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theferrarieffect · 3 months

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jealousy, jealousy - chapter 6: after one too many gin tonics

f1 fanfic: lestappen (max x charles)

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chapter summary: still in melbourne, still that bar. now hear what happened that night, only this time from max…

chapter 6: after one too many gin tonics

Back in his hotel room, Max ran a hand through his crusty-with-champagne hair, the high of the podium celebration having long worn off. His phone buzzed in his back pocket.

Checo Perez Postrace @ Lui. Meet team downstairs in 20?

Max sighed heavily. Normally he’d already be drunk by now and well on his way to getting Lando sloshed as well. But he felt too anxious to go out; in fact, he wanted nothing more than to braise his body in the shower, order fries from room service (he highly doubted they’d have mashed potatoes), and play mindless video games until he felt like he could sleep.

He wasn’t sure what scenario he dreaded more: one where Charles WAS there, or one where he wasn’t. Actually, he knew what the worst possibility was. Charles, arm in arm with Danny and Carlos, giggling like girls. Maybe he’d dance with his teammate. Maybe at some point his uncoordinated floundering and Carlos’ smooth motions would bring their bodies together, somehow gently instead of the hilarious mashing that usually ensued. And maybe Carlos would notice that Charles’ lips started in a perfect Cupid’s bow, and realize how fucking amazing it might feel to have them on his own full ones.

Max shook his head.

Was he seriously thinking about Carlos Sainz’s fucking lips right now? How did he even know they were full? And then he realized it wasn’t Carlos’ lips he had been imagining on Charles’.

Holy shit. He was actually out of his mind. Maybe what he really needed was enough gin to obliterate his fucked up brain cells. If he was going to spend the rest of the night alone with his thoughts, he was fucked beyond all hope.

He picked up his phone.

Me I’ll be there.

Then he stripped his clothes off, showered as fast as possible, and spent the entirety of his 13 remaining minutes picking out an outfit that did not involve a Red Bull shirt. Definitely not because he was thinking of a certain someone who liked fashion a lot more than he did.

Max was well aware that he was pushing the pace a lot harder than usual. His angry three shots of whatever the fuck Lando had brought over had earned him a concerned look from Checo and some excited whoops from Oscar, who was gleefully riding his P4 high. Max had never seen the young driver so visibly happy, and he briefly remembered how he felt driving F1 as a rookie, albeit masked by the thick haze that already threatened to fill his brain.

Alex materialized behind Max. “Just so you know,” he shouted over the thumping bass, “Lando is currently telling the DJ to queue up Super Max.”

“Fine by me,” Max said carelessly as Pierre hoisted Yuki onto a table and told him to “dance, you little piece of shit”. And then followed him up on to the same table. He couldn’t stop watching them—laughing maniacally and jumping to the beat. So what if Pierre and Yuki’s antics were closer to seizure activity than a sensual slow dance? They had someone to dance with…and were having a lot more fun than he was at the moment.

He made his way over to a ring of sofas, currently occupied by George, Danny, Zhou, and a small crowd of twenty-something girls. Zhou already had his arm around one, and she was laughing at something he said.

“SUPER MAX!” Danny grinned, moving to give him space to sit.

Max accepted the open seat and turned to the girl on his other side. She blushed when he made eye contact with her. He extended a hand. “Max.”

“Taylor,” she smiled, tucking blond hair behind her ear as she accepted his handshake. Her eyes could be the same shade of green as Charles’, he mused, although it was a little hard to tell in the dark club.

No. None of that.

An unknown number of drinks later, Max had managed to maintain some semblance of conversation with Taylor, judging by the way she was still next to him. Zhou and his girl was long gone—Max vaguely recalled seeing him kiss her hand like he was some kind of medieval prince, and somehow making it look suave as fuck. Truth be told, Max was pretty terrible with girls, especially ones that didn’t have any idea what he did. It was his fault, of course—he spent most of his waking hours thinking about racing and not much else. But he did like listening to others, and the millions of different things they could be interested in, and luckily Taylor had no problems talking. He stretched in his seat, accidentally grazing her leg with his.

“Sorry,” he apologized quickly.

Taylor’s eyes lit up. “No no! No problem at all.” She scooted just a little bit closer to him. Max could tell she’d be pretty receptive to an arm around the shoulders right about now. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

A flash of red caught his attention. Charles was weaving his way through the crowd with a winning smile on his face. Taylor said something else, but Max heard none of it.

Danny’s faint whoops floated through the air. “Ki, ki, ki, ay ay, rrrrra!”

Max suddenly found himself on his feet. Taylor looked up at him, bewildered. Muttering some semblance of an apology, he jostled his way through the sea of bodies, towards where he saw Charles go. His mind was totally blank, and his body felt like it was a puppet whose strings were pulled by someone that was decidedly not him.

