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The hum of a half-broken AC being turned on resonates around the room.
The sunset is peeking her hands over the roaring barrier of the ocean’s water; her waves, elegant and careful, kiss the shore with an utmost delicate mark of fingerprints against small, pink shells casting shadows and liquid gold on the ground.
They meet in an embrace, just as they do every night at sundown, and gaze into each other's eyes. Look up at the stars that shine above them, enveloped in the warm embrace of a tangerine sky and its sweetened cherry tints.
Monza was difficult.
The carving of frowns and tired eyes is no stranger to races, but still. Monza wasn’t kind to anyone.
It was a hard weekend for all teams, -Excluding Mclaren. They did really deserve that win.- especially AlphaTauri.
The affirmation makes it feel like the atmosphere is made of porcelain, and if a single sound graces the air, the previous art of kintsugi made on the glittering bowl keeping the team’s sanity together will need a brand new coat of gold to hold ivory intact and good as new.
The gentle buzz of the AC grows louder.
The crash of white foam against even whiter sand joins the whispered melody the night composes, violins and cellos of moonstone and pomegranate liqueur.
Sardinia's beaches carry on with their stupor even after the sun leaves to rest for the hours the moon enjoys as her nightwatch.
There is no other sound, there are no other thoughts to stress over; at least not here, or now.
Charles sits down upon the couch facing the stained glass in the shapes of blues and lilacs, creating life of its own and tales told throughout millenia, wrapped around the grains of sand burnt into crystal clear walls.
He can still taste the salt from the breeze on his tongue, heavy and distinct and liberating in a way almost nothing feels like by now.
He’s oh so young, and still somehow he’s managed to consume himself into little pieces of yellowed paper that smell of trapped melancholy to the extent a 35 year old would, by 23.
And he doesn’t know why it’s not as scary as he thought it would be when he realized he was destined -Doomed.- to be the flame that consumes his forests.
He’s starting to get used to it, actually.
To love and carry and scream along to the ringing in his ears that developed so slowly he hadn’t noticed was there until it was so strong it made him dizzy.
It’s loud, and just now, he’s slowly learnt to notice that maybe it’s not a simple thrum, but a song.
And he has to learn to find the rhythm and get lost in it just enough so that he won’t lose his mind, won’t spiral down until it’s the only thing he can hear surrounding him.
The moment of silence before a wave crashes against the shore.
It feels like there’s no one he knows that can make out the rhythm of the hum he so desperately tries to follow along.
Except, Pierre.
In a strangely intriguing, -And sometimes just straight up fucking scary.- yet new, nostalgic and expected way, it makes so much sense that it’s Pierre.
He can’t imagine it being anyone else but him.
Charles’ heart skips another beat, and the ringing and banging against his cochlea interludes for a second; his breath freezes inside of his ribcage, trapped in between planted roots that have grown silently over years, and years, and years.
It takes him some time to understand that it’s expected and logical in the way his mother looks at him everytime he goes home, and as elegantly and damn intelligently as always, makes comments laced in care and shaped like oh Charles, your accent sounds so much like a Frenchman’s by now, mon coeur.
And she always tops them off with sweet laughter that leaves the aftertaste of peach trees swimming inside his mouth and clinging to his teeth like rock-candy.
And he closes his eyes and laughs along with her, pretends to think nothing of it, to not understand what she means. But, Charles just thinks she knows.
If she actually does, she’s nice enough to not say a word about it, just lets him go and gaze a hundred times at the ocean, with a voice -That has an accent even more French than his.- on the other side of his phone, with lips turned upwards in a grin that could hide pearls themselves if he allowed it to.
And once the calls are done and goodbyes are muttered softly he still finds himself staring at the stars’ reflection on the water.
But he’s not there, and Sardinia’s ocean is nothing like Monaco's. It's nothing like France's.
Sardinia brings the chance of spilled words and whispers against the calm and collected shades of a TV’s bright, celeste light that makes your eyes water and the profile of a loved one seem even more breathtaking. Intoxicating.
It makes yearning feel as easy as breathing.
Seb had called the fleeting extra days he and Pierre had gotten to spend in Italy an escape from reality once the race was done and they were rushing to leave as quickly as possible.
And so it stuck. Charles couldn't feel any more free from reality if he tried.
