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The hardest year
Alex remembers it being cold that day. Partly because it was winter in Britain and he was barefoot and shirtless on the stone of the driveway. Mostly because he was fifteen and watching—helpless—as his mother was cuffed and shoved into the back of an officer’s car. He remembers crushing pressure too. From all sides. The pressure from the vice grip of his mother’s lawyer on his upper arm, dragging him back inside the house as they drove off with her. He remembers not being able to breathe. Drowning. Bruising his knees on the kitchen tiles when he hit the floor.
He remembers being held under deep ocean waters: cold, crushing, and air growing stale in his lungs.
At some point he had been shoved into a chair at the kitchen table while adults argued around him. Someone had spared him the kindness to place a glass of water before him that he didn’t drink.
They talked about the house being claimed for the damages. They talked about other assets—purses, jewelry. They talked about him, briefly, like he wasn’t there. About the racing. Then his sisters, their lives.
He didn’t know he was crying again until he felt a slap to the back of his head.
“Stop that,” his father said, finally arriving to the house. The action wasn’t necessarily unkind but it was firm, and Alex wiped at his eyes fiercely even as more tears fell.
He felt like he might die. Maybe he was, breathing labored as it was. How long until they gave out on him?
He laid his pounding head down on the table, as they continued arguing and he continued silently crying into the fine woodwork. If his dad noticed the shake in his shoulders he didn’t comment on it anymore.
He may have not moved for hours, he didn’t know. Then George was there. Alex would know the feel of his hand on his upper back anywhere.
“C’mon, Lexi.” Alex lifted his head just enough to see George’s face through the blur of his own tears.
“You’re coming home with us, Darling.” George’s mum. Car keys in hand and shoes still on. They weren’t stopping for long.
Alex stood when George’s hands guided him from the chair onto fragile legs. It was George who stooped in the hallway to tie Alex’s shoes. George who placed the coat across his bare shoulders.
At the door, George’s mum asked if he needed to grab anything.
“He’ll borrow mine, Mum. Let’s just go home,” George said.
The drive was silent and quick. Alex was grateful they didn’t live that far apart. Still, George didn’t let go of his hand the entire way.
Alex doesn’t remember much about that night at George’s house. He remembers curling into George’s body on his twin bed as the night grew dark. He could hear George’s heart beat under his ear as his head rested on his chest, George’s arm wrapping around his back and pulling him closer still.
He remembers he was still cold and crushed and unable to get the right amount of air into his lungs.
But he remembers that George was warm and soft and if anyone could drag him back to the surface it would be his best friend.
He didn’t die that day. Couldn’t. Because George had been there to keep him afloat just that little bit longer and his siblings still needed him. So Alex kept breathing, for them.
I don’t feel a thing
Alex remembers the feeling of his own bone as his fingers reached for his shoulder out of instinct. He remembers the fall, he remembers landing funny, and he remembers the initial pain that had him glancing over at the same moment his hand made contact with the exposed bit.
He threw up immediately. George was there at his side, like he always was, pushing his hair out of his forehead and trying to assure Alex between his own horrified murmurs.
George hauled him to his feet once he stopped gagging. “Hospital,” was all he said as he hooked his arm around Alex’s waist and led him down the trail.
He was moving (shaky, but moving). He was breathing (shallow, but air). He was fine. He was fine.
He was cold again, though. Like his brain was disconnected from his body. Like his limbs weren’t getting any blood and weren’t really a part of him anymore. His breathing was off, too. Not enough air up on the mountain, out on the trail. Not enough air getting to his lungs, heaving and clawing at his throat for a bit more.
Worst of all, there was no pain. Not after that initial glance. He couldn’t feel anything. That’s what scared him the most. His shoulder felt awkward but not wrong. Strange but not broken.
“George,” he managed through the sharp gasps.
“What’s wrong?” George turned to him immediately, hands immediately reaching to do, to help, without knowing the source of the issue. “Are you going to throw up again?”
Alex clutched at the front of George’s shirt, which was actually his shirt that George had borrowed some 2 months ago and never returned. “George, I don’t feel a thing.”
“That’s good, right?” George said. “You’re not in pain yet.”
No. Alex wanted to say. I need to feel it. I need it to hurt. He didn’t.
