Chapter Text
The two week gap between Australia and Azerbaijan would normally be the perfect time to get some well-deserved rest before the double and triple headers further down the calendar kick off, and everything in Charles’ life goes back to revolving around airports and tiny plane seats and workouts in hotel gyms and smiling politely in front of cameras. Instead of flying back to Monaco to relax and take his boat out and eat home cooked meals, Charles spends his time in Maranello with his engineers trying to find out what the fuck is wrong with the car.
The weather is lovely all week—blue skies and oddly high temperatures for late-winter—but Charles doesn’t let himself enjoy any of it.
By choice, he stays locked in a dark, stuffy simulator room for days on end. He wakes in the morning, drives to the factory before sunrise, gets situated into the simulator seat and doesn’t get out until his neck aches and his eyes burn. He lets Andrea walk him through endless stretches and recovery workouts, and does not complain a single time. He has dinner in the cafeteria, partly because he doesn’t want to eat alone in his apartment, partly because he doesn’t want to be seen in public if he opts to go out for dinner. He drives himself home long after the sun has gone down and takes cold, brief showers before climbing into bed, too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.
It is no surprise to him that this is what he is getting up to during his time off while Max is posting on Instagram about his family’s Easter and their following beach trip to Nice, and Carlos is nowhere to be seen on Italian soil despite the fact that he also has to drive this fucking shopping cart that Ferrari have built them again in Baku. It’s just typical, actually.
“You,” Fred says one morning when he stops by the simulator room, “look exhausted. Are you sleeping well?”
Charles, who had been busy analysing his lap times with Xavi, bristles slightly at the perceived dig, but doesn’t let it show on his face. “Yes, yes. A little jet lagged, but that is normal, no?”
Fred quirks an eyebrow at him, mouth pinched into an unimpressed line. “Do not stay here so late, tonight. Go to bed early.”
Charles opens his mouth to reply, but Fred cuts him off.
“That was not a suggestion.”
And the entire week—every single waking moment—Charles does not think about Max.
At first it’s hard.
He sits at the gate at the airport in Melbourne scrolling on social media, skipping past any picture or tweet about Max’s performance that weekend. He tries to get some sleep on the endlessly long flight, but quickly gives up on it when he keeps waking up in a panicked daze, sweaty and heart hammering in his chest at the images of what he had done the night before flashing through his dreamscape. He sits in long, tedious meetings, staring down at the tall pile of data-printouts in front of him, and forces his mind to focus on the numbers and the graphs and not on the way Max had looked as Charles sank to his knees for him. He eats dry, healthy, bland meals and ignores the way his fingers shake around the cutlery at the memory of Max walking out the door of his hotel room with a sense of dreadful finality in the tenseness of his shoulders.
But after a few days of rigorous routine in the factory, Charles finds a way to completely strip his mind of anything that isn’t data, simulation times, and the breaking points and apexes of Baku City Circuit.
There isn’t any time to think about trivial things such as the way his body is aching with fatigue or the way his heart feels a little hollow in his chest when there is another weekend, another race, another chance to prove that he is a future World Champion.
Charles won’t let himself.
When his flight touches down in Baku Wednesday night, he’s so exhausted by suppressing the urge to think about Max that he’s sort of worried about getting in his car for FP1. Andrea keeps sending him worried glances when he thinks Charles isn’t looking, and Joris won’t stop asking if he feels alright, and when Charles sees Pierre in the media pen on Thursday, it’s all he can do to not break down in tears at the concern on his face.
It’s fine. Charles is fine .
—
Despite the way Charles feels like he is slowly but surely losing his mind, everything that troubles him disappears the moment he slips into the cockpit of his car for qualifying on Friday. To Charles, getting into the body of his Ferrari is like slipping into a deprivation tank. Usually, there is nothing on his mind but apexes and braking points and engine modes and speed speed speed when he is in the car, but with how all-consuming his dread has been for the past week, he hadn’t been so sure it would be the same this weekend.
Which is why it is such a relief when Xavi comes over the radio to tell him he’s taken pole position—for the third year in a row—that Charles’ eyes immediately fill with tears.
“Come on! Yes!” Charles cheers, a relieved sigh pulled from the ache in his chest. “Feels good. Amazing jo— Ah, amazing job Xavi. All the— All the quali. Management, incredible. Uhh, thanks for everything, guys. The car— The car was good. Was really good. Feels good to be back on top.”
Good doesn’t even cover it. It wasn’t until this exact moment that Charles realised just how much the start of the season had been weighing him down. How much such a horrible run of races had hurt after the emotional turmoil of last year. Part of the reason Charles hasn’t really been home yet is because he doesn’t want to face the P2 Championship trophy in his living room.
He has never been the type to doubt himself. He might be strict with himself—unreasonably so, some people might say—and he might beat himself up when things don’t go the way he wanted them to, but when it comes to his drive, his talent , Charles knows who he is and what he can do. He wouldn’t be where he is if he didn’t. But Australia had rattled him, both on track and off it, and it feels like a burn-salve over his raw heart to get the confirmation that whatever the hell happened to his self-preservation skills last race weekend was just a blip.
He struggles a bit with the seatbelt in parc fermé , and doesn’t manage to extract himself from the cockpit before Max is parking to his right. It feels akin to divine justice when he has to walk around Max’s car to get to the team, and Charles feels his eyes on him the entire time.
It is only when Charles has finished clapping hands and hugging his engineers that he turns towards Max, only to find him rounding his car towards him. For a moment, Charles freezes, but then Max is reaching for him, and Charles’ hands move on their own accord—like there is a magnet in his right hand that is pulled towards Max’s, and a magnet in his left hand that is pulled towards his shoulder. Max’s eyes are crinkly through the open visor—Charles can feel the smile on his own face, the way his own eyes must be squinty and gleeful — and he leans forward slightly as they clasp hands; some strange semblance of a hug.
“Good job, mate!” Max tells him, so close that Charles could count his lower eyelashes if he wanted to.
He looks happy , and Charles pulls away and walks off before he has to think too hard about the fact that Max always seems happy when Charles does well.
As Andrea hands Charles his sponsored jewellery from the plastic bag he keeps them in when he’s not wearing them, he holds Charles’ gaze for a moment, winks, and mutters “ Stai bene ,” with such a gentle look on his face that Charles has to glance over his shoulder to see if Max is watching.
Everything, the entire weekend, feels off. The problem is that he cannot quite seem to put his finger on what exactly is making him feel so strange.
He chats a bit with Checo while Max conducts his interview with Mark Webber, and it’s as ok as it ever is—Checo isn’t Charles favourite person on the grid, but they get along well, through forced proximity to Max, perhaps—until Checo glances over at Max, glances back at Charles, and asks “All good?”
“Yep,” Charles squeaks, like a see-through idiot. He wonders if maybe the word I sucked Max Verstappens dick and now everything is weird are written across his forehead in big, black, block letters.
