crowd is making space for them and the bartender is already on the floor, cleaning up the glass.

Charles closes his eyes, tired of keeping them open, and feels himself being jostled through the crowd as Alex leads him out of the club. The rest of the guys trail behind.

The next hour goes by in flashes. He’s outside, he’s on the ground, on his hands and knees, and hurling into a bush as Carlos pats his back. Then they’re squeezed into an Uber, all five of them. George sits in front, Alex and Lando in the back, and Charles is slumped over Carlos sitting next to him. The windows are open. He looks down and sees chunks of vomit on his shirt.

“Do you all have to come?” he asks, slurred and stilted, struggling to keep his English Brain turned on and his French Brain dormant. His head weakly lolls onto Carlos’ shoulder.

“George accidentally ordered an XL,” Lando explains, “Alex is hitching a ride to the hotel, and McLaren booked the same hotel as Ferrari, so I might as well go back too.”

Charles groans, stifling the urge to throw up again. The car is going too fast and not fast enough. “Why is George coming?”

“I, er.” He sounds panicked. “I left something in Alex’s room.”

Charles buries his eyes in the fabric of Carlos’ shirt and mumbles, muffled, “But why were you in Alex’s hotel room?”

“Er, uh,” Alex begins to stammer.

Lando snorts and mutters, “He’s not going to remember this in the morning anyway. Relax.”

“Where’s Max?” Charles asks. “I was looking for Max. I want Max here. I need to tell him—” He’s cut off by another spell of nausea. He moans into Carlos’ shoulder.

“Do not throw up on me,” Carlos warns.

“Yeah, please don’t,” George pipes in from the front. “I have a five star Uber rating. Don’t ruin this for me. Sorry about him,” he says to the driver, and then continues to profusely apologize.

Then they’re in the hotel. Charles is in the bathroom, clutching the toilet for dear life, all sweaty and crying, and—oh god, this is all so horrible.

After he thinks he’s gotten all the food and liquid out of his stomach, he stands up on shaky legs, knees buckling. Lando helps him stand upright, then helps him cross the short distance to the sink to wash his mouth and clean his face. After that, he stumbles out of the bathroom, only to see that the others are all still there.

“You reckon this was about the race?” George asks as he takes over supporting Charles for Lando. Charles barely manages not to bang his head against the wall.

“Don’t know. I found him talking the ear off this poor girl about Alexander the Great, and then he saw me and got all excited, and started talking my ear off, then I texted you,” Alex explains.

“Why Alexander the Great?” Lando asks.

Alex makes an I don’t know noise. “Honestly, I’m still surprised that Charles knows who that is.”

“Fuck you,” Charles manages to mumble into George’s neck. He feels like a puppet on a string as he’s dragged on and on and on. Through the hotel room. Through life.

They’re all looking at him weirdly. It takes Charles a moment to realize he said that out loud, in French.

“How much did he drink?” George gasps.

“No idea,” Lando answers, “I saw him like two hours ago and he was fine.”

The bed is too far from the bathroom. In the hallway, Charles swats George’s hands off his shoulders and he finds the wall, sliding against it until he’s sitting. “Hey,” he yells, looking up at all of them, who look a mixture of concerned, and like they want to kill him. “Where is Max?”

“He should be here in a few minutes,” George says.

“What?” Lando hisses, head whipping to glare at George. “Max is coming?”

George backs into the wall and hits it with a loud thud. An angry Lando isn’t very scary, like a chihuahua yipping, Charles thinks, but George looks a little frightened. Maybe he’s scared of dogs. “I called while you were helping Charles in the bathroom.”

“You called Max?” Lando shrills, louder this time.

“Charles kept asking for him in the car!” George says, putting his hands up before his face defensively. “Cripes, what’s the harm? I meant well!”

“Oh my god, you absolute muppet. You are an amateur.”

Lando and George argue like that for a few more minutes, while Alex and Carlos ask each other if they know why Lando’s making such a big deal about this; neither of them come to any conclusion.

Soon, there’s a knock at the door, and all conversation stops, then starts again with a new frantic tone. Lando pushes himself to the door, arms spread and hands out—he looks like one of those environmental activists who ties themselves to trees, Charles thinks. He doesn’t last very long. George and Carlos and Alex all wrestle him away from the door, limbs everywhere, hair pulled, elbows rammed into stomachs, knees into crotches, and shouts of pain and frustration. Lando and Carlos end up wrestling on the floor.

