Chapter Text
It started as all things do.
Innocently, quietly, unnoticeably. As something so unworthy of attention that barely any thought lingered on it. Yet gradually it became the centre of attention. The only constant inside one’s mind.
It became at the end the thing one excitingly awaits.
Turns out it was the beginning of everything.
Well, jokes on you.
For Max Verstappen it all started with the end of a season, a championship trophy, too many drinks and, of course, Daniel fucking Ricciardo.
Abu Dhabi 2022
They say that there is nothing like winning your first championship. Well, turns out, there is nothing like winning your second championship either.
The same euphoric feeling, the same ecstasy, there is only one top step and is his. Number One.
The yacht Red Bull had rented is packed with people Max has never met and ones whose faces-he is sure- will not remember come morning. There are also people from Red Bull and from other teams and of course fellow drivers. He was pretty sure he saw Lando near the DJ and some others dancing.
Max is already five drinks in and has already grabbed a sixth with absolutely no intention on stopping there. There is music, there are people dancing, there are lights and alcohol. And of course, he is the champion of the world once more. Even that thought makes him smile harder and shake his body with the music. Everything is already here, his to grasp.
2022 was his as 2021 had been. He had written history, they had said. And this year, fair and square. No one could say he didn’t deserve to win. He had had the car, the team, the mentality. He was on the top of the world.
There is one rule after all. When the lion is hungry, he eats.
He raised his glass high and screamed out the lyrics of a song which for the life of him couldn’t remember the title of. Let them celebrate; he thought idly, the whole world was already.
There was a girl next to him and suddenly appeared a man in front of him who came closer. They got close, dancing on the floor. Both were smiling. He was high and he didn’t stop the other from almost colliding with him. With every movement he felt the other’s body grinding with his.
The lights were many but dimmed, in red and blue colours. The irony.
He could see the man he was dancing though. He couldn’t be older than he was, handsome. Slightly shorter, brown hair, slight stubble. On the leaner side. His eyes appeared to be hazel.
Max laughed, throwing his head back. Of course.
A cheap replica is always better than nothing, right?
He closed his eyes and continued dancing.
Behind his eyelids an image was beginning to form like a snapped picture.
Blues and greens and red. Hair brown like wood, like his favourite chocolate, curly like ringlets, soft like leaves.
Freckles on the corner of high cheeks after too much time spent under his favourite Mediterranean sun. His own constellations. A universe he would happily get lost in.
Eyes big and green like the Indian Ocean when calm. Two windows to the sweetest soul he has ever encountered. Two sources of blinding light. Two lighthouses.
Lean arms ending with callused hands and long and slim fingers adorned with rings. They could smash him open anytime. Touches so tender they felt like sunlight. Hot as lava on his skin.
A tongue that couldn’t lie nested inside two sinful rosy lips, painted with the sweetest of strawberry juice.
Smiles that can stretch so wide they feel bigger than the galaxy after a good result. They could wrap up his whole world and give him hope.
A slim waist he sometimes wished he could wrap his hands around and never let go.
A sweet Monegasque accent, curling around the words in such a captivating way Max wished he was the language coming from his lips.
A man whose heart beats so loud he becomes nuclear.
A walking Adonis.
He opened his eyes in time to see the same eyes his mind was so desperately trying to paint in his mind’s canvas looking at him from a corner.
And there he was. The sun, himself.
He pushed the man in front of him away. He was wrong in every way, anyway. He wanted to burn from this light, not hide from it.
To his drunken brain it appeared so controversial, so unnatural, for the sun to be in the shadows. He commanded the light, he should always be in the centre. The space was made in such a way too. Their entire solar systems constructed with too many planets in orbit around something shiny, powerful, and solar. Why should Earth be different?
Max raised his glass in a greeting and the sun smiled and nodded his head in return.
His smile wasn’t blinding. The shadows still overpowered him. Max felt a strange need to just bring him his championship trophy from the previous year right now just to let the metal reflect the light he could clearly see emitting from the other man. He wanted to storm inside that Red abomination and throw some punches, bring the whole thing to the ground for stealing the smile off his sun’s lips.
