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The navy-blue polo felt wrong when he put it on for the first time in years. Daniel expected it to feel comforting, like coming home, and even though he would get there eventually, that first time he felt like a snake trying to crawl back inside his shed skin. He’d grown up and grown out, and it no longer fit the same.
Now he tugs a similar yet painfully different navy-blue polo over his head, the collar getting caught on his ears, and he’s certain it’s a size too small. Daniel read the label before pulling it on, knows it’s technically his size, but he can feel the seam of the sleeve digging into the underside of his arm, the fabric stretching taut across his chest.
Daniel’s last two weeks had been nonstop, nothing but go go go from the moment he woke up until the second his head hit the pillow. There were photoshoots and fittings and interviews and meetings, and only his excitement to get back in the car staves off the migraine he knows is growing just behind his left temple.
The soft chime of his phone rings from in his pocket.
Max
7:11 am:
Breakfast?
Daniel smiles down at his phone even as something painful lurches in his chest.
Daniel
7:11 am:
Can’t. Sorry, Maxy. Gotta be at the track early today.
He pulls his thumbnail between his teeth, hesitating over his next message before impulsively pressing send.
Daniel
7:12 am:
Good to know you’re thinking about me though ;)
Shoving his phone deep in his pocket so he can’t waste any more time waiting for Max’s reply, Daniel grabs his bag and heads out the door.
Daniel’s eyelids are sliding closed when a muffin, wrapped messily in a napkin, is placed on the table in front of him. He looks up to find Max towering over him, hands loosely wrapped around the straps of his backpack. His fingers flex against the fabric, and Daniel recognizes it as Max trying to keep his hands busy.
“Just because you have to be here early does not mean you should skip breakfast.”
“How do you know I didn’t have something when I got here?” Daniel counters, even as he’s leaning forward to grab the muffin. He breaks off a chunk and pops it into his mouth. Resisting the urge to moan, Daniel brings another piece to his mouth before he’s swallowed the first. Lemon poppyseed, he notes. Not only had Max brought Daniel breakfast, but he’d brought his favorite.
Max gives him a look that makes it clear he does not believe him, and Daniel just grins around the food in his mouth.
“That is disgusting,” he admonishes as he collapses into the chair next to Daniel. “Would you like to walk to the press conference together? When you are finished eating, of course.”
But Daniel is standing before Max has finished the thought.
“Great thing about muffins, Maxy. On the go food.”
As he makes his way to the door, Daniel notices the absence of Max’s presence behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he finds Max still frozen next to the table, his brow furrowed in confusion.
Daniel turns back around without a word, knowing Max will follow.
Even though he never fully left the paddock, nothing compares to a full press day as a driver. Particularly one where it seems like every reporter had gotten together beforehand and compiled a list of “questions to ask Daniel in every interview”.
He’d done his best to smile through it, tried to show the classic Danny Ric everyone was expecting, falling back into the rhythm of it like he never missed a beat. But everything started to pile up more quickly than he anticipated. The question about “going back to his ex” was a particular low point of the day, and Daniel doesn’t think he’d managed to properly thank Max for getting him out of that one.
Daniel lets himself fall face first onto the bed the minute the door to his room clicks shut behind him. He resists the urge to scream into the pillow, conscious of how thin hotel walls can be.
The adrenaline from this morning has completely worn off, and all Daniel can feel is the crushing weight of the love and expectations of the Red Bull family, heavy across his shoulders and forcing him down further into the mattress.
Because as much as Daniel hates to admit it, there was more than a little truth to the question.
Coming home, as he’s described it to anyone who will listen long enough, still feels like confessing, feels like admitting defeat.
It makes him feel like a child again, like the time he was seven and decided to run away from home after an argument with his dad. He threw his Gameboy, a change of clothes, and a week's supply of candy bars into his backpack and left out the front door without a glance over his shoulder. The sun already setting, all it took was a bat swooping low over his head to send Daniel running back home, diving into his parents’ bed and taking refuge between his mother’s arms.
His mother tamed his messy curls and whispered reassurances in his ear until Daniel fell asleep to sounds of summer, safely held at bay by those four walls.
