Sunday, November 18th, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
The Penthouse
"Who knows? She might change her mind... might be back as soon as tomorrow or Tuesday," the false bravado with which Max makes this particular declaration might be enough to sway him to believe the insanity of his own words but it isn't enough to do the trick on Daniel, not by a long shot, " because you never really know, do you? Anything could happen! Isn't that what people say?
He just stares blankly back at his teammate, not saying a word but not really needing to, considering that in and of itself, his utter lack of agreement spoke volumes.
"That is what people say, right? Did I get that wrong?" Max sounds so genuinely concerned over the possibility that he'd somehow managed to get the phrasing so wrong that it's meaning was beyond Daniel, "it's simple and it sounds right in my head, but I guess I could have-"
"I mean, yeah, mate, they do. They definitely do say that... sometimes," he was doing his very best to not let the laugh building in his chest come spilling out because he wasn't a fucking idiot, he knew damn well that so much as chuckling right now would be the single worst thing he could conceivably do at the moment.
Honestly, he was fully fucking aware that Max was far more likely to take kindly to having Daniel spit in his face than he ever was to being to being openly laughed at just now– and he could respect that.
"See?" the younger man says proudly, gesturing as if the tentative, begrudging concession he'd just made was some sort of irrefutable evidence, which hadn't come with a very obvious 'but' hanging over its very head, "you said so yourself-"
"But normally, when people say 'anything can happen' they usually mean things that could actually feasibly happen or, you know, like natural disasters and shit? Not like your kind of thing because those, those, are in an entirely different neighborhood... like they're in one that doesn't exist."
Because unlike the delusions that plague his companion, Daniel isn't blinded to the realities of the situation. Thank God for small mercies, which at the very least meant it wouldn't be blind leading the blind– at least not yet. He didn't know if he could stomach the circumstances devolving to such indignities this early on in the scope of things.
Not when they still had the better part of a week to get through, preferably mostly unscathed with all their limbs still attached. Well, that was if you asked Daniel how long they had left, rather than taking Max at his word, since he seemed to be the only one out of the two of them who had any true, lasting intention of holding loyal to fact– which in this particular instance was the definitive timeframe you'd given for when you'd be back.
That went without even mentioning the reality of just how fucking far you'd been pushed in recent weeks, where there was no doubt in his mind that the physical and mental drain of the season had only further exacerbated the considerable emotional toll that your responsibilities, Max and Kaia had taken on you, all of which had been compounded by the meeting at Red Bull last week.
Because it was crystal fucking clear to Daniel what exactly, or perhaps who exactly, it was that had been the very last straw, that had dealt the final blow to your defenses and had brought every thought, emotion and unresolved conflict you'd been so neatly tucked away to face at a later date, when there was the time to do such a thing, crashing down over your head... though such obvious conclusions seemed to have escaped Max's senses in their entirety.
Perhaps that was why he had little patience for the younger man's head in the sand antics this morning, because while complete and utter lack of self-awareness was the baseline from which his teammate perpetually operated, and Daniel had long ago accepted such things as standard practice, this was where he drew the line.
