Me 🤝 Charles Leclerc

Arthur: None of this new year, new me thing. Last year I was fabulous and next year I will be fabulous.

It's official the Piastri's are the funniest people in F1

CRYING WHO TOLD THEM TO POSE LIKE THIS 😭😭😭😭😭

Oscar: Are you ready to commit?  Logan: Like, a crime or to a relationship?

stockholm syndrome

I feel like every girl on here secretly loves ruben dias. No matter what you type is: ruben dias is on that list

‘depression song’ charles what is ferrari doing to you 😭

you gotta move, or move on- c.leclerc

love is so short, forgetting is so long pairing: charles leclerc x female reader word count: 5.5k warnings: angsty slay

You were seventeen when your parents picked up your entire life and moved to the tiniest, most congested country they could have possibly chosen. You’d vacationed there, spent your summers there for years, and you’re the first to admit it’s beautiful. Paris is beautiful, too. Home is beautiful in a way Monte Carlo will never be because home belongs to you. 

You’re a transplant in Monaco; a foreign organism who doesn't know the streets, the places, the people. You weren’t done with school, you had a whole year left. Why couldn’t your parents hold off for twelve months? Wait until you were in University and could stay where you belonged, let you choose your own path? You had to get familiar with a new city and a new school, new friends, new teachers. 

That’s where you met him, sort of. Through school, not at school. He was friends with your friends, but you’d never seen him at school before. A driver, Formula 3, they told you. It meant nothing to you considering you’d never followed racing, and weren’t going to start now. He’s really good, you didn’t care, not really. You were with your new friends, and he was there, rarely, occasionally, always a big deal when he showed up. 

Then, he was doing something else, somewhere else, and winning all of the time. He’s going to get promoted, everyone was always saying, always watching his races on their phones and on their laptops and on their televisions. You were riding along with your friends–his friends–to all of these European races. You’lldo anything for a vacation when you’re a teenager. You picked up on the obvious things pretty quickly, learned more about the intricate details in the grandstands; while you wouldn’t call yourself invested, you weren’t comatose while watching the races, either. 

You think that’s what he liked about you, what sparked the interest in the first place. Half of the girls your age at home were throwing themselves at him, trying to land him before he made it big. That’s what they always tell you about athletes, you have to get in before they really make it or else you won’t ever mean anything to them, they want you to prove your loyalty to them. You think he saw you, all passive and unbothered by race results–good or bad–and it intrigued him. It’s the only plausible explanation in your head, because he had his pick of the litter and you’ve never considered yourself the smartest, the prettiest, the best at anything, really. He could have had the best, but he chose you. 

It started off with these weird glances, ones where you’d catch each other’s eyes all of the fucking time. It was always so awkward, like you’d caught each other doing something wrong. Your eyes would dart away to another friend, to the sky, to your shoelaces, and your stomach would get all tangled in itself. You always felt like apologizing, like when two people are trying to move out of each other’s way and they both step to the same side; an awkward smile and a muted apology and then you think about it for the rest of the day because the whole thing was so mortifying. 

Then it was conversations, ones you’d never had before and always about nothing important. The two of you were friend-adjacent, at best, but now you were always lingering at the back of the group. Ending up sitting in the restaurant booth for a beat longer than everyone else, waiting for the other to fill their plate before finding a place to sit. You’d talk about school, about your plans for the future, about missing Paris and he’d talk about racing, about his dreams, about missing Monaco. You live here, you’d always say to him. 

Barely, he’d always reply, the better I get the less time I have. 

At some point the group meetings became one-on-one. A restaurant you’d never heard of, one he swore had the best food in the entire world. A coffee shop you wanted to try, one he knew nothing about because he didn’t drink coffee. He didn’t tell you that until you were ordering and you felt foolish, but then he ordered a hot tea and you sat at a little table and talked some more about nothing. You took him to Paris once during Fashion Week, because you had a family friend who had a show. You showed him around and even though he’d been a million times, he let you because he liked the way you talked. Alwayssaid there was something sweet about your voice. Like candy, he said, after you pointed out the bus stop you sat at every day before school as a child, after you asked him why he was smiling like an idiot. That’s when you realized you had a crush on him– in Paris by the old bus stop. 

