lightning mcqueen

and then like the big bang, they expanded, from nothing to seemingly everything. in less than a week, maybe a slightly drug fueled week, sebastian was calculating how much it would cost to bring charles from berlin to san francisco with him. to break charles from the hold the grief had on his heart in that city, from the slightly abusive family he stayed with, and from his own certain death under the club lights and shitty edm.

it turned out all it cost was one TLC application and selling a little bit of his soul to the american public but that’s the price he’d pay to get charles away from there, to make sure that the world could behold him in all his glory.

america loved charles, maybe even more than sebastian did. they loved his heartbreaking story, they loved his charisma, and they loved his dimples. god did they love his fucking dimples.

america also hated charles, maybe more than he did himself. they hated his quick snap anger, they hated his eye rolling and inability to tell sebastian what hurt because how do you say “carve out every bit of hurt and there’s nothing left”, and they hated how he wasn’t some mary sue who magically recovered from a chemical dependence and the death of the three people he loved most.

america just plain hated sebastian. they hated his cockiness, they hated how he was just as quick to get angry as charles, and they hated how he always let charles get away with being the world’s biggest brat to him.

but every time charles took his credit card to shop, all sebastian could think about was how much he loved that charles was smiling more. when charles snapped at him, all sebastian could do was snap back and be happy that charles was able to feel safe enough to be pissy with him.

america made charles into a brat, is what everyone claims. but it was less america and more sebastian, who indulged him at every turn. and if america truly made charles into a brat, spoiled, with rounder cheeks, more thickness in his pretty waist, and dollar signs in his beautiful eyes, then sebastian pledged his allegiance to america because he loved it.

when charles whined about how foggy san francisco was and how small their apartment was, seb bought him a town house. when he was unhappy about sebastian’s old (but trusty in seb’s eyes) prius, sebastian bought him a mercedes.

america hated that charles said he’d rather a ferrari. america didn’t understand that charles was referencing an inside joke to his childhood dream of being a certified ferrari owner. nor the fact that sebastian promised to make him one.

america loved charles for what they could mould their image of him into, not who he was. they made him out to be a bratty, greedy, overly aloof and yet clingy temptation that caught the rich man he was dying for.

they never saw the actual inside look of sebastian and charles, of how sebastian held charles as he sobbed through his pain on the anniversary of the accident. how they had absolutely no hired staff to clean their house while charles lived like a prince, despite the snark reddit’s claim to the contrary. he cleaned the house by himself, he paid all their bills and kept all their documents tidy, he prepped all the ingredients for seb to cook when he got home (after the disastrous attempt that was the ill fated Food Poisoning Of Their One Year, charles never cooked), he planned their vacations and their weekends, all around his appointments and doctor’s visits.

america wasn’t interested in also learning about how charles had severe narcolepsy and PTSD. they didn’t want the story of a disabled young man with only his husband as his friend. they didn’t realize that the excess fog and darkness made his symptoms worse. that the prius was uncomfortable to sleep in for long car rides to his appointments, which seb had to drive him to.

they didn’t realize that sebastian loved caring for charles, loved giving him the life he didn’t get to have for a long time, that charles was so intentional with his spending of their money, that charles was undeniably spoiled but that he spoiled sebastian just as badly.

some people picked up on charles being a brat to indulge seb, that it was a game they played, a way for them to check on each other, and to get all their desires out without being afraid of repercussions.

charles made sebastian soften, made him slow down, take a break, and sit with him. he made sebastian take days or even a week off because he wanted to build a life with charles that didn’t involve him always being away. he wanted to slow down, sniff the flowers, be intentional about his actions.

charles made sebastian want to have slow sex, the kind that stretched for hours, softening both their bodies like summer sun warmed taffy and filling them both with love.

he made sebastian want to maintain the planter boxes on their windows with all of charles’ favorite flowers, watering them and giving them love and care, a visual of them. a visual of charles, blooming under sebastian’s hands and time.

he made sebastian want to write poetry about his whimpers when he fucked him, his snores when he fell asleep on the kitchen floor and sebastian had to carry him to the couch, his hands as they wrapped themselves around his coffee mug, his dimples as he laughed, his eyes when he fluttered his eyelashes as he tried to convince sebastian to go to singapore (“come onnnn, chéri! you know it’d be so fun to watch the race live this year), his nose as he wrinkles it at the taste of his medicines every morning, his messy brown hair as he wakes up.

charles made sebastian finally start living a life he loved instead of just existing in one he was okay with and for that, sebastian would do anything for charles.

