Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: GEORGE RUSSELL BASHING. I am warning in ALL CAPS because if you are a fan of him, DO NOT come into my inbox and complain to me about me being mean to this fictional version of him. REAL LIFE GEORGE RUSSELL WOULD OBVIOUSLY NEVER ACT LIKE THAT. Also, this chapter contains mentions of Death Threats and some vague mentions of sexual assault and threats of the same. RED BULL BASHING! Do I need to warn for that? I will just so that nobody will be able to complain.
For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it! As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Group Chat: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!
(Members: Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson, Isack Hadjar, Oliver Bearman, Esteban Ocon, Gabriel Bortoleto, Nico Hulkenberg, Kimi Antonelli, Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly, Franco Colapinto, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Alex Albon, Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso)
Lando Norris: MAX.
Max Verstappen: What.
Lando Norris: YOUR FIANCÉE HAS BROKEN THE INTERNET.
Max Verstappen: Again?
Oscar Piastri: I think technically the ring did.
Alex Albon: Have you looked at Twitter?
Pierre Gasly: Apparently Ana is engaged to Mick Schumacher.
Max Verstappen: I saw that one.
Alex Albon: David Coulthard is my personal favourite.
Lando Norris: HEREDITARY SCOTTISH RACING-DRIVER ATTRACTION.
Carlos Sainz: I laughed for five minutes.
Lewis Hamilton: Susie has probably already seen that.
Kimi Antonelli: Someone at the factory sent me a poll asking if I knew who Ana was engaged to.
Oscar Piastri: What did you say?
Kimi Antonelli: I said yes.
Lando Norris: KIMI.
Kimi Antonelli: What?
Lando Norris: YOU CAN’T SAY THAT.
Kimi Antonelli: I did not say who!
Max Verstappen: That is fine.
Lando Norris: NO IT ISN’T.
Max Verstappen: It is.
Lando Norris: Fine.
Lando Norris: More important question.
Lando Norris: HOW DID THE BERGER MEETING GO?
Charles Leclerc: Oh yes.
Alex Albon: Actually yes.
Pierre Gasly: We forgot about that because apparently Max is secretly marrying Mick Schumacher.
Max Verstappen: Ana is.According to Twitter.
Oscar Piastri: Keep up.
Fernando Alonso: How was the meeting?
Lewis Hamilton: And is Gerhard still alive?
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Lando Norris: That pause before answering was concerning.
Max Verstappen: He is alive.
Carlos: What about Jos?
Max Verstappen: Also alive.
Lando Norris: Ana?
Max Verstappen: Unfortunately also did not murder anybody.
Lewis Hamilton: Unfortunately?
Max Verstappen: She looked very pretty while being threatening.
Oscar Piastri: Of course this is your takeaway.
Max Verstappen: Anyway.
Max Verstappen: Put the pitchforks down.
Lando Norris: I DIDN’T EVEN GET MINE OUT YET.
Fernando Alonso: Mine was ready.
Max Verstappen: Gerhard apologised.
Charles Leclerc: Properly?
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Carlos Sainz: As in actual apology?
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Lewis Hamilton: No excuses?
Max Verstappen: No.
Fernando Alonso: Did he say he was sorry or did he say “I’m sorry you feel that way”?
Max Verstappen: He said he was sorry.
Fernando Alonso: Hmm.
Lando Norris: That is a suspicious Fernando hmm.
Fernando Alonso: I am evaluating.
Max Verstappen: He took responsibility. For what happened. For how Red Bull treated me. Ana asked him questions for approximately forty minutes.
Alex Albon: Oh Jesus.
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Kimi Antonelli: Did he survive?
Max Verstappen: Barely.
Lewis Hamilton: I assume she had notes.
Max Verstappen: She had a folder.
Lando Norris: OF COURSE SHE HAD A FOLDER.
Max Verstappen: She wore pearls though.
Oscar Piastri: Why is that relevant?
Max Verstappen: She said she wanted to look non-threatening.
Oscar Piastri: Did it work?
Max Verstappen: No.
Valtteri Bottas: Pearls rarely neutralise a folder.
Kimi Antonelli: Especially an Ana folder.
Max Verstappen: Anyway.I am giving him a chance.
Lewis Hamilton: Okay.
Charles Leclerc: If that’s what you want.
Carlos Sainz: Then that’s what matters.
Fernando Alonso: I reserve the right to dislike Red Bull.
Max Verstappen: Obviously.
Fernando Alonso: Strongly.
Max Verstappen: Yes, Fernando.
Fernando Alonso: For a very long time.
Max Verstappen: I know.
Lando Norris: Can I still mildly hate them?
Max Verstappen: You can do whatever you want.
Oscar Piastri: Dangerous thing to tell him.
Lando Norris: I will hate them supportively.
Max Verstappen: Thank you.
Lewis Hamilton: If Gerhard apologised properly and you want to give him the opportunity to prove himself, then fair enough.
Max Verstappen: That is basically what I said.
Fernando Alonso: One chance.
Max Verstappen: Fernando.
Fernando Alonso: I am just saying.
Max Verstappen: I know.
Fernando Alonso: If he hurts you—
Max Verstappen: Ana already gave him that speech.
Alex Albon: I bet hers was scarier.
Max Verstappen: Much scarier.
Fernando Alonso: Good.
Max Verstappen: Actually. Serious thing. Ana is there this weekend.
Lando Norris: We know.
Lando Norris: THE RING IS CURRENTLY TRENDING IN THREE COUNTRIES.
Max Verstappen: Can you all keep an eye on her?
Lewis Hamilton: Of course.
Carlos Sainz: Obviously.
Lando Norris: Yeah.
Oscar Piastri: Do you mean generally or is something wrong?
Max Verstappen: Something happened before she left.
Lewis Hamilton: What happened?
Max Verstappen: She got threats.
Charles Leclerc: What?
Lando Norris: WHAT
Carlos Sainz: What kind of threats?
Max Verstappen: Bad ones.
Lewis Hamilton: Max.
Max Verstappen: Death threats.
Fernando Alonso: Who.
Max Verstappen: We think George.
Lando Norris: You THINK???
Max Verstappen: Police are tracing the number. There are reasons to think it was him.
Charles Leclerc: What did he say?
Max Verstappen: I am not repeating it.
Lewis Hamilton: Okay. You don’t have to.
Fernando Alonso: Is she safe?
Max Verstappen: Yes. Mercedes increased security. Toto has people around the family too.
Carlos Sainz: Does COTA security know?
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Alex Albon: FIA?
Max Verstappen: Relevant people know.
Fernando Alonso: Why is she there?
Max Verstappen: Because she refused not to go.
Lewis Hamilton: It’s her job.
Max Verstappen: Exactly. Toto tried.
Valtteri Bottas: I imagine that went well.
Max Verstappen: She said she was not letting anyone take Mercedes away from her because it is her safe place.
Lewis Hamilton: Right. Then we make sure it stays that way.
Carlos Sainz: Absolutely.
Lando Norris: She won’t be alone for five fucking seconds.
Oscar Piastri: Maybe don’t make it obvious, Lando.
Lando Norris: I CAN BE SUBTLE.
Oscar Piastri: No.
Alex Albon: Absolutely not.
Pierre Gasly: Historically false.
Lando Norris: Fine.
Lando Norris: I will be normal.
Oscar Piastri: Also unlikely.
Max Verstappen: Please do not swarm her.
Lando Norris: You literally just asked us to keep an eye on her.
Max Verstappen: Yes. Not form a protective circle around her like penguins.
Alex Albon: That is exactly what Lando was planning.
Lando Norris: I WAS NOT.
Oscar Piastri: He was.
Kimi Antonelli: I can stay close to her in the garage.
Max Verstappen: Thanks.
Kimi Antonelli: I am supposed to be close to her anyway.
Max Verstappen: Yes.
Kimi Antonelli: Because she works there.
Max Verstappen: Yes, Kimi.
Kimi Antonelli: Good.
Lewis Hamilton: I’ll check in with her.
Max Verstappen: Thank you.
Charles Leclerc: Me too.
Fernando Alonso: I will watch.
Max Verstappen: That sounds threatening.
Fernando Alonso: Good.
Max Verstappen: Fernando.
Fernando Alonso: I said nothing.
Lando Norris: You said “I will watch” like a Sicilian grandfather.
Fernando Alonso: I am Spanish.
Lando Norris: You understand the vibe.
Oscar Piastri: Does Ana know you’re telling us?
Max Verstappen: I am not telling you details. I just want people around her.
Lewis Hamilton: Understood.
Max Verstappen: And please keep it out of the media if you can.
Charles Leclerc: Obviously.
Carlos Sainz: Of course.
Lewis Hamilton: Nothing leaves here.
Lando Norris: Yeah.
Oscar Piastri: Agreed.
Alex Albon: Absolutely.
Pierre Gasly: Of course.
Valtteri: Understood.
Fernando Alonso: It stays here.
Max Verstappen: Thanks.
***
Group Chat: Paddock Girlies
(Members: Alexandra Saint Mleux, Rebecca Donaldson, Lily Zneimer, Flavy Barla, Kika Gomes, Lily Muni He, Alicia Torriani, Isabella Bernadini)
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Okay.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I have been told something.
Kika Gomes: That sentence never ends well.
Rebecca Donaldson: Who told you something?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I cannot reveal my sources.
Flavy Barla: Charles.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I cannot reveal Charles.
Flavy Barla: 😭
Lily Zneimer: What happened?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Apparently Ana got threats.
Kika Gomes: What?
Rebecca Donaldson: What kind of threats?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I don’t know everything.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: And I don’t think we’re supposed to know everything.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: But serious enough that Max asked the drivers to keep an eye on her this weekend.
Flavy Barla: Oh my God.
Alicia Torriani: Is she okay?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Physically, yes.That is basically all Charles would tell me after he realised he had already told me too much.
Flavy Barla: Classic.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: He literally said, “Actually, I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
Rebecca Donaldson: After telling you.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Yes.
Kika Gomes: Pierre told me there was “a situation” and then refused to elaborate.
Flavy Barla: Oh so they ALL know.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Apparently Max told the drivers because Ana is coming to COTA and he isn’t.
Lily Zneimer: And he’s worried about her.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Very.
Rebecca Donaldson: Okay.
Rebecca Donaldson: Put her in here.
Kika Gomes: Exactly what I was thinking.
Lily Zneimer: Does Ana even know this chat exists?
Alicia Torriani: Does she WANT to be in a WAG group chat?
Rebecca Donaldson: Irrelevant.
Lily Zneimer: Rebecca 😭
Rebecca Donaldson: She is engaged. She is dating a driver. She is at a race without him. Someone threatened her. She qualifies.
Isabella Bernadini: That sounded like an immigration assessment.
Rebecca Donaldson: I stand by it.
Kika Gomes: Also the internet currently thinks she might be engaged to every guy under the sun.
Rebecca Donaldson: Put her in the chat before Twitter marries her to Bernie Ecclestone.
Kika Gomes: REBECCA.
Rebecca Donaldson: There is precedent for age gaps in that family apparently.
Lily Muni He: STOP.
Alicia Torriani: Does anyone actually have Ana’s number?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I do.
Rebecca Donaldson: Add Ana.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Shouldn’t we ask her first?
Kika Gomes: No.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Kika.
Kika Gomes: She’ll say no.
Flavy Barla: She absolutely will.
Lily Zneimer: She’ll say something like: “Thank you, but I do not believe participation is necessary.”
Rebecca Donaldson: Exactly. So we remove the decision.
Alicia Torriani: This feels ethically questionable.
Rebecca Donaldson: She can leave.
Lily Zneimer: She won’t.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: How do you know?
Lily Zneimer: Because leaving a group chat is socially confrontational and Ana seems like she would rather calculate orbital mechanics by hand than create unnecessary social conflict.
Lily Muni He: That is frighteningly convincing.
Flavy Barla: Add her.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Wait.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Before we do—
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Nobody asks about the threats.
Rebecca Donaldson: Obviously.
Lily Zneimer: Agreed.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Nobody asks who sent them.
Kika Gomes: Yes.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Nobody tells her we know unless she brings it up.
Flavy Barla: Yes.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: And nobody treats her like she needs babysitting.
Rebecca Donaldson: We are not babysitting her.
Rebecca Donaldson: We are aggressively befriending her.
Lily Zneimer: Much better.
Kika Gomes: Can we subtly make sure she isn’t alone though?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Yes.
Lily Muni He: That we can do.
Flavy Barla: Coffee.
Alicia Torriani: Lunch.
Rebecca Donaldson: Dinner.
Lily Zneimer: This is beginning to sound like a custody schedule.
Kika Gomes: Perfect.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Absolutely not.
Rebecca Donaldson: Max asked people to keep an eye on her.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: He asked the DRIVERS.
Rebecca Donaldson: And look how efficiently that worked.
Kika Gomes: We found out within twelve minutes.
Flavy Barla: Actually an argument against trusting them with anything.
Flavy Barla: 😭😭😭
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Fine.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I’m adding her.
Alexandra added Anastasia Wolff to the group.
Ana Wolff: Hello.
Kika Gomes: HI ❤️
Flavy Barla: Hi Ana!!!
Lily Zneimer: Hello 🤍
Rebecca Donaldson: Welcome.
Lily Muni He: Hi Ana ❤️
Alicia Torriani: Hi!!
Isabella Bernadini: Welcome 🤍
Ana Wolff: Thank you.
Ana Wolff: Why am I here?
Rebecca Donaldson: You’re engaged.
Ana Wolff: Yes.
Rebecca Donaldson: Therefore you qualify.
Ana Wolff: For what?
Rebecca Donaldson: This.
Ana Wolff: I do not understand.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: It’s just our chat. Race weekends, dinners, gossip, emergencies, borrowing clothes, complaining about men.
Ana Wolff: I work with most of your men.
Rebecca Donaldson: Excellent. Inside information.
Ana Wolff: I am bound by confidentiality agreements.
Kika Gomes: 😭
Flavy Barla: She thought Rebecca was serious.
Ana Wolff: Was she not?
Rebecca Donaldson: A little.
Ana Wolff: Then my response remains applicable.
Lily Zneimer: Perfect.
Ana Wolff: Also, technically, I am not a WAG.
Kika Gomes: Oh my God.
Flavy Barla: Here we go.
Rebecca Donaldson: You are literally engaged to a Formula One driver.
Ana Wolff: That is not public information.
Rebecca Donaldson: Noted.
Ana Wolff: Also, I am employed by the team he is joining.
Lily Muni He: Still counts.
Ana Wolff: I was here first.
Kika Gomes: You can be both.
Ana Wolff: Was this Max’s idea?
Kika Gomes: It was girl power.
Ana Wolff: That does not explain anything.
Lily Zneimer: You have been forcibly adopted.
Ana Wolff: I see. Why?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: No reason.
Ana Wolff: That is statistically unlikely.
Rebecca Donaldson: She has been here twelve seconds.
Flavy Barla: 😭
Ana Wolff: Did one of the drivers tell you about the threats?
The chat is silent for twenty-three seconds.
Ana Wolff: I will interpret the silence as yes.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Charles has no operational security. Max mentioned it in a group chat. Charles can’t keep his mouth shut. So we thought you should be in here.
Ana Wolff: That is very kind.
Kika Gomes: Also we are having lunch tomorrow. Come with us.
Rebecca Donaldson: Yes.
Flavy Barla: Please ❤️
Lily Muni He: We can go somewhere quiet.
Isabella Bernadini: And somewhere security is comfortable with.
Ana Wolff: That is extremely sweet of you all, but I have lunch with engineering when I am at race weekends. And
Ana Wolff: However.
Ana Wolff: Alexandra?
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Yes?
Ana Wolff: Could you potentially sneak me into Ferrari hospitality for approximately fifteen minutes after lunch?
Rebecca Donaldson: EXCUSE ME.
Kika Gomes: SPY.
Flavy Barla: Traitor.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: 😂😂😂
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Probably. Why?
Ana Wolff: I have a gift for Lewis.
Lily Zneimer: Okay that is unexpectedly wholesome.
Ana Wolff: I may also ask Nico Rosberg to come.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I need significantly more information.
Ana Wolff: Roscoe died several weeks ago. So I made Lewis a photobook.It contains photographs from throughout Roscoe's life. I had it professionally bound. Nico helped.
Rebecca Donaldson: NICO HELPED??
Ana Wolff: Yes. I asked him to review the draft.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Why Nico?
Ana Wolff: Because I am not particularly good at emotional communication.Nico is.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Wait. You said you're not good at emotional communication.
Ana Wolff: Correct. I am autistic. I process social situations differently from neurotypical people.
Rebecca Donaldson: Thank you for telling us.
Kika Gomes: Can I ask something? Only if you don't mind.
Ana Wolff: Of course.
Kika Gomes: You always seem… so good with people, though.
Ana Wolff: I am really not. I just had practice. I spent eight years in therapy. It mostly involved flashcards.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Flashcards?
Ana Wolff: Faces. People smiling. Frowning. Looking uncomfortable. Confused. Ashamed. Embarrassed. Interested.The therapist would ask me what they were feeling.
I usually did not know. Eventually I became slightly better.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: So now...?
Ana Wolff: Now I calculate.
Kika Gomes: Calculate?
Ana Wolff: Mostly unconsciously. People's eyebrows. Eyes. Jaw. Tone of voice. Context. Probability. After enough practice it became reasonably fast.
Lily Zneimer: You literally analyse facial expressions?
Ana Wolff: Yes. I cannot reliably "just know" like most people. That’s why I had Nico check the photobook.
Rebecca Donaldson: Ana… That must be so tiring.
Ana Wolff: It is. But it’s normal for me.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Is that why you always seem...So composed?
Ana Wolff: Partially. Masking is easier if one has scripts.
Lily Muni He: Scripts?
Ana Wolff: Appropriate responses. Eye contact duration. Expected facial expressions. Conversation order. I have become quite good at appearing normal.
Ana Wolff: At least I believe I did.
Kika Gomes: You absolutely do.
Rebecca Donaldson: Did people...not understand when you were younger?
Ana Wolff: Many people thought I was rude. Or cold. Or strange. Or frightening. Some preferred "crazy."
Rebecca Donaldson: People are awful.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: I'm so sorry.
Ana Wolff: It was a long time ago. I do not really mask with Max. It is...peaceful. If I think something, I generally say it. He never minded if it’s blunt. He usually says something equally blunt back.
Kika Gomes: 😂
Ana Wolff: It is remarkably efficient.
Rebecca Donaldson: That's the part you like??
Ana Wolff: Yes. There is very little ambiguity. If he is annoyed, he says he is annoyed. If he is happy, he says he is happy. If he wants a hug, he requests one. If I require silence, I say so. There is very little guessing.
Lily Muni He: That actually sounds… Really healthy.
Ana Wolff: I think so. I enjoy existing around him.
Kika Gomes: That might be the most romantic sentence anyone has ever written.
Ana Wolff: Really?
Rebecca Donaldson: Ana. Honey. Yes.
Ana Wolff: Interesting.
Ana Wolff: I shall inform Max that my wording exceeded expectations.
Alexandra Saint Mleux: Please don't phrase it like a laboratory report.
Ana Wolff: Noted. (I will probably phrase it like a laboratory report.)
***
Text Messages: Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff & Max Verstappen
Ana: Question.
Max: Yes?
Ana: Did you tell all of the Formula One drivers about the threats?
Max: ...
Max: Maybe.
Ana: Max Emilian Verstappen.
Max: I didn't tell them details.
Ana: Max.You informed nineteen Formula One drivers that I have received death threats.
Max: I asked them to keep an eye on you.
Ana: I have Nikolai.
Max: I know.
Ana: Mercedes security.
Max: I know.
Ana: Papa.
Max: I know.
Ana: The police.
Max: I know.
Ana: Then why?
Max: Because I couldn't be there.And because I trust them.
Max: I didn't want you walking around by yourself if I couldn't be next to you.
Max: Lewis said they'd keep it quiet. Charles too.
Ana: That was kind of you.
Max: You're not angry?
Ana: No.
Max: Congratulations by the way.
Ana: For what?
Max: Twitter is trying to figure out your mysterious fiancée.
Ana: Fiancée?
Max: Apparently they've realised they've been assuming you're marrying a man with absolutely no evidence.
Ana: That is statistically fair.
Max: Want to know the options?
Ana: Obviously.
Max: David Coulthard.
Ana: ...
Ana: Oh.
Max: Oh?
Ana: He did try to flirt with me once.
Max: WHAT.
Ana: I think.
Max: YOU THINK??
Ana: It was not entirely explicit.
Max: NASTYA.
Ana: There was a gala in Monaco. Perhaps 2021. We discussed historical racing helmets.
Ana: He approached me. Initiated conversation. Asked questions. Maintained eye contact. Statistically that usually indicates interest beyond technical discussion.
Max: WHY DID THIS HAPPEN.
Ana: I do not believe he recognised me.
Max: Recognised you as...?
Ana: Papa's daughter.
Ana: We had been speaking for approximately four minutes. Then Papa arrived.
Max: Go on.
Ana: Papa interrupted. David learned my surname. He became noticeably uncomfortable.
Max: 😂😂😂😂😂
Ana: Then Papa informed him that I was his daughter.
Max: OH MY GOD.
Ana: David left rather quickly. I later informed Papa that David appeared uncomfortable.
Max: 😂😂😂
Ana: Papa replied, "Good."
Max: THAT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE TOTO.
Ana: Yes.
Max: Did he actually flirt with you?
Ana: It is possible he was simply unusually interested in helmet homologation.
Max: David Coulthard has many interests. I don't think helmet homologation is number one.
Ana: Noted.
Max: I don't know whether to laugh or be offended.
Ana: Why offended?
Max: Because apparently retired F1 drivers are trying to chat you up at galas.
Ana: Only one. Potentially.
Max: ONLY ONE??
Ana: That I noticed.
Max: THAT YOU NOTICED???
Ana: Correct.
Max: NASTYA.
Ana: Yes?
Max: Do you have any idea how pretty you are?
Ana: Not particularly.
Max: Nastya.
Ana: Yes?
Max: Men have definitely flirted with you before.
Ana: That seems plausible.
Max: AND YOU JUST… DIDN'T NOTICE?
Ana: Frequently.
Max: Jesus Christ.
Ana: Unless they state their intentions directly, it is difficult to distinguish flirting from friendliness. You were comparatively straightforward.
Max: Comparatively?
Ana: Your opening strategy involved horrificially bad pick up lines. That was sufficiently unusual to suggest ulterior motives.
Ana: You also asked me to have dinner with you. Then breakfast. It was efficient.
Max: I love the way your brain works.
***
Text Messages: Unknown Number & Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff
Unknown Number: Take it off.
Unknown Number: The ring.Take it off.
Unknown Number: You look ridiculous.
Unknown Number: You really expect anyone to believe this?
Unknown Number: No man wants you.Nobody has ever wanted you.
Unknown Number: Your father bought you a ring because he is embarrassed.
Unknown Number: Or maybe you bought it yourself.That sounds like you.
Unknown Number: Creating evidence for something that never happened.
Unknown Number: Tell them the truth.
Unknown Number: Tell them nobody proposed.Tell them you are lying again.
Unknown Number: You lied about me.You lied about what happened.
Unknown Number: Who is he?
Unknown Number: Tell me his name.
Unknown Number: Answer me. You do not get to ignore me after everything.
I gave you chance after chance. I tried to help you. I was patient with you when nobody else would have been.
Unknown Number: Did he touch you?
Unknown Number: Did you let him touch you?
Unknown Number: I want to know who thinks he can touch what belongs to me.
Unknown Number: End it.Whatever arrangement this is, end it.
Unknown Number: You are humiliating yourself.
Unknown Number: You are humiliating me.
Unknown Number: He will leave when he understands what you are.
Unknown Number: They always do.
Unknown Number: You are cold.You are broken.You cannot love anyone normally.
Unknown Number: No man chooses that forever.
Unknown Number: He loves the mask.
Unknown Number: He has never seen you without it.
Unknown Number: I will always find a way to reach you.
Unknown Number: You cannot hide behind your father. You cannot hide behind Mercedes.
Unknown Number: Tell me his name.
Unknown Number: I want to know who thinks he can take what is mine.
Unknown Number: He will leave when he understands you.
Unknown Number:
No man could actually love you.
He wants your name.
Or your father’s money.
Or access to Mercedes.
Unknown Number:
He will hate the silence. He will hate the way you stare. He will hate having to explain basic human feelings to you.
Unknown Number: He will leave.
Unknown Number: I would not have left.
Unknown Number: You did this.
Unknown Number: You made everything happen.
Unknown Number: If you had listened to me none of this would have happened.
Unknown Number: Take the ring off. Post that it was a misunderstanding. Tell them the engagement is over. Then I may forgive you.
Unknown Number: You are mine.
Unknown Number: Do you understand?
Unknown Number: Mine.
Unknown Number: Not his. You cannot marry him. I will not allow it.
Unknown Number: If I cannot have you, nobody will.
Unknown Number: You have until the end of the weekend to correct this. Or I am going to make sure that there isn’t going to be a wedding. Because the groom won’t be alive anymore.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: GEORGE RUSSELL BASHING. I am warning in ALL CAPS because if you are a fan of him, DO NOT come into my inbox and complain to me about me being mean to this fictional version of him. REAL LIFE GEORGE RUSSELL WOULD OBVIOUSLY NEVER ACT LIKE THAT. Also, this chapter contains mentions of Death Threats and some vague mentions of sexual assault and threats of the same. For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
(Also I obviously have no clue how GT3 customer teams are run so...if its wrong, don't come for me)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it! As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 14 October 2025
Max woke slowly.
Not peacefully.
Pain made peace impractical.
It arrived before consciousness had fully assembled itself: the deep, grinding ache beneath his ribs; the heavy pull of his leg inside the brace; the dull pressure behind his eyes from medication.
Then came the weight of the duvet.
The muted hum of the air-conditioning.
The warmth against his chest.
Ana.
She was there.
Not asleep.
Max knew before he opened his eyes.
Her breathing was too measured. Her body was arranged too carefully against his, as if she had spent a long time making sure no part of her weight pressed against the worst of his bruising. One hand lay beneath his, palm turned upward. Sassy was wedged firmly against Ana’s side like a furry reinforcement beam, and Jimmy sat at the foot of the bed facing the door, apparently having appointed himself head of overnight perimeter security.
Max opened his eyes.
Ana’s cheek rested over his heart.
Her eyes were closed.
But she was awake.
He could feel it in the absolute stillness of her.
“Nastya,” he said, voice rough with sleep.
Her eyes opened immediately.
“Good morning.”
Max looked down at her. Then at Sassy. Then at Jimmy. “Was there a meeting I wasn’t invited to?”
“No.”
“Then why are both cats on security duty?”
“Sassy selected physical contact. Jimmy selected perimeter.”
Jimmy’s ears twitched at the sound of his name but he did not turn around.
Max frowned.
Ana’s face remained neutral. Too neutral.
He shifted his hand over hers. “What happened?”
Ana watched him for a moment. Then she moved slightly, just enough to make sure her shoulder was not pressing into his ribs. “I woke up.”
Max waited. She did not continue. “Nastya.”
“I am fine.”
“No.”
Her mouth tightened faintly. “I am functional.”
“That is also not fine.”
“I know.”
He studied her.
Her eyes looked tired. Not normal tired. Hollowed-out tired. The sort she could disguise from most people by standing very straight and speaking in complete sentences.
Max was not most people.
Sassy stretched suddenly, extending one front paw directly against Max’s sternum.
Pain flashed through him.
He winced. “Traitor.”
Sassy looked at him without remorse.
Ana lifted her gently and moved her perhaps two centimeters to the side.
“I ordered a new phone,” she said.
Max blinked. “A new phone?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Earlier.”
“How much earlier?”
Ana looked toward the closed curtains.
“Approximately four twenty-three.”
Max’s eyes narrowed.
“You were awake at four twenty-three.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I woke up.”
“From what?”
Ana looked back at him.
“A dream.”
There it was.
Max’s jaw tightened.
He hated dreams.
They were the only thing he could not put himself between.
He could not block a door against them. Could not move Ana behind him. Could not call Nikolai and demand a route, a name, a plan. He could not break a nightmare’s wrist or shut off its phone or make it understand that it had chosen the wrong person to frighten.
All he could do was wake after the fact and find Ana still inside it.
He moved his thumb slowly over the back of her hand. “What dream?”
“I do not want to describe it.”
His first instinct was to push.
Not because he thought he was entitled to every part of her. Because knowing things felt like action, and action felt better than helplessness.
But Ana had taught him the difference between a closed door and a locked one. A boundary was not an obstacle to be solved.
“Okay,” he said.
Her shoulders loosened by less than a centimeter.
Max noticed anyway. “What phone did you buy?”
“The same model. Silver this time.”
He glanced toward the bedside table.
Her old phone was not there.
Then he remembered.
Nikolai had taken it downstairs the night before after preserving the messages, copying everything for police and legal, and placing the device into an evidence bag.
“Because the old one is with Nikolai?”
“Yes.”
Only yes. Nothing about not wanting to see it again. Nothing about George’s words now living inside it.
Max did not need her to say that part. “And a case?” he asked.
Ana’s expression shifted faintly. “Planets.”
“Of course.”
“The planets are in the correct order. Saturn’s rings are too wide though.”
“Terrible.”
“Uranus has the correct axial tilt.”
Max nodded gravely. “Then we can permit it.”
Ana smiled. Small. Barely there.
Max took the victory. He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth against her knuckles. “You could have woken me.”
“You required sleep.”
“So did you.”
“I slept.”
“How much?”
“Some.”
Max looked at her. “What did you do after the dream?”
Ana hesitated.
Then said, “I listened to your heart.”
His chest tightened in a place the bruises had not reached.
“Because?”
“In the dream, you stopped breathing.”
The room went very quiet.
Max’s hand closed around hers.
Ana noticed immediately.
“You are breathing now,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I verified.”
“How long?”
She looked down at where their hands rested together.
“I do not know.”
That meant a long time.
Max wanted to pull her fully onto him. His ribs made that impossible. He hated his body for it with sudden, vicious intensity.
Instead he shifted carefully and brought his good arm around her shoulders.
Ana immediately adjusted around every injury.
Even frightened, she made herself careful.
“I’m here,” he said.
“I know.”
“Still breathing.”
“Yes.”
“You can check whenever you want.”
“I did.”
“Good.”
Her eyes closed again.
Sassy resumed purring against Ana’s side.
Jimmy remained at the foot of the bed, guarding them from all known threats and perhaps breakfast.
For several minutes, neither of them moved.
Then Ana said, “You have a meeting.”
Max groaned. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I have decided I no longer have a meeting.”
“You cannot cancel your GT3 planning session because getting out of bed is inconvenient.”
Max opened one eye. “You are very strict in the morning.”
“You are very difficult at all times.”
“I am injured.”
“That is unrelated.”
By the time they made it downstairs, Max had revised his opinion.
Getting out of bed was not inconvenient.
It was an operational failure.
It required Ana, both crutches, two pauses, one argument over whether he was dizzy, and another over whether dizziness counted if it stopped when he stood still.
Ana claimed it did.
Max claimed she was being dramatic.
Ana had looked at him for a long moment and said, “I will record that sentence for the next time I am accused of minimizing my own physical distress.”
He had shut up after that.
Now he sat at the kitchen island with his injured leg extended awkwardly beneath the counter, the brace making every position feel wrong.
Ana stood opposite him.
She had changed out of his hoodie.
That caught his attention immediately.
At home, especially in the morning, Ana usually wore one of his oversized shirts with leggings so old and soft that the knees had lost all structural integrity. Today she had dressed for work.
A pale silk blouse. Wide black trousers. Small diamond earrings.
Her hair pinned into a braided bun so exact that not one strand escaped.
The precision of it made something in Max’s stomach twist. Armor.
She had built herself armor before coming downstairs.
He thought of the night before. Of sitting behind her, carefully brushing her hair because she had been too still and because he had needed his hands to do something that was not violence.
Now every strand was secured away again.
Ana placed a bowl of porridge in front of him.
Max looked at it. “This is too healthy.”
“There is honey.”
“That is not enough.”
“There are berries.”
“Worse.”
She placed the spoon beside the bowl. “You have a meeting.”
“I know.”
“You need food.”
“I know.”
“You are being difficult.”
“I am injured.”
“That remains unrelated.”
Max took a bite. It was good.
He did not say so.
Ana watched until he took another. Only then did she turn back to the tablet and folder waiting beside her tea.
The folder was thick.
It had tabs.
Of course it had tabs.
She slid it across the island toward him.
The cover read:
GT3 PROGRAM — PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION PACK
Max looked at her. “What is this?”
“Information.”
“I can see that.”
“Background on Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing. Current homologated platform support. Probable operational structures. Staffing models. Customer team precedents. Budget ranges. Potential conflicts with Formula One obligations. Governance questions. And questions you should ask Stephan.”
Max stared at the folder.
“How many pages?”
“Forty-two.”
He looked up.
Ana met his eyes without embarrassment.
“When did you have the time to make forty-two pages?”
“I began when we first discussed the team.”
“That was weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
“You have been making this for weeks?”
“Not continuously.”
“That is not very reassuring.”
“I thought it would be better to be prepared.”
Max pointed the spoon at her.
“This is how people become frightened of you.”
“I am very polite.”
“You are terrifying politely.”
Ana frowned at him. “I am not terrifying.”
“You put tabs in a preliminary meeting.”
“Tabs are useful.”
Max smiled despite himself.
The doorbell rang.
He looked toward the hall.
“Nikolai?”
“No,” Ana said. “He would not ring.”
True.
Nikolai did not ring doorbells. Nikolai appeared inside secure spaces like a controlled weather system and then made people question whether they had ever properly understood doors.
Max pushed himself upright on the crutches.
Ana immediately stood.
“I can get it.”
“I know.”
“Then sit down.”
“No.”
“Max.”
“It is my house.”
“It is also your broken leg.”
He ignored her and began making his way toward the entrance.
Slowly.
Ana followed at the exact distance required to catch him if he stumbled while allowing him to pretend she was not doing that.
When Max opened the door, Raymond stood outside.
He took one look at Max. “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I brought the revised meeting brief.”
“Ana made one.”
Raymond’s eyes closed briefly.
Behind Max, Ana said, “Good morning, Raymond.”
Raymond looked past him. “How long?”
“Forty-two pages,” Max said.
Raymond’s eyes closed again. “Of course.”
Ana looked mildly offended. “It includes an executive summary.”
“How long is the executive summary?” Raymond asked.
“Six pages.”
Raymond looked at Max.
Max shrugged. “Isn’t she amazing?”
Before Raymond could answer, another figure appeared behind him.
Max stared.
Jos stood in the corridor with an overnight bag in one hand, a dark jacket over the other arm, and the expression of a man who had already decided he belonged wherever he happened to place himself.
“What are you doing here, Pa?”
Jos looked at him. “Good morning.”
“Why are you here?”
“I am also pleased to see you.”
“You were not invited.”
Raymond stepped neatly aside, removing himself from the direct line of fire.
Jos entered anyway. “I am here for tomorrow.”
Max frowned. “Tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“The Gerhard meeting.”
“Yes.”
“Which is tomorrow.”
Jos set down his bag. “I am aware.”
“Then why are you here today?”
“I arrived early.”
“That is not a reason.”
“It is the reason.”
Max stared at him. Jos stared back.
The familiar collision of wills settled into the hallway.
Ana stood between them at a tactically useful angle.
Jos looked at Max’s brace. Then at the crutches. Then briefly at his face.
His expression did not soften. But Max knew him well enough to see the concern under the irritation.
“You do not need to be here for the GT3 meeting,” Max said.
“I know.”
“Then leave.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Jos folded his arms. “You are a grown man.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like the beginning of something annoying.”
“You are a grown man,” Jos repeated. “You can meet Gerhard if you want. You can listen to him. You can accept the apology or refuse it.”
Max waited.
Jos’s jaw tightened. “But I am your father.”
There was a pause.
“And I will glare at people.”
Raymond covered a cough with one hand.
Ana considered Jos seriously. “That may be useful.”
Max turned toward her. “No.”
“Yes.”
“He is not coming to the meeting to glare.”
Jos said, “I did not say I would attend.”
Max looked back at him.
“I will wait outside,” Jos continued. “And glare from there.”
“That is not how glaring works.”
“It can be.”
“No.”
Ana touched Max lightly at the elbow.
“It is fine,” she said. “He can help me with the wedding guest list.”
Jos’s expression changed. Only slightly.
Max saw it.
“Guest list?” Jos asked.
“Yes.”
“What do you need from me?”
Ana lifted her tablet.
“Names, relationships, required invitations, politically necessary invitations, people who will cause a problem if invited, people who will cause a larger problem if not invited, dietary restrictions, relevant security concerns, known interpersonal conflicts, and whether anyone should be seated more than fifteen meters away from anyone else.”
Jos blinked.
Raymond said, “Good luck.”
Jos looked at Max. “This is your wedding.”
“Yes.”
“You agreed to this?”
“I did not know the spreadsheet existed until now.”
Ana said, “It did not exist until thirty seconds ago.”
The doorbell rang again.
This time, Max did not move.
Ana looked at him.
He looked at Raymond.
Raymond looked at Jos.
Jos said, “You are closest.”
Raymond sighed and opened the door.
A moment later, Toto entered carrying three paper bags, a tray of coffees, and enough breakfast to feed a strategy department after a bad qualifying session.
He was dressed for work. Dark trousers. White shirt.
Mercedes jacket folded over one arm. Phone already in hand.
Team principal mode.
Father mode sat beneath it, obvious to Max now in a way it had not been a year ago.
Toto’s eyes found Ana first.
Of course they did. He looked at her face.
Her clothes. Her hands. The tablet.
Then at Max.
Crutches. Posture. Breathing.
Max nearly rolled his eyes at the symmetry.
Instead he said, “You brought too much food.”
Toto set the bags down on the kitchen island.
“There is no such thing.”
“There definitely is.”
Ana opened the first bag. “Croissants.”
“Yes.”
“Plain?”
“Yes.”
“Almond?”
“Yes.”
“Pain au chocolat?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him.
Toto’s mouth softened.
“I know how breakfast works, Sternchen.”
“You also brought savory food.”
“Yes.”
“For a ten o’clock meeting.”
“Yes.”
Raymond opened the second bag. “Thank God.”
Max looked at him.
“Didn’t you eat before coming?”
“I ate at six.”
“That was four hours ago.”
“Exactly.”
Jos reached for a croissant.
Toto looked up and saw him properly for the first time.
There was a moment.
“Jos.”
“Toto.”
The greeting contained years of complicated history and no immediate willingness from either man to unpack any of it.
Jos took the croissant anyway.
Toto turned to Max. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
Ana said, “He is in pain.”
Max looked at her.
She continued unpacking plates.
Toto’s expression sharpened. “Medication?”
“Taken.”
“On time?”
“Yes.”
Ana placed a plate in front of Max. “Twenty-two minutes late.”
Max stared at her.
“You said it was fine.”
“I said twenty-two minutes would not materially alter the dose schedule.”
“That means fine.”
“It means not catastrophic.”
Raymond sat down with his coffee. “Comforting household.”
Toto picked up Ana’s mug and checked the contents. “Tea?”
“Yes.”
“Food?”
“I made porridge for Max.”
Toto looked at her.
Ana looked back.
Without breaking eye contact, she took a croissant from the bag and placed it on her plate.
“Thank you,” Toto said.
“You are welcome.”
Max smiled into his coffee.
The whole thing was absurdly domestic.
Toto bringing breakfast.
Raymond reading paperwork.
Jos standing in Max’s kitchen as if he had not arrived unannounced to glare at a future apology.
Ana eating because her father had looked at her and silently asked.
For a few seconds, it almost felt normal.
Then Toto noticed the folder.
He picked it up. His eyebrows rose.
“Anastasia.”
“Yes?”
He opened it. Turned one page. Then another. “Please do not terrify Stephan.”
Ana looked genuinely offended. “Excuse me?”
Max leaned back, immediately entertained.
Toto pointed at the open page. “This has a twelve-point risk matrix.”
“It is a racing operation.”
“There is a section titled ‘failure conditions.’”
“Would you prefer ‘surprises’?”
“No.”
“Then the title is appropriate.”
Toto looked at Raymond. Raymond, wisely, focused on his croissant.
Toto looked back at Ana. “Stephan is coming for an exploratory discussion.”
“Yes.”
“Not an acquisition tribunal.”
“I know.”
“Please remember that.”
Ana crossed her arms. “Papa, you raised me well. I have manners. I am very polite.”
Max choked on his coffee. Raymond covered his mouth. Jos looked suspiciously toward the ceiling.
Toto stared at his daughter. “You are polite,” he said carefully.
“Yes.”
“You are also capable of asking a man why his supply-chain model appears to depend on optimism.”
“If it does, that would be a valid question.”
“And you would ask it.”
“Politely.”
“That is what concerns me.”
Ana narrowed her eyes. “I am not going to get involved in Max’s racing team.”
Max stopped smiling. “You made forty-two pages. That is involved.”
“No. That is support.”
Max looked at her.
Ana continued, her tone calm. “If you ask me something, I will answer. If Raymond asks, I will answer. If Mercedes requires an independent systems review later and it is appropriate, you may ask me.”
“But?”
“But otherwise, I will keep out of it.”
Max frowned. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“I mean you can be involved.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you saying it like that?”
Ana’s expression softened.
Because she understood what he was asking beneath the words. She came around the island and stood beside him. “This should be yours,” she said.
Max looked up at her.
“Not Mercedes’,” Ana continued. “Not Papa’s. Not mine.”
The kitchen quieted.
Toto looked down at the folder. Raymond went still. Even Jos stopped eating.
Ana rested one hand lightly on Max’s shoulder.
“You are building it because you want something that exists beyond your own driving,” she said. “You want a team that can develop young drivers. You want endurance racing. You want to build something that does not disappear when you stop being the person inside the car.”
Max swallowed.
He had said those things to her in fragments.
Ana had collected the fragments.
“You should decide what it becomes,” she said. “I can help you analyze decisions. I will not make them for you.”
Max looked down at the folder.
Then back at her. “And if I make stupid decisions?”
“I will tell you.”
“Politely?”
“No.”
Toto sighed.
Max smiled. “That is good.”
Ana touched his hair once. Brief. Private. Then she moved back toward her chair.
“Besides,” she said, “Jos and I have the wedding guest list to attend to.”
Jos stopped with half a croissant in his hand. “We do?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was a threat.”
“It was logistics.”
Max said, “Same thing sometimes.”
Ana opened a spreadsheet on her tablet.
Jos stared at the columns.
NameRelationshipInvited byLikelihood of attendanceSecurity considerationFamily conflict potentialAlcohol riskSeating restrictions
Jos looked at her.
“Alcohol risk?”
“Yes.”
“On my side of the family?”
“On everybody’s side.”
“That feels judgmental.”
“It is predictive.”
Toto reached for another coffee.
“Am I on the spreadsheet?”
Ana swiped.
“Yes.”
“What is my family-conflict potential?”
“Context dependent.”
“What does that mean?”
“Variable.”
Jos leaned closer.
“What is mine?”
Ana looked at him.
“Would you prefer the numerical value or qualitative category?”
Max laughed.
***
Text Messages: Max Verstappen & Gianpiero Lambiase
Max:Happy birthday.
GP:Thank you.
GP:How are you?
Max:Fine.
GP:Try again.
Max:Tired.
GP:And Ana?
Max:Also tired.
GP:Are you safe?
Max:Yes.
GP:Alright. Why does this birthday message feel suspicious?
Max:It is not suspicious.
GP:Max.
Max:Ana said I cannot give you race wins as a birthday gift. I said you like winning.
GP:I do like winning.
Max:She said that is not a gift. It is you enduring me. So I got you a gift!
GP:You got me a gift?
Max:Yes.
GP:Did Ana make you?
Max:No.
GP:Did Ana strongly suggest it with frightening logic?
Max:Maybe.
GP:Right.
Max:But I picked it!
GP:That is either very kind or deeply alarming.Should I be worried?
Max:No.
Max:It is not drumsticks.
GP:Why would it be drumsticks?
Max:Because you were in a band.
GP:…
GP:How do you know that?
Max:Ana knows things.
GP:Of course she does.
Max:Also apparently there were leather wristbands.
GP:Absolutely not.
Max:And eyeliner.
GP:That is classified information.
Max:Was it a lot of eyeliner?
GP:Max.
Max:Like normal eyeliner or dramatic eyeliner?
GP:There is no such thing as normal eyeliner on me.
Max:So dramatic.
GP:I did not say that.
Max:Was it black?
GP:What other colour would it have been?
Max:I don’t know. Purple maybe.
GP:Why would it be purple?
Max:You tell me. You were the drummer with eyeliner.
GP:I deeply regret knowing you.
Max:Did you put it on yourself? Or did the singer do it for you?
GP:I am going to block you.
Max:Was it smudged on purpose?
GP:I hate that you know words like smudged.
Max:Are there any photos?
GP:Absolutely not.
GP:This is bullying.
Max:It is bonding.
GP:It is not bonding.
Max:You looked cool probably.
GP:Do not try to make this sweet now.
Max:I am serious.
GP:That is somehow worse.
Max:You were a drummer. With leather wristbands. And eyeliner.
Max:That is cool.
GP:I was nineteen and stupid.
Max:Still cool.
GP:How in the world does Ana know about the eyeliner?
Max:Ana has sources.
GP:I am afraid of her.
Max:Good.
GP:That was not a joke.
Max:Anyway. Happy birthday.
GP:Thank you.
Max:I hope you have a nice day.
GP:That was almost normal.
Max:Also thank you.
GP:For?
Max:Coming to Mercedes with me.
GP:You don’t need to thank me for that.
Max:I do.
GP:No. You don’t.
Max:I wanted to.
GP:You’re getting sentimental in your old age.
Max:I am injured. Not old. Happy birthday, GP.
GP:Thanks, mate.
Max:I hope you enjoy the gift.
GP:If it is eyeliner, I am not coming to Mercedes.
Max:Too late.
GP:Max.
Max:It is not eyeliner.
GP:Good.
Max:But now I wish it was.
GP:I am blocking you.
***
Text Messages: Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff & Gianpiero Lambiase
Ana:Happy birthday, Gianpiero.
GP:Thank you, Ana.
Ana:I hope you have a nice day.
GP:That is very kind.
GP:How are you?
Ana:Functional
GP:That is not what I asked.
Ana:It is the most accurate available answer.
GP:Also, I have a question. How the hell do you know about the band?
Ana:
That’s publicly available information. You can google that. Torperstate was a sometime-successful young 5-piece indie band from Bedfordshire. It imploded after achieving X-FM/BBC Radio play and reaching 2nd in the MTV Europe online unsigned band competition as well as being featured on a Daily Star compilation CD (with the song "Channel hop"). This was in 2003.
GP:I know you can google the band.
GP:That is not what I am asking. How the hell do you know about the leather wristbands?
Ana:That was also publicly available information.
GP:No, it was not.
Ana:Yes, it was.
GP:Anastasia.
Ana:Gianpiero.
GP:How do you know about the eyeliner?
Ana:Context clues.
GP:Absolutely not.
Ana:There were several clues.
GP:There were no clues.
Ana:You were a university drummer in an early 2000s band.
Ana:There were leather wristbands.
Ana:The probability of eyeliner was high.
GP:Probability is not evidence.
Ana:No. But in this case there is evidence.
GP:What evidence?
Ana:Video.
GP:No.
Ana:Yes.
GP:No, there is not.
Ana:There is.
GP:I know there is not, because I have checked it.
Ana:You checked?
GP:Of course I checked.
GP:Do you think I would simply allow evidence of my bad university decisions to remain publicly accessible on the internet forever?
Ana:It is not indexed under your name.
GP:Oh my God.
Ana:Or the band name.
GP:Oh my God.
Ana:It is in a university archive upload from a student film society.
GP:No.
Ana:Yes.
GP:What film society?
Ana:I will not tell you.
GP:Why not?
Ana:Because you will delete it.
GP:Correct.
Ana:Preservation of historical record matters.
GP:It is not historical record. It is eyeliner.
Ana:Those categories are not mutually exclusive.
GP:Send me the link.
Ana:No.
GP:Send me the link.
Ana:No.
GP:I am begging you as a birthday gift.
Ana:Max already got you a birthday gift.
GP:That was not a gift. I am very certain that that was psychological warfare.
Ana:He was bonding.
Ana:You looked cool.
GP:You watched it?
Ana:Yes.
GP:How much of it?
Ana:Enough.
GP:Define enough.
Ana:Four songs and one interview segment.
GP:There was an interview segment?
Ana:Yes.
Ana:The eyeliner was not as bad as you think.
GP:That means it was bad.
Ana:It was somewhat uneven.
GP:I am going to retire.
Ana:From Mercedes?
GP:From public life.
Ana:That seems disproportionate.
GP:You have a video of me in university eyeliner.
Ana:You were in your early twenties.
GP:That is not a legal defense.
Ana:It is context.
GP:Has Max seen it?
Ana:No.
GP:Thank God.
Ana:Yet.
GP:ANA.
Ana:I will not send it to him today.
GP:Today?!
Ana:It is your birthday.
GP:Does Eloisa know?
Ana:Not from me.
GP:That is not reassuring. Francesca must never know.
Ana:Maybe open your present in private then.
GP:Happy birthday to me, apparently.
Ana:Happy birthday.
GP:Thank you.
Ana:Also, the wristbands were worse than the eyeliner.
GP:I am blocking you too.
***
Lambiase Residence, Towcester, England - 23 September 2025
GP had reached an age where birthdays were best treated like engine warnings during a race weekend.
Acknowledge them.
Assess whether they were critical.
Continue operating.
Eloisa disagreed with this philosophy, which was why there were cards on the kitchen counter, fresh pastries from the bakery down the road, and a small vase of flowers Francesca had arranged herself with such intense concentration the night before that GP had not dared mention one of the stems was visibly losing the will to live.
He had kissed Eloisa good morning.
He had accepted Francesca’s hug.
He had opened the card from his daughter, which contained a hand-drawn diagram of him at the pit wall labelled ancient but useful.
He had chosen to interpret that as affection.
Then Max had texted him.
Which was never, in GP’s professional opinion, a neutral event.
By the time GP finished the conversation, he was standing in his own kitchen, phone in hand, birthday coffee going cold, trying to understand how his driver — current problem, future Mercedes problem, permanent emotional hazard — had learned about the eyeliner.
Not the band.
The band was public. Unfortunately.
Torperstate had existed. It had achieved X-FM and BBC Radio play. It had placed second in the MTV Europe online unsigned band competition. It had appeared on a Daily Star compilation CD with “Channel Hop,” a fact that GP had spent two decades choosing not to volunteer in polite company.
That information could be found by anyone sufficiently bored, cruel, or in possession of Anastasia Wolff’s investigative instincts.
But the eyeliner?
The leather wristbands?
No.
That was not supposed to be part of the historical record.
He had checked.
Several times.
More than several.
“Dad,” Francesca said from across the kitchen table, where she was eating toast and pretending not to watch him spiral, “you’re making the face.”
GP looked up. “What face?”
“The Max face.”
“I do not have a Max face.”
“You absolutely have a Max face.”
Eloisa, at the sink, said mildly, “You do.”
GP looked between his wife and daughter.
“I am being bullied in my own home.”
“It is your birthday,” Eloisa said. “So we will be kind about it.”
“You are not being kind.”
“I made coffee.”
“That is basic marital infrastructure.”
Eloisa smiled into her mug.
Francesca leaned forward, eyes bright in the way that always made GP suspicious. It was an expression that meant she had either discovered something funny or built something capable of voiding a warranty.
“Did Max say something weird?”
“Max always says something weird.”
“Birthday weird?”
GP set his phone down face-down.
“No.”
Francesca’s eyes narrowed. “That was a lie.”
“It was not a lie.”
“It was an unsuccessful truth-avoidance maneuver.”
GP stared at her.
“Do not use Ana language before school.”
Francesca grinned.
That was when the doorbell rang.
GP closed his eyes. “No.”
Eloisa glanced toward the hall. “You don’t know what it is.”
“I know exactly what it is.”
“You don’t.”
“It is Max’s gift.”
Francesca immediately sat up straighter. “Max got you a gift?”
“Yes.”
“That’s either really sweet or very dangerous.”
“That is exactly what I said.”
“Did Ana help?”
GP looked at her.
Francesca’s grin widened.
“She helped.”
“She strongly suggested with frightening logic,” GP said.
Eloisa dried her hands on a towel and walked toward the hall. “Then it is probably thoughtful.”
No it wasn’t. This was worse.
Max teasing him about university eyeliner was one thing. Max had the investigative instincts of a golden retriever with a racing license. He could be distracted. Redirected. Possibly bribed with the lap time equivalent of a medium rare steak.
Ana Wolff was different.
Ana Wolff did not tease without evidence.
Ana Wolff did not bluff.
Ana Wolff had the calm, terrifying patience of someone who could probably find a person’s childhood dental records if given enough time and a properly worded search string.
His doorbell rang again.
Francesca was already standing. “I’ll get it.”
“No.”
She stopped.
Slowly, she turned back.
“Oh,” she said. “Now I definitely want to get it.”
“Francesca Sofia.”
But she was gone before he could make his voice more authoritative.
Eloisa took another bite of toast, looking deeply entertained.
“You know,” she said, “for someone who handles Max Verstappen for a living, you are very bad at controlling situations inside your own house.”
“Max is easier.”
Eloisa laughed.
Francesca came back carrying two packages.
One large rectangular box wrapped with clean, expensive-looking paper in a dark grey GP strongly suspected had been selected by Ana. The other was a flatter package in a darker grey wrapping, tied with string, because apparently the people ruining his morning had decided to be aesthetically coordinated about it.
“Can we open it?”
“No.”
“It’s your birthday!”
“Exactly. I choose peace.”
“You never choose peace.”
“I try.”
“You work in Formula One.” Francesca set the larger box on the table with effort. “This is heavy.”
GP looked at it.
The label was from a specialist audio shop in London.
His suspicion faltered.
“Oh,” he said.
GP reached for the larger package first because whatever Max had bought would probably be less dangerous than whatever Ana considered historically relevant.
It was a record player.
A very nice record player.
Sleek. Well-chosen. Far better than the battered one GP had owned years ago and eventually stored in a cupboard after one speaker gave up and Eloisa said, gently but firmly, that nobody needed to hear one-channel Dire Straits during Sunday lunch.
Not a novelty one. Not a cheap retro thing meant for people who wanted furniture with Bluetooth and no concept of sound. A proper one. Beautiful. Heavy. Understated. The kind he had looked at online three times and closed the tab each time because it was too indulgent and he had a perfectly functional digital setup and did not need to become the sort of middle-aged man who said things like vinyl has warmth.
For a moment, GP forgot to be suspicious. “Oh,” he said.
Eloisa’s expression softened. “That’s lovely.”
Francesca leaned over the box. “That’s actually really cool.”
GP ran his thumb over the edge of the packaging.
It was thoughtful.
Annoyingly thoughtful.
Max had picked it, apparently. Or claimed he had. Ana had almost certainly made sure it was not impractical, impossible to set up, or something that required a subscription app designed by people who hated middle-aged fathers.
GP stared at the box for a second longer than he meant to.
Max had thanked him that morning. For coming to Mercedes.
As if GP would have stayed behind and let him walk into a new team alone after everything. As if there had been a choice.
“You like it,” Eloisa said softly.
GP cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said. “That’s… very nice.”
Francesca looked up at him with fond exasperation. “Dad, you’re allowed to say you love it.”
“I haven’t opened it properly.”
“You love it.”
“I might.”
“You do.”
Eloisa touched the box with one hand. “It’s beautiful.”
GP looked at the card tucked into the parcel.
His name was written on the envelope in Max’s handwriting, which was to say neat enough but slightly aggressive, like the pen had been overtaken on the inside.
He opened it.
GP, Happy birthday. Ana said race wins are not a gift, so I got you something else.
Max
Francesca looked at the smaller wrapped parcel. “Do you think those are records?”
GP immediately shifted. “No.”
“It’s obviously records.”
“It could be anything.”
“It is record-shaped.”
“Many things are record-shaped.”
“Name one.”
“Plates.”
“That is the worst argument you have ever made, Dad.”
He made the mistake of opening the second package.
The records were stacked neatly inside, each one protected in a fresh sleeve.
At first, GP relaxed.
A curated selection, clearly. Not random. Jazz. Classic rock. A few albums GP had mentioned once in passing over the years and forgotten mentioning.