Not in a familiar ocean; not in an expected thrum that seems to quiet down with every brief, stolen second spent in the presence of the only person capable of erasing the logic found in peachy laughs, and the press of playful shoves against his arms.
Things he’s grown up with; things that have always been surrounding him as he’s found his way into the world. It’s all the little things; it’s always been the little things.
He finds himself wandering the hotel room's corridors throughout quiet sunrises, thinking it looks otherworldly.
It’s a good feeling. A great feeling even, after being so damn used to wandering memorized linoleum floors and giving calculated and studied steps through crowds of people that have seen him his whole life.
That think they have known him his whole life too, even if all they know of him is a facade made up of stress and pressure to succeed hidden by a helmet over his head.
The citrus cracks in between his eyebrows that Max, Checo and Carlos swear are gonna give him permanent wrinkles before he’s even 40.
He doesn’t think it’s so bad, honestly.
He has looked at Pierre’s small, barely visible smile-lines before; he has traced them with the tips of his fingers while he rests. He has loved them in secret for so many years.
Maybe his self-made stress-lines can match with Pierre’s smile-lines in the perfect way in which they have completed each other throughout their whole lives.
Maybe.
And so, sitting here smiling, he decides he adores Italy.
Not because of Ferrari, and not because of the fans.
He decides this is his favourite ocean, because it's made of the song of seagulls, and the tilts of bottles filled with secrets that just perhaps, might be ready to be popped open some time soon.
Some time really soon -If he has enough courage.-
Maybe during one of those silences they share every once in a while.
When the laughter fades out into an eco, with the midnight sky smiling down at them and the dancing light of stars carefully tugging, tugging, tugging.
Those where Charles swears his hands ache from holding back from reaching out to touch, and his tongue feels heavy inside his mouth from not screaming an undying, dramatic love confession.
All in their otherworldly escape-from-reality hotel room, with the light of the TV painting them in the perfect shade of blue, and a place that’s not Monaco and that's not France.
All just before they have to go to sleep on top of unsaid words; get ready to leave Sardinia, and fly over to Sochi. Back to the real world.
Back to all that is known; all the little things.
But today this is their other world, and there is nothing to worry about.
Tonight there is no sunrise to observe him and there are no peachy whispers of when do you plan on bringing him over for dinner again, mon soleil?
There is no rush for anything; there is nothing that is expected and there is nothing that is familiar.
Except for the scent of rosemary that slices through the room when the bathroom door opens, and the bite of the cold air coming through the still humming, half-broken AC merging with hot steam from silver showers and evaporating droplets against fogged mirrors.
There is no race to worry about, there is no paddock to rush to.
There's no plane to catch at four in the morning, because they have a little bit more time before having to hurry on to Russia.
Charles repeats it in his head over and over and over again, like a mantra.
His heart beats and his lungs fill with rigid air that becomes movile again when it enters his body, and everything blurs.
He can feel everything.
He can feel his own blood rushing under his mortal, terribly human flesh, and the ringing in his ears quiet down. He doesn’t question it much in fear that, if he thinks too hard about it, it may become too loud again.
He turns the TV on; the promised blue light washes over marble wrists into blue and shimmering stardust.
There’s an old movie playing with a couple that argues in what looks like the climax of the story.
Charles can’t hear a thing with the way his pulse echoes inside his throat, and leaves a bruise that can’t be seen, but he can feel it.
He can feel oh so much.
Charles is sitting down on this white couch in this white beach with his skylight skin and his lilac pulse, and he can feel every single part of it.
The slam of the door being shut bounces through the walls of the room. Charles pretends he can hear the dialogue playing through the screen.
He can only hear Pierre’s voice throughout his brain ricocheting like it would in a chamber, and he aches to surrender to the sound.
“What are you watching, calamar?”
Charles panics for a second. He doesn’t turn his eyes no matter how hard he wants to, because if he does, he'll stare.
He'll stare and stare and he’ll keep staring, because he’s selfish.
He’ll be selfish, and he’ll grin like he never has before, not on a podium and not in the Ferrari car. And he won’t be able to keep the you, you, you. It’s you from slipping like sand through his fingers; like time through the end and velvet through pale hands enveloped in the shape of knives sharp enough to pierce through skin.
He keeps his eyes on the screen, and he positively aches.
“It’s just some rom-com. One from the 2000's, and stuff.” He settles on for an answer credible enough.