Because it wasn’t real if it didn’t hurt. He couldn’t ground himself without the pain. How could he be sure he was still breathing without the hitch in his lungs. He needed the break, the blood, the burn. He needed to know that he was still there after everything. It was the price of living and he needed to pay it.
He couldn’t feel a thing, and it scared him so much.
Later, at the hospital, Alex remembers the pain coming off the adrenaline high. He remembers feeling the break in his bone, the blood on his shoulder, and the burn of his torn skin.
He remembers holding onto the sensation. Clinging to the idea that this was all proof of his continued beating heart. That this was what life felt like, at least for him. He had to keep living.
For George, at his bedside through it all, at the very least.
A starving child will eat anything
Alex remembers Red Bull. He remembers it like an impulse, a habit, a mindset he could never quite break free from.
He remembers the words. The blame. The shame. The slander. The cruelty. He remembers the pressure. The demand. Every single fucking failure that was twisted around his throat until he couldn’t breathe again. He remembers every look. Every muttered insult. Every time he was told, to his face, he wasn’t—and would never—be good enough.
And maybe it changed him, he doesn’t remember that part. If he’d always skipped meals when he was anxious, or if that started with the Red Bull "nutritionist". Maybe it made him better, quicker. He doesn’t remember, but they said it did.
And that was all Alex needed. The idea that all of it—the pressure, the manipulation, the abuse—was making him better. That this was the cost of racing, and Alex could be good if he just held his tongue and took it.
Most of all, he remembers not being good enough for the final time. He remembers the day they told him—no remorse, no guilt—he was being demoted. He thinks maybe it was worse than being cut free like Pierre, being caged, chained as he was to the team spoon-feeding him poison. Having the chair kicked from under him but the noose still around his neck.
He got to watch the career he only barely managed to steal, slip from his grasp.
That was how it was always meant to go for him, though. He didn’t belong in Formula 1, he knew he wasn’t good enough from the beginning. His whole career was just waiting for them all to realize he wasn’t worth it. That he was hiding among the drivers who were actually capable.
He thought he was going to die then, too. Seemed like a fitting place. He was tired enough. Tired enough that death felt more like a good night's rest he’d never had. Maybe he wanted to die, and maybe he always had.
But George was there still, visiting the Red Bull garage just to see him. George was at his doorstep every time Alex didn’t respond to a message as quickly as he should. George was in his bed again, hand still running through his hair—no matter how greasy—on the days Alex couldn’t even manage to sit up.
He isn’t sure if he told George that he thought he might die, or if he just knew. He isn’t sure if George knew that he was the only thing keeping Alex afloat, or if Alex would ever tell him.
That year, he remembers the days passed hour by hour with agonizing effort, and every night was a gamble between something like sleep and actual, true rest.
And maybe it was only ever rest when George was there, Alex’s head on his chest. And maybe Alex tried not to remember that bit.
Drown in my own blood
Alex remembers George telling him to go to the hospital when the pain first started. He remembers ignoring him, even as it worsened and the nausea set in. He remembers staring in his bathroom mirror, wiping sweat beads from his brow, telling himself to hold his tongue. Telling himself he couldn’t lose the seat he had barely managed to sneak into. They would see how weak he really was. They would see him for what he was: a fraud.
He could push through the pain. It was a stomach ache, or food poisoning. It was pain regardless, and that was good, because that meant it was real. It meant he was doing enough to stay. He needed it to hurt. He needed to hurt for it.
He remembers collapsing in the engineering room. Remembers being rushed to the hospital. Remembers being told off for not mentioning his failing organ. He remembers feeling so exposed, so vulnerable, so at the mercy of those around him. He remembers falling asleep and not being sure if he was afraid that he might never wake up again or that he would.
Alex was floating again. He remembers the sweetness of it. The draw, the pull. Rest, true rest, unbroken and eternal. He remembers wanting so badly to just let himself sink into it and pray that in his next life he would meet George again.
Your lungs don’t work anymore. They’re filled with blood.
Alex thought it was funny that all his organs were failing him. Like they knew that he was worthless too. He might laugh if he was able to breathe.
If you hadn’t ignored it, you would have caught it earlier.
He imagines it’s George’s voice admonishing him in his thoughts. How was he supposed to know, Georgie? Ignoring had always worked before. He wasn’t meant to bring attention to himself. He didn’t belong, remember?
The surgery would have been smoother. There wouldn’t have been complications.
