Chapter Text
Perhaps that to love means to sacrifice yourself until there's nothing left of you. Until you become a wasteland.
Perhaps it means to give: your time which is also your passion, it is your reason and your heart; your feelings, which means also your secrets, half locked down with half drawn shutters, always. In a word: yourself. To give yourself to the things you love which is to sacrifice your being until there's nothing left of you but a mouldered self.
To love someone, which also means to flood without a purpose, to burst in random acts of doubt, of fear, of desperation; to love someone but only in secret. Because to love means to give away your feelings, which should be always kept inside; to love someone means to try and mask it and fail. Your face is not set to win you any poker games. You see him passing by and your eyes lit up like sudden sparks in the back of your racing car.
Which means that loving him is not easy.
And loving him in secret is not secret enough.
“You'll come to my birthday party, yeah?”
Max fakes sudden forgetfulness. “When was it again?” he asks, as if he's not been circling the day of Charles’ birthday on made-up calendars since the day he learned the date. As if he didn't spend his teenage years gushing like a stupid fool over the sixteen days difference between them. As if he hasn't believed themselves to be something predicted. Like they were maybe meant to be. Like they were destined.
Still, to show knowledge of this would admit transparency, would risk him thinking Max interested. Which doesn't mean it isn't true. It's just not something that Max purposely seeks. Ambitiously, Max tries to err away from it—to not become obscenely obvious, thus to not fall victim to his own craving.
“On the sixteen, next week.” The sun presses insistently to Charles’ skin, to his naked torso, clinging to him sticky and stubborn and tempting. It shouldn't be warm outside today. By all means, Monaco should be flooding today; the rain seems to have backed up in favour of regaling upon this particular part of the Earth cloudless streams of sunshine. To make Max's life hell. “I'm doing the party here, in Monaco, on the day of it,” Charles says, unbothered, because why would he be? “But I've got us tickets to Mykonos for this weekend, actually.”
“Us?” Max breathes the word out without prior thought.
Charles startles as if caught lying. “Well, I. . . I was gonna say it earlier, but. . .” He laughs, gets red in the high of his cheeks. Which means he spoke without thinking. Us, he must've meant, as in him and his friends, be it his real life friends or work friends. Which places Max right on the opposite side of that list. Us, as in the people Charles wants to be with him celebrating his approaching birthday.
Us—the people Charles loves.
“It's alright,” Max says, like he gets it. Because he gets it. He needs to. “I actually have some stuff to do, this weekend, so.” The smile he gives Charles is small, but not rid of all affection. Because to love in secret means to forget yourself around him, which means to do things like assure him that it's alright he doesn't consider you his friend, that you're not on the list with the people he wants near. That he doesn't love you. You need to show him it's not a big deal, smile at him with the least amount of resentment. This is not a place for theatrics.
It is not his fault he doesn't feel the same.
“Oh!” Charles exclaims. The round of his mouth is pretty, but then again, what of him is not? “You've— I mean, yeah. I should've. . . Yeah, yeah, no, that's. . . The races start next week, too.”
Max nods. “They do, yeah.”
“But you're. . . You are needed next Wednesday, too? Would you— Could you, um. . . Do you have time then? To come?” He's embarrassed, Max can tell by the way he's getting active with his fingers, restless on his feet, like he'll bolt from this place any second now. Maybe Max shouldn't have pointed out his lying, after all.
“If you want me,” Max offers quietly. It's an olive branch, sure. It's formal, a saying; it's an opportunity to retract. He's giving him chances, he's saying: It's not true, you know? You don't really want me there, with you. So take it back now. I let you.
“I. . . I do, I. . . yeah,” Charles says instead. “I want you,” he says. “I really do,” he insists. But he's always been weird with words, that's also part of Charles’ charm. And Max can understand that these are only words, not hidden subtext at all. After growing up speaking French and Italian and whatever other languages Charles knows, English ends up a jumble of words whose nuances’, more often than not, are fading in conversations. Their meaning gets lost in translation. I want you doesn't mean I desire you. His I want you means I'm embarrassed I said all that. Here, come embarrass me too.
“Then I'll be there,” Max says, shrugs, nonchalantly. But then his heart revives, it startles back with a breathtaking smile of Charles’; conspires against him with every second they waste together. To divulge his secrets. To open him from inside his chest and take Charles by hands and shove them inside Max's body until he cracks open his ribs and he bleeds his secrets into his palms, drips his feelings between Charles’ fingers right here on the pavement. What a mess that would be.
“Can't wait,” Charles says, sunny, always sunny with him when they're off the track, when he smiles and looks at Max with this look that he's seen him look at thousands others. “How come you didn't do anything for yours? I expected you to have at least a get-together if not a real party. Because I asked Daniel, and Dan said he asked you and you said you were staying in.”