“We’re not dating,” the two of you told friends for two months, even though the only thing that made the statement true was the lack of a label. You were doing everything people who date do. Suddenly, they were asking, and you were smiling and blushing and gushing all the details of just how he’d asked you to make it official. 

You got into a fight in May, because he heard from one of your friends you were going to University in Monaco. It hurt that he heard it from someone that wasn’t you but it hurt more that you were staying. You haven’t shut up about going back to Paris since I met you, he said, over the phone because he was away at a race. Why aren’t you going to Paris? You felt like a Gilmore girl, a Jess and Rory original. 

“You live here”, you said, like always. 

“Barely,” he replied, like always. 

That was precisely it, though. If he could barely make it back to his home, how could you ever expect him to have time to come see you in yours? 

You ended up going back to Paris, reluctant that he’d be able to fulfill his promises to come see you. When you packed your boxes of things into the trunk of your car, part of you knew it was just the beginning of the end. The rest of you pretended it wasn’t, carried on with red eyes to Monaco and weekend studying done on trains following him around for two trips around the sun. 

You’ve always prided yourself on being realistic, it’s what you thought helped draw him to you in the first place. But, you were coming to learn he needed optimism, the undying and unrelenting kind that you were never going to be capable of providing. You weren’t the kind of person that could watch him drive for shit and pretend he didn’t. You drove for shit, you would tell him, only if it was true and then he’d get all passive aggressive and close doors with more force than necessary and sigh dramatically every five minutes. You weren’t a villain about it, you were still his biggest cheerleader, next race you’ve got it, I know you’re better than this, but you were honest. You’d always be honest, and it was dragging him down. 

He’d be better off, you thought, if he could have his choice again and find someone who was coded in a way that built him up instead of tearing him down. If you were smarter, prettier, better at all of it, you think you could be what he needs, that you’d be able to adapt and change the way you thought for him. You weren’t those things, though, you were just you. 

So calls became short, time zones felt greater, and he never did come see you in Paris. You lost touch with your friends in Monaco, a year, unsurprisingly, does little to form life-long friendships. He kept in touch with them, was always so much better at relationships than you were. Charles would talk about them all of the time, about how much they were helping him, how good they could make him feel. It always made you sad, knowing you were never going to be enough. 

I feel like I barely know you anymore, you said once, on the phone, in the middle of the night because it was the only time you got calls from him anymore. He’s in America, racing with Sauber now and you haven’t been to a single race outside of Monaco. 

I can’t wait for your wedding, one of his friends, an old, once upon a time friend of yours said sometime that weekend. I bet he proposes, soon. You knew he wouldn’t, knew you were treading dangerously close to the extinction line. Your relationship was teetering on a cliff and waiting for a gust of wind, a breath of fresh air, a cold–hearted shove to push you over the edge and into a fiery explosion of doom, death, all other bad things. You dragged out the end of the call, worried the earlier admission would make it your last for a while. I wish you were here, you said and he didn’t reiterate the sentiment. 

You never remembered Paris as being so cloudy, so chilled, so rainy. All of the colors felt gray and muted and you just wanted to be with him, wherever he was. The U.S, China, Monaco. He was everywhere but with you, and you were furious and depressed and bratty and selfish about it. Home is a person, as cheesy as it is true, you’d come to learn. 

If you knew this is how it would have gone, you never would have conceded, you would have gone to school in Monaco and everything would be perfect. If you knew, you would have learned everything there was to know about Formula 3 all those years ago. You would have studied it like your life depended on it and would’ve become a fan girl and he never would have found you relevant or interesting and all of this could have been avoided. You didn’t do any of those things, though because you never could have known you were going to fall in love. Allgrandiose and emotional and comfortable. You never could have predicted you’d be counting sheep to spend time with him. You never could have known, never could have prepared. 

You tried to fix it, you did. Some things just aren’t repairable. You called more often, you tried to get more time off work and blew all your money traveling. When you were together, it was so good. It was never hard to share space with him, to occupy the same air. That was the easiest part. That was why it was worth trying to fix, all the conversations about nothing and everything, about your dreams and his dreams, about the future neither of you fully believed you’d share. It was lovely in the chaos and it was pure in the silence. 

