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Max has won two consecutive World Championships. He doesn’t think it’s particularly arrogant of him to say that he’ll likely win his third, this year.
Red Bull have built him the perfect car. No, that’s not entirely true — it’s got a lot of little issues, things that can be done better, like the gearbox that had truly been irking him until they’d switched it in Belgium, and he knows that Checo is struggling with it more than he wants to let on.
But the car is perfect for him. His record winning streak speaks to that, which is just a fact.
Unless Red Bull have done something crazy during summer break — which he knows they haven’t — Max knows he and the car will continue to speak with one another.
And he’s publicly said he doesn’t need Checo to even win the Constructor’s, and it’s true , even though he knows saying it out loud was probably not what he should have been doing at the time, considering Checo’s woes.
In any case, none of that is the point. The point is that Max feels pretty confident that he’s going to win again this year, a series of tragic events and unfortunate luck notwithstanding.
And being that it’s his third consecutive championship, Max feels very, very much like he’d like to celebrate with his boyfriend.
In public.
As in, he wants to be able to kiss him.
Pretty much exactly like he is right now.
Charles is laying beside him, head sharing Max’s pillow as they lazily share kisses. One of Charles’ hands is fisting Max’s shirt at his chest, while Max has his arm thrown over Charles’ waist, gently drawing patterns on his back.
They both murmured their goodnights more than ten minutes ago, and yet here they are, still awake, unable to get enough of one another. There’s no urgency – they had sex earlier, stumbling into their room after dinner, tipsy on wine and pasta – but Max just can’t quite bring himself to stop, either.
God, he never wants to stop. A little in the literal sense, because he thinks he could lie in this exact spot, kissing Charles, for the rest of his life. But more in the metaphorical – he wants to spend the rest of his life with this man, however he pleases, in whatever way he pleases.
They’ve talked before about marriage, but they’d both agreed they didn’t want to get married while their relationship is still a secret.
And then they’d both agreed that they didn’t really have any interest in coming out to the world. Anyone who really matters knows, but they still have to sneak around and Max is sick of it.
He’s about to win his third championship. That should count for something.
And Max . . . he would not say his personality is particularly impulsive. He can be rash, sometimes, and on track he is certainly not known for holding back, but those things are different.
He doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t do things he doesn’t believe in.
But he is not one to linger on a thought or a decision, once it has been made.
So he pulls from Charles, just enough that he can speak, but close enough that he can still nudge his nose against Charles’.
“Hey,” he murmurs, “if I win this year . . .”
Charles leans forward again, mouth curving into a smile beneath Max’s own.
“ When you win.”
Max might think privately that it’s almost a sure thing, but he’ll not say it aloud, even to Charles. He doesn’t want to dare risk jinxing it.
“If I win,” Max repeats, “I want . . . can I kiss you?”
“You can do more than that,” Charles whispers back, and Max might be too close to see but he can perfectly picture the sly smirk that’s pulling up one corner of his lips, that mischievous glint in his eye that he hides so well under his charm. But Max can see through it, has always been able to see through it. “When you win, you can take me home and fuck me so hard I –”
“Not at home,” Max amends, “at the – at the race. On the track. I want – . . .”
He trails off, unsure how to finish that sentence. I want to come out? I want to tell the world we’re together?
Charles pulls back further this time, so far that Max can’t just lean in for a kiss and can actually see his face. It’s pulled down into a little frown, now, a crease between his brows. Max wants to smooth it away, but he stops himself at the last moment. He needs to let Charles work his way through this one.
Charles stays silent, for so long that Max starts to feel more than slightly anxious. He wonders whether he should take it back, but then he’d be lying, so he tries to be patient while he waits for Charles to speak.
“I . . . you want to . . .”
Charles bites his lower lip, rolling it between his teeth. It’s already red and swollen from Max’s attention, and he finds he can’t quite take his eyes from it.
“Max, I – I want to say yes, but it is like . . . You know what Ferrari said.”
Yeah, Max knows what Ferrari said. He wasn’t in the meeting when Charles had told them he’s dating Max, obviously, but he had been in the meeting between the Red Bull and Ferrari PR teams and the team principles to make sure their responses would coordinate, if it were ever revealed – purposefully or not – that their two star drivers were together.
He’ll never forget the awkward silence after Fred had said This would damage the Ferrari brand. We must make sure that people do not find out.
Christian had pursed his lips, then said Unless they want people to know, in one of the most pointed tones of voice Max had ever heard from the man.
Fred had flushed, said, Well, yes, I suppose, but I cannot see why that would be the case?
