Archive of Our Own ^beta

Russell’s a dickhead. Max would rip his head off if they weren’t in parc fermé. He wonders what would be his penalty this time. Weighs the pros and cons. Reckons seriously with it as he climbs out of the cockpit. Quite sensibly, he settles with shouting curses and pointing at the fucking hole Russell made in his car. He storms off before he actually rips off George’s head, with his eyesore of a helmet and all. Max’s heartbeat thunders in his ears. He’s halfway over to the weighing scale when a hand grabs his wrist and yanks him into the safety car garage.

Charles looks furious, a deep crease between his brows when he mutters, “What are you—? You are—in pre-rut. I can smell it.”

Max grits his teeth, tightens his grip on his helmet, shakes off Charles’ hand from his wrist, and glares. He took a double dose of scent blockers in the morning, and nobody’s said anything about his scent, but he should’ve expected that Charles would be able to tell.

Charles’ eyes go bug wide. “You knew that,” he realizes, mouth pinching. Of course I knew, Max wants to say, I’m not a fucking idiot. But then Charles is asking, “You’re off suppressants?”

Max brings his free hand to the opposite hip, trying not to lash out at Charles. He chews on his lip. He’s agitated and frenetic from the sprint and he can’t tell if Charles is making it better or worse.

“Yeah,” Max says. He avoids eye contact, stares at his feet. “My hormone levels were off, so. A reset.” That’s what the doctor told him, anyway. Skipping the rut you’re required to have at least once a year, for four whole years, is suppressant abuse apparently.

“With the race tomorrow?”

Of course Charles is worried. Max wants to resent him for it. “It’s not supposed to hit until Tuesday.”

That doesn’t pacify Charles at all. “Still.”

Max glances around. Some of the stewards are looking at them weirdly. Cameras are pointed their way.

“I was cleared by the doctor to race, of course,” he defends. However, the perturbation on Charles’ face doesn’t leave, and Max doesn’t want to drag out this conversation any longer, so he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and tries to calm down. “Listen,” he says, hoping that Charles does, “I’m fine.”

Charles purses his lips. From over his shoulder, Naomi Schiff is tapping her foot, looking over at the two of them impatiently. Checo might have to do his interview first, Max thinks absently, but then Charles is asking:

“Do you have someone?”

Max blinks. Feels like a deer in headlights. Probably looks like one too, from the way Charles’ face does something—weird. Goes all blotchy.

He shakes his head, embarrassed, rubs a hand over his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Charles blurts. “I didn’t— Never mind.”

But he isn’t moving; he’s still blocking Max from exiting the garage. Checo is doing his interview first, it seems. Max brings his attention back to Charles.

“I’ve been through ruts alone before of course,” he says. He isn’t sure why he says it, and he isn’t sure why Charles responds:

“But it would be your first since—”

“Charles,” Max says. Cuts him off. They didn’t talk about it then, and Max sees no reason to talk about it now.

“Sorry,” Charles says, pulling his lips between his teeth.

Max swallows. Chews on the inside of his cheek as he thinks about how he’d shouted at George, earlier. Thinks about how angry he was. “Is it obvious? The rut?” he asks quietly.

Charles shakes his head. “Only to me,” he answers, and Max immediately sighs in relief. Charles shifts on his feet. “Just,” he starts, then stops, like he’s trying to find the right words but everything in his vocabulary is inadequate. His eyes soften, then he says, “Be safe, okay?”

“Yeah,” Max punches out, throat suddenly all tight. His voice comes out hoarse. “Thanks,” he adds, a beat too late. Charles nods at him, then walks over to Naomi.

Ah, Max thinks, finding the nearest wall to lean on. His heart pounds, pressing against the back of his throat like it wants to do something ridiculous, like jump out, and crawl its way over to Charles.

Shit.

“Saw it was a bit tense between you and Leclerc,” Christian says. “Russell too, but I reckon that was a different matter.”

He asked Max to stay behind for a couple minutes after the sprint debrief. Max rubs at his eyes. Not again. Everyone wants to fucking know what they were talking about. F1 couldn’t get any sound bites from their conversation, but Max is sure there are plenty of photos and videos regardless. Naomi asked him about it in the post-race interview, then he and Charles were asked again in the press conference. Both of them refused to answer the question.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” Max says. And if they did, what would Max even say? The truth? That Charles was angry with him because he’s days from his rut, and he’s racing regardless. Which begs the million-dollar question: How on earth did Charles know?

“Are you two still okay?” Christian asks, raising a brow.

Max thinks of Toto Wolff slamming his headset against the desk. He wonders how cathartic that must’ve felt, considers doing it right now. He thinks better of it. He takes a long breath and replies, “We have always been fine.”

“Always is a stretch, Max,” Christian says, and Max rolls his eyes. “Listen. I don’t know what happened between you two all those years ago, but I have reporters up my arse bringing up the past, trying to set you up. If things aren’t okay between the two of you, tell me, so that I know what I’m working with.”

Max bites his mouth. He looks off to the side. Christian was already on the fence about letting Max race this weekend, furious when he found out Max was abusing his suppressants for four years. He shouldn’t make Christian any more worried than he already is.

“Charles and I are fine.”

Really, they are.

It’s only, well. No one really believes it.

Charles came out as an omega halfway into the 2019 season after masquerading as a beta ever since he presented back in karting. He was the first omega driver in decades, the first omega grand prix winner, and still the only omega on the grid.

All the drivers were asked about Charles, if they knew, how they felt, what this meant for the progression of second gender equality in the sport, whatever the fuck. Max was the only one not to express his public support of Charles. He knows now that it was a mistake, that he should have sucked it up and lifelessly recited the pro-omega speech Gemma wrote up for him. But Max was twenty-one and broken-hearted and only said, “I don’t see a need to talk about this,” to every interviewer who’d ask.

Because there wasn’t a need. Max was the one keeping Charles’ secret for seven years, anyway.

It’s not like Charles told Max, or anything. They were fourteen and they hated each other and Max was freshly presented and he wanted nothing more than to run Charles off the track. Alpha, beta, omega—whatever Charles was.

But then they were in France for a karting cup and they’d banged wheels and ruined each other’s races and they got sent to the tiny medical tent and the doctor was late. Max was hastily filling out his form, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible, mentally preparing for how his dad was going to scream at him in the car ride back to Belgium. He glanced at Charles, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t touched his medical form. Charles, who was sitting on the floor and looked like he was about to faint from heat stroke even though it was freezing cold. Sweat was dripping down his neck, and his race suit was damp. Something in the tent smelled sweet.

“Max,” he said, voice weak and panting, eyes screwed shut. “I think I am. I don’t feel good. You need to leave. Can you. Please. My dad. Can you get—”

“What are you saying—” And Max’s alpha, so young and unfamiliar and not quite a part of him yet, more like a second self living inside his body, realized it before Max did. “You’re—”

Max will remember it all his life. The way Charles’ eyes shot open with fear. The way he shook his head and choked out, “You can’t tell anyone.”

So Max didn’t.

The race is fine. Congrats to Checo, or whatever. Max sprays champagne on the podium, celebrates and takes photos with the team, does a few interviews in the TV pen, keeps his answers short and to the point, and then he’s walking down the corridor for the post-race press conference, and then he realizes he’s lost, which leads him to realize: he has gaps in his memory.

The fabric of his race suit itches. His body is tense and he’s been clenching his teeth. He puts the back of his hand on his forehead. It’s burning hot. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck.

