Work Text:
Max had always liked sweet scents. Maybe because he didn’t have one himself, maybe because they were so different from the woodsy scent of his father, which dipped metallic when he was angry. Because of this, Max used to flinch at the scent of blood.
Sweet scents were like the opposite of blood, light and untainted. Like Daniel’s. It was so sugary that his father’s nose wrinkled the first time he smelled it. But Max loved it instantly. Oreo cheesecake! What kind of person would have such a joyful scent, the total opposite of Max’s gin and tonic scent that people called “mature” if they were being nice and “weird for an omega” if they weren’t.
Daniel wasn’t weird for an omega in any way. He was just a weird person, which Max adored. Daniel was the one who taught him that it was okay to nest even when he wasn’t in a heat, and that it was normal for an omega to need a scenting to stabilize their emotions, especially after something adrenaline-spiking like a crash or even an exhilarating win.
“C’mere, Maxie,” he’d say, and drag his nose across Max’s neck, easing the tension that Max could never realize was there until Daniel relieved it.
His father once described this sort of scenting—just for fun, instead of to comfort an omega in deep distress—as a step towards addiction. He said it made people sloppy. Max wasn’t sloppy in a race, but when Daniel scented him, he could see what his father meant. Being scented was like lifting the difficult emotions off his shoulders, making him feel almost drunk. Not helpful for his reaction times.
But the feeling was too good to give up, so he just made sure Daniel wasn’t scenting him right before a race, and for a while there, things were good. That sweet Oreo cheesecake scent floated around Max at all hours, and he won race after race.
Things were good, except for his heats.
According to the FIA, it wasn’t safe or necessary for an omega to suppress their heat. In Max’s opinion, the FIA was fucking stupid. He would, actually, quite like to suppress the week of clingy neediness that immobilized him twice a year. If nothing else, heats were boring. He couldn’t even go on the sim!
That said. Max probably would’ve made a stronger argument to the FIA if, every six months or so, he didn’t have a complete change of opinion.
When he was a kid, a trainer told him, “It sounds like you actually like your heats, you just don’t like thinking about them afterwards.”
Before he could mull over that, his dad had fired that trainer and told him to focus on the track. Which was precisely what Max did. Until the summer break, when his team doctor presented him with the date that had been carefully coordinated for him.
“The start of your heat,” she said, smiling. “It might be a day early or late, but we’ve worked with you for long enough that your hormones are a pretty known quantity, so…”
“So I will be stuck in bed from this day?”
“Yes. We’ll send over the scented items the day before.”
“Thank you,” he said because he had to.
Truthfully, the box of scented items was a gift he struggled to be grateful for. It was obviously more professional and appropriate than the big, chaotic nests that drivers in the early 2000s used to make in hotels after races, but it was always a bit clinical, opening those scent-locking bags and taking out clothes that smelled of sweat and flowers or whatever.
Well. Not whatever. Max knew the whole grid’s scents very well, because he was subjected to all of them for twenty-four weekends a year. Sure, they were distanced during the actual racing, but anyone who sat in their meetings knew how intensely the scents of browned butter and toasted oats could pervade a closed room. No one mentioned how well-suited Pierre and Esteban’s scents were to each other because no one wanted to see the pained expressions on their faces, but everyone was aware of it.
At least Pierre had Yuki. Brown butter and sesame seeds was, arguably, a better combination anyway. More distinctive, with each scent bringing out the best in the other. There were all sorts of pairs that had that effect on each other: Lando and Oscar, George and Alex, even Fernando and Lance.
Most famous, though, was his own pairing with Charles. The sweetest scent of all, being literal sugar and flowers. One flower, actually. The only one Max could identify by scent: lavender.
One of the first times Max raced in Suzuka, he had lavender soft serve from a café that made it from lavender freshly harvested in their own fields. It had tasted like sweet soap, and the first time he got a scented gift from Charles, he told himself that that was what the shirt would smell like.
He was wrong. Devastatingly wrong. The ice cream was a polite abomination. The shirt was… it was comfort in a bundle of fabric. The sweet warmth of it rolled through Max’s lungs and out into muscles that he hadn’t even realized were tense.
Even Daniel’s scent couldn’t compare.
Max was supposed to be the one who could get people drunk with his scent, but holding Charles’ scent close made Max feel like he was the insane one. From that very first heat when he was a teenager until now, Charles’ scent was the one he craved the most. Not just when he was in heat, either.
In 2023, when the fifteenth reporter in a row asked if he thought he was the best driver in the world and Max was close to ripping his head off from pure annoyance, Charles walked by and the gentle waft of his lavender sugar scent made Max’s face relax into the smile that he was obligated to put on.
The bastard reporter mentioned it in the caption of the video, and the fans latched onto that moment like it meant something deeper—like Max wanted Charles.
Just to be clear, who wouldn’t want Charles Leclerc? Monaco’s prince, Ferrari’s prince, the handsomest face on the grid, etc. Max didn’t think for a second that he was exceptional. In a way, this was helpful, because it meant that when he leaned too close to Charles during driver’s parades, it could be brushed off as typical behavior of someone in the vicinity of the sexiest driver of all time, or whatever the magazines were calling Charles nowadays.
