Work Text:
Max Verstappen had always prided himself on being a practical man. In his mind, the world worked in straight lines. You have a goal, you map out the fastest route to it, you execute. No drama, no unnecessary detours. That was how he handled logistics reports at Grand Prix Corp., how he built his market strategies, and how he managed his personal life. He liked women, went out occasionally whenever he had time between quarterly targets, and in twenty-eight years, he had never spent more than two seconds thinking about another man’s anatomy.
Until George Russell joined the company six months ago.
At first, Max convinced himself the constant irritation he felt was simply the natural response to the presence of a pretentious Brit who looked like he’d been raised in a laboratory dedicated to etiquette. George was the opposite of Max’s straight line; he was a line drawn perfectly with a precision ruler, full of elegant curves and calculated angles.
But the irritation, Max had started realizing with an uncomfortable knot in his stomach, had changed shape over the past few months. It had become... far too attentive to detail.
The first real warning sign came in January, during a budget meeting that dragged on until eight at night. The room was stuffy, and most of the directors already carried that dull gray exhaustion that settled in at the end of the workday. Max had been on the verge of dozing off when George stood to adjust the projector. As he did, the white light from the screen hit his profile directly, illuminating the sharp curve of his jaw and the way his long eyelashes cast shadows over his cheekbones.
Max caught himself completely forgetting about the numbers on the screen. He became fixated on the line of George’s neck, on the pale skin disappearing beneath his crisp collar. When George let out an audible sigh of frustration over the HDMI cable, his lips parted slightly in a way that made Max’s stomach twist violently. It wasn’t anger. It was a sudden, physical, overwhelming curiosity about what those perfectly symmetrical lips would feel like.
Max spent the rest of the night tense, answering everyone in monosyllables, disturbed by his own brain.
It’s exhaustion, he told himself in the car on the drive home. Just lack of sleep.
But his brain refused to cooperate. Then came the copy room incident in February.
The space between the copy machines and the wall was notoriously narrow. Max was grabbing a stack of contracts when George walked in to pick up his bound reports. Instead of waiting, George tried to squeeze past him. There wasn’t enough room. George’s broad chest pressed directly against Max’s, pinning him lightly against the cold metal of the machine.
It should’ve been an awkward moment followed by polite corporate apologies. But Max froze. He felt the heat of George’s body through the two layers of fabric between their shirts. George’s scent, something that mixed expensive citrus cologne with the clean smell of freshly laundered clothes, hit Max like a punch to the face. He looked up and found George’s green eyes impossibly close, gleaming with that familiar competitive arrogance.
“Mind taking a step back, Verstappen?” George had teased, his voice slightly lower because of the proximity.
Max didn’t answer. He was too busy discovering that his fingers wanted to close around George’s narrow hips and pull him even closer, just to see if the Brit would lose that flawless composure if he got pinned against the wall.
By the time George finally slipped past him, Max had to grip the edge of the table to stop his hands from shaking.
The final straw had been last week. The elevator. Just the two of them, heading down after work. George wasn’t wearing his blazer, the sleeves of his light blue dress shirt rolled up to his forearms. Max had always known George was tall and lean, but he had never really noticed the definition in his arms, the veins standing out beneath pale skin whenever he tightened his grip on the handle of his leather briefcase.
Max looked at their reflection in the elevator mirror and, for the first time, the question could no longer be shoved to the back of his mind.
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m straight. I’ve always been straight. So why do I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t find out what it’s like to touch this guy?
The realization came with a cold wave of panic. This wasn’t a phase. It wasn’t exhaustion. He was attracted to a man. And not just any man, but his biggest cubicle rival, the guy he spent every day trading barbs with. It was a ridiculous, obsessive, dangerous crush.
Now, on that rainy Tuesday in May, staring at George through the office’s glass partition, Max felt like he was about to implode. George was on the phone, gesturing lightly with his right hand, the black leather watch on his wrist catching beneath the fluorescent lights. Every movement felt like a trigger for Max’s forbidden thoughts.
I need to get this out of my head, Max thought, desperation rising in his throat. I need a reality check. I need to see other guys, figure out what the hell I’m feeling away from this place before I do something stupid and ruin my career or embarrass myself for the rest of my life.
He actually reached for his personal phone with slightly sweaty hands, fingers itching to open the app store right there.
But the sharp click of heels in the hallway and the sound of George’s polished laugh from the other side of the glass snapped him back to reality like a bucket of ice water.
Fuck no, he thought, shoving the phone back into his pocket with trembling hands. Messing with that on the company Wi-Fi or risking someone glancing over his shoulder during a coffee break would be the death of his dignity.
He could survive until the end of the workday.
The drive home was torture made of traffic and anxiety. Max could barely focus on the music playing through the car radio; his mind kept spinning in circles, bouncing between the image of George adjusting his tie and the absurd idea of what he was about to do.
When he finally unlocked the door to his apartment, he tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter, kicked off his shoes carelessly, and unbuttoned the first few buttons of his dress shirt, suddenly feeling like he couldn’t breathe. The silence of the place, which usually calmed him down, felt heavy tonight.
He sat down on the gray leather couch, grabbed his phone, and stared at the screen for several long seconds. No more work excuses. It was just him, his questions, and the phone.
With a heavy sigh, he opened the app store and typed the word that still felt borderline obscene in his head: Grindr.
The download took less than a minute, but to Max it felt like hours. When the yellow-and-black mask icon finally settled onto his home screen, his heart kicked so violently in his chest that he had to shift on the couch.
“Come on, Verstappen. It’s just an app. It’s just biology. No drama,” he muttered to himself before tapping the icon.
The yellow loading screen illuminated his face as the apartment darkened with the late afternoon light. The first screen asked him to create an account. Max used a backup email he barely remembered existed, absolutely refusing to link any real social media to this.
Then came the real test: building the profile.
And with it, a tidal wave of anxiety.
The app asked for a Display Name. Max stared at the blinking cursor. He couldn’t put “Max.” If he used “Max,” and someone from Grand Prix Corp. happened to be within a five-kilometer radius, he was finished. The gossip would spread through the marketing department before he even had time to delete the account.
His palms started sweating. He deleted what he’d started typing and used his middle name instead: Emilian. He barely ever used his full name anywhere. Perfect.
Next came the Profile Picture.
Max’s panic immediately escalated to an entirely new level.
Showing his face was absolutely out of the question. His brain instantly started spiraling through every paranoid possibility imaginable.
What if the CFO is secretly into men? What if one of the logistics interns uses this app? What if George himself—
No. George was probably dating some perfect British model or spending his evenings polishing his shoes. Still, the general risk remained.
Max got up from the couch, walked to the hallway mirror, and turned on the light. He stared at himself. His blond hair was slightly messy from the long day, and his blue eyes carried an expression of pure stress.
He lowered the phone, aiming the camera from the neck down. He was still wearing his dark dress pants and work shirt, but he rolled the sleeves to his elbows and undid another button at the collar, exposing the strong line of his neck and his broad shoulders, carefully cropping the picture right below his jaw.
The photo radiated an intense, rough-edged energy, the complete opposite of the polished corporate look everyone knew him for at the office.
Good enough, he thought, stomach twisting as he uploaded the picture.
In the “What are you looking for?” section, he ignored all the relationship options. Truthfully, he didn’t even know what he wanted. He just wanted answers. He wanted to know if looking at other men caused the same short-circuit George Russell caused in his brain.
For the bio, he typed a single blunt sentence:
“Just chatting. Absolute discretion is mandatory.”
When he finally tapped “Done,” the app interface opened, revealing a cascading grid of nearby profiles.
And that was when the real chaos started.
Max let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and dropped back against the couch. He was officially in. The feeling was bizarre, a mix of raw vulnerability and pure adrenaline, the exact same rush he got when closing a multimillion-dollar deal under pressure.
He’d expected something discreet. Maybe even a little awkward.
He had not been prepared for the raw reality of the internet.
Less than thirty seconds later, his phone started vibrating like it was having a seizure. Yellow notifications flashed one after another across the top bar.
Blinking in shock, he opened the messages tab.
What he found there made him want to bury himself alive from secondhand embarrassment.
The first message came from a profile named “Top_24cm_Active.” Without even bothering with a hello, the guy had sent a close-up picture of... something Max definitely did not want to see while trying to process his own sexuality on his couch.
“What the actual fuck?!” Max shouted, nearly dropping the phone. He blocked the profile immediately, face burning hot. “Do people seriously just send this stuff? Without even knowing my zodiac sign?”
He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and opened the next conversation.
The profile was called “Married_Discreet.” The profile picture was literally a random Google stock image landscape.
Married_Discreet: Top or bottom? Send a current pic. You hosting?
Max frowned, his usual office irritation immediately taking over.
Emilian.: Good evening to you too. I literally just got on this app and I’m only here to talk.
Married_Discreet: Talk? Go to Tinder. People here are looking for quick fun. If you don’t want anything, don’t waste my time.
Max scoffed in disbelief. Quick fun?
He blocked the married guy too.
The third message somehow managed to be even stranger.
The username was “Sub_Submissive_Slave.” The profile picture was a pair of feet.
Sub_Submissive_Slave: Master, can I be your rug? Can you step on me with your dress shoes? I’ll clean your house naked if you let me.
