Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The night after a win always ended the same way.

Noise, then nothing.

The champagne had dried sticky on his skin hours ago, the adrenaline long gone, leaving only the hollow ache in its place. The trophy had already been delivered to Red Bull’s cabinet, polished to gleam under lights where strangers would admire it. His team had spilled into the Monte Carlo night. Bars, clubs, laughter sharp as broken glass, but Max had gone home alone. He always went home alone.

The apartment was silent, clinical, too large for one. The faint hum of the fridge was the only reminder he wasn’t deaf. He dropped his keys on the counter and stepped onto the balcony, a glass of water in his hand he wouldn’t finish.

Monaco, dazzling as if it were trying too hard, stretched out below him. Yachts drifted with their strings of gold lights reflected in the harbor, and beyond that, the sea was nothing but black. The city felt alive, restless, but none of it touched him.

He should have felt something. Pride. Relief. Satisfaction. The kind of elation that everyone else seemed to expect from him. But victory had always been temporary—minutes of release, followed by a silence that only reminded him of everything missing.

His phone buzzed against the counter inside, the vibration carrying faintly through the glass door. It hadn’t stopped since the checkered flag. Messages stacked up like trophies, congratulations from sponsors, journalists, distant relatives who only remembered him when his name trended.

He ignored them all.

None of them mattered.

Max leaned forward, forearms braced against the railing, the city breeze threading cool fingers through his damp hair. His body still hummed with leftover adrenaline, muscles twitching like an engine cooling down, but his mind... his mind was elsewhere.

It went where it always went in these hours, when the noise bled out and there was nothing left to distract him.

Her face.

He saw it as clearly as if she’d been there tonight, in the stands, hidden in the crowd. He could almost pick it out between the blur of flags and the glitter of camera flashes. He hadn’t spoken her name in years, hadn’t dared to, but it lived in him like a bruise that never faded.

He closed his eyes and the memory flickered sharp as flame: she was nineteen, perched on the pit wall in jeans and his old jacket, sleeves pushed to her elbows. Her knees were drawn up, hands clasped tightly, her smile caught halfway between nerves and pride. She had tried to hide how much it scared her, watching him push to the edge.

She never did hide well.

Max inhaled too fast and opened his eyes, forcing the vision away. He hated how memory worked against him, how she existed everywhere he looked. In the reflection of car windows, in shadows that weren’t hers, in the corners of hotel rooms where he thought he heard her laugh.

He dragged a hand down his face, pressing his palm hard against his eyes until colors burst behind them. He went back inside before he could think too long, setting his glass down on the counter with more force than he intended. The sound cracked through the room, hollow and sharp, and left him standing in front of his own reflection in the dark window.

The man staring back was supposed to be untouchable.

A champion.

Ruthless.

But he saw none of that.

All he saw was the same boy who had once promised her that racing wouldn’t take everything from them.

He didn’t keep pictures. Not anymore. The ones he had, he had buried. Deleted. Thrown into drawers he never opened. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need them. Her voice lived under his skin, stitched into him in a way no time apart could rip free. It came back uninvited, her teasing when he lost, the gentleness when he won, the way she said his name like she knew the parts of him no one else ever would.

The phone buzzed again. He thought about ignoring it. He almost did. But this time he looked.

The name froze him.

He hadn’t seen it appear on his screen in more than four years. Not by accident, not by mistake. He had trained himself never to expect it again.

It was her.

Just two words. Congratulations, Max.

His pulse stuttered, then kicked too hard against his ribs. The message wasn’t long. It wasn’t intimate. It was careful, polite, detached enough that anyone else would read nothing from it. But Max read everything. The simplicity cut deeper than anything else could have, because it meant she still thought of him, even after all this time, even if it was only to acknowledge what the world already knew.

He stared at the screen until the letters blurred, the phone heavy in his hand. He didn’t know what to type back. He didn’t even know if he should. But his throat burned with words he hadn’t spoken in years.

He wondered where she was when she typed it. If she hesitated before pressing send. If her hands shook the way his did now.

Max set the phone down carefully, as though it might explode. His chest ached with something he didn’t have a name for, only the certainty of it.

He hadn’t forgotten her. Not for a single race, not for a single win.

Not when she had always been the only face he searched for, even in crowds where she didn’t exist.

Chapter Text

He didn’t sleep. He never really did on race nights, but this was different.

