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The night air cut right through Charles’s suit jacket as he watched Pierre disappear into the trees. Pierre’s anger lingered in his wake, but Charles didn’t feel the panic or anxiety  that usually came with upsetting a friend. Because this was Pierre, and Charles knew him better than he knew himself at the moment.

He opened the trunk. It was tiny, as they were in most supercars, but had plenty of room for a bottle of champagne and a thick blanket clearly stolen from the hotel. Two blankets, actually, as Charles found when he tucked them under his arm.

He used his phone flashlight as he started onto the trailhead after Pierre. His dress shoes didn’t do well against the silt under his feet, but he didn’t fall down as he hiked up the gentle incline.

The trees broke away into a small clearing, where a mountain stream carved its way down the ridge. Pierre sat on flat slab of rock, illuminated by his phone flashlight, though the moon was bright enough that Charles could see his silhouette without it.

Charles wordlessly laid out one of the blankets beside him, but Pierre didn’t move to make room. He set down the champagne with a dull thunk of glass on rock and draped the other blanket over Pierre’s shoulders to trap his body heat. Charles sat down beside him, but faced Pierre, not the water.

“It isn’t any different, is it,” Pierre said quietly.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Charles replied, leaning back on his hands. He rested his palms at the edge of the rock, shivering a little as freshwater spray misted over his fingers.

Pierre met his eye. “Yes you do. You just don’t want to break my fucking heart again.”

Pain slashed at Charles’s insides as he tipped his head back to look at the stars. Being so far away from the world allowed them to see the sky in its full array of beauty. Dots of white light took up the whole canvas of it, so vivid that he could see the subtle washes of the galaxy itself.

“You said you feel guilty about wanting me,” Pierre said, hurt leaking into his voice.

“You know why, Pierre.”

“So what, I’m not allowed to be hurt?”

Charles slid his gaze from the stars.

Pierre leaned forward and Charles tilted his head to meet him before he could stop himself, but they didn’t kiss.

“I don’t want this for the right reasons,” Charles admitted in a whisper. “I’m not going to do this to you.”

“Je m’en fiche,” Pierre said.

“You do care. C’est  ça le problème, and that’s why I won’t do it.”

Ever since they set on track to become princes—ever since the pathway became more than just mirage—he and Pierre had danced around this. Around them. They blurred the line of friendship and something more. Twice they stepped right over it, and both times were things Charles wished he could take back.

“Sauf votre respect, I’m not you, Char,” Pierre said. “I can actually respect boundaries. If you don’t want it to be anything more than amis avec des avantages, it’s fucking okay.”

Charles narrowed his eyes. “You just made me talk about three men in my life who are all less than a mile from here, wondering the same thing you are.”

Pierre laughed, but it was a broken sound that made Charles wish he’d never taken on a hot lap and exposed himself.

“So you have commitment issues, fine. On ne va pas se marier.”

Charles bristled, but held his tongue. Inhaled calm, exhaled control.

“You know it’s not like that,” Charles said with a lump in his throat. “So no, it’s not any different. It’s the same fucking thing.”

“So you want it to be like Abu Dhabi.”

“Ne parle pas d’Abu Dhabi, putain.”

“Tu ne peux decider de ça,” Pierre growled. “I’m the one who got burned there.”

Charles furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about, mate? No one found out, no one got burned.”

Pierre swallowed hard. “J’ai fait. You fucking acted like it never happened. You forgot about me and je ne pouvais pa arrêter de penser a te.”

Charles’s cheeks warmed and he was glad for the darkness to keep the blush from showing on his face.  “That was a long time ago.”

“No, a long time ago was Belgium,” Pierre said.

Guilt wrenched his insides. Charles could still remember that night, the way want overwhelmed him, the way he let it.

“C’est pour ça que je n’y arrive pas,” Charles whispered. “I fucked it up before we even started.”

Pierre laughed bitterly. “You’re just obsessed with the past, aren’t you?”

“That isn’t something—”

“Do you want me or not, Char?”