But Checo just nods, and asks him about how many sets of tires Ferrari have used over the weekend so far.
—
“Are you surprised by the pace of Charles today?”
Charles fights the urge to roll his eyes. He has been pretty much ignored since the broadcast began, all questions directed at Checo and Max, even though Charles is the one of them who will be starting at the very front of the pack tomorrow.
But Max doesn’t hesitate with his answer. “Erm, not– not really of Charles. I mean, we know that he’s been really good around here, otherwise you don’t get three poles in a row, right? Uhm, so– Yeah, so he felt good today, he had a lot of confidence–I think he always has a lot of confidence–which is good. And then around here, you know, you really get everything out of it, and that’s why he put it on pole.”
Staring ahead at the blinking light on one of the cameras, feeling very far away from everything happening around him, Charles smiles, something small and tense. He wonders, briefly, if Max pities him.
It isn’t like Max complimenting his abilities to the media is rare these days, especially on race weekends where they are in the top three together—where they get to race each other—but in context of everything that has happened, Max’s sudden sweetness doesn’t make him feel as good as it usually does.
It doesn’t make him feel good at all.
—
By Saturday, Charles has realised what is wrong, and is starting to feel livid about the entire situation.
It’s ridiculous. On the flight over, he had spent the entirety of take off with his notes app open on his phone, trying to write down ideas on how to handle seeing Max again in a way that wouldn’t make it obvious to everyone within a mile radius that they had seen each other's dicks, without much success.
Not a single part of him had been expecting Max to act so goddamned normal. It’s somehow a hundred times more stressful, and wounding, than if Max had walked into the paddock on media day, pointed directly at Charles, and laughed maniacally in his face.
Charles wants to grab Max by the shoulders and shake him. He wants to spit out his wounded ego onto the ground between them like a cat bringing in a bloodied bird in its mouth so that Max has no choice but to look at it. He wants some sort of acknowledgment. Some kind of sign that Max is in any way affected, that it meant absolutely anything to him.
Charles thinks about the bite mark on Max’s thigh that is probably a nice shade of yellow and green right now, and wonders if Max even remembers that it’s there. If the reminder of what they did together haunts him whenever he undresses at the end of the day, the way it has haunted Charles every single night since.
But Max is smiling. He is laughing and patting Charles on the back, and showing off their childhood pictures while they wait for the post-qualifying press conference to begin—and on Thursday to a whole bunch of journalists , apparently.
It would be odd on any given race weekend, but less than two weeks since they saw each other naked is just ridiculous.
Charles wants to wave his hands around and scream. To force everyone around them to admit that they have noticed that something has happened between them. That something is fundamentally different and wrong.
Pandora had opened the pithos, and all that remained was hope. Charles opened that hotel room door, and now all he is left with is an incessant feeling of having lost his footing, like he’s constantly in free fall. He has no idea how to wrangle this into something productive, or at least something easily ignored—especially considering that it has never been exactly uncomplicated for Charles to ignore Max.
It is not like he and Max are unfriendly now.
Over a decade has passed since their very first major clashes on track. Charles has grown, as a person, but also as a driver, and somehow—somewhere over the past few years—Max has become a person who Charles can admit he likes racing against. A person who he’s intimately familiar with, like the purr of a power unit against his spine, or the curve of Mirabeau Haute . A person who, on track, is as predictable to him as his mother’s dry humour and his younger brother’s sly smiles.
It has never been about friendship with them. Max was always too far away, emotionally and mentally. Always looking to his father, or hiding from his father, or tucking himself safely into his kart, the visor of his helmet down at all times, as if it could protect him from the glare of the sun and the glare of the one person he was doing it all for. And Charles had seen it all, smart enough during those early years that he could tell something was different for Max, different to how it was for Charles and Pierre and Esteban and George and Alex. Charles saw, and he heard—his parents’ hushed whispering when they thought he had fallen asleep, other adults at the tracks muttering to each other as Max and Jos passed—and he witnessed .
Sometimes Charles hears the way people speak about Max these days, how they speak about his relationship with Jos, and he wonders how they dare , because none of them were there. They might disagree with his driving, or his personality, but none of them saw the flinching. None of them heard the tone of voice Jos used to speak to ten year old Max with. None of them experienced the way it felt to have Jos chew you up and spit you out for trying to comfort his son when he wouldn’t. Charles does.
He remembers it all. Doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to forget.
When he thinks back to their childhood, he wonders sometimes if he would have had an easier time dealing with Max and his sad blue eyes and his temper if he wasn’t so obsessive about the entire thing.
Charles has always been an obsessive creature. He thinks you have to be to live the life he does, or it really would not be worth it. Obsessive about racing, obsessive about his body, obsessive about what the Tifosi see when they look at him. From a very young age, Charles has also been obsessed with Max.
He doesn’t necessarily blame his younger self for this. Max showed up out of nowhere when they were five years old, and he was all cheeks and blue eyes and speed. Charles–who still hadn’t figured out that he was supposed to break going into corners instead of just sending it and hoping for the best–had seen Max race once, on a rainy day in Southern France, and become utterly consumed with fascination at the pure, undeniable pace of him. It didn’t exactly help that Max was distant, serious, and very, very cute. It certainly didn’t help that Charles couldn’t, for the life of him, beat him on track for a long while during those early years.
It is as unnerving to Charles as it is fascinating to be comfortable with Max like this now. To feel equal to him in race craft. To be able to predict his every move. To weave around each other through a corner, or down a straight, pushing and pulling and breaking as late as possible, almost like dancing.
That’s how he had seen it, after the race in Bahrain last year. He had stood on the top spot, glanced down at Max, and thought to himself We waltz. You and I.
If he could go back in time, sit down fourteen-year-old Charles, and explain what the 2022 season felt like–what the F1-75 and slow dancing around Max felt like–his teenage self would probably have wept with joy.
Charles is thinking about this during the evening debrief on Saturday, as Xavi and the other engineers are comparing his sprint shootout lap times with his pole lap from qualifying yesterday, when he is suddenly reminded of Max, naked and glorious, eyes shining with disbelief as he stares down at Charles on his knees, saying “ I wish I could go back in time and tell fourteen-year-old Max about this ” and then there is nothing he can do about the fact that he flushes so hotly, so noticeably, that multiple people around the table ask him if he is alright. He gets sent to bed shortly after, with the strict instruction to get a good night’s rest, and he spends the entire walk to his motorhome feeling both chastised and guilty.
He needs to get his head in the fucking game. It feels like something has been knocked loose in him—in his brain, or maybe somewhere in his chest—and as he lays awake in bed long after midnight staring at the dark ceiling, he wonders how he’s going to dig his fingers in between muscles and sinew to right the wrong without bleeding out.
When he flinches like an idiot as Max brushes past him to get to the interviewer during the driver’s parade on Sunday, Pierre pauses telling a story about something that happened to him in church on Easter Sunday to ask Charles if he’s ok.
