Work Text:
i. aspiration
Max breathes in.
Turn 1, Suzuka. A right handed sweep, a corner yawning at its apex; drawing him in deep, fusing him to his car—
and then, it releases.
Breath still held, he takes the corner the way he always does.
There is no special trick to the perfect corner—
it arrives, then you meet it.
You can be prepared, of course. Experience counts. But really, it’s all in the attitude. It helps to be a four-time world champion, the best in the world—and maybe that’s the trick: be him. Be Max Verstappen.
With that certainty in mind, he takes the corner the way he does everything else: respecting the reasonable, and resisting the unacceptable.
The laws of physics, forcing five times his body weight onto his ribs: that is reasonable, immutable.
Oversteer, a snappy rear sliding wide, a loss of control, accruing hundredths or even tenths of a second — that is unacceptable, unthinkable. That is to be resisted.
To be controlled, and denied.
Max denies. Continually, he denies. Denies even the impulse to breathe, while it matters.
This is going to stick, he thinks—
And it does.
Good.
— another quick inhalation.
At full throttle, the car and him are as one in the exit. They sear into the S-curves, absorbed in quick succession: Two, Six, Seven, Eight.
Tension, control, lateral precision. Barriers flutter by, asphalt simmers. The engine throbs, violent and guttural — so many sounds, all howling in his helmet— so many feelings, and such feelings, all beating against his temples and ears as the gears rack up and down, as his fingers grip, as his feet shift hot and quick at the pedals.
A thought arrives, then floats, blithely, above the automatic others:
This lap is a good one.
It is all about the feeling.
Max feels.
Max feels.
In the heady, hypnotic flow state of the Suzuka Circuit, in the humid, pummelling atmosphere, he takes in a broken lungful of air and, for a moment— relaxes. Soars.
Always, only a moment.
There is no room for real ease on the circuit; there is too much to be earned in discomfort. This was a hard lesson, taught young by flat palms raised in warning, by flat lips made flatter in dismay:
Keep in mind what you are greedy for, and earn it.
Suffer longer than the others.
Keep your racing line— though your body shakes, your knuckles bleed—
though your eyes water and cry and your muscles beg to give way.
Above all: endure.
In the held breath, Max has learned to hold out for the pay-off.
Endure; endure. Enjoy.
Win.
Send it. Send it.
Every muscle strains under the heave of Spoon Curve, but the grip is there to greet him, blissful and sweet. Eyes open, breath suspended, Max’s body is poised just at the moment of its breaking, and no further.
The pain is sublime: simple, and lovely.
This lap is a good one — this track rewards you for being on the limit—
It rewards you even more for being a little over.
He’ll tell that to the press, later.
Pole position. Max robs the McLaren’s by just over a hundredth of a second. Max robs the rest, takes what is his.
Max robs.
Max robs.
***
It’s not a conscious decision, to inhale. There’s a lot of talk about it, of course: think pieces, frenzied sentences in throwaway articles, Did you know that Formula 1 drivers don’t breathe around corners? that sort of thing. Now it’s a fact, given life by repetition. As if it’s something he thinks about. As if it’s ever anything other than instinct. As if there’s any other option.
And the blinking, too. Co-ordinated, apparently. A sans-serif font on a clickbait website: The terrifying reason why Max Verstappen doesn’t blink while racing an F1 car. Maybe it is terrifying — at top speed, a blink robs him of 20 metres. Maybe it would frighten him, if he dwelled on it at all. But why dwell on it? It doesn’t matter. He does it. It is trust, the way everyone knows that when you close your eyes in a rainstorm and turn your face to the sky, you will feel the drops on your tongue.
This is the problem — there are too many people making a meal of him and every part of what he does. They attribute numbers. Assign value. Document detail. Compare statistics. He is not only Max Verstappen, racing driver, he is an invitation for assessment, open to anyone: engineers and strategists, journalists and media gurus; experts and pundits, rivals and fans. By a process of evaluation and quantification, of compartmentalisation and adjudication, they strip him down and back— 20 metres, 1- 4 milliseconds — in an effort to understand his talent, to applaud or decry him, to criticise or replicate.
