moved to @vetteltea!

There was a five-year difference between them, with Max being twenty-five and Y/N being just twenty

When Y/N was ten, she went missing

Jos lost his shit with Max, threatening him with his gun before sending him off to go and find her

Fifteen-year-old Max cried with he found Y/N reading out in the garden, hidden behind some bushes

But that was ten years ago

Now, Max had more responsibilities

He was set to take over Jos' empire any day now

Max had his own men, his own weapons and his own big jobs

His main job was still to protect his sister

It was something he and his inner circle did together

Max's inner circle

It consisted of three men and then their men

Charles, Lando, and Daniel

Max's inner circle was made up of people from all different countries

Charles was the Monégasques, he helped Max with his French dealings

Lando was British, he helped Max with his dealings in English-speaking countries

Daniel was the Aussie, he didn't help Max with any international business; his talents were better suited to the jobs Max had for him at home

Well, job, I should say

There was just one job for Daniel and her name was Y/N

When Y/N was a teenager, she had her rebelliousness squashed out of her by her fear of Jos

Now she was a quiet adult who rarely left her house, unless she was surrounded by a team of at least five men

That team always involved of Daniel

Daniel was always guarding Y/N

He went wherever she went

And, if she wasn't going anywhere, he was outside of her door

If Max wanted a meeting with his inner circle, Daniel always had at least two of his men standing outside of her door

One day, Daniel was guarding outside of her door

He had at least two guns and a knife on him - you could never have too many weapons in this line of work

Although he was always there, Y/N never interacted much with him, she knew her father would hate it

But one night, she was thirsty

Wrapped up her in robe, Y/N pulled open her bedroom door

"M'lady," said Daniel as the door opened

He tipped an invisible hat in Y/Ns direction and she smiled back at him, not saying anything

Y/N walked through the dark halls, making her way down to the kitchen with Daniel close behind

"What do you need?" He asked her

Daniel knew how Jos felt about 'staff' interacting with the Y/N Verstappen, he just didn't care

"Just a water," said Y/N as she grabbed a glass from the cupboard

Daniel stood vigilant as Y/N filled her glass and drank it

This happened night after night

Y/N didn't always answer Daniel, so he just talked as she drank

Not about his work, thank god

He spoke about everything else

Y/N was grateful for it

She didn't approve of her father's empire or the work her brother and his friends did for Jos

So, with Daniel talking about everything else, it was nice

"You're an interesting man," said Y/N as she got her water one night, surprising the both of them

"You think so?"

She nodded, standing closer to him than she ever had before

If Daniel reached out, he would have his hands on her, holding her hips

Daniel escorted her back to her room

The next evening, Y/N didn't want water

She knocked on her own door and pulled it open, looking at Daniel

"Do you want to come in?"

"If I come in, who's going to guard your door?"

She pulled him in anyway

"Everything okay?" Asked Daniel as he leaned against the door

"Fine," Y/N replied as she sat on her bed, tucking one leg under the other

"Do you need any water?"

She shook her head

"Anything to eat?"

She shook her head again

Daniel pushed away from the door

He walked around the room, looking at Y/N's things

Pictures, all of them of her family

She had no pictures of her having fun, of her with her friends

They were just her and Max, standing in their Sunday bests behind their father, who looked as though he was sitting on a throne

There were a couple of cat pictures, cats the family had owned over the years and a couple of Jimmy and Sassy

No pictures of her mother or older sister

Daniel didn't ask about it, he didn't want to pry

He stopped over by the window and looked out of it for a moment, before turning around and looking at Y/N

"So, what do you do for fun around here?" He asked

Y/N pointed towards her television and her bookshelf

"Is that it?"

She sat further back on her bed, leaning against the pillow

"I need my fathers permission to do anything and I don't have any friends. What am I supposed to do?"

"What if I took you somewhere?" he offered

"You mean, sneak out?"

"I definitely mean sneak out."

That was how Y/N found herself in her first night club

She had a drink in her hand and Daniel dancing beside her

When the second drink was placed in her hand, she and Daniel were dancing together

By the third drink she was pressed against the wall, his lips on hers

It was wrong - he worked for her brother and was more than ten years her senior

"Danny," she whispered when he pulled away

They were once again on the dance floor, his hands on her hips as they swayed to the music

His front was pressed against her behind and Y/N felt like her every nerve was on fire

At two AM, Y/N and Daniel were making their way back home

They got to the front gate and kept going, climbing over the wall

From there they snuck through the front garden, hid themselves behind trees and rose bushes

It was a real good thing the Verstappen's didn't have dogs, Daniel thought as they got to the trellis below Y/N's window

"I can't believe you don't have more security," he whispered as he helped her to climb

"You can bring that up with my brother, if you'd like"

They weren't being very quiet

Y/N struggled to open her bedroom window, stumbling back as she did so

She let out a shriek and then a series of giggles when Daniel caught her

"Wow," she whispered, grabbing a hold of the trellis

She didn't go back up to her window, but instead she turned around and kissed Daniel again

He was just a couple of rungs below her, but it made them the same height

His arms on either side of her was the only thing holding her up

They were there until his arms got tired

"Want to head up?"

