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the art of noticing ; charles leclerc

pairing charles leclerc x f. reader ( third person story )

every passing conversations, every casual interaction, you might think he never really remembered it. but as they say, to be loved is to be seen. he sees every part of you when you think he doesn’t.

word count 6648.

content 6 times charles showed you that love doesn’t always shout. sometimes, it can just whisper “I’m thinking about you” “you mentioned it before” + some insta stories snippets into their life!

author’s note if you can’t already tell, i think i’m the biggest acts of service person ever. this might be my favourite piece i’ve ever written

song recs for this fic you are in love

— I.

It was the sort of detail that would have escaped most — a minor oversight, inconsequential to anyone else, invisible even to the well-meaning. But not to Charles. Never to Charles.

The evening sun had just begun its slow descent behind the low rooftops, casting a gilded glow over the terrace of the little café they often frequented. Their table was nestled beneath a canopy of rustling ivy, where laughter mingled with the clink of cutlery and the amber hum of street lamps flickering to life. Glasses glistened with condensation, cradled in idle hands, catching light with the easy sparkle of summer. Their friends, an ensemble of familiar voices, were already settled, drinks ordered in advance, good-natured teasing passed across the table like bread.

Charles arrived a touch later, having been caught in traffic on his way from a sponsor meeting. He approached the table just in time to see her lean forward with a soft laugh, lifting her glass — a tall one, rim beaded with droplets and garnished with a curl of citrus, and drink. But not with a straw. And in that single, fleeting moment, something in him paused.

It was such a small thing. A negligible detail. But she always drank with a straw. Not out of necessity, but fondness, an affection for the sensation. The soft draw of liquid through narrow plastic, the idle way she would chew the end as she listened intently or toyed with it while thinking. He remembered the way she used to tuck the straw between her fingers, twirl it absentmindedly, press her lips to it as though the world might slow down just a touch if she did.

Once, he’d asked her why, half-mocking, wholly curious, and she had simply smiled, that lopsided, sunlit sort of smile that softened every part of her face. “Feels nicer,” she’d said with a quiet shrug. “I know it’s silly. I just like it. It makes things feel a little gentler.”

And she’d laughed, then, nibbling at the bendy part of the straw with a grin like moonlight skipping over still water. A laugh that, even now, echoed somewhere in his chest like an afterthought he never quite let go.

So when he saw her now, sipping directly from the glass, without complaint, without hesitation — something curled within him, quietly and insistently. She hadn’t asked. She never would. She adapted so easily it almost hurt. He saw it in the way she tucked discomfort away like loose threads, how she made do with what was in front of her, never demanding more, never even flinching when something was missing.

Even now, surrounded by friends and the gentle cadence of conversation, she said nothing and merely smiled, her fingers cradling the glass as though it had always been enough. But he knew better. He knew her.

So, without a word, Charles rose from his chair, offering a murmured excuse that went largely unnoticed, something about needing the loo, said softly enough to drift into the night air. No one questioned it. He walked briskly through the open terrace doors and into the softly lit interior of the café, his eyes scanning behind the bar until he spotted them, a small glass jar of plastic straws, almost forgotten, nestled beside the napkins.

He reached for one, black, slim, bendable and turned it between his fingers once, thoughtfully. It wasn’t much. But it was something. And perhaps that was what mattered. When he returned to the table, no one looked up, still mid-conversation, caught in the gentle swell of evening mirth. She sat with her chin tilted slightly towards the sky, her eyes gleaming as she listened to one of the others recount something foolish and likely exaggerated. The curl of her hair framed her cheeks, touched by the honeyed light of dusk, and her drink, still half-full, rested at her elbow, untouched since that first sip.

He did not speak. He didn’t need to. With the same quiet deliberation with which one might place a cherished relic on an altar, Charles leaned forward and gently slipped the straw into her glass. It slid between ice cubes with a soft clink, the citrus bobbing in its wake, and then he eased back into his seat with the poise of someone for whom this was entirely ordinary. She looked down and then, slowly, up.