There was a copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, because every household needed one by law. A Springsteen album. The Clash. A beautiful pressing of Kind of Blue, which made him pause because that was exactly the kind of thing he would never have bought for himself but would absolutely play on a quiet evening.
Ana had chosen well.
Of course she had.
Not sentimentally, not in the usual way people bought gifts. She had collected data. Preferences. Mentions. Time periods. Probabilities. She had likely produced a spreadsheet and pretended that was not an act of affection.
There was a note card on top in her precise handwriting.
Gianpiero,Max selected the record player. I selected several records that should be compatible with your taste profile. Happy birthday.Ana
Below that, in smaller writing:
P.S.: The final record is historically relevant.
GP stopped breathing.
“No,” he said.
Francesca froze.
Then slowly looked down at the stack.
Before GP could even move one muscle, Francesca had moved, possessed by the spirit of every teenage daughter ever born, and pulled out the last record.
The kitchen went quiet.
GP saw it at the same moment she did.
A record sleeve.
A custom pressing, clearly — not commercial, not something that had ever existed in the real world.
The cover image had been cleaned up, sharpened, and formatted like a genuine early-2000s indie release.
And there he was.
Twenty-something Gianpiero Lambiase.
Behind a drum kit.
Leather wristbands. Black eyeliner.
Hair.
Oh God.
The hair.
It was so much worse than GP remembered.
It was spiked in a way that suggested he had gone to war with gravity and lost badly. There was product involved. Too much of it. Some kind of fringe had been attempted and then abandoned halfway through a crisis. His expression was serious, which made it infinitely worse. He looked like a man who believed he was saying something profound about music, youth, and possibly capitalism.
Francesca stared.
GP stared.
Eloisa stared.
Then Francesca made a sound.
A tiny, strangled sound.
“Do not,” GP said.
She pressed a hand over her mouth.
Her shoulders shook.
“Francesca.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You are absolutely laughing.”
“I’m emotionally overwhelmed.”
“You are laughing at your father.”
She lost it.
Completely.
She folded over the kitchen table, laughing so hard she made no sound for three full seconds and then wheezed, “The hair.”
GP closed his eyes.
Eloisa had turned away toward the sink, which would have been more convincing if her shoulders were not shaking.
“Betrayal,” GP said.
Francesca lifted the sleeve again, tears in her eyes. “Dad, you look like you were about to write a sad song about dial-up internet.”
“I was a drummer!”
“You look like you had opinions about society.”
“I did have opinions about society.”
“That makes it worse.”
Eloisa finally turned back around, face bright with laughter.
“Oh, Gianni.”
“No.”
“You were adorable.”
“I was not adorable.”
“You were.”
“It was mortifying.”
“Both can be true.”
GP pointed at her. “You have been speaking to Max.”
Francesca examined the sleeve again. “The eyeliner is uneven.”
GP’s head snapped toward her. “Do not critique my technique.”
“Oh my God, there was technique?”
“There was a mirror in a university bathroom and poor lighting.”
Francesca dissolved into laughter again.
GP took the sleeve from her, or tried to. She clutched it to her chest like a sacred relic. “No.”
“That belongs to me.”
“It belongs to history.”
“Not you too.”
“Preservation of historical record matters!”
“I am going to have words with Anastasia.”
“No, you’re not,” Eloisa said, still smiling.
“I absolutely am.”
“You love the record player too much.”
GP looked at the box.
Then at the records.
Then at the cursed sleeve in his daughter’s arms.
That was the problem.
He did love it.
He loved the record player. He loved the records. He loved that Max had written a birthday card as if the words had been extracted from him with pliers and still meant them.
He loved that Ana had built an entire gift around things he liked and then, because she was Ana, had hidden a tactical strike in the final item.
It was thoughtful.
It was affectionate.
It was psychological warfare.
It was family, somehow.
Francesca wiped her eyes. “Can I show Mum’s parents?”
“No.”
“Can I show Max?”
“Absolutely not.”
Eloisa picked up Ana’s note again.
“The final record is historically relevant,” she read aloud, then started laughing again.
Francesca propped the sleeve on the table, angled toward him, because she had apparently chosen violence before school.
The younger version of him stared back.
Eyeliner.
Wristbands.
Catastrophic hair.
He sighed.
“It was cool at the time,” he muttered.
Francesca tried to stop laughing and failed. “You were very cool.”
“No, you are laughing.”
“I can laugh and think you were cool.”
GP put both hands over his face.
Francesca checked the time and gasped. “We’re going to be late.”
GP looked at the clock.
He was, unfortunately, still a father with school-run responsibilities despite the fact that his university eyeliner had just been weaponized against him on his birthday.
“Get your bag,” he said.
Francesca carefully slid the record sleeve back into its protective cover.
GP narrowed his eyes. “Leave that here.”
“I am.”
“You looked too careful.”
“I respect historical artifacts.”
“Francesca.”
She grinned, grabbed her school bag, and headed for the door.
Eloisa lingered beside the table, touching the top of the record player box.
“It really is a lovely gift,” she said softly.
GP looked at it.
Then at Max’s card.
Then at Ana’s note.
His chest felt uncomfortably full. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
Eloisa smiled.
“And the eyeliner?”
“Never happened. It’s photoshopped.”
“Of course.”
He picked up his car keys.
Francesca was already by the front door, practically vibrating with the need to continue laughing in the car.
GP walked past the table, then paused.
He turned the cursed sleeve face down.
Better.
Then he looked at it again, sighed, and turned it face up.
Francesca saw and beamed.
“See?” she said. “You were cool.”
GP gave her a look. “I am starting the car.”
They stepped outside into the crisp morning.
For a few seconds, before school traffic and emails and paperwork and Max Verstappen’s endless capacity to be both sentimental and infuriating, GP allowed himself to feel it.
The record player.
The note.
Max’s thank you.
Ana’s ridiculous, precise, ambush of a gift.
Francesca still giggling beside him.
He unlocked the car.
Francesca climbed in, then immediately said, “Dad?”
“What?”
“Did your band have a fan club?”
GP closed his eyes. “I am driving you to school in silence.”
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Original Female Character
Summary:
Jimmy Verstappen has fallen in love.
Unfortunately for Max Verstappen, the love of Jimmy’s life lives on the balcony next door, which means Jimmy keeps escaping to visit her.
Even more unfortunately, her owner is very pretty.
(Sassy thinks everyone involved is an idiot.)
Warnings and Notes:
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Jimmy knew love.
He knew it in the way he knew the sunny spot on the rug moved three times a day.
He knew it in the way he knew Max’s suitcase meant betrayal, but Max’s hoodie left on the chair meant forgiveness.
He knew it in the way he knew Sassy was going to hit him before she hit him, because her tail did a particular twitch first.
And he knew it because the most beautiful creature in the world lived on the balcony next door.
She was white.
She was fluffy.
She was round in the way expensive pillows were round.
She had a face like she had been disappointed by every human alive and was simply enduring the world until someone finally presented her with the appropriate throne.
She was, Jimmy had decided, a goddess.
The first time he saw her, she was sitting on the neighbouring balcony while the late afternoon sun made her fur glow.
Jimmy had been minding his business.
He had not been doing anything wrong.
He had merely been standing on the back of the sofa, pressing his nose against the glass door, while Max said, “Jimmy, don’t even think about it.”
Jimmy had not been thinking about anything.
Then she appeared.
White fur. Blue collar. A little gold bell. Eyes the colour of rainwater.
Jimmy forgot how to breathe.
Sassy, from her place on the armchair, opened one eye.
“Don’t,” Max said from the kitchen without looking up.
Jimmy placed one paw against the glass.
The white cat blinked at him.
Jimmy made a very soft, very dignified sound.
Sassy lifted her head.
Max looked over.
“Oh no,” he said.
Jimmy did not know what that meant, but Max sounded like he had just lost a race before the lights had even gone out.
The white cat turned, showing him the full glory of her tail, then disappeared behind a curtain.
Jimmy remained frozen.
Sassy yawned.
Max came over, crouched beside him, and looked through the glass toward the empty balcony.
“No,” Max told him.
Jimmy looked at Max.
Max narrowed his eyes. “I know that face.”
Jimmy did not know which face Max meant. He had several.
“No escaping,” Max said. “No dramatic Romeo and Juliet balcony situation. I don’t have time for this.”
Jimmy understood only three words in that sentence.
No.
Escaping.
Balcony.
All deeply concerning.
He pressed his paw harder to the glass.
Max sighed.
Behind him, Sassy jumped down from the armchair, walked over, sniffed Jimmy’s ear, and then smacked him on the head.
Jimmy accepted this. Sassy was his sister. She had been smacking him on the head since they were kittens. It was one of her love languages, probably.
“She is right,” Max said.
Jimmy did not think Sassy was right. Sassy was never right. Sassy once hissed at a cucumber. Sassy had no authority here.
The next day, the goddess returned.
This time, Jimmy was prepared.
He had positioned himself on the dining chair closest to the balcony door after breakfast. He had ignored Sassy when she called him pathetic with her eyes. He had ignored Max when Max walked past and said, “Still? Mate.”
Jimmy was not still.
Jimmy was devoted.
The goddess appeared just after noon, carried out onto the balcony by a woman with soft hair and a long cardigan.
The woman was not Max.
Jimmy knew most humans were not Max. Humans had different smells and voices and levels of competence. Max was his human, which meant he was the best human, even when he left for loud weekends and came home smelling like champagne, rubber, and other people’s hands.
The woman next door smelled faintly of vanilla, laundry soap, and something floral. She spoke gently to the goddess as she placed her on a cushion in the sun.
“There you go, princess,” the woman said. “Fresh air.”
Princess.
Jimmy’s ears went forward.
Yes.
Correct.
The goddess was a princess.
Maybe a queen.
Maybe something above queen.
The goddess settled onto the cushion and looked across the gap between balconies.
Jimmy stood.
Sassy made a disgusted little noise from the back of the sofa.
Jimmy ignored her.
He lifted one paw.
The goddess blinked slowly.
Jimmy nearly fell off the chair.
Max, who had been drinking coffee, looked up from his phone.
“Why are you making that noise?”
Jimmy had not realized he was making a noise.
He closed his mouth.
Sassy swatted his tail.
Jimmy did not even care.
The goddess had blinked slowly at him.
That meant something.
Jimmy did not know what, exactly, but it meant something.
For three days, Jimmy watched her.
For three days, the goddess appeared on the balcony in the afternoon.
For three days, the woman in the cardigan spoke to her in a warm, amused voice.
“Careful, Cleo.”
Cleo.
Her name was Cleo.
Jimmy had a name now.
A real name.
Not just goddess, though goddess still applied.
Cleo liked sleeping in the sun. Cleo liked turning her face away when her human tried to take photos of her. Cleo liked batting lazily at the leaves of the potted olive tree on her balcony. Cleo did not chase bugs because bugs came to her. Cleo did not run. Cleo reclined.
Jimmy admired this deeply.
Sassy did not.
On the fourth day, when Jimmy climbed onto the sideboard for a better view, Sassy joined him.
For one hopeful moment, Jimmy thought his sister had come to support him.
Then she shoved him.
Jimmy landed on the floor with a soft thud.
Max looked up from where he was stretching on the mat.
“Sassy.”
Sassy sat down exactly where Jimmy had been and looked at Max like she had done him a favour.
Jimmy got up and shook himself.
Sassy began washing one paw.
Max sighed. “You deserved that, probably.”
Jimmy did not deserve that.
Jimmy was a lover.
Sassy was a criminal.
The problem was the door.
The door was glass.
Glass was unfair. Jimmy could see through it, but he could not pass through it. This was one of the great cruelties of the universe, along with empty food bowls, closed bathroom doors, and Max refusing to let him sit inside the suitcase.
But Jimmy was not stupid.
Sassy thought he was stupid because Sassy thought everyone was stupid except herself and sometimes Max, depending on whether Max had fed her recently.
Jimmy was clever.
Jimmy had observed the humans.
The balcony door opened when Max pushed the handle down and slid it across. The handle was high. Jimmy could not reach it.
But sometimes Max left the door not quite closed.
Max had a habit of doing this when he came in after watering the plants. He would slide it mostly shut, then get distracted by his phone or a call or the other human who sometimes came over and made him laugh in the soft voice.
Jimmy waited.
He was patient.
He was a hunter.
He was a romantic hero.
He was also, according to Sassy, extremely annoying.
On the fifth afternoon, the opportunity came.
Max had been on a phone call for a long time, pacing barefoot through the apartment.
“No, I know,” Max said into the phone. “But it’s stupid. Why would we do that?”
Jimmy did not know what was stupid. Many things were stupid. Vacuums. Rain. Sassy’s attitude.
Max went onto the balcony with his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, watered the plants, argued with someone named GP, then came back inside.
The door slid almost closed.
Almost.
Jimmy’s heart began to pound.
Cleo was on her balcony.
She was sitting on her cushion, watching him.
This was a sign.
Jimmy crouched.
Sassy, from the sofa, lifted her head.
Her eyes narrowed.
Jimmy ignored her.
He pushed his nose into the tiny gap between door and frame.
It moved.
Not much.
Enough.
“Jimmy,” Max said.
Jimmy froze.
Max was still on the phone, looking directly at him.
Jimmy looked back.
Max pointed at him. “No.”
Jimmy considered this.
Then he ran.
“Jimmy!”
The gap widened under his shoulder. The balcony air hit his whiskers. The floor was warm under his paws. Behind him, Max swore.
Jimmy darted across the balcony.
There was a gap between his balcony and Cleo’s balcony.
It was not enormous.
It was, however, a gap.
Jimmy stopped at the edge.
Cleo watched him.
Jimmy looked down.
That was very far.
Jimmy looked back.
Max had dropped his phone somewhere inside and was coming toward him with the expression he wore when someone on television said something stupid about his driving.
“Don’t,” Max said.
Jimmy looked at Cleo.
Cleo blinked.
Jimmy made his decision.
He did not jump across the gap.
Jimmy was romantic, not suicidal.
Instead, he discovered something better.
There was a low dividing wall at the far end, where the two balconies met around the corner. It was narrow. It was slightly ridiculous. It was absolutely climbable.
“Jimmy, I swear to God—”
Jimmy climbed.
Max lunged.
Jimmy was faster.
He scrambled onto the wall, tail high, paws careful, heart full of purpose.
The world became ledge and air and Max saying words Jimmy was probably not supposed to understand.
Sassy appeared at the open balcony door.
She did not look concerned.
She looked entertained.
Traitor.
Jimmy crossed the little wall and dropped onto the neighbouring balcony.
Cleo did not move.
Jimmy landed, shook himself, and looked at her.
He had done it.
He had crossed kingdoms.
He had defied glass.
He had escaped.
He had proven his love.
Cleo stretched one front paw luxuriously, then the other. Her bell gave a tiny, perfect chime.
Jimmy approached slowly.
Cleo did not hiss.
Cleo did not swat him.
Cleo leaned forward and sniffed his nose.
Jimmy’s entire soul left his body.
From the other balcony, Max said, “Oh, you little idiot.”
Jimmy did not care.
Cleo had touched noses with him.
Jimmy was never going home again.
Then the balcony door behind Cleo opened.
The woman in the cardigan stepped out.
For a second, everyone froze.
Jimmy looked up.
The woman looked down.
Cleo sat beside him, serene and innocent, as if she had personally invited him for tea.
“Oh,” the woman said.
Max, from the other balcony, said, “I am so sorry.”
The woman looked across.
Jimmy turned his head.
Max was standing on his own balcony with one hand braced on the railing, hair messy, wearing an old Red Bull T-shirt and the expression of a man whose cat had just ruined his life.
The woman blinked.
Then she smiled.
It was a nice smile.
Jimmy noticed because Max noticed.
Max always noticed things like apexes, tyre degradation, and people smiling at him.
“Is he yours?” the woman asked.
Max looked at Jimmy.
Jimmy sat down beside Cleo.
Cleo’s tail curled around her paws.
Max exhaled through his nose. “Unfortunately.”
Jimmy did not know what unfortunately meant, but Max used it often when talking about people he loved.
The woman laughed.
Max’s expression changed.
Not a lot.
A little.
Jimmy knew Max’s faces. Max had many faces even though humans often thought he only had three. There was angry Max, sleepy Max, race Max, cat Max, soft Max, and the very rare Max who had just realized someone pretty was laughing at something he said.
This was that one.
“He seems very sweet,” the woman said.
Max looked at Jimmy again.
Jimmy looked back with dignity.
“He is not,” Max said. “He is a menace.”
The woman crouched and held out her fingers.
Jimmy sniffed them politely.
Vanilla. Laundry soap. Flowers. Cleo.
Acceptable.
“Oh, he is sweet,” she said.
Max snorted. “He waited five days to break into your balcony.”
“Determined, then.”
“Stubborn.”
“Romantic.”
Max paused.
Jimmy’s ears twitched.
The woman smiled down at Jimmy. “He came to visit Cleo.”
Cleo lifted her chin.
Yes. Obviously.
Max dragged a hand through his hair. “I should come get him.”
“I can pass him over.”
“No, no. He will act like you are murdering him. Better if I come around.”
The woman stood. “I’m in 42B.”
“I know,” Max said, then immediately looked annoyed with himself. “I mean—not in a weird way. It is just next door.”
The woman’s smile widened.
Jimmy thought Max was doing badly.
This was surprising. Max was usually good at things. Driving. Cats. Looking angry at people. Opening food pouches.
Élise looked amused. “Not in a weird way. It is just next door.”
Max stared at her for half a second.
Then he laughed.
Jimmy had heard Max laugh many times. Loudly, with his friends. Softly, at his phone. Breathlessly, when Sassy fell off the sofa and pretended she had meant to do it.
This laugh was different.
It came out surprised.
Jimmy was very proud of himself.
He stayed beside Cleo while Max disappeared from the balcony and reappeared a few minutes later at Élise’s front door.
Jimmy heard the bell.
Then footsteps.
Then Élise opening the door.
Then Max saying, “Hi.”
Then Élise saying, “Hi.”
Then nothing for a moment.
Humans were so inefficient.
Jimmy leaned toward Cleo and sniffed her cheek.
Cleo allowed it.
Best day of his life.
Max appeared on the balcony through Élise’s apartment, looking around like he was trying very hard not to look around too much.
“Nice place,” he said.
“Thank you,” Élise replied. “Cleo has allowed me to decorate it.”
Max glanced at Cleo. “Generous of her.”
“She’s very strict.”
“I have one like that. Her name is Sassy.”
“Is she the one who judges everyone from the window?”
Max nodded gravely. “That is her main job.”
Jimmy was offended. Sassy had other jobs too. Hitting him. Sitting in boxes. Refusing food until Max became concerned, then eating it when he turned around.
Élise crouched beside Jimmy again. “And this one is?”
“Jimmy.”
Jimmy lifted his head.
The way she said his name was nice.
“Jimmy,” Élise repeated, stroking one finger gently between his ears. “You are very handsome.”
Jimmy closed his eyes.
Yes.
Finally.
Recognition.
Max muttered, “Don’t encourage him.”
“I think he has excellent taste.”
Cleo, as though she understood that she was being admired, tucked her paws under her chest and became a cloud.
Max looked at Élise.
Élise looked at Max.
Jimmy opened one eye.
Ah.
There.
The thing.
Humans had it too, apparently.
The slow blink.
Only with more awkwardness.
Max cleared his throat. “Sorry again.”
“It’s fine. Cleo enjoyed the company.”
Jimmy perked up.
She did?
Max picked Jimmy up.
Jimmy considered protesting.
Then he remembered he was in Max’s arms, which was one of the safest places in the world, and chose magnanimity.
Élise walked them to the door.
Cleo remained on the balcony like a queen receiving departing guests.
“Maybe next time he can come through the front door,” Élise said.
Max stopped.
Jimmy felt him stop.
“Next time?” Max asked.
Élise’s mouth curved. “For Cleo, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Jimmy looked between them.
Max was not looking at Cleo.
Élise was not looking at Jimmy.
Interesting.
“I can give you my number,” Élise said. “In case he escapes again.”
Max’s hand shifted under Jimmy’s paws.
“Yes,” Max said. “That would be good.”
Jimmy purred.
He was a genius.
When Max carried him back into their apartment, Sassy was waiting in the hallway.
Her tail flicked.
Max shut the door behind him, still looking faintly pleased with himself.
Jimmy wriggled until Max set him down.
Sassy walked up to him.
Jimmy lifted his chin.
He had touched noses with a goddess.
He had crossed a balcony.
He had helped Max acquire a number.
He was untouchable.
Sassy sniffed him.
Then she smacked him so hard he sat down.
“Sassy,” Max said, distracted, still looking at his phone.
Jimmy shook his head and glared at her.
Sassy turned and walked away, tail high.
She was jealous.
Obviously.
Over the next week, Jimmy escaped three more times.
The second time was through the window above the balcony doors, which Max had not realized opened far enough for a cat until Jimmy proved that it did.
The third time was when a delivery man arrived and Jimmy slipped between Max’s feet with the grace and determination of a professional criminal.
The fourth time was, admittedly, Sassy’s fault.
Jimmy stood by this.
Sassy had pushed a throw blanket off the sofa, distracting Max for exactly four seconds.
Jimmy used those four seconds to slide through the balcony door and make his way to Cleo.
Sassy later denied involvement by pretending to be asleep.
Max did not believe her.
“I am being outsmarted by cats,” Max said that evening, standing on Élise’s doorstep with Jimmy tucked under one arm like a furry handbag.
Élise leaned against the doorframe. She was wearing soft trousers and a jumper with the sleeves pulled over her hands.
Jimmy liked her. She always smelled kind. She always scratched his chin properly. She did not speak to him in a silly voice unless she thought no one was listening.
Cleo liked him too.
Probably.
She allowed him to sit near her. Sometimes she touched his tail with her paw. Once she had groomed his ear for six full seconds before deciding he was beneath her again.
Jimmy was prepared to be patient.
Great love required sacrifice.
“You look very defeated for someone who drives cars very fast for a living,” Élise said.
Max gave her a flat look. “The car usually listens to me.”
“Does it?”
“No,” Max admitted. “But more than Jimmy.”
Élise laughed.
Jimmy purred in support.
Max looked down. “You are the reason I am here.”
Jimmy blinked innocently.
Élise reached out and stroked his head. “Maybe he just misses Cleo.”
“He saw her two hours ago.”
“Love has no schedule.”
Max opened his mouth, then closed it.
Élise’s smile became smug.
Max huffed. “You are enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“You could pretend to be annoyed.”
“I could,” Élise said. “But then you might stop coming over.”
Max went still.
Jimmy felt it.
A tiny shift.
A change in breathing.
A moment where Max, who was usually so fast at everything, needed a second.
Élise looked suddenly less smug.
Jimmy looked between them again.
Humans.
Hopeless.
Max said, “I could come over without him escaping.”
Élise’s cheeks changed colour.
Jimmy’s ears flicked.
Oh.
Interesting.
“Yes,” Élise said. “You could.”
Max nodded once, like he had just received important strategy instructions.
“I could bring wine,” he said.
“I like wine.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Jimmy waited.
Max waited.
Élise waited.
Cleo appeared behind Élise’s legs and gave a small, delicate meow.
Jimmy immediately forgot the humans existed.
He wriggled.
Max tightened his grip.
“No,” Max said.
Jimmy wriggled harder.
“Absolutely not.”
Cleo meowed again.
Jimmy made a desperate little sound.
Élise put a hand over her mouth.
Max looked personally betrayed. “Do not laugh. He knows when people laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You are.”
“I’m smiling supportively.”
“You are enabling him.”
“I am supporting love.”
Max looked at Jimmy.
Jimmy looked at Cleo.
Cleo blinked.
Max sighed. “Five minutes.”
Jimmy loved Max.
Max put him down.
Jimmy trotted to Cleo with great dignity.
Behind him, Max and Élise remained near the door.
“So,” Élise said. “Wine?”
“Tomorrow?” Max asked.
“I’m free tomorrow.”
“I’m free after training.”
“Is that afternoon or evening?”
“Depends if my trainer wants to kill me.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“No. He usually fails.”
Élise laughed again.
Jimmy settled beside Cleo.
This was excellent.
The following afternoon, Max spent too long choosing a shirt.
Jimmy knew this because Max changed three times.
Max did not usually change three times. Max usually wore the first thing that did not smell unacceptable. Sometimes even that standard was flexible.
Sassy sat on the bed and watched him with cool disdain.
Jimmy sat beside her.
They were united, briefly, in judgment.
Max held up a dark shirt.
Sassy blinked.
Max held up a lighter one.
Jimmy yawned.
Max looked at them. “You are no help.”
Sassy began washing her shoulder.
Max wore the dark shirt.
He smelled nervous, though he would have denied this under oath.
He picked up the wine bottle from the counter, then put it down, then picked it up again.
Jimmy followed him to the door.
“No,” Max said immediately.
Jimmy sat.
Max pointed at him. “You are not coming.”
Jimmy looked wounded.
“You are the reason this is happening,” Max said. “You do not also get to attend.”
Jimmy meowed.
Max crouched. “No.”
Jimmy meowed again, softer.
Max’s face changed.
Jimmy knew this face.
Victory was close.
Then Sassy walked over and smacked Jimmy on the back of the head.
Max stood. “Thank you, Sassy.”
Sassy accepted this praise with the regal indifference of someone who had done it for herself.
Max left.
Without Jimmy.
This was unforgivable.
Jimmy sat by the door for three minutes.
Then he went to the balcony.
Sassy followed him.
The lights were on next door. Through the glass, Jimmy could see Max standing in Élise’s kitchen while Élise poured wine. Cleo was on the bar stool, which Jimmy admired because Max never let him sit on the bar stools unless Max did not see him do it.
Max looked more relaxed now.
Élise was smiling.
Cleo flicked her tail.
Jimmy pressed one paw to the glass.
Sassy sat beside him.
For once, she did not hit him.
They watched.
Max laughed at something Élise said. Élise touched his arm. Max looked down at her hand, then back at her face.
Jimmy did not understand everything humans said.
He understood tone.
He understood warmth.
He understood Max looking like the apartment had become a little less empty while he stood in someone else’s kitchen.
Sassy’s tail brushed his.
Jimmy leaned into her side.
She allowed it for seven seconds.
Then she bit his ear.
Normal.
Max came home very late.
Jimmy was waiting in the hallway.
Sassy pretended she was not.
Max opened the door quietly, stepped inside, and looked down at them.
“You two are creepy,” he said.
Jimmy smelled Élise on him.
Wine. Vanilla. Flowers.
Also Cleo.
Jimmy immediately forgave him.
Max locked the door, kicked off his shoes, and bent to scratch Jimmy under the chin.
“She asked if you can come over tomorrow,” Max said.
Jimmy perked up.
“For Cleo,” Max added.
Jimmy purred.
Max smiled faintly.
Then he looked at Sassy. “She asked about you too.”
Sassy stared at him.
Max grinned. “Yes, I told her you are horrible.”
Sassy turned and walked away.
Jimmy thought this was fair.
The visits became regular after that.
Sometimes Jimmy went to see Cleo.
Sometimes Cleo came over to see Jimmy, carried in Élise’s arms like royalty visiting a lesser court.
The first time Cleo entered Max’s apartment, Sassy acted as though an enemy nation had invaded.
She sat on top of the bookshelf and glared down at the white Persian with magnificent hatred.
Cleo did not care.
Cleo walked directly to Jimmy’s favourite blanket, sniffed it, and sat on it.
Jimmy nearly fainted.
Sassy hissed.
Cleo blinked slowly.
Sassy seemed offended by the elegance of the response.
Max, standing beside Élise, whispered, “This is going better than expected.”
Élise whispered back, “Sassy looks like she is planning a coup.”
“She always looks like that.”
“Has she ever attempted one?”
“Several.”
Élise laughed softly and leaned into Max’s side.
Max went still for one tiny second before his arm moved around her waist like he had been doing it for years.
Jimmy saw.
Sassy saw.
Cleo probably knew already.
Cleo knew many things.
Later, when Élise and Max sat on the sofa with wine glasses on the coffee table, Jimmy lay on the rug beside Cleo. Sassy remained on the bookshelf, refusing to participate in diplomatic relations.
Élise’s voice was soft.
“I’m glad he escaped,” she said.
Max hummed. “Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
“He is very pleased with himself.”
“He should be.”
Max looked at Jimmy.
Jimmy closed his eyes and pretended not to listen.
“He is still a menace,” Max said.
Élise said, “Maybe. But a useful one.”
Max was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Yes.”
Jimmy’s chest warmed.
He did not know what useful meant, exactly.
But Max’s voice was soft.
That was enough.
Cleo shifted closer until her side touched his.
Jimmy stopped breathing.
Sassy, from the bookshelf, made a noise of disgust.
Jimmy ignored her.
His sister could be mean.
Max could be stubborn.
Humans could be very slow.
Glass doors could be cruel.
But Jimmy had known love when he saw it.
White fur glowing in afternoon sun.
A gold bell.
A slow blink from a balcony.
And now, Max laughing softly beside Élise while Cleo slept next to Jimmy on the rug.
Jimmy had crossed kingdoms for this.
He had escaped four times.
He had been smacked by Sassy, carried by Max, praised by Élise, and blessed by Cleo’s presence.
Worth it.
Completely worth it.
Then Cleo opened one rainwater eye and gently placed her paw on top of Jimmy’s.
Jimmy purred so loudly Max looked over.
Élise smiled.
Sassy jumped down from the bookshelf, marched across the room, and smacked him.
↳ A/N This might be one of my favourite pieces I've done to date—
↳ Pairings: Adult Film Star!George Russell x Adult Film Star!Unnamed Female Character
↳ Duration: 22 minutes
↳ Warnings: 18+, smut, basically an 'adult video' in text format, 'amateur' self-tape vibes, exhibitionism, outdoor sex, oral sex (m and f receiving), fingering, praise, dirty talk, spanking, breeding kink undertones, unprotected sex, creampie, cum eating, hints towards hyperspermia.
EXT. YACHT SUNDECK - DAY
The coastline of Monaco and the French Riviera looks like something straight out of a postcard; colourful buildings dotted along grassy hillsides beneath clear blue skies. From a substantial distance from the harbour, the city of Monte Carlo looks like nothing more than a colourful smudge behind bobbing dots of white yachts taking up the glistening waters of the Mediterranean. It’s quiet and serene.
Panning to the right from the bow sundeck, George is revealed beneath the canopy of the yacht, standing behind the wheel, shirtless, in only red swim trunks. He looks effortless there as he slowly guides the yacht across the crystal waters, sunglasses perched on his nose and the sea breeze rifling through his hair. The camera zooms in until his head is taking up the frame and it is then that he glances over at it and offers a smile.
A small giggle comes from behind the camera and it zooms out again to capture the picturesque backdrop as the feminine voice says sweetly, “Pretty gorgeous view.”
George slows the yacht to a stop and ensures the anchor is dropped before he steps out onto the sundeck. He towers over the camera from where she is sitting with it and it pans up his body from bare feet to amused face.
“Having fun?” he asks with a smirk.
“Yes,” she replies.
His hand reaches for the camera and it is shakily exchanged before turning down onto the woman instead. She is sitting on the padded sundeck on the bow of the yacht, lounged in a blue bikini that doesn’t leave much to the imagination, tied with only thin strings. In the direct rays of the sun, she shields her eyes to look up at him despite her sunglasses, seemingly content under the stare of both him and the camera.
“Look at you,” he compliments cheekily, zooming in on her body in the tiny bikini.
She shifts a little in place, stretching her legs out as she rests back on her hands to show off her body, glancing down at herself, “You like it?”
“Yeah, you look gorgeous.”
He crouches to join her down on the sunbed and reaches out to drag a hand down the front of her, ghosting over the thin tie of her bikini top and down her abdomen. She doesn’t move, just bites her smiling lip as both he and the camera take her in. Then, he reaches to cup a hand over one of her breasts, giving it a squeeze through the fabric of her top.
Just then, he adjusts the camera to get them both in shot as he leans in and slides a hand around the back of her neck and tugs her lips onto his. Their kisses are noisy and lewd, already shoving their tongues together as if this wasn’t the first time. When he pulls away after a few seconds, she looks a little dizzy. Or maybe that is just the swaying of the yacht.
“Mm,” his fingers trail down her jawline before tracing her collarbones and then, finally, toy with the string of her bikini top.
She seems to push out her chest towards him. An invitation.
George gives the string between her breasts a little tug and the bow unties with ease, allowing her top to fall away, revealing her chest to him and to the camera. Her skin is shimmering in the sun and his hand is all over her, groping one breast and then the other, pinching her nipples between thumb and forefinger.
Then they’re kissing again. Sloppy, tongue-led kisses that take up most of the camera shot, albeit slightly off-centre. His hand is still groping her chest until it moves up effortlessly to wrap around her neck. He’s not squeezing per se, just holding her, but it's enough to have her melting into his touch. When he pulls away, her teeth nip at his bottom lip.
Her eyes stay on his face even as his attention focuses downwards to her tiny bikini bottoms. The camera follows his stare, capturing his greedy fingers tracing the thin strings along the sides before his hand slides down between her legs. She lets out a small sound as his hand rubs her over her bottoms, right over her pussy.
When he moves to tug at the string of her bottom with anticipation to untie them, she stops him with a grab of his wrist.
“Your turn,” she sing-songs as she takes the camera back from him and turns it upon him.
He is sitting there on the padded sundeck of his yacht, bathed in sunlight, miles of bare golden skin on display, standing out against the striking red of his swim trunks. The way he is sitting—with his legs comfortably apart, one knee raised and the other folded beneath him, looking perfectly at ease—his trunks are pulled tight between his legs, showing off the sizable bulge hidden beneath the fabric.
And then it’s her turn to reach for a feel, sliding her hand over his pecs and down his abs and he lets her. She takes her time but she makes it downwards until her hand is rubbing over the front of his swimtrunks, cupping the shape of him in her hand.
No words have to be spoken before he is shifting himself to hook his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts and she steadies the camera as he shuffles out of them. He strips so effortlessly, trunks discarded across the sundeck without care, his handsome face smiling warmly at the camera and the woman behind it. He is fully naked now and his legs part to show off his body, right down to his half-hard cock and nice round balls between firm thighs.
It’s almost instinctual, the way he reaches down to take hold of his cock, giving it a few strokes for the sake of the camera. She focuses in on it, keeping it perfectly in frame.
From behind the camera, she offers a small, “Wow…”
“Yeah?” George chuckles, “Think you wanna come put it in your mouth?”
“Yes.”
The camera is passed back into his hand as he lays himself back against the sunbed and he turns it onto her. Staring down his body now, his other hand is still wrapped around his cock, holding it up from his pelvis with a little wiggle in the afternoon sunshine. She is between his spread legs and she crawls closer with a giddy smile, placing her hands on his thighs to steady herself against the swaying of the yacht.
He only lets go once she wraps a hand around his cock herself, holding him in place so she can lean down to drag her tongue up the side. With his hands out of the way, she has full reign and she seems perfectly content with that. Her tongue swirls around the head still tucked in its wrap of foreskin but after only a few seconds, she’s rolling it back to see all of him. The tip is pretty pink and glistening and she slicks it up more with a dribble of spit before stroking it in with twisting tugs of her hand.
George groans from behind the camera, keeping it angled down his body to capture every second of her as she finally lowers her head down to take him in her mouth properly. It’s quiet except for the lapping of the waves against the hull of the yacht and George’s soft breaths as she sucks on him slowly. She is on her knees and forearms, ass up, her bikini tucked between her cheeks and in full view of the camera. Behind her, the coastline stretches on.
She moans softly around him as she starts to bob her head slowly, working her way down with her hand still firm around the base. Her cheeks hollow around him on every up stroke, lips tight around his shaft. Her sunglasses conceal her eyes but it's clear she’s looking up at him as she takes him deeper.
“Yeah…good girl…” George exhales, reaching down to stroke a hand through her hair to tuck some behind her ear and out of the way.
She moans around him as she pushes herself deeper, her mouth squelching around his cock in steady rhythm in time with her hand. It helps the way his hand is in her hair, keeping the camera housing a nice view of the way she is going down on him.
Only a few moments later, she sits back on her haunches between his legs and her hands slide down his thighs. Abandoned, his cock falls heavy against his pelvis, fully hard now and desperate. His hand wraps around it himself instead, stroking lazily as he watches her body move in the sunlight.
Once she gets settled back on the sunbed, it’s clear what she’s expecting.
The camera is passed into her hands and she turns it back on him as he moves onto his knees. He’s smiling as if he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, as naked as the day he was born in the afternoon sun, toned body shimmering like he is something ethereal. He wastes no time in untying the strings of her bikini bottoms and pulling the thin fabric away, revealing her entirely to his hungry eyes.
“Let me see that pussy,” he mutters as if it were something said to himself as he pushes her legs apart for a proper look. Then, “There she is.”
He drops her bikini to the side without tearing his eyes away from her body. It’s instinctual, how he moves to lay flat out on the padded sundeck, looping his arms around her thighs to hold her in place, and he dusts a slow kiss to her inner thigh.
The camera has a perfect view of him like that, framed by her thighs as he latches his mouth onto her cunt. All perfect sea-ruffled brown waves of his hair and the faintest few freckles dotted across his nose, he is artwork to the camera. And to the woman behind it who moans softly at the vision.
When she flinches a little, her thighs bump his sunglasses askew. But he doesn’t let that deter him.
Instead, his hands grip tighter to her thighs and he doubles down his efforts. It’s hard to see exactly what his mouth is doing from that angle with the camera pointed down her body, but the flex of his jaw and cheeks give him away. And when he pulls back just a little, one can see the way his tongue flicks at her clit.
She moans prettily to the blue sky and reaches her arm out with the camera to capture a full shot of the both of them. Her, stretched out on her back in the sun with him between her legs and lapping at her pussy with an eager mouth. At the change in angle, he pauses just long enough to shoot a smile to the camera that makes her giggle.
He smiles right back—wholeheartedly enjoying himself—before slipping two fingers in his mouth. When they are wet enough, he, instead, sinks them inside her cunt. The camera catches the way her expression withers, and only more so as his mouth returns to suck on her clit.
His bicep is bulging with how he’s thrusting his fingers inside of her, two digits curled up just right to earn pretty whimpers and moans from her. She still has a firm hold on the camera, capturing both of them with the scenery of the coastline in the distant background.
“Fuck…” he huffs as he breaks his mouth away from her for just a moment, resting his cheek on her warm thigh as he watches his fingers thrusting into her, “so fucking wet for me…this perfect pussy taking my fingers so good…”
She moans a breathy, “Oh my God” to the blue sky and her free hand reaches down to tangle in his hair.
His mouth is on her again while his fingers keep their pace, lewd sloppy wet sounds of his tongue heard over the rapping of the waves against the hull of the yacht. He’s slurping at her like she’s fucking dessert and her body is writhing with pleasure, hardly able to keep the camera steady.
After a few more seconds, he pulls back and spits loudly on her cunt before rubbing it in with the pad of his thumb. While his hand keeps going—a balanced dance of fingers inside of her and thumb rubbing at her clit—he shifts to reposition himself on his knees between her spread legs.
“Need to get inside you,” he mumbles, almost as if he’s talking directly to her pussy as he’s knuckles deep, “Fucking need it.”
He takes the camera from her hand and then suddenly she’s in frame from his perspective, draped out across the bow of the yacht in nothing but her sunglasses, skin glistening in the sun. Her legs are spread to accommodate where he is kneeling between them, his right hand still nestled there with two fingers entirely inside her. The camera focuses there and he moves it a little closer, capturing his slow retreat of his fingers and the thick strings of arousal that cling to them when he pulls them out.
“Look at that…” he purrs, smearing it over her swollen clit just to catch the hitch in her breath.
“You’re unreal,” she says simply, arms draped lazily above her head.
He doesn’t answer as he shuffles closer on his knees, the camera angled downwards to capture how he lines up the head of his cock with her winking pussy. He’s far too focused, sliding it between her slick folds and nudging tauntingly against her clit.
“Please,” she exhales.
“Tell me you want it,” he whispers needily, pressing just against her cunt, teasing her with what he could give.
She doesn’t miss a beat as she replies, “I want your cock inside me.”
It’s all he needs to push forward, slowly but surely, letting the camera take in the way her lips part to accommodate him, the way she stretches around his girth. She makes a sound out of frame that is swallowed by the waves and the summer breeze. George’s low groan is picked up, however.
He gives her slow, shallow thrusts to work her in, stretching her open on his cock politely. Her hand reaches into frame to spread herself open between two fingers, encouraging him deeper and putting on a proper show for the camera. George’s thumb gently caresses her clit, now easily visible with how she’s spreading herself.
“Mm, good girl,” he praises lowly, “Let me in…just like that.”
“Fucking…feels so good…” she exhales.
When he is fully inside of her, she presses her toes into the upholstered sundeck to lift her hips up just enough to meet his angle. This way, she can ensure he is entirely inside of her, every inch buried deep, the camera privy to the way the trimmed hair of his pelvis presses against her fully. It is easy to even see the way her pussy flutters and throbs around him.
“Jesus Christ,” George mutters as he keeps the camera steady.
His free hand flattens over her abdomen as he starts to thrust into her properly and her arms return to their place above her head, gripping onto the edge of the upholstery. With her hips angled upwards like that, she is at the perfect spot for him to give her everything, shoving into her entirely before pulling out almost all the way; long, deep strokes. Every time he pulls out, his cock is glistening in the sunlight.
She whimpers from out of frame, hips moving a little against his thrusts to help build the sensations, “Yes.”
He doesn’t utter a word but lets his strokes speak for him, right down to the addition of his thumb slipping over her clit with his hand still splayed across her abdomen. Her legs quiver a little as she adjusts herself with a moan.
He pans the camera upwards just enough to catch the view of her body, her face, the way her arms are draped above her head and her hair is fanned out around her. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth as she stares back at him from behind her sunglasses. It’s a lot to keep herself up on her toes like that and so he doesn’t make her stay there for long.
The camera is passed into her hands and turned upon him instead, capturing the last few moments of them just like this. Then, he moves his hand to her side and rotates her hips ninety-degrees, forcing one leg over the other. He is still inside of her even when he moves to straddle her one straight leg, giving himself full control over her.
Her small moan is heard from behind the camera, along with the sounds of the upholstery squeaking beneath their adjustments. George doesn’t falter, steadying her with both large hands on the accentuated curve of her ass as he starts to thrust into her again. His expression almost looks so serious in that moment; furrowed brows in concentration, lips slightly parted.
He reaches a hand down to squeeze one of her breasts, keeping a firm grip as he keeps shoving into her. She holds the camera as steady as she can, even as her body bounces slightly against the intensity of his every thrust.
“Christ, you take it so good,” George pants.
“Want it,” she pleads breathily, her free hand reaching down to grab his thigh in some futile attempt to hold him deeper.
He’s not stopping, fucking greedily into her pliant body with his hands all over her, watching himself glide effortlessly in and out of her. He licks his lips before speaking, “Perfect, tight cunt just sucking me in. Just wants to be filled, hm?”
“Yeah…” she whimpers. Her hand lifts from his thigh to press against his tensing abs, “Please. Gimme it.”
“Uh huh?” George reaches for the camera with one hand while his other hoists her leg up to spread her open more. She shrieks at the adjusted angle and he doesn’t stop, even as he works to make sure the camera is capturing her body and where they are connected.
“You’re so deep,” she pants through a forming smile. She turns her head to the side with a giggle, “Fuck, I’m seriously tearing up.”
George laughs lightly along with her and—after a few more seconds of savouring the moment—pulls out as if to give her a breather. His hand rubs over her ass and hip and thighs and before she can even adjust her position, he’s leaning down to get his mouth on her. For a moment it’s as if he forgets about the camera as the screen goes dark where it bumps against her opposite leg and all that can be heard is his mouth on her, kissing and licking and suckling.
Her voice is distance, “Mm, fucking hell, George—”
The camera is jostled a bit before being shown the sun once more, taken by her hand to show exactly what he is doing. He has one large hand on the bottom of her thigh, holding it up and out of the way, while his head is half hidden by the curve of her ass still angled to the side while he goes down on her.
One particular touch has her hissing, “Shit—”
He moans loudly against her, shaking his head a little as if to get deeper into her, smothering himself between her legs and her cheeks. She tries to hold the camera up to get a better view of him but she’s far too beside herself to manage. Instead, she stretches her arm across the sundeck, camera in hand and facing towards them, capturing a perfect frame of her bare ass and his face between her legs.
The way she’s angled earns a sight of George’s tongue flicking at her clit and lapping at her pussy. He’s still holding her leg up with his body half draped over her outstretched leg as if to hold her down. His lips take as much of her in as he can, suckling greedily, before he breaks away to let his tongue take over in feverish flicks.
“Oh fuck oh fuck—“ she squeals. Her free hand reaches down to grab a fistfull of his hair to hold him there. “Fuck, you’re gonna make me come—“
George groans against her but doesn’t change his pace. Not even as her legs start trembling.
The sound of her orgasm echoes over the water (or so it seems), as she cries out to the sky and arches uselessly against the deck of the yacht. George moans loudly against her right through it, tongue still going while his hands hold her on his mouth.
When he finally pulls away, he smacks her ass, wordlessly encouraging her to roll over onto her stomach. She heaves a breath but obliges, before propping her elbows on the upholstered sundeck with the camera facing the both of them as he enters her again from his knees.
They are both half in frame, the shot capturing the arch of her back and the curve of her ass and up to George’s chest, only the best part of the scene right in the centre. No sooner do they get situated does he start moving again, two large hands on her hips pulling her into his firm thrusts.
She gasps and groans beneath the camera and pushes back onto his every thrust until the sound of their skin colliding overpowers the lapping of the waves on the hull of the yacht. She’s so wet that it’s incredibly lewd; the plap plap plap of her ass against his thighs, his balls against her clit. George moans handsomely behind her and his hands knead the flesh of her ass before giving her another spank.
“Yes…” she pants, “just like that.”
George’s voice is shallow but interlaced with a smile when he replies, “Yeah? You’re taking it so fucking well. Taking my cock so good.”
She’s a moaning mess beneath the camera, arching deeper and pushing back on him. He spanks her across the ass again.
“Making me wanna fill you up,” he taunts between thrusts, bending over her just a little more. He grips her tighter and fucks her harder.
“Ohhhh my God,” she moans helplessly.
He whines softly at her reaction and then, suddenly, huffs and halts his thrusts as he says hurriedly, “Fuck, I don’t even care anymore…wanna breed you.”
“Please…oh, please,” she swoons.
He all but snatches the camera from her hand, making sure to get a nice view of her round ass and the way her pussy is squeezed around his cock, lips hugging the shaft. When he pulls out of her, it audibly pops free, bobbing in the afternoon sun and soaked in her liquids.
As he shifts from his knees to sit down, she waits patiently, giving him a little wiggle of her bare ass, showing off her soaked cunt. George spanks her once before groping her ass in his one free hand. Still on her hands and knees, she shuffles back a little and tucks her feet under his thighs to steady herself, to secure them together.
When she pushes back, she sits right on top of his cock, sandwiching it between her cheeks and his pelvis. George groans and uses his free hand to grab hold of it and help to angle it against her leaking entrance, slipping it between her lips.
“Think you wanna let me come in your pussy?” he taunts.
“Yes,” she purrs, arching her back just right.
“Yes? You do?” he smears the head of his cock through her lips, “Want me to breed you?”
“Yeah…wanna just…” she fades out as she lowers herself down onto him instead, sheathing herself on his cock. Her moan is gorgeous.
George’s hand slips out from between them to rub up her spine soothingly, “Fuck, good girl. Take it all.”
She leans forwards and places her hands flat between his outstretched legs, steadying herself on the deck as she starts to lift up slowly. She doesn’t lift off of him all the way, ensuring that the head of his cock is still tucked inside her, but it is enough to make a point of just how much of him had fit inside of her. When she pushes back down until her ass is flush on his pelvis again, he groans from behind the camera.
She leans forwards again and with a greedy hand, he tugs at the flesh of her ass to spread her open enough for the camera to get a proper look at her. The way her pussy is gripping around his cock is insane, stretched and swollen and filled entirely by him. The sight alone has him groaning and he dusts the pad of his thumb over where they are connected.
The shape of her ass takes up most of the frame, backed beautifully by the crystal waters of the Mediterranean as she starts to set her pace. With every rise and fall upon him, their skin colliding makes the lewdest sound, soaked so much so that they’re almost connected by strings of her arousal. She squares her shoulders to bounce on him properly, her ass jiggling with every stroke and the vision is caught perfectly by the camera.
“Fucking hell,” George breathes, his hand sliding to grip the dip of her waist as she takes over.
She rests her hands on his thighs to steady herself as she rides him that way, back arched just enough and hair tumbling prettily over her shoulders. With every bounce, she makes a small “uh” sound as if the noises are fucked right out of her unintentionally, barely heard over the clap of their skin.
George pulls his arm back so the camera can capture a wider angle, framing both of them in the shot. They’re soaked in sunlight and glistening in sweat on the bow of his yacht; him, laying back with his free hand tucked behind his head and her, riding him to her heart's content. He has this small, smug smile briefly come to his face as he holds the camera out like that, still shielded by his sunglasses and nothing else.
No sooner does his momentary smile arise does it melt away again, taken place, instead, by an expression of pleasure as she doubles down her efforts. He moans handsomely and brings in the camera again if he were risking dropping it. Besides, the up-close view of her taking every inch of his cock is far more impressive.
“Don’t stop,” he pants, returning his hand to her waist, almost tugging her down onto him over and over, “Just like that…there you go.”
“God, your dick is amazing,” she whines to the summer sky through her eager bounces. Her pace is dizzyingly consistent and intense, not faltering for a second even with her thighs starting to tremble.
George grunts tightly, “Fuck, I’m gonna come.”
And her reply is immediate, instinctual, “Come inside me.”
His hand grips her hip a little tighter, groaning a little louder, the pleasure building. Even at the angle of the camera, it’s clear to see the way his abs tense.
“Come on,” she begs breathlessly, “Come in my pussy. Fill it up.”
It only takes a few more bounces from her for him to be pushed into orgasm. His ragged breaths stop suddenly, muscles tensing, and then suddenly he’s letting out a quivering groan.
At the feeling of him releasing inside of her, her breath catches and her bounces stutter and he pulls her right down on him by his hand on her waist. He’s moaning loudly, holding her place despite the way his hips try to flex up into her, the camera capturing a perfect view of the way the base of his cock throbs through each pump. She gasps and shivers and grinds down on him a little to work him through it, ensuring she gets every drop.
“F-Fuck,” she exhales as if in breathless awe, still held right down on him, “holy shit, you’re still coming…”
George just groans, toes curling, barely able to keep the camera steady for a moment. She doesn’t move, letting him ride through his orgasm with the sweet squeeze of her cunt around his throbbing cock.
When he finally goes lax, breathing hard, his hand loosens on her waist and his other readjusts the camera. A little tap on her hip encourages her to slowly lift off of him, now letting his cock slip out of her and it lands heavy against his pelvis, slick and swollen. As soon as he pulls out of her, a creamy river of cum pours out of her and lands onto the shaft of his dick and the matted hair of his pelvis.
She gasps at the feeling and clenches her muscles to push more out, letting it drip in creamy strings from between her lips. His hand gropes one of her cheeks, spreading her open some more to really show off the mess of it all, his thumb slipping between her lips. The camera catches it all.
Then, suddenly, he sets the camera down beside them, keeping his entire body from the thighs up in frame laid out across the sundeck. She doesn’t have a chance to try and get off of him before both of his hands are on her hips and pulling her up his body. She shrieks through a giggle at his tug and wobbles as she shuffles backwards under his silent demand until he has her on his face.
Her smile melts into a dreamy expression at the first touch of his tongue, settling herself full on his face without shame. His arms wrap around her thighs to hold her there, her full weight on his face, burying himself in her. With a shaky moan and a bite to her lip, her hands fall flat against his chest and abs to steady herself, but her hips work with the movement of the yacht to rock against his mouth.
She’s so sensitive and worked up that it clearly doesn’t take her long to reach that peak. Her hips jump against George’s mouth as she gasps into her orgasm, letting out her pretty moans to the warm summer air as her body shudders on top of him. He moans right back, the sound muffled by her body but no less passionate, and his hands only grip her thighs tighter until there are indents of his fingertips left behind.
When she finally has to pull away in overstimulation—her legs trembling as she lifts up—she’s got the biggest grin on her face, “Holy shit.”
George spanks her once more with a smile of his own, his lips and shin glistening in more than just sweat from the sunshine.
She sprawls out gracefully beside him across the upholstered sundeck and his one arm tucks around her to draw her close while his other picks up the camera again. He holds it up above them both, leaving a square shadow to fall across their faces where it cuts in front of the sun. They smile proudly at the camera, breathless and spent.
“Might have heat stroke,” she mumbles lightheartedly as he lowers the camera and shuts it off.
FADE OUT.
—BLACK SCREEN W/ TEXT—
“Starring MrSaturday, MissFMC
Written & Produced by @chilling-seavey
Requested by @mocharoni12
Sunglasses sponsored by Police Eyewear
This production was created for mature audiences.
All participants were over the age of 18 and consented to their involvement in the production. Boundaries, consent, and ethical considerations were communicated and respected throughout filming.”
—FADE TO BLACK—
THE END
In case you were wondering, this was my George inspo x
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Summary: After one disastrous weekend Max suggests that maybe you're not cut out for F1. He spends the rest of the season trying to rebuild what his words damaged.
6.1k words / Masterlist
You had only just made it back to the garage after a humiliating FP1 session a spin at Turn 8, a lap time that left you rooted to the bottom of the timing sheets, and nothing but clipped, uncomfortable silence from the pit wall as you limped the car back. By the time you climbed out of the cockpit, heat still trapped beneath your race suit and embarrassment burning beneath your skin, you already felt as though every pair of eyes in the garage was fixed on you.
Max didn’t need to make it worse.
“Maybe this just isn’t the place for you.”
The words hit you harder than any crash ever could.
He didn’t sound angry, somehow that would have been easier to take, his voice was calm and detached, delivered with the kind of cold certainty that made it sound less like an insult and more like a conclusion he'd already reached.
Your throat tightened so quickly it hurt.
For one awful second you could only stare at him waiting for something else, a flicker of regret, a sign that he'd spoken out of frustration rather than meaning it, but nothing came. His expression remained unreadable, already turning back towards the monitors as though the conversation was over.
You blinked twice and gave a small nod, because pretending to agree felt safer than letting him see how deeply he had cut you. Then you walked past the engineering desk without speaking, keeping your shoulders straight and your gaze fixed ahead until you were safely out of sight, where no one could see the tremble in your chin or the tears gathering behind your eyes.
You didn’t say another word for the rest of the day.
You avoided him for the rest of the weekend.
During team meetings you took the seat furthest from his. In briefings every answer you gave was clipped, addressed to your engineers never to him. You didn’t look his way once even before FP3 when you caught him watching you through the reflection in the garage mirror as you pulled your balaclava over your head. You saw the way his gaze lingered almost as though he wanted to say something, but you turned away before he could.
Then qualifying came and everything got worse.
You locked up into Turn 12, the front tyres protesting as the car skidded just wide enough to cost you two tenths through the final sector. Two tenths that might have been enough to save you. Instead your name dropped to sixteenth as the clock ran out, leaving you stranded in the garage and eliminated in Q1.
By the time you had climbed out of the car the headlines were already writing themselves.
RED BULL’S LATEST RISK FAILS TO DELIVER.
MAX’S NEW TEAMMATE CRUMBLES UNDER PRESSURE.
It didn’t seem to matter that you weren’t actually his teammate, not yet at least. You were still only a junior driver, loaned out for unknown period of time during Isack’s injury, a slight test for the future so you could find your feet without the full weight of Red Bull pressing down on your shoulders. The media had already decided what you were supposed to become though and every mistake was treated as proof that you would never be ready for it.
Max’s comment had only lit the match.
Now the entire paddock seemed determined to watch you burn.
Over the next couple of weeks you began to notice a change in Max, it was easy enough to dismiss at first. He no longer offered unsolicited advice over the radio or hovered beside your engineers while they picked apart your laps. Instead he kept his distance, watching from across the garage whenever he thought you weren’t paying attention.
You did notice but you just simply refused to acknowledge it.
In the hospitality tent you kept your headphones on and your head lowered over a sheet of telemetry, pretending to study the same sector analysis you had been staring at for nearly twenty minutes. The numbers had blurred together long ago, but concentrating on them was easier than looking around and risking another encounter with him.