***

Daniel didn't have nearly as much to drink as Y/N

He was sober enough to get her into bed and then stand guard at her door until he changed shift with Oscar

From then on it was sneaking around with Daniel

During the day, they didn't know each other; they were Y/N Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo

At night, when he could slip through her bedroom door, they were Danny and Y/N

There was four months of this, of sneaking out and kissing in the hidden away shadows of the house

And then Max found out

Well, no, actually

Lando found out first

He was walking through the hall when he saw Danile slip into Y/Ns room

The usually so careful Aussie didn't know how to explain himself, so he folded and told Lando everything

And then Lando realised he had to tell Max

Max was furious, at first

He waited, though, watched from the distance

Needed confirmation before he struck

Confirmation was something Max got surprisingly quickly

Max had himself hidden away as he watched Daniel look around and then slip into Y/Ns room

Gun drawn, Max burst in

Y/N and Daniel didn't have time to jump away from each other before Max had his gun pressed against his head

"I'm going to funking kill you"

The writing is happening a little slower rn - academics are about to start and I'm trying to work so it'll only get worse

Campus was surprisingly dead and the weather was wonderfully crisp and you had no idea the turn your evening was about to take when you’d decided to take a walk at sunset, to clear your mind with the cool autumn air. 

It greets you with a shudder and the sound of browned leaves crunching under your feet. It was like a scene from a movie—something utterly fall-ish and romantic. When Harry met Sally, maybe. All cable knit sweaters and falling leaves and careful scenery. 

Unbeknownst to you, he—Charles, your Charles—is walking around the same campus, enjoying his walk a hell of a lot less than you are. He doesn’t notice the smell of burnt orange or the falling leaves on the green grass. He’s too occupied trying to find his way to your friend’s hall—to your friend’s dorm—to you. His mind is full of mumbled directions and the pursed lips they leave. Of how perfect yours are, of how badly he wants to kiss them. 

He’d been planning the surprise for weeks. For months, almost, since before you’d even left home for the year. He’s prouder of his ability to keep it secret from you than he is of his directional skills. Carefully, he’d coordinated the whole thing with your friends to ensure the perfect surprise, and it was finally here. It was finally here, as long as he could find his fucking way around. 

Your phone vibrated in your back pocket, a text from your best friend. She was asking you to swing by her dorm ASAP, swore she had a shirt of yours that you could swear you’d folded and put away two nights earlier. You complied, though, and gave her your ETA before making a U-Turn on the path you were walking down. 

When you finally make it there, you’re surprised to find her always-open door is shut. You’re even more surprised when you move to turn the door handle only to find it locked. You look around the hall like a trick is being played on you because her door is always open. Always. And you don’t think she even knew there was a lock. 

You knock, thrice, and call her name on the other side of the door, reminding her that this isn’t as funny as she surely thinks it is. Nothing, however, could prepare you for who answered your knock. 

Charles. Charles with a bouquet of flowers. Charles with a bouquet of flowers and a big goofy smile on his face. Your stomach drops three separate times in a single second—from annoyed your friend isn’t answering, to horrified by someone else answering her door, to recognizing that it’s him. That he’s in front of you. 

You squish the flowers horribly, completely disregard their presence in your joy of slamming yourself into him with the force of every hour apart. “Putain, c'est quoi!” What the fuck! you say, and your voice comes out far more cracked than you’d intended on it being. 

With Charles, you’ve found that you don’t realize just how much you miss him until you’re with him again, ambushed by the reality of it all, of everything that is to love about him. There’s so much, so much more than you realize each and every time you’re apart. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but you’re always fond of him. The fondest. 

The evening unfolds into a flurry of laughter and stories and love. So much love. It’s like his presence had cast a spell over campus, made it all magical and energized like it was your first time there. The buildings fall into the background, nothing more than the scenic backdrop for your love story, for your catching up and calming down. 

Your dorm becomes a cozy haven for endless conversation. Spontaneous chest games and first-hand accounts of last week’s race keep you smiling, and his never ending genuine interest in your life here makes you fall head over heels over and over again, every word that leaves his mouth making you feel particularly cherished, like the luckiest person around. 

Dusk turns to dark and the two of you sit together at the dorm window, watching the same stars you’re always looking at. The same moon that serves as a reminder the world is never too big, the distance is never too much. It doesn’t matter where the two of you are, it’s always the same moon and stars in the sky. It’s a silent kind of love, careful like an early morning, beloved like a matching cup of coffee. 

It’s a short visit. Too short, always too short, but it ends with promises of more, of this weekend and that. 

It was fear that woke him up—fear of waking her up. 

Her. Chris. His girlfriend, who is sound asleep next to him, in his bed, in his apartment, in his city. 

She’s a cute sleeper, he knew—he knew, because she’d fallen asleep on FaceTime calls half a dozen times, because he’d watched her for a nearly creepily amount of time in Abu Dhabi, when he couldn’t believe she was actually there. She’s a cute sleeper, and yet, the shine hasn’t worn off yet, because he still watches. 

She’d gone to bed in a hoodie from work and no pants, because, of course she had. Of course she had. She’s got one hand awkwardly craned under her pillow and another wrapped up in the comforter like it’s a finger trap, and her hair is messy, so messy and half-stuck to her cheek. It’s fucking adorable, and he feels so lucky. 

He gets nervous then, nervous that she’s going to wake up and he’s going to be staring and it’s going to be weird, so. Instead of continuing to ogle, he reaches for his phone from the nightstand, turns the volume all the way down and scrolls through social media pretending not to steal a glance every time she takes a deep breath or moves a muscle. 

It’s half an hour before she yawns awake, and he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to wake her up, after all. 

“Morning,” he says, clicks the power button on his phone and lets it fall face down on his chest. 

Chris smiles. “Morning,” she breathes, and leans over to kiss him. 

“Mmm,” he hums, pushes his index finger against her lips. “What happened to morning breath?” He asks. 