But Georgie, you’re so naive. There are always complications with him. He couldn’t say anything. He’s stealing, remember? Thieves have to be quiet.
You’re dying, Alex.
Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe karma caught up with him. Maybe his last escape was the final time and this is really the end. He isn’t sure if he wants to stay anymore anyway.
“You can’t leave me, Lexi.”
He’d miss George, though. If he tries, he imagines he can feel the gentle warmth of George’s hand in his.
“Please, Alex. You have to come back to me.”
You can’t ask him to do that, Georgie. That’s not fair.
“Please…”
And maybe if it was anyone else, Alex would have let himself sleep. Would have allowed himself to sink into the gentle nothingness. Would have chosen his peace over whoever was asking him to stay.
But wasn’t George who it was all for anyway?
Cockroach
His lungs were burning again. They did that from time to time, reminding him of what he had lived through. That he was a survivor.
But Alex had always been a different kind of survivor. He wasn’t a hero or an example of strength and persistence to look up to. He hadn’t gone on to bigger and better things. He hadn’t made a purpose of the life that he had barely kept grip of over the years.
He had merely lived through it. It was another week, another day. Another breath.
He simply couldn’t die. It wasn’t that he won’t. It wasn’t that he had persevered through to the other side. He just didn’t die. Most days he couldn’t find a reason why.
Most days his lungs burned.
Alex thought that maybe he couldn’t die. That it didn’t matter what was done to him. He’d live with it.
His lungs burned from it. Every race, every run. He really shouldn’t have gone to Singapore in 2022. Toughest race, weakest him. Maybe his lungs wouldn’t burn then.
The worst part of the whole thing, really, had been what it had done to George. He’d never meant to worry his best friend like that. If he could go back, he’d tell his parents not to call George, that’d he’d be fine and they shouldn’t distract George from Monza. But he couldn’t tell them because his lungs had filled with blood and he was in a coma.
He had woken up though. And maybe it was for George. Maybe all of it was.
Alex thought that maybe he couldn’t die. And maybe he couldn’t die because of George.
His lungs still burned from it.
It had been worst in Singapore when he’d returned, but it had never really gotten better. They still burned, but he still raced and he kept his mouth shut about it because he needed this. If he had survived for a reason it was to race because racing kept him near George. He wasn’t any good, he knew that. But he could keep pretending.
“Mate, you good?” George. Sweet, with a hand on his shoulder. Gentle, with a thumb rubbing the seam of his kit.
It was the paddock on race day, all heat and high altitude and Alex’s lungs burned in that way they always did. His cheeks flushed too, in that way they did when George was touching him.
“Yeah, just the air or something, you know.” He thought that George should focus on the race, the podium he would surely be getting.
George won races. George was winning races. George was a future champion in Mercedes.
Alex threw that all away in 2020. Unlike most on the grid he had actually gotten that chance, the top team seat, the opportunity, the faith. He had bottled it near immediately.
He had survived that too.
They say Red Bull gives you wings. They don’t talk much about Red Bull taking them back.
Alex thinks he had never experienced something as painful. But he didn’t die. He couldn’t. George would have been mad at him if he had.
“Take care of yourself, Lex. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He says with a smile, but it pierces Alex’s heart.
He was getting ready for the car later. He wouldn’t say drive, he didn’t drive it. That mechanical beast drove him more times than not. If it were just Alex, he probably wouldn’t get in it at all. If it were just Alex, he probably would have stayed asleep in September 2022. He probably would have left in 2021 when the only thing worse than the media slander of 2020 was being ignored and forgotten the year after. If it were only Alex, he probably would not have made it past 2008 and the worst year of his life.
But it wasn’t only Alex. It was his siblings he was responsible for at 15 when his Mum had been arrested. It was George in 2020 and 2021 keeping him together for just a bit longer. It was George and his whole family in 2022 begging him to wake up.
Maybe Alex couldn’t die, but maybe it had never been about him at all.
It didn’t matter what they did to him. He would live through it.
He was getting in the car and his lungs burned again, but his back was worse.
He could feel the skin shredding and the car wasn’t even moving yet. “Battlewounds” George called them, the runs and strips of scars down his shoulder blades, layered and caked over from months of the slow torture.
If he squinted they were the wounds from where his wings had been ripped from his body in 2021.