The message still sat on his phone, unanswered. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it waiting there, glowing faint against the darkness of the room. He left it untouched, but it hummed through his chest like static, refusing to let him rest.

So he lay there on the couch instead, staring at the ceiling, the soft tick of the clock carving the night into pieces. His body should have been exhausted. His mind wouldn’t let him stop.

Ghosts were everywhere.

He could see her sitting cross-legged on this same couch, bare feet tucked under her, her hair damp from the shower. She would steal his hoodie, sleeves swallowing her hands, laughing when he pretended to be annoyed. There had been nights like this after races, where the noise outside didn’t touch them, where it felt like the world was only theirs.

The ghost flickered. The room was empty.

He turned his head toward the balcony, the faint outline of the sea beyond the glass. It dragged another memory forward, one he had buried but never lost.

They had stood on that balcony years ago, before the championships, before everything got bigger and heavier. She had leaned against the railing, hair whipping into her face with the night wind, and said, "Do you ever wonder if you’ll regret all this?"

Max had frowned, not understanding. Racing was all he’d ever wanted. "Regret what?"

She had looked at him then, quiet, her eyes holding something he hadn’t tried to read. "The things you lose on the way."

He hadn’t answered, not with words. Instead, he reached for her, cupping her face with both hands like he was afraid she might slip through if he didn’t hold on tight enough. His mouth found hers, not rushed but steady, a kiss that carried everything he couldn’t say out loud—that she was home, that he needed her, that he believed they could withstand anything.

Her hands had curled into his shirt, pulling him closer, and for a moment it felt like the world stopped. No engines, no noise, no future pressing against them. Just this, the weight of her against him, the underlying promise in the fact that neither of them pushed away first.

Back then, he thought love would be enough. Back then, he thought she’d always be there to watch him cross finish lines.

The clock ticked. The silence pressed closer.

Max sat up, elbows on his knees, palms dragging down his face. His chest ached with the weight of memory, too vivid, too close. He wanted to push it back down, the way he always did, but the message had split everything open. He couldn’t stop seeing her.

He thought of the fight, the last one. It hadn’t been dramatic, no slammed doors or shattered glass. Just words, low and sharp, the kind that cut deeper because they were quiet.

She had told him she couldn’t keep waiting. That she was tired of being second to circuits, to contracts, to a dream that seemed to take more from him than it gave back.

She said she loved him but couldn’t see a life where she wasn’t left behind.

He had told her she was being unfair. That she knew who he was, what he was chasing. That it would be different one day.

But one day wasn’t enough.

He still remembered the look on her face when she walked away. Not anger. Not even heartbreak. Just resignation, like she had already grieved what they were before she said the words out loud.

The door had closed softly. That was the last sound.

He hadn’t run after her. He told himself it was because he couldn’t. He had training, flights, races. The season didn’t stop for anyone.

But deep down he knew the truth: he hadn’t run after her because some part of him thought she would come back, the way she always did.

She never did.

The world celebrated his wins. She wasn’t there to see any of them.

Max leaned back into the couch, exhaling slow through his teeth, the taste of bitterness familiar. He thought of her laugh, sharp, unexpected, pulling warmth into rooms that otherwise felt cold. He thought of the way she used to braid her hair absentmindedly while watching replays with him, correcting his analysis even though she pretended not to know much about racing. He thought of the nights she fell asleep against his shoulder on long flights, the trust in the weight of her leaning into him.

He thought of all the ways he could still map her without even trying. The scar on her hand from falling off a bike when she was thirteen. The faint freckle under her jawline she hated but he loved. The smell of her shampoo clinging to his clothes long after she left.

Memory wasn’t kind. It didn’t fade the edges like people promised. It stayed sharp, cutting him every time he let himself remember.

His phone lit up again, breaking through the dark. For a split second, his chest seized, thinking it might be her again.

It wasn’t.

It was just Checo, a joke he couldn’t read. He locked the screen without answering.

The earlier message still waited. Untouched.

Max leaned his head back against the couch, eyes closing, jaw tight. He could almost hear her voice in the quiet. Not soft, not forgiving, just there, threaded through the silence like she’d never left.

Do you ever wonder if you’ll regret all this?

He hadn’t then. He did now.

Chapter Text

The message stayed unanswered.

He didn’t know if he could trust himself to break the silence, or if it was safer to let it remain a ghost like everything else between them. But fate didn’t wait for him to decide.