“Fine,” Charles brushes him off, somewhat unconvincingly. He dares a glance at Max in his peripheral vision, trying to see if he noticed the way Charles has just reacted like a wounded animal to the brief skin to skin contact of their arms. “You know I am easy to spook.”
Pierre looks unimpressed, but he doesn’t press the issue.
Until about two minutes later when he interrupts Charles as he is halfway through a sentence about George and Max’s clash on track during the sprint to ask “Hey, what was that thing before the press conference yesterday? When Max was showing you something on his phone and you were totally excluding Checo from whatever it was.”
Charles blanches, and then feels a little defensive about the entire thing. “We didn’t— Checo is a grown man. He was fine. It was a picture of Max and me from karting. ‘07, I think.”
Pierre grins like Charles has just told him something juicy. “It is cute how fond Max is of your karting days together.”
Charles pushes his shoulders up under his ears just to feel the muscles of his back tense up, and then relaxes with a sigh. “I think he is just nostalgic.”
“You don’t see him pulling George aside to show him the pictures from that horrible photoshoot they did together during the World Karting Championship when they were like fifteen.” Pierre huffs, like Charles is being purposefully obtuse. “I think he looks back on his childhood and sees you as one of the reasons it was tolerable.”
Charles’ heartbeat stutters, and he has to avert his eyes from Pierre’s, afraid of what sort of emotion must be entirely visible in them—afraid Pierre will be able to see some sort of truth there.
“Do you not remember how much he despised me, when we were in karting?” he asks, hating how tense his voice sounds. “It has just been long enough by now that he can laugh about it. I feel the same. But it is not going to take away from how things were between us back then.”
Pierre takes a step to the left, moving into Charles’ eyesight with a wide grin on his face. “I think you see what is comfortable for you to see.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Charles groans, feeling sweaty and caught-out. There are cameras on them, probably, and thousands of eyes from the grandstands all around them. Yuki, Daniel, and Valtteri are standing in a little circle directly to their right, and Charles suspects that the only reason they can’t hear each other’s conversations is because of the constant cheering of the crowd. “You are doing that thing with your face,” he accuses, pointing a finger at Pierre’s grin. “Like you know better than me.”
“I just might,” Pierre says, and laughs like any of this is funny.
—
Every sliver of hope drains right out of Charles’ body on lap 3 of the race. He’s had Max within his DRS range for too long to hold him off much longer, and when Max is three tenths behind and pulls off the racing line for the overtake, there is absolutely nothing Charles can do to make up for the straight line speed deviation of the RB-19 and the SF-23. Max breezes past easily, less an overtake than it simply is a drive buy. Charles flexes his hands angrily against the steering wheel, trying not to snap at Xavi when his voice comes over the radio to remind him to keep his head down and focus.
Two laps later, when Checo pulls the exact same move and squeezes him almost off the white line, Charles accepts the P3 position with a heavy heart. Max is pulling away slowly but steadily at the front of the pack, and there is really no threat from behind, with Carlos struggling to catch up to the top three. All Charles has to do now, really, is to bring it home so they can pack up the garage and move on from yet another disappointing weekend.
It isn’t even exciting when Redbull pits Max shockingly early during the yellow flag, and ends up coming back out behind George in P7. While it works out beautifully for Checo and Charles, who immediately jump into the pits under safety car, Charles cannot manage to feel positive about the sudden turn around, because he knows that Max is going to be coming back for him any moment on pure race pace–confirmed when Max overtakes him without DRS just a few corners into the end of safety car–so the blunder only really benefits Checo.
When Charles crosses the finish line 19 seconds behind Max to take third, he’s more tired than anything else. Considering the start of his season, third place is a brilliant finish; for the team, for the Tifosi, for Charles. But as usual, no finishing position feels satisfactory besides first, so he parks his car, lets his mechanics and engineers pat the crown of his helmet, the slap slap slap of their hands rattling his brain inside his skull, and moves on with his day.
Charles and Max walk in tense silence to the cooldown room after they finish their post-race interviews–both of them too unhappy with their results to stand around and listen to Checo gush about his race–and Charles thinks about how there are live mics and cameras in there that will connect to the global broadcasts at any moment. There is no way they will get away with not speaking to each other on live television—people will notice, and act the way they always do when they get a sniff of blood in the water between two drivers—which means that if Max isn’t planning on making this any less painful, Charles will have to.
Walking into the room first, he puts his helmet away, stares at the Pirelli cap waiting for him, and pretends he doesn’t remember that he’s supposed to put it on.
“You were pushing hard, after you overtook,” he comments as breezily as he can muster as he unscrews the water bottle to take a long, deliberate drink.
Max, who has just picked up the towels from his station, startles slightly and drops one of them to the floor, which Charles might have found endearing had he not been so fucking nervous.
They discuss how they got off the line at race start and the first ten laps casually, and Charles clings on to the steady conversation so desperately that he doesn’t even notice that he has sat down in Checo’s chair before Checo is in front of him insisting he stays sitting, and instead takes a seat to Charles’ right.
When Charles glances back to Max, there’s an expression on his face that Charles can’t seem to understand. A softness to his eyes, a quirk to his lips.
Considering how many times Charles has done this, podium finishes with both Rebull drivers, he really should not feel as unsettled as he does. He glances briefly at the side of Max’s head and wonders if race weekends are ever going to feel normal again. Or if maybe they broke something to the point of no return.
“For me,” Charles interrupts whatever Checo had been saying as they watch the race highlights on the screen, “It was the loneliest race ever.”
He ignores the way Max turns his head to look at him. He sees it in his peripheral vision and pretends he doesn’t.
And Charles isn’t quite sure what in the world compels him to do it, but as he steps out into the afternoon sun to all the people who are cheering for his third place finish, he stomps past his allocated spot and climbs up on the spot clearly marked P2; happy smile, spine straight, the picture of calm. He refuses to meet anyone’s eye down below, and stands with his head held high, as if he has done nothing out of the ordinary. Like he doesn’t even notice he’s on the wrong side of the podium.
As the conflicted applaus ends and the announcer speaks up again, the crowd below seem to be all holding their breath as one, the whole paddock frozen in anticipation.
Max walks around the corner, catches Charles' eye, and then simply steps up on Charles’ spot, under Charles’ flag , like that’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
Charles’ heart roars, blood pumping viciously in his ears as he watches Max square his shoulders and smile down at the crowd.
It’s all wrong. It’s so perfect. Charles rips his eyes away to stare resolutely down at his team below, hating the way tears burn in his eyes and his chest feels tight with all of his many conflicting feelings.
Charles likes pushing limits. Hasn’t that always been his thing? It has always made sense to him to claw at the bars of his enclosure—if being in a cage means being in Ferrari, I want to be in a cage all my life— but it makes less sense to him that Max seems to like letting him get away with it. Hasn’t that always been Max’s thing?
