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Max realizes now, with nearly nine years of hindsight, what Carlos must have gone through in their time together as teammates.
Max had been a feral thing, back in 2015. Seventeen, bratty and over-eager, desperate to please and foaming at the mouth for any kind of accomplishment.
Carlos too had been only twenty, barely more than a child himself, and yet forced to step into the role of the older driver without ever having the luxury of being the younger one. A mantle of maturity bestowed upon him like a curse disguised as a blessing.
Max thinks he gets it now. Mere weeks he had Liam as a teammate, and yet he felt stretched to the limit. Too little paint over too much surface area. The press hounding him about whether he was ready to be a role model for a new generation of drivers, whether he was willing to accept the responsibility of mentorship.
Max is no role model. Certainly no mentor.
Inside his ribcage still lives a savage seventeen-year-old, snarling in frustration when things don’t go his way, clawing at the tender flesh of Max’s insides in his hunger for victory.
There has not been a lot of victory this year.
Still, every week, Max plasters on a smile for the cameras, shrugs his shoulders in a “what can you do?” motion. A martyr’s answer.
Inside him, the creature howls in fury and resentment. He’s grateful that no one can see inside his chest. No one knows what kind of monster dwells there. No one, that is, except Carlos.
Carlos has met the creature in the flesh. Tamed and befriended it nearly a decade ago in the shadows between draughty meeting rooms in Milton Keynes and sweltering motorhomes across the European circuits. Carlos has cradled the creature against his chest, crying like a newborn babe, long before Max swallowed it whole, carving out a prison within himself to keep the creature alive but locked away, never again to see the light of day.
So, yes, Carlos knows.
Max sees it in his eyes sometimes when they spot each other across the paddock. Carlos’s searching gaze like an x-ray trying to peer behind his sternum. On those nights, Max lies awake as the creature calls out, pitiful for once instead of angry, for Carlos’s gentle arms to hold it once more.
---
A Mercedes crashes into Max in Austria, taking him out of the race on Lap 1. He fumes on the radio, spits out a few choice insults, then climbs out of the car. The creature writhes and shrieks in indignation, egging Max on to say something worse, to find the responsible pilot and shove him into oncoming traffic.
When he sees that it’s Kimi and not George (the creature hates George, shudders in disgust every time the British driver opens his mouth), he freezes, his brain rebooting.
Kimi is a soft thing. Fierce and talented and determined, yes, but so fragile around the edges. As if one gust of wind would knock him right over. Another teenager in F1, and yet so different from how Max was.
Max lets his anger drain out of him, seeping into the earth where his boots meet the ground. Kimi will have his own creature one day, and George is not as good of a first teammate as Carlos was. Max thinks Kimi’s creature will deserve some memories of kindness. Max can give him those, his own creature be damned.
They walk back to the paddock together, Kimi explaining what happened, eyes swimming with tears and apologies. Max nods along, not really registering the boy’s words, but allowing their solemnity to sooth his own frustration. He puts his arm around Kimi’s shoulders, the way he remembers Carlos doing when he had a bad day at Toro Rosso. Tries to imitate the soft cadence of Carlos’s voice, though the words of reassurance sound less sincere in his harsh Dutch accent.
That’s not his fault, he thinks. Max can mimic Carlos, but he cannot become him.
The creature inside whimpers in want at the memories.
Carlos is out of the race too, as it turns out. Brake fire in the pitlane. Austria has never been kind to him, Max thinks.
He finds the other driver in the Williams hospitality, his feet carrying him there without his input or consent. Carlos is still in his fireproofs, a pair of headphones around his neck, a cup of coffee in his hand.
Carlos and his coffee, Max thinks fondly. The creature gives an acknowledging purr.
When Carlos looks up from his phone and catches Max staring, he freezes in place, brown eyes wide in surprise. Max freezes too, no explanation at all for his presence. Carlos’s eyes strip him bare, as they always do, all the rotten parts of him on display for the Spanish driver’s perusal.
He’s here now. Caught. No sense in pretending he’s not.
He ascends the steps into the hospitality, blessedly empty except for the two of them, most of the personnel either in the garage or watching the race on the big screens. They still have one driver in it, after all.
