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Max split his first lip at eight years old. He remembered that more than anything else. The way the blood shone, brighter than expected. The way it splattered everywhere, staining the white school uniform of the other boy. Little red cherries blooming down his chest. A drop had splattered on his face, and he had reached out his tongue to taste it. It was warm, and coppery. Like licking a penny you found in your pocket.
The same as his. Different at the same time.
When he asked his papa about the taste later on, Jos had laughed. “He’s got no Ichor, boy, that's why it tastes different! He’s weak like the rest of them, stomme kut.” Max wasn’t sure what that meant, but it made him feel warm inside. Everybody else got mad at him for fighting, but Jos, his new step-dad, had liked it. Sometimes he felt like Jos liked him more than his real parents did.
His mother had been furious when she found out about the fight. She had yelled at him right there, in the school parking lot. In front of the other kids. The other kid’s parents. About how she had raised him better than this. “And what kind of an example are you setting for Vicky?” she had screamed. Max had only blinked up at her, nonplussed. They both knew that Vicky was different to him. She wasn’t born a viper, venomous and evil. She was soft and sweet, like their mother. Not a hint of Ares in her.
Looking back on his childhood felt like looking directly into the sun most days. He had been so angry all the time. Wild and reckless, looking for glory. No one had known what to do with him, especially not his mother. She had lived her life carefully, assured in every movement. Nothing like the angry beehive, the live wire, the rabid dog stuck inside Max’s chest, snarling and frothing to get out. He had no idea what his mother had seen in his father. No idea what she saw in Jos. Sometimes he felt like she looked at him and saw a series of bad decisions. He didn’t blame her for that. She had fallen in and out of love with anger so many times, it made sense she would do the same to him.
Karting had been there way of channeling the anger that lived inside him, and it had worked to an extent. Jos pushed him, harder than the other children’s parents, hard enough to make him bleed, and soon enough he was winning every race. He saw the other parent on the grid mutter that he was too harsh, but Max knew they were wrong. He was a rabid dog and he needed a firm hand. Jos was the only person that knew how to do that. The more time he spent at the track, hunched over a kart too big for his tiny body, the less time he spent in school, fighting boys far bigger than him.
His mother stayed home most weekends, slowly fading out of his life. She liked Vicky so much. So, so much. Her perfect baby girl, who never screamed or kicked. Who wore frilly dresses and pink bows in her hair. When Max and Jos came home from the track each night, covered in grease and sweat, they hadn’t been allowed to touch her. “I won’t let you get my little girl dirty,” she had tutted, sweeping Vicky up in her arms to go play dolls upstairs. Or maybe have tea parties, or braid each other's hair. Max didn’t care. He was winning, and Jos smiled when he pushed the other boys around on the track. Jos called him a winner. Stared at him like he was going to make it all the way to the top, even when Max messed up and he had to be punished.
He didn’t understand why his mother had to be punished. She didn’t deserve it, didn’t scream like Max did. But he supposed she must have wanted it. Otherwise she wouldn’t have stayed with them so long. His father, Max and Jos. She gave them all up in the end, sweeping up Vicky one more time and deciding that she was done with angry men in her life. They left, to be with people that were soft like they were. No harsh edges or blunt force. No children that solve every problem with hitting.
The divorce had been weird. He knew that most people found it odd that he chose to stay with his step-dad, while his sister stayed with his mother. But Jos needed his little dog to win more races, and Max couldn’t live without a chain around his neck.
They stayed together, and they won.
-
Everybody wanted to touch Charles. From the day he was born, he was loved. His father told him once that the day he was born the nurses had all gathered around, dropping their responsibilities to coo over his big eyes and pinchable cheeks. Everybody is ugly as a newborn, but Charles wasn’t. Aphrodite had chosen him. He was destined to be adored.
His parents had tried to keep it normal for him. They put him in karting, like his older brother Lorenzo. They punished him when he broke things. But they hardly knew how to process the way people responded to him.
He remembered once, when he was a very small child, maybe four or five, he had fallen off his scooter going too fast down the hill. He had rolled, hard, down the concrete path. Scraped his knees and his forehead. Grit embedded in the wounds. As he lay there, wailing, wishing he had listened to his maman about wearing a helmet, his father had ran down to him, yelling that everything was alright. But before he had get there, a crowd of mamans had surrounded him, leaving their own children to see if he was alright. By the time his father had made it past them, Charles already had a plaster over his knee and a lollipop in his mouth.
His father had scolded him for taking candy from a stranger. Had carried him on his shoulders all the way home, one hand holding his legs, the other his battered scooter. The next day, they went to a temple to ask the priestesses how to control Charles’ powers. He left with a pendant that was meant to weaken his pull, and strict instructions to not compel people towards him. The pendant helped, but the instructions didn’t. Charles never wanted people to be drawn towards him. They just were.
His parents were hard on him as a kid. Much harder than they were on his brothers. Trying to cancel out the way the world seemed to sway in his direction, keep him from getting spoiled by all the attention. While he was admonished for manipulating people, even when he promised that he had done nothing all, his brothers were praised for the slightest thing. It hardly helped their relationship, Charles knew the false compliments only infuriated his brothers. Yet, he couldn’t help but glow when he beat them out on the track, forcing his parents to acknowledge that he was better than them because of what he had done, not just because of what he was. He knew that made him selfish, having so much love and yet wanting more and more for himself. But he didn’t care. He needed this, and he couldn’t bring himself to care that his brothers might need it more. Not when he knew he could do it better than them.
When he started to move up in karting, it made things easier. Every team he joined loved him. His father only had to introduce him to a sponsor to have them wrapped around his finger. He knew that Lorenzo seethed, especially as they gave up on his career to focus on Charles. But everybody knew that Charles would be the one to make it. No point backing the wrong horse.