The chair beside you scraped against the floor and your shoulders tightened before you could stop them. Max sat down without asking, close enough that the edge of his knee nearly brushed yours beneath the table. For a moment, he said nothing, then a Red Bull energy bar slid across the page, covering the corner of the graph you had been pretending to read.
“Eat something.”
You pulled one side of your headphones away from your ear and stared at the bar. “I’m fine.”
“No you’re not.”
His answer came quickly, but there was none of the coldness or impatience you remembered from the last race. Only a quiet certainty that made your chest ache in a way you didn’t want to examine. You moved the energy bar aside and returned your attention to the data sheet. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
The silence that followed was uncomfortable, settling between you like wet concrete. Around you the hospitality suite carried on as normal cutlery clinking against plates, team members laughing near the coffee machine, someone discussing something as mundane as the weather two tables away, but the space between you felt strangely separate from all of it.
Max leaned back in his chair and released a breath, it wasn’t the irritated sigh you had grown used to hearing from him, he sounded tired, defeated, almost. When you finally glanced at him guilt sat heavily in the slope of his shoulders. His elbows rested against his knees, hands clasped loosely together as he stared down at the floor.
“I saw the headlines,” he said at last.
Your fingers tightened around the edge of the paper.
“And I know I made them worse.”
You looked away before he could see the flicker of hurt cross your face. “Forget it.”
Before he could reply you pushed your chair back and stood, Max reached for your wrist, calling your name as though he could stop you, but you pulled away without looking at him and walked out.
Max stopped keeping his distance after that.
At the next debrief he walked into the crowded conference room passed several empty chairs and took the seat directly beside you. You told yourself it was nothing, but when he did the same thing at the following session and again the day after that it became impossible to dismiss as coincidence.
Each time he arrived he would set his tablet down beside your notes and settle into the chair as though sitting anywhere else had never crossed his mind. While engineers filled the room and sector times glowed across the screens, Max remained at your side, listening more closely when your laps were discussed and quietly following every piece of feedback you were given.
He never tried to force a conversation, he simply listened, occasionally leaning closer to point out something on your screen or quietly asking one of your engineers to bring up a different lap comparison.
Then he began appearing in your garage after his own sessions. He would arrive with the sleeves of his team shirt pushed up to his elbows and an sheet of telemetery tucked beneath one arm, walking straight past the cameras and curious mechanics. Sometimes he had barely climbed out of his own car before he was asking for your telemetry.
It was strange, watching him study your laps with the same fierce concentration he usually reserved for his own. He replayed your onboard footage, compared steering traces and questioned your engineers until every small inconsistency had been pulled apart.
One evening, long after most of the paddock had begun to empty he stood beside you at the engineering desk, scrolling through a comparison between your fastest lap and the one that had been abandoned after a lock-up.
“This isn’t a braking issue,” he muttered.
You glanced away from the screen. “That’s what they keep telling me though.”
“They’re wrong.”
His tone was so blunt that one of your engineers looked up from the opposite end of the desk. Max either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He enlarged the tyre data and tapped the front-left trace with his finger.
“It isn’t coming up to temperature quickly enough. Look here.” He dragged the laps side by side. “You’re turning in expecting the grip to be there, but it isn’t. Then you’re compensating by braking later on the next lap which makes the lock-up worse.”
You studied the graph, following the lines he'd highlighted. Once he pointed it out, the pattern seemed obvious.
“You’re chasing grip that the car isn’t giving you,” he continued. “You could drive the corner perfectly and still lose time.”
You looked at him instead of the screen.
Max noticed after a moment, his hand still hovering over the tablet. “What?”
“Why are you doing this?”
The question came out more quietly than you intended.
His expression closed slightly, and he turned his attention back to the data. “Because someone needs to.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
His jaw tightened.
You waited, unwilling to let him escape behind another graph or technical explanation.
Finally, Max lowered the tablet onto the desk. “Because I should have said something useful that day.”
You said nothing.
“I knew you were struggling with the car,” he continued. “I knew the balance was wrong, and I knew you were already blaming yourself for all of it.” His eyes stayed fixed on the screen, as though looking at you would make the admission harder. “I could have helped and instead I made you feel like you didn’t belong here.”
The familiar ache returned beneath your ribs.
“And now you think fixing my setup will make up for it?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. For the first time since you arrived he met your gaze fully.
“But it’s something I can do.”
You didn’t know how to respond to that. Part of you still wanted to be angry. Anger was usually easier. It created distance between you, kept his words sharp enough in your memory that you wouldn’t risk trusting him again.
But Max was making it difficult to hold on to, especially when he kept showing up. Every evening, once the media duties ended and the garage began to quiet, you would find him waiting near your engineering station. Sometimes he had two coffees balanced in one hand. Sometimes he had already loaded your onboard footage before you arrived. He never asked whether you wanted his help anymore, but he never acted as though you owed him anything for it either.
On Friday evening, you returned from a meeting to find him leaning against the desk, your more recent data already open in front of him.
He glanced up as you approached.
“Come on,” he said, pushing himself upright. “Get your notes. We’re going over Turn 4 again.”
You folded your arms. “We went over Turn 4 yesterday.”
“And you’re still losing a tenth on entry.”
“You’re very annoying.”
“I know.”
There was the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, gone almost as soon as you noticed it. He picked up the laptop and started walking towards the back of the garage, clearly expecting you to follow.
For a moment, you remained where you were. Then you reached for your notebook and went after him.
It wasn’t until a media scrum a few races later that you understood just how much things between you had changed.
You stood behind the taped barrier beneath the harsh paddock lights, waiting for your turn while three different press officers attempted to keep the restless crowd of reporters moving. Your helmet bag hung from one shoulder, and you had already arranged the usual answers neatly in your head: the car was improving, the team was working hard, and you were taking everything one session at a time. Each response was measured, harmless and carefully constructed to give the journalists nothing they could twist into another headline.
A few feet away Max was halfway through his own interview when one of the reporters asked him about you.
“What do you make of her recent improvement? She seems to have found something over the last few races.”
You lowered your gaze, preparing yourself for the usual vague endorsement. Something about promising pace or needing more time. The sort of harmless answer drivers gave when they didn’t want to say anything at all.
Instead, Max tilted his head and squinted at the reporter as though the question had irritated him.
“She’s quick,” he said. “People forget how steep the learning curve is at this level. She’s had to learn a new car, a new team and tracks she’s never raced on before within a few weeks with everyone waiting for her to make a mistake. Give her time.”
Your grip tightened around the strap of your bag.
The reporter glanced down at his notes, a faint smirk pulling at his mouth. “It was a fairly rough start, though. You must have had doubts after the opening rounds.”
Max’s expression changed immediately.
“You ever driven a car at three hundred and twenty kilometres an hour while half the world watches your onboard and waits for you to get something wrong?”
The reporter’s smile faltered. “Well obviously not, but—”
“No?” Max interrupted, his voice still measured even as his eyes narrowed. “Standing here criticising her is easy. You’re very comfortable judging something you’ve never had the ability to do yourself.”
A murmur moved through the press pack, cameras shifted towards him, microphones lifting higher as everyone sensed the possibility of a headline. Max didn’t elaborate. He didn’t soften it with a laugh or look towards the press officer for rescue he simply handed back the microphone and stepped away from the barrier. He passed close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, but he never looked at you.
You remained frozen in place, staring after him while the reporters around you whispered to one another and your press officer called your name for the second time.
For weeks Max had been helping you quietly, behind closed doors and dimmed garage screens where no one else could see, this was different, there had been a hundred cameras pointed at him, and he had defended you anyway, you wondered briefly whether guilt was still the only reason he kept showing up for you.
You found him alone at the back of the Red Bull motorhome after the race. The celebrations had already begun downstairs, your engineers opening bottles and passing around plastic cups because eighth place ordinarily meant very little, but today it meant everything. Your first Formula One points. A small mark beside your name on the championship table that proved, at least for one weekend, that you belonged there.
Max had disappeared shortly after the podium ceremony.
You found him slumped into the corner of one of the black leather sofas, still wearing his team kit, one ankle resting over the opposite knee. His phone was in his hand, but he didn’t appear to be reading anything. His thumb moved aimlessly over the screen, his expression distant in a way that made you think he'd come there precisely because he didn’t want to be found.
He looked up when you entered.
“Congratulations,” he said, his voice quieter than you were used to hearing from him. “Your first points.”
You stopped a few feet from the sofa. “Thanks.”
Max studied you for a moment. “You don’t look very happy about it.”
“It’s not really enough still.” You shifted the strap of your bag higher onto your shoulder, reluctant to let yourself feel proud of a result that had fallen short of what you wanted.
“You scored your first points,” Max continued. “That should be celebrated. It isn’t easy and you shouldn’t act like eighth means nothing just because you wanted the podium.”
“I wasn’t planning on celebrating eighth.”
“No?” The corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “That’s disappointing. I was hoping I might finally get a smile out of you.”
Your eyes met his, and the warmth in them caught you off guard. “You’re not that charming.”
“I didn’t say I was.” His gaze dipped briefly down before returning to your eyes. “But you’re still trying not to smile.”
You looked away before he could see that he was right.
“You drove well,” he added, the teasing fading. “You stayed out of trouble, managed the tyres and took every chance when it came.”
The praise should have felt good, but it left a strange pressure beneath your ribs because you could still remember when his opinion had been the one you cared about most, before his words had hollowed you out and taught you not to look for his approval.
You nodded, unsure what else to offer him. “The changes helped.”
Max understood what you meant, the hours spent studying telemetry, the late evenings dissecting corners and the coffees left beside your laptop before early briefings.
His mouth tightened faintly. “They helped,” he agreed. “But you still had to drive the car.”
You could hear the muffled celebration below you, bursts of laughter rising through the floor whenever the doors opened. You considered leaving. You'd already started to turn when Max placed his phone face down on the cushion beside him.
“Wait.”
You stopped.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, eyes fixed somewhere near your feet. There was tension in the movement, as though the words had been sitting inside him for weeks and he still hadn’t worked out how to say them.
“I meant what I said that day,” he began.
Your entire body went still.
“Not like that,” he corrected quickly. “Not in the way it sounded.”
A humourless laugh escaped you. “Is there another way to interpret ‘maybe this isn’t the place for you’?”
He looked up then.
There was no anger in his expression and none of the defensiveness you'd expected. He looked exhausted in the way someone looked when they'd been carrying the same regret for too long and had finally realised there was no painless way to put it down.
“No,” he admitted. “There isn’t.”
You folded your arms over your chest, more to protect yourself than anything else.
“I was frustrated,” he continued. “With the car, with the team, with myself. Everything had gone wrong that day and then you walked into the garage looking so…” His voice faltered, and he glanced away. “You looked completely crushed.”
The memory returned with painful clarity, the heat beneath your race suit and the silence from the engineers. Max’s voice following you through the garage.
“And so you decided to make it worse?”
“I knew that feeling,” he said. “I knew exactly what was going through your head because I’ve been there. I know what it feels like when everyone is watching, when one bad session becomes proof that you’re not good enough and when every person around you has an opinion about whether you deserve to be here.”
He leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees. His hands clasped together so tightly that his knuckles had begun to pale.
“I knew how much you were already blaming yourself and instead of helping you I gave you another reason to.”
You looked down because holding his gaze had become too difficult.
“I told myself I was trying to warn you,” he continued. “That maybe you needed to understand how brutal this place could be before it swallowed you but that isn’t what I did. It isn’t how it came out.”
“Why?” you whispered.
Max inhaled slowly.
“Because I was scared for you.”
You looked at him again.
His gaze remained fixed on his hands. “I know what this place does to people. I know what it did to me when I was your age, everyone tells you that pressure makes you stronger, but sometimes it just makes you believe you’re only worth something when you’re winning.”
His jaw tightened, the words becoming more difficult with every sentence.
“I could see you starting to disappear into it, every mistake or headline, every time someone questioned you—like it proved something. I wanted to tell you that it didn’t. I wanted to say that you’re allowed to struggle and that one bad session doesn’t mean you don’t belong here, you’re allowed to question whether you want to be here and that doesn’t mean you don’t care.”
A broken breath left him.
“But I didn’t know how to say that… in fact I said the exact opposite.”
The tears came before you could stop them, stinging at the corners of your eyes. You blinked quickly, but one escaped anyway, slipping down your cheek before you could turn away. His expression crumpled so briefly you might have missed it if you hadn’t been watching him. He swallowed hard, eyes shining as he looked down at the floor again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice shook now, stripped of every trace of the certainty he carried in front of cameras. “I know saying it doesn’t undo anything. I know helping with the car doesn’t make it better, but I am so fucking sorry for making you feel like that.”
You stood there for a long moment. Part of you had imagined this apology countless times. In some versions, you shouted at him. In others, you told him exactly what his words had done to you and walked away before he had the chance to answer, but now that the moment had arrived, anger wasn’t the strongest thing you felt.
It was relief. Relief that he understood. That he hadn’t forgotten it the moment the words left his mouth, that every evening he had spent beside you had meant something more than obligation.
You crossed the room before you could overthink it and lowered yourself onto the sofa beside him. Max watched you carefully, almost warily, as though he didn’t trust himself to hope.
You shifted closer and gently rested your head against his shoulder.
For several seconds, Max didn’t move. Then his body softened beside yours, and he released a long, unsteady breath as though he'd been holding it since that first Friday afternoon.
His head tipped carefully against yours.
You never said the words I forgive you, but when Max’s hand settled beside yours on the sofa, his little finger brushing tentatively against your own you didn’t pull away.
By the time the paddock reached Austria Max had become woven so thoroughly into your routine that neither of you seemed capable of remembering when it had happened.
He was there during the quiet hours before briefings, leaning against the counter in hospitality while you waited for your drink, and again late in the evening when the garages began to empty and the conversations around you softened into the tired murmur of engineers preparing for the following day. What had begun as Max helping you understand an unpredictable car had become something far less structured. Some evenings you still spent hours studying telemetry and comparing onboard footage and on others the laptop remained open and almost entirely forgotten while he told you stories about his early years in the sport or tried to convince you that his terrible movie recommendations were somehow your fault for listening to him.
Whenever you climbed out of the car after a session your eyes would drift instinctively towards his garage. At dinner you saved the seat beside you before you had consciously decided to do it. When something went well Max had somehow become the first person you wanted to tell, even when he had already been watching the entire thing unfold.
The team had started to notice and the reporters had certainly noticed, but neither of you acknowledged it.
After qualifying seventh in Austria you found Max near the back of the garage, studying the final timing screen. He'd claimed pole by less than a tenth and should have been preparing for the media pen, but his attention shifted towards you the moment you approached.
You stopped beside him and folded your arms, allowing a deliberately smug smile to form.
“You’re welcome.”
Max glanced towards the screen and then back at you. “For what?”
“Pole.”
His eyebrows lifted. “My pole?”
“You were losing time through Turn 6 yesterday. I told you the wind was pushing the rear around on entry.”
“You said it felt like it ‘might be windy tomorrow’.”
“And then you went faster.”
A smile spread slowly across his face. “So now you are taking credit for my qualifying?”
“Only the successful parts.”
“What about the rest of the lap?”
“That was acceptable too.”
Max laughed, a warm sound that caught the attention of one of the nearby mechanics. A few months earlier you would never have spoken to him like this, you would have analysed every word before saying it and waited anxiously for some indication that he approved. Now you simply enjoyed the way his eyes brightened whenever you surprised him.
“Well,” he said, turning his body fully towards you, “thank you for securing my pole position.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“And congrats on seventh.”
Your smile softened. “Thank you.”
There was no joking qualification attached to it. Max did not point out where you had lost time or suggest that you might have placed higher with a cleaner final sector. He had never treated your progress like something he'd created, even after all the hours he'd spent helping you, when you did well the achievement remained entirely yours.
“You looked confident out there,” he said.
“I felt better.”
“I could tell.”
Something in his tone made warmth rise beneath your skin. “Were you watching?”
“I’d finished my lap.” Max’s gaze travelled over your face, amusement softening into something more intent. “You make it very difficult not to watch you.”
Your press officer called your name from the entrance to the garage before you could decide how to answer. You glanced towards her and then back at him, reluctant to let the moment end.
“I have to go.”
“I know.”
Neither of you moved immediately.
“Try not to lose the lead tomorrow. I would hate for all my coaching to be wasted.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You should, I have a reputation to protect now.”
Max shook his head, still smiling as you turned away and you could feel his eyes following you until you disappeared into the corridor.
The race unfolded more perfectly than anything you'd allowed yourself to imagine.
You gained a place before the first corner and emerged from the opening lap in sixth, the car balanced beneath you in a way it rarely had been at the beginning of the season. Max led several seconds ahead, but for once you weren't thinking about him or the expectations attached to being part of the same programme. Your focus narrowed to the car in front, the gap on your steering wheel and the calm instructions coming through your radio.
During the first stint you remained close enough to fifth to force the driver ahead into using more of his tyres than he wanted. Your engineer suggested extending the stint, trusting that you could maintain the pace while the others began to struggle.
It worked. You emerged from the pits later with clear air and tyres fresh enough to attack. By the time the strategy settled you were running fifth with fourth place less than three seconds ahead.
There had been a point earlier in the season when fifth would have felt too valuable to risk, you would have protected the result, terrified that wanting more might cost you everything. That instinct still whispered at the edge of your concentration, but it no longer controlled you.
With eight laps remaining you began closing the gap. The car ahead defended into Turn 3, forcing you to abandon the first attempt, but you stayed close through the middle sector. On the following lap, you positioned the car more carefully through the final two corners and pulled alongside before the braking zone.
For a fraction of a second your front-left threatened to lock.
You kept your foot in and trusted the car to hold.
The two of you swept through the corner together, but you had the inside line for the next turn. By the time you accelerated fourth place was yours.
Your engineer’s voice erupted through the radio.
“That’s P4! Great move. Absolutely fantastic.”
A breathless laugh escaped you inside your helmet. “That was close.”
You crossed the line three laps later in fourth, with Max taking the victory several seconds ahead.
The result registered slowly as you completed the cooldown lap. It wasn’t a podium, although you could almost touch one now, only three drivers had finished ahead of you and for the first time that knowledge felt exciting rather than cruel. You hadn't inherited the position through retirements or luck. You had raced for it and taken it.
When you returned to parc fermé your team were waiting against the barriers. Hands reached towards you as you climbed from the car, mechanics cheering loudly enough to be heard over the engines still arriving behind you.
You'd barely removed your helmet when someone caught you around the waist.
A startled laugh left you as your feet lifted briefly from the ground. You knew who it was before Max could set you down, his arms still loose around you and a victorious grin covering his face.
“Fourth,” he said.
“First,” you replied, looking up at him. “I suppose you managed without too much trouble.”
“I had excellent coaching.”
His hands remained at your waist and yours had settled instinctively against his shoulders. Around you cameras clicked continuously, but Max appeared entirely unconcerned by the attention.
“That overtake was brilliant” he said.
“Wha-How?”
“Because I was watching.”
“You were leading.”
“I had a gap.”
“You used it to watch my race?”
Max’s eyes moved over your face, his voice lowering despite the noise surrounding you. “I told you. You make it difficult not to.”
In the garage you had been able to blame the electricity between you on adrenaline from qualifying. Here, with his hands still resting against your waist and his attention fixed entirely on you there was nowhere for either of you to hide.
A member of the podium crew called for Max, he glanced reluctantly towards the stage and then back at you.
“You need to go,” you told him.
“Stay for the podium.”
“I usually do.”
“Stay where I can see you.”
Your heart stumbled, you tried to cover it with a smile. “Planning to dedicate the win to your coach?”
“Maybe.”
Max gave your waist one final squeeze before stepping away. The absence of him felt immediate although his gaze remained on you until someone placed a cap in his hands and steered him towards the podium.
When Max lifted the trophy he found you beneath the stage almost instantly. Champagne had dampened his hair and darkened the shoulders of his race suit, but his attention settled on you with such certainty that several photographers turned to follow his line of sight.
You raised your eyebrows and mouthed, You’re welcome.
Even from a distance you saw him laugh.
It was much later before the two of you managed to escape the celebrations.
The paddock had begun to quiet when you found Max on the terrace behind the motorhome, he'd changed into a clean team shirt although his hair was still damp from the champagne. His trophy sat on the table beside two bottles of beer, catching the last of the evening sunlight.
“You abandoned your own party,” you said as you stepped outside.
Max turned towards you. “I was waiting for someone.”
“Your coach?”
“She’s becoming very demanding.”
You walked towards him and accepted the bottle he offered. “Success changes people.”
“So does finishing fourth apparently.”
You leaned beside him against the railing. “I was delightful before.”
“You barely spoke to me.”
“You deserved it.”
“I did.”
The ease with which he accepted it removed any sting from the exchange, he looked out over the paddock for a moment, his shoulder resting against yours before turning his bottle slowly between his hands.
“You should be proud of today.”
“I am.”
Max glanced sideways at you, checking for any sign that you were only saying it for his benefit.
You smiled. “I really am.”
His expression warmed. “Good.”
“I wanted the podium.”
“I know.”
“But I didn’t leave feeling like fourth was a failure.” You looked down at the bottle in your hands. “That’s new.”
“You’ll get one soon.”
The certainty in his voice made you laugh. “You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
“What happens when I do?”
Max’s gaze shifted towards you. “When you do what?”
“Get a podium.”
He considered the question with exaggerated seriousness. “You stand on the stage. They give you a trophy. Usually there’s champagne.”
You turned until your hip rested against the railing, facing him properly. “I meant what happens afterwards.”
Understanding flickered across his face.
“Are you asking me to plan your celebration?”
“I’m asking whether you intend to be there.”
Max’s smile became more private replacing the teasing expression he'd worn moments earlier. “I intend to be there for all of them.”
The answer caught you off guard.
“All of them?” you repeated.
“Your first podium. Your first win.” His eyes remained on yours. “Whatever comes after that.”
The future opened quietly between you, carried in words that could still have been about racing if either of you needed them to be.
“You’re planning quite far ahead,” you murmured.
“I spend a lot of time looking at data. I can recognise a trend.”
“And what trend is that?”
“You keep getting closer.”
“To the podium?”
Max stepped nearer, leaving only a narrow space between you. “That too.”
Warmth climbed into your cheeks, but you resisted the instinct to look away. The confidence you had found in the car seemed to follow you here allowing you to hold his gaze and enjoy the rare moment in which Max appeared to be the less certain one.
“So,” you said, stepping slightly closer, “when I get my podium how exactly are we celebrating?”
His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re still pretending you don’t know what I want.”
Your pulse quickened, but you managed to keep your expression composed. “Perhaps you should explain it to me.”
Max laughed under his breath. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“This was much easier when you were nervous around me.”
“You hated it when I was nervous around you.”
His expression sobered. “I do like this version better.”
Months earlier his opinion had shattered something in you. Now he looked at you as though your growing confidence was not merely something he'd witnessed, but something he treasured.
“You helped.”
“You did the difficult part.”
He moved closer until his shoulder brushed yours and lowered his voice.
“Get the podium.”
“And then?”
“Then you won’t have to ask whether I’ll be there.”
You smiled. “Still avoiding the question about the celebration.”
“I already told you. It depends.”
“On whether I know what you want?”
“Yes.”
You tilted your face towards his, leaving so little distance that you felt his breath catch. “I think I’m beginning to work it out.”
For one suspended moment you thought he might kiss you.
Instead Max reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his fingertips trailing lightly along your cheek. The restraint in the gesture made it feel more intimate than rushing forward would have done.
“You drove beautifully today,” he said.
There was no joke to hide behind now, you let the praise settle without dismissing it.
“Thank you.”
His hand lingered against your cheek before falling slowly.
When you eventually returned inside Max placed his palm against the small of your back and guided you through the doorway. Several team members looked up, one of them smiled knowingly before returning to his conversation.
Summery: Six months into their relationship, its a race weekend at Las Vegas. Carson sends you a Reddit thread — a compilation video that has the NASCAR fandom completely convinced she and Carson are dating.
A/N: New one shot series alert! It's gonna jump around but it's going to be fun :)
Standard disclaimer: I do not consent to the posting, translating, or publishing of my work to any 3rd party site, the only place it may found is on tumblr or A03 under the same name. This is all fake. It does not reflect real people, real events or their actual actions or relationships. May contain google translated languages.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Friday morning and the desert was already doing what the desert did in October — bright and sharp and dry in a way that made everything feel slightly more urgent than it needed to be.
She'd been up since six. Scout had been up since five, because Scout did not understand the concept of sleeping in and had expressed this by sitting next to the bed and staring at her with the focused intention of a dog who had somewhere to be. They'd gone for a run before the track got loud, just the two of them in the early morning quiet, Scout covering twice the distance she did by virtue of having four legs and no sense of pace management.
Now Scout was asleep on the floor of the motorhome like she hadn't just dragged her owner through three miles at sunrise, and she was on her second coffee going over the weekend notes from her engineer, and everything was normal.
Her phone buzzed.
From: Carson 🤠
[link]
No caption. Just the link.
She clicked it.
r/NASCAR
📌 Y/N Carter Updates — okay I need someone to validate my shipping CartVar Posted by u/spire95daily • 2 hours ago
Someone made a four minute video and I have watched it six times. I’m convinced they’re dating. I'm going to describe it because you need to understand what's happening here.
It starts with a clip from the media day interview at Darlington back in August. A reporter asks Carson Hocevar who his favorite person on the grid is and without missing a single beat, before the reporter has even finished the sentence, he points at her and says "her." no hesitation. doesn't even think about it.
Then it cuts to HER doing a separate interview, different day, and someone asks her the same question and she laughs before she answers. Not like a polite media laugh. Like a genuine "what kind of question is that" laugh and then says "Carson, obviously" like it's the most boring question she's ever been asked.
Then there's like six clips from their joint Twitch stream. I'm going to need you to understand what this stream was. It was two hours of Carson Hocevar yelling at literally every other driver on the iracing platform while she sat next to him and did not stop him once. She just sat there. She was smiling. She handed him a snack at one point without him asking and he took it without looking and they both just continued on like this was completely normal.
Then there's a clip of him in a post race interview after Kansas where he's talking about her race, not his, and he says "she deserved better than P8 and anyone who watched the race knows that" with the kind of personal investment that is not standard teammate behavior.
Then — and this is the part that got me — there's a tweet from two months ago where she retweeted one of his posts with just "correct" and nothing else and he replied with "thank you finally someone gets it" and she replied with "I always get it" and. I'm just going to let that sit there.
I'm not saying anything. I'm just describing what I see.
↑ 6.2k | 521 comments
u/Monsterorbust • 2h
the way she handed him that snack without looking I think about it constantly
u/95ganggang • 2h
THE "I ALWAYS GET IT" TWEET. I remember when that was posted and I did not understand its significance at the time
u/spire95daily • 2h
none of us were ready
u/monsterpurist04 • 1h
okay but to be fair they've been teammates for a year and best friends even longer so some of this could just be—
u/lurkingengineer • 1h
the snack. explain the snack.
u/monsterpurist04 • 1h
...I cannot explain the snack
u/nascarnotes • 1h
I went back and watched the full Twitch stream after seeing this compilation and I need everyone to know there's a moment around the 47 minute mark where another driver comes into the chat to defend himself after Carson roasted him and Carson just looks at her and she shakes her head slightly and he drops it immediately. he dropped it IMMEDIATELY. do you understand what kind of power that is
u/f1nascarcrossoverfan • 1h
The silent communication. THE SILENT COMMUNICATION
u/redbullorbust • 58m
they have a whole language and we're only seeing part of it
u/oldschoolnascarfan • 58m
y'all said this exact thing about the max verstappen instagram stuff a few months ago and then nothing happened so
u/95ganggang • 55m
the max thing was different this is different
u/oldschoolnascarfan • 54m
how is it different
u/95ganggang • 53m
the SNACK
u/maxshipper_supreme • 45m
wait so we're dropping the max theory??
u/spire95daily • 43m
I mean he still follows her and likes her photos but he does that with a lot of drivers. The Carson evidence is RIGHT THERE
u/maxshipper_supreme • 42m
I just think we're being hasty
523 more comments
She read the whole thread.
Then she read it again.
Then she looked at Scout, still asleep on the floor, entirely unbothered by everything, and thought about how nice that must be.
To: Max 💙
Carson sent me a Reddit thread.
Four minutes passed.
From: Max 💙
I know. Lando sent it to me this morning.
She sat up straighter.
To: Max 💙
Lando sent it to you.
From: Max 💙
He thought it was funny.
To: Max 💙
And what do you think?
From: Max 💙
I think they're wrong.
To: Max 💙
That's it? That's your whole response to people on the internet thinking your girlfriend is dating her best friend?
From: Max 💙
You're coming home to me at the end of the season. I'm not worried about a Reddit thread.
She stared at that for a moment.
To: Max 💙
You're infuriating.
From: Max 💙
You're stressed about nothing. Go focus on your briefings and practice session.
She made a noise out loud that Scout opened one eye for, assessed, and decided wasn't worth getting up over.
She called Carson. He picked up laughing, which was not a great start.
"Before you—"
"Five hundred comments, Carson."
"Five hundred and thirty-seven," he said. "It went up while you were reading it."
"That is not the flex you think it is."
"I'm just saying, the engagement is impressive—"
"They think we're dating."
"I know."
"They made a compilation video."
"I watched it," he said. "Honestly pretty well edited. Whoever made it has a future in—"
"Carson."
A pause. Then, with a slightly less grin in it: "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say something useful."
"Okay." A pause, the joke mostly gone. "Here's something useful — it doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
"Why?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
"Five hundred people on the internet who don't know you, don't know me, and have never been to a race track, they’re just looking for something to do," Carson said. "That's what this is. That's the whole thing. All they did was compile things that are just — us. That's just what we're like. Best friends. We've always been like that."
"I know that."
"So what are you actually worried about?"
She didn't answer that.
Carson let the silence sit, which was unusual for him. When he spoke again the grin was fully gone. "Hey."
"I'm fine."
"I know you're fine. That's not what I asked."
She looked at Scout, still resolutely asleep on the floor. "I just don't love that the narrative is out there and I can't do anything about it."
"You could do something about it."
"Carson—"
"I'm not saying do anything. I'm saying you could. And you're choosing not to. Which is a decision you made. So own it a little."
She didn't say anything.
"You know how this ends," he said, simpler now. "You're the only one acting like you don't."
A long pause.
"Go look at your setup notes," he said. "we’ve got a race Sunday. You're in the hunt for the championship. Everything else is noise."
"When did you get wise."
"I've always been wise. You just don't listen." The grin was back, faint.
“Okay mister wiseguy, I'll see you out there.”
"Yes you will." He said and hung up.
Max landed in Las Vegas on Saturday evening.
Nobody noticed, or if they did, nothing surfaced yet. He came to the motorhome and Scout greeted him with the focused enthusiasm she reserved for people she had decided were worth her time — which was a meaningful list, not a short one — and he crouched down and let her investigate him thoroughly with the patience of someone who had learned the protocol.
"How was the flight," she said from the couch, not looking up from her notes.
"Long," he said. Scout headbutted his hand. He scratched behind her ear without being asked. "How's the car?"
"Better than Friday. Not quite where I want it yet."
He came and sat next to her and looked at the notes without saying anything for a while. Just read. That was the thing about him she still hadn't fully gotten used to after six months — the quality of his quiet. It wasn't empty. It was just comfortable.
"Your rear entry angle," he said eventually, pointing at something on the sheet.
"I know."
"Your engineer knows?"
"He knows."
"Okay," he said, and leaned back.
Scout relocated to lie across both their feet. Outside Las Vegas was being Las Vegas on a Saturday night — loud and lit up and completely indifferent to the two of them sitting in a motorhome going over setup notes like it was the most normal thing in the world.
It was, she thought, a very normal evening.
The Reddit thread had 1,200 comments now. She didn't open it.
She won Las Vegas Motor Speedway on a Sunday afternoon with three laps to go and a move on the bottom that Carson would describe for the rest of the year as "the most calculated thing I have ever watched happen in real time" and she would describe simply as "it was there."
The radio erupted. The crew erupted. She took the checkered flag and let herself be loud about it for a few seconds inside her helmet before everything got very fast — victory burnout, bringing the car in, the noise hitting her all at once the moment she climbed out. Carson got to her first because Carson always got there first, grabbed her by the shoulders and said something completely inaudible over the crowd, and she laughed, the unguarded kind, pure adrenaline. Then there were crew members everywhere, her engineer with his arms around her, someone putting a hat on her head, hurrying through the motions of victory lane, the interviews, the presenting of the trophy, the photos, the hat coming off and going back on, someone asking her to move left for the cameras and then right and then back again, and she was trying to be present in all of it — smiling and here and grateful then she saw him.
He was standing just back from the chaos, slightly removed from it the way he always was in crowds. Cap pulled low, sunglasses on, in the completely futile way that Max Verstappen wore hats and sunglasses as a disguise in public — like it would work if he just believed in it hard enough. He was watching her with that almost-smile, quiet in the middle of all the noise, and for a second the rest of victory lane went a little distant.
She thought about six months of late nights and setup notes and a pigeon on a balcony in Monaco and a Reddit thread sitting at 1,200 comments about entirely the wrong person.
She thought about Carson saying you know how this ends. You're the only one acting like you don't.
She crossed the distance between them with the trophy still in her hand and kissed him, and he caught her like he'd known it was coming — one hand at her jaw, completely unbothered by the cameras and the noise and the very public nature of what was currently happening.
It lasted maybe five seconds.
When she pulled back he looked at her with that same calm expression.
"Good race," he said.
She laughed, still a little breathless, still holding the trophy, still vaguely aware that there were approximately forty cameras pointed at them right now. "That's all you've got."
"You drove well in the second stage," he said. "Your tire management was better than the leader's. I was watching."
"You were watching my tire management."
"I was watching everything." The almost-smile again, closer to the real thing now. "But yes. Specifically the tire management in stage two."
She shook her head. Six months and he could still catch her off guard with it — the way he paid attention, the specific and unhurried way he saw things. She'd stopped being surprised that he'd noticed. She hadn't stopped being glad about it. She was still smiling when Carson appeared at her elbow approximately four seconds later. She watched him look at her, then at Max, then back at her. Something moved across his face — not surprise, more like a man watching something he already knew become real in front of him.
"So," he said.
"Don't," she said.
"I'm not saying anything."
"Good."
"I'm just standing here."
"Carson."
"Observing," he said. He looked at Max. Max looked back at him. Something passed between them — brief and unspoken, the kind of acknowledgment that didn't need words. Carson nodded once, slow, like something had been confirmed. "Nice to finally meet you properly," he said.
"You too," Max said.
She looked between them and felt something settle — quiet and certain and a little overwhelming — underneath all the noise of a race win on a Sunday afternoon in October.
r/NASCAR
📌 Y/N Carter Updates — VICTORY LANE. LAS VEGAS. I NEED EVERYONE TO LOOK AT THIS VIDEO RIGHT NOW Posted by u/spire95daily • 6 minutes ago
I don't have words. I literally do not have words. She won the race which is already — but then in victory lane she — I can't.
[video link]
I'm going to go lie down. Someone else take over.
↑ 18.4k | 1,249 comments — sorted by: new
u/Monsterorbust • 5m
IS THAT MAX VERSTAPPEN
u/95ganggang • 5m
IT'S MAX VERSTAPPEN
u/lurkingengineer • 4m
THE RIVAL SPONSORS AGENDA WAS REAL THIS WHOLE TIME
u/monsterpurist04 • 4m
I need to sit down I genuinely need to sit down
u/f1nascarcrossoverfan • 3m
OUR OWN REDDIT THREAD. WE WERE SO WRONG. WE WERE SO EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG.
u/oldschoolnascarfan • 3m
okay. FINE. I'll admit it.
u/95ganggang • 3m
TOLD YOU IT WASN'T THE SNACK
u/maxshipper_supreme • 2m
I NEVER DOUBTED THIS FOR A SINGLE SECOND
u/nascarnotes • 2m
wait where's Carson in this video
u/redbullorbust • 1m
HE'S RIGHT THERE. HE'S WATCHING IT HAPPEN IN REAL TIME
u/lurkingengineer • 1m
his FACE. someone gif his face immediately
u/95ganggang • 58s
Carson Hocevar watched his best friend kiss Max Verstappen in victory lane in Las Vegas and I think that's the most Carson thing that has ever happened
u/monsterpurist04 • 45s
the rival sponsors agenda was real the whole time and we almost missed it because of a SNACK
u/nascarnotes • 30s
I am not going to be normal about this for a very long time
u/spire95daily • 15s
none of us are
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: None for once, I think. Well, unless you count Ana's super brain. Yes, that hotel actually does exist in real life. Would a wedding like Max and Ana's be possible there? I kinda doubt it, but go with it, please.
For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Text Messages: Lando Norris & Martin Garrix
Martin: Did you know Max is engaged?
Lando: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Martin: That is not an answer.
Lando: It is if you understand the journey.
Martin: Lando.
Lando: Congratulations, you have found out.
Martin: You knew?
Lando: Yes. Max Verstappen is marrying Ana Wolff.
Martin: Toto Wolff’s daughter.
Lando: Yes.
Martin: You understand how insane that is, right?
Lando: Oh, I understand that better than you.
Martin: Why does that sound threatening?
Lando: Because they’ve been a thing for like a decade and nobody knew.
Martin: A DECADE?
Lando: Roughly.
Martin: Max has had a secret relationship with Ana Wolff for ten years?
Lando: Welcome to my personal hell.
Martin: How did nobody know?
Lando: Because Max Verstappen is a terrifyingly effective privacy goblin and Ana Wolff has the public footprint of a classified submarine.
Martin: A decade?
Lando: YES.
Martin: And no one in the paddock knew?
Lando: Some people knew.
Martin: Max asked me about wedding music.
Lando: Oh no.
Martin: Why oh no?
Lando: Because Max thinks wedding music means either Dutch EDM or whatever song he heard in a gym once.
Martin: Ana wants classical.
Lando: Of course she does.
She’s Ana Wolff.
She probably relaxes by listening to composers whose names sound like legal clauses or something…
Martin: Max said she likes composers nobody has heard of.
Lando: That sounds right.
Martin: I suggested a piano quintet.
Lando: Look at you being useful.
Martin: Unlike you?
Lando: I provide moral chaos.
Martin: He didn’t tell me he was engaged.
He just texted me saying he needed music.
Lando: HAHAHAHAHAHA
Martin: Stop laughing.
Lando: No, that’s so Max.
Lando: Also, Max once nearly got into a fistfight with Charles Leclerc over Ana.
Martin: What.
Lando: Yep.
Martin: WHAT.
Lando: Charles went on one date with her.
Martin: Charles Leclerc went on a date with Ana Wolff?
Lando: One.
Martin: And Max nearly fought him?
Lando: Allegedly.
Martin: Lando.
Lando: Fine, yes. Basically.
Martin: When was this?
Lando: Years ago. Pre-current public chaos.
Ana and Charles went to dinner or drinks or whatever very beautiful European people do when they’re pretending it’s casual.
Martin: And Max?
Lando: Max was normal about it for approximately negative three seconds.
And apparently tried to throttle Charles. Fred Vassseur needed to step in.
Martin: Did Charles know?
Lando: Charles did not know he was walking into years of secret situationship landmines.
Martin: This is insane.
Lando: I know.
Martin: And now Max is engaged to her.
Lando: Yes.
Martin: With a private island wedding. And switching to Mercedes next year.
Lando: EXACTLY.
Martin: Wait.
Martin: Actually wait.
Martin: Max is switching to Mercedes next year and marrying Toto Wolff’s daughter?
Lando: Now you’re getting it.
Martin: That is not a relationship. That is a geopolitical event.
Lando: THANK YOU.
Martin: How is the paddock handling this?
Lando: Badly.
Lando: Anyway, they’re engaged now and she has the biggest ring you have ever seen.
Martin: How big?
Lando: Huge. Not tacky. Terrifyingly intentional.
Martin: That does sounds like Max.
Lando: Every press conference next year is going to be unbearable.
Lando:
The questions.
The headlines.
The jokes.
The awkward paddock shots.
The fact that Max will be driving for his father-in-law while married to his daughter, who is also a Mercedes systems engineer and possibly smarter than all of us combined.
Martin: That sounds incredible.
Lando: It will be hell.
Martin: For you?
Lando: For everyone.
Martin: This feels like a reality show.
Lando: It is Formula One.
Martin: Fair
***
Stoddart Residence, Scotland - 11 October 2025
Toto did not sleep well in Scotland.
This was not Scotland’s fault.
The house was quiet in the way old family houses became quiet at night.
Pipes ticked. Rain moved lightly against the windows. Somewhere below, wood shifted inside the walls with the patience of things that had been standing longer than most human dramas deserved.
It should have been easy to sleep there.
Jack had gone to bed exhausted and happy after being allowed into John’s garage for longer than was probably sensible. Susie had kissed him goodnight, then kissed Toto too, softly, carefully, without the brittle edge that had sat between them in Monaco two nights earlier.
Not gone.
Not resolved.
But less sharp.
Max had fallen asleep in the sitting room for twenty minutes after dinner with one hand still on his phone, apparently halfway through a list titled ERISKA QUESTIONS, because of course he had named it that. Ana had finally woken him again with a kiss to his temple and talked him into going back upstairs.
Toto had watched.
He had become very good, over the years, at watching Ana love people in ways she thought were invisible.
It had occurred to him, not for the first time and not gently, that he had learned many of her languages far too late.
Now, hours later, the house was dark. Susie was asleep beside him, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, her breathing steady. Toto lay still for a long time, eyes open, watching a slice of moonlight spread pale across the unfamiliar ceiling.
His body was tired.
His mind was not.
Monaco kept returning to him.
Not the city. Not the light. Not the glittering indifference outside their bedroom window.
Susie’s face.
You never asked her.
That sentence had followed him north.
It had sat beside him on the plane. In the car. At breakfast. At Eriska while Fiona MacLeish spoke of privacy and access roads and winter availability. It had stood behind him when Ana circled the twentieth of December and Max looked as if he had been given something holy and dangerous to protect.
You never asked her.
Toto had built many things from guilt.
Legal structures. Financial safeguards. Diamonds. Quiet rooms. Opportunities. Lawyers on retainer. A private investigator whose invoices Susie had looked at once, raised one eyebrow over, and then never questioned again.
But he had not built the one thing that might have mattered most.
A question.
What do you remember?
The thought made lying still impossible.
Carefully, so as not to wake Susie, Toto slipped out of bed and reached for his robe. The old floorboards gave only one soft complaint under his weight as he crossed the room.
He paused at the door and looked back.
Susie slept on.
He loved her.
Downstairs, the house was dim and silver. Toto moved quietly through the hall, past the photographs on the walls, past Jack’s shoes abandoned near the stairs, past one of Quinn’s toys lying in the middle of the floor like a strategic hazard.
He nearly missed the light in the conservatory.
Not a lamp.
Something softer.
Moonlight, he realized.
And then he saw Ana.
She was sitting curled into the window seat, knees drawn up beneath a blanket, hair loose over one shoulder. The conservatory windows rose around her in dark panes, reflecting faint pieces of the room back over the night garden beyond.
She was not reading.
That was what made him stop.
Ana with a book was usually a closed door. Ana with a screen was often a warning sign. Ana with a task was a person trying to turn feeling into work before it became unmanageable.
Ana sitting still, looking out into the dark, was something else.
Toto stood in the doorway for a moment.
She did not turn.
“I know you’re there, Papa,” she said.
Of course she did.
“I was being quiet.”
“You breathe like you’re about to chair a board meeting.”
Despite himself, Toto smiled. “That bad?”
“Yes.”
“May I come in?”
Ana’s gaze stayed on the window.
Then she shifted her feet slightly, making space on the window seat beside her.
Toto crossed the room.
He sat carefully, not too close at first. The night outside pressed dark and wet against the glass. Beyond the garden, the Scottish sky had cleared in patches, and where the clouds had broken, stars showed themselves with cold precision.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
This was not uncomfortable.
Not with Ana.
Silence with Ana had always required translation. There were silences that meant go away, silences that meant stay but do not demand, silences that meant I am thinking, and silences that meant I am trying not to come apart and would prefer you not narrate it.
Eventually Ana said, “There are more stars here.”
“Yes.”
“Monaco is terrible for stars.”
“It is terrible for many things.”
She glanced at him then, faintly amused. “That is a bold statement for a man with property there.”
“I did not say it lacked uses.”
Ana looked back outside.
A few more seconds passed.
Then she said, “My grandmother used to watch the stars with me.”
Toto went very still. “Yelena,” he said.
Ana nodded.
She had mentioned her grandmother before, but rarely. Not with the hard avoidance that surrounded Irina. Yelena lived somewhere else in Ana’s memory. Somewhere soft and sealed. A room Toto had not been invited into often, and had tried, with varying success, not to press his face against the glass.
“Her flat in Moscow…” Ana said. “Small. Warm. Always smelled like tea, dust, and this rose soap she used. She taught me to play the piano.”
Toto smiled faintly.
Ana’s face softened in the reflected window, and Toto had the strange, piercing sense of seeing a younger version of her sit beside the older one. Six years old. Small hands on piano keys. A grandmother saying something in Russian, fond and exasperated. A room too warm against Moscow cold.
“She used to call me Nastyusha,” Ana said.
Toto looked at her.
“Nastyusha,” he repeated carefully.
Her mouth curved a little at his pronunciation.
“That was not terrible.”
“High praise.”
“It means you listened.”
He had.
God, he had always listened.
Just not always correctly.
Ana tilted her head back against the window frame. “In Russia nobody uses full names for people they love. Not really. Full names are for documents. Teachers. Scolding. Distance.”
Toto felt the words enter him very slowly.
Full names are for distance.
Anastasia.
He had called her Anastasia from the first day.
Not always, of course. Over time there had been other names. Ana, eventually, because that was what she used at school and later in English. Sternchen, when she was very young and he forgot himself in German. Still now, when he looked at her with paternal pride and couldn’t quite believe the woman she had grown into.
But Anastasia had remained.
His first name for her.
The name on the birth certificate.
The name he had clung to when he had nothing else. When a silent child stood in his hallway and the documents said Anastasia Mikhailovna Solovyova, and then later Anastasia Yelena Wolff, once the paperwork had caught up with the devastation.
Anastasia.
A full name.
A formal name.
A distant name.
Toto looked at his hands.
Max called her Nastya.
Not always. Not in public, usually. But when he was worried. When the room needed to become smaller. Nastya. Sometimes with that Dutch bluntness making the Russian softer by accident.
Toto had heard it that afternoon. Nastya.
Ana had let Max call her that.
Toto had not understood the full size of the gift.
“I call you Anastasia,” he said.
Ana did not look at him. “Yes. When I was little,” she continued, “Babushka had a star chart. Paper. Huge.”
Toto let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
Ana’s mouth twitched.
“She put it on the floor. We would lie next to it. She would point to constellations and tell me stories that were definitely not true.”
“Definitely?”
“She once told me Orion was punished for being too proud and should have studied more mathematics.”
“Interesting interpretation of mythology.”
“Exactly.”
The stars outside the conservatory seemed very sharp now.
Ana pulled the blanket a little higher around herself.
“I still have that star chart,” she said.
Toto turned his head. “You do?”
“Yes. I am thinking I should get it framed.”
The sentence was small.
Practical.
But Toto heard what lived under it.
Ana did not frame sentimental things lightly. To frame something was to admit it mattered enough to be seen. Not tucked in a drawer. Not preserved as evidence only she could access. Hung on a wall. Allowed into a room.
“That would be beautiful,” Toto said.
Ana looked at the stars.
“I think so.”
Another silence settled.
This one had edges, but not the same edges as before.
Because the wedding had been in the room all day.
Toto looked down at his hands.
“There is something else I should tell you.”
Ana’s gaze stayed on the stars, but her posture changed by one careful degree.
“Okay.”
“It is not bad,” Toto said.
She turned her head slightly. “What is it?”
Toto forced himself to look at her. “There is money set aside for your wedding.”
Ana blinked.
“My wedding,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
For a moment, she simply looked at him.
Not confused exactly. Assessing.
Then she said, “I have my own money.”
“I know.”
“And Max has his own money.”
“I am aware.”
“And if you tell him this, he will become difficult.”
“He already knows.”
Ana’s eyebrows lifted.
That was rare enough that Toto might have enjoyed it under different circumstances.
“Max knows?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Susie mentioned calling Fiona to hold the date. Max asked if she needed his credit card for the deposit.”
Ana closed her eyes briefly. “Of course he did.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Susie told him there was a fund.”
Ana opened her eyes again and stared at him.
“A fund.”
“Yes.”
“For my wedding.”
“Yes.”
“Separate from my trust?”
Toto hesitated.
Ana’s mouth twitched. “Oh, Papa.”
“It is separate from the trust.”
“Max must have loved that.”
“He had questions.”
“He always has questions when someone else is also trying to pay for things.”
“Yes.”
Ana leaned back against the window frame, looking faintly disbelieving and fond and alarmed all at once.
“You told Max before me.”
“I did not intend to,” Toto said quickly.
“I know.”
“It came up badly.”
“I can tell.”
“I wanted to tell you myself.”
“And now you are.”
“Yes.”
The answer sat between them.
Toto looked down at his hands again.
“I set it aside years ago,” he said.
“For each of us?”
He looked up.
Ana was watching him now.
Of course she understood the pattern immediately.
“Yes. Benedict. Rosa. Jack. You.”
“Wedding funds.”
“Weddings, if wanted. Other major life events if not.”
“That is extremely you.”
Toto’s mouth moved faintly. “I am choosing to take that neutrally.”
“It was neutral.”
He nodded.
Ana looked back out at the stars.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then she said, “You did not think I would ever want one.”
“A wedding?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Toto said. “I did not.”
There was no point lying.
Not to Ana.
“I did not know if you would want people. Attention. A formal day. A room full of eyes.” His mouth tightened. “I did not want to prepare a version of your life that made you feel expected to become someone else.”
“But you prepared anyway.”
“Yes.”
Her fingers moved once against the blanket.
“Why?”
The question was gentle enough to hurt.
Toto swallowed.
“Because I wanted it there,” he said. “If you ever did want it. I wanted you to have the option before you needed to ask.”
Ana went very still.
It was the good kind of still, perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
Toto had never been as good at telling as he wished.
“It is yours regardless,” he added. “You do not have to use it for the wedding. You do not have to use it at all. You can tell me it is unnecessary and I will not argue.”
Ana gave him a look.
He corrected himself. “I will try not to argue.”
“Better.”
“It is not pressure.”
“I know.”
“It is not because I think you need it.”
“I know.”
“It is not because Max cannot—”
“Papa.”
He stopped.
Ana held his gaze.
“I know.”
The room quieted again.
Outside, the stars watched with their usual cold indifference.
Ana looked back at them.
“I want to use it,” she said.
Toto’s chest tightened so suddenly he forgot to breathe.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“You do not have to decide now.”
“I know.”
“It is not—”
“Papa.”
He stopped again.
Her voice was softer this time.
“I have my own money,” she said. “Max has his own money. We could pay for the wedding ourselves. We probably will pay for some of it ourselves, because Max will become unbearable otherwise.”
Despite everything, Toto laughed once.
It came out rough.
Ana’s mouth curved slightly.
“But I want to use the fund,” she said. “Because you kept it for me.”
Toto looked down.
The moonlight blurred.
“And because,” Ana continued, more quietly, “you did not know whether I would ever want this. You did not ask me to want it. You did not make me feel like I had failed some expected life pattern by not choosing it earlier. You just kept a door open.”
Toto could not speak.
Ana’s hand, still wrapped in the edge of the blanket, tightened once.
“I understand that this is important to you,” she said. “So it can matter to me too.”
He closed his eyes.
For one moment, he was not in Scotland.
He was years earlier, looking at spreadsheets and trust structures and instructions to the family office. Making plans for a child who accepted almost nothing from him without analysis. Putting money aside for a wedding she might never have, children she might never choose, a future he had no right to script but could not bear to leave unprepared.
A door open.
That was all.
Or perhaps it was not all.
Perhaps it was the only thing he had known how to build.
“Thank you,” he said, and his voice was not steady.
Ana looked uncomfortable with the gratitude.
Good.
It meant she understood its size.
“You are welcome.”
The silence after that was softer.
Not easy.
But softer.
Then the old edge returned.
Because it had opened the same door.
The one behind which all Toto’s carefully constructed safeguards stood in a row. Trusts. Funds. Diamonds. Lawyers. Coats that fit. Money trying, always, to do the work his questions had not.
His hands had gone cold.
There were many ways to fail a child. Some loud. Some quiet. Some brutal in the moment, some accumulating over years until absence itself became a structure.
He had failed Anastasia in both kinds of ways.
He had known that before Susie said it.
But knowing had not made him brave.
He looked at his daughter in the moonlight and thought of Monaco, of Susie standing in their bedroom with fury bright enough to illuminate every corner he had left dark.
You never asked her.
Toto inhaled once.
Ana noticed, of course.
She always noticed.
“What?” she asked.
He closed his eyes briefly. Then opened them. “There is something else I need to ask you.”
“Okay,” she said.
Toto hated himself a little for the way she made room for other people’s difficult conversations even when she clearly did not want them.
He kept his voice quiet. “You do not have to answer.”
“That is rarely true when people preface questions that way.”
“It is true now.”
She looked at him.
He forced himself not to look away. “Do you remember Stephanie hitting you?”
Ana frowned.
Not the frown of someone hurt. The frown of someone encountering inaccurate data.
“No,” she said. “She never did that.”
Toto’s chest tightened.
Ana looked back out the window. “Her words were enough.”
He could not breathe properly for a second.
Her words were enough.
So much pain, compressed into one flat little sentence. So much history. Stephanie’s coldness. Her corrections. The way she had made Ana feel like an intrusion inside a house that should have protected her. The keyboard. The headphones. The living room converted from shared space into something Ana had to be managed out of.
Her words were enough.
Toto’s hand curled once against his knee.
“She did,” he said.
Ana went still.
He hated himself. But he did not stop. “She did do that once.”
Ana’s eyes moved back to him slowly.
Not wide. Not shocked. That was almost worse. “When?” she asked.
“You were ten.”
Her face did not change.
“You were overwhelmed. A panic attack, I think, though we called many things the wrong names then.” His throat tightened. “Stephanie thought you were being defiant. Or theatrical. I don’t know. I came in as she slapped you.”
Ana looked at him for a long moment. Then back at the stars.
“Oh,” she said.
Oh.
That was all.
No anger. No visible devastation. No dramatic rediscovery of trauma.
Just oh.
As if a missing line in a corrupted file had been restored and nothing about the larger system surprised her.
Toto almost wished she would shout. That would have been easier.
“I don’t remember that,” she said.
“I thought you didn’t.”
Ana’s mouth moved faintly. “You thought correctly then, apparently.”
“No.”
That made her look at him. Toto’s voice was rough now.
“No. I thought that and then I let the thought become an excuse not to ask you.”
Ana watched him, unreadable.
“I should have asked you,” he said. “Years ago. I should not have decided what your memory was because that was easier for me.”
She did not answer.
The silence hurt.
Good. It should.
Toto looked down at his hands.
“I am sorry,” he said. “For what she did. For not protecting you before it happened. For staying after. I should have left then.”
Ana’s eyes remained on him. He made himself continue.
“I told myself it would never happen again. I told myself I had drawn the line. I told myself many things that allowed me to remain in a house where you had already been harmed.”
The words were plain.
Not enough. But plain.
“I was trying to keep everything together,” he said. “The marriage. Benedict. Rosa. You. Work. The house. All of it. And because I was trying to keep everything together, I made you live inside something that should have been broken apart much sooner.”
Ana’s throat moved.
But she still said nothing.
Toto looked at her fully. “Imagine,” he said quietly, “that it had been Jack.”
Ana’s expression changed.
“Imagine Jack was ten,” Toto said. “Imagine he was overwhelmed, frightened, unable to regulate, and an adult hit him across the face because his distress was inconvenient.”
Ana’s fingers tightened in the blanket.
“Imagine I knew,” he continued, each word heavier than the last, “and I stayed. Imagine I told myself I had handled it because I had shouted, because I had warned, because I had said it would never happen again.”
Ana looked away. Her jaw was tight now.
“If that had happened to Jack,” Toto said, “you would be furious with me.”
“Yes,” Ana said immediately.
The word cut through the room.
Toto nodded. “Good.”
Ana looked at him sharply.
“You should be,” he said. “You should be furious for yourself too.”
For the child she had been before she learned to speak of herself like a project that had gone slightly wrong and been corrected through force of will.
Ana’s eyes had gone bright, but she did not cry.
“I don’t remember the slap,” she said after a long moment.
Toto nodded.
