Chapter Text
The paddock at Yas Marina looked holy beneath floodlights.
Not beautiful, Formula 1 outgrew beauty years ago. Beauty implied softness and humanity, something tender enough to touch. No, Abu Dhabi looked manufactured in the image of gods who had forgotten definition of mortality. White marble glowing beneath artificial light. Hospitality suites stacked like jewelry boxes above the pit lane. All polished chrome and wealth obscene enough to make the ocean itself seem decorative.
The entire place smelled of hot brakes, sea salt, and money.
Izuku Midoriya stood on the second-floor balcony of the Red Bull motorhome and watched mechanics wheel tire trolleys down the pit lane beneath the glare of floodlights. Soft compound C5s wrapped in heated blankets. Engineers with tablets tucked beneath their arms and headsets buzzing with fragmented radio chatter.
FP3 had ended less than an hour ago. Qualifying started in twenty minutes.
Below him, his RB sat inside the garage beneath fluorescent light with its nose cone removed, mechanics swarming it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts. The matte navy livery drank in the light. The car always looked fastest under night races. Navy blue bodywork cut with violent streaks of red and yellow like the car itself had been painted to resemble impact.
Car One.
Car Two.
Equal machinery, equal upgrades, and an equal chance at pole.
Christian Horner once said managing Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya in the same garage was like storing dynamite beside an open flame and praying neither noticed.
Behind him, the balcony door slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
“You’re doing the thing again.”
Izuku smiled before he turned around.
“What thing?”
“The dramatic staring into the distance thing.”
Katsuki stepped onto the balcony already half-dressed for qualifying. Fireproofs tied around his waist. Black balaclava hanging loose around his neck. His hair damp from the garage heat, pale blond beneath the floodlights.
Even after years in F1, Katsuki still carried tension like a second skeleton. It lived in him visibly. In the line of his shoulders. In the set of his jaw. In the way he looked at the world like he expected it to hit first.
The Red Bull logo curved across his chest. Four gold stars stitched beneath it. A four-time World Champion. And still, somehow, Izuku could look at him and see the thirteen-year-old boy sleeping upright in airport terminals with a helmet bag clutched against his chest.
“Sorry,” Izuku said softly. “Thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby.”
Katsuki moved beside him at the railing, forearms resting against the carbon-black barrier overlooking the pit lane.
The crowd beyond the paddock fencing erupted suddenly as another driver emerged from hospitality below. Even from here, Izuku could hear the chants bleeding through the night air.
F1 fans loved loudly, violently, and almost possessively. And no drivers had ever been loved more strangely than them.
Karting prodigies turned generational rivals turned teammates turned,
eventually, something softer than either of them had ever believed they deserved.
The media still acted shocked by it. As though the entire world had not spent years watching them orbit each other like collapsing stars.
“You talk to media?” Izuku asked.
Katsuki groaned immediately, dropping his head against the balcony rail.
“One reporter asked if we’d still sleep in the same bed if one of us bins it fighting for the championship tomorrow.”
Izuku laughed under his breath.
“And what did you say?”
“Told him if he asked me one more stupid question I’d introduce his face to the fucking barrier at Eau Rouge.”
“Very diplomatic.”
“I’m not paid to be diplomatic.”
That much was true. Katsuki had spent nearly his entire career being fined by the FIA for swearing in press conferences and insulting Sky Sports interviewers. Fans adored him for it anyway. Especially after Drive to Survive turned him into mythology for casual viewers.
The Untouchable Champion. The Mad Dog of F1. The Monster of Red Bull Racing. The list of nicknames was never ending.
None of them knew how often he woke from nightmares with his fists clenched hard enough to ache.
Below them, mechanics buzzed around like bees. Izuku watched engineers hunched over telemetry screens glowing neon blue beneath fluorescent light. Tire deg. Fuel loads. Sector times. Rear wing configurations. The entire sport was mathematics wrapped around violence. And tomorrow, one of them would leave Yas Marina leading the Drivers’ Championship. If things went badly enough, one of them might not finish at all.
“You nervous?” Izuku asked quietly.
Katsuki scoffed, “About tomorrow?”