Max stared at the screen for a full five seconds, completely stunned. His eyes slowly drifted toward the dress shoes he’d abandoned near the door.
The idea of a complete stranger begging to be stepped on by a pair of Grand Prix Corp. office shoes was so absurd that Max genuinely couldn’t decide whether to laugh or delete the app and pretend he had never been born.
“The world has completely lost its mind,” he muttered, dragging a hand over his face as the exhaustion of the day suddenly felt three times heavier.
He returned to the main browsing screen, already on the verge of giving up on the entire circus. He felt completely out of place. All the visual aggression and bizarre propositions only made him feel even more confused.
Yes, he wanted to understand what he was feeling, but he liked order. Control. Conversations that made sense.
He was not a foot “master,” and he definitely did not want unsolicited anatomical photography.
He gave the screen one final scroll with his thumb, fully prepared to delete the account if he saw one more oily torso paired with a painfully pretentious bio.
Then his thumb froze.
In the middle of that ocean of bizarre offers and explicit pictures, there was one square that seemed to operate on a completely different frequency.
The profile displayed only the name William, no last name, no unnecessary flair. The profile picture was faceless too, cropped in the exact same mysterious way as Max’s, showing only from the neck down. It revealed a flawless, lean torso dressed in a dark gray dress shirt of obviously ridiculous quality, the fabric somehow managing to look expensive and perfectly pressed even through a phone screen. The sleeves were folded neatly to the forearms in painfully precise creases, exposing prominent veins, pale skin, and an elegant black leather watch around the left wrist.
Max frowned, bringing the phone closer to his face.
There was something strangely familiar about that posture. An elegance that was almost irritating, controlled, radiating the exact same kind of corporate arrogance Max dealt with every day. In the middle of that virtual asylum, this guy looked like the only sane person there.
The guy’s bio simply read:
“Intelligent conversations. No games.”
A nasal, involuntary laugh escaped Max’s lips.
Arrogant. But at least he doesn’t want to be my fucking rug.
Feeling genuine relief at finally finding someone who seemed normal, mixed with an inexplicable flutter in his stomach because of the sheer presence that photo carried, Max opened William’s chat. Since the guy clearly valued discretion and style, Max typed the first thing that came to mind:
Emilian: Nice watch. And the rest too. Discretion is basically my middle name. And I swear I’m not going to send you feet pics.
He immediately locked the screen and threw the phone onto the other side of the couch like the device had electrocuted him. Covering his face with both hands, he felt his heart hammering against his ribs, but this time there was a sharp edge of genuine anticipation mixed into it.
Three kilometers away, inside a perfectly decorated penthouse apartment, George Russell had just stepped out of the shower. Wearing nothing but gray sweatpants and with damp hair falling slightly over his forehead, he grabbed his personal phone from the marble kitchen counter.
He kept that app under absolute secrecy too, mostly because he despised the majority of the bizarre interactions he received on it.
A yellow notification flashed across the screen.
George arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow as he read the amusing message from someone called Emilian.
A smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Intrigued. Competitive. And genuinely interested.
[WEDNESDAY, 08:14]
Max woke up to the sound of a notification that was definitely not his usual alarm.
Still squinting against the brightness of the screen, he blindly reached across the nightstand and felt his stomach flip when he saw the yellow mask icon.
The mysterious William had replied.
William: The watch was a gift from me to myself. I like knowing the exact time. I despise delays. And thank you for sparing me the feet pictures. My tolerance for human weirdness already hit its limit this week.
Max sat up in bed, an involuntary smile tugging at his lips. In his head, he read the message in an aristocratic, pretentious tone that made him laugh quietly. It was the first profile in that digital wasteland that didn’t seem like either a bot or a complete creep.
Emilian: A gift to yourself? Sounds a little egocentric. But good taste is good taste. I hate delays too. Honestly, I hate people who can’t do their own job on time even more.
William: It’s not egocentrism. It’s merit. If you want something done properly, do it yourself. And I agree. Other people’s incompetence is the greatest test of my patience. What do you do for a living, Emilian.? Besides judging strangers’ egos?
Max hesitated, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Emilian: Logistics and strategy management. Basically, I fix other people’s incompetence. You?
William: Finance and risk consulting. Which means I predict the mistakes guys like you try to fix.
Max let out an offended laugh.
The audacity of this guy.
Emilian: Careful with the arrogance, William. The line between predicting risks and being afraid to take them is very thin.
William: Don’t worry, Emilian. I know exactly when to take risks. I have to go now. Duty calls. I’ve got a full day of painfully boring meetings and one particularly irritating coworker to deal with.
Max felt a sharp stab of sympathy.
Emilian: I know the feeling. My cubicle shares a wall with the most insufferable man on the planet. Good luck.
[WEDNESDAY, 10:30]
The atmosphere inside Grand Prix Corp. was tense.
Max was focused on a screen full of distribution graphs when the sound of firm footsteps and the soft thud of a leather folder hitting the desk beside him made him glance up.
George Russell had arrived.
He looked immaculate, as always. Dark blue shirt, perfectly tailored dress pants and, around his left wrist...
The black leather watch.
Max swallowed hard.
He looked at George’s watch, then at the screen of his own phone hidden beneath a pile of papers, and a bizarre sense of déjà vu hit him. But he immediately shook the thought away.
Don’t be stupid, Verstappen. Half the businessmen in this city wear black watches.
“Good morning, Verstappen,” George greeted coolly, his voice polished and distant. He pulled out his chair and sat down with that absurdly lord-like posture. “I trust your team has already sent the route reports to my department. The deadline was ten.”
Max narrowed his eyes, his usual irritation crawling up his spine, though this time it was tangled with the strange electricity haunting him since the night before.
“They were sent at nine fifty, Russell,” Max shot back, leaning farther into his chair and crossing his arms. “I know how to read a clock. You don’t need to babysit me.”
George lifted his gaze from the computer, green eyes locking onto Max’s.
There was a challenge in them. A spark of pure, burning rivalry that always made Max’s blood boil. George slowly wet his lips before speaking again, a simple gesture that instantly sent Max’s mind veering into territory wildly inappropriate for the workplace.
“Ten minutes before the deadline isn’t efficiency, Max. It’s poor planning. Almost sounds like you stayed up all night doing something other than work. You look tired.”
If only you knew about the fucking app I downloaded because of you, Max thought, feeling heat creep up the back of his neck.
“Had a busy night, Russell. Private matters. Things you clearly wouldn’t understand, considering your social life probably consists of ironing your socks.”
George let out a short, nasal laugh, sharp enough to make Max frown.
No. Stop that.
“You’d be surprised by what I do in my free time, Verstappen,” George murmured, his voice suddenly a shade deeper, his eyes lingering on Max’s for one second longer than strictly professional. “But focus on logistics. I wouldn’t want your... performance to suffer because of your ‘private activities.’”
George turned back to his monitor, dismissing the subject with his usual arrogance.
Max kept staring at him, chest rising and falling a little too fast.
From that moment on, the rest of Wednesday became a test of Max’s sanity.
Sharing a cubicle wall with George was already difficult on normal days, but today every tiny sound felt amplified. The rhythmic tapping of George’s long fingers against the keyboard, the dry click of his pen whenever he was thinking, and worst of all, his voice.
George spent half the afternoon negotiating contracts over the phone, using that calm, controlled, ridiculously professional tone that made Max grip his mouse hard enough to nearly crack the plastic while mentally swearing at him.
Around three in the afternoon, Max got up to grab coffee from the break room purely because he needed to escape the magnetic field surrounding George’s desk.
As he waited for the painfully slow company coffee machine to fill his plastic cup, he felt someone step up behind him. The scent of citrus cologne and clean laundry hit him before he even turned around.
“Black coffee at this hour, Verstappen?” George appeared beside him, holding his perfectly clean porcelain mug. “I figured you were more the type to survive on energy drinks.”
Max turned, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. Up close, he couldn’t help noticing how perfectly the blue fabric of George’s shirt fit across his shoulders.
“I survive just fine on my own, Russell,” Max replied, narrowing his eyes. “The coffee is just to stop myself from falling asleep while reading the painfully boring reports your department sends me.”
George stepped forward to grab the sugar, ending up dangerously close.
Max held his breath for half a second, feeling heat radiate from the Brit’s body. George tilted his head slightly, looking down at Max from above, a height advantage he clearly enjoyed using to intimidate people.
“If the reports are boring, maybe you simply need better analytical skills to understand the details,” George teased, the corner of his mouth curling into an almost invisible smirk. “Or maybe your mind’s been occupied with... other things today? You seemed distracted during the noon meeting.”
Max felt his stomach knot instantly.
Distracted?
He had spent the entire meeting staring at the way George’s throat moved whenever he swallowed water.
“Don’t project your failures onto me, Russell. My mind is exactly where it needs to be,” Max replied, his voice coming out rougher than intended.
He grabbed his coffee cup and stepped sideways, breaking the proximity before he did something catastrophically stupid.
“Excuse me.”
“By all means,” George replied, watching Max walk away with an intense look that Max could practically feel burning into his back all the way until he crossed the break room door.
When the clock finally hit six in the evening, the office slowly began to empty out.
Max forced himself to stay another thirty minutes, pretending to review a spreadsheet full of route data purely because his pride refused to let him leave before George. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched George shut down his computer with methodical precision, organize his paperwork into a perfectly aligned stack, place his reading glasses inside their case, and slip on his suit jacket.