It’s this sight of the four of them that makes Charles realize that even though he’s by far the drunkest of all of them, it’s not like any of them are sober.

To Lando’s dismay, they get the door open, and—

“What are you doing here?” Lando, still on the ground, asks Pierre.

“I was with Max when you called,” Pierre explains. “He made me drive him. What the hell happened?”

As Carlos stands up and attempts to debrief Pierre, George starts going on and on about the dangers of drunk driving only for Pierre to exasperatedly explain over and over that he hasn’t drunk at all tonight, but Charles tunes them all out.

All Charles can really see is Max, standing by the door, looking at Charles like—like—

He’s angry. He looks—angry. His jaw is set and his eyes are dark. There’s a deep knit between his brows that Charles desperately wants to smooth out, and his mouth is pursed in a way that draws attention to the freckle on his top lip. Charles wants to kiss him. Wants to kiss away his anger.

So he gets up onto his feet, ignoring the protests from Alex and Carlos, stumbles over to the door, and throws his arms around Max’s neck.

“You came,” Charles whispers into his neck, rubbing his cheek against his skin. Max is so warm, and his stubble is itchy, but the friction sends tingles down Charles’ spine. His cologne is sweet and woody and tinged with sweat and cigarettes. He’s here. He’s real. He’s really here. “Thank you for coming.”

Slowly, Max’s hands come around Charles’ waist. His body is stiff, but his words gentle when he replies, “Of course I came,” and rubs his palm against the small of Charles’ back, soothing. He takes in a deep breath, then sneaks a hand between their bodies, pushing lightly on Charles’ chest.

Charles pulls himself from Max’s neck, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t ever want to let go again. He brings his hands to Max’s face and cups his cheeks, just to feel him, just to feel that he’s real. “You’re really here,” Charles says in awe.

Max frowns and sighs. He keeps his hands on Charles’ hips to steady him, and leads him so that they’re not blocking the doorway anymore, relocating to the adjacent wall. Charles goes along. He’d probably go anywhere Max wanted him to right now.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” Charles pleads, rubbing his thumbs into Max’s cheekbones. “Are you angry with me?”

“I’m not angry with you,” Max says, but his brows furrow, and he clenches his jaw.

“But you look angry,” Charles argues, his thumbs slipping down until they reach Max’s mouth, smoothing away the tight purse of them. His lips are so soft. “You’re beautiful,” Charles hears himself say. “You’re so beautiful. Even when you are angry.”

“Oh my god?” Alex whispers, just as Charles’ knees start to buckle with the effort of standing. He falls to the ground, but Max comes down with.

“I saw—I saw—” Charles frowns, fingers tracing Max’s lips now. “You kissed her. I saw you kiss her.”

Max wraps his hand around Charles’ wrist, prying his hand away from his face and setting it down in his lap, in the space between them. Charles resents that space, wants to be closer—in Max’s lap. No, more than that: under his skin.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Max says quietly, but Charles doesn’t believe him.

“But you loved her,” Charles insists, hands curling up into fists on his knees.

Max sighs heavily. His hand comes up to Charles’ forehead, and he brushes Charles’ hair away from his face. He lingers with the touch, fingers brushing the shell of his ear. “I kissed you, and it didn’t mean anything, right?”

“What?” Carlos asks into the silence. No one responds.

“Do you—” Tears are welling in Charles’ eyes now. “Do you not love me anymore?” he asks, shuddering with the words and unspilled tears. The truth, Charles needs to tell Max the truth. How he feels, all of it. He needs Max to know.

So he does.

“I love you,” he says, trembling in Max’s arms. His eyes never leave Max’s. He watches as Max’s lovely face opens up, how his beautiful eyes widen, how his gorgeous mouth parts, slightly, with a breath.

Pierre groans loudly. “Oh god. Now, Charles, really?”

George coughs. “Blimey. That makes sense, I suppose.”

Lando shushes them both. “Quiet! I wanna hear!”

Max’s face hardens in annoyance. He tears his eyes away from Charles, head violently whipping to the peanut gallery standing and hovering above them. “What the fuck are you all still doing here?”

“Righty-o! Gents?” is the last thing Charles hears before George gathers everyone up and shuffles them to the door, all of them whispering among themselves.

It isn’t until the door closes shut that either of them say anything.

“Charles—”

“I mean it,” Charles insists, pouting. “I love you.”

Max’s shoulders fall. He winces and says, “You don’t.”

Charles shakes his head so suddenly that he’s dizzy with it. “Don’t—don’t tell me how I feel. I love you. I mean it.”

