#honking cars dubious fidelity getting too close in clubs

[strawberry-daiquiris]

💙 drunken kiss / tipsy -- i know you said you'd never write it ... but lestappen in your girl!lando verse

oh anon, honestly... you don't know the power you've wielded here because i truly did believe i'd not write it, but when i saw this prompt and i had a nice short way of doing it... i had to!!! please enjoy, i will always be nervous about my max and charles voices lmao.

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“Charlie! Charlie! We’re leaving.”

Charles barely hears George over the music, dancing with her eyes closed, packed in by hundreds of other beautiful people in short dresses and open shirts. She can still feel the tears drying on her cheeks, the snot in her nostrils from crying about him. 

“Are you coming with us, or not?”

She opens her eyes, blinking the flashing colours out of the way before she focuses on George. Her hair is in loose waves around her neck, sticking to her skin from the sweat. Alex is right behind her, a possessive hand on George’s waist, fingers curled into the silk of her dress. It’s daring, almost, for them, and Charles doesn’t want to be involved with whatever game they’re playing. 

“It’s fine, you go, you go.” Charles cranes her neck, searching for someone she knows, enough of a connection to the dark room that George will abandon the pretence that she wants Charles to come with them, and not to ditch her so she can go and do whatever it is that lesbians do. Charlie thinks there’s nipple sucking involved, and maybe dildos. The closest she’s ever got to it was kissing Lando in a game of truth and dare, but she thinks they’re not supposed to talk about that anymore. “Pierre is here, and Max. I will be fine.”

Carlos is still here too, somewhere, but she doesn’t mention that, or George will never leave. Charles turns her head to the sky, swaying to the music, ignoring both the creeping fear she doesn’t look sexy, and George’s worried glances as Alex steers her towards the door.

An hour could’ve passed, or two minutes, when she feels a tap on her shoulder. 

“For you,” Max’s smile is wide, reaching both corners of his face, like he’s so happy his jaw is unhinging. He didn’t even win the Championship today, nothing squared off except Checo’s P2. Charles wishes… but then, it hasn’t been the year for dreaming, for her. “Champagne. Christian, of course, bought the bottle.”

Charles snorts, taking a delicate sip, trying to avoid the bubbles from sparkling in her nose. 

“Mate, I should not be drinking this. Fred would be so…”

Fred wouldn’t care, Charles remembers. He’d probably take the bottle for himself, sit in a corner and laugh at his good luck. She keeps forgetting, since Mattia left, that she doesn’t need to be fearful of getting too close to the drivers from the other teams. Doesn’t need to hang her existence off Carlos and Maranello and being the sweet, innocent Madonna they imagine on her knees.

“You gave a good fight, today,” Max yells, and Charles can feel his spit on her cheek, letting her mouth drop open so it falls on her tongue. Sometimes, she wants Max more than she knows what to do with, and she’s heard things. That Kelly and him are sleeping in separate bedrooms, that she’s not in Vegas because they’re waiting until the end of the season to call it off. “When you went into the chicane? Ha, I was thinking maybe the deg would…”

Max makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, one of the classics. Charlie knows exactly what he’s getting at, the exact millimetres needed to take one of the corners and not lose pace. The guy he nearly hits in the face? Not so much. She reaches a hand out, stops him from taking out half the drinks on the dance floor. 

“Can we go somewhere?” Charles shouts, and suddenly she can’t think of anything she wants to do less than dance, in a tight dress, surrounded by guys who think she’s only a 7 because she’s got natural breasts and doesn’t really know how you contour your face. “I don’t care where.”

Max takes a full bottle from the table on their way to the door, and Charlie keeps her head down when they pass a group of Ferrari mechanics by the bar. Pierre spots them, narrowing his eyes, and Charles flips him off, then nods. She knows what she’s doing. 

“You cannot just get married here, of course,” Max tells her as they walk down past one of the chapels, way off the strip by now, swigging from the bottle of champagne. It’s cold, too cold for her dress, and Max’s AlphaTauri jacket is big on her shoulders, smells like him and his cologne. “You have to apply for the licence, yes? And they won’t let you do it when you’ve had drinks…”

He holds up the bottle, sloshing some onto his shirt. Max’s hair is a mess, and Charles leans a hand out to flatten it, automatically. She can’t remember the last time they were somewhere together, drunk. Monaco, maybe. New Year’s. Kelly had been there, and Charles’ boyfriend at the time. She can remember watching them kiss at midnight, soft and sincere, whilst Laurent pawed at her arse and ground his crotch against hers.

She broke up with him the next week. 

It had just run its course. 

“So we cannot tonight then?” Charlie purrs, and she knows it’s a bit unfair, but she’s wanted someone to flirt with all night, ever since Carlos told her he was bringing her, some model, his new girlfriend. “That is a shame, Max.”

“Ah, the press would love it.”

“Mmm,” Charles takes the bottle from him, and threads her other hand with his, swinging it between them and making him twirl her under the neon flashing lights of the chapel. “Mrs Charlie Verstappen.”

Max frowns, dragging her to a halt, and they’re very close. Above them, Cupid swings with a creak.

“You would keep your own name,” Max says seriously, and when he swallows around the lump in his throat, Charles can see it. And she knows then, that he’s thought about it, about destiny and soul mates and all the foolish things she starts to believe when she looks at their birth charts and the twin signs in their lives. La predestinata. “Of course.”

“Of course.” Charles nods, exaggerated and slow, and when she stops, she leaves her face tilted skywards. If he doesn’t take the hint now, Charles thinks, then he never will.

Max takes the bottle from her hands before he does anything, placing it carefully at their feet, and when he wraps his arms around her to a chorus of honks from a passing limo, Charles knows.

This time, it’s going to be different.