Every movement radiated an almost irritating level of discipline.
But now that Max was finally being honest with himself, it was ridiculously attractive.
“See you tomorrow, Verstappen,” George said, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket and exposing the black leather watch for a brief second before grabbing his briefcase. “Try to get some rest. You genuinely look like you need it.”
“Fuck off, Russell,” Max muttered without looking at him, pretending to be deeply focused on his monitor.
He listened to George’s steady footsteps fade down the hallway toward the elevator. Only once the sound disappeared completely did Max finally relax his shoulders, sinking into his chair with a long sigh.
He was exhausted.
Not because of work, but because of the monumental effort it took to spend the entire day pretending he didn’t want to rip his office rival’s clothes off right there on top of the particleboard desks.
[WEDNESDAY, 20:15]
Back home, after taking a hot shower to wash the stress of the day and George Russell out of his system, Max collapsed onto the couch.
The very first thing he did was grab his phone.
He opened Grindr.
No messages from creeps this time, he’d quickly learned how to block people, but there was a new message from William.
William: Survived your insufferable coworker? Mine exceeded every possible expectation for irritation today. The man is a force of nature made entirely out of stubbornness. Sometimes I genuinely want to throw him out a window.
Max burst into genuine laughter, already feeling the weight of the day start to lift as he typed back quickly.
Emilian: Barely survived. Mine’s a lost cause too. Spends the whole day policing my deadlines like he owns the planet. And then he had the audacity to bother me during coffee break just to say I looked distracted. Wears shirts so tight I think the lack of oxygen’s affecting his brain. But tell me something, Will... if he annoys you that much and he’s always that close to you, how do you stop yourself from killing the guy?
The reply took a few minutes.
Max caught himself biting his lower lip while waiting for the phone to vibrate.
William: I argue with him. It’s the only way. There’s a... strange energy between us. He challenges me in a way nobody else can. It’s exasperating. But I’ll admit it makes my days a lot less monotonous.
Max paused.
That description hit a painfully sensitive nerve.
He thought about George in the break room, about the way their physical proximity had almost caused sparks beside the coffee machine.
Emilian: I know exactly what you mean. My guy challenges me too. It’s a stupid rivalry, but whenever he looks at me with that superior expression... my heart starts racing. I think I hate him. Or maybe I just want to shut him up in the worst possible way.
This time, the typing... indicator appeared and disappeared three separate times on William’s side.
The digital tension was almost tangible.
William: Shut him up... Interesting. And how exactly would you do that?
A shiver ran down Max’s arms.
The flirting had just escalated, and the adrenaline rush was addictive.
Emilian: I’d pin him against the office wall, grab him by the stupid tie he definitely wears, and kiss him until he forgot how to speak English.
Inside his luxury apartment, George Russell dropped the pen he’d been holding straight onto the carpet.
His green eyes widened, locked on the phone screen while his heart pounded violently against his ribs.
Shock raced down his spine like an electric current.
George had always prided himself on his composure, on his armor of sophisticated vocabulary and impeccable corporate posture. Reading that reply from Emilian, a faceless man whose profile somehow radiated raw, decisive masculinity, felt like taking a punch directly to the stomach.
The mental image of himself pinned against a wall, his carefully maintained British control completely shattered by an aggressive kiss, hit every single secret fantasy he spent nights trying desperately to suppress.
He swallowed hard, glancing toward the reflection of his bare torso in the bedroom mirror and feeling heat spread across his face.
The audacity of that anonymous man terrified him just as much as it excited him.
[WEDNESDAY, 20:35]
That night, notifications flew between the two faceless profiles at the speed of a high-pressure circuit.
After the initial shock of Emilian’s boldness, William, or rather George, desperately trying to maintain his polished lord-like composure while his chest rose and fell too quickly, decided he wasn’t going to back down.
William: You speak with an almost dangerous level of confidence, Emilian. But I’ll admit... there’s something appealing about shutting someone up with that much aggression.
Max grinned into the couch cushions, his thumb flying across the screen.
Emilian: It’s not confidence. It’s knowing what I want. If your guy irritates you enough to make you want to throw him out a window, then there’s obviously some repressed energy there. And you know it.
William: Perhaps you have a point. It’s frustrating. Sometimes I catch myself having similar fantasies about my irritating coworker... things I would never admit out loud at the office. But reality is a bucket of ice water. He’s so painfully, obviously straight, focused, and rough around the edges that it’s almost ridiculous.
Max frowned slightly while reading the message.
Convinced he’s straight, huh?
Poor bastards. Both of us.
Without having the slightest clue that George’s description matched him perfectly.
Emilian: So what do you do with all that pent-up tension then? Just accept it?
William: I channel it into rivalry. It’s easier to deal with things if I focus on the irritation. I turn what I feel into pure competitive anger because if I stop hating him for five minutes, what’s left genuinely scares me. I use the arguments at work to forget the attraction.
The honesty of that message hit Max hard.
He dropped the phone against his chest and inhaled deeply.
Jesus Christ.
He and William were in the exact same situation, drowning in unresolved tension over impossible coworkers.
Emilian: I understand you perfectly, William. I do exactly the same thing. But if it helps... your straight coworker has no idea what he’s missing.
The conversation didn’t stop there.
What was supposed to be nothing more than an experiment with an app turned into a deep, sharp, dangerously addictive conversation. They talked about music, corporate stress, traded intelligent insults and subtle flirting.
By the time Max finally glanced at the digital clock in the corner of the screen, it read 03:45 in the morning.
Holy shit, Max thought, closing the app with his heart racing while exhaustion finally started demanding its price.
Thursday was going to be absolute hell.
[THURSDAY, 07:15]
The alarm went off before the sun had fully risen.
Because of Grand Prix Corp.’s mid-year audit, the entire strategy and finance teams had been forced to clock in an hour and a half earlier than usual.
When Max walked through the glass doors onto the floor, he looked like an actual corpse. He carried an enormous thermal mug full of black coffee, his blue eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and dark circles clearly visible underneath them. He tossed his briefcase onto the desk and collapsed into his chair, rubbing at his temples.
Two seconds later, George Russell appeared in the cubicle hallway.
If Max had ever believed George was immune to basic human weakness, today proved otherwise.
The Brit still held himself together, but his gray suit seemed slightly heavier on his shoulders. His green eyes looked dull from a sleepless night, and he was gripping a double espresso like his life depended on caffeine. He hadn’t even adjusted his tie with his usual microscopic perfection; the knot sat slightly loose.
They stared at each other over the glass divider.
Two men destroyed by the exact same night, completely unaware they shared the exact same reason.
“You look... terrible, Verstappen,” George murmured, his voice rougher and sleepier than usual, which immediately made Max’s stomach twist in the stupidest way possible that early in the morning.
“Look in a mirror before talking about me, Russell,” Max shot back, taking a long sip of coffee. “You look like you got hit by a truck full of spreadsheets.”
“Rough night,” George explained, sitting down with a tired sigh while his long fingers dragged across his forehead before turning on his monitor.
“Yeah. Same here,” Max muttered, turning back toward his keyboard while William occupied half his thoughts and George’s very real body sat right beside him, creating absolute chaos inside his brain.
[THURSDAY, 11:30]
While the two protagonists were trying not to fall asleep face-first into their spreadsheets, a far more important and highly illegal meeting was taking place near the large conference table in the back of the marketing department.
Alexander Albon, Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were pretending to analyze the company’s new engagement charts, but the laptop screens displayed a completely different Excel spreadsheet instead.
The file title read:
“Sexual Tension Betting Pool – Cubicle 4B.”
“I’m telling you guys, the atmosphere in the break room today was survivable only through life support,” Lando whispered, leaning over the table with gossip practically sparkling in his eyes. “They both showed up looking dead, like they spent the whole night either fighting or... doing something else. Max didn’t even have the energy to properly argue with George.”
“They’ve been like this for months,” Alex Albon commented, crossing his arms with a laugh. “Max is stubborn as hell, but you can see the way he looks at George whenever George gets distracted. I’m betting fifty bucks that Max snaps and admits his feelings first. He’s more impulsive.”
“Oh, please, Alex,” Lewis Hamilton interrupted, laughing knowingly as he adjusted his sunglasses on top of his head. “You people don’t understand George. He pretends he’s all controlled and polished and proper British lord, but when he wants something, he builds an entire strategy around it. George is absolutely going to crack first. One hundred dollars on Russell.”
Carlos Sainz, who had been silently observing while sipping his water, tapped the table with his knuckles to get everyone’s attention.
“You’re all forgetting the pride factor,” Carlos said in his usual calm, confident tone. “George would rather choke to death on that tie than admit Verstappen made him lose control. But Max... Max hates losing more than anything. The second he realizes this ‘rivalry’ is interfering with his work, he’s going to solve the problem directly. One hundred and fifty on Max.”
“One hundred and fifty?!” Franco Colapinto widened his eyes, dragging his chair closer. The newly promoted commercial department employee thrived on chaos. “You people are insane. But if we’re setting things on fire, I’m in. George is way too polished, but the way he side-eyes Max gives everything away. One hundred on Russell just because I want to see the circus explode.”
