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Reset, Chapter Twenty Seven

Max Verstappen x f1 driver! Reader

Enemies to friends to lovers slow burn

Series Masterlist

March 31, 2023 Australian Grand Prix Weekend

Between Saudi and Australia, you learn more about Max than you have in all the months before put together.

Not because he suddenly sits down and tells you things. Max is still Max. Still private in that clipped, matter-of-fact way that makes every personal detail feel less like something you’re given and more like something you happen to trip over if you are in the right place at the right time. You assume some of it is culture, but you also think it might just be… the way Max is. But over the course of those two weeks- dinners, flights, the odd stop back at his place- the shape of his life starts to fill in around the edges.

You learn he has two cats.

The first announces himself by jumping onto the stool at the island while you are cooking and scaring the absolute shit out of you. You jerk so hard you nearly drop the spatula, then whirl around to find a cat where there absolutely was not a cat two seconds ago- all long, sleek gold body and dark markings and bright, assessing eyes.

Jimmy and Sassy. Bengals. Max admits he had shut them in his bedroom the first time you came over because “they’re not really into people.”

Sassy is the worse of the two. She hasn’t hissed at you, yet, but she’s got this bitchy little look on her face whenever she’s observing you from across the room that says try me, ho. If you so much as shift like you might approach her, she is gone.

Jimmy, though, is curious despite himself. Not enough to come over and be sweet about it, but enough to keep winding up in the same room, then a little closer, then on the stool beside the island like he has not chosen that spot entirely because you are slicing chicken there.

He does not want to be pet, exactly. Or maybe he does and refuses to admit it. Hard to say. Either way, you learn quickly that respect and a little bit of food go a long way with him. It takes two visits and a few sacrificed bits of protein, but eventually Jimmy lies down next to you on the floor while you cook, all casual about it, like this is not a major breakthrough for you.

It is, unfortunately, a little amusing, because the whole thing feels familiar in a way you do not say out loud. The aloofness. The watching from a distance. The suspicion giving way, inch by inch, once you prove you are not completely annoying and might occasionally be useful. Jimmy is softer than Max, obviously. Smaller, prettier, and much less likely to insult you. But still- the general philosophy feels shared.

Max learns things too. Because you talk- and to be fair, it’s less than he thought you would- but also because he is observant and you are around enough now that patterns start to reveal themselves. He learns that your phone has two groups. One for work and everything else- team people, unknown numbers, logistics, the endless administrative parade of Formula One. Always on vibrate or DND entirely. Easy to ignore until it becomes impossible.

And one for your people. Family, friends, whatever. The small circle that lives on the other side of whatever wall you keep between yourself and the rest of the world. Ringtone on when he would expect it to be silenced. On vibrate in your pocket when it probably should be off entirely.

He notices it the second time it happens, then starts noticing it every time after. The subtle lift in your face before you even look at the screen. The way you excuse yourself almost immediately. He has never seen you ignore one from home. Never seen you screen it, send it off, glance at it and decide later. If it is your family, you answer.

You learn that his building has a system for regulars. Frequent fliers get an RFID tag for the elevator instead of having to be escorted up every time, which you only find out because one evening Max presses a little fob into your hand on your way out the door like it is the most obvious thing in the world.

“So you can just come up next time,” he says. No acknowledgment that this is, in fact, a thing. That there’s the implication of enough next times to justify getting you your own access key. You dug around in your junk drawer, looking for a lanyard, or a piece of ribbon, or anything to keep you from having to look Max Verstappen in the eyeballs and tell him you misplaced access to his super-secret-rich-and-famous-people building under the gum wrappers at the bottom of your purse-

-the car. The keychain Max left behind on the night you’ve done a great job ignoring for three months now. You turned the little silver figure over in your fingers once.

And, fuck it. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Max’s keychain can go on Max’s fob. So you threaded them together right there over the counter, the silver car and the black fob clicking into a single little object that is somehow more useful and more loaded than either one was on its own. Then you dropped the whole thing back into your purse, where it is now at least large enough to find by feel. You learn the apartment better too, mostly by repetition.

Three bedrooms. Two baths.

His room, obviously. The room across the hall- the one you walked into by mistake that first night, the one that still sits mostly empty in a way you have both mutually agreed not to never speak of again. And then the third room, which is less bedroom now than shrine: his sim room, his trophy room, the place where the intensity in him becomes visible in objects. Hardware. Screens. Shelving. Helmets. Trophies.

And all of it settles into you in pieces, naturally, without any one revelation feeling especially large at the time. But by the end of those two weeks, something has shifted. His life is no longer just the abstract one you glimpse in paddocks and hotels and borrowed moments between obligations. It has a heartbeat now. Cats. Habits. Elevator access. The strange, quiet intimacy of knowing which door is his and which one leads to something you should not touch.

You make up with Danny, too. Kind of. You get the impression he’s not really an apologies guy, and you’re sure as fuck not going to apologize first, purely out of principle. You can admit you were snappy. Even mean, maybe, but he’s a grown fucking man and should know better than to push on you when steam is blowing out your ears- so if he’s not saying it out loud, you won’t either.

There’s no actual words exchanged, but you start acting normal-ish again, and it’s almost a relief. He drops by Max’s for two of the four dinners you cook there, cracks jokes while you plate food, and everyone laughs like nothing strange ever happened. He sits between you and Charles when some of the group goes out for drinks over the free weekend, and the chatter is exactly what it used to be. It feels good, honestly, to have that familiar warmth humming around you again. He’s still the perfect person to burn up the eighteen hours of flying to Melbourne with, even if it’s nothing of sustenance. He’s got jokes. He’s got new music. He’s got stories that are exactly enough truth to be believable and exactly enough bullshit to be hysterical. It’s almost like nothing happened at all. Which is good, because Melbourne is about to run both of you half to death. They’ve sent you both early. Danny, obviously, because he is Australian and the PR machine wants to run every possible ounce of the hometown hero through a juicer. Every sponsor, every broadcaster that can get their hands on him stick him in front of a camera. He is everywhere immediately, getting passed around like a beloved communal object.

And you- well. Australia is the first western culture country on the calendar. The team can finally do what they have been dying to do with you since you signed your contract. Suddenly the girl-forward marketing gets turned all the way up. More polished content. More sponsor asks. More “women in motorsport”. More carefully styled appearances and behind-the-scenes clips and press people trying to act casual about the fact that you are young and talented and photogenic and therefore, in their minds, capable of personally solving both gender parity and quarterly brand engagement.

You are a little bit of a circus- not because anyone is being gross about it, exactly. At least not openly. More because there is a specific kind of energy that attaches itself to a weekend like this- the first one where everyone feels they can market you at full volume without worrying quite so much about tone, optics, or local conservatism. The leash comes off.

It is cool, in flashes. Genuinely cool. Real shoots with proper sets, proper lighting, hair and makeup that makes you look like a version of yourself that belongs on a billboard instead of in a debrief room with tyre rubber smeared all over your fingers. Interviews in slots that actually matter. Brand engagement deals that feel like doors opening, not chores. Free product kits that make you laugh when you get back to your room- bags of skincare and sunglasses and luxury athleisure, all addressed to you, like you’re already an established thing instead of a rookie still trying to prove you won’t implode.

Part of it is not cool at all.

Because every “quick” shoot is two hours. Every reel is three takes at bare minimum. Every “just grab a few candid moments” is a marketer hovering with a phone and a smile that never drops, gently steering you into better light, better angles, better sound bites. The content never ends. You finish one thing and there is already another thing waiting, another check-in, another hallway walk you have to redo because somebody didn’t get it in focus the first time.

It’s only been two days and you already feel like you live on someone else’s schedule, someone else’s idea of who you are. It is exhausting, in this specific, maddening way- being grateful and resentful at the same time. Because you know every opportunity is real. You know every opportunity is good for the team. You know every opportunity is good for you. You also know you are tired enough that every extra ask lands like a weight, and you are already carrying too much.

Everyone wants a little more.

Just one more reel. One more answer. One more “quick” interview. One more walk-and-talk down the paddock. One more photo of you holding the product and looking like you love it. One more sponsor handshake. One more fan clip. One more “you’re so inspiring, can we just- ”

A little more.

And each request, on its own, is small enough to be reasonable. Small enough that saying no feels petty. Small enough that you hear yourself agreeing automatically before your body catches up and screams.

But when forty people are each trying to scrape out a little more, there is nothing left.

It is not that you don’t want to be generous. You do. You like being kind. You like being easy to work with. You like making people feel good. You like the part of this job where you can give something- time, attention, a moment of warmth- and watch it matter to someone. But by Wednesday afternoon you can feel yourself getting “off” in small, involuntary ways- answers going clipped, patience thinning, your face tightening when someone calls your name for the third time in five minutes. You catch it happening and try to correct, try to pull yourself back into the version of you they want, and the effort of that correction is almost its own kind of fatigue.

On normal weeks- on less demanding schedules- you are accommodating in this almost effortless way. You answer the extra question. You do the extra photo. You stay five more minutes. You sign the thing, you take the selfie, you laugh at the joke even if it’s not funny. You give freely enough that it has become a baseline people expect without ever meaning to.

So when you are tired, when you are short, when you say “not right now” or “I can’t” or “I need ten minutes,” it lands wrong. Like you have changed the rules mid-game. Like you are being difficult instead of depleted.

You can feel it in the micro-reactions. The quick flicker of disappointment. The handler’s smile tightening. The little pause before someone says, “Oh- okay,” in a tone that makes it sound like you’re somehow being difficult for wanting to sit down while you eat dinner. People try not to show it, but there’s this faint frustration that keeps skimming the surface, like they can’t quite reconcile the fact that you are not endlessly available.

They don’t mean to be entitled. I mean, really, this is your own damn fault for training them all that access to you is usually easy.

On Wednesday evening, you finally see Max in the bright, polished middle of a fancy cocktail hour- one of those events that, three weeks ago, would’ve felt exciting just on principle, and is now just starting to feel… familiar. Like you’re realizing these things exist in every city, on every calendar: a room full of local sponsors and government faces and “high-value clients” who need to be made to feel special, which means you put on a dress and do the chatting and smile until your cheeks ache. You’re not naïve; you know why it exists. You’re just newly disillusioned by how copy-paste it is. Different skyline outside the windows, same lighting, same tray of champagne flutes, same cluster of people performing importance at each other.

You know you’re being cynical.

You do.

If you had slept well- which you haven’t. If you’d eaten a real meal today- which you haven’t. If you’d had ten uninterrupted minutes to call your mom back- which you haven’t- this would probably feel like a privilege again. You’d be grateful. You’d network like a normal ambitious person and maybe even enjoy it.

Instead you are leaned up against a wall, pretending to be absorbed in something on your phone. You’re not even reading anything, just scrolling. Dragging your thumb down the screen so you look occupied. So you look like you’re waiting on something important. So nobody thinks to approach you with their drink in hand and their practiced little introduction and their expectation that you will turn on like a fucking lightswitch.

You can feel the performative part of you waiting behind your ribs, ready to step forward the second you force yourself off the wall. You know once you start moving it will be fine. It always is. You’ll find your smile, your voice, your rhythm. You’ll be warm. You’ll be funny. You’ll make people feel like they had a meaningful moment with you.

You just… can’t start. There’s a weird paralysis to it. Like your body has decided it has done enough outward-facing interaction for one lifetime and is refusing to stand up and walk back into the crowd unless you physically drag it there.

“Hey.” You jump so hard your stomach drops, and you jerk your head up, wide-eyed, ready to be annoyed-

And it’s Max.

He’s in a sport jacket. He looks nice. Of course he does. His expression is neutral, but there’s something faintly curious in it too, like he clocked your posture from across the room and decided to check on the situation. And before you really comprehend who it is, you accidentally bark-

“What?”

It comes out kind of bitchy. Sharp. Just enough edge on it that the second you look up and see Max, your stomach drops. You blink, already wincing. “Sorry. I thought you were- ” You make a helpless little gesture with your phone. “Someone else.”

He is looking at you with that faintly amused, slightly sharpened expression that means he has noticed something. “You’re spicy.”

