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Chapter Text

Early 2019

Lewis notices it again — that stare.
It happens between sessions in Barcelona, when the paddock is loud and restless and sunlit, and there’s no reason for Lewis to feel watched. But when he lifts his head from his debrief notes, Max is there across the walkway, helmet in one hand, shoulders tense, gaze fixed on him with a kind of focus that feels too sharp for rivalry and too quiet for hostility.
Max doesn’t look away.
 Not immediately.
Lewis feels the heat of it first — a flash of puzzled warmth under his ribs — and only then the realization: he’s staring at me like he knows something I don’t.
For years Lewis has dismissed the kid’s intensity as competitiveness, raw ambition, the kind of fire he used to have when he was twenty-one and the world was a straight line pointing forward.
But this —
 This doesn’t feel like ambition.
It feels personal.

Max catches himself a second too late, jerks his eyes away, mutters something to a passing engineer, and disappears into the Red Bull garage as if nothing happened. As if Lewis hadn’t just caught him looking like that again.
Lewis exhales slowly, the page of notes blank under his pen.
He shouldn’t be thinking about this, 
shouldn’t be feeling anything about it.
But for the first time he lets the thought form fully: he’s been watching me. Not as a rival. As something else.
And once Lewis acknowledges it, he can’t unsee it.
 Every press conference glance. 
Every too-long shoulder bump. 
Every moment Max stands a little too close after a race, speaking low, voice soft in a way that isn’t for the cameras.
Rivalry, Lewis knows how to handle.
 Whatever this is — he isn’t ready for it.
Not yet.
But 2019 stretches before them like a fuse waiting to be lit, and Lewis can feel the spark at the end of it whenever Max is near.
He just doesn’t know how long he can pretend not to notice.

Chapter Text

Lewis isn’t supposed to notice him like this.
Not in 2017.
Not when Max is still rough-edged talent and raw speed, all instinct and elbows and too much fire in a car that seems built for defiance.
Lewis is thirty-two, a world champion multiple times. He should not be catching himself looking back.
But today — Shanghai slick with rain, chaos underfoot — Max carved through the field like he had the track memorized in another lifetime.
And Lewis felt it.
That presence in his mirrors.
The pressure.
The pulse of something both familiar and foreign.

Now they’re on the podium, champagne dripping, the noise a blur.
Lewis slings an arm around Max without thinking. Habit, maybe. Or instinct. Or something he isn’t ready to name.
“Yeah, this dude right here,” Lewis says with a grin, voice still bright from the win. “Kept me on my toes today.”
Max shoots him a sideways look, dry, sharp, but far too warm for a kid who supposedly hates losing. “You always say that,” Max fires back. “This guy, this guy.”
The tease shouldn’t hit Lewis in the chest the way it does.
Shouldn’t make him pause like there’s a hidden meaning he wasn’t meant to hear.
He corrects himself instantly, voice dropping without conscious thought.
“Max.”
Beside them, Sebastian huffs a laugh — not unkind, almost surprised, like he’s witnessing the first page of a storyline neither of them knows they’re writing.
Lewis continues, more earnest than podium interviews warrant: “Max drove amazingly well today. Honestly. He pushed all of us.”
Max ducks his head, and that bit of shy color at his neck shouldn’t fit him — not with his swagger, not with his bite — but somehow it does.
 And Lewis only now realizes he’s watching it too closely.
Seb leans toward his mic, saying something to the crowd, but his eyes flick between them with too much knowing.
“Thanks,” Max answers quietly, not for the cameras — only for Lewis.
Too soft.
Too revealing.
Lewis lets his arm fall away before he can hold on too long.
 Before he can ask himself why he suddenly wants to.
Later, he tells himself it’s just respect.
 Just camaraderie. 
Just the natural recognition of a new star rising.
He tells himself a lot of things.
But when he watches the replay that night and sees Max glancing at him — sideways, quick, soft — he feels something he hadn’t let himself name yet.
The wall between them hasn’t fallen.
 But today, in the rain, it cracked.

Chapter Text

Max never meant to stay close to him.
 It just… happened.
He’d been nineteen when Red Bull pulled him up — too young to understand the politics but old enough to feel out of place everywhere he stood. He didn’t know how to talk to half the grid. Didn’t know what to do with microphones, photographers, or the sudden feeling of being watched all the time.
But Lewis —
 Lewis always smiled at him like he wasn’t out of his depth.
Not a mentor, not exactly a friend, but a presence Max could orbit without thinking. The way he’d once hovered around the older karting kids who treated him kindly.
When Lewis spoke to him, it was never condescending. Never dismissive. Just warm. Steady. Real.
So Max found himself drifting toward him at race weekends.
 Not deliberately — or so he told himself. 
Just… gravitating. Like instinct.
He noticed how Lewis spoke to engineers: calm, firm, but gracious.
 He noticed the way he handled media storms by stepping aside from the chaos, untouchable.
 And he noticed how Lewis smiled at rookies — warm, encouraging, patient.

Max wished he could be like that.
 Wished he could be that gracious, that centered, that… safe.
Somewhere along the line, without meaning to, he began mirroring tiny things: the cadence of Lewis’s press answers, the calm exhale before stepping into a TV pen, the quiet nod he gave rivals, even the way he rested his hands on railings in cool-down rooms.
Nobody ever pointed it out.
 Max hoped nobody noticed. 
He barely noticed it himself.
He just felt better when Lewis was near — steadier, like the world stopped spinning quite so fast.

One afternoon in early 2018, Max saw it clearly for the first time.
Lewis was talking to a young driver in the paddock — smiling, attentive, offering advice like it cost him nothing.
 Max stood a few meters away, pretending to check his phone.
He should have respected Lewis even more for it.
 Instead, something hot and unfamiliar curled in his stomach.
Because Lewis looked at that young driver
the same way he looked at Max.
Warm.
 Encouraging. 
Equal.
Max didn’t understand it at first. 
Didn’t understand why his chest tightened, why he looked away too fast, why it felt like irritation sharpening under his ribs.
 Like envy. 
Like—
He didn’t let himself name it.
But that night, lying in a hotel room too quiet for sleep, the thought finally rose, unbidden:
I want him to look at me differently.
He shoved it down instantly.
 Ridiculous. Stupid. Impossible. 
Lewis was kind to everyone.
But the idea stayed — a seed lodged under his ribs, pulsing faintly, impossible to ignore.

So he kept his distance the next few races.
 Or tried to.
He told himself it meant nothing.
 Told himself it was just competition, just respect, just the natural admiration of a young driver for a world champion.
But deep down — in a place Max wasn’t ready to face — something had already shifted.
And he didn’t know how to stop it.

Chapter Text

Silverstone, 2018

Lewis sits on the narrow bench outside the podium room, helmet resting between his knees, adrenaline still humming under his skin. His home crowd is roaring somewhere above them, muffled by concrete walls. He should feel proud of the comeback.
 He mostly feels exhausted.
Seb drops onto the bench beside him, still glowing faintly with victory and smugness.
 Kimi leans against the wall across from them, distant and quiet as ever.
“Impressive drive,” Seb says, nudging him lightly. “From last place to P2? You made the rest look slow.”
Lewis huffs a breath. “Didn’t feel impressive.”
“It was,” Seb insists, tone warm.
Silence settles — comfortable for Seb, neutral for Kimi, and a little too sharp around the edges for Lewis.

Then Seb turns his head, eyes gleaming with mischief.
“So…” he says casually. “Where’s your follower?”
Lewis blinks. “My what?”
Seb grins, slow and unforgiving. “Your follower. You know. The Dutch one.”
Lewis stares. “You mean Max?”
“Ja. Him,” Seb says, taking a sip of water like this is a normal conversation to have in the podium hallway. “He’s usually hovering somewhere near you. Very loyal. Very… intense.”
“I—he’s not—he doesn’t—Sebastian!”
 Lewis feels warmth crawl up his neck.
Seb waves him off. “But he wasn’t around today. Or last race. Or the one before. In fact…” He tilts his head thoughtfully. “He’s been avoiding you.”
Lewis’s stomach drops in a way he absolutely does not like.
“…Avoiding me?”
 He tries for calm. He gets confusion instead.
Seb raises a brow. “So you did notice.”

Lewis looks away, jaw clenching. He hadn’t wanted to notice.
 Or think about the look in Max’s eyes earlier in the season.
 Or how Max used to drift near him without thinking.
Seb continues, gentler now: “Whatever happened… you two should fix it.”
Kimi finally speaks, voice flat as a winter lake: “You two should talk.”
Lewis nearly jumps. He wasn’t expecting Kimi to contribute.
 At all.
Seb beams. “See? Even Kimi agrees.”
Lewis folds his arms, trying to regain composure. “I don’t even know what we’d talk about.”
Seb gives him a long, knowing look — the kind that sees far too much.
“You’ll figure it out,” he says softly.
Then Seb and Kimi head toward the podium stairs, leaving Lewis alone with the thundering crowd, the ache in his ribs… and the sudden, unwelcome realization simmering in his chest:
Max is avoiding him.
Lewis misses him.

Chapter Text

Mid of 2018
Of course Lewis notices but he hadn’t expected the silence lasting so long. Not from Max.
He first notices it at France — Max stepping into the hospitality tent, looking up, freezing when he sees Lewis, then turning sharply and slipping out through another door.
Lewis blinks, halfway through stirring his tea.
 That was… strange.
Probably nothing, he tells himself. Busy paddock. Crowded race weekend. Max has enough on his mind.
Except it keeps happening.

Hungary 2018 Drivers’ Briefing
Lewis arrives a minute early and takes a seat. He’s used to Max drifting in and quietly settling somewhere nearby. Not close-close, but near enough to feel that presence — that low hum of restless energy.
Today Max sits two rows away, head down, arms folded tightly across his chest.
Lewis tries not to look. Fails. Max doesn’t glance back once.
The absence rolls into the empty space beside him like an echo.

Belgium 2018 Cool-Down Room
Post-race, Lewis sips water, replaying the final laps in his head. Usually Max mutters something dry at him — a blunt comment about tyre degradation, or a “you got lucky” spoken without any real heat.
Today he barely acknowledges Lewis. A brief nod. No eye contact. The entire room feels colder than the ice packs on their necks.
Lewis looks away too quickly, unsure why it stings.

Italy 2018 TV Pen
He’s answering a question about strategy when he hears Max laughing behind him — that sharp, startled, unexpectedly warm laugh that Lewis has always found strangely contagious.
He turns instinctively, just in time to see Max leaning toward Daniel, grinning at something the older driver said.
Lewis’s chest tightens, abrupt and unwelcome. He misses that laugh. Misses hearing it near him — directed at him. And he hates that he notices.

Late 2018
The season rolls on, race after race, and Lewis tells himself he’s imagining it. Of course they’re busy. Of course they’re focused. They’re rivals, teammates of fate, opponents by design.
Max doesn’t owe him anything — not conversations, not comfort, not proximity. Lewis repeats those facts to himself like prayer.
But some nights, lying awake after a win, he finds himself thinking about:
Max’s strange, clipped humor
Max’s serious way of listening
Max’s piercing, unfiltered gaze
Max standing beside him last year, unafraid to speak bluntly
Max simply… being there.
He misses that without knowing when it disappeared.
He hates that he notices every time Max slips away.
 Hates the subtle ache that follows, quiet but insistent.
He doesn’t understand it. Not fully. And he doesn’t try to.
There’s racing to focus on. Pressure. Championship battles. Media storms.
No room for feelings he can’t name.

Final Race Weekend — End of 2018 Race Season
The paddock is buzzing after the last chequered flag. Mechanics laughing, engines cooling, fans shouting their final goodbyes.
Lewis walks toward the motorhomes, exhausted but content, thinking he won’t see half the grid again until February.
He spots Max across the walkway. Max looks up. For a split second — just a heartbeat — something old flickers in his eyes. Warmth. Recognition. A softness Lewis hasn’t seen in months.
Then Max blinks. The moment shatters. He turns away.
Lewis feels something in his chest pull tight. He tells himself it’s fine. Normal. A busy season. Too much pressure.
But as he heads to the team garage for the final debrief, Lewis realizes the paddock feels emptier than it should. It takes him the rest of the night to understand why.
He misses Max.
 And he can’t remember when that started — only that it hurts more than he expected.

Chapter Text

End of 2018 Race Season

The paddock is quieter after the final race of the season, the floodlights softening, the adrenaline settling in the air like dust. Mechanics are packing crates, engineers murmuring over data screens that will be shut down for the last time this year.
Max lingers near the Red Bull garage, leaning against a stack of tyres, pretending he’s checking something on his phone.
He’s not.
He’s replaying a moment he can’t unsee — Lewis looking at him across the paddock, warm for one second, confused the next, then gone as Max turned away too fast.
His chest still feels too tight.
Max tells himself it’s just the exhaustion. He doesn’t believe it.

“Thought I’d find you hiding somewhere.”
Max looks up.
Daniel stands beside him, hands in his pockets, expression soft with exhaustion and something sadder underneath. This is the last time they’ll do this — the last race they’ll finish as teammates.
Max tries for a smile. “I’m not hiding.”
Daniel snorts. “Mate. You’ve been hiding all season.”
Max’s throat tightens.
Daniel hops up to sit on the tyre stack next to him, sighs dramatically, leans his shoulder against Max’s. “Alright. We’re doing this. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
Max bristles. “I’m fine.”
Daniel watches him for a moment — not teasing now, just watching, like he’s trying to line up the version of Max he knows with the Max standing in front of him.
“You know,” Daniel says quietly, “you used to talk to Lewis.”
Max’s heart jumps painfully.
Daniel goes on: “You’d stick near him in the paddock. Ask him things. Joke with him. Stare at him like he had answers you needed.”
Max looks away fiercely.
“And now?” Daniel continues. “You sprint in the opposite direction when he appears. Like you’re allergic to him.”
Max inhales sharply, shutting his eyes.
Daniel softens, nudging him gently. “I’m not making fun of you. I just want to understand.”
Max presses both hands against the edge of the tyre stack, grounding himself. “I didn’t want to make things weird,” he mutters.
“For him? Or for you?”
Max’s chest tightens. “It’s not — it’s not like that.”
Daniel gives him a long, heavy look. “You’re not lying to me,” he says softly. “You’re lying to yourself.”
Max’s breath stutters.
Daniel pats his shoulder, stands, and takes a step back toward the garage. “Sort yourself out next year,” he says with a crooked smile.“And Max? Don’t run from things that matter.”
Then he walks away, leaving Max staring at the emptying paddock, pulse thudding in his ears.
For the first time all year, Max feels like the ground under him has shifted.

Winter Break — His Mother’s House
The world goes quiet.
The cold Dutch winter presses against the windows, the sky dark by late afternoon. Max sleeps too much, then not at all. He wanders around the house without purpose. He keeps reaching for his phone without knowing why.
He thought coming home would calm him. It only leaves him alone with the thoughts he tried so hard to outrun.
His mother watches him carefully — noticing when he pushes his dinner around the plate, noticing his uneasy silences, noticing the way he stares into space at odd moments.
She doesn’t ask. She never pushes when he’s brittle.
But Victoria does.

Max is on the sofa when she drops next to him, a blanket around her shoulders, hair still damp from a shower. She studies him for a moment — the way only a sister can — then says lightly: “You know… last winter, you wouldn’t shut up about Lewis.”
Max jerks upright. “What?”
Victoria shrugs. “You talked about him all the time. Lewis did this. Lewis said that. Lewis was fast. Lewis was annoying. Lewis was incredible.”
Max feels heat race up his neck. “I didn’t— it wasn’t like that.”
“Mmm.” Victoria raises an eyebrow. “Funny, because this winter you haven’t said his name once.”
Max stiffens, fingers curling into the blanket. “Victoria—”
She studies his face, her voice softening. “…Did he hurt you?”
Max’s reaction is too fast, too sharp. “No! He would never—”
Victoria freezes, startled by the intensity in his tone.
Max shuts his mouth, breath shaking.
Victoria moves closer, voice gentler now. “Okay,” she murmurs. “So he didn’t hurt you.”
Max looks at his hands. She touches his arm lightly. “Then why are you hurting yourself?”
The words hit him like cold water.

She tells him to put on a coat, and they go for a walk — breath frost-white in the air, quiet neighborhood lit by orange street lamps. Their footsteps crunch softly on thin layers of snow.
They walk in silence for a while before Victoria speaks again. “You admired him last year,” she says quietly.
Max’s throat closes.
“And this year… you’re running from him.” She glances at him. “That’s not rivalry, Max.”
He swallows hard, unable to meet her eyes. “Then what is it?” he whispers.
Victoria stops walking, turns to him fully. “It’s liking someone so much it terrifies you.”
Max shuts his eyes, breath breaking on the inhale. “It’s Lewis Hamilton,” he says, so quietly it almost vanishes. As if saying the name will change something in the world.
Victoria nods — slow, understanding. “Of course it is.”
Max laughs once, bitter and shaking. “It’s impossible.”
She bumps his shoulder gently. “Your heart doesn’t know what impossible means.”
Max looks away into the cold, dark street, tears stinging behind his eyes. He hates how true it feels.
Victoria slips her arm through his. “You don’t have to tell him,” she says softly. “You don’t have to do anything yet.”
Max breathes out slowly.
“But stop running from how you feel,” she adds. “You’re terrible at running away anyway.”
Despite everything, Max lets out a shaky laugh.