Max knows the progression of a rut. It starts with these symptoms, then it’s a quick spiral into wanting to fuck anything with a hole. He’s lucky he hasn’t knotted up in the goddamn FIA building.

He puts a hand on the wall to keep himself steady. Fuck. He needs to—phone. He needs to call Brad, or Christian. Fuck. Where is his phone? Fuck, it’s in his driver room. Think, Max. Think. Checo knows about the situation. He just needs to find Checo, and Checo can get someone to drive him to the hotel. Fuck. It’s hot. He shouldn’t be here. Should’ve taken the out, stayed in Monaco. He should have—

“Max, oh my god.” Someone is jogging toward him and grabbing his shoulders and helping him upright. Max hadn’t even noticed he was slumped against the wall. “I could smell you from the other side of the building.”

Max lifts his head. Of course it’s Charles. Of course. Charles is wearing blockers. Of course he’s wearing blockers. He always does, and he usually doubles up with scent patches too. Max hasn’t smelled him in years. Not since—

His mouth starts watering at the thought.

“I think I’m—” He shuts his mouth. He can’t focus. Charles’ face is so close. He’s gorgeous like always, and Max—wants him. Always he wants him.

Charles cups his cheek. Max closes his eyes, leans into his palm, and moans. Whimpers, more like. His touch is like the relief of cold water after the Singapore Grand Prix.

When Max opens his eyes, he sees Charles looking at him with gentle eyes.

“I told you, you stupid alpha.”

Max is in a car. A Ferrari. He looks to his side. Charles.

He doesn’t know how he got here. The last thing he remembers is the corridor.

Max looks down and sees that he’s still wearing his race suit, and he’s fully knotted up. It hurts, and he wants.

“Where are we—”

“My hotel,” Charles replies, keeping his eyes on the road. His scent patches are gone, but the blockers he must have taken in the morning still mute his scent. “We are almost there.”

Max doesn’t—doesn’t feel here. Feels weak. Feels like his body isn’t his. He tries to put himself back in his body. He thinks hard about what’s happening.

“Did people—” See us? He means to say, but his tongue is useless in his mouth.

Charles bites his lip. “Don’t worry about that now. We will deal with that after your rut.”

“My—” Max starts, struggling with the effort of forming words. “You will be— For my rut?”

They hit a red light, and Charles slows the car down to a smooth stop. He turns his head to look at Max. “Yeah,” he says, his green eyes dragging down to where Max is knotted up. “Like old times.”

The first time, actually, had happened pretty similarly.

It was Hungary 2018. Max had an engine failure on lap 5. Charles had a first-lap incident with the Force Indias and had to retire the car. They were in the media pen at the same time. Because the race was still happening, there weren’t many reporters in the pen, and they were the only two drivers. Max was finishing his interview with Ziggo, dreading the Sky Sports interview he had to do next, glancing at the TV screens every now and then, when Charles called his name. Confused, Max walked up to him. They hadn’t talked at all, really, this year. They were never really friends either.

“Max, I—” Charles said, and Max felt weird. Felt like the only person in the room was Charles. He felt distracted and focused at the same time. Charles cleared his throat, pink-cheeked and polite when he said, “Can you drive me to my hotel please?”

Max blinked. He should have been annoyed at the request, but instead he had to fight the need to say yes without question. “What?” he asked.

Charles looked around. He looked wide-eyed and skittish. “I cannot— I would ask my team, but they do not… They do not know. About me.”

“Oh,” Max said, instantly understanding. His ears felt warm.

“I have maybe thirty minutes until everyone finds out,” Charles spoke rapidly, practically speaking in tongues. “You don’t need to—help me. Of course. I just—I cannot drive like this, I think. And you are the only one who knows.”

“Okay, okay,” Max said. He scratched the back of his neck. A part of him wanted to make a joke about how it turned out to be a good thing that Charles retired in the first lap. He buried that thought away, however, and said, “Um. Let’s go.”

And the thing about back then is that practically no one knew Charles was an omega, and everyone was so focused on the race that the two of them could slip out to the car park largely unseen. The handful of people that did see them gave them looks, but no one was tipped off as to why they were leaving the track together. Their teams and the FIA wouldn’t be happy, but at the end of the day, they both would come up with excuses and pay the fines. So Max drove to Charles’ hotel, ran through yellow lights, and struggled to get his head in order. Charles’ scent was blooming, honey and sea salt, and he was making little noises in the passenger seat. It was hard to focus. Max tried not to look at him.

Once they got to the hotel, Charles grabbed a hoodie from the backseat and put it on over his race suit to mask his scent. It barely helped, but it was all they had. He found his key card in the drinks holder then stumbled out of the car, unsteady on his feet. So Max asked, “Are you okay to get to your room on your own?”

“I—” Charles said, and licked his lips. His cheeks were flushed. They shouldn’t linger. If anyone looked too closely, they’d find out. “Maybe you can. Come. Just to make sure I get there.”

“Okay,” Max said, and climbed out of the car. Maybe it would get towed, he thought absently, blocking the front entrance. He didn’t care. Besides, it was Charles’ car he was driving.

He locked the car, followed Charles into the lobby, and avoided eye contact with the concierges. The fact that they were still in their race suits didn’t help with how odd they must’ve looked. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone else around, so they made it to the lift, and Charles pressed the ninth floor.

The elevator was so small, and Charles was so close to him. He was wobbling on his feet, so Max slid an arm beneath Charles’ armpit, helping him upright. Charles buried his face in Max’s neck, and Max tried his hardest not to gasp. He was getting hard. Charles’ hip was flush to his dick. He could smell Charles’ slick, his want.

Biology, he told himself. It was just biology.

“Do you have any… toys?” Max asked, flushing when his voice cracked. He’d never been with an omega before, but he knew roughly how their heats go.

Charles shook his head, his soft mouth brushing against Max’s skin. “I have nothing,” he said. “I didn’t know I would be—I wasn’t supposed to, I’m on suppressants, I was—”

“I can—” Max said, head growing foggy. He wondered how wet Charles must be, ruining his fireproofs, soaking through the Nomex. “There should be knotting toys at the pharmacy. I can pick them up for you—”

“Please,” Charles said, voice meek and soft and like—a perfect omega, Max thought, and felt horrible about it immediately.

He nodded his head.

The elevator doors opened, and Max walked them both to Charles’ room, Charles slumped into the side of Max’s body. Max desperately needed a cold shower, or a hand around his dick. He unlocked the door for them, and Charles tripped inside. Max came inside and closed the door behind him, focusing on what he had to do. He’d make sure Charles was okay, take Charles’ keycard with him, then he’d drive to the pharmacy and back to the hotel, throw a knotting toy into the room, then close the door immediately before Charles’ scent got to him any more. He’d go back to the track, apologize to the team, tell Sauber that Charles was ill.

And then Charles dropped to his knees.

“Charles,” Max said, shocked. Charles was pawing at Max’s thighs, his eyes were lidded, his face was so red, and his perfect mouth was wet. Max put his hands flat to the door behind him and swallowed. A part of him knew, vaguely, he should push Charles away, but he didn’t trust himself to put his hands on Charles right now.

“Please,” Charles said, pressing his cheek to Max’s thigh. He mewled, and Max thought, horribly, about all the stereotypical omegas in porn. The ones that Max jerked off to and felt guilty about afterwards. The slutty ones, on their backs or on all fours, wanting, needing, nothing more than alpha knot in their cunts. Like they weren’t good for anything else.

