Chapter Text
2010
Mark really thought this was going to be his year. Winning in Spain was great, but winning in Monaco was fantastic. The celebrations gave him the illusion that he could raise his expectations for the following races, that what awaited him was the highest place on the podium, holding the first place trophy.
He believed it until Canada. At the same speed he believed he could achieve several victories during the season, Sebastian's car overtook all the others and took the victory. It wasn't just once, twice or three times. This is common, after all, all the drivers are there for the same goal and fought for it. What really upsets Mark is the perception that maybe his team didn't want him to win.
They wanted Sebastian.
Christian put his hand on the Australian's shoulder several times and said, with a tired look from the repetition, "No one here is sabotaging you, Mark. We are just as happy when you win as we are for Seb."
But that wasn't true. Sometimes Mark felt like an insecure child asking his parents if they had a favorite child, always hearing the same generic answer of 'Of course not, we love you both equally', only to have his favorite toy snatched from his hands by his rival before his parents' unseeing eyes.
Christian saw in Sebastian the potential he ignored in Mark.
Flavio has already told him on other occasions that the whole team talks about this, how they notice the difference in how the two Redbull drivers are treated in the garage. He has even told him what Sebastian says about him behind his back.
“The brat thinks he’s better than you,” said the Italian, spitting the words.
Mark only believed it because he noticed the looks Sebastian was giving him. He could feel the disdain even with the distance of 30 people between them. He tried his best not to respond to the blond's provocations, choosing the safest option of taking a deep breath and ignoring the younger driver.
There are few people he can talk to about it and complain about it, because most just say he's paranoid and that Sebastian isn't the villain he thinks he is. Of all the people Mark could choose to trust, he chose Fernando Alonso.
Unlike Flavio, who likes to stroke his ego, Fernando is a true friend who doesn't hesitate to tell Mark when he's being the jerk.
“Hey, relax,” the Spanish driver said, resting his hand on Mark’s shoulder as they walked together through the crowd of people. It’s the Silverstone Grand Prix. “You said it yourself that the car is good and Christian has high hopes of seeing you on top of the podium, don’t listen to what that ratón says.”
Fernando and Flavio are far from friendly with each other, the Ferrari driver does not hide his dissatisfaction with hearing the manager put absurd comments inside Mark's head, feeding his insecurity regarding his rivalry with his German teammate.
During training Flavio said he heard the team whispering around the garage about strategies that could benefit Sebastian in the race, which scared Mark.
The Australian smiles slightly at his friend's Spanish pronunciation, allowing himself to be pulled closer until Fernando's lips are close enough to his ear that the hairs on his arms stand on end with his warm breath.
“You should be more worried about me, because the back of my car will be the only thing you see during the entire race” he can hear the smile in his voice.
The strange approach between Mark and Fernando is nothing new to anyone, so no one is surprised to see the two together like that in the middle of the crowd. You could say that they don't stand out, but the Spaniard's red outfit is hard to miss. So they are simply ignored, inside their own bubble.
Mark's smile grows and he feels the phantom weight of worry lift from his shoulders as he turns his head to face Fernando. He's so lucky to have a friend like him.
“I’m not so sure about that”
Eventually they split up and each meets up with their own team. The tension creeps back into the Australian's bones, but he doesn't feel as bad as before. He prepares for the race, exchanges a few words with the team and looks at Sebastian, who stares back at him in silence.
Only one of the Redbull drivers came in first place that day.
***
Mark doesn't need to watch the race footage to understand precisely what happened.
He wasn't paying attention to what was going on around him, he was more concerned with staying consistent and not dropping positions. He was between Michael's car and Sebastian's, in second position. Sebastian pitted first and on the next lap it was his turn, but the mechanics weren't ready for him.
“Where are the tires?!” the Australian shouted from inside his helmet, watching the uniformed men run among themselves in the garage.
No one answered him, but a mechanic stopped next to him and said something to another mechanic, with a wary look on his face. Mark caught his attention with an aggressive gesture with his hands and asked again why there were no tires ready for him.
