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dpr-stay · 10 months

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Super-Fan | MV33

Max Verstappen x Badminton Player!Reader

No Warnings except a few swears

WC: ~4.5k

Oh boy, i love writing unserious fics about fully grown men like they’re awkward teenagers! They're just funny fellas your honour! Also can you tell I like writing dialogue?

Didn't edit and the writing style changed like six times, sorry!

The life of a professional badminton player can be described as a war between two factors: bankruptcy and passion. Well, less passion and more talent, to be completely fair. It didn’t matter if you had passion if you didn’t have any talent. The reason for this being it was virtually impossible to make any money as a professional badminton player unless you won tournaments or were able to take on thousands of brand deals.

Now, as a player with a considerable amount of talent but a huge lack of money, you had two options. You could either win more tournaments or take on thousands more brand deals. Of course, considering you were winning as many tournaments as you can, you had to choose the second option.

This meant you had taken brand deals with clothing brands, food delivery apps, animal shelters. In a time of desperation when you couldn’t even afford a coach you had even taken an opportunity to be an ambassador for a garbage collection agency, riding around on a garbage truck for a few days.

All of these deals meant you were moderately well known by the general public but incredibly well known in the small world of professional badminton players. Not only because of your brand deals though, but also your incredibly quick rise to being first place in many professional tournaments, even earning an Olympic Gold Medal for your country.

However, you still had to take on more brand deals. So, when your rich cousin came knocking on your door with a proposal to film a video for his F1 team about teaching him how to play badminton and you how to drive, you of course said yes.

I mean, who the hell would say no to Mercedes?

This is of course all build up to your current situation. Sitting in a badminton hall, which was full of people with cameras and various filming equipment, with your cousin sitting across from you in a chair. One of those fancy fold out chairs, you know, that should say director on the back.

You weren’t exactly sure how you were going to teach a professional driver how to be competent at playing badminton enough to where he’s good enough competition just as you weren’t actually sure how you were supposed to learn to drive in around an hour.

But that was a problem for future you, you thought as the camera men gave thumbs-up and George turned to the camera, PR face on.

“Hello everybody. I’m sure you’re wondering who I’m joined by and the answer to that is the most recent gold medalist for women’s singles badminton! Otherwise known as my cousin.” Ignoring the slight tease, you held up two thumbs up and smiled, albeit awkwardly, at the camera.

“Today I am hopefully going to become a pro badminton player.” He said and then turned to you. You both made eye contact and he signaled by moving his eyes for you to say something. You turned to the camera and clapped your hands together.

“And I’ll hopefully learn to drive and get my license.” You finished with a closed mouthed smile.

“Wait… you don’t have your license?” George asked and you turned back to him. Now aware of his shocked face, you slowly turned back to make eye-contact with the camera.

“No.” You slowly said. His large hand gently came into contact with your shoulder.

“You’re twenty five years old and you can’t drive?” He asked incredulously, you turning your head to now make eye contact with him.

“I’m a badminton player!” You tried to excuse, gesturing out with your hands and he shook his head, his mouth slightly open. His expression prompted you to try and explain.

“I can drive! Like I promise I can, I just don’t.” You tried to save, glancing between the camera and George.

“Yeah, because you don’t have a license!” He said, throwing his hands out, a grin threatening to spread across his face.

“I can leave. I can leave right now and cancel this whole thing.” You threatened, pointing down to the ground with what you hoped came across as power. George took a second to respond, steeling himself from laughing.

“How exactly would you leave?” He said, beginning to laugh. Your expression instantly changed into a stone cold one in response to his joke and you turned to the camera with a fed-up look on your face.

“Do you want a badminton lesson or not, you bastard?” You questioned him and he finally relented.

“Fine, fine. Shall we start?” He said and you nodded. After the cameras cut you both were quickly praised for how well you get along and your entertainment value before quickly being ushered onto a badminton court and handed rackets. The director quickly counted down before the lights turned on and the camera started recording.

George turned to you.

“We haven’t been given much direction so you’re just going to have to start teaching and hope it works out.” He smiled and you shot back a smile filled with as much joy as you were feeling.