Alex. Alex was Max’s teammate too, once. The creature ate him whole and spit out the bones, nose wrinkling at the aftertaste.
It’s a shame. Max likes Alex. Likes how easy-going he is, how forgiving.
The creature likes nobody except Carlos. Not even Daniel, who occasionally tickled and prodded it into submission, managed to win the creature’s lasting favour.
He comes to a stop a foot away from Carlos, involuntarily swaying towards him, pulled in by the Spanish driver’s colossal gravity. Max sometimes thinks that Carlos, so perfectly human-sized, must be made of lead, pulling people in with such force by virtue of density instead of volume.
His hair shines with sweat, balaclava lines still imprinted on his absurdly high cheekbones. Max wants to trace them with his fingers. He clutches his fists into the fabric of his race suit instead.
Carlos leads them wordlessly through the winding corridors of the hospitality to his driver’s room. Once the door shuts with a click of the lock behind Max’s back, Carlos turns to look at him, the silence between them sharp as a razor.
The creature whines and claws at his ribs in a desperate attempt to get out and bury itself in the only arms it has ever known peace in.
“I’m sorry,” Carlos says finally, “about your race.”
“I’m sorry about yours,” Max replies, stilted. His voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t used it in ages, despite talking to Kimi only half an hour ago.
Carlos chuckles, a bit of the tension leaving the line of his shoulders. His massive eyes somehow get impossibly bigger, and he gestures Max to sit on the couch as he himself walks over to the minifridge in the corner of the tiny space, pulling out two bottles of water.
He hands one to Max, pausing to cheers with him before lifting the bottle to his lips.
“To Austria,” he says, and drinks.
Max doesn’t drink. Instead, he watches the line of Carlos’s throat as he swallows, breath caught in his lungs. The creature too is unusually still, mesmerized.
He tears his eyes away when Carlos lowers the bottle.
“The McLarens will win again today, I think,” Carlos remarks after an age, his tone light but his eyes sharp.
Max looks away, the creature snarling at the mention of the papaya team. “It is like this, yes.”
Carlos snorts. “Ay. You sound like Charles.”
Charles.
Carlos’s beloved teammate. Max has known Charles even longer than he’s known Carlos, even holds a peculiar sort of affection for him. But he cannot help the ugly feeling of jealousy that rears its head inside him at the Monegasque driver’s name. He knows it’s unfair, but he cannot control it.
Because Charles is beautiful. In a tragic, blinding, fallen-angel kind of way, but he is breath-taking. Four years Carlos had him as a teammate, and for four years he looked upon that beauty every day.
And before him, Lando. Not beautiful, perhaps, but charming in his own boyish way. Max has seen how fondly Carlos still looks at him now.
Max was not beautiful when Carlos looked upon him every day. He and the creature were still fused as one, hunched and humourless and ugly, uncomfortable in their own skin, spitting vitriol with the ferocity of a snake. Carlos had held them anyway before moving on to better things. Prettier things.
And that’s the crux of the matter. Carlos has loved many different teammates. Max and the creature have only ever loved one.
“Lando and Oscar are doing well,” Max says finally, in response to Carlos’s comment. “They deserve their chance.”
Carlos smiles at him knowingly. “That may be. Doesn’t change the fact that it can’t be easy for you.”
“It is easy for me,” Max shoots back, defensive against Carlos’s all-knowing eyes. “I have four world titles. Someone else can have a go.”
“It’s not enough though, is it?”
No, the creature howls, it is not.
“Remind me how many you have,” he bites back.
Carlos chuckles, annoyingly unflappable. “Touché.”
Something savage in Max wants to get a rise out of him. To prod the sleeping bear until he wakes and eats Max whole, creature and all. He wants to live inside Carlos, he thinks, where it’s safe and warm.
“Regretting the Williams choice yet?” he asks, a mean to an end. It’s a cruel, cruel question.
Max is the son of a cruel man. Cruelty runs in his bloodstream like quicksilver, making his tongue sharp and venomous.
Carlos shrugs, though a shadow passes over his face.
“It is tough,” he exhales, frighteningly sincere. That’s not what Max wanted. “But it is always tough at first with a new team.”
