Work Text:
I chose this because I wanted it, but the want wasn’t up to me.
You have it all backwards. The choice comes first, then the want follows.
Imola is magical.
As it’s the first of Ferrari’s home races, Ferrari has him and Carlos travel to Italy a week early. Charles makes the six-hour solo road trip from Monaco to Imola on Sunday morning, just as the sun is beginning to rise. The extra days in Italy are dedicated to sponsor functions and filming for the YouTube channel, but also in the cockpit, requiring Charles to drive back and forth between Imola and Maranello—but it’s Italy. Home of Ferrari. The Tifosi are everywhere, and Charles loves the Tifosi. Loves the energy, the undying adoration and unconditional support.
Charles has been with Ferrari for the past three years, but 2022 is the first year he has truly felt it, the magic of the mythical team that is Scuderia Ferrari in full force. In 2019, sure, they had a good car, but everyone knew Seb was the star of the team. Charles was quick and young, but he hadn’t quite made a name for himself, other than that guy with the pretty face, with a dead dad and dead godfather. 2020 and 2021 were horror shows, but they’re past that now. The car is good. Better than Red Bull’s, and far better than Mercedes’ car. Charles has won two of the first three races and holds the fastest lap for all three. This is his year. This will be the year he brings the title back to where it belongs: Ferrari.
The Monday before race weekend, he and Carlos are lounging about the factory in Maranello, just over an hour drive from Imola, when the first crack in the magical weekend materializes.
Having just finished a promotional video for the Ferrari YouTube channel—he and Carlos were tested on their knowledge of Italian history, culture, and cuisine, and Charles won by a landslide, thank you very much—they head toward the cafeteria, grab their trainer-approved lunches, and sit at one of the few empty tables, two drops of red in a sea of blood.
He’s spent more one-on-one time with Carlos these past couple of days than he has the whole season so far. They’ve exhausted practically all topics of conversation. They chew on their food in silence, save for the chitter around them, but it’s a comfortable silence. They’re both on their phones: Charles is responding to the texts from his family group chat he’s missed since the morning, while Carlos is staring at something with comically wide eyes.
Charles puts his phone face-down on the table and waits for Carlos to say something.
At least a minute passes before Carlos speaks up.
“Oi. Have you heard about Max?”
Charles blinks. He drops his fork this time. It clatters noisily against the table. “Heard what?” He brings his trembling hand into his lap.
“Max and Kelly,” Carlos clarifies, not that helpfully. At least he finally looks up from his phone.
Charles picks up his spoon, then he rolls his eyes. Carlos really should have worded that question in a less ominous way. “Oh. What is it? Did they get engaged?” he guesses. When Carlos doesn’t immediately answer, Charles tries again, “Are they having a baby?”
The first, in his opinion, is pretty likely, while the second is more of a joke than anything, but he also wouldn’t be surprised if it was the case. Max and Kelly are madly in love, have been since the end of 2020, and they fast-tracked their relationship accordingly. Max is practically a step-father, and Kelly is a perfect match for him: the beautiful daughter of a former F1 champion. No need to fight and argue about Max never being home. She gets it. She grew up with this life.
Carlos’ mouth pinches into a line, then he says, “They broke up.”
Charles’ eyes widen. He plucks Carlos’ phone out of his hands.
Instagram is already opened up, and Max’s story is already on the screen, displaying a carefully crafted paragraph about how he and Kelly have mutually decided to end their relationship, will remain close friends, harbor good wishes for each other, et cetera. Charles had to post something similar last December, when he and Charlotte had broken up.
He helps himself to Carlos’ Instagram, searches @kellypiquet, and sees a similarly worded block of text on her story.
“Shit,” Charles whispers, handing the phone back to Carlos. He had no idea. He isn’t sure if anyone had an idea. It’s not like Charles knows Max very well, but while he’s undoubtedly been different this year, it seemed like a good different. A happy different, despite Red Bull’s horrible start to the season. Less stressed and more self-assured. Looser, more open, friendlier. Charles chalked the dramatic personality change up to the fact that Max finally has a title to his name and that Mercedes fucked up their car for the year. He had no idea Max was having relationship troubles.
“Yeah, mate,” Carlos says, leaning back into his seat. “Shit.”
Charles can’t help but feel bad. Max is already having a shit year. He lets out a low whistle, drums his fingertips on the table, and mutters, “I wonder which is worse. Two DNFs or a breakup.”
Carlos snorts. “The DNFs, for sure.”
All in all, aside from the Max news, Monday is uneventful. Aside from the usual PR meetings, Netflix and YouTube filming, and car set-up testing, the only other notable occurrence is Charles’ phone call with Andrea, who won’t be in Italy until Wednesday.
As his athletic trainer, Andrea asks Charles how he’s feeling physically, how his training is going, how he feels about the coming weekend—the works. But he also asks Charles about his new heat suppressants.
“They’re good,” Charles replies, voice cracking a bit. Andrea has been his trainer for years, and he’s an omega himself, but Charles still gets embarrassed when Andrea asks him about things like this. “There have been no side effects so far,” he adds after a beat, realizing that Andrea probably needs him to be specific.
Charles had to go off the suppressants he’d been on in 2021 because they’d messed with his weight too much. Had destroyed his appetite and made it harder to maintain muscle. The suppressants he had been on in 2020, on the other hand, made him anxious and nauseous and irritable. The suppressants he had been on before that year—they had been great, until they simply stopped working, and Charles had a spontaneous heat a full month before he was scheduled to have it, the Thursday before a race.
He was in his motorhome when it hit.
Andrea hums a pleased noise from the other line. Charles bounces his knee, thankful that he’s already in his usual Maranello accommodations, doing nothing but watching Netflix before bed.
“Great. I just wanted to check in, since you’ve been on these suppressants for three months,” Andrea explains. Charles wanted to switch them out earlier, but the timing of his cycle and the season worked out so that he could only switch to the new ones this January. Three months, normally, is when suppressants start showing any side effects. “You know, to make sure there will not be any… unwelcome surprises.”
Charles forces out a nervous laugh, cheeks burning at the implication, the memory that follows from it. It is a memory that he has tried, every single day for the past three years, to block out. Pretend never happened.
Andrea is one of a handful of people who know the truth about Silverstone 2019.
“Yes,” Charles says stiffly, then swallows. “Hopefully no surprises this year.”
There aren’t many alphas or omegas on the grid.
They make up roughly half of the human population; the rest are betas. There are about as many male alphas in the world as there are male omegas, and the same goes for females. In the junior categories, alphas and omegas are much more common, but ruts and heats, as well as the emotional outbursts signature to each dynamic, tend to be troublesome. Oftentimes, they get in the way of racing. In F3 and F2, alphas and omegas get weeded out—not discriminatorily, as in the old days, but because they generally crumble under the pressure that comes with their newfound dynamics. With young boys going through puberty and second gender presentations, come crashes, avoidable mistakes, and, predictably, physical altercations with the other boys. The feeder categories are important for showing who can successfully manage their hormones, and who can’t.
The alphas and omegas who make it to F1, however, have proven themselves, proven that their dynamics won’t get in the way of their racing. The teams no longer care about a driver’s dynamic, only their talent and effort.
Charles presented as an omega four days before he turned thirteen, the average age for second gender presentations. His first heat lasted for three days, the average length for a first heat. He barely remembers it, only flashes of him in bed, desperately tugging at his dick and drooling into the pillows; and when that didn’t satiate the wildness inside of him, clinically, clumsily, and instinctively shoving as many fingers as he could into the wetness below, too far gone to be embarrassed about it.
Three days later, he came to, lucid, hungry, parched, sticky, sore.
The morning of his thirteenth birthday, his dad drove him to the doctor’s, and he was prescribed suppressants to inhibit his quarterly heats, reducing them to once a year, as well as mild scent blockers for everyday usage.
The day after that, he raced in the Monaco Kart Cup. He won first place.
Time and time again, Charles has proven himself to be more than his second gender.
Nonetheless, there are two alphas and two omegas on the grid. Charles is the only one of them without a championship.