That night, he lies awake staring at his ceiling. Last year he talked about Lewis without thinking. This year he can’t even say his name without flinching.
Now he finally understands why. He doesn’t know what next season will bring. He doesn’t know how to face Lewis again. He doesn’t know how to stop the fear from twisting inside him.
But he knows one thing: he doesn’t want to run anymore.

Chapter Text

Early 2019

Max tells himself it’s just another season. Same paddock. Same cameras. Same noise. Same Lewis.
That last part is the problem.
He realizes it the moment he steps out of the motorhome at the first race weekend and sees the familiar flash of silver and black across the paddock. For one split second his whole body does what it’s trained to do—turn, calculate, run.
Last year, he would have turned away. Walked down another corridor. Found a perfectly good reason to be somewhere else.
This year his fingers dig into the strap of his backpack instead.
Don’t run. Victoria’s voice sits in the back of his head, annoyingly calm. You’re terrible at running away anyway.
Max exhales once, sharply, then forces himself to walk straight ahead.

Lewis is standing with an engineer, watching something on a tablet, his hair tied back, sunglasses perched on his head. He looks exactly the same and completely different — because now Max knows what his own chest is doing at the sight of him.
He hates that it feels like relief.
He hates that it feels like wanting.
Lewis looks up as Max approaches. Their eyes meet for the first time in months.
Something flickers across Lewis’s face — recognition, maybe. Wariness. Surprise. He straightens almost imperceptibly.
Max’s mouth goes dry.
“Hey,” he manages, careful, neutral.
Lewis’s reply is smooth, polite, distant. “Hey, man. How are you?”
He sounds like he’s talking to a reporter, not to someone he used to stand too close to.
“Fine,” Max says. His brain helpfully supplies: I thought about you all winter. His mouth stays shut.
“Good,” Lewis says, offering a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes before turning back to the engineer. “Have a good weekend.”
Max nods and keeps walking, heart pounding.
He didn’t run.
It feels less like victory and more like standing in the middle of the track with cars coming at him.

He doesn’t change everything at once.
 He can’t.
Instead he tries small things. Things that let him breathe without feeling like he’s tearing open his own ribs.
He stops turning away in the paddock. He doesn’t move seats when Lewis walks into the drivers’ briefing room. He lets himself answer when Lewis makes some bored, low-voiced comment about the track surface.
(“Tricky in Turn 9.”
 “Yeah,” Max replies before he can stop himself. “Rear gets really light there.”
 Lewis glances over, like he wasn’t expecting a response. “Exactly.”)
It’s nothing. It’s everything.
Lewis is friendly, professional, perfectly composed.
 Always a step away.
Max starts to understand Daniel’s parting words in a different way.
 Don’t run from things that matter.
 He’s trying not to.
The problem is he doesn’t know what to do instead.

Barcelona is loud, bright, and oddly familiar. Max likes the track. He doesn’t like how his pulse jumps every time he sees a flash of white overalls.
He tells himself to focus on the car, on strategy, on tyres. On anything else.
But the moment he walks into the cool-down room after the race and sees Lewis there — sweat-damp, flushed, bottle in hand — everything else blurs for a second.
Lewis looks exhausted in a way that doesn’t show on TV. Shoulders heavy, movements a fraction slower. Max notices because he always notices.
He hesitates, then crosses to the drinks table. His own bottle is pushed to one side. He picks up a fresh one, unscrews the cap, and without letting himself think about it, sets it down near Lewis’s hand.
Lewis glances at it, then at him. “That yours?” Lewis asks.
Max shrugs. “They’ll get me another.”
Lewis studies him for a heartbeat too long, then nods once. “Thanks,” he says quietly.
Not the media voice. Not the podium voice. Something smaller and softer.
Max shrugs again, trying to look unaffected. His throat feels tight.
He turns away before he can stare, before he can say something stupid, before he can do literally anything to betray how much that single word means.
He tells himself it’s fine. It’s nothing.
Lewis spends the rest of the room time talking more to Sebastian than to him.
Max pretends he doesn’t care.

Monaco feels like déjà vu — same circuit, same questions, same faces — but Max realizes things have shifted in small, invisible ways.
He’s the one shifting them. He just doesn’t know if he’s doing it right.
In the drivers’ parade, he ends up on the same truck as Lewis. It feels like the universe is mocking him.
There’s a breeze at the top of the circuit, pulling at Lewis’s hair, and Max catches himself looking. The way the sun hits the side of Lewis’s face, the relaxed angle of his wrist where he’s waving at the crowd — it’s stupid, insignificant. It makes Max’s chest ache.
Lewis turns slightly, catching his eye.
“You alright?” he asks, raising his voice over the engine.
“Yeah,” Max answers, then, because he’s trying to be different this year, adds, “Car feels okay.”
“Good,” Lewis replies, no judgement in his tone — only genuine interest. “You looked strong yesterday.”
Max blinks at him. He wasn’t expecting that. “Yeah,” he says again, suddenly awkward. “You too.”
Lewis laughs once, quiet but real.
For a few seconds they stand side by side at the railing, looking out at the fans. Max’s shoulder is a little too aware of the distance between them. It would be so easy to say something else. Ask something. Make a joke. Anything.
He doesn’t.
Lewis goes quiet after that, expression settling back into something Max can’t read.
By the time they climb off the truck, Max can feel the frustration knotting in his stomach. He’s the one who stopped running.
 So why does it feel like Lewis is the one stepping away?

Days blur into weekends, into races. Max keeps his promise to himself, mostly. He doesn’t run.
 He doesn’t hide. Sometimes he even approaches.
In one drivers’ briefing, a debate breaks out about a restart procedure. Someone makes a pointed remark about Lewis “taking advantage.”
Max hears the edge in the tone, feels something inside him bristle. “He didn’t do anything wrong,” Max says before he can stop himself. The room glances his way. He keeps his expression neutral. “We all would’ve done the same in his position.”
There’s a soft murmur of surprise, a few nods.
Lewis doesn’t look at him right away.
Later, as they file out, Lewis comes up beside him for a brief moment. “Didn’t need you to say that,” he murmurs under his breath.
“I know,” Max replies. “I said it anyway.”
Lewis’s lips twitch, almost a smile.
For half a second, Max thinks, this is it, this is better, this is us moving toward something better than before.
Then someone calls Lewis’s name from behind, and he steps away.
The moment closes like a door.

It might be easier if Lewis were cold. If he ignored Max. If he glared. If he snapped.
But he doesn’t. He’s careful. He’s kind. He’s just… distant.
He talks to Max, but not too long. 
He smiles at Max, but not too widely.
 He stands near him, but never quite close enough for their shoulders to brush by accident. It’s like he’s set an invisible radius around himself and decided Max can only come so far.
Max doesn’t know what to do with that.
After one race weekend, he ends up on the motorhome steps late at night, staring at the darkness of the paddock. His phone is a familiar weight in his hand. He could text Lewis. He doesn’t have to say anything strange. Just good race or you drove well today.
His thumb hovers over the screen.
He locks the phone and shoves it in his pocket instead.
If Lewis wanted to hear from him, he reasons, he’d make it clear. He’d close that last bit of distance. He’d let Max know it’s okay.
Max stares at the empty track and feels stupidly, irrationally angry at himself for caring at all. He’s the one who created the gap last year. He knows that. He’s the one who ran.
So why does it hurt this much when Lewis doesn’t chase?

It comes to a head in a stupid, small way, the kind of moment nobody else would notice.
They’re in a cramped hallway waiting to go into a press conference, drivers lined up in order. Max ends up in front of Lewis, close enough to hear his breathing, to feel the warmth of his presence at his back.
Someone brushes by too fast, jostling the line. Max shifts his weight automatically, steadying himself with a hand against the wall.
Behind him, Lewis moves with the impact, steps just a little closer so they don’t collide. For half a second, his hand lands lightly at Max’s lower back — a reflexive, steadying touch.
It’s nothing.
 It’s everything.
Max can feel the heat of it through his fireproofs. He goes perfectly still, breath trapped in his chest. Then Lewis seems to realize what he’s doing and pulls back, hand dropping as if he’s been burned.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“It’s fine,” Max says, too fast. His voice sounds wrong in his own ears.
They file into the room. Max replies to questions, says the correct words, makes the right faces.
The entire time, he can feel the ghost of that touch and the deliberate way Lewis withdrew.
You’re the one who didn’t want to make things weird, he reminds himself viciously. You, not him.
So why does it feel like Lewis is afraid of something now?

Later, lying in his hotel bed, Max stares at the ceiling and tries to put words to the knot in his chest.
He wanted to stop running.
 He has.
He wanted to be nearer to Lewis without falling apart.
 He’s half-succeeding.
But he didn’t expect this — this carefulness, this polite distance, this sense that Lewis is always standing on the edge of something and determined never to step over it.
Max presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until sparks bloom behind them.
Maybe this is what he deserves. 
Maybe you don’t distance yourself from someone for almost a year and then walk back into their life expecting it to feel the same.
Maybe the best he can hope for is this — quiet moments, small kindnesses, brief conversations that end just a little too soon.
He thinks about the way Lewis said thanks in the cool-down room, the way he looked at him in the drivers’ parade, the way his hand had hovered at Max’s back before he pulled away.
There’s something there.
 Max can feel it. 
He just doesn’t know if it’s the same as the restless, aching thing under his own ribs.
He rolls onto his side, pulling the pillow under his head, and makes himself a promise he isn’t sure how to keep:
He won’t run anymore.
 Even if Lewis still does.
He just hopes, someday, they’ll end up moving in the same direction.

Chapter Text

By mid-season, Max is starting to think the universe might be personally against him.
It’s not the car. The car is fine.
 It’s not the races. The races are intense, but manageable.
 It’s not even the media, for once.
It’s the children.
Well. Not children, technically.
 But they feel like it when they pop up in every corridor, all limbs and questions and way too much curiosity. And apparently, they’ve all decided to notice things Max is trying very hard not to make obvious.

It starts with Charles.
The drivers’ briefing is already dragging on, the room thick with air conditioning and the low hum of voices. Max has found a spot a few seats away from Lewis — closer than last year, not close enough to be obvious. At least, that’s what he tells himself.
He’s listening. He is. Mostly.
But part of his attention is always tuned to the side, registering the angle of Lewis’s shoulders, the way he leans forward when he’s focused, the small crease between his brows when he disagrees with something.
Halfway through a discussion about track limits, Charles glances over from the front row. His gaze flicks from Lewis, to Max, then back again.
Max looks straight ahead, pretending he doesn’t notice.
After the meeting breaks up, drivers start drifting toward the door in little clusters. Max gathers his notes slower than usual, hoping the room clears out before he has to navigate the space near Lewis.
He’s stuffing the papers into his folder when someone falls into step beside him.
“Bonjour,” Charles says lightly.
Max grunts something that could pass for a greeting.
Charles walks with him a few steps in silence, calm and unhurried. Then he says, without looking at Max: “You seem calmer this year.”
Max blinks. “Do I?”
“Yes.” Charles nods, thoughtful. “More… settled.”
 He pauses, then adds, utterly mild, “Except when Lewis walks into the room.”
Max actually stops walking.
Charles takes one more step, then turns back with a small, knowing smile. “I’m not judging,” he says. “It’s just… noticeable.”
Max can feel his ears burning. “It’s not— it’s nothing like that.”
“Of course.” Charles’s tone is far too agreeable. “Have a good session.”
He leaves Max standing in the hallway, pulse racing, wondering how the hell he’s come to a point in his life where Charles Leclerc is calmly diagnosing his emotional state.

If Charles is subtle, Lando is the opposite.
They’re in the paddock between sessions when it happens — Max is heading toward the hospitality area, helmet in hand, when he spots Lewis walking ahead with a team member, laughing at something.
Max doesn’t mean to slow down. His feet just… do.
He watches the line of Lewis’s shoulders, the easy way he moves, the way people make space for him without him even asking. It’s stupid, the way Max’s chest feels weirdly light and heavy at the same time.
He doesn’t notice Lando until the McLaren driver appears at his elbow like a particularly loud ghost.
“You know staring is rude,” Lando chirps.
Max startles. “I wasn’t—”
Lando follows his line of sight, then lets out a scandalized gasp. “Oh my god,” he whispers, delighted. “You fancy him.”
Max nearly drops his helmet. “What? No. What are you talking about?”
“You do,” Lando insists, eyes sparkling with the kind of glee that should be reserved for race wins and free ice cream. “You were doing the look.”
“There is no look,” Max says through his teeth.
“The look,” Lando repeats, as if Max didn’t speak. He mimes something horrifyingly earnest with his face — wide soft eyes, slightly parted lips. “Like this. ‘Oh no, he’s pretty and I’m emotionally compromised.’”
Max stares at him, appalled. “I never look like that.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I don’t—”
Lando bounces on his toes. “Do you want me to ask for his autograph for you? Or I can tell him you think he’s—”
“Lando,” Max says, very calmly, “if you finish that sentence, I will personally put your car in the wall next time you try to lap me.”
Lando beams. “So that’s a ‘yes, but in a roundabout way’?”
Max turns and walks away.
Behind him, Lando calls, “I ship it!” to absolutely no one who asked.
Max does not look back. His face is on fire.

The worst part is: once someone says it out loud, it’s harder to pretend it isn’t real. Lando’s stupid words repeat themselves in Max’s head at the least convenient times.
You fancy him.
 You do.
 The look.
He catches himself watching Lewis during a track walk, during a briefing, in the gap between interviews, and every time, he can feel the awareness of it sharpen. He clenches his jaw and tells himself to stop being ridiculous.
It works for maybe two seconds.

George is the next problem.
Max doesn’t have anything against George. He actually likes him. George is earnest, polite, unthreatening in a way that makes Max relax around him.
That all changes the day Max watches him talk to Lewis.
It’s after quali, the evening air still hot as the sun goes down. Lewis is leaning against a barrier, helmet off, hair tied back, listening to something George is saying with that focused, gentle attention he uses when he’s trying to make someone comfortable.
George is animated, hands moving as he talks, looking like a kid meeting his hero.
Lewis laughs at something, warm and low, and rests his hand briefly on George’s shoulder, squeezing once.
It’s nothing.
Max feels his stomach twist anyway.
He wasn’t even walking toward them — he was just passing by, minding his own business — but suddenly his feet are moving faster, carrying him in the opposite direction, away from the sight of it.
It’s ridiculous.
 He knows it’s ridiculous.
George has every right to talk to Lewis.
 Lewis has every right to smile at George, to advise him, to like him.
None of that changes the fact that Max spends the next hour snapping at his engineers over minor setup details and hears himself say, “No, we’re not doing that,” more harshly than he means to.
When he catches sight of himself in a reflective panel — tight mouth, crease between his brows — he looks away.
He doesn’t like what he sees.

The next time he ends up in the same room as all of them at once, he considers turning around and leaving.
He doesn’t.
 Progress, he thinks grimly.
It’s a cramped space behind the press conference backdrop — a narrow hallway where drivers wait to be called in. There’s nowhere to hide.
Lewis is a few meters away, speaking quietly with a Mercedes PR person. Charles is scrolling through his phone. George stands straight-backed, hands behind him like he’s at roll call. Lando is vibrating with energy, bouncing on his heels.
Max finds a bit of wall to lean against and pretends to care about a scuff on his boot.
He feels rather than sees Lewis move closer, lining up behind him as they’re called into order. The air changes subtly — warmer, sharper, familiar. Max’s shoulders tense, then he forces them to relax.
Don’t run, he reminds himself.
“Nice race,” Lewis murmurs from just behind him, voice low enough that it barely carries.
Max’s heart stutters. “You too.”
There’s a brief pause, like Lewis is considering saying something else. Max holds his breath without meaning to.
Before anything can happen, Lando spins around to face him, walking backwards for a few steps.
“Max,” he says brightly, far too loudly for the enclosed space. “Did you tell Lewis yet, or are you still just staring at him from across the room?”
The world stops.
Lewis blinks. “Tell me what?”
Max’s brain goes blank. His mouth moves anyway. “Nothing.”
Lando looks delighted. “Oooooh, secrets.”
Charles looks up from his phone, eyes flicking between all three of them with quiet interest.
George, bless him, edges a little further away, wearing the expression of a man who has accidentally walked into the wrong meeting.
Lewis’s gaze is on Max now, steady and confused. “Tell me what?” he asks again, softer this time.
Max can feel his pulse in his throat. Everything inside him is caught between fight, flight, and the overwhelming urge to sink through the floor.
“It’s nothing,” he says, sharper than he means to. “He’s being an idiot.”
Lando makes a wounded noise. “Rude. But not inaccurate.”
“Lando,” Charles says mildly. “Maybe not here.”
Lando subsides, but his grin doesn’t fade.
Lewis is still watching Max, something unreadable in his eyes.
Max can’t hold the look. “I’m going to get some water,” he mutters, even though he doesn’t need any, and sidesteps out of the line.
He doesn’t run. 
He walks. 
Barely.
It still feels like running.

He doesn’t actually get water.
He ends up around a corner, in a narrower bit of hallway where no one seems to be at the moment, pressing his back against the wall and forcing himself to breathe slowly.
He feels flushed and cold at the same time.
“Brilliant,” he mutters under his breath. “Perfect. Great job.”
You fancy him.
 You do. 
Tell Lewis yet?
He scrubs a hand over his face, wishing he could erase the last thirty seconds from existence.

