Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Daniel sees Max after - god, how long has it been? Five years? Six? Daniel knows he’d seen him briefly, just in passing, after Anita was born. At a work function of Chrissy’s. So maybe it’s been almost five years.

Anyway, the first time Daniel sees Max, since that time they both pretended not to recognise each other, Max has a child on his hip and a Batman backpack hanging off the opposite shoulder. 

Daniel guesses the kid is eight or nine - old enough for it to be unusual that he’s conked out fast asleep with his head in Max’s neck. 

He’s struck with a bizarre kind of panic where he thinks Max has been hiding a secret child all this time, but then when his brain kicks into gear once again, he realises: it’s Victoria’s second son. 

It makes sense. Daniel had heard that there was a new Verstappen tearing through the junior karting categories. This particular race is in the Netherlands, and Daniel remembers that when he’s not racing Max has a house here to stay close to his family. It makes sense that he’d be here to offer some moral support to his nephew. 

“Papà, ” the small hand in Daniel’s squeezes impatiently around two of his fingers. “Don’t stare.” 

It’s an easy thing to tear his eyes away from Max and Victoria, and look down at his daughter. His daughter . 

He bends at the waist and scoops her up in his arms, a sweet smelling bundle of warmth that’s real and solid and unbearably in love with him. 

“Thank you, Anita,” he says, very seriously. “I’m glad one of us has manners.”

To immediately disprove her father, Anita rolls her eyes and sighs right in Daniel’s face. He doesn’t even grimace. Saveloy and ketchup breath. Hardly the worst thing he’s smelled from her. 

“You always stare,” she whispers accusingly. Except, she’s six years old. She hasn’t quite learned that whispering isn’t just putting a lot of breath into a perfectly audible sentence. 

“No!” Daniel gasps, making his eyes huge. “I never stare! I can’t even see. I don’t know where you are! Who is this strange child in my arms?”

Anita’s shrieking giggle never gets old. She squirms against Daniel’s chest and hits his shoulder. He pretends that it hurts. 

“I’m here, papà !” A clammy little hand turns his cheek firmly towards her. “See!”

“Oh my god! Where did you come from?” 

They carry on like that, Anita laughing herself dizzy and Daniel glad to make a fool of himself for as long as he needs to, until they get back to the car. Max has long disappeared into the crowd. 

~

Anita was the one to scare the living daylights out of her parents and ask to be allowed to race. Daniel had called him mum, frantic and wide-eyed and begging her to tell him how she’d reconciled it. Her love for her child, her support for whatever he’d wanted to do, and her desire to keep him safe. 

“Oh, sweetheart. Do you think I had a choice?” 

And Daniel had thought about Anita, about the way karting lights her face up. There is no choice. She loves this just as she loves crayon drawings and swooping around the garden on Daniel’s shoulders, clutching handfuls of his hair and shrieking him deaf. 

His daughter inherited his endless energy and her mother’s determination and, even at six, she’s already carved out her own passions. 

For now, Anita is in love with racing and in love with art and, for however long those things last - maybe forever, maybe until next week when she sees a pelican and decides she wants to be a bird - Daniel will support her. 

“Hey, Roo?” he’s navigating his way through a parking lot filled with hundreds of other exhausted parents. He wonders if any of them are even half as terrified as he is. “Will you draw me a forest?” 

Anita’s little face beams at him from the back seat. Her hair is a mess of frizz and flyaways and she’d definitely spent a little too long in the sun today. 

“Finished!” she thrusts a portrait very obviously done by a six year old, but still better than anything Daniel could have produced at twice that age, towards the front of the car. 

Daniel doesn’t have to fake appreciation. 

His daughter is a little genius. 

Daniel is always going to be her number one supporter. Well. Chrissy always says he’ll have to fight her for that role, but he reckons there’s room in Anita’s life for more than one number one fan. 

Anita falls asleep between one bend and the next, exhausted from a long day of racing. Daniel listens to her soft exhales and forgets all about Max. 

~

“Mate!”

The irony that that’s the first thing Max says to him is not lost on Daniel. 

They’re trackside, in France, this time. Daniel is waiting near the back of the food truck line, and Max keeps glancing at the karts on track like he’s got a vested interest in them. 

“Hey,” he sees himself as if from a distance, wearing the same smile his own father used to wear around old acquaintances bumped into by chance. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”

Max laughs. It’s still boyish, despite the new lines on his face. “Tobias is out racing right now. I got bored watching. What are you doing here?” He says it as if Daniel is the outsider, the surprise guest. 

Daniel’s family isn’t a secret. His Instagram is mostly photos of his child, Anita’s mum travels with the F1 circus. It’s not like Max doesn’t know . 

So Daniel shrugs. “Oh, ya know. So many like-minded adults here, I figured it’s as good a place as any to pick someone up.” 

“Yeah, but the mums are all either too old or taken.” Max’s attention flicks back to the track. He hisses, quick and through his teeth. Daniel can’t tell if it’s good or bad. 

“The dads are pretty eligible, though.” 

It drags Max’s attention back to him with a snap. “Oh.” 

Fuck his eyes get big when he’s surprised. Daniel has missed teasing him. It’s almost enough to cover up his annoyance at the assumption. 

Daniel can tell Max is looking around for something to cut the tension, and Daniel is about to throw him a line and ask how long Tobias has been karting for when Max clears his throat. “So, how’s your missus?” 

And Daniel, well, he doesn’t have the energy to explain their whole thing, so he nods, wonders if he’d imagined the last minute, or if Max thinks happily committed men make jokes about picking up eligible dads. “She’s doing good. Ferrari are loving having her with them, she’s really pushing with the other engineers to get them back into championship contention. So it’s great. Or, great news for them. Probably not for you and the rest.” 

Daniel is about to say more, maybe explain that he really doesn’t know much else, maybe see if he can get away with a simple “we’re not together any more, though”, when Anita skips up to them, a bucket of sugared donuts clasped to her chest. 

She’s wearing a little racing suit, neon green and pink, like she’d requested, and her hair is tied into three messy pigtails she’d insisted on doing herself. 

“ Papà! ” She grins up at him. “They gave me four extras!” And then she turns her grin on Max. “Hello! Who are you?” 

Long-forgotten muscle memory tells Daniel that Max is awkward with kids, that now is the time to step in and make the introductions. But this Max crouches down and smiles. 

“I’m Max. Who are you?” 

“Anita.” And then immediately looks back to Daniel, guilty. It’s nice to know she’s retained at least a little bit of the stranger danger lessons. 

“Nice to meet you, Anita.” Max shakes her hand solemnly and stands back up. “Who are you here supporting?” 

The annoyance from earlier, from Max’s easy assumption, comes back with a vengeance. Before he can jump in, put Max in his place, his daughter huffs a sigh and rolls her eyes at Max like he’s the stupidest boy in all the world. 

“No one!” 

“She’s racing. In the junior category.”

“Oh!” It’s accompanied by the same wide-eyed shock as before. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume! I just thought there was a height restriction?” 

It’s a valid question, though Daniel still doesn’t entirely trust that it’s the only reason Max had discounted her as a racer. Anita is very small. ‘Bird boned’ her grandmother calls her. 

Daniel and Chrissy disagree. She may be short but she’s the scrappiest girl either of them have ever met. 

