(Max/Charles, 1/5 chapters, m-rated, red string of fate au)
Sometimes, the cold lighting of the meeting rooms in Milton Keynes would catch just so on the string around Max's finger and he’d do a doubletake at its colour. Under the fluorescents, it looked faded, as if someone had siphoned out some of its vibrancy.
He wished he could photograph it, so that he could compare how it changed day by day. Prove to himself that he wasn’t imagining things. That he really was dying.
-----
OR, Charles unknowingly rejects his and Max's soulbond on a cloudy evening in Austria in 2019. Max won't go where he's not wanted, even if that means he's signing his own death warrant.
Officially on a solo holiday for a week🥳 and by solo I of course mean me and my 4 rpf wips 😁 about to turn this balkan seaside town into a writing retreat hehe
hot take but f1 should bring sketch artists to team and stakeholder meetings the same way courts do for closed-door trials. can definitely guarantee that they will never Not have things to draw
#INCREDIBLE idea#everyone asking why is *insert team* so terrible this year#and then team sketch artist asterikks releases a drawing of their drivers sleeping during meetings#that is real reporting😌 @alanalevenof1
mhm mhm exactlyy and you know what i like your take better. everyone losing their mind taking shots across the conference table over why their team is going to the dogs and who qualifies for the most audo meanwhile i'm in the corner with company-issued pencil and notepad documenting the wonders of max verstappen catnapping:
hot take but f1 should bring sketch artists to team and stakeholder meetings the same way courts do for closed-door trials. can definitely guarantee that they will never Not have things to draw
I know it hasn’t even been a full day but I’ve reread the soulmate fic so many times!!!! I just love the angst
Ahhh you're so lovely, I'm so glad that you like it so far ! 💗💗💗
It's the angstiest fic I've written in a while and it just feels so GOOD to put Max through The Horrors™️hehehe
Just for you, here's a little snippet of Ch2 (2021)😊
On the eve of Abu Dhabi, the F1 social media admin put out a video asking every driver who they thought would win the championship. He told himself that he didn’t much care for the opinions of people who didn’t care about him, but his heart seized in his chest when the camera came to Charles.
The Monegasque driver paused for a moment, running his tongue over his front teeth in deep thought.
Max held his breath, his phone so close to his face that his nose brushed against the screen.
“I think Max,” Charles said finally with a conspiratorial smile. As if he knew something the camera didn’t. “Yeah. I think Max has got it.”
The air left Max’s lungs all at once, his hands trembling so much that the phone slipped from his grasp, disappearing into the folds of the duvet. That night, he fell asleep dreaming of green eyes and a soft, secretive smile.
The stress of race day took another couple of months off Max’s already dwindling lifespan. The pain in his joints was unbearable right up until the moment when his visor slid shut and the lights went out.
Two hours later, he was champion of the world.
GP cried on the radio. Christian screamed. And Max… Max choked on the emotion welling up in his throat, on the profound relief that he’d finally done it. He’d proven himself. To his team, to the world, to himself.
When he died, he wouldn’t die a nobody. He would die a champion.
(@zehiristyle) I would love to hear about antidote WIP 👀👀
This is weird af but I woke up one morning several months ago thinking about an hp fic I read back in the olden days (which I'll cite appropriately when I publish this). And then I said to myself what if I made it lestappen🤔 and thus this was born 😅
Essentially, it's a red string of fate soulmate AU, where Max and Charles' bond snaps into place after Austria 2019. Charles is so angry after the race that he rejects the bond before it can truly form and is therefore none the wiser about it, but Max is forced to endure a slow, painful rejection illness that will eventually lead to bond death unless his soulmate accepts him. But of course Max would rather die (literally) than say anything to Charles bc you know... plot and angst reasons😁
Small snippet below the cut :)
“George was right about you, you know. When he called you a dirty racer and a cheat. You can’t stand to lose, and you make it everybody else’s problem,” he spat.
The ball of lead dropped from Max’s throat into the pit of his stomach. Charles’ words cut deep, through all of Max’s carefully constructed defences into the very heart of him. The place that he let so few people into, only the ones he really trusted.