It should annoy you, him- Max- king of anti-social- calling you out like that. Instead, it’s kind of relieving, because there it is. Finally. Someone saying it out loud. Not that you are tired, exactly, or overwhelmed, or stretched thin- but close enough. Someone seeing the edge on you and not trying to smooth it over or politely ignore it. It makes the whole thing feel suddenly, weirdly real. Like maybe you are not imagining how hard this week has been. Like maybe you actually are wound too tight and not just a complete failure at being grateful.

You are still half apologizing when the rest of it starts spilling out. “I’m not trying to be,” you say. “I’m just-” You exhale, annoyed with yourself all over again. “I’m tired. And I know I’m being bad at this, I just-” Another little useless motion with your hand. “I really wish I didn’t have to be here tonight.”

Max looks at you for about half a second, then says, “So… don’t be.”

You stare at him with a complete deadpan expression. “Max. I can’t just not be here.”

“Why not?”

You actually laugh, once, because the question is so ridiculous. “Because this is my job?”

He nods, like he has heard you. “Watch this.”

Before you can stop him, he sets his drink down on a little tray table by the wall and starts walking across the foyer toward the exit. You just stand there for a second, staring after him. Then he stops halfway, turns, and looks at you. “You coming?”

You blink. “Max, I can’t just- ” He waits. You look back at the room, all warm light and polite laughter and glasses catching the chandeliers, then back at him standing there like this is the simplest thing in the world. “I can’t believe you would just leave,” you hiss, crossing half the distance toward him anyway. He gives you a look that says and yet.

“I can’t just go,” you try again, lower now, because the fact that you are still moving toward him is not helping your argument. Max turns and keeps walking. And because apparently your body has decided before your brain does, you follow him.

Out through the foyer. Past the staff at the front, who do not stop either of you because of course they do not. They’re hired to keep people out, not keep people in. Through the doors. And then suddenly you are outside in the night air, cool and clean against your skin after the heat and perfume and chatter of the room.

You stop on the pavement and take a breath. The whole thing hits you all at once- the audacity of it, the relief of it, the fact that you actually did just walk out of a work event in the middle of the evening because Max said watch this and apparently that was enough.

A laugh jumps out of you before you can stop it, light and a little disbelieving and just this side of giddy.

Max glances over, catching it immediately. He is enjoying himself far too much now, hands in his pockets, tie slightly loosened, looking deeply pleased with both the outcome and your reaction to it. “The world didn’t end,” he says. “No one died.”

“Give it a minute.” You shake your head, but you are smiling now in spite of yourself, the tightness in your chest finally easing by increments.

He sees that too, obviously, which only makes him more insufferable. “You’re welcome,” he says.

That gets a look out of you. “For corrupting me?”

“For improving your evening.” You lean back against the cool stone near the entrance and let the night air move over your bare arms, still a little stunned, still a little exhilarated, like your body does not quite know what to do with the sudden absence of expectation. Standing there next to him, slightly breathless and a little bit wicked with relief, you have the distinct, disorienting sense that Max has just done something small and stupid and somehow incredibly kind.

Max lets you stand there in the night air for another few seconds, watching the last of the tension bleed out of your shoulders. Then he says, “What now?”

You turn to him. “What do you mean, what now? This was your idea,” you remind him.

One corner of his mouth moves. “We could call a car,” he says.

You look down the street, then back at him. The night is mild, the city bright in that clean, expensive way places like this always are after dark. You are not quite ready to go back to the hotel, and you are definitely not ready to go back into that room and pretend it isn’t liberating to be standing out here instead- so you start walking.

Not with any real plan. Just away from the venue, somewhere, anywhere. Max falls into step beside you without comment, hands in his pockets, nonchalant in a way that makes it feel less like you are escaping and more like you have simply decided, together, to be somewhere else.

For a while you just walk. Then, because you are physically incapable of shutting the fuck up, and you are glad to see him,and because the relief is still fizzing lightly through you and the silence between you does not feel demanding but inviting- the conversation comes easily. “Did you manage not to starve while I was gone?”

He snorts. “Barely. I ordered delivery both nights I was home,” he says. “And made one sandwich.”

You laugh. “That is so bleak.”

He shrugs, unbothered. “You weren’t there.” The words land light, almost like a joke, but they hit somewhere a little more serious than that. You ignore it.

“Well,” you say, “I’ve been busy becoming a product.”

That gets his attention. “I noticed,” he says. “You’ve been all over the algorithm.”

You groan immediately. “Oh my god.”

“It’s true.”

“No, I know, it’s just awful to hear said out loud.”

He looks at you sidelong. “You’ve done, what, twelve interviews?”

“Feels like a hundred.” You start counting on your fingers without meaning to. “Interviews, photoshoots, more interviews, behind-the-scenes content, our admin had me do one of those ‘day in the life’ videos where there is absolutely no life left by the time they film it, and about six thousand short formats.You think you’re done and then someone says, ‘while we have you, can we just grab one more quick thing?’ and then suddenly you’re fucked and they already put away lunch.”

Max makes a small sound that might be amusement, or maybe pity. He’s far more familiar with the business end of a camera than he wants to be, too. “That sounds horrible.”

“It is horrible.” A beat. “Some of it is cool, though.”

He glances over.

“The free products are cool,” you admit. “I mean, the ones that aren’t entirely useless. And I’m going on the cover of two minor magazines this month. Not even motorsport ones.”

That makes him look at you properly. “Really?”

You nod, trying and failing to play it cooler than you feel about it. “Minor ones. Very minor. But still.”

Max’s mouth shifts, something a little warmer than his usual dry amusement. “That’s good.”

“It is good,” you say quickly, because it is. “It’s really cool. It just…” You blow out a breath. “It’s also exhausting. Like, cool and exhausting at the same time. Which feels ungrateful, but it’s true.”

He does’nt argue with that, which makes it easier for you to keep talking, not really because you have been waiting all week to unload consciously, but because once you start, the last few days come out of you in a rush- the makeup chairs, the handler battles, the sponsor denim, the endless little asks, the weirdness of seeing your own face pushed into your feeds over and over like the internet is trying to convince you that you are a person you should aspire to be.

And Max listens, drops the occasional question in at the right place, the right amount, enough that the walk turns into something loose and easy and oddly restorative. By the time you loop onto a quieter street, your feet are starting to hurt less, your shoulders are lower, and the whole week feels a tiny bit more survivable now that it has been said out loud to someone who does not immediately try to fix it or sell it back to you as gratitude.

You are halfway through some story about your team refusing to let you open the pink box in hospitality until Friday when you hit a side street, stop dead, and turn your head like a hunting dog.

Max almost walks a full step past you before he notices. “What?”

You don’t answer right away. You are too busy sniffing the air, eyes narrowed toward the glow of a little storefront halfway down the block. Before he can say anything else, you pivot and start walking toward it with absolute conviction.

Max makes a quiet, disbelieving sound and falls in behind you. “What are you doing?”

“I’m hungry.”

“It’s not even on a real street.”

“Exactly. Best possible place for food.”

He exhales through his nose. “Why not get room service?”

That makes you snort so hard you nearly trip in your heels. “Yeah, that’s not happening.” you say, glancing back at him. The smell gets stronger as you head down the little side street, warm and spiced and deeply persuasive, and by now there is absolutely no chance of stopping you. He would have an easier time dragging a hound off a scent trail. Max clearly sees that too, because his attempts to talk you out of it start thinning.

By the time you get to the place, he has more or less accepted that you are doing this with or without him, and the only remaining question is whether he would like to stand outside looking lost or come inside and look lost.

It is a tiny little Middle Eastern place wedged into the row of shops. Bright menu board. Warm light. Two tables outside, one occupied by a guy in a tracksuit and sneakers absolutely demolishing what looks like a wrap the size of his forearm. The whole place smells like grilled meat, garlic, cumin, toasted bread.

You are in love instantly. If it’s half as good as the cart you ate at with Dan, you’ll be happy. You turn to the guy behind the counter and order with zero hesitation, suddenly energized in a way you have not been all evening. Max listens with that same expression on his face- not disapproving, exactly. Just….suspicous.

When you finish, you look at him expectantly. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

You stare at him. “Max.”

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m fine.”

You study him for a second, then narrow your eyes a little. “This isn’t a calories thing, is it?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Max glances at the counter, the grill, the rotating spit, all of it. “I just don’t know what’s in it.” You stare at him. “It’s street food,” he says, like this is a complete defense.

You laugh. “Oh my god. You’re such a princess. You are not above this, just so you know.” He says nothing to that, which is basically an admission.

You turn back to the guy at the counter. “Actually, make that double.”

Max looks at you immediately. “I said I didn’t want one.”

“Well, that’s good, because it’s for me,” you say, perfectly serious. “All of it.”

That makes the corner of his mouth twitch, despite himself. “All of it.”

“Yes.” You accept the bag and immediately start rearranging things in Max’s hands.

“Hold these.” Max stares at you for a second, but he takes the bag. “Thank you,” you say as you dig through and pull out a giant wad of tinfoil, like he had any real choice in the matter. And maybe he says something funny or witty or snarky in response, you genuinely do not hear him, because you’ve shouldered through the door and peeled back the layer of foil and are staring at what you already know is going to be a god-tier meal.

The wrap is enormous and warm and already leaking sauce at one end. It smells so good it makes your whole body feel a brief sensation that’s dangerously close to sexual- garlic and spiced meat and toasted flatbread and something sharp and pickled cutting through it all. You take one bite while you’re still stepping off the curb, and the noise you make is not elegant. You close your eyes for half a second. “Oh, that’s good.”

He huffs a laugh and falls into step beside you, carrying the containers like some unwilling assistant while you absolutely demolish a wrap with your bare hands.

He can admit it does look good. Smells good too, irritatingly. The sort of food he is suspicious of on principle because he doesn’t know where it’s been or what kind of oil they use or whether there’s more vegetables in it than he bargained for, but you’re making quite the case for it.

You are still in the dress from the event. Full makeup. Hair done. Earrings catching the streetlights every time you turn your head. You look like you should be holding champagne in a private room somewhere, smiling nicely for people with money like the good little PR pet you are.

Instead, you are walking down the sidewalk barehanding a kebab wrap like your only mission in life is to make it disappear as fast as possible. No fork. No shame. No delicate little bites. Just full commitment, cheeks slightly rounded, eyes half closing every time you get a particularly good mouthful. A little sauce catches near your thumb and you lick it off without breaking stride.

It is not the female energy he is used to- not in a bad way… just not what he expects from women who show up in dresses like that, looking like that, at events like the one you just walked out of. Usually there is a kind of carefulness. A maintained quality. Even hunger is managed prettily, if it shows up at all. Everything measured, dabbed, laughed off.

There is something very funny about it. Very you, he is starting to realize, though he is not sure when he collected enough evidence to make that assessment and have absolute confidence in it. Polished and yet feral. Sponsor-friendly and yet absolutely uncivilized.

He finds it a little impressive. A lot entertaining.

The hotel is still a few blocks away, the night air cool against your bare arms, the city noise thin and scattered around you. You keep walking, eating like you are replenishing a blood debt, while Max carries the rest of the food and tries very hard not to seem as amused as he is.

Between bites, you glance over at him. “What are you doing with the rest of your evening?”

Max looks at you like the question is odd, which is stupid, because it is a normal question. People ask it to other people all the time. He just has a way of making normal things feel like you’ve asked him to reveal state secrets.

“Probably sim,” he says.

You chew. “Practicing for Sunday?”

“No. Enduro race this weekend.”

You stop walking for half a step. “You have sim races during an actual race weekend?”

“Yes.”

“They just let you do that?”

Max’s mouth twitches. “They haven’t stopped me yet.”

You stare at him. “So,” he continues, “I’ll probably log some hours. Make sure everything is set up before tomorrow.”

You take another bite, eyes narrowing slightly as you think it through. All the redline clips you’ve watched from the other side of the screen, all the conversations over chopped onions that turned him from stoic to animated with enough conversational massaging. You swallow. “Can I watch?”

Max glances at you, and there’s a small pause. “Watch?”

“Yeah.”