Two bodies in red. One with his arm around the other. Max saw Carlos throw back his chin laughing, run his hand through his luscious hair, and smoothly pluck the cap right off of Charles’ head and place it on his own. Charles turned to face him, and even by his profile Max could tell his eyes were crinkled in a smile infinitely more genuine than the grin he’d contorted his face into earlier while wandering the club.

And then, in an instant, the smile wavered and was gone. Charles had noticed Max standing in front of them. A tiny wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows, and that disastrous Cupid’s bow flattened as he frowned. At Max.

Carlos, on the other hand, beamed even more brightly, other arm already reaching out towards the newcomer.

Max couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything of his own volition at this point. He drunkenly reached towards Carlos, stumbling directly into his open arms.

“Dios, amigo,” Carlos laughed. “Someone’s had a lot to drink.”

“Carlos,” Max slurred, “I was so right about your lips. Pillows, amigo. Pillows. You could get a full night’s rest on them.”

“Why were you talking about my lips, Max?” Carlos smirked.

Charles gaped, open-mouthed, at them.

“Dance with me, Carlos,” Max begged. “But not like Yuki and Pierre. Dance with me like you mean it.”

Carlos looked more concerned than amused now. “Max? You good buddy?”

“What?” he shouted, a little angrily. “Can a guy not dance with his mates?”

In the very back recesses of his mind, Max was vaguely aware that he was acting extremely aggressive and extremely gay. But the dumbfounded look on Charles’ face spurred him on.

“Okay, mijo,” Carlos shrugged, and allowed Max to drag him to the cluster of moving bodies. Charles didn’t move. He stood like a statue, mouth still slightly agape.

“Carlos,” Max said, swaying into him. “You are a beautiful man.”

“And you are piss-drunk,” Carlos responded smoothly. “Although, I must say, Max—I had no idea you were so affectionate.”

“Carlos,” Max repeated. “I need you to tell me, what would it take for you to kiss another guy.”

It was about then that little corner of Max’s mind realized how incredibly screwed he was, because Carlos leaned in until their noses were almost touching.

He said, softly, “What does it matter to you, Max? Because I think I am not the person you would really want to be asking.”

And Max’s vision went black.

Max could feel the sunlight searing his eyelids, but knew that if he opened them, he’d be met with the worst headache of his life.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Super Max. Zhou flirting with a girl. There was some girl of his own, he was talking to…

Yuki. Yuki on the table. Carlos and Charles.

Charles.

Charles looking devastated. At him. At Max.

Where the fuck was he? He forced his eyelids open. He was utterly right about the headache; the room took at least 30 seconds to stop spinning and come into focus. Somehow, he had taken out his contacts before passing out. Unfortunately, he seemed to have passed out in a bed other than his.

A red cap was perched on the nightstand. Suddenly, a sick feeling invaded Max’s stomach and worked its way up his esophagus. He stumbled out of bed, flung open the bathroom door, emptied his stomach in the toilet.

Someone cleared his throat behind him. Max whirled around.

Charles was staring at the floor. In his outstretched hand were Max’s glasses and a water bottle.

“Checo brought me your glasses this morning.”

Max couldn’t look Charles in the eye. “Thanks.”

“You were really drunk last night. Checo says you took three shots the second you walked in. Carlos was actually scared.”

“I’m sorry,” Max muttered.

“Maybe you should be telling Carlos that.” Was that a twinge of bitterness in Charles’ voice?

Max opened his mouth to speak, but Charles was already walking away. Max felt like his insides were crumbling to dust.

He heard someone enter the suite, then Carlos’ voice asking if he was awake. And then the sound of someone sniffling and being patted on the back, Carlos murmuring “I’m sorry” and “it’s okay”. By the time Max left the bathroom, Charles was gone. And Carlos stood over him, rather menacingly.

He looked Max directly in the eye. “Alright, amigo. You have, how do you call it, some explaining to do.”

Max felt like a little kid in the principal’s office. He blushed angrily. “So I got drunk. I’m sorry. I don’t really remember what happened—tell me what I did and I’ll apologize for it.”

He realized he had never seen Carlos truly upset before. Carlos took a deep breath. When he spoke, his tone was measured. “Well firstly, you passed out on the dance floor. Charles carried you to the car and up to his room. He made you change and held you while you puked your guts out and remembered to make you take your fucking contact lenses out. He and George were going to take turns checking on you to make sure you didn’t die, but Charles said he couldn’t sleep. And he stayed up the entire night watching you.”

Max’s stomach twisted into a knot.

“And I would love to think that you do not remember this, but you came over to us, and acted like you wanted to fuck me right there in the club.”

Oh god.

“Carlos, I am so sorry, I—”

“Oh no you don’t,” Carlos snapped. “The fact you were hitting on me wasn’t a problem. The problem was that you did it staring, directly at Charles—the entire time.”

Max’s entire body felt numb and cold. He shook his head, closing his eyes. He wished he had just ceased to exist in the club last night the moment he blacked out on the dance floor.