“Nope,” she speaks against his finger, threatens to bite it. He knows he wouldn’t stop her, but moves his finger anyway to kiss her properly, to let her smile out of it. “You’re stuck with me now, boyfriend and all that.”

“Gross,” he smiles. “I love it.”

She flops back against the mattress with a laugh, “What time is it?” she asks, leaning over to reach for her own phone. 

“Six,” he hums. She scowls at her lock screen. “We have plans at seven.”

“Oh?” She peruses, sits up to stretch properly, to yawn again and ruffle her hair and God, she is so beautiful. He might never get over it. 

“Padel…” he smiles, wonders if he’s about to get in trouble, to start their first fight as a couple at six in the morning on a Tuesday. He probably should have run this past her, he thinks, run all of it past her. He’d just gotten so caught up in the planning of it all. “...with my brothers.”

Her hands flop from her hair onto the comforter, landing with a soft thud on the padded fabric. When she looks at him, she’s still smiling, but her eyes are tired, confused. “Baby, what is padel?”

– – –

They cook breakfast together—well, Charles cooks breakfast. Chris spends the entire time leaning against the kitchen counter cradling her phone, watching a YouTube video on the basis of padel playing. Charles keeps leaning over her shoulder, plastic spatula in hand, and correcting the man in the video. That’s not what you do, he hums. They don’t know what they’re talking about. 

After the fifth comment in as many minutes, she turns to him with a chill-inducing glare. “I’m going to padel you upside the head,” she says, with a smile on her face—which only makes it that much more terrifying. He nods, steps back from her shoulder and returns to the crepes he’s butchering on the stovetop. 

– – –

“I have to know,” she asks, sat on the floor in the bedroom, in the limited space at the end of the bed, tying her shoes. “What was the plan if I didn’t pack workout clothes?”

“Eh,” he mutters, rifling through the hangers of sweatshirts hanging in his closet. “I would have put on you some of my clothes,” he continues, pulls his two best options down from the hangers and holds them up for her. One, a blue Ferrari crewneck. The other, gray, from his friend’s line. 

“You would have put me in your clothes,” she corrects his English, and if it was anyone else he’d find it insufferable. But he doesn’t, not with her, so he chuckles and his smile grows and he can feel his dimples. For the dramatics, though, he rolls his eyes. 

“Which one?” He asks, taking turns raising the two sweatshirts. 

“As tempting as the team kit is,” she laughs, and he tosses the gray one to her. He could have guessed the gray one, he thinks, but she’s surprised him more than once before. “Thank you,” she hums, pulling it over her head and carefully fixing the wisps of hair that fall from her ponytail when she does it. 

“Always,” he nods, holds a hand out to pull her to her feet.

– – –

Arthur and Lorenzo are already at the court when Chris and Charles arrive, attempting—and failing—to play a round of singles padel on the doubles court Charles had reserved for the morning.

Just as they approach, a shot ricochets off of Arthur’s racquet and flies past Lorenzo, colliding with the glass wall behind him with a thud. Lorenzo jogs after the ball, laughing, pointing at his brother in a sore act of celebration. 

Arthur is just as sore a loser. “Ah!” He calls out, gesturing with his own racquet to the tape that runs along the top of the net. “Filet!” Net!

Lorenzo blows air from his cheeks and scoffs, firmly bouncing the ball against the ground a few times before picking it up properly. “S'il te plaît!” Please!

“Mon pote, allez,” Mate, come on, Arthur groans. “Ça tremble encore!” It’s still shaking!

“Arthur, j'étais à trois mètres,” I was three meters away. 

Charles grins, pulls open the door to the court, holding it open for Chris to step in front of him. “Retiens ton feu,” hold your fire, he calls out to his brothers, “trouve ton anglais,” find your English.

Both boys' heads shoot over, scowls still apparent. “Do you see this? Do you see him run into this net?” Arthur shouts, still gesturing wildly with his racquet. 

“Do not let him convince you, you know what you saw,” Lorenzo interjects, carries on even though the game has been abandoned and they instead jog over to greet Chris and Charles. Lorenzo is first over, kissing either of Charles’ cheeks. “You saw this?” He asks, and Charles laughs, nods. 

“I did.”

“Bullshit,” he laughs, shoves Charles’ shoulder and turns to greet Chris. “You?”

Charles expects to find some apprehension on Chris’ face, something that shows she’s not sure of her place yet, but he doesn’t find any. Confidently, she speaks, “He’s crazy, you weren’t even close,” and then kisses each cheek. 

Lorenzo tosses his arm around Chris with a laugh. “Charles,” he speaks, points to her with the same hand that’s thrown over her shoulder. “My team.”

Charles chuckles. “I try not to make a habit of telling my girlfriend what to do.” Chris blushes at the very mention of it—girlfriend. If he knew it would be that easy to make her blush he would’ve asked weeks ago. He might’ve asked in Austin, if he’s being completely honest with himself. 

“Oh-ho?” Arthur’s already teasing, clapping his hands on Charles’ shoulders and laughing like a madman. “Girlfriend, huh?”

Neither of them—Chris or Charles, say anything. Between the flush of her cheeks and the depth of his dimples, they might as well have it spray painted on their foreheads. “Right,” Lorenzo offers, “well, Chris, as the only person around here with some sense, you’re on my team.”

“You can have her,” Charles teases, Lorenzo quirks a brow. “She has no idea how to play, but also she is a rule master.”

“Abandoning your own girlfriend,” Chris interjects, the same teasing tone laced in her voice. She pretends to shiver, grand and dramatic, even though it’s eighteen degrees and sunny and she’s got long pants and a sweatshirt—his sweatshirt on. “It’s cold, man.”