Footsteps approach, then pause at the corner. For a second his heart jumps into his throat, convinced it’s Lewis.
It’s not.
Charles appears, hands in his pockets, expression somewhere between amused and sympathetic. “May I stand here?” he asks. “Or is this a dramatic-brooding-alone zone only?”
Max groans. “Do whatever you want.”
Charles comes to lean against the wall beside him, leaving a respectful amount of distance. “He won’t mock you, you know,” Charles says after a moment.
Max stares at him. “Who?”
Charles gives him a flat look.
“You think I…?” Max starts, then abandons the sentence. “Nothing’s happening.”
“I didn’t say something is happening,” Charles replies. “I said he won’t mock you.”
Max’s chest aches. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” Charles says simply. “I do.” There’s a beat of silence. “You’re not subtle,” he adds, almost kindly.
Max drops his head back against the wall with a soft thud. “I hate everyone.”
“I understand,” Charles says. “But unfortunately, we all see things.”
Max lets out a frustrated breath. “I’m not trying to—it’s not—”
“I know,” Charles says again. “That’s why it’s… endearing.”
Max glares at him.
Charles smiles, small and genuine. “Anyway,” he says, pushing off the wall. “They will start the conference soon. Don’t kill Lando before then.”
He leaves before Max can come up with a response.

Much later, after the interviews and the photos and the debriefs, Max finds a quiet moment in the back of the hospitality area. The sky outside is turning deep blue, lights flickering on across the paddock.
He sits alone at a table, fingers wrapped around a mug that’s gone lukewarm.
It’s getting harder to pretend that nobody notices.
It’s getting harder to pretend that he doesn’t notice — his own reactions, the way his mood shifts whenever Lewis is near or far, the way stupid things like a hand on a shoulder or a shared smile can stick with him for hours.
Lando’s teasing.
 Charles’s calm understanding. 
George’s obliviousness. 
Lewis’s confusion.
Max closes his eyes for a moment.
He doesn’t know what scares him more: that Lewis might eventually find out the truth — or that maybe Lewis already senses something…
…and is still keeping that careful distance anyway.

Chapter Text

Austria 2019

The sun hangs low above the Red Bull Ring as FP2 unfolds, bright and hot against the Austrian mountains. The paddock buzzes with Friday energy — engines roaring, tyres squealing, the low hum of anxiety that never quite settles.
Lewis is standing with Valtteri, helmets off, waiting for their next program run. Kimi and Seb linger nearby with their engineers, quiet pockets of concentration between the chaos.
The screens mounted above the pit wall flicker.
 Sector times appear. 
Telemetry dances.
Then suddenly—
MAX VERSTAPPEN — CRASH
The image hits before the sound: a flash of blue and red, a plume of gravel, the jarring slam of car against barrier.
The garage goes still.
Lewis’s reaction is instant. His head snaps up. His posture tightens.
 One foot shifts forward, like his body wants to move before his mind catches up.
 It’s the smallest thing — barely a step — but Seb sees it.
The commentary cuts through the static: “That’s a big one for Verstappen. Red flag. That’s a heavy impact…he’s not getting out yet…”
Lewis’s throat closes. He can’t drag his eyes from the screen.
“Is he—” The words slip out before he can swallow them. “…Is he okay?”
Seb glances sideways, assessing.
Kimi looks at Lewis for a single heartbeat, then at the screen again.
 Valtteri steps closer, quiet concern softening his features.
Another camera angle shows Max moving in the cockpit — slow, disoriented, hands bracing on the sides as he forces himself out.
Lewis exhales, too fast, too sharp.

Max appears on the broadcast again later, trudging back toward the medical car, face tight with frustration, brushing gravel from his suit.
Lewis watches him walk, jaw tense.
He shouldn’t stare. He shouldn’t feel relief this deeply. He shouldn’t care this much. But he does.
He stands there until the image cuts away.

Dinner
The restaurant is warm and dimly lit, far enough from the paddock that the noise feels distant.
 Seb swirls his drink. Kimi looks half asleep. Valtteri appears serene in a way only Finns can manage. Lewis pretends he’s fine.
Midway through the meal, Seb announces to the table: “Kids are being weird recently.”
Kimi lifts his eyes just enough. “…Which one?”
Seb shrugs. “All of them. Charles. Lando. Max. Particularly Max.”
Lewis freezes.
Valtteri looks up from his beer, expression calm. “If you keep avoiding each other, you’ll make a full lap of the world eventually.”
Seb snorts.
 Kimi gives a vague grunt of agreement.
 Lewis stares at his plate, offended on multiple levels.
“I'm not avoiding anyone,” Lewis mutters.
“Sure,” Seb says.
Valtteri just takes another sip, like he already knows how this ends.
Seb leans back, studying Lewis with too much interest. “You reacted quickly today.”
Lewis tenses. “It was a big hit.”
“You stepped forward,” Seb says. “Before the camera even zoomed in.”
Lewis looks away.
Kimi sighs, standing. “Talk to him,” he says, tossing bills on the table.
Seb rises too, stretching. “Goodnight,” he says pointedly to Lewis.
Valtteri finishes his drink, pauses, and then — gently but devastatingly — adds: “Last year he ran from you. This year you run from him. Doesn’t seem efficient.”
Lewis nearly stops breathing.
Valtteri shrugs. “Talk. Easier.” Then he leaves with the same quiet grace.
Lewis stays frozen at the table, Seb’s observations and Valtteri’s dry logic landing with equal force.
Outside, the night feels suddenly sharper.

Max sits on his hotel bed, one leg folded under him, rubbing at the bruise forming on his shoulder from the crash.
He keeps replaying the moment in his head — the snap of the rear, the gravel exploding around him, the sharp jolt as the car hit the barrier. He’s angry at himself, angry at the car, angry at the conditions.
But mostly he feels stupid. Stupid for crashing. Stupid for shaking. Stupid for caring whether anyone noticed.
He tells himself Lewis didn’t. He tells himself Lewis probably didn’t even see the crash — he would have been talking to the engineers, or laughing with his team, or—
Max stops, annoyed at himself.
He swallows and lies back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling.
There’s a hollow ache in his chest he can’t explain.
He feels embarrassed. He feels exposed. He feels… alone.
He doesn’t know that Lewis had barely breathed until he saw him climb out of the cockpit.
 He doesn’t know Lewis stepped forward before stopping himself.
 He doesn’t know Seb pulled Lewis aside because he saw too much.
Max closes his eyes, burying himself in the quiet of the night.
He’s fine. 
It was just a crash.

Lewis stands on the balcony of his hotel, overlooking the dark shapes of the mountains, the sky glimmering faintly.
The air is cold.
 He lets it wash over him. He thinks about Max brushing dust off his suit. He thinks about Max’s startled eyes when the engineers asked if he was okay. He thinks about how close he’d come to walking across the garage earlier.
He hears Kimi’s voice again: Talk to him.
Lewis exhales, slow and uncertain. For the first time in a long time, he admits the truth to himself: he wants to. He really, genuinely wants to.
The fear doesn’t go away — fear of misreading, of pushing too hard, of exposing too much. But something else rises with it, warm and fragile:
hope.
And that’s enough to nudge him forward.
Lewis turns back toward his room.
Tomorrow, he decides.
Tomorrow he’ll find Max. Tomorrow he’ll stop waiting. Even if he has no idea what he’ll say when he does.

Chapter Text

Austria 2019 – Saturday night

The paddock always felt different at night. The crowds were gone. The chants and camera flashes, the overhead announcements, the chaos — it all faded with the sun. What was left behind was quieter: the hum of generators, the faint clatter of tools, the low murmur of engineers still arguing over data.
Lewis stepped out of the Mercedes motorhome and let the cool air hit his face. From here, he could see the dark outline of the mountains, sharp against a sky that wasn’t fully black yet — blue and violet, with the last traces of the day clinging stubbornly to the horizon. Somewhere in the distance, a truck door slammed. A laugh carried across from a hospitality unit and then disappeared.
He should be in his room. He should be thinking about sector times, tyre choice, race start scenarios. He should be resting.
Instead, his mind was stuck replaying a single sequence: blue car, gravel, impact.
Max’s crash had been quick and brutal. One moment, purple sectors. The next, a snap, a plume of dust, the hollow slam of carbon meeting wall. Lewis could still feel the way his body had reacted before his brain caught up — step forward, breath gone, questions on his tongue.
He heard his own voice in his head again. Is he okay? He’d hoped no one noticed.
 But of course, they had.
Kids are being weird recently, Seb had said over dinner, like he was commenting on the weather.
And then Valtteri, in that deceptively mild way of his: Last year he ran from you. This year you run from him. Doesn’t seem efficient.

Lewis rubbed a hand over his face, thumb pressing against the bridge of his nose.
Efficient. He almost laughed. He’d spent his entire career mastering efficiency. Racing lines, tyre wear, energy deployment, time management — cutting away everything unnecessary until only what mattered remained.
Apparently, he had no idea how to apply any of that to one twenty-two-year-old Dutchman.
He took a long breath, tasting cool metal and lingering rubber in the air. If he didn’t do this now, he was never going to.
Lewis pushed off the wall and started walking. He told himself he wasn’t looking. His path just happened to curve around the back of hospitality, through the quieter part of the paddock where drivers sometimes escaped the lights. His steps weren’t rushed, but they weren’t slow either.
It was almost disappointing how quickly he found him.

Max was standing near the edge of the Red Bull hospitality deck, hands wrapped around the metal railing, head tilted toward the dark shape of the circuit. The track was just a suggestion in the night — curving lines, ghosted kerbs, the faint outline of turns that would roar back to life tomorrow.
Even from a distance, Lewis could read tension in Max’s shoulders. The set of his jaw. The way his fingers curled too tight on the rail and then loosened, like he couldn’t quite find a place for his hands.
He looked alone.
 He looked young.
Lewis slowed for a second, doubt flickering in his chest. He could turn back. Pretend he hadn’t seen anything. Tell himself this wasn’t his business.
Seb’s voice came back, firm and annoyingly right. You miss him.

Lewis huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Alright,” he murmured to no one, and crossed the last few meters. “Max.”
His voice came out soft — a little too soft, even to his own ears.
Max went still. He turned partway, shoulders rigid. When his eyes found Lewis, something flickered across his face — surprise first, then wariness, then something sharper he pushed down fast.
“Hey,” Max said. The word was tight around the edges. “You… need something?”
Lewis stopped beside him, keeping a careful bit of space between them. Close enough to have a conversation. Not close enough to feel like he was crowding him.
“I wanted to ask if you’re okay,” Lewis said. “After yesterday.”
He expected a shrug, or a quick yeah, or one of Max’s dismissive little snorts.
He did not expect the way Max bristled, like he’d reached out and touched a bruise. Max’s chin lifted a fraction. “Why do you ask?” he shot back. “It’s not like you care anyway.”
The words were sharper than the air, young and defensive and full of something that wasn’t really anger. It stung, more than Lewis wanted to admit. But he didn’t step back.
“Max,” he said quietly, “of course I care.”
The blunt honesty of it hung there between them.
Max’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Color rose high in his cheeks, visible even in the washed-out light from the windows behind them.
“Do you?” he muttered. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve been keeping your distance. Like I’m some kind of…” He searched for a word and landed on one that made his own nose wrinkle. “Virus.”
Lewis blinked. He hadn’t expected that either.
“I—” He stopped, exhaled slowly. “That’s not what I’ve been trying to do.”
Max huffed, looking away toward the track.
“Everyone else is on my case,” he grumbled. “Charles saying things, Lando running his mouth, George looking at you like you’re a saint… and you, you just—” He gestured vaguely, hand slicing through the air. “You disappear. Like I’m the only one who feels… stupid.”
He dropped his hand back to the railing, fingers curling around the metal again.

Lewis watched him. The past few weeks rearranged themselves in his head: the way Max had laughed too harshly at Lando’s teasing in the hallway, the way Charles had looked between them with that too-knowing mildness, the way Max had gone quiet the second Lewis appeared in a group.

Lewis stepped a little closer. Not much — a shift in weight, a lean of the shoulder. Enough to make his intention clear. “I’m keeping my distance,” he said, slow and careful, “because you spent most of last year running from me.”
Max’s head snapped around, eyes wide.
“And the last thing I want,” Lewis added, “is to make you run away again.”
The wind moved between them, lifting a few strands of Max’s hair, carrying the faint smell of fuel that never fully left a circuit. Somewhere below, a distant cart rattled over concrete.
Max stared at him, throat working. “I wasn’t running because I didn’t want you around,” he said finally, voice low, like the words were dragged from somewhere he didn’t show people.
Lewis’s chest went tight. “Then why?” he asked gently.
Max looked away again, shoulders hunching slightly. “Because I didn’t know how to be around you,” he muttered. “It felt… weird. I felt weird. I didn’t like it. So I did the only thing I know how to do when something feels too much.”
Lewis didn’t have to ask what that was. “You ran,” he said.
Max’s mouth twisted. “Yeah.”
Lewis leaned his forearms on the railing, mirroring Max’s stance, eyes on the shadowed sweep of Turn 1.
“I thought I’d done something wrong,” he admitted. “You wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me unless you had to. I figured I was… too much. So this year, I tried to give you more space.”
Max’s fingers tightened on the rail. “I didn’t want space,” he said quietly. “I just… didn’t know what to do… ” he winced slightly at his own wording.
Lewis’s lips curled into a small, rueful smile. “We’re really good at driving cars,” he said. “Really bad at this.”
Max snorted under his breath. “That’s one way of putting it.”
They stood like that for a few seconds — side by side, elbows half an arm’s length apart, looking at a track that couldn’t offer them any answers.

A gust of wind swept across the deck, ruffling their jackets. From another hospitality unit, laughter flared briefly and died.
“We don’t have to fix everything tonight,” Lewis said eventually. “We’ve both got a race tomorrow. I should probably not emotionally drain you before Turn 1.”
“You’d like that,” Max muttered. “Tired Max means easy overtake.”
Lewis grinned. “You’re never easy.”
Max rolled his eyes, but his mouth twitched.
The tension between them was still there, but it had changed. It felt less like a wall and more like… a knot. Something tangled, not unbreakable.

Lewis shifted, turning his body so he was facing Max more directly. “I just wanted you to hear this from me,” he said. “I wasn’t staying away because I don’t care. I was staying away because I thought I was protecting you.”
Max looked at him, expression caught somewhere between stubborn and soft.
“And I wasn’t running because I hate you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what to do with… all of this.” His hand waved vaguely between them. “With you.”
Lewis’s breath stuttered for a beat before he steadied it. He forced himself not to push, not to ask for more than Max was ready to give.
“Then maybe we can stop trying to guess what the other person wants,” he said, voice gentle. “And actually… I don’t know. Be in the same place without panicking.”
Max huffed a laugh. “Revolutionary concept,” he said. “Talking.”
Lewis smiled. “We don’t have to talk much,” he said. “We don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to. But… I’d like us not to avoid each other like we’re going to cause a multi-car incident by standing too close.”
Max glanced at the track. “That’s still a possibility,” he said. “With us.”
“True,” Lewis conceded. “But I think we can handle it.”
Max fell quiet again. He watched the shadows on the circuit for a long moment, then nodded once. “I can try,” he said.
Lewis’s chest warmed. “That’s all I’m asking.”
They stayed there a little longer, silence no longer suffocating, just… there. Two silhouettes at a railing, the track below them sleeping in the dark.

Finally, Lewis pushed gently off the metal. “We should get some sleep,” he said. “If we both mess up Turn 3 tomorrow, I’d like to blame tyres, not emotional immaturity.”
Max snorted. “Speak for yourself. I’m blaming the wind.”
“You always blame the wind.”
“Sometimes it’s the wind.”
Lewis shook his head, smiling. “Goodnight, Max.”
“Night,” Max replied.
This time, the word wasn’t defensive. It wasn’t clipped. It settled somewhere between them, small and warm.
Lewis turned and started back toward the motorhomes. The walk felt different than it had earlier — lighter somehow, like he’d left something heavy behind on that deck. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t walking away to create distance. He was walking away from a conversation he knew they’d come back to.
He didn’t look over his shoulder, but he could picture it clearly anyway: Max still at the railing for a minute or two, then straightening, pushing off, heading back inside.
Not away.
 Not toward him yet.
But no longer running in the opposite direction.
And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The paddock looked different the morning after a hard conversation.
Max arrived early, helmet bag slung over one shoulder, the Red Bull jacket zipped high against the cool mountain air. The sky was pale blue, the kind that felt too clean for the chaos of race day. Mechanics were already unloading tyres, engineers huddled over laptops, someone dragging a trolley of spare nose cones across the concrete.
He wasn’t looking for Lewis. At least, he told himself that. But when the Mercedes motorhome door opened and Lewis stepped out — white team shirt, sunglasses, water bottle in hand — Max’s feet stilled on instinct.
Lewis froze for half a beat too.
It wasn’t awkward like last year. It wasn’t avoidance. It was… uncertain.
Max cleared his throat. “Morning.”
Lewis’s smile was small, but real. “Morning, mate.”
And that — just that — settled something in Max’s chest he hadn’t realized was tight.
A Red Bull mechanic glanced between them, confused at this sudden outbreak of civility. Max ignored him and kept walking.

Driver Briefing
Max took a seat near the back, flipping through the updated notes on track limits. Lewis walked in a minute later and stopped just a fraction of a second when he spotted Max. He chose a seat not right next to him — nothing obvious — but near enough that Max felt the gravity of his presence.
Neither looked at the other. 
Both were very aware. It didn’t mean anything. It meant everything.