He looks ahead again. “It’s not very exciting.” For a few steps, he does not answer beyond that. You keep eating, trying not to look too interested, which is difficult because you are interested. Maybe because of the sim stuff itself. Maybe because the night has already become strange enough that following him back to his room to watch him do something he actually cares about feels less outrageous than it probably should.

Maybe because you are not ready to go back to the hotel and be alone with that giant bed you can’t manage to sleep in.

“If you want,” he says finally.

You split off in the hotel lobby with the loose, unspoken understanding that neither of you is going straight to bed. You are quick about it. Quick by necessity, really. It’s going to be a bit of a production to dress down, so the makeup stays. The hair stays. You just trade the dress and shoes for something a little more comfortable- a modest little pair of shorts and the slightly oversized wool sweater you found in a thrift shop in California back in your IndyCar days, the one that somehow manages to feel beachy and cozy at the same time.

Your hair has a little frizz at the edges where the polish has given up. The makeup is smudging faintly at the eyes. Your lipstick has long since disappeared somewhere between the cocktail hour and the kebab. What is left is not exactly natural, but no longer event-ready either.

When you knock on Max’s door a few minutes later, you are still tucking one sleeve up your forearm. He opens it almost immediately, and there is a small, stupid hitch.

Not enough to count as a pause. Barely enough to count as anything at all, but it’s still the tiniest interruption in the natural flow of the moment, there and gone so quickly it would be easy to miss if you were not standing inside it.

Max is also in his cozy clothes, and that should be nothing. A fitted athletic shirt, branded navy sweats, bare feet on hotel carpet. Normal. Comfortable. Entirely unremarkable.

It is, unfortunately, not unremarkable.

The shirt is the problem. Skin-tight in that absentminded, athletic-man way that makes it impossible not to register the actual shape of him beneath it- shoulders, chest, arms, all of it outlined too clearly for your liking. The kind of hot that doesn’t seem to know it’s hot, which is worse.

You try to skip over the observation.

Honestly, you do.

And because you are looking at him, you become dimly aware that he is looking at you too.

Not enough to make anything of it. Not enough to accuse him of staring. Just enough to catch the changed outline of you- bare legs under the sweater hem, face softened by the long day, the less-armored version of you that only really appears after hours. Something in his expression shifts by half a degree and settles before you can pin it down.

You both move past whatever that was with real commitment as he steps aside and lets you in.

The room smells faintly like clean laundry and hotel air-conditioning, and for a moment it is so ordinary- you in your sweater, him in sweats, the late hour of it all pressing quietly around the edges- that the strange little hitch at the door could easily feel imagined. Misread. Easy enough to file away and keep walking.

So that is what you do.

You slip past him into the room, already asking where he wants you, whether he is actually racing tonight or just setting things up, whether the cats at home are judging his absence, and he answers in that same dry, steady cadence as he closes the door behind you.

Whatever was there at the threshold gets tucked neatly away.

Or seems to.

Once you are both settled, Max more or less stops paying attention to you.

He crosses to the rig, drops into the seat, and puts his headphones on like that is the real beginning of the evening. From there, everything narrows. He calibrates something on the wheel, checks pedal input, adjusts a few settings with the clipped efficiency of someone who has done this a thousand times and still takes it seriously every single one. You watch from the couch, curled into one corner, following it with the kind of interest you always have when someone competent is doing a thing they care about.

After a minute, he glances over and says, “I’m streaming.”

You look up.

“So you should be in or out.”

It takes you half a second to understand what he means, and then you lie down lengthwise on the couch, phone in hand, tucking one arm under your head.

“There’s nothing,” you say, “I would love to do right now more than pretend I don’t exist.”

That gets the faintest movement at the corner of his mouth. “Alright,” he says, and turns back to the screens.

And then that is that. He drives. You scroll. The low murmur of his stream in your peripheral hearing, the occasional sharper line from him into the headset, the muted sounds of the rig, the soft blue-white wash of screens over the room. Every so often you glance up from TikTok to watch a stint or a setup change or the shape of his hands on the wheel, then drift back down into the mindless comfort of your phone.

It’s one of the most relaxing parts of your week. Not because anything is happening, exactly, but because nothing is being asked of you.

Max is not trying to cheer you up. He is not trying to draw you out. He is not mining you for a better mood or a prettier version of yourself. He is barely interacting with you at all. Just letting you be there. Letting you take up space on his couch and soften into the cushions and go half-liquid with exhaustion while he does his own thing a few feet away.

You have spent days being handled. Styled. steered. Asked for one more thing, one more smile, one more answer, one more small usable piece of yourself. Even the people who love you best can still want something from you- warmth, attention, reassurance, performance, ease.

Max, apparently, wants absolutely nothing. Or at least he gives that impression so well it amounts to the same thing. He borderline ignores you, and it feels incredible. No demand that you sparkle. No disappointment if you don’t. You can lie there with your frizzing hair and smudged eyes and dead phone-face, saying nothing for forty straight minutes, and the room does not tighten around it.

You can just… hang around.

You do not realize how starved you are for that until you have it, so you stay there on the couch in your thrifted sweater, lazily scrolling through nonsense while Max disappears into his sim race, and let the quiet anonymity of it soak into your bones. Every now and then he says something dry into the mic or mutters under his breath at the screens, and you smile faintly to yourself without looking up.

And then eventually, not too late, you slip out.

You don’t make a thing of it. You don’t make him pause his stream or wait for a clean break in whatever he’s doing. You just sit up quietly, gather your things, and move toward the door with the same low-impact presence you’ve kept all night.

You’re fairly certain he sees you go.

He doesn’t say anything.

You don’t either.

The hallway feels bright and empty after the lowlight of his room. You take the lift back down to your floor, the quiet pressing in again the second you’re alone, and by the time you get to your room the soft, borrowed calm of the evening has already started to thin.

Sleep doesn’t come cleanly. It hasn’t, all week. All month. All season, so far.

You fall into it in pieces, surface out of it in pieces. Dreams that don’t quite form into anything you can name, just the feeling of being held down, stuck, unable to move. You wake up with your heart racing, then drift again, then wake again. By the third or fourth time, you’re lying there staring at the ceiling with that familiar, hollow frustration settling in your chest.

This is getting old.

Around five, you give up, because there’s no point fighting it. You get up, move through your training on autopilot- stretching, calisthenics, the quiet physical routine that at least gives your body something solid to hold onto. It helps a little. By the time you’re done, the sky is just starting to lighten, and you can feel the relief coming not from the workout, but from what’s next.

Breakfast with Yuki. That, at least, is always easy. He talks too much, laughs too fast, and treats eating like a full-contact sport. Which is perfect, really, because you never end up in some shit little athlete buffet picking at eggs. He always finds somewhere good. Somewhere worth leaving the hotel for.

He talks the whole walk there- about some video he saw, about the place itself, about one specific dish he read about and absolutely cannot pronounce but is convinced will change his life. You let it wash over you, answering when it makes sense, laughing when he earns it, grateful for the simplicity of it.

No handlers. No cameras. No one asking for anything.

Just breakfast. And for a little bit, that’s enough… and then the AlphaTauri shoot starts, and by the second hour you can already feel your patience thinning.

It is your team’s headline sponsor, which means you have to bend over bakwatds whether you want to or not.. The boys get directed. You get… arranged. They get to stand there and be guys who happen to be wearing the clothes. You get picked apart by inches- chin, shoulders, legs, height, expression- while some photographer who clearly signed on expecting four Formula One drivers and one professional model keeps finding new ways to make that your problem.

By the time they call a break, you are running hot in a way that has nothing to do with the lights.

You keep it together through the last few shots- hit your marks, hold the expressions, adjust when asked- but the second they say “five,” you step off set and exhale hard, rolling your shoulders once like you’re trying to shake the whole morning off your skin, but doesn’t work, because the others are already peeling away. Jealousy is the simplest word for it, because they're done. They’re free.

You’re not.

You and Yuki are supposed to stay for the fragrance campaign. Another set. Another look. Another round of standing under lights and “like this?”-ing your way through the scrutineering of people who are apparently trained to see everything wrong with you.

It is, objectively, part of the job. It still feels like a punishment. You drop into the chair by the edge of the set, arms folded loosely, trying to cool off enough not to carry the irritation into the next round, when a shadow crosses in front of you. “Hey- sorry- can I just- ?”

You look up. The videographer. You’d seen him earlier- younger, a bit quieter than the rest, moving around the set with a kind of careful attention that reads as respectful instead of tentative. He’s holding his camera low, not in your face, not assuming anything. “Just want to check some things,” he adds, already stepping in a little closer. “If that’s okay.”

You nod. He doesn’t touch you right away. Just looks. Tilts his head slightly. Then, gentle, two fingers under your chin- “Left, a bit- ” and then “-look at me, please- yeah- hold that- ” He steps around you in a small circle.

You brace, because at this point you’re expecting it. The comment. The small correction dressed up as feedback. The thing that lands wrong and makes you want to bite back.

Instead-

“You have a very striking expression when you’re relaxed,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “I mean, your eyes just cut right through, don’t they?” He doesn’t linger on it. Just steps back like he’s said something obvious, then walks away to murmur something to the photographer across the set.

It catches you off guard enough that you sit there for a second, but you don’t have long to linger on it before someone else’s presence is behind you. A hand rests on the back of your chair- but you don’t even have to look. It’s Max. It’s always Max, lately. “Stuck here?” he says.

You tilt your head back to look up at him.Obviously, you want to say, but you know he’s just here to rub it in.

He glances around the set, takes in the lights, the racks, the slow reset happening for the next campaign, and his mouth shifts into a private little smirk. “Unlucky. You know, if you drive faster they typically let you do less of this.” It’s warm, not unkind.

You narrow your eyes at him. “Some of us are freeloaders,” you shoot back. “Some of us are assets.”

He snorts. “Right.”

You shift in the chair, leaning back into it, looking up at him with a kind of tired, pointed amusement. The photographer quietly lifts a camera from across the set. Click click click.

The videographer glances at the screen after the shot, then back up at the two of you- Max standing there, one hand braced casually on your chair, you tipped back looking up at him, expression sharp and alive in a way it hasn’t been on set all morning.

They look at each other. Then back at you. “Max,” the videographer calls.

Max turns his head slightly. “Yeah?”

“You have a tux with you?”

There’s a small pause before Max frowns faintly. “Yeah. Why?”

Another glance between the two of them. “We’re thinking of swapping you in.”

“For what?”

“The fragrance spot.”

Max looks at them, and then at you. You stare back for exactly half a second before it hits, and then you instantly laugh like your life depends on it. “Wow,” you say, sitting up. “Karma is unbelievable.”

He looks between the videographer, the photographer, and then back at you- who is now very comfortably reclined in your chair like this has become a spectator sport- and you can actually see him start to build the argument in real time.

“I mean,” he says, measured, already backing away half a step, “I’d have to go get it. Get changed. That’s going to take a while.”

“That’s fine,” the videographer says easily. “We’re resetting anyway.”

Max nods once, like that was expected. Tries again. “And I’m not sure it’s in my contract.”

“It is,” the photographer says, without even checking anything. “You’ve got five hours of unscheduled content with us per season- we’ll just bill it to that.” You have to hide another giggle at that. He’s trying. He is really trying. Calm, logical, not making a scene, just quietly attempting to slide out of this with the least amount of fuss possible.

And it’s not working.

He exhales through his nose, glances back toward you like maybe you’ll offer him something- sympathy, an out, a shred of solidarity. You give him absolutely nothing- if anything, you look more pleased by the second.

You see the exact moment he realizes he’s not going to talk his way out of this, and you are openly grinning now. “Don’t,” he says.

You lift your brows, all innocence. “Don’t what?”

You watch him walk off set with a little grumble, then lean back in your chair with a quiet little sigh of satisfaction.

Yes. Suffer alongside you. The idea of Max being just as pissed off to be here- it doesn’t undo the morning or the photographer being kind of a dick or the slow, grinding exhaustion of the last few days- but it does improve your mood a bit. The chair is nice, too.

Sitting still while someone else fixes you is, at this point, a form of rest. You let them pull your hair back apart, rebuild it, touch up your face, and you don’t have to do anything except sit there and exist. No smiling on cue. No answering questions. Just the soft brush of hands and the low hum of people working around you.