If he says it enough times, maybe Max will believe him.

“You’re drunk.”

“I am,” Charles says, flushing a little, “but I—I mean it. I love you.”

“Charles…”

Saying it over and over isn’t working. Fine, then. Fine.

“If you don’t believe me, I tell—I tell the world, right now. I love you. I love you. More than Kelly loves you. And I will tell her. I will tell the world,” Charles says, getting a fantastic idea, a romantic one. He pats around his pockets for his phone, cheering once he finds it in his back left pocket, brandishing it proudly to Max. “I will post on Instagram, and tag her, and you, and—”

“Charles,” Max says sternly, wrestling the phone out of Charles’ grip, “stop.”

“But—” Charles reaches for it, but he’s too slow. Max has already pocketed it safely.

“Listen,” he starts laboriously. “Me and Kelly. That was just for fun. We were both high on coke and—”

Charles frowns. “I thought you said you didn’t—”

Max rolls his eyes. “I never said I didn’t. Just not before races. Anyway, we thought maybe we should try it again.”

Tears spill. Charles can’t hold them anymore. They run hot down his cheeks. “So you’re back together,” he says, voice hollow. “You love her.”

“No, that’s not—” Max replies, frustrated, “that’s not what I’m saying. Jesus Christ, you’re pissed.” He takes a deep, long breath as if to steel himself, then says, “Okay, here’s how this is going to go. You are going to drink water, sleep, and then we are going to talk in the morning once you’re sober.”

“I am sober,” Charles says, scrubbing his face dry.

“No you’re not, mate,” Max denies with a small chuckle as he gets up onto his feet. He offers a hand to Charles. Charles takes it, and lets himself be led to sit on the bed.

“Arms up,” Max orders, and Charles puts them up without question. The next thing he knows, Max is slipping his hands under the fabric, fingers cool against Charles’ belly, and he’s pulling the shirt up and over Charles’ head.

“Are we going to have sex?” Charles asks. He isn’t sure if he can get hard, this drunk, but at least that means Max wants him.

Max glares. “No, idiot. Your shirt has vomit on it. I am not letting you sleep in it.”

Charles pouts. “Oh.”

Once Charles’ shirt is off and deposited on the floor, Max ambles over to the fridge and he grabs a bottle of water. He unscrews the cap before handing it to Charles. Charles takes it. The condensation is cold in his palms. He looks up at Max.

“Do you still love me?”

Max purses his lips. “Drink.”

Charles does. He takes a small sip, and because of the expectant look on Max’s face, he takes another longer drink, until half the bottle is drained. As he drinks, Max gets down onto his knees and starts to undo Charles’ shoelaces.

“Please,” Charles says, holding the bottle to his lap, looking down at Max pulling his shoes off. “Please say that you still do. Love me. I love you.”

“Not now,” Max sighs, standing up once Charles’ feet are free. Charles lets them dangle off the side of the bed. Max takes the bottle from his hands and puts it on the nightstand.

“But—”

He grabs Charles’ feet and pulls them onto the bed. Then he rolls Charles over to the side until he can free the duvet from under him and lay it over his body, to his chest. Last, he reaches over to the main control system above the nightstand and turns off the main light.

“Just go to sleep,” Max urges softly. Charles can’t see him anymore, doesn’t know where he is, but he feels so close. “We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

In the darkness, Charles reaches out, and he finds Max: first his shoulder, then his upper arm, then his face—he must be crouching by the side of the bed. Charles finds Max’s hand and slips his fingers in the spaces.

This is it, Charles thinks. This is it. It’s you. It’s never not going to be you. I need to have this. I cannot lose this. I cannot lose you. If I lose you, I am never going to move on. I am never getting over you and I hope you never get over me.

“Will you stay?” he asks, holding on tight. It’s starting to take great effort to stay awake, but he has to, at least for this. When Max doesn’t respond, Charles begs, his voice small, “Please stay.”

For the longest time, Max doesn’t move. It isn’t until Charles’ grip starts to loosen that Max sighs, slips off his shoes, pulls the covers aside, and climbs in.

Without a single word, he fits his chest to Charles’ back, his chin to Charles’ shoulder, a hand laid over the left side of Charles’ chest. Charles’ bruised heart careens in the silence, skids, screeches, screams like metal splitting gravel—until it slams into the barriers, and slows into a natural, gentle, circadian rhythm.