If he thought about it, it probably was, in honesty. At this point in his career he would do anything to stay. Including biting his tongue, willing the pain away, and washing the bloodstains out of his fireproofs before some poor team member was forced to do it. Week in, week out, he was reminded of what he had lost at Red Bull. What he had never deserved.
He wouldn’t complain here. He couldn’t complain here. If he did they would look too close and discover him a fraud. He would be compliant, whatever they asked of him. He wouldn’t complain, no matter how much his back tore or his lungs burned. He would keep the car out of the wall and pretend to be the driver they wanted, the one that would bring them back to the glory days.
He would sneak into their shelter, pretend he belonged. He was a scam artist, it ran in his blood.
P13. Not good. Not bad. A drive. A race Alexander Albon had lived through again.
He was in front of the mirror in his driver’s room, back-turned and neck craning over his shoulder trying to get the worst of it wiped up before the debrief.
His lungs still burned. But they always did these days.
The air was different when George slipped in. Probably from the sharpness of the champagne still covering him, and partly because the room always narrowed in when George was around.
Gentle hands and delicate fingers slid the towel out from Alex’s grasp and continued the ministrations on his back with careful precision.
George was always like that. Silent, clinical, but so tender. It didn’t sting the way it did when Alex roughly swiped at the bright red dripping down his shoulder blade. George took such care in the treatment of Alex’s wounds. Like he was worth the time and effort to be gentle to. Like maybe there was still some part of him worth more than what it took to keep breathing.
“Why do you put yourself through this?” His voice is gentle too, where it whispers, broken, down the back of Alex’s neck. A hand snakes around to his front, resting warm and firm on his lower stomach. A finger traces the scar there, lighting Alex’s skin ablaze.
“I’m used to it.” He answers back, eyes trained on the bloody fireproofs he’d stripped from his shoulders.
This was it, really. All he was good for, and all that would ever be offered him. You’re a bloody Formula 1 driver, Alexander. So what’s a little blood? A little burn? He’d bite his tongue until he could no longer speak if it meant they would keep him. He’d do anything to stay.
Because he’d do anything for George.
George tossed the towel in the corner, satisfied for now with the state of Alex’s shoulders. He pressed a kiss, as brief as breath, to the scar before nesting his head where Alex’s neck met the rest of his body.
“You shouldn’t have to be, Lexi. No one’s making you do this. Williams can change your seat out.”
Alex’s fingers found the seam of the ruined fireproofs and ran along the delicate stitching.
“I think maybe I deserve it.”
And then he was facing George, face cupped between both of his hands. George’s eyes were kind but searching, his gaze too strong for Alex to hold more than that initial moment. They found the floor again.
“Don’t talk about my best friend like that.” George told him.
Best friend. Right.
Alex bit his tongue again, like always. A best friend is already more than you’re worth. He had been telling himself the same for years. A fractured family is better than being alone. An F1 seat that shreds your skin is still a fucking F1 seat.
Lungs that burn still breathe.
He did his best to ignore those thoughts that told him it may not be better after all.
But as George’s thumb swept along his cheekbone and Alex closed his eyes and let himself imagine for just a brief moment that this was more, he kept those thoughts to himself.
George in part was better than no George at all.
And wasn’t he who all this was for anyway?
“You don’t deserve this, Alex. Look at me.” Alex’s eyes opened again. He ignored the blurring of his vision along his lower lash line. “People want to help you, I swear. Let people love you.”
“This is what love feels like, Georgie.”
“Alex—”
“This is the price to stay. I think I want to stay.”
“You’re worth so much more than this, Lex.” When did George start crying?
“I’m a pest, George, a parasite. I don’t belong here. I’m just waiting for the day they discover how much of a waste I am and drop me for good.”
His lungs burned again. When George wrapped him up tight in his arms. Pressed his chest firmly to his.
His heart hurt too. And that wasn’t new, not really. He’d felt it before, a long time ago. Twelve years old, head resting on George’s chest, sharing his twin bed. He was pretending to be asleep still as George’s hand carded through his hair, morning light just peeking through the curtains and lighting a sliver up their tangled legs. You can’t be doing this to me, Lexi. George had whispered.
It was the first time Alex had bit his tongue. The first time his heart had hurt. All an effort to keep George just that little bit longer.
George’s heart beat under his ear again, now so much older, so much different.
“I wish you could see yourself the way I do,” George said.
Alex found himself wishing it too.
“Will you let me show you what love should feel like?” George asked into his hair.