Max’s heart sinks. Williams is Carlos’s fifth team. His fifth attempt at finding a home. Max has been at Red Bull for nearly nine years while Carlos has drifted, ousted by the very people Max calls his second family.
The creature whimpers in remorse at the needless viciousness.
They lapse into silence again, and Max picks at the label of his unopened water bottle guiltily. He’s never known when to keep his mouth shut. Carlos makes him feel seventeen again, not a molecule of tact or finesse in his body.
“What will you do tonight?” Carlos asks suddenly.
Max looks at him, heartbeat kicking up a notch at the implication in the question.
“What do you mean?” he says carefully, not allowing himself to think anything of it.
“Will you go to any of the parties?”
“I don’t really have anything to celebrate,” Max replies.
“No. Neither do I.”
There’s a long pause, broken only by the sounds of Max’s breathing, fast and unsteady.
“You can come to my room, if you like,” Carlos offers finally, looking up to meet Max’s eyes. There’s something in them that Max doesn’t know how to interpret. An invitation veiled in challenge.
“We can watch something,” Carlos continues.
“Yeah, okay.” Max sinks his teeth into the offer with the desperation of a starved man. He wants everything that Carlos is willing to give him. Anything to make the creature quiet and docile, like no one but Carlos can.
The Spanish driver stands from the couch, a note of finality in his posture, but a promise in his eyes.
“I’m needed,” he says, “in the garage.”
Max tries not to let the disappointment show on his face. He was comfortable here, in Carlos’s space. In his orbit.
“But I will see you tonight?” Carlos adds after a pause, his tone light, hopeful.
Max nods, unsure what else to do. Carlos brushes his fingers against his forearm as Max leaves his driver’s room without another word, scorching his skin with the intensity of the light touch. The creature shivers.
He has plans. He has an invitation.
Sometimes, he feels like all he does is vie for Carlos’s attention. That he laps up every morsel of it like a rabid dog, licking the ground around Carlos’s boots in his unquenchable thirst for anything the older man gives him.
He remembers getting out of the car after Abu Dhabi 2021, every dream he’d ever had culminating in that moment. The sense of triumph crashing over him in waves, adrenaline coursing through his blood as he pointed a single finger at the sky, breathless in his victory.
He remembers opening his eyes from where they’d been screwed shut with emotion and finding Carlos’s gaze already fixed on him, something suspiciously like pride shining across his face.
He remembers hopping off the car, guided by some power outside of his control, and running into Carlos’s arms, like they were his favourite place in the world to be. Maybe they were.
He remembers Carlos clutching the fabric of his race suit and whispering into his ear, “Bravo, cariño. I’m so proud of you. I knew you could do it.”
Carlos had been the first person he’d hugged after he won. Before his father, and his team, and Daniel, and Lando, and everyone else, there had been Carlos. His first teammate. His first of so many things. The creature still purrs in satisfaction whenever Max remembers.
---
He arrives to Carlos’s room that evening with a six-pack of Red Bull because he doesn’t know what else to bring.
They’re staying in the same hotel, Red Bull and Williams, so it’s a short trip. Just two flights of stairs and a 20-metre walk, and Max finds himself staring at the shiny brass number 512 affixed to the door of Carlos’s room.
It swings open before he can knock, and the sight of Carlos wrapped in only a fluffy white towel greets him. His hair is wet, plastered to his forehead in places, clearly freshly showered. As Max watches, some droplets escape and run down his bare chest, getting caught in the magnificent contours of his abs.
Max’s brain short-circuits.
“You do know it is nine o’clock in the evening, Max?” Carlos says in lieu of a greeting, nodding towards the Red Bull cans clutched in Max’s hands.
Max just stares at him for a minute before his brain comes back online, and then he frowns.
“I did not have any wine.”
Carlos laughs, melodically. “I have beer. Come in, come in.”
He waves Max through into the room. Max sets the Red Bull down on the coffee table as Carlos disappears into the bathroom and reemerges a few seconds later regrettably wearing a pair of loose shorts and a t-shirt.
The t-shirt… it’s old and worn, small holes around the collar. The Toro Rosso emblem on the left breast, just over Carlos’s heart.
Max stares. He knows this shirt. Has a million just like it at home. But he is still part of the Red Bull family. Carlos is not. Carlos hasn’t been for years, and yet he is wearing that shirt right here in front of Max’ eyes. He may as well be tapdancing on Max’s heart.
