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Sergio didn’t have dreams often.
It was 2020. He was on his 10th season in Formula 1. There wasn’t much he dreamed about besides a championship and a home win, he supposed. He had everything he ever wanted: a close support group with family and friends, a consistent career, enough money to live how he liked, a good car to compete consistently for top 10 positions, a teammate he got along well enough and a long contract with the team that gave him a chance when he needed one. He expected himself to retire with them in the near future if things went how they were supposed to.
Racing Point was his home, after all. Messy, a bit behind with the times and disorganized, but his home nevertheless. He was their first driver, even if his teammate was the son of the new owner. He saw it in the team member’s eyes. He was their Lewis Hamilton, he was their Max Verstappen. They counted on him to lead the team to greater things, even when he had his years counted in the sport. He knew the car under his hands like he knew his family. This was home.
So, that’s why he was confused at the moment.
He knew he was in a dream the moment he saw his hands holding the Monaco Grand Prix 1st place trophy. He would never win a Grand Prix in the current car he had unless a miracle happened like Mercedes or Red Bull making abismal mistakes or getting DNFed. However, the trophy wasn’t the only thing that made him raise an eyebrow.
He wanted to look around him to gather everything that was happening as quickly as possible, but it seemed like his body didn’t obey his conscious orders, so he followed himself along in his dream. He was dressed in full Red Bull gear, as if he was one of their drivers and he felt himself cry with emotion, supposedly because of his win. His eyes barely caught the sight of Christian Horner and Helmut Marko smiling up as Max Verstappen and him were standing on the podium. His chest felt heavy and his stomach was swooping with feelings he couldn’t describe.
It was a funny feeling, winning in Formula 1. He had never felt it before. The only time he remembered being this close to a win was Malaysia 2012, where he ended up a bit frustrated for his mistake against Fernando on the last lap, but euphoric because of his first podium either way. He didn’t know how his subconscious came up with this scenario specifically, with him dressed in Red Bull colors, a Formula 1 car he didn’t recognize and Mexico’s National Anthem sounding high in Monte Carlo, but he wasn’t complaining.
The more he stayed standing there, tears blurring his vision and him taking in the feeling of achieving a long time goal he had always wanted, he realized something. He knew these people. He knew Max’s cats were called Jimmy and Sassy. He knew Christian’s children liked to ride horses. He knew Helmut’s favorite ice cream flavor was pistachio. He knew the Red Bull mechanics had on-going bets between each other and some of them had children. He knew each of the names that made up the Red Bull team. He knew Max liked his hair long. He knew how Max’s kisses felt-
What the fuck.
He woke up abruptly when his phone started ringing.
A few weeks later, the second time Sergio dreamt, he was dressed in Red Bull gear again, but he felt incredibly frustrated.
He was driving a car that seemed that he knew just like the palm of his hand: the RB19. He recognized the track immediately as a warm fuzzing feeling in his chest settled, his love for racing extending all through out his body. This was Jeddah. This was a track that fit his driving style down to each millimeter. How the hell did he end up here?
Adrenaline filled his senses as he drove with precision around the track in the first position, Max Verstappen following right behind him at a distance of 5 seconds. He didn’t understand anything that was being said on the radio by his race engineer or why did his subconscious conjure up this crazy scenario that Sergio was sure it was never going to happen. It’s almost as if his mind was playing games with him by telling him this could’ve been his future if he took different decisions when he was younger. He didn’t know what was happening around him yet again, so he decided to enjoy for a while.
After the first dream of his made-up Monaco win, he knew forcing himself to move and ask questions to people around him in his dreams was useless. It seemed that he already knew everything. He knew the passion of racing for a win, the tears that will come with it, the tiredness his bones will feel as an aftermath. He knew what was it like to fight for constant podiums against Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes or Charles Leclerc in a Ferrari. He knew he had a car to compete against the best drivers in the sport, and the best was in the form of his boyfriend, two times world champion Max Verstappen, who was just mere seconds behind him.
Whilst Sergio’s mind concentrated on the throttle, on the exits he had to make taking slow and fast corners, on controlling the bit of understeer his car gave him, it kept throwing him the feeling of uneasiness of battling out a race against his boyfriend. Yes, Max Verstappen was his boyfriend. He didn’t know how or when, but his thoughts just threw him that piece of information as it was the most natural fact of life. Sergio didn’t question it when he was already confused on why he was a Red Bull driver in the first place. Concentrate on the race first, analyze the extra information later.