Anita has gone suspiciously quiet. She’s rocking backwards and forward on the balls of her feet. Thinking, Daniel recognises. Assessing. She reaches her conclusion and leans up on her tiptoes to get closer to Max. 

In her not-whisper she announces, “I have shoes to make me tall.” 

Max’s ‘oh’ is silent this time, and accompanied by a finger over his lips. “I’m sworn to secrecy.” 

It makes Anita giggle. 

Daniel watches them, considers how Anita warmed to Max almost immediately, how Max is remarkably natural at interacting with children. He wonders if Tobias would get along with Anita. 

It’s a silly thought. He still lets himself watch Max’s back as he hurries back to pick up Tobias when the race is over. 

~

Anita is screaming. She’s sprawled on the bathroom floor, wailing at the top of her lungs, refusing to get dressed after her bath. 

Daniel is sitting on the closed toilet seat, waiting for her to tire herself out. 

He’s gifted a few seconds of silence before she takes a big breath and starts up again. 

Daniel has been waiting for this breakdown. For the adrenaline and excitement of a week of racing and travel to wear off and for Anita to hit the wall. 

It’s his fault, he knows. Or, not his fault , in that there’s nothing he could have done differently, but he knew that a midnight flight from France back to Italy wasn’t exactly conducive to a well-rested daughter. 

The fact that Anita lasted all the way to bedtime before this happened is a small miracle. 

Her wails have petered out into small sniffles. The way she’s curled up on the floor, Daniel thinks she could fall asleep right there. 

“Alright,” he crouches next to her. “Let’s get your ‘jammies on, shall we?” 

Anita falls asleep before Daniel can even get her into bed. He presses a soft kiss on her forehead, breathing in the soft apple scent of her shampoo. 

He’d had a headache even before the bathroom incident, he’s got more laundry to wash than he knows what to do with, and he’s bone-tired, but his heart clenches around his love for her. 

It feels like just yesterday that he was walking circles around his living room, Anita strapped to his chest so small and new and precious and unknown. Just a few moments ago, when Chrissy was urging him to take his shirt off next to her in a hospital bed so this squirming purple alien child could bond with him .

Yes, sometimes he wishes he could take a day off; yes, it would be nice to be able to do what he wants without having to puzzle out the logistics of childcare, but would he trade the feeling of holding an entire person’s trust in his hands for any of that? 

Not for the world. 

~

Daniel met Anita’s mum, Christina, at a bar in Florence. 

It was his first free year out of Formula 1, he was renting a house in Italy for the year, giving some behind the scenes help to an up and coming adult’s karting venture. 

There was nothing romantic about it - she declined his offer of a cocktail but let him buy her a beer. 

They introduced themselves - she knew who he was, he learned she’d travelled from the States to complete an engineering degree. They ordered another round, pretended like everyone on the dance floor wasn’t ten years younger than them. He asked if she’d give him her number and she’d grinned. Told him he’d only get it if he let her buy the next round, and only if they went to another bar. 

“Somewhere with better music.”

That bar turned into their regular haunt. Chrissy would take a break from her work schedule, Daniel would pretend he’d been doing something productive, and they’d meet at the table near the window. 

They’d trade off whose bed they ended up in - Chrissy’s more often than not, since she had to be up early for work. 

They’re sitting at Chrissy’s dining table when she tells him she’s got a job with the Ferrari pit crew. She looks uncharacteristically nervous. Daniel throws his head back and laughs, asks how long she’s known, how long she’s been agonising over telling him. 

“Do you want me to call you, while I’m away?” she asks, a week or two before the season starts. 

Daniel looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “How else am I going to get the paddock gossip?” 

And just like that, they’re neck deep in a long-distance relationship that is so much easier than any of their friends had thought it would be. 

Chrissy calls him, and Daniel travels to the French Grand Prix. In Italy, she forgoes the four-starred hotel the team put her up in in favour of Daniel’s bed. He wears a bright red pair of briefs, just to make her laugh.

In the mid-season break, she tells him she’s pregnant. She’ll continue to travel with the paddock until it becomes too dangerous - for her, for the baby - and then she’ll take a job in the factory. Not a desk job, but the closest it comes for her.  

They move in together, decide that if they’re going to be a family soon, they should start looking for a house, for real. 

Daniel cries when Anita is born. He looks at Chrissy, exhausted and sweaty and beaming in her hospital bed, cradling their daughter to her chest. When he holds her for the first time, her little hand rests next to the cherub tattooed on his arm. 

Daniel’s job is a nebulous, undefined thing - an ex-racer jobbing around, putting in appearances, using his face, his name, for advertising. It makes the most sense that he stays home with Anita when Chrissy’s maternity leave is up.

He embraces the title of house husband that the media have given him; sends Chrissy videos of Anita strapped to his chest, calling himself a kangaroo dad, photos of explosive, impressive nappy accidents. 

Chrissy visits often, and Daniel will leave her and Anita alone together, disappearing off into their garden to rest in the shade, letting them get reacquainted with one another. 

Not long after Anita’s first birthday, Chrissy cuddles into Daniel’s side on the sofa. “This isn’t working, is it?” 

Daniel thinks of Anita, fast asleep in her room where they’d put her down after dinner. He thinks of their trip to a nearby lake, the way they’d laughed, passing Anita between them in the water; how they’d stood pressed close to one another so their noses had brushed when they leant down to kiss Anita’s head. 

She’s right. 

He curls his arm around Chrissy’s shoulders. “No,” he agrees. 

Agreeing that they’re better off as friends is easy. 

Deciding that it makes the most sense for Daniel to take custody of Anita is easy. He has the house in Italy, while Chrissy lives out of a suitcase for most of the year. Chrissy will visit, just as frequently as she always has. Just because she and Daniel aren’t sleeping together anymore doesn’t mean Anita will see her mum any less. 

If anything, it makes the times Chrissy is back home easier. More simple. 

It’s not all like that, of course. 

There are tears from both of them. 

There’s Daniel resenting her, just a little, just for a while, for leaving them. 

And there’s Chrissy resenting Daniel, just a little, just for a while, for the time he gets with Anita. 

But overall, there’s a reason the long-distance had been so easy for them. Being around each other all the time was difficult . 

Chrissy wanted time to herself, while Daniel liked to spend the times they had a babysitter to do things . Daniel had a system of organising things that made sense and worked for him while being absolutely infuriating for Chrissy’s science brain. 

As people, they got along like a house on fire, but as a couple, Daniel was rather more concerned that they’d end up setting the house on fire just to get some peace from each other. 

Not that it was bad all the time. Not even like they fought, not like the roaring arguments Daniel pictured between parents on the cusp of a separation. 

It was just like Chrissy said: it wasn’t working. 

~

The next time he sees Max, it’s at a karting track in Italy. 

Rather than being excited that it’s her home race, Anita is sulking that she didn’t get to take a day off school.. Daniel has been trying to wrangle her fraying patience all day. 

She cheered up after coming second in one of her races - a feat made sweeter by beating a boy she’d taken a dislike to a few months ago. For now, Daniel’s goal is to keep her focused on the success of a podium and not on the long afternoon and rapidly cooling temperatures ahead of them. 

