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The ringing in Charles’s ears didn’t stop when the engine died. It was a persistent, high-frequency whine that seemed to resonate directly behind his eyes, echoing the violent thrum of the engine that had rattled his spine for fifty-three relentless laps. Outside the narrow visor of his helmet, the world was an overwhelming, disorienting blur of harsh fluorescent floodlights, flashing camera bulbs, and the dizzying blue-and-yellow neon of the paddock hospitality buildings, all merging together in a dizzying kaleidoscope of noise and glare. Inside the cockpit of the SF-26, however, everything was suffocatingly still, smelled of burnt oil, scorched rubber, and the heavy, metallic tang of hot carbon fibre.
"Charles, check radio. Are you okay to step out, mate?" The voice of his race engineer, Bryan, crackled through the earflaps, laced with an underlying tightness that no amount of radio static could disguise, reflecting the raw anxiety that had filled the pit wall ever since lap 44.
"I’m . . . ah . . . yeah," Charles rasped, his voice sounding like gravel grinding in a tin can, his throat parched from the sheer heat of the cockpit and the relentless G-forces. "I’m getting out."
Every single breath was an agonizing ordeal. The carbon-fibre seat, moulded precisely to the unique contours of his spine, felt less like a custom piece of high-tech engineering and more like an iron press crushing his left ribcage with relentless pressure. On lap 44, when the telemetry had registered a sickening 28G lateral shock, the heavy six-point harness had done its job with brutal efficiency: it had kept him inside the car, preventing him from being thrown into the steering column, but in doing so, it had bruised his torso and compressed his ribs until every breath felt like a knife twisting into his lungs.
Charles unlatched the steering wheel, his fingers twitching uncontrollably against the quick-release mechanism as the lingering shock in his nerves refused to settle. His left hand — the one that had taken the full, unforgiving force of the steering column snapping violently sideways when his front-left floor slammed into the high kerb — was shaking so badly he couldn't get a proper grip on the rim, forcing him to use his right arm to heave the carbon-fibre wheel free.
Three inches.
That was all the space Max had left him into Turn 9. Three mere inches of kerb before the treacherous, rubber-marred grass took over, offering zero traction and guaranteed disaster. In the split second before the impact, Charles had seen the bright blue nose of the Red Bull looming large in his side-mirror — not backing out, not yielding, carrying far too much entry speed for a corner that tight and unforgiving. Charles had held his line, refusing to be bullied off the apex he felt he had earned through sheer bravery on the brakes, refusing to concede an inch to the man who took everything given to him.
The result had been catastrophic and immediate: carbon-fibre endplates exploding into a cloud of black dust, the floor of his Ferrari lifting off the ground, and a terrifying moment where Charles felt completely weightless at 190 miles per hour before slamming back down onto the kerbs and spinning wildly into the runoff zone. The sheer force of the impact had knocked the air completely out of his lungs, leaving him suspended in a void of wind and violence before the world finally came to a halt in a haze of smoke and rubber.
He forced his aching legs to move, hauling himself up out of the survival cell with agonizing slowness. The moment his feet touched the slick tarmac of the pit lane, a sharp, blinding spike of pain shot from his lower back straight up into his neck, making his vision flicker with dark spots. He gasped, his knees buckling for a terrifying fraction of a second before he caught himself against the sharp edge of the front wing, his knuckles turning white as he held himself upright.
"Charles," his trainer, Andrea, said, appearing beside him instantly and grabbing his elbow with practiced caution, taking enough of his weight to keep him standing without pressing against his side. "Hey, look at me. Don't move too fast, Charles. Take a breath."
"I’m fine," Charles lied automatically, his face pale behind the flame-retardant balaclava, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached as he tried to mask the agony radiating through his entire core. "I’m fine, Andrea. Just give me a second."