There were team orders, the positions should be kept for an easy 1-2. They should slow down for the sake of not killing their powered-up engine before reaching half of the season. They should be hitting 33.0 each lap. Max wasn’t obeying and he knew it, his race engineer knew it, the commentators knew it, those watching the race live and at home knew it. Nobody was surprised. Not even himself.
“Target 32.6 +0.4” His race engineer spoke on the radio.
Sergio replied quickly. “Is Max doing the same?”
“Max’s last lap is 32.6.”
“Then why did you tell me 33.0?”
Agitated. Alone. Afraid. That how he felt in this dream. He wanted to scream at those in the pit wall that were giving these orders and expected him to obey without question when they knew what Max did to him last season. How did Max manage to make him feel like he was fighting for his life with each tenth he was cutting down on him, just because they both knew the team will always prefer Max to win?
The answer was simple, but he wouldn’t believe it. The unfortunate event of loving Max Verstappen wouldn’t be his to bear, he decided.
He woke up by his trainer, Jo, shaking him.
“Do you have any pets, Max?” The interviewer asked, the public from the fanzone looking at them excitedly.
Alex, Max’s teammate, and Lance, his own teammate, zoned out besides them while Sergio looked at Max behind his glasses expectantly, trying to conceal the fact that he was eagerly waiting for his answer too. This should clarify everything from his dreams.
“Yes!” Max perked up, eyes shining and happy. Sergio’s heart skipped a beat he didn’t know how to interpret. He strongly gripped his water bottle. “Two cats, Jimmy and Sassy, I love them.”
Sergio choked on his water. Two cats named Jimmy and Sassy? That couldn’t be. He must’ve heard it before in the paddock because there’s no way his subconscious just guessed the names of Max Verstappen’s pets. He must’ve gone crazy. Maybe it was a side effect of the new sleeping gummies Jo gave him.
Unless they aren’t dreams, a voice in his head added.
Shut up, Sergio bit back.
“Are you okay, Pérez?” Max laughed softly, a hint of mischief in his eyes. Sergio found the expression absurdly endearing. “You can’t believe I’m a cat guy or what? Don’t I look like it?”
Sergio felt his cheeks be dusted pink on tanned skin, and he was about to reply, trying to move the public’s attention onto someone else, but thankfully, the interviewer beat him to it and saved him the embarrassment of being caught off guard by a piece of information that shouldn’t be true, but it is.
He felt Max’s eyes still on him after leaving the fanzone on his way to the Racing Point hospitality.
The third time Sergio dreamt of himself in Red Bull gear again, he was standing on Italian soil, the second place cap on his head, Max Verstappen’s hands on his face.
All Sergio could do is blink, warm brown eyes clashing with icy blue, shivers running down his spine from the point of contact between their skins.
“That was fucking amazing, schatje!” Max whispered in his face, smile so big it reached his eyes. He didn’t know what that word meant, but the Sergio of his dreams clearly knew, assuming his fast beating heart had something to do with it. “Our first 1-2, I can’t believe it! This is the second best thing you have done for the team since lap 20 on Abu Dhabi last season.”
Sergio didn’t know what to say, so overwhelmed with emotions he couldn’t explain and have never felt before, Max’s eyes searching for something in his face while they stood in the back of the podium before their names were called.
He wasn’t a superstitious person at all, but by this stage of his dreams, he was having the strong feeling that these weren’t only dreams. These dreams were too detailed, the feelings were too strong, the cars he was driving didn’t even exist in present day. He couldn’t understand how he just knew Max Verstappen and what it felt like being held by him, or how happy he could be by just watching him laugh at his jokes. For the past few weeks, his mind has been going over his dreams over and over, as vivid and colorful as if they were actual memories. However, they didn’t feel like memories or dreams. But, if they weren’t any of these, what were they?
He couldn’t find an answer yet.
He felt himself closing and kissing Max Verstappen, softly and quickly, a smile split on both of their faces as they went apart. It seems that his affections for his teammate were as natural as pointing out that the sea is big, the grass is green and he loved Max Verstappen. Sergio wanted to understand it, but he couldn’t find a reason behind these emotions. He knew things about Max no other person knew like how he liked his coffee black, with three teaspoons of sugar or how the pasta Sergio made was his favorite because of the sweet spice he added or how he had nightmares that involved his father, but Sergio’s arms held him tight at night to try and repel them away.
When his name was called, Sergio took Max’s hands off his face and made his way to the platform, but Max didn’t let him go, pulling him back, holding his hand tightly. Sergio looked at their hands as if they were circled in gold, then to Max’s eyes.
“Do you want us to go together?” Sergio said, a suggestion he made once in a night that ended with too many drinks and their clothes thrown on the hotel floor.
