Chapter Text
Post-Quali, Austria GP, Saturday
The paddock buzzed behind them, saturated with the dying adrenaline of qualifying, but Charles had no interest in celebrating his pole. Not when Max Verstappen was stomping down the hallway like a man robbed at knifepoint.
“Do you ever shut up?” Charles snapped, trailing fast behind him, the soles of his boots echoing off the walls like warning shots.
Max didn’t even glance back.
“Only when I’m winning. So, now? No.” A pause, a smirk, just audible in his voice. “Especially when you snatched pole by three hundredths.”
Charles’s jaw flexed. “Mon dieu, you nearly parked it in front of me at Turn 8 - while I was on a flying lap!”
Max halted so abruptly Charles almost walked into him. “Turn 8?” he repeated, pivoting slowly. “You mean the corner where you magically found a tenth and a half in Sector 2? Yeah, I noticed.”
“You compromised my entire entry line!”
“I was chasing delta, not your Ferrari’s feelings.”
Charles took a step forward, chest still rising and falling under his half-unzipped suit. “You drive like you've never heard of empathy.”
Max tilted his head, eyes narrowing with a different kind of spark. “I don’t need empathy. I need pole.”
“And you need -!”
Thud.
It wasn’t loud. No dramatic thunderclap. Just a wrongness, sharp and sterile, like the sound of metal bending where it shouldn’t.
The hallway flickered.
Not the lights - everything.
Max’s outline shimmered, like a heatwave rising off tarmac. The Red Bull logo on his suit glitched for half a heartbeat. Charles blinked, staggered slightly - momentarily weightless. Like his boots weren't quite sure which reality they were grounded in.
Then, it passed.
Sort of.
The air was colder. The hum of the paddock had shifted pitch, just slightly. The team radios - once a dull murmur in the background - had gone silent. Static whispered briefly, then died.
Max looked at him sharply now. No more smirks. “Did you feel that?”
Charles didn’t answer. His eyes flicked around. Same hallway. Same floor. Same banners overhead with the 2030 Austrian GP logo. But the shadows were... longer. Wrong.
He licked his lips. “Something’s off.”
Max turned, slowly this time. “Yeah. You.”
Charles almost laughed. Almost. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
They stared at each other. For a moment, neither of them the reigning champion nor the pole-sitter. Just two drivers standing at the edge of something neither could explain.
“You were mid-sentence,” Max said, voice lower. “What did I need?”
Charles hesitated. Looked at Max. Really looked.
And then said quietly, “A tether.”
Max frowned. “What -”
Snap.
The floor buckled.
Not physically - but perceptually. Like gravity had rewritten itself.
The hallway dissolved into a smear of white light and roaring silence.
And the world began again.