Max has no idea what Fred had said before that, when Charles had first told his team principal at the beginning of the year, but Charles had come home that night, done about three shots before just drinking straight from the bottle, then had told Max that he didn’t want to talk about how it went.
He’d respected the request, of course. And after their meeting together, he’d never really felt the need to ask again. He’d been able to paint a pretty clear picture for himself.
“Ferrari can’t fire you because you’re gay,” Max points out. “It’s against the law.”
“I think that this would not stop them,” Charles mutters.
Max hates that he doesn’t know whether he’s right. He also doesn’t want to get into another fight about Charles’ beloved team; god knows it’s about the only thing they ever really, seriously get into it over.
Still, he can’t resist saying, “Another team would sign you, even if Ferrari didn’t renew your contract.”
Charles sighs, face screwing up, and Max knows he’s going to rise to it, fight him despite the fact Max is just stating fact, not trying to bait him.
“Alright, alright,” Max soothes quickly. “It’s – . . . just think about it, yes? I don’t want to pressure you, but I would like to kiss my boyfriend to celebrate. If he would like that, too, of course.”
“I will think about it,” Charles says, but Max can tell from his hesitant tone that he probably won’t think that deeply. He tries not to be too disappointed about it, but finds it upsets him a little more than he expected. “Where has this come from? I thought we agreed to wait.”
“That was a year ago,” Max says, chewing the inside of his lip. “And maybe I don’t want to wait anymore.”
Slowly, Charles raises a brow. “So you are proposing right now? This is what you are actually asking?”
Max feels his face heat up. “Well, no,” he allows, though he knows why Charles thinks that. They had agreed that they’d wait to tell the world, until they either retired or decided to get married. Considering neither have any plans to retire any time soon, he understands why Charles has assumed this must be the other option.
Max does plan to propose, but he’d only just found the jeweller he wants to use for the ring, and he wants them both to be home in Monaco, the spectre of racing out of mind for both of them.
He’s told the jeweller he needs the ring made by mid-December.
“I just – if I win, I would like to be able to look at you and not have to stop myself from doing what I want. It is my championship. I should be able to kiss the person I love.”
Charles purses his lips. “You know if you do that, it will not be about your win any more. People will always talk about your third championship and your coming out in the same sentence.”
This time, it’s Max’s turn to hesitate.
He does know that, honestly. It is why when this same thought had floated through his mind last year, right before Suzuka, he’d immediately dismissed it. Charles has known from the beginning that Max had never really had any plans to come out; not because he is ashamed, like Charles had initially assumed, but because he firmly believes in keeping his private life private.
He does not want to be remembered as one of the first ever gay drivers. As the first ever gay championship winning driver. When people say the name Max Verstappen, all he ever wants them to think about is his accomplishments.
Charles had not had the same qualms. He had quietly admitted, right at the beginning, that he feels like he owes it to the queer community to prove to them that they can do anything, their sexuality unimportant.
But after the first time Max had kissed him, Charles had pulled back, a stricken expression marring his face, and had said, We can’t. Ferrari would never allow this.
Not I don’t want you. Not I do not want people to find out I’m gay.
Ferrari would never allow this.
Whatever Charles thinks he owes to LGBT people, he thinks he owes a championship with Ferrari to his father and Jules more.
Max knows how terrified he is to risk that.
“I do not mind that,” Max says, because it has become clear to him that this is true. “Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, always said in the same breath. I think I would be okay with this.”
Slowly, a smile starts to spread on Charles’ lips again. He slides closer, so that their noses can nudge together again.
Relief releases the twist in his gut. Whatever Charles answers, at least they are still alright.
“You do not want us to be talked about together because we are championship rivals?” Charles teases. Max rolls his eyes. “Prost and Senna, Hamilton and Rosberg, Leclerc and Verstappen.”
“Who says that I cannot have both?” Max asks, splaying his hand against Charles’ back so he can pull him closer, pressing their chests together. “I do not know if you know this, but I of course am not a man that settles for less than exactly what I want.”
Charles gasps, loud and exaggerated. “This I did not know! You have shocked me with this information, Max Verstappen. Shocked me.”
Max rolls his eyes again, then leans forward to kiss the stupid laugh right out of Charles’ mouth.
When he pulls back, just enough to breathe, Charles says, “I will not promise you anything. But I will think about it more, yes?”
That’s really all he could hope for.
It’s only a week later, when they’re on Max’s plane, leaving their vacation home in southern Italy to go back to Monaco, that Charles brings it up again.