sebastian first made charles want to exist, to see him at least one more time. then he made him want to live, want to actually stay awake to see life.

charles leclerc is not your typical rich boy from monaco, he’s a generational monegasque. his family settled on that coast hundreds of years ago and were lucky to build their little grocery store and home and stay in those streets that slowly filled with the world’s elite wealthy. he was not one of them. his family survived, sure, but they were not rich by any standards, just the working class.

but he was valuable, with his citizenship and his family’s generations of living there. it meant he blended in, he was just background noise to the “main character” rich people. it meant he could slip in their pockets and get their money. it meant he heard everything going on in their lives and businesses. it’s amazing, truly, how happy the elite are to talk about their private matters in their ear pieces while looking at the aisles of specialty pasta his grandfather got from a special shop in Italy.

charles was too smart to not put this to use, to slowly manipulate the narrative and learn even more information, posting to anonymous sites about what environmental disaster this ceo was planning on attempting to cover up, how this sports star was having a disgraceful affair with his wife’s best friend’s brother, where their money was actually going, what activities they were getting involved with.

it’s also amazing how many of these people don’t turn their bluetooth on and don’t use encryption on their information. how easy it is to duplicate their phones onto his laptop that he’s “just using for inventory, papa!” and blast all over the web.

until, he accidentally duplicates the phone of a kingsman agent. of sebastian vettel, code name: Lancelot. until he scrolls through his information and is horrified by what he finds. until a strong hand is slamming his laptop closed, causing him to look up and see the man who he just saw in very interesting circumstances. his blue eyes amused as he evaluates charles.

charles is just a boy, at 19. sebastian doesn’t know why he’s shocked that charles is just a kid, when that’s the perfect cover for someone who has the ability to access information of the wealthy and blast it on the web like some internet vigilante, but also doesn’t have the ability to effectively cover his tracks well enough that he’s made virtually untraceable.

sebastian felt like he should’ve known; that speaks of someone highly highly intelligent, but also naive. someone who knows what power wields but not what the consequences are. sebastian, secretly, hopes that he never will learn those consequences. but he will if he doesn’t come with him, because the wealthy hate their gilded world being revealed and they’ll be even less amused that it was that shy kid down at the local store.

charles feels like he just realized how fucked he is. when that handsome man tugs his laptop close and tells him he knows who he is, greets him by his alias “ilpredestinato”. charles feels his world collapse in but instead sebastian, as he introduced himself (charles already knew), pulls him and his computer into a car and he says “charles. have you heard of kingsmen tailors?”

he has, they have one down the road. he’s never been, it’s too expensive.

sebastian takes him there. puts him into fitting room three, and shows him the world he’s capable of taking, tells him what he’s intelligent enough to achieve. the agent hired before him, had only discovered one state secret that his father had failed to cover, and blew open a whole government regulated arms rings. seb tells charles he’s highly capable of being one of the best agents with his background.

that’s if he can survive the tasks.

-

charles is lucky that he met seb. because nobody else’s mentor would help them but seb would help charles if he really needed it. maybe because seb was fond of him.

charles blows everyone else out of the water. charles blows even max verstappen out of the water, with how much he absolutely demolishes everyone else in his nomination class, how he scores high on every single task.

and when charles completes the final task and cradles his beloved bouvier that he affectionately named charlotte as she licks the tears from his face, he is looking right at sebastian to find sebastian looking right back at him, something more than the usual pride and mirth he usually finds in his eyes.

charles thought honeymoons were supposed to be relaxing and fun. getting day drunk with his beloved and having sleepy slow sex after a afternoon nap in the sun that was pooling through their curtains, casting charles’ husband in the most beautiful light that had charles rolling on top of him and taking him down his throat like he was a man starved.

and for maybe the first two days, charles got to relax, he got to sunbathe and get tanned. he got to have as much as sex as he wanted and wake up wrapped in the sheets with the man he loved most. until sebastian’s laptop pinged that someone involved in the outskirts of the mission he was on was nearby and suddenly, charles lost his husband to their work again.

to say that he was utterly unimpressed was an understatement, but when seb hit him with those blue eyes and a knowing grimace, charles rolled his eyes and let him do whatever he needed. sebastian had promised him he would only gather whatever he needed for his case and then would put his laptop away and spend the rest of their three weeks with him.

it had been three days of that, sebastian mining information and gathering intel while charles explored costa rica on his own. he couldn’t even peel sebastian away from his duty to go down and get brunch with him, and it was seriously becoming a problem for charles. his own husband leaving him alone on their vacation for his first love: work.