But most of your newfound levity comes from Max.

Or, more specifically, the knowledge that Max is currently being inconvenienced on your behalf. You can picture it a little too clearly: the slight annoyance, the quiet resignation, the fact that he is now locked into this with you whether he likes it or not.

Karma, bitch. It brings you more satisfaction than it probably should.

A shadow falls across your mirror. The videographer. Director. Whatever he is. “Hey,” he says, easy. “Just wanted to give you a quick rundown before we start. This set’s mine,” he adds, almost as reassurance. “We’re just going to have some fun with it. Short clips, stills, promo stuff to support the full-length commercial. We will use actors for that bit. This is all just extra, so there’s no pressure whatsoever.”

Relief, immediate and unfiltered. “Great,” you say.

He smiles a little. “Do you know the premise?”

You hesitate. “Kind of.” He waits, clearly wanting your take. You shrug slightly in the chair. “Fragrance set. Alpha and Tauri. Male and female.” You make a small, vague gesture with your hand. “Yin and yang. Aggressive versus pretty. Dominant versus submissive. The usual.”

You’ve seen enough campaigns, enough branding language, enough mood boards to know how this story usually goes. The strong men’s scent. The soft, floral, quiet perfume. The contrast sells. It’s not your favorite storyline in the world, but it’s a couple clips for your headline sponsor- if you’re selling yourself out, it better be to them.

There’s a small pause, and the videographer tilts his head slightly, like you’ve said something stupid. “That’s… not what we’re doing.”

You frown, just a little. “It’s not?”

“No.” He gestures vaguely upward, like the answer is somewhere in the name itself. “Alpha Tauri. Brightest star in the Taurus constellation. It’s not about contrast like that. It’s about… mutual power.” You go still in the chair. He nods toward you. “Have you seen yourself?”

The makeup artist makes a small noise of protest. “I’m not finished- ”

“Show her,” he says, gentle but firm. A hand mirror is angled just enough that you can see.

And- huh. It’s not soft.

It’s not delicate or floral or anything resembling the quiet, submissive version of femininity you’d already braced yourself to play. The lines are sharper. The eyes darker, more defined. There’s something almost severe in the way the makeup frames your face now- still beautiful, but not in a passive way. In a way that feels… deliberate. Controlled. A little dangerous, if you’re being honest. You stare at this version of yourself for a second longer than you mean to.

The videographer watches your reaction, then gives a small, satisfied nod like you’ve just caught up to something he already knew. “Does that look like submissive to you?” he asks, not unkindly.

You huff a quiet breath through your nose. “No.”

“Good.” He doesn’t linger. Doesn’t over-explain. Just pats your leg lightly, a quick, grounding gesture that somehow doesn’t feel patronizing, and says, “Get dressed. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

Then he’s gone, already moving back toward the set. The makeup artist resumes, muttering faintly about interruptions, and you wait quietly for him to release you to dressing.

And when you get there, the dress- My God. The dress is… everything. Heavy in your hands when they pass it to you. It has weight to it, like it knows exactly what it’s doing. The fabric catches the light in a way that feels almost indecent, deep and dark and glossy in places, matte in others, cut to sharpen you instead of soften you. When you step into it, it slides up your legs and the slit settles high- higher than anything you would ever choose for yourself in a work environment- , the line is flirting dangerously close to inappropriate.

It is obscene.

It is perfect.

For a second- just a second- you forget you’re exhausted, because it feels like being sixteen again, stepping into a prom dress for the first time, only this one costs more than your first car and fits like it was designed specifically to make you a Bond girl. It cinches where it should, leaves bare what it wants, accentuates everything. You turn once in the mirror without meaning to, catching the way it moves, the way it holds.

You wouldn’t even know how to source something this nice, much less have the stomach to buy it. This is not your world, not really. But damn if it isn’t fun to visit. You step out onto set with a little more awareness of yourself than you’d like to admit, the fabric whispering against your skin with every step.

And then you see the car. You stop, because…. that is not a prop. That is… something else entirely.

It sits under the lights like it belongs there- low, long, clean lines and vintage in a way that feels intentional rather than dated. The badge is gone, stripped for the campaign, but the shape is familiar in a way you can’t quite place.

It looks like a Mustang. You’re an American motorsports professional- you can pick out the body lines of arguably the country’s most iconic car in your sleep. And the lines are there- but… it’s not a Mustang. It’s sleeker. European, somehow. Like someone took the idea of an American muscle car and refined it until it spoke a different language.

You approach it slowly, instinctively careful. The kind of careful you get around things that are clearly expensive and clearly not yours. Your hand hovers before you touch the door, then you open it with the lightest possible grip, like you might offend it if you’re too rough.

The interior is immaculate.

Of course it is.

You lean in, bracing one hand on the frame, peering at the dash, the stitching, the layout. It’s familiar, but not. Your brain starts trying to piece it together- this line, that curve, the proportions of it- when you pick up on the logo on the floor mats.

“Aston Martin?” you murmur, mostly to yourself, trying to reconcile it. “Why does it- ”

“It’s built by Ford.”

You spin around and are face to face with Max, and for a second, you don’t say anything.

You’ve never seen him like this. Not… in person, at least. No fuss, no flash- no spectacular buttons or jewelry on the cuffs. The tailoring doesn’t wildly deviate from any other tux- just sharp lines and dark fabric sitting exactly where it should. The white shirt breaks it up just enough, the collar crisp, the jacket cut close through the shoulders.

And still, it just… works. Wide lapels that make his shoulders look a mile broad. His bowtie is a bit larger than normal, and it looks good, and still you have to bite back a little smile because it’s a fun choice, but Max and tuxes and fun aren’t exactly three things you’ve been able to consolidate as related quite yet.

He cleans up nice, and that’s fucking annoying.

You’re aware of it in the same quiet, off-axis way you were at the door last night- like your brain registers something before you’ve decided whether it’s relevant. It makes you hesitate, just a fraction. Makes you feel a little… out of position. Not outmatched, exactly. Just not entirely settled in your own skin for a second.

Which is also, annoying. You are wearing this dress. There’s not a dman thing you should feel insecure about. Still, the feeling is there.

“Don’t do that,” you say instead, defaulting to irritation because it’s easier. “You scared the shit out of me.” Max doesn’t answer right away, you realize, because he’s looking at you.

Not leering, or even really staring, but he is taking stock in that direct way he has when he’s making observations about something and not really bothering to pretend that he’s not or hide it behind politeness. There’s the faintest hitch in his posture as his gaze tracks once, briefly- your face, your shoulders, the line of the dress where it cuts high at your leg- then comes back up like nothing happened.

He resets, looks past you, back at the car, like he’s chosen the safer topic without making it obvious. “Eighties Aston. When Ford owned most of the company. Helped them manufacture.” You turn halfway back toward the car, following his lead without commenting on the shift. “That’s why it’s so…” he trails off, searching for the word.

“Sexy?” you offer with a little laugh.

He scoffs gently. “I was going to say American.”

You glance at the lines again- the weight of it, the stance, the way it sits under the lights. “Same thing,” you say, almost absent, like it’s just a fact.

There’s a small pause. “Yeah,” he says.

Neither of you looks at the other again until they’re placing you in frame, and of course, the first setup goes strangely. Not a complete disaster- at least it’s better than getting nitpicked during the photography session. Nobody’s frustrated or openly uncomfortable, but there’s a stiffness to it that wasn’t there earlier when you and Max were beside the car and accidentally giving the videographer exactly what he wanted.

Now there are marks. Weird pauses when they’re adjusting the lighting. Direction. People watching you exist, the way you move your shoulders or tilt your head or-

You feel… off. You don’t know why.

You step into position beside the Aston while someone adjusts the train of your dress and another person dabs at the inside corner of your eye with a makeup sponge. Max settles opposite you, one hand braced on the roof of the car while the assistant checks framing.

“Okay,” the videographer says. “Just look at each other for me.”

That’s easy. Correction- should be easy. You look at Max all the time. Instead, the second your eyes actually land on Max’s, something in your body misfires.

A sharp, humming sort of awareness you can’t seem to switch off. The tux. The way he’s standing. The fact that he smells good when you’re this close. The heat of the lights. The dress against your skin. Your own pulse, suddenly noticeable for no reason whatsoever.

You look away too fast. “Sorry,” you say immediately, embarrassed by your own weirdness. “Hang on.”

It’s plain as day to the set that Max is off too. He keeps adjusting his cuffs. Looking at the car, then you, then away again. There’s a strange over-correction happening and the videographer considers calling it out. Decides against it as he watches you stumble through another setup. Better to just keep things moving and let you two settle into it naturally. “Totally fine,” he says easily instead. “Let’s just loosen it up. New plan. Max, stay standing.”

Max glances up from where he’d been adjusting his cuff again. “Alright.”

“You,” he says to you, gentler, “sit.” Someone pulls a stool in near the car, angled toward camera. You settle onto it automatically, smoothing the dress beneath you while the lighting team reworks the frame around the new height difference.

And immediately- better. Because Max is no longer directly in front of you. He’s at your back now, standing slightly behind and beside the chair, broad shoulders cutting into frame while the focus stays entirely on you. His face barely appears at all in the monitor test. Just the clean line of the tux, the shape of him, one hand loose near the back of the chair.

The effect is… striking.

The facelessness of it somehow makes him feel bigger. The dark silhouette of him behind you makes you look smaller in comparison, softer physically without actually diminishing you. You’re still the center of the image. If anything, more so now.

The videographer nods slowly at the monitor.

“There it is.”

And because you don’t have to fully deal with Max’s face anymore, your body starts settling back into itself.

You can ignore him better when he’s behind you.

You stop thinking so hard about where your eyes are going. Your shoulders loosen. The strange static under your skin eases enough that you can finally slip into the rhythm of the thing- slow turns toward camera, a hand against your own collarbone, the sharp line of the makeup finally making sense under the lights.

The videographer starts moving faster now.

“Beautiful.”

“Hold that.”

“Yes- chin down slightly- perfect.”

You breathe easier. Until-

“Okay,” he says casually, “give me one hand back on his jacket.”

And instantly, the weirdness comes roaring back. You lift your hand carefully toward Max’s lapel like you’re approaching a nervous animal. “Is this… okay?” you ask quietly, glancing up at him instead of the camera.

Max blinks once. “What?”

“Like- ” Your fingers hover uncertainly against the jacket. “This isn’t weird?”

His mouth twitches faintly. “No.”

The videographer watches this exchange over the monitor with growing fascination. “Great,” he says smoothly before either of you can overthink yourselves into another spiral. “Now keep that and look at camera.”

You do, even if you’re still too aware. Not visibly enough for anyone outside the set to pick up it, probably. You hope. You’re hitting the poses. Holding eye lines. Giving the camera what it wants. But under your skin, everything feels just slightly over-wound. Like every nerve ending got turned up one setting too high.

Your hand stays carefully against Max’s jacket, but your shoulders are getting tight. Your breathing shallow in that unconscious way that happens when you’re trying too hard not to do something wrong. You can physically feel yourself overthinking again. Whether your hand placement looks natural. Whether your body angle is weird. Whether Max secretly hates this and is just being polite because there are cameras and twenty people watching.

Then-

Warmth. A hand settles into the space between your shoulder and neck.

Max.

He bends slightly, close enough now that his voice doesn’t need to be loud. “You need to relax,” he says quietly. There’s amusement under it. Something dry and steady and annoyingly calm. “I won’t bite. I swear.”

Your first instinct is to tense harder, because now you are extremely aware of the fact that Max Verstappen is touching you. But then… you relax.

Because he’s right.

What the fuck are you so worried about?

It’s Max. You know Max. You’ve fought with him. Cooked for him. Fallen asleep on his couch. Drunk-walked home with him at midnight. He is not some terrifying stranger. He’s just… Max.

Your hand softens naturally against his jacket. Your posture… loosens… and suddenly the whole thing stops looking staged. One second you’re stiff and overthinking where your fingers go, and the next something clicks into place and suddenly you feel like you might actually deserve to get paid for this.