“Pierre—”

“Dis-moi, c’est une question simple,” Pierre said. “You don’t have to answer it to make me feel a certain way. I just want the truth. You know I can fucking deal with the truth.”

Wind rustled the leaves in the canopy above them, carrying the sweet scent of summer, flourishing undergrowth, and the echo of loneliness.  

“It’s not the want you feel,” Charles finally said. “We’ve always been close. I’ve always been more comfortable with you than almost anyone else. I’ve never had to worry about touching you too much, going too far.”

Even though they’d done both. Pierre just never expected it again once it was over. He didn’t try to catch his eye or throw flirty lines at him to see if Charles would bite. He wasn’t like Carlos, who made breakfast in the morning after they fucked and waited for him to show up like they were something more than they were.

“And, look, I know how that sounds,” Charles added. “But I don’t know a better way to say it.”

Pierre folded a hand over his knee and even that touch wasn’t a question or an invitation.

“You said you wanted to kiss me when we got out of the car. Tu le pensais vraiment?”

Charles fought the urge to say it was just a spur of the moment thing, that driving fast with a beautiful boy in the seat next to him always led to kissing, so it was just a Pavlovian response.

“Oui,” Charles said. Saying it felt like speaking with a mouth full of water, messy and slippery and cold everywhere.

“So just kiss me,” Pierre breathed, and Charles felt the words more than he heard them.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Charles said, shaking his head. “I won’t do it to you again.”

Pierre kissed him anyway. Charles didn’t refuse it, not at all. PIerre tasted the same as he did back then, heady like dark chocolate but slightly sweet, like a candied orange. He tasted the dessert wine too, still lingering on Pierre’s soft lips and spreading to his own with each kisses.

Pierre always treated him gently, with reverence. Trailing touches to his jawline, waiting to introduce tongue until Charles invited him with parted lips. Always patient. Always so fucking patient.

Pierre never had to say he loved him. Charles knew it from a brief moment in Paris when they were holed up in a tiny café, waiting out a miserable rain. The seats had been made of aged wood with peeling lacquer, the walls had been painted dark green. Charles had sat there complaining about how fucking stupid his hair always looked when it got wet. Pierre sat at the table across from him, arms crossed over the back of his chair. Charles could still remember his cocky smile then, the smile that didn’t match the fondness in his eyes.

“I like it. It makes you real.”

He might as well have said it then. Charles never returned that look, never said the words. At the café, he’d flicked cappuccino cream at Pierre’s face with his stirring spoon and they turned their attention back to the rain, watching the way it created rivers in the street.

He’d meant to say it, once, but the words stayed balled in his throat until they turned to razor blades and shredded him from the inside out.

Long ago, Max called Pierre his shadow. Charles laughed at the time, but less than a year later and Pierre became exactly that: a secret, horrible ache in him he never addressed, never spoke about.

Pierre became the thing behind Max’s eyes when Max bought him the wrong flavor of birthday cake in Sochi—vanilla when they talked about chocolate. Pierre was the bundle of nerves in his stomach that wrenched when Sebastian told him they would always have each other, after Mattia told them Sebastian didn’t have a place at Ferrari anymore.

Pierre was the burn of liquor in his throat when Max stopped texting him back after Brazil, and the first number he called when his knuckles were split and he nearly broke his  invaluable hands, bleeding all over the concrete. 

He was also the one who smiled when he saw them, clucking in mock disapproval (“Tu as frappé comme je t’ai appris?”) and cleaned his wounds in the restaurant bathroom next door with gentle swipes of a washcloth and tenderness in his words as he assured Charles he could still drive, still win, still race.

Pierre wrapped his sheared knuckles in terrycloth, like the boxer he was, and didn’t kiss them even though Charles could see he wanted to. His touches never lingered even though they could have. He never stared when Charles would have stared back.

Charles pulled away from the kiss, sucking down a breath like he’d been drowning.

“How can you still want me after I hurt you so much?” Charles choked out, his voice wet. “Pourquoi tu ne me désteste pas?”

