Chapter Text
Oscar knew that he had to wait until he was at least eighteen to get his soulmark, and that’s if he was the youngest. Everyone had to wait.
And it wasn’t like he was overly special about it, despite what others may think, having parents who’d met their soulbounds didn’t mean he was any more eager to find the person matching his mark than any other. All it meant was that he’d come downstairs and see his mum huffing at his her best friend over the phone for when he’d managed to stub his toe when she was in an important business call, or his dad fussing over his friend when he’d take something out of the oven with the oven mitts that were just that slightly bit too thin and come rushing over as he was somehow out of burn cream.
But even Oscar would admit a fascination with his parents' marks. It was something every kid went through at some point - that obsession with drawing your parents' marks on everything you could get your hands on. Oscar had it easy; all he had to coordinate his shaky little hands to do was a pretty raincloud and the sun. He was the coolest boy in school for all of three weeks when he brought perfectly drawn marks to show and tell (then Elenor had pink hair and he was quickly forgotten about), and proudly bragged about how his Uncle Drew was his Daddy’s sunshine, and how Auntie Marie was his Mama’s rainstorm.
A person’s mark never fully matched that of their soulmates, and oftentimes, the connection was rather vague. Sometimes the marks would be animals, other times plants or (in rarer cases) crystals. There was always some sort of connection with your partner, though, with specialists and con-artists alike claiming to be able to tell you what your future friend would be like from the mark alone. Sometimes they got it right, but it was very difficult to get an accurate picture. After all, a person with a lion mark could very easily be as ferocious as a lion, or just having a tendency for lying in the sun and sleeping. The way most people found their partner was by gently pinching their arm, and looking for a match of pain in the other's arm.
And it wasn’t like everyone had soulmarks. Most people did, but a handful every year were born destined to be blank. Some saw this as a great thing, that they were free to be friends with whoever they wanted, that society wasn’t telling them what to do! Others wanted marks.
Oscar was one of those hopefuls who wanted. It wasn’t that he trusted the universe to get it right or anything… it was just that having a near guaranteed friend seemed greatly reassuring. Especially with how much time he was putting into getting into Formula 1, it seemed almost cruel not to get a partner, what with how little time he’d have to befriend people on his own. So he was hoping for as many friends as possible! (Hopefully that wouldn’t get too mad if he ever crashed in F1… and also wouldn’t be annoyed by the brutal training and pain he would likely put himself through every race week… oops?)
Max didn’t care much for soulmates. His father had somehow managed to annoy his parter so much that she left him - an incredible achievement given they were soulmates and best friends - so Max didn’t have much hope for his own chances. (But if he would sometimes lie in bed with a marker drawing images on all the skin that he could reach, only to wash them all off at four in the morning, that was his little secret.)
And then his eighteenth birthday passed in a hurry, as he was in F1 and everything was go go go for him to prove himself. It was a few weeks later when he checked for a soul mark. He locked his bedroom door (in his new Monaco apartment, so new it was still mostly unfurnished) and checked all over. There was no mark. Nothing.
Everywhere he looked - and trust me, he looked so many times - there was nothing. Not even a single line.
Alright. That was fine… He totally wasn’t upset about that at all. (And yes, he could have been the older person in the relationship, but Max had somehow got it into his head that, of course, he was one of the few people without any marks at all. Jos was delighted. Max still didn’t have any friends, matching marks or not.)
And so he threw himself into his driving, pushing the car to the limits in the belief that there was no one he was hurting except himself. And why should he care for his wellbeing if there was no one who cared for him?
Charles adored soulmates. His Maman and Papa both had soulmates, as did his grandparents, and even his dear older brother had found his best friend, and they were so cute together! That is to say, he adored the very idea of having that fated person (or people, but Charles knew deep in his heart that he was hoping for it to be a single person - he was a possessive shit like that.) He was the kid who drew all over his skin in pens of every colour, the kid who collected books on flower language, the kid who could tell you the symbolism behind every type of crystal.
And so it was almost fitting that there was no mark on his eighteenth birthday. And that was fine. He was obviously the oldest in the group. Sometimes people waited years for their matches (and Charles desperately ignored the sinking feeling that whispered that the bigger the age gap, the more likely it was a bond with multiple people…). He had his party that day with a bright smile, telling everyone that of course he knew he’d be the older in the bond, that of course he wasn’t upset about not getting a mark (and if he found the markers from childhood, untouched in years, and was tempted to start drawing over his skin again then that’s a secret he’d take to the grave.)
But then more years went by. His dear Papa passed, and Charles hadn’t even been able to tell him what his soulmark was. And then Jules passed as well, and that was another person Charles hadn’t been able to show his mark to. And by the time he joined Ferrari, there was no mark. The team didn’t say anything in front of him, but he could feel the looks burning into his skin, and the comments from the PR teams saying how it may be better for him to have long sleeves, and perhaps if he could start wearing bracelets to cover his blank wrists? Everyone knew that he could be the older in a bond, and that that was almost certainly the truth, but there were still those whispered voices that said that it was because he had no bonds. And nothing was worse than having no bonds…
On Oscar’s eighteenth birthday, he rolled out of bed still sleepy. It wasn’t until he was brushing his teeth, sleep-ruffled face staring back in the mirror, that his eyes caught the mark on his wrist. A drawing of two binary stars, their orbits sketched out in loosely dotted lines, slightly different to each other as if drawn by different hands. The one with the rougher lines was a rich orange (nothing like the car McLaren was using that year, his mind was quick to comment. Even not in F1 yet, and that was all he could think about) while the other was baby blue, though there was the occasional splatter of red amidst the blue. A purple planet orbited them both, looping around both in a wide, flat oval.
Two soulmates then. Two friends. Both encircled by the purple planet… by Oscar.)
