Chapter Text
BAHRAIN
For a few brief, fleeting, impossible weeks in 2022 Charles Leclerc leads the world driver’s championship.
Legs shaking as she pulls herself out of the car, Charles balances precariously on the nose and throws her arms up into the hot night air. The roar from the stands is deafening, and soon Carlos’s hands are wrapping around her waist and hauling her down to solid ground. Their helmets knock together, and Charles can’t help but giggle hysterically as Carlos shouts wordlessly in her ear.
Carlos pulls away, and Charles is off and running the second her eyes land on her team waiting just behind the barriers. Her feet lift without hesitation from the pavement, knowing that she will be caught. Arms wrap around her and hands slap at her back. Two hands grasp at her face, turning her head until their eyes meet.
“Charlie!” One of the mechanics shouts, a wide grin splitting his face. “Your car!”
Charles grins stupidly back. Yes, the car is fucking brilliant. The mechanic just laughs, not unkindly, and shakes his head.
“You need to turn it off!”
Blood rushes to Charles’s cheeks, matching the red race suit hugging her body.
She turns so fast she almost topples over, but twenty pairs of hands reach out to steady her. Bright, glee-filled laughter slips from between her cracked lips like champagne spilling over the neck of the bottle.
The immovable titanium of the halo presses against the center of her chest as she leans over and into the car, desperately trying to flick the switch with the tip of her nail. The small piece of plastic finally gives, and the engine gently shuts off. Before she walks back to her team, Charles can’t resist giving the car a solid pat against the body.
Normally, after Bahrain, Charles is hot and sticky, finding it difficult to catch her breath, because with every gulp of air she takes, she imagines dust and sand settling into her chest and coating the insides of her lungs. Now, she feels like she could run the whole race all over again.
Carlos’s car is parked next to hers, and Charles thinks she could get used to this sight. She turns back to the sea of red that is her team, moving and pulsing like blood through veins. Her grin is reflected on each of their faces.
Oh, yes. She could get very used to this.
✦✦
Bright, sticky red liquid sloshes over the side of her glass as someone shoves a drink into her hand, and Charles has just enough sense of mind to look up and make sure it’s someone she knows before wrapping her lips around the small plastic straw and sucking half of it down in one go.
They’re at the third bar of the night— though it could also be the fourth. Charles doesn’t remember moving from one to the next, and the interiors are so similar to each other that it’s nearly impossible to tell.
Carlos is at her side, his hand wrapped around her waist, and Charles feels so fuzzy at the edges, she leans her head on his shoulder, pressing herself further into his side. Her cheeks hurt from how much she’s been grinning all night. She’s only half listening to the conversation between Carlos and someone she thinks might work for Mclaren.
Carlos’s hand tightens on her waist, pulling her towards him and out of the way of some stumbling drunk, and Charles thinks to herself how nice this is.
She’d loved Seb, practically worshiped the ground he walked on, and even at the end of their second season together, Charles still found herself tripping over her words at times, completely starstruck by her teammate. Charles was so enamored with Sebastian that she’d conveniently ignored all his sideways comments about losing to a girl.
With Carlos, things were simpler, easier. He teased her like she was one of the guys, always went out of his way to include her in things that the others on the grid unintentionally left her and Max out of. Sure they had their disagreements, but Carlos always treated her equally, like a teammate, like a competitor.
But when the man moves away and Charles tips her head up, opening her mouth to put her thoughts to words, she finds Carlos looking back at her, or more specifically her lips.
She feels the ground open up beneath her, heart plummeting through her feet and to the molten core of the earth. Her pulse rabbits in her throat, and when Carlos’s fingers flex against her hip, it stops entirely.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she blurts out, yelling over the music, and Carlos, who had been leaning their faces closer together, reels back. His eyes go wide, pupils dark and fathomless, and his hand hasn’t loosened on her waist, so Charles reaches down to peel his fingers away before sliding out of the circle of his arms and making her way blindly across the club.
Charles realizes quickly that she doesn’t even know where the bathrooms are, but she pushes to the edge of the room, the unrelenting press of unfamiliar bodies suddenly overstimulating. Pressing her fingers deep into her collarbone in a ridiculous effort to slow her still rapid pulse, Charles’s eyes scan the dark corners outside the bright, searching club lights, desperate for somewhere to hide long enough for Carlos to come to his senses and find someone else to make a move on, someone decidedly less his teammate.
Her gaze catches on a familiar shape tucked away in a booth in the corner. Max’s cropped hair is messy— that post-race sort of messy with different chunks nearly defying gravity as they stick up every which way— so much so that Charles has to wonder if Max even ran a brush through it before going out. Charles wants to tease her for it. First race of the season— couldn’t she try a little harder?
At least she’s not wearing a Red Bull polo, Charles concedes, but it’s a close thing. Instead Max is wearing a variation on the same outfit she wears every time someone drags her to one of these things— a loose, silky black top, with straps so thin Charles worries that one good flex of her shoulders would rip the seam clean off, and jeans so tight Charles has to wonder how Max even got into them.
Her pulse inexplicably picks up again as she watches Max chase the fluorescent colored cherry at the bottom of her glass, repeatedly stabbing her straw into the ice and coming up empty handed. Max tips the glass back, mouth open, trying to coax the cherry out with the end of her straw, but all she gets is melted ice running down the sides of her mouth and down her chin.
Charles’s face heats with the secondhand embarrassment and decides the watching has become too painful, giving in to the magnetic pull that’s always clung to Max and moving in her direction.
It’s noticeably quieter over here, the club music thrumming in her chest as opposed to rattling her bones. Charles slips into the booth, her sweat slick thighs sticking to the cracked leather as she shuffles her way around to Max.
“Can I get you another?” she asks, “Shirley temple?”
