The final part in the Unlimited Kiss Coupon Universe <3 a longer author's note is located here, because I do have some things I want to say and because this also happens to be my contribution to @thankyoudanielfest! Big thanks to the mods for putting on this fest and allowing me to take part with this final part of the series.
Enjoy!
(notes: Unbeta'd as always so any mistakes are my own)
(if you'd like to start from the beginning you can do so here)
When Daniel had invited Max to Perth for the holidays, for Winter Break, he’d thought that that was all it was. An invite, a plan that would inevitably fall through like it always had. Daniel would offer, Max would accept, and then it just never quite worked out.
Which is why it was something of a shock to the system, static and freezing, when Max had sent him a photo from his private plane, and asked if Daniel had wanted to meet him at the airport or at the farm.
“You’re here?” Max had laughed across the line, but in a way that Daniel knew meant not just exasperation but fondness. The kind he used with Daniel rarely, because he seemed to have the hardest time getting annoyed with him, always willing to indulge. This was coloured by the clicks and tin of a phone line, but still all Max.
“Yes, Daniel, I am, of course, where I said I’d be on holiday. Unless you forgot?”
Daniel thinks perhaps the last bit wasn’t meant to come out as a question, that it wasn’t meant to sound unsure, but it’s there anyway, just a hint of it.
“Nah, ‘course not, Maxy.”
That was how Max had ended up at his farm in Perth, still wearing his jeans despite the heat, and helping Daniel to wrap gifts for his family.
“You should really not leave gift wrapping till the last minute, Daniel.” Max is holding a corner of a box of fancy hair care products for Daniel’s sister. She’d been talking about them for a while now but felt she couldn’t justify the price. Daniel, being who he was with as much loose money as he had, had purchased the hair care as she was talking about it. There was never any justifying with him, if he wanted something he got it.
Well.
“Well, this year I thought I’d add a personal touch. Try something new, you know.”
Daniel’s been trying to say things like trying something new and I have time for things now I didn’t before without a flinch and a brittleness to his body. He thinks he’s succeeded at least in part, no longer a collapsing planet, able to bear the brunt of talking about life after Formula One.
Max is looking at him with unblinking eyes, which if Daniel hadn’t known him as long as he had would be alarming. But he’s been the subject of it long enough, back in those early early Red Bull days, all the way into that horrible weekend Daniel doesn’t even want to name. Daniel simply looks back, with more blinks.
“I don’t think you should take up wrapping full time.” Max slides his gaze over to the pile of presents Daniel had done himself before Max had taken pity. They’re haphazard and ill fitting, folds with too much tape and corners too sharp and uneven.
Daniel’s not sure if the worst or best part is that he knows his family will love them anyway.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, or whatever they say, Maximus.” Daniel tears a chunk of tape off and secures the most perfectly executed wrapping paper fold he’s ever done. “How did you even get this good at wrapping?”
Max shrugs, and grabs some ribbon. There’s a flush that starts to colour his cheeks. One of Daniel’s favourite things: the ease in which Max will blush. The strawberry sorbet redness of a dessert he hasn’t had in years but can remember clearly. His mouth fills with extra saliva at the thought.
“My grandmother,” Max starts, looks down as he carefully measures out the length for a bow. “We would, you know, at Christmas spend time together. I would help her wrap gifts for everyone. It was better most of the time, then having to be social.”
Daniel is sincere when he tells him that’s really nice, Max. It is, truly, something nice to think that there was some aspect of Max’s childhood that was good and happy and not cast over with the shadow of Jos looming.
Max is smiling at him in that way that’s gentle like the incoming tide on one of Daniel’s favourite beaches. Just lapping, coming forward slowly to let Daniel dip his toes into it. The aching fondness feels like the first brush of ice cold water.
Daniel clears his throat. “I think that’s all of them.”
It’s dark outside, the sun having set hours ago. Daniel hadn’t put up a Christmas tree this year, content to simply go over to his parents and enjoy theirs–but he had made sure the lighting was dim as possible for his eyes as much as Max’s. As much as Daniel felt worn and tumbled by the season, Max also looked it. A glow of a light was something small but Daniel liked to think it helped, even just a little.
Max is standing now, groaning as he stretches out his back and joints. “Not quite all of them.”
The joke Daniel had been about to make dies on his lips as he furrows his brow and glances to the pile of presents. “What, I missed something?”
