#? probably

Actually expanding on something I kinda drove past in the last drabble aka this:

It's kind of an unfortunate reality that his deadname's a bit of an open secret around the paddock, especially among those around and in his vicinity in his early career.

The relationship between his parents and his gender has always been...messy to put it simply. At best they were indifferent to his chosen name and pronouns, going along with it mainly because his younger self too stubborn to let anyone push back on him on that matter (in some faded memory, his younger self threatened to torch his father's dream he wished to live through Niki budding career and never race again if they didn't refer to him correctly, even then doing so would've been tearing some fundamental part of himself out but he would've, if it was the price to pay for his own name).

And by the time he was allowed to be making his own medical decisions? Come hell or high water, no one was getting in the way of him going on hrt.

Still, at best his gender was treated with indifference by his parents. More often than not, it was something dangled in front of him to work and chase after. It hadn't been something he actively noticed until a friend pointed it out after the last of that familial bridge had been burnt but they had never used his name or proper pronouns unless he had a particularly good race weekend. On the most disastrous of race weeks he'd go back to being their daughter, an emotional kick while he was already down from a messy race.

It was why his deadname was an unfortunately semi-well known secret among those who knew him for most of his racing career (one everyone collectively agreed to never speak of but...knowing that many people knew, especially that many that could leak it to the media made him always kinda nervous). It was why his early years in F.ormula O.ne had him almost desperate to prove himself (he regrets some of the moves he pulled back then in that desperation of his worst races, they were sloppy at best and by god he hasn't really been able to live them down since).