Charles wakes up nauseous and confused, stomach filled with unease. He has a splitting headache, his mouth tastes awful, and his whole body is aching. The room is too bright, sterile. He’s cold, but at the same time he’s sweating feverishly, skin brushing bare against the fabric. He throws the covers to the side with a groan, sits up, rubs the grime away from his eyes, and takes in his surroundings.

Last night’s memories, the parts that his brain held onto, start to fall into place.

Charles never wants to leave this hotel room. He wants to hide away here for the rest of his life, to let his corpse rot under the clean white linen covers. He wants to dig a hole and bury himself in the earth. He wants to move to the woods and stay there forever, unseen and unknown, and perhaps let bears eat him. He wants to jump into the ocean and let a whale swallow him whole.

He throws his hands into his face and moans, humiliated and embarrassed and full of apologies that he knows he has to give today, but can’t bear to think about. He might still be drunk.

And then he remembers this: he asked Max to stay, but Max is—not here.

For a long second, Charles wonders if he imagined it, if Max slipping into bed was a dream and not a memory, but then he looks to the other side of the bed and sees familiar, body-shaped grooves pressed into the mattress. More than that, however, he notices the complimentary hotel notepad sitting on top of the hollow, messy writing scribbled all over it.

I went out for breakfast with the guys before their flights
And I checked with Rachel and you probably will miss your flight to Monaco
I’m not leaving until the afternoon so you can fly back with me if you want
Also the PR team is pissed at you and wants to meet in Milton Keynes ASAP
Videos of you in the club from last night went viral
They suggest not going on social media for a bit. It’s not looking good
BTW Carlos came in the morning and took his things but left you some clean clothes
Order room service or something
I should be back around 10. Wait for me?

In the meantime, Charles drinks the rest of the water in the minifridge, stands under the scalding hot water of the shower until his skin is red and peeling, until he feels sober and less anxious, scrubs himself clean, brushes his teeth, then changes into the spare set of clothes sitting on the table. He orders room service: just toast, eggs, and fruit. He doubts he can stomach anything else after last night.

After eating, he checks the time. It’s only 9 AM. He still has an hour to kill before Max comes back. He tries not to think about it too hard, tries not to overthink, over-prepare. He knows what he has to say. He knows what he needs to do.

And he is tempted to check out social media, even though Max told him not to. But then, the more he thinks about it, the less he wants to see what people are saying about him on Twitter, nor does he want to see videos of himself getting dragged out of the club or vomiting into a bush. He can already imagine the headlines: LECLERC GOES WILD FOLLOWING PITSTOP BLUNDER!

He eventually decides to check in with Pierre, Carlos, Lando, Alex, and George. He makes a group chat, spends thirty minutes crafting a heartfelt apology and thank you text, and presses send. Then he looks at his other messages, and sees several worried texts from his mom and brothers. He cringes, realizing that they must have seen the videos. He tells them he’s alright, and makes plans to see them once he’s back in Monaco.

By the time Charles has finished taking care of that, he hears the door clicking open. His heart howls in his chest, clamorous. He shudders, full-body, watching as Max comes in and closes the door behind him. He’s wearing a fitted white tee with the words CAT DADDY over his chest. Charles likes him so much he feels sick.

“Hey,” Max says, walking over to the bed, where Charles has buried himself under the covers. He takes a seat on the edge. “Are you feeling okay?”

Charles decides to be honest. He laughs and says, “I feel like shit.”

“Well,” Max says, frowning, “you did try to drown yourself in alcohol last night. How much of it do you remember?”

“Most of it, I think,” Charles says, wincing. He wishes he didn’t. “Somehow.”

Max looks at him for a long moment, still frowning. “The guys filled me in this morning, but I still don’t understand what happened.”

Charles looks down at his hands, twisted up in his lap. “I… overdid it with my drinks.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell.”

Charles’ cheeks burn. He supposes he owes Max a little more than that. He still doesn’t look up at Max when he says, “I saw you and Kelly, and it… I was upset.”

“You broke up with me, Charles,” Max reminds, brows knitted. “You don’t have the right to be mad at me for kissing my ex-girlfriend.”

“I know,” Charles says, finally lifting his head. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just—”

If you’re with her, he thinks, that means it’s over between us, and I don’t want it to be over.

He goes silent, but Max hears all the words he doesn’t say.

“We’re not together,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Really, it was just—for fun. I didn’t know she was coming to the party. We’ve always—even before we dated, we were friends. That’s all we are now. It was nice to see her there, and also in Austin. And the kiss was… We were in the heat of the moment and thought—why not? I’ll always love her, but— We’re over. Like, long over.”