Her smile, when it came, was not performative. It was not polite or surprising or reflexive. It bloomed. Her eyes crinkled into crescents, luminous with unspoken gratitude, and for a heartbeat, she simply stared at him as if committing the moment to memory, as though something in her had softened. The kind of smile that made everything else, the noise, the laughter, the summer breeze, fall away, leaving only the space between them, tender and charged with something wordless.

Her fingers curled instinctively around the straw, lifting it to her lips with a soft sip, and immediately, she began to nibble at the edge in that old, familiar way, the way that told him, without a single syllable, I’m at ease now. You saw me.

He offered a light shrug in return, feigning indifference, his expression unreadable save for the smallest, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Forgot you’re intolerable without a straw,” he murmured, his voice so dry it might’ve passed for teasing, were it not for the warmth flickering behind his gaze.

She let out a breath of laughter, low and fond, her shoulders lifting slightly in a gesture that betrayed her embarrassment and her joy all at once. “Shut up,” she whispered, not looking away, her eyes still tethered to him as though the rest of the world had blurred into the periphery. And in that moment, in the simplicity of a plastic straw offered without fanfare, Charles knew what most never would: that love, when it is quiet, when it is observant and enduring, often speaks not in grand gestures, but in these infinitesimal acts of memory. Of knowing. Of seeing someone as they are, and responding without request.

He hoped she understood what he could not yet voice, that he remembered every little thing about her, not out of obligation, but out of reverence. That he noticed when something wasn’t right, even if she would never say so. That her comfort mattered more than conversation, more than appearances, more than anything else that moment had to offer.

That this, this one small straw, was not just about a drink. It was about her. Always her.

And she smiled, with that gentle, grateful radiance he knew he’d carry with him far longer than anything else the evening had to give.

The terrace had emptied gradually, chairs scraped back, goodbyes exchanged with the lingering warmth of familiarity. One by one, their friends had peeled away into the night, swallowed by car doors and street corners and the inevitable pull of Monday morning. But Charles, as always, had remained.

They walked in silence now, side by side, their footsteps soft against the pavement slick with the sheen of evening humidity. The city breathed around them — not loud, not intrusive, but alive. Distant music drifted from an open window above a bakery, the faint scent of pastry still clinging to the air. Her arms were folded lightly across her chest, her fingers absently tracing the edge of her sleeve, while Charles walked with his hands in his pockets, his gait unhurried, deliberate.

They weren’t speaking, and yet nothing felt unsaid. Her thoughts, however, had not left the café. More precisely, they had not left the straw. It had been such a small thing. Insignificant to the world. But to her, it was everything. Because he had noticed. He remembered.

She hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t looked at him in any particular way. Hadn’t sighed or hinted or pouted or reached for something she knew wasn’t there. She had simply adapted, taken the glass as it was handed to her and drank without pause. And yet, within minutes of arriving, he had noticed the absence of a thin piece of plastic. And went out of his way to make it right.

And it wasn’t just about the straw. It was never just about the straw.

It was about how much of her he still carried quietly with him. The subtle things, the gentlest of preferences, things she herself sometimes forgot to mention aloud, but which he held onto as though they were sacred. She hadn’t spoken about her odd fondness for drinking through straws in months. And yet he remembered. Not because she reminded him. But because he wanted to.

The thought made something soft unfurl within her, something fragile and aching all at once. She glanced at him now, half in shadow, half bathed in the soft glow of a passing streetlight. There was a faint line between his brows, not from worry, but from thought. As though his mind was elsewhere, tracing the shape of some silent burden he never spoke of. His jaw was faintly tensed, the vein in his temple visible when he turned his head. And yet, when he looked at her, when their eyes met for the briefest beat, there was something quiet there. Gentle. Steady. The kind of softness that made her throat tighten with something unnameable.

“Charles,” she said, her voice a murmur in the hush of the evening, barely above the rustling of leaves in the wind. He looked over at her, one brow arching faintly. “Hmm?” She hesitated, not for lack of words, but because the feeling sat so deeply in her chest, she feared it might splinter if she let it out too carelessly. So instead, she offered a smile, quiet and full of meaning, her gaze resting on his face the way one might rest their fingers on something precious.

