Chapter Text
2015
Max can smell the nest before he sees it—lavender, cedar, a faint warmth in the air that suggests someone tried. Max imagines the pack room is dimly lit, scattered with old hoodies and still-folded blankets, not quite lived-in, not quite neglected either. He wouldn’t know though, he’s never been inside.
He doesn’t go in now.
His hand hovers on the doorknob for too long. His fingers burn with possibilities, that maybe he’d enter and be accepted as part of the pack.
He just wants to feel the warmth, nothing more. See what it looks like, understand what a pack can be, what a home can be. He wouldn’t stay for long, not long enough that someone might see.
“Verstappen.”
He turns. Lewis.
His body goes rigid, fingers shaking at the implication of his stance. He feels like a thief caught red handed by the police, biding his time before they take him away to prison.
Lewis’ tone is clipped, unreadable. It's not the first time this weekend that Lewis has caught him hesitating, caught him outside of something—something the rest of them seem to fall into so easily.
Lewis never wanted Max around, that much was clear. None of the other racers had wanted him around.
“Just scouting it out,” Max says, casually to hide his obvious desire.
Lewis just nods and walks past him without another word, brushing the scent-marked edge of the doorframe with his shoulder as he enters.
Max’s eyes follow the tall figure wantonly. He lingers a moment longer, then walks away.
The pack formed years ago. Informally at first, just the way drivers gravitated to each other when off the track. Mark and Seb had been the heart of it then, magnets to everyone else, and Lewis, like a pillar around which everything orbited.
When Max first appeared on the grid, the other drivers’ eyes watched him with animosity and disbelief. When they spoke about him in their post-race conferences, their words were laced with mistrust and disdain. When they interacted with Max, it was only out of necessity and it was always obvious that he was never welcome in their personal circles.
The pack was finally formed when Charles showed up on the grid, the young alpha sparking kinship and omega instincts in Seb. They formally declared a grid pack with their first pup being Charles.
Max was not invited.
Not then. Not ever.
He was sharper-edged, too fast, too cold.
When other younger drivers on the grid started to be included, Max ached. Carlos had tried bringing him into the pack room, cozying up to him around the paddock and generally integrating the young omega into grid life. But, the other racers had no desire to support Carlos’ obvious attempts at including Max which led to him telling Carlos to stop trying. It okay though, that’s what he told himself.
By the time the 2025 rookies started arriving, things had shifted. The grid pack was different, rookies were adopted immediately upon their entry into Formula 1.
Max didn't mean to get involved. Truly.
2025
The sun beats down, after qualifying at the Australian Gran Prix. Max is walking outside the Mercedes garage on his way to Red Bull debriefs when Kimi pads up with an awkward smile.
Max had met the young racer before, but their first interaction was a short quip at one of the opening galas.
“You are so fast.” Kimi remarks, gazing at the seasoned professional with awe. If Max didn’t know any better he’d say Kimi has that sort of look used only for idols, but he knows he is not Kimi’s idol.
No, that is always reserved for Lewis.
“Thank you,” Max says, thrusting his bottle of water towards the young rookie concerned for his health in the heat. He doesn’t want any of the new pup’s collapsing.
Kimi’s eyes go wide and he takes the bottle with a questioning look.
“You look like you need it more than me,” Max shrugs. He stands there waiting, watching as Kimi gulps down water hungrily, obviously in need of hydration.
When the bottle is almost completely finished, Kimi pulls away and blushes brightly.
“I’m sor–” the rookie begins but before he can finish Max holds up his hand.
“Don’t apologize.” He smiles, giving Kimi a sweet pat on the cheek. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Max watches as the kid pads away after their short tender conversation and he thinks about himself at that age. He was so brash back then, what would his experience have been like if he was more like Kimi.
There was, of course, no world where he could ever be like Kimi. His father had cut that soft sweet part of him out long before he had even stepped into a single seater.
Still, he wonders.
Ollie, Gabi and Fernando are laughing at Max's comments, joy etching its way onto their faces. That’s when a black microphone sneaks its way over their conversation and Max’s eyes are caught onto it immediately. He knows what these monitored conversations can do and he feels weirdly protective of the two rookies (three really) right in front of him.
“Fucking Netflix,” Max calls pushing away a microphone that has been suspended over the conversation. The drivers around him are laughing heartily at his attack on the network, looking over at the camera crew apologetically.
