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“It is what it is,” Max says, trying not to mind too much his slightly numb fingers, closed into tight fists in the front pockets of the sweater he thinks he’s borrowed from Daniel – too tight on the back, ill-fitting, but cozy enough, worn-out without being threadbare. Daniel’s hand on his shoulder, however, is big and warm, his pinky finger a little crooked now, the bone still stabilizing after a minor crash on his dirt bike. The weight of it is soothing, familiar. He’s not sure he wants to be soothed, right now.
“And you also know it’s not permanent, right? Fortunes alternate. You saw it already.”
His tone is, as usual, a little condescending. A part of Max hates it. The other finds a modicum of solace in the way Daniel seems always so keen on taking care of him, even when Max thinks he should be pushed instead of coddled. He says: I’m not your father, and his mouth turns into a thin, hard line, until Max stops asking him to be a little tougher altogether. There is a horrible feeling in the pits of Max’s stomach, the chilling, curdling sensation that he’s doing his best but, this time, his best is simply not enough to make up for a car that lacks any kind of performance whatsoever. It’s terrible but, given the circumstances, is there really anything he can do to fix the odds in his favor? Probably not.
Probably, sulking on the patio of Daniel’s farm is better than sulking where all the paps could see him.
It’s cold in Perth, but not as cold as it was yesterday. Max doesn’t really understand the Southern Hemisphere, if it’s supposed to be winter or early spring already, it’s just so fucking confusing. 20°C in the afternoon, 8°C at night. But he likes it here at the farm, it’s peaceful. It gives him the illusion of disappearing from the face of Earth for a while and, right now, he definitely needs it.
“Can we go back in? I want you to fuck me, please.”
He doesn’t know why he says it out loud. Doesn’t know how he manages to blame his flush on the cold wind whipping his face either. Daniel grabs his chin, gently, forces their eyes to meet. Max tries to look at his stupid ass double socks instead, but Daniel’s stubborn, even more than him.
“We’ve talked about this, Maxie. Sex is not a punishment, remember?”
Oh, they did discuss it. They discussed the way Max sometimes punishes himself with grueling hours on the simulator, how sometimes he gives himself a migraine because he leaves his corrective glasses on the nightstand on purpose. They discussed all the things that make Daniel the well adjusted adult between them and, frankly, it feels a little humiliating.
“What if I tell you I really, really want to have sex with you now?”
He purposefully doesn’t say the word need. But he’s not even trying to lure Daniel into it, he’s not groping, trying to reach his butt and squeezing, he’s just – cold and sad and, maybe, in the mood for being used, even if he knows better that Daniel would never really hurt him.
“In that case,” Daniel calmly replies, “I would call your bluff, because you’re clearly not in the right mental space to have sex, right now.”
He’s smiling. It’s charming and also infuriating. Max sighs, takes the beer Daniel is offering him, and doesn’t tell him it’s a shitty brand. He likes Daniel’s taste in wine, but the man surely doesn’t know his beers, and insists on buying this craft beer from a local brewery – it tastes of wet cat litter with a dash of lemon zest, and it sometimes gives Max vicious heartburn.
The giant lump that’s been sitting in his throat since forever stings when he tries to speak around it.
“Can you hold me, at least? I am –”
Frustrated, he thinks, but it probably wouldn’t convey the extent of backlash this season is giving him. Angry, perhaps, would get his point across a little better, but it would cover only part of the problem and not the whole. Tired. Disappointed. All of these things, but condensed and super heavy, like a tiny black hole sucking all the light in.
Daniel pulls him closer, until Max can rest his forehead in the fragrant crook of his neck, where his scent of warmth and cologne and body shower is sweeter. His beard is soft now that he’s letting it grow. He takes good care of it, mostly because he knows how sensitive Max’s skin is, how easily a simple beard burn turns into a rash that Max would surely scratch at until it bleeds.
He feels scrubbed raw, oversensitive, like an exposed nerve. Frayed and unable to keep up with the appearances, to keep a straight face in front of the catastrophe that has been this half season.