Pierre had every right to want him gone. Some things were unforgivable on their own, but to do them twice, to use someone second time—

“I’ve wanted to, before,” Pierre said, running the pad of his thumb over Charles’s bottom lip, gently turning his face like he was still inspecting for wounds. “But what I feel for you beats it every time. I can’t even think straight around you. I could never marry you, because I’d stop racing. I’d never be able to do anything else but be with you all the time.”

Guilt twisted in him like a wet sponge, wringing him into nothing but stringy tendons and mangled bone.

“Pierre, je ne peux pas,” Charles whispered.

“I know,” Pierre said, because he always knew. “I know, Char.”

Charles ducked his head into Pierre’s stupid turtleneck sweater. Soft cashmere caressed his face as Pierre gathered him in his arms. He smelled faintly of cologne, maybe one spritz of it, like an afterthought and not an intention.

“The thing is, it doesn’t matter to me if you feel the same,” Pierre murmured into his hair. “I’m not walking in blind, Charles. I’ve lived my whole adult life knowing you love someone else. C’est bon. I accepted it a long time ago.”

Charles wrenched himself away, shaking his head. “God, qu’est-ce qui va pas chez toi? Why the fuck would you say that?”

Pierre laughed. “Because it’s true? We’ve had a lot of almosts. After the second time, I kind of knew we’d never really have anything.”

Something opened in him. Charles let out a small noise of anguish, not for himself, but for Pierre. The world had given him one good thing, one good person, and Charles was incapable of giving him even the smallest kindness.

Pierre’s palms came to his cheeks, kindly forcing him out of himself to focus on the way the moon played in Pierre’s windswept hair, the way the blond strands hung over his eyes but never in them. Imperfectly perfect, like he’d always been.

“Not everything has to be painful, mon chérie,” Pierre whispered with a kiss to his forehead, just a peck. “My feelings haven’t changed. Just because you don’t love me doesn’t mean I love you any less.”

Charles squeezed his eyes shut. “I do love you,” he said, his voice mottled with pain. “Just not the way that you want.”

“Ne parle pas à ma place,” Pierre said.

Charles shot him a look, eyes wet.

Pierre kissed him again, sweetly, with too much fucking love, a waterfall when he’d asked for trickle.  Charles grimaced, pulling away.

“You love me, that’s all I want,” Pierre said.

“Je ne suis pas amoureux de toi.”

“I didn’t say that. I said you love me, and je ne cherche que ça.”

Charles put his head in his hands. The back of his suit was already damp with spray from the creek, and he began to shiver the second he noticed it.

He remembered staying up too late at Pierre’s house, running his fingers through Max’s hair while he slept and listening as Pierre told sleep-drunk stories about girls, about other drivers. Never implying anything, though Charles already knew. Never stealing glances. Charles told him everything, touched him without fear of strange looks—Pierre allowed him to be a full person. A confident person. Pierre made him without even knowing it.

“I ruined us,” Charles said. “From the very beginning.”

Pierre gently tugged Charles’s hands from his face, exposing his damp cheeks to the cold.  “You did not. If we’re talking about guilt, on est quitte. I knew what I was doing. I’d do it again if you asked.”

Charles flinched. “Don’t say that, please.”

“Both times,” Pierre added. “I knew exactly what I was getting into.” He gave Charles’s hands a squeeze.

“You’re fucking stupid,” Charles bit out.

“Ah, yes,” Pierre said with a cock of his head, smiling. “What do they say? The heart wants what it wants?”

Nausea welled up in him. The memories were always tinged red in his mind, though in reality there had been no red at all. It was like in the movies during a flashback murder scene, except Charles had been murdering himself.

Pierre’s keycard poised in his hand in Belgium, waiting to swipe as Charles snuck out of his room and stared. Pierre stood there and waited, like he’d been anticipating it, though he couldn’t have.  

The words always echoed in his head like someone else’s voice. I need you.

“Stop torturing yourself for something that happened half a decade ago,” Pierre soothed, as though reading his mind. “You always find a way to make things hurt.”

“Parce c’étair ma faute.”

“Il faut être deux por danser, calarmardo.”

“Yeah, but I initiated.”

