Work Text:
The smell of burnt castor oil and hot asphalt clung to the Monaco air, a scent that defined the Leclerc household long before they ever owned a proper home. Charles, barely a teenager but already carrying the weight of a thousand expectations, gripped the railing of the karting track. He watched a smaller, blurrier version of himself scream around a hairpin turn, the kart sliding just an inch too wide.
"He’s going to bin it!" Charles yelled, his voice cracking.
Lorenzo leaned against the railing, chewing on a piece of grass. "He’s not going to bin it, Charles. He’s exploring the limits of the curb."
"He’s exploring the gravel trap!"
The small kart corrected itself with a violent jerk, the tires shrieking as Arthur regained traction. The boy shot across the finish line, his oversized helmet wobbling on his shoulders. As Arthur climbed out, sweating and grinning, Charles was already there, frantically checking the front fairing for scratches.
"You took the apex too wide on turn four," Charles lectured, his hands fluttering. "If you keep doing that, you'll lose three-tenths. And your helmet is crooked. Why is it always crooked?"
Arthur pushed Charles’s hand away, his eyes bright with mischief. "I didn't lose time. I was making the other kids scared."
"Scaring them isn't a telemetry metric, Arthur!"
Lorenzo laughed, throwing an arm around Charles’s stiff shoulders. "Let him breathe, Charles. You’re acting like his manager, not his brother."
"Someone has to make sure he doesn't drive into a lake," Charles muttered, though he reached out to straighten the helmet anyway, his touch lingering for a second too long.
As the years bled into one another, the roles shifted, but the protectiveness remained. The karting tracks grew larger, the engines louder, and the stakes higher. By the time Arthur hit his teens, the "Leclerc Shadow" had become a tangible thing. It followed him into every paddock and every hotel lobby.
In a cramped hotel room in Italy, the walls vibrating with the roar of nearby engines, Arthur stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing his racing suit, the fabric stiff and smelling of fire-retardant chemicals.
"Do I look like a copy of you?" Arthur asked, glancing at Charles through the mirror.
Charles stopped packing his bag, his brow furrowing. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Everyone says it. 'Oh, he’s just like Charles.' 'He has that Leclerc style.' I want to know if I actually look like a driver or just a smaller version of the Ferrari golden boy."
Charles walked over, his expression softening. He reached up and flicked Arthur’s ear.
"You look like a brat who spends too much time worrying about his hair," Charles replied.
"I do not!"
"You do. You spent ten minutes on that cowlick this morning. Just drive the car, Arthur. The car doesn't care if you're a copy or an original. It only cares if you're fast."
"And if I'm faster than you were at my age?"
Charles paused, a small, competitive smirk playing on his lips. "Then I'll have to tell Dad that I’m the favorite child because I’m the only one who doesn't ask existential questions in the mirror."
The transition to the higher formulas brought new faces and new tensions. Arthur found himself in the Prema garage, surrounded by the clinical efficiency of high-level racing. It was here that the protective streak in Charles evolved from "big brother" to "full-blown security detail."
Oscar Piastri stood by the telemetry screens, his face a mask of absolute neutrality. He watched as Charles hovered over Arthur, adjusting a glove that was already perfectly tight.
"Is he always like this?" Oscar asked, his voice a flat, deadpan drone.
Arthur sighed, leaning back in his seat. "Every single waking second. I think he has a GPS tracker on my socks."
Charles overheard and whipped around. "I do not have a tracker on your socks! I just think the grip on those gloves is suboptimal for the current track temperature."
Oscar blinked slowly. "The temperature is the same as it was ten minutes ago when you checked them."
Charles stared at Oscar, then back at Arthur. "See? Even the Australian thinks you're not prepared. Tighten the strap, Arthur."
"I'm literally suffocating, Charles!"
"Suffocating is a small price to pay for precision!"
Logan Sargeant wandered over, holding a bottle of water, looking slightly bewildered by the intensity of the scene. "Are we still talking about gloves? I thought we were discussing the brake bias."
"The brake bias is fine!" Charles snapped, though he immediately turned to Arthur with a worried expression. "Is the brake bias fine? Did you check the bias?"
