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Lightning flashes. Close, as if torn from behind his eyes.
Charles wakes, chest heaving, half-drenched in sweat. He’s dreaming. Of screeching tyres, burning fuel, engine fires. The nightmares are less frequent of late. But it’s been almost a decade since his father passed, and the awful melancholy that descends this time of year likes to make itself known at times like this.
Do you often think about death? His therapist had asked him, at their fifteenth session.
Of course he thinks about death. He just tries very hard to outrun it each time at the wheel, with a thousand units of horsepower under his hands.
The wind roars outside. His hands are shaky, and his breath with it. He stumbles to the bathroom, to get a glass of water. But it’s no use: tap slipping beneath his grip, tiles spinning. The cabinet handle’s cold beneath his hands when he yanks it open, the glass of liquor sloshes as he pours. He barely stops himself from downing two fingers of whiskey in half a mouthful. The sky continues its rumble, and he’s disoriented as he reaches the doorway.
Where the fuck is the ice?
Ah, the hallway. Light white, impersonal. He might as well stand in a giant washing machine, the way his vision tumbles. He rubs his eye sockets, wills it to stop.
All the drivers are split up in the accommodation. A nice but impersonal hotel, but Charles has become accustomed to this type of sterile luxury. Max is on this floor, which Charles tries not to think too hard about. They maintain a distance like satellites. Always in orbit, conscious of proximity. It’d be dangerous to get too close, their teams tell them. Which is stupid, Charles thinks. Satellites have pre-set paths. They do not crash. He does not crash.
As Charles feels along the walls for a handle, or a ledge - anything to lead him towards the damned dispenser outside, a door swings open without warning. He yelps.
“Wel verdomme,” comes a familiar voice. He knows this voice. Already careens towards it, a sodden moth to flame. Charles turns around, and Max snaps into focus. Blue t-shirt bisected by the doorway, face sluiced with yellow lamplight. “I thought it might be a small animal or something, the racket you’re making.”
“No. Just me.”
“What are you doing out here?”
Charles blinks once, then twice. He is sure that he looks quite ridiculous right now, in a Ferrari t-shirt and his hotel slippers. “The thunder. It’s loud. I woke up.”
“Ah.”
“I wanted to get ice.”
“You’ll find it over there.”
“Wonderful. Thanks.”
For some reason, neither of them moves. Charles swallows, throat dry. The rain is coming down in sheets now, streaking the windows of Max’s room. From here, the world is half asleep, and Max’s world half open - the other man’s face etched with sleep lines despite the storm outside.
“So it woke you up, too.” Charles continues.
Max nods. Then–
“I’ve got ice. You want some?”
Well. Charles wants a lot of things. Wants closure, wants a world championship. Wants the world, the circus he’s chosen, to maybe quiet down for a second, sometimes, so he can think. For every split-second decision and the media onslaught and the internet gossip and everything in-between - he loves it all. Thrives under pressure, even.
But sometimes, he just wants to talk to someone who understands.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks, mate.”
He steps into the room, door clipping shut quietly behind them both.
Charles barely has time to have any impression of the room, mirror image to his: sports bands and hand sanitizer and team gear and a Nintendo Switch strewn haphazardly. Charles had expected perhaps items arranged by height, in neat tidy lines, alphabetized. But it is not like that at all. It is oddly humanising to see him this way, his rival. Room rumpled, half-awake.
Charles also sees the red and blue of the Red Bull insignia dotted across the room. He tries not to think about how many times he’s idly imagined donning it.
“Let’s get it out. What’s going on with you?” Max says.
“Merde. Okay.”
“You don’t usually drive like that.”
Like that. Erratically, on the limit yes, but uncontrolled. He’d nearly incurred a disqualification for almost pushing Max himself off the track earlier, on his last shred of patience with the lack of support from his own strategists. It wasn’t wrong, necessarily, in the grand scheme of the race. The stewards had let them off with a warning, knowing it was good for viewership. As expected, social media had been having a field day with it anyway. Not that he’s bothered to check. Or at least, he’s tried very hard not to.
This critique, though fair, flips a switch in Charles. It’s worse when it’s coming from someone he respects. Fine, if Max wants to talk about it, why not talk about it. Charles paces, fast enough to burn a smoke trail into the carpet. He thinks this could look funny, like the Sunday morning cartoons he used to watch with Arthur and Lorenzo growing up.
(He wonders if Max was ever allowed to watch any cartoons. Maybe just educational ones in Dutch. One that showed the cost-benefit analysis of knocking a driver off the tracks without incurring a penalty, or something.)