“Mate, I don’t think we can do that.” Ollie exclaims unwrapping his arms from behind his back and pitching forwards in a laugh that results in him leaning on Max. Max wraps his arm around the teenager quickly stabilizing them both.
“It’s fine,” Max smiles at the rookie giving him a soft clap on the back.
“Max is always like this with the press,” Fernando teases, causing Gabi to break out into a knowing laugh.
“I know, speaking with him on redline, he complains always,” the rookie exclaims. Max blows at the young racer playfully.
‘Shut up,” Max huffs, although he smiles satisfied with his ability to bring some comfort to the rookies in their very first season.
Liam races after Max with the other rookies trailing behind. Max notices this gathering and waits up mildly for the new drivers to catch up with him so they can continue their conversations from before the media shoot.
“How can we improve? Just tell us how,” Liam whines giving Max an almost puppy-dog smile, incredibly unbecoming of a newly presenting alpha. Max smiles at Liam cheekily although he knows with anymore prying from the rookies he will give them all of his trade secrets.
“I can’t tell you, then you’ll beat me and you have so much time left but I have very little,” Max jokes, swinging his arm around Liam while pinching Kimi in the side next to him. Kimi shouts slightly at the ticklish gesture, jumping away from the older omega.
“Please Maxie, “ Gabi continues, “You always help me.”
Max sighs thinking about any advice he can give the rookies that will aid in their efforts during races but honestly his driving style is too specific to the way he grew up. Max has no secrets, not when it comes to racing at least.
“Maybe,” Max smiles at them eliciting a groan from all the rookies, even Jack despite his shy and quiet demeanor.
“Ugh, but if we can’t talk to you about racing then what can we do?” Ollie retorts trying to get Max to concede.
Max wonders about the rookies and how this has happened, why they have all flocked to him despite his best efforts to separate from the pack. The rookies don’t belong to him, they belong to Lewis. They belong to the pack. His spending time with them, is pulling them away from relationships that matter way more.
“Why don’t you go to the pack room then?” Max continues, brushing off Ollie’s attempts and redirecting the race conversation away from things he can’t explain. “There’s activities there.”
Ollie and Kimi huff, but Isack lights up at the idea.
“We have a pack room?!” Isack shouts excitedly, causing a bit of fuss with the other rookies as some have the same realization and others laugh at their ignorance.
“We do, it’s really quite nice, let me take you guys!” Liam cries excitedly, dragging along Isack by the hand and forcing the rookies to follow him as the new leader replacing Max.
Max watches the group walk away, and when they notice his absence they turn around slightly, some giving him confused looks.
“Not coming?” Kimi asks, frowning, hope etching into his features in the most obvious way. Max feels bad about letting the young racer down, but he can’t go to the pack room. For well, pretty obvious reasons that the rookies don’t know.
He decides it’s easier though not to explain things and say “I have some Red Bull responsibilities,” to which the rookies nod knowingly.
They say their goodbyes quickly before running off in excitement to the pack room leaving Max in their wake with the slightest ache in his chest.
It’s easier if he doesn’t explain it, he convinces himself, but he can’t help but feel guilty for keeping things from them. For allowing them to believe he’s a part of the community that they all love.
But Max is not pack.
Max is not good with feelings, he never has been, yet when he sees Jack with red rimmed eyes and smells the sour scent of sadness, he springs into action.
The rookie is crouching in one of the alleys between racing hospitalites in the Paddock Club.
“Are you ok?” Max asks almost too harshly, approaching the rookie with care as if he would bolt at any moment. Max remembers moments like these from his first year with Toro Rosso. It gets so hard to prove yourself when it’s a bad car, but you know you have the potential, just no one else can see it. You feel stuck.
Jack whips around to him as soon as he hears his voice, eyes wide with a foreign kind of fear. Max crouches to his level looking at him with the softest eyes he can muster.
“Tell me Jack,” Max urges, although he waits patiently for the other driver to speak on his own terms.
The boy makes no sounds but angles his body towards Max and sits forward slightly pushing his arms outwards. Max quickly rubs the patched scent glands of his wrist gently on Jack’s. Jack shivers slightly as Max rubs over his freshly developed and sensitive beta glands. As the pheromones pours in, Max can see the younger boy instinctively calming.
“I’m sorry…” Jack starts, his eyes still teary and demeanor still down. His scent has improved but it’s still tangy with something hurtful.
“I’m so demoralized.” Jack continues looking up into Max’s eyes.