Anita has just started her ‘d-ad, I’m bored’ routine (‘dad’ chosen because it’s more satisfying to whine than the Italian) when a familiar Batman bag comes into view. 

“Look, Anita,” Daniel hoists her up to see through the crowd. “Do you remember Max from the last race?” His daughter looks at him like he’s senile. “Of course you do.” 

“Hello Anita,” is the first thing Max says. It’s shocking, really, the easy way he acknowledges the small girl curled over Daniel’s shoulder. The way he looks right past Daniel like it’s normal, like they see each other all the time. Like there’s no need for awkward posturing. “Congrats on coming second!” 

It wins Anita over and that’s enough for Daniel. “That’s my girl,” he boasts, then looks down to Max’s side. “Who is this?” 

“Tobias.” Max pushes him forward with a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. “My nephew.”

According to Instagram, Tobias is Victoria’s second son, the third child. He has baby twin sisters at home, if Daniel remembers correctly. 

“Nice to meet you, Tobias. My name’s Daniel, this is Anita.” 

“I’m six!” Anita’s cheerful face falls when Tobias retreats behind Max’s leg, quiet, unwilling to offer his own age back. 

“Tobias just turned eight. Sorry, he’s a little shy.” 

Daniel can feel the whinge starting in Anita’s chest. Six year olds are not logical creatures, persuaded by arguments of shy reluctance. He has to act quickly if he doesn’t want her having an embarrassed ‘the older kid on the playground won’t talk to me’ breakdown. 

“We were just going to get hot chocolates. Do you want to join us?” 

~

“So,” Max’s tongue flicks out to clear foam from the lip of his takeaway cup. “Italy. Home race… Is mum here somewhere?” 

Just like last time, Daniel wonders if Max is just being purposefully obtuse. But then again, it’s not a ridiculous assumption to make: Chrissy and Daniel both live in Italy. There’s no reason she wouldn’t be at her daughter’s race. 

“She was hoping to be, but her flight got delayed.” It’s part of the reason Anita has been in a bad mood all day. Chrissy had phoned them that morning, cursing and apologising but there was fog at the airport and the plane wasn’t going to arrive in time. “She’s picking Anita up later on. It’s our get out of prizegiving free card,” he confesses. 

All karting parents hate the end of the day prizegivings. They drag on and on, they swing wildly between too hot and Antarctic, the kids never enjoy them, and the microphones never work. 

To Anita, he says, “Mum should almost have landed.” 

Anita squeaks with excitement and starts nattering away to Tobias about how cool her room at mamma’ s is. 

Daniel looks up to find Max looking at him with a curious expression on his face. He looks like he’s just discovered something - all wide-eyed and surprised but also… also not surprised. 

He looks like a man who has just fit two puzzle pieces together and is finally looking at the picture he expected all along. 

“When-” he starts, shakes his head, begins again. “When did you and Chrissy, um…” 

And oh . Max wasn’t being dense when he asked about Daniel’s missus. He really hadn’t known. It makes sense, Daniel supposes.

He and Chrissy are still friends, still comment on each other’s social media, still talk about one another without hesitance. The only thing to give away the change in their relationship is their separate addresses, but Max has no reason to know that. 

“Anita was one and a bit? It was mutual, all civil, I guess you’d say. We just realised we were better off as friends, you know?” 

“Yeah,” Max says, with a look on his face that says he very much does not know. “That’s nice. It must be good for Anita.” 

And there’s something in his eyes, something almost longing. 

Daniel doesn’t want to assume, it would be rude and improper and absolutely not his place to put words in Max’s mouth, but he thinks about how Max’s parents were separated for most of his life, and he wonders if the longing is directed at a life his younger self could have lived. 

“How long does she have her for?” 

“A fortnight. I’m gonna savour every single second she’s away.” 

“No, you won’t!” As if Max knows exactly how much Daniel will miss Anita. 

They were teammates for three years. Maybe he does know. 

~

“ Papà ?” Anita asks out of the blue, over Facetime a few days later. “Is Max your friend?” 

“I guess so,” he says, in lieu of a lie. Or the real explanation. 

Anita’s frown looks so out of place under the brim of her sunhat. “How do you not know?”

“It’s… different with adults, Roo.” He watches her face move in and out of focus, and lets her process that thought. 

“Mm, that’s silly. You don’t like Mr de Luca down the road. You like mamma . You like Uncle Mike.. You should either like Max or not like him.”

Daniel supposes, in the eyes of a child, it really is that simple. She doesn’t know about their history - it doesn’t matter to her that they haven’t spoken in years. All that matters is that she’s seen them smile at each other, she knows they used to work together, and they’re both adults. 

“He used to be my friend.” 

“Oh.” Her eyes are in shadow but Daniel knows her moods better than his own. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You don’t need to be sad. I’m fine.”

Anita sniffles, just a little. “I think you should be friends again.” 

“We’ll see what happens.”

~

Max and Daniel have been texting non-stop.

Something about remembering what it’s like to be friends through a six year old’s eyes had made Daniel reevaluate some things. 

He’d enjoyed his time at Red Bull and it’s high time he acknowledges that it hadn’t only been about the recognition and the podiums - it had been Max, too.

Max had come into Daniel’s life first as a literal child, one of several fresh shy faces looking up at Daniel (brace-faced and gangly) and waiting for their turn at a handshake. 

And then, years later, he’d been reintroduced as the up and coming teammate Daniel was expected to mentor.

It’s safe to say that Daniel had imprinted onto Max, a little. 

Max may have been the rookie, the stranger in the paddock, the one with everything to prove, but Daniel needed him back, in his own way. 

In a way he’s only just learning. A way that it had taken raising a child to make him realise. 

At first, Max meant he had a reason to bring his best every day. A rookie teammate, capable of winning races, the reason for Daniel to push even harder than usual. 

And then Max had turned into a friend, into someone Daniel wanted to make smile, all the time. He’d been a point on the horizon to strive towards as a racer, and he’d been a solid rock on which to anchor himself when Daniel needed a break. 

When he no longer had Max for that, Daniel noticed the difference, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He’d figured it was lethargy, or the wrong car.

All of his best teammates have been people he’d wanted to be around, maybe not all the time, but people he didn’t hate doing press days with. But it was never quite the same as it had been at Red Bull. 

There had been something in Max, something to him, beyond the drive in his eyes and the stubborn-headedness that sent Daniel into tailspins of frustration and envy, something more than the others. 

In being Max’s teammate he’d found an equilibrium he hadn’t been able to recreate. 

Daniel had been the one teaching but also the one learning - learning Max’s younger, inexhaustible spirit. Learning how to be the level-headed one, for once, where before it was always someone else’s job. Learning how to be someone to be leaned on. 

Also, at the same time, learning how he could reach out, ask for help, for a pick me up, for a little space, for less space… 

Anita saying she thinks they should be friends, well… There’s no reason he shouldn’t try to start something friendly with Max again. 

So they’ve been texting. 

Just little things. A comment on the weather. About Max’s flight back to Holland. Then on the prices at the petrol station. Then about a show they’ve both been watching, somehow only a few episodes out from each other. 

But it’s frequent and it makes Max lurk in the back of Daniel’s brain, draws his shadow close enough that, when it’s night time and Daniel missing Anita with a ferocity he used to think parents made up, Daniel thinks he could reach out and touch him. 

