#gpaus

They all had to stretch and shake themselves out once they were done in the cars, but Alex used to plop down onto the floor and fold over himself, reaching his hands out to his toes in the garage after practice sessions, and Max would watch him curiously and mentally thank his parents for their completely-average-height genes.

In the last couple of races of 2019, Alex saw Max hovering and invited him to join, and he did it in that easy way he always does—the way that makes people gravitate towards him even when he's bum-on-the-dusty-garage-floor and stretching, because his eyes and his smile are just so damn warm.

Max doesn't know how he does it. If he knew how to be warm without burning everyone around him, maybe Daniel would have stayed.

Max follows Alex's pull and plops down. Gets his bum dusty. Watches closely as Alex leans himself over, and then tries to follow suit.

"Do you think they're just keeping me around for next year because they're too embarrassed to admit they made a mistake?" Alex asks his left knee in Abu Dhabi, his forehead brushing over the top of his shin.

Max, whose flexibility comes nowhere near Alex's, looks up from where he's been staring intently at his own knee, trying, somehow, to will it closer. Alex doesn't budge, just breathes deeply in and out until he's counted the seconds of the stretch and releases it. When he sits up, he raises an eyebrow at Max, and though he's smirking, his eyes are all wrong.

"I mean, you won last weekend, and I didn't even make the points. They binned Pierre for less than that."

"Lewis did not personally bulldoze into Pierre to make it so that he did not finish on the podium," Max says. "And anyway, they were wrong, I think, to demote Pierre again so quickly."

Alex's smirk disappears at that, twisting into something more sour. "Hmm. Cheers, mate." He folds himself over his right knee, forehead to shin.

Max finds that his fingers are still intertwined around his left knee, back curved forward slightly at an angle that's just about uncomfortable. He releases his grip and sits up. "I, of course, did not mean that they were wrong to promote you. And you have, of course, been doing very well. Better than Pierre. But it is... You know that it is difficult. To be here, at Red Bull. And it would not be fair to fire you so soon, after only half a season, and it was not fair to Pierre either, I think, even if I am, of course, very happy to have you here now."

Alex stops counting breaths and releases his grip on his toes. He looks up to Max, brows furrowed. "Well, of course I know how difficult it is to be at Red Bull. I didn't know that you knew."

"What do you mean?"

Alex nods his head towards Max's legs. "Come on, stretch your other side. You'll feel all imbalanced if you don't."

Max purses his lips but obeys, grabbing at his knee and trying to bend. He feels Alex's eyes on him and feels briefly embarrassed about his inflexibility. He tries to force himself lower.

"What's so difficult for you?" Alex asks. "About Red Bull? They all love you. And you're so good in the car, even when it feels like they keep trying to make it impossible to drive."

Max hasn't been counting. He sits up anyway. "Just because I am doing well does not mean it is not difficult. You know that there is always expectations and always so many eyes. And anyways, I always could be doing better."

Alex rolls his eyes, but he looks a bit less off than before. His shoulders have loosened, and his smile gets closer to his eyes.

"Come to me when you feel like the car is trying to kill you every time you get in it and you're fighting for your life for a podium, and maybe I'll have some sympathy," he jokes. "Or maybe just grow a few inches and experience the car trying to slowly crush you to death. I swear, mate, my knees might drive me to retirement before Red Bull can find someone to replace me with. You know, every time I crash, it's like they're trying to break themselves against any surface they can find. "

"I hope I do not ever receive any sympathy from you, then," Max says solemnly. Alex's eyes shine brightly as he doubles over in a laugh.

-

The rear wing doesn't shut properly, and Max careens sideways into the wall. Shot at pole: Gone. Fucking hell, maybe if he had started at the front, he could have cinched a podium.

His knees slam into each other and into the side of the nose cone. His fingers spasm on the wheel at the sudden pain.

It's funny—in Silverstone, his knees had done the same thing: Tried to destroy themselves in a fucked-up Newton's Cradle of high-speed-crash inertia. But honestly, it had been the least of his worries, back then, with his own head splitting apart, trying to kill him.

It's not the least of his worries now. In blurrily familiar movements, he hauls himself out of the car, waves to the crowd, and stumbles across the gravel.

His legs twinge all the way down to his toes.

Later, in his driver's room, his phone pings with a text while he stretches. He can get his forehead much closer to his shin now than he could back in 2019, and his exhales tickle his hair as he counts the seconds.

When he sits up, Alex's contact is visible for just a split second before his screen goes black; he unlocks his phone to read the message.

If Red Bull needs a driver for a mid-season transfer, I'm down.