“We haven’t been given any direction, so we’ll just get this out of the way. You know how to hold a racket, no?” You asked and George smiled guiltily.

“Maybe.” He shrugged, letting the racket drop from his grasp as he brought it up and clatter to the floor. You sighed and picked up the racket before giving it back to him.

“This is going to take a while.”

After roughly 45 minutes of the camera capturing you both making jokes and doing little Jim-from-the-office-esque cut away’s to look at the camera (and teaching George how to play badminton), George was ready to play a match.

You ducked under the net onto the other side of the court and held up the shuttle.

“I’ll take it easy on you, yeah? Can’t have you giving up the racket already.”

“Nah, I’ll be able to take it.” He dismissed, showing a smirk and waving his hands around. You deadpanned him.

“I think we should at least do one practice match.” He blew out air from his mouth in a mocking gesture and scrunched up his face.

“Nope! Do your worst, I’m sure I'll be able to beat you.” You raised an eyebrow.

“Or at least get a few points.” You tilted your head in question. He narrowed his eyebrows and sighed before admitting.

“I want to teach you to be able to drive.” You ‘ahh-ed’ and nodded before raising the shuttle again and nodding at him. He nodded back and you dropped the shuttle and hit it as a singles serve. George quickly moved closer to the net before gently hitting it over to you.

You, bearing in mind that he told you to do your worst, advanced quickly in footwork you’d practiced for over twenty-two years to quickly smash it straight onto the floor within bounds.

You made eye-contact with George through the net and saw him visibly gulp. You, then, turned to the camera and gave it a thumbs up before turning back and reaching under the net to scoop up the shuttle.

“I feel as though I’ve made a mistake.” He said and you huffed out a laugh.

“You asked an olympic gold level athlete to beat you at their game, it’s not going to go in your favour.” You fixed him an incredulous look and he just accepted what you said with a raised hand.

The game continued on, George not doing any better and you only continuing to prove your prowess at your sport. The ways in which George lost became increasingly more difficult to watch as the game went on, staff behind the camera having to muffle their laughs into their sleeves as George flailed around trying to return your hits.

It was down to the last serve of the match (score 20:0) and you geared up to do a fancy serve, aiming to land it just in the boundary line in order to make George run over to get it. Just as you released the shuttle, the door to the entrance of the gym slammed open, making both of you turn your heads to look at the intruder.

Max Verstappen was standing, still in shock, as he took in the sight of the Mercedes camera crew with many cameras pointed his way and the two players in front of him. He blinked as though coming out of a daze before awkwardly laughing.

“You alright mate?” George asked, focused on the guy in the doorway. While he was distracted you quickly tried to scoop up the shuttle, hoping George wouldn’t notice. “Oh yeah I’m fine.” The guy responded, his Dutch accent shining through in his words.

“I was just looking for Y/N.” You snapped your head to face him, ignoring George’s incredibly questioning look.

“Uhh yeah? Is something wrong?” You asked and the man bashfully (you read that right) turned to you. He seemed almost hesitant to speak.

“Can I talk to you after you’re done?” He asked, looking at your forehead to avoid looking at your eyes.

“Sure?” You said, questioning why the stranger who was also a world champion wanted to talk to you, and why he approached in the way a teenage boy approaches his crush.

He nodded and entered the gym, the door slamming behind him. He lumbered over behind the camera crew, holding some sort of bag and then just stood there and George made eye contact with you. You shrugged at the question in his eyes and the director cleared her throat, causing you both to look at her.

“We’ll start the take again, yes?” She asked and you nodded as did George before he paused.

“Wait, didn’t it fall to the ground?” All movement on the set stopped. You chuckled, albeit nervously.

“No, what are you talking about?” You asked, prepared to start gaslighting, a disbelieving expression on your face.

“I could’ve sworn you let go of it before… that happened.” He said, vaguely gesturing to the door, a grin beginning to spread on his face. You exhaled air and widened your eyes.

“Mate, I think we need to get your memory checked because I didn’t even let go of it.” You said, shrugging and George quickly glanced over to the staff.