He makes excuses for it, even in the private curtained booth of his own mind. 

It’s just that he feels a bit lost without their usual routine of bath and bedtime story. He and Anita are deep in the mire of the Warrior Cats series, and she’d made him promise he wouldn’t skip ahead while she was with her mum. 

The thing Daniel hadn’t realised about being a parent was the bone-deep isolation he would feel when he looked at other adults. He has all the cuddles and kisses he could want, but they come from a six year old. 

He’s heard some parents complain about the lack of sex in their lives, but it’s not sex Daniel is craving. Well, it’s not only sex. 

He sometimes wants the hand on his back to be rubbing, not clutching. He wants to be the one to be comforted. And he wants rough-housing that’s more than tickling his daughter, or pretending that her ‘assassin punches’ hurt. 

If you’d asked pre-child Daniel if he’d look longingly after couples holding hands in the street, friends pushing each other around in front of tourist attractions; if he’d put a cuddle above getting his dick wet, he’d have wondered how his life got so dramatically dismal. 

Post-child Daniel doesn’t think of it like that. Parenthood isn’t dismal, it’s just different. A change. Sure, maybe he misses adult company sometimes, but he misses Anita more when she’s away.

There are reminders of his daughter all over the house. In some ways, it makes the missing sting harder.

Draped over the foot of Daniel’s bed is Anita’s little hooded towel, the one she wears around the house over her clothes with cat ears and whiskers attached. 

He feels a little embarrassed taking it with him into the living room, but it smells like no tears shampoo and goat milk soap. He’s in his forties and he misses his kid like crazy. 

He smoothes the towel over his lap and settles into the sofa with a cup of coffee and his phone. 

maxverstappen1 feels unfamiliar to type, at this point in his life. 

There’s nothing on Instagram, just the usual workouts and Red Bull promo photos. Nothing to suggest he’s towing a child around the globe. 

Max’s hiatus from Formula 1 is old news, but Daniel had sort of expected Max to be sulking. Sulking and entering sim racing competitions. Partying. Indulging in the freedom of not having a regimented diet. 

Seeing the child in his arms, seeing Max as just another one of the faces of eager-anxious-tired parents at a children’s karting competition, reminds Daniel how much time has passed. 

It’s been years. Four seasons in Formula 1 after the Red Bull split, and then he’d met Chrissy, and then Anita was born… The calendar unfolds before him. It’s been a decade. 

Of course Max has grown up. Paddock news was he’d grown sick of hitching his horse to a team that couldn’t win him a championship, had had a brief love affair with the rising star of Aston Martin Racing that ended in bitter divorce, and gone back to a refurbished Red Bull with high hopes. 

He’d seen out last year’s season there, finished second, and then, bizarrely, exited the sport without much fanfare and even less explanation. Daniel is a bit fuzzy on the exact details but from what he’s picked up from paddock gossip, Max was told to take a break before the new Red Bull-execs would renew his contract. 

Very carefully, Daniel holds his finger down over Max’s most recent post. He doesn’t expect much in return - maybe to see Max’s name appear under one of his own pictures.

Nothing happens, of course. 

Daniel glances at the clock. Not even nine p.m. Usually, Anita would be snuffling in her sleep, arm flung off the side of the mattress. Daniel would kiss her closed eyes and rearrange her so she doesn’t wake up on the floor. 

He feels lost, adrift without the need to take care of someone, like he always does when Anita is with Chrissy. 

It’s still early. He’s got a Netflix series he’s been meaning to catch up on. 

Instead, he turns the lights off. Places a glass of water and his phone - still quiet, carrying a guilty trace of something Daniel is too tired to identify - on his bedside table. 

When he falls asleep, there’s still light slipping through the crack in his curtains.

~

Texting turns to Facetiming each other when Max complains that it’s easier to talk than text with Tobias around. 

“I need as many hands and eyes as I can get around him.”

“What’s the deal there?” Daniel asks, nodding at the background of Max’s video where Tobias is playing. 

“With Tobe?” He looks over his shoulder, checking he’s still there. “I take him around the tracks since Victoria is busy with the other kids. He got into racing before his sisters were born, and it wasn’t too hard for Vic to deal with when it was just him, Luka and Charlotte. But then she got pregnant with the twins and… Yeah, so, it’s just easier for me to take him.”

It makes sense. Max the accessible uncle, with the knowledge of the karting circuit and the free time to take Tobias with him. 

“And I like it!” He’s still smiling, no trace of a lie in his face. Their conversations have been frequent and honest enough that Daniel knows Max truly does adore his nephew. “I live, like, an hour away from them. They visit me pretty much every week. It’s nice, having the kids around.”

“Yeah, it’s nice when you can give them back!” It’s the joke of a parent. Daniel does this, sometimes - catches himself with a whole new personality. 

“Yeah,” Max agrees, but there’s a hesitancy in his voice, like he’s not saying everything. 

Daniel frowns, just a little, but Max ignores him, moves the conversation on to a new PlayStation game he and Tobias are going to try out. 

~

What Max hadn’t been prepared to admit to Daniel, is that maybe it’s not so nice. 

To give Tobias back. 

He hadn’t realised that he’d be signing up to basically co-parent Tobias when he’d made the deal with Victoria. 

He is terrified. 

Max has always been the kid. The youngest sibling, the youngest test driver, the almost-nearly youngest world champion; always the youngest teammate, even when he began to stand out as an old timer among the paddock. 

Criticisms of him have always rested on his immaturity, his youthful rebellious streak. 

His fridge, eight times out of ten, is barren of everything except sauces and beer. 

His PlayStation is still his most treasured possession. 

He still doesn’t go to bed at regular times, still gets noise complaints from neighbouring hotel rooms, still lusts after the latest sports cars. 

He supposes people would say that it doesn’t all have to fade with age. Max has seen Daniel’s fridge, he’s seen the looks he sends car yards, has seen plenty of Victoria and her mum friends after a night out. He knows it doesn’t have to stop.

But he’s been given all this… responsibility in Tobias. He hadn’t realised that from the moment he took him to his first race, he’d feel something more than just the love of an uncle. It’s different to the affection he’d known with Luka and Charlotte. 

He loves them all. All five of his nieces and nephews. Fiercely and protectively and without reason. 

But he’s spent the most time with Tobias. 

They’ve got a special bond, ‘a secret language’, Victoria sometimes lovingly complains. 

The last time he’d dropped him back home, Victoria had called Max up, barely an hour later, saying Tobias was refusing to sleep unless Max read him the latest chapter in his book. 

Their relationship is something more, something deeper than with the other kids. 

It scares Max, has him lying awake, on nights when Tobias is with Victoria. 

If this is the love he feels for his nephew, for someone he can off-load responsibility for raising, for doctors appointments and school visits, how is he going to feel when it’s his own kid?

He doesn’t know if his heart can take it. 

~

The next race is in France. 

Anita comes fourth, makes friends with the girl who wins, and begs Daniel to invite Max and Tobias to stay at their house in Italy for the next week. 

“Toby said they’re staying in a hotel.” Anita’s little face makes it clear exactly what she thinks of that. Other children her age would have been ecstatic with a hotel room, but she’s already had enough of the ‘life of the road’ experience. “My bed is soooo big.” 