Was it selfish that he wanted that smile always directed to him? Perhaps.
He didn’t give a single fuck. He wanted it. He was mortal, after all. He was earthbound and wished for the sun anyway.
He wanted him. Much more than any championship. The championship was more likely to be his though. No scored points could ever bring him closer to the Monegasque man.
Charles, Carlito, Charlie.
“Why don’t you shout it a bit louder? He might hear you this time.” A voice from next to him said and when he turned to see who he was, because he was a bit drunk and couldn’t recognise the voice, he was met with the smug face of one Daniel Ricciardo.
Bane of his existence, really.
“What the fuck are you on about?” He yelled to be heard above the music, his eyes dancing between his friend and the absolute sun that was now dancing with Carlos Sainz.
He was so jealous of Carlos right this moment. He could trade the championship happily.
Daniel was still grinning like a maniac, sipping from his own colorful monstrosity of a drink. “Charlie, is he now?”
Max was squinting his eyes at him, trying and failing to understand. Fucking alcohol. “He has always been Charlie.” He answered back still confused. Charles has always been Charlie. Simple as that. He was the sun and he was Charlie.
If possible, Daniel’s eyes lightened up even more. Max was ready to ask him if he had swallowed a firefly by accident but the other beat him to it. “Charlie the sun, it has a nice ring to it, certainly.”
His eyes were focused on that head of soft brown hair but snapped back at Daniel when the Australian dared to say “Not very bright right now, though.”
“Daniel, are you fucking blind?” He asked, the grip to his drink impossibly tight. He was like a bull ready to destroy, anger quick to resurface “Have you seen him smile? Really smile? What the fuck are you wearing? Sun glasses?”
Daniel opened his mouth to respond but oh no, no, no, sir. Max was not done. No one, absolutely no one could ever dare imply Charles Leclerc to be something else than the absolute delight he was and live to tell the tale. To Max Verstappen’s face no less.
Forget about causing a scene. Max had things to prove. Correct the utter injustice.
“You should check your eyesight. That man is a delight, Daniel my very own reason for fucking breathing and you call him a dimly star? Can’t you see his cheeks and freckles? His eyes? Daniel, his fucking dimples? Dimples? Who the fuck does he think he is?”
The other was looking at him like he had lost his mind, smiling at the poor drunk people next to them, watching the spectacle. “You are three sheets into the wind, Jesus.”
“And he” Max continued unbothered, waving his hands around to emphasize his points, damnit “just smiles and walks into the paddock like a runaway model. And no, he hasn’t done any modeling ever. I know, I have done research!” He continued and his eye twitched when he saw Carlos jokingly twirling Charles around “That son of a-I’m gonna break his hand!” He yelled “Hey! That’s my job!”
Daniel was openly laughing now, extending a hand to take his glass away “Give me the drink you’ve had enough! One more and you will propose on the spot.”
Usually their roles were reserved. Daniel was not going to play the responsible one now.
Max hugged the glass tight “What are you doing? That’s mine! Find one of your own if you so want!” His eyes suddenly widened and his hold relaxed “Daniel, you hear that? It’s Taylor Swift! Charlie adores Taylor Swift!”
“Oh my God, I must record this” the Australian muttered and finally grabbed the glass from his hand “Yes Max, I know. You’ve said plenty of times. Next thing, I will learn that Charles wears Dior underwear.”
Not his proudest moment, he must admit, but he choked on his drink he had just stolen back, his eyes wide “He wears Dior boxers?” He shrieked. Huh, the image was not bad, not bad at all.
Dizzy as he was by the alcohol and the image of Charles Leclerc in Dior boxers no less, Max was ushered without much resistance to the bar where a glass of water was given to him by Daniel, replacing the one he was holding. When he sipped he grimaced “That has no taste.”
Daniel already had his phone out and recording “That was the point actually.”