It doesn’t make any sense that Max Verstappen would let anyone take his spot on the podium. Charles briefly wonders if Max would have let him take the top spot from him too, one of these days. If he would have given Charles that charming, tight-lipped smile of his and simply taken the discarded spot—exactly like he’s just done—if Charles even dared try.
Max likes it when people bite back at him. He likes it when people see him play dirty and respond by playing dirtier . When people go for what they want, with no regard for social expectations or conventionality. It’s the thing he has always seemed to like in Charles, even those many years when he didn’t seem to like him all that much. Charles has always challenged him, and Max has always seemed to like that very much. It’s why he usually lets Charles get away with it—Val D'Argenton and Sakir notwithstanding, but it’s somehow just as exhilarating to know that Max has his limits, even with Charles.
The thought makes Charles smile. It pulls at the corners of his mouth until he can’t hold it back anymore, and then he’s smiling like an idiot while the Mexican national anthem booms out of the speakers all around them. He chances a glance over at Max, only to find him smiling right back, a knowing glint in his eyes.
Charles averts his eyes before he has to think about being known by someone like Max Verstappen.
—
Charles is following Mia back towards Ferrari hospitality for the Sunday evening debrief when Max appears out of nowhere, blocking the walkway. He has a stupid, happy grin on his face, the one he always wears when he is excited to talk to Charles about something, usually racing related.
“The DRS was strong today, no?” Max blows his cheeks up and lets the air out with an excessive amount of sound. It makes him look, and sound, very young. He nods excitedly at Charles, as if to say, huh?
Charles turns to Mia. “Just head back, I will be right there.”
Mia glances at Max for a moment, eyes calculating, before she turns her gaze back to Charles. “Ok. But if anything happens, you explain it to Sylvia,” she tells him in Italian, in a tone that makes it very clear that she is unhappy with him. “Smile for the cameras.” And with that clipped warning, she turns away from them and makes her way through the lingering crowd.
Charles turns his gaze to Max, sizing him up in all his post-race glory. “Sorry, what did you want to talk about?”
Max’s smile slips slightly, just momentarily. It’s such a quick ripple across his expression that Charles would probably have missed it had he not been staring so intently. But he sees it, and it makes his stomach swoop unpleasantly.
“Just making small talk, I guess.” Max shrugs, his tone and expression just as casual as it had been when he showed up to Charles’ hotel room to fuck him. Charles trusts it about as far as he could throw it.
He feels his eyes narrow; his shoulders tensing up defensively. “Small talk? I did not know that was a thing you knew how to do.”
Max blinks, and then chuckles, refusing to acknowledge the dig. “Today was fun. I always enjoy it when we start close to each other on the grid. You had a good start, of course. And I didn’t see your battle with Checo, but I saw the replays, and you two are usually very good against each other.”
Charles stares at the freckle on Max’s upper lip while he speaks and tries to wrangle down the lump in his throat. His lips are puffy and shiny with spit and sweat, and Charles thinks that if he wasn’t so furious with everything that the universe seems to think he doesn’t deserve, that he would have found the entire thing unbearably hot.
Max, unaware of anything going on around him as usual, keeps talking about Charles’ race. “But there was no grip there, so—“
“Thanks, mate,” Charles interrupts, a little forcefully. He desperately needs Max’s pitying to end. “I don’t feel like talking about it.”
With a frown, Max levels him with a curious look. “You sure? You drove well, of course, but with Ferrari’s longer run pace this weekend—“
“ Ouais ,” Charles interrupts again, the intonation of his voice sharp as a knife. “It was all I could do today. Nothing to dwell on, right?”
“Right…” Max appeases, but he sounds like he wants to discuss it in great detail until Charles’ brain melts out of his ears and his heart gives up in his chest. “Sorry, I just thought you would like— Usually, you do not mind debriefing with me.”
He sounds hurt, as if Charles not wanting to talk about yet another race going down the drain for him has anything to do with Max, or the way they normally talk through races together afterwards. Like Charles is rejecting him on some fundamental level. Like Max has any right to feel like he’s losing something with 93 points to Charles’ 28 in the Championship standings.
And the possibly worst part of it is the fact that Charles knows Max has the right to feel a little spurned.
He is being inexplicably rude to Max, who showed up to media day with a cheery grin on his face and went on to show anyone who asked why he was in such a good mood a picture of them from their karting days. Max, who walked out onto the podium earlier, caught Charles’ eye, and took the P3 spot underneath the Monégasque flag without so much as a twitch of his eyebrow, waving at the crowd like everyone wasn't very aware of what Charles had just done. Max, who has taken every single opportunity given to him this weekend to act like everything is incredibly normal and good, allowing Charles to weasel his way out of taking any accountability for what happened between them.
He strangles a groan into a sigh and hopes he doesn’t look as slighted as he feels. “Not today. Not this year. Not when it is going like this.”
Not when he bottled yet another pole position, his third in a row in Baku, because the tyres seem to melt off his car the moment he’s got them warmed up. Not when he’s going to have to read an overwhelming amount of tweets about how he can never seem to convert pole from people who refuse to see the context in anything as long as it confirms their beliefs that he is not worthy. Not when the Redbull drivers have a rocket ship of a car that Charles is left to chase after with a twenty second gap. Not when Max keeps making Charles feel humiliated and vulnerable all the time, seemingly completely unaware—or maybe just uncaring—of it himself.
“Fine. No, of course.” Max nods his head a few times and stares intently into Charles’ eyes, like he’s looking for something there that he cannot find. Charles is struck with the intense urge to push Max away, to avert his eyes and hide. “And it has nothing to do with…?” He trails off, but the unspoken words are very much clear.
“No,” Charles insists, and then hates himself almost as much as he hates Max for the way his voice goes a little pitchy with panic at the thought of having to talk about it .
Charles has spent every waking moment since Max left his hotel room avoiding even thinking about it.
Only once in the two weeks since that night in Melbourne has Charles let himself think about it. It had been the last night before he flew over to Azerbaijan from Maranello, and Charles had laid in his empty, too-large bed, exhausted from the week and dreading the weekend. There was nothing, really, he could do to stop his mind from going back to the moment he was on his knees with a blissfully empty head and Max’s voice keeping him afloat, keeping him safe and warm and far away from everything that agonises him every second of every day.
The truth of the matter is that Max has never been very good at denying Charles anything, for as long as they have known each other—since they were five— which is why the rejection of Australia hurts so much, why it has unnerved him in ways he didn’t think possible.
He can admit that to himself now. Max allowing Charles to walk all over him these past days is exactly the reason why Charles is so devastated about Max turning him down last race weekend. And the worst part of it all is that he is the one that doesn’t have a reason to be upset. Max is allowed to not want him like that. Charles had just thought, maybe for a second or two there, that he maybe did.