“I just—” Charles said, nosing at the tent in Max’s race suit. Max felt dizzy, and Charles smelled—good. Looked like a fucking dream. Heat looked beautiful on him. It was hard to reconcile that this was—this was Charles. Charles Leclerc. Max had known Charles even before he was an alpha and Charles was an omega. They raced together. They hated each other. But Max was there for Charles’ first heat. He was one of a handful of people who knew the truth. Max’d known about Charles’ second gender for half a decade, and he carried that secret with him all those years. He never thought about it, honest to god, never thought about Charles like this until today. It was an inconsequential thing, anyway.

Racing had nothing to do with your gender. So why did it matter that Charles was an omega?

This, Max thought to himself, realizing for the first time. This is why it matters.

“I want. Please,” he said. A broken fucking record. A parody of an omega. Every cliché in the book. It was pathetic. He was gorgeous. He was disgusting. They both were. Max hated how his dick pulsed at Charles’ words, his pretty face and empty eyes. Charles was no better than the omegas in porn who let strangers knot them and pump them full of cum. But Max wasn’t a stranger.

“I need it,” Charles went on, nuzzling his cheek against Max’s bulge, drool slipping down the corner of his mouth.

“You don’t know—” Max managed to get out, his heart rabbiting and bruising his ribcage.

“Please,” Charles cried, and Max screwed his eyes shut and tried to think of anything but Charles, but it didn’t work. His nose was filled with sweet honey, and he had an omega at his feet, begging to suck his cock. “I’ll be—I’ll be good. I’ll let you—anything. Please.”

“This is not—” Max said, and a part of him felt like crying out of frustration. His hands balled into fists by his sides, body tense, keyed up. “You’re in heat,” he said, as if that meant anything.

Charles leant back, and Max groaned at the loss, opening his eyes. Charles opened his eyes as well, and tilted his head back. His eyes were wet. “Don’t you—” he started. He looked so sad. “Am I so bad?”

Max closed his eyes again. We are going to regret this, he thought, as his hands found the zipper of his race suit, and dragged it down.

Max’s ruts are not like this. Not usually.

Usually, Max is:

Like an animal. He hates the comparison, but he knows what he’s like. Knotted up and wanting to stick his cock inside a wet hole, knowing nothing else. The universal alpha experience. He hates his ruts. Hates being out of control, hates being a fucking cliché. But for a time, for a year, he and Charles were—they had an arrangement, and during that time, maybe, maybe Max hated his ruts a little less. Then that went to hell, and Charles made it clear that it was over for good.

This rut is:

Max is losing time, feels outside of his body, feels less desperate to knot a tight wet hole and more desperate to feel another person’s skin on his. His mouth is dry, his canines are sore, and he feels so on edge he might burst. Usually, ruts are a loss of control, feeling his life happen to him. This rut, he can barely keep track of where he is, who he is, constantly slipping in and out of consciousness.

“I don’t think this is a normal rut,” Charles observes once they’re parked outside his hotel. “You are— I have never seen you like this. Maybe we should go to hospital.”

It’s a horrifying thought, how Charles knows his body inside and out. Knows when he’s in pre-rut, knows what he’s like during his ruts.

“No,” Max says, shaking his head. “No hospital.”

“Did the doctor tell you it would be like this?”

Max breathes in, breathes out. Closes his eyes. Tries to remember. “He just said it would be different.”

Charles exhales. “Alright. Let’s get you inside.”

Getting to Charles’ hotel room is a fucking trainwreck. The lobby is filled with people, fans crowding around them both. Max is barely lucid for the journey, pressing his face to Charles’ neck, nosing at his scent gland as Charles corrals them into the elevator, snapping his teeth at anyone who tries to follow them. Protective. Like—like Max is his alpha and Charles is his omega. Max feels sick and dumb with want. He presses his lips together, taut, too afraid that if he opens his mouth, he’ll do something stupid, like bite. Like really make Charles his.

“Hey, hey,” Charles says, “I have you. We are here.”

Max opens his eyes. They are here. Max is sitting on a bed. He feels so hot. It smells like Charles. He weakly searches for the zipper of his race suit until Charles bats his hands away and undoes the zipper for him. He lifts his arms and lets Charles undress him until the Nomex is peeled off his skin and his overalls sit on his hips. Charles, Max registers, is standing between his legs. Max is so hard it hurts. He keels forward, trying to kiss him, but Charles is too far away to make the move stick.

Charles presses a palm to Max’s cheek and frowns. “What do you need?”

“You,” Max says instantly, gazing up at Charles, as if there’s any other answer.

Charles lets out a small laugh. His mouth is so beautiful it’s surreal. He smells like Max now—petrichor, smoke, and fuel—after all the scenting in the lift. Max’s heart is immolating in his chest.

“You have me,” Charles replies, and Max is almost dumb enough to believe it. “Now let me take care of you,” he says, then swoops down for a kiss.

The thing about Charles is that, outside of his heats, he’s always frighteningly in control. Even when he was letting Max throw him around, rip his clothes off, fuck him up against the wall or on the floor or in the shower or against the sink, and knot his cunt or his mouth—it was always an active choice. He let it happen, wouldn’t lose himself to Max’s ruts, would always be aware of what was happening, what they were doing. He’d stroke a hand down Max’s sweaty back, kiss at his throat, dig his heel into the small of Max’s back as Max pumped him full of cum. Tell him it was okay, tell him it felt so good, that he was doing good, that he wanted it, that Max could take however much he needed.

Outside of his heats is the key point.

The first time, he was insatiable. Practically nonverbal. Could only get out please and alpha and more like he didn’t know any other words. Maybe he didn’t. He was sweet and polite and begging for it, slick gushing from his cunt, mouth red and his chest pink. He whined the first time Max’s knot deflated, and brought a hand down to his hole to push Max’s cum back inside of him, his other hand up to his nipples, toying at the rosy buds, shameless about his want. He squeaked happily when Max flipped him onto his belly and pushed back inside of him, cheek pressed to the pillow, mouth open, tears wetting the fabric, a knot huge in him, swelling blood-hot against his rim, spurting into the mattress with a sharp gasp, twitching as Max pinned him to the bed, predator and prey. He sucked at Max’s fingers, down to his knuckles, mindless, needing it. For hours and hours, he wanted to be filled so bad, all the time, braindead for alpha knot that he sobbed, wailed, and snuffled noisily whenever Max’s dick was too sore to knot up again and Max had to quiet him with his fingers, his fist, catching at his rim.

Max always got lost in it too—that was the difference between him and Charles. During Charles’ heats, Max couldn’t control himself. Charles smelled ripe and fertile and Max couldn’t help but want. He was everything he hated about alphas.

Don’t bite, he’d say to himself, like a mantra. He’s not yours—don’t bite.

They fucked throughout the afternoon and into the night, and they both drifted into sleep by midnight. His heat was close to breaking, Max kept thinking, but Charles kept waking him up, looking at him with soft, hazy eyes, blown-wide with desire.

Max gave him everything he wanted.

Half of the grid are alphas.

All of them are on suppressants.

Natural heats and ruts happen, roughly, six times a year, every other month, and last for about a day.

Suppressants can indefinitely suspend heats and ruts, but it’s recommended that people on them experience at least one natural heat or rut a year. It isn’t the healthiest thing for your body, especially in high-stress environments like motorsports. So, all the alphas on the grid schedule four ruts a year, once during the winter break, once during the summer break, and a third and a forth during the season. It’s less about suppressing the ruts, and more about controlling them.