Across the crowded parc fermé, parked in the pit lane space reserved for second place, sat the Red Bull, its bodywork streaked with tyre marbles and heat haze. Max was already out of his car, moving with that restless, kinetic energy that always possessed him after a race. He had dropped his helmet onto the nose cone and was leaning back against his rear tyre, unzipping his race suit down to his waist to let the cool night air hit his damp shirt. He looked flushed, his fair hair dark with sweat and plastered to his forehead, his sharp jaw set in that familiar, uncompromising line that usually signalled he was ready for a fight. As if sensing the heavy gaze fixed upon him, Max turned his head. Their eyes locked across twenty yards of bustling mechanics, VIP guests, camera crews, and marshals pushing car dollies. Max’s gaze wasn't smug; it wasn't triumphant or defiant. It was dark, heavy, and unreadable, carrying a strange, suffocating gravity that made the surrounding noise vanish. Charles tore his eyes away first, pulling off his balaclava with trembling fingers and stepping into the blinding light of the media pen.
The next hour was a gruelling blur of noise, blinding flashbulbs, and forced composure. Under the sweltering heat of the television lights, Charles stood in front of a dozen microphone flags, repeating the same politically safe, hollow phrases his PR manager had drilled into his head during the golf-buggy ride to the media centre. He smiled on cue, held his posture rigid, and delivered the sanitized version of a near-disaster: "Racing incident," he offered with a smooth, practiced nod. "We both pushed for the apex, and there was very little room left." "The stewards will look at the telemetry, but it's part of racing at this level." Behind his polite smile and easy Monegasque charm, however, Charles was rapidly deteriorating from the inside out. Every time he took a deep breath to answer a journalist’s probing question, his bruised lung screamed in protest, sending a sharp throb through his chest. His core felt as though it were on fire, and the massive spike of adrenaline that had carried him through the post-race interviews and FIA debriefs was rapidly evaporating, leaving behind a cold, nauseating exhaustion that made his limbs feel like lead.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Max handle his own media obligations just a few feet away. Max was considerably less diplomatic, as he always was when he felt his race craft was being questioned. He was blunt, gesturing sharply with his thick hands as he explained his trajectory into Turn 9 to an eager Dutch interviewer, his tone sharp and impatient. "He turned in," Max was saying, his voice carrying clearly over the general chatter of the media pen. "I was on the inside. He knew I was there before we hit the braking zone. You cannot expect me to just disappear into thin air when I have the momentum." Charles bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper, turning his back on Max to answer a tedious question from Sky Sports about championship points. By the time the mandatory engineering debriefs, official medical checks, and FIA press conferences were finally finished, it was well past midnight. The paddock had begun to quieten down, the bright lights dimming one by one, leaving only the metallic sound of air wrenches and heavy travel crates being wheeled towards the freight lorries in the dark.
Charles skipped dinner with the team entirely, ignoring the concerned glances from the engineers. He declined the doctor’s offer of a heavy sedative that would knock him out for twelve hours, accepting only a small blister pack of standard anti-inflammatories that he knew wouldn't touch the deep, throbbing level of pain currently consuming his left side. All he wanted was dark, quiet air, away from telemetry graphs, television screens, and opinions. He didn't make it back to his own room. His feet carried him down the carpeted hallway of the hotel’s executive floor, stopping instinctively in front of Suite 408. He didn't even pause to analyse why he was standing there — whether it was to demand an explanation for the move, to vent the poison sitting heavy in his chest, or simply because, after a decade of tearing each other apart on tracks across the globe, Max was the only person alive who understood the exact weight of the air inside that room and the terrifying thrill of the edge they walked on.
Charles lifted a trembling hand and knocked twice against the dark wood.
The lock clicked almost instantly, as if Max had been standing on the other side waiting for the sound. Max stood in the doorway, stripped down to a pair of low-slung black tracksuit bottoms, his chest bare and still damp from a recent shower. Water dripped from his short blond hair onto his shoulders, trailing down the broad expanse of his chest. His face was still flushed from the heat of the race, his bright blue eyes sharp, dark, and bloodshot with exhaustion. For a long, motionless moment, neither of them said a word. The heavy silence of the hallway settled between them, thick with the unspoken tension of lap 44, the weight of their history, and the lingering threat of what had almost happened at 190 miles per hour.
