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It had been three days since their last date and Max had helped Charles get down a plan for how they were going to approach his problem. It was pretty simple, actually, they had divided a large number of foods in three categories: smell, texture and appearance. From that, they would work their way though each category one food at a time, taking their time but also trying to keep a good rythm.
Charles was actually really happy of the system they had created, he still had control over it and knew exactly what was going to be into his plate but he let Max control over the actual tasting part. Another big part of the plan was, on course, how they were going to approach each category. For the “appearance” one, he would be wearing a blindfold; he knew what he was going to eat but he wouldn’t be able to see it, taking away the factor that was blocking him. The smell one was also pretty simple, he would probably just hold his nose and try. The texture one was the most difficult, but Max had suggested that they tried to change in some way the texture by making those foods in different ways.
The cherry on top was what Charles liked to call “his rescue system”; he had promised to try and have at least two bites of everything, but if something went wrong he would have water and a safe food to help him through it. It was that bit more of security that helped him put his mind at ease.
Max was also really happy, relieved that the Monegasque was willing to let him help, and he started to prepare the food for their first day of trying new things. They already had dinner, so that if it want wrong they Charles would still have eaten something, and their first food was going to be a fig. Charles had always wanted to try them, but they just looked too gross and he couldn’t bring himself to actually have one.
Everything was ready, the fig was on the table next to some toasted bread with Nutella, one of Charles’ biggest safe foods even if it wasn’t diet-approved, and some water, but the Monegasque refused to put the blindfold on.
«Char, please, it’s the first food we try, we can’t start like that,» Max tried, the blindfold in his left hand and his other hand on Charles’ shoulder.
«I know… it’s just… it’s hard to not be able to see what I’m eating…» he mumbled, trying to give him puppy eyes. He really wanted to try things, to be normal, but it was hard and he wanted to give up before even starting.
«But without the blindfold you won’t be able to try it. Let’s try and see, okay? Then for the second bite you can take it off.» The Dutch offered, giving him the blindfold.
Charles reluctantly put it on after sitting at the table, waiting impatiently for his boyfriend - God how good it sounded, Max was his boyfriend - to give him the fig to try. Even without being able to see it, the image was still clear in his mind and he struggled to bring the slice to his lips.
«Hey, love… it’s gonna be fine, you are going to be fine. Remember, it’s okay if you don’t like it and you have a safe food right next with you,» Max reassured him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder and gently rubbing cricles on his back.
«I know, I know…» He sighed, trying to mentally hype himself up to take a bite out of the fruit he had in his hand. He finally managed to bring it to his mouth and take a bite, bracing himself for something that didn’t come as he was expecting.
He actually liked it a lot, enjoying both the way it felt in his mouth and the taste despite his initial adversion to the fruit. He swallowed with a smile, taking his blindfold off and turning to Max who was looking at him with a proud smile.
Max had, by now, seen some of the good and the bad sides of his condition, but nothing could have prepared him for the look of pure joy on Charles’ face. He looked like a little child who just tried candy for the first time, while he took a deep breath and mentally hyped himself to take a bite while seeing what he was eating.
The Dutch didn’t know what he was expecting from this whole “trying new stuff” thing, but as he looked at his smiling boyfriend, so happy just from eating a fig, he realised he couldn’t have done a better decision when he chose to stay with him.
«The first food is off the list, then.» He smiled, hugging Charles from behind.
«This goes straight to the safe food list, I swear it’s soo good.»
•••••••••••••••
Next challenge, two days later, was seemingly an easy one: ice cream. Very ironic, considering the fact that Charles had his own ice cream, but he wasn’t able to eat more than a couple of flavours; he didn’t know why, if that was because of the colour or something like that, but that’s what happened.
Since it was supposed to be an easy challenge, they decided to try to pair it with working on his social anxiety when it came to eating in public. That only increased for Charles as his celebrity grew, hating having people who recognised him and looked at him while he was eating.
«So, what flavour do you want to try?» Max asked kindly, looking at all the flavours listed on the glass, «I think I’ll get vanilla and chocolate, a simple one.»
«I think… maybe strawberry? It is kind of a safe taste, I like a lot of things that are strawberry flavoured.» He smiled, going up to the counter to order for both of them; he had to take a picture with the man that was working in that moment, fidgeting with the candy in his pocket or with a bracelet Max had gifted to him after noticing he was prone to fidgeting and picking at his skin.