“I’m betting on Max too,” Gabriel Bortoleto joined in, adjusting his company badge around his neck. The Brazilian had a very practical view of office dynamics. “Max has zero filter. One day George is gonna make one of those sarcastic comments at the desk and Max is just gonna grab him by the collar in front of everyone. One fifty on Verstappen.”
The betting spreadsheet was climbing rapidly, numbers stacking into the hundreds of dollars.
That was when two hesitant heads appeared near the edge of the table.
Arvid Lindblad and Kimi Antonelli, the two interns from engineering and support, stared at Lando’s laptop screen with a mix of fascination and complete financial panic.
“Uh... excuse me,” Kimi said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “We kinda wanted to participate too. You can tell from a mile away that Boss Max and Boss Russell are either about to kill each other or hook up.”
“Seriously,” Arvid agreed, pulling two crumpled ten-dollar bills from his pocket. “But you people are completely insane with these amounts. One hundred and fifty dollars? One hundred dollars?”
“Dude, that’s basically half our internship paycheck!” Kimi protested dramatically, throwing his hands into the air. “We make the least money at this table. If I lose a hundred dollars, I’ll have to survive on oxygen and walk home because I won’t even have bus money until the end of the month. You people get management bonuses. Have mercy on the bottom of the food chain!”
The entire table burst into laughter at the interns’ despair.
“Alright, alright,” Lando laughed, opening a special row in the spreadsheet. “I’m creating a socially responsible intern category for you two. Ten-dollar bets accepted, but your payout’s proportional. So, who are you betting on?”
Kimi and Arvid exchanged thoughtful looks.
“Russell,” Kimi answered immediately. “I helped him fix the projector yesterday and the guy nearly had a nervous breakdown because Verstappen left the cable messy. He’s hanging by a thread.”
“I’m going with Verstappen,” Arvid said, placing his ten dollars on the table. “He drinks too much coffee. Eventually the caffeine’s gonna give him the courage he’s missing.”
“Perfect. Updating the board now,” Lando said, typing rapidly. “Current odds are: sixty-five percent chance Max makes the first move, thirty-five percent chance George breaks protocol.”
Either way, whoever won that betting pool was going to make serious money.
And far away from the conspiracy involving even the interns’ lunch budgets, Max and George sat inside Cubicle 4B, completely oblivious as they shared a synchronized yawn while staring blankly at their screens, both minds very far away from Thursday’s reports.
[THURSDAY, 15:45]
Thursday afternoon at Grand Prix Corp. was the worst part of the week.
The effects of breakfast coffee had worn off and the audit deadlines were crushing everyone alive. Max’s eyes burned while he stared at a spreadsheet full of operational costs.
To make his psychological situation even worse, William had sent him a Grindr message during lunch that was still frying his brain.
William: I think your whole “pinning someone against a wall and shutting them up” fantasy is the most efficient report I’ve read all week, Emilian. But tell me... would you actually have the guts to do that to your coworker, or are you just all talk?
Max scoffed in his chair, squeezing his eyes shut.
All talk?
He doesn’t know me at all.
Pure frustration buzzed beneath his skin.
Out of the corner of his eye, he looked toward George. The Brit’s blazer hung over the back of his chair, while the sleeves of his dark gray shirt, ironically identical to the one in William’s picture though Max was far too exhausted to process coincidences, were folded perfectly at the forearms. George typed aggressively, jaw clenched tight.
A sudden wave of heat climbed Max’s neck.
He grabbed his phone beneath the desk.
Emilian: I don’t make promises I can’t keep, William. If I had that guy locked in a room with me right now, he wouldn’t even have time to apologize for his arrogance.
[THURSDAY, 16:00]
Meanwhile, on the company’s official Microsoft Teams server, a new parallel meeting had just been created at the last minute.
There was no link on the official schedule and the title was simply:
“.”
Alexander Albon, Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Carlos Sainz, Franco Colapinto and Gabriel Bortoleto joined the video call with their cameras off, using audio only to avoid suspicion.
The interns, Kimi and Arvid, shared a single computer screen while hiding inside the supply closet.
“Attention, committee, this is Albono speaking,” Alex whispered dramatically into his headset microphone. “Emergency update meeting for Betting Pool 4B. I just walked past their hallway on my way to the bathroom. Verstappen is staring at his monitor like he wants to commit a crime of passion. And Russell is typing so aggressively I think he’s about to break the keyboard.”
“Did they talk after lunch?” Franco Colapinto’s excited voice echoed through the call. “I walked past around two and George sighed so loudly you could hear it from the sales department. I’m telling you, George is about to crack.”
“Negative, Colapinto,” Carlos Sainz interrupted while keyboard clicks echoed in the background, proving he was still working while gossiping. “George doesn’t sigh out of weakness. He sighs out of impatience. Max is the one bouncing his leg nonstop for the last two hours. That’s motor anxiety. Verstappen’s preparing to strike. I maintain my one hundred and fifty on Max.”
“Guys, please look at the company-wide Teams chat,” Lando interrupted, laughing under his breath. “George just scheduled an ‘Emergency Alignment Meeting’ with Max in the archive room on the fifth floor tomorrow morning. Eight a.m.!”
A horrified silence consumed the call, followed immediately by gasps and chaos.
“The archive room? On the fifth floor? The one nobody uses because the air conditioning sounds like a dying engine?” Gabriel Bortoleto asked in disbelief. “That is incredibly suspicious. George is either planning a corporate ambush or a romantic one.”
“I told you people,” Lewis Hamilton said smoothly, in the tone of a man who had already witnessed every possible office disaster. “George plans every move carefully. He knows the cubicle area has too many witnesses. He’s isolating the target. My hundred dollars remain firmly on Russell making the first move.”
Inside the supply closet, Kimi Antonelli carefully unmuted himself.
“Uh... bosses? If they’re going to the archive room tomorrow, does that mean we get the result tomorrow? Because Arvid and I really need to know whether we’ll have money for Friday lunch or if we need to survive on instant noodles.”
“Relax, intern,” Lando laughed. “We’re sending Alex upstairs tomorrow as a spy pretending to look for archive boxes. We will get our verdict.”
[THURSDAY, 22:30]
That night, the Grindr conversation between Emilian and William reached an entirely new level of intimacy and provocation.
Max lay sprawled across his bed wearing nothing but shorts, his mind drifting somewhere between physical exhaustion and the electric rush of the messages.
William: You’re very confident, Emilian. But real life isn’t as simple as an app chat. Tomorrow morning I have an important meeting with my irritating coworker. I’ve decided I’m finally going to confront him about his attitude. We can’t keep going with this tension between us.
Max felt his heart jump.
He’s going to confess to the guy?
A strange sting of jealousy, an utterly ridiculous sense of possessiveness over a stranger from an app, twisted inside his stomach.
Emilian: You’re confronting him? And what exactly are you planning to say? You gonna admit you’re dying for him to throw you against a wall?
William: Of course not. I’m obviously using his late reports as an excuse. I’m keeping him locked in a room with me until he admits I’m right about the deadlines. But... if by some miracle he actually did what you suggested... I don’t think I’d complain.
Max swallowed hard.
William’s boldness left him completely breathless.
Emilian: If your coworker has half the blood in his veins that I do, William, he’s gonna notice the way you breathe around him and shut you up on the spot. Good luck tomorrow. I also have some idiotic alignment meeting early in the morning with my rival. The bastard called me into the archive room.
William: The archive room? How cliché. Looks like we’re both in for a very eventful Friday morning. Sleep well, Emilian. And think about me if your rival irritates you too much.
Emilian: I’ll think about you, William. Trust me.
Max locked his phone and threw an arm over his eyes.
The irony was almost painful.
He would spend the entire night thinking about the mysterious man from the app, only to wake up early and lock himself in a room with the man haunting his real life.
He had absolutely no idea that inside a luxury penthouse apartment, George Russell was setting down his own phone with the exact same anxious smile, mentally organizing the folder he planned to bring into the archive room the next day.
Friday promised to bring Grand Prix Corp. to a complete standstill.
And the betting committee already had popcorn ready.
[FRIDAY, 07:45]
Max Verstappen had never been the type to chicken out.
He had closed contracts under brutal pressure, survived aggressive audits, and stared down furious executives without blinking a single blue eye. Yet there he was, standing in the silent hallway of the fifth floor, staring at the heavy wooden door of the Archive Room with his heart hammering so violently against his ribs it felt capable of cracking his sternum.
He was a complete wreck.
A raw bundle of anxiety and adrenaline.
The audit wasn’t the problem.
The real issue was that spending the entire night texting William about cornering, pinning, and shutting up an arrogant man had acted like dangerous fuel poured directly onto Max’s brain. His defenses were completely down from lack of sleep. The thin line of sanity that usually stopped him from launching himself at George Russell’s throat during work hours had simply vanished.
Being locked alone in an isolated room with George, far away from the marketing and finance departments, was the absolute worst-case scenario for his self-control.
Max knew it. He could physically feel it.
He was one step away from throwing professionalism into the garbage and actually acting out every absurd fantasy he had typed to the guy on Grindr.
It’s just a meeting about distribution routes, Max lied to himself, inhaling deeply while adjusting the collar of his dark jacket. You’ll walk in, throw the reports on the table, argue for ten minutes, and leave.
He grabbed the doorknob.
His palms were slightly sweaty.
He twisted the handle and pushed the door open.
