Chapter Text
SUMMER BREAK
Although she’s been laying in bed and staring at her ceiling for well over an hour, sleep eludes Charles.
She tries laying on her back. She tries each side. She even tries rolling onto her stomach, arms wrapped awkwardly around her pillow.
Monaco traffic hums away, even at one thirty in the morning, the noise drifting in through the window Charles threw open twenty minutes ago in the hopes that the cool, summer air would lull her to sleep.
Instead, Charles’s brain gets caught on trying to identify the different cars that pass by the distant sound of their engines.
Charles had made the mistake of falling asleep on her deck in the early hours of the evening after a frozen dinner and half a bottle of rosé, and now she felt frustratingly wide awake, her mind whirring, flitting quickly from one absent thought to the next.
As the headlights of passing cars spill across her ceiling, Charles counts each of them and hopes that the repetition will pull her under and grant her a peaceful, dreamless sleep. She stares at the dancing lights above her, loses track after reaching forty, and groans, tossing from one side to the other.
Her mind drifts, like it has so often lately, to Max. Max in the cool down room, Max on the podium, Max passing her on track. But then her thoughts wander further, and she’s thinking about Austria and the warm press of Max’s thighs against hers. Heat lances through her abdomen, and Charles has to clench her thighs together as she thinks about the way Max’s fingertips pressed into her skin.
Charles shifts her thighs, trying to relieve some of the building pressure in her gut. The back of her neck grows hot, and she can feel the short strands of hair at the front of her face sticking to her forehead.
Absently, she thinks about the “cons” column on the list she’d put together just that afternoon, warm from the sun and tipsy on pink wine.
Whenever she needs to make sense of her thoughts, Charles makes a list. Her notebook is filled with them, pages upon pages of neatly organized tables. The list of things to discuss with her engineers is always separated into two separate columns— “short term” and “long term”. When she is particularly frustrated during a debrief, she writes down every thought that slips into her mind but categorizes them by “things she is allowed to say” and “things she is not”.
Logically, Charles assumed this system would help her make sense of the Max situation.
Forgoing her usual black notebook, Charles dug around in her desk until she found an old notepad with Ferrari branding on it. She didn’t want to chance someone finding this scribbled list, slotted between notes from the last race and her shopping list for the week.
Underneath the prancing horse, Charles wrote out a simple “pros” and “cons” at the top of the page. Her pen hesitated over the blank space beneath the “cons” column, just for a second, before slowly writing out coworkers? and then not gay? directly under it.
The gears in her mind ground against each other as she tried to come up with something else to put in that column. After a few more seconds of her eyes absently drifting to the “pros” column, Charles scribbled a quick annoying under the “cons” before moving her pen across the pages.
Cute and funny were written down almost immediately, but kissing her feels good followed mere seconds after. Charles stared at the page for a long, drawn out moment before adding never felt this way with a boyfriend.
After that, she’d thrown the notepad down on the couch, leaning forward to grab the bottle of wine off the coffee table. As she poured herself another glass, her last contribution to the “pros” side turned over and over in her mind before she had to snatch the paper back up and write down need to know!!! on the left-hand side of the page.
Unfortunately, that’s what it keeps coming back to as Charles lays in her bed, restless with thoughts of Max turning in her mind— she needs to know.
The sound of traffic creeps in through her cracked window, and Charles gives in, letting her hand drift down her torso.
Her fingertips meet the rough lace at the edge of her panties, and she plays with the tiny bow at the front, the ribbon slipping back and forth between her fingers. Charles can feel her heartbeat jumping in the hollow of her throat. Sliding her fingers under the waistband, she backs off almost immediately, elastic snapping against the taut skin of her stomach. She huffs out a short, frustrated breath wondering who exactly she thinks she’s fooling by pretending that she isn’t about to touch herself while thinking of Max.
Compromising with herself, Charles moves her hand over her underwear and flushes when her hips jolt off the bed as the heel of her palm glances over her clit.
She tries desperately to clear her mind, imagines wiping away lesson notes on a chalkboard, left with a clean, blank surface.
Then, piece by piece, Charles starts forming an image of a faceless partner.
She imagines rough fingertips tracing down her back, stubble scratching at her neck, a rough, low voice in her ear.
But when she imagines a large hand pinning her down, a hard dick grinding against her, she cringes.
Chest heaving, Charles squeezes her eyes shut.
She shouldn’t be doing this. She can’t be doing this, can’t imagine seeing Max at the next race and having to hold a normal conversation with her after this.
Try as she might to push away the visions of Max in her mind, every jolt of pleasure lacing up her spine as she bucks up into the heel of her palm makes her think of messy blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Charles caves, pushing aside her underwear and pressing two fingers to her clit. She loses herself in the repetitive motions, letting her mind flick between all the various ways she’s imagined Max and tried to repress.
Max with one hand buried in her cunt, the other pressing firmly on Charles’s hip to hold her down.
Max on her back in a sea of messy sheets, their positions flipped, her cheeks flushed and hair mussed.
Her imagination settles on the image of Max looking up at her, head buried between Charles’s thighs and blue eyes gleaming.
Charles muffles her shout into the back of her free hand as she comes around her fingers, shaking through the shock of her sudden orgasm.
Unrelenting Monaco traffic continues to hum away as Charles pulls her hand out of her underwear and gracelessly wipes her fingers off on her thigh.
Absurdly, even though the ceiling she stares at and the cars on the street and the breeze slipping in through her window all look and sound and feel the same, Charles thinks something irrevocable has shifted.
Endorphins flood her system though as she rolls over onto her side and checks the time on her phone.
2:17.
Her eyes go heavy as she double checks that she doesn’t have anything she needs to be up early for tomorrow before switching off her screen and turning onto her other side.
Leg thrown carelessly across one of the dozen pillows piled up on her bed, sleep slips its careful fingers into her mind and drags her under.
✦✦
“So…” Lando draws the word out, peering at Charles over his boat of chips. “Max.” Charles groans and drops her head back against the bench, letting herself get lost for a second in the sounds of waves breaking against the pier and the seagulls circling overhead.
“Come on,” Lando protests before Charles can shut down the conversation. “I drove to your place so you wouldn’t have to–”
“You showed up at my house and laid on the buzzer until I let you in.”
“I brought you to the pier–”
“You told me to get in the car or you’d ‘make a scene’.”
“And I paid for your food!”
“I didn’t even want anything!” Charles laughs exasperatedly. “You said I had to get chips as well so you didn’t feel as bad about it.”
“I offered you chips because you’ve been mopey and weird as hell since Austria, and I figured you needed to… I dunno, eat ice cream and paint each other’s nails and talk about feelings and other… girl stuff.”
Charles laughs loudly, her heart swelling at the way Lando’s cheeks turn pink.
“Shut up,” he mutters, shoving a handful of chips into his mouth.
“Gross. So this is your idea of girl’s night? The pier and chips and a soda?”
“I’ve just been worried about you, mate. Max too, but I think if I tried to get her to talk about her feelings, she’d murder me and throw my body in the harbor.”
Fluttering insects make themselves known in Charles’s stomach like they do any time Max is mentioned lately or any time she sees a picture of Max or thinks about Max or—
“I just wanted to say you could… tell me about it. If you want.” Charles pushes the chips around, suddenly not very hungry. “Did you fight?” Lando’s face is so open, and Charles’s stomach hurts. “Because of the race?”
“Sort of…” His clear blue gaze is unwavering, the weight of it heavy on Charles’s face. It wasn’t really a… fight. I just did something stupid. I think– no, I know it upset her quite a lot.”
“Did you apologize?” Charles scoffs. “If you know something you did upset her, you need to apologize.”
“I just–” She groans and stuffs some chips in her mouth to give herself time to form words. “I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
“So,” Lando draws the word out. “You’re saying she’s upset for no reason?”
Charles scowls at the battered boards of the pier beneath her sneakers.
“No.”
Lando laughs at that, and Charles has to resist the urge to throw something at him.
“Then you need to tell her you’re sorry you hurt her feelings.”
“But I–” For a second, Charles wishes they were just having a girls night so that she could grab a pillow and yell some of her frustration into it. She takes a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth before arranging her thoughts carefully. “I am worried that I will just make it worse if I try to make it better. I do not know that she would even want to talk with me.”
