The sigh that escapes you when finally the five minute breather that separates each stage of qualifying from the next has ended and Max's car is no longer sat stagnant in the garage is like a gale of wind has suddenly dropped out of your sails, leaving the canvas slack and at ease, no longer forcing you across the waves at breakneck pace.
It's fucking incredible to not be standing in the same spot on the floor, in the no man's land where the concrete is still a blank canvas, with no painted numbers or navy lines bisecting the space into a web of place markers of where this should go or that that should be, just staring at the tail end of the only Red Bull car still in action for the qualifying this weekend and wondering how in the hell such a short frame of time could possibly last that long.
Though you can count on one hand the number of times in which you've ever seen Max get out from behind the wheel during quali but that doesn't stop you from worrying that maybe, just maybe, today would be one of those days and you'd be faced by the prospect of being caught being a rock and a hard place- between not having the answers your own questions, let alone someone else's and the sneaking suspicion that Max would be able to take just one look at you and know what was going on, that you'd been forced into playing a key role in the way this was likely to play out, a development about which you were convinced he'd be less excited about than anything else about the present situation.
On the upside, Kaia has fallen back asleep without any nudge in the direction of dozing off by Daniel or you. Her head is lolling back at an awkward angle, so that the nape of her neck rests across your width of your shoulder, her face tipped over to the right in such a way that the chubby, rosy tinted cheek caught between her body and your neck is squished up against her nose, and pushing her tiny cupid's bow of a mouth into a puckered up, doll-like pout.
"Of course she can sleep," Daniel says, bringing a decisive end to the silent vigil the pair of you'd been keeping since Max had returned to wait out the lull before Q3 started, which had remained in place when he'd departed, unbroken until the current moment.
'She's the only person in the entire garage that doesn't have any clue what's going on right now and that we're all on edge because her dad has to be treated like he's liable to detonate at any time on a regular day, let alone on the day he finds out that his shitty excuse for a father was the mastermind behind keep his child from-"
"From what, Daniel?" the overwhelming sense of deja vu washes over you because everything from the look on the team principal's face to his body language, down to the very last detail is reminiscent of earlier, when he'd overheard Dan's insinuation that you had idea what Max would look like without a stitch of clothing on-
"From him," Daniel shrugs, unabashed and openly gleeful that this time around he hadn't been caught saying something he wasn't willing to repeat in front of Horner, "because he's a shit person, a shit father, a shit husband- I can keep going if you'd like me to, I could do this all day."
"Save it for later, take notes, tell your mom, I don't care. We've got 12 minutes to get some answers out of Jos about what the hell is it that he's done so that when the storm comes rolling back in, we aren't caught unprepared for flooding."
"Weird metaphor, not one of your best," Daniel wrinkles his nose, ignoring the disgruntled look he gets from Christian, and snaps his fingers repeatedly in your face, jarring you from the farthest, darkest depths of your head where you stored all the fantasies you didn't, couldn't, permit yourself to enjoy these days.
"Uh, stop it, that's disgusting," Daniel doesn't hold back, his face scrunched up in revulsion, "I know that face, that far off expression, just, uh, stop."
"Oh, shut up! I'm not doing anything-" you protest, trying not to cringe at the shrillness of your voice.
"Yes, you are! You're thinking about you know who and what he'd look like under-"