And while that’s a comforting thought, it doesn’t make Charles feel any better.

“You saw me. You saw that I saw,” he points out. “And then you kissed her again.”

Max’s face hardens. His voice is quiet and level when he asks, “After all that you have done to hurt me, is it so unbelievable that I wanted to hurt you back?”

Charles sucks in a shocked breath. “No,” he says, unable to take his eyes off Max. “I guess not.”

Max looks down at his lap, and for a long time, he is silent. They both are. Charles suddenly can’t find any of the words he wanted to say.

“Lando told me that you were looking for me last night,” Max says after a few moments. “What did you want?”

Charles swallows, trying to screw his head back on straight. “I wanted to apologize. For the crash. For telling Christian that the kiss was a mistake. And for—for Qatar, also.” It all comes out as a breathless rush. “I’m—I am sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry about last night and—I’m sorry about everything.”

Max lifts a brow. “Is that it?”

“No. No, I—” Charles’ hands ball into fists. “I also wanted to talk.”

They haven’t really talked since the breakup. They share podiums, they sit next to each other at press conferences, but they don’t—it has been months since they talked. Even before Zandvoort, when they were still together, they weren’t really talking. Not really, not any conversations that mattered.

Max purses his lips, frown lines pressing into his forehead. “Then talk.”

In the back of Charles’ head, he hears his mother’s soft, gentle voice saying, If you’re honest with him, he will be honest with you. It’s worth a try, and I think it’s your turn to fight.

Charles takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, then opens them again.

“For the longest time,” he starts, “I was—angry at you. You said you loved me, but you didn’t seem to care when I asked to end things.”

Max makes a startled noise. “What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, Max,” Charles says. “Maybe just—fought? I wanted you to tell me no. I wanted—I wanted to feel like I was worth the fight, even if we would have broken up in the end. But instead you just—let me break up with you, like I was nothing. Like we were nothing.”

“It is funny how you say that,” Max says with a scoff, “but at the end of the day, you broke up with me, and told me it was all a mistake.”

“I know,” Charles says. “I know it isn’t fair of me, to want that from you, but I—but I still— I still…” He picks at the wound in his chest, fingers running along veins and arteries, the slimy feel of his battered ventricles visceral against his knuckles. He wants Max to cut him open, to shove his hands between the crevices of his ribs, stain his flesh with blood, carve fissures into bone until he hits marrow, wine caked beneath his nails. He wants Max to hold his heart and feel it thrum, wants him to know everything that he is thinking, all that he has felt and feels and will feel. Here, he thinks, here. I am all for the taking. I am all yours. Feel my heart beat.

“It hurt,” Charles finishes, voice cracking.

He drops his head, too ashamed to see the look on Max’s face.

Max is quiet for a long time until he starts, “When I was a kid, I would get so angry and frustrated when things didn’t go my way, when life didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Just like my dad. But then… I don’t know. At a point, I think I learned how to keep it all inside. All of the hurt.”

Charles lifts his head to see Max’s Adam’s apple bobbing, how his face is all twisted up, uncomfortable. It’s here and now that Charles thinks to himself: I love you so much that my heart feels too big for my body. I don’t know how it happened, or when it happened, but there is so much love inside of me that I can feel it knocking into my ribs, rattling inside my bone marrow, and pressing against the backs of my eyes. I want you to be happy. I want the best for you. I want you to know this.

“For me it is now… natural to do that. I don’t see the point in moaning and complaining when it hurts. It did hurt, in Zandvoort, and then you cut me out completely, so. And then you started driving like an idiot, and I just—found it hard to trust you, or even respect you. But still, I missed you.”

“Max…”

“I thought,” Max goes on shakily, “that if I didn’t fight, if I just accepted whatever life threw at me, it would stop hurting. All my life, the fighting has never been worth the hurt. With my mom and my dad, and how it ended with me and Kelly—it just wasn’t worth it. To hold on. I thought that if I let you go, I thought that would just be better. For both of us.” He frowns, cheeks pink. “But I think—I did not do a very good job of letting you go.”

Charles shakes his head. “I didn’t make it easy for you. I was—I have been so horrible to you, and I am sorry,” he says, frightened by how vulnerable Max is right now. How vulnerable he is right now. But he soldiers on; he has no choice but to. “It was just so hard, seeing you win all those races at the start of the season, then flying back on your plane and sleeping with you, or whatever. Having to act like, like it didn’t hurt that I was losing the championship to my—to someone that I—to you.”