Arthur groaned, throwing his head back against the headrest. "Logan, please. Tell him I'm a professional."
Logan looked at Charles, who was currently staring at Arthur’s helmet visor as if he could see the wind resistance through the plastic.
"I mean," Logan started cautiously, "you seem... capable?"
"Capable!" Charles exclaimed. "He’s not just capable, he’s a Leclerc! Which means he’s prone to over-driving when he’s nervous, which is why he needs to focus on his breathing—Arthur, are you breathing? You look like you're holding your breath."
Oscar leaned toward Arthur. "Does he ever stop?"
"Only when he's asleep," Arthur whispered. "And even then, I think he's dreaming about my tire pressures."
The dynamic shifted further after 2022. The world knew Charles as the prince of Maranello, but inside the private circles of the paddock, a different story was unfolding. The rivalry between Red Bull and Ferrari was legendary, but the rivalry between Charles and Max Verstappen had turned into something far more complicated.
Their first few dates had been a clandestine operation involving fake names and hotel rooms with discreet entrances. But once the relationship became a settled fact within their inner circle, Max became an unlikely addition to the Leclerc family chaos.
In a luxury hotel in Spain, Max sat on the edge of the bed, watching Charles pace the room. Arthur was downstairs at a driver's briefing, and Charles was currently in the middle of a crisis.
"He's too young for this circuit," Charles insisted, gesturing wildly. "The walls here are unforgiving. One mistake and he's in a concrete barrier."
Max sighed, leaning back on his elbows. "Charles. He is a professional racing driver. He knows where the walls are."
"He's my little brother, Max! He doesn't know the walls are mean!"
Max stared at him for a long beat. "Mean? You're describing a race track as 'mean' now?"
"I just... I remember when we were kids, and he'd cry if he hit a plastic cone. What if he hits a wall at two hundred kilometers per hour?"
Max stood up, walking over to Charles and placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "Listen. You cannot protect him from the wall. You can't protect him from the crashes or the bad days. You're not his father, and you're certainly not his engineer."
Charles looked up at Max, his eyes wide and anxious. "I know. I just don't want him to feel the pressure I felt."
"He's a Leclerc," Max said, a hint of a smile touching his lips. "Pressure is the family business. Let him handle it. Besides, if he crashes, I'll be the one laughing at you for worrying so much."
Charles frowned. "You're a terrible boyfriend."
"I'm a realistic boyfriend," Max corrected, pulling Charles into a brief, grounding hug. "Now stop pacing. You're wearing a hole in the carpet, and the hotel will probably charge us a thousand euros for it."
The humor of the situation wasn't lost on Arthur, who walked into the room just as Max was teasing Charles about his anxiety. Arthur stopped in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a smug expression.
"Oh, look," Arthur said. "The World Champion is babysitting the Ferrari driver. This is a historic moment."
Charles immediately detached himself from Max. "I am not being babysat! I was discussing your safety!"
"Right. Because my safety is the primary topic of conversation in every room I enter," Arthur replied, walking over to the mini-bar. "By the way, Max, can you tell him to stop texting me every fifteen minutes to ask if I've hydrated?"
Max looked at Charles, then back to Arthur. "He does that?"
"Constantly," Arthur said, popping open a water bottle. "I get a text: 'Are you drinking water?' 'Is the water cold?' 'Do you feel the electrolytes working?' It's like being raised by a very stressed-out fish."
Charles gasped. "Hydration is key to cognitive function! If you're dehydrated, your reaction time drops by milliseconds!"
"I'm literally holding a bottle of water, Charles!"
"Is it enough water?"
Max let out a short, sharp laugh. "I think you've met your match, Charles. He's just as stubborn as you are."
"He is not stubborn," Charles argued. "He's just... difficult."
"I'm not difficult," Arthur countered. "I'm an acquired taste."
As Arthur climbed the ranks, the bond between the brothers deepened, though it was often masked by bickering. There were moments of quiet, where the noise of the engines faded and the ghost of Jules Bianchi seemed to settle over them.
After a particularly grueling race where Arthur had fought his way from tenth to fifth, the two brothers sat on a low wall behind the garages. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purples and golds.