Max gives her a dirty look from underneath her choppy bangs as tamed as Charles has ever seen them, which isn’t saying much.
“I don’t even know what that is. Daniel gave this to me.” Max grimaces before finally giving up on the cherry and pushing the glass away. “I think it had bourbon in it.”
“Gin tonic then?” Max shrugs. “Vodka soda?” Her mouth twists down, and Charles just laughs at her. “They really are not that different.”
Max huffs. “They are completely different.”
“If they are so different,” Charles counters, rolling her eyes and leaning into Max’s side, “why didn’t you say you wanted the gin tonic?”
She squirms away from Charles, her eyes flashing dark. “I do not need you to buy me drinks because you won and my car self-immolated two laps before the end of the race.”
Charles just grins, nothing would deter her tonight, not even Max’s volatile moods.
“I am not buying you drinks because I won and you lost. I am trying to buy you drinks because it is the first race of the season, and I did well, and I simply would like to see you look a little less like you would like to murder someone. Especially if that someone you are considering is me.”
She wraps her hand around Max’s wrist and tugs, gently but still insistent, and to Charles’s surprise, Max goes.
They fight their way through the sweaty throngs of people, more than a few “wayward” hands landing too precisely on their tits or ass to truly be accidental, but Charles doesn’t think it worth the fight tonight.
When they finally reach the bar, Max collapses forward onto it as if the walk was some great effort. The unyielding surface pushes back against her, squishing her chest until her boobs are spilling obscenely over the neckline of her top. Charles’s tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth, and she struggles to dislodge it so she can suggest to Max that she… not do that.
Before she can say anything, the bartender slots quickly in front of them, not even trying to pretend that he isn’t openly ogling Max’s tits. Charles just barely resists the urge to snap her fingers under his nose.
“A gin tonic and a vodka soda, please.”
His eyes drift slowly to meet Charles’s.
“With a cherry in the gin tonic, as well,” Max pipes up from where she is still plastered across the bartop.
The bartender shifts his gaze back to Max, a slow smirk playing across his lips.
“Anything for you, sweetheart.”
Charles gags as he moves away, and Max honks out a laugh so loud and close to Charles that she jerks forward. She twists her head to look at Max, her eyes nearly crossing as Charles watches Max tug at the hem of her shirt, trying to get it to lay flat again.
“A cherry?” is all she asks. Max shrugs, but she seems to have unwound slightly over their walk to the bar. The tops of her cheeks are bright pink, and sweat glistens at her temples, the shortest parts of her bangs clinging to the skin there. Her lips are pink and turning up ever so slightly at the corners.
“I wanted that other one. If this one is at the top of the drink, I figure it would be easier to grab.”
And Charles just snorts because it makes sense. Max doesn’t like to be denied things she wants.
It’s like some switch in Max has flipped because as they wait for their drinks she starts regaling Charles with a play by of her team’s meeting after the race. She talks about Checo storming into her driver’s room and slamming the door thinking it was his. Her hands fly through the air as she talks until Charles has to grab her wrist and tug her away from the people behind her for fear of one of them catching an elbow in the back.
“They, of course, tried to explain why during the debrief, but I was not happy with their answers. It is fine, though.” Max huffs and leans against the bar, her face tilted up toward the ceiling so the multicolored lights dance across her skin. Charles watches as they play across her features, the purple glancing over the bridge of her nose, green in the curve of her cheek. “We will fix it, and then I will win next weekend.”
Something bristles along her back at that, pooling hot at the base of her spine. It bothers her that Max sees this as a fluke, like Charles wasn’t leading the majority of the race, like she hadn’t qualified first the day before. She knows Max is defending her title, but Charles still just barely resists the urge to curl up her lip in disgust.
“I cannot wait to see you try.”
Max opens her mouth to bite back, but the bartender saves Charles from needing to find a clever retort by appearing with their drinks. He sets Charles’s down without so much as a glance in her direction, but with Max, he intentionally holds her gaze as he places the glass in front of her.
“Enjoy.” Charles wants to laugh because there’s so much layered in that one word, the man might as well have said, “I desperately want to fuck you.” She grabs her drink, twisting her whole body so her back is to the bar and hoping he will take the hint, but she watches in horror as Max smiles back, front teeth digging into her lower lip. Jesus fucking christ.
“Thank you.” The bartender fucking winks at her before moving away to take someone else’s order, and Charles huffs out a disbelieving breath. Max’s cool, discerning gaze traps her instantly.
“Is it so difficult for you to imagine that a man would try to flirt with me? I know I am not model material and no one would call me the princess of anything but—”
“You could be a model,” Charles blurts out before heat rushes to her cheeks. She wraps her lips around the straw to take a long drink but continues to gnaw at the hard plastic to stop herself from saying anything else. Max says nothing right away, but something in her eyes has shifted.
“I mean– Obviously, you are more than pretty enough to– Of course, you are doing shoots from sponsors and the magazine covers, and always you are looking very good.”
Max smirks up at her, and instantly Charles feels something in it tugging just below her navel. This wasn’t the grimaces Max had been shooting her earlier— there was an edge to this that made Charles curl her toes over the edge of her shoes.
“Is this all it takes then?” Max asks, instantly snatching the cherry floating on top of her drink. Charles stares resolutely into her eyes, refusing to watch the way Max’s lips wrap around the stem and how they stretch when she tugs it away and how her tongue presses against the inside of her cheek as she chews on the fruit and the bob of her throat as she swallows it down. Charles definitely doesn’t watch any of it. “Your first race win in three years is all it takes for you to start outwardly flirting with me?”
Charles’s nose wrinkles, her face screwed up into something between disdain and confusion. She snags her straw between her teeth and takes a long drink to stop the first thought that jumped to the tip of her tongue.
