”What?”
”Nothing, I’m just –” Gianpiero says and clears his throat.
“You are of course staring at me,” Max says, and Gianpiero knows that he is, but how could he not?
Max is soaked to the bone, hair drenched with sweat, and the thin, white shirt he had been wearing is now clinging to his chest. His face is flushed, and his breaths are fast, shallow from running himself ragged on the paddle court. He holds the seam of his shirt between long, elegant fingers and uses it to wipe his forehead, flashing the pale skin of his stomach – and even that looks a bit flushed.
“I’m just looking at you, Max,” Gianpiero says, and at least his voice sounds calm. “Is that not allowed?”
Gianpiero is always looking at Max, toMax, for Max. When it’s not his data, it’s always Max, in the car or on the sim. Two beers deep in a bar somewhere they shouldn’t have been, complaining about the car, the cats, Lando and his moods, or whatever has been stuck on his mind this week.
Gianpiero has looked at him in his bed, spread out beautifully in pale soft sheets. So utterly lovely and impossible at the same time.
Usually, Max will look back at him and smile, eyes crinkling at the corner because Max likes the attention. Of the world? Maybe. The media? Certainly not. But there’s a select few under whose eyes Max will beam with affection, like a flower blooming under the glow of the sun.
But Max doesn’t smile. His eyes don’t crinkle, and the line of his mouth goes taut.
“Don’t,” he says. “Not when –“
“I cannot look at you, Max? At my driver, at my –“
“No,” Max says, and it’s a far cry from the man who had dragged him to the paddle court in the first place, loose and happy with the weekend off. “Not when always you do nothing about it.”
“Max.”
Gianpiero doesn’t reach for him – not here, not with Robert and Calum just meters away – but his fingers twitch with the need to.
Max watches him for a second before he scoffs. He picks up his water bottle and stalks out, back tight with tension. And then, just before he leaves for the locker room, body poised not unlike a cat ready for the attack, “I owe you of course congratulations on the promotion, GP. You must be so happy, Red Bull also, no?”
It’s catty and mean, and Gianpiero is too old for this whole cat-and-mouse bit, but he goes after him anyway, gives chase until the door slams shut behind them.
“It helps to have the success of a three-times world champion behind you,” he says, and this time he does reach for Max.
He places one hand on Max’s hip, fingers slipping on sweaty skin as he bypasses where Max’s shorts sit tight. The other cups his jaw, fingers splayed wide on his throat, making Max look at him. Max doesn’t move away, but he’s always been like this: pliant under steady hands, malleable and yielding even in times where he shouldn’t.
Max swallows, and Gianpiero feels it against his hand.
“I thought –“ Max says but the words come out strangled. Voice cracking like it does sometimes in the car, loud and hilarious over the radio, reminding them both of how far he’s come since then, how far they’ve both come.
“Always we said when it is 2025, we would try,” he says with a rasp. “And then you –“
Gianpiero breathes out a heavy breath. His thumb strokes over Max’s cheek, skin slick with sweat but he doesn’t mind. A lot of their best moments have been with Max drenched in sweat.
“I don’t think it’s that easy, unfortunately,” he says softly. “The market is changing, and what teams want is –“
“Everyone wants you, GP,” Max says, blunt and a little mean. He twists out of Gianpiero’s hands to pace the space between lockers, his shoes heavy on the floor. “Fucking Vasseur trying to –“
“As I said, things change,” Gianpiero says softly. His shirt feels clammy against his skin, and he has a meeting at four, but that has to wait. “With Lewis, Bono said –“
“I do not give a fuck about Bono,” Max lashes out, head whipped around to stare at Gianpiero. “Or did he fuck Lewis also? Did he tell him he loved him and that they would of course be together and then forget about him? Did Bono do this also? Because he is then in lovely company.”
Gianpiero flinches at the words, at how they leave Max’s mouth. Pink lips pulled back in a snarl, flat teeth that he’s felt against his skin now ready for the attack.
“Max,” he says, searching for something softer, sweeter. But Max has always been Max to him, even when he wasn’t, and Gianpiero doesn’t like to think about that. “Max,” he says again and wills it to be as sweet as any other pet name.
“Did you ever think that’s why I’m doing this?” He asks. “I cannot be your race engineer and have the responsibility of putting you in the seat, fighting with you about a car that doesn’t drive like you want it to, and then come home with you to pretend everything is alright.”
“Why not?” Max asks, rudely if Gianpiero didn’t know him better.
Gianpiero knows Max has no problem separating what happens in racing from his personal life. So perhaps Max could make it work, chewing him out over the radio before crawling into bed with him, kissing him softly as he has before. But Gianpiero knows he couldn’t.
“I love you, Max, but it has to be right, and it has to make sense, for both of us,” he says.
He knows Max already has one foot out of the sport, knows if the car continues to drive like it does Max will leave. To Aston Martin or Mercedes, he doesn’t know, or perhaps even retirement. He knows Max wants him to follow, and that now only the latter is possible.
But Gianpiero isn’t ready to leave and more truthfully, isn’t ready to be in his mid-forties and live off his boyfriend’s money.
“When?” Max asks. He’s lost some of the fight, the tension in his shoulders all but gone, and he comes to Gianpiero easy, tucking his face into his throat. “When will it make sense?”
They both know the answer but neither of them wants to say it.
Even if it meant he would have Max like this, soft and lovely in his arms, he would lose the driver Max has become. And selfishly, Gianpiero isn’t ready for that either.
“Soon,” he says and pretends the words don’t taste bitter on his tongue as he leans in to kiss him.
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