Chapter Text
Daniel was a little hesitant of Max at first.
When the team shoved him in F1 at the ripe age of seventeen and four fucking days old for a practice session in 2014, yeah, Daniel had been nothing less than worried for the kid. He was literally a child. His dad, Jos, had to be there every fucking race week end in case something happened to him. For legal reasons. Because Max wasn’t even a legal adult yet.
Max wasn’t even allowed to drive a normal car. Like. The one millions of people drive every fucking day to work. Yeah, nah, Max drove his car for work, drove a goddamn race car. The worst is, he’s good at it. Has been from the beginning.
He managed to pull that awful Toro Rosso up to seventh place on his second Grand Prix ever. Still seventeen. He would’ve done it on his first if the engine hadn’t betrayed him. Fucking Renault once again, Daniel guesses. He used to be a big fan of them the last couple years, when their engine brought him on the top step of a podium for the first time of his life, and again a few times, loved Renault so much when he finished third in the standings. Now, not so much.
But anyway. Max must really fucking love it right now. He’s also about to stand on the top step of a podium for the first time in his life. At eighteen. Which makes Daniel’s heart throb a bit, because that kid was given the best fucking strategy today, not him, which is a bit unfair, but. He knew Red Bull wanted to turn him into some kind of prodigy. Wanted him to snatch ‘youngest to’ records all over the place. Daniel doesn’t think they had expected Max to win a Grand Prix with their car on his team debut though. No. That’s just Max. Only him.
Daniel’s getting out of the car. He’s a little sour, a little sore, too, Barcelona always hard on the neck with its too many weird corners that they all enjoy so much. Daniel included. But now he has to stretch a few times to avoid his neck being at an awkward ninety degree angle. He sees white spots everywhere when he’s finished, because he closed his eyes so tight. He remembers when he used to see colors everywhere, swirling and swirling, when he was a kid. He wonders if Max is young enough to still see them. If maybe Max still sleeps with a night lamp and a plushy or something. Daniel imagines Max asking Jos for a teddy bear to hug before going on the podium and laughs to himself.
Maybe Daniel took a little too much time to get out of the car, though. He searches for Max in the weigh-in room to congratulate him, or choke him, Daniel isn’t so sure, but he can’t find out what he was going to do anyways because Daniel doesn’t find him. Instead, he’s found by Simon who presses his fingers amicably in Daniel’s shoulder. Deep. Five indents of something that tastes a bit like pity. Daniel winces a little. Sore.
Everything after that is a bit of a blur. He remembers trying to go to the podium, being told he should watch in his driver room instead, which, weird, but he’ll let it slide. He’s tired, anyway. Maybe it’s better this way.
The podium is weird, though. Daniel sees Kimi and Seb walk to their respective places. Sees them wait, hands behind their back like elementary kids waiting for the teacher to call their name. They’re all red. Red fireproofs, red on the face, red above Seb’s head from second place graphic moving behind him. Kind of hurts Daniel’s eyes. But then.
Max enters. Well, more like gets out of the cool down room, walks up the stairs and then steps on the stage. It feels like an entrance though. The TV only shows him. The whole fucking screen is only navy navy navy, grin grin grin, and crinkly eyes. Blue blue blue. Holy fuck. He’s really, really young, is the only Daniel can think about.
Because look, Max and him had maybe interacted three times properly, between interviews and PR stuff they were mandated to do last year with Carlos and Daniil. Max has always been a bit closer to Carlos than he was to Daniel, which, fair, because they were in the same team and closer in age, but thing is, Daniel doesn’t think Max has really ever been the one to engage contact. Like. Daniel likes to think of himself as a pretty open guy. He tries to be, at least. Tries to smile all big to look inviting to the new guys or something. But Daniel has never really very fond of kids so yeah, just a reason more that Daniel had been hesitant of Max at first and maybe that was also why Max didn’t come up to him. Ever. Why Daniel feels like he’s only discovering him right now.