“Okay, well Tobias is not sharing your bed, Roo.” That would be a recipe for late bedtimes, ridiculous (possibly life threatening) games being played in the middle of the night, and absolutely no one getting any sleep. 

Anita pouts, but concedes that their spare room would also be acceptable. 

Daniel expects Max to politely decline, to say they really do have a hotel booked for the week and that he’s actually quite looking forward to it, but he agrees almost instantaneously. 

“That would be great, mate. I’ve been missing adult company!” 

And so it’s planned.

Max’s car follows Daniel’s, and the two of them carry the sleeping children into Daniel’s home under the light of the moon. If people were watching them Daniel is sure it would look like something more, something meaningful and emotive. Something worthy of a swelling soundtrack and lens flare. 

But he’s bone-tired, he can smell a day’s stale sweat on himself, Max is yawning so wide Daniel worried his jaw might lock, and the whole house is cold because Daniel forgot to set the heaters. 

He shows Max to their spare room. The bed is thankfully already made up so neither of them have to wrestle with a fitted sheet at two in the morning. 

“There’s a trundler bed somewhere if you want it,” Daniel offers tiredly. He knows it exists, knows Chrissy had bought it way back when, but he truly has no idea where it is. 

“You’re all good,” Max shakes his head. “We can share.” 

Daniel’s heart does a swooping dive until he realises that Max had been talking about himself and Tobias. 

Max and his nephew can share the queen bed. 

Daniel will go to sleep in his own bedroom, alone, and will find the trundler bed in the morning.

“If you’re sure,” he says, praying that the heat in his ears isn’t obvious. “Good night.” 

“G’night,” Max’s voice follows him into the hallway, soft and sleepy like Daniel has never heard it before. 

When he lies down in the middle of his own bed, the sheets are cold. Despite how late it is, it takes him a long time to fall asleep. 

~ 

When Max’s friends found out he was staying with Daniel for a whole week, they’d laughed. 

“You expect us to be surprised?” 

“Honestly, I can’t believe you haven’t done it before.” 

He hadn’t thought much of it - just his mates being antagonistic dickheads as per usual - but he wakes up on his second morning in Daniel’s spare bedroom with their words rattling in his head: “Maxie is finally settling down.”

It’s only been a day but already Max has been thrown into Ricciardo family life head first. 

He’d expected it to feel like drowning. Like it had when he was younger and stupider and swimming up river away from the most serious relationship he’d ever had. 

He’d expected it to feel as if he’d driven off a cliff. A free fall with all the stomach dropping nausea and regret that accompanied it. 

But this - watching Anita sit on the kitchen bench watching her dad make a cooked breakfast, watching her flop into Daniel’s lap on the sofa and press her face into the little paunch of tummy he has acquired, pretending not to watch Daniel do squats in the garden while holding a giggling Anita across his arms… 

All of it feels good. 

Tobias is happy, too. When they’re on the road he misses his siblings something terrible. He loves his role as older sibling. So having Anita around, having a friend to play with, is lighting him up from the inside. 

Max feels like he’s in the same boat. Like he’s a ten year old clinging to Daniel’s coattails. 

The Max who entered Red Bull, bright eyed and young and fascinated with his older, more experienced teammate, he feels like that Max. Except that Max had been unwilling to learn, unwilling to change. There was no point. He’d been perfect. 

This Max wants to change, wants to be something (someone) new (or newer - he’s self aware enough to know he’s different than he was, that he’s matured and grown out of bad habits. It’s just that he’d like some new habits).

If he’s really honest with himself, he’d like Daniel to be part of those new habits. 

He doesn’t want to be in his thirties and still sleeping alone, still stocking his fridge with just his own preferred beer. 

This - Daniel’s house in the Italian countryside, waking up and taking care of two children’s needs while making sure there’s enough coffee for two - this is what he wants. It feels good. 

Feels like they’re creating something, living something together. 

Feels (and this is something from Max’s sleepless nights, something he holds close to his chest and tries to ignore) like they’re creating a family. 

As if he’s earned that feeling at all. 

~

For his part, Daniel enjoys how Max slots into his domestic routine. 

It’s unbearably nice to wake up and hear another adult in the kitchen, to have a conversation at the dinner table about more than what imaginary world Anita is living in. Once, just once, to step outside to take deep, self-soothing breaths while someone else watches over his daughter’s pre-bed tantrum. 

Daniel finds himself looking at Max, remembering the Red Bull days (and the days after them, where it seemed like Max was shifting before his eyes, like Daniel would turn around one day and not recognise the person in front of him). 

He looks at him and he realises that this Max really is an adult, really has changed.

He still has the same carefully studied arrogance about him. He still swears at the slightest inconvenience. His capacity for patience is still whisper thin. 

But he thinks more about what he says, now. 

He seems more sure of himself, more balanced, more at ease in his own skin. 

In the Red Bull days he was a ball of energy burning himself up to prove himself. Red Bull’s shining star about to become a blackhole if they weren’t careful. When Daniel left, went chasing his own energy through other teams, Max seemed a little better. A little more stable. 

Daniel thought that would be it. That he’d reached his final form - brilliant and scary and so goddamned defensive. 

But this Max, the Max that’s been through the Red Bull wringer twice over and is still (somehow) fully formed, this Max is so much steadier, so much more present. 

Now, Daniel can see the person below the persona. It was something he’d had to work very hard at, when they were teammates. 

He sees Max watch Tobias and really take him in, really watch him. 

Beyond that, he hears Max listening to Anita, suggesting (terrible, bad, you’re right to shoot him down, sweetheart) ideas for her games of make believe in the garden. 

He sees all the same things he’d grown to know almost inside out, and he sees that they’ve softened. They’ve gone through the wash a few times. Max’s brilliant whites a little paler, his solid blacks now with a hint of grey. 

His shoulders are broader, his waist just the same ridiculous proportion, the brown of his hair is more muted - faded to something mousey in places, grey in others. He has laugh lines and frown lines, and he looks tired at the end of a day spent with the children. 

Max has matured.

But Daniel would bet he still can’t grow a beard. And when he smiles, when Daniel gets to look at him and share a joke one of the kids made, his face still transforms into something boyish and almost innocent. 

Sometimes Max talks about Tobias like a parent would - mentioning how quiet his house feels, saying that for the first few nights without him, Max has the sleep schedule of a ten year old, that nine o’clock feels late. Asking if Daniel ever feels lonely, when Anita is at her mum’s. 

“Of course I do,” he says, sitting on the couch watching the evening news with Max. “But Chrissy misses her when she’s with me.” It’s what being a parent is, he stops himself from saying. You give away little pieces of yourself and hope they return to you. “I miss my nephew a lot.” 

“Isn’t that different?”

“Yeah. But missing is missing.”  

Max goes quiet, after that. Daniel doesn’t have an answer for what he says, next. “I don’t think I could be a parent.”

He understands what Max is saying. 

What he means is that if missing Tobias feels the way it does, if towing a small child around the world feels so much like parenting - the responsibilities, the fears, the emotions of it all - if it’s so hard already, what must it be like if Tobias was his own? 

But to Daniel, who still doesn’t quite know this version of Max, to Daniel who can hear Anita’s snuffling little breaths from down the hallway, it feels punitive. 