"You look like death," Max said, breaking the silence first. His voice was raspy and deep, completely stripped of its usual post-race bravado, carrying a quiet edge that felt far too raw for the hallway.
"Thank you," Charles spat, his voice laced with pure venom as he tried to maintain his defences. He made a move to brush past Max into the entryway, but as he stepped over the threshold, his body finally gave out under the strain. A sudden, agonizing spasm tore through his lower back, locking his spinal muscles in a vice-like grip that instantly cut off his breath. Charles let out a sharp, ragged gasp, his vision blurring with bright white spots as his knees buckled, his centre of gravity shifting helplessly towards the hard tile floor.
"Hey, easy," Max muttered, his movement instinctive and lightning-fast, born of a lifetime of split-second reflexes behind the wheel. He lunged forward, catching Charles under his arms before he could hit the ground, taking the full, dead weight of Charles’s trembling body against his own bare chest without hesitation.
"Get your hands off me, Max," Charles gasped out, the drop of his voice sharp and entirely stripped of the polite facade he wore for the cameras and the sponsors. He pushed against Max’s chest with his palm, trying to force space between them, but the sudden exertion sent another knife of heat straight through his bruised ribs. He winced violently, his face draining of all colour, his dark curls clinging to his damp forehead as he fought the nauseating wave of pain.
"Don't be a stubborn idiot," Max snapped back, his hands tightening around Charles’s upper arms, holding him upright through sheer physical force. "You can barely stand on your own two feet, Charles. You spent forty minutes in front of the press smiling like nothing was wrong while your whole left side is turning black and blue underneath that shirt."
"Because it’s my business," Charles said, swinging his right arm back to violently break Max’s grip on his elbow, though the sudden movement forced a low moan of pain from his throat. He backed up two unsteadily until his shoulder hit the entryway wall, using the solid surface to keep himself upright while his knuckles turned white where he was clutching his ribs. "I don't need you playing nurse. I don't need your pity, and I certainly don't need you acting like you care after what you did out there on lap 44."
Max dropped his grip, taking a deliberate step back into the hallway light. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched visibly beneath his pale skin. He ran a damp hand through his short hair, turning away for a fraction of a second to control his temper before rounding back on Charles with his eyes burning. "What I did?" Max asked, pointing a tense finger towards the closed suite door, his voice tight with rising frustration. "You turned in on me, Charles. You knew I had the inside apex at Turn 9. You saw me in your mirrors before we even reached the turning point, but you squeezed the gap anyway because your pride couldn't take getting passed on lap 44 after leading for twenty laps."
"I had the line," Charles said, his voice cracking with the strain on his throat and his compressed lungs. He pressed his back harder against the wall, trembling with a mixture of pain and rage. "I gave you two car widths, Max. Two full car widths. You carried way too much speed into the entry — you understeered into my floor because you refused to brake when you knew you were beat. Don't sit there and lie to my face like we’re talking to the stewards in a sterile room. You saw me. You saw me right beside you, and you took the risk anyway because you simply refuse to lose."
"I took the line that was available to me," Max said, his voice rising as he closed the small distance between them once more until he was standing directly in Charles’s personal space, his bare chest heaving with heavy breaths. "I understeered because you chopped my front wing endplate when you closed the door. You do this every single time we're wheel-to-wheel, Charles. You push the absolute limit of the rules, you expect me to yield like everyone else on the grid does for you, and then when carbon fibre flies, it's always my fault, always 'Max being too aggressive.'"
"Because you drive like no one else matters," Charles snapped back, his breath coming in shallow, frantic hitches that made his chest heave awkwardly. "You drive like you're the only one on that track with something to lose, like everyone else is just an obstacle in your way. I gave you space, Max. I gave you every single millimetre I could give without putting my left tyres directly on the grass at nearly two hundred miles per hour."
"And what did you expect me to do, brake?" Max asked, his tone laced with sharp, bitter frustration as his voice echoed off the high ceilings of the quiet suite. "We're racing for a win, Charles. We're not doing a parade lap. If I brake there, I give up the corner, I give up the line, and I give up the race to you. I don't give up corners to you. I never give up corners to you, and you know that better than anyone else."