Except Max doesn’t look like that kid from last year. He’s still as skinny on the body, barely bones and muscles forming awkward limbs, and still has that little layer of fat hanging to his face, his cheeks. He looks the same. Max still has that goddamn cap screwed to his head, and that weird-ass haircut that he doesn’t seem to grow out of. But, god, Max doesn’t look the same. Doesn’t feel the same.
This little awkward limbs and fatty cheeks guy looks happy. Max is like, dancing on the podium. Or something close to it. He was branding his fist in the air, punching the sky a couple times and it was obvious he didn’t know what he was doing. He was trying, which, cute, but it was so very clear he wasn’t meant to be on that podium. Wrong time. He was supposed to hop on there a couple year later, still clenching the youngest race winner record ever but he’d belong then. Now, he’s just kind of, there.
Except he’s got that little something. Like. It’s not really an aura, because Daniel doesn’t believe in this kind of thing, but there’s definitely an energy. Daniel isn’t sure there’s any fucking word in the English language to describe whatever Max is radiating right now. It seems to sort of suck whatever ‘aura’ Seb and Kimi have, though. There’s only him. Max. He’s almost erasing those two on each side. The camera films the three of them during the dutch anthem, which is kind of a bop by the way, but Daniel’s eyes are fixated to Max.
Bright eighteen year old pimply face Max. Red splotches on his jaw and neck similar to all the red Daniel was seeing before Max got on that podium, fireproofs a little to big, fabric on his shoulders going up when Max puts his hands on his hips. He looks a bit silly. But so, so fucking beautiful.
Which, weird. Again. Daniel had never really paid much attention to Max before right now, slumped in his driver room sofa, facing the TV at a too-high angle that strains his neck even more. Sure, he had paid attention to Max’s arrival in F1 a year ago now, and paid attention when Max pulled those brash moves on the older drivers, and his blunt interviews that always enrolled him in controversies and usual Max shenanigans. But. Never just, Max.
It feels strange to finally see him.
Strangest thing is that he feels familiar, somehow. With his cheeky grin and thinned-by-it eyes. His whole face is rippled with it. His smile. The skin under his eyes cover the below part of his irises, and the skin over them the top part. The blue is almost gone. His ears are turning purple, which Daniel thinks might be partly because of shyness, and he finds old-Max, 2015-Max in this. In the way Max fidgets a little through the giving of trophies and medals, how his spray of champagne is a little less extravagant than Kimi and Seb’s. He still finishes showered with the liquid though, good for him. But also. Not good for Daniel.
Daniel has to cough this one out. Why is he watching the podium? He forgot. Simon said something about there already being too many fans below the stage or something. He should sleep. Right. Daniel is tired. He’s just drove a Formula One race. The only thing he is supposed to do is drink his sirupy water and feel it running down his throat. Feel the electrolytes in it rehydrate his warm body. Warm because it is Barcelona. Warm because he sweat through two layers of fireproofs and race suit for two hours four times this week. Not warm because he can somehow feel the setting sun’s rays on his face like he’s got a weird ass telepathy and body bond with Max or something.
Okay, sleep now.
Daniel struggles with his own fucking brain for twenty minutes. But then. Blissful, blissful sleep takes him.
It feels like he’s still fucking sleeping six hours later and dancing in this hot-ass fancy club in the middle of Barcelona. Alcohol making his brain swirly, arms halfway up like a sleepwalker, or maybe a zombie.
He dances until his body aches with it, dances with Spanish girls that always are really pretty, rolling their ‘r’s centimeters from his ears like a bird calling a mate. Daniel likes Barcelona. Has always liked it.
And maybe even more when he’s got Max Verstappen, aka newly Grand Prix winner standing in front of him and drinking each and every alcoholic mixtures Daniel gives him like his life depends on it, no matter how disgusting they are. And maybe this is getting too much to Daniel’s head, this weird sense of power over such a young guy that he half considers to be his friend now. It makes him think somehow he can make Max makes dance. Even though Max clearly said as they entered the club that he ‘does not dance’, not because he can’t, but simply because he does not want to.
Daniel thinks he can make Max want to dance. He wants to so hard. He doesn’t know why it’s become such an important thing in his life now to make his younger teammate hit the dance floor with moves Daniel knows will be pathetic. Maybe there’s a tiny part of him that wants to make fun of Max tonight.