Both like Max is crowing with the fact that he’s freer than Daniel, that he doesn’t wake up and go to sleep with the rhythm of another person, and also like he’s saying that that feeling, that terrorjoywonderfearlove of parenthood, isn’t worth it. Isn’t worth lying down for. Isn’t worth throwing himself into. 

It hurts something inside Daniel, and he doesn’t know if he’s hurting for himself, for Anita, or for Max. 

Like he so often does (like he so often did ) he doesn’t answer. 

And Max has had years to get used to Daniel’s moods - to the way he needed space and said so without saying anything. The way he got a little hot and cold. So Max doesn’t press him, just relaxes into the sofa and unmutes the TV.

Not long after, Daniel gets up to boil the jug and check on the kids. When he returns, two hot drinks in hand (he’d never broken the habit of coffee before bed), he retakes his seat on the couch, calculatedly close to Max. 

“They’re out like lights,” Daniel crows, making no secret of the fact that his proudest moment from today has been getting the kids to sleep. “You wanna watch a movie?”

Their elbows knock together, a reminder that this is a three-seater couch and Daniel is all but sitting in Max’s lap. 

There’s only one more night of this before the last race in Italy. Before Max goes back to Holland. So sue Daniel if he wants to soak up the dregs of Max’s attention while he can still lay claim to it. 

Sue him if the company of someone he can make eye contact with, who can reach the top shelf of the pantry by himself, who swears a blue streak when he stubs his toe in the bathroom, if all of that has made him realise how big and empty his house can feel when it’s just him and Anita.

When Max meets his eyes, his face is serious. Daniel, for the first time, wonders if Max is going to turn him down. 

He never had these concerns when they were both racing. He wonders how he has changed, whether Max is looking at him right now and seeing a completely different person. 

“That would be lovely.” Max is slow to smile, these days. 

Daniel nods, holds the curve of Max’s mouth in his mind and tells himself, when the Verstappens have left and it’s just him and Anita in the stillness of their house, that it doesn’t mean anything. 

It’s just that he’s a man in his forties who has to ration his time with his friends. Friends who, if they don’t live on the other side of the world, have families of their own. Scheduling is hard. Making time for himself is hard. 

Having Max here, having a living breathing human adult sitting on the sofa next to him, solid thigh against solid thigh, is a novel treat. That’s all. 

It could be anyone nudging Daniel in the ribs before making a joke, could be anyone laughing along at the dirty jokes scattered through children’s movies with him, could be anyone’s cologne sticking like toffee in his throat.

He’s been aching for adult contact. It has absolutely nothing to do with Max. 

~

They have to be at the track in two hours. 

Max is in the spare bedroom, packing his and Tobias’s bags ( ‘how can two people create so much mess?!’ ) while Daniel is supervising one final game of The Floor is Lava. Anita is balanced on a cushion near the kitchen, Tobias giggling in the centre of the sofa. 

Daniel has one eye on his phone, one eye on the kids, but he comes back to full attention when there’s a resounding crash and a soft, shocked gasp. 

Tobias had taken a flying leap from the sofa to an armchair - a gap too wide for him to make - and smacked into the coffee table. He doesn’t look hurt, but a water glass has broken only a few centimetres away from him. 

“Okay, don’t move,” Daniel directs it at Tobias and Anita. “Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?” 

Tobias looks moments from tears, but shakes his head. 

Assured that he’s physically fine, Daniel pulls him away from the pile of glass. “You gotta be more careful, mate. No, don’t cry, it’s okay, you’re not in trouble! I’m just worried, yeah? You need to be more careful when you’re playing. What if you’d cut yourself, or hit your head? You’re ten! You’re a karter, you should know when the gap isn’t big enough, right?” 

“Sorry,” Tobias mumbles, and Daniel is just about to pull him into a hug, tell him there are muesli bars in the kitchen for him and Anita while Daniel cleans the glass, but he doesn’t get a chance. 

“Tobias, mate, why don’t you go play outside?” Max appears in the doorway. He looks fuming. Daniel is about to interject, assure him that the kids are fine, that it was just a little mistake, and no one needs to get grumpy over some broken kitchenware. 

But Max beats him to it as soon as Tobias is out the sliding door.

“Who are you to tell him what to do?” Max is glaring at him. “You’ve always been like this, you have to always be parental. He’s not your son, so stop acting like it!” 

He was expecting anger. He just hadn’t expected it to be directed at himself. “Max…” 

“No, Daniel. Shut up and just listen, for once. I came into Red Bull and you took me under your wing, and I was meant to be thankful for that, but all you did was parent me! You don’t know when to stop and just be a person , fuck!” 

Daniel watches the crest and swell of Max’s tense shoulders, and forces himself to ignore whatever is building in his chest. This isn’t the time for that. (Maybe there will never be a time for that). 

“I’m sorry, Max. Honestly. I didn’t realise you felt like… If I’d known that’s how you felt I would have stopped-”

“I’m not asking you to change, Daniel!”

“But if it’s making you feel-”

“How I feel isn’t the point! We don’t work together anymore. We’re not gonna work together again. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Anita and Tobias appear in the doorway, and Max gives one final shake of his head. “This is about Toby. Focus on Anita and leave my nephew to me, okay?” To Tobias, “Bags packed Tobe! Shall we get going?” 

Daniel says goodbye, tries not to feel self-conscious about how he farewells Tobias and Max. 

Standing on his doorstep, watching Max’s car disappear down the driveway, Daniel feels every inch the overbearing parent Max had accused him of. 

He’s barely had minutes to think about Max’s accusations, but he sees what he means. 

The Type A personality of a Formula 1 driver has never mixed well with taking things as they come, with going with the flow. Daniel has always wanted to have at least one hand on the wheel. It’s served him well in his career, but clearly, obviously, embarrassingly, not with his friendships.

Now, at least, Max is comfortable telling Daniel what he thinks about it. How long had he put up with the unconscious parenting? 

Young Max had presented a strong face to the media, he’d had no trouble giving his opinion to the driving team, not issues going toe to toe with much older drivers in the paddock. 

But non-professional relationships were a different story, in many ways. When Daniel first knew him, Max had taken a while to warm up enough to show Daniel the truth of his personality. To show emotions beneath the ones he’d been taught were acceptable. 

Hell, Daniel was like that in many ways. His media personality, Daniel Ricciardo: The Smile of the Paddock, had hidden a lot of frustrations, innumerable hurts…

How long has Max been holding onto this?

~

Max rings him after the race. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Daniel has a moment where he thinks that this would be the moment he looks incredulously at the camera if he were being filmed. He can count the times Max has apologised on two hands. 

“I shouldn’t have said all that shit. I just… I’m protective of Tobias.” 

“No, no,” Daniel gets it. He’s the dad of a girl who does semi-competitive karting. He knows about being protective. “No apology necessary, right?” 

It’s a call back to their days as teammates. When they’d had to draw the lines between who they were on and off track. 

“Racing incident,” Max agrees. 

~

Somehow, it’s another four races - a whole eight weeks - before they see each other in person again. 

Thanks to their incessant texting, Daniel knows everything Max has been up to.

Max had helped Victoria’s partner put up a trellis in her back garden and learned a lot about lemon trees via unwilling osmosis. 

