Chapter Text
The first thing Carlos noticed about Max Verstappen was that the blond absolutely hated certain types of losses.
Actually scratch that, the first thing Carlos noticed, way back in 2015 Toro Rosso when they were both bright-eyed and hopeful and looking forward to life in F1, was that his new teammate was striking. Maybe not conventionally handsome, not polished or mature (he was barely 18 after all) but beautiful in a raw, brash manner. It was particularly the wild yet controlled storm contained behind his appropriately coloured eyes that had the dual effect of drawing Carlos in while also fuelling his competitiveness.
They’d been good teammates, he likes to think. They’d brought out the best in each other and Carlos had enjoyed being the older one, had enjoyed the feeling of having Max skittishly seek him out in moments of vulnerability.
Carlos had heard about Max before they’d become teammates, of course. There hadn’t been a plethora of positive reviews, bar on his driving. It had been common then, and the trend has certainly continued through the years, that one could not honestly criticize Max’s many flaws without grudgingly agreeing that he was a phenomenal driver. But as Carlos would come to know later, Max absolutely deserved the praise on his driving. Carlos had seldom seen a driver as obsessed with the sport as the young Dutchman. Even as a young rookie, the hours and lap times he’d logged into the simulator had been downright insane. It was thus a foregone conclusion that Max, of course, hated losing.
But Carlos had quickly realised that the blond had a unique rationality to that as well. For all that he’d been a child unceremoniously yet inevitably thrust into the spotlight, and the popularity (both positive and negative) he’d gained at such an impressionable age, Max had been astonishingly mature in his philosophies. Despite, and Carlos believes he’s being very generous here, the frankly horrific circumstances of his upbringing, it seemed like Max had managed to retain more maturity than the man who claimed to be his parent.
Max did not hate strategic losses. Not bad pit windows or safety cars or untimed tire strategies that came part-and-parcel with a sport where every small decision had a hand in the result. Max usually swallowed those with the grim acceptance of a man who believed in the art of racing and considered probabilities as things that happened to other people.
No. Max hated being beaten by someone who saw him. Him. The man behind the wheel. Max hated losses where he could blame no one but himself. It was a strange dichotomy where he absolutely loved wheel-to-wheel battles but then hated whenever he fell short of his own standards.
Which is why the atmosphere inside the garage after qualifying in Montreal feels like a bomb waiting to blast at the most inopportune moment.
Carlos pulls off his balaclava slowly, pretending not to notice the silence around the engineering station. Mechanics keep their heads down, pretending to fiddle with any available object in their near vicinity. GP’s voice crackles through some monitor. Laurent is pretending to be fascinated by timing sheets that have been discussed in at least 4 meetings in the last 24 hours.
P2.
P1.
Three hundredths.
Carlos’ name above Max’s.
Again.
He can feel Max staring at him before he actually looks over.
“You done admiring yourself?” Max asks, in the flat tone he gets when he’s trying to come across as nonchalant. The tips of his ears are violently red, but then his face is still faintly flushed so it must be the high from the qualifying.
Carlos grins immediately, can’t resist the instinctual reflex going back to their days in the Red Bull rookie trenches. “You should try it sometime. Very healthy for confidence.”
“There’s a line between confidence and narcissism.”
“Ah you and your big English words. My confidence is incredible.” Carlos tosses his gloves onto a desk. “Maybe you should ask the team to build you a faster car.”
Someone nearby chokes on air. A faint ripple of laughter echoes in the room. Max’s lips pull up into a smirk even as his eyes narrow.
There it is. That spark. The thing the media keeps calling tension, rivalry, instability, chemistry. Carlos privately thinks it feels much more like standing too close to an electrical fire.
“You think you’re funny,” Max drawls.
“I know I’m funny.”
“You’re annoying.”
“And yet,” Carlos says lightly, “you keep talking to me.”
For one dangerous second Max looks like he might smile. Instead he rolls his eyes and walks away. Carlos convinces himself that the little hitch of breath that he heard must have been his imagination. Pretends not to notice his own pulse suddenly racing harder than it had even in qualifying.
There was a time when Carlos had hated getting separated from Max. He had convinced himself that it was because Max was the one getting promoted and not him. Had told his mother and his entire family that he was just worried about his own career, had convinced Franz and all the mechanics that he was just focussing on improving his own racecraft.
He had looked his father in the eye and told him that Max deserved the seat in Red Bull and he’d meant it. He’d parroted the same set of words to Daniil and Pierre and Sean and Nico, and into every microphone that had been thrust into his face as he’d shifted to Renault. Could still feel the phantom mix of bitterness and pride as he’d said Yes Max deserves the seat. He’s a phenomenal driver. I am focussed on improving and I’m going to race him at the front soon.
