𝐒 𝐏 𝐑 𝐈 𝐍 𝐓 𝐄 𝐑 [max verstappen x oc]

twelve

The weekend flew bye and Lena's excitement grew every day. By Sunday, she was smiling as she walked into the paddock and said 'hi' to everyone she knew, even to people she didn't. And, she could admit, the race was cool. The cars, not so much, but the race in general was impressive. Max and Checo took it very seriously, giving Lena great content for photographs of them with headphones in looking extremely locked-in for the race. 

When Max won the Grand Prix, Lena was on him like a hawk, taking over a hundred pictures of him just cheering for his win on the car. 

One picture in particular was of him and Checo grabbing hands, both of them messy and sweaty but looking happier than ever. Lena liked it so much she made a point of mentioning it to Lilah, who took her suggestion gratefully and ended up posting it on their account. 

As she sat in her bed at the hotel room, Lena scrolled through the photos as they uploaded onto her phone. She'd already uploaded and sent them to Media, but she saved a few so she could look at personally. 

The shine of the metal car flashed her back to her bike, sitting at home collecting dust. Lena groaned, pinching the space between her eyes. She needed a drink. 

___________________________________

The rum and coke in her hands was doing nothing about her nostalgia. Hotel bars were practically silent, but this one especially was eerily quiet, probably because it was almost two in the morning.

 Today, when she was driving back from the track, Lena rolled down the window and let the wind whip her face just like it used to when she was biking back in Monaco. 

Wesley had never texted her, never reached out. Lena wasn't expecting him to do much but not even a text was a little surprising, seeing as how he implied he felt towards her the last time they spoke. Maybe she deserved it for not saying goodbye. 

Lena took another sip of her drink. 

"We close in thirty minutes." The bartender said. "Want a refill before?"

She considered it and decided, since it was their last night, why the hell not? 

"Thank you." Lena said gratefully, bringing the glass to her lips and sipping. 

The bartender smiled and returned to drying glasses. 

Lena would give anything to be on her bike again and feel the thrill of racing just one more time. Being around it made her anxious and agitated about it, and Lena realized that ditching racing to take photos of racing was teasing herself. 

She heard footsteps behind her.

"We've got to stop running into eachother like this."

Lena swiveled on the bar chair, her face dropping when she saw who was there. She turned back around. "Why are you here? I thought they put drivers in a fancy  hotel."

Max sat down a few chairs away from her. He wore what looked like his pajamas--black sweatpants and a RedBull hoodie. Lena didn't like the look on his face. "This is the fancy hotel. You get to sleep here, the mechanics aren't so lucky."

She felt overwhelming guilt at her words but swallowed it down with another swig from her rum and coke. "Hm."

They didn't speak for a few moments. Max ordered a club soda, Lena resisted the urge to make fun of him. 

"You know you can't fire me, right?"

Max raised an eyebrow. "Hm?"

Lena tapped the edge of her glass. "I looked it up. You can't fire me, you don't have the authority. And even if you told my boss to fire me, you would need hard evidence that I assaulted you, or committed treason against the company." She pointed at him. "I have done neither of those."