Chapter Text
At the far end of the pit, the air seemed to shimmer—as if warped by heat haze.
Max didn’t need to look twice to know the cause.
After only a few steps, a cloying sweetness scraped unpleasantly at his nose. Beneath it lingered the faint, artificial bite of deodorant patches—just enough to announce that the dosage had been misjudged. Again. How many times had this been now?
He exhaled deeply, as if trying to force the scent out of his system, and shifted his gaze to its source.
Yuki.
Just two races into the season, Max’s former partner had already been replaced without mercy. He found the team’s readiness to discard a promising young driver distasteful, but even so, he had allowed himself a measure of expectation for his new teammate. Yuki had driven for the second team before; they shared the same junior program roots. They’d crossed paths during promotional events, and Max had found his straightforward, easygoing nature agreeable enough.
More importantly—Yuki was an omega.
In a sport fought at over three hundred kilometers per hour, omegas were rare. Even for Max, with his long career, having an omega as a teammate had happened only a handful of times. And precisely because of that rarity, he missed the sense of fulfillment those partnerships had brought him. This time, he’d hoped for a stable, lasting relationship with a teammate.
But the man who arrived was not what Max had hoped for.
Yuki couldn’t rely on others. As an omega, and as a teammate, that was a fatal flaw.
He had told him again and again that an omega should depend on their alpha. Each time, Yuki brushed the words off with a vague smile. If it were only a matter between the two of them, Max might have endured it—but Yuki neglected even his own self-management. An omega was supposed to share changes in condition with the team, to keep a clear grasp on their state at all times. Yuki didn’t seem to understand that.
Left unchecked, it would put the team at risk.
Even when Max explained it that way, Yuki responded with little more than agreeable noises and a smile.
"Yuki."
At the sound of his name, Yuki’s shoulders jolted. After a brief pause, he looked up, dark eyes wide and unreadable as ever.
"Hey, Max. Um… what’s up?"
"You don’t look well. You should go to the medical room."
It seemed the thought hadn’t crossed Yuki’s mind at all. His eyes widened further, blinking several times in surprise. Realizing that he was the first to comment on the scent today, Max let out a quiet breath of relief and reached out, brushing a hand over the nape of Yuki’s neck through his undershirt.
"Can’t you tell? Your scent’s leaking."
"No way… I put the patches on properly—"
"…The amount changes with your condition. I told you that before. Yuki, this isn’t just your problem."
Frowning at the scent that insistently stirred his instincts, Max spoke slowly, carefully—like a teacher restraining his patience. Yuki truly was a poor student. What Max had wanted was a teammate who could grow alongside him.
"…Sorry."
Yuki drew in a breath and let the small apology slip out. No matter how many times Max told him apologies weren’t necessary, Yuki never seemed to understand. Perhaps it eased his own guilt—but to Max, it felt uncomfortably like an accusation.
"There’s no need to apologize. Come on, go to the medical—"
"I’ve got extra deodorant patches! And—uh—this test run… I really want to finish it."
A machine test with the test team. They were about to switch drivers and head out. Was it really worth insisting on, while leaking pheromones? Max couldn’t understand what his teammate was thinking. It was rare to be this incapable of mutual understanding.
"No matter how many patches you use, they only mask the scent. They won’t stop what’s happening to your body."
"I’m really fine. I just want to check the car myself."
As a driver, Yuki’s insistence was reasonable. Acknowledging that further argument would only sour the mood in the pit, Max gave a reluctant murmur of assent.
"Ah—thanks."
The sweet scent intensified along with Yuki’s fleetingly brighter expression, and Max immediately regretted his decision. He watched Yuki jog toward the back of the pit.
Smaller than anyone else there—smaller even than some of the beta women—why did he never learn, never do anything but flinch and brace himself? If he would just rely on others, the whole team would protect him. Max included. That was an alpha’s joy, and it translated directly into performance. The omegas he’d partnered with before had understood that well—satisfying Max, and themselves, and producing results.
Yuki wanted to be recognized for his achievements as a driver. From that perspective too, Max couldn’t understand the current situation.
When Yuki returned, the scent had faded somewhat. He looked up anxiously, as if seeking confirmation. Max gave a small nod and turned back toward his own car.
He was already exhausted by the futility of the exchange.
The moment Max returned to the pit and removed his helmet, he regretted his lenient decision.
He had felt something off even during the run. Through the helmet, he had hoped it was nothing more than a trick of the senses, a baseless worry. But now—even through his mask—there was no mistaking it: a dense, cloying scent that seemed to rattle his brain filled the air. He didn’t know whether the stereotype about Japanese people having faint body odor extended to pheromones as well, but Yuki’s usual scent had been subtle, like a light floral note. Now, that sweetness had thickened, crushed beneath the artificial smell of deodorizing patches, spreading through the pit in a warped, distorted form. What Max found unbelievable was that Yuki himself—and the surrounding members of the test team—were carrying on conversations as if nothing were wrong.