Arthur was silent, his racing suit tied around his waist, his undershirt damp with sweat. He was staring at his hands, which were still shaking slightly from the adrenaline.
"You were aggressive into turn one," Charles said. His voice wasn't lecturing for once. It was soft, almost tentative.
"I had to be," Arthur replied. "If I didn't dive-bomb, I would've been stuck behind the slower cars for the whole lap."
"It was a risky move. You almost clipped the rear of the car in front."
"But I didn't."
Charles looked at his younger brother. He saw the grit in Arthur's jaw, the way he carried himself now—no longer the little boy with the crooked helmet, but a man who knew exactly how to manipulate a machine at the edge of physics.
"You're getting faster," Charles admitted.
Arthur looked up, surprised. "Wait, did you just give me a compliment without adding a 'but' at the end?"
"Don't make me take it back," Charles warned, though he reached over and ruffled Arthur's hair, intentionally messing up the styling he knew Arthur had spent time on.
"Hey! Stop it!"
"You're still a brat," Charles said, smiling. "But you're a fast brat."
The humor returned quickly, as it always did with the Leclercs. A few weeks later, the family gathered at their home in Monaco for a dinner that was less of a meal and more of a verbal battlefield.
Their father sat at the head of the table, watching with a mixture of pride and exhaustion as his sons argued over the dinner plates.
"I'm just saying," Arthur said, gesturing with a forkful of pasta, "that the line I took in the final sector was objectively superior."
"Objectively superior?" Charles scoffed. "You were drifting! You were practically in the next zip code by the time you hit the apex."
"It's called a wide entry for a late apex, Charles. Maybe if you didn't spend all your time worrying about my hydration, you'd remember the basics of racing theory."
Lorenzo choked on his wine. "He got you there."
"I did not!" Charles exclaimed. "I taught him that line! I literally showed him that line on a whiteboard three years ago!"
"And I improved it," Arthur said simply.
Max, who had been quietly eating his meal, leaned over to the father. "Do they always do this?"
The father nodded slowly. "Since they could walk. Once, they fought over who got to hold the remote for the television, and it ended with both of them trying to race the remote across the living room floor using straws to blow it."
Max grinned. "I love this family."
"Don't encourage them," the mother sighed, though she was smiling. "Charles, stop trying to steal Arthur's bread. Arthur, stop teasing your brother."
"I'm not teasing," Arthur said, his eyes twinkling. "I'm providing a necessary reality check for the Ferrari driver."
"Reality check?" Charles shouted. "I have a podium in every single—"
"And I have a better personality," Arthur interrupted.
The table erupted in laughter, the sound filling the room and masking the underlying tension that always came with their profession. For a moment, they weren't drivers, or celebrities, or the faces of a national obsession. They were just three brothers and a very amused Dutchman.
However, the protective streak in Charles never truly vanished; it just changed shape. It manifested in the way he would sneak extra treats into Arthur's bag before a long flight, or the way he would stand slightly in front of Arthur when the media crowds became too aggressive.
During a particularly chaotic press event in Silverstone, a reporter pushed a microphone too close to Arthur's face, the metal grating nearly touching his lip.
Charles, who had been standing a few feet away, moved with the speed of a qualifying lap. He didn't say a word; he simply stepped in, placed a firm hand on the reporter's wrist, and gently but decisively pushed the microphone back.
"Give him some space," Charles said, his voice low and devoid of its usual humor.
The reporter blinked, startled by the sudden shift in the "golden boy's" demeanor. "I was just asking about the lap times—"
"He'll answer the question," Charles replied, his eyes narrowing. "When you're not trying to perform dental surgery with a microphone."
Once the reporter backed off, Arthur looked up at Charles. He didn't say thank you—that wasn't their way—but he leaned his shoulder against Charles's for a brief second.
"I could have handled it," Arthur whispered.
"I know," Charles whispered back. "But it's more fun when I get to be the scary one."
As the season progressed, Arthur found himself facing the most daunting challenge of his career: a promotion to a higher category where the cars were faster and the drivers more ruthless. The night before his first big race in the new series, the hotel room was quiet.