The videographer sees it immediately. His eyes flick once to the monitor, then brighten almost imperceptibly, keeps rolling while Max straightens again behind you, his hand slipping away from your shoulder like it had been nothing at all.

Objectively, he already has more than enough footage for the digital campaign. More than enough for short cuts and promo clips and still pulls. But every time he thinks he’s got it, something else happens- another glance, another bit of dialogue, another tiny interaction that feels weirdly alive on camera in a way these things almost never do.

At first it had just been chemistry in the abstract sense- good visual balance, easy banter, two attractive people photographed well together. But somewhere over the last hour it’s become something sharper than that.

You and Max keep ending up closer. It just… happens. A hand lingers a little longer on his chest while they reset the lighting. His hand settles lower against your waist during another setup “just to see how it looks” and never really leaves. You lean into him more naturally now when they place you together instead of holding yourself stiffly apart. He bends down to hear your muttered comments between takes and doesn’t move back immediately after. Every adjustment gets smaller because eventually there’s nothing left to correct. You both start instinctively finding each other in the frame.

You and Max are hiding behind the same explanation: It’s work. This is literally the assignment. The campaign is built around tension and magnetism and mutual gravity, so of course you’re touching more. Of course you’re leaning into each other. Of course your bodies are starting to move together more fluidly after hours on set. That’s professionalism. That’s being marketable. That’s you being good at your job.That’s all this is.

The fact that the air feels a little heavier every time Max steps close is irrelevant. The fact that your pulse occasionally jumps when his hand lands on you unexpectedly is reflex. Or touch deprivation. Or self-consciousness. And then finally, after entirely too many setups and entirely too much footage, the videographer claps his hands lightly once and says, “Okay. One left.”

The crew starts shifting toward the car again. “This one’s a driving shot,” he says, already sounding apologetic before he’s even explained it. “And, we wrote it for actors, not…- look- I know it’s kind of pushing it.”

That immediately gets your attention, because what do you mean, ‘pushing it?’

The videographer steps in almost at once, clearly already preparing alternatives. “We can modify it a hundred ways,” he says quickly. “Or skip it entirely. Seriously. Totally fine. You’ve both done great, but, um- the original concept,” he says carefully, “was the actor driving, actress kind of…. kind of in his lap…” He makes another helpless little gesture. “You know, feet out the window. Intimate. Expensive. Dangerous. Fragrance-commercial bullshit.” He waves it off like it’s very much not a big deal.

You blink once. Um. Oh. The guy is already walking it back in real time. “But we absolutely do not have to do that,” he says immediately. “We can just do standard interior shots. Or split coverage. Or whatever. It’s okay, really.” Because there is no fucking way they’re going to agree to this.

You glance at Max automatically.

He looks unsurprised by the suggestion, at least, like this isn’t even the first time he’s been used as a prop. Slightly resigned, maybe. Like this tracks with the trajectory of the day.

The director continues, still cautious. “No pressure at all. I just wanted to be clear before we moved on.”

There’s a small pause. You think about it. And honestly…

you don’t have anyone to answer to. No boyfriend waiting back at the hote to get pissy about thisl. No complicated personal life that’s going to explode because you sat in somebody’s lap for ten seconds on a commercial set.

So you chew on your nail, glance at Max again and say, cautiously, “I mean…” everybody on set goes quiet, “...as long as,” you continue, looking at Max now instead of the crew, because that’s honestly what matters here, “there’s not some socialite somewhere that’s going to pour a drink over my head later…”

Max stares at you for half a second, then huffs a laugh. “No,” he says.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

You lift one shoulder. “I can at least try it.” The silence that follows is almost comical. The videographer looks between the two of you like he cannot believe this is working. “Only if you’re comfortable,” you add quickly to Max, because despite everything, that still matters more to you than the shot does. “Like, actually.”

Max looks at you for a second longer than necessary, and there’s something strange in his expression again, but he says, calmly, “It’s fine.” The videographer practically lights up.

“Great,” he says immediately, before either of you can reconsider. “Amazing. Perfect. We’ll keep it quick.”

The crew starts moving at once, and getting into the car is, unfortunately, hilarious. Not sexy, and not even a little bit smooth. Hilarious, because the dress is approximately one engineering failure away from becoming a public indecency charge, and the Aston was clearly not designed with two people behind the wheel in mind.

“Okay, butt first,” somebody says helpfully as you’re already backing into the car.

“Thank you for the insight,” you deadpan.

Max is already behind the wheel by then, one arm hooked over the seat while he watches you attempt to back yourself into the space between him and the steering wheel without flashing the entire crew. You get one knee out the window. Then get stuck. Then start laughing because the situation is such a clusterfuck that there’s nothing else to do. Eventually you manage it with assistance from four people.

Someone gathers the train of the dress out the window to make it look more dramatic, and someone else carefully lifts your legs and angles them. Another assistant tucks fabric under your knees while apologizing every three seconds.

By the time they’re done, you’re basically reclined against Max’s chest, one arm braced lightly around his shoulders so you don’t slide. You trust them when they tell you it looks incredible. Unfortunately, it also means you are now very aware of Max.

Like so extremely aware.

Your entire side is against his chest. One of his hands is resting low near your hip because there’s literally nowhere else for it to go in the cramped interior. His face is close enough that if either of you moved wrong you’d probably knock foreheads.

And there’s downtime now. Lighting adjustments. Lens swaps. People fussing with the train of the dress outside the car. Which means you’re just… sitting here. In his lap.

Which is… a lot.

The interior of the car feels smaller now that everyone has stepped back a little. Warmer. The smell of leather and expensive cologne and hairspray trapped together under the lights. You shift slightly to get comfortable and accidentally end up even closer. Your face turns toward his automatically and- for one sharp, stupid second-

Christmas Eve flashes through your head.

The twin bed. The dark. His face close to yours exactly like this, eyes half-lidded and serious and the way he looked when he finally stopped trying to be so fucking insufferable for once.

You glance at him slightly, suddenly self-conscious in a very specific way, and your brain apparently panics by rerouting into nonsense, so you blurt quietly:“You would tell me if I smelled bad, right?”

And even though it’s word vomit, you become acutely conscious of the fact that you have been on set for hours- under hot lights, in heavy makeup. Max blinks once. “What?”

“I’m serious.” You lower your voice automatically, because there are still people moving around outside the car. “Like if I smelled sweaty or weird or something.”

For a second he just stares at you like the question itself has caught him completely off guard. Then his mouth twitches. “You smell fine.”

“You would tell me, though, right? You didn’t even check.” He huffs a quiet laugh, looking down briefly like he’s trying not to smile too obviously about the fact that this is apparently your concern right now.

“You’ve smelled like hairspray all day,” he says.

You narrow your eyes slightly. “That’s not an answer.”

“You smell nice, okay? Relax.” You make a face and try not to think about that too hard. The space inside the car feels strangely small and warm and private despite the cameras pointed directly at you.

The crew keeps fussing around the outside of the car while you try not to move too much and ruin whatever precarious geometry they’ve created. Your legs are out the driver’s side window, the train of the dress spilling dramatically over the door and down the side of the Aston. One arm is looped loosely around Max’s shoulders to keep yourself balanced as he slips it into gear.

They get the rollers.

A few slow passes with the camera car tracking alongside the Aston, catching ever reflection of light off of the glossy paint. You stay folded against Max while the extra fabric spills dramatically across the side, one hand looped loosely around his shoulders while the other braces against the seat whenever he corners and turns it back for another pass.

The awkwardness is mostly gone by the time the crew finally starts wrapping- people peeling away from the convoy and lowering cameras and talking over each other about footage and pickups and schedules. And just when you’d expect him to pull it in, to let you out- Max says, casually, “We should get to have a little fun after this.”

You blink at him. “What?”

He glances over once. “Hang on.”

Your stomach drops instantly. “Max- ”

Too late. The Aston snarls, and then the world whips sideways. You shriek before you can stop yourself as Max throws the car into a brutal donut, tires screaming against pavement while the whole car spins hard enough to slam you sideways into him.

“OH MY GOD- ” You grab him on instinct. Not a cute grab. Your arms lock tight around his neck while laughter bursts out of you at the exact same time as the panic, the sound high and breathless and completely unprofessional.

Because you are basically unsecured. Your legs are still half out the fucking window. The only things keeping you from getting launched around the interior are your grip around Max’s shoulders and the fact that every few seconds his free hand comes off the shifter to catch your waist and brace you back against him.

The landscape becomes streaks of light and motion while your dress and hair whip everywhere and you’re laughing so hard now you can barely breathe. “MAX!”

He’s laughing too. One hand on the wheel, completely at ease while the Aston rotates violently around the empty stretch of pavement like he’s been waiting all day for an excuse to do something interesting.

When the car straightens, the set snaps back into motion. Crew come jogging in, someone opens your door and within minutes the whole illusion is being peeled off of both of you. By the time you’re back in your own clothes and walking out through the last of the lights and cables, it almost feels like it happened to somebody else.

“My sim race starts this afternoon,” Max says after a bit, hands in his pockets like it’s nothing.

“Can I watch?”

___________________________________________________________________

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly before Gavin can even start. “I don’t know. Maybe I just- maybe I need more laps here. The track’s weird and- ”

You feel maybe six years old. You sit at the end of the table with your head bowed slightly, elbows on your knees, still half in your fireproofs while the monitors around the room cycle through telemetry and sector comparisons. The adrenaline from FP1 has already curdled into something uglier- frustration, embarrassment, the hot little knot of defensiveness building in your chest.

Yuki beat you. Not enough for anyone outside the garage to really care, but for the first time in your entire career, he was definitively faster across the session for no apparent reason except that you were fucking slow.

“No,” Gavin says. He’s leaning against the opposite side of the table, arms folded, expression tired more than angry. Paternal, almost. Which somehow makes the shame worse. “We’re not doing that.”

Your jaw tightens a little automatically.

Because part of you does want to do that. You want to blame the track evolution or the setup or the learning curve or literally anything else because you have been trying so fucking hard this week and it feels unfair that trying hard apparently still isn’t enough.

Gavin must see it happen across your face because his expression softens a fraction before he reaches for the tablet beside him. “Well,” he says dryly, “let’s start with you being up all fucking night on Max Verstappen’s livestream.”

Your head lifts immediately. “Oh, come on- ”

Well, he’s not wrong. You were. On camera and everything. You had told yourself it didn’t matter because you weren’t sleeping anyway. Because the nightmares were bad and the adrenaline from the campaign had you buzzing and sitting behind Max’s sim rig and letting him teach you about iRacing felt easier than lying in the dark staring at hotel ceilings until sunrise.

But hearing it out loud like this- hearing it framed as a professional failure- makes shame crawl hot up your neck. “I wasn’t- ” you start weakly, then stop because there’s nothing useful to say.

Gavin is already pulling up your biometric data. “In fact,” he continues, calm enough to be terrifying, “you’ve barely slept all week.” The monitors change. Graphs. Numbers. Your resting heart rate trending higher every day. Sleep debt climbing. “You are so fucking negative on calories right now it’s not even funny,” he says.

You close your eyes briefly. “And,” Gavin continues, tapping the screen once, “you’ve lost seven pounds since Bahrain.”

That one surprises you enough that your head lifts. “What?”

“We have to rebalance ballast. That's why your car felt so bad today.”

Oh. Oh, that’s bad. Ballast means the car noticed. You stare at the numbers on the screen while something slow and horrible starts settling in your chest. You really had thought this was just… a couple corners cut here and there. Some missed sleep. Some missed meals.

“I’m trying,” you say quietly. You’re eating when you can. Sleeping when you can. Smiling when you’re supposed to. Doing the sponsor work and the interviews and the prep and the sim and the travel and the driving and all of it while your body slowly starts waving little white flags you keep pretending not to see, and now you’re starting to fail your team.

Gavin’s expression softens slightly at the look on your face. “I know you are,” he says.

Which almost makes you cry from sheer relief because at least he believes you’re not intentionally self-destructing. He pushes away from the table and comes around beside you now instead of standing across from you like an authority figure delivering judgment.

“This is a lot,” he says. “I know it is.” You stare down at your hands.

