#idk for some reason this was so wholly girl!daniel and I couldn't make it otherwise
Text
almost makes you wish
I have a terrible habit of finding all these prompt lists and never posting anything I write from them because I blank on like one or two of them, but I think?? I really liked this one
This is day 8 from Yeehawgust 2023: Patrolling the Mojave
Little bit of always a girl!Daniel Maxiel circa Melbourne 2023
1170 words of (past)hurt/(present) comfort
(TW: mental health discussion, medication)
They’ve had most of the day together, doing promotional videos in Melbourne, when Max texts her his hotel number like she hinted at.
“No dice Maxy, I am out of commission. It’s like patrolling the Mojave desert down there.” Daniel announces as she flops back onto his hotel bed, dramatic as ever.
Max sips his Red Bull and weighs up his options. She looks better for the time at home in the sun, not as gaunt and haunted as she had by the end of last year. Her smile comes easier again like all it needed to do was recharge in the Perth sun. Her hair is longer, curls fanned around her face and down past her shoulders.
A pillow hits him in the face. “Hey, space cadet.” Daniel is leaning up on her elbows, eyeing him almost suspiciously. “I can, like...I can go, if you don’t want to...if this was just for...”
Max tuts and rolls his eyes, tosses the pillow back at her. “I just wanted to see you.”
Her face does something weird as soon as he says it. In true Daniel fashion though, she deflects with humour. “Aw Maxy, lil old me? I’m flattered.”
Max throws her the tv remote and settles on the bed next to her – leaves space for her to decide if she wants to curl up against him. “You of course aren’t old, Daniel.”
“I’m decrepit, Max. A husk. Wasting away right in front of my own eyes.” She’s laughing as she carries on, finds a movie they can put on in the background. “Do I go towards the light?” She grabs his arm, short nails painted red stark again his pale arm.
Max (so fond of her it feels like he could choke on it, actually – because he finds he knows that means she’s testing the waters, seeing if he wants her close) uses her own hand to yank her off balance so she falls against his chest. “No thank you, I think actually that would be very bad.”
She stills for a moment and then it’s like she melts into the contact, nestling into the crook of his arm and throwing one leg over his, easily like they do this much more often than they do. “Yeah, then you’d have to do all of your media stuff by yourself.”
Max rolls his eyes again. “And I would be sad for you to be gone.” His breath stirs her hair as they settle close to each other.
Daniel goes as still as she ever does, and Max can practically hear the wheels in her head turning. Before she pushes herself up so she can look at his face, sitting heavy on his chest like one of the cats back home (Max wants to tell her that Sassy winds around his legs when they’re on the phone and she can hear Daniel’s disembodied voice, and she doesn’t do that for anyone else). “You mean that?”
“Yes, Daniel.” He keeps his voice light, schools his face open. He wants to roll his eyes and ask if she’s really that stupid, or if she really thinks so little of him, but he suspects it’s not the time.
Her lips quirk and she blinks until her eyes aren’t so glassy (Max is secretly glad; he doesn’t like it when she cries – no matter what he does it feels like the wrong thing). “S’good to know.” She says eventually, settling back down and tucking her head under his chin, closer than they were.
“Did…did you think differently?” He asks, hesitant before he decides it might be easier not looking at each other.
She shrugs, but he can feel her picking her thumb nail where the skin is already shredded to pieces. “Not...I mean...I know it in theory. Or...logically, let’s say. Just...sometimes it doesn’t...or didn’t, feel like it, you know? Not from you, just...depression brain, I guess.” She huffs a laugh which is more like a puff of air against his chest. “They make pills for that, though. Turns out.”
Max chews over different words in his head until it’s nearly been too long, he thinks. “You could have said, that it was so bad.” He settles on eventually.
Daniel tuts. “Kinda hard when you don’t even wanna say it to yourself.” She mutters, and then takes a deep breath. Max thinks she’s counting in her head, it’s so measured. “Sorry, I...I know I could have. Thank you. Of course I know.”
“Maybe you don’t, sometimes.” He ventures. “I think of course you are very tough and brave in racing, but you think all the time you have to be that way for everyone.” Max almost holds his breath, worried he’s said too much.
“Wow, exposed.” She mutters after a moment of silence that isn’t quite charged, but its weighty. “Nah you’re...” she rolls onto her stomach so she can look at him, hands on his chest again. “You’re right. I don’t...or, I didn’t always know that, though. I’ve been...working on it, I guess. In therapy and stuff. I’m...trying.”
Max can see something determined in her face that had gone missing, by the end of the last year, ground out of her. He reaches for the curl falling in front of her eyes and nudges it back with the rest. “You of course know there’s nothing wrong with you, though.”
Daniel snorts. “Debatable. That’s the whole...the antidepressants are why I can’t...like I can’t stress the Mojave desert enough.”
“I said already this was okay, Daniel.” Max narrows his eyes at her. “Unless that’s all you came for.”
It’s a calculated risk, to goad her into a response. He’s known her so much of his life, the whole time he’s been an adult. They’ve been doing some form of this for most of that time, too, around girlfriends and boyfriends and racing.
Daniel scowls at him, dark brows drawn together and pout on her full mouth. “Hey! That’s not fair, I just...I missed you, and...”
He grins, so wide it almost makes his cheeks hurt. “You missed me?”
Max has time to register the surprise on her face before she’s even more in his space, nose an inch away from his and her body draped over his chest (if he looked, he knows he’d see straight down the neckline of her shirt – he doesn’t, because it doesn’t feel appropriate, but he does think about it). “You’re a little shit, Verstappen.” Daniel declares, eyes dancing a bit.
His hands naturally fall to her hip and her waist and he tries to look innocent. “I of course learnt from you, so you only have yourself to blame.”
She laughs long and loud and close to his face, and he wakes up to her drooling onto his shirt hours later, TV switched itself to standby. He puts her phone on charge next to his and nudges her under the blankets even though she grumbles about it (but she throws a leg over his, murmurs thanks into the hollow of his throat).
#my fic#max/daniel#maxiel fic#idk for some reason this was so wholly girl!daniel and I couldn't make it otherwise#I like this Max voice tbh#I'm very scared about posting this so I'm rambling in the tags
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