Chapter Text
Max dreamed of finding his soulmate long before he dreamed of racing in Formula 1.
Through the countless nights of his parents screaming at each other downstairs after he and Victoria had been put to bed, he comforted himself with the thought that when he met his soulmate, everything would be okay.
Through the dozens of friendships sacrificed to the demands of a budding racing career, he told himself that his soulmate wouldn’t mind the gruelling schedule. That they’d stay by his side regardless.
Through every dirty, hateful look thrown his way for daring to speak his mind and refusing to bow to the status quo, the hope that his soulmate would love him exactly as he was held firm in his heart.
He dreamed about how it would feel when that bond finally snapped into place and he looked into the eyes of the person destined to complete the missing part of his soul.
He dreamed about a bright red string wrapped around his finger, tying him to his other half, just like the ones from the fairy tale books his mother read to him when he was small.
He imagined that when the happy day finally came, he would never feel cold or lonely or hopeless ever again.
~~~~~
2019
Max thought that Charles Leclerc was perhaps the most irritating person he had ever had the misfortune of meeting.
He was loud and annoying. He smiled too much. And most importantly, he was a sore fucking loser of the highest calibre. In Austria, he stood on the podium a step down from Max, glowering up at him as if they hadn’t just had a thrilling last lap battle for the win. Sure, the move Max had pulled at the end had been a little questionable, but that was hard racing. Charles of all people should know that.
Max acknowledged that this could have been his first win in Formula 1, and it probably stung to have that taken away, but what was he supposed to do? Not race him? Not fight?
Charles would win a hundred times over in this sport. Max knew that as sure as he knew that he would be World Champion one day.
But it didn’t seem to matter.
Charles avoided his champagne spray with the litheness of an eel, slipping away from the podium as quickly as he could. In the media pen, a swarm of journalists prevented Max from getting within ten metres of him. Only after the chaos of the paddock began to ebb, the dark Austrian night creeping in over the track, did Max finally get a chance to talk to him.
A warm shower and clean clothes had allowed him to reexamine the situation with a newfound clarity. He trudged over to the Ferrari driver’s motorhome, trepidation dampening some of the usual sureness of his step.
He didn’t intend to apologize. He had nothing to apologize for.
They raced, he won. That was all there was to it.
But Max understood that losing a win—a first win, no less—on the last lap like that must hurt. He wanted to be there for Charles in case the other driver wanted to talk about it.
Their tentative friendship, cultivated so painstakingly out of rivalry, had only just begun to blossom this season. When Charles had joined the grid last year, he’d been too wrapped up in the newness of it all to pay much attention to Max, but now… now, they talked. They debriefed and they laughed and sometimes they argued, but it was always alright in the end.
It would be alright this time too, Max thought as he mounted the ladder leading up to the door of Charles’ motorhome, the shiny silver number 16 on it reflecting the streetlamps of the parking lot.
The clang of steel reverberated around the parking lot as he rapped his knuckles against it. It swung open a few seconds later, revealing Charles, still pink-cheeked and breathing heavily, eyebrows pinched in irritation. He looked Max up and down scornfully.
“What do you want?”
Max froze for a moment, knocked off kilter by the venom in Charles’ tone. Many people in his life had raised their voices at him, and he’d never taken it well.
But this was Charles, he reminded himself. He liked Charles. Wanted to preserve their friendship. That was why he was here.
So, he took a deep breath and stepped up higher on the ladder.
“I wanted to talk about what happened in the race,” he explained in a measured voice.
Charles narrowed his eyes. “Are you here to apologize?”
“No,” he bit out, swallowing the indignation that flared up behind his ribs, “but I was hoping that maybe we could talk–”
“If it’s not an apology, then I don’t want to hear it, Verstappen.”
Something like lead lodged itself in Max’s throat at the finality of those words.
“Come on, Charles, I get that you’re upset, but it’s racing! What do you want me to do? Just move aside and let you pass?” he exclaimed, trying to appeal to the competitor inside the other man, the rival. Charles would never want Max to gift him a win.