The room was exactly what Max feared.
The archive room was large, surrounded by tall gray metal shelves packed with storage boxes. The old air conditioner produced a constant buzzing sound, loud enough to drown out any conversation, or any other noises, coming from inside.
And right there in the center, leaning against an old wooden table beside an open laptop, stood George.
George Russell looked like he had stepped straight out of a corporate drama painting.
His suit jacket was gone. The sleeves of his black dress shirt were folded perfectly at the forearms, but his dark tie was visibly loosened, exposing the pale base of his throat. He looked exhausted, faint shadows lingering beneath his green eyes, yet his posture remained so intimidatingly composed it was genuinely irritating.
When the door shut behind Max, George looked up.
A sharp, tense flicker crossed his eyes.
“You’re early, Verstappen. Five minutes early,” George pointed out, his voice carrying that slow British cadence, though there was a faint rasp to it that made the hair on Max’s arms stand up.
“I want to get this over with, Russell,” Max answered, his own voice coming out deeper and rougher than intended.
He walked toward the table and dropped a black leather folder containing the reports beside George’s laptop.
“There’s the contingency logistics plan for the audit. Fully revised. No microscopic mistakes for you to cry about later.”
George didn’t reach for the folder immediately.
Instead, he leaned a little further back against the table, crossing his arms while looking at Max from beneath slightly lowered lashes, holding the exact same challenging stare that always started their fights.
“Excellent. But we’re not here just because of the reports, Max,” George murmured quietly, his voice almost competing with the hum of the air conditioner. “We need to discuss your attitude. You’ve spent the entire week provoking me, challenging me in every meeting, acting as though... as though my presence here bothers you on a personal level.”
Max immediately felt his blood ignite.
The proximity was overwhelming.
George’s scent, that cursed citrus cologne, filled the confined space of the archive room. Max took a step closer, shrinking the distance between them until barely a foot remained separating their bodies.
“It does bother me, Russell. You’ve bothered me since the first day you walked into this company with that perfect little lord act,” Max shot back, his chest rising rapidly while his eyes locked onto George’s perfectly shaped mouth. “You spend the whole day policing my deadlines, testing me, pushing me to the edge. What the hell do you actually want from me? Hm? You want me to admit you’re in control?”
George swallowed hard.
Max watched the Brit’s Adam’s apple move slowly.
A heavy heat climbed between them, an absurd electrical tension that made the room feel seconds away from catching fire.
“I want you to follow the rules, Max,” George answered, though his voice had lost part of its professional steadiness.
His green eyes dropped briefly to Max’s lips before lifting again.
“But it seems like you prefer chaos. It seems like you want to watch me lose my composure.”
Max nearly choked on his own breathing.
His throat went completely dry.
William’s name almost slipped from his lips entirely on reflex, the result of exhaustion and the mental whiplash of spending all night messaging the man from the app, but he managed to swallow the sound in time, only letting out a strained, broken exhale instead.
Inside Max’s head, the short-circuit was absolute.
George was so close.
His back nearly touched the edge of the table, trapped there by Max’s broader frame.
The fantasy Max had described to William the night before was suddenly right in front of him: the empty office, the locked room, the rival’s loosened tie practically begging to be grabbed.
They stared at each other while their breaths collided against one another’s skin, their eyes constantly flickering between mouths and eyes.
The atmosphere was thick.
Electric.
Milliseconds away from exploding into something completely irreversible.
Max’s shoulders tightened, his fingers twitching with the urge to finally close the distance once and for all. George maintained eye contact, but his chest was rising far too quickly, betraying the fact that his precious British composure had already gone completely out the window.
It was about to happen.
The match was seconds away from dropping into the barrel of gunpowder.
CLACK!
The violent sound of the doorknob turning sliced through the silence like a gunshot.
The door swung open forcefully and Alexander Albon stumbled inside carrying a massive cardboard box that blocked half his face.
“Oh! Sorry, sorry!” Alex exclaimed in an absurdly loud and painfully fake voice, pretending to be startled while nearly dropping the box onto the table. “I didn’t know anyone was in here! Marketing sent me to grab the, uh... archived 2021 pamphlets. Extremely urgent!”
Max and George jumped apart like they’d been electrocuted.
Max immediately turned his face away, dragging a hand through his blond hair while his face burned with rage and frustration over the ruined moment.
George cleared his throat loudly, fixing his loosened tie with visibly shaky hands and instantly reassembling his polished lord persona, though his cheeks remained noticeably red.
“Albon,” George said, his voice slightly unsteady before recovering its corporate smoothness. “We are currently in the middle of a confidential logistics meeting. Could you... perhaps come back later?”
“Oh, absolutely! Of course! I’m leaving already!” Alex said quickly, though his eyes darted rapidly between Max’s wrecked expression and George’s disheveled collar, absorbing every possible detail for his future report. “I just need to grab... this folder that somehow fell on the floor here. Crazy coincidence, huh? Bye!”
Alex spun around and practically sprinted out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
[FRIDAY, 08:01]
In the fifth-floor hallway, Alex Albon dropped against the wall and immediately pulled out his phone, fingers flying across the keyboard.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Alex Albon: KILL THE MOOD! KILL THE MOOD! I HAD TO GO IN! Guys, I swear to God, if I’d waited two more seconds Max would’ve swallowed George alive right there! They were this close 🤏
Lando Norris: NO FUCKING WAY, ALBON. YOU INTERRUPTED THE KISS OF THE CENTURY?!
Carlos Sainz: Who was initiating? Albon, focus on the technical details. Who was cornering who?
Alex Albon: MAX! Max had George pinned against the table! George was red as hell and his tie was completely messed up!
Carlos Sainz: MAX! I KNEW IT! Lando, update the spreadsheet. Verstappen made the move! Everyone start preparing to transfer my one hundred and fi— wait, why did autocorrect write sponge dollars?
Lewis Hamilton: Hold on. Albon interrupted before anything actually happened. Technically nobody has broken protocol yet. The betting pool remains open until we have confirmed results.
Gabriel Bortoleto: For the love of God, Kimi just celebrated because his ten-dollar bet is still alive. The intern almost cried from relief.
Franco Colapinto: Albon, you are a hero of espionage and an enemy of romance. Go back in there and pretend you forgot your ID badge.
Inside the archive room, the silence left behind was pure embarrassment and frustration.
The moment had been destroyed.
But the tension?
The tension was still there.
More alive than ever.
[FRIDAY, 10:30]
The rest of the morning after the archive room disaster became a silent form of torture.
Max and George returned to Cubicle 4B pretending everything was perfectly normal, a performance that fooled exactly nobody on the floor.
Max typed with unnecessary force, eyes glued to his monitor, while George reread the same paragraph of a contract for the fifth time, posture rigid and face still faintly flushed.
The betting committee adapted immediately.
Now that the atmosphere had nearly crossed the professionalism barrier far too early, the drivers decided to switch strategies.
No more loud Teams meetings.
From now on, the operation would rely on subtle espionage and individual missions designed to collect involuntary testimony.
Lando Norris was the first to strike.
He appeared beside the cubicle divider holding a printed report and wearing the most innocent expression he could physically fake.
“Hey, Max... did you review the transportation costs for the event?” Lando asked casually, leaning against the desk while side-eyeing Max’s tense hands. “You seem kinda... wired today. Too much coffee, or was the alignment meeting with Russell particularly intense?”
Max didn’t even look away from his monitor.
“The meeting was normal, Lando. And I’m perfectly calm,” Max answered, his tone sharper than usual.
From the opposite side of the divider, Lando clearly heard George release a heavy breath while shifting in his chair.
Lando smiled internally, immediately filing the information away for later.
Around noon, Carlos Sainz launched his own attack in the break room.
He found George filling his water bottle.
“George, hombre, you look tired,” Carlos commented casually while leaning against the counter. “That archive room on the fifth floor gets ridiculously stuffy, doesn’t it? Alex said he walked by earlier and the air conditioning sounded like it was about to explode. Did you two manage to finish your discussion, or was something left... unresolved?”
George stopped filling the bottle for an entire second before shutting off the water.
He adjusted the collar of his gray shirt, rebuilding the polished British lord persona piece by piece.
“Everything has been perfectly resolved, Carlos. Thank you for your concern. Logistics simply required some... firmer direction,” George replied in a tone Carlos knew very well: the exact voice George used whenever he was trying not to completely lose his mind.
“Of course, of course... firmer direction,” Carlos murmured, struggling not to laugh while George escaped the break room at alarming speed.
[FRIDAY, 16:00]
The workday was nearly over when a company-wide email titled:
[URGENT REMINDER] Departure for Team Building Trip – 16:30
appeared on Max’s screen.
Max frowned and clicked the message open.
As he read the lines written by HR, his blue eyes widened in absolute horror.
“We remind all managers that the bus for our annual weekend integration retreat will depart promptly from the company parking lot at 16:30. Destination: Hotel Resort Serra Imperial. Return scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Attendance mandatory for leadership staff.”
“Holy fucking shit...” Max cursed loudly, slapping a hand against his forehead.
He had completely forgotten.
Between spending every night on Grindr talking to William and trying not to jump George Russell during meetings, the company’s stupid retreat had vanished entirely from his brain.
He had no suitcase packed.
No mental preparation whatsoever.
Nothing.