Charles was doing the same thing, just with his heats. But sometimes, suppressants fail, just like they did for Charles in Hungary 2018.

He explained the morning after, red-faced and squirming around with embarrassment, apologizing for how he acted, for how he dragged Max into it. How he didn’t mean to. How his heat was supposed to hit during the summer break. How he really just needed someone to drive him to his hotel. How he usually wasn’t like that in heat, how he didn’t know that was what it was like, but because Max was an alpha and Max was there—

And then Max realized, in slow motion and slow horror, what all that meant. What it all amounted to.

“You—when you said that. No one else knew,” Max started. He kept staring at all the bruises he left on Charles’ body, fingerprints on his hips, the blooming kiss-marks on his thighs, the purpling love-bite just above his scent gland. “No one?”

“Just my family and my doctors,” Charles explained, avoiding eye contact, wringing his hands together. “And you,” he added.

“Was I—” Max said, swallowing. He couldn’t get the rest of the question out, but he hoped Charles understood. He hoped the conclusion he’d jumped to was wrong.

It wasn’t.

Charles gave him a slow nod, eyes wide and sharp. “I had never, before.”

And Max ran to the bathroom and dry-heaved into the toilet.

But then, two weeks later, it was the middle of the summer break. Max was scheduled for his rut, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’d never spent his rut with an omega before, had never spent his rut with anyone before. He thought about it in the days leading up to his rut, a hand around his dick, his knot bulging at the base. Thought about Charles’ mouth, his cunt, his smell. Thought about what it would be like to have that again. Have him. A perfect, lovely omega like Charles was, that day—and it was a horrible thought, Max was aware, but his brain was pre-rut-addled and he was twenty years old and an alpha and Charles was an omega and no one had ever touched him, before Max. No one knew, no one who mattered, anyways, no one who could have him like Max had him. Charles was an omega in a high-performing sport, and everyone knew he would be driving for Ferrari next year. He was amazing. He infuriated Max when they were kids. He was the only one who ever gave him any real competition, those days, proud and petty and always pushing Max to his limits. Max had known him all their lives, a single life, maybe, a shared life. Known him in the parts that mattered, the only years that mattered. Charles was a future world champion and he got on his knees for Max and begged for his knot and said, alpha, please, I want, want you, alpha, bite, want, knot, need.

He was aware that that wasn’t Charles. Maybe it was, if you peeled back all the layers. Maybe all the rest was inconsequential. But then, what was Max? A dumb alpha who only thought of knots and cunts and mouths and teeth. Maybe that’s what they both were. Matryoshka dolls. At their innermost, they were maybe nothing more than their bodies.

They hadn’t talked since that morning. Charles took care of the situation at Sauber all on his own, and Max apologized to his own team and paid the exorbitant fines. No one found out about them, and odds were, as long as they didn’t do it again, no one would.

But Max was never a patron saint of self-control. He was already falling off the fucking deep end.

He clumsily found his phone from the ground, went into the WhatsApp driver’s group chat, and found Charles’ contact info. He sent the message: Are you in Monaco?

And the rest followed.

It all comes down to this fact:

They only became friends last year, in 2022. Work friends, in reality. They could talk after races, talk about racing, and it was only a little awkward. But it was new. It was good. It was different. It felt like they were finally healing.

Sure, they were heat-and-rut partners for about a year, from Hungary 2018 until Monaco 2019. Partners for four of Max’s ruts and four of Charles’ heats. But it’s not like they talked, really. It’s not like they ever saw each other outside their heats or ruts or race weekends. It was an arrangement of convenience. They’d book hotel rooms: neutral spaces, belonging to neither Max nor Charles. They’d never been to one another’s apartments for their heats or ruts, despite living in the same city.

It was just sex—the most frighteningly intimate and vulnerable sex of Max’s life.

After, the next time they’d see each other was in a new country, in the paddock or on the track, and there was a quiet understanding that what they did as an alpha and an omega was entirely separate from everything else.

Still, no matter how much they pretended, the fact remained: Charles was the only omega that Max had ever been with, and Max, petrifyingly, was the only person Charles had ever been with.

It started out in his worst moments—in rut, or during Charles’ heats, that Max found himself thinking: You’re mine and I’m yours and it can’t be any other way. It was confined to those moments—until one day, early into the 2019 season, Max was in the paddock, and he caught sight of Charles blushing and giggling shyly at his alpha fucking teammate’s jokes, that he thought, furiously: Mine, my omega, mine, only mine, mine all mine.

Then it all went tits up, and Max couldn’t—he wouldn’t let himself go through another rut. Not without Charles. Not when he knew he’d spend that entire miserable day thinking about Charles. Max wouldn’t sleep with another omega, either—not when he’d just think about Charles.

It took him three years and two world championships to stop seeing Charles as his omega.

In one of his few moments of consciousness during his rut, Max finds them on their sides, spooning. It’s night, or maybe early morning. Max can’t tell, but he knows this:

Max’s knot is expanding inside Charles, Charles is making these beautiful noises, breath hitching as he rocks back and works himself on Max’s knot, impossibly tight and wet and the lines between them are soft and hazy, edges blurred and meaningless. Max is having trouble telling where he starts and Charles begins. He’s kissing at Charles’ scent gland, lips covering his teeth but still, dangerously close—Charles is letting him. His scent gland pulses with his beating heart and Max’s nose is filled with him, his smell, lovely and sweet and gentle and soft. Max thinks about violence, he thinks about blood and claws and fangs and other sharp things. He thinks about Charles’ heart between his teeth.

The worst part, though, Max registers, is how their hands are intertwined, sweaty and knotted together by Charles’ stomach.

He wonders how many years and how many championships it will take to get over Charles Leclerc, this time around.

The next time Max regains consciousness, he feels—better. Groggy and wrecked and sore, but firmly in control. Present. Like his body is finally his again.

It still takes him a few minutes to come to, fully. He registers Charles beside him, turned on his side, facing away, naked. The covers are pulled up just above the soft curve of his plump butt, the hollows of his Venus dimples shining in the warm sunlight. He smells—lovely. Like himself, honey-sweet, ambrosia and nectar, but also like Max. There are love-bites on his nape, and the muscles of his back are defined; his hair is a mess, and his skin glistens like gold. Max knows, even though he’s hopped up on hormones and oxytocin; knows instantly he’s back to square one; knows that all the work and progress he has made of getting over Charles, fucking beta after beta, winning race after race and title after title—has all gone to shit.

“What time is it?” Max croaks, then clears his throat of phlegm.

Charles puts his phone down, then sits up, turns toward Max. His nipples look raw; his mouth pink; his lips even now, kiss-swollen; body bare and so utterly, painfully, irrevocably gorgeous. Max swallows, struck with every emotion he’s tried to bury down for the past four years. Max thinks, bizarrely, about the one time his mum took him and Victoria to the Rijksmuseum. He thinks of all the paintings he saw and didn’t care about, didn’t think twice about—just wanting to go home. Charles, at this moment, looks like an artist’s wet dream: a feline, soft mouth; eyes lidded, slightly puffy; draped in sunlight; a heart-shaped mole just above his collarbone.

“Eleven in the morning,” Charles answers. “How much do you remember of yesterday?”

“Not much,” Max confesses. All his memories are tactile: warm skin, soft lips, Charles’ cunt squeezing around Max’s knot; their hands entwined. “What was— What was I like?”