“The training load alone would be a lot. Then add travel. Add the sponsor obligations. Add moving countries every five fucking days. Add learning an F1 car while everybody in the world watches you do it.” He exhales quietly. “This is not normal.”

You huff a tiny laugh at that. “No?”

“No.” Gavin shakes his head once. “And pretending you should just magically absorb it without support is stupid.” The knot in your chest loosens a little bit, because nobody has really said that out loud yet. Mostly everyone just keeps telling you how exciting this all is.

Gavin gestures vaguely toward the telemetry screens. “But we need to problem solve this shit as a team, yeah? There are solutions for this.” He shrugs. “If you need a fucking puppy, we’ll figure out how to get you a puppy.”

That startles a laugh out of you.

“I’m serious. If a good night’s sleep is the difference between you scoring even one extra point or having one less part made this season, it is fiscally beneficial for this team to solve your sleep problem. We’ll buy you a custom mattress and drag it around the world if we have to,” he says. “I don’t care.”

Then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a company credit card. “For right now,” he says, holding it out, “I need you to go buy something with an offensive amount of calories.”

“And then,” Gavin continues, pointing toward the hallway, “you are going to go lie down in your drivers room.”

You make a face automatically. “Gavin- ”

“I mean it,” he says again, softer this time but no less firm. “I don’t care if you sleep. I don’t care if you stare at the ceiling. But you better be horizontal, off your phone, in the dark until I come get you.”

Your mouth opens slightly, but he points at you before you can argue. “And if I walk in there and catch you watching TikTok edits of yourself or answering emails, I will take your phone, so help me God.”

“You sound like my dad.”

“Perfect,” Gavin says dryly, and it hits somewhere tender enough that you look away immediately.

You buy the food. You turn out the lights. You lie down.

And there’s only one thing that chaps your ass more than a man telling you what to do with your body, and that’s a man telling you what to do with your body and being right, but… Gavin is right.

FP2 is better. Measurably, annoyingly, undeniably better. You feel it in the car immediately- not perfection or magic or some cinematic return to form where the world rights itself and you suddenly become invincible again. Just… clean. Quiet. Your hands stop chasing the wheel so much. The car stops feeling like it’s happening half a beat ahead of you. The entries are sharper. The exits less messy. The little hesitations that had infected FP1 have mostly burned off.

The team, of course, says nothing useful to the press about why, because they’re fucking G’s and have your back. Publicly, they frame it around data runs and sensible setup changes and a strong response to the first session. They would never throw you under the bus. Never say, yes, our rookie was running on fumes and then ate a giant sandwich and took a nap like an overtired toddler and magically found three tenths.

But inside the garage, the improvement is total enough that nobody has to say it out loud.

You hate that Gavin was right. You hate it even more because part of you is also relieved. Relieved you’re doing better. Relieved you were able to take a nap. Relieved someone is looking out for you. Relieved they’ve eased up your schedule. Relieved that your success no longer feels, entirely, like a you problem and more like a team effort. It’s like you are drowning in yourself, a little bit, and for the first time in forever someone has walked by and said “do you want a fucking lifejacket? Some swimming lessons?”

So when evening comes and you find yourself with the strange, disorienting reward of actual free time, it feels vaguely insulting. Like you’ve been given a reward for sucking. Who knew being worse would earn you a curfew and a schedule and a better lap time.

You’re under strict instructions now: get food, go back to your room, go to bed. No cocktails. No wandering. No getting “distracted” by anything that even looks like an email. Gavin had delivered the orders with such paternal finality that arguing would’ve felt embarrassing.

So you end up leaning against the hotel bar in clean clothes with your hair mostly brushed out and your phone face down beside the menu, waiting on your steak chimichurri sliders. The bar is warm and low-lit, that international-hotel design that makes every city feel faintly interchangeable after a while. Glass clinks softly somewhere to your left. Someone laughs too loudly behind you. You ignore all of it and keep scanning for steak, potatoes, bread, something salty.

Then a man comes up to the hostess stand beside the bar and says, “Can I get a fork?”

You know that voice anywhere. Max turns at almost the same moment, a paper bag in one hand and two foil-wrapped kebab orders tucked against his side. For one beautiful second, he is caught completely red handed. You look down at the bag again, deliberately. Then back at him. “Well, well.”

Max’s expression goes flat immediately, which only makes it funnier. “Hi,” he says.

“Did someone eat their kebab after all?” He says nothing. You push off the bar a little, menu forgotten entirely now. “Not just eat it,” you add, eyes flicking meaningfully to the second order. “But liked it enough to go back for seconds.”

You are delighted.

Because of course he ate it after you left. Of course the extra order mysteriously disappeared. And of course this man, who had acted like your street food was one step removed from biohazardous waste, has now snuck off to get more under cover of darkness like a criminal.

“I knew it,” you say, fully grinning now. “Oh my god.”

“It’s not- ”

You laugh. “No, no, no. Don’t cheapen this. You were wrong. Was the terrifying little restaurant okay for your delicate constitution?”

His mouth twitches despite himself. “It was fine.”

“Fine?”

You stare at him. He stares back for one beat, then relents by inches. “Good.”

You clap one hand lightly over your heart. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted.”

The hostess slips your take-out across the marble counter, steam curling from the vents in the clamshell. You thank her, shift the bag into one hand, and fall back in beside Max as you both aim for the elevators, still volleying little insults about kebabs and delicate constitutions.

The lift arrives. You step in first and scan the panel, thumb poised over floor number 15 while Max leans against the opposite wall with his kebab bag rustling. The doors start to glide shut and you both pointedly pretend you don’t hear the person down the call calling to hold the door.

“So,” he says, eyebrow flicking up, “you’re really just going to go eat by yourself?”

You tap the close button, like an asshole, but you’re really not keen on sharing a lift with a fan currently. “That was the assignment.”

“Come up,” he says. “Just for a bit.”

The lift smooths upward without a jolt. You should refuse. Gavin will murder you and then hang your head on the wall to scare his next rookie into listening. And yet, you shrug, your thumb slides to 30, and the elevator climbs the extra floors.

He lets you both in, and you toe off sneakers at the door, drop cross-legged onto the couch, and set your take-out between you like a peace offering. He kicks off his own shoes, tosses kebabs onto the low coffee table, and disappears long enough to return with paper napkins and two bottles of water.

“What did you get?” he asks, opening one kebab parcel.

“Steak sliders,” you say around a shrug, already peeling open the cardboard clamshell. “Doctor’s orders.” The smell, rich and herby, makes your stomach tighten with instant, reflexive hunger. You pluck a slider, tear a neat bite, and catch him sneaking a longer look than necessary.

In trade, you lean over, pinch a single seared chunk of lamb from his kebab wrap. “Research,” you declare, popping it in your mouth before he can object.

He scoffs but tilts the foil toward you in silent permission. Soon you’re trading without commentary- one of his perfectly charred gyro strips for some of your truffle fries, a swipe of yogurt sauce across the edge of his naan traded for the last bite of a slider. Conversation drifts- practice sectors, the cats, Max talks about wanting to sponsor an enduro car next year.

When he finally starts to get up, Max doesn’t say stay, but he also doesn’t say go. He just flicks on a lamp, toes the kebab bags toward the trash, and starts powering up his travel sim rig in the corner like this is the most natural progression in the world. Screens hum awake, the wheel calibrates with its little whir-click-whir, and the LED strip under the wheel washes the carpet in soft blue.

Halfway through logging into his stream account, he turns, routine as ever. “You want in?”

You shake your head, mouth quirking. “Gavin will literally murder me if I’m not horizontal in the next twenty minutes.”

Max shrugs, already adjusting the wheel angle. “So”- he vaguely motions toward the king-size bed twelve feet away- “lie down.”

Just that. As if the bed in his room is no different from a spare chair.

You glance at it. Crisp white duvet, navy throw folded neat at the foot. Clean and inviting- and also identical to your own bed two floors down. This is a terrible idea.

Max is already fitting his headphones on, attention sliding back to the monitor, unconcerned whether you accept the offer or not. It isn’t possessive; it isn’t even expectant. Simply matter-of-fact, like he’s offered you a spare towel.

“…Just for a little bit,” you mutter, more to yourself than to him.

Max’s stream intro music starts- low synth, his teammates’ voices bubbling through. You kick off your sneakers near the couch and wander towards the bed. The duvet gives under you with that hotel-fluffed loft you never can quite manage at home. You lie on your side with your arms folded up by your chin and blearily watch Max’s wheel turn.

You close your eyes, telling yourself this is just a pit stop. Twenty minutes, you promise yourself. The pillow is cool beneath your cheek. You catch one last fragment of Max telling chat he’s running a short program tonight, then nothing at all.

Twenty minutes.

____________________________________

“Hey.” Soft. Low. Almost a whisper. A gentle pressure on your shoulder, warm but careful.

You fight your way up from somewhere thick and dark, eyes gritty, limbs heavy as sandbags. For a second you don’t know where you are- just the shape of sleep still wrapped around your throat- until the low lamp comes into focus and, with it, Max.

He has left one light on- not so much as to make your eyes burn, but exactly enough that you can see his face clearly when your eyes finally catch on it. Enough that the room doesn’t feel wrong. He’s a little farther back than he needs to be, hand already retreating from your shoulder, giving you space before you even ask for it.

“How long- ?”

“Couple hours,” he murmurs. His voice stays quiet, steady. The duvet shifts lightly where he gives it a small tug back and sits on the other side. “Didn’t want you waking up confused.”

“If you want to stay,” he offers, voice casual, “it’s fine. I was just giving you the option to go back to your own room if you’d rather.” He’s in an old race-team T-shirt, shorts, nothing showy. You search yourself for alarm, or concern, or danger. Find none. Just exhaustion and the dim comfort of not having to think another step ahead.

“Too tired,” you mumble, sliding down under the duvet this time and pulling it to your collarbone.

“Okay.” He reaches over you, clicks the bedside lamp to its lowest amber glow. “I’ll kill the lights.” A last faint click, and darkness settles. Mattress shifts as he stretches out beside you, not touching, but close enough that warmth seeps through the space between.

Your body is already falling. Walls you usually keep up- noise about nightmares, safety, boundaries, what things might look like- stay down. You trust him to be safe. You trust him not to make it weird. You trust him to not blab about it.

“‘Night,” you breathe, words slurring.

Max’s reply is little more than a rumble in the half-light.

_______________________________________________________

Marbles tack up on the tyres as you nose the car into the box- engine finally quiet, hot air hissing up the wheel wells. Five-minute turnaround to Q3. Mechanics swarm, tyre blankets on, nose cone wiped, fluid temps checked. You crack the visor and it’s like the world resumes- brake dust and burnt rubber pour in with the noise of the garage and the hard thud of your own heartbeat. You feel like you could chew through sheet metal.

Gavin is there before the jack drops, tablet in hand, practically vibrating.

“You’re on it,” he says, eyes shining behind the visor strip. “Green all the way through your last two laps- keep that up and you’re in the fight with the big three, yeah?”

You nod once, quick. Sweat soaks into your braids. The numbers feel good- feel right again- clean entries, precise exits, aggression without the over-steer twitch that ruined Saudi. The car breathes under you instead of wrestling.

Gavin scrolls. “Options: banker on scrubbed soft, bolt the second set for one or two flyers. Or we can go straight to your new set, but all your softs are pretty chewed up. Probably best to try to take care of our extras, yeah?”

“Scrubbed first,” you say, throat raw. “Then new.”

He grins- an actual grin- and taps the note through to the pit wall. You’ve seen him pleased before; you’ve never seen him buzz like this in a real race, practically hopping in place while the crew re-torques the wheels. It hits you that everyone’s skating the edge of disbelief. Yesterday you were fading. Today you’re snarling on the heels of the Ferrari’s like you're waiting to bite their ankles. They’re all trying to figure out where it came from. Calories and a power nap, that’s what everyone thinks.

But you know better.

You’d slept- really slept- nearly ten straight hours. Knocked out cold on a hotel mattress under someone else’s name, lulled by Max’s steady breathing a forearm’s width away. No nightmares. No 3 a.m. lurch to the floor. Just dark, deep, unbroken rest that settled your hands and sharpened your eyes like a reset button the sport science people can’t quantify.