Everyone at Red Bull was quick to express their excitement upon his return, but still Daniel felt embarrassed, like he should have been ashamed. He was as good as admitting he made a mistake, leaving the first time around. Why should they be happy to see him if he’d turned his back on them?
Now, slotting into the Alpha Tauri seat, Daniel still worries the support is conditional, terrified that the second he slipped up, the kind, encouraging masks would drop to show the ugly underbelly he knew existed just out of sight.
He forces himself onto his back, staring at the ceiling. His eyes follow the cracks in the plaster, branching off when one connects to another and trying to track the twisting paths until he reaches a dead end.
The soft buzzing of his phone, lost somewhere in the comforter, stops his thoughts from spiraling quickly out of control.
Fishing through the folds of fabric, Daniel absently wonders what sort of black magic is embedded in every hotel bed that makes it possible for them to entirely swallow your belongings the second you need them. A few seconds of embarrassing scrambling pass before he recovers his phone and falls back against the headboard.
A movie or music would have been a better idea, but Daniel can’t stop himself from opening Twitter and scrolling endlessly. He usually tries to ignore anything people are saying about him, knowing that it’s not healthy to obsess over it. But tonight it feels good, like scratching at a mosquito bite, your brain confusing the pain for relief until the skin breaks and you wake up with dots of blood dried on your sheets.
The first time he sees the quote, Daniel’s eyes dart up to the username, convinced it’s one of those times a fan changes their profile to look like a verified account. But the username matches what he’s expecting. He keeps scrolling. This time when he sees the quote, Daniel opens the article attached to the tweet, positive that whoever wrote the copy just got the words confused or that, maybe with context, it meant something different.
He scans the article quickly before he finds the corresponding quote.
He reads the paragraph before it. He reads the paragraph after.
He reads the whole damn article twice.
I never actually wanted him to leave.
It shouldn’t be the revelation it feels like. Daniel knows how Max felt when he left. Max had never been afraid to share his thoughts, and he certainly hadn’t held back then.
But to see this confession laid before him knowing that Max had said it with the intention for everyone to hear it— Daniel rubs at his sternum to dispel the tightness coiling in the middle of his chest.
In the middle of his worst moments with Red Bull, even when their relationship was the most contentious it had ever been, Max had never shown anything but complete trust and support for Daniel. And there was never a moment Daniel questioned his authenticity for even a second. Sometimes Daniel feels sick with it. So few people can understand just how overwhelming it is to be so unconditionally loved by Max Verstappen.
Truthfully, Daniel doesn’t feel worthy of it, of that relentless faith Max has in him.
His phone continues to shake on the nightstand, each repetitive buzz making Daniel’s chest clench like some kind of electric shock that flows over his skin.
At some point, the buzzing morphs to knocking, and Daniel scrounges up his last bit of energy to haul himself to his feet and pull open his door.
“You are ignoring me.” Max moves past Daniel and into his room without preamble.
“Good evening, Max,” Daniel quips back as he pushes the door closed.
Perching on the edge of the bed, Max looks up at him, eyes painfully clear and bright.
“Why are you ignoring me?”
Daniel scuffs his socked feet against the carpet, focusing on the way the shag gets lighter and darker depending on the direction it faces. “Just a little nervous, I guess.”
“There is no reason to be. The car is shit. But you are a good driver.”
And there it is again— Max cannot fathom for even a second that Daniel will fail.
“Yeah,” is all he can say. Daniel isn’t looking for platitudes, isn’t fishing for compliments from Max. The ones he gets already are enough to make him want to turn his skin inside out.
“Daniel?” He can’t reply, something viscous crawling up his throat, intent on choking him on his own words the minute he opens his mouth. Instead, he stares at his messy nail beds, at the dried blood on his left thumb from where he’d been biting at it throughout the day. “Why are you nervous?”
His voice cracks around the edges when Daniel speaks, not enough air behind the words to support them.