«We’ll take a medium cone with vanilla and chocolate and a small cup with only strawberry, thanks,» he said, a bit nervous, paying before turning to Max. «They use the same scooper for every flavour,» he mumbled, getting more anxious as he watched them making their ice creams.
«It’s okay, you’re not going to be able to taste the other flavours on it,» Max reassured him, placing a comforting hand on his back, «We’ll just sit down at a table and eat our ice cream, okay? It’s going to be fine,» he said softly
«I love you so much,» he whispered in his ear, trying not to be heard by people around them so that they wouldn’t be outed. Since they started dating on a more regular basis, after the Monaco GP, lots of people noticed and started to speculate even more about them; it had always been a thing, the lestappen hastag being viral on basically every social media, and fans analysing everything they did when they were together to arrive to the conclusion that they were in love, but as long as the big medias thought that was only fangirls bullshit, they were fine with it. They didn’t know how the paddock and the teams might react to it and they were pretty worried, even if they hadn’t properly sat down and talked about it yet.
Max gently led him to a table, to sit down and eat their ice creams calmly. «You have to hurry, though, or your ice cream will melt and you’ll have to drink it,» he jocked, lightheartedly, trying to cheer his boyfriend up so that he would find motivation to try it. He immediatly started to eat his own, trying not to put too much pressure on him while Charles looked at his gelato from every angle before gathering the mental strenght to give it a scoop.
He made sure that it wasn’t contaminated - he really needed to stop thinking like that, he knew that it wasn’t healty for him to talk to himself in ways that hurt him and downplayed his condition - by other flavours and slowly ate it. It wasn’t really good, but it also wasn’t so bad that he felt like he couldn’t finish it. It had kind of a weird texture that grossed him out a bit, but the flavour wasn’t too intense. It reminded him a bit of the flavour of cotton candy, sweet and in some way soft.
Max smiled at him, hoping that the Monegasque didn’t notice some fans taking pictures of them, as that would have freaked him out. He was fine with fans taking pictures in the paddock or on the track, but having people taking photos of him when he was in a more “private” setting was something that stressed him and sometimes even made him have panic attacks. They had talked about it at lenght, together with Max’s own problems, talking about their struggles and and how they could help each other out. They thought it would be pretty important, considering the sport they were in, and they were right as that had already helped them out a lot.
«What’s happening?» Charles asked softly, continuing to eat his ice cream; he always liked more the commercial ice creams as they had a different, more firm, texture and the fact that the flavours were artificial meant that they would always taste the exact same every time. Plus, Cornetto* was always the best.
«Nothing, Charlie, now be careful or your ice cream is gonna melt and make a mess,» Max softly replied, resisting the urge to show the middle finger to the fans that were still blatantly staring at them; he resisted only to guarantee that Charles didn’t notice them, preferring to focus on him. He was so proud of him, he noticed that he didn’t really like the ice cream but he was still eating it and it really was a big step forward for how he usually acted when he didn’t like something.
Eventually the ice cream melted after the Ferrari driver ate only half of it, so they got up and started to go awaay when Charles noticed the fans. It was actually strange that he hadn’t noticed them before, he usually was the one that could see and spot if somebody was looking at them, but when he did he froze for a couple of seconds. He wasn’t really panicking and he probably wouldn’t, he was just getting incredibly uncomfortable.
«Charles, let’s just go home okay? Don’t think about them, it’s fine.» Max tried to redirect his attention, hoping that he wouldn’t overthink it all. He knew how much his boyfriend could be affected by this kind of things, something that wasn’t really good since they were literal celebrities, but they were trying to work on it somehow. To be completely honest, Max himself was also pretty uncomfortable with all this stuff, but right now it didn’t matter to him. Charles was more important, he would think about himself later.
«I’m… I’m fine, yeah, let’s go home,» Charles said, forcing a smile and taking Max’s hand to comfort himself. He took some deep breaths, calming his racing mind. At worst, they were just going to be asked about something about it in the next interview; at best, nothing happened or some of their friends would just be laughing about it with them. It was going to be fine.
Max smiled, softly squeezing his hand and gently leading him away. Fuck what the media thought about it, he was allowed to do what he wanted outside of the paddock without having to think about about the consequences of holding hands with his boyfriend. The walk back home was really slow and silent, but Max immediatly hugged and kissed Charles as soon as they endered their apartment. «You’ve been so bood,» he told him, smiling, «I saw you didn’t like it, but you still ate most of it.»
«It was kinda good, but Cornetto is better,» Charles said with a cheeky smile.
