#i have a factum draft due tomorrow that needs about 1k more words to be done

[overtake]

Post-Vegas Maxiel | 1.2K

The lead-up to Max’s fist on Daniel’s front door is a hazy kaleidoscope of memories.

Flashes of sponsor-branded tumblers with gin and tonics being pressed into his hands, which started the night steady and ended up shaky when they tried to sneak under Martin’s shirt and feel up his chest.

Fuzzier still: Martin pulling him into a hug and whispering something against Max’s sticky, sweaty temple about where Max really wanted to be. He can’t make out the words in his hazy memories, only their too-kind cadence, but he remembers the shape of the name Daniel on Martin’s mouth and the way he suddenly stopped wanting to kiss it.

His phone history highlights a costly change to his flight path, a car service for when he landed, typoed assurances to his team that he’d make it in time for Qatar, and four calls that Daniel never returned.

So Max is here in LA, knowing Daniel is probably warm and fast asleep in bed. He can picture the leg hanging off the side of his mattress. His white noise machine will be making Daniel’s bedroom sound like rain, a different shower than the champagne that was poured over Max’s head and down his throat.

He longs to be inside. To press his broad chest against the muscles of Daniel’s back. To kiss down the heated skin because Daniel keeps his bedroom warm like Perth summer and prefers flannel sheets.

Max’s whole body aches with every movement and the need to hold Daniel, even as a solid thrum of excitement keeps his spine rigid and eyes open. He wants to take what Daniel hinted could be theirs when all this was over, even though Max still has two more races and maybe more years left. He’ll be okay if Daniel isn’t ready, but the part of himself that was genetically designed to know Daniel tells him he’s allowed to try.

“Max?”

And then Daniel’s there, confused and squinting around the side of the house. Not asleep, the way Max pictured. He’s in shorts and nothing else, the side of his hand pressed to his forehead as he tries to ward off the sun’s glare and process what’s in front of him.

Max, little pieces of confetti still stuck to his cheek, holding nothing but his backpack and a phone on 10% battery. Max, bleary-eyed and mouth beginning to taste of hangover and death.

He knows he’s not a vision, that this isn’t the big romantic gesture he’d planned with dirt bikes under a Christmas tree. Instead, he hopes his flushed cheeks and mussed hair and the break of his face into the same kind of smile that lived under his helmet when he crossed the finish line … he prays those are enough, that Daniel is healed enough to let himself want Max now and like this.

���I won,” Max says dumbly. He wishes he remembered to grab a water bottle from the car service so the sentence wouldn’t dry tacky and cotton under his tongue.

“You won,” Daniel says, matter-of-fact. He’s not upset or elated. He’s not anything different. He’s Daniel, as himself as ever, looking like he expected this, like Max belongs here the same as the green grass and cement walls.

Max doesn’t feel ridiculous and fearful with Daniel holding him in the stare of his gentle eyes. They’re crinkled at the edges from all his years of laughing — many of the moments shared with Max adding to their depth since the skin there was taut with their shared youth. Max is developing his own smile lines, finally old enough for his skin to permanently imprint the joy of knowing Daniel.

“I have to leave for Qatar tomorrow,” Max says. He takes a step toward Daniel, then another, until Daniel begins to move too.

Max processes for the first time the way Daniel glows under the LA sun and considers that maybe he could make a home here too in Daniel’s joy. He’d seen him in Monaco. He’d been able to confirm for his own eyes that Daniel was taking ownership of this new life and thriving in it. He’d been too nervous then to do more than take Daniel to lunch and padel and observe him cautiously, trying to note every change in his month of healing.

He has the same relaxed and relieved demeanour now as he did then. Daniel is beautiful and belongs everywhere, but Max would make his home in LA just to watch the way Daniel lives so carefree under these palm trees and hundred lane highways.

His shoulders are even looser here than they were Monaco. When Max places a hand on Daniel’s bare, sun-warmed hip, he can feel the tiniest squish of where Daniel can finally eat all the schnitzel he wants. He’s a cactus built in the tough conditions of a sport that didn’t love him back, and he’s still blooming his flowers without it. Max wants to cup him like he’s something precious and be grateful that this sport didn’t make him bitter, that he was born so good that he could survive all this and love Max anyway.

“Guess you don’t need to get me a Christmas present after all,” Daniel jokes. His giggle ducks his head down to Max’s shoulder for a half second, hair tickling the nape of Max’s neck.

Max didn’t need his point to win, sure. But he liked having it; knowing that Daniel set a lap record as his final fuck you to the blind fuckers who quit on him, a lap that also gifted Max breathing room. He’d wished in the plane ride home after Singapore that fastest laps had something tangible for him to steal and hold in Daniel’s absentia. A trophy, a plaque, anything he could grip between his heat-swollen fingers to remember how his chest felt when his radio crackled with the news of Daniel’s triumph.

Max shakes his head, which sends a slightly dizzying wave through his dehydrated, sleep-deprived body. He adjusts his grip tighter on Daniel’s skin, a needed reprieve after the physical ache of wanting.

“You of course still get a Christmas present,” he tells Daniel. He briefly wishes his breath were fresher, but he doesn’t think Daniel will mind too much. “A real one, too, but also.”

He drops his bag on the grass then so his other hand is free to trace the contours of Daniel’s stubbled jawline. Max thinks that if Daniel is careful, Max will be okay to strap the seatbelt around his thighs this week even with the lingering beard burn.

Daniel gifts him the kiss instead, while Max is busy trying to memorize this moment inside his bleary head. His lips are wet against Max’s parched, chapped ones, but he doesn’t pull away from the reminder of Max’s night spent celebrating a world that Daniel was choosing to forget.

Instead, Daniel’s arms ensnare his waist and tug him closer until Max’s breath hitches and he forgets they’re in a front lawn and loses himself inside Daniel’s mouth.

“Congratulations, champ,” Daniel says, pulling away only long enough to speak the words. His nose brushes Max’s when he speaks and begins to tug Max toward the front door. “Let’s get you home.”