Alex’s lungs burned. Only if it’s true, he wanted to say. He didn’t.
Lexi, Baby
Alex didn’t expect the action to be immediate, but maybe that was the difference between him and George. George didn’t wait for opportunities, he forced them upon himself with all the determination and confidence Alex wished he had.
It started with the seat. It started with George dragging him to James, quite literally. It was a cruel trick to Alex: melting into the feeling of George’s fingers in his hair, only for them to take a vice grip of his scalp and “guide” him down the hall to James’ office.
“George, please,” he whined. “It hurts.”
“Move your feet and it won’t,” George replied, though Alex felt his fingers loosen slightly.
Alex only had a couple meters time to protest before he caught a glimpse of the familiar nameplate across the door. George didn’t even knock, simply shouldering it open and Alex wondered if he somehow held resentment towards the team for Alex’s bloody shoulders.
It’s not their fault, he wanted to say. They don’t know.
“James,” George acknowledged with a tight nod.
Alex’s team principle sat at his desk, mouth slightly agape at the sight before him. It was only then that Alex realized he was still shirtless, suit hanging loosely off his hips. He could only imagine the confusion James must be experiencing at the view of his half-naked driver being dragged into his office by a pilot of another team.
His eyes flickered between the two as George’s hand dropped from Alex’s head. Alex felt heat flush his chest and neck with embarrassment.
“What can I do for y—”
“Alex has something he wants to tell you,” George said. Clear, crisp, and with no room for argument.
Alex’s mouth went dry. “I really don’t,” he tried to say, taking a step backwards toward the door.
George's hand was on his upper arm pulling him back again. “He really does,” he grit out, shooting Alex a pointed glare.
George was like this sometimes too. His love could be forceful and aggressive as much as tender and soothing. George made sure that his love was felt in all facets and methods.
Alex stammered through something that felt half an excuse and half a plea for mercy. He wasn’t positive if anything he said even made sense.
George’s eyes didn’t leave his face, setting firmer, telling him you aren’t getting out of this.
Alex tried again. “I have a slight problem with the seat. It’s nothing really, George is making a big deal out of nothing.”
George scoffed at the words and Alex felt the all too familiar burn of shame across his face.
“His skin has been ripping open in the high speed corners,” George said.
“George, stop it—”
“Where, Alex?” James stood from the desk and Alex felt cornered.
“Show him your back.” George’s hand was on his arm, urging him to turn.
Alex was a kid again. Exposed. Vulnerable. His head was on the wood of his old dining room table. His arm was in a sling. He was in the Red Bull sim. He was in a hospital bed. He was in the car.
His shoulders were burning still. His lungs. His face. His collarbone. His knees.
He couldn’t breathe again. As he turned. He was trembling under George’s grip.
A sharp inhale “Christ, Alex…”
He’s disappointed in you. That’s what disappointment sounds like.
But there was another voice too.
“It’s alright, Lexi baby. Let people love you.” George. In his ear, soft and whispered.
He was scheduled for a seat re-molding the next week.
That was the start. George called it unlearning.
Alex called it hard.
But George was there through it all. And maybe Alex felt guilty for taking up so much space like he was.
George was always quick to shut down the thought whenever Alex let it slip from a silent doubt to a voiced concern.
“You could never be a burden, Lexi. Let people love you, darling.”
That was new too. Along with the unlearning and hard and—at some point—progress, there was “baby”, and “darling”, and “love”.
All it had taken, really, was for Alex to spiral into one of his depressive episodes, drink himself into near blackout, and when George was trying to care for him as best he could, shove his tongue down his best friend's throat on impulse.
Alex was thoroughly embarrassed when George had explained the event back to him the next morning. But while he had woken up with his head pounding, he had also woken up with his cheek pressed into George’s chest.
George was there through it all. The good days, the numb days, and the days Alex couldn’t even think about.
He made him go to a psychologist twice a week. He made him eat three meals a day and made sure he was getting all the nutrients he needed. He forced him to go to bed at unholy “reasonable” hours to ensure a full night’s sleep. He made him go on walks in nature, Facetime his family, and water the plants he had bought for their apartment whenever they were in Monaco.
Their apartment. It had been several weeks since George had spent the night anywhere other than Alex’s side.
George was there through it all. Like he always had been. Like he always would be.
Maybe this was what love was meant to feel like.
Maybe Alex was starting to believe it was true.