f1 ao3 shenanigans

“George was right about you, you know. When he called you a dirty racer and a cheat. You can’t stand to lose, and you make it everybody else’s problem,” he spat.

The ball of lead dropped from Max’s throat into the pit of his stomach. Charles’ words cut deep, through all of Max’s carefully constructed defences into the very heart of him. The place that he let so few people into, only the ones he really trusted.

“Don’t talk to me again, Max. Stay the hell away from me,” Charles finished, crossing his arms over his chest.

Max’s chest gave a sharp lurch, some cord inside pulling tight and snapping. The rebound nearly knocked him right off the steps. He swayed and caught onto the railing, his eyes immediately catching on the ring finger of his right hand.

Where there had been nothing, a glossy red string now wrapped around it, shimmering slightly where it caught the light. He followed it with his eyes, dread pooling in his stomach. Its other end looped around one of Charles’ white-knuckled fingers, a dull, lifeless grey.

This couldn’t be happening.

Soulmates.

He and Charles were soulmates.

Charles makes sure to ask the question when he’s buried so deep inside of Max that the Dutchman can probably feel it in his throat.

“What tires are you starting on tomorrow, chèri?” he breathes into Max’s mouth, swallowing the other man’s whimper as Charles hits the sensitive spot inside him just right.

“Charles– what?”

“Tires, chèri. What is your team thinking?”

“Uh– why are you– ah!”

They’re at the point where Max struggles to string his words together. Normally Charles is quite proud of how completely he can disarm his rival, until he’s a shaking, sobbing mess beneath him. But tonight he needs Max to focus, to use that beautiful, strategic brain of his and answer Charles’ question.

“Max, focus, baby.” He punctuates the sentence with a particularly hard thrust, making Max’s eyes fly open as he gasps.

They didn’t used to fuck on Saturdays. Especially not during a race weekend.

When this strange affair had started in the middle of the 2024 season as a way for them to both blow off steam in the face of McLaren’s growing dominance, Max had been firm about that boundary. No sex on Saturdays. Nothing that could potentially impact his performance in a race.

Over the months, Charles had worn him down with promises to be gentle, to go slow so that he wouldn’t hurt him. The first time Max had let Charles fuck him on a Saturday before a race had been in Qatar. Incensed by the altercation with George, he’d just texted Charles a room number and half an hour later, Charles had had him writhing on the hotel mattress, speared open on his cock.

Max had won the race the next day, and Charles had used that fact as definitive proof that Max’s performance wouldn’t be affected by pre-race sex.

“Max.” Charles’ tone takes on a warning note, and he reaches the hand that’s not holding down the Dutchman’s hips up to tweak his nipple.

“So– softs!” Max gasps out, trying and failing to twist away from Charles’ fingers.

Charles smiles and removes his hand, bending down to kiss the abused area instead. He’ll text his race engineer as soon as he and Max are done and let him know.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

Max squinted at him in the dimness, trying to make out something Charles didn’t know.

Eventually, he said, “Yeah. That sounds good. Thank you, again.”

Charles waved him off. “Give me your number. Then you can text me when you’re on the way.” He extended his unlocked phone to the other man, a new contact already pulled up.

Max took the phone from him and quickly punched in his digits, then handed the device back. “Text me first then, so that I have yours too.”

Charles smiled at him, warmth curling in his stomach. “You got it.”

Max nodded wordlessly, and rounded the truck, pulling open the driver-side door and climbing in quickly. Niki raised his head at the disturbance. Father and son exchanged a few words behind the windshield, then Niki turned to look at Charles, giving him a dazzling grin and a wave. Charles waved back, rooted to the spot.

Several moments later, the headlights came on, and the truck roared to life, its V-6 engine making itself known in the quiet. With a final raised hand in Charles’ direction, Max pulled away from the parking spot and drove off, one of the taillights flickering as he hit the bumps and pits littering the broken asphalt of the lot.

Charles watched them go until they disappeared out of sight. He looked down at his phone, eyes tracing the letters of the new name in his contacts.

Max Verstappen.

A name he hadn’t heard in many years and only ever thought about occasionally, in the depths of the night, when his mind wandered back to the past. When he lay awake in the early hours of the morning and contemplated the many people who helped him achieve the success he so often took for granted these days.

His father. Jules. Nicolas Todt. Fred Vasseur. Seb.

And somewhere among the hundreds of faces that haunted the long, winding road that had led to his world championships with Ferrari, was the angular teenage visage of Max Verstappen. Who had taught him to fight for what he wanted with every ounce of strength he possessed. To race hard and fast, always. Who had taught him that first place was the only one that mattered. Who had infected him, perhaps unwittingly, with a passion for winning that had never dimmed since, even long after Max himself had vanished from Charles’ life without a trace.

Yes, Charles had always privately considered Max to be one of the people responsible for getting him to where he was.

The years had faded so many faces from his memory. He couldn’t remember the exact pitch of Jules’ laugh, couldn’t quite recall how his father’s forehead had wrinkled when he had been exasperated with something Charles was doing. But the exact shade of Max’s blue eyes, brimming with anger as they stared at each other across the steward’s office on this very track 13 years ago, was imprinted with a hot iron on Charles’ brain.

And now here he was. His number in Charles’ phone. The biggest unsolved mystery of his life, just a text away.

-------

Max woke with the distinct feeling of being watched. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, the only sound in the dark quiet of his room the erratic beating of his own heart.

A small sigh escaped his lips as he closed his eyes for a brief moment, pulling the duvet tighter around himself.

He knew this would happen after yesterday. Prepared for it even. But still, the sheer force of his own subconscious knocked his breath out of him every time.

If he had his way, he’d never set foot on another karting track again. But of course, he could not have possibly denied Niki on his birthday. Not when the boy had asked him so sweetly–in Dutch, no less–several months in advance whether they could go.

Max had agreed, unable to resist his son’s pleading blue eyes, and dutifully set aside money since then, saving up to ensure that they could afford to spend a whole day at the track. He’d known, in his gut, that that night he would dream of cold blue eyes, the same shade as Niki’s and his own, and of even icier ones, twisted in a cruel leer as they dragged up and down his body from across the table of a restaurant.

But there had been another pair of eyes in his dreams this night.

Green ones.

Charles’ eyes.

He’d rarely let himself think about the other man with any sort of familiarity, long since compartmentalizing him as “F1 driver for Ferrari” rather than the boy who had once been his greatest karting rival.

It was always easier to think of him by his title, clinical and detached, than as Max’s last real memory of karting. His angular teenage face pinched with anger, green eyes alight with indignation across the stewards’ office at Val D’Argenton.

The last face Max would see before his world changed so cardinally, forever.

Yes, it was easier to think of Charles as just another F1 driver, no different to the 19 others that Max would never know, not in any real way.

And, if his heart beat a little faster when it was Charles crossing the finish line first as opposed to anyone else? If his chest bloomed with something close to pride when it was Charles hoisting the first-place trophy above his head on the podium, face alight with triumph?

Well, that was no one’s business but Max’s own.

There had been three pairs of eyes in Max’s dream as opposed to the usual two.

Because Charles had been there yesterday. On the exceptionally rare occasion that Max himself made it out onto a karting track, he had run into Charles Leclerc. Teenage menace and F1 world champion Charles Leclerc.