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Max’s dissatisfaction with the concept of “almost” stretches back as far as he can remember, into the deep reaches of his early karting days and probably beyond. Years now of experience tell him that P2 is not something to turn up your nose at. It’s a gift as much as the rain or a well-timed safety car. You can learn to work around these things, use them to your advantage.
The knowledge that he can doesn’t let him sleep any better at night, opting instead to stay late at the paddock to work through Plans D, E, F, and G with the team. GP is the only one of them to match him beat for beat until security flashes the overhead lights to let them know that they need to be moving out of this area for the evening. He will not be annoyed at seeing the wave of relief wash across his team, but he will almost be annoyed. He hasn’t even changed out of his suit himself, so why be tired now?
“Big things tomorrow, ay, Max?” GP remarks, clapping his shoulder before he goes. As for Max, he huffs a sigh through his nose but doesn’t answer.
Quietly, he turns back and forth in his conference room chair, playing the quali laps over and again in his mind. There was that lock up that had been threatening his car every lap and got the better of him once. One too many times, of course. Tomorrow will have to be flawless if he expects to put Lando behind him.
When he has finally thought the thing to death, he pulls himself up from his seat and begins to clear out. The last stragglers are still hanging about in groups of a half-dozen or so, putting the last-minute work in whatever that work may be. The photographers and press are long gone, thank fuck. He can’t afford to spare any focus.
After finally changing out of the suit and into his blue jumper, he ducks his head to march relentlessly forward, leaving no question that he is not to be interrupted in his trek from here to the parking lot. He has learned this posture from the Torro Rosso days and has found it very useful over time, very effective. It’s probably why it doesn’t even occur to him that there’s a hand on the back of his collar until he’s already a half pace away from it and nearly strangling on his own clothes.
“What the fuck?” he swears as he spins around on whoever the offending party may be.
But Daniel is already laughing, and all of his indignation seems to sort of melt away from his core at the familiar sound, the always lovely sight. “Sorry, mate, it was too easy,” he says, bracing his hands on his hips. “You were on the warpath. I could tell. Vacant look in your eyes.”
Max supposes Daniel is right. There’s, of course, no arguing when he glances from side to side and comes to the realization that he doesn’t know where exactly he is within the paddock. One of the more public areas, basic clearance. “How are you in here?” he demands.
“Nico got me in,” he answers with a shrug. “Wanted a T-shirt or something, I don’t know. Ended up bringing a few to pass out, anyway, then bada-bing bada-bang…” He gestures to the ground where he stands as though putting himself forward just as he is. Take it or leave it.
Of course, Max knows not to complain of Daniel being nearby (always a mistake) just as he knows not to entertain it overly much (not always a mistake, but a much more painful one when it proves to be). He had known that Daniel would be in town, though he hadn’t texted him about it this time. Rather, it was something he had learned from the rare moment once a week or so when he took over his own social media and caught it on Daniel’s story. At least back then he could rationalize that it was for the best that they made no great effort to see each other.
It’s all much harder now when he’s got Daniel so very immediately in front of him with a black “Lucky Three” cap fit over his long curls and brown eyes like a cow’s boring into him like he’s waiting for Max to catch onto a joke. “We should probably get out,” he settles on. “They’ve already flashed the lights, you know.”
“I’ll go with you,” Daniel volunteers as he falls into step next to him, and the animal part of Max’s brain begins to fire on all cylinders. Yes, yes, naturally, he wants Daniel to come with him. Hadn’t he begged for his company only as far back as Austin? And delayed gratification is gratification nonetheless.
“Okay,” he replies, feeling very much like he’s rolled over onto his back and exposed a vulnerable underbelly.
“Congrats on the P2,” he remarks before Max can think to right himself and settle back on the so-called warpath. Something he has got to do, by the way. Daniel or no Daniel.
Max shrugs his shoulders. “It doesn’t mean much until tomorrow, does it?” he says, begging that Daniel shouldn’t try to poke holes in his logic. He’s got a lot of grand ideas about what does and doesn’t matter, Daniel does.
“Nope,” Daniel affirms with a shrug of his shoulders. “But, you know. You’ve got some decent pace and a lot of know-how so. Steady on.”
“Steady on,” Max repeats, nodding his head.
Once they’ve left the paddock, Daniel tilts his head in Max’s direction. “You know, I was hoping to see you at some point this weekend,” he says. “We haven’t really talked since—”
“Yeah, since Austin,” he says, the answer too quick on his tongue and spilling out of him eagerly as though there’s anything worth saying about that evening. He had been drunk on alcohol and victory both if only just enough to use it as an excuse. Daniel had been even more drunk, of course, but he had been the more sensible between the two of them. He had been the one to hit the breaks on what might’ve spun quickly out of control.
“Austin, yep,” he confirms, eyes fixed straight ahead. Once again, this right here is something that he’s a master of: the long game of pretending that nothing has mattered or does matter or will matter. Of brushing a thousand indiscretions under the rug. This, too, Max has learned to take advantage of from time to time.
