Work Text:
The problem with having a free weekend is that Max doesn't know what to do with himself.
He knows what to do with a race weekend. A race weekend has structure - runs on a schedule so precise he could set his watch by it, has a shape he understands down to his bones. A free weekend is just time, loose and unstructured, and Max has never been good at loose and unstructured. He tends to fill it with sim work or games or going to the factory for no reason his engineers can identify, which Lewis has opinions about.
Lewis has a lot of opinions about Max's relationship with downtime. He has expressed these opinions on multiple occasions, in multiple time zones, with the particular brand of patient exasperation he reserves for things Max does that Lewis finds both frustrating and fond.
This is how Max ends up on the sofa at ten in the morning with a coffee he didn't make himself - Lewis made it, black, exactly right, without being asked - and both cats arranged on various parts of him, not allowed to go to the factory, not allowed to open his laptop.
"It's a rest weekend," Lewis had said, taking the laptop gently but firmly from Max's hands. "We're resting."
"I'm not tired," Max had said.
Lewis had given him the look. "Sit down, Max."
Max had sat down.
That was an hour ago. Lewis disappeared back into the bedroom at some point, citing something about emails, which Max suspects is a more socially acceptable version of what Max had been trying to do with the laptop, but he's learned to pick his battles. Jimmy and Sassy are warm and heavy and the coffee is good and outside the Monaco morning is doing its thing with the light, and Max is - fine. He's fine. He can do this.
He lasts another twenty minutes before he gets up.
He tells himself he's getting more coffee. This is partially true. He does get more coffee. He also drifts down the hallway toward the bedroom because that's where Lewis is and Max's internal compass has recalibrated, over the course of the past year and a half, to point more or less permanently in Lewis's direction. He's mostly made his peace with this.
The bedroom door is half open. Max nudges it with his shoulder and leans in the doorway.
Lewis is on the bed, on his stomach, laptop open in front of him, reading something. He's in a t-shirt - one that he has stolen from Max and isn't willing to give back - and soft shorts, braids loose, one ankle crossed over the other. He looks relaxed in the way he only looks when he thinks nobody's watching - all the performance of Lewis Hamilton set down somewhere, just a person in a bed on a Sunday morning.
He glances up when Max appears.
"Thought you were resting," Lewis says.
"I got more coffee," Max says, holding it up as evidence.
Lewis gives him a look that suggests he is not fooled by the coffee. But the corner of his mouth pulls up. "Come here, then."
Max comes here.
He puts his coffee on the nightstand and drops onto the bed next to Lewis, who shifts to make room for him with the ease of long habit, not looking away from his screen. Max ends up on his side, head propped on his hand, looking at the side of Lewis's face.
Lewis reads. Max watches him read. This is, he has discovered, an activity he is capable of sustaining for an unreasonable amount of time, which would embarrass him if Lewis weren't equally terrible about it in the other direction - Max has caught Lewis watching him eat breakfast with an expression of complete absorption on more than one occasion.
"You're staring," Lewis says, without looking up.
"You said come here," Max says.
"I said come here, not stare at me like I'm a race data screen."
"Race data is interesting," Max says.
Lewis does look up at that, turning his head, and he's smiling properly now - that smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, shows his teeth gap and makes Max feel like he's won something. "You're a nightmare," Lewis tells him, fondly.
"You live with me," Max points out.
"Unfortunately." Lewis closes the laptop. He turns onto his side to face Max, mirroring him, head on his hand. They're close enough that Max can see the detail of his eyes, the scatter of the light through the curtains across his face. He looks soft. He looks like the morning.
Lewis reaches out and pushes Max's hair back from his forehead, slow, just his fingers combing through it once. Max's eyes want to close. He keeps them open through effort of will.
"You really can't do nothing, can you?" Lewis says. Not unkindly. More like he finds it endearing, which Max finds both gratifying and slightly embarrassing.
"I'm doing something," Max says. "I'm lying here."
"You've been lying here for four minutes and your leg is already doing the thing."
Max looks down. His leg is, in fact, doing the thing - the restless bounce he can't always feel himself doing. He stills it deliberately. Lewis watches him do this with the expression of someone who is extremely fond of something they find completely ridiculous.
"I'll figure it out," Max tells him. "The - resting. I'm working on it."
Lewis smiles at him. "I know," he says. "You're doing great."
Max huffs. "Don't patronise me."
"I'm not." Lewis moves his hand from Max's hair to his jaw, just rests it there, thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. Max goes very still, the way he always does when Lewis touches his face - something about it always short-circuits whatever else he was doing. "I mean it. You made it an hour."