"...Max?"
Holding his helmet in one hand, Max had appeared without a word. Yuki tilted his head in confusion. As members of the test team turned their gazes toward them, Max silently grabbed Yuki by the arm. Yuki stumbled, thrown off balance by the sudden action, but Max didn’t even glance at him as he continued forward unilaterally.
"Hey, w—what are you doing? The test isn’t—"
"Are you out of your mind? You’re going to get back in the car like this? Do you want to crash again?"
"—!"
"Hah. Fine. You seem good at burning through the team’s budget. Might as well put that same enthusiasm into mismanaging yourself."
The tension drained from Yuki’s arm. Somewhere behind them, Max heard a muffled groan—maybe Japanese, maybe English—but he ignored it. Right now, he had neither the patience to be considerate of an uncomprehending teammate nor the composure to hide the frustration he’d been carrying for a while.
The test team was composed mostly of betas, but of course there were alphas and omegas among them as well—just like the rest of the team. And one of the men who had been clustered near Yuki earlier, an alpha, had clearly noticed Yuki’s scent, heat smoldering in his eyes. If Yuki didn’t learn proper self-management, it was obvious that trouble would arise within the team sooner rather than later. Red Bull was like home to Max. He couldn’t hide his anger toward an omega who posed a risk to that home.
On the way, Yuki was compliant. He didn’t stop, didn’t try to turn back—he simply hung his head and allowed himself to be dragged to Max’s destination. When the door opened and Yuki looked up, what met his eyes were several medical staff members staring at them in surprise.
"Uh—what happened—"
"He’s showing signs of heat. He doesn’t seem to be aware of it."
Max cut in over the staff member’s startled attempt at a question, delivering the information bluntly. At the word heat, all eyes in the room turned to Yuki at once.
"What do you mean he didn’t notice? Yuki, how have you been managing your heat schedule?"
"You were paired with an alpha on your previous team, weren’t you? There should be data from that time."
"Any changes in how you’re feeling? And the scent—alphas can definitely pick it up."
Questions rained down one after another. Overwhelmed and unable to process any of it, Yuki allowed himself to be guided into a separate room. Once he’d handed Yuki over, Max leaned back against the wall, feeling as though his role was finished, and watched as Yuki—eyes trembling with anxiety—disappeared beyond the thin door.
───
Yuki POV
"Yuki, can you answer our questions?"
It was a white room. Spoken to again—slowly this time, clearly—Yuki came back to himself and looked up at the faces of the medical staff lined above him. From the words that had reached his ears through the haze, he pieced things together and awkwardly twisted his lips into something resembling a smile.
"Yes, um… I mean—I'm okay. It's heat, right…? I’ll take suppressants, so… I’ll be fine."
Suppressants he hadn’t taken since the day he first met Max as his teammate. He had been using them since he was ten years old, and he knew their effects well. They were powerful—so much so that until he debuted as an F1 driver at twenty, no one had ever sensed even a trace of omega traits in him.
The female medical staff member frowned, clearly not understanding his answer, and sat down beside Yuki, who was perched uncomfortably on the bed. The room filled with a scent meant to have a calming effect on omegas. Yuki couldn’t tell whether it came from an aroma diffuser or from the perfume of the person next to him.
"...We don’t recommend using suppressants. We explained that when you joined this team, didn’t we? We’re expecting you to fulfill your role as an omega as well. And now that you have a partner, suppressants only pose unnecessary risks due to side effects."
Your role as an omega.
Those words, spoken when he was promoted to the championship team, carried the same cold weight as when he had debuted in F1. Without realizing it, Yuki wrapped his arms around himself, as if to protect his own body.
In the motorsport environment Yuki grew up in, in Japan, omegas were never wanted. His father, who said he wanted to raise him into a top driver, and the instructors at the school who had taught him kindly—everyone showed disappointment once they learned he was an omega. What he gained after desperately working to prove his worth was suppressants, which normally wouldn’t be prescribed until after puberty.
"When did you start using suppressants?"
"When I was ten… They said starting early would make them more effective…"
That had been what his instructor told him.
When Yuki was in middle school, an outside coach had argued that overseas, understanding of secondary genders was improving, and that Japan’s environment was distorted. Yuki remembered watching from afar as his instructor dismissed that claim outright. At the time, he hadn’t cared—but once he moved his base overseas, he felt it keenly. Even so, he had already come too far to turn back on his own.
The crease between the medical staff member’s brows deepened. She didn’t respond immediately, biting her lip as if weighing her thoughts.
"...Is this the first time you’ve stopped using them?"
