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They meet in high school. Well - Charles meets Max in high school. Max meets chaos.
“New kid’s Dutch,” Pierre whispers, leaning back in his chair like he’s reporting on a war criminal. “That’s like - two steps from German.”
“That’s not a thing, Pierre,” Charles mutters.
“It’s geography.”
“It’s not.”
Max Verstappen walks into their classroom like he regrets it already. He has the vague air of a boy who was raised by wolves and told to behave for one year so he could graduate. Dirty blonde hair. Cheeks flushed red. Dead-eyed stare. Backpack that looks like it holds four different types of weapons.
The teacher says he’s transferring from Belgium and then gestures toward the seat next to Charles.
Of course.
He slumps into the chair with a sigh that makes Charles raise an eyebrow. “Rough morning?”
Max doesn’t look at him. “Existing is a rough morning.”
Charles grins. “Hi, I’m Charles.”
Max’s eye twitches like he’s just remembered manners. “Max.”
They don’t speak for two days.
Max elbows Charles during one of the physics lectures because Charles is drawing little cartoon engines in his notebook with hearts on them.
“Is that a turbocharger with eyelashes?” Max asks, peering at it. “I’m not judging. I’m just emotionally unprepared.”
Charles stares, then grins. “You do talk.”
Max glances at him, face blank. “Unfortunately.”
Charles scowls anyway. “They’re eyebrows by the way.”
Pierre leans over. “Max, you should know Charles talks to engines. He believes they respond.”
“They do respond,” Charles says at the same time Max says, “Sounds reasonable.”
They all stare at him.
“What?” Max says. “I talk to my steering wheel. If it doesn’t vibe with me, we crash. It’s science.”
By the end of the year, their project - “Project Gravity” - wins the science fair.
It’s a Rube Goldberg machine with no real purpose and no practical future. It launches a tennis ball through a ring of fire made of birthday candles and turns on a desk lamp with the fall of a single domino.
“Absolutely useless,” their teacher declares.
“Perfect,” Max says, smirking at Charles.
They keep the schematics in a notebook with messy sketches, folded graph paper, and increasingly ridiculous labels. Gravitational anomalies of the emotional kind is one page header.
Charles doesn’t ask what Max means by that. Max doesn’t offer.
They survive high school.
Barely.
Pierre causes a minor explosion in chemistry (“It was an unlabeled beaker, Monsieur I Regret Hiring You”), Alex becomes head of the school newspaper because he’s too pretty to say no to, and Carlos wins Most Likely To Run A Mafia And Still Be Loved By His Teachers.
Max somehow becomes best friends with them all, despite claiming to hate parties, feelings, and “group projects with people who breathe too loud.”
But mostly, he and Charles orbit each other like magnets. Close, then closer. Never touching. Never needing to.
Until graduation.
Pierre and Carlos host a graduation party where someone ends up in the pool (Pierre), someone ends up proposing to a chair (also Pierre), and someone ends up cornering Charles at 3 a.m. on the balcony (Max this time).
“You could come with me,” Charles offers, quietly, words tumbling into the summer air like hope. “We could find a place. You hate cooking but I don’t mind.”
Max smiles like it physically hurts him. “You’d burn pasta.”
“I’d burn it for you.”
Max doesn’t look at him. Just finishes his drink.
“You’ll forget me,” he says. “You’ll go be brilliant and I’ll be some gravity trick you used to believe in.”
Charles laughs, almost angry. “You idiot.”
But Max just leans in, kisses his cheek - chaste and brief - and walks away before Charles can tell him gravity doesn’t go one way.
They don’t go together.
Max ends up in the UK, studying engineering. Charles heads to Monaco for architecture where he meets George during a croissant disaster.
“I swear this café used to serve things that didn’t taste like existential crisis,” George mutters beside him in line.
Charles snorts. “Welcome to Monaco.”
They become fast friends - George with his crisp button-downs and righteous indignation, Charles with his notebook of overcomplicated bridges. George reads his essays aloud when he's stressed. Charles draws Ferris wheels in the margins of his blueprints when he misses Max.
(He always misses Max.)
Max, meanwhile, stumbles into Lando Norris on the first day of uni - literally. Lando spills coffee on both of them, apologizes mid-sentence three different ways, and then announces that he’s dyslexic (to this date, Max can't figure out why it was relevant in that situation) and chaotic and emotionally allergic to PowerPoint presentations.
Max stares.
“...I’m Lando,” the boy adds with a grin. “You look like someone who knows how to hide a body.”
Oscar Piastri shows up a week later and sits down next to Max in a lecture without a word. Quiet. Observant. Dangerous with sarcasm.
Within a month, he and Max share a Google Drive, a calendar, and a language of glances.
“He’s like if you were born ten years later and had less emotional damage,” Lando tells Max one day.
Max doesn’t deny it.
Max doesn't like people. But he loves them anyway.
The reunion happens on accident.
Carlos invites everyone to his lake house in Spain.
