Saturday, September 1st, 2018- Monza, Italy
Italian Grand Prix, the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza
"Excuse me," Horner's voice fills the room and brings what had been a tumultuous game of hide and seek to a screeching halt as you look around to find the team principal leaning casually in the doorway to Max's driver's trailer.
"What's up, boss?" Daniel asks his team principal, hand on one hip and leg popped, paying absolutely no mind to Kaia, who he has tucked under one arm like he's collecting kindling for a fire.
"I need to speak with you," Christian addresses you directly, choosing to ignore Daniel's question entirely, and instead sparing him only so much as a puzzled, sideways glance as Kaia wriggles around, giggling happily.
"About what?" You reply as you stand up, straightening your clothes and running an absentminded hand through your hair, hoping you don't look half as ragged from playing as Daniel and Kaia do.
"I'll explain later," Horner doesn't particularly seem to be in the mood to mess about, which doesn't seem to bode well for how the conversation with Max and Jos had gone after your departure, "come with me."
"Did I do something wrong?"
"You've done plenty today but nothing I'd constitute as being explicitly wrong," Christian snickers to himself as he leads you down the narrow hallway of the trailer, past the closed door to Daniel's room and out the main door into the warm Italian sunshine, where your senses are instantly accosted by the sounds of a race weekend in full swing.
"That sounds ominous," you tell him frankly, your voice raised slightly to ensure that Horner can hear you at all, since the hustle and bustle of the paddock seems to be amplified, echoing off the siding of the RVs on either side of you.
"Let's rein in the dramatics," he says lightly, giving you a tight, thin-lipped grimace, which is about as close a thing to a smile as anyone can get from the Brit, who you'd learned over the years preferred to save his warmer expressions for his family, his drivers and the cameras.
It wasn't something you'd ever penalized the man for, in fact it was oddly comforting at this stage in the game, where even after all the years you'd spent in his employ, Horner had remained the same.
"Aye, aye captain," you give him a mock salute, which earns you a roll of his eyes and a long-suffering sigh that isn't quite sufficient enough to entirely cover up the chuckle he lets out under his breath.
"Keep up at that attitude, God knows you'll need it," Christian sounds heartfelt in his remark, not that that does much by way of soothing your nerves, which by this point are running rampant, your heart feeling almost as if it'll burn a hole in your chest and fall out, to land on the pavement under your feet and splatter into a million pieces, if you don't get things back under control soon.
"Would you stop it with the leading comments-"
"There you are! Took your time, didn't you?" You gasp, hand leaping to your heart in startled surprise, nearly jumping out of your skin when Max slips out of the shadows between two trailers where he'd been lurking and out into the sunshine, catching you entirely off guard.
"Woah, woah there- easy girl- easy," his voice soothing and soft, Max gestures at you placatingly like how one would treat a spooked horse, his right hand extended towards you as if he's about to pet your forehead, "that's it, there's a good girl."
Trying and failing to gauge how things had gone down earlier with Jos, you err on the side of caution, snapping your teeth at Max's fingers playfully, and he yanks his hand back, though not quickly enough to avoid the smack you land on his arm as you warn him that "next time, I'll take your fingers off."