Maybe Max is just fun to be around.
It’s a weird thing to think about, but then again, the alcohol has been playing a bit with his brain for a while now, and maybe dancing didn’t help, because Daniel always sways his head a little too much when partying. Which is kind of stupid, because the room spins even faster after that but. Daniel kind of likes it. That weird tightening on his stomach that almost makes him want to puke, his body light as air, lighter sometimes when he twirls a pretty girl around.
Daniel needs to sit. So. He sits. The girl behind the bar is cute enough so he orders another one of those weird pinkish alcoholic drinks he can’t seem to get enough of tonight.
There isn’t any pretty girl to spin around anymore. Well. Maybe there is, but Daniel isn’t really interested in them. The only thing his too-drunk brain can think about is Max, Max, Max, which Daniel thinks might be weird but he’s a bit too gone to really think about it. He hasn’t even drunk that much. Just a couple pink glittery cocktail that the pretty barista he saw Max try to flirt with recommended. She smelled nice. Max smelt like shit. Sweat and fuel like he hadn’t even showered after the race. But also, sweet. Daniel thinks it’s the champagne but he’s also not so sure.
He had almost gripped Max’s shoulder to test if maybe he’d be sticky, made this way by the stale alcohol dried on his body. He didn’t. Daniel knows he has a bit of a habit to try and touch people, maybe in an attempt for them to touch him back, after races. To keep him grounded. He has this weird crash of adrenaline rush easing too quickly that feels like an out of body experience, like he’s watching his every movements from a little TV in his little skull. It’s weird. It’s mostly why he often drinks twice and a half his body weight in alcohol Sunday nights, why he sometimes brings girls home that he doesn’t actually like, or guys that hit on him for no other goddamn reason than wanting to be held.
First time he did that he felt a bit weird. His heart was too fond. The guy’s hands had been so fucking wide, digging into Daniel’s arm like he was trying to crush him, and Daniel had just fucking welcomed the pressure. It’s only the morning after and fighting a raging hangover that he understood and actually registered what he did. Have sex. With a guy. A fucking guy-stranger. He hasn’t done it a lot since that first time a couple years ago. He doesn’t know why, because it feels good. He wants to do that tonight, too, though.
Daniel’s skin feels itchy. His throat is dry. His feet are moving on their own and his palms are so fucking sweaty he wants someone to lick it the fuck off.
And suddenly the room is spinning too much. It isn’t enjoyable anymore. He wants to lay down on the fucking floor and watch as the neon lights still, stop being blurry and nauseatingly so. His feet stop by themselves. His brain is screaming for his hands to grip someone, anyone, lean his whole body on them and just. Exist. Be there. He wants to stop. He breathes. Remembers to expand his lungs for four seconds and exhale for six. His palms are starting to cling to the material of his shorts.
But then. Max. Across the room. Like twenty meters away. He’s still as red as when he was on the podium, except Daniel thinks this time it’s from the alcohol. Daniel clings to that. The red. The blooming spots near his lips, where the sun shines on sometimes but never tans the skin. Just burns.
Daniel mumbles something, though even he isn’t sure what he’s trying to say. His brain wants to ask Max to stop drinking and go back to their separate hotel room, because Daniel thinks he can see a gloss over Max’s eyes, a slight flush on his neck, and pupils so dilated they take over the blue. Max looks drunk. A bit too far gone to make the rational decision that Daniel, older-and-wiser-teammate Daniel is supposed to make. But his mouth wants something else, apparently because he says, voice loud over to cover the music this time, « Join me? »
Max must be a little too far away because he frowns a little. His bottom lip jutting out. Pouting. Young. Max’s young ears should be able to hear what Daniel just said but apparently Max is just the wrong side of young that mean inexperienced with clubs and loud musics that needs you to decipher unwanted sounds from Daniel’s voice. Daniel chuckles a little at that. Max’s eyebrows go down ever lower.
