Chapter Text
To be clear, Max could not care any less about what he looks like.
It’s his fourth year of actually racing in Formula 1 now. Maybe he should act more like the media thinks F1 drivers should, flinging money around at people, drinks, and clothes. But nope, he is perfectly happy to be left alone, thanks. No need to draw unnecessary attention, judgement really, to himself.
The clothes he wears? It would be a shock if there was no Red Bull branding. His watch? Tag Heuer, through Red Bull. The reason he gets haircuts? Yeah… Red Bull.
Once every few weeks, he’ll get a text from his manager simply stating Haircut today, followed by an address and a time. Max will groan and complain to himself about it, but eventually he’ll find the motivation to drag himself off the simulator and into the depths of Milton Keynes or Monaco or wherever he is. Honestly, his motivation is that the last thing Max wants to deal with is an angry PR team. There is no doubt in his mind that it’s the PR team that his manager has been bribed by to make sure he stays on schedule.
That’s how Max finds himself in front of a small shop in Monaco. He sighs as he eyes the store’s name on the window: LEC. The name is familiar enough, bringing back a faint memory of a blonde lady cutting his hair a few months ago.
Max’s most recent haircuts have been in England with some barber close to his apartment. Usually they take twenty minutes or so, and Max spends all twenty of them visualising driving on a random track to distract himself from the awkward silence as the man goes at his head with clippers. At least his manager stays consistent with booking places Max has been before, and from what he remembers, his previous hairdresser at LEC seemed pretty nice. She reminded him of his mom a little.
Max sighs again. There’s no use complaining anyway. He rearranges his face to at least look bored and not frowning like he doesn’t want to be here. Which he doesn’t.
Vic always loved, and still loves, going to the hair salon. When they were young, she would always proudly come back from her appointments to ask him what he thought. Max learned young to say that she looked very pretty, even if he could not tell the difference. He always got a hug for his troubles anyway. That made the white lie absolutely worth it.
So this is not the time and place to be grumpy, when someone in there could easily make Max bald for the next four months. He would much rather have the haircut where nothing has changed, rather than the one that makes him an infamous F1 meme.
Facial expression adequately prepared, Max resignedly steps inside. He beelines to the front desk, passingly noting how good it smells.
The blonde woman he remembers from before smiles at him when he reaches the desk, "Bon après-midi, avez-vous un rendez-vous avec nous?"
Thankfully, Max can just barely parse what she’s saying, something about a ‘meeting with us’. Rendez-vous is basically used in English too, the only difference is it sounds way fancier in French. "Oui," Max responds in a horrendously accented pronunciation, hoping and praying that she asked a yes-or-no question, not something that required a real answer.
Thankfully, she nods. "What is your name?" …Max’s French skills obviously need to be brushed up on. It’s not his fault the Dutch accent doesn’t translate well.
"Max Verstappen." He manages his own smile at her. Well, more like a quirk of his lips. It’s the effort that counts.
The lady hums as she scribbles something on her scheduling pad. "C'est bon! Please follow me to your seat, Monsieur Verstappen."
She leads him over to a young man in the back of the room. "This is Charles. He will be assisting you today," she introduces.
Max first sees Charles clearly as his hairdresser stands when they near his station. Charles sticks out a hand for Max to shake, and as they touch palms, Charles briefly meets his eyes, before quickly looking down.
And- oh. He’s really pretty. For a second, that’s all Max can think. Sharp cheekbones and a messy hairstyle that Max could never pull off (by now, the motion of combing the hair over is so ingrained into his muscle memory that he might even do it in his sleep). Really green eyes. A dainty wrist and fingers. That he’s still shaking. That are tugging a little to get out of his grip.
Shit. Max quickly drops his hand.
"Hello," Charles says quietly, eyes still angled downwards.
The woman pats Charles’ back and murmurs some French too fast for Max to even try to understand. She smiles at Max one more time before heading back to the front of the shop, leaving Max in the company of a hopefully capable hairdresser. One who is going to have horrible neck posture later on in life if he doesn’t straighten his head up.
Charles quickly ushers Max into the seat, facing him towards the mirror as the hairdresser moves to stand behind him. The counter has various hair styling tools and bottles laid out on it, as well as a little name plaque engraved with 'Charles'. It must be his name, obviously, but it was not the spelling Max was expecting after hearing how the other hairdresser pronounced it.
Max has to strain a little to hear Charles when he asks quietly, "What would you like today?"
