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Max has always had bruises growing up.
Jos was never the kindest with his lecturing, always punishing and barely ever understanding, and being in the junior formulas certainly didn’t help keeping his body unharmed. So when he told his parents that the newly acquainted nasty bruise in his ribs wasn’t his doing, of course no one believed him.
But he knew. When Max was as young as eleven, he knew that someone, somewhere else was bruised badly enough that the imprint on his own body lasted almost a whole month. The skin was tender to the touch, different tones of purples and reds and yellows blooming across his ribs from the side of his chest to his back, coloring almost the whole expanse of his left.
Max would’ve recalled an accident like that, of course. He might be daft but he isn’t stupid.
So, soulmate it is.
Of course, soulmates weren’t a common occurrence nowadays and none of the Verstappens had ever had one before, so it would’ve been far fetched to just assume that this was his case if it weren’t for the fact that by the time he was seventeen, half a dozen bruises coloredhis body in places no one had ever touched – like his neck and collarbones and groin.
So fine, this was the game they were playing.
Certainly his soulmate was no stranger to the fact that Max existed, considering Max has been hurt more frequently than he can remember his whole life. Max has been in karting accidents as soon as he could walk, has had the imprints of his father’s fingers dug into his arms more times than he can remember.
But the bruises his soulmate took to sharing between them felt punishing, nowadays. Why would he bother with someone when he certainly knew Max existed? Surely it was a matter of time until they found each other.
The paper cuts, the belt-buckles stamps, the falling and fighting bruises, the whatever-that-big-bruise-was; all that Max could take. But the hickies and scratches on his back were just ridiculous, at that point.
It’s almost like his soulmate did it just to spite him.
It also didn’t help that because Max’s soulmate was so much of a slut, he got the fame of being a player too. Phrases like Oh Verstappen, who’s the lady that bit your neck off? and Did Max get in a fight with a vacuum? and What animal attacked your back, mate? were a usual occurrence in his day to day life, and Max couldn’t just say Actually, Jimmy, this was just my soulmate having the time of his life yesterday! Good for them, right? because knowing that himself was already embarrassing enough.
The worst of it all was that, at the time, he had been a virgin – all the while his own body was anything but.
And the thing was, why would you bother with other people when you knew your soulmate was out there somewhere? Wouldn’t you want all those experiences to be with them?
Max had been naive to think that just because he had such a rare and special bond with someone, love would’ve been a sure thing in his life.
Max is not naive anymore.
He’d given up the fantasy that his soulmate gave a shit about him around the time he was moved up to Red Bull and the whole world looking at him felt like almost enough attention for him to ignore the gnawing at his gut that screamed with the need of someone he didn’t even know.
The last of his naivete and romanticism was lost about the same time his virginity was – and he certainly did not think about how his body recalled the feeling of nails digging at his back and mouths biting blood pools into his shoulder when he himself had never experienced that before. He did not think about how, for once, his soulmate would walk around with marks that weren’t his either. He didn’t.
More times came after that one, and the bruises that littered his body became a shared curse, for once. But he didn’t think about it – not even when someone somewhere dug so deep into the hickey his girlfriend had left on his hip that Max had lost his breath mid conversation, clicking his jaw shut not to scream into his physio’s face.
Two could play a game.
He didn’t think of how he’d seek girls for the sake of the marks they’d leave on his body, how willing they were at being rough with him. And when none satiated the hunger for punishment, he started looking for men instead – and those started using force enough that would be sure to knock someone off center, which was not at all the reason why Max seeked them, of course.
The racing and training helped too. His body was somehow always sore, like his bones were constantly tired of carrying two bodies at once. And he didn’t think of how sometimes he would spring awake with the feeling of a helmet digging to the back of his head when he was on an off week, not because it wasn’t true but because he couldn’t afford to. Because he was too familiar with the feeling to not recognize it immediately, and because that would mean that whoever shared the other half of his body was-
It was useless to think of it.
His soulmate, whoever they were, was a dick and they didn’t deserve that Max would spare them a thought. They didn’t deserve it. No matter that they were hurt and far closer than Max imagined, maybe even within reach. No matter that they were the only thing Max had to hold onto when he was teen and his father kept screaming in his face that he was unlovable if he couldn’t succeed, the only certainty he had that someone out there cared for him – because even that turned out to be untrue.
They didn’t deserve Max to care, because they hadn’t waited for Max. They hadn’t looked for him. They hadn’t-
His breath gets knocked out of his lungs, a hit strong enough that his vision blurs and he loses control of the car. The qualifying gets red flagged somewhere between Max blacking out and his car finding the wall.
The first thing he recognizes when he comes to is GP’s voice is his ear, asking again and again if he’s okay, which Max can only manage a groan as confirmation.
There’s someone trying to pull him from his car, hands hosting him up, and by the time his vision clears, he can see an agglomerate of helmets surrounding him.
“What happened?” Max manages to say, pushing himself up from his seat with wobbly hands. There’s at least four marshals around him, most trying to help him out of his car. His vision is still foggy.