Max didn’t really expect him to bring it up again at all. He kind of thought he’d have to wait until it was almost time, then ask again.
Charles is scrolling on his phone, slumped in the seat opposite Max, when he says, apropos of exactly nothing, “This article says you could win as early as Japan.”
Max looks up from his own phone, where he’d been losing a game of chess against the computer. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“It also says Checo would have to DNF in the next few races.”
Max rolls his eyes. “So I could win based on bad luck for my teammate. Great.”
Charles goes quiet, and Max lingers on him, unwilling to go back to his phone until he figures out why he’d brought it up. It could just be jealousy on Charles’ part, but Max had seen that last year. This doesn’t feel the same as that; honestly, it hasn’t felt like that all year, since Charles realised Ferrari had built him a shitbox that would have no chance of challenging Max again.
“Most of the articles agree it will likely be in Qatar.”
Max purses his lips. “You know, this championship could still be anybody’s. What if I DNF every race?”
“Be serious, Max.”
“I am! It could happen.”
Charles lowers his phone from his face. “I suppose,” he allows. “But do you think it will?”
Max doesn’t want to admit his real answer to that, so he stays quiet.
“Exactly,” Charles says anyway. “So you might win in Qatar. And it is – . . . we would not be able to kiss there. You know we cannot even share a room.”
Max’s lips part as he finally realises why Charles has brought this up. Max knows that if they ever came out, they would face difficulties in some of the countries in which they race.
It had been the only real concern that Christian had brought up, when Max had first told him.
He’ll admit that he hadn’t really thought through his proposition to Charles, though. He knows the team have been making noise about how early Max might be able to win; he hasn’t been listening, really, considering what happened last year.
He’ll either win it or he won’t, and he’ll know on the day. That’s enough for him.
When he’d asked Charles whether they could kiss, he had not taken into consideration what country they might be in. It’s an admittedly silly oversight.
“Oh,” is all he can think to say.
“Then we are in Austin, and it would not be illegal, but I think you can agree even Christian would advise that we do not, which is the same in Mexico, and then in Brazil, well, did you know LGBT people have some of the most rights in the world there? But I think that this is too late in the year for you, unless you are trying not to win, but I do not think that you are even capable of throwing a race, and even if you did, we still have to race in the UAE this year. Though I did just read that the only way for a gay person to be prosecuted there is for a husband or guardian to make a complaint, but there are still ‘ treatments’ so that is – ”
“Charles,” Max interrupts, dropping his phone on the seat next to him so he can lean forward and place his hands on Charles’ knees. “It is okay if your answer is no.”
It has to be okay. Max is not willing to lose Charles, especially over this. He is terrified for whether the day may come that they actually cannot agree on this, on coming out, on not having to live in secrecy, but that day is not here yet.
“I’m sorry,” Charles murmurs. “Between Ferrari and these races, I do not think that we should do it this year.”
Max would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed. He is disappointed.
But he does understand.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia were the two countries that their teams had told them they had to avoid being together at all. Charles had thrown a fit, and Max had been just as angry – though much more quietly – but in the end they’d both understood that they could be in danger if they were caught.
If he wins in Qatar, he wouldn’t want to come out there anyway.
“Alright,” Max murmurs, then leans forward so he can kiss him, reassuring Charles that they’re fine. “Of course I understand, baby.”
Charles kisses him again, then undoes his seatbelt so he can move next to Max. He tucks himself in beside him, resting his head on Max’s shoulder.
“I wish it could be different, mon amour.”
Max doesn’t bother saying that he does, too. Charles already knows.
The thing is, is that even though Max does win the next four races, he doesn’t get the fastest lap every time and Perez gets a podium every time, too.
So he doesn’t win in Japan.
But, if he wins in Qatar, then the championship will be his.
And Max can’t stop thinking about what Charles said, about if he wins in Qatar.
Charles hasn’t brought it up again, hasn’t said he’s changed his mind, but Max knows he’s still thinking about it. They’ve been dating for almost two years, and they’ve known each other since they were kids . Of course Max knows Charles is still thinking about it.
Unlike pretty much every other race weekend, they don’t share a room in Qatar – they don’t even see each other outside of the paddock.
By the time qualifying rolls around, Max just can’t get Charles’ I do not think you are capable of throwing a race out of his head. And it’s not – Max wouldn’t say he’s really considering throwing the race, because Charles is right, he’s never done that in his life. There would never have even been a reason for him to consider it.
Charles never even said he would let Max kiss him.
But it – he – well. Max will always race the best he can. But if he were to, say, start from P20 . . .