It’s his talent— it’s his work ethic. It’s the way he was born— it’s how he was raised. There is no room for nuance; a reason must be found.
Max becomes a lump of figures and facts, not belonging to himself. They pick at him. He tries to be good, give them less. Many years into his career now, they will never come close to understanding something which can only be grasped in its sum.
Figures, then feeling.
***
Apex to apex, curve to curve. A body accepting what is given to it on the edge of what should be possible; a body subjected to force, and the realities of speed and time.
What Max takes from that sensation, he uses: that is what they call instinct. There is no plan for breathing, no plan for blinking. There is the feeling, and the reaction.
Guide the machinery with razorblade precision; refuse to yield a millimetre, a millisecond, a single breath. Instinct, repeated. Again and again. That’s what he does, better than anyone, and better than the others: he feels, he reacts, he persists. Over and over. In defence, in attack, Max endures, giving no quarter, accepting no failure, pushing and pushing to find that point where the possible slips into the improbable, and sometimes even beyond.
Beyond, where the improbable becomes the miraculous in the space of a breath— of a blink— of a spark thrown up by the skid block, surging out of dirty air. Faith; a flame, like the one his mother lights before his races. Max chases it like a comet tail chases its meteor.
Max chases breaths, chases sparks.
Chases miracles.
And he takes.
***
(There are no circuits where he considers the breaths cut short, the eyes made sightless; not while driving. This is the nature of their sport. This is his life, their life, recognising that the closer you are to the edge, the closer you are to going over. The closer you are to life, the more you skirt that other thing. That awful thing. That thing they never think of.)
***
The race goes as well as you can hope — it has a respectable, reasonable conclusion:
Max wins.
ii. vessel
When Max is born, his mother says he cries like his lungs are fully grown in his tiny body. Twenty-three years earlier, she had come into this world crying just the same.
Two red-faced babies, tiny ribcages fattening with fury, letting loose revving howls and squeals — an announcement. A miracle. Here.
Max grows, lips forming words, hair blooming blond and eyes blue, Many arms cradle him until his ankles have the strength to stumble from step to step and choose the path: into his first kart.
Those lungs, though; those lungs of his. They are greedy. Never at rest. Always striving, yearning, searching for something. Latent thieves, clawing for the breath which might satisfy him all the way to his bird bones.
You might say that Max arrives into the world knowing how to draw breath, but not how to breathe.
So Max begs, and his father takes it on himself to teach him.
His mother, who has to trust she has done enough, steps aside.
And so it is; so he learns.
Je bent toch niet van suiker?
(However much Max pushes his lips near to them on the wheel and exhales scant warmth, his knuckles remain cold and blue and wet and will grow into adulthood still trembling.)
Max arrives into the world knowing how to look, but not how to see.
When Max begs, his father takes it on himself to teach him that, too.
He misses his mother. He misses his little sister.
So it is; so he learns.
Suffer longer than the others.
(Eyes seek racing lines the way others his age seek bubbles in a light breeze, scour mulch for wriggling worms, trace footballs darting from boot to boot.)
Max never minds. Not really. He knows he is young, and that while he is weak sometimes, he is strong at others. Never give in; always deny. His father gives: advice, knowledge, discipline. Everything Max needs. The secrets to it all, the special tricks.
Knowing how to breathe in the car is like being able to see in the dark, like being able to drive in the rain. It gives him an edge over the others; and isn’t that what it is all for?
This is what he wants.
***
Quietly, Max wants other things, too. He is never discouraged from wanting them, but encouraged to keep his priorities clear, to acknowledge what comes first, always:
Racing. Winning.
It doesn’t come easy. Raw talent and pace are the basest of ingredients, and to this Max brings effort, and an upstart attitude that rankles the older drivers and might be described in his awkward, trilingual lisp as fuck you. Gasps of brilliance are tucked away within midfield retches, stuttering losses. A desperate, clawing hunger is exposed at his underbelly and is interpreted either as youthful menace, or reckless impulsivity.
