#broken reality

broken reality locations ~

I'm unsure on what text to put, maybe one version that says "NATEM" and one that's blank?

(The one on the left is the Dynamic Media Triad logo, and the one on the right is just a Like that you can collect ingame)

Some disclaimers - my knowledge of colloquial Dutch is limited to Afrikaans and a translator. Grammar and spelling errors may be present. I’d taken a long break from f1 so some details might be wrong. No one has ever read my writing so this might be stonks. Soz ;)

7

“This is pretty - isn’t it?”

“Don’t be silly, Max,” Kelly scoffs, almost laughing, thinking Max is joking.

Max just kept his measuring eyes on the stark ruby red cocktail dress. He’s no fashion expert like his girlfriend but even he could tell the thing was made with pure silk flown in from some obscure town in Uzbekistan (probably).

“You’re serious?” Kelly asks when Max says nothing.

“Well- ,”

“Max, I would humiliate myself if I wore this. It’s a very prestigious event,” Kelly explains, sounding like she’s charging another one of her fashion rants.

“I mean, unless you want my ass out?” She points out rhetorically.

It sounded unnecessarily clipped but Max knows she’s stressed. He knows when Kelly’s stressed and asks for his opinion and he gives an answer that makes it seem like he wasn’t taking her seriously, she loses patience - fast.

Except… Max was extremely serious. He isn’t sure where it comes from but he feels a strange attachment to this flimsy arrangement of silk. Max might even be compelled to say that it is stunning - absolutely - but Kelly doesn’t need to hear that.

“No, it’s just- I thought…” Max hesitates, glancing down at Kelly and her olive skin and brown eyes - brown eyes that widen with expectation.

“It will suit you.”

Kelly raises her eyebrows and her annoyed expression softens into something fonder as she runs her hand up and down Max’s arm.

“Oh, honey. Thank you, but I really can’t wear something like this - not to that event,” she coos, in a way Max thinks is probably natural for an older woman placating a younger man.

Max says nothing, only raising his eyebrows and pursing his lip as if to say ‘whatever - no bid deal’ without actually saying it. Max doesn’t lie - remember?

Kelly gives a close-lipped smile, probably as a final offering of sympathy before turning away and wading deeper into the Tommy Hilfiger store and Max feels like he’s losing her as her back recedes further and further into the sea of clothes and store assistants.

He doesn’t follow her, feeling like he’d somehow be abandoning this dress that just seemed to beckon his attention and desire. Instead he leans on a nearby wall, taking out his phone like a prop so that he can look nonchalant about it - like a man who was waiting for his girlfriend to finish her shopping.

A sigh escapes him as he tries to find something to do before his brain collapses. He abandons his prop and lets his eyes scan the store. They stop on a running water wall beside the shoe racks across from him. Max thinks it’s pretty neat and a good visual stimulus for his restless mind. It’s almost… hypnotic.

For better or worse, he gets a message and the notification rings out too loud for him to ignore. ‘Better or worse’ because it’s from an unsaved number - could be nothing more than spam. At the very least, Max makes out, it’s a Monagesque number.

Hi, Max. I trust you’re okay. I thought it’d be great if the grid could get together in Melbourne before the first race. I’d love for you to be there. Would you make it?

Lewis.

Max instantly locks his phone after reading through the whole message - like he looked at something NSFW - like he couldn’t think if his vision is filled with those words. He shifts, going to lean on one shoulder and curling into himself like he was hiding. He feels awkward and he lets out a strange cough to show that. Then he’s biting his thumb nail - about which Kelly would likely have some colourful Portuguese things to say.

He glances around the store, and when he finds nothing to take his attention away, he shifts again, almost facing the wall, before opening the message again.

“Wat is er zo geweldig?” Max wonders to himself in a low whisper.

They always get dinner before the last race so why the need for another dinner before the first? Was the man trying to leave another one of his legacies in the sport? Just f**king fantastic.

He should probably agree because everyone else has likely agreed. He doesn’t want to but Hadjar definitely will and then Alice will hear about it and she’ll kill him if he doesn’t go. If only he could tell his younger self it isn’t good enough to drive good - that sometimes he’ll do things he doesn’t want because the press would have a field day otherwise.