Pre-Race
On the grid, Max pulled on his balaclava, fingers steady, breath calm.
But when he climbed into the cockpit and looked up, he saw the silver car being prepared a few grid slots ahead. Lewis standing beside it, helmet under his arm, talking to his engineer with focused intensity.
Max swallowed. He wasn’t supposed to think about last night. He wasn’t supposed to think about Lewis’s voice saying, Of course I care.
This was a race.
 This was work.
 This was the thing he knew how to do.
Still, he couldn’t deny it — the air felt different today.
Not lighter. Not heavier. Just… clearer.

The Race
When the lights went out, all of Max’s thoughts narrowed to a single point: the track in front of him. He didn’t race differently. And neither did Lewis. They were simply two drivers doing what they’d always done: pushing, strategizing, finding the limit.
Max passed cars cleanly, aggressively, decisively.
 Lewis, struggling more with tyres than expected, did the same.
They crossed paths only in glimpses: a silver flash in Max’s mirrors, a blue-and-red blur ahead of Lewis as strategies unfolded, radio updates that mentioned positions but nothing personal
Professional. Focused. Untouched by anything from the night before. That was how it should be.
And yet — when Max stood on the top step of the podium, trophy raised and champagne mist catching the sunlight, he couldn’t help glancing toward the parc fermé area.
Lewis wasn’t looking at him. Lewis was busy with his team, mask of disappointment and frustration firmly in place.
Still, Max looked. Still, it mattered.

Post-Race Corridor
The podium interviews ended. The media pen ended. The chaos slowly dissolved into the low hum of post-race operations.
Max finally slipped away, helmet in hand, still buzzing with adrenaline, sweat drying down his neck. As he rounded the corner toward the interior corridor that cut behind the hospitality units —
Lewis was there. Alone. Leaning lightly against the wall, bottle of water half-finished in his hand. He looked up when Max approached.
For a second, neither said anything.
Max’s heart was still in race mode — fast, loud, unsteady. He tried to sound normal. “Sorry about your race,” he said quietly. Honest, not pitying.
Lewis huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You had a good one.”
Max shrugged. “Yeah.”
The corridor felt too narrow, too quiet, too much like the world had shrunk to hold only them.

Finally, Lewis said, “About last night—”
Max’s breath snagged. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Lewis paused, choosing his words carefully. “I meant what I said. I wasn’t staying away because I don’t care.”
Max’s throat worked. “I know.”
Lewis blinked. “You do?”
Max opened his mouth to answer — then closed it again. In the end, he said the only thing that felt safe. “You didn’t run from me today.”
Lewis’s expression flickered — something warm, almost overwhelmed. “You didn’t run from me either,” he said softly.
Max’s pulse kicked. He swallowed. “…we should go. Team debrief.”
“Yeah,” Lewis murmured. “Yeah, we should.”
Neither moved.
For one impossible moment, the world held still — just two drivers caught in the quiet after a storm, unsure what to do with the new shape of things.
Max finally took a step back. “I’ll… see you in Silverstone.”
Lewis’s smile was small but honest. “Looking forward to it.”
Max turned away before he could think too much. Before he said something too revealing. But as he walked down the corridor, he felt it: Not distance. Not running.
Something else.
Something like gravity shifting.
Something like the beginning of momentum.

Chapter Text

Germany 2019 – Sunday evening

By the time Max finally made it back to the Red Bull hospitality, everything hurt. Not in a bad way — this was the good kind of hurt. The kind that meant he’d pushed, and survived, and won.
The rain had turned Hockenheim into chaos. Cars sliding, spinning, tiptoeing over painted lines. Strategy windows blown apart. Penalties. Safety cars. It felt less like a race and more like trying to stay upright on black ice while someone kept changing the rules.
He’d kept it together. Enough, anyway. P1 at the end of it. It should’ve felt simple.
It didn’t.
Because for all the messy joy of the podium, there was something else lingering at the back of his mind, stubborn as the damp in his hair.
Lewis, coughing in the pen.
 Lewis, pale and hoarse in the pre-race interviews.
 Lewis, sliding off and limping home in a day that was supposed to be Mercedes’ big celebration.
Max had barely seen him since the chequered flag. The cool-down room had been its own odd blur — Daniil there, Seb there, everyone half-laughing, half-shocked they’d made it through. Lewis nowhere in sight. And under the buzzing satisfaction of his own result, something in Max twisted uncomfortably.
He toed off his wet shoes just inside the door, socks squelching faintly, and padded toward the back where the drivers’ area was. His race suit was unzipped to the waist, fireproofs clinging damply to his skin. Someone pressed a towel into his hands. He muttered a thanks and rubbed it roughly over his hair.

Pierre was already there, half-sprawled on a chair, shivering slightly despite the thick hoodie someone had thrown over his shoulders. His hair was still dripping into the collar.
“You look like a drowned cat,” Max said, dropping into the chair opposite him.
Pierre didn’t even muster a retort. He just lifted a steaming mug with both hands, cupping it like it was the last source of heat on earth. “Try this,” Pierre said, voice rough but smug. “It helps.”
Max eyed the mug like it might explode. “What is it?”
“Ginger and brown sugar. Old recipe my grandfather used to make when it was cold. Good for the rain.” Pierre took another sip and sighed. “Warms you up from inside.”
Max frowned. “That’s just tea.”
“It’s not tea, it’s—” Pierre rolled his eyes. “It’s ginger and sucre roux. It’s different.”
“Okay,” Max said slowly. “And you… just drink that?”
“Yes, Max.” Pierre’s tone was fondly exasperated. “You drink it.” He set the mug down and leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “Especially good when you’re sick,” he added. “Helps the body to heal.”

Sick. Max exhaled through his nose, the picture in his head sharpening. He remembered Lewis on the grid, shoulders set, face paler than usual, voice hoarse through the radio replays they’d all heard later. The little cough at the end of sentences. The stories floating around the paddock about a cold, about antibiotics, about fatigue. He’d brushed them aside before the race — on track, they were all just cars.
Now, off track, the words sat differently.
“You just cut the ginger,” Pierre was saying, “some slices, boil it with water, then add sugar until it tastes right.”
“How much sugar?” Max asked.
Pierre shrugged. “Enough.”
Useless.
Max picked up the mug and sniffed. The scent was sharp and sweet, heat prickling his nose.
Ginger and sugar. Help to heal.
He stood up so abruptly the towel slid off his knees and hit the floor.

The Red Bull hospitality kitchen was nearly empty, just a couple of staff quietly packing things away. They all looked tired; he got a few congratulations, a couple of quick smiles, and then they went back to their routines.
“Do we have ginger?” Max asked the nearest chef, who jumped a little at being addressed.
“Eh—yes, somewhere,” the man said, blinking. “For some of the Asian dishes. Why?”
“Can I use some?” Max asked.
There was a moment where the chef clearly wanted to ask why, then thought better of it. “Sure, I’ll get it. How much do you need?”
Max hesitated. Pierre had said “lots.”
“A lot,” he decided. “Like… a lot.”
The chef looked faintly alarmed but obediently fetched a knobbly piece of ginger from a crate. It was bigger than Max’s fist. “That enough?”
Max nodded. “And… red sugar? Brown sugar? Dark sugar?”
“We have kurozatō,” the chef said, relaxing now that the question was in his domain. “Black sugar. Very sweet.”
“Perfect,” Max said, with the confidence of a man who had no idea what he was doing.
He rolled up the sleeves of his fireproofs, grabbed a knife, and started slicing ginger into aggressively thick coins. The chef watched for a moment, then quietly slid a chopping board closer so Max wouldn’t destroy the counter.
“Not too thin,” Max muttered to himself. “Needs to be strong.”
He collected an alarming pile of ginger slices, dumped them into a pot, and added water until it felt like enough.
“How long do I boil it?” he asked.
The chef, now resigned to this experiment, shrugged. “Until it smells strong.”
It didn’t take long.
Soon the air above the stovetop filled with a sharp, eye-watering aroma. Max leaned over the pot, sniffed, and staggered back, coughing once.
“Good,” he wheezed. “Strong is good.”
The kurozatō came next — that felt heavy in his hand. He broke a few pieces off and tossed them into the pot. They vanished almost immediately.
“Maybe more,” he said, mostly to himself, and added several more chunks.
The chef made a faint alarmed noise. “Won’t that be… very sweet?” he ventured.
“It’s for someone with a cold,” Max said, stirring with a wooden spoon. “He needs energy.”
The chef didn’t argue. Maybe he recognized the tone — something between stubborn and oddly gentle.
Max watched the liquid darken, steam curling up in fragrant ribbons. When it looked thick enough, he turned off the heat and reached for the nearest mug he could find — a simple white one with a Red Bull logo.
He strained the drink carefully, trying not to dump ginger slices into the cup. Despite his efforts, at least three escaped and sunk to the bottom. “Shit,” he muttered, fishing out what he could. The liquid sloshed, nearly spilling. He wiped the side of the mug with a cloth until it looked presentable.
“What are you going to do with this?” the chef asked, curiosity finally winning.
Max stared at the mug for a moment. “Delivery,” he said.

The Mercedes motorhome was quieter than he expected.
Most of the media had moved on. The paddock outside was thinning, people trickling away toward hotels and airports. But inside, the air still held the heavy weight of a long, bad day.
The big “125 Years of Motorsport” banners fluttered limply in the breeze outside. Inside, the period-themed outfits looked slightly ridiculous now — suspenders, flat caps, vintage touches that had seemed fun and charming before the race and now just felt… sad, somehow.
Max paused at the bottom of the steps, hand tightening around the mug. He could still turn around. Pretend this was a stupid idea. Drink the ginger himself and tell Pierre he was overdoing it.
Instead, he climbed the stairs.

And then there was Toto.
Max almost stopped.
The Mercedes team principal was halfway through a conversation with someone from comms, still in his period outfit — white shirt with braces, dark waistcoat, and, incredibly, the flat cap. The hat looked like it had lost an argument with the weather and three hours of stress. It was slightly askew. Toto himself looked as if someone had poured exhaustion into human form.
He turned when he noticed Max, eyebrows shooting up in immediate, genuine surprise. “Max,” Toto said. “This is… unexpected.”
Max became acutely aware of the mug in his hands. “Hi,” he said, which was not how he’d intended to start anything. “I, uh… wanted to see Lewis.”
Toto’s gaze flicked to the mug, then back to Max’s face. There was a beat of silence. “You’re not here to poison our driver, are you?” Toto said, deadpan. “We’ve had enough of a day.”
It took Max half a second to realize it was a joke. A tired one, but a joke.
He shook his head quickly. “No. It’s— it’s just… a drink.”
Toto’s mouth twitched, the corner of it threatening a smile. “For Lewis?”
“Yeah.” Max’s fingers tightened around the ceramic. “For the cold. It’s— it’s ginger and sugar. Help the body to heal. Pierre’s family uses it when someone’s sick.”
Toto studied him for a moment, the way he did in briefings when he was weighing risk versus reward. Behind him, someone from the team brushed past, gave Max a discreet second glance, and carried on.
“It was… not an easy race,” Toto said at last. “For any of us.” his tone softened. “He’s in the drivers’ room. Not in the best shape.”
“That’s why I brought this,” Max said, before he could overthink it. “I thought… it might help.”
Another beat.
Then Toto nodded once, stepping aside. “Go ahead,” he said. “Straight down, last door on the left. Try not to break him further.”
The hat — still slightly ridiculous — dipped in what might have been something like approval.
Max forced a breath out through his nose. “I’ll try.” He moved past, aware of eyes on him but no one stopping him.

The drivers’ room was quieter. Small, softly lit, the noise of the motorhome muted behind a door.
Lewis was sitting on the small couch, still in team kit, undershirt collar peeking out. His posture was slouched in a way Max rarely saw in public — head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed, one hand resting on his chest like he was too tired to move it.
He looked… drained. Not just race-tired, but illness-tired. The kind of tired that sank into your bones and refused to shift.
For a second, Max hovered in the doorway.
Lewis’s eyes blinked open at the soft scrape of the door. “Sorry,” he started, voice ragged. “Thought I said no more—”
He stopped when he saw Max. “Oh,” he said.
That was it. Just oh. But there was a whole story in it — surprise, confusion, a flicker of something warmer underneath.

Max stepped inside and let the door swing mostly closed behind him, not quite shut. “Hi,” he said, intently aware of how stupid he sounded. “I, um… brought something.”
Lewis pushed himself up a little straighter, coughing once into his fist. “For… me?” he glanced at the mug like it might be a trap.
“It’s not poison,” Max said, then immediately wanted to slam his head into the wall. “I mean—it’s ginger. And… sugar. Pierre was drinking it just now. He said it helps to heal”
He stepped forward and held the mug out. The steam rose between them, carrying a scent that was somehow both comforting and aggressive.
Lewis accepted it slowly, fingers brushing Max’s for a second. His hands were warm, even through the ceramic. “That’s… thoughtful,” he said, and the word landed heavier than it should have.
Max shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s just water and ginger.”
“And sugar,” Lewis added, sniffing cautiously. “A lot of sugar, by the smell of it.”
Max shifted his weight. “You need energy.”
Lewis huffed a small laugh that turned into a cough halfway through. He waited for it to pass, eyes closing briefly as he caught his breath. “Did you make this?” he asked.
“Yes,” Max said. Then, because honesty seemed to be the theme of this year whether he liked it or not, added, “Kind of. I copied Pierre. But… more.”
“More,” Lewis repeated, amusement flickering faintly in his eyes. “That’s… reassuring.” He lifted the mug and took a careful sip. For a heartbeat his expression was unreadable. Then his eyes widened slightly.
“That’s…” He blinked, throat working. “That’s strong.”
“The ginger?” Max guessed.
“Yes,” Lewis managed. “And the sugar. God.”
Max grimaced. “Too much?”
“It’s…” Lewis took another sip, almost like he was testing himself. “Spicy. And very sweet. Like being hit by a cinnamon freight train.”
“There’s no cinnamon,” Max said, offended on principle. “Just ginger.”
“Well, the ginger is doing overtime, then,” Lewis muttered, but there was a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth now.
“You don’t have to drink it,” Max said quickly. “If it’s horrible, you can just—”
“No,” Lewis cut in, more firmly than he probably needed to for a discussion about ginger water. “You brought it all the way here. I’m not wasting it.” He took another sip, slower this time. His face relaxed a fraction, as if his body had decided that over-sweet, over-spicy warmth was still better than the chill clinging to his bones.
“Is it… helping?” Max asked, trying not to sound like he was holding his breath.
Lewis considered. “It’s… warming,” he said. “Feels like it’s burning a path down my throat, but in a… caring way.”
“That’s the point,” Max said. “It chases the cold out.”

There was a small pocket of silence after that. Not like the ones from last year — those had been sharp, edged with avoidance. This one was softer, if a little awkward. They both seemed to realize at the same time that they were alone in a room with no immediate excuse to leave.
“How are you feeling?” Max asked, finally.
Lewis gave him a look that said, you saw the race, what do you think, but he answered anyway. “Like I picked a fight with a washing machine and lost,” he said. “The car was… a handful. I was a mess. The cold doesn’t help.”
He took another sip, swallowing with a little wince that eased quickly. “Good drive from you, though,” he added. “Kept it together when a lot of people didn’t.”
It shouldn’t have meant as much as it did. Max felt something uncurl in his chest anyway. “Thanks,” he said, suddenly modest. “It was chaos. Felt like karting in the rain when I was ten. Except with more walls.”
Lewis smiled, tired but genuine.
“For what it’s worth,” Max said, before he could second-guess it, “no one’s going to remember the outfits. Just the race. And… you racing with a cold? That’s not nothing.”
Lewis snorted. “You say that like it’s impressive and not just bad timing.”
“It is impressive,” Max said, frowning. “You were sick. Still went out there and tried. That counts.”
Lewis looked at him for a moment, as if weighing the words. “Thanks,” he said again, quietly this time.

There was a soft knock on the half-closed door then, and it pushed open another inch. Angela stood there, one hand on the frame. “I’ll be outside,” she said to Lewis. “When you’re ready to go.”
“Two minutes,” Lewis promised.
The door eased shut again, leaving them in the muffled quiet.
Max cleared his throat. “I should…” he gestured vaguely toward the hallway. “Let you rest. Just… drink the rest if you can. It works better if you finish it.”
Lewis looked down at the mug, then back up. “That’s the plan,” Lewis said. “Thanks for this, Max. Really.”
Max shrugged, but there was no deflection left in it. “You’re welcome,” he said.
He stepped back, hand on the door. Lewis took another careful sip, made a face that somehow still looked fond, and lifted the mug slightly in a half-toast.
Max slipped out before he could say anything stupid.

The air outside was cooler, fresher, carrying the fading smell of wet tarmac and distant generators. Max descended slowly, one hand on the rail, the sounds of the Mercedes motorhome fading behind him.
Somewhere inside, Lewis was sitting with a mug of too-strong ginger drink, throat burning in a way that Max hoped meant it was working.
Max shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and started back toward Red Bull, the edges of his own exhaustion finally catching up.
It had been a long, brutal day. He’d won a race. Lewis had had one of his worst in years. Nothing about that was simple.
But somewhere in the middle of the chaos and the disappointment and the rain, he’d stood in another team’s drivers’ room and handed Lewis something warm.
Not much. 
Just a mug. Just ginger and sugar and steam.
But it felt like more.

