nadine

media outlet no2: max is going to mclaren

media outlet no3: max is going to retire

max’s manager: max is staying with red bull

Some drivers keep their designation public, but they're always alphas, with the occasional beta. The omegas who have competed openly were never really given a choice.

On the current grid, there are no known omegas. Not even the drivers know of any. But then rumors start spreading that there's a secret omega on the grid, and that's enough to send the media into a frenzy. Drivers start getting asked about it constantly because after more than ten years without a known omega, everyone is desperate to find out who it is.

Max, despite being an alpha, hates all of it. He knows omegas are always one step away from being pushed out of the sport. Whenever an omega is revealed, they rarely last more than a few seasons afterward. Sponsors disappear, the media becomes obsessed with them, and every single mistake they make gets scrutinized. If they have a bad race, people blame their designation, regardless of whether the car was capable of competing in the first place.

So after a race, when he's asked yet again about the mystery omega, Max finally snaps. Out of a sense of fairness, protectiveness, and sheer frustration, he lies and says that he's the omega everyone is looking for.

The reaction is exactly what you'd expect. The entire world loses its mind.

People are shocked that a four-time world champion, someone so aggressive, dominant, competitive, and seemingly embodying every stereotypical alpha trait, could supposedly be an omega.

Immediately after the interview, Max gets called into an emergency meeting with Red Bull. Unlike the public, the teams always know their drivers' real designations, so everyone is understandably confused about why Max just announced to the world that he's an omega when he's actually an alpha.

Max explains himself. He says he wanted people to stop hunting for the real omega and leave them alone. He admits it was an impulsive decision made in the heat of the moment, but he doesn't regret it.

And so Max ends up taking the full force of the backlash. He faces the media, the speculation, and the criticism while pretending to be an omega. He knows he's in a uniquely privileged position because:

1. He's a four-time world champion. That's enough to make it impossible for people to seriously question his ability based on his designation, and it protects him from losing any truly important sponsors.

2. Red Bull knows the truth, so his seat is never actually in danger.

Without meaning to, Max slowly becomes the public face of omega rights in motorsport.

Meanwhile, Charles, the real secret omega on the grid, is completely stunned when he learns, along with the rest of the world, that Max is an omega too. But that actually works in his favor. As far as Charles is concerned, Max's announcement only makes his own secret safer. Nobody is going to believe there are two omegas on the grid at the same time.

But, for years, Charles has had a crush on Max. He feels embarrassed by how automatically he assumed Max was an alpha. The revelation completely shatters every expectation he had. But after the initial shock fades, Charles realizes something else: he's still attracted to Max. Even though he's never been attracted to another omega before. For the first time in his life, Charles decides to actually do something about his feelings, so he starts with subtle flirting.

The problem is that Max notices almost immediately. And Max thinks Charles is an alpha.

To protect his identity, Charles has spent years wearing artificial alpha scent patches underneath his suppressants. Whenever the suppressants weaken slightly, the fake alpha scent leaks through. It's entirely intentional. He wants people to assume he's an alpha so nobody ever suspects he's actually an omega.

And Max has never been attracted to another alpha before. He's always thought Charles was ridiculously attractive, but he never paid much attention to it. And the little bit of scent he ever picked up from Charles never did anything for him.

So Max doesn't really have a problem with a supposed alpha flirting with him. The problem is the timing. Charles only starts openly flirting after Max publicly claims to be an omega, which leads Max to the completely wrong conclusion: Charles isn't interested in him because he's Max. He's interested because he thinks Max is an omega.

And, much to his own surprise, that disappoints him, he never expected Charles to act like the stereotypical alpha who suddenly starts paying attention to someone after finding out they're an omega.

CHARLES IS SO OMEGA CODED

Good news!!!! AO3 finally accepted my invitation request, which means I can post the prologue!!

Before I do, I wanted to ask something practical: what posting time would work best for you?

Please tell me the time you’d prefer chapters to go up and where you’re reading from / your time zone. I’m from Italy and I’d like to find a posting window that works for the people who commented and helped me here on tumblr.

While I wait for your answer, I thought I’d do something similar to the character sheets for the main dynamics/couples. Nothing too spoilery, just a little guide to the relationships at the centre of the story.

Couples Sheet

Lestappen

Max and Charles are the centre of the story and the reason the title is Folie à Deux.

They are two apex predators placed in the same cage, so they are supposed to recognise the threat in each other and turn the room into a battlefield. Max is territorial, blunt, and dangerous in ways everyone has already learned to fear. Charles is controlled, elegant, and far too used to turning himself into whatever shape a room expects to see. They should collide until one of them gives way.