Then again, knowing what he was like back then, his younger self would tell him, ‘Rot op,’ and go about his life the same way. Well, perhaps in another world he doesn’t have these sorts of problems. Then again, the problems might be worse.

This sucks.

He absolutely dreads any and all things Lewis-related. He has no grudges, whatsoever, with the man, however it doesn’t change that he sees that face now all the time in his dreams and, oh yeah, there was that weird-ass ripple in time and space where, according to that interview that vanished, he was apparently married to the guy.

That is to say: Max has to avoid him as much as possible. He’s been having a hard enough time, with his grip on reality just about as good as softs on a Baku curve (if not worse). What is worse is that it’s all putting a tight enough strain on his relationship with Kelly to the point where she sometimes looks at him like he’s an acquaintance or something.

To be fair, he barely recognises himself nowadays. For the first time in… maybe forever, he’s choosing his words like cards in a poker game. If he’s even slightly unrestrained, he might say the wrong thing (like calling Sassy ‘Poppy’ which has already happened a handful of times) and it’ll be all losses.

Game Over.

He might even say he’s afraid of Hamilton. He’s felt some semblance of fear towards him before - he definitely felt his heart stutter when he suddenly had the W12 and a purple helmet in his mirrors in Brazil - but that’s neither here nor there.

What is here?

Lewis is here.

Well, on a screen. One of those big high definition LED monitors they put up on store walls to showcase models decked out in all their latest what-have-yous.

Just like that f**ked up, non-existent interview, Max wasn’t initially rattled by the sight of him - he’s like one of their ambassadors or something - isn’t he? Anyway, the image was massive, practically begging for Max’s attention so he looked at it - entirely - and then his breath caught and he was choking on air all over again.

The air is way too dry, moist sweat gathers behind his knees in a way that makes his skinny jeans feel like wet socks and he gets the impulse to dive head-first into that water wall. It’s an impulse he tacitly suppresses.

F**king breathe, Verstappen.

That he does do, eyes closed, heaving a lungful of air up his nose that likely made his face twist in a nasty way, he thinks. He doesn’t care. He releases it from his mouth as if a deep breath was enough to restore balance to reality.

It isn’t.

He looks up at the screen and the image hasn’t at least transitioned into the next one as they usually do in these kinds of slideshows.

There the man stood, like a horse before Max, legs bare fringed by buoyant red silk. Yeah, as in that ruby red pure silk flown in from some obscure town in Uzbekistan. That beautifully flimsy arrangement flows like water over Lewis’s body: from the thick collar gathered around his neck like a bow-tie, to the billowing sleeves that hangs off his shoulders like arborea flowers, to the tiny skirt that encircles his hips like ocean waves and to the languid bodice that parted around his plexus like water around a gondola, letting the northern steeple of his compass peek out coyly - provokingly.

He looks like a gift.

‘It suits him’, is all Max can think to himself despite all efforts to ignore this, while it seems like no one else in the store gives a f**k, but he can’t. He looks at it, maybe waiting until someone else could see this - see what he was seeing but nobody does. He only has to blink once before it’s all gone, replaced - like it’d never been there at all - by a random model in an atrocious all-denim ensemble .

Max almost falls to his knees, releasing a breath he was holding for long enough to kill any normal man. Max isn’t normal. He’s losing his mind - hopefully not dying, he doesn’t think. Brad would kill him if he is… Maybe Brad will know what to do about this.

He should tell Brad, he decides, but he’s losing his mind still and instead of doing the level-headed thing, he plunges himself deeper into this abyss by reopening that text and replying:

As long as it’s not raw fish again, yeah.

It doesn’t take long before the one on the other side responds.

Sushi? It’s not. 19:30, okay? Grossi Florentino. See you soon.

Max throws back a thumbs up, locks his phone again before letting himself sink down with his back against the wall. He should be dunking on himself for not taking a photo of that photo or a screenshot of that fucked up interview but Max can only swim around in Hamilton’s words…

I’d

love for you

to