“Very different,” Charles chuckles, scrunching his nose. “Very… docile. Very sweet and needy. Nothing like you usually are.

Max flushes. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever called him docile before. A part of him wishes he recalled more of it, but he thinks maybe it’s for the better, that he doesn’t. He sits up too, facing Charles. “Did we—the whole time?”

Charles shrugs, nonchalant, but a soft pink dusts his cheeks. “We slept a little, but you kept waking me up throughout the night to knot me. I am very sore,” he says, blunt.

“I’m sorry,” Max says, and the downside of his sober, post-rut clarity is the knowledge that he’s made a mess of everything. “I thought I had more time.”

“It’s okay,” Charles says, shaking his head and smiling, warm and gentle, just like the rest of him. “I am sure you would have done the same for me.” Then he furrows his brows and frowns. “Although, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to completely suppress my heats.”

That’s not fair, Max thinks. Why do you think I was doing it in the first place?

“You knew what I was doing,” he points out, voice neutral, but targeted. “You never said anything.”

Abu Dhabi 2019, Charles cornered Max before the race and asked him why, ever since they stopped, he couldn’t smell even a whiff of pre- or post-rut on him. Max felt caught, kicking himself for not realizing that of course Charles could tell. Charles had always known Max’s body better than he knew his own.

And so, Max told Charles the truth, and Charles had this—look on his face. Of horror, but also: something like sadness. Charles only nodded, then walked away.

Charles bites his mouth. “I should have,” he admits.

Well. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. The past is the past.

“Thank you,” Max says, trying to start over, “for taking care of me.”

Charles only hums. He looks out the window, out at the Caspian Sea and the Baku cityscape, then back at Max, his eyes lidded, slightly puffy with sleep. “When is your next rut?”

Max’s eyes widen. He tries not to read too much into that question; it could be completely innocuous, for all he knows. “Two months,” he answers. “I have to go through all my natural ruts.”

Charles furrows his brows. “What if it happens during another race weekend?”

Max cards his fingers through his hair. “The doctor said after this first one I could use my suppressants to time them between weekends.”

His hormones were so fucked up after years of abusing his rut suppressants, that to kick off the reset, he had to completely go without them to trigger a rut.

Charles hums again. He curls his legs up to his chest under the covers, and rests his cheek on one knee. “I talked to our teams on the phone this morning.”

“Oh,” Max says with a wince. He hadn’t— This whole time he’d been worrying about the consequences of last night that he hadn’t began to consider the professional consequences. “They are…”

“Furious,” Charles reveals, predictably. “Fred, Christian, and some members of our PR teams stayed in Baku. They booked a conference room in this hotel. We will meet with them and the FIA this afternoon.” His eyes narrow. “I assume you don’t remember much from before we got here either.”

Max shakes his head, chewing on the inside of his mouth. He remembers Charles finding him in the hall, before the press conference; vaguely, the exodus out of the paddock; parts of the journey to the hotel; then the impossible odyssey from the lobby to the lift. It’s all foggy in his head when he tries to sort through the memories.

“Everyone saw,” Charles says. “The paddock got shut down, but there are photos and videos online. We also are in trouble with the FIA for skipping the conference, among many things. Something about a—” He pauses to scrunch his nose. “A public indecency clause in the regulations,” he finishes, and Max flushes. Charles, however, isn’t done. Before speaking, he takes a deep breath. “I was thinking this morning, and I think we should tell them about our past.”

Our past, Max thinks.

“Why?”

“People are saying,” Charles starts, his scent souring. “Not nice things about us.”

Max can imagine. An unmated alpha going into rut in the paddock, an unmated omega bringing him back to his hotel—both of them drivers. Nothing short of a scandal.

“It might help if people thought we were courting.”

Max’s voice is hoarse, but he manages to get out: “Are we?”

Charles looks to the side, stretches his legs back under the covers. He’s pushing back his cuticles, fingernails bitten raw. He doesn’t answer the question. “We could say that we used to be together, broke up, and we got back together recently. A half-truth. Keep things simple.”

There’s a lump in Max’s throat: like a knife. “A PR relationship,” he realizes.

A facsimile of the real thing.

“Sure,” Charles says, voice impossibly level. He still isn’t looking at Max. “If you want to call it that.”

Not even a second passes before Max has made his decision.

“No.”

Finally, Charles looks at him, mouth gaping, wide-eyed like a fawn, and Max thinks of 2018. Not when they were—like that. Before then, before the first time, when Charles was green and they had nothing to do with each other except for a shared history and a shared secret. Back when everything was new to Charles like a baby learning the world for the first time, and Max, childishly, would think to himself: I have this on you.

“What?” he breathes out, shocked, like he can’t imagine the idea of not getting his way.

“No,” Max repeats, firm and unyielding. “I won’t do it.”

“Max,” Charles says.

“We can tell them whatever you want. But I won’t—I won’t pretend.”

“Why not?” Charles asks, furious now, his scent spiking, acidic and sharp. “It’s the only way to fix this.”

It’s unfair. This is so, so unfair, Max thinks.

“You know why, Charles,” he says, honest to a fault. Charles was always better with the lies.

Charles purses his lips, stubborn and incensed. “Do you know what they are saying about us? What they are calling me? You?”

Both of them have been called every name in the book. Max, even from his first days in the sport, was deemed a wild, unruly child, too young to keep his hormones in check. Then: violent and aggressive and every alpha cliché. It got worse when he refused to say anything in support of Charles, once his secret was out. And Charles—it comes with the territory of being an omega, the only one in F1. He’s been called a slut, unfit to race, weak, submissive, obedient, how he ought to be some alpha’s husband instead of the new beating heart of Scuderia Ferrari.

It’s fucking laughable. As if Charles Leclerc belongs anywhere but in F1.

“I don’t care about what they are saying.”

“I do,” Charles says, voice cracking. Hurt. Public opinion has always affected Charles more than Max. “Do you care about me?”

Max rubs at his eyes, agitation crawling up his spine. “How could you ask that?”

“I don’t know, Max,” Charles says, rolling his eyes, “because you won’t do this one little thing—”

The past is the past, Max reminds himself, but still:

“It’s not a little thing!” he snarls. “I spent years trying to get over you, after you broke it off with me, and now you want to—”

“We had to end things, back then,” Charles spits back, eyes sharp and hostile, wobbling. “I thought you understood—”

“I understood that.” Really, at the end of the day, Max knows it was for the better, that they made too many mistakes, and had to stop before they hit the point of no return. And maybe it’s dirty, maybe it’s irrelevant and unfair to bring up dirty laundry, but he does, and he hisses: “I don’t understand why the week after you end things, a whole press release comes out about your gender. And then a month after, you fucking show up to the paddock with an alpha, and—”

“Did you ever consider,” Charles says slowly, his whole body shaking, “that I was trying to get over you too?”

Max’s heart stops, a useless little thing in his chest, and he realizes: they never did talk about it, what they did to each other, how they decided to hurt one another.

He isn’t stupid. He knows that Charles came out of their short-lived hormonal partnership just as fucked up as he did. Charles was always better at compartmentalizing, putting on a mask and letting the world know he’s okay even if he isn’t—but Max knows him. Has known him for all their lives. Knows what he smells like when he’s upset. Knows what jokes will make him giggle and which ones will make him laugh. Knows how Charles likes to be fucked and knows how he likes to race: hard. Knows that Max meant something to him, something important, even if neither of them were ever brave enough to put a name to how they felt, to take the next step or merely conceptualize themselves in a relationship of anything more than convenience.

