Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
The Penthouse
He'd been half expecting for the locks to have been changed in the time it takes for him to get home, you'd had more than enough time to, considering the fact that he'd walked home from Jimmy'z, because even in his own eyes, Max didn't think he was deserving of the luxury of a ride home and a walk home alone, drunk off his fucking ass, had seemed a deserving end for a night that had been little more than hell on Earth.
When he gets off the elevator and stumbles down the short corridor that leads from the lift to the front door his, our apartment he corrects himself, he's not particularly surprised to find the note hanging from the lacquered wood door, taped just below the peephole, written in the bold, capital letters of an angry, sharpie wielding hand, impossible to miss for even the drunkest of individuals.
IN YOUR FUCKING DREAMS. SLEEP AT DANIEL'S. HE'S EXPECTING YOU.
Max doesn't bother to fight the present state of affairs, not because he's impartial or that he just altogether doesn't care, but because the sanctions that have been put in place against him, to punish him, are entirely warranted, his banishment is well deserved, and he's trying to better about not challenging what is deserved, both on and off the track.
So, conceding defeat, he turns his back on the front door of the apartment which has, thanks to your and Kaia's presence in it over the last few weeks, become a home, and goes back the way he'd came. All sense of shame long since abandoned, Max mopes for the entirety of his short journey down to Daniel's apartment, his head hung low and his shoulders slack, holding a staring contest with the floor beneath his feet.
Not bothering to knock, Max pulls his keys free of his pocket, trying and immediately failing at his ill-fated attempt not to let his eyes linger on the keychain Kaia had proudly given him for his birthday, no doubt designed and ordered by you, which sports a picture of the two of them together after the race at the Italian Grand Prix, him still dressed in his racing suit, sweaty and grinning, and one of the four of them- you, Kaia, Daniel and himself- huddled together after qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix.
Daniel, who must have been waiting for his imminent arrival, opens the door a matter of seconds after he'd had stopped outside his door, ending Max's disastrous battle of wills against his keyring as quickly as it had started, and waves him in. His usually bright and cheery demeanor are nowhere to be found, usurped, by a stormy expression and an air of frustrated fury, neither of which the Dutchman felt he could fault the other man for, nor would he say anything in his own defense.
He had already accepted that he wasn't going to be a particularly popular individual for quite some time to come since there was no doubt in his mind exactly who Daniel and Kaia will be siding with about all of this, which as it turns out, just so happens to be the exact one that Max expects Horner, GP, his mother, as well as his sister will be taking as soon as they are appraised of what went down tonight.
Max doesn't kid himself; he knows full well that there is no viability to be found for any future in which his best friend and his daughter chose to back him over you, and he doesn't blame either one of them for it, he doesn't deserve anyone's support at the moment, not even his own, let alone theirs's right now. He deserves whatever he's got coming to him because
Like that punch from earlier, the one he hadn't even tried to stop you from taking, Max knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he deserves what he's got coming to him, none of which will be particularly pretty or nice but he doesn't expect it to, nor he doesn't think that it should be because, in his eyes, even in this case with all its extenuating circumstances and unexplained mitigating factors, the punishment should always fit the crime.