By Thursday morning, all the drivers have arrived in Imola. Since it’s a European race, most of the grid are staying in RVs around the paddock. The sky is cloudy. Light rain is forecasted for Sunday.
Charles, on his way from an interview in the media pen where he’d gotten loads of questions about his and Max’s karting rivalry, to Ferrari’s motorhome, sees Max for the first time since Australia.
Well, he smells him before he sees him. Max’s scent is strong, to put it into a single word. Irritated. On edge. Agitated. Pungent. Sour. Burning rubber. Charles can smell him from meters away.
One thing special to alphas and omegas: they have scents, and they can smell each other. Betas don’t have scents, nor can they smell alphas or omegas.
Max is getting weird looks from the engineers scattered around the paddock, and Charles can’t blame them. Max should be on blockers. No one should be able to smell him when they aren’t up close.
Charles jogs to him, which takes more effort than he was expecting since Max is walking off at a quick pace toward the media pen, hands clenched into tight fists by his sides, not giving a single care to the fact that Charles is calling his name.
It takes Charles darting his hand out to grab Max’s wrist for him to finally stop in place.
And while Max stops, he doesn’t turn around to face Charles, so Charles pivots to walk in front of Max, still clutching his wrist. He has a feeling that if he lets go, Max will simply walk away and ignore him.
Once they’re face to face, Charles is met with a fierce and unfriendly glare. He’s reminded of how Max used to be in childhood, in their karting days, before and after races. Cold, serious, not wanting to talk to anyone but his father. He’s changed a lot since then: these days, Max is the one seeking others out. But not now, not today.
Charles swallows over the lump in his throat and ignores the anxiety spiraling in his gut, feeling awfully like he’s a rabbit bouncing up to a lion, practically begging to have his throat ripped out, and prepares to say something, since Max clearly isn’t going to be the one to speak first.
“Hey, Max,” Charles says, imbuing as much gentleness into his voice as he can. “Are you—uh, okay? You, um…” He trails off, unable to think of a way to say you reek in gentle terms.
Max glances down at Charles’ hand, wrapped around his wrist, then brings his eyes back up to glare at Charles again, even colder this time. He doesn’t say anything for at least a few seconds.
Charles squeezes his wrist even tighter, reactively.
“I’m already late for my interview.” Max’s lips barely move, but Charles still catches a white sliver of teeth. “Fuck off,” he spits.
Charles—his instincts tell him to be scared. Max is an alpha after all, and Charles is an omega. Max is all that Charles can smell. They’re so close and his scent is overwhelming. Deep inside Charles, at the core of his biology, is a voice telling him to either run away or get onto his knees.
But Charles knows Max. Knows him from years of racing on karting tracks together, wet and dry, under sun and under clouds. Knows him not as a friend, but as a driver, and that’s what matters. Knows him well enough to not be intimidated. Knows that Max, while stocky and strong, aggressive and confident, an alpha through and through, is not someone who would hurt others, at least not when they don’t deserve it. Charles knew it when he was thirteen, when he was fifteen, when he was twenty-one, and he knows it now at twenty-four. Knows that he has nothing to be afraid of when it comes to Max.
Charles thinks of a rain-soaked karting track in France. Bloody knuckles. Bruised cheeks. Bright eyes.
He apologizes anyway—not out of some biological urge, but because he feels like that’s the best way to placate Max’s sudden aggression. “Sorry. I just wanted to—” Charles isn’t sure what exactly he wanted to do, so he starts over and goes with the truth. “I am worried. Did you forget to take your blockers or something?”
Up close like this, Charles finally notices what Max’s scent really is. He’s in pain.
Maybe this is about Kelly, Charles theorizes for a brief moment, remembering how they recently broke up. But—no. That doesn’t feel right. The pain seems physical.
Charles swallows. “Or…” he tries carefully, brows furrowing. “Is something wrong?”
Almost imperceptibly, Max’s brows rise. He schools his expression back into something hard and closed off before baring his teeth. “Charles,” Max sneers, mouth pulled into something cruel, something that, from far away, could be construed as a grin. “Do me a favor. Be a good little omega. Know your place, and mind your own fucking business.”
Charles drops Max’s wrist.
He’s barely processed what Max had said when Daniel’s bright orange figure comes into view. He grabs Max by his shoulders, knuckles white, looking nothing short of horrified. “Max. What the fuck is wrong with you? Be a good little omega? Know your place? What the fuck?”
Max shoves Daniel away, and Daniel stumbles back at the force, almost tumbling to the ground. “Do not touch me,” Max hisses with a warning finger, then promptly paces off in the other direction.
Daniel doesn’t chase after him. He only stares at Max’s figure shrinking into the distance. An impossible amount of time passes like that, just him and Daniel standing in place, immobile and shell-shocked, the both of them.
It isn’t until he hears Daniel hiss, “Oh fuck. Fuck,” like a revelation, that Charles snaps back into time.
And it isn’t until Daniel places his hand on his shoulder, gentle and light, that Charles realizes that he’s been shaking this entire time. Not out of fear or anger but—
“Charles,” Daniel mutters quietly, eyes big and worried. “Are you okay?”
Charles—he hasn’t quite felt in his body for a long time. To ground himself, he focuses on Daniel’s face, then glances around the paddock, noticing that people are watching. They’ve caused quite a scene.
“I, um—yeah.” His voice comes out less certain than he would have liked. He smooths his hands down his thighs, the jean fabric rough on his palms. He tips his chin up and nods. “I am okay.”
Charles isn’t quite sure if that’s true.
Daniel seems to notice the lie, frowning, looking torn. He keeps one hand on Charles’ shoulder, gently massaging Charles’ collarbone, the other coming down to his pocket, fishing out his phone.
“Look,” he says, eyes darting between his phone, a thumb scrolling through his contacts, and Charles. “I’m sorry about him. What he said. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
Charles shakes his head in reassurance. Sure, it’s been years since he’s been on the receiving end of a comment like that, but it’s been even longer since he’s let it get to him. He isn’t mad at Max for saying those things, even though he knows he should be. He’s just—
“Who are you calling?” he asks when Daniel brings his phone up to his ear.
Daniel pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, like he’s considering whether or not to tell Charles. After a few seconds, he sighs. “Christian,” he replies. Then, tapping his foot frantically, he mumbles, “C’mon. Pick up, pick up.”
“Is something wrong?” Charles bites the inside of his mouth as soon as he gets the question out. It’s a stupid question. Of course something is wrong.
Daniel sighs again, mouth pursing. “Max is a fucking idiot. That’s what’s wrong.” Christian finally picks up after a couple rings. Daniel immediately brightens up, his hand still massaging Charles’ shoulder. It helps soothe the anxiety. “Hey Christian, yeah, yeah, I’m doing well. Listen. You need to get a hold of Max ASAP.”
The pieces finally come together. His sour scent. The agitation. The pain. His cruel words. Charles feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner, and he feels even more of an idiot that Daniel, a beta, noticed all of the warning signs before Charles did. He may have been teammates with Max for three years and friends for even longer, but Charles should have known. His head is spinning.
Daniel briefly glances at Charles. “He’s heading towards the media pen, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t realize he’s about to go into rut. A bad one.”
As a teenager, Charles never cared about being an omega, but everyone else seemed to.
News traveled fast around the karting circuits. Boys talked, parents talked. Everyone talked.
He remembers being thirteen, smaller, shorter, longer hair, fuller cheeks, rudimentary grasp of English. But he still heard the whispers, understood them, felt the malice behind them too. Of course Leclerc is an omega. It all makes sense. He’s too pretty. Like a girl. Snickers, then another boy: How long do you think it’ll take for him to give up? Laughter, then: Probably once he finds an alpha who’ll knot him.
Boys will be boys, his mother said in the car as they drove back to Monaco, after Charles had told her what he heard them say. Her voice was calm, but even from the back seat, Charles had seen how her knuckles went white on the steering wheel. You’ll just have to beat them on the track, his father had said, and he pivoted his body to look at Charles, firm, angry, and determined. Show them that you’re better.
