Chapter Text
Thursday
“I’m not going to win.”
Checo looked up from his place on the hotel sofa where he was fastening a bow around Juan Pedro’s neck. It was red, white, and blue like the Netherlands flag and had a little gold tulip hanging from it.
Max looked back at him from his place curled up in the bed, the rising sun lighting his face through a slit in the curtains. “I can feel it,” he said, “I’m not going to win.”
Checo moved Juan Pedro off his lap and stood up, walking over to the bed. “You can’t know that, Max,” he said optimistically. “This is your home. Your track.”
Max let himself be held as Checo climbed behind him, curling up into the embrace.
“The car’s fucked,” he muttered pathetically.
“Maybe this weekend it’ll be better, amor,” Checo soothed. “You are so talented, Lando’s got nothing you don’t.”
”He has that McLaren.”
”You don’t need it,” his boyfriend refuted. “You just need you.”
Max sighed. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “How did your meeting with Christian go? What did he want?”
Christian had asked Checo out to dinner the night before, shortly after he had arrived in the country. It was important, he had said, but needed to be a private conversation between him and Checo.
Checo paused for a moment. “It was fine,” he said at last. “Just some talk about the car, our expectations.”
”He didn’t, you know,” Max wiggled in place, trying nicely to ask if his job had been threatened.
Checo sighed, laughing slightly. “No,” he said, “not at all.”
It had been an apology dinner, or as close to an apology as Checo would get. The engineers back at the factory had traced back the issues with the RB20 to Spain 2023, when Checo first had started to report problems. He had been explicitly ignored, Horner had admitted, because Max had not reported those problems. And now here they were.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ll tell you another day,” Checo said as Juan Pedro climbed on the bed. “I don’t want to talk about it.” In truth, he was not even sure he was allowed to talk about it in the first place.
“Are you okay?” Max asked quietly, holding Checo’s hand to his chest.
“…I will be,” the older man said. “This will be a good weekend for us, I can feel it.”
“So what happened, did you go to Mexico?”
Lance and Fernando had met up to film a tiktok for the social media team and now they were together in Lance’s driver room, scrolling through their phones and avoiding the team.
Fernando looked up from his phone. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I took Fabrizio, but we had to cut off the cleansing ceremony after he caught fire when the chanting started.” He did not sound concerned.
Lance turned to look at where Fabrizio was, nibbling on a raw piece of lasagna, chilling on his ball and looking decidedly not charred.
“Um.”
“He was fine,” Fernando waved him away. “He also did that when I took him to a church one time.”
“Um.”
“Really, don’t worry,” Fernando insisted. “I do not think he can burn.”
Lance stared at him, then at the hamster, then back at him. “So!” He had to move on, he just had to. “Did it work?”
Fernando shrugged. “Difficult to say, I–”
He was interrupted by Lance’s phone vibrating.
“Oh, it’s my dad,” Lance said, then stilled. He and Fernando looked at each other.
Fernando sat up. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he ordered, waving his hand.
He stared intently as Lance picked up the phone.
“Yeah, dad? Hi. Were you–? Oh. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, yeah he’s right here with me. Yeah, I’ll let him know. You’re calling everyone else? Cool. Okay. Thanks, dad. Yeah, love you too. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He loves you too, I’m sure. Okay, bye.”
Lance hanged up and took a breath.
Fernando leaned forward. “Si?”
Lance let the breath go and faced him. “Adrian Newey just signed with Aston starting next year.”
A pause. Then,
“It fucking worked.”
Fernando jumped up and grabbed Fabrizio’s ball, holding it up high. “You’re finally useful, you evil son of a bitch!”
The hamster rubbed its nose.
Fernando yelped as the ball gave him a shock and quickly put it back down.
Either a final look at the Spaniard, Fabrizio grabbed his lasagna and went back to gnawing at it maniacally.
“Are you sure it’s okay that he eats so many stroopwaffles? So many burnt stroopwaffles?”
Checo took a bite of his burger. “Yah,” he said around the mouthful.
Max looked at him digging into his burger then at Juan Pedro eating his weight in stroopwaffles. “You two really are the same, aren’t you?”
Checo took another big bite. “Yah.”
Max returned to his stamppot, amused. “It feels weird,” he said after a while. “To be here without Helmut.”
Checo grabbed his water bottle and sipped on the straw. “I feel great,” he said honestly once he was done. “It’s freeing.”
Max smiled slightly. “I’m glad,” he said.
“How did your talk with Seb go? I didn’t ask.” Actually, he had, but Max had said he wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“It was…good,” Max said. He shrugged. “Our experiences were different. Seb came under Red Bull’s radar at a younger age than I did and his parents weren’t as present to monitor everything as Jos was. Marko never did to me the kind of stuff he did to Seb.”
He had gone to Switzerland to meet with Seb over the break, just him while Checo visited his kids and took Fernando to bless his hamster, and talk about Marko’s abuse. The German champion had shared horror stories with him. From being forced to stand naked and quiet as a teenager whilst the old man yelled at him after a race to corporal punishment after interviews well into his F1 career.