He rolls his eyes, sticks a racquet in her hand and moves to kiss her, which is more than close enough to Lorenzo for him to abandon his position next to Chris, retreating to the safety of the court, bouncing the padel ball as he walks. “Ready to take us?” Charles asks quietly, just to her. Arthur is somewhere in the space behind him gulping a water bottle in an almost comical manner. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she replies, half-chuckled, demeanor light and bouncy. There’s something about her that always seems full of energy, ready to take on whatever is put in front of her head-on.

“Don’t worry,” he practically whispers, winks and gives her shoulder a soft squeeze. “I’ll go easy on you.”

Chris clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, feigns offense and scoffs loudly, bringing the head of the racquet up to the center of his chest, pushing him back a few steps. “Don’t you dare.”

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, offering—practically promising—to let someone else win. There’s still a basket somewhere in a storage closet full of broken video game controllers from his childhood. And once, for three entire weeks when they were six and nine, he and Arthur weren’t allowed at the dinner table together because they would race to finish their food and promptly get sick. Then again, it is Chris, all bouncy ponytail and quick wit in his home in his clothes, so. Maybe it isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. 

As expected, it becomes apparent quickly that Chris is a beginner at a game the boys have spent years playing. She misses shots and struggles to find her footing and the best positioning, but it doesn’t crush her mood, dampen her energy. Lorenzo—her teammate, takes on quite a coaching role, offers an equal amount of encouragement and advice. 

She’s a quick learner, though. Charles knew she would be. So, despite the sound loss she and Lorenzo take in the first game, she manages a decent amount of solid shots and a spattering of genuinely impressive ones. She’s quick, that’s her advantage. She might not know what to do when she gets to the ball, but she always gets there. And, when she scores her first point, actually jumps into the air when she gives Lorenzo a high-five, he can’t help but find himself soft, a smile tugging on his lips, holding back on the points that follow in hopes of seeing her goofy grin again. 

“You did quite well out there,” he tells her when they’re between games. Her eyes light up and she hums around a mouthful of water, hurries to swallow it before she laughs. 

“Really?” She coughs, clears her throat. “You think?”

He nods. “You’re quick,” he mutters before taking a drink of his own water. 

“I ran track in high school.” He quirks a brow, which makes her smile, which makes him choke on a laugh mid-swallow. You’d think neither of them had ever had a drink from a plastic water bottle before. 

“Really?” She nods, hums her response, toying with her ponytail. Her bangs are loose, untucked from her ears and her hair-tie, and he feels the overwhelming urge to brush it from her face. “Why did I not know this?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Why didn’t you know that?”

“Google said nothing about this.”

“You Googled me?!” Briefly. Briefly, he had googled her at the very beginning of it all. Really, it was more Googling her family than it was her, they are the ones with all the information out there. He needed to make sure he wasn’t starting something with a raging white supremacist or a murderer. 

“You didn’t Google me?” She scratches the back of her head, not-so discreetly looks anywhere but her. “Yeah,” he laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

With a playful eye roll, she promptly changes the subject: “you want to be on my team?”

“I…” he laughs, “...don’t know if we are there yet.”

“Oh,” She laughs, brows raised with a goofy smile and it’s official—her laugh is never going to not give him butterflies, never not going to be so much better in person. “The truth comes out.”

Chris is soundly defeated in three straight games, despite finding herself with a new teammate each round—first Lorenzo, then Arhur, and finally, after five minutes of her best puppy-dog eyes, the most competitive man alive ( her boyfriend) agreed to be her teammate. 

It’s hours later by the time they leave the country club—no, no, Charles said it was specifically a padel club. They part ways with his brothers and then they’re driving back through the winding streets to his apartment. She ogles, like she’s been doing since she got here, all the careful, intricate architecture and the perfectly manicured manner of the whole place. It’s like people don’t live here, like she’s in a made-up land. She latches onto every imperfection—a crack in the sidewalk, a shrub with a single projection, a half-ragged French flag on the stern of a super yacht. It makes it all feel human, lived in, like the place someone can grow up, the place he grew up. 

After two hurried showers and a change of clothes they set off for lunch at Charles’ self-proclaimed “favorite restaurant.” It’s a sushi place, which she finds interesting, because not once has she heard him talk about sushi when talking about his favorite foods. 

Charles parks in a garage that’s a fifteen minute walk from the restaurant because, as he puts it, she’s walking the streets with the nation’s best tour guide. He starts the tour with the middle three corners of the Grand Prix, in reverse order—the hairpin, mirabeau bas, and portier, and then they take the quarter-or-so mile walk to the first of many monuments that Chris wouldn’t even attempt to pronounce in her own head. It’s there, somewhere between the forced tourist photos he snaps of her at Le Pêcheur and the one at the Promenade Princesse Louise-Hyppolyte, the truth comes to light. 

“What do you mean you did not tell anyone you were here?!” He exclaims all dramatic-like, dropping the phone from in front of his face, abandoning the search for what he considers the perfect angle. “You left the country, Chris.” She shrugs, doesn’t really see the big deal in all of it. It’s not like she… no, it is like she purposely didn’t tell people. That’s exactly what it is, actually. 

“I thought we were keeping this on the down-low.”

“Not that low!” He scolds, but she can tell he wants to laugh. He should, she thinks. It’s funny. “What if you die?”