“I am not flirting,” she insists. Max hums noncommittally, absently stirring her drink with the straw. “I’m not.” And then there’s that stupid eyebrow again, and Charles flexes her hand around her drink.
“So you always stumble over your words like this when you are convincing your girl friends they are attractive?”
Max’s choice of words, girl friends, sticks in Charles’s throat, stopping whatever reply she tries to form.
“You buy drinks for all of them after your wins?” Max persists. “You spend your time out only with them?” Charles’s mouth continues to open and close, entirely useless. “Tell me Charles, do you always look like you are wanting to kill men who act like they would like to pick up your girl friends?”
Her blue eyes meet Charles’s own, digging their way into her head until Charles feels like her brain is freezing. She presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth like her father had taught her when she was little. When she finally unsticks it, her tongue still feels heavy in her mouth, struggling to form words.
“No,” she manages to croak out, her voice breaking around the single syllable.
Max grins, sharp and predatory.
“No,” she repeats, “I didn’t think so.” Max brings her glass to her lips, tipping her head back and downing the whole thing in one long gulp. Empty except for the rapidly melting ice, the glass makes a hollow sound when Max sets it none too gently back on the bar.
“Thank you for the drink. I will buy next weekend.”
Charles stares, open-mouthed, as Max slides off of her stool and weaves between sweat-drenched bodies packing the dancefloor until Charles loses sight of her.
Condensation drips down the outside of her glass, pooling between her fingers where she grasps it a little too tightly. She sips slowly at her drink, worried that if she finishes it too quickly, she’ll set off after Max, demanding for her to explain herself.
Instead, she sinks further down into her seat, and tries to force Max’s questions from her mind.
Across the bar, she sees Carlos plastered against the back of some model, and her shoulders loosen just that tiny bit more.
Charles turns from the bar, discreetly reaching into her bra to fish out her phone, and calls an Uber.
✦✦
For at least the tenth time that morning, the neon ball whizzes past Charles’s ear, and before she can even lift her racquet, the ball has slammed into the ground on her side of the net.
“That is game!” Arthur shouts, whooping and hollering and running around the court in dizzying circles. He comes back to the middle, leaning against the net and huffing out a disbelieving laugh. “Honestly, Charles, it is like you are not even trying this morning.”
Charles lifts her shoulders helplessly, tugging at the sleeves of her hoodie. It is starting to get bright outside, but still the fog of the morning hangs low across the ground, waiting to be burnt up by the rising sun. The mist clings to Charles’s skin, and she shivers when the soft breeze blows across the court.
“I suppose I did not sleep well last night.” Arthur laughs at that, loud and echoing, and Charles thinks how satisfying a sound the tennis ball would make if she bounced it off his big forehead.
“And what is there for you to lose sleep over? Surely being first in the championship makes you sleep like a baby.”
Charles can’t help rolling her eyes. It is like this always with Arthur. Just last week, they had gone for coffee, and Arthur had felt the need to mention to their waitress that his sister was currently leading the Formula 1 driver’s championship. The girl had nodded politely and asked if they wanted any pastries with their coffee, and Charles had backhanded Arthur in the stomach the moment she walked away.
“It has only been two races,” she admonishes him, just as she had the day before when her maman had made a comment to someone else in her salon as she trimmed Charles’s hair, and just as she had two days before when Lorenzo had bragged to his in-laws at dinner, and just as she had when Arthur had been on the phone with one of his friends.
Charles knows they mean well, but something in her balks at the idea of getting her hopes up so early in the season. Nothing is decided after only two races. She tells herself she is simply being realistic. Next weekend, she could spin out, and Max could win. Again.
She tries to focus on the sound of the ball bouncing off the court as Arthur dribbles it.
But over the last month, whenever she’s had more than a minute of silence, her thoughts very quickly shift to Max.
It’s not as if anyone could blame her. The reigning world champion is, of course, her closest competition at this point in the season. Charles frowns down at her feet, cheeks flaming as she thinks about Max’s win last weekend.
She thinks about laying in bed on Sunday after the race, images of Max on the podium pressing in on her— Max with sweat making the short hairs at her temples cling to the skin, Max’s bright flushed cheeks, Max’s wide smile as they all listened to the Dutch anthem for the first time that year.
Charles shakes her head and bends her knees, bouncing back and forth from one foot to the other as she waits for Arthur to serve.
Max was just being ridiculous in Bahrain. Charles has over analyzed all of her moves from that night until she gave herself a migraine, and Charles knows that, on a surface level, nothing she said or did was flirting. She’s absolutely bought drinks for friends before. She’s certainly stuck by a particular friend when she didn’t feel like chatting much with everyone.
The only reason her stomach turns and heat lances up her chest when she thinks about flirting with Max is because she has always felt that when she thinks anything about Max, her fiercest, most consistent competitor.
But as she tells herself this, Charles knows she is lying because even as she did it something felt different.
Sure, she’d step in to defend a friend who was getting hit on by a creepy guy, but that fierce something burning hot and molten in her gut as the bartender had ogled Max was not simple friendly protectiveness. If Charles had to put a name to it, she would say it was—
This time, she manages to at least swing her racquet as Arthur hurls the ball across the net, but it whiffs through the air, a good foot between the netting and her target.
Arthur’s raucous laughter follows her, cheeks burning, as she trudges towards the fence to recover the ball. Wedged into a gap in the metal fencing, Charles leans down to pull the ball free.
She decides she needs to do something to get these wandering thoughts under control. Charles had barely made it through the podium celebrations in Jeddah, Max’s presence difficult to forget with her warm, champagne drenched hand wrapped around Charles’s waist. Even as she celebrated, Charles burned with jealousy staring up at Max on the top step.