“Don’t talk to me again, Max. Stay the hell away from me,” Charles finished, crossing his arms over his chest.
Max’s chest gave a sharp lurch, some cord inside pulling tight and snapping. The rebound nearly knocked him right off the steps. He swayed and caught onto the railing, his eyes immediately catching on the ring finger of his right hand.
Where there had been nothing, a glossy red string now wrapped around it, shimmering slightly where it caught the light. He followed it with his eyes, dread pooling in his stomach. Its other end looped around one of Charles’ white-knuckled fingers, a dull, lifeless grey.
This couldn’t be happening.
Soulmates.
He and Charles were soulmates.
The red string… it was supposed to tie them together for life, to signify two halves of the same whole finally meeting. And there it was around Charles’ finger… grey. Dead.
oooh such a fun wip game!! i'm superrrr interested in the winner takes it all wip :)
(if i can also be greedy, darling just once calls to me too)
love your fics!!
Eeee thank you🥰🥰🥰 For darling just once, check out this ! I explained the fic and included a snippet too :)
For the winner takes it all, I can't remember where I got this idea, but I've been toying around with it for a few months. It's smutty, but not in a fun way😅
Essentially, Charles takes advantage of Max's feelings for him and starts sleeping with him in order to get Max to reveal things about his car, strategies, upgrades, etc. Ferrari knows about this and encourages it, and Charles kinda feels bad about it, but it's helping him win, so🤷
Eventually Max finds out what Charles (and Ferrari) are doing. He's extremely hurt (obvi) and ends it, then goes on a generational run to remind everyone that he's actually the greatest there's ever been (think Princess Diana revenge dress but in racing form😄) Charles regrets everything that happened, and even though he wins the championship, it feels hollow and fake. He realizes that he actually does have real feelings for Max, but now feels like he doesn't deserve him after what he did, etc etc.
Snippet under the cut (explicit sexual content) !
Charles makes sure to ask the question when he’s buried so deep inside of Max that the Dutchman can probably feel it in his throat.
“What tires are you starting on tomorrow, chèri?” he breathes into Max’s mouth, swallowing the other man’s whimper as Charles hits the sensitive spot inside him just right.
“Charles– what?”
“Tires, chèri. What is your team thinking?”
“Uh– why are you– ah!”
They’re at the point where Max struggles to string his words together. Normally Charles is quite proud of how completely he can disarm his rival, until he’s a shaking, sobbing mess beneath him. But tonight he needs Max to focus, to use that beautiful, strategic brain of his and answer Charles’ question.
“Max, focus, baby.” He punctuates the sentence with a particularly hard thrust, making Max’s eyes fly open as he gasps.
They didn’t used to fuck on Saturdays. Especially not during a race weekend.
When this strange affair had started in the middle of the 2024 season as a way for them to both blow off steam in the face of McLaren’s growing dominance, Max had been firm about that boundary. No sex on Saturdays. Nothing that could potentially impact his performance in a race.
Over the months, Charles had worn him down with promises to be gentle, to go slow so that he wouldn’t hurt him. The first time Max had let Charles fuck him on a Saturday before a race had been in Qatar. Incensed by the altercation with George, he’d just texted Charles a room number and half an hour later, Charles had had him writhing on the hotel mattress, speared open on his cock.
Max had won the race the next day, and Charles had used that fact as definitive proof that Max’s performance wouldn’t be affected by pre-race sex.
“Max.” Charles’ tone takes on a warning note, and he reaches the hand that’s not holding down the Dutchman’s hips up to tweak his nipple.
“So– softs!” Max gasps out, trying and failing to twist away from Charles’ fingers.
Charles smiles and removes his hand, bending down to kiss the abused area instead. He’ll text his race engineer as soon as he and Max are done and let him know.
rpfing while doing a phd is nasty work, i'm in bachelor's hell myself </3 may i have some of 'darling just once' please and ty
May we both be granted the strength to make it through our respective degrees then ahah🙃
I'd be so happy to share DJO, I've been working on it for almost a year at this point😅 the premise is convoluted and difficult to explain without giving too much away, but I'll try !!