Oh, right, the haircut… and Max finds himself at a loss for what to reply. Well, here’s the thing. The barber in England kind of just did whatever he wanted. The old man never really needed (or even accepted) input from Max. Maybe Max took advantage of it by never forming opinions on his own hairstyle, so what? Now, Max can only shrug and offer, "Shorter?" in response. He gets to watch through the mirror as the hairdresser reacts to what must be the most basic, non-descriptive haircut request ever. Max is amused to catch how Charles’ eyes, which are focused off to the side, squint in something that looks like judgement, before smoothing back out to nod his assent.
It’s then that Max gets this feeling of déjà vu looking at Charles. Have they met before? There’s something about him that seems so familiar.
The rest of the appointment proceeds like Max has come to expect (with the notable exception of a somehow mind-melting hair wash). Charles only makes some brief small talk at the beginning, both he and Max trailing off into silence quickly enough. Where Max would normally space out to do imaginary racing at this point in the haircut, this time he merely studies the other man through the mirror as he flits around him with his scissors. There’s an itching, nagging feeling in his brain. Like a child whining in a language that almost sounds like one he knows, but not quite, trying to tell him something important he cannot quite understand.
He also wants to see Charles’ eyes again. Charles hasn’t made eye contact with him since they shook hands.
- -
By the time Charles is blow drying his hair, Max feels beside himself with insanity.
Mostly because Max swears he knows Charles the longer he looks at him. He spent so much time racking his brain trying to jog his own memory. All that searching hurt his head. The other part of it is because Max spent the better part of an hour studying the hairdresser and could confidently describe all of Charles’ facial features to one of those police detective artists, except his eyes.
"Is the haircut okay, Monsieur?" Max is shaken out of his thoughts by a quiet, concerned voice. Only when it causes his face to relax, does Max realise he had scrunched his eyebrows in concentration. No wonder Charles thought something was wrong, whoops.
About to respond automatically with a ‘yes’, he takes a second to actually study his appearance in the mirror, instead of Charles. He does not look all that different yet Max could swear he looks a little sharper than normal. That can’t be only in his head, right? No way. The PR team is going to be over the moon. "Yeah, it’s lovely, mate," he compliments.
The furrow in Charles’ eyebrows disappears and for a moment Charles smirks. Like he knows he did well. Like he knows there was no other way Max could have answered, except in the way he did, unless he was going to lie.
Max opens his mouth to comment on it, but by the time he even thinks about what would be appropriate to say, the placid, blank expression is back. Like it never left. Max shuts his mouth.
Then he opens it again, "Hey, Charles," Max tries to pronounce it the French way he heard before. Unfortunately, it comes out sounding extremely butchered. His tongue cannot twist around the letters correctly. "Have we met before?" Max had to ask. Maybe that’s a bizarre thing to ask a stranger, but Max would have ruined the rest of his day because of this, the frustration driving out any chance of productivity or concentration. The only other plan he had today was more iRacing. Still.
Finally, Charles meets his eyes, a new glint in them. "So you do not remember the person that showed everyone Max Verstappen was not untouchable in karting?"
Oh. Ohh.
And that’s why Max recognized Charles. That little smirk and the squint of judgement. Those were the relics of the little menace kid he used to race against in karting. It’s true, Charles must have been one of the only people who could occasionally challenge him for places on the podium. Younger Max would not have taken the slander, and though Max may have grown up that doesn’t mean he’ll let Charles get away with a big ego now.
"You say untouchable but do you actually mean causing crashes because you could only ever finish behind me if you didn’t pull a dirty move?" Max is quick to playfully jab back at Charles.
To his disappointment, instead of replying, Charles only lets out a little hum of acknowledgment and takes the cape off of him.
Expecting more and receiving nothing, Max is at a loss. He just lets himself be led to the front desk. "How are you doing?" he asks quickly, trying to bring back the energy that he swears was there a second ago. Why he’s now initiating the small talk is beyond him.
"Ah, good, good," Charles mumbles, practically having a conversation with the cash register rather than with Max. Max watches helplessly as Charles swipes his card, speeding through the final steps of the appointment. "Thank you for coming to LEC." That is definitely Max’s signal to leave, no matter how much he suddenly wants to stay.
He tries to catch Charles’ eyes one last time and fails. The man is staring resolutely at a point past Max’s right ear. Max sticks his hand straight into Charles’ sightline to wave it around in farewell. "Bye, thank you." He’s a little stubbornly antagonistic, okay? Being annoying is a built-in trait.
Max walks out the door a man changed. The proud new owner of a clean haircut, and faint memories swirling around of the kid, now all grown up, that used to race figure-eights in his mind. His grumpiness over the unnecessary excursion long forgotten, perhaps washed away in the spray of the hair basin hose.