Chapter Text

Monaco – Summer Break 2019

Max had never liked Monaco as much as other people seemed to.
It was pretty, sure. Blue water, white boats, expensive everything. But to him it always felt a little unreal — plastic perfection layered over noise. He usually spent the summer break in places where he could disappear: family, friends, anywhere that didn’t smell like sponsorship money and yacht fuel.
This year, he stayed.
He told himself it was because the sim rig was here, and he wanted to grind some races. Because Monaco was convenient for flights. Because he needed to keep a running routine so he didn’t come back from break slower.
He did not, under any circumstances, tell himself it had anything to do with the fact that Lewis was here too.

The evening before the run, Max was already half-wired from too much screen time when Charles’ voice crackled through his headset.
“Again?” Charles asked. “You are not tired yet?”
“We can stop when I win,” Lando announced. “So… never.”
“You’ve been saying that for an hour,” Max said, smirking at his screen. “Still slow.”
“Yeah, yeah, world champion of pixel racing, we know,” Lando shot back. “Some of us have a social life.”
Max snorted. “You are spending your Friday night with us.”
“Exactly,” Lando said. “Elite company.”
Charles’ laughter came through, soft and warm. “So, what are you doing tomorrow, anyway? Boat? Beach? Or are you two going to live on the sim until the season restart?”
“Training,” Max said, before he could stop himself. “Run. Early.”
There was a tiny, loaded pause.
“With who?” Lando asked, instantly suspicious.
Max hesitated for one second too long.
“Lewis,” he said, aiming for casual and missing by a mile.
The silence that followed was loud.
Then Lando, delighted: “Ohhhh. Early morning personal training session with Mr. Five-Times? Look at you.”
“He’s not—” Max started, then scowled at his own screen. “Shut up.”
Charles hummed. “Five-thirty, right? That is what he posted the other week. Monaco laps at dawn.”
“You memorized his training posts?” Lando gasped. “Five-thirty! Max. Verstappen. In the morning!”
“It’s just a run,” Max insisted. “We said we’d go sometime. We’re in the same place. Now is sometime.”
The teasing continued — Lando threatening to wake up at five just to spy, Charles saying something infuriatingly calm like, I’m happy you two are talking again — until Max threatened to log off. They finally queued another race.
He caught sight of the time after the next one ended.
22:37.
He frowned, squinting. Okay. One more race. Then bed.

When he finally pushed back from the sim and yanked his headset off, his eyes were gritty and his whole body hummed with the leftover adrenaline of overtakes that didn’t count. The clock on the wall said 02:06.
“Shit,” he said aloud to the empty apartment.
He did the maths in his head. Five-thirty meeting time, which meant he had — if he was generous — twenty minutes to shower, ten minutes to calm down, and about three hours of sleep if he fell asleep immediately.
He, of course, did not fall asleep immediately.
His mind decided to replay the conversation with Lewis instead.
We can run sometime, if you want.
 Sure. I’m around. 
Early, though. I like it quiet. 
Me too.
Liar, he told himself, staring at the ceiling. You hate early.
He still set the alarm.

The alarm went off like a personal attack.
Max surfaced from sleep feeling like he’d been scraped out of a dream with a spoon. His head pounded in that special way that only three-hour sleep could achieve. His eyes felt swollen. Every part of him wanted to hit snooze, throw the phone at the wall, and forget any version of himself who had ever thought five-thirty run was a good idea.
Instead, he sat up.
The room tilted a little. He waited for his vision to steady.
You agreed, he reminded himself. You said you’d be there.
Also, Lando would never shut up if he bailed.He pulled on running gear with slow, clumsy movements, tied his shoes twice because the first attempt ended in a useless knot, and splashed cold water on his face until he could at least pretend to be awake.

Outside, the sky was a muted grey-blue, the world not quite switched on yet. Monaco was quieter at this hour — no yachts blasting music, no tourists crowding the pavements. Only the soft hiss of tires on distant roads, the clink of someone setting up tables at a café.
Max trudged toward their meeting point by the waterfront, yawning so wide his jaw clicked.
Lewis was already there, of course.
He was leaning against a low wall, stretching one calf, hood up, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Even half in shadow, he looked irritatingly alive. Awake. Ready. His breathing was calm, posture loose and balanced.
Max wanted to walk into the sea.
Lewis straightened when he heard footsteps. His eyes flicked up, and a small, easy smile tugged at his mouth. “Morning,” he said.
Max stopped a few paces away and tried to look like he hadn’t just fought his own bed to get here. “Morning,” he managed. His voice came out hoarse. “You’re… early.”
Lewis raised an eyebrow. “You’re late.”
Max checked his watch. Two minutes past.
“Traffic,” he said.
Lewis glanced pointedly at the empty street. “Uh-huh.”
Max tried to glare at him and failed halfway through, his face collapsing into another yawn.
Lewis’s smile shifted, the teasing melting into something more assessing.
“You alright?” he asked. “You look…” He searched for a word and settled on, “Tired.”
“I’m fine,” Max lied. “Just… early.”
“How much did you sleep?” Lewis asked mildly.
Max didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
Lewis huffed a small, amused breath. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll take it easy.”

They started at a light jog along the water, shoes slapping softly against the ground. The air was cool and damp, carrying a hint of salt from the sea. Lights from the yachts bobbed in the harbour like small, scattered stars.
For the first few minutes, Max focused on the mechanics: breathe, step, breathe, don’t trip over your own feet. His body remembered how to move even if his brain was operating on dial-up.
He was aware of Lewis just off to his side, matching his pace without comment.
They ran up a slight incline. Max’s lungs protested louder than they should have. His legs felt heavier than usual, like someone had quietly replaced them overnight with less efficient versions.
Halfway up, he stumbled over a crack he would normally have danced around without thinking. He caught himself, but the world tilted for a second, his vision greying at the edges.
A hand brushed his elbow, steady and firm. “Easy,” Lewis said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Max said automatically. His voice sounded distant to his own ears. He blinked hard, trying to clear the fuzziness.
Lewis slowed his pace until they were almost walking. “That’s enough,” he decided. “You’re running on fumes.”
“I can keep going,” Max argued, immediately annoyed at the idea of quitting.
“You can,” Lewis agreed. “But you’re also going to trip over your own feet and crack your head open on a bollard. And I’m not explaining that to anyone.”
Max opened his mouth to protest again, then closed it. The ground felt far away. His body was starting to feel like it was moving a fraction behind his thoughts.
“How much did you sleep?” Lewis asked again, more gently.
Max grimaced. “…Three hours.”
Lewis made a face that was half fond exasperation, half concern. “Let me guess,” he said. “Sim?”
Max didn’t confirm it out loud, but that was an answer too.
Lewis huffed out a small laugh. “Of course.”

They’d slowed to a proper walk now, then to a stop near one of the streets that led back into town. Max lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, suddenly bone-deep tired.
“Where’s your place?” Lewis asked.
Max jerked his chin further up the hill. “There. Ten minutes.”
Lewis looked at him, then at the incline.
“Right,” he said. “No.”
Max frowned. “What?”
Lewis glanced toward the waterfront, then back up at the steep road. “My place is closer,” he said. “If I let you walk back up there like this, you’ll fall asleep on the way and face-plant into someone’s doorway.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not mocking. “Come on. You can crash on my sofa.”
Max stared at him. He could say no. He could insist he was fine. He could drag himself up the hill on sheer stubbornness and then probably sleep on the floor of his own living room because he’d be too tired to make it to his bed.
Instead, he nodded once. “Okay,” he said quietly.
Lewis’s expression softened just a fraction. “Come on, then,” he repeated, and turned toward the narrower streets that led back to his building.

Max had been inside Lewis’s apartment before. Once, briefly, with other people around, a post-race dinner that wasn’t official but felt like one anyway. He remembered light, plants, too many candles in one place for a man with that many engines in his life.
Coming in like this — sweaty, half-asleep, just the two of them — was not the plan.
Lewis unlocked the door and stepped aside to let him in first. The space was dim and calm, curtains half-drawn against the growing light outside. It smelled faintly of something clean and citrusy, with an undercurrent of red tea that made Max’s empty stomach twist.
“Shoes off,” Lewis said automatically, toeing his own off near the entrance.
Max obeyed on autopilot, leaning against the wall for balance as he tugged at his laces. When he straightened, the room tilted a little again.
“The sofa’s there,” Lewis said, nodding toward a low, wide couch near the balcony. “Lie down before you fall down.”
Max walked over and more or less folded himself into the cushions. They were softer than they looked. His body sank in with alarming ease.
“I can go in a minute,” he mumbled, though he made no move to get up.
“Uh-huh,” Lewis said from somewhere near the kitchen. “Sure.”
There was the sound of a fridge opening, glass clinking. Running water. Max let his eyes drift shut for what was supposed to be one second.

When he opened them again, the light in the room had shifted. The sky beyond the balcony was brighter now, proper daylight edging in. The sounds outside were different, too — more cars, more voices, Monaco waking up properly.
Max blinked, disoriented. His neck felt stiff. He realized he’d slid down at some point so he was half curled on his side, one arm tucked under his head. He pushed himself upright slowly.
There was a soft clink from the open-plan kitchen. Max turned his head. Lewis was at the stove in a loose t-shirt and sweats, bare feet silent on the floor. He was stirring something in a small pot, movements unhurried. Steam curled up, carrying with it a warm, savoury smell that reminded Max suddenly, painfully, that he hadn’t eaten anything since last night.
He watched as Lewis turned off the heat, tasted the contents with a spoon, frowned, added something, and tasted again.
It was such a normal scene it almost felt unreal.

Lewis glanced over and caught him staring. “Hey,” he said, too easily. “You alive?”
Max cleared his throat. “Yeah.” His voice was rough with sleep. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Fall asleep instantly?” Lewis interrupted. “That was the plan.” He poured the soup — if that’s what it was — into a bowl and carried it over, along with a glass of water. “Here,” he said, setting them on the low table in front of the sofa. “Nothing fancy. Just… something light.”
Max looked down at the bowl. It was some kind of broth with bits of vegetables and a few strands of something that might have been chicken or might have been very committed tofu.
“You cooked?” he asked, surprised.
Lewis shrugged, sitting down on the other end of the sofa, angled toward him but leaving plenty of space.
“I didn’t poison it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said. “Figured you shouldn’t go back to sleep on an empty stomach. And we’re not repeating the ginger incident.”
Max grimaced at the memory.
Germany. Rain. Exhaustion. His brilliant idea after watching Pierre drinking ginger tea — twice the ginger, twice the sugar, because obviously that’s how it worked. Marching into the Mercedes motorhome soaked and pretending he belonged there, Toto’s vintage outfit and ridiculous hat staring at him like a historical painting, Valtteri looking like he’d watched a ghost walk in.
Lewis, warmed and gently horrified, drinking the whole thing anyway.
“My ginger tea was fine,” Max said in its defence.
“It tried to kill me,” Lewis replied. “It was like drinking sweet lava.”
“You finished it,” Max pointed out.
Lewis’s smile tilted. “Yeah. Well. You made it and brought it.”
Something in Max’s chest did a complicated, strange thing at that. He picked up the spoon, letting the steam warm his face for a moment before he took a sip. The soup was simple but good — light, a little salty, soothing in a way that made his shoulders want to relax whether he let them or not.
“It’s okay?” Lewis asked.
Max nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

They sat in a comfortable silence for a minute, the only sounds the soft clink of the spoon against the bowl and the distant movement of the city outside.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Max said eventually, staring into the broth.
“Bring you here?” Lewis asked. “Yeah, I did. You were about three minutes from sleepwalking into a lamppost.”
“Make food,” Max clarified.
Lewis shrugged. “Couldn’t exactly let you starve on my sofa. That’s bad hosting.”
Max rolled his eyes, but his mouth tugged sideways. “It’s nice,” he said, quieter than he meant to.
Lewis’s gaze lingered on him for a second, softening. “Don’t get used to it,” he said lightly. “Next time you show up with three hours of sleep before a run, I’m making you do yoga instead.”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” Max muttered.
“We’ll see,” Lewis said, entirely unconvinced.
Max finished the soup slower than he needed to, stretching out the moment. He put the bowl back on the table and leaned back into the cushions again, feeling the tiredness creep back in around the edges now that he was warm and full.
He glanced sideways.
Lewis had turned slightly, one arm draped along the back of the sofa, relaxed in a way Max didn’t see often outside of cool-down rooms or unguarded glimpses in the paddock.

“Why did you stay in Monaco?” Max asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it.
Lewis thought for a moment. “Needed to take care of some business,” he said. “Also do my own thing. Run. Swim. Breathe a bit.” His lips quirked. “Didn’t expect to spend part of it making soup for you, but here we are.”
Max huffed a laugh. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not,” Lewis said, and there was no hesitation in it.
Max looked down at his hands. He had a sudden, sharp thought: This. This is it.
Not the yachts, not the podiums, not the noise.
This: his body heavy with sleep, the smell of soup lingering in the air, Lewis sitting across from him in his own home, barefoot and unhurried. The knowledge that if he let his eyes close again, he’d be safe here.
This was what he’d wanted without knowing how to name it.
He swallowed. “Thanks,” he said, and hoped Lewis heard everything he didn’t know how to say tucked into the word.
Lewis smiled, small and real. “Any time,” he replied.

Later, when Max finally dragged himself back to his own apartment, the sun was high and Monaco was fully awake. His phone buzzed with a message from Charles asking about his morning run. Another from Lando, a screenshot of some ridiculous meme about “training with your crush.”
Max ignored both for the moment.
He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling, the image of Lewis’s kitchen – Lewis’s hands stirring, tasting, frowning – replaying in his mind.
For once, the thought didn’t make him want to bolt.
It made him want to go back.

Chapter Text

Late Summer Break, 2019 — Monaco

Lewis had always liked mornings in Monaco that didn’t feel like Monaco. No yachts, no cameras, no shimmer of tourist heat.
 Just the quiet kind of sunlight that drifted along the water and the soft smell of sea salt, the way it settled between the ridges of glass and concrete. On days like this, the city felt smaller, more human. A place he could breathe.

He took the stairs up to the townhouse at the end of the street — clean white walls, heavy shutters, pots of rosemary on the balcony. He had been coming here for years, long before the World Championships stacked up, long before the media turned him into myth. He didn’t knock. He never had to.
The door opened before his hand even lifted.
“Lewis,” Dr. Rajesh Müller said warmly, stepping back to let him in. Indian-German, silver hair, soft eyes behind wire-rim glasses — a man who carried a steadiness that could calm a hurricane. “Come in, come in. You look… sunburned.”
Lewis let out a small laugh. “Long week.”
“It usually is, when you call for a session mid-break.”
Lewis stepped into the familiar sitting room — soft carpet, muted colors, two sofa chairs angled slightly toward each other instead of straight on. He always appreciated that; it made honesty feel less like exposure.

They sat. No notebook, like always. Dr. Müller had never needed one.
“So,” the doctor said, settling his forearms on his knees, “tell me what’s brought you here.”
Lewis leaned back, exhaling. “It’s… complicated.”
Dr. Müller’s smile softened. “That was true about you when you were fourteen. Still true now.”
Lewis let his eyes close for a second. Maybe he should have waited to bring this up. Maybe he should have processed it alone first. Maybe—
He saw Max again in his mind: half-asleep on the sofa, hair falling into his eyes, breathing even and unguarded. The kind of vulnerable stillness Lewis rarely saw in anyone, let alone on a driver who carried his armor so tightly.

Lewis opened his eyes. “It’s about someone.”
“Someone,” Dr. Müller repeated gently, “as in… someone you care about?”
Lewis swallowed. “Yeah.”
“A driver?”
“…yes.”
The doctor didn’t react. He never did — not when Lewis had talked about Nico, not when he’d talked about the stress of rivalries, not when he’d admitted he didn’t know where the line between competition and connection was supposed to be.
“What’s different about this one?” Dr. Müller asked quietly.
Lewis looked at his hands. “He’s… younger.”
The doctor waited.
“And it’s not like with Nico,” Lewis added quickly. “Not at all. It’s not hard rivalry. It’s not— it’s not toxic.” He hesitated. “It’s just… complicated.”
“In what way?”
Lewis let out a tight breath. “Last year he avoided me. This year I avoided him. Then suddenly we’re not avoiding each other and I don’t know what that means anymore.”
Dr. Müller nodded slowly. “What do you feel?”
Lewis frowned. “I don’t know.”
A moment passed.
“Lewis,” the doctor said softly, “you do know. You’re just not ready to say it.”
Lewis’s chest tightened. He looked away, toward the slatted sunlight filtering across the floor.
A beat. Two.