Max’s face opens up. His hair is loose against his forehead, his mouth parted slightly, listening raptly.

Inertia. Charles keeps going. It’s time to let it all out, he decides, pride be damned. “In Monaco, when you did that overtake, I—it felt like you were betraying me, and I know that it was wrong to think that. To think that you would go easy on me just because we were together. But then, I just kept losing, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought ending things between us would make things easier for me. For my head. To start focusing again on what mattered. And then I started winning again, and—I thought that I made the right decision. I thought that it was all worth it. But it… It has been agony. You matter to me. So much. And it has been so hard convincing myself that you don’t.”

“Charles, I didn’t—”

“I meant it, last night,” Charles interrupts gently, but insistently. “When I said. That I—” Charles stops. He takes a deep breath. He’s already said it, but last night, he was drunk, and he can barely remember it. He wants to do it right, this time. He wants Max to know he means it. He imbues as much sincerity into his following words as possible, as much as his heart, held in his mouth, can manage. “That I love you.”

Max has pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes wide with awe.

“I think I have loved you for a long time, but it felt like I couldn’t love you, and have the championship at the same time. So I—tried not to. Not to think about it, and then not to love you,” Charles explains, figuring himself out along the way. “But then—the crash,” he chokes out, and then he laughs, the back of his throat starting to close up at the thought of it. “The night before, I dreamed that you died. That I killed you on the track, and I went on to win the race. And then—and then we did crash, and I was so scared that I lost you.”

“But you didn’t,” Max says, voice hoarse. He shifts on the bed, body almost in motion, like he wants to get closer to Charles, but isn’t sure if he should.

“I know,” Charles says, shuddering, “but it was so scary. And afterwards, I messed it all up. I know that I told Christian it was a mistake, the kiss, but it wasn’t. I think that was the one right thing I have done in the last few months. And when we were outside the hospitality unit, I wanted—I desperately wanted to tell you not to go. That I—that I loved you. But I—it is just so hard.”

It is hard to be with you, Charles thinks. It is hard not to resent you. It is hard not to love you, and it is even harder to love you.

But that’s the secret, isn’t it? It’s easy to fall in love, but it is always hard to love.

It will be worth it, Charles thinks. You will be worth it. This will be worth it.

“You said it so easily,” Charles says, the tips of his ears burning with envy. “That you loved me.”

And then—Max smiles, gentle and raw and honest. Charles missed this, he missed it so terribly, making Max smile.

“I loved you for a long time,” Max says. “The hard part was not saying it everyday.”

Charles swallows, his heart shuddering hot against his tongue. “Do you still…”

Max laughs, his head dropping with it. When he angles his neck back up to meet Charles’ gaze, his eyes are butterfly blue and his cheeks are pink. “I’ve tried my hardest not to, but yeah. I love you,” he says so casually, like it’s as easy as breathing. “Still.”

All this time they’ve been dancing around each other, going in circles. It’s been so hard, and Charles is so tired of holding himself back.

What do you want? Max had asked him in Qatar. Charles hadn’t known the truth back then—or maybe he did, and just didn’t want to face it. Regardless, he knows now, and he holds it in his palms, bright and shining for Max to see.

“I want to try again,” Charles says slowly, voice trembling. “I want to get back together, and—I want it to be a proper relationship. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to meet your family, and I want you to meet mine. I want it all. I want all of you. I don’t want to be this undefined thing. I know—I know that you don’t like labels, that you feel confident to just… have things and not give them names, but—it’s scary to me, not knowing what I have and what I can call it. If I am… allowed to hold onto it. And I want to do it right this time. I want to be better this time. To be more open with you and how I feel. I want another chance at this, at us. I love you so much, you don’t even know. I don’t even know. And I think—it would be such a shame if we lost this forever.”

Charles flushes when he registers that Max hasn’t said anything in a long time. That he’s been running his mouth about all the things he wants, and he doesn’t even know if Max wants any of this too.

“I mean,” he amends, licking his lips, “of course this is only if you even want to—”

Finally, finally, Max surges from his spot on the edge of the bed, toward Charles. He grabs his face with both his hands and kisses him, kisses him, kisses him. Charles’ hands fly to Max’s waist, gripping him as hard as he can, bruisingly, planning to never let go. He kisses back. The kiss itself is gentle, but there’s a quiet undercurrent of brutality shooting up Charles’ spine and sprouting through his fingertips. When Max pulls back, Charles chases his mouth, hands sliding to the back of his neck to bring him closer. Max lets him. Charles kisses him, Max pulls away, Charles lingers, and Max lets Charles kiss him again, again, and again. Charles’ thumb strokes at the shell of Max’s ear, hot to the touch, his other hand pressed up against Max’s pulse point. His heart is beating so fast.

