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my #choffering for this weekend: charles x bryan after singapore

read on ao3

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After Singapore, Charles very briefly considers quitting and never coming back.

It’s a fleeting thought, there and gone in the time it takes to pull off his fireproofs and change back into his own clothes. He’s not going to leave racing, obviously. He’s not even going to leave Ferrari, most likely. But the thought is there now, unspoken but indisputably real, when before it was little more than a silly possibility banded around by a press who couldn’t understand the depth of his loyalty.

If you cut him, he is certain he will still bleed racing red. But that once-endless well is running dry, and Charles doesn’t know how much he has left—or how he will know when he’s reached the bottom.

The sweater Joris has left for him is plain white, some kind of soft cashmere that feels lovely, along with baggy black sweatpants. Everything else everywhere is bright, rosso corsa red around him. He is a black-and-white dot drowning in a red sea, but the thought of wearing even a single stitch of that color right now feels unbearable. After today, after the last two months of nothing but praying for miracles that didn’t come and LICOing his way lap after lap to midfield finishes, it may as well be red with his blood.

Despite the way the fluorescent lights turn his face pale, Charles feels more like himself as he looks in the mirror than he has in days. Even his own skin has felt tight and stifling this weekend, like ill-fitting armor stretched thin around his body, but letting the Ferrari-branded layers pool at his feet and wrapping himself in his own at least helps.

Charles steps out of the changing nook to a mostly empty garage. After a late night race, he can hardly blame the mechanics and engineers for wanting to head straight home. Even Fred is gone. He plans to do the same as soon as he finds out where Joris and Andrea are; whatever analysis needs to be done can wait for the morning.

One or two people wave to him, just an acknowledgment of his presence. Nobody says anything, nor seems to expect him to, which he appreciates. They’re busy packing and taping everything up so it can be shipped as soon as possible to America, ready in time for the next race. The thought makes his stomach turn unpleasantly—last year in Austin he won. This year he wonders if it might be a blessing to be DNFed in the first corner by a reckless rookie, rather than undertake another Sisyphean quest to hold position while LICOing from lights out to the checkered flag.

“You alright?”

Charles turns. He’s not startled, really, which tells him already who it is. Very few people can sneak under his guard like that.

“What’re you still doing here, Bryan?” he asks instead of answering that impossible question.

Bryan watches him steadily. Something in his eyes says he knows what Charles was thinking just a few minutes ago, each shameful thought and weakness laid bare. Still, there’s no judgment. Never, from Bryan.

One shoulder lifts and lowers. Bryan’s shoulder and his eyes and the kind tilt of his lips and the fact that he’s still here at long past eleven in the night says what he doesn’t with words: I waited for you.

Charles is aware that he just spent the better part of half an hour supposedly cooling down and changing out of his fireproofs, a process that normally takes about five minutes max. He did it because he was hoping the garage would thin out, and he didn’t want to say something he would regret in the morning if someone shoved a microphone or worse, a pitying expression, in his direction. He did it because that’s two street tracks gone, two of his best, and the frustration is enough to turn him bitter. He did it because even through three layers of walls, he could hear the sounds of McLaren celebrating their constructors win on the podium.

Bryan knows all of this, even though he won’t call Charles out on it, and waited anyway. Charles thinks half the reason they work is Bryan seems to have taken up permanent residence in Charles’s brain; how else to explain the way he knows Charles’s thoughts before they’re even fully formed?

Now, long after the podium has been cleared, the only evidence the papaya demons celebrated anything at all is the piece of orange confetti stuck in Bryan’s hair. With a quick glance around to make sure no one is watching, Charles reaches over and flicks it away.

“Thank you for waiting. Didn’t need to do that.”

“Had a feeling you shouldn’t be alone,” Bryan says. He’s probably right. Usually is, when it comes to the care and keeping of Charles Leclerc, on and off the track. “I sent Joris and Andrea home, they seemed to understand.”

Charles is absurdly, stupidly grateful. By virtue of spending so much time with him every race weekend, Joris and Andrea are the only ones who know. Not in so many words, but they’re observant people, and Joris at least is pretty damn familiar with Charles’s type. He expected to leave the paddock with them tonight, get a restless couple hours of sleep on sheets with a thread count higher than his total points in F1, and fly home in the morning.