The chatter picks up, gathers, and is smeared and fused along the racing line. Max Verstappen hailed as a future F1 superstar after ‘fairytale’ victory….Verstappen will cause big accident, warns Kimi Räikkönen…Max Verstappen regrets reaction, but insists penalty ‘not correct’….
With chatter comes grip, a narrative, the beginning of a legacy.
(Q: Will you moderate your driving style in any way?
MV: Why should I? And I just said that I don’t like to stay in the past. What happened happened - and this is another race weekend where I will push as hard as ever. I do my thing - with my driving style as it always was.)
Let them stick their numbers to him. Let them evaluate.
Max moves on.
Max feels. Max learns. Max builds.
Max wants.
***
Say what you will about the Verstappen’s and the Kumpen’s — they keep his feet on the ground. To win the way he wants to, Max must become mature beyond his years, and so, simply, he does. There is racing, then there is family— one after the other in terms of priority, and even then, only just.
Young as he is, Max has always wanted a family. The more attention he receives, the more his ribcage tightens and he seeks out those who recognise him without him having to justify himself— his mother, his sister, those eyes that are most like his own. The more money pours into his pockets from his hard work and talent, the more he needs to look after them, take care of them, and ensure they are safe, protected and happy.
The more people he is able to keep safe, the more he wants children of his own to look after, to give them a good life, a happy one; keep their lungs filled with air, and their hands warm, to light a candle for them, their wants, their dreams —
Sometimes, that want does not sit right with him. Seeing his father’s own sown oats — his football team, sibling after sibling added to the family dinner, welcome though they are — makes him feel strange.
Max considers whether his desire to settle down quickly and provide may be an inherited perversion; something corrupt and archaic, and thus to be distrusted.
After all, for his father, a family is not something to have but something to own—
But these thoughts don’t linger long; Max denies them.
It is reasonable, to love. There does not have to be a motive.
So he has been raised to take— that does not mean that he will never be ready to give.
***
(He thinks that he will not marry, though; there seems to be pain in it.)
***
The years pass quickly. A young man in the public eye, he finds his way in the weeds of the sport, in the waves of youth and wealth and debauchery that arrive to meet him in the harbour at Port Hercule. It is reasonable to expect that Max will rise to meet the heady expectations of Red Bull Racing: living fast, and racing faster. In the Riviera sunshine, amongst the glittering parties and champagne spray and illicit substances of all kinds, he skirts the edges — this track rewards you for being on the limit, and then a little over— but it is unthinkable that he will plummet headfirst into those temptations. Always, Max is ready to deny, always able to pull himself back from the deepest water by reminding himself: he is allowed to want.
As long as he keeps his priorities clear.
As long as he keeps in mind what comes first—
Racing.
Winning—
(— which is just another word for robbing, stealing, taking away, which is what they all say about him, after 2021, what they still say even now, as if he hadn’t earned it, as if he hadn’t clawed, and yearned, and denied, and endured, and won by the rules of the mercurial sport they offer themselves to; as if the flame of his mother’s candles didn’t burn quick or bright enough, as if his lungs hadn’t throbbed with enough want, as if his knuckles on the wheel hadn’t shaken enough, pale and cold with the weight of his young years, as if the moment he had flown into the barriers at Silverstone he hadn’t for a shred of time allowed himself to consider that other thing, that other awful thing that he would give for this—)
It isn’t about the suffering. Plenty suffer; Max suffers. To suffer with purpose, that is the key— to suffer with talent. And luck. Small miracles, and sparks.
Max suffers. Max feels. Max endures.
Max wins.
(And wins.)
(And wins.)
***
Bursting through every record ever made in Formula 1, Max comes to admit what he has always, somehow, known: there is no recipe to the perfect corner— it arrives, then you meet it.
***
With each win, each drawn breath, the hunger within him stills. Not fully, never fully, but there is space here, at last, for his other wants.
A family.
Max changes. For the love of them, this new compartment of his life, he grows a new set of lungs.