Max does not know what to say to that, because he wants to tell Jack it’s going to be okay, but it’s not. They both know it’s not going to be okay, and Jack is only going to get less confident and more inconsistent with his driving because he’s in a stupid fucking Alpine.
“Do you want a hug?” Max asks, offering his arms out, and as soon as he does Jack falls into them, leaning all the way into Max as if he is the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“I’ve got you.” Max whispers, rubbing Jack’s back giving him the space to feel every shitty feeling he was having.
It happens the first time when Max is in his driver's room getting undressed after a Grand Prix. The race was shit and he is pissed about it, but there was nothing he could’ve done and now he is so sick of feeling angry about it.
His dad will be mad.
A knock comes suddenly breaking him out of his thoughts, and the Dutch racer walks over to his door to crack it open. Upon opening it, he sees a collection of people he should have expected to see outside his room.
Isack is up front looking directly at him.
“Can we come in,” Isack asks, smiling sweetly at Max with a pleading look on his face. Max, inclined to say no, takes one good look at Kimi’s soft eyes, Ollie’s dejected look and Gabi’s tensed hands and realizes he has to.
Sadness clings to the mini racers. Max’s instincts are taking over and he rushes to part the door for the rookies. Immediately their faces light up as they pile inside his room.
“It’s really nice in here,” Kimi says immediately, startling Max. Kimi and Ollie plop down onto Max’s couch, snuggling into one of larger cushions together, clearly in a nesting attempt. Max is unfamiliar with nesting habits in general but can tell that the rookies could use a good nest at this moment. He begins gathering up some blankets and clean comfort clothes he has scattered around his closet to maybe, just maybe, attempt a nest.
“Is it not like your driver's room?” Max asks in his pursuit, concerned at the thought that maybe Mercedes was not giving Kimi a proper decompression space for after races.
“I mean it smells nice…” Kimi explains and something of a blush overtakes Max’s face at the thought.
He has never been one to smell good. With years of blockers and suppressants, Max thinks his scent has been dulled although it is nice to hear that the rookies appreciate it.
“Calming,” Jack follows up, using his very few words of the day. Max smiles at Jack, rustling his shoulder comfortingly.
“Yeah, I like it,” Gabi reiterates, grinning at Max before slotting next to Kimi and Ollie on the couch. Max lets the other rookies join them and continue in their banter while he begins assembling a nest around them on the fairly large couch.
He strips off his scent patches, carefully rubbing his scent over the blankets and cushions to give the rookies some comfort. He fusses with the layout of the nest wholly inexperienced in this venture but he continues until he believes it to be sufficient.
There in his room are the rookies cocooned in blankets and pillows that smell just like him and he can’t help but smile.
Soon Gabi pulls him down into the messy nest, nuzzling into his face. Max is tense at first, uncomfortable with this sort of domestic behavior, but as the milky underdeveloped scents of the younger drivers envelop him, he feels a deep sense of contentment.
Charles leans casually against the edge of the hospitality table, crossing his arms, a half-empty bottle of electrolyte water dangling from his fingers. Max feels him intensely observing the way he's wiping off condensation from his own bottle to collect into his hands and pat onto his face for some relief from the heat.
“You know,” Charles starts, voice light but laced with something playful and mischievous, “it’s kind of funny. Watching them, I mean.”
Max does not glance up from where he is wiping water on his face. “Who?”
“The rookies,” Charles prompts, and Max looks up at him immediately. “They trail after you like ducklings.”
Charles’ tone is caught between amusement and something fonder. “Ollie nearly ran into a post trying to catch up to you the other day. And I think Isack pretended to take the wrong exit just so he could ‘bump into’ you outside the simulator room.”
Max laughs at that, thinking about each of the younger boys climbing after him. “I don’t ask them to do that.” He laughs a little.
As Max mulls over Charles’ observations in his head however, he begins to feel a little bit uneasy about it. Is it incredibly noticeable that he is always with the rookies? The last thing he wants is to infringe upon pack territory and if Lewis starts to feel Max pulling pack mates away, he is certain things will get nasty.
Charles continues, “I know. That’s the weird part, they are so naturally drawn to you.”
Charles brings his arm around Max just as he did when they were younger, jostling him playfully. Max relishes in the closeness as he feels Charles’ forested scent overcome his senses.
Max continues to roll his eyes at Charles’ words asserting, “they just don’t know better yet.”