“Oh, thank God. Are you okay, Max?” GP says instead, voice echoey in his ears.
“I’m okay,” Max dismisses, like he dismisses the marshals around him to push himself the rest of the way off, “now tell me what happened.”
“I’m not sure, Max,” his engineer says, voice drifting off. Max is almost sure he’ll leave it at that when he adds; “Russell lost control of his lap behind you, but he was too far behind for the debris to get to your car. Then you drifted off. We’re thinking there’s something wrong with the tra-”
“Russell hit the wall? Is he okay?” Max interrupts to ask when his brain catches up, shoving not so gently at the marshals that keep trying to guide him to the medical car, turning back to the track to look for the medical car, which he finds a few ways to his left. He can’t see Russell’s car from there.
GP doesn’t answer immediately, and Max can feel his heartbeat echoing in his ears the whole time he waits. His engineer sounds unsure when he finally says; “He went over the barrier, nothing from him yet.”
Max doesn’t think before he takes off running. The track is large, of course it is, and he can hear the medical team going after him but the more he runs, the more debris appears in his field of vision, a larger group of marshals waiting ahead as his steps pick up pace. It feels like he’s been running forever before he gets to the site of Russell’s crash, pieces of the silver arrows car littering the track all the way to the tyre walls and then after it, car upside down where the fence surrounding the stands begins.
He can feel hands grabbing at him but none are strong enough to stop him from jumping on top of the tyre wall and running as fast as he can to the car.
There’s something pressing down on his chest, a continuous ache between his ribs that shortens his breath but he ignores it and runs faster, right until he’s beside the three marshals trying to flip Russell’s car up and a slice of a blue helmet meets his field of vision.
He helps push the car up before he can think otherwise, Russell’s head flopping to the side as they manage to get the car facing sideways. It’s only then that Max sees that Russell’s wheel has gone part loose and is pressing down at his chest, keeping him trapped in the seat.
And if he focuses hard enough, Max can even tell the shape of the buttons that press down on George’s chest, because they match the ones on his own skin.
He lets go of the car to bend down and reach into George’s seat, pulling the wheel free and feeling as his own chest makes room for more air. The entire world fades around him as he sees Russell- no, not Russell, his soulmate lies unmoving between the little that’s left of his cockpit.
He can’t tell exactly when the marshalls manage to pull George out, just that they have and are carrying him back across the barrier.
And then he sees nothing else, falling limp across the tire wall.
Medical doesn’t clear him from the race tomorrow, but Max only half hears as the doctor explains what type of rest and medicine he needs, his focus somewhere else entirely.
It’s almost midnight by the time he gets cleared to head back to his hotel, half a hundred missed calls on his phone that he ignores completely to open the GPDA chat instead and look for George’s number, pressing the call button before he can form a coherent thought.
The call answers after the fifth ring, which Max only knows because he counted.
“Verstappen?” The voice that answers is rough but unmistakably George’s, sounding muffled on the other side of the line.
“It’s you, you fucking idiot,” Max says, exasperated and out of breath suddenly. Then before George can say anything, he adds; “Are you okay? Where are you?”
George laughs, fucking laughs, on the other side of the line. The absolute idiot. “Don’t tell me you just figured that out.”
“What the fuck are you laughing at, you moron?” Max says, voice coming out angrier than he intended. Then George lets out a pained cough and the anger immediately washes out of him. “Just tell me where you are, please.”
“I’m at the hospi-”
“Yeah, no shit, so am I.” Max doesn’t let him finish, checking the open doors looking for a familiar face as he walks down the hallway. “I mean where in the hospital?”
“I’m not sure-”
“Just fucking check, alright? Don’t make me fucking ask the receptionist and make a scen-”
“You always make a scene-”
“I am not kidding, Russell. Just crane your head and fucking look, why don’t you?”
George groans on the other side of the phone, but Max can hear him moving, which is why he doesn’t say anything else while he waits. It seems like it takes him forever, but realistically it only takes George a couple seconds to say; “The room across mine is 304.”
Max hangs up before George can say anything else, rushing down the stairs with his heart stuck on his throat, watching as the numbers go down on the corridor and not slowing down his step until he’s bursting through the door of room 303 without bothering to check who’s inside, closing the door behind himself.
When he looks inside the room, the entire world seems to blur around Russell's slim frame on top of the hospital bed. He looks pretty even then, with his cheeks hollow and bruises coloring up to his neck that Max doesn’t need to look in a mirror to know that they match the ones in his body.
“You fucking dipshit,” is the first thing Max says, that ends up being the only one because the next second he’s crossing the room and pulling George up by the neck to kiss him in the mouth.
His mouth tastes copper, blood coloring his lips a soft share of red that Max could taste as soon as he woke up on his own bed. George has the habit of worrying at his lips, which Max not only knows because it has split his own lips multiple times but also because he’s noticed George do it before, albeit unconsciously.