Then he spoke, quieter: “He fell asleep on my sofa.”
“Ah.”
“I took him there after we went running. He barely slept the night before — didn’t tell me that, of course. Nearly tripped twice on the pavement.” Lewis’s mouth twitched, fond and frustrated at once. “I didn’t want him walking home like that.”
“You were worried.”
Lewis nodded.
“And how did it feel, having him in your space?”
He hesitated. “Strange.”
“Uncomfortable?”
“No.” Lewis swallowed. “Comfortable, actually. Too comfortable.”
“Why?”
Lewis paused, searching for the truth beneath all the noise. And then it settled — the simple, terrifying, obvious answer.
“Because,” he said softly, “I don’t want him to be… just another person in my circle. Not another driver I get along with. Not another colleague.”
He exhaled. “With him, it feels different.”
Dr. Müller studied him with the gentle patience of someone who had watched Lewis grow from a teenager into a legend and had never once been blinded by the persona.
“Different,” he murmured. “Because he sees you.”
Lewis’s breath caught. The words hit with the force of truth — clean, undeniable.
“He sees me,” Lewis repeated, barely above a whisper.
Dr. Müller nodded. “Not the image. Not the expectations. Not the persona. Just you.”
Lewis looked down at his hands again. “He does,” he admitted. “Sometimes I’ll say something small — not important, not media-ready — and he just… gets it. He listens differently than most people. Like he isn’t looking at Lewis Hamilton. Like he’s looking at… me.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
Lewis didn’t answer immediately. He searched for the right emotion — not the safe one, not the rehearsed ones he kept for interviews and journalists and sponsors. The real one.
Finally: “It scares me.”
“Good,” Dr. Müller said gently. “Fear means something matters.”
Lewis let out a quiet laugh. “You always say that.”
“And you always pretend you don’t already know it’s true.”

Lewis leaned his head back against the sofa chair and closed his eyes. “What if I’ve misread everything? What if he doesn’t feel anything like that?”
“That,” the doctor said calmly, “is not the question you need answers today.”
Lewis opened his eyes, brows furrowing.
“The question you need to answer,” Dr. Müller continued, “is simpler: Why do you want him close? Not as a rival. Not as a fan or a protégé. But as a person.”
Lewis’s heartbeat stuttered. He didn’t look away this time. “I want him close,” he said quietly, “because when he’s around, I feel… real. Not surrounded by noise. Not performing. Not pretending. Just myself.”
He paused, the truth finally settling. “And I didn’t realize how much I missed feeling that.”
Dr. Müller smiled — soft, knowing, proud. “Well,” he said, “that sounds like the beginning of something worth exploring.”
Lewis exhaled, some tension loosening in his chest.
“Not today,” the doctor added, “but when the season resumes…you will know what to look for.”

Lewis nodded slowly, the knot inside him easing into clarity.
He didn’t have answers. 
But he had one truth now — the truth he’d been circling for months without naming:
Max didn’t just see the icon.
 Max saw him.
And that, more than anything, was why Lewis wasn’t going to walk away.

Chapter Text

Budapest always felt heavier after sunset — thick, humid air clinging to everything, wrapping the city in a slow kind of heat that even victory couldn’t quite cut through. The paddock was half-disassembled already, engineers moving like ghosts in branded shirts, cables coiling into crates, the echoes of the race still hanging faintly in the air.

Lewis slipped away as soon as the final debrief ended. He didn’t want to go back to the motorhome. Didn’t want champagne. Didn’t want congratulations.
 What he wanted — annoyingly, stubbornly, insistently — was Max.
Not the Red Bull driver.
 Not the kid people kept whispering would be the future of the sport. 
Just Max, who had fallen asleep on his sofa two weeks ago, curled into a blanket and Lewis kept replaying in his mind more often than was sensible.
He walked down the quiet service lane behind the hospitality units, knowing exactly where Max would be: the back corner of the paddock where the chain-link fence overlooked the floodlit empty track. Drivers always ended up there after hard races — it was neutral ground. No colors. No cameras.

When Lewis rounded the corner, Max was there, arms braced against the fence, head bowed slightly as if he were still replaying the race in his mind.
For a second, Lewis just watched him. The way the lights cut a gold line through the sweat still drying at Max’s temple. The way his shoulders rose and fell, shallow, like he’d been thinking too hard for too long.
Then Max sensed him and straightened, turning his head. “Hey,” Max said quietly. His voice was rough from radio calls and exhaustion. “Congrats.”
Lewis nodded. “Thanks. You drove well.”
Max smirked faintly. “Not well enough.”

Lewis stepped closer, stopping an arm’s length away.
 There was a beat of silence — comfortable and awkward at the same time.
Then Lewis said, too softly to be casual: “That overtake was easy.”
Max blinked. The faint smirk died. “What?”
“You heard me,” Lewis said. “That move shouldn’t have been that easy on you.”
Max looked away, jaw tightening. “It wasn’t—easy. You had fresher tyres.”
“Max,” Lewis said, and the single syllable — firm, low, steady — made Max tense. “This is me you’re talking to.”
Max’s fingers curled around the wire fence, the metal digging into his skin.
Lewis continued, voice even but layered with something sharp beneath it. “I’ve fought you wheel-to-wheel enough times to know how you defend. And that wasn’t it.”
Max’s throat worked. “So what? I left a bit more space, and—”
“A bit more space?” Lewis echoed, eyebrows lifting. “You left half a street. I could have parked a bus in there.”
Max flushed, annoyed. “It wasn’t—I wasn’t—” He broke off, frustrated with himself.
Lewis didn’t push harder. He simply said, softer now: “Max… you can’t do that.”
Max’s head snapped up. “Do what?”
Lewis stepped closer — not confrontationally, but with the careful weight of concern. “You can’t treat me differently on track. It’s not professional. And it can be dangerous. For both of us.”
The last words landed heavier than Lewis intended. But they were true.

Max swallowed. Hard. His voice cracked on the first word: “I didn’t— I wasn’t trying to let you by.”
“I know you weren’t,” Lewis said. “That’s why I’m worried.”
Max froze.
Lewis exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Look… I’m not accusing you. I’m not angry. But whatever’s going on between us—whatever shift happened in Austria, or over break—” His voice dipped, fingers flexing at his side. “—you can’t carry that into a braking zone. You can’t hesitate with me.”
Max stared at him, breathing too fast, something like humiliation and panic swirling behind his eyes. “I didn’t hesitate,” Max muttered. But even he didn’t believe it.
Lewis held his gaze steadily. “You did. Just for half a heartbeat. But at two hundred miles an hour, that’s all it takes for something to go wrong.”

The Hungarian night hummed around them: distant generators, the metallic tick of cooling machinery, a lone forklift reversing somewhere far off. The whole paddock felt suspended, like the space between two breaths.
Finally Max murmured, barely audible: “I just… didn’t want to hit you.”
Lewis went very still. Not because the words were surprising — but because they were honest. Painfully, vulnerably honest.
“And I appreciate that,” Lewis said quietly. “But you fight me the same as you fight everyone else. Hard. Smart. No mercy.”
Max looked pained. “I can’t— not right now—”
“You can,” Lewis said gently. “And you have to.”
Max squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if forcing himself to absorb the truth he didn’t want to hear.

Lewis stepped half a step closer — close enough that Max could feel the warmth of his presence, but not close enough to crowd him. 
“Whatever this is… it doesn’t change the track. What happens there stays there. We agree on that.”
Max nodded once. A small, shaky movement.
Lewis continued: “And off the track—we figure things out at our own pace. That’s fine. But don’t protect me out there. I don’t need that from you.”
Max huffed a breath, almost a laugh, but it was tight. “Of course you don’t. You’re Lewis Hamilton.”
The way he said it — like it meant everything and nothing at the same time — made Lewis’s chest ache.
“And you’re Max Verstappen,” Lewis said softly. “Which is why I expect you to fight me like hell for every position. Including P1.”
Max’s eyes flickered, something bright and fierce returning beneath the fatigue. After a long moment, he nodded again — firmer this time. “Okay,” he said. “I… I will.”
Lewis smiled, small and real. “Good.”
They stood there a moment longer, looking out over the empty track glowing under floodlights.

Max broke the quiet first. “You’re still annoying,” he muttered.
Lewis bumped his shoulder lightly. “Likewise.”
And somehow, the knot that had tightened between them loosened.
 Not gone — just… understood.
As they walked back toward the paddock lights, not side by side but not far apart either, Max said under his breath: “Next time, you won’t get past me.”
Lewis’s grin was immediate, bright as the worn tarmac ahead of them. “I look forward to it.”
And Max didn’t say it out loud — but he looked forward to it too.

Chapter Text

Belgium 2019

The paddock was quieter than usual.
Even on race day, even with engines firing up in the distance and media movements pulsing through the walkways, Spa felt muted — its edges softened by something heavier than weather or nerves. The air carried a strange kind of stillness, a hush that clung to conversations and left pauses lingering too long.
The drivers felt it most of all.
They were professionals — fighters, competitors, performers — but they were also human, and yesterday had reminded them of that in the sharpest way possible. A young driver gone. A life cut short on the same asphalt they all stepped onto every year. It wasn’t the first time. It never got easier.
Nobody said much.

Lewis kept to the periphery that morning, speaking only when he needed to, offering small nods, small smiles, small anchors of steadiness. Even Seb had been subdued, eyes distant, gestures slower. Kimi was quieter than usual. Valtteri, too.
They carried their experience like a weight — an old one, unwelcome, familiar. And they watched the younger drivers carefully.
Charles kept his helmet on longer than usual, posture tight. Lando had gone unusually quite before the drivers’ parade, hands jammed deep in his pockets. George’s smile was forced, too stretched at the edges.
But Max… Max was nowhere.
Not visibly distressed. Not with the others. Not with his team. Simply absent from the usual patterns — gone before anyone could read his expression.
Lewis noticed first. He always noticed Max first, even before he admitted that truth to himself.

The race did nothing to ease the weight. Lewis finished on the podium, but there was no celebration in his chest. No buzz of victory. Only the dull, heavy ache of a day that demanded too much from everyone.
And then news filtered through: Max had crashed out on Lap 1. He was reported uninjured, but had walked away quickly.
 Too quickly.
After the cooldown room, after obligations were met with polite minimalism, Lewis found Seb, Kimi, and Valtteri talking quietly in a narrow corridor behind the podium.
“He’s not with Red Bull,” Seb said, worry sharpening his words.
“Or with his trainer,” Valtteri added.
Kimi leaned against the wall, arms crossed, jaw set. “Someone should look for him.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Lewis said, “I’ll go.”
No one questioned it.
 No one teased. 
They just nodded — four veterans understanding instinctively that sometimes one particular person is the one who needs to go.

Lewis walked. Through the paddock. Past the motorhomes. Past the trailers. Past the usual routes Max took when he wanted to be left alone.
He finally found him near the back of the paddock, behind a freight container, where the noise of the circuit dimmed into a distant hum. Max was sitting on a low concrete step, elbows on his knees, helmet beside his feet. His gloves were still half-on, fingertips tugged loose but not removed.
He wasn’t crying. 
He wasn’t shaking. 
He just looked…young and vulnerable. 
And unbearably alone.

Lewis approached quietly, not wanting to startle him. “Max.”
Max didn’t look up at first. His voice came out flat, scraped thin. “You don’t have to do this.”
Lewis lowered himself down to sit beside him — not touching, but close enough to be real. “I know,” he said gently. “I want to.”
Max’s breath hitched, almost imperceptibly. He stared at the ground. “It’s stupid,” he muttered. “It’s just… everything. Yesterday. Today. I lost it in Turn One. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve been more—”
 he cut himself off, shaking his head violently. “Doesn’t matter.”
Lewis watched him for a moment, careful and patient. “It does matter,” he said quietly.
Max swallowed, jaw clenched tight. “I know people die in this sport. I know that. But yesterday was… and today…”

His voice cracked — not loud, not dramatic, just a thin break in a sentence that should’ve been whole.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “It just feel wrong. Like we shouldn’t just get back in the car and pretend everything’s fine.”
Lewis’s chest tightened at the honesty in that trembling admission. “We don’t pretend it’s fine,” he said. “We just carry it. All of us. In different ways.”
Max’s breathing wavered, but he nodded.

A long stretch of silence settled between them. 
Not heavy — just quiet. A companionable kind of ache.
When Max finally spoke again, it was small. “Do you ever… doubt it? This job?”
Lewis didn’t answer immediately. He let the question breathe. “Yes,” he said at last. “More times than I can count.”
Max’s eyes flicked sideways, searching his face. 
Lewis held that gaze, steady and unwavering. “But I also know this,” he continued: “You’re not weak for feeling shaken. You’re human. And sometimes it was… too much for anyone.”
Max blinked hard, as if holding something in place. “I shouldn’t have gone out like that,” he said. “Stupid mistake.”
“It was an accident,” Lewis replied softly. “They happen.”
Max’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “It just feels… heavy.”
Lewis exhaled slowly. “I know.” He hesitated a moment — then did something he had not done before. Very gently, very carefully, he reached out and placed a hand on the back of Max’s shoulder.
Not a pull.
 Not a claim. 
Just warmth. 
A quiet grounding.
Max went rigid for half a breath — then, slowly, he let himself lean into it, just a fraction, just enough to accept the comfort offered.
Lewis kept his hand there, steady and warm and real. “You’re not alone,” he said quietly.

For a long moment, they simply sat like that — two drivers, two men, side by side in the hush behind the paddock, letting the noise of the world fade into something manageable.
Eventually, Max drew a slow, shaky breath and straightened a little. He didn’t pull away. Not fully. Just enough to sit upright again. “Thank you,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Lewis nodded. “Anytime.”
They didn’t rush to stand. Didn’t rush back to the world. The moment held them gently — fragile, necessary, unspoken.

When they finally rose, Max wiped his face without shame. Lewis kept close, not touching now, but present.
They walked back together. Not talking. Not pretending. Just… walking.
Max’s steps steadier than before. Lewis’s presence quiet beside him.
For now, that was enough. More than enough.

Chapter Text

The weeks after Spa blurred together in a strange, delicate way — like fog lifting after a storm but refusing to leave entirely.
Max wasn’t the same. Lewis wasn’t either.
 Something had settled between them, something fragile and unspoken, warmer than before but edged with an understanding neither dared to name. Their interactions changed first in the smallest ways.
A handshake that didn’t break immediately.
A nod that lingered a beat too long.
Max would walk past Lewis in the paddock and feel awareness settle under his skin like static, sudden and alive.
Lewis, usually composed, found himself looking a fraction longer than necessary — checking, always checking, that Max seemed okay that day.
No one said anything.
 But sometimes, Max caught a flicker of something like relief on their faces when they saw the two of them stand a little closer than usual, or talk without the usual tension.
The world kept moving, racing from circuit to circuit. But the distance between Lewis and Max — once so wide — now felt measurable in inches.

It started in Singapore with a shoulder squeeze.
Lewis had come up behind Max as they waited for the national anthem rehearsal, the humidity thick and suffocating, the lights washing the grid in pale gold. Max looked tense — jaw tight, hands fidgeting around his gloves, eyes too dark for someone so young. Lewis reached out without thinking, his hand settling briefly on Max’s shoulder.
 A quiet, grounding pressure. 
The kind older drivers sometimes gave rookies after a bad quali, except Lewis didn’t do this often, and certainly not with Max.
Max stilled.
 Not flinching — just… softening. 
A breath escaping like he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.
Lewis withdrew his hand almost immediately, expression steadied, but Max felt the warmth linger long after.

Then came Sochi.
The race was unremarkable, strategy-heavy, nothing special on paper. But after it ended, Max walked toward the cooldown room with a weary shuffle, head throbbing from concentration. 
Lewis approached from the other direction, helmet still under his arm.
Their eyes met.
Something quiet passed between them — something tired, something understanding.
Lewis didn’t speak, just reached out and bumped their forearms lightly, subtle and quick but unmistakably fond.
Max felt heat rise under his skin.
He didn’t know how to respond, so he muttered something like “good race,” and Lewis smiled, soft and warm, the kind of smile that made Max’s heartbeat trip over itself.

Mexico, it was Media Day, loud and bright, the paddock glowing with festival colors.
Max’s face had been painted by a local artist — half sugar-skull style, half dramatic festival flair. He looked ridiculous. He looked brilliant.
Charles laughed when he saw him.
 Daniel insisted on taking a photo.
 Even Kimi gave a rare, unimpressed grunt that Max decided to interpret as approval.
The whole grid was chaos — then Max had an idea. He spotted Lewis entering the hospitality walkway, talking to an engineer, sunglasses on, expression serene.
Perfect.
Max ducked behind a pillar, then leapt out with a gleeful “BOO!”
Lewis didn’t so much as flinch. He stared at Max’s painted face one second, then said, utterly calm: “Hello, Max.”
Max deflated. “You recognized me?”
Lewis’s mouth curled, amused. “You could wear a full helmet and I’d still know it’s you.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
 Max swallowed.
Lewis reached up — slowly, so Max could pull away if he wanted.
 Max didn’t.
Lewis’s hand brushed through his hair, messing it up in a gentle, playful shuffle.
The touch was not teasing. Not mocking. It was affectionate.
Max’s breath stuttered. He tried to keep a straight face but failed completely.
“Your paint looks good,” Lewis added softly. “Very… spirited.”
Max blinked at him. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I would never,” Lewis replied smoothly, eyes warm.
 But the smile tugging at his lips said otherwise.
For once, Max didn’t mind. He walked beside Lewis for the rest of the way, painted face and all, and Lewis didn’t step away.

By the time they left Mexico, something had undeniably changed. They no longer walked past each other like rivals circling for weakness. They no longer avoided eye contact. They no longer crashed into awkward silence every time the world got too loud.
Now, their eyes met easily. Their shoulders brushed sometimes. Their greetings were soft, real. And somewhere beneath it all, a pulse of something deeper had begun to take shape — quiet, persistent, waiting.
Whatever name it would eventually carry, neither of them was ready to say.
 But it was there. Growing. Becoming.
A truth neither wanted to run from anymore.