Lando hums thoughtfully at that, scraping the last bits of his chips up and shoveling them into his mouth, fingertips shiny with grease.
“Maybe,” he concedes, words garbled around his overly full mouth. “But you won’t know if you don’t try.”
Charles caves and throws one of her chips at him.
Later, after Lando drives them up into the hills and lets Charles shout away some of her feelings, he drops her off back in front of her building. The sun has started its lazy descent towards the horizon, and the warm sea breeze stirs Charles’s hair, loose and hanging around her shoulders. The idea of going up into her empty apartment feels entirely too suffocating to Charles right now, so instead she sets off down the street.
Weaving through the backstreets of Monaco, Charles feels the warm embrace of her hometown. No tourists wander past her, no cars speed past. Only a small girl driving an RC car in the street who tugs at her brother’s arm to get his attention, mouth hanging open as they watch Charles go by. Charles sends them a small wave and laughs to herself as the girl shrieks delightedly and they both run inside their home.
She keeps walking, making her way closer to her maman’s place.
Charles tries to remember if her mother is even home this week and is just about to pull out her phone and shoot off a text when she rounds the corner and collides with someone.
Apologies tumble quickly from her lips in French and English before she leans back and realizes she recognizes the person she nearly knocked over onto the cobblestone street.
The very object of all her frustrations is standing in front of her, a net bag of produce hanging from one arm and a green, floral sundress clinging to her hips.
When she meets Max’s eyes, Charles expects to see some sort of anger or disdain. They haven’t seen each other since Austria, and the last image Charles has of Max is her cold eyes as she pulled away from Charles and told her that she thought this was a bad idea.
Instead, Max smiles softly at her and bites at her bottom lip.
“I figured you would be traveling for the break.”
Charles shakes her head, briefly stunned into silence that Max is even speaking with her.
“No,” she says. “I wanted to… rest.” She is uncomfortably aware of the way her arms are hanging at her sides and shifts from foot to foot before stopping completely, worried that Max will notice her fidgeting and thinks she wants to leave.
“And have you?” Charles raises an eyebrow, and Max shrugs, smiling. “Rested?”
Charles smiles back.
“Yeah, it’s… It’s been good.”
“Good.” There isn’t a trace of sarcasm or mockery in Max’s voice. Neither of them say anything for a long, drawn out moment, before suddenly, they are speaking over each other.
“I wanted to call–”
“Maybe we could get a drink?” Charles blurts out, bulldozing over any semblance of a sentence Max had been stringing together.
Max raises her eyebrow at that, and her eyes narrow suspiciously. Her cheeks flood with heat under Max’s clear, blue gaze.
“Just a drink,” Charles clarifies, and Max just hums quietly but smiles at Charles all the same.
“My apartment is just around the corner,” she offers.
And that’s how they end up on opposite ends of the couch on Max’s balcony, her painted toes curling around the glass topped coffee table. Charles brings her glass to her lips.
“Red?” Charles observes before taking a large gulp of wine.
Max smirks and wiggles her toes.
“Blue looks weird with my skin,” she explains. “Too pale.” The setting sun catches on her glass as she tips it back.
Something about being here, in Max’s space, has unlocked something in Charles’s brain, all the questions that she’s silently pushed away since the start of the season suddenly fighting for attention at the forefront of her mind.
Charles wants to ask about Max’s wins. She wants to ask about Nelson Piquet’s daughter who Max had been photographed with last summer. She wants to ask Max what it took for her to be so okay with all of it.
Instead she asks, “When did you know you were attracted to women?”
And Max— beautiful, confident, boisterous Max— fidgets and lowers her gaze so she doesn’t have to meet Charles’s gaze, picking at a hangnail.
“I… don’t know that there was ever a realization that I like women. It was more that–” Max takes a deep breath. “I realized that I did not feel about men the same way as other girls my age did. I had always known that women were what I liked. It was the realizing that everyone assumed I felt that way about men that was surprising. Although, I don’t know that people did expect that of me, because it was around the same time that people started talking about those things that I was taking karting very seriously. You, of course, know what type of comments come with that.”
Charles does. It’s a male dominated sport, so you are prepared for the comments about how women are not as capable, how they are only there because of this or that— an inclusivity program or because they will look good in the marketing campaigns. A ten-year-old girl is not ready to hear, from the boys she was playing football with just a year earlier, that any girl good enough to do this well in sport must be gay.
Her stomach twists when she thinks about how vehemently she had denied any such suggestions of her sexuality.
She doesn’t think she could have been like Max, taking all the allegations in stride—never confirming or denying— before turning around and tearing across that week’s track to show everyone how little anything anyone had to say about her personal life mattered.
Charles has always been too self conscious for that sort of… She doesn’t have a good word for it, but she thinks bravery might fit because it does take a special kind of confidence to ignore all the relentless, buzzing noise and continue to prove yourself week after week.
“Yeah,” Charles croaks out. “I do.”
Max stares at her curiously, cool, blue eyes assessing as they search for something in her face.
“What about you? Was there a moment you realized?” Her glass is raised to her lips, and Max takes another long drink before she continues, “Or are we still pretending that you are not attracted to women?”
Charles feels sick again and has to set down her wine glass.
“I suppose… It was something I’d never let myself consider. When you are a woman in motorsport, people of course, are making these suggestions anyway, and all I knew was to deny them. I had denied them long enough that it was never something to question. I had said it was true, so it was.”
“And now?” Max’s voice has gone quieter, lower, and something in Charles’s chest feels like it’s being tugged on, like a hook caught in the mouth of a fish. Still, Charles fights back, like if she finds the right angle, catches the right current, she might be able to fight her way free. She chews on the inside of her cheek, trying to find the right words.
“I just think sometimes…” She stares at the way the setting sun shines through her glass and casts reflections on the floor. Max’s gaze feels tangible on her skin. “I don’t know. Being a woman in Formula One feels like enough of a statement to me.”
Max leans forward, setting her drink down on the table, the sound of glass on glass making Charles wince.
“I suppose,” she replies carefully. “But not everything has to be for everyone else. Some things can just be for you.” Something about the softness of Max’s voice, pulls Charles’s gaze to her. She lets her eyes wander over the soft curve of Max’s jaw, the gentle slope of her neck, the light dusting of freckles across her collarbones.
“Yeah.” Her tongue is heavy with wine and her proximity to Max. “I suppose.” She repeats Max’s words, teasing, with a soft lilt to her voice as she says it.
“So, what?” Max queries, as direct and blunt as ever. The red on her cheeks is even more pronounced by the alcohol and the heat. Small pieces of her hair are sticking out at odd angles around her face. Charles grabs her wine again, suddenly desperate to have something to do with her hands. “You are just never going to act on the fact that you are attracted to women?”
Charles sputters, having just raised her glass to her lips. Her nose burns as she chokes on her drink. Max raises a brow, but says nothing. “ Max ,” Charles chides. “You cannot just say that.” The glass hits the table with a little more force than she intends as she sets it down again.
“It’s true, no?”
“I mean– obviously I– It’s like this–”
“Charles.” Max’s eyes, the same color of the sea just outside Charles’s apartment, gleam in the late afternoon light.
Anything else Charles might have said gets caught in her throat. “Yeah?” her voice cracks around the word.
Max doesn’t say anything else right away, and Charles’s tongue feels heavy in her mouth, but the wine more than anything pulls confessions out of her.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” she blurts out, desperate to fill the silence, “ever since Australia.” She winces slightly and amends, “Since Bahrain really.”
Max’s bright eyes go wide, but still, she says nothing.
“I don’t–” Charles takes a steadying breath, wanting, needing to get this right this time. “I can’t define it yet. I can’t say ‘This is who I am now.’ But I know that this feeling isn’t going anywhere because–” She swallows heavily. “Because I’ve wanted it to for the last three months, and it hasn’t.”
The confession hangs in the empty space between them, and Charles has to physically bite her tongue to stop herself from continuing her rambling. When Max speaks again, she suddenly can’t meet Charles’s eyes. Her gaze wanders somewhere past her shoulder and out across the harbor.
“I do not need you to have a definition for it. I know it is new for you. I just–” Charles wants to reach out and grab Max’s hand, to show some form of comfort, but she doesn’t know if she is allowed. “I don’t want this to be something you use to hurt yourself later.”
Her words collide with the middle of Charles’s chest, stealing the air right out of her lungs.