“I’m not hallucinating this, no?” None of them replied. He frowned before saying. “We’re colleagues, you guys should have more allegiance to me than to my cousin.” He pleaded as you coughed whispering “Badminton Gold Medallist” very obviously into your fist.

He turned to fix you a glare.

“I am not hallucinating this. I think you’re lying.” You shrugged at his words, smirking.

“I don’t think so. I genuinely think you were hallucinating.” You said as you shook your head, staring at him in pity. He sighed before saying,

“How would your mum feel if she knew you were lying to me like this?” Oh he brought out the big guns.

“Ok, you’re right, I was lying. Please do not tell my mum.” You quickly admitted, holding up your hands and bowing your head. He started laughing as you quickly looked to the camera.

“My mother did not raise a liar.”

“You just lied.”

You snapped your head back to him.

“Irrelevant.” You pointed a finger in his direction and he started smirking, causing you to groan.

“Does this mean I get a point?” You groaned again and George started laughing as did the staff and camera crew. There was one loud laugh and, as you glanced in the direction of the camera crew, you realized it came from the intruder. What a weird turn of events. You had no idea why he was there or why he wanted to speak to you.

After his brief stint of feeling superior, George quickly served the shuttle in a way you could only describe as dramatic, only to hit it too short so that you got the point and you won the game. You shook his hand under the net, sarcastically thanking him for a fair game.

“Hey, I got that point fair and square.” He said, eyes wide and pointing at you.

“Sure you did, buddy.” You said and patted him on the back. He laughed and the camera crew cut the cameras. The driving part of the video wasn’t scheduled for another hour and it only took 20 minutes to get there and get set up, so the director called for a 30 minute break.

After this was announced George gestured at you to walk to Max Verstappen rather vehemently, so you did, cautiously approaching the man. As you approached he looked up from where he was focused on his phone, quickly turning it off and standing up to shake your hand.

“Hi.” He said, sounding almost breathless as he grasped your hand and shook it almost violently.

“Hi?” You responded, thoroughly confused but letting him continue his assault on your hand.

“I’m Max Verstappen.” He introduced, his eyes shining as he looked at you. You nodded, a small, disbelieving smile growing on your lips.

“Yes, I know who you are.” You replied and he inhaled air audibly.

“You do?” He asked, leaning a bit closer.

“You’re a bit hard to avoid.” You said before carefully tacking on “Not that I go out of my way to avoid you.”

“I’m kind of surprised you know who I am to be honest.” He said and you almost laughed at his humbleness. After a few seconds of him continuing to hold your hand he seemed to come to himself and let go of your hand. He cleared his throat before continuing.

“I don’t know if you know, but I’m a huge fan of yours.” You had not known that and wouldn’t have been able to guess that in a million years. But it definitely explained a few things

“Oh really? That’s cool, I’m flattered.” You smiled, realizing his incredibly odd behavior was him being star-struck.

“Uhh thanks.” He said before taking a deep breath.

“We started our professional careers around the same time, I don’t know if you know.” He started. “I know your parents always wanted you to be a badminton player, like how my dad always wanted me to be a driver, so I kinda connected to you on that.” You were surprised the man had so much to say, knowing of his usual reservedness or, in George’s words, ‘passive-aggressive-ness’.

“And then, when we started at the same time, I thought it was cool how we both kinda matched each other at how well we did in our sports. Like when I won the championship, you won gold. Yeah. I just thought it was cool.” After that huge speech he went back to looking at his feet.

“So you’ve been a fan for a while?” You prompted, finding his outburst cute. He looked up again to continue speaking.

“Yeah, I actually watched your Olympic final before the Hungarian GP, like before I had to get in the car!” He said happily and you paused for a second, a confused expression taking over your face.

“Didn’t you crash in that race?” You asked, a slight hesitation in your voice. Max frantically shook his head, laughing awkwardly.

“Uh no. Someone did crash into me though.” He said, emphasizing the ‘into’ as if trying to make sure you knew that he wasn’t a bad driver. You definitely knew though, the many texts you’d received over the years from George about the older man making sure that if you knew one thing about Max Verstappen, it was that he was a damn good driver.