They both got their wires crossed, and Max isn’t nearly self-flagellating enough to convince himself otherwise, not when all the evidence points toward it: how they’d spend the day after their heats and ruts together, in bed, lazily, sleepily, languidly nosing at each other’s scent glands even though there was nothing making them stay; how they wouldn’t stop talking about each other to the media in the months after it ended, all mean insults and crude, artless digs; how even after things got better between them, it still felt like they were stuck in orbit.

“You were the only one who knew that I was an omega,” Charles says, running a hand through his hair, screwing his eyes shut. “If I was to—get over you. I couldn’t let you have that. I just couldn’t. And the alphas I dated. I couldn’t let you be the only one who— I had to—I had to get over you somehow.”

Max closes his eyes, then falls to the bed. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling for a long time. Then, he lolls his head to the side, sees Charles looking at him—no more anger, either on his face or in his scent. His cheeks are ruddy, and he looks—small. Too small.

“Did it work?” Max asks.

“What?” Charles asks, a crease between his brows.

Max swallows, licks his lips. “Did you get over me?”

Charles scoffs, almost a laugh. Bitter and full of spite. “I’m here, aren’t I? You know the answer.”

That’s the thing about the past: it’s never quite as far behind as you left it.

Rationally, Max knows that what they feel for each other is a matter of circumstance.

If Max hadn’t been there, that day Charles presented as an omega, he wouldn’t have found Max in the paddock in Hungary, six years later, asking Max for help because Max was the only one he could trust, because Max was keeping his secret all those years. And if Max hadn’t had an engine failure early into that race, Charles wouldn’t have asked him to drive him home, he wouldn’t have helped Charles out during that emergency, accidental, unplanned heat—and none of this might’ve happened. They would have lived their parallel lives, and maybe Charles would still be a secret omega, maybe someone else would have been the only one to know the truth.

It was luck and unluck. A collision of random events. Chaos theory. Butterfly effect. The way the cards fell, and brought them together.

They didn’t choose each other, is the thing.

Max happened to be there when Charles happened to present, is all. Happenstance. Primal urges and biology. The rest was a natural consequence of repeated physicality.

An accident. That’s all it was. That’s all they are.

Still. The stupid, lovesick part of Max’s brain can’t help but wonder: isn’t that what fate is?

Not much is said after that. They take separate showers, and Charles wordlessly hands Max a clean set of clothes from his suitcase to wear. Max’s medically prescribed scent blockers are still back in his own hotel room, so Charles loans him two patches for his glands. Max doesn’t put them on, because Charles hasn’t taken his blockers, or put on scent patches either. Because, as horrible as this morning has been, Max wants to linger. Doesn’t want to face the world outside this little hotel room.

The room reeks of rut and the sheets are still soaked with Charles’ slick. They order hotel room service anyway. Eat in silence. Their meeting with their teams, Charles muttered after leaving his shower, is at 4 PM. They still have a few hours.

They lie back on the bed side-by-side. Beneath the leading layer of Charles’ honey-sweet scent tangled with his own is the faint aroma of Charles’ hair conditioner, the sour residues of their breakfast, and despite the rut, the clinical neutrality of hotel rooms.

Stalemate. Max isn’t going to budge, and he doubts Charles is, either.

In the meantime, Max is doing something he rarely does, these days, not because time has passed, no, the entire universe could explode and reset ad infinitum and the hurt would still remain, but out of self-preservation: he is thinking about the wound between them, the wound they share.

Turns out, so is Charles.

“Do you ever think about it?” Charles asks, breaking the silence. As unclear as the question is, Max knows what it is, and Charles knows that he knows, too.

“I used to, a lot,” Max admits, not mentioning how he was thinking about it just now. “Now I don’t, not so much. Sometimes, though.”

Charles is picking at the drawstrings of his Nahmias hoodie: faded black, worn and loved. Max picks at the scar tissue over his heart.

“What do you think about, when you think about it?”

Max thinks about a lot of things. His mother, his father, his sister. His childhood, the one that everyone has so much to say about, but the one that no one else but him lived. He thinks of soft things, linen, sunlight, quiet mornings and quiet nights. He thinks of an idyllic future, one that people like him weren’t meant to have.

“It would not have been a good idea,” he decides on, because despite all the longing, it all comes back to that. At the end of the day: they are racers. To want anything but to win, to want anything more than a championship is antithetical.

You are not supposed to love anything more than the sport: look at Lewis, with his hundred-and-three race wins; look at Seb, the way he’s already itching to come back for more.

“We were quite young,” Max continues, because despite all the anger he held in his heart and spat out when Charles told him what he did—he knows now: Charles had made the right decision. He is older and wiser, with all the years in between to teach him that Charles was right. Older, wiser, they both are. “You had just started with Ferrari. And it’s your body, so.”

“It was also your baby.”

Max has long made his peace with it.

Between China and Baku 2019, they spent Max’s rut together. It wasn’t on purpose, but Charles hadn’t been as careful with his birth control as he is nowadays, and Max had spent a full day knotting him and pumping him full with cum. Of course it was an accident. Unplanned. A complete disaster. Who would have expected that all it would take was one missed pill, and one normal rut?

They were twenty-one years old. Children. Bumbling idiots who barely knew anything but how to race, and each other’s bodies.

Of course Charles had to get rid of it.

Charles told him right after Monaco, found him after he got kicked off the podium and told him in one sentence, unpolished but to the point: I was pregnant with your baby, I got rid of it five days ago, and I think we need to stop what we are doing.

There was nothing to grieve. It was already gone.

It was the right decision. Obviously. There’s no need to re-rationalize it, think about hypotheticals and what-ifs, what-could-have-beens, what life they could have shared. No new information could change anything. The fact of the matter is—

“I was going to have it.”

Max’s heart cracks wide open. Fault lines shift. The earth splits, ruptures under his feet: an echo of the calamity laying waste inside his chest. The wound pulls apart: a tender, blood-hot, raw mess of things. Sinew, flesh, mouths, teeth, marrow.

Max has won two world championships and thirty-seven grand prix. Somehow, his whole career feels reduced to nothing in just six words.

He turns onto his cheek. Charles is still looking up at the ceiling. “You—”

“Of course I couldn’t,” Charles says, and he feels, at once, far away and closer than he’s ever been. “It would have been insane, but I wanted to. I was going to throw everything away, all I had worked for, my career, all of it, to have it. I looked at cribs, at baby clothes. I even came up with names.”

Max’s voice cracks, sputters, chokes. Still the words come out, however mangled, “What were they?”

“Jules,” Charles answers, shuddering, “if it was a boy. Julia if it was a girl.” Max’s heart aches, sitting in the back of his throat, beating like it’s too big for his body. Charles’ eyes are wide and terrified and he says, “It hurt so, so much, Max. To think about you and what we could have had. Don’t you think it killed me too?” His voice breaks, shaking wildly. “What I did? It still does.”

I didn’t know, Max wants to say. I thought—I thought you didn’t care. I thought you saw me as someone who almost ruined your life. I thought—you didn’t want it. I thought I was the only one who did.

To be an F1 driver, you have to be an expert in desire and delusion. You have to want to win and believe, whole-heartedly, that you will win, even if all the odds are stacked against you.