•••••••••••••••
The last days hadn’t been the best, so they took a little pause from their challenges; a DNF and a non-points finish had been pretty hard on them and their mental health, the media pressure starting to get to them no matter how hard they tried to be strong.
Now it was going to be a pretty hard challenge, maybe too hard to be the first one after a pause, both the food and the setting making it more difficult for Charles to feel at ease and comfortable to try it without much resistance; he had to tru caulifower, but they were in the Ferrari hospitality. Almost were basically alone, so there wasn’t that much pressure for that, but still they were in a more open environment and he had to try a food that was harder for him that a lost of things, since he didn’t really like anything about it.
«Charles, please, I know it’s hard… but you have to try. Not much, just one bite please. Then if you don’t like it you can eat something else,» he tried, pushing slightly the plate towards the stubborn Monegasque. He didn’t want to lose his patience, really, he didn’t want to overwhelm Charles and set back all the progress they had made, he already did that error once, but sometimes he was just too stubborn and it made him angry.
Charles stared at the plate with a disgusted face, scrunching his nose and lightly pushing back the plate; he was clearly overwhelmed by it, hating the way it smelled and looked and the strange texture it looked like it had. He really wanted to try it, he really wanted to be able to go out for dinner or lunch or whatever and not having to worry about looking at the menu beforehand; but there was a part of his brain that was just screaming at him to not eat it, that he will feel sick, that if he ate it he wouldn’t like it and he would throw up and have a meltdown and he just couldn’t.
Max sighed, trying not to loose his cool and gently stroking Charles’ hair, «Let’s do this, okay? You eat a bite and I eat one with you, we do it together, is that okay? I don’t like it eitherm we can try it together,» he tried to convince him, breaking off a little piece and putting it on a fork for him and then taking a slightly bigger piece for himself.
The Monegasque made a pained face and took the fork, his hands trembling and his eyes full of tears. He was able to drive at 300 km/h but couldn’t get over the fear of eating a little piece of veggie. He looked at Max, trying to give him puppy eyes to get him to change his mind.
«No shat, you have to try it. We do it together, I’ll count to three and then we eat it,» Max sais, standing his ground and trying to be more firm but still sweet to not startle him. He took his own fork and brought it to his mouth, waiting for Charles to do the same before starting to slowly count to three. He counted very slowly, making sure that Charles was ready. He didn’t want to push him too hard, but he knew that he had to push him a bit.
When he got to three, Charles actually managed to put the fork in his mouth and start to chew almost right away. After a couple of seconds, he gagged and spat it out on his paper napking. He was now fully crying, hurrying to drink some water to try and wash the taste and texture out of his mouth. «I don’t like it…» he mumbled, «It’s making me nauseos, I feel like I’m going to throw up…»
Max immediatly hugged him, softly stroking his back. «Take deep breaths liefje, it’s going to be okay. It will be okay, breathe, you won’t throw up,» he tried to comfort him, he hated to see him like that but he knew that he had to do it. Fortunately, they already had lunch so as long as Charles didn’t throw up they would most likely be fine. He “just” had to calm Charles enough that the nausea went away.
Charles was sobbing, not even understanding himself why he was reacting that badly. Probably it was the accumulated stress of the past races and the food challenges and everything, and that had piled up on him so much that the first thing that went wrong was enough to trigger a huge breakdown. Plus, this was the first food challenge that truly went wrong. Like, totally wrong, the I need to throw up or I won’t feel better type of wrong. He tried to take a couple of deep breaths but when he understood that it wasn’t getting better he tried to make Max back off before making a little run for the bathroom. He was still crying, feeling sick, and he couldn’t explain to Max that this wasn’t because of the actual food. This was because of so many things and he was just feeling bad all of a sudden because of that.
It took him quite a lot to calm down, managing not to throw up in the end, and after he succeded in calming hin breath he finally found the word again. It had been pretty scary to not be able to talk during that whole episode he had, while Max was comforting him and trying to help him in all the ways he could, and he really wanted to make it up to him as best as he could.
«I’m sorry, I don’t know why I reacted like that. I think that stress was piling up too much and this threw everything off,» he mumbled, ashamed of what had happened and how he had acted.
Max helped him up, smiling in a reassuring way, «It’s okay, you never have to say sorry for something you can’t control. It would be like me saying sorry for stimming, do you remember what you told me?» he asked softly, running a hand through the Monegasque’s messy hair. «Now, do you want me to get you a fig to make everything better?» he continued, only half joking.
Charles only nodded, with an half smile at the mention of the fig. He couldn’t be more grateful for the beautiful boyfriend he had.