And that’s what Charles did the following weekend. But the thing was, it wasn’t because he wanted to prove something to them, but just because he wanted to win, omega or not.
Being an omega never interfered with Charles’ racing. He never understood why everyone made such a big deal about it.
When he’s in the car, there’s nothing else.
Most of the time, the ones whispering behind his back were the betas. But there were also the alphas, freshly presented and confident. Pride wounded. The things they’d say were even crueler and meaner than anything the betas could have fashioned up.
Max was never one of those alphas, the ones who thought less of Charles just because their biology told them he was lesser. Head over heart, always.
He was asked about it once in a post-race interview, back in their karting days, when Charles had won, and Max had to settle for second.
“Does it bother you at all? You, an alpha, beaten by an omega?”
A part of Charles was expecting this question, but not this soon. They were only thirteen. They’ll try to use it against you, Jules had warned him the day before.
The reporter, British and with an ugly face, was clearly trying to goad Max and provoke Charles. Both of them froze at the question, and hushed murmurs from the crowd filled the room. Charles was suddenly thankful that neither of his parents were able to come to this race—he’d hitched a ride with Pierre and his parents instead.
In the crowd, however, Charles could see Max’s father. Mouth worked up tight but wobbling, heavy lines on his forehead, a stern crease between his brows that would never be smoothed out, jaw tough, blue eyes so light they looked grey. Anger, anger, anger. But he kept silent. Charles couldn’t help but wonder how much effort that took. Even at thirteen, Charles was never afraid of alphas just because they were alphas, but he was afraid of Max’s dad. Everyone was afraid of Max’s dad. Other alphas, betas, omegas alike. He was careful never to say anything political, at least not in English or in front of a camera, but Charles knew what his thoughts on omegas racing were. He could see it on his face whenever he looked at Charles or at the other omegas on track. It was a look that said, You do not deserve to be here.
When he looked at Charles, it felt like gravity was pushing him down.
A few seconds passed, long and heavy, and the murmurs of the crowd grew louder, only stopping when Max finally spoke up to answer the question. “Well, I don’t see why that matters? Whether you are an alpha or an omega, all that matters is of course how you perform in the car.”
He sounded genuinely confused, a little off put, but when Charles turned to look at him, cheeks pink, hair matted with sweat, none of his father’s anger was apparent on his face.
The crowd went silent; however, the reporter quickly followed up with another question, a sneer on his mouth. He glanced at Charles before he asked, “But it must hurt your pride, surely, get under your skin a little, to know that an omega beat you today—”
Charles smelled Max’s anger before he saw it, he was close enough, but it wasn’t—
“This question is bullshit,” Max shouted, his words clunky and awkward, his Dutch lisp more prominent back then, his voice pitched higher, his natural belligerence not yet tamed. With those four words, he brought an end to the reporter’s provocations.
Charles doesn’t remember the rest of the conference, but that was the last and only question regarding his and Max’s dynamics of the day.
He remembers what happened afterwards, though, after he and Max and the third-place karter were escorted into the hallway and outside to find their parents—in Charles’ case, Pierre’s parents. The boy who finished third-place instantly went searching for his parents, but Max wasn’t making any effort to look for his father.
It was like he knew with absolute certainty that his dad would find him easily.
Jos showed up to every race without fail, helped Max set up his kart before the race, then sat alone in the stands, body stiff and emotions buried so deep you’d think he simply didn’t have them. He never cheered when his son won. The most he would ever show was a rare nod of approval. First place wasn’t something to celebrate; it was something expected.
Charles should have gone to look for Pierre’s parents, but instead, he chose to stay there with Max. They had started racing in the same categories and events earlier this year, but they never talked to each other before.
Those days, Max never really talked to anyone. Everyone stayed away from his dad. By association, that meant they would stay away from Max too. He was famous for two things: always winning, and his scary alpha father.
They had been somewhere in northern Italy. It was late October, the air was cool. The sun was beating down on them, no clouds to be seen, the sky so bright and clear that it hurt to look at. Charles looked at Max instead.
It was here that Charles finally saw it. The loneliness hidden in his angles, shelved away like a secret, the hunger in his eyes, so odd and displaced now that he wasn’t in a kart. He looked less like himself when he didn’t have a helmet on.
“Thanks,” Charles said, since it was just the two of them, and it would probably not be just the two of them for a long while. He knew he didn’t need to say more than that. He knew that Max knew what he was talking about.
It had been a little over two weeks since Charles’ first heat. It was the first time his second gender had been addressed in a post-race conference—but it wouldn’t be the last. This was all still so new to him. It was new to Max too.
He would find out later, years later, that Max presented as an alpha the day before Charles presented as an omega. Even then, he was always one step ahead.
Max shrugged, not looking at Charles. “It was a stupid question. It does not piss me off that you are an omega who beat me,” he muttered, pouting and kicking at the gravel under his feet. “It pisses me off that you beat me.”
They were the same, Charles realized here, for the first time. Yes, Max was an alpha, and Charles was an omega, but that wasn’t what mattered.
If you took away racing from either of them, Charles wasn’t sure if there would be anything left.
When he returns to the Ferrari motorhome, he heads straight to the engineering room. Due to the confrontation with Max, he’s late to the meeting.
He takes the empty seat next to Carlos and hastily puts his headset on, ignoring the glares he gets from Mattia and the engineers. His ears are filled with discussions on aerodynamics set-up. Front wings, rear wings. Charles tries his hardest to focus but his head keeps going back to Max. Max is in rut. A bad one. They’re just four races into the season. Max is the defending world champion. Thirty-four points are up for grabs this weekend because of the sprint. Max can’t forfeit. Max will have to—
Suspension, throttle, breaking.
Twenty minutes later, when they’re in the middle of a discussion on tyre wear, Mattia receives a phone call. He doesn’t look pleased, but he steps outside to take it.
The room goes quiet as Mattia leaves, but it fills with murmurs as soon as the door closes. Carlos turns to look at Charles for a moment, then he pulls his mic away from his mouth.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
Charles pulls his headset off, hanging it around his neck. “Why do you ask?”
Carlos looks at him like he’s stupid. “Well, you have been bouncing your leg all meeting, mi amigo. And then, when you came in, you looked—”
Mattia’s furious shouts from the hallway have Carlos closing his mouth. The rest of the room goes quiet once again. Charles can’t make out the words, too far away from the door. After at least a half-minute of that, the door opens.
Mattia’s eyes go to Charles. He sighs, mouth pinching, then says, “Charles. It’s for you.”
Immediately, Charles stands up, removes his headset, and walks to the door, doing his best to disregard how the entire room’s eyes are on him, to disregard the rabbiting beat of his heart, all thick in his ears, blood roaring.
He knows what this is about. He knows, even if it doesn’t make sense.
In the threshold Mattia doesn’t say anything, just hands him the phone, gives him a look that Charles can’t quite decipher, then he heads back into the engineering room. Charles steps into the hallway and closes the door.
When he looks at the caller ID, he isn’t surprised, even though he should be. He brings the phone up to his ear and swallows.
“Christian.”
“Hi Charles,” Christian greets tersely, and before Charles can even feign ignorance and ask what this is about—
“I’ll get straight to the point.” Christian sighs heavily. “Max has gone into a rut. Three months early, completely off schedule. We are at a loss. There are too many points at stake. We cannot forfeit this weekend.”
Charles feels hazy. His head hurts. Everything around him smells wrong and confusing. He struggles to focus. He paces in circles. He thinks about the race to ground himself.
Imola has sixty-three laps. The circuit length is just under five kilometers. Expected lap times will be roughly one minute, twenty seconds. The track will be wet. Red Bull will be strong.
“Doesn’t Max have a rut list?” Charles asks.
“Max…” Christian starts. He trails off into another sigh.
It rained here last year too. Lewis had pole, but Max won from third. Lewis had a slow pit stop, locked up, and beached his car at Tosa. Valtteri and George crashed at Tamburello. Alonso damaged his front wing. Lando did well, stealing third from Charles. It was windy. There was a safety car on Lap 2. Latifi and Mazepin made contact. Mick spun out, lost his front wing. Charles was on inters at the start, and—
“Max didn’t fill out the list properly.”