And, somehow, he can’t even articulate it properly, he’s just moping and – asking for sex, go figure . If someone had told him one, two years ago, he would have laughed until he would have burst an artery.
“I know, Maxie. I know. But you’re also a monster in that car, aren’t you? A miracle boy,” Daniel chuckles, kissing his hair. Max would object that the miracles he’s tried to perform have all turned into shattered hopes and even more disappointment, but he knows already that Daniel would repeat my miracle boy, my miracle boy until it became true and, right now, Max doesn’t really feel like it.
He doesn’t feel like anything miraculous or even remotely worthy of such unwavering support, to be fair, so he simply lets out the weak approximation of a laugh, but it sounds hollow and fake even to his own ears.
What a fucking pity party. He hates those, but he’s apparently the host and the guest to his own. It feels so pointless. Self-pity is pointless, his father used to say. Like crying. Like sulking.
(and look at you, now. Wallowing in self pity, maybe crying, and also sulking. Good fucking job)
Daniel is wearing that permanently stained knitted sweater that got ruined while clumsily attempting to prepare some japanese curry with those pre cut cubes that you only need to add to the pot, because he’s trying to become a better cook now that he’s not restricting – he’s even getting marginally good at it. Doesn’t burn the eggs for breakfast anymore, and he now knows how to salt his boiling water without turning his pasta into a salty swamp nightmare on most days. Life is slow here. Soft. Max loves that he can have it slow and soft too, when he comes back to the farm.
A long sigh that smells of blueberry vape and cold craft beer. Daniel’s hand curled around his nape, holding him tenderly, sweet nothings muttered over the shell of his ear until the knot between Max’s shoulder blades eases just so. Max’s beer keeps being untouched. He digs his fingers into the meat of Daniel’s thigh until his nails hurt, pressed down against firm muscle, white and jagged crescent moons, all bitten into now that he doesn’t need to look pristine for the press, for the many cameras that get shoved into his face four days a week, thursday from sunday, when he answers to the same dumb questions over and over, like a broken record.
His heart thumps against Daniel’s shoulder, sluggish, almost lethargic. Daniel can feel it. Daniel does always feel it.
“Can we get back inside even if we don’t fuck?” He asks, and he feels stupid and small and fragile in a way he has rarely been. Never has been, maybe, but he can’t remember a whole lot of things about his life before all of this, so he can’t really say. He just knows that he loathes it, being so deeply human, so idiotically passionate, so foolishly attached. He hates the way he needs Daniel’s reassurance and, at the same time, it breaks his heart to be loved by such a deeply caring human being. He’s lucky, he’s exhausted, he’s devastated. And, somehow, Daniel is his only lifeline in the storm.
“Are you cold, Maxie?”
Max lies, nods, because it’s better than to explain that there’s no real reason behind it other than just – getting depressed somewhere else, maybe. Daniel keeps running his thumb at the base of his neck for a while before helping him to his feet, collecting both their cans of beer and holding the door open for him with his foot, yapping about this show they’ll put on, it’s on Netflix, it’s very good, you will love it, Maxie, it’s going to be fun , his Tigger energy out in full force because that’s his mood when he’s trying to be helpful: unflagging, bouncy, enthusiastic. Sometimes, he tries too hard. Max could never blame him for that. Proactivity, he’s been told his whole life, is the key to success.
Soon enough, Max is on the couch, cocooned in a soft blanket, with a tall glass of red wine in his hand.
“I guess you’d prefer this over my shitty beer, eh?” Daniel says, flopping down by his side, close without being oppressive. It doesn’t take Max long to lean against him, anyway, eyes glazed over and a little unfocused, not exactly paying attention to the show running on the 4k Oled TV even if he loves the genre – he’s just not in the mood, but he appreciates the spirit nonetheless.
Did you feel like this? He thinks about asking, at some point. Did you feel like this when I was winning and you weren’t?
Did you feel like this when McLaren almost stole all the joy of racing from you?
Did you feel like this when you were being cast out, treated like some newbie who couldn’t survive an undriveable car?