She rolls her eyes. “Are you planning on killing me?” He glares daggers, burns a you’re not funny look into her head. “Letting me be killed?” She’s sure it annoys him to no end, positive almost, but it’s not like she can go back in time and tell everyone, and even if she could, she’s not sure she would. She likes this being just theirs, at least for now, while they can still manage it. She likes not having to report back to her parents—to her dad, especially—about her hotshot, young punk racing driver of a boyfriend and the silver spoon he feeds her french delicacies with. 

He sighs, shoulders wildly heavy, and holds her phone back out to her. His eyes are soft, frustrated in a way she didn’t expect them to be. She really didn’t think it was that crazy of a decision. “You should have told someone,” he says, and she feels immensely guilty. 

“Hannah knows,” she blurts, an honest offer of anything she has to not get such a serious look from him. He’s not meant to be serious.

“Hannah knows?”

“She knows I went somewhere. I didn’t tell her where,” she says.  I didn’t tell her where because my brother and father don’t want me to date a race driver, she doesn’t say, because that would only make him more nervous. 

“You should have told someone you were here,” he says, drags out the vowel sounds and tosses an arm over her shoulder. He kisses her temple, pulls her into him and chuckles. Okay, okay. He’s not actually upset.

“Probably,” she nods, a smile pulling on the corners of her lips. “I can tell them when I get home, if you want. Start some drama over Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure making a good impression will not be hard after that.”

MayaBay, that’s the name of his favorite restaurant, Thai and Japanese and a sushi bar that Charles talks about for the entire walk there. Apparently securing a reservation at the restaurant was hard enough, but a seat at the coveted sushi bar was something else entirely, and, according to Charles, was his first failed call after Chris’ visit was planned. She tries to tell him that it doesn’t matter where in the restaurant they eat, but he’s insistent that he’s going to try again and again, and again every time she comes to visit until he can manage to get them in. 

Her cheeks flush red at the revelation and she continues to hold out hope he’s oblivious to the heat that radiates from her face every time he meets her with some sort of compliment or insistence of inclusion. She doesn’t even think he’s conscious of the latter, which makes it all that more special. He doesn’t have to take special care to include her in his life, he just does it—does it like he’s always been doing it, always been sharing these small parts of his life with her. 

Lunch is enough to leave her full for the entire day. Po Pia Kung and Ceviche and Roti and Nigiri—two plates, no wasabi, per Charles’s request—and she’s worried that she’ll be full before getting the chance to lay eyes on their entrees. 

“This place is so special,” she tells him from across the tiny table, around the too-big centerpiece. “Thank you.”

He hums around a mouthful of Roti, brings a napkin to his mouth when he swallows so he can start talking that little bit sooner. “For what?”

Chris shrugs. Thank you… for. For. For everything, she supposes. “For wanting me here.”

He smiles, dimples digging deep, cheeks turning a rosy shade of pink when he adjusts in his seat, leans forward enough that it’s just barely perceivable. “Thank you for wanting to be here,” and you blush right back. 

It’s got to be quite the sight for any onlookers, the two of them acting all middle-school. They aren’t aware enough of the other people in the restaurant for it to be of note, and even if they were, they wouldn’t care. 

It’s Pad Thai for the main course with a side of three bites of Charles’ Kadou Yang stolen in the midst of quiet conversation, and then, as if they haven’t shared everything else already, they split the restaurant’s signature, meant to share dessert. 

“So,” he hums, somewhere on the walk back to the car—or, to the surprise Charles refuses to reveal that’s on the way back to the car. He swings their interlocked hands between their body, drags the action out in the same way he does the vowel. “When do I get to come to Georgia?”

It takes her by surprise, puts a kiddish smile on her face. It should be obvious that he would want to come, because, well, it’s where she lives. But, every conversation has always been about her coming to him. And it makes sense to her, because he’s always moving and she’s always in the same place. It makes sense that he wouldn’t come to her, but now that she thinks about it, it makes more sense that he would. “You want to come to Georgia?”

“That,” he laughs, “that is a silly question. Of course I want to.”

“Well, I mean. You’re always welcome, but I don’t know what your schedule looks like.” She knows it’s a mess, undoubtedly, even if she’s never laid eyes on it. She can only imagine the amount of people wanting him in places year round, and having all of that squished into a couple month period of time? She wouldn’t be surprised if he spends more time traveling in the offseason than he does when he’s actually racing. 

“I don’t know what it looks like, either,” he takes out his phone and clicks through half a dozen apps with his free hand—the one not intertwined with hers. “Uh…,” he chuckles at the screen like even he can’t believe just how in demand he is. “Next month I’m in Italy for some days, then France for Christmas and London for New Year.” Chris leans over to look at his calendar. 

“What about there?” She asks,  pointing to the block of dates that are empty between his color-coded trips to Italy and France. “My brother’s wedding is that weekend,” she says, and then realizes how crazy the proposition sounds and instantly attempts to retract it, “but you probably don’t want to go to that.”

She’d love more than anything to have him at Chase and Hannah’s wedding, but she can understand why he would want to do anything else. It’s one thing to make him travel all that way, but then to make him travel all that way for a wedding, where he’ll have to meet the parents and the siblings and dog—that’s just a cruel thing to imply is expected of him. It’s certainly no way to keep him wanting to come back for another visit. 

He bumps his shoulder against hers. “I love weddings.”

“Yeah?” She bumps back, dumb little smile on her face. “When you don’t know anyone there and your girlfriend is in the bridal party?”

He nods. “Yes.”

Unconsciously, she puts distance between their arms, to keep from getting too hot or to keep them from tripping or maybe for no reason at all because she really doesn’t notice that she does it. “My whole family’ll be there,” she continues meekly, and their arms are almost taught. 