by the fourth day, charles was pulling out the stops, straddling sebastian in only his button down and tight boxers, tanned thighs on display around sebastian’s hips. he purred in sebastian’s ear about how he wanted him, and then pouted as seb wrapped his arms around him, pressed a kiss to under his ear and said “later.” before unwrapping one arm from his waist and going back to typing with one hand, the other holding charles there loosely. but it didn’t matter he was fucking annoyed and just pulled sebastian’s arm from around him and went to jerk off in the shower.

by the fifth day, he was laid on the lounger by the pool as sebastian worked through the day (again), sipping his tequila sunrise and whining on his encrypted line to max about how seb was too wrapped up in work to even pay attention to him and do what newly married couples do: have copious amounts of sex and annoy everyone with how in love they are.

by the sixth day, charles was rearing up to pick a fight with sebastian over how he couldn’t put work down for three fucking weeks to spend time with him. he was actually getting insecure, it was weighing on him. was he too boring for sebastian? too needy? he knew he could be a bit much, and in the worst, a total brat to sebastian. but sebastian proposed to him, soothed his fears about being too young and naive and stupid. seb was the one to approve both their leaves, to make sure they had enough time.

but when he got back to the room, cheeks hot with fury at sebastian’s gall to spend their whole honeymoon working and doing exactly what they could do in london, in monte carlo, in berlin, sebastian was waiting for him with a dinner spread and a look of repentance in his face, guilt seeping out of every pore.

he looked like a kicked dog as charles power walks in, his mouth already forming the words he was about to say when he stops in his tracks and takes in his husband, smiling sheepishly and then the dinner he set out for him.

charles ended up eating the dinner and getting the world’s best sorry blow job he’d ever received. and seb had given him many over the four years they’d been together.

on the seventh day, charles peaked over his mimosa at sebastian with a smile on his lips and a fresh mark sucked beneath his ear like they were teenagers.

-

it’s one of those days for max. he doesn’t really know why, he never knows why. all he knows is that the world is pressing down on him and he’s exhausted, his body already heavy even though he just woke up. his anxiety is already clutching his throat, squeezing down hard and then harder when he attempts to soothe it. it travels down to his diaphragm and causes everything to stop for a terrifying 1..2..3..4. he gasps. he sits up.

daniel already left for the morning, having to go off and deal with the little fires that seem to be popping up everyday on his new project. it just adds to the growing pressure in his stomach. daniel always knows when he wakes up like this, he always understands without max having to verbalize. without daniel, max feels like he’s already sealed within his walls and he’s left to rot.

there’s a sticky note on max’s phone when he picks it up to look at it, to doomscroll and add to his already terrible mood.

it reads: “love u! left breakfast in the fridge 4 u. remember to take ur meds, plz.” max feels like a slight failure, his husband having to remind him to take his pills so he doesn’t freak out (again) and end up hospitalized.

max gets out of bed, his body feeling like lead. daniel has been on a mission to get max eating twice a day, as his nutritionist recommended he bump up his meal count again, so he makes him breakfast and dinner every single day. max usually eats it. today he does not feel like eating it, so he forgoes it, the curling viper of anxiety just waiting to lunge.

he’ll put it into tupperware to eat tomorrow. daniel will be sad that he didn’t eat it, but he’ll also probably be happy that max didn’t hide it. he’s been working on that, not hiding when he hasn’t eaten. his therapist said that it’s small steps on the way, but it’s big to not hide it. to be honest with his loved ones about what’s going on in his brain.

the psychiatrist at the hospital that he was forced into told him that by lying and doing the things he does, he was acting just like his father. he’s been juggling that thought since then. he’s just like his father if he lies, he’s just like his father if he continues to not take his meds.

when he told daniel the psychiatrist said that, daniel flew into a rage because who says that to someone? but max internalized that. the last thing he ever wanted to be was just like his father and he feared turning into him.

max takes his pills out of the lion themed pill box, the ones that daniel dutifully puts out for him every morning and then locks the medication back up. his therapist also suggested they did that, so max wasn’t tempted to overuse when things weren’t going well in his mind. he hated the implication. he hated that she was right.

he throws back the three pills all together, washing it down with a redbull, chugging it so he can feel like it washed all the way down. at least he managed to do one thing today, which is always an accomplishment.

-

daniel calls on his lunch, his voice cheery through the phone as max curls up their couch with sassy and attempts to finish his homework for his class. he has a pretty low grade in this class and feels guilty if he has to use anymore of daniel’s money to retake it.

