Chapter Text
“Yellow flag, sector two, car in the wall.”
Max’s eyes flickered up to the screens as they flashed past, trying to catch a glimpse. It was always a moment he felt his whole body go cold, hearing those words. Whoever it was, or however bad the crash may be, just knowing it had happened again sent a shiver down his spine. Even if it wasn’t at particularly high speed, low speed in Formula 1 still meant at least seventy miles an hour. So every time there was an incident, Max would say a silent prayer everyone was safe.
And the yet the media still loved to portray him as the ruthless, heartless bastard of the grid. They never saw the other side.
Then again, the other side didn’t make good headlines.
As he rounded the next corner, into sector two, he caught sight of the crash. From the collapsed barriers and the dust of the kicked-up gravel, it was a bad one. Then he saw a flash of red, the briefest of glances at the livery.
A Ferrari.
“Who?”
“Repeat?"
“Who’s in the wall?”
“Focus. Gap to car ahead, 1.3 seconds.”
“Who is in the wall?”
“Leclerc.”
Nothing ever prepared him for that though, to hear that name.
In the stupid media they had to do, the hours they had to spend on interviews and photo shoots, and Netflix, they would get asked pathetic, arbitrary questions about pets and work out schedules and food. Sometimes they’d be even more idiotic questions, like ‘you must be pretty fearless to be an F1 driver. What’s your greatest fear?’
Max never knew what to say. Because the answer was that. Those words GP had just uttered to him over the radio, and the view of a car in pieces against the barriers. But not just any car. Charles’s car.
“Is he okay?”
“Focus Max. Russel 1.2 ahead.”
“Is he okay?”
The radio was silent for a beat, at least two corners, and Max wondered (hoped) if GP was giving him space to navigate the most technical part of the track.
The next words almost sent him into the wall himself.
“He isn’t out of the car yet.”
Feeling his grip tighten on the steering wheel, Max released his thumb from the radio button and tried to fucking /breathe/. This was what they had warned him about, the few that knew about him and Charles. This exact moment was the thing that everyone had cited as the only reason for it to be a terrible idea, the only reason they shouldn’t pursue it. The moment that, under any other circumstances, any other combination of people, would be scary enough. But if one of them wasn’t a driver, was in the garage watching the screens, at least their complete focus could be on them, could be on getting to them as fast as possible.
But no. Max was almost within DRS of George, about to fight him for a podium, with three laps to go.
A podium he now didn’t want.
And this was the other argument, the thing GP had sat him down for, with his serious face, and made him listen.
“If it comes to it, him or the win, what are you choosing?”
“I won’t have to choose,” Max assured him. “We’ve agreed. On the track, nothing has changed. If we’re battling each other, we’re doing it how we always would. No holding back.”
“And what if it’s not a fair battle?”
Max hadn’t really known what GP had meant then. He hadn’t pressed, hadn’t asked for clarity, had just brushed him off with irritation and got on with his day. But this is what he meant – what if it was a psychological battle?
Because now, if Max got 3rd, that’s post-race interviews, and the cool down room, and podium celebrations, and even more interviews after that.
If he got 4th, he could climb out of the car, ditch his kit, and find Charles straight away.
Suddenly, 4th had never looked so appealing.
“Okay Max, 0.9 we’re in DRS.” GP’s voice pulled him back to reality. Shit, almost nine corners had gone by and he was sure he hadn’t registered a single one of them. And yet somehow he’d still managed to close the gap to the Mercedes in front of him. “Two laps to go. Mode push. Mode push.”
“Is he out of the car?”
“Max, I won’t ask you again. Mode push. DRS zone coming up.”
Fuck.
Eyes fixed on the car ahead, Max tried to weigh up the options. Two laps, within DRS. Easy. He could take George in the next DRS zone in fact, he was sure. It would be obvious, so fucking obvious, if he didn’t. Not just to the pit wall, to the entire fucking grid. There was no reason for that not to be a simple pass down the start finish straight, right in the middle of the DRS zone, lock it off at turn one, and be done with it. There would have to be something seriously wrong, or a serious mistake to happen, for Max to not get that move done.
Coming into the second to last corner, he found himself hitting the brakes just a little too hard.
The car twitched, the front left locked up, flat spotted, smoke billowing from the tyre as it ground out against the tarmac. Subsequently, the car didn’t make the full turn, running and bouncing over the curb, sending him at an odd angle back onto the track ahead. Easily recoverable but…
Glancing down at the data, he felt a twinge of satisfaction sit in the pit of his stomach.
Gap – 1.1
Max could just imagine the commentary, the crowds, going on about how costly that was, how a mistake like that was unlike him, how that could have lost him the podium.
He fucking hoped it had.
“Okay Max, we can make that back across the next run. Take him on the final lap.”
Silence.
And he wasn’t even going to bother to respond. GP knew, he was sure of it. He had every single millisecond of data in front of him, every single throttle movement, break touch, live G-force calculations, even how much water was left in his drinks reservoir. He would’ve known the second it happened that the over-breaking wasn’t necessary, wasn’t in reaction to anything, wasn’t because he was coming into the corner too fast, or too deep.
He would’ve known that was a set up. And he would’ve known why.
Pacing himself behind George was harder than expected. Ultimately, for once, the car wanted to go faster, could’ve gone faster. And there was still that itch, in the back of his mind, the need to give it his absolute all every second of the lap. The need to keep it all on the edge, slick, faultless, the poetry of the car on the track. But the second time he passed the crash, and caught the merest of glimpses of Charles being /helped/ out of the car by the marshals, he was reminded why suddenly 1.1 was the most important figure he had ever seen flash up on the steering wheel.