Chapter Text

Austin, 2019

The paddock glittered under the Texas twilight — strings of lights, murmured conversations, the low clink of glasses as teams settled into their various celebrations. Mercedes’ garage was brighter than the rest, laughter spilling out in soft bursts. No music, nothing wild — just the sound of a team exhaling after the inevitable became official.

Lewis Hamilton: Six-time World Champion!

Max lingered near the edge of the crowd, helmet bag still slung over his shoulder, fingers tugging absently at the zip. He hadn’t planned to seek Lewis out. He’d told himself he would offer congratulations later, maybe tomorrow, when everything calmed down and the glow of victory wasn’t so sharp.
But then he saw him — not the Legend, not the Six-time World Champion, not the icon framed in silver and celebration — but Lewis, laughing with his engineers, head tilted back, shoulders loose in a way Max rarely saw.
It pulled him in before he decided anything.

Lewis sensed him first. He turned, eyes softening, expression shifting from adrenaline-laced joy to something quieter, warmer.
Max cleared his throat, suddenly aware of every heartbeat in his own body. “Congratulations,” he said, and the word came out a touch rougher than he intended. “It’s… an incredible achievement.”
Lewis’ smile changed — deeper, gentler, something private tucked in the edges of it.
“Thanks, Max,” he said. “Means a lot.”

For a moment they simply stood there, the noise of the garage dimming into something like background static. Max didn’t know what he was supposed to say next. Nothing felt big enough. Six world titles. Six.
Lewis saved him. “You’ll get it,” he said quietly. “Someday. I really believe that.”
Max blinked — not at the words themselves, but at the sincerity behind them.
Most people said things like that casually, or strategically, or because they didn’t know what else to say. Lewis said it like truth. Like promise.
Max swallowed. “You don’t know that.”
Lewis tilted his head. “I know your talent. And your drive. And the way you show up, even when it’s hard.” 
A tiny pause. 
“I know enough.”

Something caught low in Max’s chest — gratitude, maybe. Or something too close to it. He nodded once, steady. “Thank you.”
Lewis’ hand lifted like he might touch his shoulder, then hesitated, then did — a brief, warm press. Not long enough for anyone to comment. Long enough for Max to feel it hours later.
“I should let you celebrate,” Max murmured.
Lewis’ smile took on that soft, familiar curve Max had come to recognize — the one that meant he didn’t want the moment to end but wouldn’t push.
“See you around,” Lewis said.
“Yeah,” Max replied, stepping back, warmth still humming under his skin. “See you.”

He walked out into the cool Austin night, the sound of Mercedes’ cheers fading behind him, and found himself smiling — small, quiet, unguarded.
Six titles.
 And yet Lewis had looked at him like he was something worth believing in. Max tucked the feeling away carefully, somewhere deep, somewhere safe.
Tomorrow, the world would return to noise and rivalry.
But tonight, there was this — a moment suspended in warm garage light, soft as breath, steady as truth.

Chapter Text

Brazil, 2019

The Interlagos paddock vibrated with noise. Crowds were already in full voice hours before qualifying, Brazilian flags draped over shoulders and railings, the air heavy with heat and exhaust and the particular kind of energy this place always carried.
Lewis had raced here enough times to know it never felt casual. Not in Senna’s country. Not on this track.
Qualifying had been a blur of laps and adjustments, the world narrowing to braking points and kerb edges and the tiny margins that decided everything.
In the end, when the dust settled and the times locked in, it was Max’s name at the top of the board.
Pole.
The roar from the grandstands when the result flashed up wasn’t subtle. Interlagos loved a charge from the front, and Max had delivered one.

Lewis could have been annoyed. On another day, another year, he might have been. Today, though, watching Max on his cool-down lap — voice a little breathless over the radio, half-laughing, half-shouting — he just felt something close to pride curl warm in his chest.
He found him in the paddock a little while later, just outside the Red Bull garage. Max was still in his suit, top half down and hanging around his waist, undershirt damp with sweat. His hair was a mess. He looked like he’d just been through a storm and come out exhilarated.
When he saw Lewis walking toward him, his expression flickered — surprise, then something softer he covered quickly.
“Nice job,” Lewis said, stopping in front of him. “That was a hell of a lap.”
Max exhaled, almost a laugh. “Thanks.”
There was a beat of silence. Before Lewis could say anything else, Max blurted, “If I win tomorrow… can I ask you something?”
The question landed oddly, like he’d thrown it out faster than his brain could approve it.
Lewis raised his eyebrows. “You planning that far ahead?”
Max rolled his eyes, but the tips of his ears had gone pink. “Just answer the question.”
Lewis huffed, amused. “Alright. Yeah. If you win, you can ask me something.”
Max nodded, trying very hard to look casual and failing just enough for Lewis to notice. “Okay,” he said. “Deal.”
Lewis clapped him lightly on the shoulder before he could overthink it. “Then go finish the job.”

He did.
The race was chaos in all the ways Interlagos liked — overtakes, strategies, moments that made engineers swear in three languages. Max was relentless from the front. Lewis fought, pushed, tried options, but today the blue car was just that little bit sharper where it mattered.
When the chequered flag fell, it was Max P1.
The crowd went wild.
Lewis rolled across the line in P3, lungs burning, adrenaline still buzzing. There was a part of him that always hated not winning. That part muttered under his ribs for a while, then quieted as he cooled down, as he watched Max on the in-lap, voice cracking just a little as he shouted his thanks to the team.
On the podium, the world was noise and champagne and confetti.
Max’s grin was blinding, wide and unguarded in a way Lewis didn’t see often anymore. Pierre’s eyes shone with disbelief. Lewis found himself genuinely happy for both of them, clapping Max on the back harder than necessary, leaning in to say, “You earned this.”
Max looked at him then, and for a moment the grin softened into something smaller and more private. “Don’t forget our deal,” he said under the roar of the crowd.
Lewis blinked, then huffed, amused. “Didn’t think you would.”

The chaos thinned out after the podium. Interviews, debriefs, de-suiting, media walls — it all blurred together. By the time Lewis finally escaped the worst of it, the sun had shifted, shadows stretching longer across the paddock. His body was starting to slide from adrenaline high into post-race exhaustion.
He was halfway back to the Mercedes hospitality when a voice called,
“Lewis!”
He turned.
Max was jogging toward him, now in team gear — navy shirt, jeans, hair tamed a little but not enough. There was a sheen to his skin still, that post-race glow that came from heat and effort and too much emotion.
Lewis waited for him to catch up.
“So,” Max said, stopping in front of him, arms folding like he needed to physically hold himself together. “I want to cash in my question.”
Lewis tilted his head. “Go on.”
Max swallowed once, throat working. When he spoke, his tone tried for casual and landed somewhere a little too careful. “Would you have dinner with me?” he asked. “Tonight. There’s this restaurant… Brazilian place. They do good food. And they can do all the vegan stuff for you, before you ask.” The last part tumbled out too fast, like he’d rehearsed it.
For a second, Lewis just looked at him. He thought of all the ways this could be interpreted. Media-friendly “two drivers being sportsmanlike.” Mentor-and-young-gun. Celebration of a good race. Neutral, professional.
Except Max had clearly planned this. Clearly cared enough to find a place that would work for him. Clearly gone to the trouble of thinking about tonight when most drivers would already be halfway to the airport in their heads.
Lewis felt something warm unfold in his chest. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”
Relief flashed across Max’s face so raw it made Lewis’s heart stutter. “Okay,” Max said. “I’ll text you the time. And the address.”
“Looking forward to it,” Lewis replied. And he meant it.

Max told himself it wasn’t a date. He told himself that three times while standing under the shower, then another five while staring at his open suitcase, and at least ten more while trying to decide which shirt didn’t make him look like he was trying too hard.
He failed the last part.
In the end, he picked something nicer than his usual — dark, well-fitted, sleeves rolled just enough to show his forearms. He combed his hair properly, put on cologne he almost never used, checked his reflection twice and then felt ridiculous for doing it.
It’s not a date, he thought, slinging his jacket over his shoulder. It’s dinner. With someone who just happens to be—
He cut the thought off before he could complete it.

The restaurant was tucked away on a quieter street, warm light spilling from its windows, the smell of grilled food and spices drifting out when the door opened. Inside, the décor was a comfortable mix of wood and color — lively without being loud.
Lewis arrived a few minutes early, mostly because he hadn’t wanted to be late. A host led him to a corner table, half-screened by a plant, with a view of the room without being in the center of it. Max had chosen well.
When Max walked in, Lewis felt it before he saw it — a tiny shift in the room’s atmosphere, a sudden awareness that someone he cared about had entered his orbit. Then he turned, and there Max was.
The shirt suited him. The effort was obvious in a way that tugged at Lewis’s mouth, trying to pull it into a smile. Max looked good. Not like he was heading to a red carpet. Just… more put together than usual. Like this mattered.

“Hey,” Max said, coming over to the table. “You found it.”
“I did,” Lewis replied, rising briefly in greeting. “You clean up well.”
Max rolled his eyes, but his cheeks were a fraction too pink. “You say that like I usually show up covered in mud.”
Lewis’s smile widened. “I’ve seen your race suit after a wet quali, mate.”
They sat.

The menu was a thoughtful mix — traditional Brazilian dishes, grilled options, sides, and a clearly marked vegan section that didn’t feel like an afterthought. Lewis flicked through it, impressed despite himself. “You weren’t kidding,” he said. “They actually know what vegan means.”
“Told you,” Max replied, with a hint of pride. “I asked around.”
The image of Max, going out of his way to ask people for restaurant recommendations that would fit him, lodged itself in Lewis’s chest and refused to move. “You didn’t have to do that,” Lewis said quietly.
Max shrugged, looking down at his menu. “I wanted to.”
They ordered. Something warm and hearty for Max, plant-based feijoada and vegetables for Lewis. Drinks — nothing strong. They were both too used to keeping their bodies in check after races.

The conversation started with safe topics — tyres, strategy, the mess of the midfield, Pierre’s podium, radio messages that had made them both snort with laughter when they’d heard them back later.
But as the food came, and the noise in the restaurant settled into a steady background hum, something in the air between them softened further.
Lewis found himself asking about Max’s sim races, his off-season plans, his childhood memories of watching Interlagos on TV. Max, in turn, asked about Lewis’s first time racing here, about his own early career, about the weird mix of pressure and love he felt from Brazilian fans.
“Do you ever get used to it?” Max asked at one point, gesturing vaguely. “Being… the one everyone looks at.”
Lewis toyed with his fork for a moment, thinking. “You learn how to carry it,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it gets lighter. You just get stronger. Or maybe you just get more practiced at pretending.”
Max studied him, expression serious. “I don’t think you’re pretending,” he said. “Not all the time.”
Lewis looked up, surprised by the certainty in his tone.
“I think you know how to… hold it,” Max continued, brow furrowing slightly like he was searching for the right words. “But I’ve seen you when you think no one’s watching. In the cool-down room. In the paddock. You look…” He trailed off, then shrugged. “Real.”
The words were simple, but they landed with unexpected weight.
Lewis felt his throat go briefly tight. “Thanks,” he said, because anything more would risk too much.

They ate. They laughed, now and then. There were still pauses, but they weren’t jagged — just spaces where both of them seemed to be adjusting to the fact that this was happening at all. That they were sitting in a restaurant in Brazil, just the two of them, without microphones or cameras or a dozen other drivers around.
The world outside the windows moved on — cars passing, people walking, city noise but at their table, it felt like time had slowed just a little.
At one point, Max said something sharply funny about a commentator constantly mispronouncing names, and Lewis laughed, head tipping back, shoulders loosening. When he looked back, Max was watching him with an expression that was almost reverent before he caught himself and glanced away.
Lewis pretended not to notice. His heart didn’t.

When they stepped out of the restaurant, the night air was cooler, the street quieter. The city’s hum wrapped around them — distant traffic, occasional shouts, the muffled beat of music from somewhere down the road.
“I’ll walk you back,” Max said, a little too quickly.
Lewis blinked. “You don’t have to. Isn’t your hotel the other way?”
“Yeah,” Max admitted. “But it’s fine. It’s not far.”
There was a stubborn set to his jaw that told Lewis any protest would be ignored.
“Alright,” Lewis said. “Let’s go, then.”
They walked side by side through the streets, not too close, not too far. Streetlights washed them in pools of yellow and white. A few fans recognized them, but most people at this hour were busy with their own lives, their own nights.
Their conversation had quieted, words giving way to a different kind of ease. Now and then, their shoulders brushed lightly. Neither of them commented on it.

When they reached the entrance of Lewis’s hotel, they stopped. The lobby glow spilled out onto the pavement, softening the edges of everything.
“This is you, right?” Max asked, nodding toward the doors.
“Yeah,” Lewis said. For a moment, he didn’t move.
Max shifted his weight, hands shoved into his pockets now that he didn’t have a menu to hold on to.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “To dinner, I mean.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” Lewis replied. “You picked a good spot.”
A beat passed. Another.
“Congratulations again,” Lewis added. “For today. Pole and the win. Big statement.”
Max’s mouth tilted up, just a little. “Coming from you, that means something,” he said quietly.
Lewis felt warmth spread through his chest. “It was well deserved,” he said. “You drove beautifully.”
Max swallowed, the movement visible in his throat. “Goodnight, Lewis,” he said. The words were soft, almost tentative.
Lewis held his gaze for a heartbeat longer than was strictly necessary. “Goodnight, Max,” he answered, matching the softness without meaning to.
For a second, it felt like the moment might tip into something else. A breath closer, a hand on an arm, a step over a line neither of them had named. Instead, Max took a small step back.
“See you tomorrow,” he said.
Lewis nodded. “Yeah. See you.”
He watched Max turn and walk away down the pavement, shoulders squared, hands still in his pockets. The night air tugged at his shirt, at the ends of his hair. He didn’t look back.
Lewis went inside.

Later, in the quiet of his hotel room, Lewis lay on his back staring at the ceiling, the faint city noise leaking in through the glass.
He’d showered. He’d answered a couple of messages, scrolled aimlessly through his phone, set it aside. None of it stopped his mind from replaying the evening.
Max, fidgeting with the edge of his menu.
 Max, trying to sound casual while asking about vegan options.
 Max, saying I wanted to instead of I had to.
 Max, watching him laugh like it meant something.
 Max, standing under the hotel lights saying goodnight like the word was heavier than usual.
Lewis exhaled slowly, chest rising and falling in the dim light. “What are we doing…” he murmured into the empty room.
He didn’t have an answer.
But there was a small, involuntary smile on his face as he let his eyes close, images of Max’s grin and the warmth of his voice lingering like the echo of the crowd at Interlagos.
Whatever this was, whatever it was becoming, it no longer felt like running in circles. It felt like the start of something neither of them had quite dared to name.
Not yet.

Chapter Text

Mid-December, 2019

Monaco still hummed softly beneath the winter sky — yachts lit along the harbour, restaurants spilling warm light onto the streets, the sea a dark, quiet presence beyond the buildings. Somewhere, music pulsed. Somewhere else, cameras flashed. Life went on.

Up in Lewis’s apartment, it was just laughter.
His place was warm, lights dimmed, candles burning on the low table. Someone had made a playlist — Lando, probably — and it rolled through old R&B, pop, the occasional terrible remix Daniel insisted was “iconic.”
Takeout containers were scattered across the counter. Half-empty glasses and bottles sat on every flat surface. Shoes had been kicked off by the door in a heap that would haunt Lewis later.
And his living room was, somehow, full of drivers.

Daniel was sprawled on the sofa like he owned it, legs hanging off the armrest. Lando sat cross-legged on the floor, waving chopsticks around as he tried to prove a point to Charles, who was politely arguing back in three languages at once. Max had claimed a spot near the balcony door, one foot braced against the frame, half in the room and half out in the December air.
Lewis leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter and watched them, smiling.
He’d told himself he wanted this for everyone — to decompress, to celebrate, to exist without cameras or press conferences or team PR. But there was another truth under that.
He wanted to see Max like this. Relaxed. Laughing. Here.

“Mate, I’m just saying,” Daniel declared, gesturing with his beer, “if you’d taken that line in Turn 4, you would’ve had him.”
Lando pointed his chopsticks at him. “You say that about every corner.”
“Because I’m always right.”
Charles snorted. “You were not right in Germany.”
“That’s slander,” Daniel said at once. “And I refuse to be attacked in Hamilton’s house.”
Lewis shook his head. “You came in attacking my playlist five minutes after walking through the door.”
“It was playing Mariah Carey.”
“It’s December.”
“And?”
Max huffed a quiet laugh at that, the corner of his mouth tugging up as he looked down at his drink. The sound was small, but Lewis caught it like a reward.

It was still strange, in a good way — having Max here, not across a paddock or on a podium, but barefoot in his living room, wearing a soft black t-shirt and jeans that looked like he’d actually chosen them instead of just pulling on whatever was clean.
They had been steadily orbiting closer since Brazil. Since that dinner. Since Max had walked him back to his hotel and said goodnight in a voice that had lodged somewhere behind Lewis’s ribs.
Tonight, their orbits had finally overlapped.
“Alright,” Lewis said, clapping his hands once. “Anyone want more food before I admit defeat and start cleaning this up?”
“You’re cleaning?” Daniel asked. “Personally? With your own hands?”
“How else would I do it?”
Lando raised his phone. “I feel like I should document this historic moment.”
“Try it,” Lewis warned lightly, “and I’ll block you.”
“That’s a shame,” Lando muttered, already laughing.