“Good,” Charles scoffs, and pulls her right back to his side, like even an arm’s length is too far.  “I can fix the first impression you’re going to break.”

Chris rolls her eyes, both at his words and his actions—painfully endeared by both.  “Why are you so convinced I’m going to have something bad to say about you?”

“I’m not worried really about what you say, but your father is not going to like me if you say to him, ‘this is my boyfriend who I saw in two different countries without telling to you.’”

“Yeah,” she nods, bites back a laugh against the skin on the inside of her cheek. It shouldn’t be as funny as it is to her; the state of her life. “Yeah, you definitely have a point there,” she cuts the vowel short, chokes on a laugh, sucks in her own lips in an attempt to keep them from spilling, the laugh escaping silently through her nose. He meets her with a matching—no, a somehow dramatized mirroring—of her expression that only makes it that much harder not to laugh. When she finally does break, there are practically tears in her eyes, and it was never even that funny. 

He smiles at her laugh, like always, and shakes his head. “I will have to come to this wedding to do damage control.” 

“Probably,” she nods, still laughing. It’s like it’s all just sunk in for her—the boyfriend. The long distance boyfriend, as in, long distance. Whatever everyone else considers long distance, times the distance of the Atlantic Ocean and the average net worth of his hometown. The fact that he was a stranger just a few months ago, and now she’s in her second foreign country in three days with him and it all feels so normal. The fact that she didn’t even want to go on that Hot Lap—hot laps, plural— or that she didn’t have any interest in going to the race. If she’d tried just a little bit harder to get out of it, or stayed in the beer tent for just ten minutes longer or, or, or. It’s not funny at all, and yet it’s hilarious. 

“You’re ridiculous, you know this?”

“I know this.” She sighs, deep and slow and grounding, one stray chuckle slipping through her lips before she can continue. “Don’t book any flights, then—Until I make sure it’s all good with Hannah.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, salutes her with his phone still in his hand and everything.

“Okay, so,” Charles sighs, drops his head against the pillow with a soft plop. Lunch was hours ago, now, succeeded by a walk around the Japanese Gardens, a trip to the supermarket because his fridge is, as Chris so affectionately referred to it as—bachelor pad chic—and a personal tour around the Prince’s Car Collection where he got to show off his favorite memories. It’s after dinner, even. After half-stale pasta made by him and meal-saving chicken expertly prepared by her, after two episodes of a French reality show with English closed captioning, after a day he won’t soon forget. It’s then, in bed, while she reads the final pages of the book she’s been cutting away at for weeks now, that he tests his knowledge on the information he’s been quizzing her for afternoon. “Chandler is the oldest, and she’s dating Alexis.”

“Correct,” Chris says, turns the page on her book. 

“But the drama is that Alexis doesn’t like any of your family, so she and your sister moved away and don’t come to anything.” She hums her response this time, and he wonders if she’s even listening all that much or if he could get her to agree to anything right now. “And then Chase is in the middle, he’s marrying Hannah. But the drama is Hannah was—” before he can even get the next word out, she’s glancing over at him to interject. “Hannah is your best friend, and was before Chase dated her. And she has a little boy named Reid with a dickhead.”

“Yup.”

“And then you, my perfect little angel.”

She smiles at the pages of her book. He likes making her smile. “Don’t forget it.”

“Your parents are Bill and Cindy, short for… William and,” he pauses. She pauses. He has no idea what Cindy is short for. “Lucinda?” Chris blinks, hard, dog ears the corner of her page and shuts her book. If he didn’t already know it was a pretty shit guess, he sure knows it now. Sometimes a blink is worth a thousand and one words. 

“No,” she says, furrows her brows so subtly that it shouldn’t be recognizable, but it is. And then she blinks again. 

“I knew that,” he boasts, his best cocky tone and a matching smug expression on his face. “I was just testing you.”

She chuckles, leans to her right to set the book down on the bed-side table there. “On my own mother’s name?” She questions, tucking herself under the covers and scooching over, leaning against his chest comfortably. He would let her lie like this as long as she wanted. It’s so sweet to have her in his arms.

“Well, you call her ‘Mom,’” he explains, even down to the forced American accent when he says ‘Mom.’ “So maybe you did not know.”

“Cindy isn’t short for anything.”

“Like I said,” he twists her hair around his finger slowly, mindlessly, without any sort of purpose or intention. When she uses him like a pillow this way, he can always smell her shampoo. He’s been trying to place it for days now. Coconut, he knows—but there is something else there, too, something he can’t put his finger on.  “I know this.”

“Okay, continue then.”

“I will,” he says, lets the twirled hair fall from his finger and kisses her head with a smile on his face. “They have a dog called Beans that you call Beanie-Baby,” he pauses. “And the drama is, your parents do not like me.”

He can see the apples of her cheeks flare in his peripheral, a laugh stirring in her chest. “The drama is: there is no drama with them,” she says. “They’re all bark no bite.”

He adjusts underneath her, sighs all heavy and deflated because the thought of it—her family, her parents. It’s so fucking intimidating, it is. Because he knows how important they are to her, how highly she regards their opinion, even if she pretends that she doesn’t. He knows that it’s everything to her, and if he makes even a single mis-step he could ruin it all—their opinion, her opinion, all of it. And something in his gut, a pit in his stomach tells him that she’s already made a mis-step for him when she came over here without telling anyone she was coming. Why wouldn’t she tell anyone she was coming? “What do I even talk to them about?”

“I don’t know,” she says, adjusts to accommodate his adjustment, and eventually they’ll get properly comfortable. “Racing.”

“We race in different cars.”

“But it’s all cars.”