Max’s eyes landed again on the Ferrari pair like the younger man was a magnet, calling for his attention constantly “Smooth operator my ass” he said “what more does he has, huh? Memorable hair? I can grow my hair too, put some gel and shit.”
Daniel could barely hold the phone stable from laughing “I think it’s natural.”
“Suave fucker” he hissed “and what with that? He is a red chili pepper. I am a lion, a fucking lion!” He hit his chest to prove his point.
The other whizzed loudly and quickly shook his head “Please never say that to Charles if you want to get laid.”
“Fucking Ferrari.”
“That’s pure gold” Daniel said between laughing “You know Max, you are exactly like Mr. Darcy.”
Max leveled him with a look “Daniel, I am fucking blond.” Because, in contrast to popular belief he knew who Darcy was. Blame Victoria for it, really.
“Well, apart from the hair, obviously.”
“Are you calling me miserable, you walking ball of photosynthesis?” He snapped back. He caught with the corner of his eye Charles laugh, tossing his head back and all the annoyance left his beyond drunk brain “I am gonna marry him.”
Daniel was crying, the tears on his eyes reflecting the lights “That too, you absolute doofus. But no, pathetically pining and whatnot.”
Max shot him a death glare “I am not pining. And how do you know how Mr. Darcy or whatever his name is, acts?”
The Australian grinned “My sister won’t shut up about that book.” He quickly explained “Who knows! Perhaps you will start writing letters to him too!”
“Daniel” he said and ordered another Red Bull with vodka before Daniel could stop him “from the bottom of my heart, fuck you.”
“Nah” the other said shaking his head “Charles will be saddened to hear that.”
Max’s eyes once again landed on the man he has been chasing for years. He had dreamed of Charles extending a hand only for him to try and take it and finding it incorporeal. He had the fastest car and yet, the lovely Monegasque always slipped from his fingers. Like sunlight. But then again, what could possibly the summer sunlight want with the midnight rain?
He slumped at the bar completely, his face towards the dance floor “I don’t want to make him sad.” And then he added “He deserves all the happiness in the world.”
Daniel looked at him lowering the phone a bit “Oh man, you are completely smitten.”
He smiled, silly and lovesick. A smile he only indulged in whenever he was drunk beyond sanity or alone at home. A smile directed only to one person. A smile caused by only one person. Charles has moved to the dance floor with Carlos and Pierre, yelling the lyrics of the song. He was a vision. “Sun of my life, he is.”
His friend pocketed his phone and grabbed him by the arm “Okay Casanova, let’s go dance. We can’t have you all drunk and lovesick on your own championship party.”
Had he been more sober, he would have seen the empathy and the fond smile on Daniel’s lips upon catching two green eyes locked on the two of them.
Fucking alcohol.
When he woke up, well past twelve o’clock the next morning he had a killer headache and instantly regretted those seven drinks from the night before. Really, did no one think to stop him? Briefly he contemplated smashing his head on a wall but his mom would be furious if she saw a giant bruise on his forehead when he will visit her for Christmas.
So painkillers and a warm shower it was.
His phone was dead and he ignored it. Notifications were the last thing he wanted to check this moment.
When the plane finally landed in Nice and he drove all the way to Monaco after a tiring but perfect weekend, he felt like himself again. Max had a feeling that the idea of having won a second championship hasn’t dawned on him yet.
It was still building under his skin.
Sassy and Jimmy welcomed him on the door, circling around his legs and he was so happy to see them again. His eye caught a slim book with a soft pink cover on his couch. He stood up from where he had bended down to scratch his cats behind the ears and sat on the couch.
His sister’s name greeted him when he opened the cover. ‘She forgot her poetry book again’ he thought. He will never understand his sister’s fixation with poetry. With books, in general. He fell asleep after reading a chapter usually.
Victoria always forgot something behind whenever she came over to Monaco, was it a book, a child’s blanket, a phone’s charger.
Max let it aside and made a mental note to pack it too along with his things for his trip to Belgium for the holidays.