“That was unbelievable.” Charles says. “How the hell did you hit the apex so quickly?”
“Muscle memory. You know how it is.”
“Clearly. But what was it? Did they adjust the floor? The oversteer seemed so–”
“It’s not that.” Max shrugs, clearly harbouring no hard feelings. This must be easier for him, Charles thinks – he was always better at compartmentalising.
“Will you sit down?” Max adds, gesturing.
Charles fights an instinct to roll his eyes at being told what to do, but acquiesces, folding himself into a nearby armchair. There’s a buzz in his fingertips, a sign that he must be going insane. It’s his eagerness to know, humming at his teeth. The way his idle hands itch to do something, be somewhere, become something. Because they are locked in this strange zero-sum game. They can put everything into the race, count everything down to milligrams and microseconds, and still it feels like nothing is enough unless one of them is standing at the top.
Charles wants to continue spinning out this line of questioning, knowing that the answer is close. And maybe it’s not the actual answer to this question that he wants, but all that he’s wanted to ask Max, ever. Questions like why are you stronger than me? How are you faster than me? Did your Father breaking you really make you a better driver than me?
But he can’t. Because they would skirt too close to the truth: which is that he isn’t Max. Won’t ever be.
Besides, he doesn’t know if he could pay that kind of price for greatness.
“Just tell me.” Charles murmurs. As if he hasn’t thought about it for years and years already. The aggression with which Max approaches everything and yet here he is, placid. All Charles can think about is open track, open vistas.
Please, he pleads, silently.
“Wish I knew too. It is–” Max mulls on it. “Something takes over. You know how it is. Sometimes it is beyond explanation.”
It’s not what Charles wanted. But he knows it is true, as true as he is breathing and sitting here. He chews on the inside of the cheek.
Lightning flashes again, just once, illuminating everything. Dark window frame, pendant lamp, desk with things everywhere, white linen on the bed. Max’s square jaw, eyes deep blue. Charles’s heart rabbits, knowing the whiplike crack that follows.
But the sound never comes.
“That’s heat lightning.” Max says, thoughtful. Shifting lines.
“Fire?”
“No. The lightning’s far away. It’s a…how would they say it in English. An echo. Off the clouds.”
“Like…a reflection?”
“Yeah. The light appears closer because of the pressure. In the atmosphere.”
“Our eyes are tricking us?”
“Yes. And the mind. We believe it’s closer than it is.”
“So, we fear.”
“Yes. We fear.”
Charles shifts in his chair and picks at the fabric of the seat.
“You know very much about weather patterns , for someone who spent their whole life in a kart.”
“Charlie. Ferrari might have a kart. But at Red Bull we have a real car.”
Charles laughs, a real one, equal parts bitter and mirth. Max is right about this, of course, but still Charles’s eyebrows shoot up as he leans across and unscrews a nearby soda bottle to pour a drink. One for himself, one for Max. Charles passes the drink across, and their fingers brush over the glass. A little strike of lightning in his fingers, right there. Neither of them remarks at the contact.
“The drives to the tracks were long. I found ways to keep myself busy.” Max continues.
“I don't know how you could concentrate in that. The sound is very violent.”
Charles is aware of how ridiculous this seems. Violence is each click of his helmet downwards, imminent in each bend of the track. The edges of his life are tinged with possibility of death constantly. It started with Jules, papa, then Antoine. Rings of a tree, outwards.
“I’m used to it. As the others might say.”
Max’s gaze is level back at him. They both know that Max is talking about his father. He’s a ghost in the room, as much as papa is.
“He would make me train outside in conditions like this.” Max continues. “Said it was good.”
“Good?”
“To find the grip.”
“You could have been badly hurt.”
“This surprises you, somehow?”
“It does not make it not worse.”
Max shrugs. “I’m still here.”
Alarm streaks through Charles. When he looks at Max again, tries to read the other man’s face, he gets nothing.
Charles takes a breath. “It is not my business, Max. But I think that there is a difference. Putting a child in harm’s way. And what we do as grown men each weekend.”
And sure, they are really arguing about points that may seem arbitrary. Charles was a small child in a go-kart too, his family understood the level of risk. But racing is all about margins, and what is the limit for a father who collared his son with the dreams he couldn’t fulfil? Even if Max has grown to be a hound now, sniffing alert for blood – he was little too, once.