As he grew older, he learned to control his pull a bit more. He could never turn it off completely, but he learned to turn it down a little. It helped, especially when girls, and a few intrepid boys, started throwing themselves at him. Back then, he had been grateful for the kart to hide him, and for his father, who learned how to break the crowds that formed around him. He never took the pendant off these days.
Sometimes he didn’t want to be touched.
-
Max had always hated Charles. He already had enough divine power tugging him around, thundering through his veins, pushing him ever forwards in jerky, golden movements. He didn’t need more godly influences in his life, especially ones that drew him in and demanded his attention.
Jos shared his opinions in that regard. They privately referred to Charles as a domme hoer, laughing when he used his powers to draw in creepy old men. Max had never needed the sponsors to love him. His results spoke for themselves, far louder than his abrasive personality did. If Charles wasn’t good enough to progress without pimping himself, that was fine with him.
He ignored Charles off the track, and raced him hard on it. It got a little dirty sometimes. He had been surprised, back then that the golden boy knew how to fight. He hadn’t learned yet about the kernel of hate, deep rooted and bitter, he kept locked away, hidden away from his adoring fans.
The ‘inchident,’ had been one of many. He had been furious afterwards, telling everyone who asked what Charles had done, with puddle soaked fireproofs to prove it. Charles, of course, had told them that nothing happened, and they believed him. They would believe anything from those sweet lips, no matter how poison coated his words were.
After the race, Max had cornered him behind a camper van. Had yelled at him about sportsmanship, as if that was what this was about. Charles had yelled back, about how Max was being dramatic, too angry, overreacting as always. He had waved his arms around, gesticulating furiously, frustrated over not getting his way. Spoiled idiot.
He didn’t remember who threw the first punch, but soon enough, they were rolling on the ground, tearing at each other, pulling hair and clawing at each other’s arms. At one point, Max had him pinned down, hand around his throat, the other raised to punch down on him again, when he looked into Charles’ eyes and realised that he couldn’t. It was a terrifying feeling, to lose control so completely, right in the heat of action. The moment only lasted a second or two, as Charles quickly flipped them back over and they returned to whaling on each other. It was only when both of them were too exhausted to move anymore that they gave up, seemingly reaching a mutual agreement and they lay on the grass, panting and bleeding.
“Can’t even fight without begging for Aphrodite’s help.” Max had spat out, “Too scared to hurt that pretty face.”
Charles had just wheezed out, “Ah, so you do think my face is pretty,” shooting him a smug smile that had Max considering getting up just to start the whole thing all over again.
The next day, he expected the whole circuit to be talking about it. People had spoken plenty about his other run ins, parents shooting reprehensive looks at Jos’s pet loose cannon. But Charles had told everyone he fell through a bush apparently, and people were too busy fussing over his wounds to connect the dots between their equally battered appearances.
They had a mutual respect from then on, circling around each other on the karting circuits. Max could ignore him for the most part. He was progressing much faster, anyways. He wasn’t distracted in the same way Charles was.
By 2014, he was already in F3, racing and test driving for Toro Rosso. Charles was set to race next year, but Max knew that, by then, he would be in a Formula 1 car. It seemed like universal adoration could only get you so far.
-
Most people found it hard to believe that his godly mother, Aphrodite, had ever fallen for Ares. Charles, however, understood it completely. War and love were the same set of instincts repackaged, light and glory disguising a primal need. To dominate, to possess, to prove yourself ahead of everyone else. His brothers certainly understood that, having seen Charles take and take, all in Aphrodite’s name. He suspected that Max did, too.
Their fight had woken up something inside of Charles. It was his first split lip. Probably his first time speaking to someone completely resistant to his charms, as well. He had liked the taste. He wanted more. He always raced hard, but he had raced harder against Max. And it killed him that, no matter what he did, Max always seemed to beat him. By the time he made it to F2, Max was already in his third season of F1. Winning races and picking fights, just like they used to.
Charles knew his time was coming, Ferrari had made it clear that they wanted him. Italians and love, they went together like spaghetti and sauce. But they kept him on his toes, wanting glory for glory.
When his dad lay on his deathbed, Charles put all his charm into one white lie. He offered himself up to Aphrodite for the first time in a long time, begging her to help him convince him. He told his dad that he had signed to Ferrari, and he told himself that it had happened, too.
Later down the line, Charles sometimes wondered if he spoke it into existence, if the world loved him that much.
He preferred to believe he was lying.
After his father passed away, it was harder to stay grounded. His family had been the only ones that knew how to say no to him, and now, their lynchpin was lost. He was adrift in a sea of adoring fans, teammates begging to be his friend without knowing who he was. Charles knew that if they looked past his magnetic field, they would be repulsed. He was spoiled, and mean, and vindictive, and he had no idea how to deal with the one bad thing that had happened in his life.
The only person who had seemed to see the real him, Max, had responded by punching him into the ground. He probably deserved more by now.
His mother was a shell, retreating more and more into the temples of Aphrodite. His brothers had their own lives now, and they made it clear that they didn’t want more of Charle’s successes rubbed in their faces. He was pretty sure that Lorenzo had his number blocked after one too many drunk calls.
Instead, he threw himself into racing. Refusing to leave the track until everyone else was done, pushing everyone away who tried to get close.
He finished the season with a 72 point lead over his closest competitor, one of the most dominant runs in the series’ history. They promised him a year in the Sauber and then, after that, the Ferrari. He could already see the team swaying towards him in adoration. Like it or not, Max would be seeing him again.