He’s not cruel enough to do this to Daniel. He’s furious, rebid even, but not at him, and it would be just unfair to compare his situation to what Daniel had to endure since moving out from Red Bull. But he dreams about his answers as he dozes off, lulled by the steady rising and falling of Daniel’s chest. He must have zoned out and missed the part where Daniel got them into a more comfortable position, took the empty stem glass from his slack hand, and laid the blanket out on top of them, smoothing it so that Max couldn’t complain about the creases.
He can feel Daniel swipe a thumb across his cheek, featherlight, gentle enough it could all be in his head.
He dreams about his answers, and it’s sort of those nightmares that aren’t actually nightmares, just bad dreams with no real climax, no spicy kick. Like being trapped in a maze but with no monsters chasing him, like dreaming of his father’s furious eyes but not of his fists. A tangled ball of cutting nylon threads and caked mud. Daniel’s breath, soft, in-and-out. Snoring, brutally interrupted. Daniel’s fingers combing through his hair and some more sweet nothings Max isn’t awake enough to grasp.
He thinks he says something, while Daniel is kissing his forehead. Something like this show is really good. Then, he’s pulled under by a current he can’t stop, and he’s asleep.
It’s dark outside when he wakes up, and Daniel has turned on the himalayan salt lamp on the coffee table, the light coming from it dim and suffused, orange, floating over the wooden floors like mist. He’s also painfully aware of the erection he’s insistently rubbing against Daniel’s hip, of the stifling heat of the blanket on his shoulder, of Daniel’s scent in his nostrils, so strong it almost makes him dizzy.
The fact that he’s dry humping his leg like a clingy purse dog doesn’t seem to bother Daniel too much; he’s sleeping with his mouth open and a rivulet of saliva trickling down the corner of his lips, and he’s soft and pliant, his eyelids fluttering slightly, like the quivering wings of a butterfly.
Max thinks about taking care of it himself, at first, to make a quick run for the bathroom and jerk off to calm down, but then his traitorous dick brushes against Daniel’s and, suddenly, jerking off feels so unappealing. He somehow knows already that it won’t do the trick, it won’t take the edge off him, and what would the point be then?
Daniel is hard too. Max whimpers, kicking the blanket away, and then he calls “Danny? Daniel?” with an excessively plaintive whine, just like that of a lost puppy.
Daniel is slow to come to – in the morning, he’s even slower, and he doesn’t really understand what’s going on around him until he’s gotten his coffee into his system, joking that he should hang an IV bag next to the bed and load it with caffeine instead of suffering through the tribulations of making coffee when he’s just woken up.
“Hi,” he says, his voice thick with sleep, a smile dancing on the brink of his spit-shiny lips. Max swallows, his throat clicking loudly in the quiet living room. It must be dinnertime already, but he’s not hungry, not for food at least.
His heart weighs far too heavy in his mouth, he can taste the iron of his own blood on his gums – again, he bucks his hips, this time with a meaning. Three hundred different microexpressions pass over Daniel’s face in the span of two seconds or so, and Max wails again: “Danny? Please?”
He should. Use his words and try to look like an adult who’s got his shit together. Drop this frenzied agony and just ask Daniel to fuck him until it rewires his brain. But he can’t, so there’s nothing left to do besides begging and hoping Daniel takes a modicum of pity on him.
“Maxie, hey, hey, it’s alright, it’s –”
Daniel’s breath catches in his throat brusquely when Max grinds against his erection, a shiver of pleasure running down his spine. He doesn’t need any more begging, he reckons, when Daniel’s hands are under his sweater, working their way to the skin nails first as if, now, he’s finally caught a whiff of his need and, suddenly, he’s developed the same urge too.
Like the spreading of an infection, or a poison coming off all over Max’s miserable self.
He makes a noise of desperate relief when Daniel helps him peel off his clothes, then tosses them on the floor and strokes his taut stomach, eyes wide with wonder and awe, making Max’s heartbeat go askew for a second.