Lap 11, he and Max were battling wheel-to-wheel. Max dove down the inside, but Charles covered him off, and Max had to cover off Seb. Lap 14, they entered the pitlane at the same time. Charles had gone on used mediums, and so had Max. Charles had been ahead, but Red Bull, they pulled off a blisteringly fast pitstop, and Max came out of the pits ahead. But then Max went wide, and—
Fuck, Charles thinks. No, no. That wasn’t Imola 2021. That was Silverstone 2019. His head is a mess. He can’t keep things straight.
Suspension, throttle, breaking.
“What do you mean?”
“He’d only written two names at the start of the year, and the FIA let it slide because of him and Kelly. Max promised them they were going to be mated by the summer break but… I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”
Suspension, throttle, breaking.
“I am sure she would still be willing to—”
Christian cuts him off. “She is not,” he says firmly, each word fully articulated. “I checked. I groveled over the phone.”
Suspension, throttle, breaking. Suspension, throttle, breaking. Suspension, throttle, breaking.
Charles repeats it to himself, over and over.
The line goes silent, but Charles knows that Christian is still on the other end. They’re playing chicken. Unlike Christian, Charles has never been one for games.
“Why are you telling me this?” Charles asks, even though he knows exactly why. It doesn’t make sense, but Charles knows.
“Because,” Christian starts, “you were the other name on the list.” The confirmation doesn’t make the situation make any more sense. “Additionally, we remember what Max did for you, three years ago. At Silverstone.”
“It does not work like that,” Charles yells, but then he recalls he’s in public, outside the engineering room. He lowers his voice, then hisses, “It is not a transaction—”
“I know that,” Christian says, sounding pained. “But—I’m sorry, Charles. I called in a favor, pulled some strings, and I saw your list. You still have him on yours. So would it be a stretch to assume that there is some form of trust between you two?”
Charles tightens his grip on Mattia’s phone, the edges of the case surely leaving divots into his fingers. “That is illegal, Christian,” he reminds, voice hollow.
There’s probably about a million privacy laws Christian violated to get Charles’ list, risking a series of massive fines, and probably a few lawsuits, if Ferrari got involved or if the general public got wind of it.
“I am well aware. This is not ideal, I know. But we are left with no other options. It is up to you. I know that this doesn’t benefit you at all, but—please. Max is still pretty lucid—in pain, but lucid. He said that if you were okay with it, he’s okay with it. Please,” Christian begs, “at least think about it.”
Charles has been trying, for the past few years, to do anything but think about it.
Following a certain incident involving the two Mercedes drivers in 2016, the FIA introduced a new rule, a contingency plan, for 2017: At the start of each season, all unmated alphas and omegas have to submit a list of at least five pre-approved emergency heat/rut partners. People who can get on a flight immediately to wherever the race is being held that weekend. Of course, this can get tricky depending on where the race is, so the FIA requires that at least one person on the list is someone who’ll be at all the races, whether that’s team personnel, a supportive romantic partner, or a member of the paddock.
With heat-and-rut services illegal in most of the countries they race in, the new ruling was unanimously decided to be the best option for alphas and omegas on the grid, and there was very little backlash.
It gave the drivers a choice. If an alpha or an omega driver should fall into a rut or a heat unexpectedly during a race weekend, instead of having the driver go through the rut or heat alone—which would take them out for an absolute minimum of forty-eight hours, practically ensuring a zero-points weekend—or having to scramble to find a partner in the area to shorten the rut or heat to just a couple of hours, all the teams have to do is go through each of the names on the list, call them one by one, until someone is willing to help.
Just because their name is on the list, doesn’t mean that they have to say yes.
At the start of 2018, his first season in F1, Charles filled out his heat list for the first time. At the start of 2019, he hadn’t bothered to make any changes.
Emergency heats and ruts are rare. Only about five-percent of the alpha-omega population experience one in a lifetime. High stress environments, however, tend to drastically increase the odds.
Still, Charles never thought it was going to happen to him.
He could only think of four alphas who would be willing to help him out through a heat; however, none of them fulfilled the FIA’s condition of being at all of his races. He had written them all down, but he hadn’t been able to come up with a fifth name until the day of the deadline.
Charles was twenty and stupid. He was thinking of that rain-soaked karting track in France, bloody knuckles, bruised cheeks, bright eyes. In the fifth slot, he wrote down Max’s name.
Over an hour later, Charles finds himself at a hotel fifty minutes from the circuit. Red Bull had needed to book out an entire floor, and this was the only accommodation with enough openings. Before he left the track, he stopped by his RV to change into clean clothes, picking subtle greys instead of bright red. He also snuck into Pierre’s RV to steal an Alpha Tauri hat. Then, he headed over to the lot and got into his car, for once hating how recognizable his Ferrari is. He spent the entire drive to the hotel in heated phone calls with Mattia, then his PR manager, and then his performance coach. Since he’s just missing Thursday, he’s only missing out on his media duties, but his schedule for Friday needed to be adjusted slightly.
None of them say it outright, but the team is not happy with his decision. Red Bull is the competition, Mattia reminded. Max is the competition. As if Charles didn’t already know.
In the lobby of the hotel, he quickly finds Brad, Max’s performance coach, easily noticeable from his Red Bull Racing polo. Charles has seen him walking around the paddock and the track with Max these past few years.
“Hey,” Brad greets as soon as he spots Charles. Once Charles gets close enough, Brad sweeps him into a half-hug, which Charles returns with a nervous laugh. Brad is an alpha, Charles notices during the hug. He smells like one, faint but clear. Charles can’t help but wrinkle his nose. He smells all wrong.
Neither of them linger with the hug, thankfully.
Brad pats him on the back, then pulls back. “You know, I thought Christian was fucking with me when he said it’d be you. Thank god, though.”
Charles doesn’t quite know what to say to that. In 2019, everyone who knew about Max’s participation in Charles’ heat had to sign NDAs, and he’s certain that the same will go for today. Charles knows the names of everyone who knew. Brad wasn’t part of the team back then, wasn’t one of the ones who knew.
For lack of a better response, Charles merely nods.
Wasting no more time, Brad hands him a keycard and tells him Max’s room number. Just as Charles is about to head toward the elevators, Brad stops him.
“Hey, I just wanted to say thank you. On behalf of Max, and the team. We really appreciate it. Thank you for doing this. I know it must have been a tough decision.”
And that’s the problem. It wasn’t. Charles didn’t even have to think about it.
He doesn’t tell Brad this. Instead, he smiles his PR-smile and says, “He did it for me, once. I am just returning the favor.”
The truth of the matter is that Charles doesn’t actually remember much of that day his heat struck.
He remembers waking up, feeling only slightly ill, his head distant and absent, body weak and sluggish, but not thinking much of it—or of anything at all—until he nearly collapsed on his way back from signing shirts and caps. He somehow found his way back to his motorhome, and he was so dizzy, starting to see spots in his vision, barely able to make it to his bed, that he had the sense to call Andrea.
He remembers arguing with Andrea in his RV, then being shuffled into a car, then transported to a hotel room. He remembers being told that Giada, his first choice and his girlfriend at the time, happened to be all the way in New Zealand, vacationing with family, and would not be able to make it to Silverstone in time; that Philippe was in the hospital with his wife who had just given birth; that Maya was in Monaco, but sick with the flu; and that Matteo was in New York City on a business trip.
Bad luck. Bad timing.
More arguing. Snapshots of it. Time didn’t feel linear.
“There always is the option of—”
“No!” Charles shouted, panting with the effort of getting the words out. He was on a bed, his shirt off and only in his boxers, but he was under the covers. Everything was too hot, but at the same time too cold. He was shivering and he was sweating. Everything smelled wrong. His body confused him. It felt like he was in the car, and it was on fire, and he was suffocating from the flames, all strapped in with no one to help him. The world was lagging. His vision was echoing. He needed somebody to touch him. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. Everything felt heavy and not enough.
His ribs ached like they might crack with the dull force of his heart. He felt empty and awful.
