Chapter Text
Oliver Bearman was in the trenches.
The scrolling trenches. The doomscrolling trenches. The place where time was an illusion and Twitter (no, he refused to call it X, it was Twitter until the end of days) was both the battlefield and the siren song luring him to his own demise.
It had started innocently enough—one minute, he was checking if Ferrari had posted any new pictures of the car (they hadn’t, probably because they were busy sacrificing small woodland creatures to the strategy gods), and the next, he had slipped into the forbidden realm: Fan edits.
A dangerous place. A chaotic place. A place where reality bent like a Red Bull front wing under scrutiny.
Ollie had seen things.
Things that could never be unseen.
Charles Leclerc edits set to Taylor Swift’s All Too Well (10-Minute Version), flashing between rain-soaked podiums and heartbreakingly close finishes. Max Verstappen’s entire existence rebranded as an anime protagonist, complete with lens flares and Unravel playing in the background. Carlos Sainz edits where he looked like the lead in a Spanish telenovela about a cursed but devastatingly attractive vineyard owner (no notes, honestly).
Then—then—he had stumbled.
He had fallen.
He had tripped face-first into a tweet so monumentally unhinged, so cosmically deranged, that it single-handedly rearranged the fabric of his brain chemistry.
“Max and Charles share custody of the three kids.”
BOOM.
SHOCKWAVE.
His soul evacuated his body at the speed of a Ferrari pit stop (2.1 seconds on a good day, 5.6 on a day they decide to ruin someone’s race).
His mind collapsed like a Williams suspension encountering a curb the wrong way.
His spirit astral projected to a higher plane, where the great philosophers of old (Plato, Aristotle, Lando Norris with a McDonald’s bag) stared at him and whispered, "He is not ready."
But he was ready.
Oliver Bearman’s two remaining brain cells—one named Hope and the other Delusion—high-fived.
Because this? This was the most important thing he had ever read in his life.
His hands shook. His vision blurred. The letters on the screen melted into divine scripture, burning themselves into the deepest recesses of his being.
The tweet had 600,000 likes.
Two hundred thousand retweets.
Thirty thousand quote tweets, some of which were written with the unhinged enthusiasm of a cult manifesto.
And the replies?
Mayhem. Absolute mayhem.
🚨 | BREAKING: Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have been spotted engaging in a brutal custody battle over their three kids.
🧍♂️❗ @redbullracing @ScuderiaFerrari please explain???
Some lunatic had made a graphic like they were ESPN covering a dramatic sports trade, featuring Max and Charles standing on opposite sides of the paddock with the words “SHARED CUSTODY AGREEMENT?” in bold font.
Another had posted a tier list, ranking different drivers on how good they would be at parenting the “three kids,” complete with an analysis thread that went deeper than an F1 post-race debrief.
Someone else had simply posted:
“Leo is the favorite child. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
Ollie wheezed.
Then—then—he found the tweet.
The tweet that would change the course of history.
A reply. Innocuous. Dangerous. The catalyst of his newfound purpose.
“Bro just let them kiss already 😭”
And that was it. That was the moment of enlightenment.
The moment Oliver Bearman realised his fate.
Because if the internet already believed it, why not make it real?
If thousands of people could manifest a fake custody arrangement, what was stopping him from ascending to his final form— from becoming the most powerful nepo baby of all time—and simply forcing Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc to kiss?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Ollie threw his phone onto the bed like it was cursed (which, frankly, it was).
He sat up, mind racing faster than a DRS-assisted overtake, eyes glowing with the divine madness of a man who had just discovered his life’s purpose.
There was only one thing to do.
Only one mission worth pursuing.
Only one prophecy left to fulfill.
Oliver Bearman would not rest.
Not until Operation: GET MAX AND CHARLES TO KISS was complete.
Oliver Bearman collapsed backwards onto the hotel bed, arms splayed, eyes wide, brain melting like a Pirelli tire under extreme degradation. His phone lay discarded beside him, screen still glowing, the tweet seared into his retinas like an omen from the racing gods.