They sit down on the couch, and Carlos flicks on the TV, handing Max a beer in the process. Max sips it silently, eyes glued to the screen to avoid looking at Carlos. The creature paces restlessly inside its bony prison, the vibrations from its gait making Max’s hands shake around the beer bottle.
“Lando won today, like I said,” Carlos says offhandedly after a while.
Max startles. “Yes.”
“They are having a good season.”
“Yes.”
The TV plays some inane German drama, whose plot Max cannot grasp despite understanding the language. He clears his throat instead.
“Do you wish you hadn’t left? McLaren, I mean,” he asks, voice cracking like it always seems to, around Carlos. The seventeen-year-old inside trying to bust his way out to the surface.
Carlos considers the question for so long, Max begins to think that he simply won’t answer.
“No,” he says eventually. “I think I am where I was meant to be.”
Max nods, trying to bite down on his disappointment.
Do you wish you hadn’t left Toro Rosso? was his next question. Do you wish you had stayed and been promoted to Red Bull with me after Daniel left?
He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t want to see the pity in Carlos’s face if he did. Doesn’t want to hear the gentle but firm “no.” Carlos would never be cruel about it, he doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body, but he would not lie either.
“There are some things I wish were different, of course,” Carlos elaborates after some time.
Max watches the TV and doesn’t respond until he feels warm fingers wrap around his wrist. Carlos tugs gently until Max turns his body to face him, pinned in place by the endless depth of those brown eyes.
“Why did you come here tonight, Max?”
The single syllable of Max’s name never sounds so melodic as when it’s said in Carlos’s accent. Carlos has said his name a thousand times. It must feel intimately familiar on his tongue by now.
Max shrugs. “You invited me.”
“Yes,” Carlos pauses, scrutinizing him, “but you didn’t have to accept. You could’ve gone anywhere, to any party. Why did you come here?”
Max looks at him incredulously. Surely, Carlos must know. He may not feel the same way, but he must know at least. That Max wants to be near him all the time. That he craves Carlos’s light like a sunflower, utterly dependent on him for survival.
Max cannot hide an emotion to save his life. There’s no way he’s hidden a decade of want. Carlos must know.
“Because I– I wanted, I want–”
“What do you want, Max?”
The creature roars inside him. It wants to devour or be devoured, Max doesn’t even know, but it wants it with Carlos.
“I want…” he begins again, but he cannot force the words out. He has kept the creature locked away for so long that he’s scared to find out what will happen if he lets Carlos open that cage.
Carlos shifts closer and raises a hand to swipe his thumb over Max’s cheekbone.
“There are things that I want,” he says, voice low, eyes boring into Max’s soul. “And sometimes, I catch you looking, and I think you might want them too.”
Max closes his eyes, breathing faltering.
“What do you want, Carlos?” he whispers.
Instead of an answer, he feels a pair of warm lips against his. Carlos kisses him with such tenderness, one hand coming up to rest between Max’s shoulder blades, the other on the back of his head. Max gasps into Carlos’s mouth, and the other man swallows it, pushing Max backwards until he is laying on his back against the couch cushions, Carlos’s broad frame bracketing his completely.
He pulls away, still holding Max in his arms and rests his forehead against his.
“Do you want this too, Max? Please tell me that you want this too,” he murmurs into the miniscule space between their mouths, and for the first time, Max hears a tremor in his voice.
He nods frantically, already drunk on two sips of beer and the taste of Carlos’s lips, and fists both hands into the Spanish driver’s hair. Carlos used to let him touch it sometimes at Toro Rosso. It’s as soft as Max remembers.
“I need your words, cariño.”
“Yes, yes, I– I do. I want this. I want you, Carlos.”
Carlos’s lips spread into a slow grin, and then he’s kissing Max again, licking into his mouth feverishly. Max is crushed beneath his weight, and he never wants it to end. Wants Carlos to lay on top of him until Max is absorbed through his skin, and then he can live inside Carlos’s ribcage, the way the creature lives in his.
Carlos shifts above him, one of his knees slotting in between Max’s thighs, and the realization that Max is hard strikes him like a bolt of lightning. From just a few kisses and being held in Carlos’s arms.