“But I remember the room after,” she continued.
Ana’s voice was very quiet.
“I remember the carpet in the living room. It was ugly. Green. It had these shapes on it. I used to count them when she screamed at me, so I wouldn’t start crying. She hated it but refused to replace it because Benedict once spilled paint there and she said there was no point having nice things if children existed.” Her mouth twisted. “I remember laying in my bed. I remember my face hurt, but I thought it was from crying. Or clenching my jaw. I don’t remember.”
Toto closed his eyes.
A sound moved through him that he could not quite control. “I am sorry,” he said again.
“I remember you shouting.”
He opened his eyes.
Ana was looking at him now. “You shouted so loudly.”
Toto remembered that.
God, he remembered that.
“I did.”
“I thought you were angry at me.”
He flinched. “I wasn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“But then—”
“I was ten,” Ana said.
Yes. She had been ten.
Old enough to understand danger.
Young enough to believe she might still be its cause.
Toto put a hand over his mouth for a second.
When he lowered it, his voice was no longer steady.
“I should have taken you out of that house.”
Ana looked at him. “Yes,” she said.
The word was not cruel.
That made it worse.
“I should have left Stephanie then.”
“Yes.”
“I failed you.”
Ana was quiet.
Then she said, “Sometimes.”
Toto almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was so Ana.
So precise. So unwilling to grant him either total absolution or total damnation when the record required something more exact.
Sometimes. Yes.
He had failed her sometimes.
He had also learned her food preferences one careful observation at a time. Sat outside her bedroom door when she would not let him in. Paid for specialists. Bought coats that fit. Argued with schools. Built quiet into houses. Took her calls at three in the morning from Cambridge when she said nothing for eleven minutes and then asked about tax law as if that had been the reason.
He had failed her sometimes. He had stayed.
That was the terrible complexity.
Ana looked back at the stars.
“She was always going to be cruel,” she said.
“Stephanie?”
“Yes.”
Toto did not answer.
Ana’s voice was calm in a way that made him ache.
“I don’t think it was because of me. I used to. But I don’t anymore.”
“Good.”
“She liked things she could understand. Benedict was difficult sometimes, but he was difficult in recognizable ways. Rosa was a baby. I was…” She paused. “Not legible to her.”
“You were a child.”
“I know.”
He looked at her.
She said it again, quieter. “I know that now.”
That was something, perhaps.
Not enough.
But something.
Toto swallowed.
“I am sorry for the keyboard,” he said.
Ana looked at him.
“And the headphones,” he added.
A faint line appeared between her brows.
“Susie found out. She yelled at you?”
“Yes.”
Ana’s mouth curved by a fraction.
“She was right,” Toto said.
“She usually is.”
“Yes.”
“She’s very angry.”
“Yes.”
“With you.”
“Yes.”
Ana considered this. “She still loves you.”
“I know.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
“No,” Toto said. “I am learning that.”
Ana looked satisfied with that answer, which was more than he deserved.
For a while, they simply sat there.
Outside, the clouds moved slowly across the sky. Stars appeared and disappeared, not gone, only hidden.
Toto thought of Yelena’s chart folded badly on a Moscow floor. Of Nastyusha. Of a little girl learning constellations from a woman who had loved her without making that love sound like duty.
“Nastyusha,” he said quietly.
Ana looked at him.
“Was she the only one who called you that?”
Ana’s face shifted.
“My grandmother? Yes.” Then, after a moment, “Sometimes my mother, when Yelena was alive. But after she died, not really.”
Toto nodded slowly.
“And Max calls you Nastya.”
“Yes.”
“You let him.”
Ana looked away, but there was no defensiveness in it.
“Yes.”
He smiled faintly. “He knows what he has been given?”
“Yes,” Ana said. “Usually after a delay.”
“That sounds like Max.”
“It is one of his best traits. He found Nastya on google,” Ana admitted drily. “Before that he was using horrific Dutch pet names.”
Toto couldn’t help the snort that escaped him.
Toto looked at her profile, silvered by moonlight.
“May I ask what you prefer from me?”
Ana looked back at him.
“My name?”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a long time.
Then she said, “I don’t want you to change because you feel guilty.”
He absorbed that.
“I feel guilty about many things,” he said. “But I am asking because I want to know.”
Ana studied him.
“You can call me Anastasia,” she said. “It is yours.”
His throat closed.
Ana looked away quickly, as if she had given too much again and needed the sky to take some of the weight.
“It never sounded cold from you,” she said. “It sounded like you were trying to hold onto the full shape of me.”
Toto could not speak.
He did not deserve that sentence.
But Ana had never given people what they deserved. She gave the truth as precisely as she could bear to give it.
Toto blinked hard once.
The stars blurred.
“I tried,” he said.
“I know.”
“It was not enough.”
“No,” Ana said.
He nodded.
She shifted then, slowly, as if making the decision required more courage than the movement suggested.
Then she leaned sideways and put her head on his shoulder.
Toto went still.
Entirely still.
Not because she had never done it before. She had, in rare moments. On planes when exhaustion outweighed self-consciousness. In hospitals when sedation made her less able to guard herself. Once, years ago, after Jack was born, when she had held him and then handed him back with such terrified reverence that Toto had thought his heart would break.
But this was deliberate.
Awake.
Chosen.
Ana’s head rested against his shoulder, her hair soft against his robe, the blanket gathered around both of them now.
Toto did not move for a second.
Then, carefully, he lifted one arm and rested it around her.
Not too tight. Never too tight.
Ana exhaled.
“Papa,” she said.
The word undid him.
Quietly. Completely. Somewhere beneath the ribs, where all the old structures had already been weakened.
He closed his eyes.
“Yes, Sternchen?”
She made a small sound that might have been annoyance, or affection, or both.
“We got through it,” she said.
Toto opened his eyes.
The stars were still there.
“We survived it,” Ana continued, voice low against his shoulder. “You did the best you could.”
His chest hurt.
“No.”
“Yes,” she said, not moving. “You failed sometimes. You did. I know that. You know that. Susie definitely knows that.”
A laugh escaped him, broken at the edge.
Ana’s hand found his sleeve and held it.
“But you never left me,” she said.
Toto stopped breathing.
“You stayed,” Ana said. “Badly sometimes. Stubbornly. With too many lawyers and not enough emotional vocabulary. With coats and school forms and diamonds and very bad Russian pronunciation. But you stayed.”
He pressed his mouth together.
It did not help.
“I should have done better,” he said.
“Yes.”
The answer came immediately.
No softness where the truth required firmness.
Then her fingers tightened in his sleeve.
“But you were there.”
Toto looked down at her.
Ana did not lift her head.
Perhaps that made it easier for both of them.
“When I stopped speaking, you sat outside the door,” she said. “When I hid food, you bought more of the same things and pretended not to notice. When I corrected your German, you let me, even when I was rude. When I called from Cambridge and said nothing, you stayed on the phone. When I needed Switzerland to be quiet, you made it quiet.”
Toto could not answer.
“If you had left me,” Ana said, “I would have understood why people leave.”
His arm tightened before he could stop it.
Ana allowed it.
“But you didn’t. So I had to learn something else too.”
He bowed his head over hers.
“I am so sorry,” he said.
“I know.”
“I should have protected you better.”
“Yes.”
“I should have left earlier.”
“Yes.”
“I should have asked.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: “Yes.”
The word landed gently and mercilessly.
Toto nodded.
“I will ask now,” he said.
Ana lifted her head at last.
Her eyes were wet.
So were his, he suspected. There was no point pretending otherwise in the dark.
“Not everything at once,” she said.
“No.”
“And not because Susie yelled at you.”
He managed a faint smile. “Partly because Susie yelled at me.”
Ana considered this.
“Acceptable,” she said. “She is very persuasive when furious.”
“She is terrifying.”
“Yes.” Ana’s mouth twitched. “It’s one of her best qualities.”
Toto smiled properly then, though it hurt.
Ana looked back outside.
“I don’t remember the slap,” she said. “Not clearly.”
“All right.”
“But I remember the carpet. And the sound of you shouting. And afterwards you bought me a coat.”
Toto closed his eyes.
“It was purple,” Ana said.
He opened them.
“You remember that?”
“It was too bright,” she said. “I hated it. I wore it to the doctor because I wanted the doctor to think I was being cooperative.”
A laugh came out of him, small and wrecked.
Ana’s face softened.
“I kept it,” she said.
Toto stared at her.
“The coat?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She shrugged one shoulder.
“Because it fit.”
The words nearly finished him.
He looked away, jaw tight, because grief had become too large to hold politely.
Ana leaned back into him.
Not hiding.
Resting.
“You bought too many things,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You still buy too many things.”
“Yes.”
“The diamonds are excessive.”
“I know.”
“You should stop.”
“I will not.”
She sighed. “I know.”
A pause.
Then: “I keep them.”
His breath caught.
“I know,” he said.
Ana turned her head slightly against his shoulder.
“Not because they fix it.”
“No.”
“Because you keep trying.”
Toto looked down at her.
“I will keep trying,” he said.
“I know.”
Outside, a final strip of cloud moved away from the moon, and the conservatory filled with a pale, gentle light.
Ana looked up at the stars again.
“I will frame the chart,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Maybe in Monaco.”
“I would like to see it.”
“You can.”
Another gift.
Another door opened, not wide, but enough.
Toto understood now, perhaps more than he had before, that love with Ana was not entry into a room. It was being allowed to stand at a threshold and wait until she chose to turn the key.
He would wait.
He should have waited better before.
He would wait better now.
They sat there until the stars shifted, until the house settled deeper around them, until the terrible things between them did not vanish but became, for a little while, held.
Not fixed.
Held.
And for that night, in the conservatory in Scotland, with his daughter’s head on his shoulder and the sky spread wide beyond the glass, Toto understood the difference more clearly than he ever had.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: None for once, I think. Well, unless you count Ana's super brain. Yes, that hotel actually does exist in real life. Would a wedding like Max and Ana's be possible there? I kinda doubt it, but go with it, please.
For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Text Messages: Max Verstappen & Eloisa Lambiase
Max: Hello.
Eloisa: Hello, Max. Why does this feel ominous?
Max: I need gift advice. For birthdays.
Eloisa: Birthdays?
Max: GP’s Birthday is Monday.
Eloisa: Yes.
Max: Francesca’s is soon afte?
Eloisa: Thursday.
Max: Yes. That.
Eloisa: Max.
Max: What?
Eloisa: Please tell me you have not only just remembered my husband’s birthday.
Max: I remembered!Ana is making a document for gift ideas.
Eloisa: What were you going to get him?
Max: A Race win.
Eloisa: Max.
Max: I know, I know. Ana said the same thing. But GP likes race wins!
Eloisa: GP also likes being remembered as a person rather than a headset attached to your car.
Max: Apparently I should acknowledge his non-work self. GP likes mountain biking, right?
Eloisa: He does.
Max: Can I buy something for that?
Eloisa: Carefully. Men who mountain bike are very strange about equipment.
Max: Like racing drivers.
Eloisa: Worse, because they pretend it is casual.
Max: Ah.
Eloisa: Do not buy him a bike part unless he has specifically asked for it. I learned that the hard way.
Eloisa: A really good riding jacket could work, but sizing is annoying. Gloves, maybe. Or a voucher from his favourite shop..
Max: Ana said a voucher feels impersonal.
Max: Drums?
Eloisa: Drums?
Max: GP plays drums, right?
Eloisa: Yes.
Max: Ana says GP was in a band.
Eloisa: He was.
Max: You knew?
Eloisa: Of course I knew.
Max: Why did I not know?Was he any good?
Eloisa: He was loud.
Max: That is not same thing.
Max: What was the band called?
Eloisa: Why?
Max: Gift research.
Eloisa: That sounds like blackmail research.
Max: Also maybe.
Eloisa: Max.
Max: Ana said there were leather wristbands.
Eloisa: There were.
Max: And eyeliner.
Eloisa: ...
Max: ?
Eloisa: Excuse me?
Max: Eyeliner.
Eloisa: THERE WAS EYELINER?!?!
Max: Ana said yes.
Eloisa: ANA SAID THERE WAS EYELINER?
Max: Yes.
Eloisa: That is news to me.
Max: You did not know?
Eloisa: I knew about the band.
I knew about the leather wristbands.
I knew about the terrible hair.
I knew about one specific sleeveless black shirt he claims was “the style at the time.”
Max: Was it?
Eloisa: No.
Max: But not the eyeliner?
Eloisa: No, Max, not the eyeliner.
Eloisa: How does Ana know?
Max: She says she has sources.
Eloisa: What sources?
Max: She will not say.
Eloisa: I am going to ask Gianpiero.
Max: Do not say I asked.
Eloisa: Absolutely not.
I am saying Ana knows.
Max: That may be worse.
Eloisa: For him, yes.
Max: Good.
Eloisa: Max Verstappen, are you using my husband’s birthday planning as an opportunity to acquire embarrassing information?
Max: A little.
Eloisa: At least you’re honest.
Max: What about drumsticks?
Eloisa: Also no.
Max: Why no drumsticks?
Eloisa: Because he will know you recently discovered he has hobbies and panicked.
Max: Ana said that too.
Eloisa: I like Ana.
Max: Me too.
Eloisa: I should hope so given that you are going to marry her.
Max: What about something related to the band but not bad?
Eloisa: A good record player setup? He has been muttering about replacing the one in the study.
Max: That is good.
Eloisa: But nothing absurdly expensive.
Max: Define absurd.
Eloisa: Max.
Max: What?
Eloisa: Not something that requires installation by three specialists and structural reinforcement.
Max: Fine. I can do that.
Max: And for Francesca?
Eloisa: What about her?
Max: Birthday.
Eloisa: Oh.
Max: Ana says Francesca plays the violin.
Eloisa: She does.
Max: Can we get something for that?
Eloisa: Francesca is extremely particular about her equipment. She gets it from her father.
Max: What does she need?
Eloisa: Need? Nothing.
Want? She would probably love tickets to something. Not a huge concert. Something intimate. Chamber music, maybe. She likes watching musicians close up because she tries to analyse technique.
Max: That is very Francesca.
Eloisa: Yes.
Max: Ana may like that too. Maybe they can go together.
Eloisa: Max.
Max: What?
Eloisa: That is actually very sweet.
Max: I do sweet things.
Eloisa: Occasionally by accident.
Max: What else?
Eloisa: She likes mechanical puzzles. She likes old things that still work. Clocks, music boxes, little automata. She pretends she doesn’t like pretty things, but she does.
Max: So Francesca: maybe chamber music tickets. Maybe something pretty.
Eloisa: Yes.
Max: Not robotics.
Eloisa: Not for birthday.
She can have her robotics glory separately.
Max: Good.
Eloisa: And tell Ana I will trade information about Francesca’s current violin pieces for everything she knows about GP’s band and the eyeliner.
***
Stoddart Residence, Scotland - 11 October 2025
By late Saturday afternoon, Sally Stoddart’s kitchen had become a controlled disaster.
This, Ana suspected, was Sally’s preferred state of domestic operation.
Not chaos. Not exactly.
There was too much method involved for chaos. The potatoes had been assigned. The roasting tray was prepared. The onions were chopped. The carrots had been lined up with alarming precision. A pot simmered on the aga.
Toto was standing at the sink washing leeks with the serious focus of a man performing due diligence.
Ana was beside Sally at the counter, cutting herbs.
Sally had simply pointed at the pile of vegetables and said, “Anyone who cannot cook is on peeling.”
Which was how the rest of them had ended up sitting around the large scrubbed table with peelers, bowls, and the dull resentment of the domestically unqualified.
Jack was peeling one potato with enormous concentration.
Max was peeling badly but with confidence.
John was peeling efficiently while offering unsolicited commentary on everyone else’s technique.
Susie was peeling with the grim dignity of a woman who had no intention of pretending she belonged anywhere near an open flame. “I can cook,” Susie said, for the third time.
Sally did not look up from checking the roast. “You can heat things, darling.”
“That is a form of cooking.”
“It is not.”
“I have kept a child alive.”
“With the considerable external support of cereal,” Toto said from the sink.
Susie pointed her peeler at him. “Careful.”
Toto wisely turned back to the leeks.
Ana smiled down at the herbs.
She liked this.
She liked the smell of roasting meat and butter and wet wool drying near the back door. She liked Sally moving around the kitchen like the room was an extension of her body. She liked Susie pretending offence at her culinary exile while clearly delighted to be treated like a daughter in her own parents’ house.
She liked Max at the table, leg propped up, peeling potatoes as if this were somehow a competitive event.
“You’re taking too much off,” Ana said without looking at him.
Max paused. “What?”
“The potato.”
He looked down at it.
“It is peeled.”
“It has suffered.”
John leaned over to inspect. “Aye, she’s right, lad. That potato’s been scalped.”
Jack giggled.
Max looked betrayed. “I have one leg.”
Ana looked at him then. “You are not peeling with your leg.”
Susie laughed into her bowl.
Max muttered something in Dutch and selected another potato with the injured pride of a man unfairly attacked by root vegetables.
Sally, who had been watching all of this with the satisfied expression of someone hosting exactly the sort of family Saturday she had always wanted, said, “Well, since everyone’s here and nobody is allowed to escape before dinner, shall we talk about the wedding?”
Max brightened.
Ana immediately became suspicious.
Toto closed his eyes.
Susie, very quietly, said, “Oh no.”
Sally looked delighted. “What?”
“He has thoughts,” Ana said.
Max straightened, which made his leg slide slightly off the chair.
“Careful,” three people said at once.
He fixed the leg, then looked around with wounded dignity. “I am allowed to have thoughts about my own wedding.”
“You are,” Susie said. “But some of them may require supervision.”
“I found the island.”
“No,” Ana said. “Susie and I found the island.”
“I approved it.”
“You wanted to buy the bridge.”
John nodded. “A sound instinct, that.”
“Thank you,” Max said.
Toto glanced toward Ana. “You see what you are marrying.”
“Yes,” Ana said. “Unfortunately, I find him very compelling.”
Max looked pleased enough that it was almost unbearable.
Sally smiled into the roasting tray. “Music, then. Have you thought about music?”
Max answered too quickly. “Yes.”
Ana put the knife down.
Very slowly.
Max noticed. “What?”
“Max,” she said.
“What?”
“I love you.”
“That usually means you are about to be mean.”
“Your music taste is the Dutch Top 40 and Martin Garrix.”
John barked a laugh.
Jack frowned. “Who is Martin Garrix?”
Max looked offended. “A very good DJ.”
Ana’s expression was solemn. “Yes. That is the problem.”
“You like music made by dead composers nobody has ever heard of.”
Ana’s eyes narrowed. “Plenty of people have heard of Scriabin.”
Max looked around the kitchen. “Has anyone here heard of Scriabin?”
Toto raised one hand.
Ana pointed at him triumphantly. “See?”
“He does not count,” Max said. “He is your father.”
“I have also heard of Scriabin,” Sally said mildly.
Ana looked even more triumphant.
Max stared. “You have?”
Sally nodded. “John once spent three weeks convinced he liked classical music after watching a documentary.”
John looked offended. “I do like classical music.”
“You fell asleep during the concert we went to.”
“It was relaxing.”
“That was Mahler.”
“It was long.”
Ana made a small wounded noise.
Max pointed at her. “See? This is what I mean. If we let you choose the music, everyone will be educated and also fall asleep.”
“If we let you choose,” Ana replied, “the ceremony will sound like a Zandvoort fan zone.”
“That would be fun.”
Susie looked delighted. “I am enjoying this much more than peeling potatoes.”
Toto stirred the gravy with the haunted expression of a man imagining having to walk down his daughter the aisle towards Max Verstappen to electronic dance music while said daughter internally dissociated.
“We can have both,” Sally said.
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged. “Something classical for the ceremony. Something more lively later. Weddings are long enough to contain several people’s terrible taste.”
“My taste is not terrible,” Max said.
“My taste is not terrible either,” Ana said.
Sally, apparently deciding the music discussion had reached a natural point of absurdity, changed direction with grandmotherly precision. “And who will be in the bridal party?”
Ana stared at the herbs in front of her.
“Great question,” she said.
Max watched her immediately.
He knew that tone. Everyone who loved Ana knew that tone.
It meant her brain had just opened twelve files at once and discovered none had been named properly.
Sally smiled gently. “No pressure, darling. Just wondering.”
“No, it’s fine.” Ana reached for the knife again, then realized she no longer needed to cut anything and set it down. “Jack, obviously.”
Jack looked up so fast he nearly dropped his potato.
“Me?”
“Yes,” Ana said. “You can carry the rings.”
Jack’s face lit up in pure, stunned triumph.
Max looked at him. “Very important job.”
Jack nodded gravely. “I know.”
“You cannot lose them.”
“I won’t.”
Sally looked delighted. “So Jack with the rings.”
“Yes.” Ana nodded, then continued in the manner of someone building a system out loud. “Max has a bunch of younger siblings through his father.”
Max’s mouth twitched. “That is one way to phrase it.”
John coughed into his hand to hide a laugh.
Ana continued, “Then his sister, Victoria’s children.”
“Luka and Lio and Hailey,” Max said.
“And my goddaughters.”
Susie softened. “Alana and Keira?”
Ana nodded. “Yes. They’ll be upset if they’re not included. Or at least Alana will pretend not to be upset while becoming unbearable about it later. Keira will mostly care about the dress.”
Sally nodded seriously. “Reasonable.”
“Then there’s Solomon,” Ana said, mostly to herself now. “We’ll invite Solomon, obviously.”
Max looked at her. “Obviously.”
“He is my second in command. And maybe his girls,” Ana continued. “Not Samson, because he can’t walk yet.”
Susie paused. “Samson is a baby.”
“Yes, exactly. Inefficient for processional duties.”
Sally laughed. “Ana.”
“What?”
“You’re staffing the bridal party like a project team.”
“I am identifying available personnel by capability.”
Max leaned toward Jack and stage-whispered, “That means she loves you.”
Jack nodded solemnly. “Because I can walk and not lose rings.”
“Yes.”
Ana looked at Max. “That is a low bar.”
“For ring security, it is the main bar.”
Toto glanced at Jack. “I am not sure I would describe it as secured.”
Jack gasped. “Papa!”
The kitchen settled into laughter and potato peeling again.
For a moment, it was almost easy.
Then Ana, who had apparently moved from bridal party to seating arrangements inside her head without notifying anyone, said, “We can seat Francesca near Kimi or some of the rookies.”
Max went very still.
Toto looked up sharply.
Susie’s peeler stopped.
Sally, unaware of the impending motorsport-specific social hazard, said, “Francesca?”
“GP’s daughter,” Ana said. “She’ll be seventeen by then. And Kimi and some of the rookies are close in age. It might be better than putting her with adults who ask irritating questions.”
Max slowly turned toward her.
“Ana.”
“What?”
“Sure,” he said. “GP will love it when you sit his seventeen-year-old daughter next to the nineteen-year-old Italian Formula One driver.”
Ana blinked.
Then frowned. “Why?”
Max stared at her.
Toto set down the spoon he was holding.
Susie covered her mouth with one hand.
John looked between them with dawning interest.
Ana looked genuinely confused. “Kimi is very polite,” she said.
Max nodded slowly. “That is not the issue.”
“He is also close to her age.”
“Yes. That is the issue.”
Ana stared.
Then, with mounting defensiveness, “They both have Italian ancestry.”
Max put his potato down.
Silence.
Then Susie made a strangled noise.
Toto said, “Anastasia.”
“What? That is a shared cultural reference point.”
Max looked at her with deep, delighted horror. “You are accidentally matchmaking.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“I am seating guests.”
“You are putting GP’s daughter next to Kimi Antonelli because they are close in age and Italian.”
“Partially Italian.”
“That does not make it less matchmaking. Super smart girl,” Max said, pointing at her. Then he pointed at himself. “Race car driver boy.”
Toto made a pained sound.
Susie started laughing properly now.
John had given up all pretense of peeling.
Ana stared at Max.
“Well,” she said after a moment, “it worked out well once, didn’t it?”
Max froze.
Sally put a hand to her chest. “Oh, that was lovely.”
Max’s face did something complicated.
Ana seemed to realize what she had said a second after saying it.
Her mouth parted slightly. Then she looked down at the herbs.
Max, however, had recovered enough to look unbearable. “It did work,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“It worked very well.”
“Max.”
“Super smart girl. Race car driver boy.”
Toto looked at the ceiling as if asking several ancestors for patience.
Susie was still laughing.
Sally, with grandmotherly satisfaction, said, “Well, maybe seat Francesca with a group, then. Not just the Italian boy.”
“I was never going to seat her alone with him,” Ana said, affronted.
Max murmured, “First the software, then the wedding seating.”
Ana pointed at him again. “You are being unhelpful.”
“I am protecting GP’s sanity.”
Susie wiped tears from the corner of her eye. “I am never letting either of you plan the seating chart unsupervised.”
Ana looked affronted. “I am very good at matchmaking. I am the architect behind two marriages!”
Toto and Max both looked at her. Susie paused.
“You are. Still, we’ll keep considering other seating options,” she amended.
Ana looked slightly appeased.
Sally picked up the roasting tray. “Right. Before the entire wedding becomes a Formula One seating scandal, Ana, darling, taste this.”
Ana crossed the kitchen immediately, taking the spoon Sally handed her.
Max watched her taste, consider, then reach for the salt with quiet competence. Sally observed with approval.
Susie leaned toward Max and whispered, “This is why I married someone who can afford restaurants.”
Ana looked over her shoulder at him.
For a second, the kitchen quieted around them in that subtle way rooms did when love became visible enough to make witnesses feel fond and slightly intrusive.
“I still want some Martin Garrix,” he said.
Ana returned to the herbs with a sigh. “Make me a playlist and I’ll consider it.”
Max stared at her. “You are ruthless.”
“You like that.”
“Yes,” he admitted.
***
Text Messages: Max Verstappen & Martin Garrix
Max: You busy?
Martin: Depends.
Max: I need music.
Martin: You personally?
Max: For a wedding.
Martin: Whose wedding?
Max: Mine.
Martin: ...
Martin: Sorry?
Max: My wedding.
Martin: What the fuck do you mean your wedding.
Max: I mean I am getting married.
Martin: SINCE WHEN?
Max: Since I proposed?
Martin: Max.
Max: Yes?
Martin: You’re engaged?
Max: Yes.
Martin: To who!?
Max: Ana.
Martin: Ana who?!
Max: Ana Wolff.
Martin: You are marrying Toto Wolff’s daughter.
Max: Yes.
Martin: And you are telling me this because you need music.
Max: Yes.
Martin: I am going to need a minute.
Max: Okay.
Martin: No, don’t just okay me.
Max: What else should I say?
Martin: Maybe start with: “Hi Martin, I have secretly been dating the daughter of one of the most famous people in Formula One and now I am engaged to her.”
Max: It was not secret from everyone.
Martin: WHO KNEW?
Max: Some people.
Martin: Max.
Max: GP.
Martin: Of course GP knew.
Max: Victoria.
Martin: That makes sense.
Max: Susie.
Martin: I would hope so.
Max: Toto.
Martin: Again, I would hope so.
Max: Lando knows.
Martin: LANDO KNOWS?
Max: Yes.
Martin: Lando Norris knows you’re engaged to Ana Wolff before I do?
Max: He found out accidentally.
Martin: That does not make this better.
Max: Why?
Martin: Because it means Lando Norris stumbled into state secrets and I, your friend, am being informed because you have discovered the concept of wedding music.
Max: You are my music friend.
Martin: I am also your normal friend!
Martin: I’m choosing not to take that personally because I am still processing the Toto Wolff part.
Max: Okay.
Martin: Stop saying okay.
Max: Okay.
Martin: MAX.
Max: Sorry.
Martin: When is this wedding?
Max: 20 December.
Martin: This year?
Max: Yes.
Martin: Max, that is in two months.
Max: More or less.
Martin: No, not more or less. TWO MONTHS.
Max: The venue had availability.
Martin: You have a venue?
Max: Private island in Scotland.
Martin: Of course it is.
Max: It has a bridge.
Martin: Why is that relevant?
Max: Access control.
Martin: Why did I even ask?
Max: Ana likes the bridge.
Martin: Oh my god.
Martin: You’re actually serious.
Max: Yes.
Martin: You’re getting married on a private island in Scotland to Ana Wolff on 20 December and you are texting me like, “You busy?”
Max: Yes.
Martin: What kind of music do you need?
Max: Ceremony music.
Martin: You want me to DJ your ceremony?
Max: No.
Martin: Thank god.
Max: Ana said no Martin Garrix during the ceremony.
Martin: Ana sounds very sensible.
Max: She said my music taste is Dutch Top 40 and you.
Martin: She is not wrong.
Max: Rude.
Max: Meanwhile, she likes composers nobody has heard of.
Martin: That also sounds like Ana Wolff.
Max: Can you help with music or not?
Martin: I hate that I am already thinking about it.
Max: Good.
Martin: What does she want?
Max: Classical.
Martin: That narrows it down about as much as “food.”
Max: Maybe piano.
Martin: Ceremony piano?
Max: Maybe.
Martin: Do you want a pianist? String quartet? Chamber ensemble? Something arranged?
Max: I don’t know. You’re the expert.
Martin: You are lucky I like you.
Max: Yes.
Martin: And lucky I am nosy.
Max: Also yes.
Martin: Okay.
For a private island winter wedding in Scotland, if Ana wants classical and you don’t want it to feel like a funeral, I’d do chamber music.
Max: What is chamber music?
Martin: Small classical ensemble. Elegant. Intimate. Not giant orchestra.
A piano quintet could work.
Max: What is that?
Martin: Piano plus string quartet.
Max: That sounds expensive.
Martin: You are marrying Toto Wolff’s daughter on a private island.
Max: That does not mean I want stupid expensive.
Martin: No, but it means “piano plus four musicians” is not the financial crisis in this scenario.
Martin: I know some people. We can probably manage a piano quintet for the ceremony.
Max: Good.
Martin: And maybe cocktail hour / dinner too, depending on repertoire.
Max: Good.
Martin: Reception is different.
Max: You can DJ.
Martin: Oh, now I’m allowed?
Max: Yes.
Martin: Very generous.
Max: Ana said I should built a playlist for her to approve off.
Martin: That woman has taste and boundaries. I respect her.
Max: Which is why I need your help. I find music.
You help.
Ana approves.
Done.
Martin: There are about forty missing steps in that.
Max: That is why you are here.
Martin: I am being weaponized.
Max: Yes.
Martin: At least you’re honest.
Max: Can you do classical and DJ?
Martin: I cannot personally become a piano quintet, Max.
Max: I know.
Martin: I can help source musicians. Proper ones. People who can do ceremony, maybe arrangements if Ana has specific composers she likes.
Max: She does.
Martin: Of course she does.
Martin: I’ll need venue details, date, timing, rough guest count, whether there’s space for equipment, power, weather contingency, indoor/outdoor, and what Ana actually wants for the ceremony.
Max: That is many things.
Martin: Welcome to wedding planning.
Max: I preferred when it was just a bridge and full buy-out.
Max: Thank you.
Martin: You’re welcome.
Martin: Also congratulations, you emotionally constipated menace.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: None for once, I think. Well, unless you count Ana's super brain. Yes, that hotel actually does exist in real life. Would a wedding like Max and Ana's be possible there? I kinda doubt it, but go with it, please.
For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Stoddart Residence, Scotland - 11 October 2025
Breakfast became wedding planning by accident, which, Max thought, was how most important things in his life now seemed to happen.
It started with pastries.
Susie and Ana came back from wherever they had gone in the early morning mist, carrying enough paper bags to suggest either generosity or a complete collapse of proportional reasoning in a Scottish bakery.
Jack, naturally, reacted as though civilization had been saved personally on his behalf.
Sally set out plates.
John made tea strong enough to classify as industrial solvent.
Quinn stationed himself beneath the table with the patient optimism of a dog who believed crumbs were merely a question of time.
Max was halfway through a pastry he would later claim not to have wanted when Susie, in the calm tone of a woman dropping explosives into domestic settings for sport, said: “We may have found a wedding venue.”
That got the table.
Sally looked up from her coffee. Toto paused with jam halfway to toast.
Jack, who had no particular investment in weddings as an institution, still looked immediately interested because adults had all gone oddly still.
Max swallowed. “What.”
Susie buttered her toast as if this were a routine update. “We ran into an old school friend of mine in Tesco. She runs the Isle of Eriska.”
There was a beat.
Then Ana said, with suspicious neutrality, “It is very private.”
Max looked between them both. “You found a place?”
“Possibly,” Susie said.
“Possibly,” Ana echoed, but her face had gone just a little too blank, which was always the tell.
Max reached for his phone immediately. “Spell it, please”
Susie did.
He searched.
And then the first image loaded.
And the second. And the third. And then there was the website, and more photos, and the whole thing appeared in front of him at once: the island, the hotel, the stone manor, the sea, the bridge, the privacy, the weather, the fact that it looked expensive without being tacky and remote without being miserable.
Max stared. “Oh.”
That was all he said out loud.
Internally, however, there were already approximately three thousand questions.
How many rooms? How much control over access? How private was private? Could they do a ceremony outside if the weather behaved or was that optimistic in Scotland? What did the interior look like in bad light? How far was it from the nearest airstrip? Would it be easier to buy out the whole thing than manage guest containment? What did catering look like? What was the rain contingency? Did they need a tent? Could they bring their own flowers? Could they stop people photographing things from boats? How soon could he see it?
Across from him, Ana was watching his face with growing suspicion.“What?”
Max looked up. “There’s a restaurant.”
Susie smiled immediately. “Yes. There is. We could have afternoon tea or dinner there. Fiona gave me her card.”
Max looked back at the phone. Then up again. “Sold,” he said. “I need to see it.”
That got laughter from most of the table.
Ana, however, narrowed her eyes. “You’re being very intense very quickly, Max.”
“No,” Max said.
“Yes,” Toto said at the same time.
Max ignored him. He was already scrolling further. “Can we book the whole island?”
Ana stared at him. “What?”
“The whole island,” Max repeated, like this was obvious. “Just book all of it. Then nobody can be annoying. Full buy-out.”
That made John bark out a laugh so sudden Quinn woke up under the table and thumped his tail in mild support.
“No, look.” Max was already scrolling again. “This is practical. Private. Pretty. There’s only one way on it, and that’s a bridge. If we book the whole thing, nobody can be weird.”
“That’s your planning philosophy, is it?” John asked with a snort.
“Yes.”
“It’s not the worst one.”
“Thank you,” Max said.
Ana looked at him for a long moment.
Then, dryly: “Why do I feel like I’ve rubbed off on you?”
Max turned toward her at once. “Because you have. Throwing money at problems to fix them is surprisingly effective. I learned that from you.” Max kept going. “Seriously. This is a great place. A contained place. We need a calendar or something. If this works, then we can just book the whole island and be done with it.”
Ana stared at him. John looked delighted. Susie looked like she was actively trying not to laugh.
“You can’t just say ‘book the whole island’ like you’re ordering lunch,” Toto said.
Max looked at him. “Why not?”
Toto opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Apparently because the real answer was: you absolutely can, and that’s the problem.
Ana folded one hand around her mug and said, with that careful tone she used when she was trying to decide whether to be alarmed or impressed:
“You are becoming concerningly enthusiastic.”
Max put his phone down and looked at her with total sincerity. “I want to marry you before next season.”
The room changed.
Only slightly. Enough.
Because there it was underneath the logistics and the private islands and the very obvious fact that Max Verstappen had become, in his own specific way, an absolutely deranged groom.
Not performance. Not stress for its own sake. Just Intent.
Ana’s face softened by a fraction.
Max, encouraged by that and by absolutely no sense of moderation, kept going.
“That’s a location,” he said, gesturing to the phone. “Now we need a guest list.”
Ana stared at him. “How many people are you thinking?”
Max answered immediately, because of course he had already thought about it. “Probably like a hundred. A hundred and fifty.”
That got actual silence.
Then Sally laughed. Then John did too. Then Susie put a hand over her eyes.
Ana turned fully toward him. “A hundred and fifty.”
Max frowned slightly. “What.”
“That is not a small wedding.”
“It’s not huge.”
Toto looked at him with deep skepticism. “For normal people, it is.”
“We are not normal people,” Max said, which was, annoyingly, impossible to argue with.
Jack, who had been following this with the rapt attention of a child hearing that adults might be planning something both expensive and slightly insane, looked up from his pastry and asked, “Am I invited?”
Max looked at him. “Obviously.”
Jack nodded, satisfied. “Good.”
Ana looked as though she were calculating human bodies in space and finding the model insufficiently elegant. “Who,” she asked, “is in this hundred and fifty.”
Max leaned back.
This, finally, was a solvable question. “Well. Family.”
“That is already a broad category for us.”
“Yes, but still manageable.”
Ana gave him a look that suggested nothing about either of their families had ever, in her experience, ever qualified as manageable.
Max ignored that too. “Close friends.”
“Define close.”
“The people we actually like.”
“That also remains a broad category.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Max said. “It means not everybody.”
Toto laughed once into his coffee. “That does significantly narrow Formula One.”
Ana still had that expression on her face—the one she got when the room had become more ambitious than her nervous system had approved in advance but she had not yet decided whether to shut it down or optimize it.
Max saw it and adjusted.
Not backing down. Just clarifying.
“It doesn’t have to be enormous,” he said. “But I don’t want weirdly tiny either.” He looked back at the phone. “And if it’s private, and we can control the whole place, then it can be bigger without becoming awful.”
That landed better.
Ana knew it too. He could see her mind moving over it now, not emotionally but structurally: island, access, containment, capacity, timing, weather, lodging, transport.
Susie, sensing that the conversation had reached a point where gentle maternal intervention would increase rather than reduce momentum, said, “We could at least go and see it.”
Max nodded at once. “Yes.”
Toto, because apparently he had decided to be practical rather than entertaining, said, “Before anybody books an island, we should begin with a site visit.”
“That’s what I said,” Max replied.
Ana leaned back in her chair and looked at Max as though she were trying to reassess the full scale of what she had agreed to marry. “You have thought about this.”
Max gave her a look. “Of course I’ve thought about this.”
“How much?”
He hesitated.
Not because he hadn’t. Because the honest answer sounded vaguely unhinged.
Susie, sensing blood in the water immediately, said, “Oh, I would love the real answer.”
Max ignored her. “A reasonable amount.”
Toto actually laughed into his coffee. “That means an unreasonable amount.”
“Yes,” Susie said. “That definitely means an unreasonable amount.”
Ana looked at him.
Max looked back.
Then, because there was no point pretending otherwise in front of this room, he said, “Fine. I have some thoughts.”
John leaned back in his chair, grinning. “Some thoughts.”
“A few.”
“Aye.”
Max picked his phone back up and opened the photos again like a man presenting technical evidence to a board.
“I’m just saying, if it’s private and there’s enough space and the food is good and nobody can randomly wander in, then this solves a lot of problems. We can control timing. We can do whatever weird multi-country family nonsense we need to do and then leave.”
Ana watched him for a second longer.
Then, with very quiet amusement: “You really do want to book the whole island.”
“Yes.”
Susie said, “I can’t decide whether this is romantic or tyrannical.”
“Both,” Sally answered serenely.
That got a full laugh out of Ana.
And there it was—the thing that kept happening to Max every time she laughed properly. The room shifted around it. The whole world improved by a few measurable degrees.
He looked at her and said, more gently now, “Come and see it with me.”
Ana held his gaze.
Then nodded once.
“All right.”
That felt like progress. Real progress.
Max immediately went back to logistics.
“We need dates.”
“We do not need dates this second,” Toto said.
“We do because I want to know if we can do it before testing.”
“Max,” Ana said.
“What.”
She took another sip of coffee and then said, with complete composure, “Eat your breakfast before you turn into a one-man wedding task force.”
John laughed so hard he had to put his mug down.
Max, however, was not yet fully deterred.
“No, but seriously,” he said. “If it’s the right place, then why wait? We can go see it. We can ask about capacity. We can look at rooms. We can work out who actually has to be there and who is just decorative.”
“Decorative?” Toto repeated.
“Yes.”
“I’m fascinated to know which members of our families fall into that category.”
Max looked at him. “You don’t want that list before lunch.”
Sally laughed again. Even Toto smiled.
Ana reached over then and took the phone gently out of Max’s hand.
He looked at her in betrayal.
She locked the screen and set it face-down beside her plate.
“Eat,” she said.
Max stared at her.
“You cannot dangle a private island wedding venue in front of me and then tell me to eat toast.”
“Yes,” Ana said. “I can.”
He looked at Susie for support.
She only smiled. “She’s right.”
Of course she was.
Traitors, all of them.
Still, as Max reached for his coffee again, he could feel the energy in him sparking and reordering itself into lists and contingencies and numbers and questions he would absolutely pretend were spontaneous later and had not already begun multiplying in his head.
A place. A date. A guest list. An island. A wedding. Before next season.
Across the table, Ana was watching him with that soft, dry, deeply entertained expression that made him feel both exposed and indestructible at once.
And Max, who had perhaps become slightly more of a groomzilla than anyone in the room had expected—possibly including himself—decided that if the answer to this whole problem was, in fact, to throw enough money and logistics at it until it became perfect, then that seemed not only reasonable but loving.
John, still smiling into his tea, said, “Lad, if ye’re this worked up now, I’d hate to see you once flowers get involved.”
Max looked at him.
“Flowers are easy,” he said.
Ana closed her eyes briefly.
Susie said, “Oh no.”
And the whole table laughed.
“Hypothetically,” Ana said, “if we saw it. Hypothetically. And if it worked. Hypothetically. Then we would still need actual dates, availability, guest lists, transport, rooms, weather plans, legal timelines, and—”
“Yes,” Max said. “Exactly. That’s why I said we need a calendar.”
She stared at him for one beat.
Then laughed.
Actually laughed.
Not because he was joking. Because he wasn’t. Which somehow made it worse and better at once.
“Why,” she asked the ceiling, “do I feel like I built this problem myself.”
Susie leaned back in her chair, radiating satisfaction. “Because you did.”
Toto was smiling into his coffee now despite himself.
Max reached across, touched two fingers lightly to Ana’s wrist, and said more quietly, only for her:
“I just want to marry you.”
That changed her face.
She looked at him for a second longer than the room required.
Then said, very softly, “I know. I want to marry you too.”
And because apparently that was enough to let the logistical fever live another few minutes without becoming too ridiculous, she added:
“Fine. After breakfast, we can look at the calendar.”
Max sat back at once, deeply victorious.
“Good.”
***
The Isle of Eriska Hotel, Scotland — 11 October 2025
Fiona MacLeish had, in her professional life, learned not to be surprised by rich people.
It was one of the first (of many) rules of running a private island hotel.
People with money were odd in ways that were often predictable if one paid attention.
They wanted privacy but also to be seen arriving. They wanted rustic charm but not a single actual inconvenience. They wanted Scotland, but not midges. They wanted weather, atmosphere, mist, wildness, romance, ancient stone, and a roaring fire, but they also wanted Egyptian cotton, a decent wine list, and Wi-Fi strong enough to run a hedge fund from the bath.
Fiona understood all of this.
She was very good at understanding it.
She had handled aristocrats who still spoke as though rationing had ended last Tuesday. She had handled American tech founders who referred to weather as “immersive.” She had handled discreet anniversary weekends, very undiscreet affairs, post-divorce retreats, pre-divorce retreats, and one spectacularly tense birthday gathering involving two ex-wives, one current wife, and a man who kept insisting everyone was “being adult about this,” which had been very untrue.
So no, Fiona MacLeish did not surprise easily.
But there were exceptions.
Susie Stoddart walking into Tesco with her daughter that morning had been one.
Susie Stoddart walking into the Isle of Eriska Hotel less than six hours later with her parents, her husband, her son, the aforementioned daughter, and Max Verstappen on crutches was another.
Fiona stood at the entrance hall for approximately three seconds longer than professionalism strictly allowed.
Then her training returned.
“Susie,” she said warmly, as though Formula One world champions with crutches and intensely blue eyes appeared on her private island every Saturday. “Welcome.”
Susie smiled in that easy, composed way Fiona remembered.
At school, Susie had been a bright thing. Sharp, athletic, confident without seeming to know why anyone would expect her not to be. Fiona had known her as Susie Stoddart, younger sister of a boy in Fiona’s year, local, quick, loud when laughing.
The woman in front of her now was older, of course. More polished. More watchful. But the essence was still there. That same contained energy. That same habit of assessing a room in one glance and deciding where the exits were, who mattered, and what was likely to go wrong.
The years had not changed that.
They had simply given her better coats.
“Fiona,” Susie said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Thank you for letting us descend on you with absolutely no notice.”
“Please,” Fiona said. “You know I live for chaos disguised as hospitality.”
Susie laughed.
Then the party unfolded around her.
Fiona knew Sally and John Stoddart by sight, of course.
Everyone in Oban knew everyone by sight eventually, even when decades and lives had put distance between them. Sally had the same warm, practical face Fiona remembered from the edges of school events, though now softer with age. John looked like a man who considered all buildings firstly by how well they had been constructed and secondly by whether the tea inside them was any good.
There was a boy — Jack, Fiona assumed from the small amount of research she had done after Tesco, which had begun as responsible preparation and very quickly turned into what her husband would have called “being nosy with Wi-Fi.” Light brown hair, watchful, polite, clearly accustomed to adults saying things over his head and absolutely listening to all of it.
Then there was Toto Wolff. Fiona had known who Toto Wolff was before that morning, obviously. She did not follow Formula One with devotion, but there were certain men whose faces entered general public knowledge by force of personality, success, and height.
Toto Wolff was taller in person than Fiona had expected, which seemed unfair. Most famous people, in Fiona’s experience, were smaller than their reputations. Toto Wolff looked exactly the size his reputation required and possibly a little more.
He stood beside Susie with a contained, assessing stillness that would have made him intimidating if his hand had not come to rest, almost unconsciously, at the back of Jack’s shoulder.
That, Fiona thought, was interesting.
Her research had produced headlines, interviews, a thousand photographs, and the sort of public shorthand people loved to attach to very successful men.
CEO. Billionaire. Investor. Mercedes boss. Austrian. Ruthless. Charming when necessary. Dangerous when underestimated.
None of those summaries included the way his attention kept returning to Ana.
And Ana— Well.
Fiona’s eyes moved there carefully, not lingering too long.
Ana Wolff stood beside Susie, gaze moving over the entrance hall not with awe but with assessment.
Stonework. Staircase. Sightlines. Lighting. Movement patterns. Doors. Windows. Staff.
Fiona could almost see her cataloguing it.
There was something still about her that was not calm exactly. It was more specific than that. Fiona had worked around enough high-net-worth families to recognize the children who had been trained into performance and the children who had fled from it.
Ana did not perform.
That was the first notable thing.
The second was that everyone around her had quietly arranged themselves so she did not have to.
Susie stood close enough to intercept. Toto stood angled toward her, not possessive exactly, but available. John looked at her with the particular softness of a man who had decided this strange, serious girl was one of his. Sally had a tote bag over one arm and the alert warmth of a grandmother preparing to feed any emotional difficulty into submission.
And Max Verstappen—
Well.
Fiona had not expected Max Verstappen.
That was not a sentence she had ever anticipated needing in a professional context, but there it was.
He stood on crutches beside Ana, wearing a dark coat, one trouser leg adjusted around what looked like a brace. He looked tired in a way that spoke of pain managed rather than pain absent.
His face was younger than Fiona expected and older than it should have been. He was…compelling. Direct. Unvarnished.
He also looked at Ana as though Fiona’s entire hotel could have burned around them and his first instinct would still be to check whether Ana had inhaled smoke.
Interesting, Fiona thought again. Very interesting.
Because this, according to the internet, was not common knowledge. The internet had been quite unhelpful, actually, in the way it became when something genuinely private was being kept genuinely private.
Fiona had searched Susie first, naturally. An old school friend appearing in Tesco after thirty years with a daughter Fiona had not known existed and an air of confidential importance invited curiosity. That was just human nature. Professional diligence, really.
Susie Wolff neé Stoddart had been easy enough. Former racing driver. Managing Director of F1 Academy. Married to Toto Wolff. Mother to Jack. Public figure, polished speaker, advocate, impressive in precisely the way Fiona would have expected.
Ana had been more complicated.
There were fewer photographs. No interviews. A scattering of references. Systems engineer. Mercedes. Brilliant. Toto’s daughter. Occasionally described in the sort of language male journalists used when they did not know whether to admire a woman or be frightened of her.
There had been speculation, certainly. There was always speculation. The internet was incapable of seeing a private woman adjacent to famous men without attempting to turn her into a puzzle.
But nowhere — nowhere — had Fiona found any public confirmation that Ana Wolff was engaged to Max Verstappen.
And yet here he was.
On crutches. On her island.
Looking at Fiona with direct, polite focus as Susie said, “And this is Max.”
As though that were normal.
“Lovely to meet you,” Fiona said, because she had been raised properly.
Max shifted one crutch slightly and offered his hand. Firm handshake. No performance. No attempt to charm the room into orbit around him.
“You too,” he said. “Thank you for showing us the place.”
His accent was exactly as Dutch as one expected and his tone exactly as practical as Fiona found comforting in a client.
Potential client, she corrected herself.
Though from the way Susie had described things on the phone, and from the way Max was already looking at the building, Fiona had a feeling potential might not last long.
“My pleasure,” Fiona said. “I thought we’d start with tea in the drawing room, then I can walk you through the main spaces. Or crutch you through, I suppose.”
There was half a beat.
Then Max’s mouth twitched.
Ana looked at Fiona properly for the first time.
And Susie laughed.
Good, Fiona thought. They had a sense of humour about it. That would help.
“Crutch is acceptable,” Max said.
“Excellent,” Fiona replied. “I do try to use accurate terminology.”
John Stoddart gave a pleased little snort.
Ana’s gaze flicked to Max, then away again, but Fiona caught the tiny movement at the corner of her mouth.
A point scored, then.
Good.
The drawing room had been prepared quickly but beautifully.
Fiona believed in the value of appearing effortless with great effort. Tea had been set by the windows overlooking the water: finger sandwiches, scones, jam, clotted cream, shortbread, fruit tartlets, and a discreet plate of plainer biscuits because children and very serious engineers often appreciated predictability more than flair.
The weather, for once, had decided to be useful.
The rain had thinned into silver mist, softening the view across the water until the island seemed suspended between sea and sky. The trees were dark with wet. The bridge curved back toward the mainland like a private permission. Beyond it, the world felt distant enough to matter less.
Fiona watched Ana see it.
That was the real test.
Not Max. Not Susie. Not Toto Wolff, who could likely afford to buy a castle.
Ana.
Ana stood by the window after they entered the room and looked out over the water.
She did not gasp. She did not gush. She did not say, “Oh, it’s beautiful,” in the reflexive way brides often did when they wanted to reassure everyone that they were having an appropriate emotional response.
She simply went still.
Max noticed instantly.
Fiona noticed Max noticing.
He moved toward her, slower on the crutches than his attention wanted him to be. Ana did not turn, but her hand came out a little, as if she had known exactly where he would be. Max’s fingers brushed hers once.
Not dramatic.
Not for the room.
In fact, Fiona suspected neither of them knew anyone else had noticed.
That was always how one could tell.
Toto Wolff noticed too.
Fiona saw him watching them from beside the tea table, expression unreadable at first glance and deeply readable at second. There was calculation there, yes. He looked like a man who had never fully switched off a strategic part of his mind in his life.
But underneath it, clear as clean water, was tenderness.
And worry. And pride.
Ana Wolff, Fiona thought, was clearly the apple of both Toto and Susie’s eye.
Not in the spoiled heiress sense. Fiona had known those girls too. Girls who had learned early that wanting was enough to rearrange the universe, who turned boredom into staff instructions and disappointment into spectacle.
Ana was not that.
But she was cherished. Fiercely. Actively. In layers.
It was there in the way Susie had introduced her in Tesco. My daughter. Not careful. Not qualified. Not step-daughter. Not explained.
It was there in Toto’s posture, in the way his attention never intruded but never strayed far.
It was there in Jack, who took a biscuit and then, without being asked, slid the plate closer to Ana before reaching for his own.
It was there in Sally saying, “Sit there, love, you’ll get the view,” and Ana actually sitting there, as though she had learned to accept this kind of care even if she still did not quite know what to do with it.
It was there most obviously in Max Verstappen, who lowered himself into the chair beside Ana with the quiet determination of a man who would rather break the other leg than sit anywhere else.
Fiona poured tea and revised her assumptions.
She had expected wealth. Privacy. Probably complication.
She had not expected this much love sitting around a tea service looking slightly damp from the Scottish weather.
“So,” Fiona said, once everyone had settled and tea had been distributed. “I understand this is an exploratory visit.”
Max looked up immediately. “Yes.”
Ana looked at him.
He added, with visible effort, “Very exploratory.”
Susie put her teacup down delicately. “Well done.”
“I am being totally normal,” Max said.
Ana laughed under her breath.
Toto closed his eyes briefly, as if asking the universe for strength he knew it had no intention of providing.
Fiona liked them more by the minute.
“Exploratory is very sensible,” Fiona said. “It gives you a chance to understand the space before making any decisions.”
Max nodded.
Ana looked relieved by the word sensible.
Fiona continued, “We do host private weddings. Not many, and only when it suits the property. We’re not really a production-line venue.”
“That is good,” Ana said immediately.
Her first voluntary sentence to Fiona beyond politeness.
Fiona took note.
“We tend to work best for people who want seclusion, good food, and a setting that doesn’t need much decoration.”
Max looked toward the window. “It doesn’t.”
“No,” Ana agreed softly.
There was a pause.
Fiona allowed it. Silence sold this place better than any brochure ever could.
Then Toto said, “How private is private, in practice?”
Ah, Fiona thought. There he is.
Not suspicious. Not rude. Simply precise.
She turned to him. “In practice, if there is a full buy-out, very private. The island access is controlled. Staff are briefed. We use trusted suppliers. Depending on scale, certain external contractors would need to be brought in, but that can be tightly managed.”
Toto nodded once. “Security?”
“Possible,” Fiona said. “We’ve coordinated with private teams before. We would need a clear operational plan, particularly around arrivals and departures, but the geography helps.”
“It does,” Ana said.
Max looked vindicated.
Fiona almost smiled.
“The bridge,” Max said.
Ana gave him a look.
“What?” he said. “It affects access. That’s why it’s good.”
Fiona had the distinct sense she was witnessing an argument that had already happened in several forms since breakfast.
“Max has become very fond of the bridge,” Susie said.
“The bridge is useful,” Max replied.
“Romance is alive,” Toto murmured.
Max ignored him with the practiced ease of a future son-in-law who had already decided Toto Wolff was not as intimidating as advertised, at least not in domestic settings.
That, Fiona thought, was bold.
Possibly foolish.
But mostly bold.
“So,” Fiona said, “are you imagining a small wedding?”
There was a fascinating silence.
Ana reached for her tea.
Susie’s lips twitched.
Toto looked into his cup.
Max said, “Define small.”
Fiona did smile then. She could not help it.
“A useful question,” she said. “For us, small might be thirty. Moderate would be sixty to eighty. Larger events are possible with additional planning.”
Max glanced at Ana.
Ana raised a single eyebrow.
“A hundred and fifty,” Jack supplied helpfully.
The room erupted in reaction.
“Jack,” Susie said, laughing.
“What?” he asked. “Max said it at breakfast.”
Fiona kept her expression professionally neutral through sheer force of will.
A hundred and fifty.
On Eriska.
For a wedding involving the Wolffs and Max Verstappen.
Her operations manager was going to need a lie down.
Ana set her cup down with care. “A hundred and fifty was a number introduced without committee approval.”
“It was a starting point,” Max said brightly.
Fiona looked at Max, who did not seem remotely embarrassed. If anything, he looked mildly defensive in the manner of someone who believed his number had been reasonable and everyone else was overreacting.
“I wanted to know the upper range,” he said.
“By inventing one?” Toto asked.
“Yes.”
Fiona had handled grooms before. Most fell into one of three categories: absent, agreeable, or secretly controlling about one bizarre detail like napkin texture.
Max Verstappen appeared to belong to a fourth category: operationally feral.
How wonderful.
“Well,” Fiona said carefully, “a wedding of that size would require more infrastructure than a smaller event. Marquee considerations, transport flow, accommodation overflow, staff expansion, kitchen timing, contingency spaces. But it isn’t impossible.”
Max’s eyes sharpened at the word impossible.
Ana’s did too, though for different reasons.
Tea settled after that into something almost ordinary.
Almost.