“Fuck, I would have if I thought I had any chance in hell. Both times. Way more than that.” He laughed and Charles could hear genuine happiness in it.

“I’m such a piece of shit, Pierre,” Charles whispered, his voice sticky.

Pierre shook his head. “You needed someone. I’m glad it could be me and not someone who fucking hurts you like those two.”

“That’s not an excuse to cheat.”

The word hung in the air between them. It made Charles fucking sick to hear it echo around his head.

The mind always found ways to justify its own actions. Charles told himself he deserved to have happiness both times. The told himself that if Max really wanted him, he wouldn’t be gone chasing a crown all the time and he would find a way to be with him even when it was difficult.

Age didn’t change that part of himself, because he’d told himself the same thing five years later. That Sebastian was probably in love with someone else, or already looking for his new husband, flirting and fucking around. FIA marriages didn’t count. Feelings weren’t real. The world owed him, Max owed him, Sebastian owed him—everyone owed him, but he didn’t owe anyone else.  That he deserved to be happy, no matter what it cost or who it hurt.

Max had only been three doors down in that hotel in Belgium, sleeping soundly before what would end up being his last race as a lower court driver, while Charles snuck out of their shared bed fucked their best friend.

Sebastian had been putting together their final post-race evening as husbands, kindly sidestepping any implications of sex while Charles moaned Pierre’s name in the back of an SUV with blackout windows, parked thirty feet from Sebastian’s personal Ferrari he’d brought just so Charles could drive it.

“You’re allowed to want this,” Pierre said, breaking him from his thoughts. “You can’t let Max and Sebastian hold you back. We both made bad decisions, but punishing yourself for it now doesn’t make any sense. Max doesn’t give a shit about your feelings, not anymore. Sebastian doesn’t either, Char.”

“Now there’s Carlos,” Charles said, deflecting, because he didn’t want to start an argument about Max or Sebastian right now.

Pierre let out a snort. “You can’t love someone who loves someone else. Je te connais.”

“I did, though,” Charles choked out, tears wetting his eyes again. “I fucking—I fell in love with him.”

Saying the words for real felt like vomiting, but with none of the relief after. Just a twisted up throat, a phlegmy burn in the back of his mouth, stomach acid dripping back down to where it belonged.

“But you never told him,” Pierre said. He didn’t sound hurt at all—he never did, no matter what Charles told him, no matter how painful. And Pierre wasn’t George, he didn’t have to ask whether or not Charles ever told Carlos, he just knew.

“No,” Charles whispered, blinking the moisture from his eyes. “It felt like I would be giving him too much, that he’d take it away the second I gave in. So I didn’t give in.”

“It shouldn’t feel like that,” Pierre murmured, shifting closer. He pressed his lips to Charles’s knee where he’d drawn it up to his chest. “Char, it should never feel like that.”

“Well it did,” Charles bit out. “Because I always fucking knew I’d never be first for him. So what’s the point, you know? Why say it when he can’t possibly—when he won’t—”

He cut himself off and turned his face away. He willed the antidepressants to stop him from crying, but they didn’t.

“You feel so much,” Pierre said, reaching up to thumb his tears away.

“I feel fucking sorry for myself too much,” Charles said with a bitter laugh, closing his eyes to allow Pierre to wipe everything away. “Here I am talking about this, hurting you again.”

“It doesn’t hurt me to hear you love him,” Pierre said as he pulled back.

Charles opened his eyes just in time to see Pierre lean over him, draping the blanket over his back instead, protecting him from the water.

“How can it not?” Charles asked.

Pierre smiled and moved next to him, shrugging the blanket over his own shoulders so they were both covered. Charles leaned into him without thinking, seeking out his warmth.

“Well, you loved me first, for one,” Pierre said, putting an arm around him. “And, I dunno, I don’t want ownership over you just because of the way I feel. It’s never been like that. Knowing I have you in my life is enough. Knowing I’m important to you. Yeah, maybe after all of this, you’ll marry someone who isn’t me. And I’m talking real married, pas ces conneries. And I’ll go to your wedding, and even that won’t hurt because I’ll just know.”