This new respiratory system is built for other compounds. Wispy talcum powder and downy cotton, in place of acrid tarmac and burnt rubber. Full nappies and baby hair— soft and organic— in place of the blue edge of ozone, and the chemical scrape of brake pads, singed.
Max can take a breath, a full one— if he is able, for a moment, to compartmentalise those first, frightened lungs of his. Tuck them away: those greedy ones that strive, that struggling pair he was born with but which were formed by other hands. They are useful for the racetrack alone, because that is what they were built to feed: those first, primal, screaming wants of his — to drive, to race, to win. Now, with the new set, Max might take his helmet off and absolve them of their duty, that he might catch his breath again.
Nestled between this second pair of lungs, his heart grows a hundredfold. Looking at his family, clutching a newborn to his chest— as the joy creeps up his neck and flushes into his cold extremities— he thinks that this might feel like a championship, won every day. Raised on the maxim that happiness arrives only with domination and success, for the first time, he doubts. For the first time, he wonders if this happiness was waiting for him whether or not he ever climbed into a kart, or a race car. Whether he ended up instead as the bus driver his father always feared.
Four titles, and he begins to wonder if he needs another. Is the hunger still there? Does he need to keep winning at all costs? Does he have anything more to prove, now? Is it time?
Does he need those first, ugly lungs of his? They had been useful enough to establish a legacy; they might still be useful for other series, away from the white scrutiny of Formula 1.
Perhaps there is a world beyond this one: of clean air, and ribcages that move, gentle and fearless, against the velvet exhalations of a newborn, held close.
These new lungs, suffused with love, can support Max alone. The old pair can wither in the dark, brought out only by his mirror-self to sear the mouthpiece of his racing helmet. Perhaps if he holds on for long enough, the two sets will merge into one and there will be no more struggle, no more fighting for the next inhalation.
Perhaps if he is clever in the meantime, no one will notice Max is breathing twice.
iii. combustion
Fire robs. It steals everything — the very air that feeds it.
Fire is a fight, is bared teeth. A lion’s jaw. They still speak about Max like that — like they want to warm their hands by him, but also fear his fury. Max scorches, blazes, looms in mirrors; has been born to burn, to raze, to destroy. Throughout his career, Max steals wins, claims championships, and devours teammates, consuming their talent and denying them their longed-for glories. Max is an uncontrollable element searing through the grid: inevitable.
When they give him a car worthy of his fifth, he discovers another kind of flame. A holier one; hell-bent.
That it would be him is an inevitability. A predestiny, perhaps. Max laughs at this phrasing derisively when it is put to him in the media pen. Pressed for comment, he demurs, thumbing the condensation from the side of a cool Red Bull can: we both work very hard, and always have, of course. When you work hard, and have talent, as Charles does, well…
It is the wet dream of a racing fanatic: childhood rivals turned nemeses in Formula 1. Max isn’t stupid. It is good for their brands. Good for their images. Thinkpieces are made of it, many articles of frenzied sentences, summoning something else from a relationship that for many years was nothing more than a polite, professional fraternity. It ran cold at times and warm at others. Now, you would think they came out of the womb with the intention to race each other. The legend of their rivalry is now a fact, given life by repetition.
What the media fail to understand is that this is not the childhood rivalry of Lewis and Rosberg. There has been no firm friendship for rivalry to sour— a kinship, certainly, through karting, but nothing that would get in the way of each triumphing over the other. No petty knowledge of trivialities — likes and dislikes, loves and hates — to gather like motes of superficial sand, shoaling on the circuit, carried on the wind from the dunes at Zandvoort. What Max and Charles have is different. It is another intimacy, deeper, well-met: the tarmac below.
Max’s instinct tells him to use it. To exploit it. It is good for the sport, and thus, it is good for him. It’s no use pretending otherwise when every time he slides beneath the halo and feels the anticipation of a fight with a worthy opponent, he is blessed by that childish, pure feeling of chasing something bright. Why give it more thought? It is simple; there is no narrative.
Chase what drives you: bubbles in the breeze, fleeting and heady enough to hold your breath for. Close your eyes for the rain on your tongue.
It is not easy.