“I don’t know what is going on with you,” Carlos continued, “and this is between you and me, but I can tell you that in all the time we’ve been teammates I have never heard Charles cry until last night. Fuck man, I’ve never heard anybody cry the way he did. And I can imagine some things maybe are not easy, I have no business prying into your personal life, but I cannot imagine wanting to hurt someone. Like that.”

“Carlos,” Max croaked. He cleared his throat. “Carlos…I am so fucked up. I don’t know what to say. Charles…he’s hated me and he still does and he always will!” He felt his voice rise shrilly on the last words, and to his horror, felt a tear escape his eye and land on his chest.

Carlos regarded him steadily. “You need to figure a lot of things out, mate. But I’ll tell you this. You don’t get to say how Charles feels about you. Only he does.”

Max started to cry. Carlos wrapped his arms around him. “You’ll be okay, amigo. But maybe next time pick someone else to use as your seducing jealous object. If I’m being completely honest…it was a little bit weird.”

And despite how incredibly, absurdly, fully fucked up this entire situation was, Max couldn’t help but laugh.

notes: ohhhhh, shit. at least max has admitted how he feels about charles, even though their friendship might be fubar for good...

i have mixed feelings on the whole alternate pov thing so…hope it wasn’t too repetitive of a read. if it was, feel free to tell me 😜

taglist @fangirl-dot-com @spacegirlstuff @vroomvroomgang @perfectlyrainywerewolf

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hellkitepriest · 3 months

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ee @ jacaranda baltic, liverpool

it’s, once again, haphazardly-written everything everything show debrief time. these shows were advertised as having signings after, which they then cancelled for schedule reasons but said they would be hanging around after, but we lurked a bit and all we saw was jeremy RUNNING into a van that then drove off. so.

@shallowtboy and i spent most of the day wandering around various galleries and museums which was lovely even if half the places we attempted to go were closed. the gift shop of one of the places we went had these tiny 2x2x2 rubiks cubes on keychains, which OBVIOUSLY we ended up buying, because, well. yknow. we went to the pub to eat first and badly followed too many online guides on how to solve 2x2x2 cubes, and i realised rapidly i have absolutely none of the spatial reasoning skills to be able to know what i was doing. i am now 100x more in awe of alex robertshaw than i was.

when we arrived to the venue we could hear the first show of the day still hadn’t finished, because s/s/w/d was leaking out of the walls of this very nice former brewery (what a joy! to hear it!), and nobody else was waiting outside so we went to the pub next door (and used bill clinton’s autobiography as a fortune-telling device) until ~45 minutes before doors. we got chatting to some lovely people in the queue. i will never tire of hearing strangers mention dave sardine out loud irl.

they let us in out of the rain finally, and we ran right to the front, securing the coveted middle-left-right-between-jon-and-alex spot at the barrier which was INHUMANELY close to the stage. if i’d tried hard enough i could’ve reached over and started poking at alex’s pedals, haaa. we watched pete come on and warm up by playing scales on the keyboard for a bit. i followed the Pope on twitter.

the show was INCREDIBLE, because we were in this tiny sweaty low-ceilinged basement with 450 other people and everyone there was clearly SO into it (the guy behind me was yelling along to every lyric so loudly and violently! yes!! good!!!) which culminated in all this sweaty rowdy energy that jon was so clearly feeding off of. he did at one point say “this is the best one of these we’ve done so far” but i’m not convinced he doesn’t say that to everyone. there was a massive metal pillar on the stage between him and jeremy that he kept leaning against/holding and swinging around towards the latter half of the set. he did definitely make eye contact with me at one point, mortifyingly, and i’m also pretty sure he noticed shallowtboy and i doing our newest Bit of “point at pete every time he hits the Distant Past Button during distant past”, whoops. we came here to have an absolute nonsense time, what can i say?

the energy was just SO powerful and jon was really leaning into it, including one bit during no reptiles where he growl-yelled FUUUCK off-mic which i will be thinking about for the rest of my life. sorry everyone! alex robertshaw was exactly as strange on stage as you expect him to be, but he did occasionally smile at the others in a sort bemused way, like “wow they really are loving this”. he kept switching between eyes-closed-standing-there-gently-wiggling Standard Alex Stuff and occasional wide-eyed what-looked-like-fear whenever he actually bothered to look up at the crowd. alex pls. we are harmless. i have a rubiks cube in my bag for you to sign. (AND YET IT REMAINS UNSIGNED… HOPEFULLY THEY ACTUALLY DO THE SIGNING WHEN I AM AT MY NEXT SHOW ON FRIDAY… THIS BIT HAS GONE ON TOO LONG)

it was special and intense and shallowtboy and i are doing it all again on friday, with about 300 fewer people in attendance. please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. also jon had a little jason voorhees pin on his guitar strap.

#everything everything #c vs the band

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