He was about to spend an entire weekend trapped at a countryside resort with the entire company.
And even worse:
with Russell.
On the other side of the divider, George looked up, calmly observing Max’s panic.
George already had a sleek black leather carry-on placed neatly beside his chair, perfectly packed since the day before.
“Problem, Verstappen?” George asked with subtle mockery in his tone, even though deep down his own heart had accelerated at the thought of spending forty-eight uninterrupted hours near the Dutchman. “Judging by your face, you forgot the most important corporate event of the quarter.”
“I didn’t forget, Russell,” Max lied shamelessly while aggressively closing tabs on his computer and standing up. “I just have more important things to think about than spending a weekend pretending I enjoy team-building exercises.”
While Max hurriedly shoved his laptop into his backpack, he failed to notice Franco Colapinto and Gabriel Bortoleto discreetly exchanging a high-five near the back hallway.
“Verstappen forgot about the trip,” Gabriel whispered to Franco. “He’s either spending the weekend wearing the same work clothes or borrowing someone else’s stuff.”
“Dude, this is perfect,” Franco laughed while typing furiously on his phone. “Imagine if they end up sharing the same cabin? The betting odds are gonna skyrocket. The interns are gonna have to sell a kidney to cover tomorrow’s bets.”
[FRIDAY, 16:25]
The Grand Prix Corp. parking lot was controlled chaos. The luxury coach bus chartered by the company sat idling with its engine running. Alex, Lando, Oscar, Lewis, and the rest of the grid were already settled into the back rows, laughing and cracking open the first beer cans of the trip. Kimi and Arvid sat a few rows ahead, clutching their phones like they were operating a rocket launch panel, tracking the betting spreadsheets that now had an extra tab labeled: “Resort Factor.”
Max boarded the bus last, visibly irritated, carrying nothing but his everyday backpack. The only empty seat left was in the middle row.
By the window, reading a book through a pair of thin reading glasses while holding a cup of water, sat George.
Max stopped in the aisle, staring at the empty seat. He glanced toward the back and caught Lewis Hamilton’s conspiratorial grin, immediately realizing he was completely trapped. There was no escape. Fate, and the company’s self-appointed espionage committee, had decided their weekend was going to be very, very long.
With a heavy sigh that echoed down the aisle, Max shoved his backpack into the overhead compartment and dropped into the seat beside George, instantly feeling the heat of the Brit’s arm brush against his in the cramped space.
“Have a nice trip, Verstappen,” George murmured without looking up from his book, though a tense, involuntary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Go fuck yourself, Russell,” Max muttered back, crossing his arms and sinking into the seat as the bus finally pulled away toward the countryside.
In the back rows, the phones of the committee members buzzed simultaneously with a new message from Lando:
“Buckle up. Phase 2 has begun.”
The bus engine rumbled loudly beneath them, vibrations traveling through the floor and straight into the soles of Max’s shoes. When the vehicle finally maneuvered out of the Grand Prix Corp. parking lot, Max felt a cold bead of sweat slide down the back of his neck.
He was officially trapped.
The trip to Hotel Resort Serra Imperial would take at least three hours. On a good day. And since it was Friday evening traffic leaving the city, the drive threatened to become a four- or even five-hour purgatory. And right in the center of Max’s personal hell sat George Russell.
George wasn’t just another passenger beside him , he was a massive, long-limbed, absurdly close presence. The legroom on the coach bus was decent enough, but for two broad-shouldered men over six feet tall, it felt like confinement. Every time the bus took a sharper turn, George’s left arm, covered in black dress-shirt fabric, brushed against Max’s right arm. The heat of that proximity traveled through Max’s clothes like an electric current, twisting his stomach into knots.
Max tried pressing himself against the window, crossing his arms tightly to avoid contact, but it was useless. George’s scent seemed to consume all the oxygen in their row. And to make matters worse, the image of William and the filthy messages from the previous night kept replaying in Max’s head.
“I’d pin him against the wall… pull him by the tie…”
Max swallowed hard, staring straight ahead at the road while his pulse climbed higher and higher. He was inches away from his living fantasy, exhausted from a sleepless night, and somehow still had to pretend he wanted nothing to do with the man beside him.
And then, just to complete the perfect psychological breakdown, Max’s brain began projecting the rest of the weekend.
The HR email had mentioned that, due to the hotel’s capacity and the size of the company delegation, employees would be split into triple rooms.
Triple rooms.
According to Max’s increasingly desperate logic, the odds of ending up in the same room as George were enormous. Management loved pairing “rivals” together for idiotic team-building exercises. Max closed his eyes, genuine panic rising in his throat. Sharing a hotel room with George? Seeing him walk out of the shower? Fighting over a tiny bathroom with the man who had monopolized every forbidden thought in his head for weeks?
That was the perfect recipe for losing control completely and committing either a corporate crime… or something much worse.
And then came the final blow: his “luggage.”
Max looked down at the black work backpack wedged between his legs.
That was not luggage. Not even remotely.
Inside it, aside from his company laptop and three tangled chargers, there was only the emergency kit he always carried out of habit: one spare pair of underwear still in the package, a wrinkled gym outfit, an old gray cotton t-shirt and black shorts, and a pair of flat-soled sneakers he kept around in case he decided to stop by the gym after work.
He didn’t have a clean dress shirt for Saturday’s formal dinner.
He didn’t even have flip-flops.
He was about to spend an entire weekend wearing the same tailored pants and dress shoes he’d worked in all week. The man who prided himself on being the company’s most practical and strategic employee was going to look like an absolute disaster next to George Russell, whose perfectly labeled genuine leather suitcase sat in the luggage compartment overhead.
Max let out another heavy sigh and dropped his head against the seatback, convinced he was losing his mind.
Beside him, George slowly turned a page in his book.
He hadn’t said a single word since the bus departed, but his green eyes flicked briefly toward Max’s tense profile, noticing the way the Dutchman clenched his jaw. George tightened his fingers slightly around the edge of the book, trying to focus on the printed words while his own heart stubbornly ignored the traffic and focused solely on the warmth of Max’s shoulder pressed beside his.
The trip had barely begun, and Max Verstappen already felt like he wasn’t going to survive the first turn.
The traffic leaving the city did not disappoint.
What should have been a three-hour drive became, shortly after the first toll booth, an endless trail of red brake lights beneath the darkening sky. The bus crawled forward at a miserable pace.
For Max, every minute inside that vehicle felt like an hour of psychological torture.
His mind had become a battlefield.
On one side stood Corporate Max Verstappen, the rational man who knew he needed to maintain his composure at all costs, trying desperately to focus on the logistics problems waiting for him on Monday morning.
On the other side stood Private Max, the version of himself who had spent the entire night being provoked by William on the app, operating now on pure obsession.
He glanced sideways at the window and could see George Russell’s reflection in the dark glass. His thoughts moved in endless circles around the Brit.
How can someone be this irritating and this attractive at the same time?
The question made him irrationally angry with himself.
He remembered William’s words from the chat:
“I use the arguments at work to distract myself from how badly I want him.”
Did George do the same thing?
Were George’s constant criticisms and deadline policing just a façade?
Max shook his head sharply, trying to kill the thought before it spiraled further.
Don’t be ridiculous. Russell’s just an uptight asshole. You’re projecting your app fantasies onto your office rival.
The internal battle raged for the next two hours.
Max tried closing his eyes and pretending to sleep, but the darkness only sharpened his other senses. He could hear George’s slow breathing. He could feel the warmth of George’s arm against his every time the bus hit another pothole in the road.
It was a brutal test of endurance.
Max felt like if he moved his hand just two inches to the side, he could touch George’s fingers.
And the worst part was that he wanted to.
Around seven-thirty in the evening, the bus finally picked up speed on the highway, and the gentle rocking of the vehicle began claiming victims one by one. In the back rows, the singing and laughter from the betting committee faded into quiet murmurs and sleepy silence.
Beside Max, George’s book slowly slipped from his hands and landed in his lap.
Max opened his eyes and looked over.
George had fallen asleep.
Without the tense expression and sharp comments, the Brit’s face looked surprisingly soft beneath the dim overhead lighting. Long lashes rested against pale skin, and his lips were slightly parted.
Max froze.
The conflict inside his chest reached catastrophic levels. He shouldn’t look. He definitely shouldn’t think his rival looked beautiful.
But he couldn’t look away.
Then the bus driver hit the brakes a little too hard to avoid a dip in the road.
With the sudden jolt, George’s body tipped sideways. Max tensed instinctively, expecting him to wake up, but George’s exhaustion must have been just as deep as his own.
Instead of waking, George’s head tilted gently to the left, landing perfectly in the space between Max’s neck and shoulder.
He let out a slow, satisfied sigh and settled there comfortably, burying his face against the dark fabric of Max’s jacket.
If Max’s self-control had already been hanging by a thread before, the dam now shattered completely.
Max Verstappen froze solid.
He stopped breathing for a full five seconds, terrified that even the slightest movement would wake George and make him realize the situation. His heart began hammering so violently against his ribs that Max became convinced George would be able to feel it through his chest.
A fresh and catastrophic mental war exploded inside his head.
Push him off. Elbow him. Shove him toward the window and pretend it was accidental, the rational part of his brain ordered immediately.
Absolutely fucking not, the rest of his body answered.
The weight of George’s head on his shoulder felt perfect.