Of course, the fans wouldn’t even let him have that.
“Ah, they are calling it lestappen. Cute, no?”
“No,” Max said stiffly. “It is not cute.”
“I like it.” Charles shrugged, putting his phone away. “Do you need a shirt?”
Lately, Charles had taken to offering his clothes at random times, and it was a little maddening.
“No. I’m not going into heat.”
Charles tsked disapprovingly. “I can never understand why you and Oscar do this to yourselves.”
“An omega needs pack scents if they’re in heat,” Max said, echoing what his father told him but leaving out his father’s addendum, and that’s why they’re weak little shits.
“Yes, but that is not the only time we need them.”
Max rolled his eyes. “You and I are different.”
“Not as much as you believe, I think.”
.
Trans-designation. What an interesting development. Max had tried to look out for the rookies, and he did have a bit of a soft spot for Kimi since the kid was getting so much media attention, but he’d completely missed this.
He had not even known that it was possible to just… say no to what your body insisted upon. To reject a secondary gender and simply take a new one on was not something Max had ever known was on the table. When he was seventeen and experiencing his first heats—late, because he’d presented late and presented wrong according to Jos—he told himself that he wished he could be an alpha.
Would that version of Max have actually gone through? Would he have made it so Kimi wasn’t the first? Max wasn’t completely sure, but he knew that he was happy to be an omega now.
The designation had grown on him after he watched Yuki make a fool out of himself for Pierre and Logan bin it into the wall when he was in rut—though he did do that when he wasn’t in rut, hadn’t he? The Williams hadn’t been the kindest to him.
When he was teammates with Alex, he quickly learned how wound-up an alpha could become if there weren’t any omegas around who needed their care and attention. Which was tough in Formula 1 because all the drivers wanted a certain independence from one another. Alex had just about lost his mind in the one rut he had with Red Bull.
After that, Max realized he didn’t really want to be an alpha. Besides, for as much as Jos hated it, there were benefits to being in the majority designation. The team never felt like they had to walk on eggshells around him, they just knew to scent him more. Seeing other omegas around didn’t agitate him at all, whereas a high concentration of alpha scents could bother an alpha, especially one near a rut. Plus, nests were nice and cozy.
Not that Max would readily admit that. The nest in his Monaco apartment was permanent—he wasn’t like Oscar, who famously revealed in an interview that he didn’t really get homesick for a nest at home because he only made nests when he was in heat—but it was quite small.
“This is embarrassing,” Charles said, nodding to the pile of blankets on the couch.
“What do you mean?”
“You call this a nest? It has, what, two scents? Three?” Charles frowned. “Who are these people?”
“My engineers,” Max said, rolling his eyes. “What, jealous?”
Charles stiffened. “I am doing you a favor.”
“Really? Because I don’t see you doing anything.”
This whole thing started—as many an unfortunate thing did—with Pierre. They’d been talking about nests, and when Pierre heard what Max’s setup was like, he’d sicced Charles on him to “make that house a home, you know?”
“I needed to see what it is that I am working with,” Charles said. He picked up a throw pillow that GP had scented. “Do you have your whole garage scent your things?”
“Do you?” Max asked, appalled by the very idea. That had to be so many people, right?
“If I am in heat.”
“Well, I’m not in heat, Charles. And my nest is fine.”
“Pierre does not think so.”
“Pierre has never even been here.”
Charles shrugged. “Is it okay if I scent this?”
Max blinked, looking first at the pillow in Charles’s hands, then at all the plain, unscented blankets Charles had access to. “Does it have to be that one?”
“It is what’s in my hands.” But there was a defensive edge in Charles’s tone.
“Sure,” Max said. “It was getting old. I’ll ask GP to do something else—”
“No.”
Max frowned. “What?”
“No. You do not need any other scents.”
“You were just saying that the nest doesn’t have enough scents!”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Charles said, rubbing the inside of his wrist against the pillow. Max could tell the second his scent took, because sweet lavender flooded the room. Charles’s smile was pure satisfaction.
A strange heat rose to Max’s face. “Okay.”
“So can I scent the other things?”
“As in the whole nest? Isn’t that a bit…” Max struggled for the word. “Forward?”
“Oh.” Charles placed the pillow down. “Did I misunderstand? I am sorry.”
“Misunderstand what?”
“I’m sorry,” Charles said, and he left without a further explanation.
Max was going to kill Pierre.
.
Within hours, Charles’s lavender-sugar scent pervaded the whole house. Max opened every window, then went out for a while, but when he returned, the scent remained strong as ever.
He felt like he was on the brink of losing his mind. Decades of training and focus unraveled in a cloud of sugar.
In Mexico, when the lights went out, Max tried to focus, but it was a frustrating start when the Ferraris squeezed him off the road. And all he could think about was the way he’d brought that pillow to his bed and held it as he slept, like a child holding a stuffed animal. It had felt right in the moment, but looking back, Max felt terribly embarrassed.
