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Three shots of espresso in a medium cup, oat milk steamed to exactly sixty-three degrees, one pump of vanilla syrup, and precisely three ice cubes dropped in after the milk. Not two. Not four. Three.
The omega behind the counter had memorized this order two weeks into Max's reign of coffee terror, and he recited it back with a smile every single time.
"That'll be four ninety," Charles said, his green eyes doing that thing where they crinkled at the corners.
Max shoved a five-pound note across the counter. "Keep the change."
"Ten pence. How generous."
"It adds up."
"At this rate I will be a millionaire in approximately twenty-seven thousand years." Charles plucked a cup from the stack and uncapped his marker. "Give me a moment to make your nightmare drink."
"It's not a nightmare. It's specific."
"It is specific," Charles agreed, already moving toward the espresso machine. "That is the kindest word for it."
Max watched him work. He always watched him work. There was something about the way Charles moved behind that counter, efficient and unhurried, wiping down the steam wand before and after every use, tapping the portafilter against the knock box with a practiced flick of his wrist.
The coffee shop was small, tucked between a dry cleaner and a bookshop on a street that didn't get much foot traffic. Charles had painted the walls a warm yellow two years ago and hung up photographs of Monaco on every available surface. The tables were mismatched. The chairs didn't match either. It should have looked chaotic, but somehow it felt like walking into someone's living room.
Max had discovered it four months ago when his usual coffee place closed for renovations. He had walked in expecting mediocrity and instead found Charles leaning against the counter, scrolling through his phone, looking up with those ridiculous green eyes and asking, "What can I get for you?"
Max's brain had short-circuited. His alpha instincts had done something embarrassing that he refused to think about. And instead of saying something normal like "a latte, please," he had panicked and rattled off the most complicated coffee order he could invent on the spot.
Three shots of espresso. Oat milk. Sixty-three degrees. One pump vanilla. Three ice cubes.
He did not know why he said any of it. He did not even like oat milk.
But Charles had just nodded, made the drink without complaint, and handed it over with a smile. And Max, being Max, could not back down after that. So he came back the next day and ordered the same thing. And the next day. And the next.
Four months later, here he still was, drinking a coffee he did not particularly enjoy, just to have an excuse to stand in this warm yellow room and watch Charles Leclerc make it.
"Here you go." Charles slid the cup across the counter. "Three ice cubes. I counted."
Max wrapped his hand around the cup. The warmth of the espresso seeped through the cardboard. "Thanks."
"You are welcome." Charles was already turning away to wipe down the counter, but he paused. "Max?"
"Yeah?"
"You know you can just order a black coffee, right? I would not judge you."
Max felt his face heat. "I like this drink."
"You hate this drink. You make a face every time you take the first sip. Like this." Charles scrunched up his nose and grimaced, an exaggerated impression that made him look like a disgruntled cat.
"I do not make that face."
"You absolutely make that face. I have seen it one hundred and twenty-three times."
"You're counting?"
Charles shrugged one shoulder, a casual gesture that somehow made Max's heart stutter. "I am a businessman. I notice patterns."
Max took a sip of his coffee just to prove a point, and he absolutely did not grimace even though the oat milk was definitely not the right temperature today. "It's good."
"It is sixty-five degrees," Charles said. "I steamed it too hot on purpose to see if you would notice."
"You sabotaged my coffee?"
"I conducted an experiment. You failed."
Max stared at him. Charles stared back, his expression perfectly innocent except for the gleam in his eyes.
"You're a menace," Max said.
"And yet you keep coming back." Charles tossed the rag over his shoulder and leaned his hip against the counter. "One hundred and twenty-four days, Max. A man does not drink coffee he hates for one hundred and twenty-four days unless there is something else keeping him here."
Max's grip tightened on his cup. "The service is good."
"The service is mediocre at best."
"The atmosphere."
"The chairs wobble."
"The convenient location."
"You live twenty minutes away. Daniel told me."
Max made a mental note to murder Daniel at his earliest convenience. "You talked to Daniel?"
"He comes in on Tuesdays. He orders a flat white and tells me embarrassing stories about you." Charles's smile widened. "Did you really trip over a tire barrier and fall into a gravel trap at Silverstone last year?"
"That was not my fault. There was a dip in the track."
"A dip."
"A significant dip."
"I am sure." Charles pushed off from the counter and picked up his rag again. "Well. Enjoy your too-hot sabotage coffee. I will see you tomorrow?"
The question hung in the air, light and teasing, and Max felt something tight coil in his chest. Charles asked him that every day, and every day Max said yes, and every day it meant nothing and everything all at once.
"Yeah," he said. "Tomorrow."
