🦢🦢🦢🦢🦢🦢🦢🦢 y'know what just give me the fic
i know who you are and you're NOT getting me that easily. that said. it did get too long not to put it under a cut.
When it happened for the first time, he was neither drunk nor dying. It was not the end of anything, and it had been coming at him for too long to call it the beginning. When it happened for the first time, what he remembers probably more than anything is that he was sore all over his whole body, and the cool waters of the lake that Daniel had brought him to did very little for it.
It was the race that made him so tired. At least, that was how he excused it away as he sat on the edge of the dock with his legs in the water up to his knees. It was perhaps true that Fernando had knocked him out in turn one, but there was always more to a race than the running of it. There was media. There was lots of mental preparation as well as physical. There were practice sessions. There was qualifying. There were a thousand reasons for his back and his legs and his knees to be killing him that were very easy to think about.
And the truth was he shouldn’t even be thinking about it at all. Daniel had made him a special invitation to come with him to this hidden corner of Salzburg that he had apparently found when he was only a little older than Max was at that moment. He had been still brimming with all of his energy from yesterday’s P3 when he had pulled him from his hotel room, but he had been very gentle anyway. Very understanding and sympathetic even when Max had insisted he didn’t feel like going. “Yeah, mate. It’s a rough hand, going out like that,” he had said, reaching out to tug on Max’s earlobe just a little. “Why don’t you come with me, anyway? It’ll do you good. Get your mind off of it.”
It had then suddenly been the most appealing offer Max had gotten all weekend long. Only in breathing fresh air did he realize how much his room smelled like Christian everywhere.
But Daniel had kept the car windows down on the drive, and he had tried his best to yodel. (Because, he said, it’s what the Von Trapps had been doing all up and down these streets eighty years ago.) And he kept with his smiling. And he knew secret places where no one would follow and find them. And he looked so strong.
Even in that moment, with Max only sitting on the dock while Daniel explored the deeper waters, he seemed suddenly to be a remedy of some kind. Like a balm he could spread over himself, and all the aches would disappear. Then, he never would have to think about the reasons for them. His wonderings crept back in the way that cool, blue shadows stretch at the sunset. What would it be like to kiss Daniel? He was, of course, still sure that it would be different than everything. It had to be.
“You were supposed to get in the water!” Daniel called out to him. He was very funny-looking where he was—just a head and shoulders in the distance.
“I already did, a little bit!” Max answered, straightening his spine and leaning forward to project his voice. “It’s quite cold for July!”
“That’s the beauty!” he answered, swimming closer. Quite a strange answer for Daniel, who never liked cold no matter the shape it took. When he was close enough to not have to shout, he continued, “It’s mountain water. Natural ice bath.”
(@anemptyflask)