Sally asked about the house and the history of the island. John wanted to know about maintenance, heating systems, old stone, the bridge construction, and whether storms ever properly cut them off. Jack asked if there were otters. Fiona said yes, sometimes, and watched him brighten.
Max ate three sandwiches with the focused efficiency of a man who had forgotten lunch might exist unless placed directly in front of him.
Ana broke a scone in half and rebuilt it with jam first, which made Sally nod in approval and Toto look amused.
“Careful,” Susie said. “That’s a political declaration in some parts of Britain.”
Ana looked down at the scone. “It is structurally more stable this way.”
“Exactly,” Sally said.
Max, without looking up, said, “She is right.”
“Of course you think so,” Toto said.
“She usually is.”
Ana’s hand paused. Only for half a second.
But Fiona saw it.
Everyone at the table, she suspected, saw it and pretended not to.
Max certainly did not make anything of it. He simply reached for another sandwich, as though publicly stating Ana’s correctness was not a romantic gesture but a basic factual obligation.
That, Fiona thought, was probably why it landed.
Not all devotion was poetic.
Some of it was practical to the point of absurdity.
Some of it said: she is right.
Some of it limped across a drawing room on crutches because the person you loved had gone quiet at a window.
After tea, Fiona took them through the property.
The manor house first, with its public rooms and bedrooms, the old details and the renovated comforts. Susie asked intelligent questions about flow and where older relatives might be most comfortable. Toto asked about exclusivity, staffing, and whether separate zones could be created for family and media-free decompression, though he did not use the word media. He did not need to.
Ana asked about noise.
Not capacity first. Not flowers. Not aesthetics.
Noise.
“What carries between rooms?” she asked. “If there’s music here, what can be heard upstairs? And if people need quiet, where would they go?”
Fiona answered thoroughly.
She had the sense Ana valued thoroughness more than charm.
“There are several quieter sitting rooms,” Fiona explained. “And we can designate spaces as private throughout the event. The library is good for that. So is the smaller room facing the garden. It doesn’t tend to catch traffic unless directed there.”
Ana nodded. “Good.”
Max looked at Fiona. “She needs somewhere to disappear if people get too much.”
Ana looked sharply at him.
He looked back, unbothered. “What?” he said. “You do.”
There was no shame in it. No apology. No attempt to hide it for Fiona’s benefit.
Just fact.
Ana stared at him for a second, and Fiona wondered if she was going to object.
Instead, she looked away first. “Yes.”
Toto’s face softened so quickly that Fiona almost felt rude for seeing it. Susie did not hide her expression at all.
Apple of their eye, Fiona thought again.
No, not apple.
That was too passive.
Ana Wolff was not a pretty child set on a pedestal to be admired.
She was something rarer in families like these.
She was protected without being contained. Indulged without being dismissed. Loved with a kind of alertness that suggested people in her life had made mistakes before and were now determined not to make them again.
And Max Verstappen, somehow, had found his way into that circle not by charming them but by aligning himself with the central operating principle: Ana first.
They moved outside when the rain became mist again.
Max was slower on the gravel. Not dramatically, but enough that the party adjusted around him without making a spectacle of it. Toto shortened his stride. Susie paused to ask Fiona a question about landscaping at exactly the moment Max needed an extra second. Ana noticed both, Fiona noticed Ana noticing, and no one said a word.
The view opened beyond the house, water stretching pewter and cold beneath the shifting sky.
“This,” Fiona said, “is one of the possible ceremony areas in good weather. Emphasis on good.”
Ana looked at the sky.
Max looked at the view.
Susie looked at Ana.
Toto looked at Max looking at Ana.
Fiona, who was paid in part to understand people quickly, thought: oh, this will be their place if she lets it be.
Max did not speak for a while.
That surprised her a little.
He had been direct so far, quick to ask, quick to decide, quick to turn every possibility into a logistical problem he could grab by the throat. But standing there, facing the water, with one crutch planted carefully in the damp grass and Ana beside him, he went quiet.
Ana’s shoulder brushed his sleeve.
He looked down at her.
She looked at the island.
“It’s not too much,” she said eventually.
Her voice was quiet enough that Fiona almost missed it.
Max did not. “No,” he said.
“I thought it might be.”
“I know.”
“It’s private but not sealed off.”
“There’s a bridge,” Max said.
Ana huffed something that was almost a laugh. “Do not make me regret the bridge.”
“I like the bridge.”
“You have mentioned.”
“It means people can come in when we want them and leave when we want them gone.”
Fiona glanced at Susie, who was looking out over the water with suspicious brightness in her eyes.
Toto had his hands in his coat pockets, expression soft and complicated.
John and Sally stood a little apart, letting the younger ones have the view.
Fiona had spent years selling people the idea of perfect moments. She knew how often they were manufactured. How frequently they required lighting, timing, staff, patience, alcohol, and strategic editing.
This was not manufactured.
It was only a damp Scottish afternoon with a family standing on wet grass looking at water.
And yet.
Max shifted his weight on the crutches and said, very quietly, “I can see it.”
Ana did not answer for a moment.
Then she said, “So can I.”
Fiona looked away.
There were professional limits, after all.
When they returned inside, Max had questions.
Many questions.
He produced his phone with the speed of a man who had been physically restrained from using it for at least twenty minutes and now intended to make up for lost time.
Capacity. Full buy-out. Dates. Late December versus early January. Weather contingencies. Helicopter access. Car access. Guest transport from airports. Whether the restaurant could handle welcome dinners. Whether the island could support additional temporary structures. Whether outside photographers could be restricted. Whether NDAs were standard.
Ana sat beside Max, increasingly less horrified and increasingly more engaged despite herself. She corrected his assumptions. Added conditions. Asked about quiet rooms again. Asked about dietary requirements with terrifying specificity. Asked whether staff could be briefed not to approach certain guests for photographs. Asked whether there was a room with good enough light for her to get ready without feeling displayed.
Fiona answered every question.
And with every answer, she understood more.
Ana would get whatever she wanted.
Not because she demanded it.
Because everyone around her seemed quietly committed to making sure she never had to.
Max would book an island because privacy made her breathe easier.
Toto would interrogate security until no gap remained because he could not bear the thought of the world mishandling her.
Susie would smooth the human edges, translating feeling into logistics and logistics back into feeling.
Jack would ask about otters.
And Ana, at the centre of it all, would sit very still and try to convince herself she was not too much trouble while an entire constellation rearranged itself around her.
Fiona found that she liked her.
More than liked her, perhaps.
She recognized something in that stillness. Not from herself, exactly, but from years of watching people arrive at Eriska hoping the right place might make them feel briefly safe.
Ana was not looking for grandeur.
She was looking for containment.
The island could offer that.
Perhaps.
If handled correctly.
At the end of the visit, as staff brought coats and the afternoon folded toward evening, Susie lingered a moment near the entrance hall.
“Well?” Fiona asked quietly.
Susie looked toward Ana, who was listening to John explain something about old Yamaha engines to Jack while Max stood beside her on his crutches, visibly pretending he was not still thinking about guest numbers.
“It’s very good,” Susie said.
Fiona nodded. “I thought it might be.”
Susie’s expression softened. “She likes it.”
“Yes,” Fiona said. “I could tell.”
“That’s not always easy.”
“No,” Fiona agreed. “But it was here.”
Susie looked at her then, gratitude and caution both present.
Fiona understood that too.
“I meant what I said,” Fiona told her. “Direct line. No front desk nonsense. If you decide to proceed, I’ll handle it personally.”
Susie exhaled a little. “Thank you.”
“And Susie?”
“Yes?”
Fiona glanced once toward Ana and Max. “We’re very good at privacy.”
Susie held her gaze.
Then smiled.
“I know.”
Outside, the cars waited. The bridge stretched pale against the wet dark of the island road. The family began to gather itself into departure, coats zipped, bags collected.
Max moved carefully down the steps on his crutches.
Ana walked beside him, not hovering, but close enough.
At the car, he said something Fiona could not hear.
Ana smiled.
Max grinned like a man who had won something far more important than a race.
Fiona stood in the doorway of the Isle of Eriska Hotel and watched them go, the Wolffs and Stoddarts and Verstappen crossing back over the bridge into the mist.
Only when the last car disappeared did her operations manager appear beside her.
“So,” he said cautiously. “Was that who I think it was?”
Fiona folded Susie’s booking enquiry card between her fingers and looked out at the water.
“Yes,” she said.
“And?”
Fiona thought of Ana at the window. Max on crutches beside her. Toto Wolff’s watchful tenderness. Susie’s pride in a Tesco biscuit aisle. A family large enough, complicated enough, wealthy enough, and determined enough to turn a private island wedding into either a masterpiece or a controlled natural disaster.
Probably both.
Fiona smiled.
“And,” she said, “we may need to prepare for a very interesting winter.”
***
Stoddart Residence, Scotland - 11 October 2025
Ana did not say anything in the car back from Eriska.
This was not unusual enough for anyone to comment on it.
Jack was looking out of the window, fascinated by sheep. Toto was on his phone, though Ana could tell from the way he was not typing that he was not doing anything particularly important. Susie was driving and looking out of the window with an expression that meant she was pretending not to think too loudly.
Max sat beside Ana in the back, one crutch wedged awkwardly between his knee and the seat, his injured leg stretched as comfortably as the car allowed.
She had not expected to love the island.
That was the first problem.
She had expected to find it beautiful, because she had eyes and the Isle of Eriska was objectively very good at being beautiful.
She had expected to find the privacy useful, the controlled access efficient, the hotel capable, the staff discreet, and Fiona MacLeish professionally competent in a way that reduced Ana’s immediate desire to flee.
She had expected to approve of it.
Approval was manageable.
Approval lived in lists.
She had not expected to stand by the water and feel something inside her go quiet.
Not empty.
Not numb.
Quiet.
There had been the bridge. The wet grass. The stone house behind them. The water ahead. Max beside her on crutches, ridiculous and stubborn and already halfway to purchasing control of an entire island because he had decided privacy was a marital need and not a luxury.
There had been Susie watching with too much understanding.
Toto pretending he was interested in the security implications of the shoreline instead of Ana’s face.
Sally and John giving her space without making it feel like abandonment.
And for one strange, impossible second, Ana had been able to see it.
Not just the venue.
The wedding.
A winter wedding. Damp and cold and dark early, with fires inside and rain on old windows.
No glaring summer light. No soft-focus performance. No Mediterranean spectacle.
Scotland in December, severe and private and honest. People arriving over the bridge. The island sealed around them. A ceremony that did not have to be large enough for the world to feel included. A place where no one could wander in by accident and take pieces of them away.
She could see Max standing there.
She could see Susie crying and pretending she was not.
She could see Toto looking as though he had negotiated ten corporate acquisitions with less personal stress.
She could see herself walking toward Max and not feeling trapped by the looking.
That was the dangerous part.
Wanting things made them unstable.
By the time they returned to the house, her thoughts had become too crowded to name.
Everyone spilled back into the Stoddart residence in the peculiar disorder that happened when a group had spent several hours behaving politely in public and immediately lost the ability to do so in private.
Jack wanted to tell Sally about the otters he had not actually seen. John wanted to discuss the bridge with Toto, who was making the mistake of engaging. Susie disappeared into the kitchen with Fiona’s printed availability sheet, which was a dangerous object and should probably have been locked in a fireproof cabinet.
Max, naturally, followed the paper.
Ana followed Max.
This was how she found herself twenty minutes later in the conservatory, with rain ticking at the windows, a tray of tea on the low table, Max’s crutches leaning against the sofa, and a calendar open between them.
It felt absurdly domestic for something that might alter the architecture of her life.
Max had his phone out, Fiona’s availability email open on the screen. There was a printed sheet beside it because Fiona was, apparently, a woman after Ana’s own heart and believed significant planning should be available both digitally and physically.
Ana appreciated her.
This was a problem too.
“She has availability in December,” Max said.
Ana looked at the paper. “Limited availability.”
“Yes, because it is already October.”
“That is not an argument in favour of rushing.”
“It is not rushing if we already know.”
Ana looked at him.
Max looked back with the innocent expression of a man who had not just suggested compressing an entire private island wedding into ten weeks.
“You are not subtle,” Ana said.
“No.”
“You are aware of that?”
“Yes.”
Ana should not have smiled.
She did anyway.
Max saw it and immediately looked victorious, which made the smile harder to suppress. He was unbearable when pleased with himself.
“She gave us three main options for a full buy-out before Christmas,” he said, dragging the printed sheet closer. “Late November, but that is too soon.”
Ana blinked. “You think?”
“Yes,” Max said seriously. “I am being reasonable.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” He tapped the sheet. “Then there is the weekend of the thirteenth and fourteenth of December. And the weekend of the twentieth and twenty-first.”
Ana’s stomach stopped.
Not dropped.
Stopped.
The room continued around it, which was rude.
Rain at the window. The old radiator clicking. Max breathing beside her. Somewhere in the house, Jack laughing at something, high and delighted. John’s voice carried faintly from the kitchen, saying something about Yamaha engines with the confidence of a man who believed all conversations improved when motorcycles entered them.
Ana looked at the paper.
13 December.
There it was.
A neat black line. Availability. Friday arrival possible. Saturday ceremony possible. Sunday departure flexible.
Possible.
A useful word.
A terrible word.
Max tapped the date with one finger. “This could work.”
Ana did not answer.
“It is after post-season testing,” he continued, already building the logic because of course he was. “Abu Dhabi is the weekend before. Testing after that. Then the FIA gala is on the twelfth, so people are already moving around, but the thirteenth could be—”
“No.”
Max stopped.
Ana had said it too quickly.
She knew it at once.
Max looked up from the calendar. Not annoyed. Not yet worried. Just attentive.
“No?”
“No,” Ana said again, more controlled this time. “Not that weekend.”
“All right.” He said it immediately.
No argument. No visible disappointment. No attempt to negotiate.
That made it worse.
Ana reached for her tea, mostly to occupy her hands. The cup was too warm against her fingers. She set it down again.
Max watched the movement but did not comment.
“Twentieth then,” he said, looking back at the sheet. “That also works. Arrivals on the Friday, nineteenth. Ceremony Saturday, twentieth. People leave Sunday. Or Monday if they are family and impossible to remove.”
Ana tried to focus.
The twentieth.
A normal date.
A safe date.
Not safe, exactly, because weddings were not safe and neither was wanting one this much, but safer. Less contaminated. Less sharp.
“That is more practical,” she said.
Max nodded. “Yes. It gives us one more week.”
“Yes.”
“And it is not the same weekend as the gala.”
“Yes.”
“And it means people do not have to go from gala to Scotland like crazy.”
“Yes.”
Max was quiet for a moment.
Ana looked at the calendar so hard the numbers blurred.
Then he said, carefully, “Is there another reason?”
Ana closed her eyes.
Of course there was another reason.
There was always another reason.
Her life was built on other reasons stacked beneath perfectly functional explanations.
Noise was not just noise. Crowds were not just crowds. Touch was not just touch. December was not just December.
“No,” she said.
It was such a bad lie that Max did not even need to challenge it.
He simply sat back slightly, giving her more physical space.
Ana hated that too.
She hated how good he was at it now. Hated that he had learned her enough to know when to push and when to retreat. Hated that he did not look hurt by her closed doors because he was too busy waiting outside them.
“Nastya,” he said.
Not soft in the way people sometimes got when they wanted her to become simpler for them.
Just quiet.
She opened her eyes.
Max was watching her, the printed sheet forgotten under his hand.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he said. “But I need to know if there are dates that are bad. So I don’t accidentally choose one.”
The practical shape of that nearly broke her.
Not why are you upset.
Not tell me.
Not I’m your fiancé, you should say things to me.
Just: give me the necessary data so I do not hurt you by accident.
Ana looked at him.
Then looked away.
Her throat felt wrong.
“The thirteenth is my birthday,” she said.
Max went still.
Not dramatically. But completely. Ana could feel the moment the information entered him and rearranged things.
“You never told me your birthday,” he said.
“I know.”
His voice stayed careful. “So it is December thirteenth 1997?”
“Yes.”
There was another pause.
Ana could hear her own pulse now, irritatingly loud.
Max said, “Okay.”
That was all.
Not accusation. Not hurt. Not even surprise, though he had to be surprised.
Just okay.
The word sat between them like a hand held palm-up.
Ana hated December thirteenth.
She hated it with a precision that had survived adulthood, therapy, distance, success, money, Austrian winters, Monaco summers, Switzerland, Oxford, Brackley, airports, birthdays she had ignored, birthdays other people had tried to redeem, birthdays Susie had approached carefully, birthdays Toto had mishandled and then learned to handle differently, birthdays that should have become easier and did not.
She hated the date because it had the audacity to be hers.
She hated it because it was also the date her mother had given her away.
Just a suitcase. A coat. An airport. A hand on her shoulder that had felt more like positioning than comfort. Her mother’s perfume in the cold air.
Mid-December snow turned to grey slush at the edges of the viennese pavement. Her mother saying things that sounded reasonable if one did not understand that reasonable could still be abandonment in a good coat.
“It’s your turn. You deal with it. I’m done.”
“You’ll be better off here. Your father has the means. And the space. And patience.”
“Be good.”
Ana had been eight years old.
She had not cried until much later.
Even then, she had done it wrong. Too quietly. Into a pillow. Angry at the biological inefficiency of tears. Angry that her body had decided to produce evidence when she had already understood the facts.
Twenty years.
On the thirteenth of December 2025, it would be twenty years.
And Max had been talking about making it their wedding date.
Of course he had not known.
That was the point.
He had not known because she had built a life in which nobody could know unless she let them.
Max was still waiting.
Ana folded her hands together. Pressed one thumb into the other until the pressure became useful.
“It is also the day she left me with Toto,” she said.
Max’s face changed.
There was no clean way to describe it.
It was not pity. Max rarely did pity, which was one of the reasons Ana loved him.
Pity required a distance he had never quite respected. It was not shock either. He had known enough of the shape, if not the date.
He knew her mother had left in December. He knew Ana did not speak of it unless she had to.
He knew Ana still went strange around mid-December in a way that made her sharper with everyone.
But he had not known this.
The birthday.
The exactness of it.
The cruelty of the calendar.
“She dropped you off on your birthday,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Ana gave one small nod.
Max swore under his breath in Dutch.
The violence of it was comforting.
“Normally,” Ana said, because now that the door had opened the words had apparently decided to escape without permission, “I spent the evening of the twelfth getting absolutely drunk on vodka.”
He did not react.
“Not like a normal person. Not wine with dinner. Not cocktails. Vodka. Properly. Alone, usually. Sometimes in Brackley. Sometimes in whatever hotel I’m in if the calendar is stupid. I turn my phone off. I drink until I don’t have to be in my body properly. Then I sleep through as much of the thirteenth as I can.”
Max’s thumb stopped moving.
Ana looked at him because she could not bear the stillness.
His face had gone pale.. “Nastya,” he said.
It was not pity.
She would have hated pity.
This was worse.
This was grief on her behalf, and she did not know what to do with it.
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know it’s not healthy. I’m not defending it as a coping mechanism. It is objectively maladaptive. I am aware.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to think it.”
“I was thinking I wish you had not been alone.”
That shut her up.
Her mouth closed.
Max looked down at their hands. His grip tightened, then loosened, as if he had to remind himself not to hold too hard.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“You didn’t know.”
“No,” he said. “But I am still sorry.”
Ana hated how quickly her eyes burned.
It was absurd. She had said the facts cleanly. Efficiently. No unnecessary embellishment. No dramatic language.
Subject dropped off by biological mother on eighth birthday. Subject developed annual pattern of self-medication through alcohol. Subject failed to disclose relevant date to fiancé. Avoid wedding date accordingly.
There was no reason for her body to treat this like an emergency.
Except Max was looking at her as though every version of her counted, including the eight-year-old one with a suitcase and a mother who had already emotionally left long before the physical act became official.
“I don’t want it near the wedding,” she said.
“Of course not.”
“I don’t want to stand there on that date and think about her.”
“You won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes,” Max said. “I can. Because it won’t be that date.”
She exhaled.
Something inside her went weak with relief, which was ridiculous because he had already said okay. He had said okay before he knew why. He had said okay immediately.
Still.
She needed to hear the door close.
Max leaned forward and pulled the laptop slightly toward himself with his free hand.
“No thirteenth,” he said.
Ana watched him move the cursor away from it.
Such a small thing.
A blue highlight disappearing from a date on a screen.
It felt disproportionate that it almost made her cry.
Max scrolled further down.
“There is the twentieth,” he said.
Ana blinked.
“The twentieth?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the calendar.
20 December 2025.
Available for full buy-out. Preferred winter weekend. Arrival possible from Friday afternoon. Ceremony Saturday. Departure Sunday or Monday.
“It’s close to Christmas,” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“People may have plans.”
“Then they don’t come.”
“Max.”
“What?” he said, entirely serious. “If people cannot come, they cannot come. The important people will come.”
Ana stared at the date.
The twentieth.
A week later.
Far enough away from the thirteenth that it could breathe. Close enough to winter that Eriska would still be all water and stone and fires and dark trees. After the gala. After testing. Before Christmas fully swallowed every calendar into family obligation and airport misery.
“Arrivals Friday?” she asked.
Max’s eyes flicked to her face.
“Yes,” he said. “Friday nineteenth. People arrive during the day. Maybe welcome dinner Friday night. Wedding Saturday. Brunch Sunday. Some people leave Sunday, some Monday if they want. Or if we want them to.”
Despite herself, Ana smiled faintly. “If we want them to.”
“Yes.”
“You are very focused on expelling guests.”
“I am focused on control.”
“I know.”
He squeezed her hand once.
“Twentieth,” he said. “Maybe.”
Ana looked at the screen.
Maybe.
It was still terrifying.
It was still too soon and too large and too possible. There would be lists. Contracts. Legal timings. Family conversations. The terrible question of guest numbers. Flowers, apparently, which Max had declared easy with the confidence of a man who had no idea he had just threatened the peace of multiple households.
But the date did not make her skin go cold.
That mattered.
She could see the twentieth.
She could see arriving on the Friday, the island dark and wet and beautiful, everyone crossing the bridge into a contained little world. She could see dinner by the fire. Susie pretending not to cry. Toto checking security with microscopic calm. Victoria laughing with her children. Max’s hand at the small of Ana’s back.
She could see the next day.
Not fully.
Enough.
“I can do the twentieth,” she said.
Max’s face changed.
Just slightly.
Not victory. Not exactly.
Something quieter.
Relief, maybe.
Hope.
“I don’t want you to do that this year,” he said.
Ana knew what he meant.
The vodka.
The phone turned off.
The annual disappearance into a date that had never learned how to be only a birthday.
Her first instinct was resistance.
It arrived automatically, polished by years of use.
You don’t get to decide that. It is mine. It is ugly but it is mine. I have survived it this way. Do not take away a coping mechanism unless you have brought scaffolding.
Max saw it before she said a word.
“I am not saying you can’t,” he added. “I know it’s not— I know I cannot just say don’t and make it easy.”
Ana looked down.
His voice got rougher. “But I don’t want you alone with it.”
That was worse.
That was much worse.
She pressed her lips together.
Max waited.
“I don’t know how to have a birthday,” she admitted.
It felt humiliating.
Small.
Like confessing she did not know how to use a door handle.
Max’s expression broke open for one unguarded second.
Then he pulled it back, because he knew she would not survive too much emotion directed at her all at once.
“That is okay,” he said.
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
“Yes.”
“I should know how to tolerate a date.”
Max looked unimpressed by that. “There are many things people should know how to do. Many people are still shit at them.”
Despite herself, Ana huffed a laugh.
Max looked pleased.
Then he said, more softly, “We can make it nothing.”
Ana looked at him.
“Or small,” he said. “Or not call it anything. We can go somewhere. Stay home. Sit with the cats. Invite no one. Invite your father and Susie and Jack. Whatever you want. No party if you don’t want that. No cake if you don’t want that.”
Ana’s throat tightened again at the word cake, which was stupid.
Max noticed.
“I can also buy vodka,” he said carefully. “But then we drink one glass because it tastes good, not because you want to disappear.”
She stared at him.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe two glasses.”
Ana laughed then.
It came out cracked at the edges, but it was real enough that his face softened.
“You are negotiating my trauma with beverage limits,” she said.
“Yes.”
“That is very you.”
“I am practical.”
“You are injured and planning a private island wedding.”
“That is also practical.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling now, and Max looked at her as if he could live for a week on that alone.
The door creaked open before either of them could say anything else.
Susie appeared, took in the laptop, their joined hands, Ana’s slightly damp eyes, and Max’s expression, and visibly recalibrated in less than a second.
“I was going to ask if you wanted more tea,” she said gently.
Ana wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand before pretending she had not. “No, thank you.”
Susie’s gaze flicked to the closed laptop.
Not asking.
Not yet.
Max said, “The twentieth.”
Susie went still.
Susie’s face did something terribly careful.
“The twentieth,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“With arrivals on the Friday,” Max added, because he was still himself.
Susie’s mouth trembled once with the effort not to smile too widely at the wrong moment.
“That sounds sensible.”
Ana gave her a suspicious look. “You think December is sensible?”
“I think,” Susie said, stepping further into the room, “that if the two of you found a date that feels possible, then sensible is a flexible concept.”
Max nodded. “Exactly.”
“I was not agreeing with your entire planning philosophy, Max.”
“You should. It is good.”
Susie looked at Ana. “Is it good?”
Ana thought about the island. The bridge. The water. Max’s hand around hers. The thirteenth losing its highlight on the screen. The twentieth sitting there instead, quiet and possible.
She breathed in.
Then out.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”
Susie’s eyes softened.
She crossed the room and sat on Ana’s other side without making a production of it. Close enough that Ana could lean into her if she wanted. Not so close that she had to.
For a minute, they sat like that.
The rain tapped the window. The fire shifted. Somewhere Toto laughed at something John said, the sound low and surprised and oddly comforting.
Max still held Ana’s hand.
Susie’s shoulder was warm beside hers.
The laptop stayed closed.
The thirteenth stayed inside it, avoided but not erased.
The twentieth waited.
Ana looked down at her ring, at the way it caught the firelight, and allowed herself, very carefully, to imagine a Saturday in December that belonged to something else.
Not abandonment.
Not vodka.
Not a mother leaving.
A bridge.
An island.
A wedding.
Max beside her.
Her family around her.
The thought did not hurt.
That was new.
Max’s thumb moved once over her knuckles, as though he knew.
Of course he knew.
He always knew more than was convenient.
“The twentieth,” Ana said quietly.
Max looked at her.
Then nodded.
“The twentieth.”
And for the first time in her life, December had offered Ana a date she did not want to erase.
↳ Series Summary: As a single mother, Josefine is used to doing everything on her own. Leaving everything behind to chase her son's karting dreams in England, she dedicated herself wholeheartedly to pushing him through the ranks, no matter the cost...even if it takes everything from her in the process. She knows that nothing is guaranteed and trust isn't easily won, and yet she comes to learn that the biggest lessons may not be found on the track but, rather, in the form of a retired Formula 1 driver and his daughter.
↳ Pairings: SingleDad!KartingCoach!George Russell x Single Mom!OC
↳ Chapter Word Count: 2666
Josefine stared after where George and Ivy had disappeared like this wasn’t real. Like Henrik hadn’t just spilled George’s biggest secret to his unsuspecting daughter in a fit of anger. Like George hadn’t looked at her like she had committed the ultimate betrayal. Like they weren’t now standing in the echoing silence of realization that pressed down agonizingly onto her shoulders until it felt as though her knees were about to buckle underneath her.
In the distance, the karts still on track roared through the summer breeze through the final lap of the race. Josefine barely heard them. Instead, it was Henrik’s shuddering inhale that caught her attention. She turned her attention onto her son instead, torn back to reality by the sound of his breath.
He, too, was staring after where George and Ivy had gone, eyes shimmering with unshed tears and his youthful face stricken in horror. It had been incredibly unlike him to have an outburst like that, to say such things. Even he, too, was stunned by what he had said and the capabilities of his own words. He had been in a pressure cooker for weeks, Josefine knew there was going to eventually be a moment where he would explode. She just never anticipated it would be like this.
“Henrik…” she started, cautious and tentative.
“Mamma.” Henrik exhaled, his words quivering, eyes still fixed on the direction of the parking lot. When he blinked, a tear dripped down his cheek. His inhale was ragged, “Mamma, I didn’t mean to—”
“Come on,” she set a firm hand on his shoulder and turned him away from the direction of the parking lot to steer him into the tent.
There was nothing more to say. Not here. Not like this. They had to go home before they made everything worse.
Josefine barely remembered packing up that day. All she could recall was that she was shaking so badly that it was hard to zip up their bag. Henrik was no help; he had sat himself on a chair in the corner and held his face in his hands as if he were trying to will himself from existence.
Josefine couldn’t deny that she was incredibly upset with him; but, even more than that, she was upset with herself for having trusted her ten-year-old with such a secret. How could she have been so foolish? What had she done? Oh, she felt sick to her stomach.
The mechanics were none the wiser—although they could tell something happened, just not exactly what—and they politely helped her pack up like it was any other Sunday. She couldn’t meet their eyes, couldn’t properly formulate a response. Her fight or flight was in full swing and all she wanted to do was flee. It was not the right time for any more of a fight. They had done enough damage. She knew the last person George was going to want to see when they inevitably returned to the tent was her.
Once they were in the car and back on the M1 towards home, once it was just the two of them, Henrik crumbled into his guilt. It started with a choked back sob that he smothered against his hand as he stared out the passenger side window, as if it were all bubbling up out of him all at once. And it just overtook him. He was in tears the whole drive home and if Josefine wasn’t so in shock over everything, she would have been too.
“I-I’m sorry!” Henrik stumbled out, his words gasping and jagged through his tears.
“Shh…just breathe…” she soothed the best she could, reaching out a hand to set upon his leg in some feeble attempt to calm him. How could she calm her son when she, too, was on the brink of breaking down?
It broke her heart to hear her son so distressed and yet all she could think about was how George was likely thinking the same about his daughter at that moment. Josefine swallowed back the bile in her throat and kept her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. As much as she wanted to jump headfirst into fixing this, she knew she had to tread carefully. There were so many variables now, so many people—the children most importantly.
And Henrik. Who didn’t deserve to have that secret laid upon him at only ten-years-old. Josefine bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.
When they finally arrived back at their apartment, Josefine helped to usher Henrik upstairs. His shuddering sobs echoed in the stairwell. In any other situation, she might have worried what the neighbours thought. Instead, her focus was on getting him inside.
The door was unlocked with trembling hands and Henrik toes off his shoes and left them strewn haphazardly across the foyer. Josefine—this one time—didn’t correct him on it. Instead, she slipped his backpack off his shoulders and quietly instructed him to go wash his hands. She just needed a few seconds to figure out what the hell she was going to do next.
With Henrik’s crying coming from the bathroom behind the rush of the faucet, Josefine took out her phone with trembling hands. It had been long enough that a text wouldn’t appear too pushy; but not too long where it would come across like she didn’t care. She had to make it known she was sorry. Whether George accepted it or not would be another story.
The blinking line taunted her as she stared at their text thread. Any words she tried to formulate didn’t feel at all sufficient. Nothing felt right. She typed and deleted and re-typed, trying to put together a string of words that made even a fraction of sense. Coaching her clients on how to own up and apologize seemed easy from behind the desk. Here, now, with her being the one in need of taking ownership, it felt incredibly daunting.
When she heard the sound of the bathroom faucet turn off, she forced herself to send whatever she had last typed; something was better than nothing. Staring at it any longer wouldn’t miraculously change things.
J: I am so sorry, George. I should have handled things differently. I understand if you need space…just know I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk.
“Mamma?”
Josefine immediately tucked her phone away and looked up at the sound of her son’s broken voice. Henrik was standing in the entryway to the living room, still in his racesuit tied around his waist and his hands wrung together in front of him, cheeks flushed and eyes red-rimmed. The only thing she had to do was hold out her arms and he scurried over to curl himself against her chest. She cradled the back of his head with a comforting hand, holding him close, letting him burrow himself in her shirt.
“Shh,” she consoled him softly, her other hand rubbing soothingly across his back, “take a deep breath, my boy.”
Henrik hiccuped through his tears, his hands clutching the back of her shirt as he struggled to get his words out. Oh, it broke her heart to see him like that. It broke her heart to think that all of these dominoes fell because of her decision.
Josefine leaned away from his embrace just enough to wipe the tears from his cheeks with the pad of her thumb, breathing deeply to try and get him to follow along with her. Despite how hard it was for the little boy to try and calm himself down, Henrik soon tried to mirror her, pulling in air before letting it all out in trembling exhales.
Finally, he managed to speak, “I-I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.”
“I know,” Josefine mumbled, wiping his cheek once more.
Looking to the living room carpet with a frown, Henrik muttered sharply, “I wish I didn’t say anything. I wish I kept my stupid big mouth shut.”
“Hey, now,” she tutted, “Do not speak so harshly about yourself. You made a mistake but you are not stupid.”
Henrik curled into her chest again, wrapping his arms around her middle, and Josefine dropped a kiss to the top of his head.
“You are a boy—you are going to make many mistakes, and say many things you wish you could take back in your life, hm?” she spoke softly to him.
“I don’t want him to hate me.”
His words were so quiet, muffled into the fabric of her shirt over her chest where his face was buried, that she almost didn’t catch it. But she did. And, God, she wished she could have reassured him that it wasn’t the case and that George could never hate him; but how was she to know? Emotions were still raw, the situation was dire, and she could still see the way he looked at her like she had committed the ultimate betrayal every time she blinked.
Finally, she found her words carefully, “George could not hate you, Henrik. He may be upset but I cannot imagine that he would hate you.”
Henrik didn’t answer, simply keeping himself nuzzled into her chest. She hesitated, her fingers brushing gently through his hair, somehow a way to soothe not only him but herself as well.
All she could think about was that night when she told Henrik about George’s secret; how he had been so upset and forlorn, how she was only trying to comfort him. She hadn’t meant to tell him the secret maliciously, but rather to express that not all families are born. To explain that George is more than capable of loving a child who was not from his DNA. To explain that Henrik wasn’t less than because he didn’t have a biological dad in his life.
Looking back, she could see now how misguided she was…how wrong. She always prided herself on how carefully she treaded, how particularly she chose her words—something so important in her line of work. Yet, here she was, facing the consequences of her mistakes she couldn’t imagine making, facing the consequences of breaking George’s trust in such a blatant and snide way.
With her son in her arms, Josefine confessed to him softly, “And I made a mistake too. I should not have told you something like that. You were not meant to carry it. I am sorry for putting the weight of it onto you.”
“But I still said it. Me.”
“You do not need me to tell you that it was not nice of you to say what you said. That it was not your right to tell Ivy what you did. It is clear you know very well that what you did was not kind.”
Henrik sniffled and pulled back again to look up at her, his words tumbling out desperately, “She’s not kind to me all the time! I just…I just thought that…I couldn’t hear one more second of it…it was the first thing that I thought of…I didn’t mean to!”
“I know, I know…shh…” Josefine murmured, wiping his cheeks again as more heavy tears dripped from the corners of his eyes and he curled back into her, “I could see how it was all simmering under the surface in you. You are such a kind boy that you never pushed back until it all bubbled up inside you and just exploded, ja?”
Henrik nodded into her chest and gripped tighter onto her shirt.
“You have to learn how to speak up when someone is upsetting you so it does not bubble up like that. You tell them right away.”
Henrik sniffled, “Do you…think she’s really upset?”
Josefine sighed, “Yes…I think she is.”
Henrik’s arms tightened around her and she pressed another kiss to the top of his head.
“We will figure it out,” she murmured, “One step at a time, ja?”
He didn’t answer, but she felt him nod.
Neither of them particularly wanted to stomach eating dinner but they knew they had to; they shared a can of soup and a sleeve of crackers and Henrik finished it with a glass of milk. Neither of them looked at George’s poster on his bedroom wall as Josefine tucked him into bed. In the pitch black room, Josefine stayed with her son as he fell asleep, finding peace in the sound of his breathing.
If it wasn’t for the way her mind was reeling or the sickening guilt that was still eating her from the inside out, she might have fallen asleep right there beside him. Instead, she eventually tiptoed out of his bedroom, closed the door behind her with a soft creak, and collapsed onto the couch with an exasperated sigh. The sun had just set and it had felt like the longest evening of her entire life.
When she picked up her phone, she found that her text to George had been read three hours earlier and left unanswered. Something unsettling churned in her stomach.
The last thing she wanted was to hound him while he was dealing with something so big, so she distracted herself with the television—some boring talk show she barely registered. She hadn’t even bothered to turn the lights on, leaving her in only the illumination of the moon through the open curtains and the flickering light of the television.
By almost ten o’clock, her phone rang.
The sight of George’s name flashing across her screen had her heart in her throat. Without giving herself a second to overthink, she grabbed her phone and answered it.
“George—” she barely managed to croak out. She cleared her throat.
“Hello, Josefine.”
The coldness in his tone made her shiver and she slowly eased back into the comfort of the sofa, cowering under the weight of her mistake.
“How, uh…is everything…are you holding up…” her words felt too big for her mouth, trying and failing to sound normal; just the right amount of compassionate and remorseful without coming on too strong.
George didn’t seem to want to bother with the small talk. In all honesty, it was clear he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to her at all. Instead, the reason for his call made itself clear to her with ease as his next words came bluntly, “I wanted to call as I have made the tough decision to forfeit the sponsorship agreement, effective immediately.”
Josefine pressed a trembling hand to her lips and forced herself to swallow back the bile that was working its way up her throat. She had known she had made a grave mistake—that she would be owning up for it for the foreseeable future—but this?
“Oh, God, George, please. We are so sorry. I am so sorry. I take full accountability for betraying your trust the way I did. Please, do not take it out on Henrik. Please.”
Her pleas fell on deaf ears. It was clear he had made up his mind.
“My daughter is my priority, Josefine. She is my priority over everything else, and right now, I have to protect her and deal with the damage you and your son have caused.”
“George—”
“You nearly destroyed my family. The trust my child has in me. That is irreversible. Henrik will not be racing with us for the remainder of the season.”
“There are only two races left…”
His reply came in expert calm, dripping in that well-practiced PR training prose, “I wish Henrik the best of luck for the remainder of the season.”
Josefine couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t find her breath. She knew that anything she said would be a mute point. It was very clear by the tone of George’s voice that his mind had been made up and there was no way to change it. The damage was done.
He had the last word with a simple, “Good night.”
And then the dial tone groaned in her ear in the darkness of the living room. On the television talk show, the studio audience laughed.
♡ Enjoying my content? Support my writing here :)
♡ None of the original writing on this blog may be reproduced, reposted, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
↳ A/N After the previous chapter's "conversation", let's see how the weekend goes...
↳ Series Summary: As a single mother, Josefine is used to doing everything on her own. Leaving everything behind to chase her son's karting dreams in England, she dedicated herself wholeheartedly to pushing him through the ranks, no matter the cost...even if it takes everything from her in the process. She knows that nothing is guaranteed and trust isn't easily won, and yet she comes to learn that the biggest lessons may not be found on the track but, rather, in the form of a retired Formula 1 driver and his daughter.
↳ Pairings: SingleDad!KartingCoach!George Russell x Single Mom!OC
↳ Chapter Word Count: 3586
In all honesty, the karting track was the last place Josefine really wanted to be that weekend, not with everything waiting for her there. It was a bit of a drive up to Northampton in the heat of the summer and bumper to bumper Friday traffic on the M1. The radio played quietly while Henrik rested his head against the passenger side window and stared out at the passing scenery for most of the drive. Josefine had a million things she wanted to say to him, to talk about, but none, she knew, would help if all he wanted to do was sit in silence.
She hoped, at least, that a busy race weekend would allow for a bit of a distraction from the turmoil that she had been feeling all week. Being forced back into close quarters with George and Ivy, buffered only by mechanics and other parents, all of them pretending things were normal. Like George had said, the weekend would be used to scope out if they needed to do anymore damage control for the kids. Hopefully, all would be well. She hoped he was right; that the kids were fine and that she was the problem for thinking otherwise.
The track was already bustling with parents and kids and crew alike under the summer sun. The moment Josefine parked and stepped out of the van, the air was alive with the familiar smells and sounds of a race weekend through the countryside breeze.
They had so much as barely unloaded their van before she and Henrik were approached by another mum in the parking lot. Henrik was holding onto his kart on the dolly, his backpack on and helmet bag in hand, standing close beside his mother as they were interrupted.
“Good morning!” the mum beamed, sunhat on, Kindle in hand—as if this weekend were for relaxing, not coaching, “How’s the two of you today?”
“It was nice to see you on the weekend for Ivy’s birthday. Lovely little party.”
There was nothing Josefine hated as much as small talk with a stranger but she humoured her politely, “George really went above and beyond.”
“He did. He is such a good dad.” the mum gushed. And then she was looking right at Henrik with that everpresent smile, “And so good of him to take Henrik under his wing like this. Not everyone would be so…generous.”
Josefine was quick to press back, “Henrik earned his place. George saw the talent in him.”
“Yes,” she looked back at Josefine, still with that smile that any adult could so easily read through the lines of, “I’m sure he saw quite a lot.”
At the woman’s subtle up-and-down glance, Josefine had had enough. She set a hand on Henrik’s back to usher him onwards and muttered to the lady with a curt, “Excuse us.”
Henrik stole another glance at the lady over his shoulder as they walked off.
The familiar purple and white tent was already set up in the pit area amongst dozens of others and, inside, George and Ivy and the mechanics were already hard at work. Right away, Henrik’s team of mechanics helped him get his kart set up to take a look at and polite ‘good mornings’ were shared amongst the team.
“How’re you feeling about this weekend, Henrik?” George asked lightheartedly as the boy set his backpack down on the table.
“Good,” was his simple answer.
“It should be sunny all weekend which is a great help.”
Josefine set their last two bags down on the table too and started to unpack their necessities. It wasn’t lost on her the way Ivy was standing so close at George’s side that you might have mistaken her for his shadow. She hadn’t uttered a word since they arrived but she was certainly watching, observing.
Even as the practice day progressed, Ivy followed in George’s footsteps like she was a security guard, refusing to let him out of arm’s reach for even a second. He didn’t seem to mind—or notice—as she had a way of managing to stay out of his way enough that she wasn’t a bother. She had perfected the art of predicting his next move. Josefine was almost impressed if it wasn’t a little concerning. She wished she could turn off her psychotherapist mind. It was hard when she knew it wasn’t her place to speak on it, and yet it also partially affected her and her son at the same time.
George would be leaning over Henrik’s kart to adjust something and Ivy would be right beside him, peering into it too, already with a wrench in hand to pass over before he could even ask. Henrik—a half step behind them—would only receive a proud smirk from Ivy when she did such things.
Josefine didn’t need to be directly involved to notice. As an outsider, watching from her spot at the table, she was privy to plenty. How George went about his usual routine despite Ivy’s closeness, how she was plastering on obedient smiles and sweet words to her father, how Henrik was on the receiving end of her smug glances when George’s back was turned. Even when Henrik tried to engage with Ivy to ask her a question or try to be friendly, she would simply turn her back to him like he wasn’t even there.
Through Friday and Saturday, between practice sessions and Heats and snack breaks, it was the same routine. Josefine could see that from George’s Ivy-biased perspective, she looked well-behaved and fine. But it was the glances between the lines—the small actions when his back was turned—that spoke far more about her internalized thoughts than anything he could see.
As they reviewed the results as a team on Saturday afternoon to prepare for Sunday, Ivy was taking her notes in her old notebook. With all the pages filled, she ended up having to cram her handwriting into the margins, desperate to keep using this notebook. While George spoke to them, Henrik was paying more attention to the way she was now writing away on the inside cover of her book as if to prove a point.
While George was momentarily pulled away by one of the mechanics, Henrik leaned over to Ivy “If you need a new notebook—”
“I don’t,” she said simply, matter-of-factly, without looking at him, “I like this one.”
“But it’s full.”
He was met with no response. He slumped back in his chair.
Through their end-of-day review, Ivy was the picture of politeness under the eye of her father. She didn’t interrupt or argue, even when given feedback or when she had an alternative opinion, keeping herself perfectly composed.
It was enough to earn her a proud praise from her father during packdown that both Josefine and Henrik picked up on. A small squeeze of her shoulder and a kiss to her head and a smile, “See? This is what I like to see—good attitude this weekend.”
By Sunday, it was the same routine. Midday, Henrik was sitting at the table in the tent, chin in hand, lunch untouched on the table beside him, while George and Ivy were touching base with her mechanics across the tent. Josefine slid into the folding chair across from him and he didn’t even glance up.
“My boy…” she said softly, reaching out to brush his shaggy blonde fringe out of his face, “What is the matter?”
Henrik raised his eyes to meet hers from across the table and he just shrugged.
“You have not been yourself all weekend.”
He deflected casually, “I’m driving good.”
“Yes, you are. But off the track, you are acting different. Upset.”
Henrik turned his eyes back to his untouched lunch with a mumbled, “I’m fine.”
“You say that, but I know there is something on your heart,” Josefine whispered, just for them, “You can talk to me.”
Henrik sighed and dropped his hand from his face to pick up his fork instead and he nudged some of his food around his plate, “It’s just…”
Josefine held her breath, not wanting to rush him, or to risk spooking him like a frightened animal. Patience was always a virtue.
Except only a second later, he shrugged again, relenting with a mumbled, “It’s nothing.”
“Henrik…” Josefine started with a concerned sigh.
Just then, from across the tent, George called out, “Henrik! Ready for debrief?”
Without another word or glance to his mother, Henrik grabbed his notebook, and trudged across the tent to join George and Ivy. Josefine trailed after him, always part of the debriefs to follow Henrik’s progress, and pulled up a chair to their little group. When she did, Ivy scooted her chair a careful inch closer to George’s side, just enough to assert herself.
George had two clipboards in hand, one for each kid, with all of the lap times and sessions results from that weekend thus far. They went through each session together, recapping strengths and weaknesses and what to focus on during the race. Ivy kept going wide at turn seven, Henrik was losing a bit of time in sector two.
“How do I get more time?” Henrik asked, “I’ve been tightening my racing line.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed. Your time has been improving over the weekend which we love to see,” George replied, “Sector two has a lot of direction changes—stay steady, hug the apexes, and don’t cover extra track unless you’re defending.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Ivy added with a hint of arrogance in her voice, as if she, too, were Henrik’s coach.
“That’s good, Poppet. Help each other out.” George encouraged.
“And I only have to stop going so tight into turn seven,” she declared.
“Right. We don’t want you to let up on the throttle too much so keep yourself just a smidge wider to keep from losing the kart.”
“Yes. Because I’m already very quick otherwise. In all sectors.”
“You are,” George responded haphazardly as he flipped another page on the clipboard. With him momentarily distracted, Ivy shot a smirk at Henrik, half-teasing, half-smug.
The debrief progressed quickly. After two full days at that track, they had already covered quite a bit. It was good weather and the karts were running smoothly and both Ivy and Henrik were starting on the front row; it looked to be a promising day.
George wrapped up the debrief with a final thought, “Watch your teammate and cover your blind spots. There are a lot of tight corners at this track as we’ve discussed so be extra aware of other drivers around you. And have fun, right?”
Ivy hopped up from her chair, already moving to grab her helmet with a chipper, “You’re always right, Daddy!”
Henrik, on the other hand, rose from his seat with a polite and simple, “Thank you.”
George gave him a quick shoulder pat as he drifted past.
Josefine reached out to Ivy, “Ivy, did you want me to do your braids for you?”
Ivy answered without even a second glance, as if she wasn’t even there, “No, thank you.”
And then she was yanking on her helmet and rushing past her after George. Josefine’s eyes trailed her for a moment, a heavy feeling in her chest settling. It felt as if all the work she had put into trying to bridge that gap to Ivy, to get in her good books, was all being undone.
Once they were called to the grid, the team started to head down to the starting line together, towing karts and equipment. The kids walked ahead with their mechanics while George and Josefine fell into step together just behind.
“We haven’t had a proper moment to talk, really,” he said casually, hands tucked in his pockets.
“No, seems not,” Josefine replied.
“How are you doing?”
“I am…alright. Everything still feels…unsettled.”
George stole a glance at her for only a second before looking back ahead towards the kids, “Really? I thought things were looking up. Ivy’s been in surprisingly good spirits this weekend.”
Josefine knew it wasn’t the time or place to get into it so she just pulled a tight-lipped smile and let him get pulled away by his daughter calling him over with haughty demand. So Josefine turned her attention to her son who was already in his kart and staring across the track to the viewing area where most of the parents were already gathered and awaiting the race start. When she approached, he tore his gaze from the crowd up to her instead, her body shielding the sun from his eyes.
She crouched in front of him so he could hear her through the noise of the starting grid, “All set?”
Henrik nodded, holding out a hand so she could help him tug his gloves on properly.
“Head down, shut out any noise, and just have fun, right?” she said earnestly, staring into his sweet eyes through the open visor.
“And don’t take all the track in sector two.”
Josefine smiled softly and gently tapped the side of his helmet three times before offering out her fist. Henrik bumped his against hers.
“Good luck, my boy.”
“Takk, Mamma.”
Joining the other parents in the spectator area, Josefine watched George give his drivers final words of encouragement before heading off the grid for the race. While waiting for him, Josefine watched Henrik glance at Ivy, who was just half a kart length ahead in P1. She didn’t look back. Instead, she adjusted in her seat, flexed her hands on the wheel, and tapped the throttle to edge forward, angling her kart toward Henrik’s in a snide attempt to intimidate him. Henrik snapped his visor shut.
George appeared beside her and joined her at the fence, “A 1-2 finish would be ideal for us this weekend. Heaps of points.”
“Mm,” Josefine agreed, “Especially for Ivy after last weekend’s troubles.”
“Would certainly even their playing field a bit more, that’s true.”
As George observed the start of the formation lap, Josefine felt like she was being watched. She stole a glance to her right where a trio of other parents were staring at them. When she caught them, they just smiled and looked away. Josefine turned back to the track and shifted her weight, leaning her forearms onto the railing with a sigh.
The revs of the karts echoed louder through the summer air as the first lap of the race began and the kids took off at full speed down the main straight. Ivy and Henrik were neck and neck, battling closely but fairly for the first few laps. It was enough to cause George and Josefine to react out loud with every close call, every overtake attempt or brave defence. One time, Henrik even managed to get past her but Ivy scooped the place right back from him into the next turn.
It almost felt like there were no other kids on track with how intensely Ivy and Henrik were battling right at the front. Almost nothing else was worth watching. The time was counting down, laps going by one by one. Ivy was holding her own but Henrik hadn’t let her out of his striking distance.
By lap ten, they had crossed into sector two neck and neck, almost side by side for the first turn before they approached turn seven. Henrik stayed tight to the racing line, managing to hold the inside while Ivy went a little too wide. Both were heavy on the throttle, refusing to break first, stubborn and competitive and not backing down. From the distance the stands were at, not much could be seen, and both George and Josefine rose onto their toes as if to get a clearer view.
Except the next thing they knew, somehow, the karts collided and both went spinning out onto the grass and hit the barrier at impressive speeds. Josefine gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. Beside her, George had his hands at the back of his neck in a mix of exasperation and concern, watching carefully as all of the other drivers zipped right past them. On the timing tower displayed beside the start-finish line, RUS and NES dropped to the very bottom.
Henrik was desperately trying to will his kart out of the grass, the wheels spinning but not gripping enough. Ivy, on the other hand, had already given up, pushing herself out of her kart and giving it a frustrated kick before plopping herself onto the barrier to wait for the marshals.
“Fucking hell,” George muttered, already turning to head towards parc ferme where the marshals would bring them.
Josefine followed closely after him, ignoring the whispers of the other parents as they passed by.
Their priority, first and foremost, was to make sure their children were okay. Their karts could be dealt with later. The moment the marshals brought Ivy and Henrik safely off the track, their parents rushed to their sides.
Josefine took Henrik’s helmet in her hands and leaned down, peering into his open visor, asking hurriedly, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, Mamma,” Henrik grumbled and pushed her hands away to head back towards their tent.
Only a step away, at the same time, George was checking on Ivy as she yanked off her gloves and helmet, “You alright, Poppet?”
“No! I’m not!” Ivy shoved her helmet at him and stormed past him, right towards Henrik. She was approaching from behind him and shoved his shoulder, making him stumble, “What was that?! Idiot! You took me out!”
Henrik didn’t stop walking as he yanked off his own helmet. He didn’t even turn to look at her, calling over his shoulder as he continued his brisk walk back to the tent, “You took us out. You went wide again and I was overtaking on the inside.”
Josefine and George hurried after them, already anticipating damage control that would come with the drop of adrenaline and a tough to swallow race. A DNF for both of them—brutal for their standings this season.
Ivy broke into a bit of a run to get herself beside Henrik so she could shout right at him, “You moved under braking! I was so far in front of you…did you not use your eyes?”
Henrik stopped abruptly and turned to face her, his expression uncharacteristically angry—cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. Josefine had never seen as angry as that. Then he was pointing a finger at Ivy and snapping right back, “No, you moved under braking trying to defend too much! You cut right into me!”
She threw her hands out, “I did not! I was ahead at the apex! It was mine.”
“Whatever,” Henrik snapped, turning away and heading for the tent.
George called out from a few steps behind them, “Enough, both of you! It’s racing—incidents happen. We’ll go over it later, properly. Right now, I need you to cool off.”
But his coaching demands fell on deaf ears. Henrik had just reached the tent when Ivy jumped in again:
“You just can’t stand seeing me beat you. You’re so selfish now, ever since Daddy felt bad for you and gave you all this.”
Henrik whipped around to face her in utter disbelief beyond his years, “Since he felt bad for me?”
“Yeah!”
Josefine and George caught up to them and right away tried to get some space between them. Josefine reached Henrik first, a firm hand to his chest to stop him from stepping forward, while George caught Ivy by the arm and pulled her back to his side. Ivy, still burning with adrenaline, tried to yank her arm free. Although Henrik stayed rooted in place, his expression tight with barely restrained anger, a storm of emotion on his young face.
“Well, you—” Henrik stopped, breath catching as he forced himself to swallow the rest. As if he caught himself from saying something he might regret.
But Ivy wasn’t done. She threw in one more punch, her voice shrill and desperate to hurt, “You wouldn’t even be here winning races if it wasn’t for my dad’s money!”
And then Henrik snapped. Meeting her intensity, he shouted back, “It’s not like he’s even your real dad!”
The second those words left Henrik’s mouth, it was as if an ice-cold bucket of water had been dumped over Josefine. Everything slowed.
Henrik’s hand pressed to his mouth as if he were taken aback by the words he had just uttered. Ivy’s expression melted from its angry scowl into pure shock and confusion. Instantly, she turned to George, who was just a step behind them, as if searching for confirmation. He, too, was frozen in place, stricken in shock, unable to formulate a reply.
His hesitation told her everything.
Ivy’s face flickered and she let out the tiniest huff as if choking back tears before she ran off towards the parking lot.
Then George turned from where he had watched his daughter run, and looked at Josefine. The look on his face nearly brought her to her knees. It was nothing but hurt. A solemn, disbelieving, expression of pain settled heavy across his features, dulling the blue of his eyes. He didn’t utter a single word, but the single look said more than enough.
He only looked at her for a second, but it felt like an agonizing lifetime. Forcing her to face the horrifying reality that they now stood in, the position she had put him in. Then George turned and stalked after Ivy.
♡ Enjoying my content? Support my writing here :)
♡ None of the original writing on this blog may be reproduced, reposted, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
↳ A/N After the previous chapter's "conversation", let's see how the weekend goes...
↳ Series Summary: As a single mother, Josefine is used to doing everything on her own. Leaving everything behind to chase her son's karting dreams in England, she dedicated herself wholeheartedly to pushing him through the ranks, no matter the cost...even if it takes everything from her in the process. She knows that nothing is guaranteed and trust isn't easily won, and yet she comes to learn that the biggest lessons may not be found on the track but, rather, in the form of a retired Formula 1 driver and his daughter.
↳ Pairings: SingleDad!KartingCoach!George Russell x Single Mom!OC
↳ Chapter Word Count: 3586
In all honesty, the karting track was the last place Josefine really wanted to be that weekend, not with everything waiting for her there. It was a bit of a drive up to Northampton in the heat of the summer and bumper to bumper Friday traffic on the M1. The radio played quietly while Henrik rested his head against the passenger side window and stared out at the passing scenery for most of the drive. Josefine had a million things she wanted to say to him, to talk about, but none, she knew, would help if all he wanted to do was sit in silence.