"You could have killed us both," Charles said quietly, the simple words cutting through the lingering noise of the argument like a blade.
The echoing argument faded into a sudden, suffocating silence that made the entire suite feel impossibly small. The air between them snapped taut, thick with the heavy ghosts of a decade of intense rivalry — karting championships fought in the pouring rain, wheel-to-wheel crashes in Austria, lost world titles, fractured friendships, and the terrifying, unspoken truth of what it meant to travel at 200 miles per hour strapped into a box of flammable fluid and thin carbon fibre. Charles leaned heavily against the wall, his head tilted back against the dark paint, his chest rising and falling in ragged, painful hitches as he struggled to pull air into his bruised lungs. Sweat dripped slowly down his temple, tracing a clean path through the faint smudge of track dirt still clinging to his jawline. A cold, hollow tremor began in his fingers and ran all the way up his forearms.
"You didn't back off," Charles whispered, his voice dropping into a register so raw and exposed it felt like an open wound between them. The furious adrenaline had suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a terrifying, hollow quiet that stripped away every layer of defence he possessed. "Even when you saw my floor lift off the tarmac . . . even when the car went completely sideways at 190 . . . you didn't even lift, Max."
Max opened his mouth to bark out another defensive rebuttal, another telemetry-backed excuse, but the words froze completely in his throat. He looked at Charles. Really looked at him in the dim lighting of the entryway. The oversized gray sweatshirt Charles was wearing looked far too big on his slumped frame, emphasizing how drained he was. His face was ghostly pale, his lips bled of all natural colour, and his left hand was clutching his chest so tightly that his short nails were digging deep into the soft cotton fabric. He looked small, exhausted, and fragile in a way that no Formula 1 driver was ever allowed to look in the paddock or in front of a lens.
The red haze of post-race adrenaline that had burned inside Max’s veins ever since lap 44 vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, sickening wave of memory that made his stomach drop. Max remembered the violent jolt through his steering wheel when their tyres made contact—the sharp, sickening crunch of carbon fibre disintegrating. He remembered looking in his side-mirror and seeing the bright red belly of Charles’s Ferrari tilt upward into the air, catching the aerodynamic lift, dangerously close to flipping over entirely before slamming back onto the high kerbs in a massive cloud of white sparks and black debris. Most of all, he remembered the sickening, agonizing four seconds of complete radio silence over the pit wall while he waited to hear if Charles was still breathing.
Max took a slow, deliberate breath, his shoulders dropping as the anger drained out of his posture, leaving his expression raw, exposed, and deeply troubled. "I lifted," Max said softly, his voice barely a rasp in the quiet room.
Charles blinked, shaking his head faintly, his stubborn pride refusing to accept the gesture. "Telemetry said—"
"I don't care what the telemetry said," Max cut in, his tone quiet, rough, and entirely lacking its previous sharp edge. He took two slow, cautious steps forward, stepping right into Charles’s space until his warm skin radiated against Charles’s cold frame. He reached out, his thick hands hovering inches away from Charles’s waist, wanting desperately to touch him but terrified of causing more physical pain. "The second I felt the contact through the steering column, I lifted, Charles. I drifted straight into the runoff zone to give you space to catch the car if you could. Do you really think . . . do you really think I’d risk putting you in the wall?"
Charles searched Max’s face in the dim light, looking for the ruthless, uncompromising champion who tore through sector times without mercy and broke the spirit of every driver on the grid. He looked for the driver who treated every single inch of track as his personal birthright. He didn't find him. All he saw was Max: pale, wet-haired, utterly exhausted, his blue eyes dark with a desperate, unspoken terror that he spent every waking hour of his life hiding from the rest of the world.
"You scare me sometimes, Max," Charles admitted, his voice barely audible over the low, monotonous hum of the room's air conditioner. The last lingering embers of his defensive anger were completely gone, replaced by the crushing, terrifying weight of their reality. "When you get like that on the track . . . you drive as though you're invincible, as though nothing can ever break you."
