Monday, October 22nd, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
The Penthouse
It's definitely getting closer and closer to finally being time for you to put your pettiness aside and get back to what you should have been doing all along- your actual fucking job.
But that's currently proving itself to be an increasingly difficult thing to actually force yourself into doing now that you've foolishly allowed yourself to give in to what you wanted to do rather than what you needed to do.
The past three days mark the Grand Prix in what has to be well over three years that you'd been absent from a race, and unaccustomed as you are to being away from the team during the season, it's stranger even still to watch the weekend unfold as a live, televised event.
Kaia, bless her, has not handled the separation from her father well at all, not in the slightest, and there had been a steep learning curve that had plagued the first few days the three of you had spent apart for the first time since she'd come into either one of your lives.
It had taken a few sleepless nights and countless dead ends before you'd finally caved and done what you'd known you'd end up doing all along... you'd folded, giving in to good sense and better reason, and you'd called Max before you could stop yourself.
And after that, once the pair of you had momentarily put your personal issues aside, bedtime had run relatively smoothly from there on out, which wasn't even in the same vicinity as your nights had been prior to that first weekend in September or anywhere near how they were when Kaia asleep in the center of the mattress was the closest thing to separation as things ever got.
Now, there was an ocean between where Kaia and you slept and where Max did, and while the addition of your laptop screen and conflicting schedules posed their own complications, they were problems that were far easier to handle and, in the end, hardly changed matters at all.
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2018- México City, México
México Grand Prix, Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Mexico City International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez)
"I'm sorry to interrupt but Max, could you please not look at her like that? Please?" Daniel sounds like he's teetering dangerously close to getting sick right here in the middle of the airport.
"Like what? I'm not doing anything!" Max is erring on the far side of being excessively defensive for someone presently maintaining their innocence, "how exactly do you think I'm looking at her?"
"Like you want to eat her!" Daniel explains impatiently, "it's fucking disgusting, honestly."
"Language," you interject, more out of habit than anything else since Kaia doesn't seem to have heard a thing as she stares at the sea of people that surrounds your little group, "also I'm right here, well within ear shot in case you've both somehow failed to notice."
"Max hasn't failed to notice shit," Daniel snorts, "look at him, even after we just talk about it, he's doing it again."
"I don't- I'm not-" Max, to his credit, tries to deny his teammate's accusation but fails entirely as he just splutters in disbelief.
"You fucking are, mate, I hate to break it to you," you don't even bother to correct Daniel this time, "in public, honestly," he continued with a long-suffering sigh, "you can't help yourself, can you? It's like you can't decide between trying to undress her with your eyes or just behaving for once."
"I don't! Can we just not do this right now? Can we just go back to the hotel already? We have to be up early," Max implores.
"Don't whine," you tell him, rolling your eyes at his reaction, "oh, save it would you? Don't pout at me, for God's sake," you reach out and thump his brow, flicking him solidly between the eyes, "you're going to give yourself premature wrinkles and put yourself out of business if you keep that up."
"Ow?" Max looks so taken aback by what you've just done that he's forgotten to get angry as you'd expected him to, "whatever," he starts to gesture crudely before remembering himself, taking the setting and present company in account, tries to play the motion off as a dismissive wave of his hand, "fuck you two."
"Oh, so now he has spatial awareness," Daniel does his best to replicate the disjointed, stilted movement back at the Dutchman, "dumb ass."
"Kaia, come on," Max glares at Daniel before extending his hand to his daughter, who merely looks up at him blankly, wholly unimpressed and turns to you.
"Lovie," she says simply, raising both arms in silent request to be picked up, not paying her father any mind whatsoever as he scoffs at the succinct rejection.
"Come on then, baby."
