*ೃ࿔ ≡ 🏎️🌫️🫧 .･*｡ max verstappen x driver!reader — — the one where max quickly realizes he's an all or nothing kind of man.
warnings! very heavy themes! attempted assault (nothing graphic), drugging, violence, blood, fighting, strong language, and similar themes are present!
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YOU DIDN'T MEAN TO FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM.
Though, that seems to always be the likely story. But you didn't. In fact, you both spent the majority of the fifteen years you've known each other— hating each other. From karting days when the most interaction you were willing to give each other were scowls and middle fingers— to your first year in Formula One where Max spent an outrageous amount of time cursing you out on his team radio (that of which earned him more community service that he fully blamed on you).
Truly, you think at one point, you did hate Max Verstappen's guts. He made it so easy back then. All he cared about was winning, driving faster, being better. And back then— you didn't care that the monster under his bed was his father. Because so was yours. You had similar demons, and it made the fire rage so much hotter. All the insults you threw at each other were verbatim from what you both heard from your overbearing fathers.
Blaming your failures on each other so you both didn't crumble under the weight. Easier to blame someone else, yell at someone else, when the real person you hate is also the person signing the checks.
Fifteen years later, now rivals in one of the most prestigious sports in the world, the fire burned with someone different.
You wore red, looked good in it too. The prancing principessa of Ferrari, the red devil, the lion hunter— whatever they called you in the media these days. Didn't matter really, only results did. And you made sure that you weren't a waste of money or a PR disaster. Two championships later, you had skin in the game.
He wore blue, looked just as good. Mad Max, the flying dutchman, the lion, and all the many more names they thought up for him. Three championships of his own, skills behind a wheel that could cash the checks his fat mouth signed. No one was ever doubting whether or not he was a good driver, not even you.
It was like expecting fire and gasoline not to mix.
You didn't, not for years. You couldn't afford to be anything different than professional with every single man you worked with. You'd worked too hard, burned too many bridges, cried too many tears, bled too much blood, just to throw it away and be called a paddock bunny. Years of being Max's worst nightmare dressed in all red, showing him that Lewis Hamilton was a rival of his dreams compared to you. You never let him misstep, misspeak, or mess up. You were watching him, always there to profit.
And it was always thrown right back at you. It was just how it was.
Until it wasn't. Until one argument got taken outside of the club one night after a race during celebrations and it ended up with you taking every inch Max was giving you in the back of your vintage Ferrari.