“Did you know that motorbiking bloke peed on his lemon trees to make them grow?” 

“Burt Munro. Still no excuse for you pissing in the garden when you’re drunk.”

He’d cooked exactly three meals, one which he’d thrown away as soon as it came out of the pan. He’d helped all three school-aged Verstappen children with more English homework than he cares to admit, and oh, yeah, he’d had a date.

Daniel knows about the date in fine detail because Max called him up, panicky and sweaty and looking like he’d rather sign a Haas contract than meet whoever his mates had set him up with. 

“It’s going to be a disaster.” 

“It will be if you keep up that attitude, yeah.” 

“Daniel…” 

“Max.” 

“Like, it’s actually going to be a disaster. She doesn’t like racing.” 

Daniel had rolled his eyes, there, but then Max whines, high and long and far too close to something Daniel imagines from him if he were flat on his back in Daniel’s bed, and well, he has no choice but to sympathise after that, does he? 

“It’s just one date. Take her out to dinner, don’t get drunk, don’t wear a cap, be polite, and drop her home after. If she sucks, you never have to see her again.” 

Never did Daniel think he’d be giving Max Verstappen dating advice. Certainly not over the phone, in his pyjama bottoms, just about to settle in for the night. Definitely not while nursing a small, secret sprout of a crush in the bottom of his chest. 

It’s nothing. 

It’s so small it’s basically non-existent. 

It’s near his spine, settled in a dark spot below his shoulder blades, that’s how far away from his heart it is. 

The string of texts from Max that Daniel wakes up to the next morning cast soft diffuse light on the sprout. 

Max: it was awful
Max: i might have lost my temper
Max: nothing serious, i didn’t yell or anythign
Max: she said parents who let their kids do karting are endangering their kids
Max: when i said it was bullshit she asked if tobias had ever got hurt and if he knew his twelve times tables
Max: i said it was non of her fucking business and left. Didn;t drive her home. Wasn’t polite. Sorry

Sorry . Like Daniel’s reputation was hanging on the line of Max being a good date. 

Sorry . Like he’s actually concerned about disappointing Daniel. 

Sorry . Like Daniel isn’t in his corner one thousand and ten percent. (Just in this instance, of course. Only because she’d brought the kids into it. Nothing to do with Max.) 

Daniel: not that u need me to tell you but u aren’t endangering tobias

Max: and you aren’t endangering anita
Max: there was that one time in baku that u endangered me though…. 

~

It’s an accident, when Max meets Chrissy for the first time. 

It feels normal to sneak up on Max; to stick his freezing cold fingers under the collar of Max’s polo shirt just to make him shriek and whirl around to sock Daniel in the shoulder (oh, he’s gotten strong, hasn’t he?). It’s normal it’s normal, it’s just friends being friends giggling their way through a standing game of footsie at the side of a karting track. 

Daniel is about to get his fingers in Max’s belt loops and do… something, when Max tenses. 

“Hello,” he announces, backing away from Daniel. He’s textbook polite, even his face is blank of emotion. 

Daniel turns, looking to see what’s made Max so squirrely, and sees Chrissy. 

She’s in England with work, it’s a happy accident that coincided with Anita’s racing. Daniel had remembered, of course, he’s just forgotten to tell Max. Forgotten to prepare an introduction that managed to encapsulate what, exactly, they are to each other. 

How is he supposed to introduce him to the mother of his child when Daniel doesn’t even know what they are? 

“You made it!” he beams at Chrissy, gives her a one-armed hug hello. Max’s face is carefully blank. “Chrissy, this is Max. Max, this is Chrissy. Anita’s mum.” 

Chrissy and Max have technically met before - but only ever in passing. Daniel doesn’t know if either of them have ever had a full conversation. 

“It’s good to meet you.” Max sounds stilted. Rehearsed, almost. Daniel would worry that something is wrong, but he’s sure it must be uncomfortable for Max. He’s never been great at first impressions. 

~

If Daniel had instigated their argument over a fallen child and a broken cup, it’s over a steak that Max takes his own turn to say something stupid. 

Chrissy had volunteered to take Tobias out to dinner with her and Anita - “so you two can have some time not thinking about childcare!” Daniel is dressed nice, a pair of fitted jeans and an ironed button up. He’d picked Max up from his hotel room feeling insecure and overdressed until he’d seen Max in actual trousers and a black bomber jacket he’s never seen him wear before. 

“So,” Max sips at his wine. Another thing Daniel hasn’t seen Max do. There’s beer on tap, and here he is drinking a Syrah. He’s really struggling to hold his hopes in check. “You’re so good at being civil to her.” It’s so out of the blue, so incongruous with the nice maybe date Daniel thinks they’re on, that it takes a while for Max’s words to compute. “Like, it’s nice for her to take an interest in Anita now , right? Instead of always prioritising her career.” 

When Daniel realises Max is talking about Chrissy, he’s thrown. He hadn’t expected this at all. He’s not prepared for this conversation. 

Max takes his silence as permission to continue. 

“That’s why you two broke up, right? Because her priorities were wrong.” Max’s tone is cutting and bitter, and Daniel is shaking his head and clutching his fork and, oh my god, are those angry tears he can feel building? 

“Nope. Nuh-uh,” he resists the urge to point his cutlery at Max. He takes a pause. Empties his hands. “You don’t get to assume that just because you’re on bad terms with all your exes that the same applies to me. I still love Chrissy. I respect her choices. And if you can’t then I don’t want to hear you say anything about her again.” 

“I…” Max is fish-mouthing across the table at him. He looks stunned. Like he’d truly never imagined that Daniel would do anything but agree with him. “Daniel, I’m sorry.” 

The old Daniel would have cut Max off, would probably have walked out on him. 

This Daniel wants to listen. Wants to hear the full breadth of his apology. Maybe it’s idealistic, but he wants to see this through to the end - whatever that may be. 

“I’m sorry, you’re right.” Daniel can count on one hand the number of times Max has said either of those things to him. “I… I was speaking about my baggage. I shouldn’t have assumed that applied to you, too. It was rude.” 

It was rude. It was rude and it’s not going to be fixed with just one apology, but neither will it be fixed by turning this into an Argument. 

“It’s all good. Well, it’s not, but thank you for apologising.” He pauses. “I need you to know,” can he say this? Should he say this? Looking across the table at Max’s wide eyes, at his clean-shaven neck and his own reflection in the window over Max’s shoulder - greying and balding and tired and still handsome, despite it all - he decides, yeah. They both deserve to know where they stand with each other. “I need you to know that Anita is my first priority, always. Chrissy is part of that. We’re not in love anymore but I still love her. If you… if we are going to be anything to each other, I need you to get okay with Chrissy.” 

Max is flushed a pretty, pretty pink. Daniel can see him rolling a question around in his mouth. He tries to shape his expression into something that says, yes, it’s okay, ask me. 

Whatever Max sees in his eyes clearly does the job. 

“What are we?” 

It’s bolder than Daniel had expected. Everything he knows about Max tells him they should be talking much wider circles around this than they are. 

“Let’s see how dinner goes.” 

~

When Chrissy drops the kids back to Daniel’s hotel room, she gives him a knowing little smile. 

“I could have had the kids sleepover if you’d told me.” 