Had said the same words in the same order to Max himself, cowering behind the shield of sportsmanship to justify the sudden space he’d created. Max had been Max, blunt and honest and so very brave as he’d all but begged Carlos to stop treating him differently, to stop behaving like Max was an alien. And Carlos had known how lonely Max was on the grid, how isolated he’d felt at the older drivers’ ignorance, and yet he’d taken the knife already stabbed into Max’s armour and twisted it deeper. Had convinced himself that it was better for both of them to maintain a level of professionalism in their friendship. Had pretended not to notice the slight sheen in Max’s eyes when he’d stepped back from the younger’s attempted hug.
And so it had continued.
Through Toro Rosso and Renault and McLaren, through changing teammates and temporary girlfriends, Carlos had watched Max grow into a skilled driver whose rise in the points table seemed directly proportional to his distance from Carlos. And then 2019 had brought Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, George Russell and Alex Albon into the mix. Charles, who’d brought with him a joint history of 15 years with Max. Alex, who’d joined Max at Red Bull, a seat that was once meant for Carlos. George, who’d known Max in karting. And Lando, who was apparently friends with Max.
It had been easy, till then, to lie to himself. But once he’d joined McLaren, Lando and Max’s friendship had placed him back into Max’s orbit yet again, and he’d been forced to come to the conclusion that he missed Max. There was a certain comfort that had bloomed between them as teammates, that he’d yet to feel with anyone since. And don’t get him wrong, Lando was wonderful, fun and youthful and so fucking genuine, always looking to Carlos for guidance, eyes sparkling and curls bouncing.
And it had felt so good to let himself get lost in that friendship, to bask in the knowledge that his new younger teammate definitely had a puppy crush on him, to feel admired and loved. And maybe it would have been so much easier for him to fall in love with Lando, and then maybe he would have stayed on at McLaren (and then maybe he would’ve faced the same fate there too. Carlos is convinced that no possible decision would have changed the eventual trajectory of his life. He would always be the spare driver, in every universe, in every team).
But Carlos’ heart did not belong to him anymore. Hadn’t been his since that one afternoon in fucking 2016 when Max had won his debut race in Red Bull in Carlos’ fucking home and had somehow been insane enough to kiss Carlos in the shed behind the Toro Rosso motorhome before the podium. Carlos can still remember in 8-dimensional quality, the exact feel of the Red Bull fireproofs under his hands as he’d gripped Max’s waist, can taste Max’s sweat and tears on his tongue and can feel his heart give out from fear and exhilaration and dread and terror. Can hear Max’s wounded little whimper as Carlos had shoved him back, can see the sheer heartbreak in Max’s eyes as Carlos had brutally turned him down and berated him for being so fucking stupid baboso, what if someone had seen?
And that had been the end of it.
Max had met him at the next race like normal and they had talked like normal and it had almost felt like they were back to being cordial colleagues slash ex-teammates. Max had given no inkling of any residual hard feelings, and his aggressive nonchalance towards Carlos, paired with his increasing closeness to Daniel had meant that no one on the grid had suspected anything. Hell if Carlos didn’t remember the acute pain of breaking his own heart and feeling like he’d swallowed a knife anytime he found himself near the Dutchman, he too would’ve thought that they were just colleagues.
2021 felt like salvation. Carlos finally allowed himself to breathe. Cautiously hoped that his struggle for a seat was finally over, tried to believe that if a team like Ferrari wanted him then that meant that he’d finally made it. Charles was an amazing teammate and it became obvious from the get-go that they would be good friends. For the first time in what felt like forever, he had a team that felt like his own, and he had a car that performed. The sheer myth and legacy associated with wearing the Rosso Corsa made all the frustrating race results and bad strategy calls seem worth it. Carlos Sainz Jr, Formula 1 driver for Scuderia Ferrari. It had a nice ring to it.
But Ferrari meant Charles, and Charles meant an increasingly intimate knowledge of Max. It wasn’t as if Charles was doing it on purpose (at least, Carlos doesn’t think he was. After all, what would’ve been the point?). Charles had practically grown up racing against Max, and they had been friends in the tiny pockets of time where their rivalry had not meant Jos’ raised voice in Max’s ear. It was, of course, impossible for Charles to not mention Max at all in any conversation. And so Carlos resigned himself to being helplessly fed mundane details about Max’s childhood that he meticulously filed into a neat little box in his head for… future reference? For motivation to beat Jos up?
Charles and Alex, and George and Pierre and Esteban were all rigidly tight-lipped about anything related to Jos Verstappen’s handling of his son, but there were times when Charles slipped up and casually mentioned a slap with a wrench or a mysterious bruise or Max’s aversion to absolute silence and dark spaces and suddenly Carlos would be filled with an insane urge to wrap the younger blond in a blanket and hug him till he forgot all about his sorry excuse of a father.