Max doesn’t get a chance to respond, because lightning forks the sky again, the boom of thunder following close behind. Charles barely stops himself from covering his ears, from jolting. Max looks up at the window, then back at him.
“Are you scared?”
“No.” Charles says. But always, the nervous jiggle of his leg gives him away.
Max rests his chin on a curled up fist. “Did you know that the 1978 Canadian GP holds the record for coldest race ever?”
“Yes. I am aware.”
“The highest temperature that day was six degrees celsius. Would you believe it.”
“Could we just…?”
“The tyre strategy must have been crazy.”
“Why are we talking about this right now?”
“Your grip has relaxed. So.”
Charles looks down at the armchair. “Oh.”
Max is right. This has helped Charles relax, given him a different target to refocus his energy on.
A new idea spirals out in the silence, threading together the things neither of them are brave enough to say. That Max does the talking, has always found Charles after the race, partly because - yes - he likes being the one in charge and in the know, but equally that Max knows it gets a reaction out of him. Another idea, new, shiny like a fresh chassis: Max is better at social graces than he lets on, he just chooses half the time not to participate.
Max waves a hand. “You can stay, if you want. Or until this stops.”
Charles considers it. It’s not a terrible idea. Staying here sounds better than falling in and out of another nightmare in his room.
“Thanks.”
“No one has to know.”
“I won’t tell anyone. If you won’t.”
“Our little secret then. No inchidents.”
Max laughs at his own joke. Though it is stupid, the sound is quite lovely. Charles has a selfish instinct to bottle it up, store it someplace safe. Put yellow tape on this would-be crime scene and not let anyone in.
Charles does none of that. Instead, he leans one side of his face on his elbow, sideways on the sofa, letting sleep take him.
The last thing he thinks then is how the both of them got here. Wondering if they are two dogs, ears always tuned for the trigger. Destined to chase each other, barreling through grass and woods until there are no survivors.
Charles has dozed off. He only knows because he wakes to a crick in his neck, the soft light of the sole lamp casting the room in sepia. Max fell asleep too, sprawled out on his bed, long limbs akimbo.
He doesn’t mean to stare. But it’s rare to see a lion like this, vulnerable.
Max looks much younger when he’s asleep. Charles wonders at the boy he could’ve been, but also the boy he had known. The angry one with the ruddy face and awkward shoulders, always stomping off the track early and into his father’s van. Charles doesn’t think much of Jos, hasn’t done over the years. He only really knows Jos in the shadow of his own father. The huge figure in his life who first brought him karting, who Charles only knows as warm, as loving, with a gentle hand on his shoulder telling him bon travail, mon fille.
He wonders what it’s like for Max, living with a riptide all your life. Whether that kind of pressure is what it takes to create a once in a generation victor, to kick down the doors of history and proclaim his place.
Charles would never tell anyone, much less admit it to himself, but Charles thinks a lot about Red Bull, too. On track of course he smiles, plays nicely with the media, carefully hidden behind a mask of civility. He is sure sometimes the concealment is visible; his eyes the window to truth. Perhaps this is why he and Max had disliked each other so much in their youth. Two halves of a mirror: one detached and glacial-cool, the other predestined in the fire. One with the father who pushed too fast and too hard, the other who points to the sky, tu me manques, papa, at the Monza podium.
But these are the twists and turns of their lives, and this is the truth of the sport. A line of people nipping at your heels, everyone wanting a piece of you, no matter how great the loss, how immeasurable the cost. Universal storylines of growth and loss and triumph that transcend speech and languages. Charles sees it in the same excited eyes no matter what area code he’s in, hears it in the good lucks from multiple languages no matter which track he’s on.
Kind, be kind, he remembers his parents telling him.
But what happens when the world wants too much? Asks too much? What happens when you stop listening to them, and let the silence be loud?
He supposes that’s what it’s like, being Max.
Charles nibbles his knuckle, contemplating this, when Max blinks his eyes open.
The storm keeps going. At some point the ice runs out, and they just drink lukewarm liquor from bottles that leave dew on their fingers.
They have given up on pouring the drinks, and are just swigging drinks, side by side. Max at the end of his bed, Charles at his spot on the sofa, passing bottles back and forth. They have summer break coming up, so what’s a little indulgence.
“You always wear the ugly shoes.” Max says, sipping his drink.
“They are Air Force Ones, thank you. And mate, when was the last time you wore a shirt that is not navy?”
“I’m no peacock like you.”
“Don’t be so sassy.”
“But it’s much more fun when you’re annoyed.”