“I don’t want that either,” she whispers. Max’s eyebrows raise but her eyes never wander from Charles’s.
The usual, ever present background noise that is Monaco hums away below them as Charles shifts on the couch so she is directly facing Max. She pulls one leg up underneath her so that she has more leverage as she leans forward.
In her mind, Charles visualizes the distance between herself and Max, stopping at her approximation of the halfway point. As she pauses in that no-man’s land, her mind drifts to her physics class of all things, fixating on the philosopher Zeno. She can’t remember if he was Greek or Roman but she remembers being sixteen and moody and difficult and finding a tragic beauty in the idea that two objects could never truly touch.
Nearly a decade later, Charles knows the solution to the quandary though, and she waits halfway for Max to prove her theory.
Her heart pounds loudly in her throat as Max pulls her knees up to the couch, crouching next to Charles and leaning forward.
They meet in the middle, and Charles wraps her fingers in the short hairs at the base of Max’s skull as she pulls their mouths together.
Like every other time she has kissed Max, Charles tries not to think about it, to get her brain to cooperate and just shut off for a second. Instead, she dives into Max’s warm, welcoming mouth, letting herself get lost in the wet drag of their mouths. Before she knows it, Charles is tugging at Max’s thighs and pulling her up and into her lap.
The noises Max makes against her mouth are intoxicating, and Charles swallows each of them down like the wine she’d just been drinking
She finds herself fixated on Max’s thighs, her hands running across them in senseless patterns. Charles thinks of all the times she’s stared at Max in her navy race suit, the fabric clinging to her waist and the way her hips slope down toward her thighs. More than once, Charles has lost her focus during a podium or post race interview while staring at the outline of Max’s figure. Now that the long expanse of Max’s legs are laid bare to her, Charles wastes no time in letting her touch drag across Max’s skin. Soft, blonde curls cover her legs.
“You don’t shave,” Charles says stupidly and immediately wants to snatch the bottle of wine off the coffee table and whack herself over the head with it. She expects Max to get defensive, but her soft wheezing laugh hits Charles gently in the chest.
“Mate, I am usually wearing full body race suits or jeans, and when I am in dresses, I could not care less.” Her cheeks grow red, and she squirms a little under Charles’s gaze. “Does that bother you?” She sounds defensive but there’s something small and shy underneath it that makes Charles’s heart squeeze.
“No,” Charles quickly insists. She drops her head, pressing butterfly kisses along the line of Max’s shoulder, pushing aside the thin strap of the dress until it falls loose around Max’s forearm. Her lips map out each freckle and mark, and as her tongue slips the slightest bit out of her mouth, Charles swears she can taste the sun on her skin. Forcing herself to move on, Charles’s fingers dip under the hem of Max’s dress.
Despite the strong muscles resting just below the skin, Max’s thighs are still noticeably softer than anyone Charles has ever been with, and her brain decides to fixate on it— the smooth skin, the soft, blonde hairs, the gentle turn of her knee.
But before she can freeze again, stunned by the newness of it all, Charles’s fingers run along the back of Max’s knee. Shivering in her lap, Max gasps out a broken “Charles” against her collarbone, and Charles quickly decides to stop thinking.
Her hands slide up underneath Max’s dress on a relentless path until they reach the jut of her hips. The tips of her fingers graze the rough, lacy edging of her underwear as Charles grows impatient and hikes the whole skirt up around Max’s waist.
Max’s mouth is moving relentlessly at Charles’s neckline, sucking marks into the curve of her throat. Charles runs her fingers back and forth across the waistband of Max’s underwear. She lets her fingertips drag along the skin just underneath the hem over and over and over again until Max’s fingernails are digging into her shoulders.
“Charles,” she gasps, more an exhalation of air than an actual word.
Charles smirks against her lips as she pulls their mouths together.
“Oui mignonne?” Charles can feel the way Max’s nose wrinkles at the endearment.
“Just touch me.”
Something about how the way Max is draped over her lap feels so natural gives Charles the confidence to tease.
“I am touching you, cherie,” she murmurs into Max’s neck before pulling the skin softly between her teeth.
Max groans, her legs falling open even further, and Charles’s stomach flips as Max rotates her hips in an effort to hide the fact that she’s really trying to grind down on Charles’s thigh. Chest tightening, her grip tightening on Max’s hips as her thumb hook under the elastic of Max’s panties. She drags one thumb, slowly but deliberately, along the seam until short gasps fall from Max’s lips.
Grumbling wordlessly in complaint, Max’s blue eyes fix Charles in their cool glare as Charles flips their positions and falls to her knees between Max’s thighs. Charles feels trapped in her gaze as Max stares down at her, and she holds their eye contact as he leans forward to press open-mouthed misses across her legs.
She dips down, her lips tracing twisting circuits across Max’s thighs. Her tongue glances across the curve of the back of Max’s knee, and heat pools in her stomach when she tastes the sweat clinging to the skin there. Teeth dragging across Max’s skin, Charles shifts so that she is resting on her calves, her breath catching in her throat as she finds herself at eye-level with Max’s stark white, lacy panties.
Charles stares for a long moment at the dark spot in the center of her underwear for a long moment before looking up and catching Max’s eye again.
“Maybe…” Max swallows, throat bobbing, and Charles watches pink blush down her neck and across the center of her chest. “Maybe we should move to the bedroom.” Her sentence ends on a huffed breath that stirs the hairs framing Charles’s face. The prospect makes her stomach clench, but she nods wordlessly.
She lets Max pull her up off the floor, and Charles feels like a lovesick kid, tripping over her own feet as she struggles to stand, never pulling her gaze from Max’s face. Max leads them through the apartment, giggling as she stops abruptly in the doorway of her bedroom and Charles stumbles into her back.
Max’s bed is messy and clearly only half made, the duvet thrown lazily across the mattress and pillows piled haphazardly against the headboard, but still something about it catches Charles in the chest.
This isn’t making out outside a bar.
This isn’t kissing in Max’s driver’s room,
This isn’t feeling her up on the balcony.
This is a bed and the two of them standing hand in hand in the doorway and clean, white sheets and the afternoon sun spilling across the room, warming the space.
But when Max takes another step into the room and looks back at Charles over her shoulder, eyes bright and crinkling at the corners, Charles can’t imagine not following.
They tumble onto the bed together, a dangerous mess of limbs.
Charles wiggles herself down the mattress until she is, once again, slotted between Max’s thighs. She wastes no time in flipping Max’s skirt up, exposing her underwear and the soft curve of her belly. Charles wants to press her lips to the soft hairs resting just under the dip of her belly button, but she makes herself keep moving down. Hooking her thumbs into the top of Max’s panties, Charles is dragging them over her hips and down her thighs without a second thought.
Max needs no encouragement to lift her hips, arching off the mattress and gasping as Charles throws the scrap of fabric behind her and immediately leans back in, breath ghosting over Max’s now exposed cunt.
It’s at this moment that Charles’s brain starts to feed her wandering thoughts. Surely she won’t be any good at this, with her only frame of reference being the admittedly few times a boyfriend had ever gone down on her. Max won’t say anything, but Charles will know that she isn’t really enjoying herself.
Before her thoughts can spiral any further, Max’s finger catches under Charles’s jaw, tipping her head up to meet her gaze.
“Charlie,” Max whispers, and her stomach twists at the nickname, pulse fluttering. She swallows frantically, struggling to speak around the lump in her throat.
“Yes?” she croaks out.
“Are you okay?”
Her chest cracks open, and for a second Charles is worried that she’ll have to grasp at her heart to stop it from falling out and staining Max’s startlingly clean sheets. Max’s voice is so soft and earnest, and it’s that gentle kindness that gives her the courage to lean forward and press her lips into the crease of Max’s thigh, mere centimeters from where she is wet and wanting.
“Yes,” she whispers into the delicate skin. There’s a freckle here, and Charles wonders how many others have ever seen this small, hidden part of her as she traces her tongue over the mark. “What do you want?”
Max huffs then, incredulous and slightly frustrated, and Charles preens at the knowledge that she’s done that to Max, made her squirm.
“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious, Charles. Are you going to eat me out, or do I need to take care of it myself?”