He put his phone to charge and went to tidy his things and feed his cats. He had ahead of him at least one month of relaxation before he was required to Milton Keynes.
A pink! was heard from his phone after a while and Max came from the bathroom, toweling his wet hair. He opened it to see some messages from Daniel and a message from his dad. He ignored the last completely.
Daniel
Hope you are better!
*video*
Also, I call dibs for best man.
His eyebrows frowned. Daniel was cryptic on a good day. Now, after a hangover he barely made sense. And judging by the time the messages were sent Daniel must have been drunk. He had been drunk and he could barely remember dancing with the Australian the night before.
Curious, he played the video and after watching it he threw the phone at the other side of the large couch like it had burned him.
“I’m gonna kill him” he hissed, his cheeks pink.
Just, how much had he drunk the night before?
He sat down on the couch, elbows on his knees and face in his hands. Sassy blinked at him “I am a fucking idiot.” He said to her but she ignored his pain.
His head was still killing him.
Realistically, Max Verstappen knew who he was. He knew what he could do, how he acted, what he believed. Since early he had learned to not let the others know his emotions and his thoughts.
There was no better defense than the ignorance of others.
The world is cruel, he has come to know way earlier than he should have to and it takes your weaknesses to feed its never ending hunger. It can never take something from you if you don’t show that here is something that can be taken. It shapes you accordingly.
And yet, here he was, drunk on alcohol and happiness, lamenting about a life he wished he had. Giving the world a glimpse that there is something out there able to bring Max Verstappen to his knees.
He felt vulnerable. It was Daniel the one who had found him like that and Daniel knew. Knew about his past and his dad and his feelings and all the things about Charles. He was no stranger.
And yet, baring himself for anyone else to see was difficult. Even if it was Daniel. It was a wall demolished. Broken down like a sand castle under a child’s kick.
What a wrecking ball, Charles Leclerc was. A catalyst.
Max didn’t lie. He saw no point in doing so. He always said what he believed even if it sounded cruel. The price for honesty was realism. The world never sugarcoated things anyway. And lying to himself was pointless. There was not a minute since the moment his eyes had landed on that short boy from Monaco all those years back that passed in which Max didn’t know what he was feeling.
Startling clarity. Like looking at a mirror. The price perhaps, for embracing the honesty and the apathy that the world had gifted him as a welcoming present.
So of fucking course he would talk about Charles Leclerc when he was three sheets into the wind.
Drunken words are sober thoughts and Max has never denied, not for one moment, how much Charles has him wrapped around his little finger, even if he doesn’t show it. Charles, Charles has always been the one person, the one thing that gave Max the hope that the world was not the terrible place he thought it was. That there was this warmth and purity out there, somewhere.
He had been there and he was the very proof of the existence of the warmth Max had been looking for. He had been and still is the living proof that there is love which is not a weakness but a power.
Just like back in Spa in 2019 when Charles, fresh from losing a father had stepped on the top step of the podium, offering the trophy to the sky as a gift to the one person who had believed in him from the very start.
It was love that made Charles win, apart from his talent. And Max had looked at him and saw something worth fighting for.
Daniel was the first to ever know, he thought as Jimmy nudged his leg and asked for attention. He was the first to care enough to make him admit it out loud. And when he understood that there was nothing to be afraid of, Victoria learned about it too. His mother. Three people that mattered.
Max shook his head, laughing silently. Writing letters. Who, him? Nah.
He had tried to get over Charles with other people but it didn’t work. Ten years of silence. Charles really didn’t deserve a simple confession written on paper. For this love to have lasted so many years, it means that it is important. Vital, real.
After all, why would Charles, happy and smiley and lovely Charles ever look at him, an angry and closed off and boring Dutch boy and find something worth of loving?
He shook his head and stood up in search of something to eat.
Something to get his mind off things.
He was the fucking Champion, for God’s sake.
It was late and he closed the TV, tossing the remote away. There was nothing to watch. Nothing interesting to watch.