"No… When my F1 debut was decided. I stopped for two years. Then, I continued taking them again until recently, before this new pause…"
Even after moving abroad, things hadn’t been that difficult. He’d managed to perform well while keeping his secondary gender suppressed. But that didn’t work in F1—the stage he’d always dreamed of. He’d pleaded to keep going as he was, but the team had been unforgiving. Omegas had their role, alphas had theirs; they were meant to elevate each other. His teammate at the time was an alpha, and suppressing his omega traits was deemed nothing but a disadvantage to the team.
"Why only two years?"
"...Because… my heat came."
Yuki’s head still wasn’t working properly. His lips simply traced the fragments that remained in his memory.
The omega traits that had been forcibly suppressed by medication since childhood didn’t resurface immediately even after he stopped taking them. His teammate—who never once looked displeased by such a defective omega—had guided him like an older brother. When that teammate told him he was transferring teams, he still promised to support Yuki to the very end. It was Yuki who hesitated to tell him that his first heat had arrived. Afraid of burdening his busy teammate, Yuki chose to rely on the familiar medication instead.
"Your first heat… alone? Using medication?"
The medical staff member raised her voice despite herself, then covered her mouth in shock. What had the medical staff of the second team been doing back then? At the very least, an omega forced to face their first heat due to team circumstances should never have been left like that.
"I didn’t have enough pills… um, so I took three more…"
His first heat had happened in a cheap hotel in the UK. It was during one of those long stretches of rain so typical of England; he remembered the groceries he’d stocked up on growing mold. Too afraid to contact an alpha, he locked his phone in the safe.
Even after throwing up, the heat kept surging from deep within his body. The stimulation he tried to create with his own hands only turned into pain. Clinging to the suppressants for something—anything—he ended up with nothing but nausea and headaches, laughing through tears at how stupid he was.
"It didn’t work at all… I called out, but because I’m a useless omega… ah, no—that’s not—sorry. Yes. I was alone, and then… I started taking suppressants again, until now… so I’m sorry. I don’t know my schedule, and the deodorizing patches—I read the instructions, but… I’m sorry. I’m just not used to any of this, and I caused trouble for everyone…"
He startled at the sound of his own voice when he remembered calling someone’s name—sweet, clinging, a sound he never wanted to hear again. A chill ran through him, and Yuki’s head cleared slightly. Still unable to organize his thoughts, he spilled out whatever words lingered in his mind, shaking his head as he tried to answer as simply as possible.
After waiting several seconds for the next question, Yuki looked at the medical staff as if to confirm the silence. Her eyes trembled faintly, her lips quivering as though she were holding something back. Even the sound of note-taking had stopped among the other staff standing around. Confused, Yuki tilted his head.
"Um… I’m sorry. I’m bad at explaining things…"
"You're not a burden!"
The medical staff member sitting beside him blurted out the denial and pulled the bewildered Yuki into a hug. To her, Yuki had been a troublesome omega—ignorant of his own secondary gender, unwilling to learn. She had assumed he was selfishly abusing suppressants, rejecting proposals from the second team and disrupting the team’s order. That was why she had treated him more harshly than necessary. Now, she understood that it was precisely because of his environment—because he’d grown up ignorant—that he’d been kept at a distance from the medical team.
"You’re not a burden at all. I’m sorry. We should have properly understood your situation."
Yuki only grew more confused as the medical staff member suddenly began to cry. Still in his racing suit, having been dragged here by Max, Yuki couldn’t even offer her a handkerchief. As she continued apologizing, he awkwardly patted her back. No one in the room noticed the sound of footsteps shifting on the other side of the thin door, stirred by her sobs.
───
Max had never intended to eavesdrop on his confession.
He had only been about to move to a chair, following the medical staff’s casual suggestion. That was all.
It was just that the words suppressants and ten years old reached his ears—and his feet stopped moving.
Judging by her reaction, the medical staff member who had been making coffee must have heard it too.
They both ended up frozen in front of the thin door.
Yuki’s clumsy confession drifted out, sounding almost intoxicated, dreamlike.
It was more than enough to turn what Max had believed to be justified anger—righteous indignation, even—into something heavy with guilt.
If the coffee machine alarm hadn’t gone off, snapping them back to reality, Max and the staff member might have come to their senses only after physically colliding with the door.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. We’ve finished the interview and the examination."
The medical staff member, eyes and nose reddened, gave a small sniff and looked down at the two of them, both holding up coffee cups.
"Thank you. How is he?" Max asked.
"He’s calmed down with a sedative. I think he’ll be able to return once he’s a bit more stable, but…"
She cast a brief, assessing glance at Max.
Understanding the implication, Max raised his free hand lightly.
"I’m a responsible alpha."
She smiled. "Good. That reaction tells me—you heard everything, didn’t you?"