Charles curled an arm around Pierre’s thigh where he’d pulled his knees to his chest, Charles’s head on his shoulder. “Know what?”

Pierre kissed his temple. “Well, I’m only coming to the wedding if you’re really in love with the guy. And when I see you that day, I know it’ll all be okay for you. He’ll take care of you for the rest of your life. And hey, maybe I’ll get married too. And one day our kids will grow up together and think they want this, and je ne sais pas. I just imagine looking up at you, and all of this is going to snap through our minds in an instant and—”

He shrugged—gently, so as not to jostle Charles too much.

“And I guess that’s enough for me,” he finished. “To know we had this, on avait tout ce. That we had this time together and we didn’t let it destroy us. So maybe our kids can have that too.”

Charles never imagined life after royalty. He imagined parallels, the way his life could have been without a crown, but never the inevitable end of representing an empire.

Of course, statistically, he had only ten years left, maybe twenty if he proved to be the prince everyone thought he could be.

He never thought about kids. About his own family, what he might want after this.

“I never think about what happens after,” he said quietly.

“You’ve never had to,” Pierre said, nuzzling against him. Charles’s hair snagged in Pierre’s beard, and he hugged his arm a little tighter around Pierre’s leg.

Pierre had been in danger of losing his crown too many times, but he’d finally asserted himself as a champion prince with a win in Monza, a win Charles didn’t feel guilty about giving away from the medical tent after his fucking stupid accident.

It was better that way, to not have competed. To be able to watch Pierre win without the taste of blood in his mouth, the coppery tang of loss.

“So what happens now?” Charles asked into the quiet.

“What do you want to happen?” Pierre returned, carding his fingers through Charles’s hair.

He remembered lying in Pierre’s bed in Belgium, after. Gasping up at the ceiling, totally consumed with the pleasure that still radiated everywhere, the bursting warmth that made him want to scream just as much as it made him want to beg for more.

Mostly, he remembered never wanting Max the same way. Never being satisfied, always thinking of Pierre—not the physical things he’d done, but the way he laughed during, the way they kept up the same banter until the want burned the joking out of them.

The way Pierre didn’t try for any more kisses or touches when it was over, he just gave Charles one of his own shirts back and didn’t even walk him to the door, but smiled at him from his bed, blankets tucked to his chin.

Max left him two months later, so he didn’t have to hide for long.

And then, the year before. The dry heat of Abu Dhabi that lingered even in darkness, the way Pierre didn’t joke that time and still gave him everything he wanted and more. The way Pierre took all of the pain and fear in him and made it tangible, something he could fuck away, and then let him.

And Pierre never asked for anything else, not even when Charles left that SUV and refused to look at him until Sebastian was no longer his husband.

Selfishness didn’t even begin to cover it. Charles knew that.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Charles whispered. “And trying to be anything more than what we are means risking that.”

“You couldn’t lose me if you tried,” Pierre assured him. “You’ve already tried, and je suis encore là.”

Pierre deserved the person Charles wished he could be, the man the people saw on screen, so totally unlike the real thing.

“I know you aren’t in love with me,” Pierre added. “But if there’s a chance, I want to take it. There won’t be a ‘right time’ for us, I know that. But if…”

The silence that came after Pierre trailed off made Charles pull back, only to find Pierre’s face completely devoid of the smile he usually found there.

Pierre swallowed hard, and Charles ached when he saw the sadness in him—a well of it. Deep, vast pain accumulated over a lifetime. Charles knew loneliness because it looked him in the mirror every morning. He saw it etched into Pierre’s face like an engraving, impossible to buff out.

“I really, really wish you’d love me once,” Pierre said quietly. “I can handle it if you don’t, but god, I wish every day that I could change your mind.”

The stream hissed and frothed behind them, a sound to accompany the emotion welling up as Charles leaned in and kissed his best friend.

This time, Pierre’s lips tasted like salt-sprinkled despair, a cold night neverending, all of the things he drove away from Charles with a well-timed letter or soft touch.

Charles broke the kiss after a moment, too overwhelmed with the sadness of it.