Charles does not allow him to breathe, on the track. The fury of it models Max anew. For the first time in years, he must adapt, become reactive instead of instinctive. Circumstances force alternatives from him, and compel him to think differently. For once, a chicane is not just a chicane, a corner not just a corner —the very concept of one changes, because Max used to drive and dominate each turn alone but now a Ferrari licks at his heels at each twitch, and his nose finds a red wing to nudge.
Wheels spin, kiss, and then spit at each other before parting. Accident after accident is avoided through nothing but skill; hundreds of near-misses gather in their arms, shared. Through each one Max can’t breathe at all, not even a little, feeling too much the adrenaline — there is a scarlet threat in his mirrors; a chassis resisting the deep press of an overtake; the slivered fin of a rear wing, darting—
— and then within it, between them, beyond: that awful thing. That brilliant thing.
Apex to apex, curve to curve. Two bodies poised at the moment of their breaking. Two minds operating in milliseconds, in the emptiness between each sand grain falling in the hourglass. On the limit, and then a little over. Pain, breath, sight, a miracle— less of a battle than a dance, and one they perform together.
They each bring fuel to the flame, that gruelling need to win: Max with his punished ribcage, Charles with his haunting grief.
They each throw up sparks. Max is himself, struck flint; Charles a match head, nursed too long in a shitbox and let loose at last.
Between their wheels, smoke rises. Rather than destroy, rather than burn, it is drawn into Max’s body in the absence of air and rejuvenates.
Max breathes in, and in, and in; addicted, as the red race boot holds lightly on his throat.
***
While the smoke restores his first set of lungs, love loses its ability to nourish the second.
It as though it can’t quite reach down through the surge of Latin names— trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, alveoli— and make peace there. At the membrane where love and air should meet the body and transfer its gift, there is no passage. It is a denial Max never means to make, but can’t for the life of him reverse.
He tries, torn down the middle, thriving in one half while the other runs away from him like a breath that he can’t catch, like air dragged from a room. It slips through cold knuckles beside the life he once thought would save him, when it gave him something to provide and care for.
Time and again, he is asked for the one thing he can’t give, the one thing that brings him pain and reminds him of a faithful candle, extinguished by cruel fingers pinched hard. A marriage —
Max heaves, gasps. Still, there is no respite, no miracle arriving, no promise of pay-off.
For the first time in a long time, the mantras he was raised on rise to the occasion:
Keep in mind what you are greedy for, and earn it.
Suffer longer than the others.
Endure.
***
The break-up comes and Max can’t breathe at all. No smoke, no air, no love.
If his hollow chest rises, it is only in the moment following the apex of a high-speed bend, when the G-force eases. Through it all, he drives harder, angrier, faster than most believe possible, draining the car, squeezing every last drop from it, frenzied. The boy who drove with his underbelly exposed returns with the same hunger, but with years of experience and everything— and nothing— to lose.
(Q: You’ve been criticised--
MV: Have I? I had not noticed.
Q: Concerns have been raised about your increasingly aggressive moves on track—
MV: People can say what they like, of course. I am not going to back out. I need to win, and if others would like to complain about it, I would suggest they try the same, or else they can stay at home. It’s as easy as that.)
It is no longer a miracle that he chases, but its demonic opposite — a profanity, a straightforward negation of grace.
Of everyone, Charles knows this. Charles knows grief intimately; knows that, sometimes, the best thing one can give it is an antagonist. And that, wherever possible, it should not be yourself.
So Charles gives. It is generous. Max imagines that’s why Charles chases him down the way he does— why, over the next few races, Charles rises to meet him like the revelation he is.
Charles drives less like a man than a divine provocation, draped in rosso corsa and matching Max blow for blow.
Red rag to a red bull.
Max seeks to damn him, even if it damns them both.
***
At Monza, he succeeds.
Double DNF.
In the wall, Max can’t breathe for even a moment, his ribcage frozen solid, his hands fused to the wheel. In the medical centre, they don’t believe him when he tells them this— they point out he is standing upright, they check his head for a concussion, pulling on his eyelids, shining light into his pupils. They tell him Charles walked away fine, an anastasis. Max doesn’t recall asking.