“Stop it.” Charles says, not meaning it. He pushes one hand into his hair. “Okay. Truth, or dare?”
“Truth.” Max says. Somewhere in the distance the clock glows in single digits. Both of them are too tired. Both know they’re basically playing truth and truth. This is a rare window where they’ve had quiet amongst the cacophony of race weekends, interviews, strat debriefs, jumping in the sim, jumping out, all the hordes of people around them. So Charles might as well ask.
“Do you ever think about crashing?”
To this, Max drums his fingers on his knee. Contemplation flickers across his face, as if he’s unsure how much to reveal.
“I actually have a repeated dream about that. The roar is like Grosjean’s. The fire’s high and hot, and my seatbelt pins me.” Max points at his chest. Charles’s gaze lands there, the middle of his broad chest, stretched out beneath a t-shirt.
“You, too?”
Max nods. “And all I think about, when it happens, is if my Dad will be angry at me.”
Charles’s throat is dry. “Is he? In the dream.”
“Sometimes. But I don’t dream that anymore.”
Was it the fourth world championship? Is that what made it go away? When does it feel like enough? What do even you dream about? Charles wants to ask. But somehow, that feels too personal. Even for tonight. Instead, he says:
“Have you talked to anyone? About what it means.”
“No. I don’t need people asking if I’m ‘okay’ or ‘need help’. It’s distracting.”
“Lando probably would. Talk to someone, I mean.”
“Well. I am not Lando.”
“No, you’re not.” Charles shifts in his seat. It’s only fair he offers some information, now that Max has been vulnerable to him. “I’ll tell you mine. Lockup, high speed. My neck gets thrown back. My hands, they never stop gripping the wheel. Then, only red, and orange.”
“Do you make your way out?” Max asks, voice low, rough-tinged with late night tiredness. It occurs to Charles that their knees are practically touching.
“You know – my therapist was saying once, that such a dream is a symbol. For transformation. For something urgent.”
Max’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “Your subconscious tells you to come to Red Bull?”
Charles laughs then, a sharp, shaky sound. The soda water he’s holding in one hand sloshes with the force of it. It’s strange, because he’s never told anyone this before. Never admitted one of his greatest fears out loud - not the idea of being asked to go, but a worse idea - which is that he might actively want to leave. Yet somehow this feels easier with his childhood rival. Off the track, they barely know each other at all. Even if they know the shape of each other’s inside line, the slight slither of the car before a tricky overtake.
At any rate, Charles doesn’t know if he makes his way out of the burning car. That’s when he usually wakes up.
Max, for his part, cracks a smile, but the focus in his eyes tells Charles that he’s serious too.
“You know I couldn’t.” Charles says.
“Why not?”
“No, mate. We aren’t doing this right now.”
“The spot is there if you want it.”
“That is not your offer to make.”
“It isn’t. But it could be yours. That’s all I’m saying.”
Charles doesn’t know if Max means that the decision is Charles’s to make, or that Max would put in enough work in the background to help things along, if Red Bull really were an option on the table. That particular track of thinking is one he hasn’t dared pry open yet, and he is not going to do it tonight. He shakes his head, shakes the weight of this off of him, and opts to change the subject.
“I love this life, you know. But we are pulled in many directions.”
“Do you ever wish you could stop?”
“No. I– sometimes, don’t know?”
I don’t know who I would be without it. Charles thinks, confronting it not for the first time.
But Max smiles now. The gentlest Charles has ever seen him, sun breaking through cloud.
Max leans across and taps him lightly with his fist. The contact warms Charles’s side, lighting him up, all tiny sparks like a titanium skid block.
“Lekker bezig, Charlie.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I’m not, really.”
“The bad feeling. It will pass.”
Charles wishes he wasn’t so warmed by this, a part of his hindbrain wanting to lean in, to beg for more reassurance. He doesn’t do that, but he does wonder where they would be, who they might become, if their destinies were not to sit in sharp metal, wheels screaming down asphalt to an end where only one man could stand and hold the crown. After all, the nearest brush to death was the nearest breath to feeling most alive. There were only a handful of other people in the world who could understand that, and he is looking at one of them.
“Thanks.” Charles says. Again. Feeling strangely indebted to Max on this night.
“Anytime.”
“I…just. Sometimes I don’t know which version of myself I’m needing to be.”
“Maybe just you, is good.”
Charles examines what Max is saying, finding angles of entry or deception, and comes up empty. He could be saying you’re good in the context that all men on the track say to each other. That shorthand for we’re doing what we love, and we’re alive, so we’re alright.