Something happens to Max immediately after the day of "the inchident" and he vanishes from the face of the racing world. 13 years later, Charles runs into him at the same karting track. Max has a kid that he's desperate to protect from what he experienced himself and Charles is a world champion with Ferrari that's disillusioned with the sport and his own accomplishments. The story is about worlds colliding and facing the past and the cost of success and a million other things that I can't explain better so I'll just share two snippets below the cut (one from each POV)😊
“I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
Max squinted at him in the dimness, trying to make out something Charles didn’t know.
Eventually, he said, “Yeah. That sounds good. Thank you, again.”
Charles waved him off. “Give me your number. Then you can text me when you’re on the way.” He extended his unlocked phone to the other man, a new contact already pulled up.
Max took the phone from him and quickly punched in his digits, then handed the device back. “Text me first then, so that I have yours too.”
Charles smiled at him, warmth curling in his stomach. “You got it.”
Max nodded wordlessly, and rounded the truck, pulling open the driver-side door and climbing in quickly. Niki raised his head at the disturbance. Father and son exchanged a few words behind the windshield, then Niki turned to look at Charles, giving him a dazzling grin and a wave. Charles waved back, rooted to the spot.
Several moments later, the headlights came on, and the truck roared to life, its V-6 engine making itself known in the quiet. With a final raised hand in Charles’ direction, Max pulled away from the parking spot and drove off, one of the taillights flickering as he hit the bumps and pits littering the broken asphalt of the lot.
Charles watched them go until they disappeared out of sight. He looked down at his phone, eyes tracing the letters of the new name in his contacts.
Max Verstappen.
A name he hadn’t heard in many years and only ever thought about occasionally, in the depths of the night, when his mind wandered back to the past. When he lay awake in the early hours of the morning and contemplated the many people who helped him achieve the success he so often took for granted these days.
His father. Jules. Nicolas Todt. Fred Vasseur. Seb.
And somewhere among the hundreds of faces that haunted the long, winding road that had led to his world championships with Ferrari, was the angular teenage visage of Max Verstappen. Who had taught him to fight for what he wanted with every ounce of strength he possessed. To race hard and fast, always. Who had taught him that first place was the only one that mattered. Who had infected him, perhaps unwittingly, with a passion for winning that had never dimmed since, even long after Max himself had vanished from Charles’ life without a trace.
Yes, Charles had always privately considered Max to be one of the people responsible for getting him to where he was.
The years had faded so many faces from his memory. He couldn’t remember the exact pitch of Jules’ laugh, couldn’t quite recall how his father’s forehead had wrinkled when he had been exasperated with something Charles was doing. But the exact shade of Max’s blue eyes, brimming with anger as they stared at each other across the steward’s office on this very track 13 years ago, was imprinted with a hot iron on Charles’ brain.
And now here he was. His number in Charles’ phone. The biggest unsolved mystery of his life, just a text away.
-------
Max woke with the distinct feeling of being watched. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, the only sound in the dark quiet of his room the erratic beating of his own heart.
A small sigh escaped his lips as he closed his eyes for a brief moment, pulling the duvet tighter around himself.
He knew this would happen after yesterday. Prepared for it even. But still, the sheer force of his own subconscious knocked his breath out of him every time.
If he had his way, he’d never set foot on another karting track again. But of course, he could not have possibly denied Niki on his birthday. Not when the boy had asked him so sweetly–in Dutch, no less–several months in advance whether they could go.
Max had agreed, unable to resist his son’s pleading blue eyes, and dutifully set aside money since then, saving up to ensure that they could afford to spend a whole day at the track. He’d known, in his gut, that that night he would dream of cold blue eyes, the same shade as Niki’s and his own, and of even icier ones, twisted in a cruel leer as they dragged up and down his body from across the table of a restaurant.
But there had been another pair of eyes in his dreams this night.
Green ones.
Charles’ eyes.
He’d rarely let himself think about the other man with any sort of familiarity, long since compartmentalizing him as “F1 driver for Ferrari” rather than the boy who had once been his greatest karting rival.