“Sebastian was here first, we didn’t prepare fast enough”
It had to be a joke. Mark expected the man to laugh and say that it was just a joke and he wasn't stuck in the pitstop because his teammate stole his tires, but the mechanic's face remained as serious as his own.
“Has Sebastian been here before?” he asked slowly, wanting to be sure of his answer.
The mechanic just nodded, and then new tires came out and Mark could finally get back on track. He finished in third place.
After the race, the Australian didn't want to talk to anyone on the team. Christian tried to stop him and explain the situation, but Mark shook off his touch and walked straight ahead. He answered interviews with a face as rigid as stone and ignored Fernando's attempts to get his attention.
One journalist in particular, who Mark couldn’t help but stare at because she vaguely reminded him of a crow, lifted a pen from a notepad and asked, “What’s the most important thing to you, Mark?”
Without hesitation he replied, “Racing, for sure. My career is the most important thing to me.”
The journalist wrote his words on the paper and then looked at it again, looking pitying. “You must be sad that you are getting old and have no family, if the rumors that you will retire soon are true.”
The Australian doesn't answer another question after that.
When he was ready to head back to the hotel, exhausted, Sebastian stopped him halfway.
"I need to talk to you"
Mark looked him up and down, noticing that the blond had already changed his clothes. For a second he expected him to be there to show off his trophy, but his hands were empty.
“I believe the party is on the other side, champion,” he replied strictly, not wanting to give the other person any room to continue. But just as Sebastian is stubborn on the track, he can be stubborn off it too.
Preferring to ignore the hostile tone of voice, the blond says:
“It wasn’t my idea, that thing with the tires. Christian said—”
“I don’t give a shit!” Mark exclaimed, interrupting “I don’t want to talk to you, Sebastian.”
Then he turned his back and walked away, leaving his problem behind.
***
After arriving at the hotel, he made it very clear at the reception that he didn't want to see anyone. Not even Christian, Flavio or Fernando. Much less Sebastian. He wasn't sure if it was something he could demand, but if his peace was interrupted by anyone, that same person would certainly be thrown out the window.
Mark first took a shower and then threw his body on the bed, closing his eyes and wishing that day had been a nightmare. He hopes that he crashed his car into the wall and hallucinated all that hell.
His phone had rung several times in the last few hours, but he pretended not to notice. He just lay there, pondering whether he had enough reasons to cry then and now without looking so pathetic.
Not sure how much time passes before the room intercom rings.
The Australian groans and blindly reaches for the intercom and presses it to his ear, without opening his eyes he answers in a tired voice “Yes?”
“Hello, Mr. Webber. I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a… situation here,” says the voice on the other end, maybe the same young employee who spoke to him earlier.
Mark sighed audibly, controlling himself from yelling at the poor person on the other end of the line. He also thought that this hotel should check the intercoms in the rooms more closely, as an annoying buzzing sound made it difficult to understand what the employee was saying.
“A situation?” he repeats.
“Yes, you see, you made it very clear that you did not want visitors…” the buzzing sound interferes with hearing the last part “…but this young man is being quite insistent and said he knows you, very convincing”
Young man.
Shit, Sebastian.
Mark opens his eyes only to roll them angrily “Did he say what he wants?”
“What?” the employee doesn’t understand what he says.
“Did he said-, fuck, sorry about that, tell him to come”
“All right, Mr. Webber, I’ll send him to your room.”
Mark hangs up and buries his face in the pillow. Just when he thought he was starting to feel better, his teammate remembers his presence and makes a point of chasing Mark like a dog chasing a bone. Until he completely destroys him, he won't leave him alone.
Mark growled grumpily when he heard someone knocking on his door. He knew that the hotel's reception had called minutes before to let him know that Sebastian was coming up to his room, but he still felt unwilling to get out of bed to answer the door.
He doesn't meet those familiar blue eyes when he opens the door, actually, he sees a boy standing in the hallway with a backpack on his back and looking at him with intense brown eyes.
Mark bends down and speaks in a calmer voice, imagining that he is the son of some fan who got lost inside the hotel. “Hi, buddy. Do you need help finding your parents?” He notices that the boy is holding a piece of paper in his hand, but no pen. “Or do you want an autograph?”