So, Daniel comes to him. His feet work on their own again, and his brain seems okay with it. Unhelpfully gives Daniel this need for closeness, which Daniel can’t help but indulge in. He leans his face close to Max’s ear, so close he could touch if he wanted. And Daniel wants. But he’s also the wrong side of older that mean his prefrontal cortex is fully developed and keeps him from making stupid decision and act too much on desires. Personal pleasures.
« Wanna dance, Maxy? » Daniel lets out with a chuckle. It’s sort of hard to inhale a full lung-capacity breath after that. He guesses it’s because so many people are sweating it’s hanging in the air. On the floor, too, apparently because he can feel the ground slippery under his fancy shoes.
Max smiles. His eyes get all crinkled again. Blue swirling under those goddamn neon lights. « What? » Max chuckles and Daniel thinks it’s a bit silly, but. He likes it. The sound is all weird and awkward, high pitch riddled with deep cracks, young and teenage-y like his voice is still in the long process of changing. « I can’t hear you over the music, Dan. »
Max is full on giggling now. His teeth are so fucking white, tucked neatly between two plump lips, and they’re so straight they look like fucking veneers. Daniel know they’re not. Has seen Max with braces back when he was a proper kid. It’s hard to think of that little fourteen year old as the same guy giggling over nothing in front of him. Teenage Zandvoort Max was similar to 2015 Max in a way. Distant. Not cold, but something close to it. This Max is gorgeously open. He almost looks. Sweet.
Daniel has to stop himself. The room isn’t spinning as much anymore, and the lights are easier on his aching head but. He’ll still tell himself his thoughts went crazy because of that. Because of the couple vodka Red Bulls and pink glitter thingy he downed a bit quickly at the start of the night, and the too-many shots Lewis forced him to take. Apparently Lewis didn’t allow the fucking crash with Nico to let his party-mood down. If anything, he seemed fucking lit up.
Daniel laughs to himself at the memory. He shakes his head, tries to go back to the present. Ground himself. His hands are achy to touch again. It gets even harder not to let them do what they want when he sees Max look at him with those big round eyes. Eyebrows rising up under his cap. His goddamn cap. Daniel wants to take it off, wants to tell Max it’s to avoid being spotted by fans in the club, which is partly true, but also partly not, because he just wants to see that weird ass haircut somehow. If maybe the strands of blonde hair turn green because of the lights of the club, or if maybe they’re clinging together because of the sweat, the champagne, or whatever the fuck makes hair cling together. Fuck.
Max smiles. His face goes down. The anchor-like red of his face is gone in a matter of seconds. Hidden behind his hands. They’re sort of pale compared to the brown of his eyebrows.
It wasn’t originally to take Max’s hand in his that Daniel takes Max’s hand in his. It was just to see the red again. Ground himself. The sound the music coming from behind him was starting to oppress him again a little, and he felt his shorts too much on his hips, itchy and wet on the hem. It’s sort of a happy coincidence that Daniel gets a double grounding out of it. Gets to touch. To press his fingertips in the small crook between Max’s thumb and pointer finger, where it’s mostly skin and nothing to grab onto. Daniel managed to anyway. He pinches there and snatches Max away from the bar, and from the cute brunette bartender who Daniel should have gone home with tonight instead of the nobody that is going to be if his brain keeps whispering sweet Maxes in his ear. What the fuck even, brain.
Daniel parts the crowd. Sees Lewis doing shots off of Fernando’s head at some point and wonders for a second if maybe Lewis is doing all this to forget about today. If maybe it’s the same kind of weird coping thing Daniel does. The alcohol. The drinking until your body gives out and you wake up in a girl’s bed you talk to for the first time as she’s making you coffee, or throwing your socks at you to get the fuck out because her boyfriend is coming back early.
Daniel doesn’t really know. Should probably want to, but he doesn’t. He wants to get out of the club with Max and properly talk to him next morning as he makes Max coffee or something. Which, again, what the f-
« Fuckin’ hell, mate. » Daniel can’t stop fucking laughing. Max is back to being normal Max again, sort of, limbs not working well together, wobbly, wobbly, wobbly like a little duck trying to follow its mom into the water. « You’re such a lightweight! » Daniel says that as if he isn’t the one practically falling black out drunk in front of a guy he’s thought too many thoughts of tonight, some frankly weird as fuck. He hasn’t felt so fucking silly in years. Out of place. Nervous for no fucking reason.