The simplest solution, she decides as she serves the ball back to Arthur, is to make sure Max feels that same fire eating away at her next weekend, to watch Charles take the trophy while standing a step above her. If Charles has to feel this way, at least she doesn’t have to be alone in it.
Her brother’s loud laughter echoes around the court as Charles dives for his returning volley, stumbling to her knees as she misses the point once again.
AUSTRALIA
If Bahrain was electric, Australia is what Charles imagines touching a live wire must feel like. She stumbles around after the podium ceremony in a sort of daze, Andrea’s hand grasped firmly around her shoulder steering her through the throng of people pressing in towards her. Even in the paddock where she sees these people day in and day out throughout the season, random engineers and team members are grabbing her arm and shaking her hand and ruffling her hair.
Outside of home races, Charles doesn’t think she’s felt this level of attention since her Ferrari contract was first announced.
One voice floats above the rest however as Andrea continues to fight their way towards the Ferrari motorhome.
“Sharl! Hey, mate, wait up.”
Daniel’s face swoops into her line of sight, grinning his signature grin. Charles can’t help but smile back, Daniel’s infectious mirth fighting through her dazed stupor.
“Congrats, Charlie. You were on frickin’ fire today, mate.” He grasps her hand, doing some strange version of a shake that ends up jostling her entire arm. It startles a laugh out of her, and Daniel grins even harder.
“And you as well,” she responds, tugging on Daniel’s hand since he would not let go of hers. He trips forward, the brims of their caps knocking together. “Your first points of the year. That is great.”
Charles means it, but she watches something strange dance across Daniel’s face.
“Damn straight!” he crows regardless. “It is my home race after all. Couldn’t let down all the hometown fans.” He winks at Charles, and she really can’t help but giggle, but Daniel has always made her feel this way. There was a time when Charles had wondered if something might not happen between the two of them, but when they’d run into each other on their separate vacations in Las Vegas nothing had happened despite ample opportunities and copious amounts of alcohol. Truthfully, Charles had always been a little too intimidated by his friendship with Max to ever seriously consider trying anything.
As if just thinking about her had brought the other driver into existence, Max was there between one instant and the next, tugging on Daniel’s sleeve and shooting Charles dirty looks.
“Daniel, we need to head back now if we are going to have enough time to shower and get changed.”
“Aw, Maxy Max.” Daniel wraps her arm around Max’s neck, pulling her into a headlock. Max, to her credit, simply goes with it, knowing better than to fight Daniel when he’s in this kind of mood.
Charles turns to make a joke to Andrea but finds no one beside her. He must have gotten tired of waiting, but Daniel is still talking.
“This isn’t the type of place you need to get all dolled up for, you know. No one’s gonna bat an eye in there if you’re a little sweaty rat.”
Max splutters, finally slipping out of Daniel’s grasp when he shifts her face into his armpit.
“Fine,” she concedes, cramming her cap further down onto her head and flashing another strange look at Charles. “But still we should be heading out soon.”
“Alright, alright.” Daniel straightens up, but his grin is still aimed firmly on Charles. “Anyway, that’s why I wanted to grab you, Charlie. We’re heading to this bar a buddy of mine owns. He’s gonna shut it down for us, so just drivers and anyone you wanna bring along.” He wiggles his eyebrows at that last bit, but Charles just rolls her eyes smiling.
“Ah, yes, I will have to bring my hot date I definitely packed in my suitcase. Remind me to grab him when I am back in my hotel room.”
Max’s eyes bore into the side of her face, and Daniel’s loud laugh pulls the attention of a number of random team members wandering up and down the paddock.
“No dates required. Just bring your lovely self.” He winks then, and Max smacks him in the stomach, startling a grunt out of Daniel.
“If I do not get a chance to wash my hair because of your ridiculous need to flirt, I will piss in your drink tonight.”
Before Charles has fully processed anything Max has said, she is pulling Daniel quickly away as he shouts back at Charles that he’ll text her the address.
Your ridiculous need to flirt.
Charles absently wonders if Max just assumes everyone she knows is always flirting with someone else. Perhaps it’s just a necessary side effect of spending so much time around Daniel Ricciardo.
✦✦
The bar is loud, but not like the clubs they usually find themselves at after races. Bad country music is playing from a jukebox in the corner behind the bar, and people shout at each other as they play pool and darts.
It’s a good kind of loud though. Two shitty dive bar margaritas in, and Charles feels pleasantly warm, pressed up between George and Alex on one side of a booth. They’re playing some sort of card game George had found that Charles has lost every round of, but she can’t find it in her to care all that much as she watches Alex holler in triumph while George throws his hand down on the table.
A third margarita appears for her seemingly out of thin air, but before she can wrap her lips around the straw, someone is tugging on her arm, pulling her over Alex’s lap and out of the booth.
When she looks up, Daniel’s grinning face is inches from hers.
“Come on, now. Up and at ‘em!”
Daniel grasps her hand and drops to one knee, and Charles laughs when she realizes he is giving her a step to climb up onto the stool and then onto the bar.
“Why thank you, sir,” she teases, and Daniel cackles back.
“Anything for the Princess of Monaco.”
Charles’s cheeks burn. She’s seen that nickname thrown around online plenty, usually not in a flattering context. But looking at Daniel’s grin, she knows there isn't a drop of malice in his words. Instead she tilts her head in acknowledgement before hiking herself up onto the bartop.
Immediately, Daniel is hopping on one foot, pulling off his sandal and grabbing a can of beer from his back pocket. Charles puts her hands up in front of her as though she can physically stop what’s about to happen.
“Daniel, I don’t think—
“It’s tradition,” he shouts as he cracks the beer open and pours it into the shallow space of the shoe. Charles purses her lips but before she can shove Daniel’s hand back, he’s quick to cut her off with a, “Seb did it!”