He saw her three days later.

It wasn’t planned. He was leaving a meeting near the harbor, sunglasses shielding him from the flash of cameras, his steps brisk the way they always were when the public pressed too close. And then.. she was there.

She was standing by the water, speaking with someone he didn’t recognize, her profile cut sharp against the afternoon light. For a heartbeat, he thought it was another trick of memory, another ghost summoned by exhaustion. But then she turned, and her eyes found his.

The world stood motionless.

Max stopped walking. The people around him blurred into background noise, voices swallowed by the sea. She didn’t move at first either, just looked at him, like she couldn’t decide if this was real.

And then she smiled. Small. Careful. The same way she had in her message.

He walked toward her before he could think, the ground feeling unsteady beneath him. When he stopped in front of her, neither spoke. Not at first.

"Hey." She said finally, her voice soft, almost tentative.

He swallowed. "Hi."

The man she’d been speaking with excused himself politely, sensing something in the air. They were left standing in the middle of the boardwalk, the world moving around them while they stayed frozen in place.

Max wanted to say a thousand things. None of them made it to his mouth.

"You look..." He stopped, the word wrong no matter how he tried to finish it. Good. Different. The same. None of them fit.

She tilted her head, her smile tugging faint. "So do you."

Silence pressed between them. Not heavy, not yet, just strange. Like two people relearning how to breathe in the same space.

"You didn’t answer my message." She said after a moment. Not accusing. Just fact.

"I.. I didn’t know what to say."

Her eyes searched his face, as if she could read the words he hadn’t typed. She always used to. But time had carved distance between them, and he couldn’t tell if she still could now.

"I meant it," She said quietly. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." His voice caught on the words, too thin, too formal. He hated it.

Another pause. People brushed past, laughter, footsteps, the thrum of music from a passing boat. The world carried on oblivious.

"Do you have time?" She asked suddenly. "For coffee. Just... to talk."

He hesitated. Every instinct in him screamed that this was dangerous, that reopening wounds only made them deeper.

But he couldn’t walk away.

Not from her. Ever.

Not when she was standing in front of him again, real and alive and close enough to touch.

"Yeah," He said. "I do."

They found a small café tucked into a side street, quiet enough that no one paid them attention. She chose the table, the one by the window, sunlight catching in her hair the way it always used to. Max sat across from her, the weight of the moment pressing hard against his chest.

The conversation started light. Polite. Work. Travel. She asked about his family, his sister, his schedule, things that could be spoken about without bleeding. He answered, his words stiff at first, loosening only when she laughed at something and the sound cut straight through him.

But behind it all, there was an underlying throb. The years between them. The break. The way everything had ended without resolution.

At one point, he looked at her hands on the table, fingers curled loosely around her cup, nails short, no ring. His throat tightened. He didn’t ask the question that burned in him. He wasn’t sure if he could bear the answer.

Finally, she said it. "You look.. tired."

He huffed a laugh, low. "I usually am."

"You used to be better at hiding it."

Her eyes softened then, and for a flicker of a moment it was like nothing had changed. Like they were still young, still on the edge of everything, still pretending the world couldn’t touch them.

"I still think about you," Max said suddenly. The words came out raw, unpolished, before he could stop them.

Her breath caught, just faint, her lashes lowering. She didn’t look surprised. Maybe she already knew.

"I know." She said softly.

The admission cracked something in him. He leaned back, exhaling, his hands trembling slightly where they rested on his thighs under the table.

She reached across then, her fingers brushing his for the briefest moment before she pulled back, as though she couldn’t trust herself to linger. The touch was nothing, barely there, but it felt like everything.

Silence stretched again, thick now, full of everything unsaid.

When they finally stood to leave, the goodbye was awkward, half-formed. He walked her back toward the street, neither of them rushing, both pretending they didn’t feel the clock pressing down on them.

At the corner, she stopped. Turned to him.

"It was good to see you, Max."

Not Maxie. Not the name only she ever used, the one that once softened him in a way nothing else could. Just Max. Plain. Distant. And it haunted him more than if she’d said nothing at all.

He nodded, his jaw tight, words locked somewhere he couldn’t reach.

She leaned in, kissed his cheek lightly. But as she pulled back, he turned just slightly, enough that her lips brushed dangerously close to his. Not quite a kiss. Not nothing either.