That’s what hurts, and Charles doesn’t know what to do with that.
Max had shown him yet another thing that Charles would do anything to have, just to rip it away from him. And while Charles can’t seem to force himself to stomach the loss, Max doesn’t owe him anything. What is there to say?
“I am tired, I think,” he tries. “I will see you next week, no?”
Max nods, eyes still searching. “Yeah, mate. See you next week.”
Charles has turned to leave before Max has even finished talking, and he refuses to feel bad about it.
—
The third year in a row with pole position in Baku, and pole in the sprint, hadn’t been enough to shake Charles out of his start-of-season slump, considering he couldn’t convert them with this tractor of a car, but it had motivated him. If the car can get on pole, then the potential is there, somewhere. Charles and his engineers just have to spend who knows how many race weekends trying to figure out where that potential is, and how to extract it.
Charles comes into Miami feeling a little lighter on his feet, and by the time he crosses the finish line and slows down for his cool down lap, all that lightness has left him.
Joris and Andrea stand in his driver’s room, watching him get changed out of his race suit with tense, slightly desperate smiles on their faces. The tension in the small room feels like a rubber band being pulled tighter and tighter, but Charles is too frustrated and bone-tired that he doesn’t care enough to try to reassure them.
“You will bounce back,” Andrea says, in a tone that is usually encouraging but now just sounds pitying. “You always bounce back.”
“Bounce back to what?” Charles asks, voice slightly muffled from where he is bent over at the waist on the massage table trying to angrily tie his shoelaces.
“Bounce on top,” Andrea replies, immediately, the way he always does when he knows Charles is being self-deprecating and is refusing to engage with it.
Joris snickers.
Charles raises his head to glower up at him. “You are not allowed to laugh at gay innuendos in your head just because your best friend is gay.”
Joris laughs, loudly.
—
Scrolling through his message exchange from Australia is a little bit like picking at a scab until you bleed, but Charles still tucks himself into bed on Sunday night and reads through every message with the obsessive focus of a madman. Everything, from Max’s capitalised letters to his punctuation to the timestamps leers out at him from the too bright screen, and Charles stares at it all until his eyes sting.
And there, at the very top of the conversation, right above the message where Charles’ nude photo would be had he not frantically deleted it the moment Max left his hotel room that night, is the audio message Charles had sent him at 00:05 AM on New Year’s Eve.
Charles stares at the audio message with a sour pit in his stomach. 00:49 seconds of humiliation that he had found in his messages the day after—after he had spent the majority of the morning leaning over the toilet bowl trying not to die—and has not listened to since then, too mortified by the way Max had ignored it to ever revisit the mortification.
He doesn’t remember sending it, can’t imagine what had possessed him to think it was a good idea, at five minutes past midnight, to sneak off from his friends to hide in a corner of the courtyard of the house they were staying in, muttering into the receiver of his phone, like it was some dirty little secret.
He rolls over in bed, pressing his face to the cold side of the pillow, and presses play.
“Max,” Charles on the recording whisper-yells over fireworks and music and the sound of his friends’ drunken joy. “Happy New— OW . Sorry, I got a leaf in my eye. Happy New Year. To you. I have read that you celebrate by jumping in the ocean, over there in the Netherlands. Not that— I do not know if that is where you are celebrating, but I hope you got to… I hope you swam. Uh, and I hope you are well. And I will see you again s— See you in Bahrain.”
It ends with a full ten seconds of rustling, and the faint recognisable muffle of Charles calling out “ Verse-en un pour moi aussi” to one of his friends before it goes quiet.
His own voice on the recording sounds horrible. It starts off as a drunken mumble, and turns sickeningly tender somewhere halfway through. He sounds like he is speaking to someone he loves, someone he holds gently in the palms of his hands. It really is no wonder Max didn’t respond, because the entire thing is unbelievably inappropriate, considering their relationship.
The only reason Charles sees Max’s incoming message is because he’s already in their chat, lurking like an insane person, or a masochist. His phone buzzes, and the chat skips away from the audio message to scroll down to the newest one. Charles swallows hard and hopes Max didn’t see the way his message was immediately read.
Max 20:52
Are you awake?
Charles stares in utter indignance at the message at the bottom of his screen.
The last time Charles saw him, Max was still doing media. It always takes significantly longer for the winner of the race to finish his media duties than any other finishing position. Post-crash interviews are insistent and exhausting, but everyone wants to speak to a winner—for as long as they can, as if they hope the glow from the top step of the podium might be contagious. Charles had taken one look at him as he left the pen–standing by the Viaplay crew still wet with champagne and that stupid fucking tight-lipped smile on his face–and then stomped off to his debrief, dreading the look in Xavi and Ale and Fred’s eyes as they go through, in extensive, dreadful detail, what went wrong today.
Charles 20:59
yes
why?
Max 21:01
Great, I’m in the lobby.
Max cannot seriously be…
Right?
Charles fucking hates Miami. He hates all the people and he hates the humidity and the heat and the sparkle. He hates what it seems to do with people’s heads even more. No one knows how to fucking behave here, apparently, but Charles never thought Max would be one to fall for the fake, disgusting glamour of the weekend.
There is really no way Max is here for what Charles' mind immediately went to. After the past few weeks of tense smiles and Charles hiding from him whenever he can, he cannot possibly think that Charles would be up for another round of horrible decision making and the weeks of dread that follow.
Charles 21:01
why?????
leave???
Max 21:01
What’s your room number?
Charles wants to storm downstairs and strangle him.
Charles 21:02
WHY?
Max 21:02
I just want to talk. Promise.
Will keep my pants on the entire time.
It really is a testament to how on edge Charles feels, because Max’s last message makes his cheeks flush and the palm of his hands start sweating. He tries, as hard as he can, to pretend to himself that he doesn’t immediately picture Max without pants–it’s not hard, now that he has actually seen it up close.
His cheeks are not only warm with impure thoughts, however. Mostly, Charles is pissed off. And a little desperate to get Max the fuck out of the lobby of his hotel.
Charles 21: 03
fuck you
542
Max 21:03
Great. See you in a minute.
Charles opens the door the moment the knock comes. “Did anyone see you?” he asks before Max has the chance to do so much as smile at him.
Max rolls his eyes, pushing against Charles’ shoulder with the palm of his hand to get him to step back, so he can get into the room. “I met Zak Brown in the lobby, but he thinks I’m here to see Lando.”
Charles, who had completely forgotten that Ferrari and McLaren were put up in the same hotel this weekend, freezes with his hand still on the doorknob. “What?” he asks, throat dry. “And what the fuck will you do if Lando asks about it?”
They are standing too closely together. Max next to the door and Charles in front of it, facing each other. Charles can feel his heart beating in the back of his throat, and when he glances at Max’s eyes, his pupils dilate until there is barely any blue visible.