“Thank you. For the straw.” His brow furrowed, not out of confusion, but in that way he often did when receiving gratitude for something he considered too obvious to deserve it. His lips curved faintly, and he exhaled through his nose, amused. “Hardly worth a medal, is it?”

But she stopped walking. He turned back to her, and in the pause between footfalls, something shifted. Her eyes were glassy with a sheen of emotion she didn’t quite trust herself to name. “It is,” she said, her voice firmer now, though it trembled at the edges. “You remembered. And I didn’t even ask. I didn’t hint. I didn’t even think of it myself until you brought it to me. But you remembered.”

Her hand rose, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she looked down, smiling faintly to herself before meeting his gaze again. “That’s the thing about you. You remember the little things, the soft things. The things no one else thinks to keep.” Charles was still, and in the golden light spilling from a nearby window, she saw it, the subtle tightening of his jaw, the way his lips parted just slightly, as though he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure he could.

She stepped a little closer. “You always say you’re not good with words. That you’re not the sentimental one. But you are,” she said softly, the words tumbling out now, fragile but insistent. “You don’t make a show of it, but you see me. Even when I think I’m fading into the background, you still see me. And you do these quiet, thoughtful things that no one ever asks for. That I never ask for. But you do them anyway.”

She laughed, self-conscious, shaking her head. “It was just a straw, right? But it felt like... I don’t know. Like you reached into a part of my heart I didn’t even realise was waiting to be touched.” Charles blinked, and for a moment, all the usual retorts seemed to fail him. He looked down, exhaling slowly, his thumb brushing the edge of his palm, a gesture she recognised, the way he often steadied himself when emotion crept too close to the surface.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost reverent. “I notice you,” he said. “Even when you think I don’t. I always have.” And with that, they fell into step once more, the silence between them no longer hollow, but full, thick with feeling, steeped in the quiet knowledge that sometimes, love does not arrive with trumpets or declarations.

Sometimes, it’s a straw in a glass. Sometimes, it’s a man who remembers how you like to drink, even when you forget to ask. And sometimes, that’s how you know. You are loved.

— II.

Breakfasts with Charles were never grand affairs. Not the way one might imagine in the fantasy of hotel mornings, no ostentatious silver platters beneath cloche lids, no chilled flutes of mimosa or extravagant towers of French patisserie. No, theirs were quieter rituals. Softer. Built not of spectacle, but of knowing, the sort that could only be cultivated over time and tenderness.

The hotel buffet, as ever, offered the usual suspects: lukewarm eggs in wide metal pans, wilted greens, triangle slices of pale toast barely brushed with butter, and a cruel abundance of strawberry-flavoured atrocities masquerading as yoghurts, jams, and jellies.

She had always loathed that particular brand of cloying sweetness, that artificial tang of strawberry-flavoured nonsense that seemed to follow her everywhere. It wasn’t the fruit itself, no, she rather liked that, the way the seeds crackled faintly between her teeth and the juices stained her fingertips. But the manufactured version, bright pink and plastic-tasting, reminded her of childhood medicine and cheap lollipops left too long in the sun.

And yet, even before she reached the table, before the first sip of coffee passed her lips or the sleepy fog had lifted from her thoughts — Charles always knew. He was already seated when she arrived that morning, a page of Le Monde folded neatly beside his plate, his cutlery arranged with the sort of casual precision she’d come to associate with him. His hair was damp, fresh from the shower, and he wore that vaguely rumpled Oxford shirt he never quite bothered to button all the way. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms dusted with a faint tan, and there was a small ink smudge on his thumb, always, somehow, there was ink.

As she slid into the seat opposite him, the plate already waiting for her told her everything. He’d done it again. Her toast sat unassumingly on its plate, two slices stacked slightly askew, but without a trace of tomato. Not even a smear of pulp or a rogue seed to betray its absence. They were gone, of course, spirited away onto his plate, nestled beside his eggs. She could see them now, glistening under the morning light, sliced thinly and stacked in that way he did, not for presentation, but for ease.