Max stared down at him for a long, silent moment, his expression shifting into something pained and gentle. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his hand and pressed his warm, bare palm against the centre of Charles’s chest, right over his sternum. Through the thin gray cotton of the sweatshirt, Max could feel the fast, frantic hammering of Charles’s heart against his ribs. "I'm not," Max whispered, his thumb stroking lightly over Charles's collarbone in a slow, soothing motion. "And neither are you. That’s what scares me."
The admission hung between them, heavy, raw, and completely irrefutable. Max didn't wait for Charles to formulate an answer. He eased his left arm around Charles’s waist, taking extreme care to keep his broad forearm clear of the bruised, tender skin on Charles's left flank. He pulled Charles gently away from the wall, transferring the vast majority of Charles’s weight onto his own broad, solid shoulders without hesitation.
This time, Charles didn't fight him or push him away. With a shaky, shuddering exhale that rattled in his chest, Charles surrendered entirely to the physical reality of his injuries and the deep exhaustion consuming him. He let his head drop forward, burying his face into the warm, damp crook of Max’s neck, inhaling the familiar scent of clean soap and skin. His right arm came up, wrapping loosely around Max’s bare shoulders, his fingers digging into Max’s skin for stability as his legs threatened to give out.
"God, it hurts," Charles breathed into Max’s skin, his body shivering violently as the delayed physical shock finally took total control of his nervous system, releasing the tension he had been holding all evening.
"I know," Max murmured, his voice low, steady, and warm right against Charles’s ear. "I've got you, Charles. Just walk with me. Slowly."
With agonizing slowness, Max navigated them out of the small entryway and into the dim, carpeted bedroom of the executive suite. Every single step was a carefully coordinated effort; Max moved with deliberate, measured patience, bracing Charles whenever a sharp twitch in his lower back threatened to bring him down. When they finally reached the edge of the large king-sized bed, Max manoeuvred Charles around with immense care so his knees pressed against the edge of the mattress.
"Sit," Max instructed softly, his hands supporting Charles’s back as he guided him down.
Charles lowered himself down with a faint wince, gripping the soft edge of the duvet with his knuckles as he sat. He looked up, his dark eyes wide, glossy with pain, and clouded with exhaustion, his dark curls sticking messy to his forehead. Max turned to the nightstand, picking up the small white painkiller he had prepared earlier along with a full glass of still water. He dropped down onto his knees right between Charles’s legs, bringing himself level with Charles’s chest, stripping away every bit of height and distance between them.
"Take it," Max said, offering the small pill on his palm. "No arguing tonight, Charles. Please."
The word felt strange and heavy on Max’s tongue—quiet, unpolished, and completely sincere. Charles looked at the small pill, then down at Max kneeling between his knees on the hotel carpet. The sight of Max Verstappen — the most dominant, uncompromising force in modern motorsport — kneeling on the floor, looking up at him with raw, unguarded concern in his eyes, was enough to quiet every single lingering defensive instinct in Charles’s mind.
Charles took the pill with a trembling hand, placed it on his tongue, and drank half the glass of water that Max held steady for him. Max watched him carefully, ensuring he swallowed before taking the glass back and placing it safely on the nightstand. But Max didn't stand up immediately. He stayed on his knees between Charles’s legs, his broad hands resting gently on Charles’s thighs, his thumbs tracing slow, grounding patterns through the soft fabric of Charles’s tracksuit bottoms to anchor him.
"Where else does it hurt?" Max asked softly, his voice dipping into a gentle register reserved only for rooms like this, far away from cameras and telemetry screens.
"Ribs," Charles rasped, leaning his head back against the plush leather headboard with a weary sigh. "Lower back . . . from the impact when I landed. My wrist . . . from when the steering wheel snapped sideways."
Max reached out, gently taking Charles’s left hand in his own broad palm. He lifted it slightly into the faint light, examining the swollen, reddish skin around the wrist joint where the force of the steering column had strained the tendons. With meticulous care, Max brought Charles's trembling hand to his mouth, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the bruised skin just above the pulse point, letting the heat of his lips rest against the injured joint.