The boy raises an eyebrow and shows that the paper is actually a birth certificate.
“You are my dad”
Holy fuck.
***
To deal with this kind of situation, there is only one person Mark could call when he doesn't know what to do.
“Is this a joke?” Fernando asks, shifting his gaze between Mark, who is standing in front of him, and the boy sitting on the bed watching TV.
The Australian points to his own startled face “Do I look like I’m telling a joke?!”
“Calm down, this must be a misunderstanding. What did he say?”
“That I am his father”
“How did he prove it?”
“Uh…” Mark looked around until he found the birth certificate on the bed, next to the boy. He picked it up in a quick gesture and handed it to the Spanish. “With this.”
To Fernando's knowledge, it looks like valid documentation. He reads the written name and repeats it out loud.
“Oscar Jack Piastri-Webber”
With his name mentioned, the boy looks away from the TV and stares at the two men standing a few feet away from him. Mark wishes that hotel room was bigger.
“He might have faked it, why are you so scared?” Fernando asks, and the boy, Oscar, responds.
“I don’t know how to forge documents”
“Maybe, but someone knows and must have given this to you” he looks at Mark again and feels a chill grow in his stomach, seeing that the taller one no longer seems calm with the idea, as if he really believed that it was real “Mark?”
“I know his mother,” he replies, pointing with a trembling finger to the name next to his on the paper. “Remember Nicole, my ex-fiancée?”
Fernando looks at him in shock. Against the sake of his sanity, the Ferrari driver says:
“I think you should call Flavio”
After Flavio arrives, he reacts no better than Fernando. When the older man enters the room and receives the blank stares of the two drivers as a welcome, he asks with a nervous laugh.
"Who died?"
Then he sees the boy sitting on the bed and points at him, as if the two drivers hadn't seen him. “Please, tell me this boy isn't the son of any of you”
Only then does Mark begin to explain.
Nicole and Mark had been dating for 5 years before Mark proposed. The two were already living together in Australia and were happy to take the next step. However, Mark's career and fame began to take up too much space in his life, which made his relationship with Nicole difficult. Mark had mentioned her to Fernando before, when they were drunk and sat on the sofa at the Spanish's house one night, and the Red Bull driver said that he had almost gotten married once.
“If you guys broke up, why does he exist? No offense,” Flavio says to Oscar, who shrugs without caring about the crisis between the three men.
Mark scratches the back of his neck and hesitates to answer in the presence of a child. In a lower tone of voice, he says, “Uh, we slept together one last time, you know? As a goodbye.”
Fernando looks at him skeptically “And this 'goodbye' happened how many years ago?”
Mark does a quick mental calculation “8 years ago, almost”
The Spanish turns to talk to Oscar “Hey, niño, how old are you?”
Oscar responds, puffing out his chest “7 and a half”
The look Mark receives from his manager and friend is not reassuring.
“I don’t believe this story.” Flavio snorts and walks towards the boy, stopping in front of the TV to get his attention. “You may think you’ve managed to fool us, but a piece of paper doesn’t prove that Mark is your father.”
“Yes… yes!” Mark regains his confidence and stands next to Flavio, challenging the boy “The Nicole I know would never allow one of her children to walk around alone, so where is she?”
Calmly, Oscar searches for something inside his backpack and hands Mark a letter. The man holds it carefully and swallows hard, recognizing the handwriting of the woman he almost married.
“Read” the boy replies simply.
The letter, in Nicole's handwriting, explains that she apologized for never telling him about Oscar's existence before, as she believed it wouldn't be a good idea while Mark was so focused on his career. After all, there was no room for a child to grow up in the middle of racing.
She also says that she has the birth certificate to prove it and agrees to take paternity tests to prove that Oscar really is Mark's son. She says again that she is sorry for depriving Mark of knowing his son and…
“Blah, blah, blah. Read the important part now!” Flavio interrupts, impatiently following Mark’s slow reading.