She didn’t even have to look at him. She knew. He had eaten them for her. Not out of obligation, not because she asked, but simply because he remembered.

She picked up her fork, her gaze flicking to the small fruit bowl beside her napkin, and there, too, was the quiet curation of his affection. No strawberry yoghurt. No pink-tinted jam. Only the fresh strawberries remained, halved neatly, their bright red flesh exposed, untouched. Just the way she liked.

And just beside it, on a tiny plate he’d nudged to her side without ceremony, was his croissant, golden and still warm, along with half a hard-boiled egg and a small wedge of brie he’d quietly abandoned from his own tray. His own breakfast, modest and picked apart, as though it had been negotiated and reassembled with her preferences in mind, not his.

“You know,” she said after a long silence, her voice still a little hoarse from sleep, “you always eat the tomatoes off my toast.” Charles didn’t look up from his coffee. He gave a faint shrug, as if this fact was hardly worth remarking on. “They’re better on mine.” She smiled. “You don’t even like them that much.”

He finally glanced at her then, his eyes soft but unreadable, the ghost of a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I don’t dislike them either.” A beat passed, quiet but full. “And the yoghurts?” she asked, nodding at the abandoned strawberry pot still on the serving tray behind him, untouched. “Didn’t fancy those this morning either?”

Charles lifted his coffee cup, the steam curling around his knuckles, and took a slow sip. “They taste like regret and sugar-free chewing gum,” he said dryly. “Wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all you.” She let out a laugh, the kind that escaped before she could smooth it down, unexpectedly genuine. “But you used to eat them.”

“I used to do a lot of things,” he replied, setting the cup down with care, his voice dropping just slightly. “Then I realised how much you hated them.” There was something unspoken in the air between them then. Something that wasn’t quite said, but pressed in from the edges like morning mist creeping across a windowpane.

It wasn’t just about the tomatoes. Or the yoghurt. Or the reshuffled breakfast plates. It was about noticing. It was about care. It was about the way he saw her, not only in the big declarations, but in the minutiae most others missed. The way she peeled her fruit but left the seeds. The way she pushed the tomatoes to the side without fanfare. The way her nose crinkled at artificial scents, her disdain for strawberry-flavoured things nearly as strong as her fondness for the real fruit itself.

And Charles — reticent, observant Charles, had made it his quiet mission to preserve her comfort without ever calling attention to it. “You remember everything,” she murmured, almost to herself. Charles didn’t smile. He didn’t offer any easy reply. Instead, he simply met her gaze across the narrow table, his eyes steady and impossibly gentle. “No,” he said, after a moment. “Just the things that matter.”

She looked down then, cheeks warm, her fork idly cutting into the yolk of the egg he’d given her. The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was full, thick with memory and unspoken affection, like a well-worn book whose pages still smelled faintly of ink and the past.

In that moment, she realised, as she chewed the toast that no longer bore the sting of tomato, drank the coffee he always sweetened to her taste, and watched him quietly refill her glass without a word — that love didn’t always need to shout. It didn’t have to be grand or performative.

Sometimes, it was breakfast. Sometimes, it was the tomatoes he ate so she didn’t have to, the yoghurts he left untouched, the fruit bowls he edited in silence. And sometimes, that was more than enough.

— III.

The paddock was a cacophony of movement and sound — a restless tapestry of camera shutters, overlapping voices, glinting flashes, and the low thrum of engines idling in the distance. Reporters swarmed like bees, each vying for a slice of attention, microphone cords tangled at their feet and press passes flapping in the breeze like fragile flags of entitlement. It was an environment of barely restrained chaos — all gloss and noise and performance.

And she hated it. Not the sport, nor the spectacle, but this part. The part that demanded visibility. The part that left little room for silence. She stood just to the side of Charles, her figure half-shielded by his taller frame, a step behind but tethered to him by presence alone. She didn’t speak, she rarely did when cameras were involved, but her smile, soft and hesitant, held steady for the sake of politeness. She was good at that: presenting a composed exterior, even when her nerves fluttered like moths beneath her skin.