The kiss is soft as anything, both their bodies far too strained to require anything more of them, but George still meets him halfway and when they part his mouth hangs open, in surprise or maybe something else.
Max holds their foreheads together for a couple seconds, or maybe for eternity, it’s hard to tell, before he lets go of him to sit on the side of his bed.
George just stares at him a little dumbfounded for a few beats, until his mouth breaks open in a grin and he’s laughing again a beat later.
“What are you laughing at, now?” Max says, pushing for anger and landing somewhere else entirely. Fond, maybe.
“It’s just-” He says, then can’t because he’s laughing too hard to form a sentence. The groan of pain is the only thing that seems to break his resolve, but he’s still smiling after it. “I just don’t understand how you didn’t connect the dots earlier.”
“Oh, because you had?” Max pokes at the center of his chest, just because he knows it will hurt. He can feel where the pad of his finger touches George’s hospital garment inside his own shirt.
George rolls his eyes at him. Max could punch him in the face, but they already have enough bruises as it is.
“Of course I did,” George says, instead, posh as ever, accent pulling on his vowels. “I’ve known for years, mate.”
Max feels a pang in his chest that goes deeper than the bruises. He doesn’t mean for his voice to sound as hurt as it does when he says; “And you just… didn’t tell me?”
“I thought you knew-”
“Of course I hadn’t fucking known, do you think I wouldn’t have reached out if I had?”
George laughs, except it’s bitter now. It looks pretty in his face all the same. “Yeah, Max.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, I think you wouldn’t have reached out. You’re you.”
Max almost can’t believe George has the fucking courage to say that, considering it was George who gave up on him before they had ever-
Well. Now that he thinks of it, had George given up on him?
He remembers George’s eager eyes when they first met, the way he seemed to look up at Max when Max wasn’t even looking. Remembers his attempt at being friends that went mostly ignored, but Max hadn’t-
He hadn’t known.
Had George?
“How long?” Max says, and then doesn’t finish his sentence because George understands exactly what he means. Maybe always has, because he is his soulmate and maybe that’s what soulmates do.
“Since we were sixteen, I think. Maybe longer.”
“But you-” Max tries, but the words get stuck on his throat beside his heart. He pushes them out anyway; “What about all those people, George? I don’t understand.”
“Figured you weren’t interested,” George says, a smile wholly untrue crossing his lips. He looks away from Max to say; “You can’t blame me for trying to get your attention. Did it even work?”
“Did it even-” It’s Max who laughs now, a guttural thing. “Of course it fucking worked, what do you think, you idiot.”
“Well, so there’s that,” George laughs too, and he’s not exactly looking at him but he also is.
There’s nothing else to say – or maybe there is, but Max can’t conjure the words out. The silence that settles allows him to notice George better, all the bruises on his skin that match the ones he carries to the inch.
And then he thinks of everything that George has had to carry with him his whole life.
When Jos hit Max, he was hitting them both. He almost can’t bear to imagine how scared George must’ve felt when he was a kid and had shown up with bruises the size of his arm when Max’s father had been particularly rough with him, walking around with the weight of Max’s failures before George could even conceptualize the thought of what a soulmate was.
Maybe, to George, that was that being soulmates was. Pain.
Not his own, but Max’s. What was a comfort for Max’s entire life, the knowledge that someone carried his hurt with him, had maybe felt like a punishment to George – one he never deserved.
Max isolated George in his pain, and grew up to demand from him a loyalty to someone he never knew and only ever hurt him. Max grew up to resent the pleasure George sought when that was the only thing his soulmate never gave him. And then sought to punish George for it.
“Will you stop with that?” George says, breaking Max out of his thoughts, now properly looking at him again.
“Huh?”
“You always do that when you’re thinking,” George points to his hand, which Max hadn’t realized was held in a fist till now. When Max opens his hand, there’s fingers indents in his palm. “We’re in enough pain as it is.”
His intestines do something funny at that – at hurting him, maybe. At being known, most likely.
“Sorry,” Max says, fully relaxing his hands now. He notices without meaning to that George has the same four fingernails scarred to his palm that Max has had his whole life.
Max is not a crier, but if he was maybe he would’ve cried just then.
“C’mon, lay down,” George scoots over to the corner of his small hospital bed, patting his side. “Let’s rest for a bit.”
“But what about-”
“We have our whole lives to discuss this,” George says, calmly as ever, and pets the bed again. “For now, I want to sleep.”
Max lays down before he can think otherwise, his back pressing to George’s front without having to scoot closer because of just how small the bed is.
They both feel the touch everywhere it hurts.
Everywhere it doesn’t, too.
Max only knows that they both feel it because he’s felt his soulmate’s body his whole life. Felt George’s body.
Max doesn’t really want to wait to talk about everything they have to say – so many words stuck on his throat he could throw up an entire dictionary.
But, as soon as George wraps his arm around him, he thinks that maybe he can wait.
After all, he’s waited his whale life, what’s one more day?