And of course that seals it. Charles tries not to think about how the only reason the beer is staying in the sandal is because of the divot created from years of being worn down by Daniel’s heel. She downs the beer in one gulp, which Charles soon realizes is a mistake when the bubbles quickly come up and out her nose, but Daniel hoots and hollers all the same, clapping a hand on her shoulder. The rest of the bar cheers, and Charles glows with the attention despite how fucking bad Daniel’s foot beer tastes.
The beer-tequila combination is a bad one that quickly goes to Charles’s head, and when she tries to step off the bar, her foot slips. Her heart jumps to her throat, terrible images of her head cracked open on this absolutely unsanitary bar floor flitting through her mind, but before those fears can come true, two firm hands are wrapping around her waist and setting her right.
Charles stares at her feet for a second, just to verify that they are, in fact, planted firmly on the ground, and when she looks up she’s startled to find Max’s face inches from her own.
The bar is loud, and Daniel is shouting something from across the room. Charles thinks the man with his arm looped around Daniel’s neck might be the owner. Oscar shouts something at Lando, their pool cues dangerously close to poking out each other’s eyes.
Despite all of it, she can hear every word Max says, their faces hovering inches apart, Max’s hands still resting on Charles’s hips.
“Are you okay?”
Charles’s eyes darts between Max’s, unable to decide which to focus on with their faces still so close together.
“Umm…”
Max laughs, loud and shockingly genuine for someone who didn’t finish the race today.
“My god, Charles. How much have you had?”
Charles laughs nervously.
“Honestly, mate, I’m not even sure.”
Even in the dull bar lighting, Max’s bright eyes sparkle, and Charles finds herself unable to tear her gaze away from them. She watches the corners crinkle and turn up as Max smiles wider.
“Yes, I believe Daniel is dead set on giving you a ‘proper Australian winner’s celebration.’”
“Does a ‘proper Australian winner’s celebration’ always involve so much shitty beer?”
Max’s laugh cuts through all the other noise in the bar, high and clear, and Charles’s face and neck go warm. She supposes she has had quite a bit to drink tonight, even if she isn’t sure exactly how much, for her to be feeling like this.
“I’m not sure. You’ve got that one over on me, so you would have to ask someone else.”
“I’m sorry your race didn’t go well,” Charles blurts out before she can stop herself. Max looks surprised but keeps smiling. Their faces are still fairly close together. “It sucks, to have come all this way and not get to even finish your race.”
Max shrugs. “I suppose I will just have to make the best of the trip then.” Her smile is smaller now, but undeniably there. As Charles stares into her eyes, she notices the way Max’s gaze flicks back and forth from her eyes to her lips and back again.
An involuntary noise gets caught behind Charles’s teeth, and a crease forms between Max’s eyebrows, her hand coming up to wrap around Charles’s forearm.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Charles? You don’t feel sick, do you?” Charles shakes her head, but then Max is tugging on her arm. “Would you like to go outside? You are starting to look very warm.”
Charles giggles, surprising herself. “That’s a strange way of calling me hot, Max.”
Max huffs, the burst of air moving the messy bangs hanging in front of her eyes.
“I am just trying to make sure you do not pass out from the heat, but of course, if you would like to –” Charles rolls her eyes, still grinning, and wraps her fingers around Max’s wrist before dragging her to the door.
“Surely,” Charles says as cool March air rushes over her sweaty cheeks, “I would not pass out just from being in a stuffy bar. I am a high performance athlete after all.” She wiggles her eyebrows at Max in her best approximation of Daniel, and her chest goes all warm when Max laughs, loud and echoing off the alley walls.
“Ah, so that is why you are so sweaty,” Max teases. “I had been meaning to ask.”
They both laugh at that, though Charles knows none of it is really that funny.
All of Charles’s drinks have started to catch up to her, and she sways slightly as she walks further down the alley. She turns to say something to Max, but nearly jumps when she finds the other girl’s face, once again, mere inches from her own.
Charles can pick out every freckle, every blemish, every slightly enlarged pore, and she finds herself fascinated by it, her eyes tracing invisible lines across Max’s face. She must have put mascara on her bottom lashes because Charles can see where they’ve clumped together, coming to tiny, sharp points below her eyes. Charles has the sudden urge to run her thumb under them.
Maybe it’s the power of suggestion, but Charles hasn’t had a day of peace since their conversation in Bahrain, thoughts slowly trickling in before flooding her mind with all the things she’s never allowed herself to imagine before. But imagining can only go so far— Charles is curious and wants to know .
So she leans sideways into the wall, meeting Max’s searching gaze, and slowly, intentionally, Charles lets her eyes drift down to Max’s lips.
When Max starts to lean in, Charles’s confidence wavers— she considers pulling back, thinking about the shoey Daniel forced on her not even half an hour ago, worried that if Max kisses her, she’ll be able to taste the awful combination of warm beer, sweat, and feet that Charles hasn’t been able to wash away with the last three drinks.
Max’s eyes widen, and Charles watches something like hurt flash across her eyes. Before she can overthink it, Charles meets her halfway, pressing their lips together.
Charles expects kissing Max to make her brain even foggier than the alcohol had already made it, but instead it has the opposite effect, bringing everything around her into focus. She can feel every place Max is touching her— the hand wrapped around her hip, the fingers twisted into the short hairs at the base of her skull, the soft but insistent press of her tongue against Charles’s lower lip.
The sounds of the bar are muffled by the door next to them as Charles loses her footing and pushes Max back a step and into the brick wall behind her. Max laughs into Charles’s mouth, and Charles groans at the feeling, letting her lips fall open further and tracing the line of Max’s bottom lip with her tongue. Every soft and quiet sound that slips from Max’s lips makes Charles crazier and crazier, desperate to find a way to swallow them down and keep them inside her forever.