Never one to back down from a challenge, especially when it comes to Max, Charles dips her head down, licking a long stripe across Max. The taste is strange— not bad, just new and somehow familiar. Charles thinks about kissing boys after they had gone down on her, about how it had felt wrong how turned on that had made her. Now she drags her tongue over the intricate folds of Max, desperate to memorize every careful detail, consume every piece of her that Max is willing to give.
Charles lets herself get lost in it, tracing torturous circuits across Max’s clit with her tongue as the minutes tick by. She can’t tell just how much time has passed when she notices Max starting to squirm underneath her. Glancing down, Charles can see Max’s white knuckles as she clings desperately to the sheets. The strong muscles of her thighs tense on either side of Charles’s head, and her hips press further into the mattress as if she is trying not to buck up into Charles’s mouth.
The grin that splits her face makes it hard for Charles to maintain a rhythm, but she pulls back to meet Max’s eyes.
Sweat glistens at her temples, her cheeks hot and flushed, eyes gleaming, and Charles’s breath catches.
“Are you–” Her voice breaks, and she has to swallow around the tightness in her throat.
“I was.”
Charles huffs, smiling, and dips back down. She reaches up blindly with one hand, loosening Max’s fingers from the sheets and placing her hand on the back of Charles’s head. With her free hand, Charles drags her fingers up the inside of Max’s thigh until she’s probing gently at her entrance.
She looks up, and Max nods frantically when their eyes meet, and that’s all the encouragement Charles needs to slide a finger inside Max, pulling her clit between her lips and sucking.
Charles tries not to think about Max’s wide open windows as her shout echoes in Charles’s ears. Even as Max is shaking apart around her, Charles doesn’t let up, hoping that what feels good for her feels good for Max. She drags her tongue in long, flat strokes and curls her finger just so to press against that spot that Charles can never quite reach when she touches herself but that she knows sends rolling waves of pleasure through her gut.
Her brain goes hazy, completely lost in her single-minded focus of making Max feel as good as possible. It’s only once Max has called her name over and over that things start to come back into focus.
Charles finds herself abruptly nervous, her cheeks warming as she lets her head rest against Max’s thigh.
“Was that…” She licks her lips nervously, and a jolt of arousal lances through her at the taste of Max still clinging there. “Good?”
Charles does her best not to feel embarrassed as Max just laughs, a little delirious, her forearm thrown across her face so that Charles can’t discern her expression.
She decides she’s never going to know if she doesn’t just ask, so she crawls up Max’s body before coming to rest hovering above her. Hand wrapped loosely around Max’s wrist, Charles tugs at her hand until Max’s arm falls away from her face.
Greeted by gleaming eyes and a wide smile, Charles can’t help the soft, disbelieving laugh that is punched out of her.
“Well?” She persists, nervous.
Instead of answering, Max leans up and presses their lips together. Their movements are lazy and indulgent, and Max’s hand creeps up under Charles’s shirt, dancing under the hem of her bra. Charles moans as Max unhooks her bra with one hand as the other draws circles on her hip.
Doing her level best not to elbow Max, Charles wiggles out of her shirt and casts it and the bra to the foot of the bed. Max’s mouth falls open, and Charles dives back down to kiss her full, wet lips, suddenly self conscious. Max hikes her leg over Charles’s hip and flips their positions, her mouth never parting from Charles’s.
When she finally does lean back, Charles’s stomach flips at the predatory look in her eyes.
“You were very good, Charles,” Max concedes, and she warms under the praise, every inch of skin that Max touches alight with pleasure.
Max shuffles down the bed, hooking her fingers in the waistband of Charles’s shorts and waiting until Charles nods to pull the clothing completely off.
Charles can feel the heat of her breath through her underwear as Max props herself up between her legs.
“But let me give you some tips.”
✦✦
Over the course of the rest of their summer break, Charles comes to learn more about Max than she ever had in the last decade of racing her.
Max loves to talk, and Charles loves to listen.
Max talks like she has nothing to hide, and Charles’s stomach twists at the idea that maybe she doesn’t.
Max tells her silly things and serious things, and sometimes Charles wonders if Max can even tell the difference.
✦✦
“When I was fifteen, I shaved part of my head.”
Charles snorts, water coming out of her nose, and Max laughs, clear and bright, like a bell ringing through Charles’s apartment, before handing her a napkin.
Just after lunch, Max had shown up at her door flushed and sweaty from her run and full lips just begging to be kissed, and Charles was helpless to deny her.
They had spent the rest of the afternoon in Charles’s bed, both of them taking turns getting the other off, until Charles had pleaded for mercy, insisting that she needed water and maybe a protein bar if they were going to go again.
“My dad came into the bathroom part way through and took me to a barber the next day to fix it. He had to chop off quite a bit, and my dad lectured me the whole time.” Max slides into the stool next to Charles, spinning the bracelets stacked on her wrist. “I don’t think he really cared what my hair looked like, he just didn’t like that I’d done something so impulsive just to piss him off.”
Charles remembers seeing Max not long after the haircut, the sides of her hair buzzed and long and messy on top.
“Doesn’t she look cool?” Alex had asked, awestruck. Charles had to resist the urge not to smack the back of his head, suddenly desperate to get his eyes off of Max.
Even then, Charles remembers being a little disgusted by it. Surely Max didn’t want to look like one of the boys. People made enough gross jokes about them as it was. Why would Max invite more?
Now Charles leans forward and runs her fingers through Max’s short, choppy hair, stomach going hot with shame that she’d even thought it.
“Short hair suits you.”
Max grins, and tilts her head down to press a soft kiss to Charles’s lips.
✦✦
“Why can they not just write all of the measurements down somewhere?” Charles exclaims as she tries her best to rewind the TikTok she is watching without getting food on the screen.
“You are the one who chose to make something you saw online,” Max points out. “You could have just found a written recipe.”
Charles pouts, and Max swoops in to kiss it off her lips.
“You sent it to me,” she protests against Max’s mouth. “You said it looked good.”
Max leans back then, her eyes searching Charles’s face. There’s a pepper seed clinging to her cheek and God only knows how it got there, but Charles reaches up to swipe it away with her thumb.
“Well, if it’s for me,” she grins at Charles before letting go and turning back to her cutting board, “by all means keep struggling with your little video.”
Charles rolls her eyes, smiling down at her phone.
“Shut up.”
She watches the same five seconds of the video at least three times trying to pause it at the exact moment it shows how much butter she should be adding.
“Is Charles short for something?” Max asks out of nowhere. Charles glances at her, surprised by the question, and Max just shrugs and continues cutting. “I realized I do not know.”
She catches the video at the right frame and shouts in triumph. Three tablespoons.
“On my birth certificate it is Charlotte, and my maman is calling me this sometimes,” Charles explains as she moves to the fridge to grab the butter. Max had grabbed it as they ran down the list of ingredients, but the recipe said it had to be cold so Charles insisted she put it back even though it would only be sitting out for a few minutes. “I was named after my father’s brother, so everyone was always calling me ‘little Charles’, and then just ‘Charles’, and now we are here. Once I started karting, I liked being able to surprise people, for them to see ‘Charles’ on the paper and then to have me show up.”
Max chuckles at that.
“I am just Max,” she says as she places the cut up peppers in a bowl. “It was my dad’s idea. He was so certain I would be a boy and was dead set on ‘Max Emilian’.” Charles shifts behind her, hand brushing against her waist to silently let Max know not to back up as she moves to the stove. “My mom had to talk him into ‘Emilia’ once I was born.”
Max is grinning when she turns to Charles, bright eyes sparkling in the golden light of the kitchen. Isn’t that funny , her eyes ask. Charles’s chest just feels heavy. She wants to reach out and hug Max but she thinks that would be weird. It’s one thing to make each other come and kiss and lay in bed together, but hugging feels…
Instead, she sets the bundle of tomatoes on Max’s cutting board.
“These need to be diced. Can you do that for me?”
Max leans across the stove to grab a small handful of shredded cheese from the bowl next to Charles and shoves it into her mouth.
“Anything for you, schatje.”
Charles wrinkles her nose at the endearment, and Max just laughs, and as Max starts chopping the tomatoes and Charles stirs the sauce, she thinks about how nicely the sound fits in her space.
✦✦
“I remember when we were teenagers,” Max says softly tucked up in bed behind her, and Charles jumps, half convinced that Max had already fallen asleep, “and you pushed me off track.” Charles nods, pressing herself back into the heat of Max. “I was so mad.”