And of course Pierre approaches over the back of the couch, leans over to see for himself, with a malva long-sleeved shirt hanging from his shoulders and pooling over his arms in a way that makes him look like a carved marble statue. Charles can smell his lavender cologne, and he feels like he could faint.
He’s gonna fucking faint and wake up in Sochi. He’s gonna have missed this entirely, damned be the nervous bubbles dancing happily and unaware, stupid in love, in his tummy.
But instead he turns, and is met with green eyes, staring at the screen where the girl cries with a smile on her face. Pierre has the shadow of a smile hanging over his lips too.
And when he turns to him, it grows. He's gifting him a grin made of candlelight washed over the ocean blue of the Italian Riviera; waves upon waves upon waves carefully crafted to reflect upon him, their sole purpose to paint him in beauty.
It seems like the whole world is crafted to shape Pierre into the most beautiful thing Charles has ever seen. His best friend is the center of the world, and Charles is ready to bet on it, to spin around him until he gets motion sickness.
He’s lost the game already, and yet he wants to bet again.
Charles knows he's jumping off the cliff, and he feels the frigid air fly around his face, and he knows there's no water to catch him when he inevitably hits the ground.
He's glad to take the fall.
He smiles back, because what else can he do?
He’s trapped.
Pierre walks over, and sits down beside him on the couch. Charles can’t tell whether he’s too close or too far away from him, and he shivers.
An ache pulls at stiff muscles; his shoulders are tense and waiting, in an eternal, patient pause. Like mountains, like the firm dirt that cages stardust in between its grains.
He can feel the heat that emanates from Pierre’s body sitting beside him. It’s burning him.
He’s been taught before to be scared of things that may consume him. Yet, here he is, frozen to his seat. Waiting.
He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.
And they’re both quiet. Charles doesn’t mind. It doesn’t seem like Pierre does either.
They sit beside each other, watch the rest of the film in silence, the end credits, the beginning of another film, this one some superhero movie. Their gazes are frozen on the screen. And it isn’t awkward.
Well, maybe it’s a little awkward.
It just feels like something in the air is electrified; wired and ready to explode the moment either of them speak up. Almost like the moment they open their mouths something might just pass by and steal their voices from them.
Maybe they’re just afraid of talking about what happened in the race.
Maybe Charles is scared.
Either way, the feeling lingers on the air. Unsaid, cold, and simply left to float away into the death of the dark room that surrounds them.
The actors in the movie keep speaking, and speaking, and speaking as subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. Charles’ eyes are unfocused as he remembers the race.
The dust, and the cheers of the crowd. The roar of engines passing through concrete chicanes. The deafening crash of crossing a checkered flag, with the deafening P4 Charles, P4. Well done, mate.
But no. Not well done. from the ruins of the deafening cries emerge the how did it manage to go so badly.
How did I manage to do so badly.
Why can’t I just do good enough.
Thoughts distort, eyes look down. He blinks, then blinks again.
And suddenly, eyes stare at him. Pierre stares at him.
Charles pretends he doesn’t notice, and keeps staring at the screen. He brings his hands up to his chin to appear concentrated, and plays dumb, like a prey that lays down on the ground, appearing dead, playing with it’s possibility to live, with the chance at death and the chance at victory and the chance at yet another day.
He pretends he doesn’t feel like he’s gonna melt into a puddle on the ground. He pretends that he can’t feel his heart race, rabbit-like; frantic. Like he can’t feel Pierre’s gaze pass through the curve of his arms, his hands.
Coming back with gravity to rest on his face. Always coming back.
“Charles.” He whispers, in a fragile, low breath. He whispers it like it’s a prayer, or an oath. Charles can’t breathe.
Why does he say his name like that?
“Charles.” Pierre repeats it, louder, thinking he hasn’t heard it, perhaps.
He doesn’t know he is memorizing it, imprinting it like a tattoo inside his head, carefully carving its honey milk taste into the ridges of his mind, to come back to it during nights of self-consolation prizes.
“Charles. Mon petit.”
And just like that, Charles crumbles.
He turns his head, but can’t find it within himself to give the final push off the cliff. To anticipate the bone crush at the last second of the fall. He stays on the bridge, doesn’t cross to the other side to meet Pierre in the middle. To let his eyes glide through ice and cherry and paradise, to answer his call. To see the smoke signals floating through the quiet, night air, waiting for an answer, for a rescue.Yet.
I’ll jump. I will jump for you.