The air caught between them, charged, the memory of the balcony kiss years ago flashing so vivid he almost swayed.

Her eyes held his for a moment longer. And then she stepped back.

And this time, he let her go.

Chapter Text

He thought he could leave it there. One coffee. One careful conversation. One almost-kiss that lingered like static on his skin. He told himself he could walk away again, lock it back into memory, carry on as if nothing had happened.

But he couldn’t.

Two nights later, he found himself standing outside her hotel. He didn’t even remember deciding to go. He just knew he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t breathe with the thought of her being so close and not seeing her again. His chest felt too tight, like the words he hadn’t said were choking him.

He texted her only when he was already outside. Are you awake?

The reply came quicker than he expected. Yes.

A minute later, she stepped out. She wore a simple sweater, hair loose, no makeup. The sight of her stole the air from his lungs.

"Max," She said softly, surprise flickering in her eyes. "It’s late."

"I know." His voice came rough. "I just... I needed..." He broke off, shaking his head. He’d rehearsed nothing, had no idea how to explain the storm inside him.

She studied him, then gestured down the street. "Walk with me?"

They went side by side, the city hushed around them. The harbor glittered in the distance, the waves slapping quietly against the docks. Their steps echoed against the stone.

For a while, neither spoke. Max’s hands curled into fists, shoving deep into his pockets, like he could anchor himself there. She walked calmly, her gaze ahead, but he could feel her attention pulling toward him in fragments.

Finally, she said, "Why are you here?"

He exhaled, the sound harsh in the quiet. "Because I can’t keep pretending I’ve forgotten you."

She slowed, turning to look at him. The streetlamp threw shadows across her face, but he could still see the way her expression softened, the way her breath caught.

"Max.."

"I tried," He pushed on, voice low but fierce. "I tried to bury it. I thought if I just kept winning, if I kept moving, I could outrun it. But I can’t. Every time it’s quiet, you’re still there. Every race, every night after, I look for you. I can’t stop."

His words fell raw between them, stripped down, no shield.

She pressed her lips together, eyes glinting. "Do you think it’s been easy for me? That I don’t feel it too?"

The answer hit him like impact. He stopped walking, turned fully to face her. "Then why did you leave?"

"Because I couldn’t be the one waiting anymore," She said, her voice trembling but steady with truth. "I loved you, Max. God, I loved you. I did. But I was drowning. And you didn’t even see it."

He flinched. The honesty cut deeper than any fight ever had.

"I thought..." He dragged a hand through his hair, frustration burning hot. "I thought we had time. That if I just kept pushing, if I just kept winning, one day it would all settle and—"

"‘One day,’" She repeated, bitter, a ghost of a laugh leaving her. "That’s what you always said. But I couldn’t live on ‘one day’ forever."

He stared at her, chest heaving, words caught like gravel in his throat.

"I never stopped loving you." He said finally, the confession ripped from him.

Her face softened, pain and longing tangled in her eyes. She stepped closer, so close he could see the faint tremor in her hands.

"I know." She whispered.

The air between them throbbed, thick, impossible. Max’s hand lifted before he could stop it, brushing lightly against her jaw. She didn’t pull away. Her breath hitched, and for a moment, the world shrank down to this. Her skin under his touch, her eyes locked on his, the gravity of years pulling them back together.

He leaned in, close enough that her lips hovered a breath away. Memory surged, the balcony, the kiss that once felt like a promise. His chest ached with how much he wanted to close the distance.

But she turned her head at the last second, his mouth grazing her cheek instead.

"I can’t Max.." She whispered, her voice breaking. "If I let this happen again, I won’t survive losing you twice."

The words shattered through him. His hand dropped, his throat tightening until it hurt to swallow.

Silence stretched, raw and jagged.

Max stepped back, forcing himself to breathe. His chest felt hollow, stripped bare. He had bared everything, and it still wasn’t enough.

She looked at him, her eyes glistening in the streetlight. "You’ll always be a part of me. Always. But that doesn’t mean we can go back."

He nodded slowly, though it felt like tearing himself apart. He wanted to argue, to beg, but he didn’t. Not this time.

The sea roared faintly in the distance. The city lights blurred.

Max whispered, "Do you think I’ve forgotten about you?"

Her eyes closed for a moment, her shoulders trembling with the weight of it. When she opened them, her voice was steady.

"No. I think that’s what scares me most."