She hoped, at least, that a busy race weekend would allow for a bit of a distraction from the turmoil that she had been feeling all week. Being forced back into close quarters with George and Ivy, buffered only by mechanics and other parents, all of them pretending things were normal. Like George had said, the weekend would be used to scope out if they needed to do anymore damage control for the kids. Hopefully, all would be well. She hoped he was right; that the kids were fine and that she was the problem for thinking otherwise.
The track was already bustling with parents and kids and crew alike under the summer sun. The moment Josefine parked and stepped out of the van, the air was alive with the familiar smells and sounds of a race weekend through the countryside breeze.
They had so much as barely unloaded their van before she and Henrik were approached by another mum in the parking lot. Henrik was holding onto his kart on the dolly, his backpack on and helmet bag in hand, standing close beside his mother as they were interrupted.
“Good morning!” the mum beamed, sunhat on, Kindle in hand—as if this weekend were for relaxing, not coaching, “How’s the two of you today?”
“It was nice to see you on the weekend for Ivy’s birthday. Lovely little party.”
There was nothing Josefine hated as much as small talk with a stranger but she humoured her politely, “George really went above and beyond.”
“He did. He is such a good dad.” the mum gushed. And then she was looking right at Henrik with that everpresent smile, “And so good of him to take Henrik under his wing like this. Not everyone would be so…generous.”
Josefine was quick to press back, “Henrik earned his place. George saw the talent in him.”
“Yes,” she looked back at Josefine, still with that smile that any adult could so easily read through the lines of, “I’m sure he saw quite a lot.”
At the woman’s subtle up-and-down glance, Josefine had had enough. She set a hand on Henrik’s back to usher him onwards and muttered to the lady with a curt, “Excuse us.”
Henrik stole another glance at the lady over his shoulder as they walked off.
The familiar purple and white tent was already set up in the pit area amongst dozens of others and, inside, George and Ivy and the mechanics were already hard at work. Right away, Henrik’s team of mechanics helped him get his kart set up to take a look at and polite ‘good mornings’ were shared amongst the team.
“How’re you feeling about this weekend, Henrik?” George asked lightheartedly as the boy set his backpack down on the table.
“Good,” was his simple answer.
“It should be sunny all weekend which is a great help.”
Josefine set their last two bags down on the table too and started to unpack their necessities. It wasn’t lost on her the way Ivy was standing so close at George’s side that you might have mistaken her for his shadow. She hadn’t uttered a word since they arrived but she was certainly watching, observing.
Even as the practice day progressed, Ivy followed in George’s footsteps like she was a security guard, refusing to let him out of arm’s reach for even a second. He didn’t seem to mind—or notice—as she had a way of managing to stay out of his way enough that she wasn’t a bother. She had perfected the art of predicting his next move. Josefine was almost impressed if it wasn’t a little concerning. She wished she could turn off her psychotherapist mind. It was hard when she knew it wasn’t her place to speak on it, and yet it also partially affected her and her son at the same time.
George would be leaning over Henrik’s kart to adjust something and Ivy would be right beside him, peering into it too, already with a wrench in hand to pass over before he could even ask. Henrik—a half step behind them—would only receive a proud smirk from Ivy when she did such things.
Josefine didn’t need to be directly involved to notice. As an outsider, watching from her spot at the table, she was privy to plenty. How George went about his usual routine despite Ivy’s closeness, how she was plastering on obedient smiles and sweet words to her father, how Henrik was on the receiving end of her smug glances when George’s back was turned. Even when Henrik tried to engage with Ivy to ask her a question or try to be friendly, she would simply turn her back to him like he wasn’t even there.
Through Friday and Saturday, between practice sessions and Heats and snack breaks, it was the same routine. Josefine could see that from George’s Ivy-biased perspective, she looked well-behaved and fine. But it was the glances between the lines—the small actions when his back was turned—that spoke far more about her internalized thoughts than anything he could see.
As they reviewed the results as a team on Saturday afternoon to prepare for Sunday, Ivy was taking her notes in her old notebook. With all the pages filled, she ended up having to cram her handwriting into the margins, desperate to keep using this notebook. While George spoke to them, Henrik was paying more attention to the way she was now writing away on the inside cover of her book as if to prove a point.
While George was momentarily pulled away by one of the mechanics, Henrik leaned over to Ivy “If you need a new notebook—”
“I don’t,” she said simply, matter-of-factly, without looking at him, “I like this one.”
“But it’s full.”
He was met with no response. He slumped back in his chair.
Through their end-of-day review, Ivy was the picture of politeness under the eye of her father. She didn’t interrupt or argue, even when given feedback or when she had an alternative opinion, keeping herself perfectly composed.
It was enough to earn her a proud praise from her father during packdown that both Josefine and Henrik picked up on. A small squeeze of her shoulder and a kiss to her head and a smile, “See? This is what I like to see—good attitude this weekend.”
By Sunday, it was the same routine. Midday, Henrik was sitting at the table in the tent, chin in hand, lunch untouched on the table beside him, while George and Ivy were touching base with her mechanics across the tent. Josefine slid into the folding chair across from him and he didn’t even glance up.
“My boy…” she said softly, reaching out to brush his shaggy blonde fringe out of his face, “What is the matter?”
Henrik raised his eyes to meet hers from across the table and he just shrugged.
“You have not been yourself all weekend.”
He deflected casually, “I’m driving good.”
“Yes, you are. But off the track, you are acting different. Upset.”
Henrik turned his eyes back to his untouched lunch with a mumbled, “I’m fine.”
“You say that, but I know there is something on your heart,” Josefine whispered, just for them, “You can talk to me.”
Henrik sighed and dropped his hand from his face to pick up his fork instead and he nudged some of his food around his plate, “It’s just…”
Josefine held her breath, not wanting to rush him, or to risk spooking him like a frightened animal. Patience was always a virtue.
Except only a second later, he shrugged again, relenting with a mumbled, “It’s nothing.”
“Henrik…” Josefine started with a concerned sigh.
Just then, from across the tent, George called out, “Henrik! Ready for debrief?”
Without another word or glance to his mother, Henrik grabbed his notebook, and trudged across the tent to join George and Ivy. Josefine trailed after him, always part of the debriefs to follow Henrik’s progress, and pulled up a chair to their little group. When she did, Ivy scooted her chair a careful inch closer to George’s side, just enough to assert herself.
George had two clipboards in hand, one for each kid, with all of the lap times and sessions results from that weekend thus far. They went through each session together, recapping strengths and weaknesses and what to focus on during the race. Ivy kept going wide at turn seven, Henrik was losing a bit of time in sector two.
“How do I get more time?” Henrik asked, “I’ve been tightening my racing line.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed. Your time has been improving over the weekend which we love to see,” George replied, “Sector two has a lot of direction changes—stay steady, hug the apexes, and don’t cover extra track unless you’re defending.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Ivy added with a hint of arrogance in her voice, as if she, too, were Henrik’s coach.
“That’s good, Poppet. Help each other out.” George encouraged.
“And I only have to stop going so tight into turn seven,” she declared.
“Right. We don’t want you to let up on the throttle too much so keep yourself just a smidge wider to keep from losing the kart.”
“Yes. Because I’m already very quick otherwise. In all sectors.”
“You are,” George responded haphazardly as he flipped another page on the clipboard. With him momentarily distracted, Ivy shot a smirk at Henrik, half-teasing, half-smug.
The debrief progressed quickly. After two full days at that track, they had already covered quite a bit. It was good weather and the karts were running smoothly and both Ivy and Henrik were starting on the front row; it looked to be a promising day.
George wrapped up the debrief with a final thought, “Watch your teammate and cover your blind spots. There are a lot of tight corners at this track as we’ve discussed so be extra aware of other drivers around you. And have fun, right?”
Ivy hopped up from her chair, already moving to grab her helmet with a chipper, “You’re always right, Daddy!”
Henrik, on the other hand, rose from his seat with a polite and simple, “Thank you.”
George gave him a quick shoulder pat as he drifted past.
Josefine reached out to Ivy, “Ivy, did you want me to do your braids for you?”
Ivy answered without even a second glance, as if she wasn’t even there, “No, thank you.”
And then she was yanking on her helmet and rushing past her after George. Josefine’s eyes trailed her for a moment, a heavy feeling in her chest settling. It felt as if all the work she had put into trying to bridge that gap to Ivy, to get in her good books, was all being undone.
Once they were called to the grid, the team started to head down to the starting line together, towing karts and equipment. The kids walked ahead with their mechanics while George and Josefine fell into step together just behind.
“We haven’t had a proper moment to talk, really,” he said casually, hands tucked in his pockets.
“No, seems not,” Josefine replied.
“How are you doing?”
“I am…alright. Everything still feels…unsettled.”
George stole a glance at her for only a second before looking back ahead towards the kids, “Really? I thought things were looking up. Ivy’s been in surprisingly good spirits this weekend.”
Josefine knew it wasn’t the time or place to get into it so she just pulled a tight-lipped smile and let him get pulled away by his daughter calling him over with haughty demand. So Josefine turned her attention to her son who was already in his kart and staring across the track to the viewing area where most of the parents were already gathered and awaiting the race start. When she approached, he tore his gaze from the crowd up to her instead, her body shielding the sun from his eyes.
She crouched in front of him so he could hear her through the noise of the starting grid, “All set?”
Henrik nodded, holding out a hand so she could help him tug his gloves on properly.
“Head down, shut out any noise, and just have fun, right?” she said earnestly, staring into his sweet eyes through the open visor.
“And don’t take all the track in sector two.”
Josefine smiled softly and gently tapped the side of his helmet three times before offering out her fist. Henrik bumped his against hers.
“Good luck, my boy.”
“Takk, Mamma.”
Joining the other parents in the spectator area, Josefine watched George give his drivers final words of encouragement before heading off the grid for the race. While waiting for him, Josefine watched Henrik glance at Ivy, who was just half a kart length ahead in P1. She didn’t look back. Instead, she adjusted in her seat, flexed her hands on the wheel, and tapped the throttle to edge forward, angling her kart toward Henrik’s in a snide attempt to intimidate him. Henrik snapped his visor shut.
George appeared beside her and joined her at the fence, “A 1-2 finish would be ideal for us this weekend. Heaps of points.”
“Mm,” Josefine agreed, “Especially for Ivy after last weekend’s troubles.”
“Would certainly even their playing field a bit more, that’s true.”
As George observed the start of the formation lap, Josefine felt like she was being watched. She stole a glance to her right where a trio of other parents were staring at them. When she caught them, they just smiled and looked away. Josefine turned back to the track and shifted her weight, leaning her forearms onto the railing with a sigh.
The revs of the karts echoed louder through the summer air as the first lap of the race began and the kids took off at full speed down the main straight. Ivy and Henrik were neck and neck, battling closely but fairly for the first few laps. It was enough to cause George and Josefine to react out loud with every close call, every overtake attempt or brave defence. One time, Henrik even managed to get past her but Ivy scooped the place right back from him into the next turn.
It almost felt like there were no other kids on track with how intensely Ivy and Henrik were battling right at the front. Almost nothing else was worth watching. The time was counting down, laps going by one by one. Ivy was holding her own but Henrik hadn’t let her out of his striking distance.
By lap ten, they had crossed into sector two neck and neck, almost side by side for the first turn before they approached turn seven. Henrik stayed tight to the racing line, managing to hold the inside while Ivy went a little too wide. Both were heavy on the throttle, refusing to break first, stubborn and competitive and not backing down. From the distance the stands were at, not much could be seen, and both George and Josefine rose onto their toes as if to get a clearer view.
Except the next thing they knew, somehow, the karts collided and both went spinning out onto the grass and hit the barrier at impressive speeds. Josefine gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. Beside her, George had his hands at the back of his neck in a mix of exasperation and concern, watching carefully as all of the other drivers zipped right past them. On the timing tower displayed beside the start-finish line, RUS and NES dropped to the very bottom.
Henrik was desperately trying to will his kart out of the grass, the wheels spinning but not gripping enough. Ivy, on the other hand, had already given up, pushing herself out of her kart and giving it a frustrated kick before plopping herself onto the barrier to wait for the marshals.
“Fucking hell,” George muttered, already turning to head towards parc ferme where the marshals would bring them.
Josefine followed closely after him, ignoring the whispers of the other parents as they passed by.
Their priority, first and foremost, was to make sure their children were okay. Their karts could be dealt with later. The moment the marshals brought Ivy and Henrik safely off the track, their parents rushed to their sides.
Josefine took Henrik’s helmet in her hands and leaned down, peering into his open visor, asking hurriedly, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, Mamma,” Henrik grumbled and pushed her hands away to head back towards their tent.
Only a step away, at the same time, George was checking on Ivy as she yanked off her gloves and helmet, “You alright, Poppet?”
“No! I’m not!” Ivy shoved her helmet at him and stormed past him, right towards Henrik. She was approaching from behind him and shoved his shoulder, making him stumble, “What was that?! Idiot! You took me out!”
Henrik didn’t stop walking as he yanked off his own helmet. He didn’t even turn to look at her, calling over his shoulder as he continued his brisk walk back to the tent, “You took us out. You went wide again and I was overtaking on the inside.”
Josefine and George hurried after them, already anticipating damage control that would come with the drop of adrenaline and a tough to swallow race. A DNF for both of them—brutal for their standings this season.
Ivy broke into a bit of a run to get herself beside Henrik so she could shout right at him, “You moved under braking! I was so far in front of you…did you not use your eyes?”
Henrik stopped abruptly and turned to face her, his expression uncharacteristically angry—cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. Josefine had never seen as angry as that. Then he was pointing a finger at Ivy and snapping right back, “No, you moved under braking trying to defend too much! You cut right into me!”
She threw her hands out, “I did not! I was ahead at the apex! It was mine.”
“Whatever,” Henrik snapped, turning away and heading for the tent.
George called out from a few steps behind them, “Enough, both of you! It’s racing—incidents happen. We’ll go over it later, properly. Right now, I need you to cool off.”
But his coaching demands fell on deaf ears. Henrik had just reached the tent when Ivy jumped in again:
“You just can’t stand seeing me beat you. You’re so selfish now, ever since Daddy felt bad for you and gave you all this.”
Henrik whipped around to face her in utter disbelief beyond his years, “Since he felt bad for me?”
“Yeah!”
Josefine and George caught up to them and right away tried to get some space between them. Josefine reached Henrik first, a firm hand to his chest to stop him from stepping forward, while George caught Ivy by the arm and pulled her back to his side. Ivy, still burning with adrenaline, tried to yank her arm free. Although Henrik stayed rooted in place, his expression tight with barely restrained anger, a storm of emotion on his young face.
“Well, you—” Henrik stopped, breath catching as he forced himself to swallow the rest. As if he caught himself from saying something he might regret.
But Ivy wasn’t done. She threw in one more punch, her voice shrill and desperate to hurt, “You wouldn’t even be here winning races if it wasn’t for my dad’s money!”
And then Henrik snapped. Meeting her intensity, he shouted back, “It’s not like he’s even your real dad!”
The second those words left Henrik’s mouth, it was as if an ice-cold bucket of water had been dumped over Josefine. Everything slowed.
Henrik’s hand pressed to his mouth as if he were taken aback by the words he had just uttered. Ivy’s expression melted from its angry scowl into pure shock and confusion. Instantly, she turned to George, who was just a step behind them, as if searching for confirmation. He, too, was frozen in place, stricken in shock, unable to formulate a reply.
His hesitation told her everything.
Ivy’s face flickered and she let out the tiniest huff as if choking back tears before she ran off towards the parking lot.
Then George turned from where he had watched his daughter run, and looked at Josefine. The look on his face nearly brought her to her knees. It was nothing but hurt. A solemn, disbelieving, expression of pain settled heavy across his features, dulling the blue of his eyes. He didn’t utter a single word, but the single look said more than enough.
He only looked at her for a second, but it felt like an agonizing lifetime. Forcing her to face the horrifying reality that they now stood in, the position she had put him in. Then George turned and stalked after Ivy.
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Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result. ...Surprise, I accidentally made Part 5 14k long, so I split it.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Laurent had expected many things from the race weekend.
Weather uncertainty. Strategy headaches. Media questions about Red Bull’s uneven season.
Max Verstappen being blunt in ways that made the PR team age in real time.
He had not expected Toto Wolff to appear at the entrance of Red Bull hospitality looking like a man about to conduct either a negotiation or a funeral.
Laurent saw him before anyone announced him.
Toto stood just beyond the glass doors, tall, immaculate, expression controlled in a way that immediately suggested nothing about him was controlled at all.
That was never a good sign.
Laurent set down his coffee.
“Is Toto Wolff here?” one of the hospitality staff asked, mildly alarmed.
Laurent sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “Apparently.”
He walked over himself.
“Toto,” he greeted, cautious but polite. “This is unexpected.”
Toto’s mouth tightened. “Laurent. Do you have a moment?”
That was worse.
In Formula One, do you have a moment could mean anything from we need to discuss engine regulations to one of your mechanics has accidentally insulted the FIA president.
Laurent gestured toward a quieter corner of the hospitality unit.
“For you? Of course.”
He did not mean that as warmly as it sounded.
They sat.
Toto did not take the coffee offered to him.
Extremely bad sign.
Laurent folded his hands.
“What can I do for you?”
Toto exhaled once through his nose, as though he had rehearsed this conversation and disliked every version of it.
“I need to speak to you about one of your engineers.”
Laurent’s mind immediately sharpened.
“One of my engineers?”
“Yes.”
“Has something happened?”
“No,” Toto said quickly. Then, less convincingly, “Not exactly.”
Laurent stared at him.
There were several possibilities. None of them good.
Mercedes might be trying to poach someone.
Mercedes might suspect Red Bull of having poached someone.
There might be a conflict of interest, a compliance issue, some obscure FIA technical disaster waiting to unfold across three legal departments and an emergency Teams call.
Or—
Laurent looked at Toto again.
The rigid posture. The refusal of coffee. The pale, strained line around his mouth. The way he looked less like a team principal and more like a man trying to keep a private catastrophe from becoming visible.
Oh no.
No.
Absolutely not.
Please, God, let it be poaching.
“Who?” he asked.
Toto’s jaw flexed.
“Charlotte Fischer.”
Laurent blinked.
Then blinked again.
Charlotte Fischer.
Quiet. Brilliant. Sim department. Max-adjacent in ways Laurent was pretending not to monitor too closely.
That Charlotte Fischer.
Laurent leaned back slightly.
“I see,” he said, though he absolutely did not.
Toto’s expression sharpened. “You know her.”
“She works for me,” Laurent said carefully. “So yes.”
“I need to know if she is alright.”
Laurent stared.
That was not poaching.
That was worse.
“Alright,” Laurent repeated.
“Yes.”
“As in… professionally?”
Toto hesitated.
Laurent’s internal alarms began screaming.
“As in generally,” Toto said.
Generally.
Toto Wolff had walked into Red Bull hospitality on a race weekend to ask if one of Laurent’s engineers was generally alright.
A young female engineer.
A private, pretty, highly intelligent young female engineer whom Toto had no professional reason to ask about.
Laurent’s brain, despite his best efforts, immediately presented him with the worst possible explanation.
No.
No, no, no.
He glanced around the hospitality unit, suddenly aware of every camera, every guest, every person with a phone, every Red Bull employee who might decide to look over at exactly the wrong moment.
If Toto Wolff was having an affair with Charlotte Fischer—
Laurent nearly choked on the thought.
If Toto Wolff was cheating on Susie Wolff with Laurent’s simulator engineer, in Red Bull’s workplace, during a season already held together with duct tape and Max Verstappen’s rage, Laurent was going to walk into the paddock, lie face-down on the asphalt, and allow the pit lane traffic to take him out.
“Toto,” he said very slowly, “why are you asking me if Charlotte Fischer is alright?”
Toto looked down at his hands.
That made everything worse.
So much worse.
Laurent’s soul briefly left his body, assessed the situation, and refused to come back.
He cleared his throat.
“Forgive me,” he said, with the brittle courtesy of a man standing at the edge of scandalous hell, “but if this is a personal matter between you and Charlotte, I am not sure I am the appropriate person to involve.”
Toto looked up.
Blank.
Then confused.
“What?”
Laurent held his gaze, because he was French, experienced, and unfortunately responsible for this hospitality unit.
“If you are… personally acquainted,” he said.
Toto stared.
The silence stretched.
Laurent wanted to evaporate.
Then Toto’s expression changed in such a violent sequence of offence, realisation, and outright disgust that Laurent almost felt sorry for him.
“Oh my God,” Toto said.
Laurent lifted both hands slightly. “I am simply clarifying.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“No,” Toto repeated, sharper now. “Not like that.”
“Excellent,” Laurent said, far too quickly.
Toto stared at him.
Laurent coughed.
“I mean, of course. Thank you for clarifying.”
“For God’s sake, Laurent.”
“You came to Red Bull hospitality asking about my young engineer with the emotional atmosphere of a man about to throw himself into the harbour,” Laurent said, losing patience for exactly three seconds. “You must admit, from my position, there were several alarming interpretations.”
Toto dragged a hand down his face. “She is my daughter.”
The words landed on the table between them with the force of a dropped wheel gun.
Laurent stopped breathing for half a second.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Toto looked physically pained.
“Charlotte is my daughter.”
Laurent stared at him.
Charlotte Fischer.
Toto Wolff’s daughter.
Charlotte Fischer, who had worked at Red Bull since graduating.
Who had never once hinted at knowing Toto personally, let alone being related to him.
Who moved through the sim department like someone who had chosen invisibility as both strategy and survival. Who was quiet, exacting, frighteningly good, and currently the subject of a building-wide emotional investment because Max Verstappen had apparently discovered the concept of a crush and decided to experience it like a mechanical failure.
Laurent sat back slowly.
“Well,” he said after a moment. “That is… considerably better than what I was afraid of.”
Toto’s head lifted.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Toto narrowed his eyes. “What were you afraid of?”
Laurent looked away.
A fatal mistake.
Toto’s expression sharpened.
“Laurent.”
“No.”
“What did you think?”
“I am not answering that.”
“You thought I was poaching her.”
Laurent said nothing.
Toto’s face changed.
“You did not think I was poaching her.”
“I wished you were poaching her,” Laurent said under his breath.
Toto froze.
Then his eyes widened.
“Oh my God.”
“Yes,” Laurent said. “That.”
“With Charlotte?”
“You refused coffee and asked if she was generally alright!”
“She is my daughter!”
“I know that now!”
“I am married to Susie!”
“Which was precisely why I found the alternative so stressful!”
For a moment, they stared at each other across the table, two team principals caught in a silence so absurd that Laurent almost laughed.
Almost.
Then Toto leaned back, appalled. “You thought I was having an affair with one of your engineers.”
“I thought many things in a very short period of time,” Laurent said. “None of them pleasant.”
Toto looked like he might actually pass away from outrage.
Laurent, despite everything, felt an exhausted flicker of relief.
Daughter was complicated.
Daughter was painful.
Daughter was going to create problems.
But daughter was not Toto Wolff cheats on Susie Wolff with Red Bull simulator engineer, which would have required crisis management, legal review, HR involvement, paddock diplomacy, and possibly a priest.
So, comparatively, excellent.
Toto closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them again, the outrage was gone.
The pain remained.
“She didn’t tell you,” he said.
“No,” Laurent said. “She very much did not.”
There was a pause.
Laurent suddenly understood several things at once.
The name. The lack of politics. The almost aggressive privacy. The way she kept her head down despite being far too good at her job to disappear completely.
And Toto’s face.
That, too.
The guilt was impossible to miss now that Laurent knew where to look.
“I need to know if she’s alright,” Toto said again, quieter this time. “I recently learned some things. About her health. About her life. I—” He stopped. Swallowed. “I haven’t spoken to her in years.”
Laurent’s sympathy arrived reluctantly.
Not because Toto did not deserve compassion.
But because Charlotte deserved caution first.
“She is professionally excellent,” Laurent said carefully. “Valued. Respected. Protected by her department, frankly.”
Toto closed his eyes briefly.
“And personally?”
Laurent gave him a look.
“Toto.”
“I know,” Toto said. “I know I have no right to ask.”
“No,” Laurent agreed. “You really don’t.”
The honesty landed. Toto absorbed it without protest.
“But,” Laurent continued, softer, “from what I can see, she has built a life here. A quiet one. She has friends. People who care about her.”
Toto nodded once, tight and controlled.
“Does Max know?” he asked.
Laurent froze.
Ah.
There it was.
The other grenade.
“Know what?” Laurent asked, because he was not an idiot.
“That she is my daughter.”
Laurent almost laughed.
He truly almost did.
Because the idea of Max Verstappen having all the pieces of this particular puzzle and behaving normally was absurd.
“I don’t believe so,” Laurent said.
Toto looked relieved.
Then suspicious.
Laurent should have stopped there.
Unfortunately, he had never been as good at leaving silence alone as he wanted to be.
“Although,” he added, “Max is… aware of Charlotte.”
Toto’s eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
Laurent looked away for half a second.
A fatal mistake.
“Toto,” Laurent said mildly, “this is not really my place.”
“What does that mean?” Toto repeated, now in full team-principal interrogation mode.
Laurent sighed.
“It means Max asks after her. Spends time in the simulator. Has been seen bringing her things when she was unwell.”
Toto stared.
Laurent watched the information reach him.
First confusion. Then disbelief. Then a kind of paternal horror so intense that Laurent almost felt guilty.
“Max,” Toto said.
“Yes.”
“Max Verstappen.”
“Yes.”
“With Charlotte.”
“I did not say with,” Laurent corrected quickly. “I said aware of.”
Toto looked at him.
Laurent amended, “Very aware.”
Toto leaned back in his chair as if he had just been informed of a regulation change that personally attacked him.
“My daughter,” he said slowly, “works for Red Bull.”
“Yes.”
“And Max Verstappen is interested in her.”
Laurent spread his hands. “That would be the current interpretation back in Milton Keynes.”
Toto’s expression was indescribable.
Laurent, despite himself, felt a flicker of amusement.
This was terrible.
It was also objectively very funny.
“Toto,” he said, “I assure you, Charlotte is not easily influenced by drivers.”
“No,” Toto said faintly. “She wouldn’t be.”
“She is very good,” Laurent said. “Not because of you. Not because of her name. Because she is Charlotte Fischer.”
Toto looked down.
“I know.”
Laurent doubted he did, fully.
But perhaps he was beginning to.
Around them, Red Bull hospitality carried on: espresso machines hissing, staff moving, someone laughing near the entrance, Max’s voice audible somewhere outside as he argued about something with GP.
Toto heard it too.
His shoulders tensed.
Laurent wisely pretended not to notice.
“If you want my advice,” Laurent said, “do not approach her here.”
Toto looked up.
“Why?”
“Because this is her workplace,” Laurent said. “Her safe ground. And because if you ambush her in Red Bull hospitality, half my staff will attempt to murder you with hospitality cutlery.”
Toto stared at him.
Laurent shrugged. “As I said. Protected.”
For the first time since he had sat down, Toto looked less panicked.
More wounded, perhaps.
But also relieved.
“She has people,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” Laurent said. “She does.”
Toto nodded, as if that hurt and helped in equal measure.
Then Max appeared in the doorway.
He stopped when he saw them.
His gaze went from Laurent to Toto, then back again.
“What is this?” Max asked suspiciously.
Toto looked at him.
Laurent watched, fascinated, as several different crises collided behind Toto Wolff’s eyes.
Max frowned. “Why are you here?”
Laurent stood immediately.
“No reason,” he said brightly. “Absolutely no reason that concerns you.”
Max’s suspicion deepened.
Toto also stood, too quickly. “I was just leaving.”
Max’s eyes narrowed further.
Laurent thought, with no small amount of despair, that he could practically see the questions forming.
Then, from somewhere behind Max, Charlotte’s voice cut through the hospitality noise.
“Max? The updated sim notes are in your inbox.”
Max turned instantly.
The change in him was so obvious that Laurent almost winced.
His whole face shifted. Softened. “Yeah,” Max said. “Thanks.”
Charlotte stepped into view, tablet in hand, expression neutral.
Then she saw Toto.
She stopped.
Completely.
The air went cold.
Laurent stopped breathing.
Toto looked like someone had punched through his chest.
“Charlotte,” he said.
Charlotte’s face changed by not changing at all.
A shutter coming down. “Toto,” she replied.
Not Papa.
Toto flinched.
Max looked between them, confusion sharpening into something else.
Laurent thought, with sudden and absolute certainty, that this race weekend had just become unsalvageable.
Charlotte’s gaze moved briefly to Laurent.
Then back to Toto.
“Is there a reason you’re at my workplace?”
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
Toto opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Max stepped half a pace closer to Charlotte without thinking.
Laurent saw Toto notice.
Of course he noticed.
Charlotte noticed too.
Her jaw tightened.
Laurent, who had once believed race strategy was stressful, realised he would rather manage an entire race on mixed tyres in changing rain than stand in this triangle for another ten seconds.
He cleared his throat.
“Perhaps,” he said carefully, “we should all take a breath.”
Charlotte did not look away from Toto. “No,” she said. “I think I’d like an answer.”
And there it was.
Not anger. Not yet.
Just the sound of four years of silence deciding, finally, that someone else was going to explain themselves.
Laurent had spent enough years in Formula One to recognise when a situation had gone beyond strategy.
This was no longer manageable.
This was impact.
Toto Wolff stood in Red Bull hospitality, facing a daughter no one here had known was his, looking like every word in every language he spoke had deserted him at once.
Charlotte stood opposite him with a tablet against her chest like a shield, face smooth, eyes sharp.
And Max—
Max was beside her.
Not touching. Not speaking.
Just there.
Laurent watched Toto notice that too.
Of course he noticed it.
Toto’s gaze flicked once to Max’s position, to the instinctive half-step he had taken toward Charlotte, and something like pain moved across his face before he buried it.
“I came to speak to Laurent,” Toto said finally.
Charlotte’s expression did not change. “About me.”
It was not a question.
Toto swallowed. “Yes.”
Max’s head turned slightly toward Toto.
Laurent could practically feel the temperature in the room drop.
Charlotte’s fingers tightened around the edge of her tablet. “I see,” she said.
That was worse than shouting.
Laurent knew it immediately. Shouting would have been easier. Shouting would have at least given them something to work with.
Charlotte’s calm was surgical.
Toto took one step forward, then stopped himself, as if remembering he had no right to close the distance.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said.
“No,” Charlotte replied. “You really shouldn’t have.”
Toto flinched again.
Max looked at her then, properly. His face had gone still in a way Laurent recognised from race weekends when things got dangerous.
Not angry yet.
Assessing.
Trying to understand where the threat was coming from.
Charlotte saw it. Laurent saw her see it.
For one second, something flickered in her face — regret, maybe, that Max was witnessing this at all.
Then it was gone.
“How did you find me?” she asked Toto.
The question landed heavily.
Toto’s silence answered before he did.
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed.
Laurent had the terrible feeling that he was watching an accident unfold in slow motion.
“Toto,” she said, very quietly. “How did you find me?”
Toto looked away.
Max’s jaw tightened.
Charlotte let out a short breath through her nose. Almost a laugh. Not remotely amused.
“Oh,” she said. “Of course.”
Toto’s head snapped back up. “Charlotte—”
“You hired someone.”
“I was worried.”
“You hired someone,” she repeated.
The words were still calm.
That was the frightening part.
“You had four years,” Charlotte said. “Four years to write a letter. To do literally anything that required you to approach me like a person, and instead you paid someone to investigate me.”
Toto’s face tightened with shame. “I didn’t know if you were alright.”
“You weren’t entitled to know.”
The silence after that was absolute.
Even the hospitality noise seemed to dim around them.
Laurent became suddenly, acutely aware of people nearby pretending not to listen and failing miserably.
He lifted a hand slightly toward one of the hospitality managers, and she understood at once, subtly guiding staff and guests further away. Good. At least one thing could still be controlled.
Toto’s voice was rough when he spoke again. “I found out about the cancer.”
Charlotte went very still.
Max’s face changed.
Not surprise — Laurent realised with a jolt that Max already knew. Not all of it, perhaps, but enough.
Charlotte’s gaze cut to Laurent for one fraction of a second.
Laurent hated himself a little.
“I did not tell him,” he said immediately.
She looked back to Toto.
“No,” she said. “You outsourced that too.”
Toto recoiled as if she had struck him.
“Charlotte,” he said, and his voice broke around her name. “It was the same—”
“Don’t.”
One word.
Flat.
Final.
Toto stopped.
Charlotte’s eyes were very dark and very cold.
“You do not get to make my cancer about your grief.”
Toto’s mouth opened.
Closed.
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “You are standing in my workplace, after hiring someone to violate my privacy, because you found out I had the same cancer that killed your father. You are not here because I called you. You are not here because I asked for help. You are here because now you feel something.”
Max shifted beside her.
Barely.
But enough.
Laurent saw Toto’s eyes flick down again. Saw the exact moment Toto registered that Max knew where to stand without being asked.
The irony was brutal.
Charlotte saw it too.
Her face hardened.
“Don’t look at him like that,” she said.
Toto blinked.
Charlotte’s voice lowered. “This is not about Max.”
Max’s gaze snapped to her.
Toto’s did too.
Laurent, despite the disaster happening in front of him, had one clear, absurd thought: Well. That answers that question.
Toto looked like he’d swallowed glass.
“Max knows?” he asked.
Charlotte’s chin lifted. “Yes.”
The word hit Toto harder than anything else had.
Laurent almost pitied him.
Almost.
Because there it was, laid bare: Max Verstappen, Red Bull’s impossible driver, knew something Toto Wolff had been denied. Not by accident. By choice.
Toto’s voice dropped. “You told him.”
Charlotte held his gaze.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
It was the wrong question.
Everyone in the immediate vicinity knew it the second he said it.
Max’s eyes flashed.
Laurent closed his eyes briefly.
Charlotte did not move. “Because he showed up,” she said.
Toto looked destroyed.
Charlotte continued, each word precise.
“He didn’t ask for access. He didn’t demand an explanation. He didn’t tell me what I should have done. He brought crackers and electrolyte drinks and then sat quietly in my living room because I had a migraine.”
Max looked down, suddenly embarrassed.
Toto looked at him.
This time, Charlotte did not tell him not to.
The silence shifted.
Something hot and ugly moved through Toto’s face — not anger, not jealousy, though both hovered close. It was recognition.
Recognition of a standard he had failed.
“He knew how to do that after knowing me for weeks,” Charlotte said. “You couldn’t manage it after raising me.”
No one breathed.
Laurent felt the words in his own chest.
Toto did not defend himself.
That, perhaps, was the first correct thing he had done since entering the hospitality unit.
Charlotte looked tired suddenly.
Not weak.
Just exhausted in a way that made her seem younger for half a second. Not the formidable engineer. Not the woman who had built an entire identity under her mother’s name.
Just someone who had been carrying too much for too long.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.
Toto’s answer came too quickly, too raw. “I want to apologise.”
Charlotte’s expression twisted faintly.
“You want forgiveness.”
“No,” Toto said immediately. Then, quieter, “No. I don’t think I have the right to ask for that.”
That stopped her.
Only slightly.
But Laurent saw it.
Max did too.
Toto seemed to gather himself around the small opening.
“I should not have hired someone,” he said. “I know that. Susie told me it was wrong. I knew it was wrong. I did it anyway because I was afraid, and because I am very good at control and very bad at…” He stopped, a humourless breath escaping him. “Everything else, apparently.”
Charlotte said nothing.
Toto’s hands curled loosely at his sides.
“I failed you,” he said. “Before this. Long before this. I let Stephanie hurt you because it was easier to keep peace than to protect you. I told myself you were strong. That you were fine. That you would tell me if you needed me.”
His voice cracked. “You were a child.”
Charlotte’s face flickered.
Just once.
Toto saw it and looked like it hurt him.
“You were a child,” he repeated. “And I made you responsible for surviving my cowardice.”
Laurent glanced away.
Not because he wanted to miss it.
Because suddenly it felt too intimate to witness.
Max did not look away. His attention stayed on Charlotte, not Toto, as if he were measuring her breathing, the angle of her shoulders, the tight grip she had on the tablet.
Charlotte did not cry.
Laurent suspected that was worse.
“You should have said that four years ago,” she said.
“Yes,” Toto said.
“Or ten.”
“Yes.”
“Or when I was thirteen and Stephanie told me my mother would be embarrassed by me.”
Toto went white.
Max’s face went blank in a way that made Laurent deeply grateful they were in public.
Charlotte smiled faintly, without humour. “You didn’t know that one, did you.”
Toto shook his head once.
“No,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said. “You never asked.”
Toto looked like the sentence had gone through him cleanly.
Charlotte took one breath.
Then another.
“I am not doing this here.”
“No,” Laurent said immediately, grateful for something practical to offer. “Of course not.”
Charlotte glanced at him.
He straightened.
“There is a quiet room upstairs,” Laurent said. “No cameras. No guests. Or I can have someone take you back to the garage. Whatever you prefer.”
Toto looked at her with terrible hope.
Charlotte noticed.
Her eyes hardened again.
“I’m not going upstairs with you,” she told him.
The hope died.
Max stepped closer to Charlotte now, not hiding it.
“Do you want to go?” he asked quietly.
Charlotte looked at him.
Something passed between them that Laurent had no business witnessing.
Trust.
Not soft. Not easy.
But real.
“Yes,” she said.
Max nodded once. “Okay.”
Toto’s face did something complicated.
He did not protest.
Another correct thing.
Charlotte turned back to him. “If you want to apologise,” she said, “write a letter.”
Toto swallowed. “A letter.”
“Yes. Not a call. Not a visit. Not another investigator. A letter.” Her voice steadied. “I will decide if I read it.”
Toto nodded, fast, desperate but contained. “Yes. Of course.”
“And do not come to Red Bull again for me.”
“I won’t.”
“And if you think you need to speak to my employer about me, you don’t.”
Toto nodded again.
Charlotte looked at him for one last, long second.
Then she said, “Goodbye, Toto.”
Not Papa.
Still not Papa.
Maybe never again.
She turned and walked away.
Max went with her.
He did not put a hand on her back. Did not touch her at all. He simply matched her pace, close enough to be there, far enough to let her leave on her own power.
Laurent watched them go.
Beside him, Toto stood utterly still.
The hospitality unit slowly remembered how to breathe.
After a long moment, Toto said, very quietly, “She told him.”
Laurent glanced at him.
Toto was not looking at Max anymore.
He was looking at the place Charlotte had been.
“She told him because he showed up,” Toto said.
Laurent said nothing.
There was nothing useful to say.
Finally, Toto turned toward him, face drawn.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For bringing this here.”
Laurent exhaled.
“Yes,” he said. “You should be.”
Toto nodded, accepting it.
Laurent softened, reluctantly. “But for what it is worth,” he added, “she is not alone here.”
Toto’s eyes closed briefly.
“I saw.”
“No,” Laurent said, firm now. “You saw Max. But it is not only Max. Her department cares about her. Hannah cares about her. GP cares. She has people.”
Toto opened his eyes.
“She has people,” he repeated, like he was trying to believe it.
“She earned them,” Laurent said.
Toto flinched.
Good, Laurent thought. Maybe he should.
Another silence.
Then Toto gave him one curt nod, turned, and walked out of Red Bull hospitality like a man leaving a battlefield he had no right to have entered.
Laurent stood there for several seconds after he was gone.
Then he turned and found GP watching from the far side of the room, expression unreadable.
Of course.
GP had seen everything.
Laurent sighed. “How much did you hear?”
GP took a sip of his drink. “Enough.”
Laurent looked toward the exit Charlotte and Max had taken.
GP followed his gaze.
“Max?” Laurent asked.
GP’s mouth flattened. “He’ll stay with her.”
There was no doubt in his voice.
Laurent nodded.
Race engineer and wingman, apparently.
Then GP looked back at Laurent.
“Did Toto Wolff just find out Max has feelings for his daughter in Red Bull hospitality?”
Laurent closed his eyes. “Yes.”
GP considered that.
Then said, deadpan, “Terrible race strategy from Mercedes.”
Laurent laughed before he could stop himself.
Not because it was funny.
But because it was either that or scream.
***
Charlotte did not remember deciding to leave.
One moment, she was standing in Red Bull hospitality with her father in front of her, Laurent Mekies beside them looking like he would rather be negotiating with the FIA, and Max Verstappen close enough that she could feel the tension rolling off him.
The next, she was outside.
The paddock air hit her face, cool and metallic with distant engines, generators, people moving through a race weekend as if Charlotte’s entire past had not just walked into her workplace and sat down with her team principal.
Her hand was still wrapped around her tablet.
Too tight.
Max walked beside her.
Not touching her. Not asking questions. Not crowding. Just matching her pace as she moved away from the hospitality unit, down a quieter stretch behind the motorhomes, until the noise softened and the world stopped looking quite so public.
Charlotte stopped by a service corridor wall and pressed one hand flat against it.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Again.
Her pulse was too fast. Her fingers were cold. Her body had the humiliating audacity to react as though she was in danger, even though she was not five anymore. Not thirteen. Not standing at the edge of a family dinner while Stephanie smiled like a knife.
Max stopped a few feet away.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then, quietly, almost carefully, he said, “So.”
Charlotte closed her eyes.
There it was.
“Toto Wolff is your father?”
She let out a breath that almost became a laugh.
Of course that would be the first sentence. Of course it would sound absurd when said aloud. Toto Wolff, team principal of Mercedes, the man whose face appeared on screens every other race weekend, the man Max had spent most of his career fighting in one way or another.
Her father.
“Yes,” Charlotte said.
Max blinked once. “Okay.”
Something about the simple, inadequate response made her look at him.
He was watching her with that same focused expression he had in the simulator, as if every answer mattered and he would rather be silent than choose the wrong one.
“Okay?” she repeated.
“I don’t know what else to say yet,” Max admitted. “It is a lot.”
Despite everything, a weak huff of amusement escaped her.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
Charlotte knew she could end it there. She could say she didn’t want to talk about it. Max would accept that, she thought. He had been surprisingly good at accepting the edges of her.
But he had asked.
Not demanded. Not pried.
Asked.
And after Toto had walked into her workplace with answers bought from a stranger, the difference felt enormous.
“My mother was his first great mistake,” Charlotte said.
Max’s brow furrowed. “That’s not—”
“That’s how his first wife saw it,” she corrected, voice flat. “Not how I did.”
His expression darkened.
Charlotte looked down at the tablet in her hands. It was easier than looking at him.
“My mother was Austrian. Caroline Fischer. She was a beauty queen when she was younger, which everyone always mentions first, as if that was the most important thing about her.” Her mouth softened despite herself. “It wasn’t. She was funny. And loud when she laughed. Very warm. The kind of person who made strangers feel as if they had been expected.”
Max stayed quiet.
“She and Toto were never married,” Charlotte continued. “I don’t think they were together very long by the time I was born. I don’t remember the details. I was little. And she never spoke badly of him.”
That part still hurt.
Her mother had never made Charlotte feel like a complication.
Never.
“She died when I was five,” Charlotte said.
Max’s face changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Charlotte nodded once, because there was nothing else to do with condolences that old.
“Cancer,” she said. “Different kind. Fast. I remember hospitals mostly in fragments. Flowers. Bad coffee. Adults speaking softly in the hallway. Her perfume on scarves after she was gone.”
Her fingers tightened around the tablet again.
“Toto took me in after that. Legally. Financially. Practically. On paper, he did everything right.”
Max’s jaw tensed, because he heard it. The shape of everything that came after.
“But?” he asked.
Charlotte smiled faintly, without humour.
“But Stephanie hated me from the beginning.”
The words came out easier than expected.
Maybe because she had said some of them in there. Maybe because they were old enough to be smooth now, worn down by years of carrying them around.
“She hated that I existed,” Charlotte said. “I was proof of another woman. Proof of a life Toto had before her. Proof he had loved someone else enough, or been careless enough, to have me. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” Max said quietly.
Charlotte looked at him.
His face was very still.
“It matters,” he repeated.
She swallowed.
“Well,” she said, softer, “it didn’t matter enough then.”
Max said nothing.
“She was never stupid about it,” Charlotte continued. “Not in ways that left easy evidence. She didn’t have to be. It was rules that only applied to me. Comments about my mother. About how grateful I should be. About how difficult I was. How cold. How unlikable. How I ruined the shape of their family by being in it.”
Max’s hand curled into a fist at his side.
Charlotte saw it.
“Don’t,” she said automatically.
He looked at her.
“Don’t be angry for me. I don’t know what to do with that.”
His fingers slowly relaxed.
“Okay,” he said, though his voice made it clear he was not okay at all.
That, strangely, helped.
Charlotte leaned her shoulder lightly against the wall.
“Rosa learned from her,” she said. “Benedict mostly watched. He was younger. They both were. I don’t know how much blame belongs where. I stopped trying to divide it neatly years ago.”
“And Toto?”
There it was.
The centre of it.
Charlotte looked away.
“Toto provided,” she said. “Schools. Clothes. Doctors. Boarding school when I was older. Cambridge. Trust fund. Everything measurable.”
Max was quiet for a beat.
“But he didn’t protect you.”
Charlotte closed her eyes briefly.
“No.”
The word was small.
It still filled the corridor.
“He saw enough to know,” she said. “He was not oblivious. That would almost have been kinder. He saw the tension. The way I stopped talking at dinner. The way Stephanie’s voice changed when she said my name. The way I learned to leave rooms before I could be asked to. He knew something was wrong.”
She opened her eyes again.
“He chose peace.”
Max looked at her like the sentence had landed somewhere under his ribs.
“Every time?” he asked.
Charlotte nodded.
“Every time.”
A group of mechanics passed at the far end of the corridor, laughing about something. Neither of them moved. The normality of the sound felt obscene.
“The last straw was four years ago,” Charlotte said. “Family dinner. Rosa said something about my mother. Stephanie backed her. I don’t even remember the exact wording anymore, which is ridiculous because I remember everything around it. The glass in my hand. The candle smell. The way Benedict looked at his plate.”
Her throat tightened.
“I snapped.”
Max’s eyes softened.
“I said everything. Years of it. How I had been a child and they had made me feel like an intruder in a home I had never asked to enter.”
She could still hear the room going quiet.
Toto’s face.
The fatal pause before he chose wrong one final time.
“And he said, ‘Charlotte, calm down.’”
Max inhaled slowly.
Charlotte laughed once, sharp and humourless.
“That was it. That was the whole thing. Not ‘what did they say to you?’ Not ‘Stephanie, stop.’ Not ‘Rosa, apologise.’ Just—calm down.”
Max’s voice came out low. “So you left.”
“Yes.”
“And he let you.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it hurt more than explanation ever had.
“I changed my number,” she said. “Changed everything professionally to Fischer. My mother’s name. I stopped using the trust fund.”
Max looked almost pained by that.
Charlotte stared down at her own hands.
“I don’t think he ever understood that money was not what I needed from him.”
“I don’t think I really understood how terrible that is until I saw his face today.”
Max shook his head once, small. “That does not make it your fault.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Charlotte’s mouth opened.
No answer came.
Max stepped closer, slowly enough that she could stop him.
She didn’t.
“It’s not your fault,” he said again. “That he didn’t know. It’s not your job to make him feel better about not being there.”
Charlotte stared at him.
There were things she could have said. That she knew that. That she was fine. That she had survived. That she had Tilly and work and a life built with enough walls to withstand weather.
Instead, what came out was quieter.
“You showed up.”
Max blinked.
“What?”
“When I had a migraine,” she said. “You showed up. You brought ridiculous groceries you googled.”
“The ginger chews were bad,” he said, like that was somehow relevant.
“They were awful.”
“I panicked.”
“I know.”
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth.
It broke something open in her chest.
“You showed up,” Charlotte repeated, and this time her voice almost wavered. “You barely knew me. You didn’t know the half of it. And you still showed up.”
Max’s face softened in a way that made him look younger and infinitely more dangerous.
“I wanted to.”
That sentence again.
No obligation. No debt. No performance.
I wanted to.
Charlotte looked away, because if she kept looking at him, she was going to do something reckless.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” she admitted.
Max was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “You don’t have to do anything.”
She laughed faintly. “That cannot possibly be true.”
“It is.”
“Max.”
“I mean it.” He stepped a little closer again. “You don’t have to fix it. Or explain everything. Or be okay because someone is standing there.”
Her throat tightened.
“I’m very bad at this.”
“At what?”
She looked at him helplessly. “This.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes.
Not victory.
Not excitement.
Something gentler.
“I am not very good either,” he said.
“You have dated people.”
“Yes,” he said, then grimaced slightly. “That is not the same as being good at it.”
Despite herself, Charlotte laughed.
A real one. Short. Surprised. Unsteady.
Max smiled at her like he had won something far more difficult than Imola.
Then he seemed to catch himself.
His expression sobered.
“Charlotte,” he said.
She felt her own name move through her like a warning.
“Yes?”
“I want to kiss you,” he said carefully. “But not if today is too much. Not if this is because—”
“It’s not because of Toto.”
He stopped.
Charlotte held his gaze.
Her heart was hammering now for entirely different reasons.
“It’s not because of Toto,” she repeated. “It’s because you asked.”
Max’s breath caught.
Only barely.
But she saw it.
He stayed where he was, waiting.
Of course he did.
That waiting undid her more than any grand gesture could have.
Charlotte lifted a hand and touched two fingers to the front of his hoodie. Barely anything. A point of contact. A choice.
Max looked down at her hand.
Then back at her.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
The question nearly broke her.
Not because it was complicated.
Because it was simple.
Because no one had asked her enough.
“Yes,” Charlotte said.
Max moved slowly.
So slowly she could have changed her mind in the space between one breath and the next.
She didn’t.
His hand came up to her jaw, warm and careful, not holding her in place so much as giving her somewhere to rest. Charlotte inhaled once, sharp and unsteady.
Then he kissed her.
Softly.
That was the first thing she registered.
For all his intensity, all his sharp edges and impossible focus, Max kissed like he knew exactly how easily something precious could startle and disappear.
A question, not a claim.
Charlotte’s eyes closed.
Her hand tightened in his hoodie.
For a heartbeat, she did nothing but feel the warmth of him, the quiet of the corridor, the strange absence of fear.
Then she kissed him back.
Max made a small sound against her mouth — surprised, relieved, carefully restrained — and Charlotte felt it everywhere.
It was not dramatic.
It did not fix anything.
Toto was still her father. Stephanie was still a ghost with teeth. Her mother was still gone. The cancer had still happened. The titanium plate beneath her skin still held a piece of her skull together.
But Max was here.
Warm.
Careful.
Real.
And for once, Charlotte did not make herself step away from the thing she wanted.
When they broke apart, Max stayed close but did not chase.
His thumb brushed lightly once near her cheekbone, then stilled as if asking permission all over again.
Charlotte looked at him.
“Well,” she said, because if she didn’t say something, she might start shaking. “That was not very professional.”
Max laughed under his breath.
“No,” he agreed. “Very bad workplace conduct.”
“Terrible.”
“We should report it to Laurent.”
“Absolutely not.”
His smile widened.
Then softened.
“You okay?”
Charlotte considered lying.
She didn’t.
“No,” she said. “But I think I’m better than I was five minutes ago.”
Max nodded, accepting the exact answer.
“Good.”
She looked toward the paddock, then back at him.
“People will talk.”
“They already talk.”
“GP?”
“And Hannah.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. “Of course.”
“He will say it was strategy,” Max said.
Despite everything, she smiled.
“It was.”
Max held out his hand.
He did not take hers.
Just offered.
Charlotte stared at it for a moment.
Then she slid her fingers into his.
His hand closed around hers gently, as if he understood that being chosen was different from taking.
Together, they walked back toward the noise of the paddock.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
The email arrived without ceremony.
No alert.
No urgent flag.
No red marker demanding attention.
Just another message appearing in Toto Wolff’s inbox on a grey afternoon, while Monaco sat muted beyond the windows.
Toto opened the email because it was there.
Because he had asked for answers.
Because he had convinced himself that knowing would be better than not knowing.
At first, he only skimmed.
The investigator’s language was spare. Professional. Restrained. No dramatics. No unnecessary commentary.
Charlotte Fischer was alive.
Employed.
Independent.
Private.
Toto’s breath had caught at that first, at the confirmation that she existed somewhere in the world beyond his imagination. Alive. Working. Building a life with a name that was no longer his.
Then he reached the medical section.
He stopped.
The words did not make sense at first.
Not because they were unclear.
Because they were too clear.
Medical history.
Brain tumour.
Oncology.
Surgery.
His hand stilled on the trackpad.
He read the paragraph again.
Slower.
Then again.
By the third time, the words had ceased being information and become something else entirely. Something with teeth.
A diagnosis. A treatment history. Follow-up neurology appointments. Migraines noted indirectly through workplace absence patterns. No evidence of ongoing acute illness. Stable.
Stable.
As if that word could possibly carry the weight of everything before it.
Then his eyes caught on one line.
Classification.
Subtype.
The same cancer that had killed his father.
For a moment, Toto forgot how to breathe.
The apartment changed around him.
The room sharpened brutally, every reflection in the glass too bright, every edge too defined. The city beyond the windows blurred into lights and distance. His pulse began to pound in his ears with a force that made the silence seem to throb.
No.
He scrolled back.
Read it again.
There it was.
Clinical. Precise. Indifferent.
The same cancer.
Not similar enough to frighten him.
Not close enough to be dismissed as coincidence.
The same.
Toto pushed back from the table so abruptly the chair scraped against the floor.
“No,” he said.
The word went nowhere.
He stood, then did not know what to do with standing. His hands found the edge of the dining table, palms pressing into the cool stone as if the surface might hold him upright.
Charlotte.
His daughter.
His child.
She had had the same cancer that had taken his father from him.
And she had survived it.
Without him.
A sound left his throat.
Small at first. Almost nothing. Then sharper, broken at the edges, something between a laugh and a sob and a protest made too late for anyone to hear.
He saw his father’s hospital room.
The memory came with no mercy.
White sheets. Bad coffee. The smell of disinfectant. His father’s hand thinner than it should have been in his. The horror of watching a man who had once seemed immovable become fragile under fluorescent lights. The helpless fury of money being useless, of intelligence being useless, of love arriving with no power to change the outcome.
Then Charlotte.
Not as the woman in the report.
Not Charlotte Fischer, Engineer, adult, unreachable.
Charlotte at five, too quiet in a house that had not known what to do with her grief.
Charlotte at ten, straight-backed at the dinner table, learning to make herself smaller.
Charlotte at thirteen, eyes lowered while Stephanie’s voice did something delicate and cruel around the edges.
Charlotte at twenty-something, walking out of his life after he told her to calm down.
Charlotte alone in a hospital room while doctors said words he knew too well.
He hadn’t known.
He hadn’t been there.
He hadn’t protected her.
The thought did not arrive gently.
It detonated.
She could have died.
Toto pressed a hand to his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.
She could have died.
She could have been sick, and afraid, and lying beneath machines that hummed too close to her skull, and he had been somewhere else. Running a team. Answering emails. Sitting in meetings. Keeping peace in houses where peace had always cost Charlotte too much.
She could have called.
No.
The thought collapsed as soon as it formed.
Of course she hadn’t called.
He had taught her not to.
“God,” he said hoarsely.
His breathing had gone wrong. Too shallow. Too fast. His hands were shaking now, visibly, and he hated that almost as much as he hated the fact that he deserved it.
The laptop sat open on the table.
The email waited.
Stable.
Alive.
No indication of immediate danger.
Words that should have comforted him.
Words that instead revealed the scale of what he had missed.
He began to pace.
Three steps one way. Turn. Three steps back.
It did nothing.
The apartment felt too small. Too polished. Too full of evidence that his life had continued comfortably while Charlotte had fought for hers somewhere else under another name.
He dragged both hands through his hair.
“She was alone,” he whispered.
That was the part that split him open.
Not only the illness.
The loneliness.
The fact that Charlotte had looked at the possibility of dying and still had not reached for him.
Because at some point, long before the diagnosis, she had decided he was not someone to call when things became unbearable.
And she had been right.
The room tilted.
Toto caught himself on the back of a chair.
He did not hear the door open.
He did not hear Susie come in.
He only registered her when she was suddenly there, solid and immediate, her hands closing around his arms.
“Toto.”
Her voice was sharp.
Grounding.
“Toto, look at me.”
He tried.
Couldn’t.
His vision had gone blurred at the edges, the laptop nothing more than a bright rectangle behind her.
“She—” His voice broke before he could finish. He swallowed, but it did not help. “Susie, she had the same—”
Susie’s eyes flicked past him to the open screen.
She read quickly.
She always did.
The moment she understood, her face changed.
Not shock, exactly.
Something quieter.