He opens his mouth to speak, pauses, clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and then finally, “it’s different.”

“I think you’re overreacting a bit, here,” she says, and he rolls his eyes. He’s not overreacting, she’s underreacting. “I get along with your Mom and your brothers and I don't know what anyone is saying half of the time.” Okay, okay, maybe she has a point there. He did kind of throw her to the wolves this week—not that his family are wolves, just. Meeting the parents before the relationship is even a relationship is. It’s just messed up for him to do, and she’d handled it gracefully, perfectly and flawlessly charmed everyone. 

But then again. “Yeah, but you’re you.” Anyone would be charmed by her. She’s very charming. 

“And you’re you.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t understand.” She can’t possibly understand it because he doesn’t even properly understand it, the way he feels about her. The fear he feels about losing all the indecipherable feelings. It’s just good, everything about her, about being near her. It’s all so sweet and nice and good and he really, really doesn’t want to screw it up.

“You’ve already met my Dad,” she starts, clearly trying to calm him down, to ease his nerves. “My brother is just like him but more annoying,” she laughs, and even though he’s half deflated, her laugh still puts a weak smile on his face. “My sister probably won’t speak to you, and my Mom loves anyone that calls her ma’am and tells her she looks young. Just don’t talk about racing with her.”

“You just told me—”

“With the boys,” Chris clarifies.

“Your Mum doesn’t like Chase racing?”

“Does yours?” Good point. Is there a mother on the face of the planet, over all of history, that loved the idea of their kid racing other kids around high speed corners without any regard for their own lives?

“Then why did she let him?”

“I’m sure the same reason yours let you. Dad’s can be very convincing.”

His stomach drops. “Yeah. Yeah, they can be. My dad was.” His fingers trace mindless circles on the skin of her arm, soft and warm and clean. His eyes focus on the little red light on the bottom of his television, the one that’s only on when the TV is off. “He would spend so much time at the karting track with my brothers and I, you would not believe it. Sometimes my Mum would say that we lived there and should take blankets to sleep in the karts,” He says, and Chris laughs, makes him aware of his tracing fingers, but doesn’t stop them. “She would always say to us, ‘be careful, drive slow,’ and my Dad would always say ‘be careful, have fun.’ Now Mum will say to us just to be careful.”

“Did your Dad drop the ‘have fun,’ too?”

Red Light. Soft skin. He knew it was coming, it’s always coming, only a matter of time before he had to tell her. Honestly, he’s surprised it had gone this long, that she hadn’t asked about his father the moment she met the rest of the family and he was absent. He can’t stomach the look of pity she’ll give him. She can take it from everyone else, always had—but the image of that look on her face, the dead dad look. He never wants her to look at him like that. 

Red light. Stupid shapes. “No, uh,” he drags out his own words, putting off the inevitable by even a few more moments. “My father died when I was a teenager.” 

At least he knows her google search of him months earlier wasn’t too in-depth. “Oh my God, Charles,” She says, voice quiet and soft, like she thinks her words will break him. They won’t. He wishes she knew they won’t. 

“No,” he chuckles, kisses the top of her head. “No. Don’t look at me like that,”

“I’m not,” she protests, but he doesn’t have to look at her to confirm. Nobody is above the look of pity. 

“You are.”

“You’re not even looking at me,” she says, sits up off his chest. He keeps his eyes on the red light. “Look at me,” she insists, a soft hand on his jaw, pulling him back to her. 

He rolls his eyes before he looks, before there’s an eternity of silent eye contact because she doesn’t have the look on her face. Anyone can tell she feels bad, especially him, but it’s different. It’s different, and he doesn’t feel like some pathetic puppy in a cold corner. He doesn’t feel like a nineteen year old who’s world is in shambles. He just feels like him. Like it’s all okay. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” she finally speaks, and he hears it now. She doesn’t think he’s going to break, that’s now why she’s meek. She feels guilty, guilty that she brought it up, that she didn’t know, that he thinks she would ever think he would break.

“How would you?”

Sincere in her apology, in her guilt, she doubles down. “I’m still sorry.”

Her eyes are filled with something pure, some innocent kind of affection and he feels awful that she feels awful. “I’m sorry for going on about him.”

“I’ll listen as long as you want to talk.”

He smiles, a genuine laugh falling from his lips. “I can talk forever.”

“Then,” she smiles, leans over to kiss him before getting comfortable again, snuggling into his chest like before. “Tell me all about him.”

They sleep late the next morning. Maybe they’re adjusting to the timezone—unlikely, especially in Chris’ case—or they were just up to late talking, but Chris is stretching against the sheets, against Charles, just after nine.

It’s no surprise that she wakes up tangled in a mess of limbs, not even something she minds. Even with her hand asleep and painfully tingley. She knows that she won’t get to wake up like this tomorrow morning, or the morning after, or every morning for at least a month, so. She doesn’t mind the heat and the sleeping limbs and the threat of a knot in her shoulder. 

She wiggles out from his grip without waking him, grabs her phone from the bedside table and checks the time. She scans the room, eyes floating over all of her things scattered about. She should start packing up, she thinks. Start packing and getting ready to leave. 

She tiptoes across the room, around the corner into the bathroom to start there, far away from his sleeping body. Quietly, carefully, she brushes her teeth, washes her face and tugs a brush through her hair, tying it back into a ponytail. Slowly, she gathers her stuff—makeup and hair tools and skincare—and packs it away carefully into her toiletries bag. 

When she comes back into the bedroom, still cringing with every creak of the floor under her feet, she finds Charles awake in bed, soft, sleepy smile when she turns the corner. “Come back to bed,” he’s pleading before she can even mutter a good morning. 