George’s slightly messy brown hair brushed against Max’s jaw, and every time George breathed, the warm air from his lips ghosted over the exposed skin of Max’s neck, sending constant shivers down his spine. The citrus scent of his cologne was so close now that Max felt intoxicated by it.
Max swallowed hard, staring straight ahead into the darkness of the bus in complete panic.
He was having a full internal collapse.
He had spent months wanting to grab this man by the collar and shake him senseless and now George was asleep on his shoulder like Max was the safest place in the world.
His right hand, crossed over his chest, slowly relaxed.
His fingers twitched with the overwhelming temptation to slide upward into George’s hair, to pull him even closer. He forced himself to grip his own thigh tightly instead.
You are so fucked, Verstappen. Completely fucked.
The realization hit him with a terrifying mix of despair and something far softer an absurdly genuine tenderness and desire he had never felt for anyone before.
So Max kept his body rigid, acting as George’s support, letting his rival sleep through the rest of the journey.
He didn’t close his eyes again for a single second.
He stayed there in the dark, guarding the sleep of the man he claimed to hate, fighting an erection that was absolutely trying its hardest to ruin his life, while the bus climbed higher into the mountains toward the resort that was destined to destroy whatever peace he had left.
[FRIDAY, 21:15]
While Max Verstappen endured the worst endurance test of his life breathing as shallowly as possible so he wouldn’t move the shoulder George Russell was currently sleeping on like an angel, while actively fighting against the laws of his own body, the dim backlight from the last rows of the bus illuminated a secret conclave of glowing phone screens.
Lando Norris, strategically seated two rows behind them across the aisle, had stretched his neck beyond the safe limits of human anatomy. His eyes gleamed in the darkness as they focused on George’s perfectly slumped silhouette, his face buried against Max’s neck.
He wasted no time. He snapped a quick photo without flash and dropped it into the group chat.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Lando Norris: [BLURRY_BUT_HISTORIC.JPG] SYSTEM FAILURE! REPEATING: SYSTEM FAILURE! Russell passed out and fell asleep on Max’s shoulder. Max is stiffer than a marble statue. He hasn’t moved in thirty minutes!
Franco Colapinto: NO FUCKING WAY!!! Holy shit, George broke character in his sleep? Does this count as first move?!
Lewis Hamilton: No, Franco. That’s gravity, not initiative. Protocol requires conscious action. But look at Max’s posture… He could’ve pushed him away. He didn’t. Interesting middle ground.
Carlos Sainz: Guys, Max is staring at the windshield like he’s witnessing the apocalypse. He’s panicking. The odds of Verstappen cracking first just skyrocketed.
In the seat ahead of them, Kimi Antonelli elbowed Arvid Lindblad, who had nearly fallen asleep.
“Arvid, wake up,” Kimi whispered, eyes glued to the screen. “Lando changed the betting status. This is our chance.”
Kimi quickly unmuted himself on Teams and sent a hushed voice message, his tone dripping with youthful ambition.
“Hey, bosses. Since Albon ruined the archive room incident and now they’re literally glued together, the general bet’s gotten too vague. We should allow contract amendments. Change the rules!”
Albon: What do you mean, intern?
Kimi: Specific scenario betting! If we only keep ‘who confesses first,’ too many people split the prize pool. But if someone predicts the exact situation where the first move happens, they win the ENTIRE pot. Full payout. No percentage split!
A tactical silence settled over the chat as the senior managers and analysts processed the proposal. It was bold. For the interns, it was the only possible path out of corporate poverty and toward humiliating their bosses.
Lando: I’m in! Makes the game more dangerous. If you miss the specifics, you lose everything you already bet. Who’s making the first detailed prediction?
Carlos Sainz: Me. One hundred and fifty dollars specific: Max loses control tomorrow night during the resort welcome cocktail party after two caipirinhas and drags George into the bathroom hallway.
Lando: Noted. Lewis?
Lewis Hamilton: George Russell. Sunday morning, before the leadership workshop. He’ll use presentation prep as an excuse to invite Max into his chalet and shut the door with his foot. One hundred dollars.
Kimi and Arvid exchanged looks from their seats on the bus. They only had their original ten-dollar bets each, but with the new rules, if they got closer to the real scenario than the wildly dramatic guesses from management, they would clean out the entire pool.
“What do you think?” Arvid whispered. “Max is basically having a breakdown up there.”
“Max isn’t surviving this resort,” Kimi analyzed like a seasoned behavioral specialist. “He has no luggage, he’s horny, he’s pissed off. He’s gonna snap within the next twenty-four hours.”
Kimi grabbed his phone and typed out the interns’ final prediction:
Kimi Antonelli: Intern Social Quota Bet (Ten dollars each): The first move happens because of Max’s lack of clothes. He’ll have to borrow something from George at the chalet, the tension will explode over some stupid reason, and Max will corner Russell before Saturday dinner. If we correctly predict the clothing trigger, we take everything.
Gabriel Bortoleto: Bold. I like it. But my bet’s still on Max completely losing it during the pool group activity.
Lando Norris took one final look at the spreadsheet before snapping his laptop shut with satisfaction.
Lando Norris: Specific addendum betting officially closed. Total prize pool: 820 dollars. May God have mercy on Max Verstappen and George Russell, because the gossip committee absolutely won’t.
Two rows ahead, completely unaware that his own body and lack of underwear had become the company’s most volatile financial investment, Max Verstappen let out a silent, tortured groan.
George had just shifted slightly in his sleep, brushing the tip of his nose against the curve of Max’s neck.
Max squeezed his eyes shut, praying for the bus to drive faster, because his peace of mind officially no longer existed.
The massive tires of the bus finally crunched over gravel as they entered Hotel Resort Serra Imperial. The sound of stones beneath the vehicle and the sudden drop in speed woke the last passengers still half-asleep.
Beside Max, George stirred slowly.
He blinked a few times, his mind foggy with deep sleep, and it took exactly three seconds for him to process the fact that his face was practically buried in Max Verstappen’s neck.
And worse: Max’s hand was firmly braced against the back of the seat, keeping his body rigid so George wouldn’t fall over.
George jolted backward, straightening his tie with impressive speed as his face flushed into a shade of red worthy of a sunset.
“My apologies, Verstappen,” George cleared his throat, forcibly recovering his polished British tone, even though his green eyes were still wide. “The motion of the bus was… rather conducive to sleep.”
“Whatever, Russell,” Max grumbled. His voice came out lower and completely rough. He stood up from the seat immediately, desperately needing to take two steps so his dress pants would stop betraying the evidence of the physical battle he’d been fighting for the past three hours. “Just grab your stuff.”
When the bus doors opened, the fresh freezing mountain air hit the group of employees all at once. In front of them, illuminated by rustic lights and surrounded by thick fog, stood the resort. It was a massive complex of wooden and stone cabins scattered across the hillside.
At the center of the reception lobby, holding a digital clipboard and wearing a black puffer jacket with the company logo on it, stood Grand Prix Corp.’s Industrial Director: Peter Bonnington, better known across every department simply as Bono.
Bono had that veteran manager aura of someone with absolutely no patience for nonsense. He clapped his hands twice, the sound echoing through the lobby and instantly silencing the gossip committee, who had already positioned themselves strategically near the reception desk.
“Alright, team, attention!” Bono called out, reading glasses balanced on the tip of his nose as he glanced at the clipboard. “Traffic completely destroyed our welcome schedule, so tonight’s cocktail reception has been canceled. I want everyone rested because tomorrow’s leadership workshop starts promptly at seven-thirty in the morning. No delays.”
A disappointed murmur spread through the drivers and interns, but Bono didn’t even blink.
“I’m going to read the cabin assignments so you can collect your keys and head to your rooms. Triple cabins. Alright then: Cabin 1: Hamilton, Albon, and Norris.”
Lando and Alex exchanged a glance, celebrating discreetly.
Max felt his stomach twist into a knot. If Albon and Lando were together, then the walls were definitely closing in. He glanced sideways at George, who stood there with his perfectly aligned leather suitcase beside him, looking just as tense as Max felt. This is it, Max thought, his heartbeat speeding up again. HR is going to lock me in with this guy.
“Cabin 6,” Bono continued emotionlessly. “Sainz, Verstappen, and Antonelli.”
Max’s brain took a full second to process it. Sainz… Verstappen… and the intern Kimi. He wasn’t rooming with George.
A massive wave of relief crashed through Max’s chest, making his shoulders instantly relax. But right afterward, a completely stupid and inexplicable stab of frustration poked at his stomach. I spent the entire trip having a breakdown for nothing? he thought irritably.
On the other side of the lobby, George Russell froze. His eyebrows lifted slightly. He had been absolutely certain company logistics would place him with the strategy manager. He tightened his grip on the handle of his suitcase, feeling a strange and irritating emptiness replace the adrenaline that had been haunting him ever since the archive room incident.
“And Cabin 8: Russell, Colapinto, and Bortoleto,” Bono finished, tapping the clipboard against his thigh. “Keys are at the front desk. Good night, everyone.”
The disappointment was immediate. At the back of the lobby, the gossip committee descended into silent panic.