Charles let out a soft, hitching breath at the contact, his fingers twitching slightly in Max's hold. The contrast between the dull, throbbing ache in his wrist and the intense, soothing heat of Max’s lips sent a quiet shiver down his spine, smoothing away the remaining edge of his pain.
"I’m going to help you lie down now," Max murmured against his wrist, his warm breath fanning over Charles's skin before he released his hand. He stood up smoothly, shifting to the side of the bed. Taking Charles gently by his shoulders, Max guided him backward onto the pile of soft pillows. He lifted Charles’s legs onto the mattress one at a time, keeping his movements as fluid and supportive as possible to avoid straining his battered torso.
Once Charles was lying flat, Max reached down and pulled the heavy duvet up over Charles’s body, tucking it carefully around his chest and shoulders to keep out the chill of the air conditioning. Charles sank deep into the mattress with a long, shuddering sigh of relief. The painkillers hadn't fully kicked in yet, but the sheer relief of being off his feet, surrounded by warmth, and anchored by Max was immediate. He closed his eyes, his long lashes casting dark shadows over his pale, exhausted cheekbones.
The heavy mattress shifted as Max climbed on beside him. Max didn't stay on his own side of the vast bed. He moved close, sliding under the duvet until he was lying on his side facing Charles. He was careful to leave a safe inch of space between his bare chest and Charles’s injured left side, but he closed every other physical gap between them until their warmth merged in the dark.
"Max," Charles whispered into the quiet darkness of the room, his eyes fluttering open to find Max’s face inches from his own.
"Shh," Max murmured softly, his voice a soothing rumble in the quiet space.
Max reached up, resting his large hand against the side of Charles’s face. His fingers were warm, smelling faintly of clean hotel soap, rain, and the faint trace of salt. He brushed a cluster of dark, damp curls away from Charles’s eyes, his thumb trailing smooth, deliberate strokes across the bridge of Charles’s high cheekbone, feeling the delicate bone structure beneath his skin. Charles closed his eyes again, leaning his face subtly into the comforting cup of Max’s palm, letting out a low breath. The simple, tender contact felt overwhelming after endless hours of hostile press questions, medical probes, and agonizing physical pain.
Slowly, with absolute reverence and care, Max leaned in across the small gap between their pillows. He pressed his soft lips to the exact centre of Charles’s forehead. It wasn't a quick or fleeting gesture; it was a long, deep kiss that lingered against Charles’s skin, holding there until Max felt the tight, unconscious knot of tension between Charles’s eyebrows finally smooth out completely.
From there, Max shifted his touch with painstaking gentleness. His lips trailed down the side of Charles’s temple, brushing softly against his dark hairline, before moving down to press another lingering kiss against the high ridge of his cheekbone. Every touch was light, feather-soft, and completely devoid of rush, demand, or expectations.
"Max," Charles breathed again, his voice dropping an octave into a soft, velvety murmur as he turned his head on the pillow just enough to bridge the tiny remaining distance between their lips.
Their lips met in the dark.
The kiss was slow, deep, and impossibly gentle, carrying none of the fierce, possessive desperation that usually defined their rare, secret encounters after a high-adrenaline race weekend. It was quiet, grounding, and profoundly tender — a silent reassurance traded between two men who spent their entire lives running on the absolute razor’s edge of danger and speed. Max’s mouth moved against Charles’s with quiet patience, tasting the faint trace of water and mint on his lips. He didn't press forward or demand more; he simply kept his lips soft against Charles's, letting the slow, rhythmic cadence of the kiss soothe the remaining physical tremors out of Charles’s frame until his entire body relaxed into the bed.
Charles lifted his right arm — his uninjured side — and reached out from beneath the heavy duvet. His fingers slid slowly, weakly into the short, soft hair at the back of Max’s neck, anchoring him close, holding him in the quiet, sacred space they had built away from the roaring grandstands and the glare of the media.
When Max finally pulled back a fraction of an inch, his lips remained hovering just above Charles’s, their warm breaths mingling in the dark. His thumb moved to gently trace the full, soft curve of Charles’s lower lip.
"Better?" Max asked quietly, his voice a low, gravelly whisper that barely broke the stillness of the room.