“I have to pack,” she argues half-heartedly, because she wants nothing more than to climb back into bed, and his voice is no help—all hoarse and raspy with sleep. 

“Why?” He asks, drags the letter sounds out into a yawn that makes her smile. 

“Because,” she says, draws out the e-sound to tease his cadence. “It’s almost nine-thirty, and I'm leaving in two hours.”

“You don’t have two hours of stuff,” he protests. 

“I don’t like to be late,” she continues over her shoulder, opening her suitcase and laying it flat on the floor at the end of the bed, readjusting the still-folded clothes she hadn’t ended up wearing. 

“Well,” he says, stretches against his sheets and then he’s getting out of bed with another yawn. “Let me help you, then.”

He steps around her open suitcase carefully. There isn’t exactly a surplus of floorspace for him to find his footing in. He disappears into the bathroom, locks the door behind him while she continues to gather her things, reappearing ten minutes later. “Give me a kiss,” he says, trudging over to her with open arms. 

“You’re so needy this morning,” she quips, slinking her arms around his neck and pulling him down into a kiss. He hums against her lips in agreement and the vibration makes her giggle into his mouth. 

Chris makes an attempt to return to the task at hand, but he has different plans, and follows around right behind her. His arms wrap around her torso everytime she stills for even a moment and he hugs her from behind, kisses her shoulders and her neck and her hair. 

“You make it hard to pack,” she tells him, and he laughs into the crook of her neck. What she really means is: you make it hard to leave. 

“Come back to bed.”

“I want to,” she sighs, leans back against his body.

He turns with her so they’re facing the bed. “It is right there,” he says, and she groans. “Look at it, all warm and comfy.” He’s right, the sheets look so soft, the pillows so fluffed. It’s a bed begging to be slept in, to be lounged on, to be snuggled by. 

She wiggles from his grasp, backs away from him towards the door and makes a challenge that she knows she has no intention of winning; “We can go back to bed,” she starts, still inching further away from him, further away from the bed, “if you can catch me,” and then she bolts. 

Chris’ high school claim to fame might have been that she was an all-state track and field athlete, but she’s got nothing on her boyfriend, who’s made a career out of his reflexes. It’s all pants and squeals and laughs that go on for entirely too long. 

She realizes that she’s trapped when they’re stood on opposite sides of his dining room table, and she couldn’t be the least bit bothered. She tries to fake him out, to move left and then right, but he predicts the move before she even makes it, catches her with a strong grip around her waist and lifts  her off her feet, carries her into the bedroom and tackles her onto the bed. 

click here for the nsfw cut

Chris’ flight leaves Nice at 12:30 pm, and then it’s a two and a half hour layover in Amsterdam, until finally, she lands in Atlanta long after sunset. She Ubers home and by the time she’s flopping down onto her couch, it’s almost eleven. Charles is the only call she makes before crashing. Then again, who else would she call? He’s one of two people who knew she was anywhere but home, and the only one who’d made her promise to call—despite the time difference and the Uber delay—with the threat of calling the first Georgia police number he could find on google to report her missing. 

He answers on the third ring, voice with the same rasp of that morning. “Hello?”

“Hi,” she speaks through a yawn, lays the phone beside her ear on the couch cushion and leaving it on speaker. 

“Hey,” he laughs, and she can perfectly hear the smile on his lips. She can almost feel it, the way the room reacts to it. 

“You gave me a hickey,” she says, fingering the bruise that lies an inch above her collarbone. His giggle on the other end is loud and boyish—particularly teenager-ish. 

“So, you made it home safe?”

“Well, if you ignore the vampire bruise on my neck.”

“Sorry,” he says, but he’s still laughing like a little kid. 

“It’s not funny,” she warns, thinly veiled because even she can hear the tired laugh at the back of her throat. 

“It’s a little funny.”

Chris rolls her eyes. “I have to see my entire family tomorrow!”

“Eh,” he hums, and just like the smile, she can see the shrug. She can see him so well it’s like he’s here or she’s there or that they’re somewhere together. Somewhere that doesn’t really matter, because they’re both there, smiling and laughing and shrugging. God. God, she already misses him so much. “They already don’t like me.”

“Charles!” She scolds, but she’s laughing now, too.

“I’m sorry,” he smooths. “I am. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know,” Chris sighs, pokes her own neck. “I’m not upset, I’ll just have to whisk it all morning.”

He chuckles. “You have to do what?” 

“You know, like. For eggs…or baking. A whisk,” with every word that leaves her mouth, another letter is types into her phone’s search bar. Google Translate: whisk.  “Le fouet?”

“Le fouet??” He questions with a tone that would make her think she’d called him a slur. “I do not think that is right.”

“Le fouet à…” she trails off, debating internally over the pronunciation of the words in front of her. “How do you say the ‘o’ and the ‘e’ when they’re together?” She asks, butchers it before he has the chance to give her any answer. “Œufs?”

“I have no idea what you are telling to me.”

“Telling you,” Chris corrects. “What I’m telling you.”

“Oh, mon dieu,” he groans. “This is sad. We can talk in the morning.”

“Okay,” she nods, yawns again. It’s long past her bedtime, and she has no idea how many hours now she’s been awake for. It’s gotta be going on twenty or more, surely. Surely. 

“Thank you for calling me,” he says, softly, genuinely grateful for the call. She’s grateful he’s grateful. It’s sweet, all the little things he does to show he cares. The way he does most of them without realizing it. 

“Thank you for wanting me to call.”

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