You both descended into awkward silence as you sucked in air through your teeth and rocked back and forth on your feet. He wasn’t helping, after his correction he’d taken to clearing his throat and scratching the back of his neck. You opened your mouth to speak before closing it, having nothing to say except that this might’ve been one of the most awkward situations you’d gotten yourself into.

“I was wondering if you could sign some merch?” He quickly blurted out, snapping your eyes from the roof to his face. You could only nod as he took off his bag and opened it, revealing probably the biggest stash of your merch you had ever seen. You let out a quiet ‘wow’ as he started pulling stuff out and putting it on the chair he was previously sitting on, choosing not to comment on the way he flushed at your words.

His collection was expansive, there was team shirts from your first team, caps with your name on them, your country’s badminton jersey from the olympics with your name on it, a few banners, a badminton bag part of a collection you’d modeled for, and even more merch from all your brand deals. Did you know that you had a special edition of a garbage bag from that garbage company series or a pair of socks from a luxury sock brand? No, but Max definitely did.

He wouldn’t look at you as you took in the scale of all the items. He was probably single handedly paying your rent with the amount of stuff he had bought. You could only look on in awe at the magnitude. You kinda felt bad, you only had a cap with his name on it from a lame attempt to tease George at Secret Santa that backfired when the cap was launched at you and nearly knocked your teeth out.

“It’s not all, if you were wondering.” He said as he quietly stepped back from the pile and you turned to him, an heavily incredulous look on your face. You took note of George in the background of your vision, playing suspiciously on his phone, almost looking as if he was recording.

“Wow, you really are a fan.” Was the only thing you could manage to say as you stared at the array, stuff falling off the chair and onto the floor. You took a deep breath before slapping your thighs as you crouched down, grabbing one of the hats. You turned to look at Max.

“You got a pen?” You asked and he hastily retrieved one from his pocket and handed it to you. You chose not to address the way his hand lingered as it touched yours barely as he handed you the pen.

You signed the hat before reaching deeper into the pile, grabbing a shirt and signing it too. The cycle continued for a few items before you must have grabbed something that upset the pile and you were suddenly buried in your own merch. It’s always those closest to us we can’t trust.

The darkness encapsulated you and you tried to shake off the large mass, but your attempts proved unfruitful. After a few seconds you just resigned yourself to being buried in assorted items with your name plastered on it. I mean, when did you sponsor a lamp company and why was there a lamp with your badminton racket holding the lightbulb? How the hell did Max fit that in his bag?

After 30 seconds you saw light again, Max’s mortified face staring down at your splayed out form. His head was encapsulated by the stadium-grade lights and it was almost as if an angel was looking down at you from the heavens.

You tried to haul an arm up to hopefully pull yourself out, but you couldn’t move your arm. It was pinned down by a… was that a BearBrick version of you? You really have got to pay attention to the contracts you sign. Max eventually got the memo by the shifting plastic (?) and pulled the bear off of you, leaving you to sit yourself up rapidly with a gasp, like a swimmer getting their first breath after nearly drowning.

It took you a second to regain your senses, but when you eventually came back to normal you could hear three things. The silence that was permeating from the film crew who could only stare in barely-concealed horror, George’s raucous laughter as he struggled to hold his phone properly to capture you both, and Max’s rushed apologies, repeatedly muttering how sorry he was as he took your hand and hauled you so you were standing.

You took a second for your iron to stop fucking with you before you patted Max on the shoulder, him letting go of your hand in response and you leaned over to put your hands on your thighs, hanging your head forward before lifting it to see the catastrophe of your merchandise all over the floor.

Max hadn’t stopped apologising and you feared he might combust if you didn’t address it soon. You turned to him, taking in the way he was glaring at the floor and hadn’t stopped fidgeting with his hands, and you sighed. That only seemed to make him shrink in on himself, still apologising before you took his hand and almost dragged him across the hall, out towards the door he had entered the hall through.

There was a small paved walkway outside the hall, the pathway separated from the tin walls of the hall and the road beside the hall by two nice patches of greenery. There was a railing on the outside of the pathway and you leant back against it as you let go of Max’s hand and surveyed his form.