Instead, they become fascinated (to put it lightly).

Max looks at Charles and sees the monster waiting under all that softness. Charles looks back and recognises something just as dangerous, though Max wears his violence in a different way.

Their relationship begins with observation and turns into provocation before either of them can stop it. They test each other through silences, small shifts in control, and a kind of intimacy neither of them would call intimacy out loud. The more they understand, the worse it gets, because neither reacts the way the other expects.

The obsession grows from that recognition.

That is where the folie à deux begins: two monsters who should have destroyed each other finding, instead, someone willing to look at the worst parts of them and find an equal (aka partner).

Landoscar

Lando and Oscar should make even less sense than Max and Charles.

Max and Charles, for all their differences, share enough darkness to recognise each other. There is common ground beneath the masks and the brutality: control, obsession, possessiveness, the instinct to protect what they decide is theirs no matter what it costs everyone else.

Lando and Oscar have almost none of that at first glance.

Lando survives through attachment, warmth, emotional intelligence, and a brightness that makes people forget how much grief he carries. Oscar survives through control, distance, silence, and the refusal to let anyone touch anything he has not chosen to give. Lando feels loudly even when he tries not to. Oscar feels in ways he has trained himself to keep contained.

Oscar’s need for control (Yes, Dom Oscar) comes from a place where control once meant safety. Lando’s need to surrender is tangled with devotion, and the terrible instinct to give too much of himself to the people he loves. What makes them work is also what makes them difficult: neither of them can approach intimacy casually.

Their relationship builds slowly because it has to. Every boundary matters, as does every moment of trust.

Where Max and Charles recognise each other almost violently, Lando and Oscar have to learn each other piece by piece.

Galex

Alex and George are already together when the story begins, and they are the emotional support couple of the fic in the most prison-appropriate, emotionally damaged sense of the phrase.

Their relationship is lived-in. They have history, routines, arguments they have had before, silences they know how to read, and a kind of devotion that no longer needs to announce itself. Alex knows how to soften a moment without losing control of it. George knows how to turn worry into structure, strategy, and occasionally a lecture no one asked for but everyone probably needed.

They balance each other because they have already made the choice the others are still circling around. Alex and George know what it means to stay. They know what it means to be afraid for someone and angry at them and in love with them all at once.

In a fic full of people being surprised by recognition, Alex and George are the proof that choosing someone once is only the beginning. The harder part is continuing to choose them, again and again, even inside a world built to make that difficult.

Bearnelli

Kimi insists that Ollie is his best friend, which would be more convincing if he did not talk about him like gravity might stop working without him.

Their story is more off-screen than the others at first because Ollie is not physically present for much of the fic. Kimi, however, is extremely willing to compensate for this absence by mentioning him whenever possible, providing unnecessary context, sharing details no one asked for, and acting very confused when people draw the obvious conclusions.

According to Kimi, this is all completely normal best friend behaviour.

Ollie is present in the story through the way Kimi talks about him: casually at first, then constantly enough that everyone around him begins to understand that the absence has weight. He is the person Kimi returns to in conversation, the name that makes him brighten, the point of reference he uses without realising how revealing it is. Kimi may not have the language for what Ollie means to him yet, but he gives himself away almost every time he opens his mouth.

charles holding max’s helmet like this, is probably one for the comfiest photo that i’ve ever seen. my heart is hurting and my brain is already forming hundred of different ideas for a potential fic

to avoid all of that, Charles decided that no one besides his family would know the truth: that he’s an omega, not an alpha. and to keep it that way, in addition to suppressants, he used scent patches: one to block his real scent and another to give him an artificial alpha scent. and for years, it worked.

but over time, with continuous use, the one blocking his scent started to lose its effectiveness, and his real scent would sometimes leak through and mix with the artificial alpha one. it wasn’t a major issue at first, because people just assumed he was dating an omega, and that the scent belonged to them.

the problem is, as much as Max tried to ignore it, that scent, the one from Charles’s supposed partner, was driving him insane. he didn’t want to become obsessed with some unknown omega, someone he had never even seen, and definitely not with a taken omega, especially one connected to a fellow driver. not that he and Charles were close, but Max liked to think they got along and understood each other like no one else on track, and there was a mutual respect between them as alphas. Max would never go after someone else’s omega…

except he couldn’t stop himself from imagining them, from wanting to know more. so eventually, he gives in and starts asking Charles about them, at first in vague, general ways. but the questions become more and more frequent, because every small detail only makes him want to know more. and Max can’t help but think how cruel fate is, to give someone else the omega that was meant for him.