And Oscar was happy with that. It was everything he could have dreamed of when he went to sleep the night before his eighteenth… but binary stars? Two stars caught in an orbit around each other? With Oscar around them both… where his two friends somehow destined to be closer to each other than him?
But the thought was quickly out of his mind as the smell of breakfast wafted up from downstairs, and his Mum called for him. The marks were shown to family, and there was a customary chorus of chatter and applause, but then it was just another birthday for Oscar.
Max was at home when he woke up with his marks. He was alone (as always) and went to bed thinking about perhaps doing some runs on the sim for the upcoming Chinese GP. The thought of soulmarks hadn’t even crossed his mind. But he woke up with it anyways. With his mark.
It was clearly a mark. A soulmate! He had a soulmate! (He had the opportunity to fuck it up… the opportunity to be like his father).
There was a single orange star that boldly filled the inside of his wrist. It had orbit lines sketched in, but seemed oddly off-centre, almost in a squashed orbit. And the planet that was drawn further out (dark purple, almost muted) orbited further than that, almost around something else as well. But there was nothing there, just two sketched circles on orbits that, no matter how much Max squinted at them, he couldn’t figure out.
Charles was absolutely delighted. Or at least, people thought he was. And by the way he was delightedly racing about his home, shoving the mark in the faces of everyone was there and calling everyone who wasn’t, you’d be forgiven for thinking so.
And that’s not to say that Charles wasn’t happy. Of course he was happy! He’d got his soulmate mark! And what a pretty mark it was! A purple planet in a far too large orbit around an off-centre blue (with red specks) sun, everything clearly in the drawing style of his dear soulmates! But there was something off about it.
Something… not quite right with how it lay on his wrist, the orbits just that tiny bit too much to the side…
But you can’t be angry at your soulmate, so Charles put on a brave face, and continued his race around his home… he had his soul mark!
Max and Charles were both at the Chinese GP. In fact, Max had overtaken Charles. And that was why Charles was searching the paddock for Max (and totally not because he wanted the attention of the other boy). And Max totally hadn’t been searching for Charles either, so when they met in front of the Mercedes motorhome, it was a complete coincidence…
And naturally, they chattered away. So much so that the staff moving around them to pack up the Mercedes area had to ask them to leave. They walked away still chattering away, still so lost in conversation with each other that they didn’t see the drivers rolling their eyes as the pair walked past, or the Daniel Riccardo miming vaguely inappropriate gestures towards Max before pointing at Charles, as the pair headed inside Max’s motor home, the door locking behind them.
It was mid-conversation that Charles rolled up his sleeves. And Max’s eyes caught on the mark on the Monagasque’s wrists. He froze.
Charles only continued talking for a few seconds before realising that Max wasn’t following him anymore.
“What?” he asked, bemused when Max (who you couldn’t normally get to shut up) was dead silent.
Max didn’t reply. He just pulled up his own sleeve and pushed his wrist next to Charles’s. They matched. Or rather, they partially matched. See, both and Max had the same soulmark… but they weren’t bonded to each other.
There was silence, and a few glances as both ascertained that the other didn’t know who the purple planet was… and both slowly realised that they weren’t soulmates. They weren’t destined to be friends… just acquaintances through someone, never close enough to be with each other… Just close enough for it to hurt…
They’d always have to be around each other as well. Or one of them would have to stop being friends with their soulmate.
Charles left the motorhome in silence, the pair didn’t speak for what seemed like ages, and then the Austria GP happened, and Charles was so pissed at Max for stealing what could have been his maiden win that no one was trying to get them to reconcile.
It was probably a good thing they weren’t soulmates, both of them thought, lying alone in their respective hotel rooms, as who could be friends with someone like that?
They became closer again, though. It seemed that the realisation that if they were going to share a friend, they probably had to be on good terms with each other had occurred to both of them. Neither apologised for Austria nor brought up the nearly matching marks, but they were friends again.
Not best friends, not soulmate friends (like the media liked to joke about), but friends nonetheless. (Friends who spend more time together than apart in the off season, friends who did their grocery shopping together as they cooked in one kitchen so much that it was just easier that way, friends who mixed up their body washes so much by accident that all their clothes smelt of both of them… just friends).
And it was into that situation that Oscar Piastri joined F1. He’d known who his soulmates were for ages. Max’s Silverstone crash had had him shaking for weeks, and Charles’s 2020 Italian GP wasn’t fun either. And though the crashes were painful (and scary, having no way to contact his destined friends to ask if they were alright or not), it was rather reassuring to know that he’d be going into F1 with guaranteed friends.
Or at least, he thought so.
See, when he managed to sneakily bring up the marks to Lando while being added to the driver group chat, Lando mentioned something that made him freeze.
“Oh yeah,” Lando had said, “some drivers are a lot more open with marks than others. Max and Charles are matching with someone, you know! I wish the poor bastard luck getting into that, they’re going to be torn in half trying to pick a side!” he laughed, though it quickly died out when he saw Oscar’s horrified face.
“Torn in half? Are they both that possessive that they can’t be in a triad like others?”
“Ha! No. They’re not in a triad, see mate?” Lando tried to explain, but somehow made everything worse.
Oscar let out a low whining noise that had Lando’s attention drawn fully to him, “What do you- I- What? Not a triad? But it’s… It’s Max and Charles?!”
“I know! The universe must be having a laugh yeah? Whoever their poor purple planet is I wish them so much luck. I’d wish them strength but then we’d probably have a dead Max and Charles by the end of the year, you know?”
Oscar did know.
Oscar worldessly pulled his sleeve back to show Lando the mark on his wrist. The purple planets circling two binary stars.
Lando nearly passed out from laughing too hard.