We have to be at rock bottom, you told him, teary eyed on the sofa of a hotel suite on a Monday morning. You were packing your bags, you back to France, him to the next race. You just started crying, out of nowhere, while you were folding your underwear. He laughed at first, but you didn’t stop crying. The thought of going back to being apart was one you couldn’t grapple with, refused to come to terms with because it was so bad when you were away. A shredded heart apart, a mended wound together. The pain of it was becoming unbearable. 

You moved back to Monaco. It felt like the only thing left to do, a last resort. All those times he told you he was barely there, he wasn’t lying. He was away from Monaco the same as he was away from Paris. “You love me,” you teased him over Facetime, cooking dinner, making horrible jokes, trying with all your might to make it all better. 

“I love you,” he said, rehearsed and bored and unamused. Reminded, maybe, by your words that he was supposed to love you. Every word for the rest of the night feels like checking the expiration date on a bottle of something you don’t remember buying and can’t identify. 

Winter break, he was back home for the holidays, to see his family, to see you. You didn’t want to do it then, but it felt like the only option. “I’ve had enough,” you said to him, among a million other things. 

“I understand,” he told you, and you knew it was really over because he didn’t try to fight for you, to convince you otherwise. If he had tried, you would have let him, would have caved, you know it. 

“We can still be friends,” you offered, a concession prize because being with him really was that great. It was all the complicated long-distance relationship dynamics that killed what you had, what you still have. 

“I don’t want to be friends.” 

You cried, he cried, and when you went to his apartment three days later to pack up the things you had there, you found a little velvet box on the top shelf of the closet. Curiosity killed the cat, and you opened it, instantly regretted it, memorized the diamond ring inside, closed it and returned it to it’s original spot and never told another person. You should have said no, but you would’ve said yes. 

There won’t be too many drunk calls, you hoped, from either of you. A clean breakup. You figured it wouldn’t be long before he moved on, before you saw on social media that he was walking the paddock with a girl who could give him everything he needed, everything you couldn’t. You thought it would make you happy, to see him happy and fulfilled and with a partner that was better suited to him. 

She looks just like you. Your sister texted you at the beginning of the next season. He was a hot shot now, the promised prince who would be bringing Ferrari to glory again. He was also walking through the paddock with another girl. 

Il Predestinato, the predestined. You wondered if it held any truth. Wondering if the universe had it all planned out, if every single thing that has ever happened to him, including you, was all a part of some master plan. If it is, the universe is sick, you think. 

He looks happy, good for him. You replied, cried for four hours, soaked shirt and sheets and pillowcase. You could have kept going if you had any tears left to give, but you used them all up scrolling through social media, doom spiraling until you found out who she was, found her twitter, found her Instagram, scrolled to the bottom of her tagged photos, learned the name of her sister and what color dress she’d worn in Italy with her teenage boyfriend. You needed to know all of it, because he was your teenage boyfriend before long before he ever belonged to her.

You never thought of Monaco as a small town, but, now that you’re expecting to find a ghost around every corner, to spot his car on every street, the fucking country has never felt smaller. You’re claustrophobic here, everything reminds you of him, his picture is everywhere. Formula One is everywhere. Your friends, the ones you’d reconnected with since moving back, they were his friends first. 

They act like nothing’s changed, like they’ve chosen your side when they clearly haven’t. You wonder how long they all knew about his new girl, how long they’ve been together, how long it took him to move on. You expected it to be quick, but God, it’s barely been a few months and he’s already comfortable enough subjecting her to the media circus. 

You try to go out, to drown your sorrows with the girls who aren’t really your friends. The nightlife is always bustling here, but every club feels empty without him there. Everyshot needs a partner and every fruity drink needs him stealing sips and refusing to admit he likes it. Your friends try to cheer you up, and guys try to hit on you, but you feel like a shell of a person. Justfloating around without purpose. Floating, waiting, hoping it’s all a nightmare. 

You don’t run into him, thank God. You run into Pascale and Arthur, though, which is arguably so, so much worse. It’s just on the street, they’re heading to the grocery store, one of them tells you. You’re walking to nowhere, from nowhere. Pascale hugs you and you think you might burst into tears. We miss you, she says, and it fuels the jealous ball of guilt in your soul for another day. 