Charles tilts his head, studying Max with a little more weight. The thoughtful expression that sometimes graces his feature is present now and Max hates how transparent he feels. “Maybe they see something the rest of us took a little too long to notice.”
As soon as Charles says that, Max’s thoughts stop and his body tenses.
Those words hang in the air like condensation on glass and they are soft and uncomfortable. Max doesn’t answer, his fingers have since tightened around the bottle in his hand.
Charles doesn’t press.
Pushing off the table Charles finally says, “Next time you bring them into your nest, I would like an invite. Gabi never stops talking about it.” Max raises a brow at that statement feigning a cool exterior.
“Or you could come into the pack room?” Charles adds hopefully.
Max shoots him a look of disbelief and humour. “You are very funny Charles.” He laughs, but makes clear that he has no intention of ever doing that.
He doesn’t know why Charles would say something like that when he knows. He knows Max is not pack, everyone does.
They are in the Red Bull lounge waiting for an unusual VCarb Red Bull debrief. The air is heavy with post-race exhaustion but there is a certain glow that all the racers bask in knowing they have had good races.
Max is sitting in one of the corner chairs, scrolling mindlessly on his phone. There’s something crawling under his skin — not literally, but it feels close enough. A low, thudding vibration. The ache in his spine hasn't left since qualifying, and now the warmth in his chest won’t ebb, even in the cool of the lounge. He’d blamed the adrenaline. The hydration. The physicality of the race.
But now it just feels like something ticking.
He swallows down the dry knot in his throat. His shirt clings too tightly to his back. The light feels too sharp in the corners of his vision.
Max doesn’t want to name it.
Not yet.
He’s good at ignoring warning signs until it’s too late.
Then something small and sharp hits him square in the shin.
“Ow—what the hell?” Max scoffs and glances up sharply, finding a grinning Isack with his arm up and one socked foot raised mid-air.
He is missing a shoe.
“Sorry,” Isack chortles, not sounding sorry at all. “It slipped.” He giggles.
Max stares at the rogue sneaker now resting against his leg on the floor while he rubs his bruised shin with the back of his other leg. “Are you really throwing your shoes at people now? Is that going to be our new strategy?” Max asks with an incredulous look.
“I missed your attention. You’ve been brooding for twenty minutes.” Isack muses cheekily, leaning back, hands behind his head to create a picture of nonchalance.
“I don’t brood,” Max mutters, looking away and tossing the shoe back with a little more force than necessary.
Isack catches it immediately and retaliates by quipping “That’s your whole brand.”
Max narrows his eyes, “My brand is winning races, what’s yours?” Which causes Isack to guffaw in offense at the implication that he does not win.
“This is true,” Isack says dejectedly, suddenly contemplating his season thus far. He wishes, he wishes he was Kimi with a podium finish already, one of the youngest ever to do it and he wishes he had more points so he could be in the top ten of he drivers championship, and he wishes he was better.
Max watches the rookie sink into these thoughts, immediately regretting his words.
“You are a good racer, Isack. If only you could throw how you race,” Max insults, in an attempt to distract Isack, which seems to work because he smiles wide and warm at Max’s compliment.
Isack’s smile morphs in a beaming look and then with a sarcastic tone he responds with. “You say the sweetest things.”
Max huffs, the corner of his mouth twitching upward despite himself. “Whatever.” But he can’t help the grin that graces his face.
The hallway outside the sim room is quiet, the kind of stillness that rings in Max’s ears in the most pleasant way. It should be a painful memory of the hours he spent in his youth training to become a world class racer but those times in a gaming chair with a racing wheel gripped firmly in his hand, were when he felt the most peace.
Max didn’t mean to stop but he sees Ollie sitting cross-legged on the floor staring at a telemetry and he slows his steps.
The teenager is fiddling with the chin strap of his helmet with a look of furious determination, brows furrowed and mouth drawn tight.
Max chuckles and leans a shoulder against the wall attempting a menacing stance but he comes out looking more affectionate than anything.
“It’s not going to untangle itself,” Max laughs.
Ollie looks up from his screen and as soon as he sees Max crinkles into a smile. “Oh. I didn’t see you.” Ollie sighs, continuing to pull on the helmut strap.
Max presses forward, approaching Ollie. “You okay?”
Ollie hesitates. “Just a rough run. Couple of mistakes. Felt like I was dragging the whole car backwards.”
“You weren’t,” Max says simply. “If anyone was dragging something backwards, it was Logan.”
That makes Ollie laugh, small and involuntary.
It feels good.