Charles risks biting at Max’s lip, a sharp nip at the delicate skin between her teeth, and Max responds with a firm tug at Charles’s hair. Pinpricks of pain dance across the back of her neck, and Charles groans before multiple things happen in quick succession.
Faintly, Charles hears someone inside shout, “Hey, where’d Charles go?” Then, the previously muffled bar noises are suddenly loud and incredibly present, pounding against her ears as the side exit door swings open, narrowly missing Max. Both of them jump and spring apart to find none other than Daniel Ricciardo, mouth so wide open that Charles has the sudden urge to press it shut with her own hands.
Daniel lets the door fall closed behind him, still gaping at the pair of them, his lips moving as if he wants to talk but the words won’t come. He takes a deep breath, but Max is quick to cut him off.
“Daniel.” His eyes snap to Max, and his jaw clicks comically shut. Some strange, silent communication clearly passes between them because Daniel eventually nods, and all he says is “You’re not off the hook,” before slipping back inside.
The second the door slams shut again Max fits herself back into Charles’s space, her hands returning to their place on Charles’s hips and pressing their foreheads together.
“Sorry,” she breathes against Charles’s lips, but whatever tide Charles had gotten swept up in just a few moments earlier seems to have carried her back to shore and planted her firmly on solid ground. Charles slides her hands up Max’s arms and presses firmly against her shoulders until Max takes a stumbling step back.
“We shouldn’t have done that.” Something is pounding aggressively between her eyes. Max’s lips are still wet, and when Charles looks at them, she can see the neon lights of the bar reflecting on them, and her stomach twists. She kissed those lips. Max was going to back off, and then Charles had kissed her anyway.
Max looks up at Charles from underneath her dark eyelashes, and Charles is really starting to feel sick.
“I’m sorry–” she stumbles out. “We should–” Charles fumbles to find the door handle, but Max makes no move to follow.
“You go ahead.” She shifts against the opposite wall of the alley, looking slightly nauseous herself, her face pale and the shadows below her eyes dark.
Charles doesn’t wait for her to say anything else, practically tearing open the door and falling back into the safety of the raucous bar. She leans back against the wall just inside the door, giving herself a second to collect her breath, but her moment of peace is quickly shattered by a shouted, “Charlie! ”
Daniel is making his way over to her. Of course he is. As much as she tries to smooth her features and calm her breathing, Daniel must see something damning in her face.
“Where’s Max?”
Charles’s stomach roils at that, and she desperately shoves Daniel to the side and sprints for the bathroom.
It’s not her best moment, barely making it into the cramped space. Sticky tile and Sharpie graffiti meet her as she collapses to her knees in front of the chipped porcelain. Sweaty sandal beer tastes infinitely worse coming up than it did going down.
MONACO
Charles doesn’t really consider herself superstitious. She avoids walking under ladders because she’s a little afraid they will fall down on her, and she doesn’t open umbrellas inside because then how are you meant to fit it through the door.
Despite this, as she crosses the checkered flag and Xavi is yelling in her ear that it’s pole, she finds herself absently trying to remember what she’d worn to the track today, what she had for breakfast, if she’d done anything particular before getting ready for bed last night.
But then Sunday comes, and it turns out none of it really matters as she watches the race slip away from her like water between her fingers.
Hours later, after she’s slipped away from the track and the vulturous press, Charles finds herself on a small, secluded stretch of beach far from any yacht parties or busy clubs, Joris next to her, and three bottles of wine between them.
Charles wiggles her toes and cringes at the way the sand rubs against her skin. The cool air of the late spring evening nips at the bare skin of her shoulders. A loud pop echoes on the empty beach as Joris finally maneuvers the cork out of the second bottle. She passes it to Charles without a word, and Charles wastes no time in bringing the cold glass to her lips.
She winces when the wine hits her tongue. Typically, Charles prefers sweet whites, so the bitter tannins of the dark red Joris had snatched from her apartment send a shiver of displeasure down Charles’s spine.
“This was really all you had?” she asks, pursing her lips.
Joris laughs, swiping the bottle back and taking a long pull.
“If we finish this one off quickly enough, you won’t even be able to tell how bad it is by the third one.”
Charles doesn’t question her friend’s logic as she grabs the wine and tips her head back, her mouth filling with the sharp taste. Her head is starting to feel fuzzy, Joris’s profile rotating as Charles glances at her out of the corner of her eye.
“Are you superstitious, Joris?” Charles tries to ask it casually, but whether it’s the day they’ve had, where they’re sitting now, or the two mostly empty bottles of wine shoved into the sand between them, the words fall a little too heavily from her lips.
“What, like… black cats and broken mirrors?”
“No, not like that.” She picks at the corner of the label until her thumb nail slides under the corner, and she starts to peel away tiny strips of paper that drift along the sand in the soft, evening breeze. “It’s like…”
The edge of the label catches, slicing through the skin on the pad of her thumb. Bright red blood pools along the line of the cut, and Charles presses her pointer finger just below it, watching with sick satisfaction as the blood wells together and slides in a sticky line down the side of her thumb.
With nothing other than her clothes to wipe it on, Charles pops her thumb into her mouth, the tangy iron of her blood somehow tasting better than the bite of the dry red. She soothes the cut, pressing her tongue firmly against it to try and stem the flow. When she speaks again, her words are muffled by her thumb hooked in the corner of her mouth.
“You know when you were a kid and you would do something bad but small. Like un petit mensonge or when you would break your brother’s toy but it wasn’t one they played with often. And then for weeks you would feel sick to your stomach just waiting for someone to find you out or for something bad to happen to you in return for you being bad.”