The subtext of what he said also stretches in the silence. You. Yourself, that’s enough. What means: that you don’t need to choose just one of yourself. The person he has to be for the media, with his friends, on the track, with himself.
The storm outside seems to ebb, but the rain still comes down in steady sheets. Max’s hand twitches like he has half an impulse to do something, say something. His somatic response could give him away, but he stops himself just in time.
Instead, Max nudges Charles’s knee with the lip of his bottle. “The Austin drive. ‘22. What was that like?”
“Incredible, honestly. Like… racing sunlight. Touching god.”
“You believe in god?”
Charles snorts and clasps his hands in prayer. “I race for an Italian team. Of course I believe in God, Max.”
“Hm.”
“I believe in engineering that doesn’t fail, when we are at three hundred kilometres an hour. That, I believe.”
“No higher power.”
“I did not say none. Just that we do for ourselves enough, and the rest is not ours to control.”
Max leans in. So close Charles can count the freckles on his brow, the minor constellation at the left side of his face. His stare is a blue knife’s edge, the difference between camera obscura and bright, yawning space.
“And this. This is in your control?” Max asks, softer. Surprisingly smooth.
Charles is not sure at what point their interaction would sharpen to this point. Perhaps it was an inevitability, the way they were destined to be intertwined, sitting in this room. Sixteen days apart and not much to separate them except raw desire for something – victory, connection, a compulsive need – now turned towards each other.
Because of all the people who know him in the world, all the camera smiles he had offered, the handshakes he had shared - if they peeled away all the noise and layers of how each interacted with the universe, it boils down to this: they are just boys, inexplicably connected. Pushing each other to go faster and reach the line first.
Charles has suspected that the feeling was mutual, loathe as they were to give this a name. The fleeting hand touches, the seconds they had spent too long looking at each other and acting like nobody noticed. It all sharpens to a point now, his hand resting close to Max’s, the edge of the bed brushing the front of his knees.
And Max’s mouth looks so soft, opposite him. Shoulders beneath his shirt sculpted made for aerodynamism, legs jutting out at a right angle to the bed. Charles wonders what it would be like to claim this divine engineering for himself. To know the divots of Max’s body, hear how he sighs when his mouth touches his own.
They have been drinking, but Charles sees everything suddenly with picture-perfect clarity.
“Max, I…”
Max’s mouth parts, pupils so wide they could carve a new road through them. Charles’s blood is ringing in his ears. yearning to lean in, neither of them doing so.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about this.” Charles continues.
“Of course I have.”
“Then tell me that we’re being really stupid right now.”
“We are.”
Max flicks his gaze down to Charles’s cheek, his jaw. Max stays still as a statue. Charles fingers tighten on his bottle. He leans into Max’s space, his shoulder, towards his open arms.
Their foreheads press against each other, warm, anointing. Lightning flashes outside, and the world is still.
“What are we doing?” Charles whispers.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m– I’m not someone who can do things by the halves. If we cross this line, we cannot go back.”
“I’d be ready to face it.”
Charles is less sure. Max waits, in the silence. It occurs to Charles that Max has always been faster. From Val D’argenton, to Van Amersfort, to F1. Was always waiting, always ahead. And now, Charles has him in the palm of his hand. This is the final frontier, if he would only leap for it.
And Charles’s mother had always said he was a determined little child. He knows what it is to fight for what matters, to understand sacrifice. To know the best thing is waiting, yet to come. There is time for them still, and it is not now.
If only there wasn’t so much to lose. If they weren’t point for point for the first time in years. He’s already made a mistake, coming in here, being vulnerable. There’s so much he wishes he could take back, but what’s happened has happened, and they can only ever move forward.
This is the problem with a competitor like Max. That he could set his eyes on a goal, take it by sheer force of will, damned the consequences. He would devour everything in his path, until there was nothing left but choke on the smoke left in the wake. Charles knows, because despite their differences, they are made of the same steel.
Charles would be lying to himself if he didn’t say that he felt it too. But two truths can be true. You can hate the thing that could destroy you, and know it is the same thing that sharpens your instinct, makes you a better survivor because of it.
“I cannot do this. Not right now.” Charles pulls away. “I’m sorry. It’s too complicated.”
Max looks like he’s been punched. “What are you saying?”
“The championship… we are so close.”
“I know, but I would–”
Charles shakes his head. “Whatever it is you are about to say, I can’t hear it. I– I can’t.”