Yet her hands betrayed her. They always did. When there was nothing to hold, nothing to occupy the anxious energy that simmered beneath the surface of her stillness, her fingers defaulted to the familiar ritual of picking at her nails. The edges of her thumbnails were already raw from the morning, tiny crescents of skin peeled back in quiet punishment, and now her index finger circled the corner of her nail with obsessive precision, over and over and over again.

Charles was speaking — something about race strategy and track conditions — his voice low and measured, the cadence effortless, as if the words came from muscle memory alone. But even as he faced the journalist and nodded thoughtfully at their questions, his eyes flicked sideways. Just once. Just enough. He saw her hands. Of course he did. He always saw.

Without a break in conversation, without so much as a change in his tone, he reached down and unhooked the silver bracelet from his wrist, the one she had once described absentmindedly as fidget-worthy during a quiet moment in the back of a hotel shuttle, when she’d spun it between her fingers for an entire hour without realising.

He slipped it from beneath the cuff of his fireproof undershirt, fingers deft despite the constraints of the suit, and turned slightly, subtly, towards her. His voice didn’t falter. His words continued to flow into the press microphone, eloquent and precise, as if he weren’t doing something else entirely with his hands. Then, low enough for her ears only, he murmured, “Here. Play with this instead.”

His voice was a balm — even, warm, without judgement. As though this, too, was simply part of the routine. As natural as breathing. She glanced up at him, startled at first by the bracelet being pressed gently into her palm, the cool metal coiling like a snake across her skin. Her fingers closed around it instinctively, grateful beyond words, and her lips parted, as if to protest, or perhaps to thank him but no sound emerged.

There was only the look he gave her then, fleeting, almost imperceptible, but anchored in a softness that undid her. And so she stayed quiet, as she always did. Smiled politely at the camera. Let the storm pass around her. But this time, her fingers twisted the bracelet between them instead of worrying the edge of her cuticles to blood.

Later, someone would post the clip online, a zoomed-in snippet from the live interview, barely ten seconds long. You could see her, half-hidden behind him, shifting her weight from foot to foot. You could see her hand start to rise towards her mouth before being gently intercepted by his. You could see the bracelet passed between them like a secret. And then, as clear as sunlight, the way her shoulders lowered, her thumb idly tracing the ridged pattern of the chain links, the storm in her spine slowly dissolving.

And Charles? He didn’t look at her again. He simply went on answering questions about tyre degradation and sector times as if he hadn’t just pulled her out of the spiral and placed her firmly back into the world. It was never loud, the way he cared.

Never performative, never dramatic. But always, always present. In gestures small enough to be missed by anyone who wasn’t paying attention. In the accessories he wore, not for style or sponsorship, but for her. In the way he carried her needs like second nature, quietly, without ceremony, without needing to be thanked.

She stood beside him, her fingers wrapped gently around the bracelet that now warmed in her palm from the heat of her own skin, a talisman, a lifeline, a reminder that someone saw her even when she didn’t speak. And for the rest of the interview, while the cameras flashed and the journalists jostled and Charles slipped easily from one polished reply to the next, she didn’t touch her fingernails once.

— IV.

The room was steeped in that peculiar kind of silence that only arrives in the early hours, not emptiness, but a hush thick enough to hear the passing of time itself. Moonlight poured like melted pewter through the gauzy curtains, brushing silver over the bed linens, over the slope of the duvet where Charles lay half-curled on his side, one arm instinctively reaching out, seeking warmth where hers should’ve been. Only to find air.

His hand met the cool, undisturbed hollow of her pillow, the sheets untouched. No warmth lingered. No trace of her sleep-heavy breath or the weight of her limbs tucked close. His brow furrowed in the dark, a slight crease between his brows as he blinked himself more fully awake. There was no sound, no movement, only that unsettling stillness which made the absence of her even louder.

He sat up, the mattress creaking softly beneath his weight. His bare feet found the floorboards with a muted sigh, and he reached for the dressing gown slung across the armchair. The air was cooler than expected as he padded quietly through the hallway, passing the soft spill of lamplight under the kitchen door.