And that’s the danger: the desire, sometimes, will bleed into other areas of your life. Max doesn’t just want more championships: he wants everything. He wants kids, he wants a husband, he wants a family. He wants—

Everything.

And there’s when the delusion comes in. You think you can have it all, but Max saw what having a wife did to his father and what having kids did to his mother and he saw what having a family did to them. You always have to make sacrifices in the end.

Why are you telling me this? Max wants to ask. It has been four years. Why tell me now? To get me to play your game?

The truth of the matter is, Charles Leclerc can be cruel, at times. Knows where to make it hurt the most and how to twist the knife. He’ll hide it between careful smiles and coy bats of his lashes and confused tilts of his head: the Scuderia’s darling, Formula 1’s omega sweetheart. It’s laughable. His claws are just as sharp and his fangs just as deep as any alpha—he’s just smarter with it, that’s all.

Are you being cruel right now? Are you playing a terrible, horrible mind game with the baby we didn’t have? No matter how deep Charles will bite, Max can never return that cruelty. Charles has this strange power over him: to defang, declaw.

Max looks at Charles again, sees the flayed open look in his eyes.

No, he thinks, realization dawning. Charles rarely ever lets himself be vulnerable; he is not so cruel as to weaponize his hurt.

This is not callous pride; this is not a Trojan Horse.

This is an olive branch. This is you, after destroying me, after pushing me into the gravel, after sending me into the barriers. This is you finding me in my puddle-soaked go-kart, this is you finding me beneath the halo in the tattered ruins of my cockpit. This is you putting out your hand and saying: I’m sorry. I’m sorry but we have to. I’m sorry that we have ruined each other. I’m sorry that we have hurt each other, and I’m sorry that we will continue to hurt each other.

This is you saying: this will be just as hard for me, as it will be for you. This will hurt me, just as much as it will hurt you.

Max takes a deep breath, looks up at the lights, and thinks:

You’ll always get your way, because that’s who you are. You’ll always get whatever you want, because I’ll always give it to you. That’s how it’s been, right? I was there for your first heat, and you asked me to keep it a secret, so I did, for seven years. I was the only one who knew you were an omega, so you found me in the media pen and asked me to take care of you and fuck you through your heat, so I did. You asked to stop, so we did.

I know how this goes. I’ll say yes, and we’ll play pretend until the storm clears and you have no use for me and we’ll both come out of it worse for wear, and we’ll break each other’s already battered hearts again and again until there is nothing left of us but what we have done to each other and how we have hurt each other. The hurt: that’s all that’ll be left if I say yes, if I give this one thing to you, if I let you have your way.

Not again, Max thinks. I cannot do this again.

But Max isn’t twenty-one. He knows what he wants, and maybe—maybe it’s okay to want everything, all at once. To say: fuck all, and want to eat the earth.

“I won’t do it,” he decides, heart lodged in his throat, sharp like a knife. He looks at Charles, who’s looking back at him, hurt and furious. “I won’t pretend. But I would try something real.”

“Max,” Charles breathes, punched out of him, shocked. He sits up.

Max sits up too, facing him.

“I understand why we couldn’t—back then. We barely knew each other, and we were so young, so. Scared.” Max hadn’t won any championships then and Charles hadn’t won any races. Charles still had a secret and Max was keeping it. They had everything to prove; there was barely room in their lives for each other, let alone a baby. “I understand why we had to stop everything. I was a distraction, and so were you.”

A lot of factors contributed to Max’s first championship: skill, luck, hunger, the unconditional support of his family and his team, and maybe the heartbreak too. That year, Max drove his fucking heart out, maybe in part because he had nothing left to lose, and maybe in part because Charles chose that year to tout around an alpha of the week around the paddock, as if to say: You don’t mean anything to me anymore. So Max said: Alright then. If that’s how we’re going to do this—that’s how we’re going to do this. Neither of them were any good with words, let alone the fact that the only language they shared was a secondary one; but they’ve always been damn good at racing. They knew how to talk on the track and talk with their bodies, but that last bridge was burned, a tunnel flooded shut, so Max did what he could.

I’ll show you, he was saying. I’ll show you that I don’t need you either.

Even when they were kids, if Max pulled a dirty move on Charles, Charles would retaliate with one of his own. To this day Charles is still one of the only drivers with the balls to race him on the limit. But the same went in the other direction: Max would never let Charles one-up him. They’ve grown up, grown old and grown together, but that competitive instinct: that will never die.

Still. Max is tired of fighting. Not when there is only more hurt on the other end of the line.

“But now,” Max goes on, “we are older. And we—I don’t know. If the only way to fix this is to make it look like we are together, then why not just… Be together? Try it out for real? Don’t tell me you don’t want it—”

“Of course I want it,” Charles shouts, scent putrid and inflamed.

“Then—”

“It is not about the wanting. It is about being realistic. What would happen if we tried, Max?” Charles demands. “Have you even thought that far? Because I have. And you know what?”

Max tilts his chin up and crosses his arms over his chest, defiant. “What?”

Charles scrunches his nose, haughty, prissy, aristocratic, and laughs.

“It would be good. At first, it would be amazing.” His cheeks are the color of roses when he says, “I would let you fuck me again. All day. Here, in this hotel room. We would miss our meeting, I would let you claim me, and I would claim you. We would fly to Monaco and get married tomorrow. Because we are both impatient to a fault, and neither of us do anything in halves.”

His voice shakes, and he slides his hand, maybe unconsciously, protectively, across his stomach.

“But it’s like this. You have the luxury of championships. Of being a fucking alpha. Of being Red Bull’s golden boy who can do nothing wrong. You have nothing to prove. And this—is what would happen in a year, maybe two: I’ll forget to take my birth control like I did last time, and you’d put another baby in me. And then I’d keep this one, because I can’t— Not again. And then Ferrari would fire me, and no team would take me, an omega with a kid, mated to a world champion. My career would be over for good, but you would keep racing, you would keep winning championships. I would resent you for your career and your titles. We wouldn’t work. The only thing we both like is racing. And we don’t even—all we have is this, heat and rut sex and F1. We have nothing else. We would be unhappy, but I would still want you and you would still want me because that is what our bodies tell us to feel. We would be so sick of each other and we would never leave each other. I’m not stupid. I know that there is no one else for me, now, and I know it is the same for you.”

Charles is ruddy-cheeked and breathless, looking at him victorious, but only in a Pyrrhic sense.

“You’ve thought this all through,” Max says.

“I have,” Charles responds, obstinate and leading at the corner. But there are always more turns, and there is always another straight.

Max thumbs through the catalogue of Charles’ points in his brain, cocking his head to the side. “Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“Let’s have it your way. We pretend. What then? Do you honestly think that it wouldn’t end like this: you, in my bed, or me, in yours.” Max doesn’t mean to do it, let his voice drop an octave, like a soft growl. Not a threat, but a challenge, maybe. Charles’ scent spikes accordingly, like his omega has just remembered it’s an alpha he’s talking to. Max tries not to let it go to his head. “My rut, your heat—maybe even outside of them. Of course we’d slip up, of course we’d spend them together, even if we were just pretending. And then what?” Max asks. “We would be back here, arguing about whether or not to give it a try.”

Charles blinks, pupils massive. His mouth opens, Cupid’s bow shiny in the sterile lights, but no words come out, so Max goes on.

“So. Right now. Let’s say we try it. You were half-right. I’d fuck you now. We’d miss our meeting. I’d claim you, no heat, no rut. But I wouldn’t marry you tomorrow, because I wouldn’t let you leave this bed for days.”