“He probably won’t,” Max replies, narrowing his eyes at Charles like he thinks he’s being slow.
“Oh, probably .” Charles laughs and lets go of the doorknob to stomp into the living room, leaving Max and his audacity out in the hallway. He’s gotten comfortable on the couch by the time Max follows, shoeless and confused. “I feel really good about probably.”
“Fucking hell,” Max mutters as he sits down in the armchair facing Charles. “If he asks I’ll tell him the truth.”
“ The truth —”
Max interrupts him before Charles has the opportunity to freak out. “That I came here to talk to you. He really doesn’t need to know anything else, and I doubt he will even ask.” He crosses his arms over his chest, which makes his t-shirt stretch over his biceps like it’s about to burst at the seam. Charles averts his eyes to stare at the painting above Max’s head, feeling a little hysterical. “Now can you please stop acting like this?”
Charles snaps his head back down, frowning. “If you came here to be an asshole, you could have just done that over text. I am not interested in this , whatever it is.”
A line appears between Max’s eyebrows, the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. “I am not here to be an asshole. I am here so we can talk about the things we clearly should talk about, because things are strange between us, and I do not like it.”
One thing Charles had failed to consider in the aftermath of Australia is how much Max values talking things through. Charles, who has been on the receiving end of Max’s anger more than a few times in the decades they have known each other, should really have known it was never going to be an easy route out of this situation. Every single time they have had incidents on track, Charles has glowered and stewed in silence, content with feeling whatever he needs to feel and then moving on with his life—and maybe once or twice begging the stewarts to make Max taste the bitter flavour of consequences—while Max has always been the one to chase him down, seek him out, so that they can talk about it. Max fucking loves talking about it.
Charles sighs, long-suffering and exasperated. “Look, Max… I know that is how you deal with… conflict. And I respect that about you. But… I really do not think it is too much to ask for that you maybe let me decide how this one goes. Do you not think you owe me, after I flew back with you after Austria because you wanted to talk?”
Something flickers over Max’s features, some unnamed emotion Charles can’t catch. Max seems to be aware of it, because he schools his face into something that looks eerily similar to the way his face always looks in drivers’ briefings; detached but somehow attentive.
“Ok,” he starts, voice a little too loud. “Listen, I am going to talk, because it has been weeks and I think we could both benefit from clearing the air a bit.”
Charles feels a little stunned by the entire situation, but especially the way Max’s intonation changes around the word both .
“Oh,” he huffs. “I cannot promise to have anything I want to say back.”
Which isn’t exactly true, but Charles would rather drink battery acid than say any of the things he possibly could say to Max about what happened and how he has felt about it in the weeks since.
“That’s fine,” Max says with a shrug.
Charles stares at him for a moment, feeling trapped. “Ok. Talk.”
“I have been going over it in my head for weeks,” Max says, still cool and collected, his legs crossed at the ankles, like they are discussing their mistakes after a tight qualifying session. “When I realised you’re not mad at me… I was very relieved.”
Charles bristles.
This is not what he had been expecting when he agreed to let Max talk. He had maybe expected Max to tell him to get the fuck over it and stop being a baby about something as trivial as a unsuccessful semi-drunken hookup. What the fuck does Max think he knows about what has been going on in Charles’ head for the past few weeks?
“I am not?” he asks, his mouth twisting into a sneer.
“Of course you’re not,” Max huffs, like the very notion is ridiculous. “You are mad that you are losing.”
Charles scoffs. “Or maybe I am embarrassed about what happened in Australia.”
By the end of the sentence, his tone has taken on a self-mocking tilt to it that he can’t seem to get under control, no matter how badly he wants to sound unaffected. Max listens impassively, but Charles can tell he hears it. He tilts his head to the side, eyes flickering all over Charles’ face like he is trying to put something together.
“I do not think that is it either. I think you are mad at yourself for needing me to make you feel better about losing,” Max says at last, tone frustratingly sure.
“Fuck you,” Charles hisses, suddenly furious. “I do not— I did not need you. I needed a distraction and you offered me one.”
Max smiles sweetly at him. “Can you honestly say that if you had sent that picture to anyone else who had the opportunity to come to you, that you would have let them? It happened because it was me.”
Charles doesn’t have to wonder if that is true or not. He tries to imagine opening the hotel room door to anybody but Max that night. Tries to imagine sinking to his knees on the carpeted floor, looking up and not seeing Max’s winning smile. Tries to imagine letting anyone else speak to him the way Max had spoken to him.
What truly infuriates him is the way Max seems to think Charles is such a bad loser that he would let it affect their carefully curated relationship. Last year, when Charles was actually losing, when the Championship slipped from his fingers before he had the time to close them around it, Max had been the person he spent the most time with out of all the other drivers. It was inevitable. Max should know better than anyone how Charles actually reacts to losing, and if he thinks for a second that Charles would have sex with Max to make himself feel better about a first lap racing incident, a DNF, and a P7 this early in the season, then he’s got him all wrong.
Hell, if that was a plausible way to make him feel better, Charles would have had sex with Max in Imola, when he realised the car was a whole new car, and not the one that would carry him to the finish line in Abu Dhabi. Or maybe in Suzuka, when Charles had stood on the third step on the podium and watched Max celebrate his second championship win. Or in the bathroom on the second floor of the building the FIA gala was held in, with Max’s Championship trophy discarded somewhere on the shiny tiles and their ties loose around their necks.
“How do you know that it was not a punishment?” Charles asks, his blood thumping angrily in his ears at the satisfied smile on Max’s face.
“Punishment, reward. Pleasure, pain. You, of course, want both.”
It has always been hard to argue with Max. Not the desire, but the execution of it. It has always been easy to fall into; to want . But something about the language barrier filters the true spirit of their anger into something confusing and frustrating. It’s hard to come up with a quick remark or to lash out with words when they have to translate everything in their heads before it can come out. The few times Charles has been so truly angry at Max that he hasn’t been able to go through the process, the entire dialogue had just been incomprehensible and frustrating; a spluttering, angry mess of half-English words.
It also makes it crueller, somehow. The added time to think usually lets them both have the opportunity to come up with something even more cutting than what they originally wanted to say.
Which is why it’s slightly too easy for Charles to say, “It is not like I got any pleasure, but I guess the embarrassment I have felt over it since has been punishment enough. So thank you for helping me find a different alternative to skipping dinner and reading rude comments about my race online all night.”
Max’s eyes have that same sharpness to them that they did when Charles told him he didn’t want to be kissed, and for a moment, Charles relishes in the strange idea that he has the power to hurt Max’s feelings .
“Charles, can we actually talk about it for a moment, instead of being… like this?”
“Like what?” Charles asks, petulantly.
“Petty,” Max answers immediately. “You keep lashing out at me, like you think I am to blame for it.”
Charles bites back the urge to say because it is all your fault that I feel like this. That would be too revealing, and Max has already seen him naked and begging, so nothing good can come from Charles prying his heart out of his chest and presenting it to him in its misshapen, bloody glory.