He’s being stupid. He knows he’s being stupid. He’s just postponing the inevitable – which is him winning without Charles’ permission for a kiss. But maybe with one more week, Charles might . . .
No. No. He can’t. Can he?
No. He can’t.
If he were to ask Charles right now, the one person who might understand, he knows exactly what his boyfriend would say: what the fuck, Max, are you crazy? Or something like it.
But then, right before quali starts, Charles brushes past Max in the paddock. Max thinks that will be the end of it, just that brief, one second interlocking of their pinkies, but then Charles grabs his wrist and pulls him to a stop.
“I have a good feeling about today,” Charles says, smiling. “You will get P1 I think, yes? And then tomorrow the championship will be yours.”
Max purses his lips, and then narrows his eyes.
“You do not think that the good feeling might be for yourself?”
Charles laughs, eyes lighting up. “Perhaps I will get P1, and you will not make it past Q1. Then I will get to wait another week before having to see your ego get so big your head falls off.”
Max can’t help the chuckle that bursts past his lips.
“You would be sad, if my head fell off,” he teases.
Charles tilts his head, pretending to think about it. Slowly, as if he has taken great care with his answer, he says, “It is a pretty head. I would probably miss it, I think.”
Despite the joke, Max lets out a shocked scoff. “You think? ”
“I would still have your trophies to cuddle at night,” Charles informs him primly.
God, he’s such a menace.
“I do not want to find out whether you are joking,” Max says, even though he knows that of course he is. “So I think that this week I will not win.”
Charles steps closer, then slings his arm around Max’s shoulder. It could be friendly, but Max still tenses.
He hasn’t kissed Charles since they landed here four days ago. It’s not his fault he’s starting to feel a bit on edge.
“If you do not win here, then we will still be able to celebrate together,” Charles murmurs into his ear.
He pulls back, and they were really only hugging for a moment, but Max’s ears are ringing anyway.
“Good luck!” Charles calls as he walks away, waving over his shoulder as he goes.
He would not have said that, if he knew what Max has been thinking. If he knew how seriously Max had been considering postponing his win. Max knows Charles would never actually encourage him to throw a race.
And yet, he sits in the cockpit of the car, hands tightening on the steering wheel as he waits to be let out of the garage, and he thinks of Charles’ If you do not win here, then we will still be able to celebrate together, and he wonders whether, if he gives Charles another week, he’ll change his mind about coming out together.
Honestly, he thought he’d be more ashamed about purposefully qualifying badly.
It’s shockingly easy to do. He doesn’t crash, because he doesn’t actually want to cost the team any money just because he’s maybe gone a little insane, but it’s pretty easy to only do a couple flying laps in the beginning, come in to pit, do an out lap, pretend to be impeded on his next hot lap, and then do another in lap.
He chucks a bit of a tantrum about Hulkenberg impeding him, but he knows Hulkenberg won’t actually get a penalty because he didn’t really do anything wrong. Max will probably cop a bit of lashing online about being a baby, but he couldn’t care less.
By the time that’s all settled and the team is ready to send him out again, Max makes up an excuse about needing to go to the bathroom, and then everyone in the garage is so antsy about the rapidly declining time that Max does get his ass back in the car.
He does another out lap, losing a couple seconds by going wide in turn 6, and by the time he starts his flying lap he knows there isn’t enough time on the clock for him to set a new time with a low fuel load.
His team is hoping he’s going to pull off a miracle, GP in his ear at the beginning of the lap giving him some gentle encouragement. If he was really, truly trying, he might actually be able to make some magic.
As it happens, he goes slightly wide again in turn 6 – it’s probably overkill, but he knows it’ll shave off a hundredth or two, just in case he’s miscalculated.
He hasn’t.
Just like that, he’s qualified P19, out in Q1 for the first time in – well, he actually can’t remember.
He kind of feels for Zhou, who had actually been trying and who Max has still out-qualified, but whatever. He’s got problems of his own, evidenced by the silence from his radio that is usually filled with words of praise.
“Where’d I place?” Max asks, just to keep up the ruse.
He feels a bit bad, when GP, obviously quite hesitantly, says, “Uh, P19, Max.”
He puts up a token fight, lest anyone figure out what he’s done – “What the fuck, is that a fucking joke, that’s bullshit, mate,” – and then pulls in to the garage.
Christian crosses over from the pit wall as soon as he’s allowed, watching Max get out of the cockpit with arms crossed over his chest.
Max expects a tongue lashing. Of course he does. Even he can’t quite believe his own audacity.
But Christian just looks at him, with a brow slowly raising, and says, “Everything alright, son?”
