Charles Leclerc Imagines

We'll Handle This

If there's one job worse than being a Scuderia Ferrari strategist, it's being the director of public relations for the same team. The strategists really do try, bless their misguided little hearts, or so they claim, at least, but they do tend to cause a fair amount of trouble. Every race week, you prepare your statements for every kind of mishap, and every race week, you find yourself scrambling to draft responses to all types of new problems. Delightful.

Well, at least it's interesting. Besides, the need for all these responses keeps you in a job, so you can't really complain all that much. If there was one person with a legitimate bone to pick, though, that would have to be your boyfriend. He's the one out there on the track whose shot at the Drivers' Championship slips away with every bad plan, but for some reason, Charles Leclerc has still managed to keep his public affection for his racing team in fact.

Publicly, that is. When no one's around but the two of you, when no one can hear you but the moths clustering on the outside of your glowing windows and the curling wind after dark, Charles sighs and runs his hands through his already mussed hair and actually says what he wishes.

It's sort of funny, actually, that the only person Charles feels safe to be honest with is the PR head for his own company. As if you'd do a thing to hurt either him or his reputation, though. With the daunting task of carrying the hopes and dreams of all the Tifosi, Charles' image and the man himself are one and the same. If you can protect him in any way, why would you not?

You just have to take care that you're doing it inconspicuously. Very few people on this earth know about your relationship with Charles, you'd done that on purpose. Both of you were afraid of the toll it would take on your respective careers should the news come out. You would be accused of unfairly favoring a fellow employee, and he would be called out for similar HR violations.

That's what years of public relations occupations have taught you. That's the textbook answer: you don't date your coworkers and so you don't have to find out what sort of backlash that blunder would win you. In all reality, you have no idea what would happen. Ferrari loves Charles, and you've won them some serious Internet credit over the years. After steering them away from several controversies, you'd think they'd be willing to cut you some slack.

Such a scenario, of Fred Vasseur letting you date his golden boy, isn't even feasible in your imagination, let alone real life. Your little fantasy of public acceptance will have to stay just that until several miracles happen all at once to twist the popular eye in your favor.

Until then, though, you're happy with what you have, truly you are. You fell in love with Charles for a reason, despite your best efforts and smartest choices. He is a wonderful man and an even better boyfriend. No one in this world has prioritized you or cared about you even half as much as he does. Charles does nothing by halves– not his racing, not his passion for his sport and career, and certainly not loving you.

With him, you feel wanted, and with him, you are willing to hide until hell freezes over and you're allowed to go public without risking your job. Right now, you have everything, and there's no way you'd risk that. Working at Ferrari was your dream, and you've had it for years now. Falling in love with someone like Charles was beyond your wildest imagination, but somehow that came true, too.

And, when you speak to Charles, he says much of the same thing. Sometimes, when you talk to him, you can still see the boy who'd promised his father he'd drive for Ferrari, the same kid who stepped into a kart for the first time and knew it would be his world forever. Charles has a spirit wholly unlike anything you've ever experienced before, yet he still swears that his life wasn't complete until he met you.

Despite all of his charm, you had still initially tried to resist your feelings for him. Charles had joined Scuderia Ferrari only a year before you did; both of you were relatively new to the love and scourge of the Tifosi. It had been easy, then, to talk with him, to laugh with him, to let him eke out a place in your heart. It was inevitable. It was glorious. It was him.