Max pouts again. His red face is all orange-y overtone because of the yellow light of the street lamp. « ‘M not! »
Daniel can see Max’s chest stutter. Want to laugh translated in the constricting and expanding of his ribcage. Short. Snappy. It’s a clear fucking sign that whatever they’re doing isn’t very teammate-who-met-properly-like-two-seconds-ago of them. Daniel thinking he wishes he could feel those scattered up and downs under his own sweaty palms adds to this. « Yeah, right. » Daniel stands up properly from his bend again, and has to take a breath to ground himself in another way than being weird. « How much you had to drink then? »
He sees Max flush some more. His hands go tight and flexed a couple times. Daniel can’t stop looking at them. At the almost there veins under the skin, turning it a little turquoise like his eyes, sometimes bumping across a patch of blonde hair sticking to his palms because of the very probable alcohol poured on it, or an awkward knuckle that looks a little out of place, a little too big for his hand, a little too- « Stopped counting. » Max answers, teenage giggles still filling his words.
« I don’t believe you. » Daniel says. Can feel his fucking grin stretching his face all wide and real. It feels so fucking different than whatever he gives the PR people in interviews. « Max the drunk, » The grin keeps getting bigger as he continues talking, munching at his words like his drunk Australian accent wasn’t already doing enough of that, « so used to alcohol he stops counting his intake like, two minutes after taking his first shot. »
(Daniel remembers being eighteen. Remembers the parties he and Jules used to go to the first few months of being legal for the first time in their lives. Remembers feeling out of place, not understanding shit because of his shitty Italian and everything. Remembers the first nights he and Jules spent together just. Being here. Being there. Just them. Two awkward barely-adults eighteen year olds trying to figure out why they left their families if it meant going to a country that doesn’t feel like home. Jules’ move had been a little easier apparently, moving from France and all must have made it more practice than having to do three fucking airports stops from Perth to Faenza.
Having Italian sounding surnames made everything a little easier though. So, thanks dad. Thanks Jules’ dad, too. They had adapted to their little roommate situation quickly once they figured out it was better to befriend people than wait for them to stab you in the back or something. They weren’t eighteen for long though. The rest is all fucking history.)
Daniel sees Max smile. Has to pass a hand through his hand for the umpteenth time tonight because whatever the fuck is happening isn’t supposed to be happening. He’ll fuck up his curls if it means he can be a non-deranged in his mid-twenties guy for a couple minutes before he goes back into the club. He suddenly remembers he was supposed to buy mousse after qualifying on Saturday. He forgot. He’ll have to have non defined curls for the next two traveling days. The people surrounding him in the plane to Nice and the cab drivers after will have to deal with it.
Daniel is brought out of his imaginary travel with fucked up hair reverie by a giggle. A loud one with feet screeching against the paved floor of Barcelona. A loud voice too. Max’s. Max, Max, Max. « Fuck off. »
« Yeah, okay. » Daniel tries to pout, tries to mimic whatever the fuck Max’s face normally and naturally does, but he doesn’t think he manages to, judging from the smile curling Max’s glistening lips. This grin isn’t soft. It’s pretty nasty, actually. Eyes crinkled and nose scrunched at the bridge like it was made to make Daniel want to jump off of one.
« You look dumb, mate. » Max jokes, emphasizes the last word in pure Daniel manor. Imitates a very bad Australian accent. Sounds Austrian instead or something. Daniel snorts. Drunk and weirdly fond. He realizes Max’ accent gets a little heavier there when he’s drunk. He doesn’t why it’s already becoming such a precious fact to him.