Andrea was saying something, but Charles couldn’t make sense of any of it. The room was so thick with his own scent he was lightheaded, couldn’t think.
He’d never had a heat this bad, not since his first heat, and that—that didn’t really count.
“I want to race,” he said, all slurred, tongue heavy like lead. “I will race.”
“You cannot race in this condition.”
Charles shook his head. He repeated himself. The same three stubborn words. I will race.
Andrea was silent for a moment, but Charles heard cicadas in his ears. “If you want to race, then you need to let me call—”
They’d already had this same argument in the car. Max was the simplest option. He was in Silverstone, Andrea had insisted, trying to talk sense into him. Charles had refused. I never asked him. He doesn’t know. Even if you call, he won’t come. He wouldn’t—
And then, Max was there, sitting on the foot of the bed, legs crossed before him. Andrea had left at a point, and Charles hadn’t noticed. He had also gotten himself off a couple times. There was a pool of slick beneath him. The sheets were soaked. He was no longer wearing boxers. He had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been nighttime already, and he wouldn’t have even known.
“Max?” Charles thought he was hallucinating, but he mustered up the strength to sit up, scoot forward until he was almost in Max’s lap, and brought his hand to Max’s cheek. He gasped when he felt skin. He jerked his hand back in shock. Max was real, and he was there.
Max looked—he was the only thing Charles could see. Everything else was hazy, blurry fog. But Max was all high definition, 4K, too good to be real, but he was real. The blue butterfly shimmer of his eyes, the stubble on his chin, the mottled blush on his cheeks. Charles could even count each of his freckles if he tried.
Charles wanted to touch him again: when he placed his hand on Max’s face it was the same relief of an ice cold shower after the Singapore Grand Prix, but a million times over. The scent in the room was slowly becoming more bearable. Something permeating through Charles’ heavy sweetness. Charles breathed in deeply. It felt right. This felt right, but it also felt so wrong. It wasn’t enough. He needed Max closer. Max was too far away.
Charles brought his hands to the sheets, and clutched the fabric in his fists. He shouldn’t—he felt more lucid. Felt better. Could finally think. He knew that Max shouldn’t have been here. Why was Max here?
“Why are you here?”
Charles finally registered that he was naked, that he was an omega, that he was in heat, and Max was right there. An alpha. Strong, familiar. Charles wanted him. Wanted him more than anything—and that was scary. Knowing that every desire he’d ever have after this would pale in comparison to now. The want on his skin, deep in his bones, laden and horrible and biological.
He could not control this.
It terrified him that he was okay with it. It terrified him, how right this felt. It terrified him, how much he wanted Max.
“Because I’m on your list, idiot,” Max said. His eyes softened. “Of course I came.”
That doesn’t make sense, Charles thought. Nothing about this made sense. He still was half-convinced that this was a dream.
He shook his head, swayed with it. Dizzy. He lost balance, keeling forward. Max caught him by both of his shoulders, and Charles—made a noise. A gasp or maybe a moan, it didn’t matter. It was ripped out of his throat all the same. His palms were on Charles’ shoulders. His bare skin.
“But you—” Charles struggled to find the correct words in English, but a part of him also knew he would struggle in French. He dropped his head, stared at his knees, ruddy and pink against white sheets, afraid to look anywhere else.
This wasn’t really him, he knew that, knew that this was all his heat, his biology, his omega. But—this was him, at the same time. He was horrified at the thought that maybe this was him when you pulled back all the layers.
“You did not have to—”
Then there was a hand grabbing his jaw, tilting his head back. He met Max’s eyes, a gasp catching in his throat. Max’s touch was almost bruising in its gentleness. It felt so good. Charles forgot what he wanted to say. He just wanted. He was all want. He would never be anything more.
Max said something, but Charles didn’t register it, keening forward, and he didn’t realize he was trying to kiss Max, to crawl up into his lap until he was already mid-motion, graceless like a baby deer.
A hand on his stomach stopped him and held him in place. Charles choked out a whimper, both in relief and in disappointment.
“Easy there,” Max said, and his hand traveled to curl around Charles’ hip, the other sliding to the back of Charles’ neck. He sounded amused, a slight smirk pulling on the corner of his mouth. Charles wanted to kiss him so bad, wanted that mouth on him, wanted him all over.
“Focus for a second, okay? For me?” His voice was deeper, rough and loose like the karting track gravel they used to kick at as kids.
“Anything for you,” Charles heard himself say, and he couldn’t even be embarrassed about it. That was the truth. At this moment, he would do anything for Max. Anything Max wanted.
So he focused. Focused hard. Tried to be good. Because if he was good, Max would give him what he wanted. That’s how it works. If you’re good, you get what you want. Charles had been trying all his life to be good.
“They told me no one else on your list was available,” Max said. “Is that true?”
Focus. Charles swallowed, took a deep breath, thought hard and long about the question, then nodded. He opened his mouth prematurely, struggled to find his words, any words at all.
“I am sorry,” is what came tumbling out. His eyes were stinging. He blinked rapidly. He didn’t feel sorry at all, in this moment, but he knew that this was something he should have felt sorry about. “I did not think I would—I had no idea—I should not have—”
“Stop apologizing,” Max ordered firmly, his hand back on Charles’ chin, his thumb running along the open wet seam of Charles’ mouth. His jaw went slack like a reflex. He took the thumb between his lips.
Max’s pupils were dark and blown-wide. Charles managed to tear his eyes away from his face. Max was hard in his khaki shorts. Still fully clothed. That—that was wrong. There were too many layers between them.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” Max muttered, and he squeezed Charles’ hip hard enough to bruise.
Want, Max had said. He understood the horrible truth of it all. Charles needed this, yes, but more than that, he wanted it. He wanted it five minutes ago, wanted it this morning, wanted it yesterday, wanted it since he was fifteen, wanted it before he was old enough to know what want even was.
He knew, at that moment, that he would want it forever.
“Take care of me,” Charles said, and Max’s mouth was on his before he could even say please.
The rest of the day went by in flashes, like for his first heat. Only this time, Max was with him. Pressing him into the mattress. Kissing his throat. Fucking his mouth. Knotting him. Over and over and over until he physically couldn’t anymore. Max had ordered food from room service at some point, fed him as the sun dipped low in the sky, bathing the room in golden light. Soon enough they were at it again, and Max fucked him until he passed out, until they both passed out, and it was so, so good. Charles woke up the next morning with Max soft inside him, pressed to his back, snoring into his shoulder. His heat was over and gone; they both knew it, but they fucked that morning anyway, all slow and lazy and lucid, succumbing to the lingering sentiment from the heat, intimacy they would never have with one another again. Aware of themselves and each other and what they were doing, what they had done. Neither of them had said a word.
They showered separately and dressed in silence.
Charles had to leave first. A member from his team had called and told him she was parked outside the hotel. At the door, Max saw him off. He was planning to leave later in the morning in case any fans saw them together. Charles lingered at the threshold. Looking at Max. Max was looking back.
For a long second, he thought Max would kiss him goodbye.
He didn’t.
The thing about Max helping him out with his heat in 2019 is that, despite all the misery and hesitance leading up to it, it didn’t end up being a big deal. They both made it back to the track in time for their morning track walk, interviews, free practices, and by the time Charles was done with all his duties he was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as he fell onto his bed. The next day was qualifying: Charles did well, and so did Max. P3 and P4. The race itself was exhilarating. Charles meant it when he said, in the post-race interview, that it was the most fun he’s had in F1.
Sunday night, he flew to France, then drove back to Monaco. Monday morning, he went to the doctor’s appointment that Andrea had booked for him. He found out that his suppressants had stopped working and that was why his heat came early.
That was that.
Charles broke up with his girlfriend a month later, but that had nothing to do with Max. Really. He had a new girlfriend a few weeks later, and he was happy.
That Thursday they spent together felt so far away, so far back in the past that it wasn’t worth talking about. It didn’t change anything. They weren’t friends, weren’t teammates, and weren’t exactly rivals yet—not like they used to be, not like they would be in 2022.
Almost three years have passed, and they still haven’t talked about it.