Max’s fingers play across her ribs like she is playing Charles’s beloved piano. Charles shivers as she glances across the soft skin just under her chest. Max presses her palm to the middle of Charles’s breastbone, a reassurance.
“I was ranting to Victoria about it the next time I saw her, and she just laughed at me. She said you were like the boy in maths tugging on the braids of the girl he likes.”
Charles feels her cheeks go red, glad Max can’t see.
“I told her you were just being a jealous bitch.”
Charles gasps in mock affront and tries to dig her elbow in between Max’s ribs. Max just giggles and pins Charles’s arms to her sides.
They lapse into silence, and when Charles is once again convinced Max has fallen asleep, soft words stir the small hairs at the base of her skull.
“I’ve liked you for a long time, Charles. But I never thought there was a chance you would feel the same. I never wanted to make you uncomfortable. But–” Max cuts herself off, and Charles keeps her breathing as even as possible, hoping that maybe Max will believe she is asleep.
But Max doesn’t say anything else, just leans forward and presses a soft kiss to the top of Charles’s spine.
✦✦
Charles is drifting in and out of consciousness, that lovely liminal space right before you fully fall asleep. Max dances her fingertips over the stretch of skin exposed by Charles’s t-shirt riding up. Her eyes are closed, warmed by the early evening light pouring in through her large windows.
Muffled words land on her ears as if they had traveled underwater to reach her. She pulls her eyes open, one after the other, and finds Max smiling down at her, trying to hand Charles her phone.
“Your mother tried to call.”
Her legs fold easily under her as she sits up and unlocks her phone.
mama
16:52 - Is there anything you would like me to bring tonight? I can have Lorenzo run to the store.
Despite the golden sunlight bathing her apartment in warmth, Charles’s chest suddenly goes cold, her hands shaking as she closes her phone.
“Merde,” she whispers, jumping to her feet and running to her kitchen to catalog everything in her fridge.
“Is everything alright?” Max’s voice drifts in to her from the living room.
Charles was going to make soup. She rifles through her fridge and her cabinets to make sure she still has all the things she bought earlier this week. Once she has everything lined up on the counter, Charles grabs her phone.
a couple loaves of bread would be good :) i forgot to pick some up this morning
“Charles?”
Max’s voice is closer than it was before, and Charles jumps. When she turns around, the sight of Max leaning so casually in the doorframe catches her in the throat. She’d gotten hot, as she always did, laying so close together, and had taken her shirt off almost as soon as they started cuddling on the couch. Now Charles looks at her, standing in the kitchen, in just a sports bra and athletic shorts, hair mussed and cheeks flushed.
But instead of the usual flip in her stomach, Charles just feels a little bit like she might throw up, terrified that at any moment, her family will be letting themselves into her apartment.
“You need to go.”
“O- Okay?”
Charles doesn’t meet her eyes, catching the hurt look on Max’s face out of the corner of her eye.
“My family is coming over for dinner. I completely spaced it off, that is my fault, but you can’t–” She snatches Max’s t-shirt off the couch, twisting it between her hands. “They could get here at any minute, and you shouldn’t be here.”
Max steps back into the living room, hip cocked to the side, and Charles tosses the shirt at her before grabbing Max’s phone and keys off the coffee table.
Max laughs, shirt clutched loosely in one hand while Charles shoves her things into the other. The sound of it is bright and open and so painfully contradictory to how Charles is feeling. Sweat covers the back of her neck, the short hairs at the base of her skull plastered uncomfortably to her skin.
“Oh, come on, Charles.” The final s hisses between her teeth, her vowels long and warm in her mouth, still lax and soft from their afternoon spent dozing together. “Would it be so awful for your family to find me here?” Hands wrapped firmly around Max’s shoulders, Charles steers them toward the tight entrance hallway, but Max shakes off her grasp, turning in the circle of Charles’s arms and crossing her wrists behind Charles’s neck.
She leans forward, slotting her thigh between Charles’s legs and pressing her back against the wall with a careful, practiced ease. Charles’s heart rate spikes from a combination of the sudden proximity and the crushing realization that they got more comfortable with this thing between them than she had ever intended.
“Which would be worse?” Max queries, a teasing glint in her shining blue eyes. “Your family walking in that door to find you kissing a girl or finding you with a Red Bull driver?”
Charles scoffs and pulls back as ice-water shock courses down her spine.
“You are not as funny as you think, Max.”
Max’s face softens, and her hand wraps loosely around Charles’s wrist, tugging at it gently— a suggestion, not a demand.
And Charles goes, pressing their foreheads together.
“I was only teasing, schatje.” Warm breath stirs the baby hairs framing her face, and Charles tries not to squirm at the way they tickle. “I, of course, know you are not out to them and that they do not know we are together.”
“Out?” Charles asks incredulously. “What is there to be out about?”
“Well that…” She clears her throat, and Charles can feel Max’s chest shifting against hers. “That you are gay.”
Her stomach plummets straight down to the Monaco streets below her. Much, much too comfortable. Charles pulls her wrist from Max’s grip and steps backwards a few short steps until her back collides with the opposite wall of the entryway.
“I am not gay,” she insists. “And we are not together.” Charles spits out the word as Max’s words finally catch up with her.
Max’s mouth falls open on a quiet huff, so quiet that Charles doesn’t think she would have heard it if they weren’t still standing so close together. Charles wishes they weren’t having this conversation here, right in front of the door, where the space is so small she can’t put as much distance between them as she’d like. Max doesn’t say anything right away, and Charles’s stupid mouth feels the need to fill the silence.
“I mean, it is like– Obviously, we have been together, like, sleeping together, but we are not– Of course, you did not think we were–” Charles watches with growing panic as Max’s face goes paler. Her heart is throwing itself painfully against her ribs. Charles wonders if it might puncture itself if it keeps it up. Eyes that usually remind Charles of the warm Mediterranean sea she is ever so familiar with have shuttered closed and now more closely resemble the stormy, gray Dutch skies they first raced each other under.
“Right.” That’s all she says, the single syllable short and clipped. Turning to the sofa table behind her, Max grabs her things and tries to pull her t-shirt on at the same time. Charles’s heart clenches as she listens to Max’s frustrated huff when she can’t fit her hand and her wallet through the sleeve on the first try. Her gaze darts to the ground as Max finally tugs the shirt down over her head, unable to meet her gaze.
“See you in Spa.”
Charles doesn’t look up again until the door slams shut, rattling the picture frames that line the entryway.
✦✦
When the sun has gone down, and her apartment is loud with the sound of music and her family bustling about the space, dread settles coldly in her gut. Charles tries to wash away the feeling with another glass of wine, but instead her head just gets fuzzier and the urge to call Max grows stronger.
Watching her brothers and maman yell at each other over the new board game Lorenzo had brought over, Charles feels like she needs to slap herself across the face. Max was right, even though she hadn’t said it quite so explicitly— Charles’s family loves her just as much as she loves them. They of course would not care if she was dating a woman.
Charles smiles into her wine glass as she imagines her brother’s faces if she were to tell them said woman was a Red Bull driver and, worse, Max Verstappen.
Her mouth twists, and she swallows down the rest of the wine.
Of course, Charles was right too— they aren’t dating. They’d slept together quite a lot, and Charles wasn’t above admitting that it had felt like something more was there, but they certainly hadn’t had a conversation about what it meant to them, and Max couldn’t blame Charles alone for that.
Ever since she had entered Formula One, Charles had made herself a list of rules.
For the men, it is different. They can date four different women in the same season, and no one will bat an eye.
But Charles isn’t afforded that luxury.
If she has a boyfriend, there will be twenty different articles about it. If she breaks up with said boyfriend, she’d have to suffer through endless comments about Charles Leclerc the maneater. God forbid she would start dating someone in the same calendar year after said break up, or all hell would break loose.
As a woman in motorsport, Charles is held to a different standard, and this is something she has always been aware of. To this day, Charles feels sick to her stomach whenever she thinks about sitting at a long conference table, ready to sign her contract with Ferrari, and watching Maurizio’s assistant lay out pictures of her and some random boy kissing outside a club after her F2 championship. She felt briefly indignant as she watched this woman she had never met before display these photos, wondering who else had seen them, how many people around her next year would know what she looks like pressed up against the dark brick of an alley.
