oooh may i request a 17 + 24 for charles x reader? 🤭
17. tracing tanlines under a fingertip && 24. balcony views — charles leclerc
"JESUS CHRIST, CHARLES, when you said Ferrari was getting under your skin I didn't think you meant that literally."
"What?"
He turns around, quizzical, and the fading light of day catches more irregular motifs on his pectorals and clavicles than you'd even noticed. You can't help snorting at the sight.
"You're lobster red!"
A beat passes, during which Charles stares at you like a fish out of water, and then he's wiggling around, trying to catch a glimpse of every patch of skin on his torso, and when he cranes his neck to inspect his upper back he almost trips on the shirt he's just discarded to the floor.
"Putainnn," he drags out, a defeated moan that slumps out of his lips just like his shoulders. "Argh! C'est pas vrai..."
"That's what happens when you try to apply sunscreen yourself like a big boy." Your laugh is soft, your head shaking gently as you observe your husband, crimson stripes all over his back and shoulders like the brushstrokes of some tropical Van Gogh. "Come on, go sit on the terrace."
He does as he's told, shuffling his feet over to the chaises longues on the large, roofed balcony. When you step out the hotel room, favorite assortment of aloe vera ointments in hand, you find him sitting on the edge of the chair, pressing two fingers onto the red gash on his arm. When he lifts them and they reveal white skin that immediately fades back to carmine, he sighs.
"Not to say I told you so," you drag one of the chairs over, "but..."
"You told me so."
He grumbles like a toddler proven wrong—the swirling shapes of his sunburns are certainly reminiscent of a kindergartner's drawings. Even so, your smile is delicate, easy like an evening shower when you coax a ribbon of aloe vera cream onto your palm and rub your hands together.
"Tell me if it hurts."
Instead, Charles lets out a long, blissful exhale as soon as your cool fingertips press against his bare back.
Slowly, gently, you trace the outline of his burns, where a nascent tan fades into red patterns; you study the confines of skin he overlook in the morning, cajole the corners of him where even his fingertips won't go. That's when the gentle breeze picks up, born out of the Atlantic's froth, and dishevels the Brazilian foliage below and Charles' salt-kissed hair.
You feel him melt beneath your touch like so many times before.
"This is nice, actually," he murmurs, low and deep like the rumble of the ocean somewhere over the railing.
"Yeah, well, if you want a massage, just ask next time, there's no need to fuck up your skin like that, alright?"
"This never happens to me in Monac—aouch," he winces, but the sound is soon lost to the breeze, too.
"We're not in Monaco right now," you reply with a peculiar reverie, as though you aren't really here either, but someplace else, in the valleys that stretch out between Charles' moles.
He, on the other hand, looks over your hunched shoulders, to the late-afternoon that sprinkles golden lighting over the jungle. In the distance, he thinks he can make out a flock of tropical birds spinning in the milky sky like dancers, though it could be a trick of light. How to be sure, on this island where life commences anew, but oh so different?
"Yes, that's for sure," he concedes, pensive. But his eyes tear from the sprawling view and travel up to your concentrated face, and he scrunches into a solar grin.
"I think you should be good... though you should probably keep your shirt on for the next few days. Even if it pains me horribly to say it," you release him from the cooling balm, and are about to step back and put the tube away when he grabs your hand and pulls you back to him. Into the radiating heat of his body and the midday brightness of his gaze.
"Thanks for taking care of me."
"Of course, Charles," you reply in a genteel hum. The Monégasque rubs his thumb across your wedding band. "That's what I signed up for."
Neither of you makes a move; only your heads turn to the magnificent ocean, and, very far, its horizon where heavy clouds gather. All of the sunset's oranges and pinks ricochet off of their dark gray, and somehow you are certain they end their course back with you. Curled up in your promontory.
The rain, after a while, scatters off into the ocean, quietly.
© musicallisto, 2025 MASTERLIST / INBOX ⤷ liked this fic? then you might enjoy... adoration (cl16)!