Not this time. He is too sober, the wounds to his pride too fresh. Daniel might have texted him had he wanted to. Might have called. Might have tried. And that’s a sentiment that stretches back and back, too. Still, he glances Daniel’s direction. He keeps doing that. Never could help it. “Look, mate, I want to apologize,” he says, and that gets Daniel to face him head-on at least. Even so, the silence is a little too drawn out for his taste. Lamely, he adds, “I was really drunk.”
“You didn’t sound it,” Daniel replies, that damned smiling beginning to curl.
“Well, I was, so.” he answers sharply as he grinds to a sudden halt. “I am very sorry, and there’s not a lot more to say about it.”
They’re out in the parking lot proper now, and it would be nice to say that it was completely dark, but the city lights of Las Vegas makes all that impossible. It’s like daytime, the way that all of Daniel’s soft features are visible and lit up in every possible color. Deep blues in the shadows. He looks a little wounded, to be honest, even if there’s no call for it. It’s an easy out for him, and only a confirmation that Daniel did the right thing by cutting off the head of that creature in him that keeps reaching for him long after the ship has sailed. It is a sort of hydra, though. It always seems to grow a couple more.
Daniel’s lips part, tongue running over his back teeth as he looks over Max’s shoulder and then from side to side. “I reckon there’s some to say about it, still,” he mutters.
“Oh, Jesus, Daniel,” Max swears without another moment’s hesitation, palms spread. “Honestly, what do you want me to say, then? I would like to keep pretending to be friends, but to be honest, it gets really difficult sometimes, all right?”
It’s a step too honest, and it brings Daniel an offensive step closer. “I know that. I do, all right? I’m trying to help keep it all from… you know… festering.”
Max is not entirely sure what the word “festering” means, but he’s got a basic idea of the sentiment. He pushes his fingers up through his hair and turns himself about, a mere jumpstart off from walking away entirely. There is a sort of energy in his veins that could send him running at any moment if he were brave enough to let himself be a coward, and he wonders if Daniel would bother to go after him. “Yeah, well consider it festered,” he spits out. “It isn’t something I can do so easily.”
“What isn’t?”
“The waiting. The waiting around,” he answers, and even he can hear the frustrated tone of his voice. He thinks he is probably not entitled to it, considering that this conversation is a cancerous growth from the desire that he can’t let go of. “I cannot just sit quietly for the next time you want me. There’s no time in the day for that.” There’s hardly time now. The fucking title hangs in the balance, and Daniel comes to him wanting to talk now.
And now, Daniel shuts his mouth with an audible click, his eyes still as wide as anything as he nods his head slowly. God, how is it that Max still does not know how to read him after so many years? That is something where Daniel has always had the advantage on him. He’s really an open book in comparison. “So, what did you think I was going to say?” he questions finally. “Since you seem ready to argue with it straight away and everything.”
Max sputters stupidly for half a second, over-confident that an answer will come to him eventually. “Of course, you were going to try to say that it is all okay and that we should forget it and go back to how we agreed,” he says. “Which, of course, we should. But all I’m saying is that it isn’t so easy. And I’m sorry.”
“Mate, if that’s not so easy, I’m curious what you’ll do when I tell you to fuck off entirely,” he answers. He’s playing it as a joke (maybe a half-joke), but it stings across Max’s skin like a slap. The cold air whipping through them both doesn’t exactly help, and he shivers and doesn’t laugh.
Daniel’s hardened expression at least softens a little then, and he glances around the empty space as he shoves his hands deep into his pockets. It’s clear he’s looking for every possible camera, any possible passerby. It was always like this. They were always afraid of cutting media and well-intentioned coworkers and the wrath of lovers past and present. It’s a familiar, comforting panic that swells in him now that maybe they have been talking too loud. Maybe they missed a figure in the shadows.
Then, Daniel sighs, “Come on,” and grabs the sleeve of Max’s jumper at the elbow to pull him along. Naturally, Max goes too easily and lets himself be dragged as far as the passenger door of Daniel’s truck. What’s worse is that he doesn’t even need to be told to get in. He does it on instinct, all too happy to turn off his mind and follow instructions, even the unspoken kind.
The tinted windows provide a barrier from the rest of the city at the very least. Max realizes it as Daniel climbs into the driver’s seat and slams the door shut. It interests him more than it should for having insisted not five minutes ago that he only wants and begs when there’s alcohol in his system. His focus now has never felt sharper, and it is all trained on how to best draw out his best performance in regards to Daniel. He could do it. He could take it on like any other challenge.
But Daniel has his forehead against the steering wheel, his cap half off of his head. This posture more than anything warns him off of saying anything at all at the risk of saying it all wrong. “What’s all this that you’ve been saying about taking my number?” he mutters finally.
“What?”
“Number three,” he snipes back, holding Max in the corner of his eye. “I’ve had my phone blowing up all weekend.”
Max rolls his eyes and scratches his thumb across his eyebrow. There is getting to be an exorbitant figure in his brain that he would pay to stop doing press entirely. “It’s just these stupid questions they’ve been asking me,” he says. “Whether I’ll change my number or not with the rule change. I try to get it through their fucking heads that there is no decision until there has to be one, but they don’t understand that. They never understand what I’m trying to say to them, you know that, Daniel.”