I miss you guys, too, you said, and meant it. You wondered if any of them knew about the ring. Charles was never one to keep a secret, he was historically terrible at it, it was endearing. Arthur was almost hard to look at, the same eyes, the same voice. Identical laughs, all nervous and short, the same face, practically. “How’s Lorenzo?” You asked, because you couldn’t ask about Charles. 

You walked home, passed his building and wished you were dead so any trace of your relationship could be buried with you. You tried to pretend you didn’t know the cracks on the sidewalk, that you didn’t have each and every one memorized from walking the same steps so many times. 

Home is just as haunting as the streets are. He’d helped you pick out the apartment, went to look at this one with you and said he’d never forgive you if you didn’t lock it in. You ate pizza on the living room floor, before you had any furniture at all, before you even had an internet connection. Sauce dripped from your slice onto the floor and he hurriedly grabbed a napkin to wipe it off the wood floors. You can’t afford to lose your deposit, idiot, he told you, smiled like a goofball and wiped the sauce on your face. 

The whole place sings of him, the walls have heard his favorite songs played over, and over, and over again. He picked that paint color, helped you put it on the wall and raced to see who could finish their side first. You deleted his playlist from your phone, along with all the pictures and the videos, but the memories still linger, stunt your healing and stick into your life like a stubborn splinter. 

You buy out your lease the next week, move back to Paris and stay with a friend until you can get a place of your own. It’s good for you, the best, being away from a place that was never really yours. It allows you to pick up the pieces and move forward, to not spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been, what might have fixed things. 

Paris gives you clarity, makes it impossible to be angry at him because it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There’s nothing anyone could have done, the universe itself never would have been able to intervene. It was just young love, all poetic and film-inspiring and heartbreak song-inducing. Innocent and infuriating and codependent and convoluted. Your first heartbreak, the first real, gut-wrenching experience with losing a love, it’s always like this. The movies and the songs proved that. You just didn’t experience that loss until you were in your early twenties. Distance allows you to recognize that. Having the same aching pain settled so deep in your chest would have been unbearable if you were any younger. You were lucky, as sick and twisted as it felt.

He swears to God he saw you during the podium in Monza. A flash of your hair, your eyes, he blinks and it’s gone, you’re gone. A figment of his imagination, he tries to convince himself he’s seeing things in the chaos of winning Ferrari’s home race, but, he can’t shake it, the feeling that you’re here. 

You’d come to a race at Monza, a million years ago, 2016. It was a sprint race and he retired. It’s okay, all of his friends told him. All of them except you. You didn’t say anything, just smiled and gave him the same awkward hug you always did. “What did you think about the race?” He asked you.

“It was whatever.” You’d shrugged. “Shit for you, I suppose.” It was right there. That’s the moment he pinpointed, the exact second he decided he wanted to know you better, that he needed to prove himself to you, show you just how interesting his life could be. He always figured he would tell your kids the story one day, that he’d mention it in his wedding vows and get a spattering of laughs from the guests. 

That was the last time you were in Monza together. That’s why he was seeing you in the crowd, he was projecting, surely. He asks his brother, his mother, if they saw you. They give him strange looks and ask him if he’s okay because, why would you be here? 

You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be here, he keeps telling himself. He half expects to find you in his drivers room, or lingering by the coffee machine in hospitality. You’ve never even been inside the Ferrari motorhomes, but, he thinks you’d look so familiar in there, like he wouldn’t bat an eye seeing you. 

His mind races, and he feels like a teenager again. Like no time at all has passed and you and he are painfully in love and it’s stupid and young and lovely.  “What’s going on in your head?” His girlfriend asks him, playing with his hair like you used to. 

“Nobody.” He says, slips up unconsciously, because he doesn’t want to start an argument. 

“Nobody?” She says, that incessant whine in her voice that drives him up a wall. He sighs, because she’s gearing up for a fight. He wonders if it’s too late to crash his car into the barrier, pull a few dozen G’s and have an excuse for perfectly teeing her up. 

He runs into you at a Christmas party that winter. It’s the anniversary of the end of you two and he wonders if you remember as vividly as he does. One year without each other, a date he never thought he’d remember. A date he never thought would come. 