“Max,” Charles whispers, cheeks painted a beautiful, uncomfortable red. He always did get shy about the strangest things. His scent blooms, sweet and happy despite the petulant glare on his face.

“And maybe—maybe we would mess up again,” Max admits, because the last adjective anyone would use to describe him or Charles would be careful. “Maybe you’d keep it. Always it will be your choice. But I wouldn’t let your career go to shit. You would have to take a year off, sure, maybe two, but—honestly, I’d fucking burn down all of Maranello if they fired you.”

“Please don’t,” Charles says, voice faint, overwhelmed.

“And I know you, I know it has to be Ferrari. I know you wouldn’t have it any other way. I know they’re it for you, but you know what? You are also it for me.”

Charles’ Adam’s apple bobs, the lovely ridges of his throat in motion. He looks as stunned as Max feels. Max cannot believe he’s saying all of this either—half-formed thoughts he was too afraid to let harden. But none of it is unfamiliar.

Charles’ eyes are wide and filled with awe and disbelief. Fine, then. Max will just have to make him believe.

“I would take as many years off as you do,” Max goes on, heart throbbing so much it’s painful, but he can’t waste this momentum. He has Charles’ attention. It’s now or never. “The burden should be not only on you.”

Charles frowns, but he shifts closer on the bed, until his knees are touching Max’s. “I would never make you do that,” he says, voice small.

“I know. But I’d want to,” Max says, smiling. He really means it. He also means this: “Of course I like racing with or without you, but—racing is not everything. I know that.”

Life would be easier, if it was all about racing, but that’s the point: life isn’t supposed to be easy.

“We’ll keep racing against each other. For years and years, until one of us retires. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s always been. You’ll win as many championships as you’re able. I’ll give you the hardest time and I won’t go easy, but you’ll fight for it. I know you will. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Even in their most intimate moments, Charles always felt so far away. It always took Max everything he had not to say: Stay where you are. Next to me. Every sentence Max is saying now, at heart, stripped to its bare bones, is just a backwards paraphrase.

We have spent our whole lives chasing after each other. Here we are, after a lifetime of driving in circles, finally heart-to-heart. So stay.

“Max,” Charles says, weaker. His eyes are glassy and fawnish. Max realizes that his are stinging too.

“And we wouldn’t be unhappy. Or, I don’t know, maybe we would be, but who is to say we will be more unhappy with each other, than we are without. It would be like: not going for the gap,” Max points out, punctuating the words with little hand motions, and Charles shakes with laughter, shy and fond, his head falling forward. Max’s alpha preens at making his omega happy.

Charles scoffs, nudging Max’s thigh with his knee, and Max takes that as permission to scoot closer. He says, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know,” Max laughs. “None of this does. I didn’t choose you, and you didn’t choose me. To be honest, I don’t really care.” And that’s one of many hard truths Max is coming to face with: however much hates being out of control; however much he hates his alpha, hates so much of the things his body tells him to want—his alpha brought him to Charles and Charles to him. “We’re stuck with each other. At least, I know I’m stuck with you. And what does it matter if all we have is this and racing? What does it matter if we only want each other because that’s what our bodies tell us to feel? Like, okay. Maybe it is all a fucking illusion. Maybe none of this is real. But if this isn’t real, I don’t fucking know what is.”

Charles is wringing his hands together in his lap, his fingertips peeking out from his sweatshirt sleeves, a shy blush on his cheeks and a beautiful pout.

“You really—you want this,” he says quietly.

Max takes a deep breath, embarrassed, heart too big for his body, sitting in the space between them. He nods. “I can’t pretend. I’m no good at that.” At acting, at shoving away the want. The want is all he is and all he has. “I won’t, and I cannot. I will have you for real, or none of you. Like you said, no half-measures. I don’t do anything in halves. Neither do you. We either fix this some other way, and never speak to each other again—because honestly, I think that is what it would take to be rid of each other.”

It has been four years since they stopped. Even so, neither of them have quite let go.

“Or we could try,” Max says. “And if it goes to shit—fuck it. It goes to shit. If I am wrong, then we let each other go. There are surgeries that can remove mating bites. Ask Lewis. It won’t be the end of our lives, if it turns out to be a mistake. This doesn’t have to be forever. Not if we don’t want it to. But I don’t think I’m wrong, and I don’t think we would be a mistake. I think that we can work.”

It will be hard work, Max knows. But neither of them are strangers to that.

The odds are stacked against them, but they’ve already beaten more impossible odds. They’re both in F1, after all. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t greedy, if they didn’t want to move mountains and swallow oceans. If they didn’t believe, whole-heartedly, that they could have it all.

“Plus, I think it would be a waste of love not to at least try.”

Charles makes a small noise, his scent bright and surprised. “Love,” he repeats, mouth slightly open.

Max puts a hand on the back of his neck, scalding hot to the touch. He looks down, then back up again at Charles. “Yeah, I. I don’t know. Maybe I am jumping the gun, but. That is what it feels like. To me.”

Deep down, all racing drivers are heart over head no matter how much they pretend to intellectualize their gut instincts. Max has long learned to throw away the pretense; it’s never done him any good. His alpha can be stupid, sometimes, most of the time, but it’s a part of him: maybe this time he needs to listen.

“We’re fucked anyway, aren’t we?” Max asks, a Hail Mary pass—the final one. “Might as well be fucked together.”

Charles is silent for a long time. He’s looking down at his hands. Max is looking at him. The thing is: he has known Charles Leclerc for all his life, the parts that count, but still, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over how implausibly, fantastically, ridiculously beautiful Charles is. The stuff from dreams.

Max’s heart has been roaring in his ears for an eternity, but he can take another eternity of this, if that is what Charles needs; his omega, as if there’ll ever be anyone else.

At last, Charles looks up at him. His face is unreadable.

Max holds his heart in his mouth, holds his breath beside it as Charles rises to his knees and swings one over Max’s lap. He crowds him against the headboard, hovers above him, and Max doesn’t let go of his breath until Charles has placed one hand over Max’s heart, the other to his scent gland. He looks deep into Max’s eyes. Max meets his gaze, swallowing. For all the intimacy they’ve shared, this might be the most acute.

The world is so narrow, when it’s just the two of them; everything outside them, dim and insignificant. Max can’t see past him, like Charles is the sun and the rest of the cosmos is empty and dark.

Charles’ eyes are fixed, unyielding, certain. Max’s heart is a wild animal caged; it’s a frightening thing, knowing that Charles can feel the thump thump thump of it, like it’s his to tame, like it’s his own, and maybe it is.

However, Max knows this: there is nothing to fear, when it comes to Charles.

“Fine,” Charles mutters, clearing his throat. Max’s heart pounds and howls under Charles’ thumb, and he has to remind his alpha not to do something stupid: like maul Charles before he finishes speaking. “I will—I will hold you to all your promises,” he declares, voice impossibly level, controlled, nothing like how Max feels right now. Charles really is amazing. “Now, start with the first.”

Max, absurdly, thinks of Suzuka 2022. Did he win the championship, or did he not?

“Which—” he starts, then stops. “Do you mean you—”

Charles huffs, haughty and fond and incredulous and happy and pushy and annoyed and insistent and so, so lovely. Most of all, lovely. He throws his head back with sunshine laughter, lifts his hands to cup both sides of Max’s face, and leans in until their noses brush.

“Stupid alpha,” he says, then catches Max’s mouth with a kiss.