It’s nicer than Max deserves. The whole thing still looks like Max’s fault, even without the knowledge that he’d masterminded it purposefully.
“The fuck do you think?” he snaps back, making sure there’s no real bite to it, because, again — it’s his own fault.
“Go back to the hotel and get some rest,” Christian advises, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have a big day tomorrow, trying to make up those places.”
It’s still nice, but Max understands the command underneath. The expectation.
Christian cares more about the records than Max does, but even Max is proud of this winning streak. He also feels pretty confident that it’s going to stand for a long, long time, so he doesn’t much care about adding one more number to it.
But he nods, and he does go back to the hotel. He doesn’t want to see anyone, doesn’t want to have to keep up the charade.
Guilt starts to settle in him, the further away from the track he gets, because what the fuck was he thinking? Where has his hunger gone? His drive?
There’s an angry text from his father waiting on his phone, but Max swipes it away in favour of watching the broadcast of the rest of quali.
Charles qualifies P1.
Max’s guilt ebbs, just a little.
He ends up being glad that he and Charles aren’t allowed to see each other, because by the time quali ends and Max is back at his hotel, there’s a text from Charles.
What the fuck? I was joking, you know.
Max doesn’t reply. Charles is the one person who will be able to see through his lies.
By the time the race comes around, Max has made the decision that he’s going to try for P1, even though he’s set himself up pretty terribly. He’s starting to feel pretty bad about the whole thing, Christian’s wary looks and GP’s quiet encouragement only adding to his despair.
This isn’t who he is. But he hasn’t gone so far that this can’t be fixed.
He doesn’t even need P1 to win the championship, considering he won the sprint yesterday. He just needs to scrape together a few points, and it’s his.
And he just started from P6 in Spa, and still managed to win by 30 seconds. He can do this.
There aren’t a lot of overtaking opportunities at Lusail, but the huge straight and the RB19’s straight-line speed mean that’s not going to be an issue. He’ll be able to overtake most of the cars at the back pretty easily, even without DRS. The midfield will be a bit more of a challenge, but he knows he can do it.
The McLaren’s would be an issue, considering the track is exclusively medium- and high-speed corners, but their straight-line speed is so bad it’s actually laughable.
The Ferrari’s are the real competitors, their max straight-line speed even higher than Red Bull’s, but once he engages his DRS he’ll be able to pick them off, too, if he can’t manage it around a corner somewhere.
It’s not too late to make right his wrongs. Nobody even has to know what he did.
By lap 36, he’s made up 13 places. He honestly thinks he might even be able to go for P1, at this point.
Then George makes contact with him going into turn 1, and the Mercedes tyre rips a hole in his side pod.
They’re both forced to retire.
Max has never been a religious man. He wouldn’t even say he’s particularly spiritual.
Still, he thinks this might be a sign that he should have stuck with his gut and let the championship go this round.
George looks a bit terrified, when he spots Max after the race is done. Max just turns away from him, and hopes that nobody can see just how unbothered he is by his DNF.
Charles is staring at him a bit too intensely on the flight back to Nice.
Daniel is on the flight too, everybody else who’d been planning to come having ditched for fear of Max’s foul mood after such a bad weekend. Lando and Alex hadn’t said that, exactly, but he’d been able to tell from the looks on their faces anyway.
The lack of said bad mood had had Daniel peering at him curiously. Charles is even more obvious; he hasn’t stopped looking at him since they sat down.
Max can tell from the crease between his brows that Charles has a thing or two on his mind, perhaps that he’s even just trying to figure out how to say what he wants in English. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything on the plane, because Max would have no idea how to approach the subject in front of Daniel.
Whatever Charles may or may not have figured out, Max would never admit to it to anyone other than him. Honestly, he’s still trying to work out whether he’s going to tell the truth to even Charles.
It’s not until they’re back in their apartment that Charles finally says, “So. Your first DNF of the season.”
Max hasn’t even put his bag down yet, too busy trying to make sure he doesn’t accidentally squish Sassy and Jimmy, who are very enthusiastically greeting him by twirling around his ankles.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he says stiffly. He knows that won’t placate Charles, but a man can try.
Charles hums behind him, dropping his suitcase beside Max’s in the kitchen, then leaning down to scratch beneath Sassy’s chin.
“You could have won the championship this weekend.”
“I suppose that good feeling you had really was for yourself.”
He can immediately tell he’s given too much away. Slowly, Charles lifts his head, eyes narrowed.