Max looked at him like Sergio was a god that just conceded him his most cherished wish, a gaze upon him so intense, it had Sergio squirming a bit under it and Max nodded. It seemed like the blonde didn’t need any words to have Sergio on the palm of his hand.
As they walked alongside each other when Max’s name was called announcing his first place, Sergio, for the first time in his career, felt like he belonged to a team and the winning laurels were shared between Max and him.
As he looked down to their team, Christian, Helmut and Adrian glancing up to their drivers, their engineers giving them proud smiles, he felt at peace knowing he has given them what they were looking for: a perfect pair of teammates that would achieve what they have always wanted.
A stable team with a steady beating heart.
He woke up by the sound of Lawrence Stroll making a phone call on the hotel room next to his, Sebastian Vettel’s name loud and clear.
The fourth time Sergio dreamt, the Sergio from his dreams was trying to stop his eyes from spilling tears in front of Max Verstappen in the middle of a hotel room they shared.
Brazil. A fight on track for P6. A lost vice championship if he didn’t get P2 in Abu Dhabi. Their internal struggles were televised for the world to see. His father was there watching his own little world fall apart. How did they get here?
“Why are you doing this, Checo? Why are you making this more complicated than it is?” Max asked, eyes furious as he stood besides the side of the bed opposite to Sergio, posture tense. “I said I’m sorry, I should’ve given you the position back, alright! Talk to me!”
Sergio kept quiet, not trusting that his voice wouldn’t crack in front of his teammate. He kept putting things in his suitcase, so he could be out of the room as soon as possible to go to Abu Dhabi and leave this place and its bad memories behind. Most importantly, to have some space between him and the man talking in front of him.
His dream didn’t stop the images from flooding his memory as if everything was just something that was meant to happen, a crack in their relationship that was bound to break at the smallest hit. Teammates fight, of course they do. He had fought against Jenson, Nico and Esteban enough on and off track to last him a lifetime. He knew what it meant to fight for better positions with his teammates. He knew the clash of egos, the furious stares, the heated arguments, the stabbing words whose meaning were ephemeral as soon as the next season started. He knew every phase of fighting against a teammate and what came out of it, losing or winning.
Yet, this was no ordinary fight. This wasn’t just a fight he could shoulder off and start over the next race.
This was something much deeper than Max not obeying orders. This meant that Max didn’t trust him as a person or a driver. His teammate, and most importantly, his boyfriend questioned his ethics and morals when it came to his work over a crash in Monaco, something they could’ve easily cleared up if Max had only asked him. So many things could’ve gone differently if Max took different decisions instead of following whatever the people around him suggested him to do.
Sergio, even after all these dreams and him accepting that maybe there was more to them than pure fantasies his subconscious came up with, couldn’t understand how he got to this level of attachment to the Dutchman or Red Bull as a team. The whole situation felt like a betrayal that hit deep in his bones, from both the team that justified their world champion and his decision and Max that didn’t think about talking to him about a simple issue that could’ve been resolved with basic communication. This felt personal and exhausting.
Max continued to try to talk to him, but Sergio shut him up after loudly closing his suitcase, ready to leave. Max stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded at Sergio’s facial expression. He laughed bitterly. “You know what? When I heard your radio after the race, I couldn’t believe you said that. It didn’t sound like the Max Verstappen I knew. At least, not the teammate that stood besides me in Italy.”
Max’s eyes glistened under the hotel light and Sergio still couldn’t believe how absolutely beautiful he found him. He continued. “I couldn’t shake the feeling you sounded like someone else I knew. I searched in my brain to find why your words and actions felt so familiar.”
Sergio walked to the door, suitcase in hand, ready to leave. “When I remembered, I felt afraid of you for the first time.”
“Why?” Max asked so softly, Sergio almost didn’t hear him.
He took the door’s handle with all the strength he had, his back to the Dutchman. He felt his hands shake a little and he knew he couldn’t turn to see Max without breaking into pieces. “Because you reminded me of your father.”
He closed the door behind him as soon as he opened it.
He woke up when Lance started knocking on his door telling him they were late to media day.
After the news of his contract termination with Racing Point was announced to the public, he started seeing Max Verstappen everywhere around his perimeter.
His ocean blue eyes followed Sergio as if he was the most interesting person in the paddock. He was always walking beside him during the drivers parade and after qualifying to ask for his thoughts on anything race or track related. It wasn’t unusual for the younger driver to be this enthusiastic over racing, but to Sergio specifically, who has always stayed away from the Red Bull driver since they were generations apart, this was new and surprising. He couldn’t quite crack why Max was suddenly interested in him as a driver. It’s not like he has told him about his (not) dreams. Those were his to deal with.