Just promise you’ll try to catch me.
And a cold hand -Pierre’s hand.- reaches out, because of course it does. Of course he does.
He places it on Charles’ chin.
And he pulls him in.
Pierre pulls, pulls pulls and so Charles pushes, like they always have.
Because by now they’ve memorized each other, head to toe, coming back home over and over again. Returning unknowingly to arms ready to hold and words ready to linger unspoken; it’s all the little things.
The ambiance holds its gentle breath static and ready to burst; the dust particles stop in their wake; so does the world. It observes them, loves them. It smiles.
Charles holds his breath along with it in syntony, harmony. A melody.
And he shouldn’t expect any less than Pierre ever-gracefully moving his hand onto Charles’ cheek, fingertips coated in gold, bubbling and pearlescent and expert; careful and glistening and running like water across his flesh. Cold and hot and burning.
How is he burning him?
Charles’ hands tremble where they lay useless on his lap. Something akin to motion sickness licks at his legs, and he’s so glad he’s sitting down.
He aches when he looks into Pierre’s eyes, and he can’t tell what he’s being faced with. He can’t tell if once he lands from the fall, closed wings and pearly bones turned to dust, he’ll be met with water or dirt.
And here it comes.
“What is up with you tonight? You’ve barely spared me a glance since the race was over.” Pierre says. His still gaze switches from one of Charles’ eyes to the other, almost like he doesn’t know what he’s meant to do.
His tongue pokes out of his mouth for a second, licks at his lips. Charles wonders what words he hides under them.
What he’ll need to sacrifice, to dig out from deep within his heart and cleanse to find out.
“What’s wrong?”
Charles just stays quiet.
He doesn’t know how to say that he fears Pierre’s touch, and what it may do to him. That he fears what he may think of him if he speaks about how terribly he did in the race. How ashamed and inconsiderate he is for not asking him how he was feeling the moment he walked out of the car.
So he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything.
He stays silent, and just stares.
He’s selfish.
He already knows, he knows, he knows.
Pierre hasn’t looked away, -He doesn’t look like he’s going to.- and Charles knows he must look idiotic with the way he hasn’t answered the question yet. Hasn’t even blinked.
Or maybe not.
With the time they’ve been together, they’ve become experts at unspoken words, at the art of looks, of elegant and studied gazes. Of honest eyes and of affection that boils and bubbles until it tips over. Until it’s spilling like warm milk, with its white bubbles made of seafoam.
Maybe Pierre can read his mind, because he frowns. Charles really hopes he can’t though.
If he did, then just maybe he’d hear the chorus of Je t’aime plus que tout, Je ferais ce que tu veux, Ti amo tanto, più del mondo, I love you, I love you, I love you, I am yours. ringing through his head whenever Pierre laughs, or looks at him like this.
Like he’s doing right now.
“Charles. You know you can tell me anything.” Not everything.
“It’s just us.” You’re gonna be the death of me.
“What’s wrong, calamar?” It's you. You’re all I want.
Charles is overwhelmed. His cheeks are burning with the flush that paints him in shades of rosé. Pierre’s hand isn’t moving, but his thumb is, and it skates across his skin in the shape of a caress.
Charles hates it. He wants to beg Pierre to never pull away.
Instead, he just -Finally.- answers, “I should be the one asking you that.”
It’s just a mumble really, but Pierre seems to catch it anyways.
“What do you mean by that?” His eyes are made of grass and jade and star-ridden glory.
“Pierre, you’re the one that had a DNF. I should be the one asking you how you are. I should be the one taking care of you.” The You should be upset at me goes unsaid. “That podium was yours last year, and it was taken away from you now.”
“You know that’s not how it works Charles. It’s fine, actually.” Pierre says. He’s met with a glare, all incredulous eyes and a tint of sadness that sticks to Charles’ irises. “It is! It is fine. Really.”
“But it’s not fine! You shouldn’t just say it is. It’s not okay, just like that.”
“But it is Charles. I know…” Pierre’s eyes soften, and Charles just can’t breathe.
“I know how much Monza meant to you. How much you wanted that win. You’re too hard on yourself sometimes, you know? You didn’t disappoint anyone, you did amazing. You’re amazing.”
Charles’ eyes widen, and he can feel a lump inside his throat start to form. He can feel it tighten and suffocate him and it’s so scary.