You’ve got a guy with you, who just told the worst joke he’s heard in a while. You laugh, because you’re sweet, but he knows you don’t think it’s funny–knows your laugh too well, worked hard to hear it for too many years. 

He watches the two of you, studies you, wonders if he looks as foolish with his new girlfriend as you look with your new boyfriend. It’s painfully obvious, he thinks, how unhappy you are, how ungenuine you appear. That’s not your smile, not your drink, not your favorite pair of heels. 

“Hi,” he says when he finds you in the kitchen of the house party, alone. “It’s good to see you,” A lie. He’d almost turned around and walked right back out the door when he saw you. You, with someone who wasn’t him. 

“Yeah, you too,” you said, also a lie. He knows you, whether you like it or not. 

“So, new guy, huh?” Awkward. So fucking awkward. You nod. “Nice.” He sips his drink. 

“Are you seeing anyone?” You asked, and he thought there was no way you didn’t know. No way you’d gone unalerted to your doppelganger walking the grid. Surely, someone told you. Your sister, likely, maybe a friend. 

“Uh,” he scratches the back of his neck because his hands don’t feel like they belong to him. He doesn’t know where to put them. “Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah.” She’s nothing like you, he wants to say. Wonders if it would do more harm or good, if you’d read his words as an admission that you are irreplaceable or if you’d see them as an insult. 

“Great.” You say, smile, and it might be genuine. He’s startled that he can’t read it precisely, forced to confront the notion that he doesn’t know you like he once did. Beat after beat of silence, tense and awkward and strange. He was more comfortable when you were breaking up with him than he is right now. “Do you hate me?” You finally spoke, and his heart broke a little. It broke a lot, but, your heart isn’t his to break anymore. That’s what he keeps telling himself, anyway. 

It hurts to say your name, the air rips its way out of his lungs and through his vocal cords and gets caught in the back of his throat, again on the tip of his tongue. “I could never hate you.” He wishes he could. He’s tried, time and time again to hate you, to loathe you for existing. You tore him into a million tiny pieces and sprinkled them in every corner of the earth, hid them in the deepest nooks and the tightest crannies. Destroyed some, just for the hell of it. Then, you sent him on his way, handed him a bottle of glue, a good luck in the form of we can still be friends and expected him to be fine. 

He knew–was able to recognize now–that he was far from perfect. Far, far from it. He was distant and pushed you away and was a complete ass, but fuck, he loved you more than he knew. You hurt him more than anyone would ever know. 

There are few things as sobering as returning an engagement ring to the jeweler. It’s a sympathetic look he’ll never forget, and even then he knew he couldn’t blame you, that the blame lied solely on him for fucking it all up. His mom cried when he told her, called him an idiot in three languages, told him he needed to fix it, that you were worth it. I know, Mama, he told her, I know, but I can’t fix this. 

He broke up with your twin a few weeks later because no matter how hard he tried, there was no replicating you. He wondered how long it would be before word got to you, if you’d even care when it did. 

He hated being home, now. Monaco was a nightmare, you were all over his place, all over the most important years of his life. Your smell could be erased from the sheets with a few washes, but the grease stain you left on the corner of the couch? The one you cried about and apolgized for everytime you saw it? There’s no getting rid of it. 

He cleaned out his closet a couple weeks ago, after all these years. Your name was written in pink marker on the wall, behind a bunch of shoe boxes. You were here, 2017, it read, and he spent thirty minutes going over it with a Magic Eraser only for it to be just as vibrant as before. 

There was one time, before he broke up with his girlfriend, where he caught himself just before saying your name into her shoulder. The first syllable slipped and he had to pretend it was a nonsensical shuddered breath. He’s fallen into more of a monthly rotation since then, keeps them around until it becomes glaringly apparent they’ll never fill the shoes you left behind. Flavors of the month. It works well enough, distracts him well enough. 

The more removed he becomes from you, the cloudier the memories become. Clarity, people tell him he needs it, but, the haze distracts him just the same. He can forget you for a while, live his life without looking for you in everyone who tries to buy him a drink. Distractions come in the form of driving, of friends, of family. In the form of a girl who looks nothing like you, who speaks nothing like you, who acts nothing like you. It won’t last, he knows it won’t but he can’t find you anywhere in her and it’s refreshing. 