“About me.”
That dragged a smirk from him.
“You saying that like you didn’t try a move on me into turn one at Monza.”
“You left the door open.”
“I left half a car width.”
“You know that’s an invitation.”
“It’s a fuckin’ threat.”
Izuku laughed again, softer this time.
God. Sometimes he forgot how strange this still felt. To stand beside Katsuki without anger between them. Not because the anger disappeared. That would’ve been much easier. No, Katsuki still drove angry. Still argued with engineers over radio strategy calls. Still climbed from the cockpit after bad races looking one inconvenience away from homicide.
But somewhere along the way, the anger stopped being aimed at Izuku like a weapon, now it existed beside love instead.
A Gulfstream screamed overhead somewhere beyond the marina, low enough that the balcony vibrated faintly beneath their feet.
Katsuki’s gaze drifted toward pit exit.
The circuit beyond the paddock glowed. Twenty-one corners of engineered brutality. Long straights feeding heavy braking zones. Walls waiting patiently inches from racing line apexes. Yas Marina was deceptive that way.
“You remember Spa?” Katsuki asked suddenly.
Izuku blinked.
“Which year?”
“The wet one.”
Izuku went still.
Ah. That year.
The race where visibility vanished behind spray on the Kemmel Straight. The race where cars disappeared entirely at 300 kilometers an hour. The race where Katsuki climbed from his RB after qualifying and immediately started screaming about the track conditions before anyone even asked him questions.
The race where Izuku hit the wall hard enough to make the paddock fall silent.
“We were kids,” Izuku murmured.
“We were twenty-three.”
“Exactly.”
Katsuki huffed a laugh through his nose.
The noise below them blurred together, impact guns whining in pit lane, engineers calling sector deltas.
“You scared the shit outta me that day.”
Izuku looked at him.
Katsuki’s eyes remained fixed stubbornly forward, jaw tight, like the confession physically pained him. It probably did.
This was the thing nobody understood about Katsuki Bakugou, he had been taught how to survive long before he was taught how to feel. Love, for him, had always sounded closest to terror.
Izuku leaned his shoulder gently against Katsuki’s.
“You scare me every race weekend,” he admitted softly.
That finally pulled Katsuki’s gaze toward him.
And there it was. That look. The one the cameras spent years trying to capture properly and never could. Not softness exactly, Katsuki rarely looked soft. No, it was worse than softness. It was trust.
“You regret it?” Izuku asked before he could stop himself.
Katsuki frowned immediately.
“Regret what?”
“This.”
The world. The sport. Them.
Below them sat two championship-winning Red Bulls beneath garage lights while millions of people across the planet debated which of them deserved the title more.
In a few minutes, they would race each other at over 330 kilometers an hour. One bad lock-up could kill them both, and somehow, impossibly, they had still chosen this.
Katsuki stared at him for a long moment like he couldn’t believe the question existed.
Then he stepped closer. Hooked two fingers lazily into the zipper of Izuku’s race suit and pulled him forward.
“Dumbass,” he muttered.
And kissed him. The kind of kiss built over years of surviving each other.
Below the balcony, someone screamed loud enough that they’d definitely been spotted by fans through the fencing again. Neither of them cared anymore. Katsuki rested his forehead briefly against Izuku’s curls.
“If it comes down to us tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I’m not backing out.”
There it was. The truest thing in this sport. Not I love you. Just I will still race you honestly.
Izuku smiled, something aching and fond pulling at his ribs, “I know.”
And he did because loving Katsuki Bakugou had never once made him gentler on track. If anything, it made him crueler.
The announcement system crackled overhead.
Qualifying begins in fifteen minutes.
The spell broke gently. Katsuki pulled away first, rebuilding himself piece by piece in real time. Shoulders tightening. Expression sharpening. The driver replacing the man. It still hurt to watch sometimes. Not because Izuku feared him leaving anymore. But because he remembered when the armor first started growing there.
Katsuki paused at the balcony door and turned back.
“You better not damage my floor tomorrow trying something stupid.”
Izuku grinned helplessly.
“You say the sweetest things before qualifying.”
“Tch.”