“That’s not true.” The dam breaks. Charles wants to pull away from the warmth, because it’s not real. It could never be. In some sad way, he already knows.
“Why would you even say that? I wasn’t enough, everyone was expecting something better, and I couldn't deliver, and it’s because I can’t. I’m not good enough. I'm not even good.” He wants to cry. He can’t cry because of this.
He looks up. Pierre’s eyebrows are furrowed again, and he mirrors him, like he did the first time they met as children, out of an overwhelming need for Pierre to like him. They’re always mirroring each other.
“Why do you think I’m so good?” He finishes.
“Charles.” He looks like he’s devastated. Like he’s gonna crumble. “Don’t say that about yourself. Ever again.”
“What?” Charles exhales, eyes crinkling in shards of little broken conchshells.
Pierre pauses. Pauses and gulps and blinks.
And Charles is selfish, selfish, selfish, so he stares. Waits, bated breath stuck in his vocal chords like a pale blue knot.
The lights are out and the world is quiet and the blue light makes Pierre look so breathtaking.
Charles wants to let go.
Pierre pauses. Then says, “I love you. You’re my best friend. Ever since we were kids.” He has never seemed this honest. This raw. Visceral. He keeps on talking. “We met, and I chose you. We chose each other, Charles. And I have seen you grown, and- and you are just so, perfect. You’re magnetic, calamar.”
I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Tu es tout mon monde.” He whispers, because it’s true. It’s close enough to what he really wants to say.
Pierre seems awestruck. Charles loves him like this, loves him all the damn time. “E tu il mio mondo.” he whispers, and smiles so big. Bigger than Charles has seen him in a long, long time.
He wants to think that we could stay the same, mon trésor.
Pierre’s hand creeps up from the side of his own body, and up Charles' hand. His lithe fingers snake around his wrist, and the tips lay just beside his veins, making an indentation.
Like this, he can probably feel his pulse beating and beating and beating even faster. Raising much more quickly than the velocity of their cars before the lights out and away we go resonating around more than a hundred thousand expectant ears. All of them reveling in the glow of it, probably never seen something that fast before; And yet it feels like slow motion to them both.
Ultraviolet visions paint the experience, make up the glistening, ever-changing colours on both their figures; the shadows they project against the wall sitting behind them; observing quiet and tranquil.
Pierre squeezes his fingers against Charles’ wrist, and somehow that makes his heart skip a beat from deep, deep within him. Way past where he can reach on his own. Way past the places he speaks about. He has never dared utter a word about the treasure chests filled with thought upon wonder upon jewel that he keeps there, collecting dust and staying out of reach for anyone. Even Pierre.
Pierre’s eyes still haven’t left his. They stare, stare, stare and just keep on staring.
He’s gone all soft, and Charles doesn’t think he’s ever stared at him like this before.
Not when they were kids, playing pretend and standing on log podiums with glasses of water simulating bubbly, sparkling champagne and dreaming of trophies; always beside each other, always taking turns on who got to stand on the highest log. Always connected. Always laughing.
Not when they grew up, and held hands silently inside their rooms. When Pierre would talk about pretty girls in his grade, and Charles would try his very best to grin and stop his blood from boiling his affection out, always trying to hold onto Pierre’s fingers tighter.
Like somehow he’d manage to imprint himself onto his skin, for anyone to see, anyone that might try to want Pierre, to see that Charles had been there before. That he’d been there first.That he’d never leave.
Not when crying came around the corner, creeping and walking on its tiptoes and grief left its hue and print upon their shores. When eyes glistened with the coat of diamonds and gravity did what it does best; letting things fall.
Because Charles was always meant to fall for Pierre. The question just was if Pierre was willing to fall along with him, to let himself be pushed by the shove of a history embroidered into their minds.
God, Charles is so selfish.
He smiles like he never has before today, polished and bathed in moonstone. He wants to scream It’s you, you, you.
“I can feel your pulse beating like crazy,” Pierre whispers, but his ears are oh so pink, cherry blossom and raspberry at the tips, along with the patch of the skin of his chest that allows his collarbones -God, his collarbones.- to remain on sight. “It’s cute.”
His pulse races even quicker now. Overtakes the blood rushing through his veins and his heart beats faster than it has before. p2, p2.
Pierre smiles back, charming and beautifully candid like he always is, and he giggles slightly. It’s more of a snicker. It has this edge of nervousness and something that feels almost mischievous. Childish.