From then on, Nicole's handwriting becomes confusing, as if she were writing in a hurry. But she explains that she is working on a social project in a country in Africa and that she will be without phone or internet signal for a few months, but that he could try to get in touch if he can (she left a phone number and an email). She urgently needs Mark to take care of Oscar in the meantime, but then when she gets back she will pick him up. There is no one else who can take care of him.
“No one?” Mark raises an eyebrow at the boy, suspicious. “Your mother preferred to trust me over anyone else to take care of you? And what about your aunt Isabel?”
For the first time he sees Oscar's gaze fall, as if remembering a sad event. Fiddling nervously with his fingertips in his lap, the boy answers hesitantly.
“She… she died in a car accident. A few months ago.”
Mark feels guilty for upsetting a child, but he also feels a little affected by the news. Isabel is Nicole's sister, who was the one who introduced them and was called responsible for bringing the two lovers together. She was always very energetic and true, almost like a younger sister to Mark, and now she is dead.
“Yes, very sad. Don’t you have anyone else?” Flavio broke that funereal atmosphere rudely, receiving hostile looks from the drivers “What? Am I the only one who wants a solution?”
“Watch your mouth, Briatore,” Fernando says, crossing his arms over his chest.
Mark is still not convinced by that story “How did you end up here, or rather, how did you find me?”
Oscar straightens his posture and coughs before speaking, “My mother and I live in Australia and she was thinking of a plan to leave me with someone responsible. She told me stories about you,” he smiles slightly, “She said you were going to be in England for a race, which would be great because her plane would stop here before heading to Africa. She drove me here and then took a taxi back to the airport straight away.”
“So you found me alone?”
The boy shrugs. “There was a man helping me, but I think he lost sight of me. It wasn’t hard to find you, your face is everywhere.”
“Yeah, I still don’t believe you,” Flavio says, furiously scrolling through his phone. “We need a DNA test as soon as possible.”
“How can we do this? We have to catch a flight tomorrow for the next race,” Fernando says.
“We’re not leaving this country until we know for sure whether the child is coming with us or not. I know a guy… don’t look at me like that, Mark,” the manager trails off when he notices the Redbull driver’s judgmental look. “I know a guy who’s trustworthy enough to do a paternity test within hours that’s truly accurate.”
The Spanish driver looks at him mockingly “Why do you have the number of a guy who specializes in paternity tests, Flavio?”
Three pairs of eyes stare at the manager who begins to sweat nervously.
“Are you really going to judge me? I’m the only one helping here.” He puts his phone in his back pocket. “He can come here discreetly and take blood samples… again, Mark, don’t look at me like that. So you,” he points at Fernando, “can go back to your hotel and keep your mouth shut about this. And you guys,” he points at Mark and Oscar, “are not leaving this room until everything is sorted out. And I’m going to call your mother.”
Oscar looks at him nonchalantly “You can try”
“I didn’t mean to say anything anyway,” Fernando says, ignoring the angry look from the Italian in the room. With a softer voice, he says goodbye to Mark. “I have to go now, but call me if you need help, okay?”
Mark nods, feeling the familiar weight of relief that comes from the Spanish man’s reassuring words “Thank you, Nando.”
“Excuse me, I’m the only one doing anything really useful here” Flavio huffs, following Fernando to the door. With one last look at the Australians, he says in a stern tone “Don’t leave this room, I’ll be back with the doctor in a moment.”
When it's just Mark and Oscar left, they both stare at each other like two strangers meeting for the first time. The man's hands have been sweaty since the moment he opened the door.
“After this is over, I’m going to have a very serious talk with your mother.”
A few hours later, Flavio returns with the suspicious doctor, who collects some of Oscar and Mark's blood. He says that in the morning, before they have to catch the plane, the test results should be ready.
“I need your documents if I need to buy tickets for you,” the manager says to the boy, who promptly hands him his passport.
“Have you talked to Christian?” Mark asks.
Flavio looks at him with wide eyes “Of course not!” He puts the passport in his pocket and wipes some of the sweat that has appeared on his forehead in the last few hours due to stress “We can’t allow more people to find out about this situation until we are sure whether or not he is your son. Only after the test will we put the plan into action”
“What plan?”
