Work Text:
Max keeps fidgeting her hands, like she wants to reach up to grab something near her neck but doesn’t. She’s picking at her nail polish, a nice subtle shade of pink, barely brighter than her natural nail beds. For as long as Daniel has known her, she has always had her nails kept the same way. They’re short, but neatly shaped and with a barely there pink shine. We’re sitting through what is supposed to be a brief post FP1 debrief, but the balance of the car was way off, and miles off the pace. The engineers are hoping to get the setup right before quali, which means sifting through all the data to understand what changes need to be made before FP2. Max is giving good feedback about how the car is understeering into turn 8, causing her to be too late into turn nine to get a good launch into the straight, but every time the attention shifts away from her, her hands flinch upwards.
When we’re finally released from the debrief, with just enough time to recover before FP2, Max bolts out of there as quickly as she can without seeming like she’s sprinting. They’ve only been teammates for a little over four months, but he’s never seen her so harried before a practice session. Even when she jumped into the car at Suzuka in 2014, at sixteen she seemed more excited than anything else.
“Hey Maxie wait up” He catches up to her before she can sneak off to her driver’s room. She turns around, her nose and eyes crinkling up in the way that they do when she’s annoyed at something “Is everything okay? You seemed pretty keyed up in there?”
“Oh, thank you for your concern, but it’s nothing”
“Well it’s not nothing if it’s bothering you. What’s up?”
“You’ll think it’s silly” She crosses her arms, pushing up her chest—which, yeah, is not something Daniel should be thinking about his teammate, his eighteen-year-old teammate.
“It can’t be that silly if it’s bugging you so much, c’mon, tell me, promise I won’t make fun of you” He’s good at that, prodding. He’s especially good at prodding Max. She’s so open with all her emotions. She’s refreshing, with all the PR people and journalists making sure that everyone else in the paddock is perfectly manicured. Max doesn’t bother with any pretense or hide her true thoughts behind flowery language—she claims it’s a side effect of being Dutch.
“My hair is bothering me” She reaches up to untie the ponytail at the base of her neck. Daniel thinks it looks fine, maybe a little bit frizzy but nothing that can’t be explained by pulling off a balaclava. Max usually kept her blonde hair simple and neat, most of the time it was just straight, falling till just past her shoulders. But, whenever she was in the car, it would be tied back in a tight braid. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen her hair styled any other way. Twice at Christian’s post-Silverstone barbecue and once at last year’s FIA gala, where she had curled it into bouncy waves.
“Don’t worry about it, I know people can get nervous about trying out a new look but it’s nice”
Max glares at him, her brows scrunching up in annoyance
“Obviously I am not concerned about that, it feels weird under my helmet”
“Oh, I mean, just put it in a braid like usual ya know”
“I don’t know how, if I did, of course I wouldn’t have this problem” She breaks eye contact, looking down at her shoes. Her face lights up completely red, the blush spreading over her entire face. Despite how clearly embarrassed she is, she still states it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Which, sure granted, it may be.
“I know how, I can do it, I mean if you’re comfortable of course” Shit, why did he offer to braid her hair? He spat out the words before he could even think. It's already bad enough being teammates with her, but touching her hair, running his fingers through it—God what kind of creep thinks this much about an eighteen-year-old’s hair? So what if it’s perfectly blonde, and looks so soft, and smells kinda like strawberries? Jesus fuck he’s doing it again. Fuck he’s definitely going to hell.
“You’re not being serious, you said wouldn’t make fun of me” She says this so gravely, as if it’s the most serious thing in the world. As if 30 seconds ago, Daniel didn’t put his foot in his mouth by saying her ponytail was pretty.
“I’m being genuine, I used to braid my sister’s hair all the time when we were kids” He puts his hand on Max’s shoulder forcing her to look at him, “Just stop by my driver’s room before FP2, if you wanna.”
***
Later, about 30 minutes before FP2, there’s a light knocking on the door to his driver’s room. Daniel wishes he could lie and say he’d forgotten about it, but he in fact couldn’t stop thinking about it. So what if he sat in his driver’s room for a little longer than usual? It’s not like he was actively waiting for Max to show up, but he wanted to be around, just in case she came by. He did promise after all, and it would be such a dick move to promise to braid her hair, and then not be here when she showed up. So yeah, maybe he did wait for her. Sue him.
“Daniel, is it okay if I come in, you’re not naked or anything right?” Max says, her voice lilting over my name like it does when she says it, Daniel, Dan-iel, Daniel.
“Yeah, come on in, not yeah as in I’m naked, but yeah as in it’s okay to come in. I’d never do something like that, flash you. Flashing is not cool man” Shut up, shut up, shut up. Jesus why couldn’t he just know when to stop talking, fuck now Max thinks he’s some kind of pervert. Great.
She peeks her head in as if checking to make sure that he isn’t, in fact, lying and is actually fully clothed. She’s holding a wooden hairbrush and some hair ties in her hand. “You said you weren’t joking earlier when you offered to braid my hair” She looks at me expectedly, like she’s waiting for me to shoo her away “And of course, I know that you weren’t going to flash me.” She’s smiling a little, the corner of her mouth lifting.