“Max,” he says slowly, the way he always does when English is failing him and he wants to switch back to his mother tongue. “I am going to ask you this only once, and I want you to be honest with me. Did you purposefully qualify badly on Friday?”
He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to figure a way out of it, even though Charles has purposefully asked for his honesty and Max prides himself on delivering it, particularly when he’s asked.
His silence drags on for too long, and that’s apparently all Charles needs.
“ C'est quoi ce bordel, Max? Pourquoi voudriez-vous – you are so stupid , si vous faisiez cela pour que je gagne – If you did this so I would win –”
His heart jumps into his throat. He’s known Charles has been anxious about his standings, knows he, Carlos, and George have been trading places for several weekends now. Going into this weekend, Charles had been at the bottom of the three, seventh overall, following some lower finishes compared to the other two in the first four races back.
He also knows Charles has been anxious about being so low on the list, especially considering that his contract with Ferrari is yet to be renegotiated.
It may seem hypocritical, considering what he’s just done, but he would never, ever throw a race just to help another driver – not even Charles. It’s too deeply embedded in him, to push hard and find a gap where one may not exist.
Austria 2019 proved that, even if they hadn’t been dating yet at that point.
Charles would probably punch him in the face, if he ever even did it. It’s one of the many reasons why they get along so well – they understand each other too deeply.
Of all the things Max thought Charles might assume, he has to admit that this didn’t even cross his mind, even though it’s an obvious assumption, in hindsight.
“ No, ” he is quick to assure, even though he doesn’t know what the other things Charles said are. “No, it was not so you could win.”
Neither bother to point out Charles still didn’t win. Checo had gotten P1, and Lewis had pushed enough to secure P2. A shitty pitstop – again – had had Charles having to settle for third.
George’s DNF at least had Charles moving ahead of him again in the standings. Carlos’ P4 still has him the spot above Charles overall.
“I do not understand,” Charles announces, straightening up from the ground and crossing his arms over his chest. “So you did qualify badly, but not for me?”
He doesn’t know how to explain it. He’d told himself that it was a momentary weakness, a lapse in judgement, but the truth is that Max had been thinking about it since Charles had said on their flight back from summer break So you might win in Qatar. And it is – . . . we would not be able to kiss there.
It’s not much of a stand, really, because nobody in the world is ever going to know that it has its roots in his anger over the treatment of LGBT people in Qatar, but that had been what he was thinking.
That he didn’t want to be a gay driver, celebrating his championship in a country that would have arrested him if he’d dared to kiss his boyfriend in public. That they don’t deserve to be part of his history, to be remembered as the country in which he’d won his third championship.
He isn’t sure how to say all of that to Charles. He thinks he’d probably struggle to say it even in Dutch, but in English he knows it will come out all wrong.
“I did not want to win Qatar,” he settles on finally. “Not if I couldn’t celebrate with you after.”
Charles’ face does something strange, softening slightly but also screwing up.
“You know that this does not matter to me,” Charles says softly. “I would still have been to see you, I would still come to the party.”
“It matters to me,” Max insists. “If this is the last championship I win, I do not want it to be somewhere that I could not sleep beside you that night.”
Charles’ face melts, arms dropping by his side as he steps forward to hook them around Max’s waist, dropping his forehead into the crook on his neck. Max leans down, resting his chin on top of Charles’ head, running his fingers down his boyfriend’s spine.
“You are still stupid,” Charles mutters against him. “But you are so sweet, too.”
Max feels the tip of his ears start to burn. He knows he’s doing better, being vulnerable with Charles, but it is not easy, either. He’ll probably need to retreat to the bathroom after this, give himself time to pull himself back together in privacy.
“Did you change your mind?” Charles asks after a moment. “You got back into the points, but that crash did not look like your fault.”
“I felt a bit guilty,” he admits quietly, glad that Charles has enough sense to keep his face buried in Max’s throat. He isn’t sure how honest he could continue to be, if Charles were looking at him still. “So I decided that I would try to make up the places. The crash was an accident, but I – . . .”
“It was taken out of your hands,” Charles finishes for him, fingers tightening in Max’s shirt by his waist. “You got what you wanted, but you did not have to do anything for it. This is why you were not mad at George.”
“Yes,” he whispers. There’s a burning lump in his throat, making it hard for him to speak. He tries to swallow it down, but is mortified to feel tears scratching at his eyes instead.
Charles chooses that moment to pull back, but there’s nothing but understanding on his face.
“I wish I was as brave as you,” Charles murmurs, reaching up with gentle fingers to drag his finger from Max’s temple down to his ear. “And I – I love you, too.”