Room 1401. Room 1401. Room 1401.
Charles repeats it to himself as he steps off the elevator. His head is a mess. It has been since Max told him to fuck off, be a good little omega, know his place, mind his own business. And still—he’s here. For some reason, he’s here. He has no real, binding obligation to be here, but he is.
He can still back out. He knows that—but he doesn’t want to. He wants to help. Wants Max, and that’s, that’s the worst part. Despite everything, he wants to do this.
When he reaches the room—a luxury deluxe suite—he takes a deep breath before tapping the keycard to the censor, other hand on the knob. He can—he can already smell Max through the door. He finally understands why Red Bull had to book out the entire floor.
There’s no use overthinking it. He already made his decision. No, that’s not it—there was no decision to make. He was always going to do this. There was no other choice.
He opens the door and slips the keycard in his back pocket. He packed a bag of clean clothes to change into in the morning, his suppressants, and his scent blockers, and it’s slung over his shoulder. As soon as he steps into the suite, he lets it down by the door, where Max’s sneakers are knocked over and offset from one another.
He hears a groan from further inside the suite, annoyed and miserable. Charles stays by the door, trying not to panic. From the sound of it, Max is getting off the bed and walking toward the hallway. “Fuck you. Who is it—”
Max stops at the end of the hallway.
The first thing Charles notices: he’s only wearing boxers, rock-hard beneath the fabric. Charles has seen it all before, but the sight of him like this still makes him want to get on his knees.
“Charles,” Max breathes out, shocked, his skin flushed pink, his hair matted with sweat and sticking up in all the wrong directions. His eyes are so dark. He looks so raw and vulnerable, and Charles feels sick with how much he wants him.
“Hey,” Charles chokes out lamely, and then—
Max is already at the door, pushing Charles against it, both his hands coming up to cup Charles’ cheeks before catching his mouth in a kiss. Charles gasps in surprise, and that gives Max the opportunity to slip his tongue past the seam of his lips. Charles kisses back as best as he can, already so overwhelmed. He didn’t think they would get to this so soon. But Max—looks pretty gone. Smells like it too. Scent strong, musky, spicy, heady. Charles already feels drunk on it. Charles has kissed Max hundreds of times before, but that was three years ago. Right now, right here, kissing Max feels exciting and new, but at the same time, familiar and safe. The weight of him, all heavy and secure, caging Charles into the door; his dick pressing into Charles’ thigh, pulsing; his mouth, warm and wet and confident. Max’s hands slide upward from his cheeks to his ears then to his skull, nails scraping his scalp, fingers twisting at his hair. Charles grabs Max’s hips to steady himself, digging into the soft layer of flesh there, hiding years of muscle, his fingertips wanting to bruise. Max responds by shoving a knee between his thighs, and Charles slips down the door just slightly, needing to tilt his head back to meet Max’s mouth, needing to hold onto his waist as securely as possible. He has to remind himself to breathe through his nose, but a part of him finds it unnecessary. What need is there to breathe when he has this? This is all he’ll ever need. He knows it.
He feels his own body reacting to the kiss, to Max’s scent, to everything that’s happening, slick leaking down his thighs already, under all the fabric, and it’s that jolt of wetness that grounds Charles. They’re still at the door, and they should be on the bed. His body wants Max to knot him, needs it, is preparing for it, expecting it, and they should—do that on a bed.
He slides his hand up Max’s stomach, pushing at his chest with a little more force than necessary. He’s covering all his bases, unsure of how lucid Max is now. Max doesn’t put up much of a fight, but he does bite Charles’ lip before pulling back, letting out an annoyed growl as he tries to go in for another kiss, animalistic.
Laughing, Charles dodges Max’s mouth. Max, in turn, lets his lips slide across Charles’ cheek all the way down to his neck. He buries his nose by Charles’ scent gland and moans in relief, licking over it, then closes his lips over Charles’ scent gland, sucks harshly and deliberately. And Charles lets him. Trusts that Max wouldn’t bite. Charles looks down, only looks, for a moment.
Max’s eyes are closed. He smells like sex. He’s gorgeous, all raw and open like this. Solid and warm and real.
It takes everything Charles has not to let Max have his way with him, here against the door.
“Easy there,” Charles says when Max grinds against him, thumbing along one of Max’s nipples, feeling a little lightheaded when Max shivers against him.
“I can’t believe it,” Max says. Charles feels his voice more than he hears it, rumbling against his throat. “I can’t believe you actually came. I didn’t—I didn’t believe them when they said—when they told me it was you. That you were coming. After everything I said—”
Max rarely stumbles over his words like this. Charles is strangely endeared.
“Of course I came,” Charles says, because—that’s the truth. Max needed him. Of course Charles would come to help.
When Max pulls back from his neck, he looks at Charles like—like he wants to eat him, but also a little like—like he’s in awe. Of Charles. Of what he sees. Of what he said.
Somehow, they manage to make it to the bed. It’s a difficult feat, given that they have to pass through the suite’s kitchen and living room while kissing the entire time.
Max shoves him onto the bed, and Charles stifles a moan, another gush of slick escaping him. His dick is so hard it’s starting to hurt. He starts to pull his shirt off, expecting Max to get in the way, but instead, Max just gets between his knees, starting to mouth along Charles’ stomach, leaving wet, bruising kisses all the way up to his chest as he tugs off his boxers, and then Charles’ sweatpants. They waste no time getting naked. And once they are, Charles brings a hand down to twist his fingers in Max’s hair, yanking him back up so he can get his mouth on him, feel the hot press of his body. He already feels sex-stupid, and Max hasn’t even gotten his dick inside of him. He feels like he’s starving, feels like he’ll die. He knows that this isn’t normal, to feel adrenaline like this when he isn’t in heat, as if he’s in the car and crashing over and over and over, but he knows that it’s to be expected.
Unsuppressed heats spent with an alpha trigger pseudo-ruts. Unsuppressed ruts spent with an omega trigger pseudo-heats.
Charles has known that since he was thirteen, reading through the pamphlets the doctor gave him, red-faced and so embarrassed about the whole thing he wanted to cry. He had never hated his body or the fact that he was an omega, but—it was all so much, knowing about the things he’d want before he even wanted them for himself.
He never understood what a pseudo-heat was. Something that was like a heat, but not a heat.
Now, he understands.
There’s that same sticky desire, that desperate want to be fucked and knotted, the feeling that he’ll die if he doesn’t get what he wants, except—he’s lucid. He knows that this isn’t really him, but that it is really him. He knows who he is now, and he knows who he was minutes ago, before he set foot into this room. He’s splitting into two. It’s all so confusing. The one thing he really knows is that he wants this, both parts. All of him. All the time. He really, really wants this.
Max just—smells so good. Right. It’s different with each breath. Like rain on grass after a long drought. Petrichor. Like fire. Like fuel. Like the beaches back home, salty and warm and sunny. Like everything good in Charles’ life.
Back then, soon after the first time they did this, Charles spent a long time trying to make sense of it, why Max came, why he stayed, why he didn’t hate Charles after it. He came to the conclusion that it had to have been some sort of power trip. Max had a warm body to stick his cock in for a day, quench his alpha’s desire to knot knot knot, pin his oldest rival to the bed, and use him for hours.
Charles had been wrong, he realizes that now. There is no power to this. No agency. There could never be, with something this core and primal, bigger than them, older than time.
Is this how it felt for you? Three years ago, is this what it felt like?
Why was my name on your list? Why did you and Kelly break up? Why did you help me back then? Why do you trust me? Why do I trust you?
When Charles tugs on Max’s hair, forcing him to pull back from the heady kiss, a line of spit connects their swollen mouths, dipping down until it breaks.
Max’s hands gripping his hips so hard Charles is sure it’ll bruise. His dick is half-knotted, pulsing wildly and blood-hot against Charles’ thigh. Charles’ is trapped between their stomachs. Lower, he’s so wet and loose it’s stupid. He hasn’t even been touched there, but his rim is already fluttering open in need. He brings up one of his knees, uses it to nudge Max’s apart. He slides his hand down to curl around the swell of Max’s dick.