“If you are part of Ferrari,” the Team Principal had chastised as Charles tried to keep herself from vomiting onto the reflective surface in front of her, “this cannot happen. There are standards, expectations.”
And Charles has carried that with her ever since, terrified of disappointing the unrelenting, beating heart of Ferrari.
So she doesn’t date. Not unless she knows it’s something that other people will receive well. She’s never wanted to call them PR relationships, but Charles supposes that isn’t too far off. When she thinks about it, she can’t remember the last time she was in love with someone she dated.
But then Max had crashed into her like a wayward bull in a china shop, shattering all her preconceived ideas of what her relationships were supposed to look like, and Charles was helpless to fight it.
Charles cannot date a girl. Charles cannot have a girlfriend. Charles cannot be in a public relationship with Max Verstappen.
Something twists in Charles’s stomach that has her pressing her palm firmly against her abdomen.
Part of her knows that this will never work in the long term. Sure, Max has never corrected people when it comes to her sexuality, but deep down, she has to know that’s as far as she could go. A blatant coming out would never fly, even for the reigning world champion.
As long as they are both racing, at some level, this would always be a secret.
When exactly did it become a ‘this’, Charles wonders to herself, her throat tightening.
The legs of her chair scrape loudly against the floor as she pushes back from the table and hides in the kitchen. Tears blur her vision, and Charles presses the heels of her hands firmly to her eyes in the hopes that if she does it long enough, they will be reabsorbed into her eyes.
She jumps when Lorenzo speaks from just behind her.
“Had a bit much to drink, Charles?”
Charles just groans, refusing to turn around and rubbing at her eyes as if the movement could explain away the redness she is certain her brother will see when he looks at her face.
“I am fine, thank you. Something is not sitting well in my stomach, I think.”
Lorenzo’s hand is gentle on her shoulder as he turns her around, and instantly Charles knows her attempts at lying will do nothing to deter his questions. Growing up sandwiched between an older and younger brother, Charles was no stranger to waking up with errant bruises and skinned knees from hours of rough play. Her brothers would never hurt her intentionally, but they were all incredibly active children— gentle wasn’t a word she would ever use to describe their relationship.
So when Lorenzo cups Charles’s cheeks and pushes away the tears that finally slip from her eyes, it only makes her cry harder. She bites at her lip to stop the sobs building in her throat from tumbling out.
“Oh, miette.” Her brother’s hand slides up into her hair, cradling the back of her head, and the slightest pressure of his other hand on her back sends her crashing headlong into his chest.
“I do not want maman to hear,” she gasps into his shirt, but Lorenzo merely runs his hand along her spine.
“Did something happen?” Charles shakes her head, no longer certain of her ability to speak without sobbing. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Lorenzo doesn’t say anything right away, clearly reassured for the moment that there is no immediate danger. They stay, Charles plastered to his front, tears and snot making a mess of his nice shirt, and Lorenzo rocking from one foot to the other as if trying to soothe a fussy child. Charles snorts quietly at that image. Lorenzo plays with her hair.
“Would you like to talk about it?” he asks after a few minutes.
Charles breathes deeply, filling her lungs with air until they ache before releasing it all in one, short breath. The album playing on her turntable skips, playing the same few seconds over and over, stuck at the end of the record. She hears her mother’s muffled voice and Arthur saying something in response before the music stops completely and then quickly picks back up again as it’s flipped to the other side.
“I have been… seeing someone.” She doesn’t move her face from where it’s buried in Lorenzo’s shirt, but she knows he’s heard her by the way his hand stutters over her back. “I don’t know exactly what we are. We have only been seeing each other… well I suppose it has been for some time, but it has only been serious,” her voice breaks around the word, but she presses on, “for maybe a month.”
Fresh tears spring to her eyes, and the words grow thick in her throat so that Charles can barely speak the next part of her confession.
“I think I ruined it today but– She’s important to me.” Lorenzo’s movements stop completely then, and Charles squeezes her eyes as tight as they can go so she can’t risk even a glance at his face.
“I just wanted to tell someone,” Charles whispers into his shirt. Her brother’s arms tighten protectively around her.
“I’m glad to be the one you told,” he whispers back. They stay like that for a few, long moments before Lorenzo’s fingers dig into the space between her ribs. Charles yelps, trying to squirm out of his grasp, but she quickly realizes her mistake in letting him get his arms so firmly around her. She stands on his toes, but Lorenzo just laughs, loud and warm, into her hair, and Charles laughs with him, the knot in her stomach slowly starting to loosen.
They’re quiet for a long beat before Lorenzo pulls back to look Charles in the eyes and say, “You could tell maman and Arthur too, you know.”
“Yeah,” Charles nods, her eyes starting to burn again at her brother’s open expression. She purses her lips. She doesn’t want to cry anymore. “Not yet though. Just…” She swallows, her throat impossibly dry as if all the moisture in her body has been drained through her tears. “Not yet.”
Lorenzo surges down to press a loud, smacking kiss to the middle of her forehead. Charles makes a noise of protest, rubbing at her forehead with the back of her hand even as she grins up at her big brother.
“Drink some water,” he reprimands before moving towards the doorway. “And then get back out here.”
JAPAN
Max doesn’t talk to Charles in Belgium.
They don’t talk in the Netherlands either, and Charles tries not to feel jealous as she stands next to Max on the podium, wrapped in the Dutch flag and bathed in the cheers of her countrymen who turned up in droves to watch their star driver win her home race once again.
In Monza, it’s Charles who doesn’t speak with Max, but that has nothing to do with their situation and everything to do with her frustration at the race.
It’s at Suzuka that Max is crowned Champion once again.
There’s some confusion in the cooldown room, but eventually they pull Max into a side room with that ridiculous red chair.
Charles tells herself not to look, but when Max’s back is turned, she can’t help from peeking around the doorframe to see how they are celebrating the 2022 world champion.
Her stomach twists at the thought that this could have been for her had things gone differently, and she has to go sit down.
The podium is quick and painless, another P3 that Charles has to pretend she is content with, but at least she doesn’t have to pretend to be happy for Max despite everything.
After the debrief, two sharp raps against her door pull her attention away from packing to head back to the hotel.
“Come in,” she hollers over her shoulder. Andrea had just left to get the car, but maybe Charles was being slower than she thought. “I’m almost ready.”
When Andrea doesn’t make a joke about her taking too much time and how ready he is for bad, Charles glances over her shoulder.
Standing in the door to her driver’s room is Max Verstappen, trophy still clutched loosely in her hand.
Charles’s jaw drops, but she has just enough sense of mind to stride across the room and pull Max inside, slamming the door shut behind her.
“Are you crazy?” she hisses out. “How did you even get back here?”
Max looks guiltily down at her sneakers.
“I told Andrea I needed to talk to you for a second. I don’t know if he knows but–”
“He doesn’t,” Charles snaps before shutting her jaw so fast, it’s a miracle she doesn’t bite off part of her tongue.
“Well,” Max continues, unperturbed, “I think he knew we’d been… fighting. He let me back and told me to tell you to meet him at the car when we were done.”
They drift into uncomfortable silence before Charles gets antsy and throws her arms out at her sides.
“Well.” Charles knows she sounds bitchy, but she can’t help it. “You said you needed to talk. Talk.”
“I saw you,” Max says, setting the trophy at her feet. “In the cooldown room. Peeking in.”
Charles rolls her eyes and ignores the unsteady feeling in her gut. “That chair looked ridiculous. I just had to see it with my own eyes.” Max is smiling at her like she knows something Charles doesn’t, and Charles squirms under her gaze. “Congratulations, by the way.” As much as she wishes she could make herself sound dismissive, she can’t.
Max doesn’t say anything right away, her expression carefully neutral, and Charles hates that, hates that she can't read everything Max is thinking in each subtle shift of her features. She drifts further into the room, and it makes Charles feel off-kilter. This is her space, and yet she feels entirely foreign as she watches Max settle on the edge of the couch.
“Why are you here?” Charles finally bursts out, unable to keep hold of her tongue any longer. Max’s eyes widen slightly, her mouth falling open. “Why are you talking to me? You’ve been more than content to ignore me the last few weeks, what’s changed?”
When the words leave her mouth, Charles watches each of them hit Max, and at the last, something ugly and mean twists at Max’s mouth.