“He never hit me,” Max had said, feeling ashamed. How dare he compare his problems with Sebastian’s?
“He didn’t have to,” Sebastian had answered kindly. “He had other ways to punish you, didn’t he?”
Marko had.
“We briefly talked about a lawsuit,” Max continued, looking down at his potatoes. “But I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Even he wasn’t convinced.”
“That’s okay,” Checo said, reaching out to grab his hand. “Take it at your own pace. Whatever you want to do.”
“And you?” Max looked at his boyfriend. “You have grounds to sue. Not just him but all of Red Bull, over discrimination.”
“Yeah,” Checo didn’t deny it. “Maybe. I don’t know. Would make things awkward, no?”
Max smiled sympathetically. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Probably.”
He looked around and sighed when he spotted his dad lurking around outside the hospitality on the phone.
Checo followed his gaze and wrinkled his nose.
Juan Pedro sneezed.
“He wants to go out to dinner one of these days,” Max said.
“Hmm.”
“You know how he is. He’s upset I’ve stopped calling him as often.”
“Hmm.”
“I suppose I understand…it’s not his fault–”
“No.”
Max sighed again. “Well, it is his fault, but I never told him it is. Far as he knows, I just stopped calling one day.”
“He’s a grown man, he can figure out why the child he abused no longer calls him every day.”
Max rubbed his face. “He’s my dad, Checo,” he murmured.
The older man let out a breath. “You’re right, sorry,” he said quietly. “I know I can’t understand.”
“And that makes me very happy,” Max said, nudging Checo’s chin with a knuckle.
Checo grabbed his hand and kissed his palm softly.
“Must you do that in public?”
The two sprang apart at the sardonic voice that greeted them. They looked up to find Jos sneering at them from his place standing by their table.
“Dad!” Max coughed. “I thought you were outside.”
Jos took a seat next to his son, scowling at Juan Pedro. “I was,” he said. “You two done kissing?”
Max looked down.
Checo hummed. Then he grabbed Max by the cheeks and leaned into a heavy, dirty kiss. He moaned into it and shoved his tongue into Max’s mouth, making his boyfriend whine. He moved away and pressed three chaste kisses around his face, then a final one on his lips. He let go of him and stood up, Juan Pedro quickly climbing on his shoulders. “Done now,” he smiled at Jos and walked off.
Max stared after him, smiling stupidly.
Jos gaped. “Deviant,” he hissed.
Max put his chin on his hands and sighed lovingly.
Diego Mejia was being tested. He might quite possibly be the last competent journalist left in the paddock.
He loved his job. Really. He loooooved his job. But christ, some people were stupid. So he did his part to bring a little bit of integrity to the world of motorsport journalism and went home satisfied.
And tired. Very tired.
It was media day, which meant it was his day to shine as the only journalist who did not ask Checo stupid questions. He walked around the paddock every weekend, hearing bullshit after bullcrap and lamented the state of the world.
He had an interview with Checo lined up in a bit. Nothing special. More of a ‘how’s life Checo? Well, it’s not great Diego’ kind of talk. He stood up from where he was laying on the grass next to the grid and pocketed his 1/43 RB19 model. He stretched his arms and sighed.
“Estas listo?”
The capybara seated on the ground looked up at him, vaguely chewing a blade of grass.
“Great!”
The pair marched off towards the Red Bull hospitality.
“Who is this?” Checo smiled down at the capybara sitting by Diego’s feet. It was wearing a miniature version of his Miami cap from the hear before. Checo didn’t even know they sold those.
“Ah, Diego,” Diego said, taking a seat in front of him, putting his RB19 model on the table between them and taking out his notebook.
“No, wey, la capibara.”
“His name is Diego,” Diego repeated. “And he’s a chigüire, not a capybara.”
“Same thing, no?” A camera man whispered.
“Cállate, Luis,” Diego said, petting Diego the chigüire. “Don’t be a coloniser.”
“Oop.”
“You named your capybara after you?” Checo laughed.
Diego scowled.
“Perdon, perdon. Chi-güi-re.”
“I didn’t name him,” Diego said, satisfied. “I put a list of names in front of him and he picked Diego. He’s very smart. I found him on the side of the road with a broken leg when I visited home. I took him to a vet and she said we had to put him down. So we brought a priest to administer his last rites—“
“As you do for a capybara you find on the road.”
“Luis, cállate,” Diego continued. “And he didn’t die. So I kept him. He’s my assistant.”
Checo put Juan Pedro right in front of the capybara. The two stared at each other.
Diego and Checo looked at them.
Nothing.
Okay.
“Ready to start?” Diego held up his notebook.
Checo took a seat.
“So,” Diego coughed. “How’s Red Bull? Things seem to be looking up this weekend.”
Checo smiled diplomatically. “Bueno, Diego, I think it’s going to be a great weekend.”
Diego smiled back.
What a pair of liars.
Juan Pedro climbed on Diego’s back. The Capybara did nothing. The capybara didn’t care about anything.