It was always easier to think of him by his title, clinical and detached, than as Max’s last real memory of karting. His angular teenage face pinched with anger, green eyes alight with indignation across the stewards’ office at Val D’Argenton.
The last face Max would see before his world changed so cardinally, forever.
Yes, it was easier to think of Charles as just another F1 driver, no different to the 19 others that Max would never know, not in any real way.
And, if his heart beat a little faster when it was Charles crossing the finish line first as opposed to anyone else? If his chest bloomed with something close to pride when it was Charles hoisting the first-place trophy above his head on the podium, face alight with triumph?
Well, that was no one’s business but Max’s own.
There had been three pairs of eyes in Max’s dream as opposed to the usual two.
Because Charles had been there yesterday. On the exceptionally rare occasion that Max himself made it out onto a karting track, he had run into Charles Leclerc. Teenage menace and F1 world champion Charles Leclerc.
The serendipity of it all had Max smiling slightly, almost enough to forget the other two haunting presences in the back of his mind.
rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your wip folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous and tag as many people as you have wips. people send an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then you post a snippet or tell them something about it
I'm frankly chomping at the bit to start publishing some of these WIPs, but I'm so scared of starting to publish a story that's not finished and then losing motivation to keep writing it (looking at you h2o fic😭)
Anyway, here you go😁
darling just once (let yesterday go) wip // got like 50k words already written for this👀
the winner takes it all wip
antidote wip
the amazing race wip
Not sure who's already participated but tagging @its-an-echo, @drivingstuff, @zehiristyle, and @renlovespastries ! No pressure but would love to see what you guys are up to !! <3
Here's what irks me about the whole GP to McLaren business: once again it's started the rumour mill of "Max to Mercedes" or "Max to Aston" or (insanely) "Max to McLaren". Max has said a hundred million times that he will finish his career with Red Bull. That when GP is done, he's done too.
WHY DON'T PEOPLE BELIEVE HIM ????
MAX DOESN'T LIE.
The man is truthful to a fault, so WHY am I seeing serious news outlets, serious F1 content creators still speculating about this ? Does it break my sad little heart that he'll likely retire before/when GP leaves ? OF COURSE. But I (a real Max fan) know that he's not fucking lying about it.
Coming from hot (when you're on top) one shot request!!!
Ballet AU! Maybe where Max is a dancer and Charles is a pianist? I feel like that would work sooooo well, lots of delicious silent pining from both sides maybe??
I loved hot (when you're on top) thank you sm for writing❣️
Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE the ballet, so this is right up my alley hehe.
Silent pining Lestappen is sacred, it's true 😌
I'm thinking... Max as the prima ballerina and Charles as the house pianist (like you say) and after every show, during the applause, Charles throws Max a flower. Max is enamored with this beautiful pianist but Charles never talks to him. Then, on the night of the last performance, Max decides he just HAS to talk to Charles bc what if they never see each other again and runs after him in his pretty ballerina outfit and... let's see 🙈
I just read hot (when you're on top) and it really reminded me how much i love your charles and max, and had to read I hope you know (I will carry you home) again ❤️❤️❤️ it really is my favorite not-so-meet-cute story, you just capture them perfectly and your writing is gorgeous 💙💙💙
so! to spark your lestappen writing gene with a prompt, i humbly request f1 driver!max or charles and cabin boy! max or charles 😁 max or charles spend the f1 summer break on their yacht out at sea with friends and a crew to manage the boat which max or charles is a part of somehow. love sparks over lust or bonding or maybe they are soulmates, anything is good as long as they are topless at sea 🤭
Ahhh you're so sweet, spoiling me rotten with the compliments 🥰🥰🥰 so glad you enjoyed hwyot and ihyk :)))
And I LOVE this prompt !! Got me immediately in a summer mood 😁 preliminarily thinking that maybe Max agrees last minute to fill in on the crew for a friend (maybe Lando or Danny or someone) because they're sick but fails to account for the fact that he gets seasick ! 🫣 cue Charles trying to help and comfort him despite being the "guest".
And of course lots and lots and lots of fluff and shirtless lestappen content 😁😁 maybe even some smut let's see hehe
Thank you for this prompt, I'm very excited to write it ! 💗