“Not for wrapping.” Max is holding out a hand to help Daniel up, and maybe it’s his imagination, but Daniel swears there is a light quiver to it. “For gifting.”
It’s Christmas Eve, Max is what Daniel says as he also stands, cracking every single bone he has in his body at once he is pretty sure.
“Yes, it is.” Max bites his lip, drags it between teeth until it is puffier when he releases it. Red too. “In Belgium you know, they open gifts on Christmas Eve.”
“Do they now?”
“Yes.”
Daniel’s heart rate is spiking, a bird’s wings beating against his ribcage. He feels lightheaded, floating. Drunk on nothing but this feeling in his chest, ever expanding like bubblegum until it bursts.
“You told me you had the best gift for me, right?” Because he did. Max had left him a voice note and told him to invite him and Daniel had and Max had accepted.
Daniel thinks they both know what it means for Max to be here. They’ve treated it as ordinary so far, made light of it, but it’s–more.
There has always been a reason Max has never been to the farm before, and Daniel has never insisted. Unspoken and building, a flood against a dam.
“Gonna give me that gift, Max?” Daniel says with more confidence than he feels. Inside he feels like ice cream melting in this heat. Goop.
“Close your eyes, Daniel.”
Daniel does, without question this time. He closes his eyes and he holds his breath a little and he thinks please, please, please and–
Max’s lips touch his.
Daniel’s first thought is to their plushness, the budding bloom of it all. His second is oh, finally before the wings in his chest take flight, lifting him up and up and up. His third thought is to wonder why they haven’t been doing this for longer.
He’s kissed many women in his time in many different places, but this feels like the Big Bang: an all encompassing explosion of nebulae and stars and galaxies that have been pressed between hands to make something bigger.
It’s making him poetic is what it’s doing.
Daniel opens his eyes and Max is looking at him in a way that makes him see Max as he is now, but also as he was then. Stars shining in his eyes and a moon hung from Daniel’s hands.
“Merry Christmas, Daniel.”
And Daniel, Daniel who has run from things all year long and longer, who has been battered and bruised and maybe lost pieces of his heart along the way–
Holds his heart out one last time.
He wraps hands around Max’s waist. Feels the softness like a creature comfort. He thinks he’d like to nuzzle up in that space, the little dip before Max’s love handles begin.
“I’ve wanted that for a while.” His voice is soft, deeper, accent rounded out. It’s Daniel’s real voice, the kind he only uses when he doesn’t suspect a gutting to the fleshy belly of himself. Max has heard it often. “I was scared maybe about it.”
Max breathes against him, warm and deep. “You were, Daniel. You were very scared. It was hard to be patient with you sometimes.”
He puts hands to Daniel’s cheeks, sways them a little, all that bulk translating to an ability to move Daniel how he wants him and Daniel letting him. He feels safe. He feels protected. He might want to just fall to the floor and stay in between Max’s hands and arms for a long, long time.
“You are my favourite thing, Daniel.”
Daniel thinks of the list of favourite things he has, has had, this year. The things that are always included: dirt biking, his family, his friends, Italian pizza and cherry ripes and the Perth sunshine.
He thinks of the things he can no longer include: Formula 1, and champagne, and the smell of a karting track.
He thinks of Max, the way he looks now: smile beatific, eyes nearly invisible. Daniel can see the tell tale sign of laugh lines that will appear on Max’s face in a few years time. Permanent and unyielding.
It’s good.
“I’m all yours, Max,” Daniel says, has it burst out of him fully, a flower fit to bloom.
Max looks about to say something, but Daniel cannot contain himself, not now, not ever again and leans in for another kiss. This one is deeper, and sticking; this one is a taste of Max. Daniel licks into his mouth, presses their bodies flush. He tastes chocolate and mint from the snacks Max had been sneaking earlier but pretending he wasn’t, tastes like relief. The relief of finally getting something he wanted, the relief of being chosen, the relief of knowing Max will never ever drop him like a broken toy ready for something shiny and new.
The next adventure feels a little more in his reach.
(Tomorrow he and Max will wake up, and on the bedside table to their bed, there will be a set of two unlimited free kisses coupons. One with a green bow, the other red. Neither Max nor Daniel will remember putting them there, but they’ll laugh about it all the same, secret and dazzling.)