This is so weird, I totally get if you say no, she texted him late one night. But, do you want to go to a wedding with me in a couple weeks? He should say no, he thinks. Committing to a wedding in a couple weeks is committing to being interested in a couple weeks and he can’t guarantee that. It’s commitment he can’t make and that’s if you disregard all the implications of going with someone to a wedding. It’s like the first rule of dating, you don’t go to a wedding together if you don’t see things lasting. 

It’s too romantic, there’s too much love flying around. He’ll be catching side eyes all night from her, longing glances that make everything weird. The bouquet toss will be taken just a little too seriously for two people who are casually dating. 

It’s too weird, right? She says after a few long minutes of radio silence. 

No, not weird. He replies. Sounds like a good time.

That’s how he ends up there, believe it or not. The sickest fucking coincidence in the world, he thinks, standing in front of this intricate sign. It bore your name, your fiance’s name, written in delicate script. 

There’s no way, he thinks. There is no fucking way. “How do you know them, again?” He asks the girl on his arm. 

“My mom is friends with the Groom’s mom. We grew up together.” She says, smiley and lovely and perfectly dressed. There is no fucking way this is his reality. He has to be dreaming, stuck in a nightmare, surely. Even the universe isn’t this fucked up. 

This isn’t the wedding you always talked about wanting, the one you daydreamed about when you were feeling particularly in love. It’s not the one he planned on giving you. There’s so many people here, it’s not like you. I want something intimate, you told him once. I want to love everyone there. You never would have had a family friend’s plus-one in attendance. 

“Hey,” She says, flashes him a flask in her purse. “You wanna do a shot?”

God, you have no idea. “Yeah.” 

You’ll cry when you see me, you told him. If you don’t, I’ll turn around and do it again. He thinks about that when you’re standing with your dad at the top of the aisle, beaming, glowing. Your dress is the most you thing he’s ever seen–fits you right in every spot, classy and spunky and traditional and fun all at the same time. He looks to the end of the long aisle, to your groom. He’s smiling, has his hands crossed behind his back and laughs, no tears. 

He tries not to stare, because he doesn’t want to catch your eye, to catch your father’s eye, but it’s so hard when you look like that. “She looks so beautiful,” His date leans into him and whispers, doesn’t look at him. A good thing she doesn’t, too, because his eyes are bloodshot. 

“Yeah,” He says, blinks away a tear. 

You’re giddy at the reception. The bar serves two cocktails–his and hers mixed drinks. His date drinks yours, and he steals a sip and it’s fruity and sweet. “Can I have another shot?” He asks, and she subtly slides her flask to him under the table. 

His eyes can’t stop finding you, watching you all dopey and smiley while you hug everyone and talk with grand expressions. You’re making the rounds, and he slips away before you and your new husband make it to his table. 

Your sister catches him by the bathrooms. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.” He says, chuckles at his shit luck because there’s nothing else he can do.

“No, Charles.” She says it firmer this time, like he’s in trouble, which–understandable. “Why are you, here?”

“My, uh.” He twists the ring on his pinky. “The girl I’m seeing, I’m her plus-one.”

She looks nervous, your sister, like she’s fraternizing with the enemy and at any given moment someone is going to catch her and take her head. “Has she seen you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can’t be here.” She’s practically whispering, grabbing his arm and pulling him behind a corner. 

“You’re telling me.” He laughs, because he’s about to cry at the wedding of the girl he thought he was going to marry. He’s going to cry at your wedding, just like you always said he would. 

“I mean it. You need to leave.”

He cocks his head, she’s not serious. She’s just being a good sister. “Come on, don’t you–”

“Charles.” She says it soft, cracked and sad. There is so much unsaid. “Leave.”

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He doesn’t know how he’s going to explain this one away, but, he has the walk from the bathrooms to the reception hall to figure it out. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

And he does–go. He goes, and wonders for the rest of his life what would’ve happened if he stayed.

every weekend ferrari does something to fuck sharl over and i’m like YOU’RE LOSING HIM!!!!!!!! and then approximately 4 days later he’s in maranello in his pista signing hats with the biggest smile on his face forza ferrari, and then the next weekend comes and the cycle repeats. i feel like sisyphus.

I need to know what charles just heard to earn THAT reaction