There, in the quiet glow of the refrigerator’s faint light and the soft amber cast of the counter lamp, she stood in silence. Her frame, small and pale in one of his old T-shirts, was silhouetted against the darkened kitchen like a figure carved from sleep and shadow. She was cradling a glass of water between both hands, fingers wrapped tightly around it as if drawing heat, though the liquid was cold.

Her gaze was far-off, fixed somewhere beyond the windowpane above the sink, where nothing stirred but the occasional drifting wisp of cloud. He leaned against the doorframe, his voice barely a whisper. “Couldn’t sleep again?” She turned, almost guiltily, her expression softening at the sight of him. Her smile was faint, apologetic, though he needed no apology, he’d long known her sleepless habits, her restlessness once the world went quiet and the thoughts grew loud.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” she murmured, her voice hoarse with fatigue, the barest crack threading her words. Charles crossed the room in a few quiet strides. He didn’t speak again until he reached her, until he’d taken the glass from her hands with a tenderness that made her breath catch. He placed it gently on the counter, then reached for her wrist, fingers warm and sure as they circled it.

“Come back to bed,” he said, not a suggestion, but a quiet, unwavering promise. “I’ll read to you.” She blinked up at him, her expression half amused, half disbelieving. “A bedtime story?” He offered a lopsided smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and softened his usually composed features into something achingly fond. “If it helps, I’ll even do the voices.”

She huffed a breath of laughter, barely a sound, really, but it melted the frost clinging to her bones, enough for her to nod, allowing him to lead her back down the hall with one arm loosely around her shoulders, his thumb brushing absent circles against the curve of her arm.

Back in the dim sanctuary of their bedroom, he tucked her in first — carefully, like something sacred — smoothing the duvet over her legs, brushing a stray wisp of hair away from her temple before retreating momentarily to the bookshelf tucked into the alcove across the room.

When he returned, he held a small, well-thumbed book in his hand. The cover was faded, the corners worn soft by time and use, one of those children’s storybooks she had once confessed brought her comfort, the kind with more whimsy than structure, tales about forest creatures in waistcoats and teacups that could talk.

He settled beside her with the ease of familiarity, one arm behind her head, the other holding the book open against his thigh. She turned towards him, head resting on his chest, and he began to read, softly, deliberately, with a cadence shaped not for theatrics, but for soothing. His voice, though deeper than the tales demanded, wrapped around each sentence with a kind of reverence, unhurried, as though willing each word to guide her gently out of her wakefulness.

“And so the hedgehog, with his scarf trailing behind him like the tail of a comet, tiptoed into the clearing where the moon had woven silver through the grass…” She didn’t respond, but her breathing slowed, gradually, like a tide beginning to recede. Her fingers, which had been nervously twisting the edge of the duvet, stilled, then curled into the fabric of his shirt. He continued reading even as her eyelids fluttered shut, even as her body grew heavier against him, her tension dissolving into the warmth of his presence.

By the time he turned the page, she was asleep, her expression soft now, no longer pinched by exhaustion, the crease between her brows smoothed as though sleep had finally offered her something close to peace.

Charles didn’t stop reading. Not immediately. He read on for a few more pages, his voice a low hum against the quiet, not for her benefit now, but simply to fill the silence with something gentle, something kind.

Eventually, he placed the book down on the bedside table and turned the lamp off with a gentle click. The darkness folded around them once more, but this time, it was not empty. He gathered her closer in his arms, pressing a kiss to her crown, and whispered into the space between them, “Sleep well, amore.”

She didn’t stir. But he stayed awake a while longer, just to listen to the rhythm of her breath, and to marvel at how something as simple as a storybook could coax sleep from the jaws of her insomnia, not because of the words themselves, but because it was him reading them.

Because sometimes, love was not in grand declarations, but in the quiet conviction of a man who would sit in the stillness of 3 in the morning, reading stories aloud just to help her find peace even when he lacked the sleep from his race schedule.

— V.