“Right, yeah, of course. I mean take a seat.” Daniel pats the place next to him on the couch. When he and Michelle were younger that’s how they’d do it, sitting next to each other, sideways on his parent’s couch.
“It is usually easier if I sit in front like this” and Max just plops down, on the floor between his legs, her back to him. Well not between his legs more in front of him than anything else, but it’s close enough that it’s causing his brain to see things that he should not be thinking about his teenage teammate. She’s 18, Jesus Christ, get a grip. And it’s not like he probably hasn’t slept with 18-year-old girls before, but it’s not like he makes it a habit out of asking his hookups their age either. And it’s different, hooking up with someone who happens to be 18, and knowing that she’s 18. There was a little celebration in the Toro Rosso garage on her birthday last year, and doesn’t that make it even worse? It makes him feel like one of those freaks who posted countdowns till she was legal. Oh God, she’s staring at him. He’s been caught out, and now Max will expose him for the creep that he is, leering at teenagers.
“Daniel, are you okay?” She’s holding out her hairbrush, waiting for him to take it. Is that part of it, brushing her hair? It’s bad enough having her sitting the way she is, touching her hair, but something feels more intimate about brushing it.
“Yeah of course, let’s get this party started Maxie!” He forces out a laugh. Maybe if he cracks enough stupid jokes Max won’t realize how much of a creep he actually is.
It’s quiet for a bit as he starts to brush her hair and separate it into three strands, the feeling of her hair under my hands is too much, “ahem, sorry if this is weird, but who does your hair on race weekends if you don’t do it yourself?” He needs to break up the silence before he does something stupid like breathe in her conditioner, ya know like a serial killer on TV.
“My dad always does, but he’s not here”
Jos Verstappen braiding hair, now that’s an image Daniel never thought he’d have to picture. It’s hard to reconcile this new information with Daniel’s knowledge of Jos. Each time he’d seen Jos, he’d either be talking at Max in harsh clipped Dutch, slamming his palm down on a table in the paddock, or glaring at him from behind Max’s shoulder. It’s hard to imagine Jos in any other mode than coldly stoic or angry. Sure, he’s seen the pictures of him playing with a toddler-aged Max during his F1 days. God the media loved running the image of Max, as a baby, sitting in her father’s F1 car. And yeah, despite Jos’ temper and callousness, he’s never heard Max say anything less than positive about him. And yeah, he’s overheard the late-night phone calls to her dad, even when he’d been at the paddock earlier, and would be there the next day. But something about Jos sitting with his daughter in front of him, patiently braiding her hair before every race, just breaks his brain a little bit.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Sorry, I just never would have thought”
“I know right? But he has before every race since I was like ten” she says that with a shrug, as if this little pre-race routine isn’t achingly sweet. “I used to keep my hair short, you know, so it would fit better under the helmet, but I didn’t want to look like a boy, and he said then my hair had to be kept neat so it wouldn’t get in the way racing.”
Jos isn’t at the race this weekend. In Belgium, after Max hit Kimi and had to come in, he apparently through a proper bitch fit. Daniel doesn’t know the details, but he knows that Christian had to suggest to Max that maybe her father shouldn’t come to the next race.
“Is this your first race without your dad?” Every race since she was ten. He knew Jos was super involved in Max’s career, and yeah if she’s always raced with her hair in a braid and he’s the only one who braids her hair, then sure logically it follows that he’s been here for every race, but there’s a difference between passively recognizing something and sitting with the full implications of her dad being at every race since she was ten.
“Don’t worry about that I’ll be fine, he of course cannot always be here, I have to get used to it” She straightens her posture, pausing in the middle of her sentence. It sounds like something she’s said before. And yeah, Jos is a dick, like a grade-A asshole, but that doesn’t mean that Daniel doesn’t feel for Max.
“Oh right, well, if you ever need someone to braid your hair, you know who to call.” This moment is too sincere for Daniel. He feels the need to make some stupid Ghostbusters joke just so he doesn’t have to sit in this heavy silence. But Daniel’s basically done with the braid at this point. He’s almost in the clear. No more worrying about him pressing his nose against her hair. “Well, you’re all set.” Daniel pats the top of her head like that makes this whole thing less intimate.
“Do you think you can braid my hair again tomorrow, just for quali? I mean it will be fine if not but- “
“Yeah of course, just stop by my driver’s room before practice, and you can again on Sunday before the race, it’s no biggie.” She beams up at me. Usually, we’re about the same height, I’m maybe half a centimeter taller, but sitting like this she’s forced to crane her neck to make eye contact. It makes him feel powerful, and so much older than her, and like such a fucking creep.
“Thank you, Daniel,” Dan-iel “I will of course learn how to braid my own hair before the next race, but thank you for helping me this weekend”
“Right, anything for the team” Daniel hopes she never learns.