“Are you really going to stand there and pretend that I didn’t have reason to?” she snaps back, and Charles lets the words dig into her chest like shards of ice. Lips pressed firmly together as if to hold back all the other things she wants to say, Max sighs deeply before tucking her legs up underneath her. Charles opens her mouth to chide Max about her shoes, still firmly on her feet, but decides almost as quickly that it isn’t a fight worth picking right now.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” is all she says as an explanation. “I want us to talk, and at the end of it we can decide where to go from there. If we’re only ever going to interact as coworkers again that is… fine.” The way Max bites off the word makes it clear to Charles that this outcome is anything but fine to her. “I just want us to talk.”
Charles stands there, in the no man’s land between the place on the couch Max has left for her and the door. She could tell Max no, tell her that they’ve passed the window for talking this out, could find Andrea in the car park and head back to the hotel.
But it was never an option really, Charles thinks as she drags herself to the couch and curls her body in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest.
The silence stretches out between them, digging its long, gnarled fingers into Charles’s chest until she feels like she can’t catch her breath. Charles has never been known for her patience, and as the seconds tick by, she struggles not to fill the silence, demanding Max just get this over with already.
“Did I ever tell you about my first girlfriend?” Max finally asks.
“N-no?” Charles’s voice cracks, and she clears her throat. “No.”
“We dated while I was in Formula 3. It wasn’t serious at first until it was, but we were young and…”
Charles imagines Max, sixteen and pimple-faced, kissing some faceless girl, all awkward limbs and bright eyes.
“Neither of us were secretive about it,” Max goes on, “but we weren’t public either. We’d visit a lot because there’s nothing to question about two friends spending long weekends together at each other’s houses.” Her voice is bitter, no amount of years dulling the hurt knowing that no one would even assume you and your partner were together because it was unthinkable to imagine the motorsports wonderkid could be dating a girl. “We never went out of our way to hide it. Our parents knew, our siblings knew, our best friends knew.”
Max stares down at the floor, and Charles so desperately wants to reach out and hold her hand, lace their fingers together.
“Then I got offered the Toro Rosso seat.”
This surprises Charles, but Max doesn’t see, still resolutely avoiding looking at Charles’s face.
“Once everything was confirmed, I told her that we couldn’t post about each other as often anymore, that she could only come to races in my home country or hers, she couldn’t travel with me or it would be too obvious. I was… scared.” And Charles can believe it because she’s twenty-five and racing for a top team in Formula One, and even the idea that she could be attracted to women sent her into a months-long spiral.
“For the first time in my life, I was scared to find out how people would react to learning I wasn’t straight. It was one thing for me to never correct anyone’s assumptions, but to outwardly declare it…”
Charles watches as tears build in the corner of Max’s downcast eyes.
“It was all so new to me– the job, the relationship, how adult it all felt, and I handled it like the kid I was. I was so paranoid, and when I told Lena we needed to be more secretive, she dumped me.”
“What?”
Max looks up then, her soft smile clashing with the tears clinging to the lashes under her eyes.
“I think that’s what I forgot in all of this, Charles. Even though you’re older than I was, this is all new to you. That doesn’t mean I think what you said was okay, but I wanted to apologize for ignoring you after. I could have tried to talk, but I was… pretty upset. It wasn’t fair to us to cast aside all that time we’d spent together like it was nothing. Because it was, wasn’t it? Something?”
Charles’s heart clenches in her chest, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe, and the only thing that makes it easier is letting out all her thoughts, excising them like an infection from a wound.
“Yes,” she insists, finally pulling Max’s hands, dry, cracked knuckles and all, between her own.
Max is rolling her bottom lip between her teeth, and it looks worryingly red. Charles leans forward and presses the pad of her thumb to the middle of Max’s lip, gently freeing it from the damage of her teeth.
Max was honest with her, so Charles feels that she owes her the same. She takes a deep breath, tracing her thumb in circles across the back of Max’s hand.
“I don’t know why I said any of that. I mean–” Charles clears her throat uncomfortably. “I know why. I was nervous at the idea of telling my family or really of telling anyone. I was scared because I had to relearn who I was.” She chokes on the way the confession feels in her mouth, but Charles pushes through. “And because summer break with you was the most comfortable I think I’ve ever felt, and that terrified me.”
A small, real smile has spread across Max’s face, and suddenly Charles wants to do everything she can to keep it there.
“I… I told Lorenzo. About us” Max’s eyebrows disappear behind her choppy bangs, and Charles can’t help but laugh at her expression.
“You did?” Her hands tighten around Charles’s, flipping her wrists so she can thread their fingers together.
“I was kind of a mess, crying over you in the kitchen.” Failing to hide the self satisfied smirk on her face, Charles pushes at Max, nearly tipping her back onto the couch. “Shut up. Lorenzo came out into the kitchen and saw me crying and he didn’t ask but I… wanted to tell him.” The bones of her fingers grind together as Max squeezes her hand a little too tightly, encouraging Charles to go on. “It was… good? It was good,” she repeats, more assured.
She opens her mouth to say something else, but before she can get another word out, Max is diving forward into her lap and pulling their mouths together. Charles squeals in surprise, but Max must take it as noise of displeasure as she quickly rocks back onto her heels though Charles doesn’t let her get far, fisting her hand in the collar of her stupid Red Bull polo and kissing her hard.
Their lips stick together, dry and cracked from the race, and Charles thinks she should probably find it gross. She can’t bring herself to move back any further, just enough to take in a breath before she speaks, her mouth moving against Max’s.
“It is just– I still am not ready to… make any public statements. I would tell my family and friends, but…” She breathes out, slightly unsteady. “It is just too much, don’t you think? I am a woman in Formula One, and I am trying to win a championship for Ferrari– that is more than enough. I do not think I am ready for the world to know I am… gay.”
Max presses their lips together, a brief chaste kiss, as Charles says the word she’d so vehemently avoided.
“You think it is too much for someone to be a woman and gay and a world champion?” Her voice is soft, barely an exhalation dragging its gentle fingers over Charles’s skin. “Because I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?” Charles feels more than sees Max’s lips twitch in a mischievous smile. “Now, if you’re saying it’s too much to think Ferrari could get a championship, then I agree but–”
Charles reels back, gasping, but Max is quick to grab her face between her hands and presses kisses across every inch she can reach by way of consolation. Their mix of soft laughter finds a home in the center of Charles’s chest, warming her from the inside out. Max leans back just enough for their eyes to meet.
As long as they have known each other, Charles has found the intensity in Max’s eyes startling, and now is no exception. Clear blue pierces her chest and long, lithe fingers reach into the crack and start taking Charles slowly apart.
“You are not for anyone else, Charles,” Max explains quietly. “You do not need to spend all your time trying to make other people happy. You shouldn’t be doing or not doing something just because it is what you think people expect or to make them happy. What would make you happy, Charles?”
“A Championship,” she responds before Max has even finished speaking. Max grins, and Charles’s stomach flips as she watches the corners of Max’s eyes crinkle. God, why did she ever try to deny herself this?
“Okay. What else?”
“I would like to be called a good driver. Not a good female driver, not ‘impressive for a girl’.” Her mouth twists as she quotes the interview Barretto had given just last night after qualifying. “I just want to be impressive, good– great .” Max looks… Charles wants to say proud but she doesn’t know if that’s the right word for it.
“Anything else?” Her face is so open, so painfully earnest despite everything. Charles tried to push Max away, got scared by how quick and how much she felt for her and thought this would make it easier, but still Max is here.
“Kissing you.” Blue eyes gleam, soft pink lips turning up in a smirk. “Being with you,” Charles is quick to correct. “In a… a relationship.” Her mouth moves strangely around the word, but she knows it’s right. “I know I said…” Her stomach clenches, and Charles’s heart aches because she can’t even bring herself to repeat the venomous words she’d hurled at Max.
“Did I fuck this up?” She pleads quietly, tears creeping into her voice for the first time all night. “God, please tell me I didn’t.”
Max smiles at her and shakes her head.
“You didn’t.”
“And you… do you want that?” Charles presses. “Us?”
Max nods.
“Yeah,” she says before pressing their lips together again. “I want that.”
ABU DHABI
Max’s cheeks are flushed from the desert heat, and Charles finds herself staring intently at the slope and curve of her mouth as she speaks on the broadcast.
Deep shadows carve out her cheekbones, thrown into sharp contrast by the floodlights beating down on the track.