He finds Charles already waiting for him in his driver’s room; righteous, and shaking.
***
Max had once thought that the sweetest breath was the one taken in the tight hot press of victory.
Over time, as victory had become less of a novelty and more of a habitat he made a lonely home in, each flutter-shut of his eyelashes on the podium had dimmed, and each victorious heave had felt more bitter, diminishing return upon diminishing return and then—
Then.
***
Sometimes you find your breath in someone else’s lungs, someone else’s mouth. As if, for the entire time you have been on Earth together you have harboured the same air, the same fire.
You are each the shoaling sand, the spaces between grains, the tarmac below, a turn well met. You are each the victory.
The relief of it unfolds like a petal over Max’s skin, opening at the light. A soft tongue parts his lips. Warm hands still their furious trembling at his neck. Sternum to sternum, there is a pressing, a silent invitation.
Max gives way.
There is no point in denial. There is no thing to control; aside from this guttural desire, the pulsing of blood rising against Max’s temples and ears, growing as the intimacy racks up and down, as his fingers grip Charles’s cinctured waist, as his feet shift, hot and quick, slotting between two ankles.
Max feels —
Max feels —
Max gasps, and Charles gives, and when it’s over, the door shuts softly behind him, and the air— the air rushes back in.
***
The breaths they exchange come quick once they are discovered; snatched in secret, organised not in words but in discreet glances, gifting reprieve.
Meeting one another becomes a necessity, an extension of the understanding they reach while racing one another: that life exists in the gap where they almost meet.
The slightest brush of fingertip to fingertip is like breaching the waters at Cap Ferrat, cool air and warm water and a vision split by the sun. Palms clasped in parc ferme are ice in the tropics of Singapore, water on the stripped deserts of Nevada and Qatar.
A gasp heaved in a dark apartment, a discarded trophy rolling along the ground. Two people tipping themselves into the open mouth of the other, over and over, careless as the red wine they spill over white, rich linen. A perversion of the Monegasque flag, the same thing they say to one another on the racetrack, in battle: I know you. I hate it. It makes me need you.
Resplendent in red, and resplendent outside of it, Charles allows Max to hold a hand to his ribs, keeping his touch precise. Max marvels at the arch of them, their movement, the way they rise and sink with ease under his fingertips, the way his diaphragm will stutter when he presses, gently, this way or that way; the quiver of it under a thumb’s caress. The low vibration of a sound in his chest; its heat scattered over Max’s knuckles, unvoiced.
Afterwards, Max will allow Charles to trace his eyelashes where they fall against his lower lids, pale and dry, and there will be no need to count how many meters he loses in the dark.
Max takes. Charles, generous Charles, gives.
***
It is never enough, of course. Never enough; because the act of breathing is an act of want. It must have something to draw on, an ever-replenishing supply, an opening.
Each time they meet, the door closes behind one of them on the way out.
And with each snap- shut, Max unravels a little more. At first, he is not alarmed. He has faith in his own ability to steer the racing line true, even when the car protests. It is a matter of returning to first principles, and so Max studies the secret pulse of them like an unfamiliar corner: what is reasonable, what is unacceptable?
Reasonable: to want. This is human. It has always been allowed.
Unacceptable: to lose sight of what comes first.
The answer? The same as it has always been. A game of denial.
Max denies himself his own hunger. And he watches, as Charles denies it too. It is in the back of both of their minds, how much they both want and how much they are willing to suffer for it. This is what binds them: this drive, this fuel, this oxygen they create and then burn to their own deprivation — the two of them drawn forward in tandem, seeking the thing that will at last bring satisfaction — breath, love, air, victory, recognition—
Where the world believes they are the inverse of the other, Max knows instead that they act in direct harmony. Balletic. Controlled. Feverish, proud, and burning, yes; but always in control.
There is no alternative. No oversteer, no time to waste. The margin of error at Monaco is millimetres. There is no room. There is no time. The air is running out.