But Charles only flared his nostrils, a bright fire sparking to life behind his eyes. “You wouldn’t have had to move aside, since I was the one who was ahead, you asshole.”
Max pursed his lips, acknowledging the point. But before he could open his mouth to defend himself, Charles kept going.
“George was right about you, you know. When he called you a dirty racer and a cheat. You can’t stand to lose, and you make it everybody else’s problem,” he spat.
The ball of lead dropped from Max’s throat into the pit of his stomach. Charles’ words sliced through all of Max’s carefully constructed defences, cutting down into the very heart of him. The place that he let so few people into, only the ones he really trusted.
“Don’t talk to me again, Max. Stay the hell away from me,” Charles finished, crossing his arms over his chest.
Something behind Max’s sternum gave a sharp lurch, some cord inside him pulling taut and snapping. The rebound nearly knocked him right off the steps. He swayed and grabbed onto the railing, his eyes immediately catching on the ring finger of his right hand.
Where there had previously been nothing, a glossy red string now wrapped around it, shimmering slightly where it caught the light. He followed it with his eyes, dread pooling in his stomach. Its other end looped around one of Charles’ white-knuckled fingers, a dull, lifeless grey.
This couldn’t be happening.
Soulmates.
He and Charles were soulmates.
The red string… it was supposed to tie them together for life, to signify two halves of the same whole finally meeting.
And there it was around Charles’ finger… grey. Dead. The bond rejected before it could even fully form.
Charles narrowed his eyes and glanced down to where Max’s gaze was fixed on his hand. His eyebrows drew together in suspicion. Max jerked his head away, looking back at his own string as it pulsed with one-sided energy around his ring finger.
If Charles had rejected the soulmate bond before it had even formed, then he wouldn’t be able to see the dead string around his finger. He wouldn’t have felt the tether snapping between them the way Max had. He’d be none the wiser that anything had changed.
“What are you looking at?” Charles asked, voice wary and combative.
Max startled and looked back into the other man’s face, seeing him suddenly in a new light. His soulmate. The only person in the world who was perfect for him. Who was destined by the universe itself to love him.
And who would never know that he had just condemned Max to a slow, painful death.
“Nothing,” Max whispered, dropping his gaze and stepping down from the ladder. He felt cold. “Nothing. Sorry to have bothered you. Have a good night, Charles.”
Charles didn’t return the sentiment. The metal door simply shut in Max’s face.
Soulmates.
Never in the years Max had spent daydreaming about his soulmate did he ever consider that they wouldn’t want him. That they’d reject his attempt to reach out so abruptly and with such finality that the bond itself would fracture.
That was the only way a soulbond could be left one-sided.
Sharp, immediate, remorseless rejection.
Charles didn’t want him.
Charles had told him to stay away from him. To never speak to him again. And he’d meant it. Otherwise, the soulmate bond wouldn’t have shattered.
The Monegasque driver’s words echoed through Max’s head as he stood rooted to the spot, trying to convince his unresponsive legs to move.
George was right about you, you know. When he called you a dirty racer and a cheat. You can’t stand to lose, and you make it everybody else’s problem.
He’d heard these words before of course. From George, from others. Normally, he’d be unbothered. He’d learned long ago to not let the opinions of others affect him.
But hearing them from Charles was different. The entire time Max had thought they were becoming friends, Charles had thought the same about him as everybody else on the grid did.
Numbness settled under Max’s skin.
The string around his ring finger seemed to pulse in the dim light. He closed his eyes and pictured the other end of it, limp and colourless against Charles’ tanned skin.
Max was destined for the same fate now.
A broken soulbond was like an open wound. It would sap his life force, and Max would wither and fade away, greyed out of existence as his soul slowly bled out until there was nothing left.
And then he’d die.
Four weeks later in Spa, Charles won the race.
Max DNFed.
He caught Charles’ eyes in the media pen and shot him a small, congratulatory smile, but the Ferrari driver only turned his head away and resumed his conversation with SkySports. Max stood frozen for a moment, the sting of rejection washing over him once more. The string around his finger hummed restlessly.
He tuned it out and followed his press officer to the next interview.