He’s flushed all the way down to his chest already, and he’s not even naked, just pressing his sweatpants-clad erection into the dip of Daniel’s thighs. He thinks he could come like this. He could come in his pants like a teenager, like that first time they met and, on the way home, he had stained the front of his briefs while thinking a bit too intensely about the whole thing. He could come only by witnessing how Daniel’s face opens up for him, how he looks genuinely amazed everytime he gets Max naked, how he marvels at every version of him, when he’s in his best shape and when he’s relaxed and plumpy, a small layer of fat protecting his toned abs.
He could come untouched, but he won’t; he craves the feeling of Daniel’s skin against his own, fever-hot and slick with sweat, and almost tears his curry stained sweater to shreds while trying to pull it out of his neck as fast as his fingers allow him. Daniel lets out a husky laugh – “careful, Maxie, you like this one, don’t you?”
He does, but he likes his Daniel naked better. So he leans down and kisses him sloppily and he doesn’t care if there’s way too much spit in their kiss, he’s simply too far gone to care about the sensory minutiae of it; plus, he loves the way Daniel’s mouth molds on his, fast and receptive, his tongue quick, big and nimble, just like the horny twenty-year-olds on the internet fantasize it to be.
Max is privileged, he knows that much. Daniel is a wet dream on legs, and it’s all for him, all for him, only for him. This makes him feel a little better. At least there’s something he’ll never have to question, never have to raise any doubts about.
Daniel.
Danny.
He keeps saying his name in between the kisses. Daniel, Danny, like it’s a mantra, a prayer he can’t keep himself from uttering as he ruts against Daniel’s soft sweatpants and feels the heat pool in his belly, as strong and unstoppable as the rising tide.
Pulling down each other’s pants and boxers is a complicated lesson in patience and compromise; Daniel keeps things slower despite being now fully hard and, by the looks of it, achingly so, while Max would cut everything off if he could get his hands on a pair of garden scissors. There’s a brief discussion on whether or not getting up to fetch the lube now that Daniel wins, only because he can think a little straighter than Max, and Max almost feels like skinning himself with a potato peeler as he waits for Daniel to come back downstairs with the bottle in his hand, a victorious smile on his face that briefly turns into a worried grimace as he realizes the state in which Max is – not desperate. Desperate wouldn’t be enough to describe it. More like…a caged beast gnawing at the bars of its enclosure, unable to wait any longer without bleeding out.
It’s a strange feeling. Max rarely experiences new, unexpected sensations, and he’s not sure he likes it. What he likes, though, is Daniel pulling him onto his lap, rubbing soothing circles in the small of his back, telling him to relax. What he likes is baring his throat, letting Daniel leave tiny red marks along an imaginary line that runs across his adam’s apple, each little dot ripping feeble sounds out of him, wails and moans and pleas. What he likes is Daniel’s slick fingers finding his hole, circling around the ring of clenching muscles until Max relaxes a fraction, enough that Daniel can push a fingertip in, making him squeal.
Things have considerably slowed down, and now Max feels like time’s painstakingly trickling through molasses. Daniel is careful and well lubed, and the friction of both their dicks against their stomachs is unexpectedly hot, tips red and engorged, drooling precum all over them, viscous, wet.
“We take our time, eh, Maxie? Let’s not rush it.”
Except that he wants to rush it, wants to feel the stinging pain of being penetrated way before being ready to take a full dick in his ass, but he can only submit to Daniel’s pace, one finger at a time, kiss after kiss after kiss. Daniel is so deadly set on taking care of him it would be moving, if Max wasn’t already feeling overwhelmed, on the verge of letting out weeks of bottled up stress in the form of a bone-crushing orgasm.
He tries diverting his thoughts instead. Binary numbering, the memorized layout of a track, ugly feet in even uglier sandals. When his thoughts obviously steer towards his current season, Max lets out an ugly moan to drown out the depressing feeling of it, to disperse the underperforming excuse of a car from his mind and go back to the start – binary numbering. Daniel’s fingers hitting his prostate. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.