Max swallows loudly, then closes his eyes and leans forward so he can kiss the love of his life. Charles is – he just understands. He knows his boyfriend deserves to hear the words more often than he can push them past his unwilling lips, but he’s glad to know that Charles can at least read between the lines. Max’s upbringing may have made saying it more difficult than it should be, but Charles knows, anyway, and he’s endlessly grateful for this man.
Just under two weeks later, Max takes the 2023 championship in Austin.
GP and Christian are screaming in his ear, and he knows he’s screaming right back. He puts together something vaguely intelligible and appropriate in response as he does his cool down lap, and he does some donuts on the main straight, and then he finally parks in parc ferme.
Second and third are already parked; Checo is in third, and there’s a Ferrari in second, but Max doesn’t know whether it’s Charles or Carlos. The two had been scrapping for second with only ten laps to go, and Max hadn’t been told who had come out victorious.
God, he hopes it’s Charles. He doesn’t want to have to try and fight his way through the crowd and get to the media pen to find his boyfriend.
Max’s fingers are shaking as he pulls the steering wheel out; he doesn’t balance it right, and it slides off the front of the car and onto the ground. He’s fumbling with his seatbelt when he finally finds out which of the Ferrari’s got P2.
Charles’ face appears over the halo, helmet gone, balaclava lines on his cheeks, and beaming down at Max so widely that Max just knows he’ll be complaining about sore cheeks tonight.
Max doesn’t even realise his hands have gone slack until Charles reaches into the cockpit, undoing the belt for him.
“So you can win three consecutive championships, but you cannot undo your belt?” Charles says, shouting to be heard over the cheers of the crowd.
Max knows he should be doing something, anything, but as he rises from his seat, he only has eyes for Charles – who only has eyes for him, too.
“Take this off,” Charles says, knocking his knuckles against the helmet over his cheek. “I want to kiss you, and you are making it very difficult for me.”
Max stops, from where he’d been hooking his foot just underneath the halo so he could stand on the body, and stares down at Charles.
“Huh?”
Charles bites his lip, looking nervous.
“Only if you still want.”
His foot slips in his hurry to undo the buckle of his helmet, and Charles laughs, loud, as he grabs Max’s waist to steady him.
“Fucking – fuck,” he mutters as he rips the balaclava from the top of his head.
Charles is clearly nervous, but he’s trying so hard to be brave, Max can tell.
“Are you sure?” Max asks as he throws the HANS, helmet, and balaclava on the ground, uncaring.
Charles just reaches up, grabbing Max’s race suit in a fist and dragging him down.
Max goes more than willingly, caging Charles’ face between his palms and pressing their lips together. It’s as heated as it would have been in private, but Max barely – barely – as the wherewithal to stop himself from sliding his tongue into Charles mouth. His knees are pressing into the halo, sharp and uncomfortable, so Max tries to swing one of his legs over without breaking the kiss, but all he manages to do is stumble enough that Charles has to take a steadying step backwards, laughing as he pulls back slightly.
He has no idea how anybody reacts, because his ears are ringing loudly, and he doesn’t really care, anyway.
He just leans forward again, catching Charles’ mouth once, twice, then a third time.
“You are so greedy,” Charles teases, pushing his hand against Max’s chest. “I think that you should probably stand on your car or something, no?”
“Who the fuck cares?” he mutters, trying to lean forward for another kiss.
Charles just laughs again, and steps back completely. “Go to your team, at least. Maybe they will wait to kill us, if you make them happy.”
Max rolls his eyes, but finally pulls himself from the car. He doesn’t bother with the usual car celebration – he’s pretty sure nothing is going to feel better than this, anyway.
“Just one more, baby,” he murmurs, once he’s free.
“Only because you are a three-time world champion,” Charles declares, the little shit, and then kisses him again, arms thrown around his neck and pressing their bodies tightly together.
A hand claps him on the back, hard and congratulatory, which pulls Max from his haze enough that he finally lets Charles go.
“Let somebody else have a go, eh, Leclerc?” Checo says, grinning widely.
“I should hope they do not,” Charles answers, shockingly indignant. He reaches up, pressing his thumb to the corner of Max’s mouth to rub something away, eyes and face so fucking soft that Max kind of wants to cry. “ But I will allow a hug. Just this once.”
Checo and Max laugh, as a satisfied grin spreads across Charles' face.
“I’ll see you in the cooldown room,” Charles murmurs, patting him on the shoulder. He gives Checo a quick handshake, and then disappears, running over to his own team.