He recovered from the race start, but when he tried to make a lunge on Hamilton, he was too distracted by that lavender-scented memory to finish the move properly, and left the road once again.
For the rest of the race, he couldn’t stop chiding himself for the childish error. By the second-to-last lap, he was ready to make up for it by overtaking Charles and securing second, but then the virtual safety car kicked in and he was doomed to third.
A frustrating race, without a doubt, made more frustrating by his own failures.
.
Max had dealt with a lot of stupid media people, but it was one thing to have someone ask him invasive, annoying questions. It was quite another when they asked a rookie who’d just had his private life shared to the world, such a thing.
How fucking dare they, he seethed as he guided Kimi away from the media pen.
The pain on Kimi’s face was difficult to behold. Max didn’t know what to do to erase it. He only had a moment to flounder before Charles offered to scent him. Max nodded along quickly, willing to do anything.
“Yes, please,” Kimi said. His eyes between Max and Charles. “Uh, by who?”
“Whoever you want,” Max said quickly.
“Both,” Kimi said. Then, with a devious spark in his eyes, he added, “at the same time?”
Charles said, “That will be hard to fit, no?”
“We should do it,” Max rushed to say. “He has two glands, yes? On each side of the neck. We can…”
Charles’s smile was so innocent it hurt. “Okay,” he said.
What they were doing was supposed to be for Kimi. But when his neck was the only thing between Max’s face and Charles’s, when the lavender sugar in the air was so strong that Max could practically taste it… That didn’t feel like it was for anyone else at all.
At some point, Kimi walked away. And Charles was so, so close.
“Do you think he felt better?” Charles asked, straightening.
Max found himself brushing invisible dirt off his race suit. “Yeah. Yep. I think so.”
The corners of Charles’s eyes crinkled upwards. “Good, good.”
“You… It was, uh, a good idea.”
“Really? Because you look a bit…” Charles waved his hand around to gesture at Max’s whole face. “Sick.”
“I’m fine. Your scent is just very strong.”
“Is it better than George’s?”
Max was surprised by how much this clearly bothered Charles. “Yes. I am not scenting him all the time, you know.”
“Not when I am around?”
Max felt like Charles was pushing him into a verbal corner here, but all he could say was, “Yes.”
Charles looked inordinately pleased. “You’re not going into heat, are you?”
“No,” Max said. “I have two more months.”
“Ah. It is the same for me.”
It was basically the same for all the omegas on the grid, because they all had the same breaks, but something about the way Charles said it made a shiver run up Max’s spine.
Max cleared his throat. “That is good.”
“Is it?” Charles asked, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.
“We will, ah, be on break.”
“Yes. I will be in Monaco for my heat. Will you?”
He would be anywhere if Charles wanted. The second the thought passed through Max’s brain, he frowned. Since when did Charles have so much power over him?
“I think so, yes.”
“We should spend our heats together,” Charles said.
.
Max didn’t mull over these words every second he was free, why would you ask? He was most certainly not consumed with thoughts of Charles in his nest or himself in Charles’s. No. Absolutely not.
When the ridiculously short winter break began, he spent a perfectly normal amount of time checking his phone for elaboration from Charles.
And when Charles texted, has your heat started? Max took a respectable two seconds to respond: yes.
Come over, Charles responded.
Max was helpless to do anything but make his way to Charles’s apartment in the other part of the complex. The walk was short, and the ache in his chest made it somehow shorter and longer at once. All of a sudden, he was confronted with a door identical to his own.
I’m here, he texted, and the door swung open instantly.
Charles’s eyes were feverish. His perfect hair was plastered messily to his forehead. “Come here,” he said, dragging Max inside. “Come to the nest.”
Charles’s nest was like something out of a dream: a spread of soft, sweet-smelling fabrics piled so high that Max couldn’t see the bed underneath. Charles had clearly slept here a lot, too, because the almond note was so strong that Max felt like he was chewing on marzipan. But there was no other scent interrupting the haze of sugar.
“Where are the other drivers’ things?” Max asked.
Charles shook his head. “I do not want them now. I only want you.”
Max had never heard such beautiful words. He purred, and Charles grinned.
“Aww, you are so cute when you are not pretending to be an alpha.”
“I never pretend that,” Max argued, annoyed. “I am happy to be an omega.”
Charles laughed. “I know. I said it badly, I apologize. I meant that you’re cute when you are in heat. You’re just like a cat.”
“Thank you?”
“It’s a good thing,” Charles reassured him. “Here, let me scent you.”
Max immediately acquiesced, baring his neck for Charles. When Charles pressed his nose into the junction of his neck and shoulder, Max immediately understood what his father meant about scenting being addictive.
If Daniel’s sweetness drained the tension from Max’s body, Charles’s scent was like an injection of pure sugar right into his veins, making him feel more alive. His vision sharpened, his thoughts drifted away, and he was perfectly here, in the moment that he realized, quite suddenly, he did deserve.
It was sweeter than a win.