- -
That night, Max dreams.
He dreams about a wet track and wet suit. The anger he felt being pushed off the track unfairly by some brown-haired prick.
The exhilaration from racing wheel-to-wheel against the same kid. How in awe Max was of Charles’ takeovers on him, even when his dad’s voice was echoing in his mind about how Max could not let that happen if he wanted to be the best.
The karts in this dream do not have regular seats. For some reason, they are racing in salon chairs. Also, their helmets are those vintage hair dryer hoods ladies would always sit under in movies.
But then the dream switches from the track to a grassy expanse. The sun is bright, shining through the clear sky. It is simultaneously somewhere Max has been before and somewhere he hasn’t, yet he still recognizes it for what it is: an overnight camp for drivers and their families at a karting race. There are motorhomes and cars everywhere, with people all around chatting and grilling.
Max is stuck in place, looking at everything from the perspective of a child. It feels like he’s only 140 centimetres tall. If he were to turn around, Max is sure he would see the tarmac of a karting track.
Suddenly a few blurs of colour run past him. Kids. The group of boys shouts and giggles, following their ring leader. Max catches a glimpse of brown swooping hair and knows exactly who it is they are chasing after.
He can only watch, along with the other boys, as Charles, huddled beside a tree, grabs a bottle of chocolate sauce and doctors up a piece of hot dog, showing the surrounding kids his masterpiece while holding a tiny hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. Charles’ little cheeks bulge for a second with the effort of keeping in what was sure to be a wannabe evil cackle. Getting a grip on himself, he holds a finger over his mouth to quiet everyone, before running over to a group of adults and offering it to a man wearing glasses with the biggest angelic smile. The man discreetly eyes the crowd of boys staring at him before taking a tiny nibble, immediately making an exaggerated disgusted face. Charles and his entourage dissolve into hysterics at the dramatic reaction.
Max finds his arms reaching out, straining to follow the boys and laugh along with them. It’s all he wants.
His feet simply refuse to cooperate.
Suddenly, Max is an adult again, grown to his real-life height. The scene is frozen, the tree leaves and people paused for a moment in time. Everything is still the same, except that Charles has grown too. The other man is the only thing moving. He looks over at Max, green eyes like a beacon, wearing a wicked smirk, and raises his eyebrows as if to say, "Won’t you join in on our fun? We can be friends."
The scene unpauses. People move around him in a rush, arms full of thankfully regular-looking helmets and racing suits. Max loses sight of Charles. Charles disappears.
Max wakes up.
- -
Not much of the dream has stuck around in the morning. After waking with a jolt, Max groggily flipped around in bed to see a blinking 4:00 on his alarm, peed, and went back to a dreamless sleep. He can remember something about a puddle and high-pitched giggles.
It does seem to have unlocked memories from years ago, though.
Max always saw Charles on the track when they were young. Ever since he was five years old, the little boy was consistently on his tail. If Max looked in his mirrors, some comically large helmet would be riding along not too far behind him.
Then Max started to see Charles off the track too. Charles was always running around the grounds with friends. Always up to no good (or rolling around in the grass with dogs).
Max might have been the star of the track, racking up wins left and right, but Charles was the star of the paddock. All young Max wanted to do was be in on his jokes. For some reason, Max is convinced they would have been the best partners in crime.
By the time his dad finally gave him a little free time to make friends, Max was too shy to break into the tight-knit group of boys that had been formed through the many series together.
Charles had disappeared years earlier along with the hundreds of other boys who never got to make it to single-seaters.
Now, Max sees his chance. He can become friends with Charles like he longed to for so long. Healing childhood trauma and whatever. Daniel is always preaching about Max’s inner child.
The hairdresser is not quite like the boy he remembers, besides the obvious physical changes. That boy was a brat and prankster, always with a scheme up his sleeve. The smirk a permanent fixture on his face. Charles’ eyes were all that were needed to express his true feelings, even when he was spouting niceties to interviewers. Max swears there is an interview out there with Charles trying his best to absolutely re-write the dialogue surrounding one of their racing incidents.
This man seems meek and a little subdued.
But that’s okay. Max missed the opportunity once to be friends with Charles and he refuses to not follow through now, even if he’s a little quieter than in his memories.
Yeah. Friends. Friends sounds good.
He phones his manager over breakfast. "Hey, mate. Can you please schedule my next haircut at LEC? With Charles." That’s Charles with a hard Ch sound and an s at the end. The way he has always pronounced his name. It sounds, and feels, much better than before.