And so what if Charles and Max suddenly became the internet’s favourite couple and people started shipping them like crazy? So what if people claimed them to be soulmates and praised their iconic rivalry and went mad over their non-stop yapping sessions? So what if Max and Charles themselves seemed to enjoy it and genuinely started spending more time together? Carlos was fine with it. He was a perfectly well-adjusted adult. He knew how to deal with his feelings. He definitely didn’t want to rip them apart and lock them in their respective driver’s rooms.
Besides, people loved shipping him with Charles too. Hah take that! So he did what any sane person would do, and pretended even more like he did not care what Max did or said. Pretended like it did not tear his heart into two to hear Max refer to the “inchident” multiple times, pretended to ignore when the Red Bull admin posted Lestappen podium pictures, pretended that he was perfectly happy only being best friends with Charles and Lando.
There was one time, and Carlos counts it as singular due to its intensity rather than its frequency, when he felt himself standing on the knife edge of giving in to temptation. Max won his first Championship, fighting and clawing his way onto the top step against Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes, face glowing with happiness and radiating satisfaction. And Carlos felt it. That pull. That magnetic pulse inside him that told him to just go for it. To push Max into his driver’s room and taste that championship champagne off his lips. To feel that smile with his mouth and have those winning hands wrap around his neck. He knew, somewhere in his gut, that Max wouldn’t be opposed to it. Would like it, even. He let the feeling flow through him, consume him from head to toe for a minute. And then he tamped it down under every other such impulse he’d felt for almost 5 years.
When Max finally made it to him at the championship party hosted afterwards, Carlos hugged him to his chest for 5 whole minutes. Let himself feel so fucking proud of the shy, awkward kid who’d achieved the very thing they all dreamt of. Let himself feel all the love and affection and care and devotion that had consumed him from the moment a 19-year-old Max had fallen asleep in his arms under a desk in Christian’s office. And when Max finally stepped out of the hug, Carlos let himself look into those bright blue eyes and allowed Max’s happy little giggles to wash over him, content in the knowledge that the blond wouldn’t remember a single minute of the night.
Max won three more Championships, broke records left right and center, became near untouchable as he went from Crashstappen to Mad Max to the Rain of Milton Keynes. Carlos drove for Ferrari, won some races, lost more than he won, felt himself grow hungrier for more with each passing season, and watched as the strategy decisions on the Ferrari pit wall grew increasingly skewed towards the other side of the garage.
And then, because he would always, always end up with the short end of the stick, he realised that Ferrari was going to let him go. He sat through meetings and drove races and gave interviews, all while processing the humiliating realisation that he had become dispensable yet again. He would have to go to a midfield team. Become a “development driver.” Watch Lewis and Charles be hailed as the dream team for Ferrari.
(Max had texted, just once, when the rumours had started circulating of Lewis’ move from Mercedes. It had been a short paragraph, each word ringing with sincerity, almost physically forcing Carlos to hear the blunt, simple praises in Max’s raspy voice, phantom lisp curling around the syllables of Carlos’ name. The message had been devoid of ornamentation, simply stating that Carlos was one of the few drivers on the grid who used his brain along with his driving skills, and that any team would be beyond lucky to have him drive their car.
Max had always been publicly disparaging of Ferrari’s strategy calls, usually with respect to Charles losing, and it had been a shot of euphoria to hear Max repeat those very admonishments all the more vehemently in Carlos’ defense. Carlos hadn’t been able to bring himself to reply, but the text had been meticulously saved and had since been transferred to every single device he owned. Carlos would have gotten it tattooed across his chest if he hadn’t been deathly afraid of needles.)
He knew, even as he signed the contract in James Vowles’ office, that Williams wouldn’t satisfy him. Wouldn’t fill the hunger, the gnawing ache inside him that had festered to a rot as he’d heard his father swallow his pride and contact Jos Verstappen to try for a Red Bull seat yet again. No, Williams was always going to be a placeholder, until Carlos could prove himself all over again.
But in all the probable universes, in all his wildest dreams, after the Horner scandal and the new regulations and Lando finally winning the numero uno, Carlos would never have expected Laurent Mekies to pitch for him as the second Red Bull pilot. Again. 10 years since he and Max got separated, and the universe was bringing them together again. If Carlos was more religious, he would consider this a divine signal. Sitting in yet another meeting room, this time in Milton Keynes, with both Laurent and Max sitting around the same table as him, Carlos finally lets himself take a deep breath.
He is home.
And he is here to stay.