“did you eat, princess?” daniel asks him after max told him what he was doing.

his silence was enough to answer for daniel but he allows max to take time to speak.

“no.” he admits finally. “i woke up feeling too anxious. i took the pills.”

daniel hums happily at that, walking past max not eating, which max is happy for. he reminds himself it’s just the little things. the baby steps to get there.

he hears someone come into his office and daniel’s voice grows faint before he comes back on the line and tells max “i have to go, baby, but i’ll be home before three! love you.”

max hums and says “love you too.” before they hang up and he returns to his coursework, sighing in frustration at the fact that he couldn’t figure out the problem that was being proposed to him.

-

when max met daniel, he tried to hide everything that was going on with him, the raging mental health disorders, the serial lying, the eating disorder, the whole dad thing.

until one day, daniel looked at him, looked him dead in the eye and said “i know, max. you don’t have fucking to lie to me.” and suddenly the curtain was pulled back and all of max’s wounds were revealed to broad daylight and he hated it. but daniel didn’t leave, he pulled max close and let him be honest, no matter how hard it was to hear.

daniel loved max and made max want to seek out help instead of desperation and clinging to a facade.

daniel made max promise to at least always be honest with him. max promised. daniel promised as well.

max only ever truly lied once after that and he was so out of practice with daniel that his husband picked up on it immediately. he saved max’s life that night and when max woke up in the hospital, he figured that there was no use in lying to daniel anyways. he always knew.

-

there was a psychologist that asked max if maybe he was holding daniel back, burdening him when daniel was so successful. he could have built a beautiful life and had kids by now with anyone else. someone able to hold a job, someone who graduated high school, someone who didn’t have a diagnostic sheet a mile long.

max asked the psychologist why he wasn’t worthy of that good life as well. but he couldn’t help but let that conversation get to him. max was trying, but daniel was so wonderful and deserved that good life.

he asked daniel about it.

“max emilian ricciardo-verstappen.” his eyes looked troubled “who says you don’t give me a good life? i knew what i was getting myself into the moment you walked into that club and spilled your drink on me. you give me the life i want.” and max let that get to him as well. because everyone always acts like daniel never had a choice. to date him, to love him, to marry him. daniel knew it all. and he still chose max.

-

max was frowning at the stain in the sink when he heard the door open, the tub of ‘pink stuff’ being dropped as the lock clicked and startled him.

he picked up the tub and set it on the counter, digging through the sponge drawer for his handy orange scrub daddy to attempt to get the stains off his beautiful sink.

he leaned back against daniel when he felt the arms around his waist and the kiss to the side of his jaw, relaxing into his husband’s arms as he continued to scrub at the sink, fighting the good fight against the forever persistent water, wine, and food stains.

“still trying to get those out?” daniel teased. max rolled his eyes, turning to peak at daniel over his shoulder.

“i will get these stains out if it’s the last thing i do.” daniel just smiled at him, nodding like he believed him.

“oh absolutely, baby. it’s only a matter of time before you will them out of the century old porcelain. you got it!” he patted his ass and stepped away before max could turn and fully glare at him.

that was another thing his therapist suggested, for max to do something that he finds fulfilling. he doesn’t think she was thinking of him finally getting those stains that have been bugging him since they moved into their house, but when he told her, she just smiled and asked him what he’s tried.

when daniel comes back downstairs, dressed in his workout clothes and holding his phone, max sets down his scrub daddy and says, loudly “you said i couldn’t work out if i didn’t eat. so i’m of course not coming.” which meant that he really wanted to go.

daniel raised an eyebrow in his direction, his lips curling up as he asks “do you want to come and watch?” max practically sprints to get his own workout clothes on, even though daniel won’t let him work out but he likes watching anyways.

daniel has a meal supplement shake in his hand for him when he’s back down, whistling at him in his sweats and baggy tee, which is cut down to his hips practically. he’s pretty sure it’s daniel’s but he just threw on what he saw.

max chugs the shake and takes daniel’s hand as they walk to the gym, swinging his water bottle on the way as they chat about the day.

max wishes daniel didn’t have such an impact on his mood but he’s come to terms with it long ago when he realized that this was long term for them. so he tries to navigate as best as he can.

-

when they’re laying in bed, daniel tracing shapes on max’s back, daniel asks him what he asks every night:

“how was it today?” and max tells him honestly.

“i woke up anxious, that’s why i didn’t eat. i struggled with my class, and it made me very upset, of course. but going to the gym, eating dinner, and finally being able to orgasm made it better. i feel like today was a better day than last week’s tuesday.”