He definitely didn’t think Bryan would want to see him after that result.

“I can’t imagine I’ll be very pleasant company tonight,” Charles warns, though Bryan already knows that, and he knows Bryan knows.

Sure enough, Bryan raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t accompany it with a roll of his eyes, but it’s clearly a near thing. “If I wanted pleasant company, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here. I wanted yours.”

Charles wonders if all British schools teach their students to be so unflinchingly direct, or if that’s a Bryan special. Somehow, it sounds good in his voice—charming even, sexy in a way that can’t be replicated. Bryan could have anyone he wanted, not just because he’s gorgeous but because of that damn charisma. Instead, somehow, he wants this jaded, miserable, thorny version of Charles.

“And I’m sorry about the race today,” he says, because he can’t not. Bryan should know that before they—do what they’re going to do. He should remember that Charles hasn’t earned any kind of reward today. “I really tried.”

“Don’t be silly, Charles.” Bryan’s voice is soft, gentle. Nearly too intimate for their surroundings, even with no one listening. “You gave it everything. No one could have done more.”

The words loosen something in him.

I’ll never ask more of you than you can give, Bryan said to him once. The first, or maybe the second time they did whatever this is, when Charles followed Bryan back to his hotel room and they tumbled into bed together, trading syrupy kisses and sweet nothings until one of them (Charles, inevitably) fell asleep. The memory is beautifully hazy in his mind, but those words are crystal sharp. He carries them with him every time the helmet goes on.

“Thanks,” he says, trying to sound off-hand. Instead it comes out jagged, the syllables split around the lump of guilt and gratitude lodged in his throat. Gra-zie.

“I always believe in you,” comes the response. Measured, plain, emphatic. Bryan says it like he’d say a message over the radio.

“Don’t you ever get tired of having to praise me?” Charles asks, almost petulantly. He knows people have noticed the way Bryan talks to him over the radio, the constant stay positives and that was a good lap and well dones. If he was a stronger man, he would tell Bryan to stop; as it is, he’s barely making it through these races with the help.

Sometimes he can’t help but wonder if this is all just a job to Bryan; if this is what Fred said he had to do in order to get promoted to Race Engineer and Bryan just shrugged and went that’s fine he’s pretty enough.

“When it’s you? It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

Sometimes he can’t help but wonder if this is all just a job to Bryan, and then Bryan will go say something like that, his voice rich and warm and so clearly genuine, to shut him the fuck up.

Charles swallows down his first three attempts at a reply and picks the fourth. “I thought about quitting today.”

A confession, like a parishioner before his priest. There is no booth here, no grated screen to preserve his anonymity, but with Bryan it’s unnecessary. His very gaze seems to effortlessly peel back all of Charles’s layers and expose the core of him, that weak, craven, needy little thing.

“I had a feeling.” Not absolution, but something close. Acceptance. “Thinking about it isn’t doing it, though.”

If to be known is to be loved, then by god is he loved.

“No,” Charles agrees. His maman likes to say that holding firm in the face of temptation is true faith.

It used to be that he was never even tempted, but things have changed. All he can do now is try to keep the faith until his well runs dry.

There’s a long pause, like a held breath.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bryan says, framed like a suggestion and anything but.

Charles doesn’t agree verbally. He doesn’t need to when his body speaks for him, falling easily into lockstep at Bryan’s shoulder, close enough to feel the heat radiating from him but not so close they’re actually touching. Not yet. Not until they’re out of the paddock.

But as they walk, Bryan’s hand snakes its way along Charles’s back and comes to rest somewhere between his spine and his waist. The warmth of it is like a brand, firm and grounding. Charles trusts that Bryan knows the boundaries of what they can and can’t get away with, has assessed the number of prying eyes around and calibrated his affections appropriately. He hopes that’s true, because even just this one point of contact snaps him back into his own skin in a way that felt unattainable just half an hour ago.

Bryan is good for him. They’ve known it for a long time.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Bryan says, weighty, like he means more than just the room.

Charles’s eyes flutter. When Bryan leads the way there, he lets the tension seep from his body and follows.

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