“I have been hung up over you since Zandvoort,” Max confesses against his mouth. His eyes are closed, and their foreheads are pressed together, warm. “Does that make me pathetic?”

Charles could cry. Instead, he laughs. “A little bit,” he says, face blooming with a smile. “But it makes me very happy.”

Max pulls back first, but keeps a hand on Charles’ cheek. Charles leans into it, leans into the warmth.

“I am still… I think it will take me some time to forgive you. And to trust you again, but… eventually, I think… I think we can make this work. If you want me to fight to keep you, I will,” Max says resolutely. “I will try.”

Charles brings a hand up to his face and lays his hand over Max’s knuckles, gently prying his hand away and down between their bodies. He weaves his fingers through the spaces, curling over Max’s knuckles. He looks at them, holding onto each other so tight.

They need to be careful about this. They weren’t careful about it the last time around—they’d jumped into it heartfirst, thinking they would come out of it unscathed, that nothing would change this year, that making promises was all it took.

Making promises—that’s the easy part. Keeping them, however, that’s the only part that matters.

“I think—I think you should know that I can’t—I don’t think I can—” Charles tries to think of a way to explain it without scaring Max off, but then he realizes—when has Max Verstappen ever been afraid of anything? “I thought it was going to be easy,” he says. “I thought I could—split you in half. The one on the track and the one that I—love.”

Max furrows his brows together, tilting his head to the side. “That’s stupid.”

“I know,” Charles admits, realizing how stupid he’d been, to think that there was ever any difference. “When I realized I couldn’t, I broke up with you. I was scared. I thought I had to make the choice. You or the title. And I still want it. I still want to win. I still want to beat you.”

And that makes Max smile. Dimpled, happy, and fond.

“I want this too,” he says, squeezing Max’s hands. “But until I win a championship, I think I am always going to feel I am less than you. Until then, I don’t think I can handle a relationship. Being with you. Not until then.”

Max hums for a long moment, eyes narrowing. “Until you win a championship,” he echoes.

“Until I win a championship,” Charles repeats, wincing. He looks at their hands again, just to confirm that Max hasn’t left. That Max is still here.

“Okay,” Max says. “I can wait.”

Charles looks up, shocked at the easy smile on Max’s face. “What?”

Max shrugs. “It’s going to happen at some point. This year, or next, or the year after,” he says, with no small amount of certainty. “We have time. I can wait. But I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

If you think that Max is ever getting over you, you’re even dumber than I thought you were.

Charles lets out a startled laugh. “I wouldn’t want you to,” he says softly.

“Is it a promise?”

In this moment, Charles feels like a blue swallow about to take its first flight. The world is big, so free and open, and he knows exactly where he wants to go. He knows, also, who he wants to be by his side.

His heart sings. He smiles, big and bright, and says, “It’s a promise.”

The fallout after Brazil is disastrous.

Following the move he made on Max in Qatar as well as the crash in Mexico, his reputation was already taking a hit: for the first time in years, he actually started losing Instagram followers. After all the viral videos of him getting dragged out of the Red Bull afterparty, damage control is a necessity.

He and Max fly to London that afternoon, then get driven to Milton Keynes together. The PR team helps him draft a statement on his Instagram story, and Max laughs at him throughout the entire meeting. He even snaps a photo of Charles during the meeting, watching the videos for the first time, red-faced and ashamed, and posts it on his Instagram story. Charles notices and flips him off, but Max takes another candid and posts that one too. The PR team scolds Max for posting it without permission, and for making a joke out of it, but the public receives it well, and are surprised that they seem to be friends again—or at least, on friendly terms.

Everyone at Red Bull is confused as to why he and Max flew into England together, why Max asked to sit in on Charles’ meeting when they spent the latter half of the season avoiding one another. Regardless, it works in everyone’s favor; they have Max and Charles finally film marketing videos together in an attempt to maneuver Charles’ public image away from ARROGANT F1 TITLE CONTENDER GETS BLACKOUT DRUNK IN BRAZIL and toward something more wholesome. They redo their interview about their karting days, and they go karting again. This time, it’s fun. Actually fun. Charles starts to feel like himself again.