Worse.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Toto let out a sound he could not control and folded forward, his forehead dropping briefly against her shoulder as if his body had decided for him that standing upright was no longer possible.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
The words were useless.
Obscene in their inadequacy.
“I didn’t know. She went through it, and I didn’t know.”
Susie’s arms came around him, firm enough to hold, not gentle enough to let him disappear into himself.
“Breathe,” she said. “Just breathe.”
“I should have known.”
“Toto—”
“She had the same cancer,” he choked. “The same one. My father—” He couldn’t finish. His hand closed around her sleeve. “My child had it.”
Susie held him tighter.
“She survived,” she said.
The sentence struck him like a mercy he did not deserve.
“She is alive.”
“But I wasn’t there,” he whispered.
Susie did not answer immediately.
That silence was its own answer.
Toto closed his eyes, and the truth came for him again.
He had not been there.
Not for the diagnosis.
Not for the surgery.
Not for the fear.
Not for the recovery.
Not for any part of the life Charlotte had built around surviving him and everything else.
“I should have been there,” he said. “I should have—”
Susie pulled back just enough to look at him, her hands still braced on his arms.
“You cannot rewrite that.”
Her voice was fierce now.
Not cruel.
Not soft either.
“You cannot go back and make yourself the father she needed then.”
Toto’s face twisted.
“I know.”
“But you can stop doing this,” she said.
He blinked at her.
“Doing what?”
“Turning her survival into your punishment.”
The words cut cleanly.
Toto stared at her.
Susie’s eyes were bright, but steady.
“She lived,” she said. “Do you hear me? She lived. And yes, you were not there. Yes, that is on you. Yes, you will have to live with it. But she lived, Toto. That matters more than your guilt.”
He laughed once, weak and broken.
“The worst version already happened.”
“No,” Susie said sharply.
He flinched.
“The worst version did not happen,” she said. “Do not you dare sit here and imagine her dead because your guilt wants the most brutal story it can find.”
Toto looked away.
Susie caught his face with one hand and made him look back at her.
“She is alive,” Susie repeated. “Somewhere, she is alive. She works. She has a life. She survived something terrible, and she did it without you, and that hurts because it should hurt. But do not make the fact that she survived smaller because you cannot bear that you were absent.”
His breathing shook.
For a long moment, he could only look at her.
Then his eyes closed.
The truth of it moved through him slowly.
Painfully.
Charlotte was alive.
Charlotte had survived.
Charlotte had not needed him to do it.
Each sentence was a relief.
Each sentence was a wound.
Susie pulled him back in, one hand firm between his shoulder blades.
This time, Toto let himself lean.
Not collapse.
Not fully.
But enough.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” he admitted into the quiet.
Susie’s answer came after a moment.
“Nothing yet.”
He let out a ragged breath.
“I have to—”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything tonight.”
“But—”
“No.” Her voice sharpened again. “No calls. No messages. No more investigators. No showing up wherever she is because you are scared. You sit with this first. You let it hurt. You do not make Charlotte responsible for helping you survive what you just learned.”
Toto’s throat worked.
He nodded once.
Barely.
But he nodded.
Behind them, the laptop screen began to dim, the report fading toward grey.
The apartment settled back into its expensive silence.
Outside, Monaco glittered as if nothing had changed.
Inside, Toto stood in Susie’s arms and felt something inside him crack open so thoroughly he did not know whether it would ever close again.
His daughter had nearly died.
His daughter had lived.
His daughter had done both without him.
And somewhere far away, under her mother’s name, Charlotte Fischer existed beyond his reach — alive, private, and proof that survival was not the same thing as forgiveness.
***
By the third time Toto stared at nothing and said, “I should have known,” Susie’s patience ran out.
Not her sympathy.
That was still there, lodged painfully beneath her ribs. She understood the shape of his panic. She understood why the report had gutted him, why the words brain tumour and same classification had hollowed something out of his chest. She understood what his father’s death had done to him. She understood, too, the horror of realising that Charlotte had faced something so close to it without ever reaching for him.
But understanding did not make watching him spiral any more useful.
“Toto,” she said, sharper than before.
He didn’t react.
He was sitting at the dining table, shoulders curved inward, one hand pressed to his mouth, eyes unfocused as though the apartment had disappeared around him.
“I should have known,” he said again.
Enough.
Susie crossed the room.
“Toto. Stop.”
That made him look up, but only barely.
“You’re spiralling,” she said.
He didn’t argue.
That worried her more than if he had.
Toto argued when he still had structure. When he still had a plan. When there was a version of the problem he could attack from the side and bend into something survivable.
This was different.
This was guilt without a strategy.
Susie reached past him and pulled the laptop closer.
He made a faint sound of protest. “Susie—”
“No,” she said. “You’ve been staring at the same three lines for twenty minutes. I’m reading the whole thing.”
The email was still open, the investigator’s report stark against the dimmed screen.
Susie forced herself to read properly this time.
Not in fragments.
Not through Toto’s panic.
Line by line.
Alive. Professionally established. Financially independent. No evidence of immediate danger.
Good.
She held onto that.
Charlotte was alive.
Charlotte had survived.
Charlotte had built something.
Susie kept reading.
Medical notes. She moved through those quickly, her stomach still tight. Then career details. Current employment. Role. Location.
Her eyes caught on one line.
Stopped.
She blinked.
Read it again.
Then again, more slowly.
For a moment, the apartment changed shape around her.
Not because of horror this time.
Because of something so wildly, absurdly Charlotte that Susie’s mouth twitched before she could stop it.
Oh.
Oh, no.
She cleared her throat.
“Toto.”
He looked up. His eyes were red, his face drawn in a way that made him look older than he had that morning.
“What?”
Susie pressed her lips together.
This was not the time.
It absolutely was not the time.
And yet.
“You know where she works?” she asked.
His expression tightened immediately. “Susie, please don’t—”
“No, no.” She lifted a hand, eyes still on the screen. “This is important.”
He stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
Perhaps she had.
Trauma did that sometimes.
So did Formula One.
Susie turned the laptop slightly toward him and tapped the relevant line with one finger.
“Unless there is another Red Bull Racing with a simulator department in Milton Keynes, yes.”
Toto stared at her.
Susie tried very hard not to smile.
Failed.
“The simulator department,” she added, because apparently she had chosen violence as a coping mechanism. “She’s been there since Cambridge.”
Toto’s expression did not move.
Not a flicker.
Not a blink.
“That’s not funny,” he said.
Susie laughed.
She couldn’t help it.
Not loudly. Not cruelly. Just once, incredulous and helpless, because the alternative was going back to the image of Charlotte alone in hospital rooms and Toto coming apart under the weight of it.
“Toto,” she said, “it is objectively a little funny.”
“My estranged daughter,” he said tightly, “changed her name, disappeared for four years, survived cancer, and chose to work for our biggest rival.”
“Yes,” Susie said. “When you list it like that, it does sound less funny.”
He gave her a look.
She held it for half a second.
Then the corner of her mouth twitched again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry enough. “But Red Bull?”
Toto dragged a hand down his face.
“Of course,” he muttered.
Susie’s amusement softened.
There was pain in it too. There had to be.
Because beneath the absurdity was intent.
Charlotte had not stumbled into Red Bull by accident. She had not chosen the nearest available job, or the easiest route, or the path made smooth by her father’s name. She had taken her mother’s surname and gone to the one place in Formula One where being Toto Wolff’s daughter would have complicated absolutely everything.
And then she had told no one.
Susie looked back at the report.
“She did well,” she said quietly.
Toto’s hand stilled.
“She did,” Susie repeated. “Look.”
She turned the screen further toward him.
The report was restrained, but the meaning was clear. Charlotte was not merely employed. She was valued. Respected. Known, at least within her own little technical world, for being exceptionally good.
Not because of him.
Not because of access.
Not because of the Wolff name.
Because she was Charlotte.
Toto read the line again.
His face changed then.
Only slightly.
The panic was still there. The guilt. The grief. But something else moved beneath it now, reluctant and aching.
Pride.
It appeared before he could stop it.
Then shame followed, because even pride felt like something he had no right to claim.
“She really didn’t want to be found,” he said.
Susie looked at him.
“No,” she said. “She wanted to be herself.”
That landed.
She saw it land.
Toto looked back at the screen, at the name Charlotte Fischer, at the employer listed beneath it, at the professional life she had built with ruthless precision outside the radius of his influence.
“She used Caroline’s name,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
His throat worked.
“She chose her mother.”
Susie did not answer immediately.
There were answers that were true and still too sharp to say quickly.
Eventually, she said, “Maybe she chose the name that felt safest.”
Toto closed his eyes.
The words hurt him.
They were supposed to.
Susie reached across the table and covered his hand with hers.
“She survived,” she said. “She built a life. She found work she’s good at. People who seem to value her. That matters, Toto.”
He nodded once.
Sharp.
Controlled.
Too controlled.
Then, after a long silence, he muttered, “Red Bull.”
Susie snorted before she could stop herself.
He opened his eyes and glared at her.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I am coping,” she said. “Through humour.”
“This is not humorous.”
“Your daughter secretly becoming a Red Bull simulator engineer under her mother’s maiden name is, unfortunately, a little humorous.”
He looked pained.
“And impressive,” Susie added, more gently. “Very impressive.”
That softened him.
Barely.
“She must be very good,” Toto said, almost to himself.
Susie glanced at the report. “Apparently she is.”
“Of course she is.”
There it was again.
Pride.
Grief.
Regret.
All braided together until Susie doubted even he could separate them.
The apartment settled into quiet again, but it was different now. Less airless. Less filled with only the worst thing.
Charlotte had not only survived illness.
She had gone to Cambridge. Changed her name. Entered Formula One on her own terms. Built a career beneath the floorboards of Toto’s rival and apparently become so embedded there that the investigator’s report spoke of her not like a missing daughter, but like a person who belonged somewhere.
That, Susie thought, might hurt him almost as much as the cancer.
Not because she worked for Red Bull.
Because she had found a place to be Charlotte Fischer, and he had not known any of it.
“She really meant it,” Toto said quietly.
Susie looked at him.
“When she left,” he continued. “She really meant it.”
There was no accusation in his voice.
Only comprehension.
Late.
Far too late.
“Yes,” Susie said. “She did.”
Toto nodded.
His gaze stayed on the screen.
“She made a life without me.”
Susie squeezed his hand.
“Yes.”
He flinched.
She did not apologise.
Sometimes love meant refusing to soften the truth until it became useless.
“But it is a life,” Susie said. “Not just an absence. Remember that.”
He looked at her then.
“She is not just gone,” Susie continued. “She is somewhere. Working. Living. Being valued. That matters more than the fact that the somewhere happens to be Red Bull.”
Toto gave a hollow laugh.
“You say that as if Red Bull is a minor detail.”
“In this context,” Susie said dryly, “it is.”
His mouth twitched.
Barely.
But she saw it.
Good.
A crack in the grief.
Not healing. Not yet. But air.
Toto leaned back in his chair, exhausted, one hand still beneath hers.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Susie glanced at the laptop, then back at him.
“For tonight?” she said. “Nothing.”
His jaw tightened.
“Toto.”
He looked at her.
“You do nothing tonight,” she repeated. “You don’t call anyone. You don’t email Red Bull. You don’t send a message to an address you’re not supposed to have. You don’t turn this into another operation.”
His eyes flickered.
Caught.
Susie narrowed hers.
“Toto.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were thinking about it.”
He looked away.
Of course he had been.
Susie sighed.
“Let her life be hers for one night,” she said.
The sentence quieted him.
He looked back at the screen one more time.
Charlotte Fischer.
Red Bull Racing.
A life built deliberately beyond him.
Somewhere beneath the guilt and grief and the ridiculous sting of Formula One rivalry, Susie watched something settle in him that looked, if not like peace, then at least like respect.
Reluctant.
Painful.
Overdue.
Charlotte had not vanished.
She had not waited.
She had not remained frozen at the moment he failed her.
She had chosen her name.
Her work.
Her side.
Her survival.
And for once, Toto Wolff could do nothing about it except sit there in the expensive quiet of their Monaco apartment and understand that his daughter had become someone without asking his permission first.
***
The Monza request came in disguised as a calendar invite.
That was how Charlotte knew it was going to ruin her week.
She was at her desk in the sim wing, coffee going cold beside her, one monitor full of model comparison data and the other full of an email thread that had already grown too many branches to be trusted. The subject line was innocuous enough.
Italian GP — simulator correlation support
Charlotte clicked it open.
Read the first line.
Then stopped.
Her stomach sank.
They wanted her at Monza.
Not remotely available. Not on standby from Milton Keynes. Not quietly buried in the sim room where she belonged, with screens between her and the rest of the world.
At the track.
In the paddock.
For the race weekend.
Charlotte read the email again, slower this time, because sometimes terrible things became less terrible when approached with precision.
They did not.
The issue was logical. Irritatingly logical, which made it worse. The simulator updates had improved correlation, but Monza’s aero sensitivity, kerb behaviour, and low-downforce package were creating enough uncertainty that Laurent wanted someone from the sim department on-site to help bridge the gap between track feedback and model response in real time.
Someone who knew the recent fix inside out.
Someone who could translate Max’s feedback quickly.
Someone like Charlotte.
Which, professionally, was a compliment.
Personally, it was a disaster.
Charlotte leaned back in her chair and stared at the screen.
Monza meant Mercedes.
Mercedes meant him.
Not definitely. Not inevitably. The paddock was large, busy, full of people and movement and carefully choreographed avoidance. It was entirely possible to spend three days at a Grand Prix and not run into one specific person.
Unless that specific person was Toto Wolff.
Unless he was six foot five and impossible to miss.
Unless he had spent four years living in the carefully sealed part of her life labelled do not open.
Charlotte exhaled slowly through her nose.
No.
She was not doing this.
She moved her cursor toward the reply button.
Then stopped.
What was she going to say?
Unfortunately, I cannot attend the Italian Grand Prix because there is a non-zero chance I will encounter my estranged father, who is the team principal of our direct competitor and does not know I work here.
Ridiculous.
Unusable.
Career-ending, probably.
At minimum, it would invite questions.
Charlotte hated questions.
She especially hated questions with answers.
She closed the email.
Opened it again.
Still there.
Behind her, someone laughed at something in the corridor. The simulator hummed steadily, indifferent to personal catastrophes. Charlotte looked at the graphs on her other monitor and tried to ground herself in the clean logic of them.
Input.
Output.
Cause.
Effect.
The cause was clear: the car was unpredictable at low downforce, and she had built the correction that made the model honest enough to be useful.
The effect was also clear: she was being asked to go to Monza.
Everything beyond that was emotional interference.
Charlotte did not enjoy emotional interference.
“Bad email?”
She looked up.
Hannah stood beside her desk, holding a mug and looking far too perceptive for this early in the morning.
Charlotte minimised the email on instinct.
That was a mistake.
Hannah’s eyes flicked to the movement.
Then back to Charlotte.
“Oh,” Hannah said. “Very bad email.”
“It’s fine.”
“That was your administrative voice.”
Charlotte looked back at her monitor. “I have one voice.”
“You have at least seven. That one means you’re about to pretend something is manageable until it becomes a structural problem.”
Charlotte said nothing.
Hannah leaned against the edge of the desk.
“What is it?”
Charlotte considered lying.
She had many options.
Schedule conflict. Medical concern. Travel fatigue. Workload prioritisation. She could produce a perfectly reasonable objection in under ten seconds and make it sound like efficiency rather than avoidance.
But Hannah had become, inconveniently, difficult to lie to.
“Laurent wants me at Monza,” Charlotte said.
Hannah blinked.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“For correlation support?”
“Yes.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yes.”
“And you hate that it makes sense.”
Charlotte’s jaw tightened.
Hannah softened immediately.
Not pity.
Understanding.
“You don’t like trackside,” she said.
Charlotte could have taken the escape.
She could have nodded and let Hannah believe it was simply the noise, the people, the lack of control. All of those were true enough. The paddock was loud and bright and socially expensive. It had too many eyes and too little privacy. It turned everyone into a version of themselves designed for cameras and lanyards.
Charlotte did dislike it.
But that was not why her pulse had kicked up the moment she saw Monza.
“I prefer the sim,” she said.
Hannah waited.
Charlotte looked at the keyboard.
“I don’t want to run into Mercedes.”
It was the closest she could get.
Hannah’s expression sharpened by a fraction.
Not enough to be obvious.
Enough.
“Mercedes generally,” Hannah said carefully, “or Mercedes specifically?”
Charlotte did not answer.
Hannah inhaled slowly.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” Hannah agreed, after a pause. “But I see enough to know not to ask the wrong questions.”
Charlotte looked at her then.
That was why Hannah was dangerous.
She did not need information to understand where the boundary was.
“I can’t say no,” Charlotte said.
It came out quieter than she intended.
Hannah’s face softened again. “You can.”
“No. Professionally, I can’t. Not without making it strange.”
“It’s already strange if you’re this tense.”
Charlotte looked away.
Hannah set her mug down carefully.
“Do you want me to speak to Laurent?”
“No.”
“Charlotte.”
“No,” she repeated, firmer. “I won’t have people rearranging work around something I refuse to explain.”
Hannah studied her.
“You’re allowed to have reasons.”
“I know.”
“Even reasons you don’t explain.”
“I know that too.”
“Do you?”
Charlotte gave her a look.
Hannah raised both hands slightly. “Fine. Sorry.”
Silence settled between them.
On the screen, the calendar invite waited.
Accept.
Decline.
Maybe.
Charlotte hated that third option most of all. It implied uncertainty, and uncertainty was rarely useful.
“What’s the actual concern?” Hannah asked gently. “Practical version. Not the part you don’t want to say.”
Charlotte appreciated that more than she wanted to.
Practical version.
She could do practical.
“Paddock exposure,” she said. “Unplanned encounters. Media. Restricted access zones that are not actually restricted enough. Being stuck somewhere I cannot leave without looking unprofessional.”
Hannah nodded once, like Charlotte had just given her tyre degradation numbers.
“Okay.”
“And I don’t know the trackside rhythm well enough,” Charlotte added, because once the list began, it was easier. “I’ll be slower there. Less useful. I hate being less useful.”
“That part is false.”
“It is not.”
“You’ll be terrifyingly useful. Everyone will just have to witness it in person.”
Charlotte sighed.
Hannah smiled faintly.
Then she said, “Max will be there.”
Charlotte’s eyes snapped back to her.
Hannah’s expression turned deliberately innocent.
“I know that.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “But I’m saying it anyway.”
“That is not relevant.”
“It is a little relevant.”
“It is professionally relevant.”
“Of course.”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes.
Hannah’s smile widened by half a millimetre.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it loudly.”
“I am allowed private thoughts.”
“Not those.”
Hannah laughed softly, then sobered.
“He’d help,” she said.
Charlotte looked back at the email.
“I don’t need Max to help.”
“No,” Hannah agreed. “But he would.”
That was the problem.
Max would help.
Max would notice. Max would position himself between her and the worst of the noise without making it obvious. Max would ask once and then respect the answer if she did not give him one. Max would show up with crackers and electrolyte drinks and no expectation that she make his concern comfortable for him.
Charlotte had not decided what to do with any of that yet.
Bringing it to Monza seemed reckless.
The door to the sim room opened behind them.
“Why does everyone look like the model caught fire?” GP asked.
Charlotte closed her eyes.
Hannah, traitor that she was, said, “Charlotte’s been summoned to Monza.”
GP stopped.
Then he looked at Charlotte.
“Ah.”
Charlotte did not like the amount of understanding in that single syllable.
“There is no need to make it dramatic,” she said.
“I hadn’t said anything.”
“You said ah.”
“It was a neutral ah.”
“It was not.”
GP walked closer, glanced at her screen, then at her face.
“You don’t want to go.”
“Very perceptive.”
“You should go.”
Charlotte turned slowly toward him.
GP, who had faced Max Verstappen in full fury and survived, did not flinch.
“It’s your work,” he said. “Your fix. Your model. Monza will expose every weakness if we don’t stay on top of it. You’ll be useful.”
“I know.”
“And you hate being useful somewhere inconvenient.”
Charlotte’s mouth tightened.
Hannah looked between them with open interest.
GP’s voice softened slightly, which was somehow worse.
“You don’t have to explain why you don’t want to be there,” he said. “But don’t let whatever it is take this from you.”
Charlotte looked at him.
The sentence landed badly.
Because it was unfair.
Because it was accurate.
Because Red Bull was hers.
Not by name. Not by legacy. Not because anyone had given it to her. It was hers because she had built a place for herself here, in the hum beneath the factory, in the data, in the work no one saw until it was suddenly the thing keeping the car from lying.
She had chosen this team because no one here knew who she was.
Because here, she was Charlotte Fischer.
Not someone’s daughter.
Not someone’s old failure.
Not a ghost from another team principal’s private life.
If she refused Monza because of him, then he still had power over where she could stand.
The thought made something cold and stubborn settle in her chest.
Charlotte looked at the invite again.
Accept.
Decline.
Maybe.
She clicked accept before she could overthink it.
Hannah said nothing.
GP said nothing.
Charlotte appreciated both of them for exactly three seconds.
Then GP ruined it. “I’ll tell Max.”
Charlotte’s head snapped up. “You will not.”
GP looked bland. “About the correlation support.”
“You absolutely meant something else.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Hannah picked up her mug to hide a smile.
Charlotte pointed at both of them. “I dislike you.”
“No, you don’t,” Hannah said.
“I do currently.”
“That’s fair.”
Charlotte turned back to her screen, the accepted invite now sitting in her calendar like a threat.
Monza.
Noise. Heat. Cameras. Mercedes silver and black in the corner of her eye. The possibility of seeing him across a paddock and having to keep her face steady while her entire nervous system remembered being five years old and unwanted in someone else’s house.
She could do it.
She had done worse.
Behind her, GP said, quieter now, “We’ll keep you busy.”
Charlotte did not turn around.
“I know.”
“And if you need to leave somewhere, you leave.”
She swallowed once.
“I know.”
Hannah’s hand rested briefly on the back of her chair.
Not quite touch.
Just presence.
Charlotte looked at the Monza invite one more time.
Then she pulled up the low-downforce model and forced herself back into the only language that had never failed her.
Data.
At least data did not ask why her hands were cold.
***
Monza was too loud.
That was not unusual. Monza was always too loud. Heat rising off asphalt, grandstands roaring in red, scooters buzzing in the distance, Ferrari flags everywhere like the entire circuit had been draped in expectation and bad decisions.
Max usually liked it.
Not always the circus around it, not the endless questions or the way people spoke about history as if history could make a car faster, but the track itself. The speed. The commitment. The way everything stripped down to braking points and kerbs and the pure violence of low downforce.
This year, he noticed Charlotte instead.
That was becoming a problem.
She had arrived that morning with a Red Bull lanyard, a tablet under one arm, and the kind of expression that told Max she had already decided she was going to be fine through sheer professional spite.
At first, he thought it was the paddock.
Charlotte did not like attention. That much was obvious. She belonged in the sim room, under fluorescent lights and surrounded by people who had learned not to ask unnecessary questions.
Trackside was different. Trackside had cameras, guests, journalists, people wandering where they should not be, conversations happening too quickly and too publicly.
So, yes.
At first, Max thought it was that.
Then he noticed where she looked.
Not toward the media pen.
Not toward the garage.
Not toward the clusters of VIPs drifting through hospitality.
Mercedes.
Always Mercedes.
Not obviously. Charlotte was far too controlled for that. Her gaze did not linger. Her face did not change. She simply knew where they were in relation to her at all times.
Like someone mapping exits.
Like someone tracking weather.
Like someone bracing for impact.
Max noticed because he knew what it looked like to live with part of your attention permanently elsewhere.
He said nothing through the first meeting.
Nothing through lunch.
Nothing when she stood half a step behind the engineers during a briefing and kept her answers precise, clipped, perfect. Nothing when Laurent complimented the clarity of the latest correlation notes and Charlotte nodded like praise was an administrative inconvenience.
But by mid-afternoon, after she cut off a perfectly reasonable conversation with a strategist because someone in Mercedes kit moved past the open hospitality door, Max had had enough.
He found her behind the garage, tucked near a stack of freight cases with her tablet balanced against one arm, pretending to read data she had definitely already reviewed.
“Charlotte.”
She looked up at once.
“Max.”
“You are doing the face.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “I have several faces.”
“This one.”
“That is unhelpfully vague.”
“The one where you are pretending everything is normal very aggressively.”
Her expression did not change.
Which meant he was right.
“I’m working,” she said.
“Yes,” Max replied. “You also work when you are not looking like you want to reverse into a wall.”
Charlotte’s mouth tightened. “Very poetic.”
“I am Dutch.”
“That explains everything.”
He almost smiled, but he did not let himself be distracted.
He stepped closer, careful to leave enough space between them. Charlotte watched him do it, and for one moment he saw the calculation behind her eyes — not fear, exactly. Assessment.
Then she looked back down at the tablet. “I’m fine.”
“No,” Max said.
Her eyes flicked up.
He kept his voice low. “You are not.”
The words landed between them.
For a second, he thought she might snap at him. It would have been easier, maybe. More familiar. Charlotte had a way of making sharpness feel like a closed door.
Instead, she inhaled slowly.
“That is an irritating habit,” she said.
“What?”
“Not believing me when I’m lying.”
Max shrugged. “You are not very good at lying.”
“I am excellent at lying.”
“No,” he said. “You are excellent at making people think they should not ask.”
That stopped her.
For a moment, the paddock noise filled the space between them. Engines in the distance. Footsteps. Radios. Someone laughing too loudly near hospitality.
Charlotte looked toward the Mercedes motorhome again.
Barely.
But Max saw it. His chest tightened.
“It’s them,” he said.
Her face went still.
Careful.
Too careful.
“Who?”
“Mercedes.”
Charlotte’s fingers shifted against the edge of her tablet.
Max looked at her.
“Is there someone there?”
She did not answer.
He softened his voice. “Charlotte.”
Her jaw tightened once.
Then she looked away.
“My father is here.”
Max blinked.
Not because the information was shocking on its own. Fathers came to races. Mechanics had fathers. Engineers had fathers. Everyone had people somewhere.
But the way she said it.
Flat. Resigned. Like a threat she was too tired to dress up as anything else.
“Your father works for Mercedes?” Max asked.
Charlotte’s laugh was almost soundless.
“Something like that.”
A strange feeling moved through him.
Something like warning.
“You haven’t talked to him in years,” he said.
It was not a question.
Charlotte looked at him then.
For once, there was no quick deflection ready. No dry answer. No administrative voice. Just Charlotte, tired and tightly held together under a Monza sun that suddenly felt too bright.
“No,” she said. “Nearly four.”
Max nodded slowly.
Pieces rearranged themselves.
Her reluctance to come. The way she watched the Mercedes side of the paddock. The fact that she had never once mentioned family except in fragments so sharp they could not be accidental.
“What happened?” he asked. Then, immediately, “You do not have to tell me.”
Charlotte’s expression flickered.
That seemed to matter. The second sentence more than the first.
She looked down at the tablet again, though Max doubted she saw anything on it. “It’s complicated.”
“Okay.”
“And old.”
“Okay.”
“And not something I can explain in a paddock.”
“Okay.”
She let out a faint breath through her nose. “You’re being very agreeable.”
“You look like if I say the wrong thing, you will leave.”
“I might.”
“I know.”
For some reason, that made her mouth soften.
Only slightly.
Enough.
Max leaned back against the freight case opposite her, making himself less imposing, less like a person demanding answers. He did not know if it worked, but Charlotte did not leave, so perhaps it did.
“My mother died when I was five,” she said eventually.
Max went very still.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded once. “Cancer.” The word sat differently now that Max knew her own history with it.
“She was Austrian,” Charlotte continued. “Caroline Fischer. That’s where my surname comes from.”
Max listened.
“She and my father were never married. When she died, I went to live with him.”
“At Mercedes?” Max asked before he could stop himself.
Charlotte’s mouth twitched faintly. “Not in the factory, no.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Her fingers tightened around the tablet. “He had a family. A wife. Children, eventually. I was… not part of the plan.”
Max’s jaw shifted.
He said nothing.
Good.
“I was provided for,” Charlotte said. “Very well. Schools. Boarding. Cambridge. Money. Everything measurable.”
Max heard the word she did not say.
“But.”
Charlotte looked toward the paddock again.
“But he never protected me.”
Max felt something cold move through him.
It was not the whole story. Not even close. He could hear the gaps in it. The missing names. The careful omissions. Charlotte gave him the outline and kept the wound covered.
He wanted to know.
He wanted to ask who had hurt her. What her father had failed to do. Why she spoke about being provided for like it was an invoice instead of love.
He did not ask.
Charlotte had given him this much.
He would not take more.
“He is here,” Max said quietly.
“Yes.”
“And he does not know you work for Red Bull?”
Charlotte’s silence answered.
Max stared at her.
“He does not know?”
“No.”
“Charlotte.”
“I know.”
“Four years?”
“Yes.”
“And now you are here in the paddock.”
“Yes.”
“With Mercedes ten metres away.”
“Usually more than ten.”
“Charlotte.”
Her mouth twitched again, though this time it did not reach her eyes.
“I said I didn’t want to come.”
“To who?”
“Hannah. GP. Myself. The calendar invite.”
Despite everything, Max nearly laughed.
Nearly.
Then he sobered.
“You should have told me.”
Her face closed immediately.
Max cursed himself internally.
“That came out wrong,” he said quickly.
“Yes.”
“I mean—” He stopped, took a breath, tried again. “I wish I had known you were dealing with this.”
Charlotte looked at him for a long moment.
Then some of the tension left her shoulders.
“I don’t know how to tell people things like this.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” Max admitted. “But I know you don’t.”
That earned him a small, unwilling huff.
For a moment, they stood there in the narrow strip of shade behind the garage, the roar of Monza continuing around them like a world that belonged to other people.
Then Charlotte said, quieter, “I didn’t want him to have this place.”
Max frowned. “What?”
“Red Bull.” She looked down at the badge hanging from her lanyard. “The sim. The work. Here, I’m just Charlotte. No one knows who I am. No one looks at me like I’m his failure or his daughter or his complication. I just do my job.”
Max understood then.
Not everything.
Enough.
“And if he sees you?”
Charlotte’s expression went very still.
“I don’t know.”
That was the first honest answer.
The one without armour.
Max pushed himself off the freight case.
Charlotte tensed, but he did not move toward her. He only shifted enough to stand beside her rather than opposite her, his shoulder angled toward the open paddock.
A barrier, if she wanted one.
An exit, if she needed one.
“I can stay near you,” he said.
Charlotte looked at him sharply.
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“I know.”
“Max.”
“I said I can,” he replied. “Not that you need it.”
She stared at him.
That distinction seemed to land.
He kept his gaze on the paddock, where people moved past in team kit and sunglasses and lanyards, all of them unaware that the world had narrowed to one woman trying not to be found by her father.
“If you see him,” Max said, “and you want to leave, we leave.”
“I am working.”
“Then we walk somewhere else for work.”
“That is not how jobs function.”
“It is how mine functions sometimes.”
Despite herself, Charlotte laughed softly.
It loosened something in him.
“GP will help,” Max added. “Hannah too.”
Charlotte looked down.
“They already know enough.”
“Good.”
“You don’t even know who he is.”
Max glanced at her.
There it was again.
The sharp edge of the secret.
He did not push.
“Then I do not need to know,” he said. “Not today.”
Charlotte’s eyes lifted to his.
The paddock noise faded for a second.
“You’re very careful sometimes,” she said.
Max shrugged. “Only when it matters.”
Her face changed.
Not much.
With Charlotte, it was never much.
But Max was learning to read the millimetres.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded once.
Then, because the air was too heavy and he could not help himself, added, “Also, if your father is from Mercedes, then clearly your taste in teams improved.”
Charlotte stared at him.
For one terrible second, he thought he had misjudged it.
Then she laughed. Actually laughed. Short, surprised, real.
Max smiled before he could stop himself.
“That was awful,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Objectively terrible.”
“But you laughed.”
“I have a migraine history. My judgment is compromised.”
“Still counts.”
She shook her head, but some colour had returned to her face.
Across the paddock, a group in Mercedes kit moved past the far end of the lane.
Charlotte went still for half a beat.
Max saw.
He shifted without making a thing of it, stepping slightly into her line of sight, blocking the view.
Charlotte noticed.
Of course she did.
She did not thank him.
She did not need to.
Instead, after a moment, she looked back at her tablet and said, “The low-downforce correlation issue is worse in sector two.”
Max nodded, accepting the change of subject.
“Okay,” he said. “Show me.”
She did.
And if Max stood close enough that she would not have to face the paddock alone, neither of them mentioned it.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Charlotte knew the migraine was bad when the apartment started to feel hostile.
The flat was quiet. She had made sure of that. Curtains drawn. Overhead lights off. Kettle abandoned. Phone face down on the coffee table with every notification silenced. The world had been reduced to low amber light, soft fabric, and Tilly’s warm weight pressed against her hip.
Still, everything had edges.
The clock on the wall ticked too sharply. The refrigerator hummed with spite. Even the air seemed to press against her skin as if it had mass.
Charlotte lay very still on the couch, one hand resting over Tilly’s ribs, counting the cat’s slow, steady breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
The migraine pulsed behind her eye, dull and insistent. Not the worst kind. Not the kind that made her vision fracture or sent nausea crawling up her throat.
Bad enough.
Bad enough that she had given up pretending she could work from home. Bad enough that she had closed the laptop after eleven minutes and stared at the ceiling in grim defeat while Hannah’s final message sat on her phone like a reprimand.
Do not log back in. I will know.
Charlotte had not logged back in.
This, apparently, was personal growth.
Tilly shifted against her side, purring faintly, as if pleased with this display of compliance.
“Yes,” Charlotte murmured. “You win.”
The doorbell rang.
Charlotte did not move.
For several seconds, she simply stared toward the hallway, offended by the very concept of visitors.
Wrong door, she thought. It had to be.
No one came to her flat unannounced. That was one of the reasons she liked it. People at work knew better. Delivery drivers left things downstairs. Hannah would text first.
The bell rang again.
Tilly lifted her head.
Charlotte closed her eyes. “No.”
The universe, predictably, did not apologise.
She pushed herself upright with slow, careful movements, one hand braced against the arm of the couch until the room steadied. The migraine objected immediately, pressure blooming behind her right eye.
“Stay,” she told Tilly.
Tilly did not stay.
She followed Charlotte into the hallway, tail raised, already prepared to inspect whatever disturbance had entered their carefully managed ecosystem.
Charlotte opened the door.
And stopped.
Max Verstappen stood in her hallway.
For one long, surreal second, Charlotte’s brain refused to assemble the image properly.
Max Verstappen, four-time world champion.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull’s gravitational centre, the man half the factory treated like a temperamental national treasure.
Max.
Hoodie. Trainers. Hair slightly flattened like he had run a hand through it too many times. A paper bag clutched in one hand with the awkward solemnity of someone delivering classified materials.
Charlotte blinked. The hallway light stabbed directly into her skull. “…What are you doing here?”
It came out flatter than she meant it to.
Not rude. Not quite.
Just entirely without the energy required to make confusion sound polite.
Max straightened slightly. “Hi.”
Charlotte stared at him.
That was apparently all he had.
“Hi,” she repeated slowly.
He winced, as if aware of the poor start. “I heard you were sick.”
Charlotte closed her eyes for half a second.
Of course. Of course someone had told him. Of course her carefully contained absence had somehow become information that travelled.
“I have a migraine,” she said, because if people were going to discuss her, they could at least be accurate.
“I know,” Max said quickly. “I mean, I know now. They told me. Not you.”
That made her open her eyes again.
There was something in the way he said it. Not defensive, exactly. Careful. Like he understood there was a difference between being told and being trusted with something.
Charlotte looked at the bag.
Then at him.
Then back at the bag.
Max noticed and lifted it slightly.
“I brought things.”
“Things.”
“For migraines.”
The situation, already strange, tipped fully into the impossible.
Charlotte stared at him.
“You brought migraine things.”
“Yes.”
“To my flat.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Max’s mouth opened.
Closed.
Then he said, very plainly, “I googled.”
Charlotte was almost certain the migraine had made her start hallucinating.
“You googled.”
“The internet was very aggressive,” Max said, with the faint defensiveness of a man who had spent too long reading contradictory medical advice on his phone. “But Hannah said no scented things. So there are no scented things.”
Charlotte’s throat tightened before she could stop it.
That was irritating.
She should have told him to go home.
She should have said, thank you, that is kind, but unnecessary. She should have taken the bag, shut the door, returned to the couch and the dim, curated safety of being alone.
Instead, she stepped back.
“Come in,” she said.
Max looked so visibly relieved it would have been funny if her head did not hurt so much.
“But,” Charlotte added, lifting one finger, “if anything in that bag makes noise, smells strongly, or flashes, I will throw it into the street.”
Max nodded solemnly. “That is fair.”
He stepped inside like he had been given temporary diplomatic clearance.
Charlotte shut the door behind him, blocking out the cruel hallway light. The flat fell back into its low-lit quiet, though it felt different now. Not louder. Not crowded.
Altered.
Max stood in her small kitchen area and looked briefly too large for it, which was absurd, because Charlotte was not short and the flat was not tiny. Still, there was something about him that changed a room by entering it. Usually Charlotte found that kind of presence exhausting.
Today, he seemed to be trying very hard not to take up space.
That was worse. Or better.
She did not know.
He set the bag on the counter and began removing items with careful precision.
Electrolyte drinks. Plain crackers. Peppermint tea. Ginger chews. An eye mask. A small packet of instant soup. Something labelled low-sugar.
Charlotte stared.
“All of this is migraine-safe,” she said quietly.
Max glanced up, suddenly uncertain. “I checked.”
“I can see that.”
“I did not know what would help,” he admitted. “So I bought options.”
Options.
Not flowers. Not some dramatic gesture. Not something meant to make him look thoughtful in a way she could compliment.
Useful things. Quiet things. Things she might actually need.
Charlotte folded her arms, mostly because she did not know what else to do with her hands. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know.” The answer came immediately.
Not apologetic. Not defensive.
“I wanted to,” he added.
Charlotte looked away.
That sentence was becoming a problem.
Tilly chose that moment to emerge from the hallway and inspect the intruder. She approached Max with the slow, imperious caution of a customs official.
Max went very still.
Not afraid. Respectful.
Charlotte watched him watching the cat.
“This is Tilly,” she said.
Max nodded gravely. “Hello, Tilly.”
Tilly sniffed his shoe.
Then his ankle.
Then flicked her tail, which Charlotte knew meant provisional tolerance.
“She is judging you,” Charlotte said.
“I understand.”
“You should. She’s very experienced.”
Max’s mouth twitched.
Tilly brushed once against his leg and then abandoned him, leaping back onto the couch as if her work was done.
Max looked after her. “She’s the cat from the hats.”
Charlotte’s head turned slowly.
“You know about the hats?”
Max froze. A beat too late. “I might have seen the account.”
“The account has thirty-eight followers.”
“Thirty-nine now.”
Charlotte stared at him.
The migraine pulsed.
Somehow, against all reason, she almost laughed. “You followed my cat’s Instagram?”
“It is a good account.”
“It is a terrible account.”
“No,” Max said seriously. “The mushroom hat is very good.”
Charlotte closed her eyes.
“I cannot believe I am having this conversation with a migraine.”
“Sorry.” But he sounded a little pleased.
She hated that she liked it.
Charlotte walked back toward the couch before the standing became too much. Tilly immediately rearranged herself to make room, because she was benevolent when she felt like it. Charlotte sat down carefully, one hand pressing briefly to her temple.
Max stayed where he was.
That, more than anything, made her look back at him.
He did not assume the invitation extended further than the doorway. Or the kitchen. Or the groceries. He had come all the way here and still waited to be allowed nearer.
Something softened in her chest.
It was very inconvenient.
“You can sit,” she said.
Max nodded and moved to the armchair instead of the empty space beside her.
Good. Terrible. Thoughtful.
“Five minutes,” Charlotte added.
“Okay.”
“I mean that.”
“I know.”
He sat carefully, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. He did not look around the flat with obvious curiosity. Did not ask questions about the books stacked by the window or the yarn basket half-hidden under the side table or the framed photograph turned just slightly away from the room.
He simply sat.
Quietly.
Charlotte sank back against the cushions, Tilly warm against her thigh.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The silence should have been awkward.
It wasn’t.
That unsettled her more than the visit.
Most people treated silence like a problem to solve. They filled it, tripped over themselves inside it, tried to make it comfortable by making it cease to exist. Max did not. He sat in it like he understood that today, noise was expensive and Charlotte had none of herself to spare.
After a few minutes, he nodded toward the bag.
“The crackers are plain,” he said quietly. “Not the ones with salt everywhere. I wasn’t sure.”
“Salt is fine.”
“Okay.”
A pause.
“The ginger things are maybe bad.”
“They are always bad.”
“Yes,” Max said. “I thought so.”
This time, the laugh slipped out before she could catch it.
Small. Rough at the edges. But real.
Max looked at her like he had just watched something rare happen.
Charlotte immediately regretted laughing.
Not because it was wrong. Because it had been easy.
She looked down at Tilly and stroked the soft fur between her ears.
“She’s my cancer cat,” Charlotte said.
The words came out before she had decided to say them.
Max went very still.
Charlotte kept her eyes on Tilly.
“I got her after the diagnosis,” she continued, voice low. “I thought I was being practical. Something alive in the flat. Something to feed. Something that would notice if I disappeared.”
Tilly purred, oblivious to the enormity of her own biography.
“She was the reason I wanted to survive for a while,” Charlotte said. “Which sounds dramatic, but it’s true.”
Max said nothing.
For one second, Charlotte thought she had made a mistake.
Then he said, softly, “She looks like she took that very seriously.”
Charlotte’s breath caught.
Not sympathy. Not horror.
Not I’m sorry said in that careful voice people used when they were trying to decide how tragic she was.
Just acceptance.
Tilly had a job. Tilly had done it.
Charlotte’s hand stilled on the cat’s back.
“Yes,” she said. “She did.”
Another silence.
This one felt different.
Closer.
The migraine was still there. Still pressing. Still turning the room faintly sideways.
But some of the sharpness had eased.
Not because Max had fixed anything. He hadn’t. He couldn’t.
He had simply come with crackers and electrolyte drinks and no demand to be useful beyond what she allowed.
“What are you doing here, Max?” Charlotte asked again.
This time, the question was quieter.
Less bewildered. More dangerous.
He looked at her.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said. “And I didn’t know how to do that properly, so I decided to do it badly but honestly.”
Charlotte stared at him.
“That is an alarming sentence.”
“Yes.”
“At least you know.”
“I know many things.”
“You googled migraines and followed my cat’s Instagram.”
“Those are also things.”
The laugh came again.
Barely.
But enough.
Max smiled, small and pleased and trying not to be.
Charlotte looked away before it did something irreversible to her.
She had survived alone for a long time.
Not entirely alone, perhaps. There had been colleagues eventually. Hannah, in her sharp way. The sim department, with their quiet protective instincts. Tilly, most of all, warm and stubborn and alive when Charlotte had needed a reason to remain the same.
But this was different.
Max sitting in her dim living room, holding himself carefully still so the world would not hurt her more, was different.
He had chosen to come.
Not because she asked.
Not because he owed her.
Not because there was anything in it for him.
He had simply noticed she was gone and decided that mattered.
Charlotte closed her eyes, one hand resting on Tilly, the other curled against the blanket.
The migraine still pulsed.
The flat still hummed.
The world still had edges.
But for the first time all day, she did not feel like she had to hold all of it by herself.
That was not dependence.
Not need.
Not yet.
Just the fragile, disorienting realisation that someone had shown up at her door and, somehow, made being found feel less like an intrusion than a kindness.
And that felt more dangerous than the pain.
***
Lunch should have been safe.
That was what made it dangerous.
The debrief was over. The sim session had not yet started. There were sandwiches, bad coffee, and the familiar comfort of listening to GP complain about correlation curves in a tone that suggested the laws of physics had personally disappointed him.
Normal things.
Manageable things.
Max sat across from GP and Hannah, unwrapping his sandwich with great concentration, doing his best impression of a man who had absolutely not spent part of the previous afternoon standing outside Charlotte Fischer’s flat with a bag of migraine-safe groceries and the emotional instincts of a raccoon that had learned to use Google.
He was fine. Very normal.
Not thinking about drawn curtains. Or an orange cat. Or Charlotte in an oversized hoodie, pale with pain, looking at him like she could not decide whether he was a hallucination or a logistical problem.
Hannah watched him for exactly twenty-seven seconds.
Then her mouth twitched.
“So,” she said.
Max froze with his hand halfway to his drink. “No.”
GP did not look up from his coffee. “Because you did.”
Max shot him a glare. “I did not say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” GP said. “You’re sitting like someone trying very hard to look innocent.”
“I always sit like this.”
“No,” Hannah said, delighted now. “You sit like that when you’ve done something and you’re hoping nobody noticed.”
Max looked between them.
This, he realised, was a trap.
Unfortunately, he had already entered it, sat down, and unwrapped a sandwich.
Hannah leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes bright with the kind of professional curiosity that made her so dangerous on a pit wall and unbearable in personal matters.
“You went, didn’t you?”
Max looked down at his sandwich.
It suddenly seemed very interesting.
GP finally glanced up. “Oh, mate.”
Max exhaled through his nose.
Slowly.
Defeated before the first corner.
“…Yes.”
Hannah’s face changed at once. The amusement stayed, but something softer came in beneath it. Something almost fond. “Oh my god,” she said. “You actually went.”
“It wasn’t a big thing.”
“You went to her apartment,” GP said.
“I brought things.”
“Things,” GP repeated.
“Migraine things.”
Hannah pressed her lips together.
Max pointed at her. “Do not laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You are internally laughing.”
“I am internally screaming,” Hannah corrected. “There is a difference.”
GP leaned back in his chair, arms folding. “Did you Google it?”
Max said nothing.
Hannah’s smile widened. “You googled it.”
“The internet had opinions,” Max muttered.
“Of course it did,” GP said. “And you obeyed them?”
“I bought crackers.”
Hannah made a small, strangled sound.
“And electrolytes,” Max added, because apparently he had lost control of his own mouth.
GP stared at him.
Max glared back. “She had a migraine.”
“Yes,” GP said slowly. “And you handled that by assembling an emergency care package like you were preparing for a small natural disaster.”
“It was not like that.”
“What was it like?” Hannah asked.
Max looked down again.
He remembered Charlotte opening the door, squinting against the hallway light, hair soft and slightly disordered, her expression completely blank with disbelief.
What are you doing here?
He remembered the dimness of her flat. Tilly brushing against his leg like he was being assessed by a very small committee. Charlotte looking into the bag and going quiet when she realised he had actually tried.
He shrugged, because explaining any of that felt dangerous.
“She asked why I was there.”
GP’s eyebrows rose. “Reasonable.”
“I told her I wanted to check she was okay.”
Hannah softened again.
“And?”
“She let me in.”
GP looked genuinely surprised. “She did?”
Max frowned. “Yes.”
Hannah sat back, impressed. “That is huge.”
“It was five minutes.”
“Still huge.”
“She told me five minutes,” Max clarified. “Very specifically.”
GP nodded gravely. “Ah. A formal audience.”
Max kicked him lightly under the table.
GP did not react.
Hannah rested her chin in her hand. “If Charlotte Fischer did not want you there, you would have been out of that doorway in under ten seconds.”
Max considered that.
It sounded true.
Charlotte was polite, but Max had already learned that her politeness was not softness. It was a locked door with excellent diction.
“She let me sit,” he said after a moment.
Hannah’s eyes narrowed happily.
“Where?”
“In the armchair.”
“Good choice.”
“What do you mean good choice?”
“It means you didn’t immediately sit next to the woman with a migraine and no energy to remove you physically.”
“I am not stupid.”
GP made a noise.
Max looked at him. “Do not.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a noise.”
“It was a tactical noise.”
Hannah laughed into her coffee.
Max tried to focus on his sandwich again.
It did not work.
“So,” Hannah said, softer now. “Was she okay?”
Max hesitated.
The jokes had made it easier, for a moment. Easier to stand slightly outside the thing and let GP and Hannah tease him until it became absurd instead of frightening.
But the memory of Charlotte on the couch, one hand on the orange cat curled against her side, returned with uncomfortable clarity.
“She was in pain,” he said. “But she said it wasn’t alarming.”
Hannah nodded once. “That sounds like her.”
“She said Tilly was her cancer cat.”
The table went quieter.
GP’s expression shifted, the humour draining back into something more careful.
Hannah looked down at her mug for a second.
“She told you that?”
Max nodded.
“She said she got her after the diagnosis. That she needed something alive in the flat.”
Hannah exhaled slowly.
“Well,” GP said after a beat, quieter than before. “That’s something.”
Max looked between them. “What?”
Hannah met his eyes.
“Charlotte doesn’t usually give people the story behind things.”
Max sat very still.
“Oh.”
“She gives facts,” Hannah said. “Migraine. Tumour. Treatment. Stable. Fine. She doesn’t usually give the part where it hurt.”
Max thought of Charlotte saying it without looking at him.
She was the reason I wanted to survive for a while.
His chest tightened.
GP watched him with an expression that was almost sympathetic, which somehow felt worse than the teasing.
“Mate,” he said.
Max immediately scowled. “No.”
“You have it bad.”
“I was worried.”
“Yes,” GP said. “That is one of the symptoms.”
Hannah snorted.
Max groaned and leaned back in his chair. “You are both impossible.”
“You bought electrolyte drinks for a woman who did not even clap when you won Imola,” GP said.
“She said congratulations.”
“Professionally,” Hannah added.
“She said good drive later.”
GP pointed at him. “Listen to yourself.”
Max folded his arms. “She is interesting.”
Hannah smiled.
“Oh, we’re saying interesting?”
“She is.”
“She’s brilliant, private, stubborn, has a cat, survived cancer, doesn’t care about your trophies, and somehow let you into her flat for five whole minutes,” Hannah listed. “Yes, Max. Very interesting.”
Max stared at her.
“That was too many details.”
“I’m an excellent strategist.”
GP nodded. “She is.”
Max looked away, ears warm.
“This is not how this usually goes,” he muttered.
“No,” GP agreed. “Usually they are impressed by the winning.”
“She is not impressed by anything.”
“That’s not true,” Hannah said.
Max looked back.
Hannah tilted her head, thoughtful now. “She’s impressed by competence. By consistency. By people doing what they say they’ll do. By not making a mess she has to clean up.”
GP added, “By models that don’t lie.”
“And cats in hats,” Max said before he could stop himself.
Hannah’s face lit up.
GP closed his eyes. “Oh no.”
Max realised his mistake too late.
Hannah leaned forward again. “You brought up the cat hats.”
“I was making a point.”
“You were thinking about the cat hats.”
“I follow the account.”
“We know,” GP said with a long suffering sigh.
Hannah was laughing now, but not cruelly. More like she had just watched a puppy walk into a glass door and wanted very badly to help while also enjoying the spectacle.
Max sighed.
“She has a cat,” he said weakly, because apparently he had chosen surrender.
“Yes,” Hannah said warmly. “And you are doomed.”
GP picked up his tray, standing. “I am leaving before you ask whether crochet hooks come in sizes.”
“I am not asking about yarn.”
“Not today.”
Max pointed at him. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
GP walked away, far too pleased with himself.
Hannah stayed seated, still smiling, but her expression gentled once GP was out of earshot.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “you did fine.”
Max looked at her.
“With Charlotte,” she clarified. “You didn’t push. You brought useful things. You left the choice with her.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“That’s usually when people do the most damage.”
Max absorbed that.
His lunch sat untouched in front of him.
Somewhere between the sim room, the empty console, the paper bag in his hand, and Charlotte’s dim living room with the curtains drawn, something had shifted.
He had crossed a line.
Not with her, maybe.
With himself.
A few weeks ago, Charlotte Fischer had been interesting because she did not react to him the way people usually did.
Now she was interesting because he wanted to know if she was okay even when there was nothing he could do about it.
That was much worse.
Hannah watched the realisation arrive and smiled like she had seen it coming from several kilometres away.
“You really do have it bad,” she said.
Max picked up his sandwich at last.
Took one bite.
Chewed.
Swallowed.
Then said, very quietly, “Yes.”
Hannah’s smile softened.
She did not tease him for that.
Which was how Max knew he was truly in trouble.
***
Text Messages: Max Verstappen & Victoria Verstappen
Max: Hypothetically.
Victoria: I already don’t like where this is going.
Max: If you had a crush on someone.
Victoria: YOU DO.
😂😂😂
Oh my god who is it.
Max: I said hypothetically.
Victoria: You only say hypothetically when you’re already doomed.
Is she pretty.
Max: Yes.
Victoria: TALL pretty or annoying pretty.
Max: Tall. Smart. Does not care when I win races.
Victoria: Oh no.
That’s a serious one.
Max: She works with us.
Victoria: OF COURSE SHE DOES.
Let me guess. Engineer.
Max: Sim engineer.
Victoria: I’m screaming.
You fell for the one woman in the building immune to your charm.
Max: She didn’t even blink after Imola.
Victoria: I love her already.
Max: I went to check on her the other day.
Victoria: YOU WHAT.
Max: She was sick.
Victoria:Max.
Max: I brought groceries.
Victoria: MAX.
Max: Migraine-friendly ones.
Victoria: I cannot wait to tell mum.
This is incredible.
Max: Don’t. Please.
Victoria: Fine.
So what’s her deal?
Max: She had a brain tumour.
Victoria: …what.
Max: A few years ago. Cancer. She survived. Gets migraines sometimes.
Victoria: Oh.
Victoria: Okay.
No jokes. That’s serious.
Max: Yeah.
Victoria: Does she have support?
Max: Her colleagues are very protective.
She lives alone. Has a cat.
Victoria: Of course she does.
Victoria: Is that why you went?
Max: I think so.
Victoria: Okay.
Then listen to me.
Victoria: Be kind.
Don’t make it about you.
Don’t rush her.
And don’t treat her like she’s fragile unless she asks you to.
Max: I don’t think she’d tolerate that anyway.
Victoria: Good.
Then you’re already doing better than you think.
Victoria: I take back laughing.
You’re allowed to like her.
Just… do it properly.
Max: I don’t know how this ends.
Victoria: You never do.
Victoria: But I’m rooting for you.
And for her.
***
Susie knew something had shifted the moment Toto stopped looking broken and started looking efficient.
That was never a good sign.
Grief made him restless. Guilt made him quiet. Panic made him sharp around the edges, all pacing and half-finished sentences and hands dragged through his hair until it stood up in every direction.
But this was worse.
This was Toto with his jaw set and his laptop closed with deliberate finality. Toto picking up his phone. Toto scrolling through contacts with the stillness of a man who had already made a decision and was now simply carrying out the logistical consequences.
Susie watched him from the other side of the dining table, unease settling low in her stomach.
“Toto,” she said slowly. “What are you doing?”
He did not look up.
“Reaching out.”
Susie waited.
He kept scrolling.
That should have told her everything.
Unfortunately, she made the mistake of assuming he meant reaching out like a normal person. Emotionally. Vulnerably. Perhaps writing the letter Susie had suggested, or asking for advice on how to begin an apology he was terrified Charlotte would never read.
That was Susie’s first mistake.
Her second was leaving him unsupervised.
She discovered this an hour later, when he appeared in the kitchen and said, with the casual seriousness of a man announcing he had booked a dental appointment, “I’ve hired someone.”
Susie froze with her mug halfway to her mouth.
The silence lasted long enough that Toto finally looked at her.
She lowered the mug very carefully. “You’ve hired who exactly?”
“A private investigator,” Toto said.
For a moment, Susie simply stared at him.
There were points in marriage when a person had to decide whether to respond with love, rage, or the kind of controlled calm used around live explosives.
Susie chose the third option.
“You hired a private investigator,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“To look for Charlotte.”
“To find out if she’s alright.”
“To look for Charlotte,” Susie said again.
Toto’s mouth tightened. “She blocked my number. She doesn’t answer emails. I don’t know where she lives, what she does, whether she’s safe—”
“That is because she does not want you to know.”
He flinched.
Only slightly.
Susie saw it anyway.
“I’m her father,” he said.
The words were low. Defensive. Desperate.
Susie set her tea down on the counter before she did something regrettable with it.
“And she is an adult woman who chose not to have contact with you,” she said. “Those things can both be true.”
Toto looked away.
That only made her angrier.
Not because she did not understand him.
She did.
That was the problem.
She understood the guilt. The fear. The way not knowing had started to eat through him the moment he realised Charlotte’s trust had sat untouched for years, compounding interest around her absence.