So, when Christian Horner approached him days later and asked him if they could have a quick chat over lunch or dinner to discuss some ideas he had for Red Bull’s future, Sergio understood exactly why Max was always in his perimeter.
However, the feeling of deja vu never went away.
The fifth and last time Sergio dreamt, he was in a hotel again, Max Verstappen animatedly talking about the Las Vegas Grand Prix while they were having dinner in their shared bed.
Sergio now knew these dreams were his future. Everything felt too real to not be something that has actually happened. After each dream, he sat down to analyze everything he remembered from them. Nothing made sense, but at the same time, it did. Every single thing he took into his hands, the race results, his love for racing, his connection to Max, it all felt too close to his heart to not be something that would happen. After his dinner with Christian Horner, he tried to make sense of what was about to happen to him.
But why?
Why would life show him his future? What was the purpose? To accept that he may never be world champion? To see his teammate winning over him? If this is what it came as a consequence of him signing with Red Bull, then maybe having a year off Formula 1 would be a better choice. Maybe he could get a seat in another team with less pressure and expectations, fly under the radar till his retirement. He has done enough already for the people around him in the paddock that his family and friends wouldn’t blame him if he just wanted some peace and quiet for the end of his career.
However, he looked to the man next to him and his whole world stopped for a second.
How could you love a driver and a team you barely knew?
Sergio Pérez in real life didn’t know Max Verstappen. He didn’t know anything beyond what the track showed him. He knew a driver who was thrown into the cruelty of Formula 1 way too young, but had the talent to beat anybody in his way with the right car. He knew a driver who gave him some of the fiercest battles he has seen on track since he debuted, as if he were already a world champion. That’s the Max he knew in present day.
He didn’t know anything about Red Bull. He knew a team that was born from the ashes of Jaguar, made into a championship winning team on the hands of Horner, Marko, Newey and Wheatley. He knew they were considered rebels and underdogs, pushed by the owner’s firm belief that an energy drink should be represented in the pinnacle of motorsport as something more than a brand. He knew they made Sebastian Vettel world champion and they’ve tried to replicate this formula with Max. That’s the Red Bull he knew in present day.
Yet, the Sergio from his dreams, the one that lives in the near future, knew them so much more than he could ever imagine.
He couldn’t access the memories of those people and moments shared, as if life was preventing him from getting his future spoiled too much, but he just knew. He knew how much Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing meant to him in the future and how they changed his life, whether it was for the best or the worst, he couldn’t know yet, but he knew his visions weren’t lying. Life was presenting him the opportunity to have the knowledge before taking a decision and it was giving him the chance to back out if he wanted to.
“You know how much your vice-championship means to us, right?” Max shook him out of his thoughts, taking Sergio’s hand off his face to take it and kiss his knuckles. “I know you would prefer to be world champion, but you just made history for Red Bull, very few drivers can say the same, you should be proud.”
Sergio kept his eyes on him, trying to memorize Max’s blonde hair, blue eyes, light eyelashes, upper lip mole, everything that the Sergio from his vision loved because he knew, more like an instinct in the back of his mind, that this would be the last time he would see him like this till their life together actually started.
“Te amo.” Sergio whispered, almost like a prayer and he realized this is the first time he could actually do things in his visions and just not let them happen to him.
Max gave him a toothy grin, a bit shy. “I love you too, schatje.”
Maybe it was the confusion or his present day feelings being mixed with his future ones, but right there and then, he made his decision.
He wouldn’t back out from the challenge and he would sign with Red Bull. For Max. For Red Bull. For that 14 year old child who once came to Germany alone with only a dream and 300 dollars in his pockets.
For himself.
“If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” Sergio asked, the question up in the air as they sat in the couch of Max’s Monaco home.
The recent 2021 World Champion furrowed his eyebrows and considered the question, adjusting his arm over Sergio’s shoulder. “I don’t know, it depends on the outcome, if I like it or not,” he paused, then fully turned to Sergio “You know, I’ve had my eyes on the championship trophy for long as I can remember. I’ve always dreamt of having it in my hands and lifting it up in the air. You know what surprised me most?”
“What?”
Max suddenly held his face, familiar hands on his cheeks holding him firmly. No more Italy around them, only a steady heart and home. “It wasn’t winning it. It was meeting you.”
Sergio sighed, the warm feeling in his chest wide and open, like a fire in the middle of a freezing night. “I forgot how good it felt to be held by you.”
“Do you want us to keep winning more championships together?”
Sergio blinked and answered, no hesitation in his voice.
“Yes.”