She gets lost in thought, tracing the lines of Max’s face until she hears someone calling to her.
“Charles?”
Her eyes snap to Jolyon, her cheeks warming as she sees Max smirking at her from the corner of her eye.
“Uhh… Could you repeat the question?” Charles keeps her gaze firmly on the interviewers and bites her lip to keep from grinning back at her girlfriend.
“How confident are you feeling in that second place in the driver’s standings? Do you think you’ll be able to overtake Sergio at the start?”
“I think it will be a tough race, but I am ready to fight for that place and I’m looking forward to it.”
Max moves her microphone back to her mouth, and Charles’s pulse picks up.
“It will certainly be a challenge. We all know Charles is strong on this track, and she will, of course, not make it easy for us.”
Charles doesn’t hear anything else from the commentators after that, barely has enough sense of mind to thank them before walking off with Max, because she’s too busy trying not to jump Max then and there for praising her so blatantly on live TV.
Walking side by side down the paddock, Charles can’t stop thinking about reaching down and grabbing Max’s hand, lacing their fingers together. As if she’s heard her thoughts, Max glances over at Charles and grins, bumping their shoulders together. Someone shouts at them from the Alpha Tauri garage, and Max smiles and raises a hand in their direction.
They’ve got some time before they need to get back to their garages so Max pulls her down a small alley between two motorhomes.
“Max,” Charles chides, laughing all the same. “I told you we cannot be doing things like this in the paddock.”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” Max insists. “Perhaps I am trying to rattle your nerves to secure Checo’s second place.”
Charles scoffs. She remembers Brazil just as well as Max.
“No, I–” Max rubs at the back of her neck and peeks back towards the paddock as if checking to see if anyone was watching. Her cheeks have been permanently flushed from the heat the whole weekend, and Charles finds herself hopelessly endeared by it. “I wanted to say… good luck.”
Heart hammering in her throat, Charles glances over Max’s shoulder before darting forward and placing a small peck on Max’s lips. She laughs, too loudly, at the shock on Max’s face and the way more heat crawls up her neck and across her cheeks.
“Thank you, cherie.” Charles gives Max’s cheek a short pat before moving back towards the paddock. “But I will not need luck.”
✦✦
Sleep clings to her lashes as Charles slowly opens one eye, golden afternoon light blinding her as the sun creeps through the cracks in the blinds.
She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, plastered to Max’s side as they laid on the couch watching some show neither of them really cared about, but once her head had hit the pillow, the warmth of another body and Max’s steady breaths had her out in seconds.
Now she squeezes her eyes shut as she shifts uncomfortably on the couch, t-shirt clinging to her back with sweat. Her nose wrinkles as her tongue scrapes against the roof of her mouth, dry from sleeping with it open. Charles feels gross.
Rooting around in the blankets, she looks for her phone, but before she even turns on the screen, she can tell from the warmth of the light flooding her living room that it is much later than she would like it to be.
Max shuffles behind her at Charles’s movements and winces when her eyes flutter open. She sits up, hooking her chin over Charles’s shoulder and glancing down at her phone. A quiet, huffed out breath moves her hair, and Charles squirms at the feeling.
“I’ll get out of your hair.” The words are pressed into Charles’s neck as Max mouths her way up the column of her throat. Charles shivers despite how warm she is. “I know you will want to get cleaned up before your family gets here.”
Charles runs her tongue over the front of her teeth and grimaces. Max isn’t wrong. She would kill for a shower right now and desperately needs to run a brush through her hair before her mother comes over and shoots her on sight.
But as Max moves to stand up, Charles’s hand darts out from the blankets, wrapping around Max’s wrist and hauling her back down into Charles’s lap so she can kiss her. Max giggles against her mouth, and Charles feels drunk off the feeling of knowing she made Max sound like that.
“Or you could stay,” Charles suggests, the words carried on a soft breath between their mouths. “You should stay.”
Max reels back, eyes wide.
“You want me to… stay?” Charles nods, biting at her bottom lip to keep from grinning like a maniac. “But your family is coming.”
It’s Charles’s turn to laugh then, throwing her head back before burying her fingers in the grown out hairs at the base of Max’s skull and pulling their mouths back together again. Her tongue runs along the seam of Max’s lips, and Max caves to her immediately. They both taste like sleep, but underneath that is Max , and Charles thinks she’d have to find something a lot worse than a little morning breath to stop her from constantly hungering for that taste.
“I know,” Charles gasps as they finally break apart. “And I would like you to be here as well.” Max’s eyes are still wide, her mouth hanging open, and suddenly Charles feels nervous that Max might say no, that she doesn’t want to tell Charles’s family, and fuck maybe Charles has been reading this so wrong—
“I love you.”
It’s Charles’s turn to be shocked then, jaw clicking with how fast it drops. She watches the heat creep across Max’s face, her cheeks turning bright red, and Charles wants to press her lips to them. She decides there’s no reason for her not to, so she does just that, dropping soft kisses along the apples of Max’s cheek, tracing the curve of her face.
Charles leans back and cradles Max’s face gently between her palms.
“I love you, too.”
Max grins up at her before diving forward to kiss Charles again.
Later, Charles is firmly chastised by her mother as she opens the door to her family, hair dripping wet, soaking the shoulders of her shirt. She bites her tongue to keep from blaming Max, who’d suggested they shower together to save time, but who ended up kneeling on the title floor, Charles’s leg hitched over her shoulder all the same.
They did not save time.
But Charles keeps her thoughts to herself as her cheeks heat up and stays quiet as her mother continues her light scolding. She swoops down to press quick kisses to Charles’s cheeks before flying around her and depositing her bags on the counter.
Her mother greets Max like they’ve been best friends for years, and Max just smirks over at Charles as Pascale grabs a bottle of wine from her bag and pours them each a hefty glass. Arthur’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline as he follows their mother into the kitchen to find her pulling on an apron and standing next to two-time world champion Max Verstappen as they begin making dinner. Lorenzo shoots her a sideways smile and pinches her hip as he moves out of the entryway and into the living room.
Charles presses the backs of her hands to her cheeks, trying to calm the heat in her face, but she’s grinning all the same as she hears Max’s soft lisp and stumbling accent mingle with the familiar tones of her family.
She slots in beside Max at the counter who is diligently taking instructions from her mother. Just barely resisting the urge to press a kiss to Max’s bare shoulder, Charles settles for wrapping an arm around her waist, just in case anyone had any questions about why one of her competitors was joining them for dinner.
The food is great, but the company is even better, and Charles thinks, traitorously, that all of this might be worth it, might be worth telling the world about herself and Max too, if that is something she wants. She wants to wander around Monaco with Max’s fingers laced neatly between her own as they are now, tucked up on Max’s knee.
Arthur and Lorenzo are bickering over God knows what, and her mother is asking Max questions about her sister. Charles leans back in her chair, warm and content, swinging her leg back and forth, catching Max’s ankle.
Max doesn’t miss a beat, squeezing her hand and responding to her maman’s question before leaning over and pressing a soft kiss to Charles’s temple.
“Are you not getting enough attention, schatje?” she whispers into her hair.
Not quietly enough apparently, because the only thing that will distract her brothers from an argument is a chance to make fun of her. It quickly devolves into stories about Charles performing on the ‘stage’ in their living room for everyone during the holidays.
Max laughs with Charles’s mother as Arthur imitates her high, child-like voice, and Charles lets her head fall onto Max’s shoulder, smiling easily.
✦✦
Charles gets second, in the race and the standings.
As she climbs the steps to the podium, Max grabs her wrist, giving her hand one, quick squeeze. She’s smiling that always stunning smile of hers, eyes crinkled and teeth on full display.
They don’t have time to say anything, but Charles can see it all clearly written across Max’s face. She might as well have slipped in an, “I told you so.”
Charles throws the trophy high over her head, and soon after watches Max do the same.
When the champagne hits her in the face, Charles just laughs before trying her best to return the favor.
They stumble to the top step to take the picture, Checo on Max’s other side, and Max is quick to wrap her hand around Charles’s waist.
I can have both, Charles realizes as Max’s fingers flex on her hip. She remembers telling herself that she’d give up this part of herself entirely if it meant she could have the racing, the wins.
Max is the first to climb down off the podium, and she turns back to Charles, hand outstretched and the fireworks in the sky reflected in her eyes.
I will have both, she promises herself.