Finally, Daniel picks his head up from the steering wheel and leans back against the driver’s window, observing him down the slope of his perfect nose. “Would you do it though?”
Max shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “I would have to ask you, wouldn’t I?”
“Reckon you would.”
He lets only a beat pass. “What would you say?”
Daniel tucks his lower lip under his teeth as he stares down at a hole in the knee of his jeans and begins to pick at the threads. Somehow, it feels like a line has been crossed. That perhaps they have collided too hard at this moment and frozen that way before the momentum can send either of them reeling back in opposite directions. “It’s not going to matter,” he finally answers, so low and quiet that Max has to strain to hear. Removing his cap, he runs slender fingers through his curls. “You’re going to fucking win this thing, Maxie.”
The quiet confidence with which he says it sends a sharp, thrilling pain through him from the ground up—the heels of his feet to the muscle in his chest. For a moment as bright as the city, he forgets almost what it feels like to lose. And, like clockwork, he is nineteen again. Daniel’s word is law. Daniel’s word is everything. Daniel is handing him the championship in the passenger seat of an American car.
“You’re going to win this thing,” Daniel repeats, louder and with a sort of frustration that Max has rarely heard from him. His fingers have stopped playing with strings and have instead curled into fists that he beats against the back of the bench in a muted staccato. Finally, finally, his dark eyes meet Max’s. “And it’ll get all twisted up like it does every other fucking time you’ve done it. And I’d probably give you anything, then. Fuck you.”
“Kiss me,” he demands in a tone that’s likely as childish as he feels. “Oh my God, kiss me.”
And Daniel doesn’t even blink, nor argue, nor dare rebuff him at all. Instead, he surges forward and takes Max’s jaw in both hands, slotting their lips together as though there was no memory between now and the last time. Max grabs on for dear life around Daniel’s waist, relishing the softness of it through his hoodie as much as the once-comforting, once-familiar warmth of Daniel all over him.
Always, always, he has given Daniel too much leeway with him. Too much control, but the truth has always been that he has been happy to give it. Already, he knows what would happen if he tried to cut off the head. He does not try to stop Daniel when his mouth begins to migrate across his chin and down the tendons of his neck. Of course, how could he put a stop to what he asked for? He does, however, make a point of staying still even as blood rushes all over his body. He can’t startle him and risk being dropped now.
But Max is breathing maybe too heavily, in any case. He’s sure that Daniel can feel it with the hands that have moved to bracket his rib cage, running back and forth and up and down like he’s trying to soothe him or something. “Baby,” he tries, and it’s the first time in an age that Max has heard him say that. Thank God he doesn’t make any noises that might embarrass him, but he does move his hands to the back of Daniel’s head to thread his fingers through soft hair.
“Yes, Daniel?” he says, and his voice sounds too young and too eager even to himself.
Daniel picks himself up to hover over Max, staring at him for a long moment before lowering himself back into a slow, languid kiss. Too slow and too languid. Already, Max begins to dread the moment that they break apart. “I’m not making it any easier on you, am I?” Daniel muses, against Max’s mouth.
Max goes still once more. Hell, he nearly goes slack.
Not that there was anything he could’ve done in stillness or in action. Daniel sits up properly once again and really refuses to look Max in the eye. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and starts the car. “I can take you to your hotel,” he says.
It’s just another head gone. That’s all it is. Max can feel it bleed out like he’s felt the pain of so many other things. He remembers suddenly, coldly that losing is a sensation he’s experienced before. And each time he has weathered it and hardened himself against it. Clearing his throat, Max shifts himself back up, dizzy though he is. “No,” he says, fumbling for the door handle. “I have a car.”
Even as he’s tumbling out of the car, Daniel rolls his eyes. “Oh, fuck you,” he says. “Let me do the honorable thing for once.”
“Yeah, too bad,” Max grumbles. “You had your chance, you arsehole.”
“Fine then. Don’t say I never tried to do anything for you. Jesus Christ,” he swears. A beat passes, and Max still hasn’t shut Daniel away in his car just yet. He must take it as a sign to keep talking, but he’s not sure that Daniel has ever seen a sign to stop. “Look. Lando’s not nearly as good in his corners as he wants to pretend to be, especially in this circuit. It won’t take him long to slip up.”
Max nods, noting silently that whatever has just happened is still bleeding out in the space between them. It’s beginning to look very much like the worst of his anger. He scrunches up his nose. “You know, I think I might’ve beaten Lando a couple times, now that you mention it,” he says.
“All I’m saying,” Daniel asserts over him, “is that I’ll see you on the podium, all right? Just so you don’t miss me, I’ll be the guy in the stands not giving a shit about the other two.”
It’s almost a nice sentiment. Very nearly. “Thank you, Daniel,” he says because he feels he ought to. “I’ll look for you.”
Daniel nods. “Cheers, mate,” he says, friendly as anything. Just as they had agreed upon.
Unable to stomach any more conversation in that particular tone, Max nods, shuts the door and walks away hanging onto just one more “almost.”
---
The next evening, when he’s on the podium with the trophy in his hands, he scans the crowds gathered at his feet and catches no sight of Daniel anywhere.