"The walls are way too thin," Max replied dryly. "Hardly any respect for privacy."
With that, he downed the remaining coffee in one gulp and stuck out his tongue in an exaggerated gesture.
The staff member let out a polite chuckle and slipped several documents from the binder in her hands, offering them to him.
"These are the kind of pamphlets we usually give to junior team kids. Do you think he might need them?"
They were basic explanations of secondary genders—alpha and omega—heat management, illustrated in simple diagrams.
They weren’t much different from what Max himself had been shown as a child. He let out a short laugh and shook his head.
"I’ll teach him. Or am I officially disqualified as an instructor now?"
"At the very least," she said calmly, "he’s afraid of you. You should’ve seen how pale he was when you dragged him in."
"I’m reflecting on that," Max replied. And he meant it.
The teammate he had labeled a disappointment—someone endangering the team—had been a victim.
The idea that a ten-year-old child could be made to regularly take suppressants—medication with side effects concerning even for adults—was unthinkable.
Secondary gender was neither something to be ashamed of nor something to suppress.
Twisting it that way was an act worthy of condemnation—one that could destroy the future of a precious driver.
In reality, Yuki had been twisted by his environment.
If he’d been given proper education and experience like other omegas, how extraordinary might he have become?
"…Do you think he hates me now?"
Max had believed he was doing everything right.
But knowing Yuki’s background now, he couldn’t deny that his actions might have been cruel.
If Yuki had been a child newly awakening to his omega traits, Max knew he would have spoken gently—even if it wasn’t the first time.
And yet, part of him still wondered about professionalism, about responsibility.
The stubbornness of that thought made his brow furrow.
"You’re teammates," the staff member said evenly. "You’ll have plenty of chances to talk."
She didn’t deny his feelings or try to comfort him outright, and Max answered with a small, quiet smile.
Teammates.
A pitiful teammate—celebrated when acquired, discarded when deemed disappointing.
"Oh, I’ll go explain how to submit a heat report to Yuki," said the staff member who’d been eavesdropping with him, standing up.
Max followed him with his eyes, then spoke just as the man reached the door.
"I’ll do it."
Ignoring the attention of the surrounding staff, Max stood up casually.
"I am his alpha, after all."
No one stopped him.
Only the female medical staff member across from him shot him a dissatisfied look, but she said nothing.
He placed a reassuring hand on the shoulder of the staff member hesitating by the door and reached for the doorknob.
In that moment, he remembered the sound Yuki had made earlier—the small, pained noise when Max had grabbed his hand.
The voice he hadn’t been able to understand when he’d hurled that sarcastic remark at him.
What had Yuki said then?
It was only a few seconds, but Max stood frozen.
The other staff member looked up at him, concerned.
"It’s nothing," Max muttered flatly, and turned the knob.
"Yuki."
In the white room, Yuki’s black hair stood out starkly as he sat dazed on the bed.
Max called his name, carefully suppressing emotion—but he couldn’t tell if he succeeded.
"Max… oh, you waited for me? Don’t you have a test run too?"
Yuki murmured his name, then seemed to snap back to himself and hurriedly shifted his body.
Seeing that, Max felt a wave of relief—his condition seemed a little more stable.
"Don’t worry about that. Uh… how are you feeling? I want to explain how to submit a heat report."
"Ah—yeah. I’m okay, but…"
The vague answer made Max raise an eyebrow.
Yuki shifted uncomfortably, rocking slightly, and looked up at him hesitantly.
"If it’s just an explanation, I can ask the medical staff. And, um… if you go back now, you might still make the test run. At least you should."
"Yuki."
The volume of his voice was louder than he’d intended.
Yuki flinched, shoulders trembling, swallowing his words.
Max had seen this before.
And in that instant, he understood clearly—to Yuki, my voice sounds like shouting.
Before that realization could spiral further, Max forced his tone into something calmer.
"I told you already—don’t worry about that. I’m going to explain the heat report process now. After that, you and I need to act together. It’s more efficient than going back to the pit, running a single lap, and returning here again."
Facts. Short, clear explanations.
This was how adults had taught him as a child.
How he’d always instructed juniors.
He’d believed it was effective.
But watching Yuki go pale in front of him, Max realized—at least for this teammate, it wasn’t.
"I’m sorry… for interfering when I don’t even understand anything…"
Fear—an omega’s fear—mingled faintly with the scent of sedatives.
"No. For now… let’s just do what needs to be done. We can talk afterward."
Had he always felt irritation toward Yuki, back when he thought he was carelessly leaking pheromones?
A dull ache spread through Max’s chest as he spread the papers he’d snatched from his eavesdropping partner in front of Yuki.
Watching the small crown of Yuki’s head tilt downward, Max began lining up excuses in his mind—for everything he’d said and done until now.