Gradually, the energy shifted. People started glancing at the time, at their phones. Goodnights were exchanged, hugs given, jokes thrown out as they piled on coats and shoes by the door.
“Thanks for having us,” Charles said, squeezing Lewis’s shoulder briefly. “It was… nice. To just be.”
“Anytime,” Lewis said, and meant it.
Daniel gave him a quick, tight hug. “Next year, you’re coming to mine. I’m gonna grill so much food you’ll never forgive me.”
Lando waved on his way out. “Love you, bye, don’t break anything,” he called, and then he was gone too, chattering with Daniel down the hall.
The door closed with a soft click.

Silence settled in their wake — gentler, not empty.
Lewis exhaled and turned. Max was still there.
He was standing by the dining table now, hands pushed into his pockets, shoulders a little hunched like he wasn’t sure if he’d overstayed or not. His hair was slightly mussed, cheeks faintly warm from the wine.
Lewis’s heart did something small and inconvenient. “You don’t have to stay,” Lewis said. “You’ve had a long season. I can deal with the mess.”
Max shrugged. “I can help.”
“You sure?”
Max nodded once, more decisive this time. “Yeah.” There was something almost shy in it, but stubborn too — like he’d made up his mind and any argument would insult them both.
“Alright,” Lewis said softly. “Thank you.”

They fell into a quiet rhythm. Lewis gathered empty bottles and glasses from the living room while Max started stacking takeout containers in the kitchen. Every so often they’d brush past each other in the narrow space, a shoulder almost touching, a hand hovering just out of the way.
It was ordinary. It was mundane.
Lewis felt like he could feel every second in his chest. At one point, he walked back in to find Max standing at the sink, rinsing a bowl with a focus usually reserved for telemetry. There was a small furrow between his brows. His sleeves were pushed up, exposing his forearms.
Lewis had to look away for a moment and remind himself that this was just washing dishes and he was a grown man. “You know you’re not auditioning for a cleaning commercial,” he said lightly.
Max shot him a quick, embarrassed glance. “I just don’t want to break anything.”
“It’s a bowl, not the W10,” Lewis said. “Relax.”
Max huffed under his breath, but his mouth curved.

They finished faster than Lewis had expected. The counter cleared, the dishwasher humming, the candles slowly burning lower.
“Looks good,” Lewis said, wiping his hands on a towel. “You did well. I might hire you.”
“I’m expensive,” Max said. “And I only take payment in points.”
“That tracks.”
Max hesitated then, a tiny pause in his body language. His right hand slid into his jeans pocket, fingers curling around something invisible.
“Actually,” he said, voice dropping a notch, “I… have something.”
Lewis tilted his head. “Something?”
“For you.”
Max pulled his hand out. In his palm lay a small, simple bracelet — thin black cord threaded with a few silver beads, one of them shaped like a tiny wing, another like a stylized number. It was understated, clean. It looked, alarmingly, exactly like something Lewis would choose for himself.
Lewis blinked. “What’s this?”
Max’s gaze flicked between the bracelet and Lewis’s face, like he was trying to gauge if this had been a terrible idea. “I, uh,” he began, the word rough in his throat, “I was walking around a few days ago. There’s this little shop not far from here. I saw it in the window.” He swallowed. “It made me think of you.”
Lewis’s fingers closed around the bracelet almost automatically, the metal warm from Max’s skin. “Max,” he said quietly.
“It’s not… expensive,” Max rushed to add, cheeks colouring. “Or, like, fancy. I just thought… you might like it. You don’t have to wear it or anything. I just—” He exhaled, annoyed at himself. “It’s stupid, forget it.”
“It’s not stupid,” Lewis cut in, a little more sharply than he intended. He softened his tone. “It’s… beautiful. Really.”
He turned it over in his hands, taking in the small details — the way the beads were spaced, the subtle shape of the wing, the number etched so small you had to deliberately look to see it.
“You have good taste,” Lewis said. “Apparently.”
Max shifted his weight. “Apparently,” he echoed, trying for casual and not quite getting there.
Lewis looked up and met his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. No jokes. No deflection. Just that. “Really. I like it.”
Max ducked his head, a little flustered. “You’re welcome.”
Lewis slipped the bracelet onto his wrist. It settled there like it had been waiting for that spot all along. He was still adjusting it when something small and green tumbled out of Max’s other hand and landed on the floor between them.

Lewis looked down.
A tiny sprig of artificial mistletoe lay on the wooden floor, white berries and all, its cheap plastic stem bent at an awkward angle.
Silence stretched.
Max made a strangled sound low in his throat and dropped to a crouch so fast Lewis almost stepped back. “That’s—nothing,” Max said, scooping it up like evidence. “It’s from… from earlier. With Lando. He was being stupid. I forgot it was in my pocket.”
He was talking too quickly.
Lewis couldn’t remember seeing mistletoe anywhere near Lando all evening. “Oh?” Lewis asked mildly. “Lando, huh.”
“Yes,” Max said, too forceful. “He thought it was funny.”
Lewis’s mouth tugged up. “And you brought it here.”
Max’s ears went pink. “It was just still in my pocket. I didn’t… I wasn’t going to… use it.”

The last words came out softer, bitten off at the end. He straightened, fist closed tight around the little sprig, shoulders tense. The air between them seemed to vibrate with all the things neither of them was quite ready to say.
Lewis looked at his hand, then back at Max’s face. He could push. He could ask. 
He didn’t.
Instead, he stepped in — just enough to cross the space between them.
“Max,” he said quietly.
Max looked down at him, eyes wide, pupils dark in the low light.
Lewis raised his hand, fingers gentle as he rested it against Max’s cheek for the briefest moment, thumb brushing the edge of his jaw. Then he leaned up and pressed a soft, careful kiss to Max’s forehead.
It was barely more than a touch. A brush of lips against skin. Not a claim, not a declaration.
Just… an answer.
He felt Max’s breath hitch under him.
When he drew back, Max was staring at him like someone had tilted his world by a few degrees.
“Merry early Christmas,” Lewis said, voice low.
Max swallowed. His grip on the mistletoe loosened. “Yeah,” he said, a little dazed. “You too.”

They stood there for another heartbeat that felt like it didn’t belong to the clock on the wall. Then Lewis stepped back, giving him space. “I should let you go,” he said gently. “It’s late. And you’ve already done enough slave labour for one night.”
Max huffed a quiet laugh. “It’s my pleasure” He moved toward the door, then hesitated and turned back.
“Lewis?”
“Yeah?”
Max’s fingers flexed at his side, the mistletoe tucked away again. “I’m… glad I came tonight,” he said. The words were simple, but his voice was careful, like he was placing them down very deliberately between them. “Thank you. For inviting me.”
Lewis felt that same warmth bloom in his chest all over again. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “Anytime.”
Max nodded once, a little too briskly, then pulled on his jacket and shoes. Lewis walked him to the door.
“Goodnight,” Lewis said.
“Goodnight,” Max replied, and smiled. It was small and real and full of something that made it hard for Lewis to breathe for a second.
Then Max stepped out into the hallway.
Lewis watched the closed door for a moment, thumb brushing over the bracelet on his wrist.

Outside, the air was colder than it had been on the balcony.
Max pulled his jacket tighter around himself as he walked down the quiet street. The city wasn’t truly dark, not here, but the glow felt softer, like the whole place was exhaling after a long year.
His forehead still tingled faintly where Lewis’s lips had touched it. He thought about the bracelet on Lewis’s wrist. About the way Lewis had said really I like it and hadn’t laughed, hadn’t brushed it off, hadn’t treated it like something silly or childish. He thought about the mistletoe in his pocket and the way he’d almost—almost—
He blew out a breath, watching it cloud in the cool air. He didn’t have all the answers. He didn’t know what they were doing, what they were heading toward, what would break or hold when the next season began.
But as he walked home through Monaco’s winter streets, hands in his pockets, heart too full and too restless, Max felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
Not a fantasy. Not a guarantee.
Just… the quiet sense that whatever this was, whatever it became, it was moving forward.
And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The house was finally quiet.
Christmas had come and gone in its familiar rush — warm food, loud laughter, siblings teasing him in ways no one else dared to, his nieces running between rooms with tinsel in their hair.
But now, in the soft lull of late afternoon, the holiday noise had settled into something gentler.

Lewis stood near the window, a mug of peppermint tea warming his hands.
Outside, London was gray in that wintery way he’d always loved — clouds low, streets damp, car lights smearing through the mist. It reminded him of childhood, of evenings when the world felt too big and he’d press his forehead to the glass just to steady himself.
He didn’t hear his mother enter the room, but he felt it — her presence, quiet and grounding. Carmen always had a way of moving like she didn’t want to disturb the air.
“You’re thinking too loud,” she said softly.
Lewis smiled at that, shaking his head. “Didn’t realize I was.”
“You never do.” She moved to stand beside him, her shoulder brushing his. “Want to tell me what’s sitting on your mind?”
He exhaled, watching a pair of headlights cut through the fog. For a moment, he considered brushing it aside — saying it was about the season ahead, contract talks, the usual things drivers carried into a new year. But she knew him too well. She always had.
“There is this one person” he said.
Carmen gave him a look that said try me.

Lewis hesitated, then said the name like he was testing the weight of it.
“Max.”
Her eyebrows lifted — not in judgment, but in recognition. The name had been floating around his orbit for months now; he’d spoken of him without realizing it, little mentions tucked into longer conversations. A race result here. A comment there. A story he didn’t need to tell but told anyway.
“What about Max?” she asked gently.
Lewis swallowed. “It’s… the way I feel around him. It’s different.”
“Different how?”
He searched for words, something honest but grounded. His therapist had helped him peel the layers back, but saying it to his mother was harder — more real.
“He sees me,” he said finally. “Not the champion. Not… ‘Lewis Hamilton.’ He looks at me like he sees who I actually am. And I didn’t realize how much I’d missed that.”
Carmen’s expression softened, deeply, the way only a mother could. “And that scares you,” she said.
Lewis let out an unsteady breath. “Yeah.”

Silence settled between them — not heavy, just contemplative.
“And you care for him,” she added quietly.
Lewis nodded, almost imperceptibly. “More than I meant to.”
Carmen rested a hand on his arm. “Is it romantic?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not yet. Or… I don’t know. I care. I want him safe. I want to look out for him. And when he’s near, I can’t—” He stopped, jaw working. “I can’t pretend it’s nothing.”
Carmen listened, her eyes full of that same fierce, steady love she’d had since he was little. But there was concern there too, tucked behind her softness.
“He’s another driver,” she said. “Another competitor. That’s a dangerous line to walk, sweetheart.”
“I know.”
“And you and Nico…” she began carefully.
Lewis winced — not from pain, but from memory. Old fractures that had healed but still ached in cold weather.
“That was different,” he said quietly.
Carmen touched his hand. “Tell me why.”

Lewis looked back toward the window, at the blur of headlights, the wash of winter gray. And then he spoke. “With Nico, we were… kids pretending not to be. Too young. Too proud. Too stubborn. We pushed until something broke.”
He exhaled, slow. “Max isn’t like that. And I’m not that person anymore.”
His mother watched him, patient, giving him space to keep going.
“I feel…” His voice softened, almost unsure. “I feel like I could protect him. Not from racing — I know I can’t shield him from that. But emotionally. From the noise. The pressure. The expectations.”
He huffed a small, disbelieving laugh. “And that’s new for me. Wanting to protect another driver like that.”
“And who protects you?” Carmen asked quietly.
Lewis looked at her then — really looked — and something in his chest loosened.
“I’m learning how to let people try,” he said. “And Max… made me realize that maybe I want someone to try.”

Carmen took this in, her expression shifting through understanding, worry, and something inevitably maternal — love, deep and unwavering.
“You deserve someone who sees you,” she said softly.
Lewis’s throat tightened. “He does.”
“And you deserve someone who lets you be soft,” she continued. “Not everyone gets that part of you. You hide it.”
“Maybe I don’t want to hide it from him,” Lewis admitted, voice barely above a whisper.
Carmen nodded slowly. “Then be careful. But don’t be afraid. If you care for him, care honestly. And trust yourself to know the difference between what happened with Nico… and what’s happening now.”
Lewis felt the words settle in him, warm and grounding. He leaned into his mother’s shoulder, just slightly, the way he used to when the world felt too big. “Thanks, Mum.”
She squeezed his hand. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If you fall… fall thoughtfully.”
Lewis smiled, a small, private smile. “I think I already am.”

Outside, the fog thickened. Inside, the light felt warmer somehow.
And for the first time that winter, Lewis let himself imagine a version of the future where the feeling in his chest — gentle, cautious, unfamiliar — was allowed to grow.
Not rushed. Not dramatic. Not dangerous.
Just real.

Chapter Text

Barcelona 2020, Pre-season testing

The paddock looked different in February light.
 Sharper. Clearer.
 Like the world had been washed clean and left out to dry.
Lewis stood beside the new Mercedes W11, hands in the pockets of his team jacket, listening with half of his attention as an engineer listed updates. The other half kept drifting — quietly — toward the Red Bull garage across the lane.
He told himself he wasn’t waiting.
He absolutely was.

They had kept in touch through the winter — messages that started sparse and polite, then grew warmer, longer, easier. Max sent videos of his simulator runs and complained about Dutch weather. Lewis sent pictures of Roscoe in sweaters and updates from training camps. Their phones carried tiny echoes of laughter back and forth — not enough to feel close, but enough to feel connected.
Still, texting was nothing like seeing someone again.
Especially someone you’d held in your arms on a night you wished had gone differently.
Especially someone you hadn’t stopped thinking about since.

Lewis inhaled, steadying himself as mechanics fired up the W11’s engine for the first run of the day. The visceral vibration shivered up through the pavement.
He tried to focus on the car.
He failed — because suddenly, across the paddock, Max appeared.
And Lewis forgot to breathe.
Max had always been tall. He had always leaned awkwardly, spoken too fast when nervous, moved with that tight, restless energy of someone who lived at full throttle even off the circuit.
But now—
The boyishness had faded at the edges.
Max walked with a straighter posture, shoulders broader beneath his Red Bull jacket. His hair was shorter, the stubble on his jaw more defined. His expression was calmer, steady in a way that made him look quietly grown.
He looked… older.
No, Lewis corrected himself.
 He looked like a man.

Max spotted him almost immediately — because of course he did — and his face lit up in a small, sincere curve that hit Lewis squarely in the chest.
Lewis felt heat rise under his collar before he could stop it.
Max crossed the paddock in long strides, and Lewis realized a split second too late that he wasn’t ready — emotionally, mentally, physically — for how much he’d missed him.
“Lewis,” Max said, a little breathless. “Hey.”
Lewis managed, “Hey,” but his voice sounded softer than he intended.

They stopped close — close enough that Lewis felt the warmth radiating through Max’s jacket, close enough that two months of distance collapsed into a heartbeat.
Max hesitated for half a second, then leaned in for a hug.
It wasn’t long.
It wasn’t tight.
Just a brief, warm, familiar contact—
—but long enough for Lewis to feel the new breadth of Max’s shoulders against his hands, long enough to feel the strength in his posture, long enough for Lewis to blush at the unexpected certainty of it.
Max pulled back slightly, but his hand lingered — just a moment — on Lewis’s upper arm.
Lewis swallowed. “You look… well,” he said, attempting casual.
Max huffed a small laugh. “I trained a lot this winter.”
“I can tell,” Lewis said before thinking.
Max froze — surprised, then flustered, then pleased in a way he tried to hide behind a shrug.

Lewis looked away quickly. “Um. I mean, it shows. In a good way.”
Max’s smile returned — small, warm. “Thanks.”
Mercedes fired the engine again. The sound rippled through them, grounding Lewis just enough to remember why they were both here.
“You ready for this?” Max asked, nodding at the W11.
Lewis exhaled slowly. “I think so. The car feels good.”
“It looks fast,” Max murmured, eyes following the sleek silver lines of the bodywork. “Really fast.”
Lewis tilted his head toward Max. “You’re not scared, are you?”
Max scoffed. “Of what? You? Maybe.”
Lewis laughed — a soft, delighted breath. “Fair.”
Max’s eyes stayed on him a heartbeat too long. “Watching you drive… it always looks easy,” he said quietly. “Like the car listens only to you.”
Lewis felt something warm bloom under his ribs. 
Admiration from anyone meant something. But admiration from Max — Max who understood speed like it was a second language — cut deeper. Sweeter.
“Well,” Lewis said gently, “it’s not easy. But it feels right.”
Max nodded, expression softening in a way that made Lewis’s pulse jump. “I know what you mean,” he said quietly. “I feel that sometimes too.”

They stood there a moment, suspended in something neither of them named.
Then a Mercedes engineer called Lewis’s name, pulling him back to the world.
He turned to Max again. “Will you watch my first run?”
Max didn’t even attempt to hide his eagerness. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
Lewis smiled — brighter than he intended — then slipped into the garage toward his car.
He didn’t see the way Max watched him go, eyes bright with something that wasn’t rivalry. He didn’t see the tiny, private smile Max tried to suppress. He didn’t see how Max’s shoulders loosened, just a little, like being near him reset something inside.
But he felt it.
He carried it with him when he strapped into the W11.
As he took the track for the first lap of 2020, the car surged forward, smooth and powerful, and Lewis realized with startling clarity:
He wasn’t driving into a new season alone.