InTheCloudsAgain

Sure, there were important milestones, some reached earlier and some later than other people did, but he had never considered his life as something cut in two. Not even the first championship had felt that significant, despite being the culmination of everything he had worked for. It had been just...one step. A very big one, but one step all the same, like the other ones he'd been taking every day since he had sat in a kart for the first time.

Now though, there was a very clear before and an after, which was the rest of his life.

Interestingly enough, the cutting point wasn't even the accident.

He only vaguely remembered the screaming of the bending metal, the smell of burnt tyres, the exploding vibrancy of the hit. He could hear more clearly GP's voice, afterwards, asking him to come in on the radio, when his limbs were too heavy too move and his head too scrambled to think. But overall, the accident was surrounded by too many black voids to be a significant moment. Even when it was the thing that always appeared in his dreams, the crash wasn't the scariest part.

No, the real stepping stone, the gate diving Max Verstappen, world champion and Max, nobody, was a voice, and a silence.

The voice had been the doctor's, saying you were very lucky, Mr. Verstappen, to wake up at all.

The silence had been Max's, unable to find his voice after being told he would never drive again.

The before had ended with a diagnosis: a shattered hip and post-concussion syndrome. To which his brain had added its own flare, just to be funny, saddling him with an unexplainable mutism, all his words lost in the trauma.

Sometimes, before and after could be defined by that too, if he was feeling less morbid: with words and without words.

The shame of opening his mouth to ask, to beg, to plead to take it back, to fix him, to let him race again please, and finding no sounds on his tongue is forever burned into his brain. The first moment of the after, setting the mark for the rest of his life.

Today it is clearly a bad day. Max is not used to think about it quite as hard anymore, and yet here he is, sitting on the porch swing, pitying himself.

He guesses that once you're in the after you can't really fully grow out of it anymore. The before will always sting, a perpetual hurt only laying dormant on the better days, ready to raise its head during the weaker moments.

Max feels very weak today.

It's more of a mental feeling than a physical one these days, but it doesn't weigh any less. His reconstructed hip, a mash of metal and miraculously salvaged ligaments, is particularly painful today, probably due to the humidity that makes the morning air stick to his skin, and to the reminders of the life he's no longer living, which are stronger this time of year.

Yet another season is starting, one in which he will not be racing.

Because he doesn't race anymore.

He hasn't raced for years.

And despite moving past it, despite finding other reasons to drag his aching legs over the betrayal of his body, it still hurts. Something tells him it will always hurt.

Just like his hip.

"You're being grumpy too early in the morning."

Max doesn't look away from the horizon, doesn't need to, knows exactly what he would see if he turned his head. He doesn't answer either, letting Daniel sit down next to him, careful about not jostling him, despite it being almost impossible on the swing.

Daniel had been the one wanting the swing, saying that every porch needed one. Max still hasn't figured out if it was the real reason, or just the one Daniel had given him to lure him out of the house, to give him a place to sit in the fresh air that didn't aggravate his pain.

He doesn't really care anyway. Despite his grumbling about clichès, he does love the swing.

"Are you in pain?" Daniel asks, more softly now, placing his mug down on the ground with a clink. Max can smell the coffee, wonders how he didn't hear Daniel make it through the open kitchen door.

He shrugs noncommittally, not really feeling like moving more to actually give an answer. Not really feeling like thinking about an answer.

"Do you need painkillers, some water, or a hug?"

Daniel taps his arm while he offers options, once, twice, three times. It had been one of the first ways to communicate right after the crash, when his head hurt too badly too often to make writing reliable.

Max doesn't tap back.

Secret fourth option: he wants all of it to not be real.

He knows his therapist would glare at him for the thought, but what she isn't here to see won't hurt her.

"Max," Daniel says, more insistent this time, a finger coming up to tap his chin, gently turning his head when Max doesn't fight it.

His eyes are just as gentle, and his curls are grey on the temples. Sometimes, when he is in so much pain he can't walk, Max likes to see the sign of age on Daniel because it reminds him he's not the only one having days when he feels like a million years old. The rest of times, he likes to see them because he likes Daniel.

He just stares and Daniel smiles at him, impossibly kind even when Max is being difficult.

"Bad day?"

This Max can answer. He nods, just one dip of his head, chin sliding further against Daniel's fingers which are still touching it, and which then move to cup his cheek instead.

When Max closes his eyes they feel achey, like he forgot to blink for too long, and he wonders how long he was out here alone, looking at the horizon, before Daniel noticed.

The air is humid and i am in pain, he wants to say.

I am still mourning the person I was, the life I had. I don't know how to stop and I don't know if I ever will.

But his voice hasn't been here since before, and at this point he has stopped waiting for it, so he keeps it all inside.

He raises two heavy hands instead, signing I love you, because that's a truth he can always give.

"I love you too," Daniel answers readily. He doesn't even have to think about it anymore, not like at first, when they were both still clumsily moving through the basis of sign language.

"Do you want me to get you a heat pack, or do you want to go inside in the air con and have breakfast?"

Max leans forward, keeps leaning through the painful tug of his hip, and places one kiss on the corner of Daniel's mouth, then another. Tap tap, option number 2. He's had enough self pity for a morning.

He will pick it back up later, when his brain will unhelpfully remind him cars are racing in Albert Park, but for now he wants painkillers and eggs and maybe even bacon and to watch Daniel hum along some weird song while shaking his still very healthy hips.