“Ok,” he says at last, through the awful lump in his throat. “I guess if you refuse to pretend it never happened, we can talk.”
Max leans his head back and groans. Charles tries his hardest to not stare at the tight, stretched out muscles that the position exposes to him.
“Charles, you’re the one who is acting differently. I have been trying to act normally, because that’s what you wanted. This is what I am talking about.”
Rolling his eyes, Charles waves his hands at Max as if to say get on with it.
“I think I understand if you are embarrassed about… it being me, either because you have known me for so long or because you don’t like me like that. That is fine, of course. But you seem to be more embarrassed about how it ended than I think you should be.”
Charles shuffles in his seat, suddenly wishing they were still arguing. It’s horrific, actually, to hear Max speak about the very thing that has kept Charles in a perpetual state of distress for weeks in the very same tone he uses when they discuss which racing line they picked through the most difficult corners of a circuit.
“How did it end?” Charles asks, because as much as this feels as close to torture as a conversation can possibly get, he really wants to know what Max thinks happened. What he has spent the past few weeks thinking about.
Max looks flushed. “I stopped it because I did not want to… hurt you.”
“I am not made of glass,” Charles huffs. He tries not to look as angry as he feels, but it’s hard when the things Max is saying feel like criticism.
“Listen,” Max sighs. “It was my fault. What happened. And I did not handle it well.”
Charles feels utterly stupefied. He has no idea what is going on right now. “No?”
“At first, I was just trying to— I mean, I was doing what we do. On track. I did think you were going to push back, like you always do. You did at first, of course. But then you didn’t , so I assumed you were into it.”
Every word out of Max’s mouth peels back at Charles’ skin until he is left with nothing but sinew and blood. He tries to think back to that moment when Max told him to get on his knees, to remind himself of what exactly had existed in Max’s tone of voice that made Charles listen without protest.
He clears his throat, and the noise comes out strangled by dread. “I was. Into it,” he admits, even though the words hurt on the way out. The wrongness of them sharp against the inside of his throat.
“Right,” Max coughs, and there’s a wild glint to his eyes. “I’m just trying to say that I wouldn’t have if—“
Charles waves him off, too exhausted to face the rejection all over again. It was enough the first time. Max doesn’t have to double down. “Oh, I get it.”
“No, you don’t, Charles, come on. Just listen for a second.”
It’s not the proudest moment of Charles’ life when he harrumphs like a child and crosses his arms over his chest, feeling like he has to protect his chest from all of this.
“I was not expecting it,” Max says, intonation soft and careful. “But it did not surprise me, exactly.”
Charles feels shame creep up his spine, cold and buzzing the entire way up, where it nestles at the back of his skull, draping itself around his shoulders.
It’s ridiculous. Charles should be above the criticism. People think he’s soft. Too pretty, too free with his affection, too malleable. And it’s not exactly what Max is saying, but something about the implications hurt as much as they always do. He’s exhausted with feeling like he is always going to be seen as something small and weak, when he feels like a huge, ravenous beast; something vast and hungry and strong.
“I do not—“ He clears his throat. “Why?” he asks, because he could snap his teeth, but he really just wants to understand . To see if his suspicions are correct, or if Max is going to do that thing he does sometimes where he says something that proves he has been paying attention to Charles for two decades. That he knows him on a level very few people do.
“Because you have to be in control all time time, ” Max says easily, like he doesn’t even have to think about it. “You always have. Control of your car, control of your image, control of sponsors and financial support to keep racing, control of how your team is perceived. You never get to turn it off, I have noticed.”
Charles feels like his head and chest has been filled with helium. His ears pop, and his heart feels like it’s encrusted in something sticky and heavy.
Max seems unaware of the effect his words are having, because he keeps going without waiting for a response, his eyes averted as if he is trying not to see whatever Charles’ face is doing.
“You feel good when you get to finally turn it off, like when— When you feel safe enough to let someone else take over.“
Charles clears his throat again, desperate to clear the lump of emotion that seems to be permanently stuck there.
He thinks about how much pressure he is under all the time . About the way journalists write about him, how they twist narratives to fit their agendas, how they criticise his every emotion and twist his words. He thinks about how hard he works to make sure people have as little to criticise him for as possible. He thinks about the few times he lets his guard down and truly lets himself be vulnerable. He thinks about the people in his life he has felt safe enough to do that with. His mother; his brothers; Jules; Joris; Andrea; Bryan; Seb, towards the end of their time as teammates and every day since; Pierre.
Max.
When he feels overwhelmed and gravitates to his side because he knows Max will distract him. When he was younger and so angry all the time, seeking Max out because he was good at redirecting Charles’ emotions. When he let Max take what he wanted from him, moaning and cursing and saying pretty things the entire time.
“How do you know things like this?” he asks, his voice unrecognisable to his own ears.
Eyes flickering momentarily to Charles’ and cheeks flushing, Max let’s put a small, tense huff of a laugh. “Personal research.”
Charles forgets about feeling vulnerable and naked and ashamed. “What sort of personal research?” he prompts.
Max’s blush deepens. “I had a… experience. With someone, and I wanted to understand why I liked it so much.”
Regret settles heavily at the bottom of Charles' stomach. Suddenly, he no longer wants to ask any more questions. He wants Max to leave Charles alone in this stupidly big hotel room to lick his own wounds clean while torturing himself with fantasies, just like he had done last time. He has no interest in hearing anything else about this person who Max had such amazing sex with that he ended up doing research afterwards. He doesn’t even care that he has no idea what Max is talking about.
“Charles?” Max asks, leaning forward in his seat to search his face. When Charles looks up at him, Max gives him that dorky, endearing, tight lipped smile of his.
“Uhm,” Charles says dumbly. “Ok.”
Max raises a brow at him. “It was a one night stand only,” he says, for some reason.
Charles nods. “Ok.”
“What I am trying to say,” Max huffs, like something about this situation is funny to him. “Is that I was never in control of anything for most of my life. I had no say, and I had… No one has ever let me take care of them. Which is why you have no reason to feel embarrassed about Australia, because, uhm, I found it really hot. You’re not the only one who got a little carried away.”
Charles startles like Max has flung something at him. The immediate flash of hurt in his chest is sharp and overwhelming.
“Then why did you leave?” he asks before he can wrangle the words back down his throat, and his voice comes out small and wavering.
Max’s face falls. “Charles—“
The wave of embarrassment crashes down over him with unexpected force. Charles shakes his head vehemently. “No, no. Sorry . Forget I said it.”
“Charles…” Max sighs. “I came here to talk to you about these—“
“ Really. There is no need. I promise you that you do not need to make me feel better about you changing your mind. I know that I freaked out a bit about it that night, but you have every right to change your mind!”