What happens next is kind of a blur. One moment he’s panting, open-mouthed, against Daniel’s collarbone, fully seated on his dick, and the other he’s coming, with a faint notion of it happening embarrassingly fast, copious splashes of cum turning Daniel’s chest and stomach into a Pollock masterpiece, some of it ending up in his hair.
The tiny aftershocks of his own orgasm ripple through him, making his muscles clench rhythmically. Daniel comes too, with a surprisingly high-pitched moan, and then he’s holding him, and Max feels…a little less sad, a little less hopeless.
“Are you hungry, Maxie? It’s late. Would you like me to cook something for you?”
“Shower first,” Max manages to say, feeling gross and tremendously greasy all over. His armpits smell like dumpster, and he’s gotten cum all over himself, other than painting Daniel white. Daniel laughs – his mouth is always so big, a yawning pit, swallowing Max whole.
“Of course! Did you really think I was suggesting I could cook with cum all over myself?”
Max laughs too. When he gets up from the couch, his legs feel like cooked noodles, and he wonders if he’ll collapse on himself on his way to the bathroom.
(it wouldn’t even be that bad, at this point)
“How did you even get through that?”
Max doesn’t even need to articulate any further, because Daniel already knows what he’s talking about. He’s seen his mood ebb and flow in the last hour or so, between the shower and settling for some pasta al ragù for dinner, something he isn’t supposed to eat but, well, comfort food and all that. He would have asked for meatball soup if it wasn’t so late they would have ended up eating in the dead of the night. Plus, there might be no minced beef in the freezer – he doesn’t know, Daniel handles all the groceries.
He keeps thinking about it. His botched season, his lame car. It’s like a refrain permanently stuck in his brain, impossible to ignore even after a mind-blowing orgasm and having Daniel wash his hair for him in the shower.
He doesn’t want to be insensitive by being too direct, he just wants to know whether such a feeling of loss and misalignment is survivable, if it will eventually recede.
If it’ll harden up into a callus that Max would, sometimes, need to trim down lest it hurts too much.
Daniel shrugs, fully focused on making their veggies crispy without burning them.
“I didn’t,” he admits, painfully candid. “It went through me. But you’re fundamentally different, Maxie. You will come out of this unscathed. Maybe even stronger, if you play your cards right.”
Max wants to ask what’s fundamentally different with him. Why should he feel different than anyone else now that he finds himself unable to overtake Alexander Albon in his shitty Williams, fighting for a meager P6 and eight useless points in a championship that seems to be already written in stone.
Scrambling for the scraps while he should be on the top step of the podium every sunday. How can it not be frustrating?
He feels the unwelcome push of bile rising through his throat, but by now he’s become quite good at ignoring it. He opens his mouth to object but then, slightly defeated, he shuts it closed; he presses himself against Daniel instead, breathes him in, resting his chin over his shoulder, the vegetables sauteing in the pan smelling fresh and a little spicy. He wants to ask if there’s garlic in it, because he doesn’t like garlic, but he knows already Daniel has basically stopped putting garlic on anything the very moment they moved in together, because he’s a thoughtful partner and that’s what thoughtful partners do.
He wishes he could believe him, anyway. About being extraordinary. About being able to overcome the hardships of driving an unmanageable car with a team that’s slowly disintegrating from within.
He whispers: “If you say so…” and tries not to obsess over it any further.
He’s got Daniel. Daniel cooking for him. Daniel fucking him. Daniel washing his hair and telling him he’s the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. Daniel quiet and steady and always there for him. Daniel. Danny.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
Daniel’s tone is lighthearted, even if he isn’t actually smiling. Max shrugs, and lets Daniel feed him a piece of cauliflower directly from the wooden spoon.
“It’s ready,” he states.
“Alright. Will you set up the table?”
Max nods.
Maybe tomorrow his mood will improve. Maybe he needs some more sex. Maybe he needs a faster car. He sighs as he lays out plates and forks and fat, round glasses – maybe he simply needs to make peace with the fact that he’s not winning this WDC for good.
(how did Daniel even manage to make peace with that?)