Each video they post racks up ten million views within a few days, and Charles starts to regain all the followers he lost.

After their extended stay in Milton Keynes, they fly to Monaco together, but part ways. They don’t see each other again in person until Las Vegas, but they text. Max sends Charles photos of Jimmy and Sassy every now and then, complains about all the PR he has to do leading up to Vegas, and brags about his iRacing victories. Charles sends him things that remind him of Max, trailers of new movies he thinks Max would like, the songs he composes in his free time.

It’s easy and hard at the same time. Easy to fall back into old habits, but hard not to fall into them too hard. But they make do, and they do the best they can to keep within their boundaries, but not wander too far away from one another.

In the meantime, Charles patches things up with Carlos. Goes golfing, plays a few rounds of padel with him a few days later, and he even invites Carlos to come to one of Joris’ house parties. Pierre comes to Monaco, and he goes to lunch with Charles, his mom, and his brothers. He spends the entire afternoon explaining the situation to everyone. The Max situation. The full, unadulterated truth. Pierre is no help at all; he only sits there amused and enjoying Charles’ misery at the hands of his brothers. Despite the humiliation, Charles knows he is lucky to have them.

And it’s good. Life is good, and things feel like they’re starting to fall back into place.

Las Vegas is like it always is: overly grandiose, packed with celebrities and influencers, cringe-worthy, but exciting. The city comes truly alive.

After Mexico and Brazil, the world has their doubts about Charles: whether he still has a chance at the championship, whether his mental state is stable enough to win any more races this season, whether or not he deserves this title.

Charles has no such doubts.

A few bad days don’t make a bad life; Charles Leclerc has had his unfair share of bad days, but he still believes that on the whole, his life is good, and he is luckier than most.

More than that: two bad races don’t make a lost championship.

Game on, Verstappen.

He wins in Las Vegas, reaches the chequered flag first, Max half a second behind him. They fought till the end, trading fastest laps and trading positions dozens of times in their last stints, but Charles won out and held Max back throughout the final few corners.

He parks his car in the number one spot, climbs out of the RB-21, and jumps on its nose. He kisses his index finger through his helmet, and points it up to the sky.

This is for you, he thinks over the boos of the crowd, the cheers of the mechanics. This is for you.

The next thing Charles knows, Max’s arms are wrapped right around his waist, and he’s picking Charles off the ground. Their helmets knock together, but this time, Max doesn’t let him go, sets him gently on the gravel, and hugs him tight, tighter, like he can’t get close enough.

They stand there holding each other tight, laughing and breathing, pressed together helmet-to-helmet, heart-to-heart, for what feels like an eternity. Charles lets out a sob in relief.

They pull back from the hug at the same time. Through his helmet, Charles sees Max’s bright blue-grey eyes crinkling with a smile. He looks so earnest. Happy. This is real, he thinks. You are real. This, how I feel about you—this is real.

“What about that hug?” Nico Rosberg laughs once it’s time for Charles’ post-race interview. “Friends again?”

“Yeah,” Charles says, and he turns around to look at Max who is looking at him, fond and patient and impossibly lovely. “Friends again.”

They go into Abu Dhabi on equal points: 448 each. It’s the first title-deciding season finale since 2021. They have both won ten races this season.

It’s all to play for. Winner takes all.

The thing is:

Formula 1 is looking for a story. A narrative. A show.

I gave you a story, Charles thinks, waiting for the lights to go out. I gave you a narrative. I gave you a show. I have given you a title fight for the ages.

I have paid my dues. Now, I will take what I am owed.

But more than that: Charles has a promise to fulfill. To the sport, the world, himself, Max, his mother, his brothers, Papa, Jules, to everyone who has ever loved him, and to everyone he has ever loved.

Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc lock out the front row. Max is on pole. Charles doesn’t believe in fate or destiny. He believes only in himself and his hands and everyone who taught him how to use them. Nonetheless, Charles knows Max won’t win here. He has a feeling. It doesn’t feel right for Max to win here, win tonight.

What do you want? he asks himself as the lights go out.

Charles gets the better start. He hits the throttle and goes to overtake, sparks flying behind him. Max tries to cover him off, but Charles is already on the outside, and they’re wheel-to-wheel. The crowd roars.

He wants to win today. He wants Max to lose. And that—that will never change.

He knows what he wants, and he has a good feeling. He feels good. He feels confident. He feels—

Hungry. He has never felt hungrier. He could even eat a lion.