It’s not until Charles is swarmed by his team that everything starts to filter back in – the huge crowd in parc ferme, the screams and cheers of the spectators that he thinks might be even louder than before, the fireworks that are still exploding in the late afternoon sky.
Max already knows he’s going to find the pictures of he and Charles and set one of them as his lock screen.
Christian rolls his eyes when Max throws himself at him, pulling back just enough to press a fond pat against his cheek.
“You certainly don’t know how to do things by halves,” Christian shouts over the cheers, still somehow managing to sound indulgent.
“I didn’t know he was going to do that,” Max says, which is true – he doesn’t bother to say that he was the one who proposed it originally, who’s been hoping for weeks that Charles would change his mind.
He also feels a bit bad that they’re all going to have to change their pre-approved coming out supportive announcement, but it’s not Max’s fault that the PR team didn’t know him well enough to come up with a post-race-celebratory-kiss version.
None of the rest of the team say anything about it, and Max pointedly ignores his father, who is standing by the barrier and looking like he’s bitten into a lemon.
By the time Max makes it to the cooldown room, his press officer, Gemma, has been in his ear about behaving professionally the whole time, but he’s just itching to see Charles again and he barely hears a word.
The camera is already filming, Checo and Charles’ bland conversation about the race echoing through the room as Max picks up the 1st place cap and takes a liberal drink of water.
There’s no fucking throne this year, but it wouldn’t even matter if there were.
Gemma is still glaring at him from the doorway, so Max stops himself from kissing Charles again – but just barely. He moves to stand beside the second place chair Charles is lounging in, and Charles doesn’t even pause in his recollection of some incident when he reaches over to grab Max’s hand in his.
Max smiles down at him, and he knows the look on his face must be sickeningly lovestruck if Checo’s eye roll and his press officer’s grimace is anything to go by.
He could not care less.
By the time they’re waiting to be let on stage, zipping back into their race suits, Max feels pretty confident he’s going to kiss Charles again on the podium.
When Max first asked Charles whether, if he won his third world championship, he’d let him kiss him on live TV to celebrate — well, he’d thought his biggest problem would be Charles saying no .
Not being able to stop kissing him . . . well, it’s certainly a problem in their everyday life. He didn’t really think it would be his main concern now.
And yet, when the Dutch and Austrian anthems play yet again, and Max accepts his trophy, it’s pretty much all he can think about. And Charles – well, he doesn’t help, staring up at Max from his second place step like there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.
When Carmen starts to play, Charles is obviously more focussed than Max; he’s spraying him in the face before Max has even picked up his Trento.
Max laughs and turns his head away, pure, unbridled delight blooming in his chest and making it hard to breathe. He shakes his own bottle and points it back towards Charles, hoping to get at least a little bit on him, but before the rose water is even gone he drops the bottle and hooks his fingers into the fabric stretched over Charles’ stomach.
Charles grins and complies easily, wrapping his arms around Max’s neck, the bottle of Trento smacking Max in the back.
This time, he can’t help the little bit of tongue – but he’ll swear up and down, later, that Charles started it.
Rose water drenching the tops of their heads brings Max back to reality, and for the second time in an hour it's Checo who is responsible for pulling them apart.
“Yes, yes, we get it, you’re in love,” Checo teases, then sprays them both right in the face.
Max thinks that maybe, just maybe, he might set one of these photos as his lock screen instead.
Lestappen (taylor’s version)
A beautiful picture of Max and Charles celebrating Max’s win! 🌈 🦁
[image id: Max Verstappen, leaning down from his car and kissing Charles Leclerc, after pulling into parc ferme in Austin.]
Ellia
Can somebody please confirm whether I hallucinated or if in the year of our lord 2023 i just saw perhaps the single greatest kiss in the history of kisses on live television
Max loves charles confirmed
LIPREADERS OF THE INTERNET UNITE AND PLEASE TELL ME WHETHER I REALLY SAW MAX CALL CHARLES ‘BABY’
MV33 world champion
Brb, just compiling a comprehensive list of all those ‘fruity max verstappen’ videos that people laughed at us about for years
Leclerc lover
I don’t think i can ever recover from this moment. Is this what it feels like to win a world championship? Congrats max (and charles) (and myself) (and basically every lestappen girlie out there)
Formula One ✅
A huge congratulations to Max Verstappen for his third championship, and to both he and Charles Leclerc for the announcement of their relationship.
We can’t wait to see what the rest of the 2023 season brings!
Swipe through to see the moment Max pulled into parc ferme for his celebration.
#maxverstappen #charlesleclerc #loveislove 🌈