Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
Daniel's Apartment
Once the topic of conversation had been fully exhausted, Daniel excuses himself to his own bed, not bothering to give Max the usual spiel of the apartment's layout, about the location of the bathroom or which of the doors along the hallway lead to his room for the night because it would wholly unnecessary to do so considering the fact that Max spent enough time here to know every square inch of the place off the top of his head.
Now wholly alone, in a bed that he'd never slept in a day before in his life, since the guest suite that he's always taken in the past, the larger of the two bedrooms, has at some point in recent months been taken over by Kaia and the space has been painted a pastel shade of green, stocked with toys and toddler sized furniture, relegating Max to the remaining room.
Laying with his arms and his legs flung wide, sprawled out on his back in very center of the mattress, Max stares blankly up at the ceiling, his eyes wide and unseeing, Max wades through the knee-deep, standing waters that fills the inside of his head, where the still rising tide gives him little choice but to keep moving, to keep exploring, to rediscover forgotten memories and faded recollections, all in an effort to keep his head above the surface as the new thoughts and fresh formed revelations flood in, treading water until the rapids return to trickle fed streams.
Max has found himself in the rather unique predicament of being unwelcome in his own home, having managed to quite thoroughly achieve the task of ostracizing himself from the other head of the house in the course of a single evening out, an accomplishment over which he's more than willing to bet what little of his stake in the household that he still retains that the third and final member of his little family will have sided against him in the wake of last night's disaster.
Not because you've actually done a single thing to influence Kaia's final decision about which side of the line she'd fall behind, let alone gone to any extraordinary lengths to purposefully, vindictively or malignantly turn the two-year-old against him but because he expects that the toddler will have picked the party she instinctively prefers more often than not- you.
He tries not to let it bother him that frequently, it's you that she wants, rather than her sole remaining biological parent- a distinction which Max has only recently begun to make in his thoughts, not meant to demean your role in Kaia's life by acknowledging the difference between the water of the womb and the blood of the covenant, but as a personal reminder that his daughter has three parents who love her, a blessing that she doesn't even know has been bestowed upon here.
As it so happens is not a position that he'd ever even considered ending up in, a rarity in his life because for the most part, thanks to the combined efforts of his overactive imagination, traumatic childhood and propensity towards being excessively anxious, he'd be hard pressed to find any theoretical situation or feasible circumstance about which that he's not mentally dissected and dichotomized down to the last, excruciating detail.
Because prior to recent events, Max had been able to count on one hand the number of situations that have fallen outside the purview of his compulsive habit in the entirety of his life but that standard had gone out the window that Saturday afternoon when he'd climbed out of his car after qualifying to find that he'd somehow become a single father in the time it had taken to clench a third-row grid start at Monza.
This current predicament was the fourth such eventuality he'd stumbled upon the two short months since that fateful day, and as such, it likely should have lost the initial sense of surprise that the first three had brought with them because all things considered, Max had more than long enough to adjust to what was his life's new normal.
And yet, Max still felt just as caught off guard, out of sorts and wholly unprepared in the face of this latest development as he had for each of the three that had come before it.
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
Daniel's Apartment
He barely gets a wink of sleep in the late hours of the previous night, having been left on his own with only the clamoring din of rogue ideas and passing fancies in his mind's eye for company, only finally falling victim to slumber when the weak, watery grey light that preludes the dawn begins to illuminate the dark sky, the soft glow of daybreak leaking in through the gaps between the curtain panels.
Somewhere around 8 AM, Max finally gives up on trying to fall asleep and stay that way after what has to be the third or the fourth time in as many hours that he's drifted off only to jolt back into consciousness, his heart racing and his breathing all out of whack.
Electing to write it all off as the result of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed after a night of drink in excess and staying up well beyond any reasonable person's expectations of an appropriate bedtime, even after factoring in the extenuating circumstances of their birthday celebrations, Max still knows damn fucking well he's lying to himself, merely placing the blame on the consequences of his actions rather than on the actions themselves.
Since he doesn't exactly have anything better to do at the moment, Max isn't above killing time for the next half hour or so, wasting away minutes until it's closer to an appropriate time to show his face at home by pacing around the guest room, not wanting to venture out into the apartment and risk running into the man himself just yet because if the hangover he's got at present is any standard to go by, then the one that Australian will be nursing this morning will be nothing short of fucking lethal.
Max knows from experience that when Daniel is hungover, the best course of action that you can take is to avoid him at all costs because, while under normal circumstances, the older man is more than likely to be the nicest, most genuinely upbeat person that you'll ever meet in the course of your entire life, when he's hungover he'll take your fucking head off for looking at him for too long if you're not careful.
So, when the clock on the bedside table finally reads 9 am, Max picks his discarded shirt up from where it lays in a rumpled, wrinkled mess at the foot of the bed and pulls it on, nearly gagging at the smell of liquor that clings to the fabric, the scent of some unidentifiable drink that he hadn't even realized had been spilled on him clashes horrifically with his throbbing head and queasy stomach, threatening to make him start throwing up if he doesn't get a change of clothes fast.
Unwilling to spend an instant longer in the item of clothing than he strictly has to, Max books it out of the spare bedroom, across Daniel's living room and through his front door, not wanting to pause longer than it takes for him to mumble an almost unintelligible 'hello, thank you, goodbye' to his teammate as he passes him in the hallway on the way to the elevator bay, less the lack of motion afford his body enough time of inactivity an opportunity to revisit violently puking up everything he'd drank last night.