What a funny picture. A champion of the world, staring at the ceiling of his living room in utter boredom.
Neither Daniel nor Lando have returned to Monaco yet and his flight to Belgium wasn’t set for another two days. And honestly? No matter how much he loved racing, he was in no mood to play sim racing.
His gaze fell upon the book Victoria had forgotten behind. With a sigh he took it in his hands and opened it in the first page. ‘Various poems and quotes’. What a boring title, he thought briefly.
“At least, it will make me fall asleep.” He muttered. Max Verstappen was a curious little thing deep inside after all.
‘A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine’
Marilynne Robinson
‘Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?’
Clarice Lispector
‘If you lived all your life with monsters, what was monstrous?’
Marlon James
Max was looking at the page, his eyes slightly wide, utterly perplexed. All of them had hit a bit too close for comfort. Okay, that was not happening.
Briefly he thought of his father and he gripped the book tighter. What utter bullshit.
Briefly again, he wondered if Victoria felt that these quotes represented her too. If she had read them for the first time and found herself feeling the same kind of unsettled he was feeling right now. Wasn’t that what poetry was for, anyway? To read something and empathize with that? See yourself in it?
‘Some people don’t know what they have until it’s gone.
‘But what about the ones who do know? The ones who never took a damn thing for granted? Who tried their hardest to hold on, yet could only look on helplessly while they lost the thing they loved the most.
‘Isn’t it so much worse for them?’
Lang Leav
‘What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze:
my father's father killed in the frontier of
Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
--just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow --the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.’
Jorge Luis Borges
Max closed the book and threw it again at the other side of the big couch with perhaps more force that he had initially intended to. He was left breathing heavily, his eyes looking at the ground, his mind spinning.
What the fuck was that?
What kind of bullshit was that depicted things he preferred to never think about?
How dared mere words to unsettle him so? There were mere words! Simple black ink!
It was ridiculous. Why was he so winded up about this? About two poems and three quotes that Victoria thought great to bring with her and forget it here? Read in her free time to relax. That wasn’t fucking relaxation. Utterly ridiculous. A waste of time.
His mind focused on the image of Charles dancing, the only clear thing from yesterday. The only thing able to bring a resemblance of peace in him.
What can I hold you with?
“Ahhh” Max gritted his teeth and smacked his face on a nearby pillow. There was no way he would spend a minute more reading this thing. Useless.
He stood up and went to his bedroom, got under the covers and stubbornly refused to look at the door leading to the living room.
Poetry, ha.
An absolute waste of time. Really, what was this all fuss about, he didn’t know. He will tell Victoria to find another hobby. Poetry and literature, ha.
Just words typed on paper. A waste of paper. Didn’t they all know to protect the environment?
He closed his eyes and willed himself to fall asleep.
“Who knows! Perhaps you will start writing letters to him too!”
He groaned and grabbed a pillow, threw it on the wall. Fucking Daniel and fucking Mister Darcy and his fancy ponce letters and really why did he watch the video again?
It was such a ridiculous thought. Even more than the poetry book. Him? Max Verstappen writing letters, and romantic ones too? The irony of the fucking century.
Daniel had been drunk. He had had no idea of what he was even talking about.
“Just sleep, damn you.” He muttered, to no one really.
He was the champion of the world. Champions weren’t affected by such trivial things.
The voice that said that was too angry to be his own.
The next morning found him sitting on the barstool on his too big kitchen, glaring daggers at the inconspicuous book with the soft pink paperback front.
He couldn’t shake that weird feeling off him since the moment he had woken up. It was under his skin and it was tingling. He didn’t know what to do.
Max liked having control of things, not in a bad way. He wanted most to have the complete control of his own body and self. When you know what you are doing, you can control what the other will see.
There was no vulnerability in control.
When the heart is absent from the body, the only one remaining is the brain. Thoughts are often false. A feeling is always real. Not true but real. And his heart has been missing for years. Chasing something faster than the light.