Susie understood why his mind had gone straight to worst-case scenarios, to danger, to illness, to the unbearable possibility that his daughter might be suffering somewhere and he would not even know.
She understood.
She simply refused to let understanding become permission.
“You cannot outsource intimacy,” she said.
Toto’s eyes came back to hers.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Her voice sharpened. “You cannot hire someone to do the frightening part for you and call it reaching out.”
“I’m not trying to frighten her.”
“No,” Susie said. “You’re trying to avoid being frightened yourself.”
That landed.
She watched it land.
Toto went still.
For all his height, all his presence, all that famous Wolff severity people mistook for invulnerability, in that moment he looked almost unbearably tired.
“I just need to know she is alive,” he said.
The words came out rough.
Susie’s anger faltered for half a second.
Only half.
“She is alive,” she said. “She did not survive everything she survived just to vanish quietly because you stopped watching.”
His face tightened.
“That’s cruel.”
“It’s true.”
His jaw worked once, but no answer came.
Good, Susie thought. Let it hurt. Maybe it needed to.
She stepped closer, not enough to comfort him, but enough to make sure he had to hear her.
“Charlotte did not leave because she wanted to become a mystery you could solve,” she said. “She left because she wanted distance. She wanted a life that did not require her to keep waiting for you to choose her. And now, instead of respecting that, you are paying a stranger to cross the boundary she made because you don’t like how it feels.”
Toto looked down at his hands.
“I failed her,” he said quietly.
The admission no longer surprised Susie.
It had been sitting between them for days now. Weeks, perhaps. Years, if she was honest. Only recently had Toto found the courage to say it out loud without immediately burying it beneath explanations.
“I know I failed her,” he continued. “But not knowing—” He broke off, gesturing helplessly. “Susie, I don’t know anything. I don’t know where she lives. I don’t know if she’s happy. I don’t know if she needs help. I don’t know if she is alone.”
Susie took a slow breath.
“And whose fault is that?”
He closed his eyes.
She regretted the sharpness immediately.
Not because it was untrue.
Because it was too easy.
Still, she did not take it back.
“Toto,” she said, softer but no less firm, “you are trying to soothe your guilt without risking rejection.”
His eyes opened.
There it was.
The thing he had not wanted named.
The reason the private investigator had felt easier than a letter. A report could not ignore him. A report could not return unopened. A report could not look him in the eye and say, too late.
Charlotte could.
That was what terrified him.
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs, suddenly older.
“I don’t even know what I would say to her,” he admitted. “If she answered.”
Susie looked at him for a long moment.
There were versions of this conversation where she yelled. Where she told him exactly what she thought of his instinct to manage emotional pain like a corporate problem. Where she reminded him that Charlotte had been a child in his house, and all the investigators in the world would not change the fact that he had seen enough and still stayed quiet.
But he already knew.
That did not absolve him.
It only meant cruelty would serve no one.
“Then start there,” Susie said.
He looked up.
“Write that down. Don’t send it yet. Just write it. ‘I don’t know what to say because I know I failed you.’ Start with the truth.”
Toto’s mouth twisted. “And if she never wants to hear it?”
“Then you live with that.”
His face tightened.
Susie held his gaze.
“Like she had to live with you not choosing her.”
Silence fell.
It was not comfortable.
It was not meant to be.
Outside, Monaco glittered beyond the windows, all polished glass and distant lights, as if the world could be made beautiful enough to distract from what people did to each other inside expensive rooms.
After a while, Toto said, very quietly, “I already paid the retainer.”
Susie closed her eyes.
Of course he had.
Of course he had gone from remorse to wire transfer without stopping anywhere near emotional common sense.
“Toto.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I don’t think you do.”
He looked up at her, helpless and stubborn all at once.
“I can cancel it.”
“You should cancel it.”
“I just wanted—”
“I know what you wanted,” Susie said. “That’s what makes this so frustrating.”
She picked up her mug, more for something to hold than because she wanted the tea.
“You run one of the most successful teams in the world,” she said, shaking her head. “You negotiate contracts worth millions. You manage drivers, sponsors, engineers, shareholders, crisis after crisis. And this is how you handle emotional repair? You hire surveillance?”
“It’s not surveillance.”
Susie gave him a look.
He had the grace to wince.
“It is discreet,” he muttered, but weakly now.
“It is still a violation.”
His shoulders dropped.
For a moment, he looked so much like the man she had married — brilliant, impossible, wounded in places he covered with competence — that Susie’s anger softened into something sadder.
She came closer and rested a hand on the back of the chair beside him.
“Toto,” she said quietly, “if you want to be part of Charlotte’s life again, you cannot begin by proving she was right to leave you out of it.”
That broke through.
She saw it.
The pain moved over his face before he could hide it.
He looked down.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
This time, he did not answer quickly.
Good.
Susie turned toward the doorway, then stopped.
Behind her, Toto said, almost inaudibly, “What if she needed me?”
Susie closed her eyes for a moment.
There it was.
The rawest part.
Not control. Not pride. Not even guilt.
Fear.
What if she had needed him, and he had not known?
What if she had suffered?
What if she had been alone?
What if the answer was yes?
Susie turned back.
“Then you will have to live with the fact that she learned not to call you,” she said.
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Winning Imola felt good.
It always did — the track, the flow, the way a lap could come together there like a sentence that finally made sense. The car had still been difficult, still on the edge of uncooperative, but he’d dragged it where it needed to go and stood on the top step anyway.
Applause. Champagne. Noise.
By the time Max made it back to the factory a few days later, the win had already settled into something quieter — pride instead of adrenaline. He expected congratulations. Handshakes. Smiles.
What he hadn’t expected was how clearly, immediately, he knew where he was going.
Charlotte’s desk sat where it always did: half-buried in screens, notes taped at precise angles, a mug that had definitely gone cold hours ago. She was leaning forward slightly, chin tucked, eyes fixed on a replay loop from the simulator, fingers tapping lightly against the desk as she thought.
Max stopped a few steps away, watching her for a moment.
Still pretty. Still focused. Still not looking at him.
He cleared his throat.
She glanced up. Recognition flickered — quick, contained.
“Hey,” she said.
Just that.
No excitement. No smile. No Imola! hanging in the air between them.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
“Well,” Max said finally, tilting his head, “we won.”
Charlotte nodded once. “Yes. Congratulations.”
That was it.
No follow-up questions. No gushing. No visible awe. She turned back to the screen, already rewinding a segment of the run.
Max frowned slightly. “…You saw the race?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And the mid-corner balance looked improved,” she said, still watching the data. “The correlation update helped.”
He blinked. “That’s—” He stopped himself, then tried again. “That’s all?”
Charlotte looked back at him properly this time, dark eyes assessing, not unkind — just curious. “Did you want something else?”
Max stared at her.
People usually did something when he won. Even people who tried very hard not to care still leaked enthusiasm at the edges. Pride. Excitement. Relief.
Charlotte just… processed it.
He shifted his weight, suddenly aware that this wasn’t going the way he’d pictured.
“I thought,” he said slowly, “you might be… impressed.”
She considered that. “I’m glad the work helped,” she said eventually. “But you’ve won races before.”
It wasn’t dismissive. It wasn’t rude. It was factual.
Max felt something unfamiliar flicker in his chest — not annoyance, not quite — more like disorientation. “…Right,” he said.
She tilted her head slightly, studying him now. “Is everything okay?”
He huffed out a small laugh despite himself. “Yeah. Just—”
He stopped. Tried to find the words.
Normally, this part was easy.
Normally, the women he was interested in reacted. There was a rhythm to it — admiration first, curiosity second, the unspoken understanding that this was impressive and he was part of it.
Charlotte wasn’t playing that game.
She wasn’t unimpressed.
She just wasn’t impressed by that.
“I just wanted to say hi,” he said finally.
She nodded. “Hi.”
Then, as if remembering something, she added, “Good drive.”
Two words. Earned. Clean.
Max felt more validated by that than he wanted to admit.
She turned back to her work, conversation clearly concluded.
Max stood there for a second longer than necessary, then walked away, hands in his pockets, brain spinning.
That had not gone according to plan.
At all.
He’d come expecting to dazzle her.
Instead, he’d been treated like a variable that performed as expected.
And for the first time in a long while, Max Verstappen found himself genuinely, deeply dumbfounded.
Which was… annoying.
And, inconveniently—
Kind of thrilling.
***
GP did not look surprised.
Which, frankly, offended Max a little.
They were walking down the corridor toward the sim wing, Max still buzzing with post-win energy that had nowhere to go, irritation prickling under his skin like static. He’d tried to ignore it. Failed. Badly.
“So,” Max said finally, unable to help himself, “I went to see Charlotte.”
GP hummed. Noncommittal. Dangerous. “And?” he asked.
Max stopped walking and turned on him. “She didn’t care.”
GP blinked. “About what.”
“About Imola,” Max said, exasperated. “About the win. About—” He gestured vaguely at himself. “Any of it.”
GP sipped his coffee. Took his time.
“She said congratulations,” Max added quickly. “But like. Professionally.”
GP stared at him for a long moment. Then: “Mate.”
Max folded his arms. “Don’t.”
“You have it bad.”
Max scoffed. “I do not.”
“You came to find me specifically to complain about a woman not being impressed by you winning a Grand Prix,” GP said evenly. “That’s not subtle.”
Max opened his mouth to argue. Closed it. “…She just went straight back to her screen,” he muttered. “Like I was a meeting reminder.”
GP nodded. “Sounds like Charlotte.”
Max frowned. “You know her?”
GP shrugged. “Some. Hannah does more. They’re friends through one of the other sim engineers.”
Max perked up despite himself. “They’re friends?”
“Yes,” GP said. “They talk. Coffee. Normal human things.”
Max exhaled. “Of course they do.”
GP gave him a sideways look. “You’re spiralling.”
“I am not spiralling.”
“You are,” GP said calmly, “standing in a hallway, emotionally compromised by a woman who complimented your driving efficiency instead of your ego.”
Max grimaced. “When you say it like that, it sounds —”
“It sounds accurate,” GP finished.
They resumed walking.
GP took another sip of coffee, then added casually, “Also, you need to recalibrate your expectations.”
Max shot him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
GP didn’t hesitate. “Charlotte has a Cambridge degree,” he said. “She’s been buried in sim models since she was about twenty-two. She’s not a wannabe model, influencer, or someone impressed by trophies.”
Max bristled. “I don’t only go for—”
GP raised an eyebrow.
Max sighed. “…Usually.”
“Exactly,” GP said. “She doesn’t orbit your world. She has her own. And she’s not going to perform admiration on command.”
Max stared ahead, jaw tight.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care,” GP added. “It means you’re going to have to try something you’re not very good at.”
Max groaned. “What.”
“Being interesting without winning something,” GP said.
“That’s harsh.”
They walked in silence for a moment.
“…She said the car looked better,” Max muttered. “Said the correlation update helped. That it was a ‘Good Drive’.”
GP smiled faintly. “High praise. From her.”
Max glanced at him. “You think?”
“I know,” GP said. “If Charlotte Fischer tells you ‘good drive’ and means it, that’s about as close as you’ll get to a standing ovation.”
Max absorbed that slowly. Then, quieter: “I didn’t know what to do.”
Aero_Matt:rumour check
did max actually go to charlotte after imola expecting her to be impressed
Sim_Ruby:yes
Aero_Matt:oh my god
Garage_Pete:how bad was it
Sim_Ruby:she said congratulations and then went back to the model
Strategy_Leah:iconic
Composite_Tom:brutal
Powertrains_Nina:efficient
Garage_Pete:did she at least smile
Sim_Ruby:no
Aero_Matt:MAX VERSTAPPEN WON IMOLA AND GOT A CALENDAR NOTIFICATION RESPONSE
Comms_Jess:wait is charlotte even single
Aero_Matt:do we know literally anything about charlotte
Sim_Ruby:she has a cat
Garage_Pete:called tilly
Powertrains_Nina:tilly wears hats
Composite_Tom:crochet hats
Strategy_Leah:seasonal crochet hats
Comms_Jess:okay so we know cat lore
do we know boyfriend lore
Sim_Ruby:no boyfriend has ever been mentioned
Aero_Matt:has ANY personal human ever been mentioned
Powertrains_Nina:hannah?
Garage_Pete:hannah is not charlotte’s boyfriend
Strategy_Hannah:Thank you for clarifying.
Comms_Jess:no but seriously
she’s pretty, terrifyingly smart, has an expensive accent, went to cambridge, and max is acting like a teenage boy
someone should know if she’s single
Composite_Tom:“expensive accent” is so real
Aero_Matt:she says “can’t” like there’s inheritance involved
Sim_Ruby:she was born in austria though
Comms_Jess:SHE WAS WHAT
Garage_Pete:welcome to charlotte lore part 2
Strategy_Leah:austrian but sounds like she was educated by the bbc
Powertrains_Nina:because she was
Aero_Matt:boarding school apparently
Comms_Jess:how do we know all this and still not know if she has a boyfriend
Sim_Ruby:to be fair charlotte doesn’t talk about herself
Composite_Tom:she once answered “did you have a good weekend?” with “it was operationally sufficient”
Garage_Pete:that’s romantic actually
Comms_Jess:max would probably propose if she said that to him
Engineering_GP:Do not give him ideas.
Aero_Matt:GP CONFIRMED MAX HAS IDEAS
Engineering_GP:I confirmed nothing.
Strategy_Hannah:You confirmed it by appearing.
Engineering_GP:I regret teaching any of you how to use Slack.
Comms_Jess:okay facts we know about Charlotte Fischer:
Austrian
Cambridge
sim engineer wizard
posh accent
cat named Tilly
crochets cat hats
immune to Max Verstappen Grand Prix victory flirting
possibly single
mysterious family situation??
Aero_Matt:what family situation
Sim_Ruby:her mother died, I think
Comms_Jess:oh
Powertrains_Nina:yeah. she doesn’t talk about it much.
Garage_Pete:does she have family here?
Sim_Ruby:not really, I don’t think
Composite_Tom:I’ve never heard her mention anyone
Strategy_Leah:she has Tilly
Strategy_Hannah:And before anyone gets weird: that is enough information.
Comms_Jess:understood
Aero_Matt:respecting boundaries in the gossip channel
growth
Garage_Pete:wait wasn’t there also the cancer thing
Comms_Jess:the what
Sim_Ruby:Pete.
Garage_Pete:sorry
Strategy_Hannah:Careful.
Garage_Pete:no I mean not gossip way
just like
That why everyone is protective of her, right?
Powertrains_Nina:yes. partly.
Composite_Tom:she had a brain tumour a few years ago. she’s okay now.
Comms_Jess:oh my god
Strategy_Leah:she gets migraines sometimes. we cover when she’s out.
Comms_Jess:okay suddenly max having a crush is less funny and more like
oh no he is going to be extremely sincere about this
Engineering_GP:Unfortunately, yes.
Aero_Matt:does max know about the cancer?
Strategy_Hannah:Not from this channel.
Sim_Ruby:good point
Garage_Pete:if max finds out he’s going to hover
Strategy_Leah:he already hovers
Composite_Tom:he does emotional hovering
Comms_Jess:what does emotional hovering look like
Sim_Ruby:asking whether the low-speed model has been updated when what he means is “is Charlotte here today”
Aero_Matt:walking past the sim wing three times
Powertrains_Nina:bringing coffee and pretending it was extra
Garage_Pete:liking Tilly’s strawberry bonnet at 01:13
Comms_Jess:HE DID WHAT
Strategy_Hannah:Please stop monitoring the man’s likes.
Aero_Matt:he followed a 39-follower cat account
that’s public behaviour
Comms_Jess:back to the important bit
how did max take charlotte not being impressed by imola
Engineering_GP:Badly.
Aero_Matt:details
Engineering_GP:No.
Strategy_Hannah:He complained that she “didn’t care.”
Composite_Tom:HAHAHAHA
Garage_Pete:world champion defeated by woman saying “expected performance”
Strategy_Leah:to be fair she did say good drive
Sim_Ruby:that is basically a standing ovation from Charlotte
Powertrains_Nina:that is Charlotte throwing underwear on stage
Strategy_Hannah:Nina.
Powertrains_Nina:sorry
Aero_Matt:did GP give him advice
Engineering_GP:I told him to be interesting without winning something.
Comms_Jess:that is the meanest and most useful advice I’ve ever heard
Garage_Pete:did he survive it
Engineering_GP:Barely.
Sim_Ruby:max has never had to flirt uphill before
Composite_Tom:flirt uphill 😭
Strategy_Leah:Charlotte is basically Eau Rouge emotionally
Strategy_Hannah:Difficult, fast, and punishes arrogance?
Engineering_GP:Accurate.
Sim_Ruby:I am gonna go and find out if Charlotte has a boyfriend.
***
It happened over coffee.
It always did.
There was something about the Red Bull sim wing before ten in the morning that made people forget themselves. Maybe it was the bad coffee. Maybe it was the hours. Maybe it was the false intimacy of standing around half-awake with mugs in hand, pretending they were not all about to spend the day arguing with data that had the emotional temperament of a spoilt racehorse.
Charlotte had been halfway through explaining a small but irritating inconsistency in a tyre degradation model when one of the younger engineers, Ruby, — bright, well-meaning, and entirely too invested in the romantic prospects of everyone around them — looked at her over the rim of her mug.
“You know,” Ruby said, far too casually, “my friend is single.”
Charlotte paused. Only for a second. “No,” she said.
Ruby blinked. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to tell me he works in aero,” Charlotte replied, turning back toward the screen. “Possibly that he is tall. Probably that he is normal, which is never as reassuring as people think it is.”
A beat.
Ruby’s mouth fell open. “How did you—”
“You have tried this twice before.”
“I have not.”
“You have. Once with the gearbox analyst. Once with the composite materials guy who owned a bearded dragon.”
“He was lovely.”
“He brought the bearded dragon to a first date.”
“That shows commitment.”
“That shows poor judgment.”
Someone at the next desk laughed into their coffee.
Ruby, undeterred, leaned against the edge of Charlotte’s workstation. “Okay, but this one is different.”
“They never are.”
“He’s nice.”
“I’m sure.”
“Tall.”
“As predicted.”
“Works in aero.”
“Tragic.”
“And he’s normal.”
Charlotte looked at her then.
Ruby winced. “Okay, I hear it now.”
“Good.”
“Oh, come on,” Ruby said, laughing. “It’s just coffee. No pressure. You might like him.”
Charlotte’s face settled automatically into something pleasant and final.
“No, thank you.”
The words came easily.
Too easily.
They always had.
Ruby held her gaze for a moment, looking for a crack in the answer, some hidden hesitation she could widen into a yes. Charlotte gave her nothing.
Eventually, Ruby shrugged. “Fine. Your loss.”
“Statistically unlikely.”
That earned another laugh, and the conversation drifted back toward the model, toward tyre behaviour and track evolution and the clean relief of problems that did not ask to be loved.
Charlotte appreciated that.
She appreciated people who knew when to stop.
Still, the thought followed her after Ruby left.
It sat beside her through the next simulation review, quiet and unwelcome. It lingered when she corrected an input error, when she sent an update to Hannah, when she stood by the coffee machine later and realised she had forgotten to drink the first cup entirely.
Dating required openness.
Not the fashionable kind of vulnerability people discussed in seminars, all neat language and tidy conclusions. Not the sort of thing that could be packaged into a sentence about communication styles.
Real openness.
The kind that meant letting someone close enough to see the places where you had learned not to expect much.
Charlotte did not have that in her anymore.
Or maybe she had once, and it had been worn away so gradually she had not noticed until it was gone. Either way, she had lost the ability to trust gently a very, very long time ago.
She had never had a boyfriend.
Not in school, where safety had felt temporary and affection like something that could be revoked without warning. She had been too busy learning which version of herself took up the least space.
Not at Cambridge, where she had worked until her eyes burned and her hands cramped, pouring herself into problem sets, libraries, lectures, late-night calculations, anything that could be solved by discipline. People had flirted. Some had even been kind about it. She had deflected them all with essays and deadlines and the cold, efficient belief that competence was a better investment than connection.
There had always been something more important.
Then there had been the cancer.
That had settled the matter in a very definitive way.
Charlotte still remembered the room where the doctor told her.
Sterile walls. Too-bright lights.
A poster about neurological symptoms curling slightly at one corner. The careful, gentle cadence of a specialist explaining timelines and treatment options and probabilities as if kindness could soften the shape of the words.
Tumour.
Surgery.
Radiation.
Chemotherapy.
Monitoring.
Support.
They had said that word several times.
Support.
As if it were a thing a person could simply decide to have.
Charlotte had sat with her hands folded in her lap, listening carefully, asking precise questions, nodding in the appropriate places. And somewhere beneath the clinical calm, a thought had arrived with perfect clarity.
This is not something you ask someone to share.
Nobody should be burdened with that.
The fear. The uncertainty. The possibility that she might disappear halfway through someone loving her.
She had survived, yes.
But survival had come with a cost.
It had taught her to carry her own weight and then some. To plan for the worst and apologise for nothing. To assume that if life dropped something unbearable into her hands, it was still her responsibility to hold it.
Opening herself up enough to let someone in would mean explaining too much.
Her mother.
Her father.
The house where she had learned to be silent.
The years no one had come for her.
The scars, visible and otherwise.
Charlotte no longer knew how to do that without flinching.
So she didn’t.
It was easier that way.
Cleaner.
By the time Charlotte got home that evening, the migraine had settled in properly.
Not the sharp kind. Not the kind that made her vision blur at the edges and forced her immediately into darkness.
This was duller. Heavier. A pressure wrapped around her skull like a hand tightening very slowly, making the world feel faintly misaligned, as though everything was half a second behind where it ought to be.
She unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.
For a moment, she stayed there.
Bag dropped at her feet.
Forehead pressed against the cool wood.
Breathing.
In.
Out.
Again.
It was not panic.
It never was anymore.
But migraines still carried echoes.
Pressure behind the eye. Light sensitivity. The low, traitorous whisper at the back of her mind: you have felt this before.
Charlotte closed her eyes.
“I know,” she murmured, to no one in particular. “I know.”
A soft, questioning noise answered from the hallway.
Charlotte opened her eyes and looked down.
Tilly sat on the floor, tail curled neatly around her paws, a round orange face tilted up in stern disapproval. She looked profoundly unimpressed by human frailty.
“You’re right,” Charlotte said quietly. “I’m late.”
Tilly blinked.
Judgment, but with affection.
Probably.
Charlotte kicked off her shoes and padded into the living room, switching off the overhead light before it could worsen the pressure behind her eyes. She left only the small lamp on near the sofa, its glow low and amber.
Muscle memory.
Survival habits never quite left. They only softened around the edges until they looked like preferences.
Tilly followed at her heels.
Charlotte sank onto the couch carefully, one hand pressed against her temple. The migraine pulsed, insistent but contained.
Unpleasant.
Not alarming.
She repeated that to herself automatically.
Unpleasant. Not alarming.
Still, every migraine carried the echo of hospital lights. Of MRI machines humming too close to her skull. Of doctors speaking gently in that terrible voice people used when they were about to change your life.
It’s probably nothing, they had said at first.
It had not been nothing.
Tilly jumped up beside her without waiting for an invitation, circled once, then climbed into Charlotte’s lap with the deliberate gravity of a creature who considered herself medically essential.
Charlotte exhaled.
“There you are,” she whispered.
Tilly tucked herself against Charlotte’s stomach, purring almost immediately.
Charlotte let her head fall back against the couch.
“Cancer cat,” she murmured, resting one hand on Tilly’s warm back.
Tilly flicked an ear.
Charlotte had gotten Tilly on a Tuesday.
Charlotte remembered that with unreasonable clarity.
The shelter had smelled of disinfectant, old blankets, and damp fur. Charlotte had still been wearing the blouse she wore to the appointment. She remembered that too. White. Stupid choice. Too formal for a diagnosis, too ordinary for the fact that her life had just split neatly into before and after.
The doctor’s voice had still been in her head.
We caught it early.
The prognosis is good.
You’ll need support.
She had not called her father.
She had not called anyone.
Instead, she had gone to the shelter on the way home, because some part of her had known before the rest of her caught up that she could not return to an empty flat with a brain tumour and nothing alive waiting for her.
Tilly had been in the last cage.
Quiet. Watchful. Recently surrendered.
Not performing charm. Not pawing at the bars. Not begging to be chosen.
Just sitting there, looking at Charlotte with an expression that seemed to say, Well?
Charlotte had crouched in front of the cage.
Tilly had stared back.
And Charlotte had thought, with startling, absurd clarity: If I die, this cat will not understand why I left.
So she had stayed.
Through surgery.
Through radiation.
Through the long, ugly recovery no one put in pamphlets properly — the fatigue, the dizziness, the fear disguised as medical vigilance, the slow crawl back into a body that no longer felt entirely trustworthy.
She had stayed because every evening there was a cat waiting to be fed.
A cat waiting to complain.
A cat waiting to climb onto her chest as if she could hold Charlotte’s soul in place by sheer stubbornness.
Charlotte stroked Tilly’s fur now, slow and steady, feeling the vibration of her purr seep through her hand and into her bones.
“I stayed,” she whispered. “See?”
Tilly pressed closer.
The migraine dulled, fractionally.
Outside, the world went on. Rumours, races, strategy calls, factory gossip, the noise of a season slowly trying to eat itself alive.
Inside, there was low light, warm fur, and the steady proof of something Charlotte still struggled to name.
Not happiness, exactly.
Not peace.
But life.
Chosen once.
Chosen again.
Chosen every day since.
Charlotte closed her eyes and let herself rest beneath the weight of the cat who had once made survival feel less like an obligation and more like a promise.
Just for a moment.
Just long enough to remember why she was still here.
***
The simulator room was wrong.
Not silent — the simulator room was never silent. There was always the low electrical hum of machinery, the faint murmur of engineers speaking in half-sentences, the click of keys, the shuffle of someone moving between consoles with a coffee in one hand and three problems in the other.
But it was missing something.
Max noticed before he meant to.
A rhythm.
A presence.
The far console, usually lit before the rest of the room had properly settled, was dark.
Charlotte’s chair was empty.
Max pulled off his gloves slowly, gaze lingering on the workstation as if she might appear if he looked long enough. Which was stupid. He knew it was stupid. He had known her properly for only a handful of weeks, and yet somehow his brain had already started cataloguing the room by whether or not Charlotte Fischer was in it.
He looked away.
“Where’s Charlotte?” he asked.
Casual.
Perfectly casual.
Like he had simply noticed a missing engineer and not the absence of a particular woman with short dark hair, dark eyes, and the ability to make him feel like an idiot by raising one eyebrow.
One of the sim engineers looked up from their laptop. “She called in sick.”
Max nodded. “Oh.”
The word landed badly.
Too heavy.
Too obvious.
He made himself set his gloves down.
Another engineer, older and more familiar, grimaced slightly. “Yeah. Migraines.”
Max paused. “Migraines?”
“Yeah.”
“She gets those a lot?”
The engineer hesitated.
It was small. Barely anything. But Max noticed it the way he noticed hesitation in a car before it snapped.
The first engineer glanced at the second.
The second shrugged. “After the brain tumour,” they said. “Yeah. Sometimes they’re brutal.”
Max went still.
For a second, the hum of the room seemed to flatten into one long, dull note.
“…The what?”
Both engineers looked at him.
The older one’s expression shifted first.
Realisation. Then regret.
“Oh,” they said slowly. “You didn’t know.”
Max shook his head once.
“No.”
The answer came out too quiet.
There was another pause, and this one was heavier. A silent exchange moved between the two engineers — not gossip, not panic, just the quick calculation of people who had learned there were things you handled carefully because Charlotte mattered.
That, somehow, made it worse.
The younger engineer spoke first, voice gentler now.
“She had cancer. A few years ago. Brain tumour.” He said it plainly, without drama, which only made the words more brutal. “She survived. Obviously. But the migraines stuck around.”
Max stared at them.
Brain tumour.
Cancer.
The words did not fit.
They refused to attach themselves to the woman he knew — precise, contained Charlotte, who rewound sim runs with a frown of intense concentration and spoke about flawed modelling assumptions like the data had personally betrayed her.
Charlotte, who crocheted tiny hats for her cat.
Charlotte, who had looked at him after Imola like winning a Grand Prix was a perfectly normal thing for a Grand Prix driver to have done.
Charlotte, who had made the car honest again.
“She’s fine now,” the engineer added quickly, as if Max had asked. As if the room could feel the sudden, sharp drop in him. “It’s not… I mean, they monitor everything. She’s okay. It’s just that sometimes her body reminds her.”
Max nodded.
He did not trust himself to speak.
Sometimes her body reminds her.
He looked toward the empty console again.
Her screens were off.
Her chair pushed in.
A neat absence.
The older engineer followed his gaze and sighed softly. “We basically force her to stay home when it hits.”
Max’s eyes moved back to them.
“Force her?”
“She’d work through it otherwise.”
“Of course she would,” the younger engineer muttered, fond and exasperated. “Last time she tried to remote into the model review from her sofa with one eye open.”
“She lasted eleven minutes,” the older one said. “Then Hannah threatened to change her passwords.”
Despite himself, Max almost smiled.
Almost.
“She’s stubborn,” the younger engineer said.
“Brilliant,” the other added. “But stubborn.”
Then their tone shifted, just slightly. Firmer. Protective.
“And we don’t mess around with it. If Charlotte says she’s not okay, she’s not okay. End of.”
Max looked between them.
That was when he saw it properly.
Not pity.
Not curiosity.
Not the strange, hungry interest people sometimes had in someone else’s tragedy.
This was different.
Quiet. Unshowy. Absolute.
They protected her.
Not because she had asked them to.
Max suspected Charlotte Fischer rarely asked anyone for anything.
They protected her because they had decided she was theirs.
The sim department’s. Red Bull’s, in that strange, territorial way the team had with people it loved.
The same way half the building treated Max like he was both weapon and child.
Except Charlotte had earned it without ever inviting it.
Something tightened in Max’s chest.
“How long has she been here?” he asked.
“Since she graduated,” the younger engineer said. “Cambridge. Straight in.”
“Barely took time off even then,” the older one added. “Had to be bullied into it, obviously.”
Max let out a slow breath.
Cambridge.
Austria.
Boarding school.
The cat account.
Cancer.
Migraines.
The pieces rearranged themselves, but they still did not make a full picture. If anything, they made less sense now. Or maybe they made too much.
Charlotte’s composure. Her distance. The way she did not waste energy trying to be liked. The way she treated praise like a weather report. The way she had made herself necessary and still somehow almost invisible.
“She never talks about it,” Max said.
It was not really a question.
“No,” the older engineer replied. “And we don’t push.”
The younger one glanced toward Charlotte’s empty console, expression softening. “She earned that.”
Max nodded once.
He understood that.
More than he expected to.
There were things people did not get to know simply because they were curious.
There were parts of a person that had to be offered, not taken.
Still, the knowledge sat badly in him.
He had gone to her desk after Imola wanting her to be impressed.
The memory turned sour now.
He had stood there with a trophy somewhere in the building and a win still fresh in everyone’s mouth, waiting for Charlotte Fischer to look at him like he was extraordinary.
And she had survived a brain tumour.
Of course she had not cared about Imola the way he wanted her to.
Of course she had looked at him like winning was simply what he was supposed to do.
Her scale for important had been rewritten by things he had not even imagined.
Max swallowed.
“Right,” he said finally. “Okay.”
It was neither right nor okay, but there was nothing else to say.
He turned back toward the simulator, movements automatic. Helmet. Seat. Straps. Wheel. Systems coming online around him, the familiar ritual settling over his body even as his mind stayed fixed on the empty workstation beyond the glass.
The run began.
The car loaded.
The model waited.
Max stared at the screen for a moment longer than necessary.
He was supposed to be thinking about balance. Entry instability. Rear load. The thousand problems of a car that wanted to punish him for believing in it too much.
Instead, he thought about Charlotte sitting alone somewhere with a migraine bad enough to keep her away from the one place she seemed to prefer over people.
He thought about her colleagues closing ranks without needing to discuss it.
He thought about a woman who had survived something enormous and then returned to work as if that were the logical next step.
A few days ago, he had been curious about her.
Annoyingly curious.
Embarrassingly curious.
He had wanted to know why she sounded British when she was Austrian. Why she crocheted hats for her cat. Why she looked at him like he was a variable instead of a world champion.
Now the curiosity had changed shape.
It had become concern.
Not abstract. Not polite.
Personal.
Max tightened his hands on the wheel.
That was inconvenient.
That was dangerous.
That was very, very bad.
Through the glass, Charlotte’s console remained dark.
Max looked at it once more.
Then he drove.
***
Max found Hannah exactly where he expected to find her.
In her office. Half-hidden behind two monitors, shoulders rounded toward a screen full of data, a mug beside her hand that had probably been hot once in a previous lifetime.
She looked up when he knocked.
Then immediately narrowed her eyes.
“You have a face,” she said.
Max paused in the doorway. “I always have a face.”
“No,” Hannah said. “You have that face. The one where you are about to ask a question you have already decided is casual, even though it absolutely is not.”
Max exhaled through his nose and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
“I found out about Charlotte.”
Hannah’s expression changed.
Not dramatically. Not with alarm.
Just softer.
“Oh,” she said.
That confirmed it before she said anything else.
Max’s jaw tightened.
“They said she called in sick. Migraine.”
Hannah nodded once. “Yeah. That happens sometimes.”
“Because of the tumour.”
She watched him for a moment, measuring how much he knew and how much he was trying very hard not to show he cared.
“Yes,” she said eventually. “Brain tumour. Cancer. A few years ago.”
The words were not new anymore. He had already heard them in the sim room.
They still landed badly.
Max looked down at the floor, then back at her. “She’s okay?”
“If it’s one of the migraines, she’ll be fine in a day or two,” Hannah said. “She knows her limits.”
Max gave her a look.
Hannah sighed. “Mostly.”
That sounded more like Charlotte.
“She tries to work through them?”
“Of course she does,” Hannah said, as if this was a deeply irritating fact of nature. “Because apparently surviving cancer did not teach her that rest is not a moral failure.”
Max’s mouth pressed into a line.
Hannah leaned back in her chair.
“She doesn’t like people making a thing out of it,” she added. “She doesn’t hide it exactly, but she doesn’t volunteer it either. It’s not how she wants people to see her.”
“No,” Max said quietly. “I can understand that.”
Hannah studied him.
There was too much understanding in her face.
Max hated that.
He shifted, folding his arms. “So she’s alone?”
Hannah blinked.
“Alone?”
“At home,” Max clarified too quickly. “I mean, if she has a migraine. Is someone there? A boyfriend or something?”
Silence.
It lasted half a second too long.
Then Hannah’s eyebrows rose.
Max immediately regretted everything.
“Oh,” she said.
“No.”
“Oh, Max.”
“I am just asking.”
“No, you are absolutely not just asking.”
He straightened. “It’s a normal question.”
“It became abnormal the second you said boyfriend or something like the word boyfriend was trying to murder you.”
Max looked away. “Forget I asked.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“Hannah.”
“She’s single,” Hannah said, far too calmly.
Max’s eyes flicked back to her before he could stop them.
Hannah saw it.
Of course she saw it.
Her smile sharpened.
“She lives alone,” she continued. “A few minutes from campus. Quiet flat. One cat. No boyfriend. No secret husband. No dramatic situationship with an aero engineer, despite several people’s attempts.”
Max absorbed that with a level of interest he did not want to examine.
“Oh,” he said.
Hannah’s smile became unbearable.
“Right,” he added, because apparently he was determined to make it worse.
She rested her chin in her hand.
“You want to check on her.”
“No,” Max said automatically.
Hannah waited.
He made it three seconds.
“…Maybe.”
“There it is.”
“I can’t just show up at her apartment,” he said. “That’s weird.”
“It can be weird,” Hannah allowed.
Max stared at her. “That is not helpful.”
“It depends how you do it.”
“How is there a non-weird way to show up at someone’s home when they’re sick?”
“By not making it about yourself,” Hannah said simply. “By bringing something useful. By leaving if she wants you to leave. By not expecting gratitude, vulnerability, or a scene from a romantic comedy.”
Max frowned. “I don’t want a romantic comedy.”
“No,” Hannah said. “You want a woman who doesn’t care that you won Imola to let you care about her without biting your head off.”
Max opened his mouth. Closed it. “That is very specific.”
“And yet accurate.”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“I don’t even know her that well.”
“No,” Hannah agreed. “You don’t.”
That should have helped.
It did not.
“But you know enough to be worried,” she added.
Max looked at her.
Hannah’s voice softened. “And for Charlotte, someone being worried without trying to take over is not the worst thing in the world.”
“She doesn’t need me checking on her.”
“No,” Hannah said. “She doesn’t need anyone.”
That hit him harder than expected.
Because Hannah did not say it admiringly.
She said it like it was a fact and a wound at the same time.
Max looked toward the corridor, though Charlotte was not there. Her empty console flashed in his mind again. Dark screens. Chair pushed in. The whole room subtly wrong without her.
“She would hate people fussing,” he said.
“She would despise it.”
“So I should not fuss.”
“Correct.”
“But checking is different?”
“It can be.”
Max huffed. “You are being very unhelpful for someone who knows her.”
“I know her well enough to know she won’t want pity,” Hannah said. “And I know you well enough to know pity is not what this is.”
Max went still.
Hannah let that sit for a moment.
Then she stood, picking up her tablet.
“Don’t overthink it.”
“That is impossible.”
“For you, apparently.” She moved around the desk, then paused beside him. “Bring normal things. Migraine-safe things. Crackers. Electrolytes. Nothing scented. Nothing loud. Don’t knock like the police. If she opens the door and tells you to go away, go away.”
Max nodded slowly, committing the list to memory with the same seriousness he gave race strategy.
Hannah looked at him and sighed.
“Oh, you are completely doomed.”
“I am not.”
“Max,” she said, almost fond now. “You came into my office to ask whether Charlotte Fischer has a boyfriend because you heard she has a migraine.”
He said nothing.
There was really nothing useful to say.
Hannah patted his arm once as she passed.
“She lives on Hawthorn Close,” she said. “Number twelve. I did not tell you that.”
Max stared after her.
“That seems very much like you told me.”
“No,” Hannah called over her shoulder. “I merely released information into the room. What you do with it is between you, your conscience, and whatever terrible romantic instincts you apparently have.”
“Hannah.”
She glanced back, smiling now.
“You really do have it bad.”
Then she was gone, leaving Max alone in her office doorway with Charlotte’s address in his head, concern sitting uncomfortably behind his ribs, and the deeply inconvenient realisation that, for once, winning something would not help him at all.
↳ A/N Writing children is so interesting...because they way they handle their emotions is so different from adults and wow it can make for intense scenes. It hurt my heart writing this one :')
↳ Series Summary: As a single mother, Josefine is used to doing everything on her own. Leaving everything behind to chase her son's karting dreams in England, she dedicated herself wholeheartedly to pushing him through the ranks, no matter the cost...even if it takes everything from her in the process. She knows that nothing is guaranteed and trust isn't easily won, and yet she comes to learn that the biggest lessons may not be found on the track but, rather, in the form of a retired Formula 1 driver and his daughter.
↳ Pairings: SingleDad!KartingCoach!George Russell x Single Mom!OC
↳ Chapter Word Count: 3839
Ivy turned ten on August 4th.
George had passed an invitation to her birthday party to Josefine after one of their practice sessions the week before, insisting that both she and Henrik were more than welcome to come. The theme was ‘purple’ which—despite Henrik arguing on the drive over that it was hardly much of a theme but rather simply a colour—was very on brand for Ivy. In fact, the moment they pulled up the curving driveway to the Russell’s home, the concept of purple was truly everywhere.
The façade of the house was adorned with purple streamers wrapped around the brick columns and draped effortlessly from the eaves that one might have considered them professionally hung. The driveway was full of various cars, likely from the parents of the other party guests, and lined with trios of purple balloons along the edge of the paverstones as if the party started right from the street, luring them up to the house.
When they stepped onto the porch, as if in shock, Henrik blinked at the purple banner that was tacked to the front door donning a huge number 10 within doodles of hearts and stars and flowers. It was all quite above and beyond, Josefine had to admit, but who could blame a parent for wanting to give their child the best they could on their birthday. She gave Henrik’s shoulder a squeeze before pressing the doorbell.
George opened the door with a smile that was equally honest and equally running on adrenaline, Josefine could see it easily. The house was just full of noise between the overlapping chatter from parents and the rowdiness of over a dozen kids all brought together by overplayed pop hits playing loudly through the sound system. Josefine was sure she might have seen George’s eye twitch from holding it all together.
But he still welcomed them generously, “I’m so glad you could make it!”
“Thank you for inviting us,” Josefine smiled back at him, letting her hand find his arm for a fraction of a second. It was a friendly gesture but one that seemed to remind him to take a breath and ground himself for a moment.
Henrik held out the present he bought, wrapped by his own hands in an iridescent purple wrapping paper, “This is for Ivy.”
“Oh, that’s so kind! Thank you, mate. I’ll show you where you can put it.”
They trailed after George towards the back of the house where the sliding glass doors were open wide into the backyard, all while dodging kids who were running down the hallway and blowing party horns or shouting over each other in some mad sugar-rush. George navigated the chaos all too easily, as if he could predict where each kid was going to step before they even got there. He absolutely exuded confidence in his ironed lilac button-up and pristine light denim jeans. It wasn’t news that his presence alone could command a room.
Out back, the party decor only multiplied. Even Josefine paused, taken aback by the large balloon arch at one end of the spacious patio, framing a customized sign reading ‘Ivy’s 10th Birthday’ in fun, curling letters. Fairy lights were strung through the pergola and the lush trees across the property, criss-crossed with purple streamers and glittering bunting, all meticulously arranged to draw guests toward the centre of the lawn. There, a long white table was set, dressed in a purple tablecloth lined with two dozen place settings—silver plastic cutlery, purple napkins and plates—and a generous spread of tasteful purple flowers woven through a bed of ivy leaves.
Set up against the brick of the house at the edge of the patio, another table sat, donning a purple tablecloth of its own and piled high with presents. Henrik set his small gift alongside the others before tucking his hands behind him and taking a step closer to his mum.
“This is all…incredible,” Josefine said to George as she took in their surroundings, “So professional.”
George exhaled with a smile, “Thank you, yeah, I was lucky my sister has a friend in the party planning business. She’s been my go-to almost every year since Ivy’s first birthday. Really takes the stress out of it.”
“Where is the birthday girl anyway?”
George glanced out across the lawn where more of the kids were playing, running between small groups of adults who were mingling with cold drinks in hand. Amongst them—somewhere—was Ivy in her purple birthday tiara with grass stains on the knees of her lilac washed jeans, bossing around a group of friends in whatever game they were playing.
Josefine waved her hand in the air casually, “I will find her later. I do not want to interrupt her fun.”
As if thankful he wasn’t going to be sent to wrangle her over for yet another hello she didn’t care to give, George’s shoulders eased. He gestured to another nearby table full of snacks and food, “Help yourself if you're hungry. We have a candy bar and cotton candy machine, homemade punch, and some charcuterie for the grown ups. Pizza will be here within the hour.”
Josefine glanced down at Henrik who was nearly glued to her side. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, “You should have a snack and go play with the other kids.”
Henrik stared out across the lawn for a moment before looking back at her, “I don’t know anyone.”
“There are some of the other boys from karting here,” George offered, “It’s not all girls from Ivy’s school.”
“See?” Josefine encouraged her son gently, “And go wish Ivy a happy birthday too, yes?”
“Ja,” Henrik grumbled but obeyed, trudging away from his mother to pick at the snack table before he would brave some socializing.
They watched him make his way across the lawn towards where Ivy was playing with some of her friends to the background music of radio pop hits leaking through the outdoor speakers. Josefine caught herself smiling at the sight of Ivy in her special birthday outfit and the way her tiara fit in her thick waves of light brown hair just so.
“Her hair is curled,” Josefine noted, “She looks like a princess.”
George tucked his hands in his pockets with an appreciative hum and a fond glance in the direction of his daughter, “That was the goal.”
She turned to him, “Did you do it?”
“No…God, no,” George laughed in an almost self-deprecating way, “My parents came over early this morning and my mum did her hair for her.”
“Your parents are here?”
“My whole family, yeah. Ivy’s cousins too.” George gestured across the lawn to the chairs set up by the garden where a few adults were gathered.
For some reason, that made Josefine feel a little nervous. She swallowed back her ridiculous butterflies and said casually, “It is nice they are here to celebrate her.”
“And to take a bit of the load off me. Or, at least that’s what my brother claimed he was here to do before he just opened a beer and sat down an hour ago.”
The two of them shared light laughter at his expense. Their conversation couldn’t progress much further before they were interrupted by the birthday girl rushing over, her heavy footfalls thudding against the paverstones of the patio.
“Daddy—” Ivy started, her expression firm and so serious. Far more serious than a ten year old should be. “I need to talk to you. In private.”
Josefine took the moment to step in gently, “Happy birthday, Ivy. You look beautiful.”
As if flipped by a switch, Ivy turned to her with a beaming grin and a ‘thank you’. Then, just as quickly, the smile vanished as she faced her father again, her sternness settling back over her like a veil.
George shot Josefine an apologetic look before muttering, patient as ever, “Excuse us.”
She stepped aside to let them pass and they disappeared around the side of the house and away from the guests. Josefine, in her moment of solitude, suddenly felt just as awkward as her son had and she hovered by the snack table to pick at some of the charcuterie and make herself look busy. Maybe it was the direction of the breeze that afternoon or maybe George and Ivy hadn’t stepped far enough away, but Josefine was suddenly able to catch part of their conversation from the patio.
“I told you I didn’t want to invite him to my birthday party.”
“I know that’s what you said, but I decided it would be nice to invite him. He’s your teammate.”
“No, he’s my biggest rival. I don’t want him here!”
“That’s not very nice, Poppet. He’s the new kid. It’s kind to include him.”
“I don’t care if it’s kind! It’s my party and I don’t want him here!”
“Well, tough luck. I’m pulling the dad card. He’s invited. He’s here. He’s staying.”
“You’re ruining my birthday!”
“No, you’re souring your own birthday by throwing a fit, Ivy.”
“Why do you like him more than me?!”
Josefine knew it was not her place to eavesdrop and so she took a few steps away, letting the loud music and rowdy chatter of the party swallow up the private conversation. With her plate in hand, she hovered uselessly in the middle of the patio.
In that moment, visions of Henrik’s tenth birthday from January came to mind; so painfully easy to compare his celebration with Ivy’s. They couldn’t afford a proper party since money had been so tight, on the brink of being evicted by mid-winter, but Josefine managed to save a bit of extra money to be able to buy him a small grocery store cake. He had his two school friends over and they watched a movie on cable TV and sang him happy birthday on the living room floor before he blew out his candles.
It was hardly much of anything—hardly enough to truly be considered a party—and there was always an ache in Josefine’s chest when she thought back to it; a reminder of all her shortcomings, all that she wished she could give more of to her son. Yet, despite how underwhelming that birthday had been in her eyes, how lacklustre, Henrik still thanked her for his special party when she tucked him in that night.
Standing in the middle of the patio, Josefine blinked away tears at the memory and popped a cheese cube in her mouth.
The rest of the party carried on around her in a blur of chatter and laughter. Lunch was called soon after, the children gathering around the long table in a chorus of clinking cutlery and excited voices while parents lingered nearby with drinks in hand. Ivy had long since returned, all traces of her earlier frustration tucked neatly away behind polite smiles as she took her seat at the centre of the table, basking in the attention as the birthday girl.
George had been swallowed up by host duties and so Josefine lingered alone, staying quietly to the side as he brought out the pizza boxes and started to serve the kids. Henrik was sitting at one of the chairs at the end of the table—included but still on the edge of things—and he kept glancing over his shoulder towards Josefine, making sure she was still close by. Her little thumbs up in response seemed to ease him a little and he turned back to the other kids.
Once the pizza boxes were laid out on the patio table for the parents, Josefine helped herself quietly. Although, her attention didn’t stray far from George who was still bustling about the kids’ table, refilling sodas and supplying more napkins and answering any questions that two dozen ten year olds felt were important. It was the routine of a single parent; doing everything on your own. Even what was supposed to be the fun stuff, it could all get exhausting.
She found herself drifting over to him after a moment with an extra slice of pizza on her purple paper plate and when he noticed her, she held it out to him, “The party will most definitely come to a screeching halt if you pass out of starvation.”
George cracked an appreciative smile and picked up the slice, “We wouldn’t want that.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“Uhm,” George thought for a moment through his bite of pizza, surveying the kids at the table in front of them, keeping watch and clocking the absolute mess that was unfolding. Finally, he relented, “If you wouldn’t mind helping me clear the table when they’re done?”
“Yeah, of course,” Josefine agreed easily. She then thrust the paper plate at him in exchange for the jug of punch he was still holding, “Let me.”
Taking it upon herself to help, she did a lap around the table to refill cups and bring seconds to those who asked for it, giving George a well deserved moment to breathe. By the time lunch had finished and the plates had been cleared to the large garbage bag in the kitchen and the last crumbs brushed away, the children had already begun chanting for presents.
Ivy needed little encouragement.
She settled herself on the patio in front of her balloon arch—on a white folding chair adorned in purple streamers, of course—with a kind of practiced excitement. Guests circled in close as brightly wrapped boxes were gathered at her feet; the kids taking a seat on the paverstones while the adults stood around the perimeter. Josefine stayed to the side, watching how George lingered at his daughter’s side, helping to bring her a present one by one, clear away the wrapping, or set her new toy safely aside.
She tore through her pile quickly and efficiently, pausing between each reveal to offer thank-yous with a smile. Her excitement was contagious and despite the angst that the little girl carried over their presence that day, Josefine caught herself smiling fondly at her birthday joy.
Soon, Ivy was handed Henrik’s gift. He watched quietly from the edge of the group of kids as she tore open the purple wrapping to reveal the gift he carefully had picked out earlier that week. Josefine couldn’t believe how much thought he had put into it, especially after how Ivy had been treating him recently. But he had stood there in front of the shelves in the store and debated between items until he settled on the perfect one.
A brand new purple notebook adorned with a sparkly letter ‘I’ on the cover and accompanied by a matching glitter pen. On the end of the pen, a plastic star was attached with a tiny spring so it wobbled when it moved.
“Oh,” Ivy’s expression was hard to read; her lips pulled tight as if she was struggling to hold back just how much she really liked it, “I already have a notebook.”
She thrust it out towards George. The poor father looked about ready to have an absolute coronary at the audacity of his daughter.
“Ivy,” George huffed and took it from her, “You know you can never have enough notebooks. You use one for karting all the time and it’s getting full. You’ll be needing a second one soon.”
“Yeah,” she shrugged and was already reaching for another present.
Despite being in front of a whole crowd, George reached out to grab her shoulder and gently pulled her upright again, “What do you say to Henrik?”
Ivy forced a smile in his direction, words strained as if only to please her father, “Thank you. I will use it at the track.”
Josefine couldn’t miss the way Henrik’s shoulders slumped. Oh, she could have cried.
When all of the presents were opened and George and his parents were tidying up the torn wrapping and arranging the gifts back on the table, the kids hurried back out onto the lawn to play. Well, except Henrik who drifted over to Josefine like a ghost.
Instinctively, her arm went around him and she pulled him into her side so she could drop a kiss to the top of his head, “Your gift was very, very thoughtful, my boy.”
“Can we go home soon?” he asked timidly.
Josefine squeezed him tighter as if to keep not only him composed but herself, too.
“Soon,” she said softly, “After cake, okay?”
George approached them then, his attention immediately settling on Henrik. He rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze until Henrik looked up.
“It was very kind of you to bring Ivy a gift,” he said, voice low, “It was a very good choice.”
“You’re welcome,” Henrik replied, barely audible.
George hesitated, then added quietly, just for the three of them, “I’m very sorry about how Ivy’s been treating you. She’s going through a difficult time right now, and we’re trying to work through it. She shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
Henrik nodded.
“I’m very glad you came. Both of you.” George had been speaking to Henrik but at the end, he glanced at Josefine instead, so she, too, could hear the honesty in his words. The parents shared a solemn smile and he rested his hand on her arm for just a moment, a brief touch of comfort.
Henrik was easy enough to distract at the candy bar while Josefine followed George inside to help prepare the birthday cake. The kitchen was strikingly quiet compared to the noise outside, and for a moment, Josefine simply welcomed the calm. She lingered by the island as George pulled the cake box from the large refrigerator, clearing a space on the counter for him to set it down.
He opened the top to reveal a two-tiered chocolate cake, covered in perfectly smooth purple icing with white trim. Along the sides were tiny white stars piped on and the perimeter housed a plethora of purple and white icing flowers. On the top, tucked within a bed of more icing flowers, was an ornate cake topper of the number ten. It had clearly been baked at a professional bakery, looking so perfect it was as if it was made out of plastic.
As Josefine gawked at the cake, George yanked open one of the kitchen drawers with an exasperated sigh, rifling around for candles.
Josefine turned her attention to him with a kind, “Everything alright?”
“Yeah…” he muttered, ripping open the brand new box of white candles as he closed the drawer with his hip, “Just…Ivy. I love her but, Christ, is she a piece of work sometimes. Like talking to a brick wall.”
Josefine shifted her weight, watching him start to carefully place the candles on both tiers of the cake, one at a time like it was an artform. She didn’t quite know what to say in response. It was difficult when she held empathy for the girl but, at the same time, it was her son the girl was targeting.
“So embarrassing, you know?” George continued, “Standing out there and my kid doesn’t even say thank you for a gift. All these parents watching…my family…really makes me look like a rubbish dad.”
“You are not a rubbish dad.”
“Could have fooled me,” he muttered, pulling another candle from the package.
“George,” Josefine tutted and stepped around the corner of the island to set a comforting hand on his back, “You are a wonderful dad. It is just getting close to that age where girls start to…have some moods.”
He cracked a small smile as he placed another candle.
“From what I can see at least, you are handling everything very well. Doing all you can, supporting her, correcting her when she needs to be. She is very lucky to have you. She just might not be old enough to realize that yet.”
George looked at her standing close beside him, eye to eye. Her hand slipped from his back to tuck around his bicep, holding him a little more insistently, keeping his gaze in the quiet of the kitchen.
After a moment, he whispered, “Thank you.”
She gave his arm a squeeze, “Of course.”
Neither of them moved for a moment, just lingering in the tension of their shared gaze in their rare solitude. When she noticed his eyes flit down to her lips for a fraction of a second, her heart did a somersault in her chest. It was funny, really, how she always seemed to gravitate to him no matter the circumstance, finding him just to be eased by his presence, how just a look into his blue eyes made everything feel a little more okay.
They leaned in together, lips just barely touching as if they were stealing away in secret. Perhaps, in a way, they were. But after a few tiny kisses, George’s arm slid around her waist and he slowly deepened their kiss, pulling her closer with the half-empty package of candles still clutched in his hand. She melted against him, resting a hand against his chest as she kissed him back. It was nothing passionate or heated, but rather something simple and comforting shared in a moment of reprieve.
Well, until they were interrupted by the sound of a gasp from across the kitchen.
Josefine and George broke away from each other as if they were teenagers caught by their parents, instantly stepping apart as they looked towards the doorway. Anyone else would have been manageable—a karting parent, George’s siblings, his mum even—except they were faced with the worst possible situation. In the doorway stood Ivy and Henrik, side by side, eyes wide and mouths agape.
Under his breath, George huffed out a small, “Fuck.”
They braced for it—for shouting, for tears, for something explosive. Instead, nothing.
Ivy was the first to move. The shock vanished from her face as quickly as it had come, something colder settling in its place before she turned on her heel and stormed back out to the party.
Josefine barely registered her leaving. Her eyes were fixed on Henrik. He hadn’t moved.
The two of them stared at each other across the kitchen, like a standoff, neither knowing who would speak first.
George cleared his throat and reached for the cake platter with unsteady hands and a mumbled, “Excuse me.”
He slipped past Henrik, lifting the cake carefully over his head as he disappeared into the hallway.
Josefine was always usually so good at reading Henrik’s expressions but, then and there, she couldn’t. He just stared back at her with this flat expression, almost calm, eyes still wide in surprise, feet planted firmly in the doorway. She wanted to go to him but she felt frozen in place, stunned by her own choices.
“Henrik…” she settled for, simply, her voice quivering.
“It’s okay,” he mumbled, “It’s fine. I just…I wanna go home. Please?”
Josefine blinked at his calmness but then nodded once, already reaching for her purse on the island, “Ja, of course. Of course. Let’s go home.”
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