He has questions. So many questions. The only one he’s able to get out is, “Are you going to knot me or what?”
Once, when they were younger, Pierre had asked Charles what heats were like. Impossibly flustered and squirming with embarrassment, Charles tried to explain it as clinically and impersonally as possible.
All the textbooks say the same things: Heats start with dizziness and weakness, while ruts start with aggression and pain. But they both boil down to the same thing: uncontrollable desire. For the omega, to be knotted; for the alpha, to knot.
Complimentary aims. Bodies and desires made for one another. Lock and key. Jigsaw puzzles.
And that’s what Charles told him. Pierre, shameless as ever, tilted his head to the side and asked, “But what’s even the point of that? Since, you know, you can’t get pregnant?” At that point, Charles threw a pillow at his head, chucked it at full force, and Pierre, bright with laughter, let the topic go.
The truth was, the explanation Charles gave wasn’t quite right.
Dizziness, weakness, aggression, pain, desire, knotting, it doesn’t quite capture the full experience. There’s no way to properly explain what a heat or a rut is purely in mechanical, technical terms. Heats are the most intimate thing possible for an omega, just as ruts for an alpha.
The useless want for something that has no ends, that is an end in itself, something you desire for its own sake, the pull of it, is inexplicable.
Charles wakes up first, the morning after. The room is still dark, the sun still dipped below the Italian sky. He glances to the side, at Max, mouth half-open, face light and smooth with sleep. His scent has calmed, his rut is over.
Their bodies aren’t connected anymore. Charles resents it. He wants to touch him. Wants to do it all over. Again and again and again. If he could pick any day to be stuck in a time loop for eternity, he’d pick yesterday.
He finally understands why, three years ago, that Friday morning after Charles’ heat, they’d fucked all over again, even though the heat had already broken. Back then, he had still been foggy with the remnants of his heat. His body thought he was in heat, even though his brain knew it wasn’t. He hadn’t remembered the things they’d done the day and night before, but his body did. It knew, and it wanted. Charles had been acting on instinct, submitted to the primal urge inside of him, letting his body want, and Max—had given it to him.
This time around he remembers. All of it. Remembers how Max dragged his lips down the center of his throat and easily slid over the ridges. Remembers the broken noise that escaped his throat in response. Remembers how Max flipped him over onto his stomach, pushed back inside of him, twisted his hand in front of Charles’ mouth and shoved two fingers between his lips. Remembers how they fell onto the floor, at some point, and just kept going there. Remembers the ache, the fullness, how Max’s body fit and locked inside his against his like they were something as silly as soulmates.
His body remembers it too. Each touch left a bruise on his skin. Rug burns, love bites, but invisible ones too. Ghosts. Not there physically, but there. Deep, deep, deep under his skin. Atomic level. Permanent and indomitable.
Charles has had alphas help him through his heats before, and he has helped a few alphas through their ruts before. But none were like this—none had been emergency heats or ruts. The school textbooks and pamphlets from the doctor’s office hadn’t said much about this, what it is really like.
He couldn’t have known it would be like this. This—
It’s like when he won in Monza in 2019. He remembers every second, the final lap, the thrill of it, the adrenaline; the celebration on the podium, solidifying and gratifying, the sweet, sticky champagne. It is something that he will never forget.
Was Max feeling this all along? That morning? All these years?
His body doesn’t feel like just his own anymore. Feels like—it is also Max’s. And maybe all this time, all these years, it has been Max’s, but he just did not know. Without the memories to back it up, he could not have known.
He carefully checks his neck and scent glands to make sure they didn’t mate last night, even though it doesn’t smell like they had. The only thing he feels are ill-placed hickeys all over. No mating. Just—something close.
It doesn’t—it doesn’t make sense, but at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world. When Max went into rut—there really was no other choice but for Charles to help him. It would never be just returning the favor.
They fucked up. They both did, but Charles fucked up first. He shouldn’t have put Max’s name down, all those years ago, but—
That’s the thing. It doesn’t feel like a fuck up. It doesn’t feel like a mistake.
Charles had a plan. He was going to get off the bed without waking Max, forgo a shower, put on a clean set of clothes, swallow his daily suppressant pill, double up on his blockers, bolt out of the suite, book it to his car, and they’d never speak about this again, like they had three years ago.
It all goes to naught when Max rolls over in his sleep, on top of Charles like a weighted blanket. Charles lets out a soft laugh, and he lets sleep pull him under once again.
The next time he wakes up, it’s with a gasp. He’s on his side, and Max is rocking into him, knot swelling blood-hot against his rim, and his body is so used to the shape of Max inside him that it doesn’t hurt, at least not in an unpleasant way. Max is tugging at his dick, kissing open-mouthed at his nape, and it doesn’t take long for Charles to spill into his hand. Max wipes his hand dry on the soiled sheets and rests it on Charles’ hip, stroking.
The room is warm with sunlight, and Charles lets out a pleased hum, smiling before he can help it.
“Morning,” Max says, nosing at Charles’ hair.
“Morning,” Charles murmurs. The fabric of the pillow beneath him is soft and warm against his cheek. He is suddenly very grateful that he didn’t end up leaving. All his worries from earlier in the morning feel small and insignificant. Vaguely, he knows that has to do with the flood of endorphins from being knotted, but it’s worth softening the panicked edge to his thoughts.
“Thank you,” Max says, lips now brushing against Charles’ scent gland.
“Hm?” Charles hums, distracted.
“For coming.”
Charles hums again, this time in understanding.
Already, this is different. Three years ago, they hadn’t talked the morning after. Charles supposes that makes sense. In 2019, they weren’t on the best of terms: Charles was still angry about Austria, and Max hadn’t yet earned the championship he was due. Everything and everyone around him was an obstacle. But this is their second go at it. They are both fighting for a title. They have done this before, and they have done it wrong.
Charles really, really wants to get it right this time.
Once Max’s knot softens, he eases Charles’ leg forward so that he can pull out. Charles shudders at the sudden trickle of cum and slick leaking out of him. Max soothes the ache by pushing it back inside with his fingers.
“Can I ask you a question?” Charles asks once the ache has been soothed, and Max’s hand is mostly dry and splayed across his stomach, like he wants to keep him as close as possible.
“Sure,” Max says, voice sleepy and rough.
Charles has a long list of questions. He has not forgotten any of them, but he still struggles to pick one to start with. He’s glad that he’s facing away from Max. He’s sure he’s making plenty of stupid faces as he’s contemplating it.
He ends up choosing the most concrete of them. “Why did you and Kelly break up?”
Neither of them have taken their blockers yet this morning. Max’s scent is clear and discernable, and Charles notices when it spikes with surprise.
“You don’t have to tell me if you do not want to.”
Max shakes his head. Charles feels his nose rubbing his scalp with the motion. “It’s fine,” he reassures, then breathes in deeply. “It was already not the best between us, for a while. I think we grew tired of each other, but couldn’t find a good reason to end things. I think we both were looking for an out. And we got one, when we tried to mate,” he reveals. “It didn’t work.”
Charles furrows his brows. “It didn’t work?”
“The doctor said it was because—I had already formed a pre-mating bond with someone else. And then me and Kelly got into a fight, because she of course thought that meant that I was cheating on her the whole time. Which I wasn’t, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Oh,” Charles breathes out, understanding. “Was it…”
“Yeah,” Max says, not trying to hide anything.
Charles swallows. “How?”
“It’s—if you think about it,” Max begins, confidently, and immediately Charles knows that Max is about to explain Charles’ own biology to Charles, “the only omegas who go through emergency heats are the ones who are on suppressants. You know, if you aren’t on suppressants, you will go through four heats a year, but suppressants reduce them to one, and they of course reduce the effects. So when you have a heat like the one you had three years ago, it is like—all the natural heats that were suppressed for years build up, and are released into one, and that is of course what you experienced. It was a very intense thing, and…” His voice is less confident when he goes on, “I think that, because I helped you, I formed an attachment.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles says, starting to feel awful about the whole thing again, but Max just leaves kisses up the side of his throat, comforting. It helps.