There were, perhaps, a hundred louder things one could observe in the paddock on a race weekend — the purr and growl of machinery fine-tuned to the edge of performance, the subtle orchestra of radios crackling commands, the thrum of soles against tarmac, and the easy camaraderie threaded through half-spoken jokes and short bursts of laughter.

Yet, amidst it all, Charles sat cross-legged on a bench just outside of hospitality, the sunshine glazing the shoulders of his black hoodie, his head bowed in quiet concentration over a humble collection of brightly coloured sweets.

Scattered across the small table in front of him lay three opened packets of Skittles, their glossy little forms glinting in the sunlight like enamelled jewels. He was sorting through them with a precision that bordered on the methodical, fingertips deftly flicking away the reds, oranges, yellows and greens, setting aside the coveted purples into a separate paper cup with all the seriousness of a jeweller sifting for amethysts.

To the untrained eye, it might have looked absurd — a Formula One driver, whose fingers gripped a steering wheel at 300 km/h with surgical control, now carefully hunched over sugar-coated confections like he was performing some sacred ritual. But there was something ineffably tender in the way he did it. Something unspoken and warm.

The interruption came, inevitably, in the form of laughter. “Mate, what the hell are you doing?” Max’s voice was bright with amusement as he strolled past, his cap pulled low over his brow, eyes crinkled in curiosity.

Charles didn’t even look up, merely plucked another red Skittle and dropped it unceremoniously into the discard pile. “Sorting them,” he said simply, his tone nonchalant. “She likes the purple ones.”

There was a pause. Then, the echo of laughter again — not mocking, but affectionate — as Max was joined by Carlos and Lewis, the three of them forming an impromptu audience for the quiet absurdity.

“That’s commitment,” Carlos grinned, nudging Max with his elbow. “You’re mad, you know that?” Lewis arched a brow, arms folded, a teasing glint in his gaze. “She said that, like, once?”

Charles finally glanced up then, his expression unbothered, the faintest of smirks playing at the corner of his mouth. “She mentioned it once, yes,” he replied, brushing a few more Skittles into the growing collection of purples. “But to be loved is to be seen, non?”

The words weren’t said with fanfare or boast. They were simply there, quiet and sincere, spoken in that lilting Monegasque accent of his, and yet they landed like poetry. The kind of sentence that hung in the air long after the speaker had gone back to sorting sweets.

The trio exchanged glances, that same fond amusement flickering in their expressions, before they moved on down the paddock, chuckling to themselves. But Charles remained, undisturbed, content with the small but purposeful task before him. The sun had risen higher by the time she arrived.

There was always something quieter about her presence — not shy, necessarily, but composed, inward. She moved like someone who didn’t need to fill every silence, whose stillness spoke volumes where words might fall short. Dressed in a simple sundress and trainers, her accreditation swinging gently from her lanyard, she smiled as she approached him, her eyes lifting slightly in surprise at the small paper cup he held out in her direction.

“What’s this?” she asked, her fingers brushing his as she took it from him. “Purple Skittles,” he said, leaning back, one leg crossed over the other with an easy air. “You said you liked them, that they’re your favourites.” Her lips parted, not quite in speech, more in that tender astonishment of being remembered. Really remembered.

Not in the grand gestures, not in declarations painted across sky banners or diamond-studded gifts, but in this, in purple sweets sorted by hand on a sunlit morning, because she had once mentioned, offhandedly, that she liked them best. She looked down at the cup in her hands, the colours all the same, her favourites, and then back up at him, her gaze warm, slightly glassy, as though her heart had swelled so quietly it pressed against the edges of her chest.

“You really remembered.” He shrugged, feigning indifference, but there was a smile tugging at his mouth, gentle and unmistakably proud. “Of course I did.” There it was again, that unshakeable sense of being seen. Of being watched with care, of her passing remarks held like rare treasures in the corners of his mind. She sank onto the bench beside him, her shoulder brushing his, and offered him one of the purple Skittles in turn.