Charles was sitting on the balcony, looking out at the city lights. Arthur joined him, leaning on the railing.
"I'm nervous," Arthur admitted. The admission was rare, a crack in the armor he'd built to survive his brother's shadow.
Charles didn't offer a platitude. He didn't tell him everything would be fine. Instead, he looked at Arthur and spoke with a raw honesty.
"I was terrified my first time," Charles said. "I felt like if I made one mistake, I was failing everyone. I felt like I had to be perfect because I didn't want to let Jules down. I didn't want to be the one who couldn't handle it."
Arthur looked at him. "Do you still feel that?"
"Sometimes," Charles admitted. "But then I remember that the fear is what makes you sharp. If you're not a little bit scared, you're not paying attention. The trick isn't to get rid of the fear, Arthur. The trick is to make the fear work for you."
Arthur nodded, absorbing the words. "Do you think I'm ready?"
Charles turned to him, his expression serious. He reached out and gripped the back of Arthur's neck, pulling him in for a brief, firm hug.
"You've been ready for years," Charles said. "Now go out there and make me look slow. It'll be good for my ego to have a challenge."
Arthur laughed, pushing him away. "Don't worry, Charles. I'll make sure to send you a photo of the trophy so you remember what one looks like."
"You little—!"
The race weekend arrived in a whirlwind of noise and adrenaline. From the pit wall, Charles watched the screens with a tension that made his jaw ache. Max stood beside him, his hand resting on the small of Charles's back, a silent anchor.
"He's in P3," Max noted. "He's driving cleanly."
"He's too close to the car in P2," Charles muttered. "He's going to try something stupid. I know that look. He has the 'I'm going to dive-bomb' look."
"Let him," Max said. "He's got the pace."
"If he bins it, I'm going to kill him," Charles whispered.
"You'll have to wait in line," Max replied. "The team principal will probably get to him first."
On the final lap, Arthur made his move. It was a daring, high-risk maneuver into the final chicane—a move that was almost identical to one Charles had attempted years prior, though Arthur executed it with a slight tweak to the entry angle.
As Arthur crossed the line in second place, the radio exploded with the team's cheers. Charles didn't cheer. He let out a breath he felt he'd been holding for fifteen years.
When Arthur climbed out of the car, drenched in sweat and shaking with exhaustion, he didn't go to his engineers first. He walked straight to Charles.
The two brothers collided in a messy, uncoordinated hug, the smell of Nomex and champagne surrounding them.
"I did the line!" Arthur yelled into Charles's shoulder. "I did the line and I improved it!"
Charles laughed, pulling back to look at his brother. "It was still too wide on the entry!"
"Shut up!" Arthur laughed, shoving him. "Just shut up and tell me I'm great!"
"You're okay," Charles teased, though his eyes were shining. "For a brat."
As they walked back toward the motorhome, Max fell in step beside them, shaking his head.
"So," Max said. "Now that Arthur is a podium finisher, does this mean Charles stops texting me about his hydration?"
"Absolutely not," Arthur said, grinning. "In fact, I think we should start a group chat. I want to know exactly how many liters of water Charles drinks a day. For science."
"I hate you both," Charles groaned, though he wrapped an arm around Arthur's shoulders, pulling him close.
The walk back was filled with the usual bickering, the usual jokes, and the kind of effortless love that only exists between people who have seen each other at their absolute worst. As they passed the trophy table, Charles paused, looking at the silver cup Arthur had just earned.
He remembered the little boy with the crooked helmet. He remembered the teenager who feared the shadow. And he looked at the man beside him, who was currently trying to trip him with a well-placed foot.
Charles didn't need to say it out loud. He didn't need to be the protector anymore. Arthur had found his own way, his own line, and his own strength.
"Hey, Arthur?" Charles asked as they reached the door.
"What now? Is my helmet crooked?"
Charles smiled, a genuine, peaceful expression. "No. It looks perfect."
Arthur paused, looking at his brother. He smiled back, a mirror image of the same stubborn, determined spirit.
"Of course it does," Arthur said. "I'm a Leclerc."