I was trying to write something else for famiglia and got stuck with a small brainworm, so I gift to you all 450 words of famiglia GP, set in the short chunk of time at the end of chapter 1 where max is waiting on the sectional, and GP is putting together the boxes of his things.
Gianpiero paces across Hayden's floor, running his hand across his head.
"I can't do it. I can't, I'm— I'm going to fuck it up, Hayds. I'm barely even thirty, I don't— what am I supposed to do with a kid?"
Hayden bites at the inside of his cheek, folding an old shirt from Gianpiero's dresser into a box. He's been trying to find things for Max to wear temporarily while Gianpiero packs up the other essentials.
He's still reeling that he doesn't live here anymore. That he has a new home, and that there's an entire teenager in it—
"If anyone can do it, it's you. None of the rest of us would've been able to step up the way you have."
Gianpiero presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to calm his breathing.
"And what if that was a mistake? Hayden, he doesn't even talk. How the hell am I supposed to get this right? I don't even know what to do with a kid. Doesn't he need to be in school? I can't possibly take him to every race with me, but this is my career—"
"GP. Gianpiero, mate, let's just,"
Hayden gets an arm across his shoulders and guides them back to the bed, sitting on the edge.
Gianpiero's next breath is ragged.
"He's so hurt, Hayden. How do I fix that? I mean— he's not slept through a single full night this entire time. He cries in his sleep, and he flinches at loud noises, and his hand is— Hayden, mate, it's fucked."
Hayden wraps a palm over his knee, pressing their shoulders together in support.
"You do exactly what you've been doing. Take it day by day. He's a tough kid, and you're a smart man, and you've got all of us behind you."
Gianpiero blinks, trying not to think of how small Max had felt when he'd held him after the accident, drenched in rain and skin slippery with blood. His face had glittered under the harsh lights with shattered glass, and he'd clung so tightly to him that there's still a faded bruise under his ribs, five fingerprints where Max had dug in when they'd tried to separate them.
The idea of someone trying to take him away now, after what they've been through— after Gianpiero has jumped international legal hoops, after he's turned his work bag into a collection of water and snacks and pain pills, after he's spent hours scrolling parenting forums while talking quietly to Max, trying to settle his tears without waking him up—
Max had refused to let go of him in the middle of the road. Gianpiero refuses to let him go now.