Max almost doesn’t go. But Lando is already packing. Oscar threatens to drag him.
Nobody says no to Carlos. Not even time.
Especially when his text read:
lake house.
two weeks.
come or I’ll revoke your childhood friend status.
The moment Max walks in, all tanned forearms and his hair - lengthier than he's ever seen it - Charles forgets how to breathe.
“Hey,” Max says casually, like he hasn’t grown into every corner of Charles’ heart in absentia.
“Hey,” Charles manages, blinking too much.
The moment he sees Charles again - leaned against a porch post, barefoot and laughing at something Pierre said - Max realizes he’s doomed.
Again.
It's been just three hours and the house is chaos.
George is already on his third itinerary printout.
Alex is shirtless by noon and somehow always smells like sunscreen and lime.
Pierre accidentally lights a towel on fire trying to make café brûlée.
Lando falls in the lake three times.
Max ends up in Charles' orbit like it’s muscle memory.
“You still do that thing,” Max says that night on the deck, pointing at Charles’ open notebook.
“What thing?”
“You draw machines that do nothing.”
Charles raises an eyebrow. “They do something.”
“Make me nostalgic,” Max murmurs.
On the second day, Oscar and Lando try to convince everyone to do a shot every time Carlos says “strategically.”
George and Alex host a Eurovision-themed cooking challenge that ends in three minor kitchen fires.
Pierre starts a bonfire with a hairdryer and moral support from Lando.
Carlos is the kind of person who alphabetizes his spices but misplaces entire surfboards.
So naturally, the attic is a mess, and naturally, Pierre’s the one digging through it because he doesn’t trust Carlos to have remembered extra extension cords.
"Why do you have a box labeled Gravitational Schematics and Betrayals?" Pierre calls down.
Carlos squints up. “No idea. Probably Charles.”
“I don’t label things dramatically,” Charles says.
Pierre holds up a notebook with Max’s name in neat block letters under a hand-drawn title that reads: Project Gravity – Class 11C.
Charles freezes. “Oh. That.”
Ten minutes later, they’re all sitting around the box like it’s a cursed relic.
“This is adorable,” Alex says, flipping through a diagram of a Rube Goldberg machine powered by marbles, magnets, and Max’s unrelenting need to over-engineer. “Were you guys… trying to prove love was a gravitational constant?”
“No,” Charles lies. “Yes,” Max mumbles at the same time, and immediately looks at his feet.
George snorts into his soda. “You nerds were building a metaphor.”
Max shrugs, trying to look annoyed and failing. “It had practical applications.”
“Name one,” Oscar says, a brow raised in classic dry-deadpan mode. He’s leaning against Max’s shoulder, a smug little echo of him.
“It could’ve powered a desk lamp,” Max says.
Lando blinks. “A lamp powered by... vibes?”
“Physics.”
They rebuild it on the deck.
Piece by piece.
Magnet by magnet.
Pierre insists on being project manager and brings snacks instead.
Lando is banned from glue after getting his fingers stuck together twice.
Oscar rewrites the sequence logic and gets into a spat with Carlos about resistance coefficients.
Max and Charles build.
Together.
It feels like coming home in fast-forward. Every line Max draws, Charles refines. Every turn Charles imagines, Max calculates.
The air is thick with almosts and used-to-bes.
The machine works.
Sort of.
It launches the tennis ball halfway across the lawn and knocks over Lando’s drink.
“I’m calling it a success,” Charles shrugs, playing with a bunch of marbles he had found in Carlos' attic.
“I’m calling it karma,” Lando stared mournfully at the spill.
Max doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he turns to Charles, eyes soft.
“You know what always annoyed me?” Max says, quiet.
Charles raises an eyebrow. “Everything?”
“You thought this was just a joke. Just a school project.”
Charles drops the marbles.
It rolls down the half-finished ramp, hits the first switch, and fizzles out before reaching the lamp.
“Still needs work,” Charles says, but his voice is lighter now.
Max leans in. “I missed you.”
“You think?”
“I never stopped.”
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
Max shrugs, smile small. “You were already in my gravity. I didn’t want to screw with physics.”
“And I thought,” he continues slowly, “if I built something complicated enough, maybe I wouldn’t have to explain what I felt.”
There’s a beat.
Then Charles grabs him by the shirt collar and kisses him.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not perfect. Max tastes like marshmallow and lake water and something inevitable.
“Still scared of breaking physics?” Charles murmurs after.
Max laughs, breathless. “No. But I am worried Lando’s gonna fall in the lake again.”
There’s a splash behind them.
“...I’m fine!” Lando yells from somewhere behind them.
Much later, when the stars are high and the group is lounging half-asleep across lawn chairs and cushions, Charles curls into Max’s side like it’s a position that was always waiting for him.
“I think we’re still orbiting,” Charles whispers.
Max kisses the top of his head.
“Maybe,” he says. “But this time, I don’t mind getting pulled in.”