Joris’s eyebrows have slid together as Charles speaks, but she doesn’t look at her friend as she twists the corkscrew into the third bottle. Charles squints at the label. Malbec. Her mouth twists.
“I suppose,” Joris admits while she tries to balance the bottle between her knobbly knees. “Why do you ask?”
Charles avoids responding by making a show of peering down at the cut on her thumb, turning it this way and that in the soft lights of the pier.
“I have felt like that all season, but the opposite. The winning, it… makes me nervous. Because inevitably it will stop. And when it does…” She breathes out through her nose, long and heavy. Charles wonders if she can purge this feeling in her chest along with the air escaping her lungs. “When it does, it will stop like this, today. And I do not know how to cope with it.”
Later, after Joris has safely deposited her back in her apartment, Charles stands in the pool of warm light in her kitchen, chest pressed against the cool marble countertop and scrolling through her phone.
Against her own better judgment, she opens Twitter. As post after post flies by, she continues to tell herself Just another minute. A tweet about her bad luck. A clip of a talking head claiming they’ve never seen a single driver experience so many missteps not of their own making in one season. Finally, it’s one of the tweets that’s a variation on the one she’s seen countless times before.
One day Monaco will love her back.
Charles immediately closes the app.
They can claim it’s superstition. The media can talk about bad luck until their faces turn the same shade as her racesuit and the blood once again pooling on her thumb, the skin stretching too far as she tries to reach across the screen. But at the end of the day, Charles wonders if she just doesn’t deserve this.
She thinks about standing outside a noisy bar, the rough brick wall digging into the bare skin between her shoulder blades, Max’s hand clamped firmly around her hip. She thinks about the way she felt something in her chest realign, like a train switching tracks, when Max’s thumb ran back and forth across the exposed skin above the waistband of her skirt.
Charles wants to know what feckless god she displeased this year—who had looked down and seen both her old and new hunger and sent this as a punishment?
Drunk and a little stupid, Charles opens her contacts and hovers her thumb over the bright red letters underneath Max’s name. Like when she was small and her mother told her she must give up something important in the weeks leading up to Easter, Charles wonders if giving up Max would be considered an equitable enough trade to give her a win next weekend.
“Why can’t I give up green beans?” Charles pouted as a child, pushing the limp vegetable around her plate. “That’d be so much easier.”
“It’s not meant to be easy, mon chou.” Her mother leaned forward, pressing her thumb to the middle of Charles’s bottom lip. Un poussin pourrait marcher sur cette lèvre, she would always chide. Charles sucked both lips quickly between her teeth. “It has to be something you will miss otherwise it does not mean anything.”
Charles’s thumb shifts across the screen, a hairsbreadth between her skin and the small phone icon. Her stomach flips, and she quickly turns off her phone screen and lays it face down on the counter. She may be drunk and a little stupid, but she’s not that drunk or that stupid.
Further proving to herself her ever increasing sobriety, Charles forces herself to fill a glass of water before shuffling through her apartment. She sets the glass down on her nightstand a little too aggressively then falls face-first into the duvet.
Just for a minute, she thinks to herself. Just a few seconds to rest her eyes before she gets ready for bed.
AUSTRIA
“Congratulations,” Max smirks at Charles as they wait in the wings, cap pulled low over her face.
Adrenaline still courses through Charles’s veins as she grins back. The warm afternoon light plays across the side of Max’s face that’s turned towards her, the other half thrown into dark shadows.
“Thanks,” she breathes out, suddenly lightheaded and dizzy.
Max is the reigning world champion. Max fought tooth and nail across the entirety of last season, and at the end of it, she stood on the top step, cheeks flushed and hair mussed, grin so wide Charles wondered that her lips didn’t split from the force of it. Charles sat and watched as Max won race after race after race.
And at the beginning of this year, Charles had thought that could be her. She had thought, maybe deludedly, that the championship could be hers, but almost as soon as the thought had crossed her mind, Max was tearing out ahead.
Halfway into the season, and seven podiums in a row and six wins later, Charles doubts she’ll be able to catch up again.
But today, in the dying light of a Sunday afternoon, it’s Charles who walks out and stands on the top step, heads and shoulders above the other two, Charles hoisting the weighty trophy high above her head, arms shaking though she tries to hide it. She stands on the podium, flanked on either side by two world champions.
Charles makes eye contact with Mattia in the sea of red below the podium and pushes herself onto the tips of her toes, lifting the trophy that much higher.
Her hands shake as she fights with the foil on top of the champagne, and just as she twists off the top, champagne hits the back of her neck, and Charles shrieks from the cold. She turns around, and through the spray of champagne, she can see Max grinning at her. Charles does her best to wipe the sticky liquid from her eyes and to return the favor to Max.
In the hallway after, Lewis hurries off, but Max lingers, falling into step beside Charles as she climbs down the stairs.
“That was the most fun I’ve had this season,” Max confesses, entirely unprompted, and Charles grins down at her boots. It’s one thing to win. It’s another to fight for it, and fighting with Max has always been Charles’s strength.
“Hmm.” Charles takes longer steps so that Max can’t see the smile on her face. “I still think Australia was better.”
Max splutters behind her, and Charles pulls her lip between her teeth to keep from laughing. As they move through the paddock, crowds of people part around them as if they are confined to their own little bubble, entirely engrossed in conversation. Max explains lap twenty-seven, and Charles complains about Lance trying to unlap himself.
Before she fully realizes what has happened, Charles is closing the door to her driver’s room with Max still mere inches away. She stays like that for a moment, her hand still on the door handle and breathing slowly through her nose. For a second, she wonders what would happen if she told Max to leave, made up some excuse about wanting to shower before heading back to the hotel.
“Charles?”