One can only win when his mind is stronger than his emotions. And he has learned that too early. There was no room for emotions in a champion’s personality. They were a weakness.
He caressed the front page of the book thinking of Charles and how his love for his family was bigger than his body. That it was that which drove him to become who he is today. How can love, his supposed weakness be someone else’s power?
When Max opened the book he skipped the first pages he had read already.
‘I have been bent and broken, but-I hope-into a better shape’
Charles Dickens
Perhaps it was because that book contained the exact opposite things from the ones that have been engraved on his brain since the age of three years old.
Perhaps it was because he so wanted to bring down the walls covered with these orders and depictions of another’s life in a desperate attempt to make Max just like him.
Perhaps it was because he was thirsty for a rebellion of sorts.
But this time he didn’t stop reading. Not when the weird feeling inside him intensified. Not when Sassy and Jimmy abandoned him to find something else to play with.
‘The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives’
Mahmoud Darwish
‘What is lineage, if not a gold thread of pride and guilt?’
Ada Limon
Perhaps it was because the love stricken look of his from the championship party wouldn’t leave his mind.
Perhaps it was because he was so tired of having to chase his heart and practically beg it to come back instead of letting it go, knowing full well that the man it was chasing would either cherish it or crush it.
Perhaps it was because he knew himself and that in the end, Daniel was right. He was pining, he was loving, he was waiting patiently with no clear goal in mind.
‘If only my heart were as cold as I pretend it is, maybe I could get over this’
Jessica Katoff
Max Verstappen was afraid, as weird as that sounds.
‘At first glance, the mortals believed that
Ares and Aphrodite didn’t make sense.
Her soft curves didn’t seem to fit against
His gasoline drenched, war torn body.
But Ares had never looked at Aphrodite
Under the guise that she was made of
Sugar and spice and all things nice.
She tasted of salt water and divinity.
Her beauty honed like a blade
More than fit for the battlefield
That he called home.
She loved to murmur against his lips
That “all is fair in love and war.”
As both of them were born ruthless,
An unapologetic, consuming force.’
Lyra Wren
Charles was smiley and lovely and positive. But he was also ruthless, an unapologetic, consuming force. He could demolish Max’s defences in a second and that was terrifying.
Max wasn’t used to being vulnerable.
He chuckled as his eyes read over the lines. There was only one person who could bring Max Verstappen to his knees. They were cut from the same cloth and simply used differently.
The basic structure though, it never changes.
And Max knew. He knew that there was no escaping the Sun and its summers. No use fighting against the Sun and its storms. A Sun this bright, could cast a shadow equally just as dark.
Max wondered if anyone else could see it. That duality. Or if it was just a by-product of spending so many years with Charles, getting to know him inside a sport which always brought the worst out of any character.
He was playing with the fire. But really, what were the consequences of aiming for the Sun when you were born to be earthbound?
How can one see the rough edges of the Sun, the lethal weapons hiding under all the brightness? How can one see all of that and love it still because he too has the same darkness and the same fears and the same pain?
Getting your tongue twisted by liquid courage, confessing your sins just to make room for more, because you finally dared to care about someone so much and wanted to have them so badly. Because Charles is beautiful and terrible and he is the one good thing you’ve begged to deserve, the one thing that meant everything but you are so out of order, you slam your chest against his until it cracks just to see if everything inside of there is beating your name because everything inside of you is beating his.
Max closed the book and hid his head in his hands. The year was so disastrous for Charles. Why no one ever bothers to ask if the Sun is still breathing even when they all watched it fall? No one ever wonders how much of itself it loses just to make way for the Moon.
He thought about letters and Daniel and the end of the season. He thought of his own victory and how dejected Charles has been for most of the season.
He thought about his father and his useless tips and his cruel mouth and words.
He thought about that damned book he had in front of him and how it had rattled him in an unfamiliar and new and terrifying way.
Max thought of his own heart, chasing the Sun.
He huffed, a certain kind of sadness taking over him.
The Sun is much too big to belong to one person, anyway.