“Because this is it. I was out of options. I wasn’t even really supposed to have this.” This confession slipping between his lips seems to take something out of him with it. He collapses onto the bed next to Max, eyes cast down at his feet. “If I mess it up…”
“Then you mess it up.” Daniel scoffs, but Max presses his clammy palm to the side of his neck, turning Daniel’s head with the soft press of his fingers against the corner of his jaw. Max’s hand falls back to his side, and it’s like his touch burns Daniel, cold air outlining the imprint of his hand on Daniel’s skin. “Then you move on to the next thing and the next after that.”
Max pulls his full, bottom lip between his teeth, and some quiet voice in the back of Daniel’s mind tells him to touch it with his thumb, to let the pad of his finger tug at the skin until the wet, pink skin on the inside of his lip was exposed. He wonders if his touch would burn Max in the same way that Max’s burned him.
“You are not meant to be like this.” Daniel seeks out clear, blue eyes then, a small crease forming between his brows. Max is always direct, always clear, but still sometimes, Daniel thinks English holds something of him back. “You are good,” Max clarifies. “A good driver, a good person. It does not matter what anyone else thinks as long as you know that.”
Max’s love for him is blinding, like staring directly into the sun, and it lingers in his vision even after he looks away.
Daniel thinks Max is wrong— he can live with everyone else questioning him, he can even deal with his own self doubt for the most part. The one thing he knows he wouldn’t overcome would be losing this, losing Max’s faith in him.
That tight coiling is back in his chest accompanied by something fluttering behind his navel.
Daniel’s done a lot of stupid things, made plenty of mistakes, and he’s certain that he’ll make even more. But as he seeks out Max’s hand that rests against his thigh, twining their fingers together, he knows he won’t consider this one.
“Thanks, Maxy.” Eyes trained on their joined hands, Daniel watches a soft flush creep up the sides of Max’s neck and across the apples of his cheeks. He squeezes Max’s hand and smiles when Max squeezes back.
Before he knows it, it’s Sunday and the race is over and Daniel is desperately trying not to cry behind his visor. He feels stupid, crying over a finish without points, but it felt so fucking good. It isn’t some blazing trail back into racing that he may have secretly hoped it could be, but that doesn’t matter.
Daniel had been nervous about any number of things, but more than anything he was terrified he would get back in the car only to find out he just didn’t love it anymore.
By the end of 2022, putting himself in that car every weekend had been torture, and as much as he hated to leave, he couldn’t wait for it to be over.
Today was different.
Daniel felt excited to climb into the car, and his blood rushed in his ears, heart pounding when the lights went out. His stomach sank when he felt the contact in turn one, but he refused to let that be the end. If he had to drag pieces of his car around the track with him, he would.
He flips up the visor now, pressing his gloved into the corners of his eyes to hold back the tears. Climbing out, Daniel takes a deep breath, and for the first time in months, it feels like it goes all the way to the bottom of his lungs.
Press goes by in a blur, but this time Daniel doesn’t have to force the smile on his face.
Hours pass, and Daniel sits curled up on the couch in his driver’s room, texting his parents when someone knocks so quietly at his door that Daniel almost thinks he imagines it.
He stands up, every inch of his body protesting, but he just grins, more than happy to deal with all the aches and pains that come with driving again.
The door slides quietly open, and Daniel isn’t really surprised to find Max standing there, smiling his blinding smile.
“Can I come in?”
Daniel steps aside, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.
“Learned some manners I s—”
Max throws his body against Daniel’s, knocking the wind out of him as his arms wrap around his torso. His hands come up to fist in the back of Max’s shirt, pulling them even closer together. Daniel doesn’t know how long they stay like that, chests pressed together, heartbeats ricocheting off each other.
Eventually, Max pulls back, his smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes and his cheeks beautifully flushed.
“Still nervous?”
Daniel searches Max’s face then, desperate to find some indication of what he’s thinking. His expression is open, his eyes sparkling, and Daniel thinks, Yeah, fuck it.
“Not even a little bit.”
His hand slides up Max’s back until it’s cradling the back of his head, and Daniel closes the small space between them to slot their lips together.
Maybe he is a little crazy to come back, but if this is where it leads him, Daniel is more than happy to follow.