Max spent the rest of the day at the simulator, which was a mistake. He missed three braking points and crashed into a wall on a track he had driven a thousand times. His engineer asked if he was feeling unwell. His trainer suggested he go home early. Daniel texted him a string of laughing emojis with no context, which meant Charles had definitely told him about the oat milk sabotage.
He was not handling this well.
The problem, Max had come to realize, was that he had never been good at this. Not the racing. The racing was easy. The racing made sense. You put your foot down, you turned the wheel, you went fast. There were rules and procedures and clear metrics for success.
There were no rules for what to do when an omega with green eyes and a terrible sense of humor made you feel like you were coming apart at the seams every time he smiled.
Max was an alpha. He was supposed to be confident and direct and good at pursuing people he was interested in. Instead he had spent four months ordering a coffee he hated and waiting for Charles to somehow figure it out on his own.
Which Charles had.
Because Charles had just told him, to his face, that he knew Max was not coming for the coffee. And Max had just stood there like an idiot and said, "The service is good."
He dropped his head onto his desk.
"Pathetic," he muttered to himself. "Absolutely pathetic."
His phone buzzed. A text from Daniel: Charles says you looked cute today. His words not mine. Well, he said 'flustered' but I'm translating.
Max threw his phone across the room.
He did not sleep well that night. He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about Charles leaning against the counter, Charles scrunching up his nose, Charles saying a man does not drink coffee he hates for one hundred and twenty-four days unless there is something else keeping him here.
Charles knew. Charles had always known. Charles was just waiting for Max to do something about it.
The realization sat heavy in his chest, equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.
He had to do something. He had to say something. He had to stop being pathetic and actually communicate like a functioning adult alpha instead of a teenager with his first crush.
But what was he supposed to say? Hello, I have been coming to your coffee shop every day for four months because I think you are beautiful and funny and I want to spend the rest of my life watching you make espresso?
That seemed like a lot for a Tuesday morning.
Maybe he could write it down. That was easier. He was better with words when they were not coming out of his mouth. He could write something small, something simple, something that would not make him look like a complete lunatic.
He fell asleep somewhere around three in the morning, still turning phrases over in his head.
The next day, Max arrived at the coffee shop at his usual time: nine seventeen in the morning, exactly thirteen minutes after Charles opened. He had been timing it.
Charles was behind the counter as always, his brown curls slightly damp like he had just showered. The warm yellow walls caught the morning light. The mismatched chairs sat empty. They were alone.
"Good morning," Charles said, his smile already curling at the edges. "The usual?"
Max walked up to the counter and placed both hands flat on the surface. He had a plan. It was not a great plan, but it was a plan, and he was going to execute it.
"Yes," he said. "The usual."
Charles's eyebrows lifted slightly. "No complaints about yesterday's temperature sabotage?"
"You said you would not do it again."
"I said no such thing. I said I would see you tomorrow. I made no promises about the coffee."
Max huffed out something that was almost a laugh. "You are impossible."
"And yet." Charles grabbed a cup and his marker. "Three shots. Oat milk. Sixty-three degrees. One pump vanilla. Three ice cubes. I am writing it down even though I know it by heart, just in case you think I might forget."
He bent his head and started writing on the cup, his marker squeaking against the cardboard.
Max watched him. His heart was beating too fast. His palms were sweating. He was a professional athlete who raced cars at three hundred kilometers an hour for a living, and he was nervous about a conversation with a coffee shop owner.
Charles finished writing, capped his marker, and turned toward the espresso machine. Max opened his mouth to say something, anything, and what came out was: "Wait."
Charles turned back. "Yes?"
"I." Max stopped. All his carefully rehearsed words evaporated. "Nothing. The coffee. Make the coffee."
Charles studied him for a moment, his green eyes unreadable. Then he shrugged and turned back to the machine.
Max stood at the counter and watched him work, just like he did every morning. The only difference was that today, his entire future felt balanced on the edge of a blade.
Charles finished the drink, snapped on a lid, and slid it across the counter. "Four ninety."
Max handed over a five-pound note. "Keep the change."
"Ten pence. I am truly blessed." Charles pushed the cup a little closer. "Here. Maybe read the cup today. I put something extra."
Max looked down at the cup in his hands.
In Charles's neat handwriting, beneath the complicated order, there were two words: Ask me.
Max stared at them.
Ask me.
Two words. Just two words. He had been agonizing over what to say for four months, and Charles had boiled it down to two words.
He looked up. Charles was watching him with a small smile, his arms crossed, his hip against the counter. He smelled like coffee beans and something sweeter underneath, something that Max's alpha senses kept trying to catalogue as home.