***
For now, though, the breaths still come even as they thin, and it almost feels good, to be on the edge like this. It’s something that all great drivers come to understand, but don’t want to name, because of what came before them, the lives taken by the same sport they bind their bodies to: that the closer you are to death, the more you are alive.
After a lifetime of pushing the limit, and living slightly over it, Max imagines that everything he loses, he can recover in time. That’s his first problem. In the absence of experience, Max imagines that if he holds out for long enough— if he endures— he can keep Charles long enough in his lungs for him to stay there, to seep in, membrane to membrane, and replenish him— to give him back the air he had; and enough of it to win.
But Charles. Oh Charles. He’s cleverer than that, isn’t he? There is so much still for him to prove. There are too many destinies for him to rise to. Max has forgotten the heady pull of having just one desire, that push of latent potential along one undeniable curve— Radillon searing up into Eau Rouge.
Max’s want is strong. It is overwhelming. But it’s everywhere, now— diffused, scattered in all directions. Impossible to parse.
Keep in mind what you are greedy for, and earn it.
What is he greedy for, now?
Is it enough, now, to win?
While Max thinks about it, Charles takes.
***
It had been Charles who started it, so it’s fitting that he ends it. Charles the undeniable, Charles the inevitable, Charles the predestined who, unlike Max, is under no illusions that he can achieve it all. Charles knows that he can’t spark life into everything he loves (his shitty, sanctified team; the hopes and dreams of his rapturous following; the memories of his loved ones, now gone) by winning a championship, and also have enough of that life left over for Max, the one man who can steal it all away.
Max understands. It’s fine.
Charles hasn’t learned yet, that there’s no end to the want.
There is no end to the need to draw in the one thing that keeps you alive— the air, the drive, the next win, another person — there is no pause, just like there’s no way to shave off those hundredths on a quali lap after crossing the chequered line. There are breaths that can’t be drawn, and breaths that can’t be held and shored up for later. Even a second pair of lungs can decay when there’s no air for either; nothing more to take, nothing more to give.
Charles hasn’t learned yet, that there can be no end to it, to the deep dark insatiable well in both of them— two boys that grew up matching each other, making themselves in the image of the perfect racer, chasing miracles when there are so precious few to be had.
But it’s not Max’s job to tell him. No one can tell you what should be instinct. There is no recipe for a perfect corner; some lessons have to be learned in the living of them.
***
Max, for his sins, falls back into old habits. Starts taking phone calls from his dad again. Hears his voice in the cold cupped palm of the car, the shadow of the halo, shivering even in the desert heat.
… though your body shakes, your knuckles bleed…
Je bent toch niet van suiker.
In his held breaths, Max remembers how to hold out for the pay-off.
He drives, like it’s all he’s built to do.
***
In the end, it isn’t enough. The new world champion is crowned with air and light spilling out of him.
Charles’s lips meet the side of the silver trophy. The press of their holy fire is so, so familiar; but the blessing they give is not, this time, for him.
Charles holds the prize aloft in victory; an annunciation for the crying tifosi.
Max doesn’t linger long to find out if this new prince-turned-king— this new messiah— spares any air for himself. He turns away.
He imagines it, though: that on the podium, Charles will look to the sky and find the relief he so deserves. That he will accept the victory drawn down from the clouds by his diaphragm, that it will nourish him. That he will savour it when it pools in the font of his (lovely—) ribs.
Max hopes that for Charles it is different: that one breath, that one victory, will be enough for him.
(Max knows it won’t; knows what they are, the two of them. Fire consumes, or it starves. But he hopes.)
iv. exhultation
Retirement comes. There’s a time for everything. It arrives, and Max meets it.
***
Endure, endure.
Endure what, now?
At some stage, endurance becomes existence.
Spun off the circuit of his old life, in one of his homes — Belgium, Holland, Monaco — Max adopts another mantra. It’s trite. His father would probab— but it doesn’t matter. Max matters. He laughs at himself, thinking it. He tells his daughters, sometimes:
Exist, exist — enjoy.
Max is still winning. That doesn’t change; he always has that trump card, that trick: being him. Being Max Verstappen. It isn’t Formula 1 anymore, but his other lives: sim racing and e-sports, endurance— GT3, Le Mans, NLS.