“Don’t worry, Mark. I know what I’m doing.” The man walks to the door, but before leaving he smiles and points his finger at the intercom. “Order dinner for the two of you, I don’t know when was the last time he ate.”
When they are alone again, Oscar looks for the menu near the bed and curiously reads the options. With his eyes shining, he says “They have ice cream here?!”
"Definitely not"
Dinner is quiet, if you can call it that. Mark doesn't know if it's more suspicious to open the door and show that there's a child in his room or to try to hide the fact that there's a child in his room from the hotel staff. Either way, he feels awkward.
Oscar takes a shower and puts on the pajamas he brought in his backpack, then lies down comfortably in the empty space next to Mark on the bed. The man stares at the ceiling, not feeling ready to sleep.
The sound of the boy searching for something in his backpack catches his attention and he sees him holding a book in his hands.
"What is that?"
“A book, see?” Oscar holds it up before his eyes, allowing Mark to read only the title of the story about the 3 little pigs “Will you read me to sleep?”
"I will not do it"
Oscar rolls his eyes and Mark finds this act very disrespectful to do to someone who might be his father. He puts the book back in his backpack and lies down on the bed again. “So tell me a story?”
“I don’t know how to tell stories”
“My mother always tells me bedtime stories”
"I'm not your mom"
“But you are my dad”
The two of them are silent for a while. Mark hopes the boy is already asleep, but then he starts talking again.
“Then I’ll do something else.” He shifts in bed and pulls some of the blanket off Mark, reaching for his backpack. Mark hates that backpack. He grabs a notebook and pen and sits down, ready to write.
“What’s that?” the man asks, frowning. The lamp on next to Oscar is the only thing illuminating the room, except for a crack in the curtain.
“My notebook, I brought it with me to write down as much information about you as possible.”
"Why?"
“Because I don’t know you. And I don’t know if you’ll still want to see me after my mom picks me up, so I’m going to write as much as I can find out about you.” Mark doesn’t have time to feel bad about hearing that because soon the questions start to arise. “If your house was on fire, what would you run to save first?”
"My dogs"
Oscar's eyes sparkle with interest. “Do you have dogs?”
“Yes, Simba e Sammy”
“I like these names,” he writes in the notebook. “What’s your favorite color?”
“I don’t have a favorite color”
“Everyone has a favorite color. Mine is orange, what’s yours?”
Mark sighs, thinking a little “Green… red”
“What is the most important thing to you?”
“The races,” he answers without hesitation.
Oscar continues writing.
“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” Just as Mark is about to answer, he and Oscar both respond “Chocolate…” “Chocolate!”
The boy seems happy with this information and Mark is tired of answering.
“I think it’s time for us both to go to sleep, tomorrow we’ll wake up really early.”
“One last question.” Oscar looks at him sideways, which makes some of his light hair fall over his forehead. His gaze is as intense as the first time he saw him. “What are you most afraid of?”
Mark swallows hard, feeling less patient now. He turns to the side, his back to the boy.
“It’s time for bed, Oscar.”
He hears the boy snort, making unnecessary noises as he puts his notebook back in his backpack. Then he feels the blanket move and the weight of the boy's body lying next to him. A few seconds pass and Oscar speaks for the last time before yawning and closing his eyes to sleep.
“My biggest fear is being alone”
Mark closes his eyes tightly and waits to wake up from this nightmare, not sleeping before whispering to the darkness “Mine too.”
The next morning Mark wakes up to loud knocks on the door. He opens his eyes with difficulty because the crack in the curtain he left open punishes him with the strong light of day. He almost believes that it was all a dream, but soon realizes that it wasn't when he tries to move and sees that Oscar is sleeping with his face pressed against his back.
He gets out of bed cautiously, so as not to wake the sleeping boy, and goes to answer the door. The sight of Flavio's disgruntled face and lips pressed into a thin line was not the image he wanted.
"What?"
Flavio gives him some papers proving that yesterday's test came out positive.
“Congratulations, Mark. It’s a boy.”