“You’re getting soft,” she teased lightly. “No,” he murmured, bumping her knee with his. “Just attentive.” And for a moment, as the bustle of the paddock carried on around them, the clatter of trolleys, the murmurs of engineers, the flash of cameras, they sat in their little orbit of stillness. Just two people, elbows brushing, sharing sugar sweets beneath a springtime sun.

Because to be loved is to be seen. And to be seen is to be remembered in the quietest, smallest ways — even in the sorting of purple Skittles at half past ten in the paddock.

— VI.

There was nothing particularly offensive about spring onions. To most, they were innocuous, the sort of garnish sprinkled with habitual flourish by chefs who sought only to add colour, not controversy, to their plates. A final dusting of green, delicate and insistent, perched atop steaming bowls and glistening noodles like the feather in a cap, largely decorative and often overlooked.

But not by her. She never made a fuss. Not the kind to push her preferences loudly into the centre of a room or send plates back with disdain. Instead, her disapproval was always quiet, a subtle wrinkle of her nose, a pause just long enough before the first bite.

And then, with a kind of resigned patience, she would begin the delicate process of removing them herself, picking at the chopped spring onions with the tip of a spoon or the corner of a serviette, collecting the flecks of green into a tiny pile at the edge of her plate as though they were unwelcome thoughts she was trying to quietly set aside.

Charles had noticed, of course. Not at once, not with any grand revelation, but with the sort of slow-burning attentiveness that came from watching someone you loved simply exist.

He had seen the way she did it every time, never complaining, always careful not to appear troublesome, and something about that unspoken discomfort had stirred something in him. A quiet sort of ache, almost imperceptible, nestled beneath his ribs.

It happened first in Shanghai, in the modest, low-lit restaurant tucked behind the circuit, the kind of place frequented by locals and drivers alike, with steam fogging the windows and the scent of sesame and broth heavy in the air.

She had ordered a simple bowl of rice porridge, and he had watched as she began the routine once again, that tiny, precise extraction of spring onions from the silky surface.

He reached across the table without a word. “Let me,” he murmured, his voice low and warm, fingers already reaching for her spoon. She blinked, a little startled, as he gently angled the bowl toward himself.

He worked deftly, silently — spooning the offending garnish out with the focus of someone performing a task far weightier than it appeared. It was almost comical, how seriously he took it, how meticulously he gathered every green sliver and flicked it onto a side plate as though defusing a bomb.

When he returned the dish to her, his expression was matter-of-fact. “There. All clear.” She gave him a look — soft, amused, a little disbelieving. “You didn’t have to—”

“I wanted to.” The way he said it, without bravado, without ceremony, made her chest pull painfully tight. There was something infinitely more romantic in that than in flowers or fireworks. This quiet removal of what she disliked. This small, wordless protection of her comfort.

And so it became a ritual, unspoken but unmissable. In every city, every continent, whether in posh post-race dinners with crystal glassware or street-side cafés with mismatched crockery, he would check her plate first. His eyes would scan for the telltale greens, and if they were there, he would intercept her dish with a casual, “Wait, let me get rid of those for you.”

Sometimes, he would do it even before the server had fully retreated, already lifting his fork to sweep aside the spring onions before she had a chance to touch her napkin. No one else paid much mind to it, perhaps dismissing it as habit or fussiness, but for her, each gesture felt like a quiet sonnet sung beneath breath.

Once, she had asked, her voice hushed beneath the noise of clinking cutlery and background music, “You remember every time. Why?” Charles had glanced up from her plate, his eyes meeting hers with that same unassuming warmth that always made her feel like her heart was caught between its beats.

“Because you don’t like them,” he said simply, as though it required no further explanation. And perhaps it didn’t.

To be loved, truly loved, was not always in the grand gestures. It was not in serenades or showy declarations. It was in the gentle hand that remembered what you quietly endured, and removed it before you had to ask. It was in the bowl of porridge, stripped of its garnish. In the way he handed it back with a soft smile, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to safeguard someone’s comfort, one tiny green sliver at a time.

Because, after all, to be loved is to be seen. And to be seen is to be known, not in the loudness of who we are, but in the quietest corners of what we avoid.

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