Max and Charles.
Custody.
Kissing.
The narrative was already THERE. The internet had done 80% of the work for him. The prophecy was self-fulfilling, a spinning Red Bull wheel of destiny, but it needed a final push. A spark. A catalyst.
And that catalyst?
Oliver Bearman, Ferrari's favorite nepo baby, the most powerful agent of chaos the grid had ever seen.
He closed his eyes. He needed to think. Strategize. Manifest.
This was a mission unlike any other. This was not a simple Twitter joke. This was not a casual meme. This was a coup d'état on the entire fabric of reality, and he would execute it perfectly.
He inhaled, exhaled.
His two brain cells, Hope and Delusion, fired up like a Mercedes engine right before it inevitably exploded.
Step one: Establish the target dynamics.
First, the fathers.
Charles Leclerc. Ferrari’s golden child. Monégasque prince. The human embodiment of heartbreak, a walking Greek tragedy in race suit form. He had too much emotion, too much passion, a man destined to suffer under the weight of the Tifosi's love. Max was the only one on the grid who understood this suffering.
Max Verstappen. Four-time world champion (and counting). Statistically a menace. A man with the emotional range of a brick wall, but when he did feel, he felt deeply. A menace, but Charles’ menace. Ollie had seen it—we had all seen it. The fights, the near misses, the shared podiums. The tension so thick you could cut it with a front wing.
This was not a crack ship. This was a historical fact.
And if two people already acted like bitter exes locked in a co-parenting arrangement, why not escalate?
Step two: Identify the weakest points.
What would push them together?
Charles, that hopeless romantic would fold like a cheap lawn chair if presented with the right dramatic scenario. Max was harder—he functioned purely on performance, results, and rivalry. He needed stakes. A challenge. A reason.
Step three: The perfect scenario.
It needed to be organic.
(Well, as organic as something engineered with the force of an entire Formula 1 PR department behind it.)
It couldn’t be forced—no, no, NO, if he told them to kiss, they would do the opposite out of sheer spite. Charles was stubborn. Max was stubborn. They were two bulls staring each other down, too dumb to move, too prideful to back away.
So.
What did people like them respond to?
What made a man like Max Verstappen do something stupid and impulsive?
What made a man like Charles Leclerc completely lose control of his emotions?
The answer was so obvious that Ollie almost sat up in a panic.
Rivalry.
Competition.
If he framed it as a game —a contest, a challenge, a battle of egos— Max would take the bait immediately. And if it had an emotional weight to it, Charles would get swept away in the moment, suffering beautifully like the protagonist of a tragic romance novel.
Oh, it was perfect.
Perfect.
Ollie’s mind was on fire, spinning through possibilities like a Red Bull wind tunnel test at illegal speeds.
Step four: The execution.
There were so many ways to make this happen.
1. The Fake Bet.
→ Option: “Max, Charles bet that you wouldn’t have the balls to kiss him.”
→ Outcome: Max immediately kisses Charles out of sheer Verstappen-stubbornness. Charles immediately malfunctions and overthinks it for seventy-two hours straight.
→ Potential Downfall: Charles might actually die.
2. The Podium Trap.
→ Option: Convince the FIA to do a special edition Monaco podium where the winners must “celebrate” like old-school footballers (read: kiss for the cameras).
→ Outcome: Max and Charles both win the race. P1-P2. Championship implications. The world explodes.
→ Potential Downfall: Red Bull and Ferrari both have aneurysms.
3. The "Accidental" Kiss Cam.
→ Option: Manipulate the cameras during pre-race. Make it look “random”. Force the kiss live on broadcast.
→ Outcome: The entire world sees it in real-time. Twitter combusts.
→ Potential Downfall: He will be sued by Liberty Media personally.
Ollie gripped his phone like it was the Holy Grail.
The path was clear.
The goal was set.
Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc were going to kiss and cement their legacy as co-parents of the grid, and he, Oliver James Bearman, was going to be the one to make it happen.
Because history?
History did not wait for cowards.
And neither did he.