~~~~~
2020
The new season began with a distinct feeling of hope among the team at Red Bull. The car felt more competitive, capable of winning races without Max having to wrangle it into submission every time he was on track. A subtle excitement wound its way through the hallowed halls of Milton Keynes. Something big was coming. It wouldn’t be here this year, but the puzzle pieces were finally in one place. All that remained was to finally slot them together.
Max had almost forgotten about his severed soulbond. The bright red of the string around his ring finger still caught his attention sometimes, but the winter break had done its job in taking his mind off everything wrong in his life. Including Charles Leclerc.
Maybe he was going to be fine after all. Maybe he was the exception to the rule.
But almost a year to the day since the incident on the steps of Charles’ motorhome, Max woke with ants crawling under his skin and unease in his chest. Unnerved, he tried to banish the bizarre feeling, dragging himself to the factory for a day of sim work. For a few hours, the steady hum of the simulator drowned out the buzzing in his veins and lap times replaced the strange static in his brain. But when he stood from the chair, his whole body shook from exhaustion, skin itching with discomfort.
GP shot him a concerned look when he kept dropping his pen during the debrief, trembling fingers struggling to keep it steady. Max dropped his eyes, avoiding the unspoken question in his race engineer’s face. He didn’t know how to answer it.
He didn’t know what was wrong with him.
He went to bed that night praying that he would feel better in the morning and that this irregularity in his nervous system was just a product of poor sleep or too much gaming. But when he woke eight hours later, the feeling was still burrowed under his ribs, too far to reach with rational assurances that everything was fine and he had no reason to feel this way.
Three weeks later he nearly binned the car in the barrier during free practice in Silverstone because his hands were shaking so badly, and GP forced him to go see the team doctor.
“Anxiety,” she announced after Max described the feeling in his chest and the shaking of his limbs. “Has anything major happened in your life recently that’s causing you stress?”
Charles’ angry face flashed in front of his eyes, but Max said nothing. He’d suspected for a few weeks now that his tremors were a manifestation of the severed bond, finally making its appearance after a year of dormancy, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it. Not even to himself.
“No, nothing I can remember,” he answered the doctor, who scribbled something down on her clipboard.
“Well, it’s not uncommon. Or a very big deal,” she assured him with a sympathetic smile. “I can get you a prescription for some mild anxiety medication and you’ll feel right as rain.”
“Sounds good,” he said, returning her smile with a thin-lipped one of his own, despite the sinking sensation in his stomach.
If this was indeed the effects of the fractured soulbond making their appearance, then no amount of pills would help him, Max knew. Bond symptoms were not beholden to modern medicine. An affliction of the soul could not be cured with treatment of the body.
No, if this was his soulbond, then it only meant one thing.
Max’s clock had started ticking.
He made his way back to his motorhome in a daze, his phone vibrating in his pocket with concerned texts from GP. He’d need to answer the older man soon, let him know that everything was fine even if it wasn’t. Later, as he lay awake in the middle of the night, morbid curiosity prompted Max to type “rejected soulbond symptom progression” into the search bar of his phone and fall down the rabbit hole of what awaited him.
Accounts varied. Some reports said that patients felt the effects of the severed bond immediately after the fact. For others, the symptoms took longer to manifest—months, sometimes years. Max supposed he fell into the latter category. He didn’t know whether or not to be grateful for that.
But once the symptoms set in, the story rarely differed. Anxiety, fatigue, general weakness in the body. Sensitivity to temperature. Difficulty moving. In some cases, paralysis. Max hoped that the universe would at least spare him that.
Eventually, the ending was always the same. Bond death.
There were rumours that there had already been a case of a soulbond rejection in Formula 1. That when Ayrton Senna had purposefully crashed into Alain Prost at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix to secure his second world championship, their soulbond had snapped into place. That in the furious aftermath of the incident, Prost had rejected his old rival, and that Senna, too proud to beg, had refused to bring the matter up again, even as he slowly wasted away in the following years.
There were rumours that his fatal crash at Imola in 1994 had been intentional. That he’d chosen a racer’s death instead of succumbing to the severed bond.
Max wondered if he’d choose to do the same thing when it came down to it.