Max snorts after a while, like something about this is funny. “Of course you manage to make this about you.”
“But it is about me,” Charles says, starting to feel frustrated. He turns over so that he’s facing Max. “I put your name down, and—”
“You were on my list too,” Max drops casually, bringing a stop to Charles’ ramblings. “Before all of this.”
“What?” Charles gets out, barely a hoarse whisper.
“So don’t act like this is all your fault,” Max finishes, glaring.
Charles’ head is spinning. He had thought that Max added him after 2019. This makes even less sense. “Why?”
“I don’t really know,” Max says, “I’ve known you for so long. I guess I trusted you. It is why I helped you. I knew that you would do the same for me. And you did.”
Charles feels hot at the honesty, the brutality of it. He props up an elbow up to rest his head in. “After my heat, did it feel like—this too?”
It isn’t the clearest of questions, but Max understands.
“It did.”
”Does it still?” Charles asks, wondering if he’ll feel like this forever. A part of him hopes he does. He likes it. Having something to hold onto. Something that he can’t lose, a part of him, integral to him.
”It does,” Max answers, without any hesitation.
Charles knits his brows together. “Why did you not tell me?”
Max purses his mouth, looking uncharacteristically shy and insecure. “I thought it would go away, after a while. But—I also, I mean, I thought you hated it,” he confesses.
How could I hate it? You gave me everything I wanted, Charles thinks. I wanted you even before then. I want you all the time. I wrote you down for a reason. How could you not know?
Then again. They never did talk about it.
Charles wants to scream. Wants to cry. Wants to laugh.
He does none of those. Instead, he hooks a knee to the other side of Max’s stomach so that he’s on top of him, swoops down and kisses him hard, pushy and insistent, trying to communicate all the things he cannot say. Max runs his hands down Charles’ sides, and Charles knows, feels, that he understands.
He pulls back eventually, resting his forehead on Max’s, breathing him in, all of him.
“Things were different back then. They were not—we were not on so good terms,” Max says after a few moments. “And you had a girlfriend. So did I, I guess. That probably did not help.”
Charles sits up, placing himself atop Max’s stomach. It’s a little gross, and he’s probably leaking all over Max, but he pushes past the embarrassment to say, “I didn’t—I did not know it was like this. If I had known, I would have—” Done anything to have this, Charles doesn’t say. “If I had known that it felt like this for you. Like—” He still cannot find the words. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to find the words.
“You don’t have to say it. I know,” Max says, a hand coming up to curl around Charles’ neck, thumbing gentle shapes over all the bruises he left yesterday. Charles believes him.
He pulls Charles closer, and Charles goes with it, then they’re kissing again. Max’s hands fall to Charles’ hips, while Charles brings his hands to Max’s face, strokes along his beautiful cheekbones, skin scalding hot.
Charles has wanted this forever. It is scary that he was born wanting it, even scarier that he has it, but—it isn’t something that he wants to run away from. He wants to embrace it. Wants to tame the fear. If you pull back all the layers, maybe it’s better to be something rather than nothing.
He slides down until his cheek is resting on Max’s chest, just above where his heart is, pulsing like a rabbit. Charles is happy to know that he isn’t the only one.
After a long time of that, just listening to Max’s heart beating, Charles finally asks the million-dollar question. “What are we going to do?”
It’s impractical. Illogical. Unromantic. Circumstantial. A happy accident. It’ll never work. It’ll be hard work, even just trying. Charles doesn’t even know what they are, what he wants them to be. They’re both fighting for a championship. They’re playing a zero-sum game. They can’t both win. And yet—
He angles his head so that he can see Max’s face, and he is surprised by the huge smile that meets his eyes.
“Well,” Max hums, “we could fuck again, and then we will head back to the track, and then I will beat you—”
Charles climbs up from Max’s chest and shuts him up with his mouth, not wanting to hear the rest of it, yet he can’t help but smile through the kiss. Max doesn’t put up with it for long, though. He shoves his thigh between Charles’ legs and flips them over. They’ll just have to take it as it comes.
It was never going to be tender yearning with them. If fear has no place in the car, it has no place with them. All or nothing. Win or lose. Otherwise, it isn’t really worth it.
There is a memory shelved into the back of Charles’ mind. It is something he tries to never think about, but it is something that he will never forget.
He was at a karting circuit in France and he was fifteen, and as soon as the race finished, rain began to pour.
Charles had won the race by a wide margin that day—beating out all the alphas and betas who thought so highly of themselves and so little of Charles. Max had to retire due to an engine failure.
Charles was slow in disassembling his kart, but Jules and his father were helping. Once the kart was in pieces, Jules and Charles’ father brought it back to the car, while Charles set out to find Pierre to say goodbye until they saw each other again, planning to head straight to the parking lot afterwards.
He ended up getting into a fistfight with one of the alphas he beat. The boy was older than Charles and much taller. He waited until Charles was alone and egged him on. Charles let his anger grow to a pitch, spat back as many cruel words as was spat at him, not expecting it to really matter, not expecting it to come to blows. Over the years, he had learned that most alphas were all bark and no bite, but he was wrong about this one.
It was a losing fight and he knew it, but he refused to back down. He was not a coward, but he was not a good fighter, either, all clumsy fists and no finesse to his punches. Really, it wasn’t as violent or grand as it felt in the moment, but he was hopped up on post-victory adrenaline, and it seemed like the most important moment of his life, not his karting career, but his life. If Charles won here where all the odds were stacked up high against him, he could win anything. He was hungry like that, wanting to win even if he already had on the track.
He hadn’t known loss back then, not really, hadn’t known there were more important things in life than crossing the finish line first.
The boy swung his arm, his fist about to collide with Charles’ cheek, but then—an arm was yanking him back, pulling him off of Charles and shoving him to the mud.
Max and the boy both ended up in the dirt, throwing graceless punches at one another. Charles was panting, watching. Max wasn’t that much better of a fighter than Charles but he was taller and heavier and he eventually got the upper hand. The boy scampered away, shouting insults at the both of them and nursing his wounds, probably heading to his parents to cry about it.
Max was still on the ground, soiled in mud and rain. His knuckles were bloody, his face was bruised, but his eyes were bright. Charles thought he looked beautiful.
“Why did you do that?” Charles asked, furious and upset and embarrassed—not only that someone had come to save him, but that it was Max Verstappen who came to save him, and he ended up taking all the glory.
If Max had said something like, Because you were hurt, Charles might have punched him in the mouth.
Instead, Max wiped the dirt off his face with the sleeve of his racesuit and said, “That guy is a jerk and a shit racer. I have wanted to punch him for so long.”
“Oh,” Charles said quietly. His heart was doing something strange in his chest.
He didn’t feel angry or upset anymore.
He offered his hand to Max, who stared at it blankly, like he wasn’t sure if he should take it or not. But he did. As soon as he was up on his feet, he turned around. His shoulders were hunched up high and his ears were red. He walked away.
Not even a minute passed before Jules found him. He’d been gone for so long that his parents had been worried.
“What happened to you?” Jules asked, looking shocked and angry but confused more than anything. He was holding an umbrella, and he brought it over both their heads.
“I got into a fight,” Charles said. His mouth tasted like iron. He wiped at his nose, cringing at the blood smeared on his hand.
Jules glared. “I can see that,” he replied flatly, brows furrowed in disapproval and disappointment. But after a few short seconds, he gave up the act. Jules was twenty-three and Charles’ favorite person, but he was young enough to remember what it was like to be just a boy.
He knocked his elbow against Charles’ arm, “Well? Did you win?”
Charles looked up at him and grinned.
Imola, in reality, will be a disaster. 2022, in fact, will not be the year where Charles wins the title.
Charles will make mistakes, Ferrari will make more, while Max and Red Bull will be practically flawless for the rest of the season. Second place in the championship will feel like a consolation prize, one that he will have to fight till the very end for.
However, in the quiet little escape of an Italian hotel a fifty minute drive away from the track, Charles doesn’t know that. He only knows that he might not have chosen to be an omega, or to have suffered a spontaneous heat three years ago, but he chose Max, and Max chose him back.