For a world champion, a man who should walk around full of pride, he really presented himself as quite small. Maybe that was just because of the circumstances, but he should be more confident in himself, you couldn’t help but think to yourself.

The way George had described him in his ranting sessions contrasted heavily as to how he was acting in front of you, all shy like. You wondered where the ballsy man who pushed people off track and didn’t really care went. If you were a two time world champion you’d walk around bragging about it everywhere you went.

‘Hey pretty lady, you want to go out? I’m a two time F1 world champion and I can make all your dreams come true!’ To be fair, that probably wouldn’t work on any self-respecting woman, but hey! There’s a lot of women in the world, Max could definitely pull at least one of them.

How did you get here? Your mind was just wondering about, you guessed. The man was attractive, so it did make sense you’d be thinking along these lines, but normally you have a three hour grace period where you decide if a man is a creep before thinking along the lines of if you want to… respectfully ponder his relationship status.

Max, unfortunately and probably against his wishes, had kinda come off as a bit of a creep, though you knew that if you told him that he would probably shrink in on himself like before and disappear. However, you still found yourself thinking about him like that. Maybe you found it cute, the way he was such a fan? Maybe you were just really flattered that such a famous person liked you so much? Maybe you just found his mannerisms really cute?

You didn’t know.

At this point it had been a minute or so of you both quietly standing there, Max having finally stopped apologising as you took his hand. You breathed out and Max’s eyes snapped to you.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t know that would happen, I wouldn’t have brought everything if I’d have known. I shouldn’t have brought everything, it was too much. This is our first time meeting, this was probably so weird. I didn’t mean to weird you out, I’m sorry. I probably just embarrassed you in front of all of those people, you didn’t deserve that.” The unspoken ‘I just embarrassed myself in front of you’ was heard loudly in your head, as you stared dumbly at the man who had just poured out all of his worries in front of you.

He went silent again, leaving you with time to process all he had said. While yes, it was definitely a bit much for a first meeting, why did you find it sort of sweet? And, to be quite honest, you didn’t really care about embarrassing yourself in front of the crew. As despondent as it sounds, you’d done worse for less. You decided to tell him as such.

“Nah, you’re fine.” You said and he looked at you again.

“To be honest, I just pulled you out because I didn’t want you to be embarrassed.” He opened his mouth to speak but closed it at your words. A pause.

“I’m still really sorry about this whole thing, I shouldn’t have stopped by.” He said quietly.

“How would I have known that two time world champion Max Verstappen was my biggest fan then?” You teased and he shook his head, a small smile appearing on his face.

“It was cute honestly.” You said, and his head jolted up to make eye contact, shock plastered all over his face.

“It’s kinda sweet to know someone so respected has such respect for me.” You said quietly, looking to the floor, a smile spread across your face.

“Uhh yeah, I definitely have a lot of respect for you.” He said, clearing his throat. You then looked up at him, like really looked at him. You took a moment to decide something before continuing to speak.

“Would you like to go for dinner at some point?” You asked and Max looked as if he had been shot for a second before jolting out of it.

“Pardon?” He asked and you winced. Alright, message received. You just awkwardly waved it off.

“Oh nothing, just something stupid.” “No please, what did you say?” A tone of desperation took over his voice and he grasped your hand. You looked at his eyes, genuineness shining through then. Ok, one more shot.

“Would you like to go for dinner?” You asked and he immediately started nodding his head violently.

“Yes, I’d love to! Can I have your number so we can talk about it?” He asked, and reached into his pocket to grab his phone before coming back empty-handed. He groaned, realising his phone was still in the badminton hall and you laughed.

“Of course, you probably need your phone though.” Max looked over to you as though to say something sarcastic but stopped as he saw your smile. You pretended not to notice and went to open the badminton hall door.

“Are you ready to go back in?” You asked and he groaned.

“We’re going to have to pack it all up and face Russell.” He said, resignedly, and you laughed.

“Sounds like a good prelude to a dinner.” And he smiled, looking back at you.

“It does."

You did eventually learn how to drive, by the way. It just wasn’t from George teaching you.

get the title now (i don't know how to embed spotify links so this is what you get, sorry) also probably my worst work but oh well

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