"An hour and twenty," Max believes this needs to be clarified.
Lewis grins. "An hour and twenty. Record time."
Max catches Lewis's wrist before he can move his hand, holds it in place. Lewis raises an eyebrow. Max turns his face slightly and presses his lips to Lewis's palm, which is not something he would have done a year and a half ago, before Lewis, before this - before he learned that he was apparently someone who does things like that.
Lewis makes a small, soft sound. His expression does something complicated.
"Max," he says.
"What," Max says, against his palm.
"Nothing," Lewis says. "Just - " He shakes his head slightly, still looking at Max with that expression. "Nothing."
Max kisses his palm again. Then his wrist, the inside of it, where his pulse is. He feels Lewis's breath change fractionally, the slight hitch of it, and something in Max sharpens and focuses the way it does at the start of a race - everything else dropping away, just this, just Lewis.
"We could," Max says, against the inside of his wrist, "rest like this."
Lewis laughs, low, and the sound of it goes straight down Max's spine. "Yeah," Lewis says. "We could do that."
Max moves.
He rolls Lewis onto his back and follows him over, bracing himself above him, and Lewis looks up at him with those eyes - warm and wanting and completely focused on Max - and Max has had a year and a half of this and it still does the same thing to him every single time. He doesn't think that's going to stop.
"Hi," Lewis says, quieter.
"Hi," Max says, and kisses him.
Lewis kisses back slowly, unhurried, hands sliding into Max's hair. This is the thing about Lewis that Max had not anticipated before Lewis - the patience of him, the way he never rushes, the way every kiss feels like he's decided this is the only thing worth doing right now. Max had expected Lewis to be intense in the way he's intense about everything, sharp and focused. He is that, sometimes. But mostly he's like this - generous, warm, in absolutely no hurry at all.
It makes Max want to take him apart.
He mouths down Lewis's jaw, his throat, feels Lewis tip his head back with a hum of approval. His hands are moving up under Lewis's t-shirt, palms flat against the warmth of his stomach, and Lewis makes a small sound when Max's thumbs brush his ribs.
"Off," Max says, pulling at the hem.
Lewis lifts his arms cooperatively and Max pulls the shirt over his head and drops it somewhere and then just - looks. He does this every time. He can't help it. Lewis lies there and lets him look with that expression he gets, pleased and warm, the particular expression that means yes, I know, come here.
Max comes here.
He gets his mouth on Lewis's collarbone, his chest, the compass rose that Max has traced with his fingers enough times to know by heart. Lewis's hands are in his hair, not directing, just holding, and his breathing has changed properly now, deeper and less even. Max bites softly at his ribs and feels him shiver.
"Max," Lewis says. Just his name. Not a question.
"I've got you," Max tells him, which is something Lewis said to him once, months ago, and which Max has since discovered is the correct thing to say, because Lewis's whole body does something at it - softens, opens up, like a key in a lock.
It does that now. Lewis makes a quiet sound and his grip in Max's hair loosens and tightens at once, and Max feels the specific pleasure of being trusted with this - Lewis, who is in charge of everything always, letting Max take over. Choosing to.
Max works his way down. Lewis's shorts come off somewhere in the process and then his underwear and Lewis is spread out on their bed in the morning light, all of him, warm and tattooed and looking at Max like Max is the most interesting thing in any room he's ever been in.
"You're still dressed," Lewis points out.
"I know," Max says.
Lewis gives him a look. "That's not fair."
"You can take them off," Max says, which is a calculated move, because Lewis taking off his clothes is an experience. Sure enough, Lewis sits up and gets his hands in Max's shirt with that particular unhurried attention he brings to everything, pulling it over his head, his palms sliding down Max's chest and stomach in a way that is not strictly necessary but which Max has no objections to. His shorts follow.
Lewis puts a hand flat on Max's chest and pushes, lightly. Max goes back against the pillows and Lewis settles over him, knees on either side, and looks down at him with an expression of profound satisfaction.
"Better," Lewis says.
"You're so annoying," Max tells him, which is completely undermined by the fact that his hands are already on Lewis's thighs, gripping.
Lewis grins. He leans down and kisses Max again, slower this time, deeper, one hand braced by Max's head. Max slides his palms up from his thighs to his hips, his waist, the line of his back. He can feel the warmth of him, the weight, and he wants-
"Drawer," Lewis says, against his mouth.