Carlos seems to realize it too because he pulls away from Max with a grin and glances down between them.
Max whines at the loss of Carlos’s lips.
“Shhh, mi amor,” Carlos swipes a hand through Max’s hair, pushing the rogue strands out of his face. “I will not have sex with you tonight.”
Max’s eyes fly open, indignant.
“What, why not?” he demands. Carlos said he wanted this. Asked Max if he wanted it too, and Max does. Max wants it all.
Carlos’s eyes are unbearably fond when Max looks into them. His hair frames his face in the most artistic portrait Max has ever seen, backlit by the dim lamp next to the couch so that it resembles a halo.
“Because I want to do this right,” he whispers tenderly.
Max closes his eyes again, exhales. Carlos’s hand cards through his hair again.
“When we are back in Monaco, I will cook you dinner,” he continues, and Max looks at him again, “and we will talk properly.”
Talk.
Max doesn’t want to talk. But he was waited a long time for this, without even knowing it perhaps. Unsure what it even was he wanted.
Now he knows. He wants Carlos. Always.
He can wait a little longer.
“Okay.”
Carlos nods then moves to press gentle kisses underneath Max’s jaw.
“And then,” he whispers, smiling against Max’s skin, “after we talk. I will fuck you so hard that you will forget your own name.”
Max’s breath hitches in his throat, a pathetic whimper escaping instead. God, he wants that. He wants to forget his own name, he wants to only remember Carlos’s, to become Carlos, he wants, he wants, he wants…
The creature thrashes about inside, convulsing at the prospect. Max thinks he probably would have had a seizure if Carlos had proposed this back at Toro Rosso, when Max and the creature were still one being. It is good that they waited, that Max is nearly a decade older. He thinks he will survive, now.
“Yes, okay,” he manages to say finally, “I want that.”
Carlos smacks a final kiss to his lips as a reward before getting up. Max scrambles up too, afraid suddenly that Carlos will kick him out now that they’ve agreed. He doesn’t want to go back to his room alone. The creature wails in protest at the very idea. Even if Carlos won’t fuck him now, he wants to stay, to soak in Carlos’s warmth like a lizard in the sun, he wants–
Carlos wraps him up in his arms again, swaying them slowly in place.
“Let’s get ready for bed, cariño. You’ll stay, won’t you?”
Max can only nod in abject relief.
He allows Carlos to lead him into the bathroom and hand him a spare toothbrush. Then to take his hand and tug him towards the king size bed by the far wall.
Max can barely breath as Carlos kneels down in front of him and gently lifts his foot off the ground, first one and then the other, peeling his socks off. He tugs Max’s shorts down next, keeping his eyes fixed on Max’s face the whole time.
Max thinks that maybe he is already dreaming.
Finally, Carlos stands, snagging the hem of Max’s t-shirt on his way up and pulling it over his head. Max stand before him in only his boxers, still half hard, feeling more exposed than if he was completely naked.
“Beautiful,” Carlos murmurs, running a hand along Max’s bare chest, then leaning forward to kiss him softly on the lips.
The touch brings out goosebumps on Max’s skin and a shudder out of his body. Carlos chuckles before shrugging off his own t-shirt and sliding it over Max’s head. The lingering warmth of Carlos’s body in the fabric seeps into Max’s skin like water into sand, and he feels inexplicably whole. Like a missing puzzle piece has finally slotted into place.
They turn off the lights and climb into the bed, Carlos pulling Max flush against his bare chest, one hand settling possessively over Max’s waist, the other over the Toro Rosso logo above his heart.
Max closes his eyes and feels the steady rhythm of Carlos’s breathing behind him.
“When did you– when did you realize?” he asks into the darkness. “When did you realize that you wanted this?”
He feels Carlos’s exhale against the nape of his neck.
“Oh, cariño… I’ve known a long, long time,” Carlos whispers.
And… that’s not enough. Max wants to know more. A date, a time. Everything.
But it’s enough for now.
He lets the lingering tension bleed out of his body and shifts to be closer to Carlos, their bodies practically fused into one. Carlos’s arms tighten around him.
Inside his chest, the creature sleeps soundly.