Daniel blurts out laughing when Max’s face is so blank. He’s probably so fucking far gone he can’t even manage his own face muscles or something. It’s pretty fucking hilarious. « Max, come on, » He tries to think of a way to to get back at Max and Max is fucking drunk Daniel doesn’t even know if his brain can even recognize sarcasm. He tries anyway. « Mocking accents now? ’S not fair. »
Max laughs. God, his laugh. It’s crumpling him into himself like those little bugs that roll into themselves, warm and. Soft. Maybe. Daniel guesses Max does have a sort of softness hanging to him, even though it’s the total opposite of how he is on the track. In the interviews. With his dad. Softness on his plump baby lips and red as fuck cheeks. His eyes big and round, round, round. Max does a weird sound, like a failed blown raspberry and hides his face with his hands again. Red gone. Again. The navy of his cap blurs in the dark of the night. Makes his pale skin pop out.
Daniel sees Max lick his lips and he wants to taste as well. The sweat. The whatever drinks Max topped tonight, the too many g&t’s he saw Max hold in his hand, too many g&t’s with too many limes because Max is the kind of lunatics that prefers the lime over the gin or something.
« ’S not fair. » Max echoes. Lisp heavy on his pink lips. Heavy, heavy, heavy on Daniel’s stomach.
Daniel swallows. Takes a real big fucking breath to avoid tracing Max’s lisp on his tongue or something. It always seems to want to dart out of his mouth. The words always come out wet.
Daniel takes another breath. Tries to sort out his curls he previously fucked up, without any mousse or gel to help him, just weird sticky sugary alcohols and pink glitter on the back of his hand when Lewis spitted out his shot on him. He realizes it was a pretty stupid thing to do when he can feel the sugar coating his curls.
« We better go back. » Daniel says, in a breath. Breathless. Even though he’s been at least for five minutes bathing in fresh Spanish air and non neon lights. He prepares to go back in. Straightens his shorts and remembers for the second time in about thirty seconds that Lewis spit on him vodka and an alcohol with a Spanish name. Which, gross. Now Daniel has to go back knowing he’s got Lewis’ saliva on the hem of his shorts. He mutters something along the lines of ‘oh come on’ and he can fucking feel Max’s eyes on the wet spot. He hopes to dear fucking God it doesn’t look like he pissed himself.
Max pushes his hand on his own shorts. They look like team merch. Gosh. « Oh, right. Yeah- Of course, yeah. »
Daniel shifts his weight slightly on the leg he wasn’t leaning on that much. « Yep. » He emphasizes the p, giggling softly at his own sound. More like, to the memory of Max saying ‘mate’ in his weird English. It had been a long time since Daniel had done that. Popping a p. He doesn’t know why he stopped.
His brain screams at him to take Max’s hand again to lead him into the club, to part the crowd in two, three, whatever, to buy so many drinks Max would barely be able to stand by the end of the nights but. He doesn’t. Daniel’s come down a little. Fresh air, yellow street lights and all helping. Max not, somehow. Fucking hell.
Daniel gets close again. Close enough to smell the sweat, and the too-many limes and maybe a hint of cologne. Maybe it’s still the fuel. Maybe it’s the mixing of both. Daniel presses a hand on Max’s shoulder, because he thinks he’s at least allowed to do that, because Simon had done it to him, and Christian too back in Montreal. So, it’s not like. Weird. Daniel doesn’t why it would even be in the first place. Right. Friends, teammates. It’s totally normal.
Totally fucking fine.
Daniel should probably know better than that, because he’s been through this before. Eight years ago. Eight years ago.
Still. Daniel will just fucking close his eyes on whatever this is. That aching that’s slowly coming back, building up under his tongue, in the back of his throat, wanting to get out, to writhe, to talk, to say so much and that wants, wants, wants to do, to touch, to say-
« Congrats on the win again, by the way. ’T was crazy, mate. »
Daniel goes back into the club. Drinks that same glittery liquid from a long and wide glass a couple times. Spots Lewis and Fernando across the room. Is stopped by some girl when he goes to talk to them.
He wakes up in her bed the next day, panties in his hand and pain in his head. She makes him coffee. A tomato omelet, even. Which really wasn’t fucking necessary. He’s out of there in the two minutes it takes her to go to the toilet. He’s fucked, maybe. It’s only when he steps on a weirdly cut paving stone that he notices he forgot to put on his shoes in his hurry.