Which was not the truth at all. Max did had a get-together for his birthday, but he wasn't going to tell Daniel about it, was he? There were three participants: Max, his father, their severed relationship. The night's goal: attempts to smooth out old pains. Would've been inconvenient to have Charles or any other there, in between all that. Max couldn't have counted on Charles to stay and take his father's shadowed hatred towards any of Max's life choices the way Max did. He would've scorn. Made Jos angry.
Made Max proud.
He's not gonna tell him that, though, is he?
“Too tired, I guess,” Max says, insisting to not look at how Charles wipes down his torso with his palm. He probably fails. It is only Max's fault, the gaze that nourishes, ramifies to the point of explosion all over Charles's being. He should not do that. He should not act so riveted by some showing of skin.
But love means: I rub my eyes against your body as if they'd suddenly grown fingers. My fingertips tremble with desire, to touch, to enwrap my hands around you, to caress, to brush against, to make myself expand all over you, then suddenly collapse until I've swallowed you all.
“Already tired of partying, mate?”
“We're getting old,” says Pierre, showing up from nowhere and startling them both. Or perhaps that he's been here all along; he's also partially naked, branding some shorts like Charles, wet with sweat like Charles, post-workout heaving like Charles. So they must've been here together from the start. But how could Max remember? It is also universally known that he makes you forget about anything and anyone around you. Love, Max can tacitly admit it, is a dangerous enemy when trying to conduct yourself accordingly.
“You are getting old,” Charles says to Pierre, and does this thing with his eyes which is a savage gift for Max's heart. “I feel like I'm only getting started. I think now I'm in my prime. I could go party all night. We should go, no? Tonight, yeah, come on guys!”
“Yeah, count me out,” Pierre backs away a little from them. “Kika's already planned the night for us, and I don't think that any party would have her give up on spa night, so.”
“You're getting boring, mate,” Charles pouts at his friend. Then he turns his head to look at Max. And how good it feels? The heat of the sun blazing up your face. “Max,” Charles says, extending his hand as if reaching for him; then slowly pulling it away, eyes big and bigger smile. “You can't say no to me.”
But the thing is, Max really can. He can refuse Charles, he can say no to him, can see him disappointed with him, because this is what Max does best. It is not progress, and it is not self-preservation, but it is also part of the secrets he's hiding. For his mind, it is something constant. He won't say yes to Charles because that means giving in. And giving in means giving yourself to him, which means transparency, which would leave Max bare open to reach for dead ends.
And he's already made a fool of himself enough for a day.
“Not a way in hell, mate,” he responds. But Charles’ smile changes like hell is something easy to access. Thankfully, Pierre steps in before Charles gets to show Max the way, too.
“Don't be annoying, calamar. I'm sure Max has other plans for tonight than to entertain you.”
“You have, Max?” Charles asks, not much unsettled by Pierre’s intervention.
“Some sim racing,” Max shrugs. “Maybe some other games, I don't know, maybe some Mario Cart. I didn't plan anything exciting for tonight.”
“Oh,” Charles exclaims. “I love Mario Cart.”
“Charles.” Pierre says his friend's name like a warning, jabs his elbow to some part of Charles's body like a piece of advice. Charles squirms away from him, stepping closer to Max.
“We should play together. I promise I'll be good.”
Pierre facepalms. Max stares. Charles blinks like he's just now realising what he's said. “I mean, at Mario Cart. I'll beat you, of course. I'll be all over you— I mean way over you, because I'm gonna beat you, I'm that good, I'm the best at it, they call me the king of—”
Max silently coughs. “Charles,” he says, interrupting his rambling.
“Yes.”
And he's weird again with the words. His yes is not a question, it's not confusion. It is an answer, although Max hasn't gotten around to ask him anything yet. He does it now.
“You want to come over?” There. Max has said it. And the world is still spinning, and the earth hasn't shattered. Only his fingers tingle, mini earthquakes that ring echo in his ears. “For Mario Cart.”
“If you insist,” Charles says, playful, and Max rolls his eyes, and smiles, and the aftershock is gone, but what about the ruins? What's Max supposed to do with them?
“We should go now,” Pierre says before either Charles or Max tries to put their foot in their mouth again. He tugs at Charles’ arm until he’s moving him away from Max. Max tries not to take that personally and partially flunks it.
“Wait!” Charles stumbles on his feet to try and turn to Max. “I will text you,” he says, louder than necessary. “Do not bail out!” He stumbles again when Pierre tugs him more forcefully to steer him in the right direction. Pierre ends up in the middle of the street for his trouble. Luckly, this street in Monaco seems vacant of any driving cars.
Max's laugh is not heard, it gets picked up by the wind, which is now free to reign, the sun has gone. It will rain over Monaco today, afterall. You will drown, the dark skies tell him, have always told him. You will end up holding your breath the whole time, and you'll die. So take a breath of water instead. And if the thought panics you then you'll die. And if the thought excites you, then you'll also die. Either way, you're dead.
A rumble from above has Max shaking his head. He turns his back to the blue color of death of Monaco's clouds, to the other two pushing each other around in the distance, then restarts his route towards the store. Right. That's why he went out for. Groceries.