Max reaches for the nightstand without looking. Lewis shifts to give him room and Max finds the lube by feel, which at this point he could do in a pit lane blindfolded, and Lewis makes a quiet amused sound at the efficiency of it.
"Very smooth," Lewis says.
"I practice," Max says, straight-faced, and Lewis dissolves into giggles, real giggles, dropping his forehead to Max's shoulder, and Max grins at the ceiling and thinks he would stay in this moment for the rest of his life if he could. Lewis giggling against his skin on a Sunday morning with nowhere to be.
"Come on then," Lewis says, lifting his head, eyes bright, still smiling.
Max gets a hand between them.
He takes his time - this is the thing Lewis has taught him, to take his time, that there's no race flag at the end of this - and Lewis hides his face in Max's throat and makes sounds that are going to live permanently in the back of Max's brain. Two fingers, then three, and Lewis is warm and responsive and says Max's name with a particular catch in his voice when Max finds the right angle.
"Okay," Lewis says, after a while. His voice has gone lower, rougher. "Okay, Max, I'm ready-"
"I know," Max says.
"Then-"
"I know," Max says again, because he does, he can feel it, he just wants - one more minute of this, Lewis undone and wanting, asking for him. He curls his fingers and Lewis makes a choked sound and his hips roll forward and Max thinks there, thinks that's it.
"Max." Lewis lifts his head and looks at him and his eyes are dark and his expression is past patience, past the warm unhurried Sunday morning of it, into something more urgent. "Now."
Max moves.
He eases his fingers free and Lewis shifts and Max grips his hips and guides himself down and - the sound Lewis makes, low and long, his head dropping back - Max stores that somewhere he can find it later, some internal archive of things he intends to keep.
Lewis sets the pace at first, which is his right, slow rolls of his hips that build with intent. Max watches him and keeps his hands on his waist and lets him, because Lewis in control of this is - there are no words, Max has looked for them, Lewis is just Lewis, just devastating, and Max is fine with that.
Then Lewis braces his hands on Max's chest and looks down at him with an expression that means "harder" and Max stops letting him.
He gets his hands firmly on Lewis's hips and takes over, and Lewis tips his head back and moans, properly, the kind of sound he usually keeps quiet about, and Max feels it everywhere.
It gets less gentle from there. Lewis drops forward, forearms on either side of Max's head, and Max gets an arm around his waist and rolls them over, and Lewis makes an indignant noise that becomes a completely different noise when Max drives into him, and outside the Monaco morning is still doing its thing with the light but Max is not looking at the light, Max is looking at Lewis, who is looking back at him with an expression that is beyond words and has been beyond words every single time and which Max has stopped trying to name.
"Fuck, there," Lewis says, breathless, "yes, there-"
Max stays there. He's a precise driver. He knows how to hit a mark.
Lewis comes with Max's name in his mouth and his hands fisted in the sheets, and Max follows inside him approximately thirty seconds later because he was never going to last with Lewis clenching around him like that, and the morning goes briefly white at the edges.
-
Later, Max is on his back. Lewis is draped half over him, head on his chest, not going anywhere. The room is warm. Outside, distantly, Monaco is being Monaco. Jimmy has appeared in the doorway, assessed the situation, and retreated.
Max has one hand in Lewis's braids, not doing anything, just resting there. Lewis is drawing something on Max's stomach with one finger, absently. A shape Max can't identify.
"Better than the factory?"
Max pretend to thinks about it seriously, which Lewis probably expected, because Lewis laughs before he can answer.
"Better," Max says. "Slightly."
Lewis pinches his side. Max catches his hand and holds it flat against his stomach instead.
"Next free weekend," Lewis says, "we're doing this again."
"The whole thing?" Max asks. "Or just-"
"The whole thing." Lewis tilts his head up to look at him. He looks wrecked and warm and completely satisfied, which is an expression Max has decided is his favourite thing in the world. "Sofa. Coffee. Resting." A pause. "This."
"The other part is still hard," Max says honestly.
"I know." Lewis settles his head back on Max's chest. "You're getting better at it."
Max looks at the ceiling. Lewis's hand is warm and still under his. Jimmy has reappeared in the doorway and is staring at them with the particular judgement only cats can achieve.
"Maybe," Max says. He tightens his arm around Lewis's shoulders, just slightly. "When you're here it's easier."
Lewis is quiet for a moment. Then he presses a kiss to Max's chest, soft, right over his sternum.
Max doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to. Outside Monaco hums along and in here Lewis is warm and heavy against him and the day is long and unscheduled and for once - just this once - Max thinks he might be all right with that.