“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Max laments. “I’m not gonna make you, especially not if you never want it to happen again. But you keep saying I changed my mind, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Ever since Australia. It kills me that you think what happened meant that I didn’t want to continue. I just think that we should have talked about things beforehand. That type of sex shouldn’t be taken lightly, you know? I panicked slightly when I realised that you had never been in su— That it was your first time feeling like that. But I just wanted you to be aware of what was happening, what you were experiencing. I wanted it to be good for you, Charles. Not just in the moment, but afterwards too. I would have felt like I took advantage of the situation.”
Charles stares at Max’s face as he speaks, gaze flittering over his features one by one. The curve of his cheekbones. The slope of his nose. The folds of his eyelids when he blinks. The shape of his top lip and the freckle there.
When Max has finished speaking and looks back at Charles with defiance in his eyes, Charles manages to wrangle out something close enough to a sound of understanding.
“And not to be that person, but you were the one who kicked me out,” Max says, in an attempt to be funny, if the odd, half-assed humorous tone of his voice is any indication. “I would have still— I wasn’t planning on leaving.”
The problem with the way Charles is putting pieces together is that he cannot get emotionally invested in the final product. The past two weeks have been exhausting. If Charles is reading this right, which he thinks he might be, it seems like Max is admitting to something far more insidious than what Charles had feared; that he wanted him, that he wants him now, possibly.
Charles blinks and tries to adjust to a reality in which all he seems to have to do is ask, and Max will grant it to him.
He takes a deep breath, and reminds himself that he is someone who will never be satisfied with anything less than everything he wants.
“I see,” he says, careful to keep his voice even. “I am sorry I have been so rude. I do understand now, I think, so thank you for clearing the air. ” He tries to do an impression of Max when he echoes his words from earlier, but it comes out as something syrupy sweet and tender, which isn’t at all how Max had said it.
Max smiles wide enough that his eyes crinkle with it, and Charles thinks to himself that he can handle this. This in between thing where they can never take back what happened, but they can move past it.
Charles thinks that if he was a less selfish person, he would have easily fallen into the indulgence of what Max could offer him. It would have been nice, maybe, if Charles was someone who wanted less , to allow himself to do something reckless and débauched just for the sake of pleasure and nothing else.
But at the end of the day, Charles is not going to have sex with Max just because it would be satisfactory . He doesn’t think either of them work like that, and whatever Max can offer him wouldn’t be enough. Charles would probably be half-way to insane by the time summer break comes around, if he has to feel the way he did in Australia again with someone who will not stick around. He has never been good with blurred lines and complicated relationship labels.
“Good,” Max says, and whether he understands what Charles is thinking he doesn’t let on. He just tucks his feet under the chair and gives Charles a lopsided grin. “Can I ask you a question?”
No , Charles thinks. “Yes, of course,” he says.
“In Baku,” Max begins, his grin growing wider and more symmetrical when Charles sighs. “Were you trying to make a point? On the podium.”
Charles shuffles in his seat as he tries to come up with an explanation for the way he had behaved in Azerbaijan. The back of his neck prickles with discomfort.
“I was— I felt weird, seeing you again after… And you were acting like everything was normal. It made me feel wronged.”
“So it was to make a point.”
“I do not know. Maybe. I am not sure what point, exactly.”
Max doesn’t seem put off or annoyed by the confirmation. He stares steadily at Charles’ face, a small smile across his lips. “You cheater,” he teases.
Charles splutters. “I have never cheated.”
Max narrows his eyes at him, a disbelieving look in them; a challenging glint. “Oh, really?”
“No!” Charles insists, and then, “ Well , this was not cheating. It was a…—“
“Pushing of limits, I know. That’s how you always get away with it.”
Charles tuts. He leans forward in his seat as if being closer to Max will make his next point more convincing. “I get away with it because I drive well enough to make up for it. Just like you.”
Max throws his head back and laughs, a sound of sunshine erupting from his throat like it has been dredged up from deep within his chest. “That’s not true,” he argues once he’s pulled himself together enough to look into Charles’ eyes again.
“Why? Because I do not drive like you?” Charles asks, his tone ice cold and precise. All his animosity from earlier returns like a tidal wave, rushing over him and pulling him under.
Max rolls his eyes, and it reads to Charles as condescending. Like Charles is once again not getting it. “I have always thought you drive like me,” he says, enunciating every word slowly. “Charles, I have been telling journalists from the moment you joined F1 that we drive the same.”
Charles swallows hard. “Then why—…” His voice cracks and then he can’t make himself complete the question, afraid he’s going to do something horrible, like cry.
But Max seems to understand exactly what he is thinking about. “You know why. Everyone knows why.”
Charles takes a deep breath through his nose, and lets it out through his mouth, like his therapist had taught him to do as a teenager, after Jules died. ”Not me. I do not understand why.”
“I could give you names. Races. Strategy calls. Charles, I know you love Ferrari, and I know it’s embedded into your bones to never talk badly about them ever, even when literally anyone else would. But… I mean, look at where you guys have been the last couple of years. You’re supposed to be Ferrari. ”
“Thank you,” Charles forces out through gritted teeth.
Max rolls his eyes at him again “ You are the reason Ferrari isn’t a mid-field team right now. Seb put in a good effort, of course, but Binotto—“
“You are saying I outperformed the car,” Charles says. “I know this already. People are always telling me this—“
“No,” Max interrupts, firmly. “I am saying you outperformed the team.”
Charles snaps his mouth shut and glares at the coffee table between them, overwhelmed with all the fury and relief and agony that rushes through him. It bubbles in his stomach, sears in his lungs.
“Maybe,” he says, voice hollow. He tries to clear his throat, tries to school his features back to some semblance of normal. When he glances up at Max, he is looking back at Charles with such an affectionate look on his face that Charles immediately has to look away. “Sorry, I am having a strange year,” he tells him, feeling like he has to apologise for the way he’s been acting for the past few months.
“I get it,” Max says kindly. He glances at the clock on the far right wall, and then slaps the tops of his thighs as he stands up. “I’m going to go. I’m flying to the factory at midnight, so I should probably get going.”
Charles follows Max’s gaze towards the clock, and wonders why in the world Max came across town two hours before his flight when he could have just waited until next weekend, or texted him about it.
Probably so that Charles couldn’t weasel himself out of it.
He stands up, brushes invisible crumbs off his sweatpants, and nods. “Yes, you probably should,” he says, a strange weight pressing on his chest.
Max looks, for a moment, nervous, or at least apprehensive.
“I will see you in two weeks, no?” Charles tries, feeling suddenly like he has to reassure Max about something. “Where I will not have to cheat to be on the step above you on the podium.”
Max’s face blooms . His eyes glinting, his cheeks pinking with humour, his mouth softening. Like a sunflower turning towards the sun. He stops looking like he’s two seconds away from saying something he might regret, and laughs.
“You are really something, Charles,” he says.
It’s enough.