Daniel rolls his eyes and brushes her off and tells her he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

And then he turns around and Max is standing in the hallways behind him, in his own boxers and a shirt of Daniel’s, and he looks so happy. 

~

“Anita has started asking me why Charlie Lievielle has a girlfriend, and my sister has a boyfriend, but Max is only your friend.”

Daniel freezes. A deer in headlights. “Um....”

He contemplates just hanging up the phone. But Chrissy would only call back.

“You need to be honest with yourself, Daniel. Even your daughter can see it.” 

“It’s not... I haven’t done anything in front of her with... with him.”

“I don’t care about that, Daniel. You really think that matters? Do you like Max?”

“I... well.... I guess you could say that it’s...”

“This isn’t a press conference. A simple yes or no will do.”

“...yes.”

“Does Max like you? Don’t answer that. Max likes you. Are you going to do anything about it?”

“Not.... we already have... I mean, we’ve made out. We, there was a thing the other week where we...” he makes a suggestive hand gesture. Chrissy can’t see it but she knows, somehow, anyway.

“That’s great, but I mean emotionally. Are you going to have a conversation?”

“A conversation.” he parrots, grimacing. 

“Do you know what your problem is? What it’s always been? Commitment. You’re so used to moving, that it’s like you've made your emotional attachment transient as well. Daniel, I love you, you know I do. You’re a great father, a great friend. You were - you are - a great partner. You just need to get out of your head for once. Talk to Max.”

~

Daniel does what Daniel does best; he does not talk to Max. 

He gives Max a spare key and the code to his alarm, and he clears a space under his bathroom sink for Max’s hair stuff. He draws little red stars on the calendar in the kitchen, weeks where Max is back in Holland. He buys Max’s yoghurt brand and starts changing his sheets more regularly. But he doesn’t talk to him. 

What’s the point? He gets Max in his bed even without talking; he gets Max kissing him without talking; he gets Max cuddled up to his side on the sofa without talking. Who knows? Maybe talking would put a stop to all that. 

And then, one weekend, Daniel has a work thing he has to travel out of the country for. Chrissy is in the middle of an unusually quiet patch at work, so she’s staying in his house with Anita. The evening before Daniel is due back, Max looks up from his PlayStation and sees a caller ID that makes his blood run cold. 

“Chrissy? What’s… Is everything okay?” 

“What? Oh, no, everything’s fine! Sorry for scaring you. I would have text, but well… Are you busy?” 

Max thinks of all the things Daniel’s ex could want to talk to him about and none of them are good. He’d been having such a good day, too.

“Yeah, I mean no, I’m not busy. What’s up?” 

Chrissy laughs down the phone. “This is a bit embarrassing, to be honest-” Oh, god. She’s going to tell me to keep my hands off Daniel. “-know this is super last minute and normally I would say no, but it’s urgent and work needs me to come in for this meeting tonight and I’ve got no one to look after Anita. Would you mind staying with her? Just for the night?” 

And it’s so far from anything Max had been imagining that he stands frozen in his living room for probably too long. Chrissy is silent on the other end of the phone. 

“I know you probably had plans. Absolutely no pressure to say yes, I know she can be a handful - at bedtime especially. I can just call Daniel’s usual babysitter, see if she’s free...” 

“Chrissy!” Max doesn’t mean to shout, but she’s sounding increasingly guilty and the absolute last thing Max wants is her thinking Max is too busy for her child. “It’s fine, really. I was just surprised. That you’d… well, want me to look after her.”

Even though Daniel has said to him, made it clear that that’s not how things are between him and Chrissy, Max is finally listening to the proof. That Chrissy isn’t bitter about his relationship with Daniel, that she and Daniel really are just friends. More than that, bigger than that, is the fact that she trusts Max with their daughter, and that that means Daniel trusts Max with his daughter. It's a lot. 

Being asked to stay the night - being the first person Chrissy called, not the runner up to a paid babysitter, but actually wanted … 

“Oh, Max. Of course. Anita loves you.” There’s something soft and wistful and almost protective in her voice. 

Rather than process what that means, what she could be thinking about him, he pushes on. “I’d love to. Anita’s great.” 

“I know.” She laughs, and it’s relieved and fond and relieved, again. “Thank you, Max. I… I’ll see you soon?” 

~

They kind of have to talk about it, after that. 

Daniel arrives home the following evening in a flurry, spinning Anita around the room and then pressing his nose into Max’s cheek. 

His ‘thank you’ is quiet, wouldn’t sound out of place if he breathed it into Max’s ear when they’re lying in bed. The gentle intimacy of it makes Max’s chest clench. It seems Daniel is feeling something similar because before he gets Anita ready for bed, he hands Max a bottle of wine without a word. 

Max has two glasses on the coffee table by the time he comes back. 

“Thank you,” Daniel says again. 

Max shakes his head. “You don’t have to thank me. I love her.” 

And it’s as simple as that, in the end. 

It’s Max’s declaration of love (why is Daniel surprised? It’s so obvious, she’s so easy to love) for Anita that opens the floodgates. Daniel sinks into the sofa next to Max, basically on top of him. He’s still obnoxious about personal space. 

“Good,” Daniel says, sweet and straight to the point. “Because I love you.” 

~

They’re at Daniel’s family farm in Perth for Christmas: Max, Chrissy, Daniel and Anita. 

It’s the first hot Christmas Max has ever had. He can feel a sunburn prickling on the back of his neck, the edges of his shoulders, the tops of his feet. Daniel’s mum had looked at him and laughed. “I told you not to skip out on the SPF!” 

Right now, Anita is on a swing set under a eucalyptus tree, squealing in joy and asking her granddad to push her higher and higher. Daniel is at the barbecue with his sister’s husband, waving his hands and a pair of tongs, his back to Max. He's so handsome. Max wonders vaguely what he’s talking about that’s got him so energetic. 

Max is sitting at the outdoor table, trying to lessen the pain he’ll feel tomorrow by sticking close to the shade. Chrissy slides into the seat across from him and follows his eyeline.

“I know, right?” Max doesn’t have to wonder what she’s talking about for long. “Somehow he’s the one with childbearing hips, while I’m the one who’s got the stitches.” 

She’d timed it perfectly, waited for him to take a sip of beer and now he’s got the fizz of alcohol in the back of his nostrils. Of course she and Daniel get on so well. 

Chrissy grins at him, not even bothering to pretend innocence. “By the way - how much has Victoria told you about vaginal tearing?” 

“Christina!” Daniel has a piece of steak clutched between the tongs he’s waving in their direction. “Stop harassing Max and go find out how our daughter wants her steak today!” 

"If you drop that on the ground, I'll drop something on you!" Daniel's sister threatens.

Chrissy gives Max a cheeky wink and blows him a kiss before jogging over to join Anita at the swing set. 

Max looks around him. There’s the weatherboard house, the expansive decking area behind him. This little oasis of green lawn between the house and the crisp brown farmland surrounding them. Daniel, to his right; a little spitfire child to his left. 

He had hardly thought, when he’d said yes to taking his nephew karting, that he’d end up accidentally co-parenting with his ex-teammate. Even less so that he’d be co-ex-parenting with his ex-teammate’s ex-girlfriend, too.

Max can hardly say he minds, though.