It needed to say at 1.1, until the finish line.
The third time he passed the crash, Charles was gone, though he was sure it was via medical car. GP had been in his ear, every ten seconds, telling him to push, telling him he could do it, they still had time. He hadn’t responded once. Instead, as they crossed the line for the final time, under the chequered flag, Max put on his best disappointed voice and slowed to an acceptable pace for the cool down lap, still far faster than he would usually do it.
“Bad luck guys. We pushed hard, but that flat spot really messed me up.”
“Yeah… shame Max, but good race. We’ll discuss in debrief,” came GP’s clipped response.
All for show. Max wasn’t going to be in the fucking debrief, they both knew that.
Pulling the car into the pits, Max fumbled quickly to get the headrest unclipped, steering wheel out of the column, jumping out of the car and just about managing to reattach the steering wheel as they had to, before sprinting into the garage, pulling at his gloves, fingertips tugging at his helmet straps to get it off. He ignored everyone as he went past them, nothing particularly unusual there, and went straight up to GP. Thank god his Dad wasn't here.
“What the fuck was that?” his engineer hissed at him, glaring cold and hard.
“Where did they take him? Hospital?”
“No, he’s still in the medical room here.”
Max glanced around at the garage, watching for a moment as the team wheeled the car in, distracted. “Get me there.”
“Fucking hell, Max, are you seriously…?”
“Get me there, now.”
The resigned look GP gave him told him he’d won this battle. The dressing down he was going to get would be horrific, but that wasn’t a now problem. The only now problem was getting to Charles as fast as possible.
“What do you know?” Max asked as he followed GP through the back of the garage, unzipping his race suit and tying it around his hips.
“It was really high impact. He’s got bruised ribs and they’re worried about concussion.”
Max nodded stoically, because around them were hundreds of people milling with phones and cameras and social media. But inside, he wanted to scream and shout and cry. And panic. He hadn’t thought through how they were going to get away with this at all. Charles was going to be surrounded by people, it was going to be super weird him just turning up to check on him. Why? Why would he do that? But then he supposed the track doctors were employed to keep silent. They had the medical knowledge of that driver in their hands. Surely they had signed some form of NDA to prevent them from talking about any injuries that may happen, that they may see?
Maybe that could extend to who came in and out of the medical room.
Thankfully, there was only one doctor still with Charles when they arrived, and he was stood making notes on a form. Max had hung back whilst GP had knocked and stepped inside, and Max saw Charles’s flicker of worry and recognition across his face has he watched Max’s engineer enter the room. Hovering in the doorway, Max tried to make his presence known whilst GP negotiated some kind of fucking silence deal with the doctor. It seemed to work anyway, whatever it was, because seconds later GP was stepping out with the doctor, brushing past Max.
“You have five minutes. Then he’s being taken to the hotel and your arse will be in that garage. And you better have a good fucking story,” GP muttered, his gaze stern before he was walking off again. Max took a millisecond to take a deep breath, before he was pushing into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him.
The pressure marks from his helmet still sat on Charles’s face, deeper and redder than usual where the impact had thrown him around. Max could see a bruise forming on the top of his hand, presumably from where the steering wheel had snapped back, or a piece of barrier had fallen on him. Otherwise, there were no other visible injuries at the moment, and Max found himself thanking every single piece of safety equipment that surrounded them in the cockpit that Charles could throw the car into the wall at whatever stupid speed it was and come out with injuries as small as this.
Wasn’t any nicer to see though, especially not how distant and glassy his eyes looked.
“You shouldn’t be here, someone’s going to see,” Charles said quietly.
“We can cover it up, it’ll be fine,” Max reassured gently, stepping towards Charles, weak smile on his lips. “You only had four laps to go.”
“Wasn’t in the points anyway,” Charles muttered in return, watching Max come towards him. “Where did you finish?”
“Fourth,” Max replied, near-flippantly, like it was the most unimportant thing in the world. He was almost at Charles’s side now, where he was sat up on the bed, hand resting on his side. Slowly, Max extended his arm out, hand coming to settle over the top of Charles’s, face falling into a frown. “It hurts?”
“Yeah, it hurts,” Charles affirmed. “Nothing broken. Just bruised this side. And they’re pretty sure I don’t have concussion, but they want me to stay awake for another five hours, six if I can.”
With a nod, Max was stepping even closer, pushing into Charles’s space. “We can watch a movie in the hotel,” he said quietly, stupidly, like that was something that was going to /help/. Charles laughed weakly, shrugging a little before wincing at the movement. Max soothed a thumb over the back of his hand. “You scared the shit out of me,” he breathed. “When GP said you hadn’t got out of the car…”
“I couldn’t move,” Charles whispered in return. “My whole body just seized. It /hurt/, my ribs, I just…” He turned his head then, resting his forehead against Max’s shoulder, the closest piece of him he could reach. “Thought I’d really fucked myself for a bit.” He raised his head again, meeting his eyes. “But it wore off, managed to get myself standing.”
“I saw. But it took you almost a whole lap?”
Charles nodded, forehead resting back on Max’s shoulder, sighing softly as Max’s hand came up to the back of his head, threading his fingers into the brunette hair. “Think I just stunned myself.”
“The impact would’ve been over 30G, liefde.” Max kept caressing his fingers through his hair, down the nape of his neck, before bowing his head to press a kiss to the crown of his head. “I need to get back to the garage. GP is ready to kill me.”
“Why?” Charles laughed softly. “What did you do now?” He pulled his head back, looking up at Max, eyebrow raised in question. He took in his far too serious expression, and knew it wasn’t just because of his injuries. “Chéri, what did you do?”