“Charles.” Max says, clasping Charles’s hands between his own. Charles tries very hard not to think about how right it feels, how warm his embrace is. “We could have it. All of it.”
Charles laughs again, bitter. The alcohol’s settling, and he can feel a headache coming on. “That’s easy for you to say. You already have four championships.”
The other man sucks in a breath and pulls back, as if burned. Several things flit across Max’s face at once, which Charles will sift through later: anger, resignation, acceptance. Then, Max shifts his expression back to careful neutral. Charles scrambles.
“I’m really sorry, Max. Could we just…?”
Charles doesn’t know what he wants to say. Can we just pretend this never happened? Can we go back to what we were? Will we always have this?
The world seems to collapse in on itself, Max gently withdraws his hands, and Charles finds himself already missing the contact. He wishes he cared about winning less than he did his heart. He’s losing this, they’re back at the start line, and he just–
But as always, Max is there first. “I understand.”
“This…doesn’t have to change anything, does it?” Charles mumbles.
“No.”
Max is an unconvincing liar. This must be what his father taught him, you see. Never let your opponent hear you scream. Even if everything hurts. Charles knows this feeling, because he sees it in Max’s eyes too, knows it in the way Max and him chase each other in an endless loop, mile for mile. Knows it in the way that they would only ever want to let one be destroyed by the other, because the closest discovery to flight was right before the fall.
But at least they are here, and they are alive.
“I still mean it. Stay if you want. I won’t do anything.” Max says.
And Charles believes it. Can’t find the deception in it. Because when you have raced against each other for over a decade, fought tooth and nail, raced each other on the limit, there is trust, too. This is his competitor, who tonight has offered compassion, and met him without judgement. There may always be a wall between them, but at this moment, they’re willing to tear at it, brick by quiet brick, until they peer across the precipice of understanding. See each other, for what they are.
“I should–” Charles starts.
“Just get some rest here, won’t you? That sofa will make your neck hurt.”
“I don’t think–”
“I need someone to give me a good fight, okay? You’re not going to do that with half an hour’s sleep to start the summer break.”
Charles thinks about this. Max has a point, even if it is a flimsily constructed excuse to keep him here. They both know they’re smarter than this, but Charles can accept an olive branch when it’s thrust at him, however unwieldy it might be.
“Alright.” Charles says.
“We don’t need to make this fucking… weird.”
“Oh, no. Not weird at all.”
It’s weird. But, at least they’re moving on from the awkwardness, and it’s still better than sitting like a zombie in his room and not being able to sleep.
Max makes room for him. Graciously, the bed is fairly palatial in size. So they lie down, a safe amount of space between them, not even bothering to crawl under the blanket. Two semicircles curved away from each other.
There’s a soft click as Max turns off the light.
“You were such an asshole on turn sixteen, by the way.” Charles says, facing away, breath warm on his own forearm.
“You noticed.”
“It’s really difficult not to when you’re cutting my line.”
Max seems to ponder this, silence stretching out. There is no way to sanitise it - what’s on the track will always come first, and they both know. The other man doesn’t say sorry. There wasn’t anything to be sorry for. If you don’t go for the gap, you are no longer a racing driver.
“I had to.” Max finally says.
“I know. I hated it.” Charles says. “But I would have done the same.”
Max doesn’t respond. Perhaps there isn’t anything else for him to say.
The rain is barely a blush now. They only have a few hours before Charles needs to crawl back to his room, take some painkillers for the headache. But he’ll savour this, keep it close. Figure out the excuses later.
Charles inhales. The pillow smells like Max. Mint from his body wash, something amber and sharp, that demands attention the closer Charles hones in on it. Charles catalogues this, adds it to the already alarming number of facts he already knows about his most intimate competitor.
The sheets rustle as Max shifts on the bed, trying to get comfortable.
“Goodnight, Charlie,” he finally says.
This makes something unknot in Charles’s stomach. The thing claws its way to his throat where he has to swallow the emotion back down. Max has called him Charlie before, of course. But not quite like that – careful, the first drop of dew.
The minutes pass, and his heartbeat calms. Distantly he is aware of Max’s chest, rising and falling next to his, a new rhythm. In this room there’s just the two of them, and the silence. And perhaps for now, this is enough.
“Goodnight, Max.”
Tout ira bien. Charles tells himself, in the quiet.
Je vais bien. Charles mouths, to the dark. And as the world goes quiet, and their breaths go even.
Because what a gift it is, to grant each other softness.
What a gift, to have and to hold this moment. Now, and until the next reckoning.