Her heart pounds in her throat as Charles slowly turns around, pressing her back against the door, desperate to feel something solid. As soon as she meets Max’s eyes, Charles wishes she hadn’t looked, because the clear blue of them is so open and questioning that it makes Charles’s chest ache.
“Are you alright?”
Charles laughs at that, a harsh, rough sounding thing ripped from her throat.
She laughs because the truth of the matter is that Charles has only felt this good a few times this season. The 1-2 in Bahrain, her grand slam in Australia, and later in the night, pressed up against the wall of a dive bar, Max’s lips against hers.
This is what scares her about Max, about this new gaping want inside her— Charles is not used to not getting the things she wants. She has lost things to be sure, and she knows that she won’t ever be satisfied until she sees her name on the world champion’s trophy. Until now, that has been the most pressing, all-encompassing want she has ever known.
But in her life, she is unused to being denied her simple desires. And though it terrifies her, Charles knows now that that’s what this is. Her want for Max is so deep and intense that Charles wishes she could pierce the middle of her chest with her nails, pull apart the skin, crack apart her breastbone, and root around in her chest cavity until she comes out, fingers bloody and heart in hand— anything to get rid of this feeling.
In lieu of tearing out her own heart, Charles thinks this might accomplish the same thing.
The step she takes forward is small, crossing the negligible distance between her and Max, and chests pressed against one another, Charles wraps her fingers in the short hairs at the base of her neck and crashes their lips together.
Charles can feel more than hear Max’s muffled noise of surprise, the startled breath rushing past Charles’s lips and into her mouth. Max is just as quick and impatient off track as on, and she wastes no time in wrapping her hands around Charles’s waist and walking them backwards until she reaches the couch. Max’s knees buckle as they hit the cushion, and Charles barely has enough time to catch herself, her hands pressed into the back of the couch and her knees bracketing Max’s thighs.
Their eyes meet, and suddenly frightened by the proximity, Charles ducks her face into Max’s neck.
Max’s throat tastes like champagne and sweat under Charles’s mouth, and absurdly, all she can think about is how much better it tastes than Daniel’s ridiculous shoey he’d made her do in Australia. There’s something intoxicating about Max, and Charles is fairly certain it isn’t the alcohol.
Charles’s arm shakes as she tries to hold herself away from Max’s body, but all of her efforts are thwarted when Max slides her arm around Charles’s waist and hauls her up and off the couch and into her lap. A soft gasp is punched out of her as her legs fall open and their thighs are pressed even closer together.
A shiver races up her back as still-wet fingers find the hem of her fireproofs and a palm presses hot and heavy to the dip of her spine. Charles moans into Max’s neck when those same, careful fingers run along the waistband of her underwear. On instinct, her hips buck forward, but when she is met with the pulsing heat of Max, her entire body freezes.
Her heart climbs up her throat, and Charles realizes as the seconds tick by that she should do something to cover her mistake.
Before she can pull the skin of Max’s neck between her teeth to distract her, Max is picking her up and placing Charles too gently beside her on the couch.
Charles stares resolutely down at her hands, but when she notices the slight tremor in them, she shoves them under her thighs. Her heart is still hammering in her chest, and she tries to get her breathing under control as she waits for Max to speak.
“Charles…”
Her eyes burn at the reprimanding tone of Max’s voice, and Charles forces herself to swallow at the lump in her throat, desperate not to let the sobs rise any further.
“Charles, I–” Max clears her throat. “I am not interested in being an experiment or some guilty pleasure. I do not want to do this if you are only going to make me or yourself feel bad about it afterwards.”
Charles’s eyes snap up at that, and she opens her mouth to argue, but met with the new coldness in Max’s eyes, her jaw clicks at the force with which she slams her teeth together.
“This is–” Max bites at her lip and stares off somewhere over Charles’s shoulder. Charles wonders if she is imagining the wetness at the corners of her eyes. She stands up and walks towards the door before Charles can get a closer look. “I’m not willing to put myself through that if you are still unsure what it is you want.”
The pattern of the upholstery goes wiggly and hurts Charles’s eyes as she stares unwaveringly at the couch cushions while Max picks up her trophy and slips out of the room, the click of the door latch deafening.
Charles wishes she could have argued with Max because she knows she wants, but her stupid brain can’t let that be enough.
She throws her head back against the couch, repeating the motion until the base of her skull connects a little too hard with the wooden frame underneath. Champagne sticky fingers rub at her head and as she moves her hand, Charles notices just how much hair has come loose from her tight french braids. She tugs at the errant strands, and tears finally fall down her cheeks as she thinks about having to undo and re-braid them all over again. Ridiculously, she wishes her mother was here to fix them for her.
A quiet knock on her door startles Charles out of her thoughts.
“Charles?”
The sound of her trainer’s voice has Charles sniffling desperately to slow her tears..
“Come in,” she croaks out.
Andrea opens the door just enough to slide inside. Charles can see him instantly clock her red eyes and tear stained cheeks, but he says nothing about either.
“Would you like to wash your face before press?” is all he says, sitting next to her on the couch. He wraps his hand around hers, slowly pulling her fingers away from her hair. “I can help fix these if you want. They will not be as nice as yours but…” Andrea trails off, the offer hanging in the air between them.
Charles swallows down the rest of her tears and gives a short, sharp nod.
“Thank you.” Andrea smiles down at her as he stands and moves to the small sink in the corner, checking the water temperature with his fingers before running a clean rag under it. The rag falls into her hands, and Andrea wordlessly turns her on the couch so he can crouch behind her, pulling her hair ties from the ends of her braids.
Dragging the cloth against her cheeks in small deliberate strokes, Charles revels in the comforting sensations of the warm fabric and Andrea’s careful fingers tangled in her hair, and for just a second, she loses herself in the feeling and lets herself forget.