"Mmm," Charles hummed softly, a faint, genuine smile finally tugging at the corner of his mouth for the first time all night. He smoothed his thumb over the nape of Max’s neck, feeling the solid heat of his skin. "Don't go back to your room, Max."
"I told you," Max murmured, his bright blue eyes fixed on Charles’s face in the faint amber light filtering through the sheer window curtains. "I'm not going anywhere tonight."
Max carefully repositioned himself on the mattress, sliding his left arm under the pillow beneath Charles’s head so Charles could rest his cheek against his shoulder without placing any unwanted weight on his damaged ribs. Max’s right hand reached over beneath the covers, resting gently against the centre of Charles’s chest—feeling the deep, steady, and peaceful rhythm of his heart beating under his bare palm. He leaned down one last time, pressing a tender, lingering kiss to the warm, sensitive skin just below Charles’s jawline, right over his fluttering pulse.
"Go to sleep, Charles," Max whispered against his skin, his thumb sweeping back and forth over Charles's chest in a quiet, hypnotic rhythm that matched his breathing. "I'll be right here when you wake up."
Charles let out a long, peaceful breath that expanded his chest without pain. The heavy pain medication was finally taking full hold, spreading a warm, dull numbness through his torso and drowning out the sharp, jagged edges of the ache. With his hand resting loosely in the soft strands of Max’s hair and the steady, protective weight of Max’s palm anchored firmly over his heart, Charles allowed himself to drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The harsh glare of the morning sun began to seep through the edges of the heavy blackout blinds around seven o'clock, casting long, pale strips of golden light across the foot of the bed and illuminating the quiet room. Charles woke up slowly, floating up from the deep sleep. The sharp, searing agony of the previous night had settled into a heavy, dull ache throughout his core, though every subtle shift of his torso still reminded him of the 28G impact. His left side was terribly stiff, and his breathing felt somewhat shallow, but the violent muscle spasms that had wracked his back had entirely subsided.
Beside him, Max hadn't moved an inch all night. His arm was still tucked carefully beneath Charles’s head, serving as a pillow, his broad hand still resting flat against the centre of Charles’s chest, his breathing slow, deep, and rhythmic in sleep. In the pale morning light, stripped of his red-and-blue racing gear, his helmet, and the tense, defensive set of his shoulders, Max looked surprisingly young and relaxed, his soft blond hair messy against the white pillowcases.
Charles shifted slightly, suppressing a faint wince as his ribs protested the subtle movement. He turned his head on Max's shoulder to look at him, watching the calm, steady rise and fall of Max's chest in the quiet morning air.
Max’s eyelashes fluttered almost immediately, his sharp senses reacting to the subtle movement beside him. His eyes opened slowly, blinking against the dim morning light, his gaze focusing on Charles’s face instantly without a moment of confusion.
"How are you feeling?" Max asked, his voice thick and deep with sleep, his hand flexing gently against Charles’s chest to check on him.
"Stiff," Charles murmured softly, his fingers finding Max’s wrist under the duvet and lightly squeezing it. "Everything aches. But it is much better than last night."
Max let out a low, relieved exhale, his thumb brushing back and forth over the fabric of Charles’s shirt in that same hypnotic rhythm from the night before. "Good. Because Andrea sent three frantic messages to my phone starting at 6:00 AM asking if I had seen you anywhere in the hotel."
A faint, tired laugh escaped Charles’s lips, though he cut it short with a quiet gasp as his ribs tightened up in protest. "He always knows."
"Of course he knows," Max said, a subtle, fond smirk touching his mouth before it softened into something far quieter and more intimate. He leaned in across the pillow, pressing his lips gently against Charles’s temple, letting them rest against his warm skin for a long, quiet beat as the sun rose higher outside. "Let him wait another hour, Charles. We have time."
Charles closed his eyes with a contented sigh, resting his forehead against the solid curve of Max’s bare shoulder, letting the quiet warmth of the room and the steady beat of Max’s heart hold them together just a little longer before the loud, demanding circus of the paddock called them back to war.