Like he knows what they’re both getting into, and he still wants it to happen. Is willing it to come, and longing for it. Like he knows he’s going to set the match on ablaze after he’s done pouring the gasoline, and he knows Charles is going to flick it towards it.
Charles is glad, cause for a second, he thought he’d have to be the one to light the fire.
Now, he only has to stand while it burns bright in the dark, knowing they’ve both started it.
It grows from inside him, resonates in his ears, the ring is gone now; it’s all the little things.
He has to breathe in once, twice, three times to stop himself from reaching out. He has convinced himself that he’s not allowed to touch for so long, that he deems it a little impossible to let himself be so self-indulgent.
The grip his want has on him is strong though, and he wavers, overwhelmed and needful from the mere thought of Pierre wanting him to touch.
Charles wants to touch, And before he can even think about it, his arm is up, and his hand lands on Pierre’s throat like the touch of a feather, a mere quiet brush, hiding in between the folds of his fingers.
He pulls, until Pierre’s black pupils dilate and their foreheads are touching, just before he can find it in himself to regret it.
He has spent so much time thinking of this moment in different universes, in different situations and different timelines. It’s like a part of him remembers millions of past lives with them together, scars and beauty marks sitting lovely and well-loved in the hidden nooks and crannies of flesh, finding a resemblance in the shared softness that comes with this touch.
A hidden language only they can speak. A secret sweetness whispered into the smooth edges of the millenia they have shared, spent adoring each other. Shaping the wine on their tongues and the cracks on their lips into the words they deem appropriate. Burning forests, throwing lightning. Sending smoke signals until they can find each other again, and again and again.
Just until the end nears, turning around and watching cities be damned, empires crumble before their very eyes while they sit in front of each other and scream into the frigid air of a thousand beaches, falling into continents and falling into each other, shouting. Always shouting.
The end is here.
The end is this, Pierre’s pulse and Charles feeling it jumping up like an excited child into the palm of his open hand. There’s a metaphor somewhere in there, a poem waiting to be found about how their veins carry their blood through them in tandem, made into creeks ready to connect into a river, tangled and intertwined.
“Your pulse is high, too.” He says, a slurred accent diluted with the shaking of his hands, their shared french resting in the curve of his teeth, and a boiling, spilling heart to accompany it.
He sighs, closes his eyes, and licks his lips. If he can see Pierre staring at his mouth when he opens them, he tries to scrub it clean from that small, selfish corner inside his brain ready to play it back like a film reel until he feels like he’ll never be able to fall asleep without replaying it for at least an hour before, ever again.
He wants to let his eyes dart down, cause he can feel Pierre’s breath on his chin, on his lips, fucking everywhere all at once, and it’s driving him insane. He’s gonna lose his mind, like this, until his self-control finally withers after years and years of endurance.
Until it goes out with a bang, not a whimper. The scream of canyons ricocheting through the room like the echoes of a lost homeland, with the shock of Pierre’s lips against his for the first -And the last,- time.
They’re both so quiet still, and Charles is still so dizzy, longing caged inside his stomach like a million birds, with years of pining accumulated into mountains and mountains of burning starlight.
The reflection of the tv’s ultramarine upon Pierre’s freckles feels enchanting. Charles can’t possibly look away. He’s left here; idiotic, lost and so in love it hurts, to stare at Pierre’s gorgeous face in front of him, so close, and still, unable to understand the magnitude of the furour running deep through his arteries and crawling under his skin.
There’s no coming back from this.
It’s irreparable, and if Charles doesn’t scream how much he loves this irrevocably marvelous, captivating man, he’ll lose his mind.
He’ll find himself unable to keep his hands under the table-cloths of fancy restaurants next to prestigious coasts. To lock his adoration behind his pupils, so that he won’t slip during interviews, and he won’t be able to pretend he’s but a real person with the need for a hand on his waist and a kiss to his cheek.
He wants to smile, wants to laugh his nerves away like they did when they were children, unaware of what love is.
If he could, Charles would go back in time to his younger self. He’d sit down at the dinner table of the house where he grew up. He’d see himself sitting there too, scraped knees with peeling bandaids barely reaching the edge of the white chair.
He’d warn himself on behalf of his poor, poor heart. Say that love is just as beautiful as the poets paint it out to be. Just as cruel. Just as inevitably part of being himself. Being Charles Leclerc, and being alive.