Crew chief clears you. Jack drops. Engine fires violent and alive. You squeeze Gavin’s forearm through the gap in the halo and flip your visor down. “Let’s finish it,” you say.

He pats the top of your helmet twice before he steps back, and as you roll down pit-lane and past Max’s empty bay, you briefly wonder if he felt the same strange calm when he woke to find you still breathing beside him.

The pit lane spits you out slow at first, all leash and no freedom, engine straining under the limiter while the whole car vibrates with withheld intent. You keep your hands light on the wheel. Keep your breathing even. The tyres underneath you are not fresh, not eager, not new enough to trust without a little coaxing, but that’s fine. You know how to ask nicely before you start making demands.

The line opens up, limiter off, and the car surges forward like it has been insulted.

You don’t attack the lap yet. You wake it up. A little weave, then another, broad and deliberate, feeling the old rubber load and roll and start to come back to you. You lean on the brakes harder than you need to, just to get some heat in everything, then release and let it run.

You are keyed all the way up, but it’s not frantic, you’re not overcooked. You’re ready. There’s a difference.

End of the back straight a flash of navy and yellow explodes from the mirrors- Max is on his flyer. You stay flat out right up into the corner before you peel a meter off, do a little swap into the turn that gives him the line so nicely it might as well be choreographed. Nice little tow he never asked for. You flick back onto the racing line, knit the wheel straight, feed throttle. Your lap is coming up.

It’s a racehorse-at-the-gate kind of feeling: nostrils flared, reins shaking. Up through eighth, speed blur lifting the front-wing tips. Brake at the 75-board, body braced against the belts. The car is on rails- old rubber, sure, but balanced- front end knifing in, rear settling just long enough for rotation before you smash curb exit.

You breathe through six, feather seven, flat-saw eight. Your helmet feels like a fucking kiln; sweat stings your eyes and dries before you can blink it away. Lance’s delta pings green ahead- P6 for him, smug little Aston badges on the timing tower. Not for long.

Into the hairpin you hold off on the downshift just a heartbeat later, shove the nose inside the darker groove, tyres shuffling but staying firm. The DRS makes your blood sing- all this seat time and there’s still moments where the sheer speed is mind-bending. This is your fucking car screaming 200 mph down the straits. Brake late, roll apex, throttle out earlier than sanity tells you to. The rear wiggles, but catches, and you make a note to adjust your timing.

Across the stripe, you sit P7, three hundredths off Stroll, trading punches with Carlos and Charles in the live timings.

“Okay, you’re in it. A new set should help you out,” Gavin warns in your ear. “Box, box this lap.”

Box. You mind your procedures, because you refuse to lose this momentum to a penalty. On the timing screen, Max punches provisional pole for the third lap in a row. Shocking. Whatever. You’re hunting green cars right now, not blue rocketships.

Out you go again- rubber glossy and virgin- but not for long. Turn 1, you brake later than before- and these fresh tyres laugh at the load, ask for more. Full power exit, and it’s just green, green, green. You're getting faster with every sector, and you’re pure instinct: a raw animal slamming on those inputs, feeling that world-class suspension punch you in the spine.

The fresh tyres deliver you, lap after lap, and the tower turns into a fist-fight of nameplates for the ‘best of the rest.’ Charles keeps looking like he has it one second, and then dying off the next. Lance throws everything at the Aston, slides wide,, and his delta bleeds red. They’ve already given their best today, and at some point it’s apparent they’re going to stay frozen beneath you on the timing stack, locked out.

But Carlos- Carlos keeps coming. P5 flashes to Ferrari, and well, that’s just fucking unacceptable for you. You respond- shove two wheels over the exit kerb of the chicane, engine screaming- and it flips to your number.

Next tour he steals it back by nineteen thousandths.

Heat builds under the helmet, a wild, metallic taste in your throat. Every time the screen changes you feel it in your pulse, hot and sharp- prove it, prove it, prove it. Gavin’s voice is a distant drone: “Reset, kid- take a beat and prep for one more if you want it- ” but you’re already ripping through S-curves, chasing green bars.

You nail the hairpin apex, rocket down the straight, perfect shift lights- and the delta glows +0.015. Not enough. You cross the stripe and reclaim P5, and your heart has either exploded or stopped altogether, but which you’re not sure. Two minutes left.

Carlos answers with a lap that is all scarlet aggression, Ferrari clipping every apex by millimetres. P5 flips red at the split screen and sticks: –0.007.

Chequered flag falls. Oh, fuck all the way off.

You coast into pit-lane ahead of him, visor cracked heat pulsing up the cockpit sides. The Ferrari idles past your box, and for one ridiculous second you picture leaping from your car onto his engine cover and throttling him like some cartoon bandit- just keyed-up racer brain, nothing personal, but God you wanted that fifth.

Instead you guide the car to the weight bridge, kill the engine, and sit there while the silence howls in your ears. Sixth on merit, Ferrari in sight. The garage erupts anyway when you pull it in- your best grid slot yet in a midfield car- and part of you does smile about it. But the other part files that achy, injustice feeling away, hot and bright, to use as fuel for tomorrow’s lights.

The media-zone gauntlet spits you out into late-afternoon glare and the arms of the junior press, but eventually, the reporters and influencers do peel away, cameras drift to the next driver, and you step aside to un-Velcro your suit collar, lungs still tasting rubber smoke. When you look up, Max is there- no planned reunion, just inevitable- shouldering his way past every interview that he’s not contractually obligated to give. You meet in the slack space between backdrops, helmets dangling from opposite hands. The grin hits both of you at the same time.

“Nice session,” he says, tapping a knuckle against the very edge of your shoulder. “Clean.”

“Likewise,” you answer, a little breathless, more from adrenaline than exertion. “Pole by four tenths? Must’ve been that tow.”

He snorts. “Thank God for that, no?”

“Oh, absolutely,” you laugh, rolling your eyes. “That draft down the back straight- whole half second right there, you’re welcome. It’s like cheating.”

He shakes his head. You elbow him lightly as your turn; he bumps you back. The exchange is easy, charged only by leftover adrenaline and shared relief. For a second there’s no history- no last-season animosity, no awkward sponsor dinners, no exhausting fathers, no weird photoshoots- just two drivers who both had a good quali.

“You looked quick,” he adds, more genuine now. “Balanced.”

“Feel quick,” you say, and you realise it’s true. “They fiddled with a few things. The new tyres helped. Team’s over the moon.”

“Well, feel free to give a tow again tomorrow when I start lapping the midfield."

“Shut up,” you mutter, grinning so hard your cheeks hurt. The warmth lingers; people move around you, mechanics hustling tyres, journalists calling names, but you and Max hold the centre of a small, accidental orbit.

The two of you drift out of the mixed zone and head toward hospitality, and conversation jogs from sector deltas to tyre drop-off, then meanders into nothing in particular- easy filler you don’t have to think about, which thank God, because meanwhile your brain is sprinting laps of its own.

Say it. Just ask. It’s one night.

You nod along to something Max says about front-wing damage, only half hearing him, and immediately forget your reply. Because every time you open your mouth to suggest staying again- “Hey, about tonight…”- the words tangle. You’ve shared a flight, shared a couch, shared a bed, shared ten hours of unconscious proximity, but somehow asking for a repeat feels bigger when it’s deliberate.

Luck, superstition, whatever. After today’s quali you’d sleep in the pitlane if it guaranteed tomorrow’s pace. And you know the difference was ten solid hours beside him. You just have to explain that without sounding…odd.

“You want to do dinner after briefing?” he asks as you step onto the paddock footbridge.

Your pulse jumps. Opening.

“Actually.” You clear your throat, glance at the walkway’s steel grating. “I was thinking- uh- about sleep.” He frowns slightly, confused and obviously waiting fr you to elaborate.. “I drove better today,” you rush on. “The sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well and- it worked. So… I wondered if maybe- just tonight- ”

Just a blank blink from Max. “You want to hang out still, right?”

“No. I mean, yes, yes, but- ” Your face heats under the sun visor. “I mean… if I could crash in your room again. After we… hang out.”

Max’s eyebrows lift, not in surprise so much as calculation. You can see him sorting variables: his own sleep, his own start, but somewhere beneath that the faint crease that says he does understand performance nerves.

“You think it’ll help.” Statement, not question.

“It will.” It comes out small but certain. “Just this once- Baku’s weeks away, I’ll get myself sorted before then. I’m just- ” You shrug, helpless. “Desperate.”

He’s silent long enough that your stomach knots, but when he looks over he isn’t skeptical, just… shy, almost, in a way you’ve never seen on his face.

“Okay,” he says. “My room?”

Air whooshes from your lungs. “Um, sure. If that’s okay?” Neither of you knows what to do with the sudden quiet, and you both laugh at the exact same time, which only makes it worse- better- something.

“So,” he offers, scratching at the base of his neck, “briefing, dinner, sleep. That’s the plan?”

“That’s the plan,” you echo, nodding too fast.

And somehow that’s the arrangement: purposeful, mutually agreed, startlingly innocent for all the potential undercurrent. You walk the rest of the way shoulder-to-shoulder, each of you a little pink about the ears, each pretending the other can’t see.

Danny catches the both of you right at the edge of the paddock flow, that loose end-of-day moment where everybody’s still keeping up the facade like they’re not trying to get the hell off of the track as soon as possible.

“Chef’s table at Collins tonight,” he says, like he’s announcing a pub stop. “I forgot I booked it. You guys in? Lando, Carlos- I think Charles and his new lady, we’ll see.”

You say yes without really thinking, because Max does, and agreeing feels easier than doing social calculus in public, and because you’re already moving, already buoyed by the good day. And then you’re on the cart back to the hotel, shoulder against the b-pillar, phone in hand, doing what you always do when something costs money: checking the math. Not spiraling about it, at least not yet- but you need to know what you’ve gotten yourself into. If you need to back out now.

Collins’ menu pulls up, and it’s a nice place, obviously. But it’s not insane. There are mains for normal people with normal people budgets. There are also things that look like they’re priced for people who don’t know what a per diem is, but you can just… not order those. Easy.

You run it through your head: entrée, maybe a side, maybe one drink if you feel like it. Tip, maybe. Is that a thing here? Taxi, if needed. All fine. It’ll sting a little on principle- because you’ve been weirdly disciplined since moving, not really buying things, not really “going out” unless it’s on the company’s dime- but it won’t wreck anything.

And it’s slightly odd to be doing it at all- to be able to do it- sitting at a chef’s table with your friends like you didn’t spend most of your life eating trackside sandwiches and counting gas money, but the oddness is more observational than emotional. Like coming to your house one day and seeing that yes, it’s still your house, but someone’s built luxury condos all over your neighborhood without telling you and your property’s tripled in value without you seemingly doing anything.

It won’t touch the money you still feel like you owe your parents, either, which is the real line in the sand. You split off upstairs at the hotel with direction to meet in the upper lounge at 7, which gives you roughly 35 minutes to get yourself sorted out.

You do not wash your hair- no chance. It would take a century to dry and you’d end up going to dinner with that weird moist scalp feeling that leaves the roots of your hair feeling gross and heavy and makes you irrationally irritated. So you rinse down fast- body only- hot water, quick soap, enough to get the day off your skin.

Then you stand in front of your open suitcase, throw a bunch of shit onto the bed, and make a decision you didn’t realize you’d been delaying: what the fuck do you wear?

Because it is a nicer place. Upscale dinner at an upscale restaurant. And every time you’ve ever been somewhere like that, it’s been for an occasion. An anniversary. A birthday. A promotion. A “this matters, so look like it matters.” You don’t know how to go to a place like that without at least trying a little.

You pull on a long black slip dress- simple, clean, the kind of thing that looks intentional without being flashy. Hair down, because it’s the quickest way to look finished, even if the waves are not intentional but actually from your sweaty braids. Simple earrings. Low block heels that are friendly enough you could do gymnastics in them. You keep the makeup minimal on purpose: mascara, lip gloss, nothing that requires precision or time.