"Well?" Charles said.
Max's hands were shaking slightly. He tightened his grip on the cup, and then immediately loosened it so he would not crush the cardboard. "Would you," he started, and his voice came out rough. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Would you want to have dinner with me? Sometime? When you are not making coffee?"
Charles's smile widened slowly, like sunrise breaking over a horizon. "Yes," he said. "I would want that."
"You would?"
"I wrote 'ask me' on your cup, Max. I have been waiting for you to do this for approximately three months."
"Three months?"
"Give or take. The first month I thought you were just a very particular customer. By month two I had figured it out."
Max felt heat crawl up the back of his neck. "Figured what out?"
"That you like me." Charles uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. "You are very obvious. You stare at me the entire time I make your coffee. You leave a ten-pence tip every day even though you could just hand me exact change. You asked Daniel about my schedule so you would know when I work."
"Daniel told you that too?"
"Daniel tells me everything. He thinks it is hilarious." Charles tilted his head. "So. Dinner. Where are you taking me?"
Max's brain was still stuck on you like me and Daniel tells me everything and the fact that Charles had apparently known for three months and had just been waiting for Max to get his act together.
"I do not know yet," he admitted. "I did not think I would get this far."
Charles laughed, a warm sound that made Max's chest feel too small for his heart. "That is very honest of you."
"I am trying to be honest. I am not very good at it."
"You seem to be doing fine so far."
Max looked down at the cup again. Ask me. Two words that had changed everything. "I thought about writing something on the cup," he said. "For you, I mean. But you are the one who writes on the cups."
"What would you have written?"
"Something stupid. Probably."
"I like stupid things." Charles reached across the counter and gently tugged the cup from Max's hands. He pulled off the lid, took a sip of the coffee he had just made, and grimaced. "This is a terrible drink. Why did you order this for four months?"
"I panicked."
"You panicked and invented the world's worst coffee?"
"The first day I came in, you looked at me and I forgot how to order a normal drink. So I just said things until I ran out of things to say."
Charles set the cup down. His expression had shifted into something softer, something that made Max's pulse skip. "That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."
"I know."
"Four months of bad coffee because you panicked."
"I know."
Charles shook his head slowly. "Monday. I am off on Monday. Pick me up here at seven."
"Seven," Max repeated. "Okay."
"And Max?"
"Yeah?"
"Order a black coffee tomorrow. You will like it better."
Max walked out of the coffee shop with his terrible oat milk concoction and a smile he could not control. His hands were still shaking slightly around the cup, but he did not think it was from nerves anymore.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Daniel again: Did you finally do it? Charles just sent me a thumbs-up emoji with no context.
Max typed back: Monday. Seven o'clock.
Daniel's response came immediately: FINALLY. I've been watching you pine for FOUR MONTHS. You owe me dinner for my emotional suffering.
Max shoved his phone back into his pocket without replying. He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced at the taste of oat milk and vanilla and too-hot espresso.
He could not wait to order a black coffee tomorrow.
Monday arrived slowly. Max spent the intervening days doing normal things like training and simulator work and sitting through engineering meetings, but his mind was perpetually elsewhere. He ordered black coffee on Wednesday morning and Charles had grinned at him like he had won a championship.
"See?" Charles had said, sliding the cup across the counter. "Much better."
"It is good," Max had admitted. "I should have done this months ago."
"You should have done a lot of things months ago."
"Are you going to keep teasing me about this forever?"
"Yes," Charles had said cheerfully. "That is the plan."
Now it was Monday evening, and Max was standing outside the coffee shop at six fifty-three, seven minutes early, wearing a shirt that Daniel had picked out for him because Daniel claimed Max had no fashion sense. The shirt was dark blue. Daniel said it brought out his eyes. Max felt like he was wearing a costume.
The door to the coffee shop opened, and Charles stepped out.
He was wearing a dark green sweater that matched his eyes and made his brown curls look even warmer in the evening light. He had locked the door behind him and was now walking toward Max with his hands in his pockets and a smile that made Max forget every word he had ever learned.
"Hi," Charles said.
"Hi."
"You are early."
"Seven minutes. That is not that early."
"For you it is probably late. You seem like the type to arrive twenty minutes early to everything."
Max could not argue with that. "Where do you want to go?"
"There is a Italian place two streets over. The owner owes me a favor because I fix her espresso machine for free."
"You fix espresso machines?"
"I am a coffee shop owner. Of course I fix espresso machines." Charles fell into step beside him, and they started walking. "I can also unclog a sink, repair a broken chair, and negotiate with difficult dairy suppliers. It is a very glamorous profession."
"It sounds like you run the whole place by yourself."