“I want to try,” Charles breathed, resting their foreheads together. “But I have to make sure I can do it right. I can’t promise you you’ll have all of me. I wish…I wish I could, but I can’t.”

Even now he was too selfish, too scared.

Pierre’s fingers curled against his shirt and Charles folded his hand over Pierre’s, holding it to his chest.

“When I see you in Austria, I’ll tell you what I can give,” Charles said. “Will you let me do that?”

“Always making me wait,” Pierre murmured. His smile returned, but it was broken, the lights flickering where they usually glowed. “But yeah. You know how to find me.”

 


 

When Charles stepped back into the Ferrari hotel room, he saw two empty bowls in the sink, remnants of whatever Carlos must have cooked for Lando. Carlos didn’t mention Lando would be visiting, but Charles excused the misstep without a second thought. In fact, relief flooded him, because Carlos hadn’t spent the evening alone.

He shrugged off his suit jacket on the way to the bedroom, where he could hear the soft sounds of Carlos’s breathing where he slept slumped against the headboard, an open book in his lap.

The low light of the nightstand lamp painted shadows on the hard lines of Carlos’s jaw and the gentle curve of his lips, the slight hook of his nose. His hair was disheveled, and Charles could imagine how often he’d run his hand through his while reading, pretending to focus. His cheeks still looked blotchy. Irritated from crying, maybe.

He did love Carlos, he realized. Except it wasn’t really a new feeling, it just had a name now.

Tragedies only earned titles after they ended. This one was no different. Charles loved Carlos, Carlos loved Lando. Same story it had always been, but Charles had already given him away, and he didn’t dare to take him back.

Loved. Past-tense. There. A better description.

Charles finished undressing and hopped into a pair of more comfortable boxers before approaching the bed. He gently took the book from Carlos’s sleeping hands—Chess Mastery, Vol. I.

A little smile curled at Charles’s lips as he set the book aside and leaned in, pressing a kiss to Carlos’s forehead. His skin was warm, his hair soft against Charles’s lips  where he’d forgotten to brush it away.

Carlos woke with a soft noise. His hands immediately lifted, going flat against Charles’s bare chest, seemingly on reflex.

“Charles?” Carlos croaked. “V’tutto bene?”

“You fell asleep sitting up,” Charles soothed, thumbing his cheek. “I’m going to brush my teeth. You should lie down. Can’t have a stiff neck tomorrow.”

Carlos grunted in reply, too sleep-drugged to comprehend much beyond the suggestion. His hands fell away and he retreated down into the blankets, eyes falling closed.

Carlos had such long eyelashes. Charles marveled at the way they fanned over his cheeks, black and beautiful like they’d been inked there.

They were nothing like Pierre’s blond-tipped lashes, which were just as long but not nearly so prominent.

Charles made quick work of his bedtime routine. He replaced the taste of Pierre with toothpaste, thankful that they hadn’t actually popped that bottle of champagne. Once he’d washed his face, he headed back to bed and shut off the lamp as he crawled over Carlos’s sleeping form.

“Charles?” Carlos murmured.

Not sleeping, it seemed.

“Yes?” Charles asked as he pulled up the covers.

“Did you have fun?” Carlos asked, slurry with sleep. His eyes still hadn’t opened.

Charles smiled into the dark and moved closer, tucking himself against Carlos’s back. Carlos tensed against him for a moment, clearly surprised, then leaned back into him, a steady weight.

“I did,” Charles replied, letting his lips brush against the nape of Carlos’s neck, his arm hooked over Carlos’s middle. “I hope you had fun too.”

Carlos answered him with a snore, his body going slack.

Charles nuzzled against him, drinking in the warmth of his sun-kissed skin, the scent of his shampoo.

Playing at love was so much easier after losing it.

Charles closed his eyes.

When he slept, he dreamed of Carlos, but the one he met crushed his trachea and held no love for him. And the Max he woke to had hateful knowing in his eyes and Pierre’s terrycloth wrapped around his knuckles.

Charles didn’t have time to think before the punches began, blessedly merciless.