Chapter Text

The silence felt heavier than anything he had carried before.

She shook her head, quiet but unshakable. "I can’t do this, Max."

The words split through him, blunt and merciless. He had heard heartbreak in other voices, seen it in other people’s stories, but never like this. Never pointed at him.

He tried to speak, but his throat locked. His mouth opened, then closed. Everything he wanted to say, that he’d fight for her, that he’d give anything to fix this, jammed up like gravel behind his teeth.

Her voice trembled, but it did not break. "You’ll always be the love I can’t forget. But we’re not meant to find each other again. Not now. Not ever."

It landed with finality, a clean blade.

"So.. This is it?" His voice was a rasp, hoarse and hollow.

Her lips curved in a faint, fragile smile. Not comfort, not forgiveness, just apology. "It has to be."

And just like that, she stepped away.

Her footsteps echoed in the hollow street, too loud in his ears. She walked with purpose, like she had to keep moving before her own resolve shattered.

Max didn’t follow. He couldn’t. His body was lead, his chest locked in place. He stood rooted where she had left him, heart hammering uselessly against his ribs, every instinct screaming to run after her, drag her back, tell her he wasn’t ready to lose her again.

But he stayed frozen.

At the corner, she paused. The moment stretched like thread pulled too tight.

He thought she might turn, might look back, might give him something, anything, to hold onto.

The air hitched in his chest.

But she didn’t.

She kept walking, the night swallowing her whole.

The streetlamps buzzed faintly above him, throwing sterile yellow light across the pavement. The harbor whispered in the distance, waves pulling against the docks with indifference. The world carried on, uncaring, while Max stood motionless, gutted.

She was gone.

The love he’d carried for years, the promise he thought he could always return to, gone.

And still, she lingered.

Already, he could feel it: the outline of her in his chest, the ghost of her laugh curled into the hollow spaces of his nights. He knew he wouldn’t be free of her. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not years from now. She was stitched into him too deeply.

It wouldn’t be her hand he felt, but the absence of it. Not her voice in his ear, but the echo of it, fragile in memory. He would live with shadows, with fragments, with the version of her that belonged only to the past.

This was all he would have left.

The cruelest truth was knowing that he would carry her still. On podiums, with the crowd screaming his name, he’d search the blur of faces and ache at the emptiness where she should have been. In hotel rooms between races, silence pressing against the walls, he’d hear her in the quiet. When the engines cut, when the adrenaline drained, when the night left him alone, she would return.

Not in flesh, not in presence, but in memory.

That was where she lived now. In the place he went when everything else fell away. The dark corner of his mind where she was eternal, untouched by time, smiling in the way she no longer smiled for him.

It wasn’t comfort.

It wasn’t closure.

It was haunting.

Max tilted his head back, eyes burning as he stared at the sky. The night was still, blank, endless. His chest heaved with the weight of everything he couldn’t undo. He whispered her name once, so low it dissolved into the air.

No answer.

He pressed his palms against his face, dragging them down slowly, grounding himself in pain. His nails bit against skin, his breath shuddering as he tried to cage the breaking.

Eventually, he moved. His feet carried him back the way he came, each step heavy, deliberate, stripped of all urgency. There was no destination. Just distance.

Tomorrow, he would put the mask on again. He would race, he would win, he would stand on podiums and let champagne drip across his fireproofs as though the world hadn’t ended here tonight. He would give the media their soundbites, his team their victories, the crowd their champion.

But none of it would touch the truth.

The truth was that he had lost her twice.

The first time when she walked away years ago, tired of waiting for him to make space for her. And now, again, when he finally admitted what he should have said all along, only to find it was too late.

This was the end.

And there would be no second chances, no rewrites, no miracle return.

It was final.

He knew he would keep driving anyway. He would keep chasing victory, because it was the only thing left that didn’t collapse beneath his weight. But deep down, he knew what every race, every flight, every hotel room would come back to.

Her.

The ghost of her.

The place inside him that would always be about her, no matter how far he drove or how much he won.

Max clenched his jaw, forcing the burn in his chest down, letting it spread where no one else could see. He kept walking, step after step into the emptiness, carrying her absence like a brand he could never erase.

Because this was where she remained now. Not beside him, not waiting in the wings, but in the memory he couldn’t stop returning to.

And Max Verstappen, no matter how much time passed, would always go back there.

To remember her face.