"I do. I opened it three years ago with money I saved from working at a restaurant in Monaco." Charles glanced at him sideways. "You have never asked me about myself before. Not really."
Max felt a pang of guilt. "I should have."
"You were too busy panicking about your coffee order." Charles's shoulder bumped against his as they walked. "It is fine. I am asking you now. So. Racing. Is it as exciting as it looks on television?"
"Sometimes. Mostly it is meetings and training and sitting in traffic on the way to the track."
"That is very glamorous too."
They reached the restaurant, a small place with red-checked tablecloths and candles flickering on every table. The owner, a stout woman with gray hair and an apron dusted with flour, greeted Charles by name and ushered them to a table in the corner.
"She likes you," Max observed as they sat down.
"I told you. I fix her espresso machine." Charles picked up his menu. "It is a very useful skill. I recommend learning it."
"I will add it to my list."
The dinner passed in a blur of pasta and wine and conversation that flowed easier than Max had ever imagined it could. Charles talked about growing up in Monaco, about his brothers, about the years he spent saving money for the coffee shop. Max talked about racing and traveling and the strange loneliness of spending your life surrounded by people who all wanted something from you.
"The coffee shop is different," Max said at one point, halfway through his second glass of wine. "When I am there, I do not feel like Max Verstappen the racing driver. I just feel like a person who wants coffee."
"That is the point," Charles said. "That is why I opened it. I wanted a place where people could just be people."
"Is that why you never treated me differently? Even when you knew who I was?"
Charles set down his fork. "I knew who you were the first day you walked in. You are not exactly unknown. But you were so nervous and you ordered that terrible drink and you looked at me like you were terrified I would recognize you. So I pretended I did not."
Max felt something catch in his throat. "Thank you."
"You do not need to thank me. You just needed somewhere to be normal." Charles smiled, soft and warm in the candlelight. "Although I have to say, you are much less normal than I expected."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I thought you would be arrogant and demanding and instead you were just. Awkward. And sweet. And you left me ten pence every day like it was the most important thing in the world." Charles reached across the table and brushed his fingers against the back of Max's hand. "You are not what I expected at all."
Max turned his hand over and caught Charles's fingers in his own. The touch was light, barely there, but it sent a current of warmth up his arm. "Is that a good thing?"
"It is a very good thing." Charles's thumb traced a small circle against Max's palm. "Now finish your pasta. I want dessert."
They shared a slice of tiramisu and argued about whether it was better than the tiramisu in Italy. Charles insisted it was. Max had never been to Italy for anything except racing and had no opinion, but he argued anyway just to watch Charles get passionate about dessert.
Later, they walked back toward the coffee shop in the dark. The street was quiet, the shops all closed, the warm yellow glow of Charles's windows the only light on the block.
"This was good," Charles said, stopping outside the door. "I had a good time."
"Me too."
"We should do it again."
"Yes." Max's voice came out more earnest than he intended. "Definitely. Tomorrow, if you want. Or whenever. I do not have a race for two weeks so I am here. In town. Available."
Charles laughed. "Breathe, Max."
"I am breathing."
"You are panicking again."
"I am not panicking." He was definitely panicking a little. "I just want to be clear about what I want."
"And what do you want?"
Max looked at him, at those green eyes and the brown curls falling across his forehead, at the smile that was somehow teasing and gentle all at once. His alpha instincts were humming under his skin, a low steady warmth that made him want to step closer, to wrap himself around this omega and never let go.
"I want to keep doing this," he said. "Dinner. Talking. Whatever you want to call it. I want to get to know you properly, not just three minutes at a time while you make my coffee."
Charles stepped closer. Close enough that Max could smell him properly now, beyond the coffee and the restaurant and into something sweeter, something that was purely Charles. "That sounds nice."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Charles reached up and touched Max's jaw, his fingers light against the stubble there. "But I have one condition."
"What?"
"No more terrible coffee orders. If you are going to be my boyfriend, you have to drink things you actually like."
Max's brain stuttered to a halt on the word boyfriend. "Is that what I am? Your boyfriend?"
"After tonight?" Charles's smile turned mischievous. "I think so. Unless you have objections."
"No objections."
"Good." Charles rose up on his toes and pressed a kiss to Max's cheek. "Then I will see you tomorrow morning. Black coffee. Maybe a croissant if you are nice to me."
He pulled back, unlocked the coffee shop door, and slipped inside before Max could respond. The lock clicked behind him.
Max stood on the empty street, one hand pressed to the spot on his cheek where Charles had kissed him.
"Black coffee," he said to no one. "I can do black coffee."
He walked home with a smile he could not suppress, already counting the hours until tomorrow morning.