Breathing is less difficult, now. It becomes easier, slower, relying on the steady expansion of two sets of lungs, working at half capacity. A balance is found.
The seconds stretch out further, longer, running between the fingers of his outstretched palm.
***
They take a day trip on the yacht, Max and his family. A quick afternoon, leaving the marina at Fontvielle with a basketful of bread and a full fridge, heading across the blue, blue sea southwest towards Cannes. His sister pulls out a pair of binoculars as they chop through the water, and points them towards Nice at the starboard side, challenging him to spot the waterfall at the east end of its old town.
It takes him a moment of patience, fiddling with the image stabiliser, but he finds it; glittering spray over the Baie des Anges and the champagne coloured rocks rising behind.
She tells him he needs someone, that she doesn’t want him to be alone; then she leaves to bring their mother a drink.
They anchor between the Lérins Islands, south of Cannes. Over the soft slop of the waves and the rattle of the chain plummeting into the water, the monastery bells toll on the Ile Saint- Honorat.
Max goes out. He floats in the azure sea, skin warmed by the sun, and dives. Opening his eyes, he treads carefully, watching quick silvered fish chase one another above the kelp below. The black spot on their tail reminds him, momentarily, of a livery, a sponsor.
The water meets his smile. They seem far away.
The gentle swell pulls him until he relents. Swimming to a sheltered shore of jagged limestone nearby, he can hear his family in the water, his nephews and their lawless dives, his daughters and their shrieks.
(It has taken him a while to learn, but Max knows now that the most important thing you can provide, you can give, is love. A lit candle. The palm of a hand, open and offered. Now, he knows that you cannot lose a family you wanted so badly to make.)
On the north side of the Ile Sainte Marguerite, there is a somewhat famous fort which draws tourists away from Max’s small beach. Thus, there is no one around but those minding their business on their own boats, and no need for his security to be alarmed. People want less of him now, make less of a meal of him now he is not so readily available for evaluation— and so Max climbs ashore, drawn by the scent of salt and red earth and the russet bark of the eucalyptus. Tired, with sore shoulders, he catches his hand on a sharp rock.
The red that he bleeds does not register as familiar, and the greens of the pines are just green— until he breathes in.
The pain is sublime, simple, and lovely.
Max feels.
The world does not fall, the rear does not slide wide, the barriers do not rise to meet him, and the laws of physics do not bruise every inch of him and rob him of his faculties. Meters, milliseconds: they do not matter now. The time he accrues is not spilled wine on white linen, but poured water for parched thirst.
Perhaps the things he had denied himself were not so undeniable — or at least, would not be now. Perhaps this life — real life — has room for this.
It’s not an attitude that chases miracles, nor makes them. But despite what some might think, despite the small flame his mother nurtures before every race, even now — God has never been with Max.
And — and he is not God, either.
That is all right. It has taken him a while to see it, but it has always been all right.
***
It is years later. He does not expect it — the weight of the door opening, the person behind it.
Max has seen him around, of course, in the years since. They’ve met in supermarkets, passed by each other on boardwalks, walking their dogs. They have nodded and smiled. They’ve even whiled away hours in conversation at the tables of mutual friends, over gin, over wine, reminiscing. Remembering, but not too hard. They have spoken about driving together again, one day. They might still — they leave it open-ended, every time.
And if, on occasion, Max sees a spark in the far corner of those green eyes suggesting stronger memories, he doesn’t mention it. It’s gone before he can catch it, anyway, a rear wing darting around a corner Charles must take alone.
It’s different this time. When Max opens the door, he sees the change instantly. The warmth is there, matched. Not burning. They are a little too old for that, now; a little too wise.
There is no red and navy; only green, only blue.
“It wasn’t enough,” Charles sighs, when Max has invited him in and offered him something to drink. His ribs hitch when he looks up at Max, beatific in the gold sunlight.
Max smiles, generous at last. He strikes a match, lights a candle, and lets loose the breath he’s been holding all his life.