He’d apologise for condemning himself to a life of staring at white ceilings at four in the morning, and longing every second he exists.
He’d grab his own shoulder, and squeeze the child he was into a hug, with a hand on the back of his head like his brothers and him used to do. Murmur that he must love, always love as if it was the last day. That he mustn’t fear, no matter how many realisations of what he’d be capable of doing for love he has to endure.
Maybe, that’d help so he doesn’t feel like he’s gonna die from adoration every time Pierre so much as looks in his direction.
He wants to smile, he wants to laugh his nerves away like he did as a child, and he wants to love Pierre like he's slipping through his hands like water.
In some sad way, maybe he is
He sees the sparkle in his green eyes, that flame that was ignited at the start of the night. God knows how long they’ve been here, sitting on this couch like they’re the only people left in the world.
And Charles may not believe in it fully, but if there’s something, anythingout there, some entity, or maybe the universe itself, whatever it is he talks to before every race, that coaxes a Let it be me, me, me. And let him be fine. Please. out of him, he wants to believe it all.
He wants to beg. he wants to beg Pierre to kiss him, until he can’t breathe, until he can’t think, until he can’t.
Charles wants Pierre to kiss him, and he’s ready to jump.
Pierre turns back up to look him in the eyes. He doesn't look away, so maybe they're thinking the same things right now.
The air is frozen, and suffocating in the delicious way only adrenaline feels. Charles is suddenly back inside his car, back in the race, back with Pierre on the podium, podium, podium.
His heart is gonna beat out of his chest and he has a feeling Pierre knows it already, with his fingers inside his wrist like this, stuck to his flesh and growing like pretty green vines right from his arteries, encompassing and calculating. But it's okay; it seems like Pierres pulse has risen too.
He feels like he's in the middle of lap 52 with how fast his heart beats.
He feels drunk on the podium champagne. But he's really just drunk off Pierre's warm breath against his mouth.
“Charles,” He can more so feel than hear his name on Pierre’s lips, and he never wants to experience this any differently. He never wants his name to be used as anything but a tenderness like this. Not by commentators screaming in joy, and not by the crowds of Monaco clamouring his name into the breeze of a lucky Sunday. “Do you,,,”
He trails off, cut off by the soft press of a pair of lips against his own. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, and it’s not fireworks, but it sure as hell still is a goddamn, blissful quiet. Like being washed under a wave, dragged to the shore with a breath of fresh air.
And when Charles pulls away and opens his eyes back up, He can see Pierre’s are still shut and motionless. He’d be lying if he said he doesn’t panic for a second, belly filled with butterflies and fluttering, tranquil shores ebbing and flowing in the dark.
“Pierre,” he says loud enough to be heard by the owner of said sweet, sweet name only. He’s held it close to his heart for a long time, but only now does it feel like he won’t burst into flames for murmuring it.
Pierre looks up sharply, and for a second his eyes are blank slates.
Charles doesn’t know what he’s seeing reflected back at him in his own eyes, but it must be enough to make him give up on the sentence he was preparing himself to speak into existence.
“Say it again,” He asks for, and Charles has never been more glad to give away his voice. “Please, say it again.”
“Pierre.” It comes out enveloped around giddiness, and he has a feeling he’ll die from being loved like this. So softly. So quiet. He has heard other say that beautiful things don’t ask for attention. “Pierre, ma moitié.”
“Calamar,” No word has ever held such weight before today, and the world fades into nothing. The universe is made up of their otherworldly hotel room, with a broken AC, and the words whispered into the dark. “Mon ange. I have loved you for so long.”
“I fell long ago,” Charles smiles, and he can barely fit the words around the joyful, boyish curve of his mouth, “Long before I even knew what it meant.”
Pierre’s smile turns from a smirk, to a grin. “Tell me.” He asks for, and Charles aches to give, “You weren’t loud about it.”
Maybe this is why we’re opposites
“I was loud. I’ve spent years shouting into the void.”
“Charles.”
And that’s okay
“I love you.”
A smile. A beat.
“I love you, too.”
He laughs, because he can. He closes his eyes, because he’s hit the ground and he feels like he’s fallen onto a bed of dandelions. He lays down in the meadow, and a second laugh rings beside him, casting anything but its synchrony to his own in shadows. He can feel it deep in his bones: it’s all the little things.