You stare at yourself once in the mirror, head tilted slightly. You feel… underdressed, somehow.

Which is ridiculous, because you’re wearing a dress and heels. But the place is nice, and your brain runs on old rules: nice place means you should look nice, and your options are either this or the things you packed that are even more casual- or one dress you packed for the gala events that are so formal it would make you look like you misunderstood the assignment entirely.

So. This. You grab your clutch, check the time, and head for the elevator. You get there exactly when you said you would. And-

Lando is in jeans. Max is in jeans and a T-shirt. Daniel is in jeans and a T-shirt. Lando is still wearing his team polo, for fuck’s sake, like dinner is just an extension of paddock hours.

You stop short for half a beat- these- these- these fucking fuckers. Women would never do this shit to you. Then you keep walking, because what else are you going to do- turn around and sprint back to your room in heels?

They are all looking at you.

It’s not in a mean way, but it's not in a flattering way, either. They’re looking at you more like you’ve walked out in costume. Like you’ve accidentally raised the formality of the entire group by two levels without warning anyone. Like you’re about to tell them there’s a dress code they missed.

“Hi,” you say, forcing it light.

“Hey,” Danny says. Lando’s mouth opens like he’s about to say something that he thinks is funny, then closes again. Max’s eyes flick over you once and then he stares at the elevator panel like it suddenly requires intense concentration. Nobody says a word about your outfit. Which, in some ways, is worse than if they did.

The elevator doors slide shut and the ride down feels longer than it should, and the silence feels like a spotlight in itself. You can feel your own skin. The sleek fabric of the dress against your thighs. The way your hair falls. The ridiculous awareness of being the only one who obviously gave any effort at all.

You keep your face neutral and stare at the numbers as they tick down, trying not to let your initial embarrassment flare into anger.

They’re millionaires. They can wear whatever they want. They live in a world where nice dinners happen all the time, unremarkable enough to show up in a polo and still be treated like royalty. Of course they don’t feel the need to dress up.

It’s about you, and the fact that you did. It feels exposed to be the only one who tried. Like you’ve accidentally admitted something terribly immature by revealing that you still think places like this are special.

You swallow it down and tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself you look fine. You tell yourself you’re not going to spend the entire dinner mad at yourself just because these men don’t respect a dress code that doesn’t exist.

The elevator dings. Doors open, and you get ready step out first, chin up, heels clicking confidently like you meant to do this all along. And then Alexandra is right there.

Properly done up. Flashy little cocktail dress in a bright, unapologetic baby pink. Hair smooth. Makeup finished. Matching shoes, matching purse, the whole look calibrated in a way that says yes, this is dinner and yes, I meant it.

It’s like spotting a lifeboat in pink.

You practically fall the rest of the way out of the elevator trying to go stand next to her.

“Alexandra- hi,” you say, too bright, too grateful, closing the distance like you’ve known her longer than the ten minutes you actually have. You have met her once- briefly, on the yacht, before things got too crazy- just enough to exchange a polite chitchat and then drift apart in the churn of other people. She’s basically a stranger.

But right now she feels like an ally. A silent permission slip that you weren’t insane for dressing like this. She looks up, surprised for half a beat by your enthusiasm, then smiles- warm, a little amused, immediately receptive. “Hi,” she says, and her accent softens it. “You look… very nice.”

You could kiss her.

Instead you laugh, a little breathless, and dip your head. “Thank you. I- ” you glance back toward the elevator where Max and Lando and Danny are stepping out behind you like they’ve just come from a team briefing, “I thought I overdressed for a second.”

Alexandra’s eyes flick to the boys, take in the jeans and polos, and something sympathetic flashes across her face. She makes a tiny, elegant shrug. “They are just underdressed.”

You make a conscious decision to sit with her. Alexandra is bright and composed and clearly operating on the same social frequency you are tonight, and you latch onto that like it’s strategy. For both of your sakes. Because you do not feel like doing another hour of being the only woman in a room full of jeans and testosterone, and she probably doesn’t either.

You set your clutch down, smooth the slip dress at your thighs, angle your knees neatly under the table. For the first time since the elevator, you feel like you’re not sticking out.

You don’t really think about what’s going to happen with the chair on your other side.

Why would you? It’s not your job to manage the seating chart. You have no enemies here. Nobody worth avoiding. You got yourself next to the one other person in the room who understands heels, and that’s plenty of work for one night.

Behind you, chairs scrape.

Lando’s voice is close- he’s mid-joke about something, light and easy- and it’s clear to the rest of the room he’s drifting toward the chair beside you, like it’s natural, like that’s where he would like to be this evening. He’s already half reaching for it.

And then Max is there. He doesn’t shoulder Lando out or say anything sharp. He just steps in first, just a little quicker, like the space was always his to occupy. Like there isn’t even a decision being made. It’s almost polite in its rebuke, like Lando was the one stepping out of line for trying to sit there.

“Mate- ” Lando starts, amused more than anything, like he’s about to tease him for it. Max doesn’t even look up properly. He pulls the chair out and sits, unbothered, brooking absolutely no argument while pretending he’s not doing anything at all.

Lando pauses, recalibrates, and swings around to another seat with a shrug that says fine, whatever, like it doesn’t matter. It does, a little. But that’s their business.

You don’t notice any of it. You’re already leaning slightly toward Alexandra, asking her something small- how she’s finding it, if she’s been to Melbourne before, what she thinks looks good.

Max settles beside you like he never thought about sitting anywhere else. You only notice him once he’s already seated, when his elbow brushes lightly past yours as he reaches for the water.

You glance over, casual, half expecting Lando. “Oh- hi.”

He huffs a little laugh, like yes, hello, I’ve been right next to you all weekend, and says, “Hi.”

The appetizers keep coming and going in waves, little plates sliding through the middle of the table and getting picked at by whoever’s closest. You take things when offered, just enough to keep in the rhythm of the meal, but not enough to put a dent in any of the plates. You order swordfish- fun and exotic enough to feel special without actually being all that expensive. It’s gorgeous.

Dinner is perfect. Nothing outrageous happens. Nobody gets drunk or confesses anything or starts a fight. It is perfect in a normal way. Alex is lovely. Sharp without trying too hard, sweet and kind and more than happy to share her art studies with you. Talking to her feels easy almost immediately, and you find yourself leaning her way more than once, laughing softly into your glassless hand, pleased every time she laughs back.

And Max is funny.

That shouldn’t still surprise you, but it does a little, especially outside of his apartment. He sits beside you all loose shoulders and low commentary, dropping little lines into the table at exactly the right moment to send the guys on a new conversational tangent. The whole thing feels fluid and warm and lived-in. No awkwardness. No stiffness.

The boys needle you, of course.

About Carlos nicking P5 in the last lap. About being overdressed. About something stupid you said that last time at Jimmy’Z. About being a -“how you say”- hillbilly that talks with a mouth full of marbles.

You give it right back. It comes easily tonight. Nothing lands too hard. Nothing catches under your skin. You’re quick and warm and a little bit mean in the fun way, and they meet you there. Even Danny, who has finally fully recovered from his weird little wobble in Saudi, is back in his proper category- easy, familiar, all grin and good timing.

It is such a relief to feel this good that it almost makes you dizzy. You haven’t even had a drink.

Neither has anyone else, really- not properly. Danny and Alex have wine because they can. The rest of you are driving tomorrow. It’s just water and food and jokes and the weird, almost holy pleasure of feeling like you might have friend(s). Multiple. Plural.

By the end of the meal you feel… bright, and when the night finally loosens enough for people to peel off in directions that make sense, you split from the group in the elevator with some vague, soft goodbyes. Nobody questions it. Nobody should.

But you know exactly what you’re doing.

Throwing the scent off the trail.

Because you would rather die than let any of the boys realize you are not actually going to your own room. The idea of Lando discovering it, of Danny finding out, of anyone putting together that you and Max are somehow, inexplicably, doing sleepovers now- absolutely not. Death before dishonor.

Door open. Shoes off. Dress peeled away. Full shower. Fresh clothes. Comfortable ones. Hair brushed out. Phone charger grabbed. It’s practical. Innocent. Boring, even.

And all the while, underneath the ordinary motions, there is this strange, buoyant feeling in you. Like your feet are not entirely touching the carpet. Like you are walking half an inch above yourself. You feel like you’re glowing. Or levitating, maybe. It’s stupid. Embarrassing, even- because it’s so much harder to pretend you don’t have any basic needs until they’re suddenly all checked off and you’re suddenly operating on a new level entirely.

Your belly is full of food. Your phone is full of new contacts- people who might want to make plans in the daylight, in Monaco, for no other reason than that you mutually enjoy each other’s company. Your body feels steadier than it has in days. Your head is clear in that way it only gets when you can actually fucking sleep. And under all of that, coiled hot and clean, is the fire of tomorrow.

Race day.

You can feel it waiting for you now without dread attached. Without the weight of depletion or the frantic fear that you’re already behind before the lights even go out. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, the prospect feels good. Exciting. Like something you want to sink your teeth into rather than pray to survive. You feel like a hunter- not hunted.

By the time you leave your room again, keycard tucked away and your steps careful in the hall, you feel almost absurdly ready. For sleep, sure, but also just for all of it. For the race. For the start. For the first lap. For whatever version of yourself shows up in the car tomorrow, because for once you trust that she’ll be there when you need her.

When you get to Max’s room, it feels… a little weird.

Not… wrong, per se, but a bit strange in the very plain sense of showing up at a man’s hotel door on purpose with your overnight things in your arms and the specific intention of sleeping in his bed.

With him.

It’s not anything dramagtic, though. He opens the door in socks and a T-shirt, says hi like you’ve come by to borrow a charger, and steps back to let you in. The TV is on. FIFA, from the look of it. All good. Fine. Normal.

So you put your pajamas on. They are not cute, and that is on purpose. They do not match. Big dark T-shirt with some California car meet printed across the back. Sleep shorts that are not indecent, exactly, but definitely not long either. You leave your bra on while the lights are still up because that feels easier, less self-conscious, like a line. Max barely looks up from the game when you come back out, which is nice of him.

You sit on the edge of the bed with your laptop for a while, answering the last few things you can’t quite let go unanswered, no matter what Gavin says. He finishes one match, starts another, swears once under his breath at the screen. The room settles around both of you in that low, companionable way you’ve somehow found with him.

Eventually, though, the night has to end. You close the laptop. At almost the same time, Max sets the controller down and decides he’s done too.

And all at once the room gets a little shy. Nobody says anything awkward. Nobody fumbles a joke. But the energy shifts anyway, softening into something more uncertain as the practical business of actually getting into bed, on purpose, begins. You slide under the covers first, careful and very aware of yourself, arranging the blanket and your limbs like there might be an unembarrassing way to do this and you are determined to find it. Max kills the TV, the room dimming down to the bedside lamp, and walks around to his side.

The mattress dips. He gets in. The bed settles.

You lie there on your side, facing outward, pulse a little too noticeable in your own throat. It is not bad. It is just… there. The awareness of him a foot away. The awareness of the dim room. The awareness that you are here on purpose this time, not half asleep on a couch, not collapsed by accident or necessity, but here because you asked and he said yes and now this is happening. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him almost turn. Almost take a breath. Like he is maybe thinking about saying something.

And that thought hits a wire in you immediately, because the last time Max spoke to you in a bed- really spoke, with that low rough tone and too little space between you- you ended up making out with him on Christmas Eve like a complete idiot.

God. The memory flashes bright and unwanted and you are instantly horrified with yourself for even thinking it. So you simply don’t let him say anything.

“Goodnight,” you say, quick but not rude, like a book set down firmly to end a conversation before it begins. Then you reach out, click off the lamp, and let darkness rush in.

In the cover of it, you pull one hand under your shirt, unhook your bra, wriggle it free through a sleeve with the practiced secrecy of womanhood, and shove it somewhere near your pillow. Then you pull the blanket up to your chin like that might protect you from your own thoughts, squeeze your eyes closed, and will yourself toward sleep before your brain can think of any other creative thoughts.

The mattress shifts once beside you. And then, in the dark, very quietly, Max says,

“Night.” _______________________________________________ I am still, technically, alive.

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