Carlos Sainz looked at Max, then down at the spreadsheet on his phone, realizing his “two caipirinhas at the cocktail reception” bet had completely gone up in flames now that the cocktail event had been canceled. Kimi Antonelli, meanwhile, nudged Arvid with his elbow, eyes shining. Verstappen was in his cabin. Without a suitcase. Irritated. The interns’ entire “lack of clothes” strategy was still very much alive.
Max grabbed his everyday backpack from reception and started walking down the stone paths toward the cabins beneath the starry mountain sky. He was going to spend the weekend sleeping in a room with Carlos and an intern while wearing his single spare pair of underwear tomorrow.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he walked through the cold night air, feeling the device vibrate. A new Grindr notification. William had sent him a message.
William: Finally got a minute of peace. What an exhausting day. To make things worse, it seems fate has decided I need to spend the entire weekend putting up with my coworker nearby. Much longer than what’s strictly necessary for my sanity.
Max stopped in the middle of the stone path, his breath fogging in the cold night air. He looked down at the screen, a tense and understanding smile appearing on his lips as he started typing.
Emilian: Tell me about it. I’m in exactly the same situation. My insufferable coworker is practically in my line of sight at all times now. Had to deal with the guy glued to me for the past few hours. It’s a genuine endurance test.
William: And how are you handling it? Still focusing on the rivalry to ignore everything else?
Max swallowed hard, remembering the exact feeling of George’s head resting against his shoulder on the bus and the heat that had nearly made him lose control back in the archive room.
Emilian: I’m trying. But I’ll admit it, William… every minute I spend near that guy, the tension just gets worse. Being in the same space with him without being able to do anything I want is driving me insane. But nothing’s going to happen. I need to keep my head straight.
Two cabins away, locked inside the bathroom for privacy from Franco and Gabriel’s comments, George Russell read the message and leaned his head back against the tiled wall, slowly exhaling. His chest burned with a mixture of frustration and desire.
William: Stay focused, Emilian. I’ll try to do the same over here. But I agree with you… all this built-up tension is a very dangerous game.
Max slipped his phone back into his pocket, tightening his grip on the backpack straps. They weren’t going to give in. There would be no stolen kisses in hidden corners, no confessions under moonlight. It was going to be an entire weekend of pure, raw, agonizing silent tension.
And Saturday morning was already right around the corner.
[SATURDAY, 06:45]
Saturday morning in the mountains arrived with brilliant sunshine, a biting chill in the air, and Bono’s promise hanging over their heads: “Leadership workshop starts at seven-thirty sharp.”
In Cabin 6, Max Verstappen was having his own logistical apocalypse. He stepped out of the shower wrapped in nothing but a white resort towel, feeling that the tailored trousers he’d worn all day yesterday, and his only decent option left for the day, felt heavy and oppressive.
He zipped open his backpack. He tossed his spare underwear (the last clean pair he had) onto the bed. Beside it, he grabbed his workout gear: a faded, worn-out grey cotton t-shirt and the black shorts he used for the gym. That was his reality for the entire day.
Over in the corner of the room, Kimi Antonelli, already dressed in his corporate polo, watched the scene with gleaming eyes. On Teams, the interns' group chat was blowing up. “Max’s desperation levels are skyrocketing. He’s going to have to wear gym shorts all day,” Kimi typed into the confidential betting pool.
Carlos Sainz, who was organizing his own suitcase, looked at Max’s shorts and crumpled t-shirt and let out a huff of laughter, though it was compassionate.
“Are you sure you don’t want to borrow a shirt from Russell, hombre?” Carlos teased with a wry smirk. “He probably has three extra dress shirts he irons before going to bed. The gym shorts are going to leave you looking a bit... overexposed at the workshop.”
“Screw you, Carlos,” Max muttered, pulling on the black workout shorts, which fit a little too snugly around his thighs, and the wrinkled t-shirt. “I’m perfectly fine.”
[SATURDAY, 07:45]
The resort’s conference room was immaculate. In the front rows, Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad were already seated, notebooks out and pens poised. Even though they were fully invested in the office pool, the two support interns took Bono’s orders seriously; they were there to actively participate and learn everything they could from the coordinators and team leaders.
“Dude, look at Russell’s posture,” Arvid whispered, gesturing discreetly with his pen.
George was in the third row, wearing a pristine light-blue polo and white linen trousers, his digital notepad open on his lap. He exuded corporate efficiency and control. At the back of the room, hiding in the very last row so no one could see his legs, Max Verstappen sat with his arms tightly crossed, wearing his wrinkled grey t-shirt and gym shorts.
As the workshop began, Bono pulled up the slides on goals and distribution. Kimi’s hand shot up immediately, eager to score points.
“Director Bono, thinking about the workflow optimization Coordinator Russell proposed in the monthly report, how can the engineering team predict bottlenecks without compromising the final logistics deadline?” Kimi asked, methodically jotting down every word.
George turned slightly in his seat, casting an approving glance at the intern.
“Excellent question, Antonelli,” George spoke up, his polished voice echoing through the room. “The key is risk predictability. If logistics worked with realistic deadlines instead of delivering reports at the eleventh hour, support wouldn't have to spend all their time putting out fires. Right, Verstappen?”
Max felt the blood rush straight to his head. He leaned forward in his chair at the back of the room.
“Predictability looks great on paper, Russell,” Max retorted, his voice cutting and deep, making Kimi and Arvid scramble to copy his arguments into their notebooks like academic gold. “But in practice, logistics requires flexibility. Anyone who gets too bogged down by rigid rules ends up paralyzing the operation. A good leader knows how to handle the unexpected, they don’t sit around crying over a missed minute.”
The tension between the two in the conference room was so thick Arvid almost forgot to take notes. Kimi, his eyes darting between professional development and pure, unadulterated corporate gossip, merely whispered to his colleague: “Write that down: resilience under pressure from rivals.”
[SATURDAY, 11:30]
After two hours of an intense debate disguised as a lecture, Bono wrapped up the theoretical portion. “Alright, team. Now that the interns have learned the theory from our leaders, let’s move on to the practical application: a team-building exercise by the pool area!”
The exercise was simple and infuriating: two teams, a climbing rope stretched across the Olympic-sized pool, and the mission to get every member from one side to the other without falling into the freezing water.
Max was on the Blue Team. George was on the Red Team.
The competition only sharpened their rivalry. Max, his gym shorts already getting damp and clinging to his thighs from his own crossing attempts, barked orders at Lando and Oscar. George, on the Red Team, was wearing a pair of micro swim trunks, the shortest Max had ever seen a businessman wear, in a shade of cyan blue that contrasted sharply with his pale skin. George’s trunks were already completely soaked and plastered to his body, tracing every contour of his long legs and something else Max was actively trying to ignore.
It was during the Red Team’s third crossing that Max’s psychological catastrophe struck.
George was halfway across the rope, struggling to balance. The sun caught his wet brown hair. His polo shirt was drenched, clinging to his chest and shoulders. The micro cyan trunks had turned semi-transparent from the water, revealing the curve of his thighs and the outline of his seams. George let out a low groan of exertion, flexing his muscles to hold on.
Max stopped breathing. The heat of the archive room, the weight of George’s head on the bus, and that image of William on Grindr collided in his mind in a single second of pure sensory overload. The corporate rivalry vanished. Professionalism disappeared. All that was left was the private Max, consumed by a wave of horniness so raw, physical, and violent that he nearly slipped off the edge of the pool where he was standing.
His erection, which had spent its whole life fighting for space on the bus, finally made an appearance. And it wasn’t a timid one; it was a full, imposing, instantaneous show of force beneath Max’s tight, wet gym shorts.
“Holy shit…” Max gasped, his face burning, his pulse spiking dangerously.
George, still on the rope, looked down toward Max for a fraction of a second, green eyes locking onto blue. George was flushed from the effort, but seeing the paralyzed expression and sheer panic on the Dutchman's face, something in his own mind snapped. George’s British composure wavered, causing him to lose his balance and hit the water with a massive splash, securing the Red Team’s defeat.
While everyone else was shouting, laughing, and celebrating, Max didn't move. He was having a genuine, full-blown crisis of arousal in the middle of the Olympic pool, with the entire company present. He couldn't stay there. He’d be caught in two seconds if he tried to stand up.
In the background, the gossip committee was losing its mind. Gabriel Bortoleto was typing furiously in the Teams chat: “GUYS, RUSSELL FELL! VERSTAPPEN IS LAUGHING ON THE EDGE! I TOLD YOU THE BREAKDOWN WOULD HAPPEN AT THE POOL! MY BET IS SAFE!”
But Bortoleto was wrong. The committee was so focused on George’s defeat that no one was looking at Max. No one noticed that the private Max was in control, and that he was on the verge of a total collapse.
Max took advantage of the general chaos of George’s splash to haul himself away from the pool edge. He crossed his hands over the front of his shorts, pretending to adjust his clothes, and walked in quick, controlled strides toward the men's locker room next to the sauna, just off the pool deck.
Stepping into the quiet, chilly locker room, Max locked the door. He was breathing as if he’d run a marathon. He turned the deadbolt with almost frantic haste. The metallic clack sealed him away from the laughter of the team, the pool water, and, crucially, George Russell’s green eyes.
The locker room was bathed in a cool twilight, the air heavy with the rustic scent of cedar wood from the adjacent sauna and a sharp tang of chlorine. Max pressed his back against the cool, textured tiled wall, his head tilted back, his eyes squeezed shut. He was panting, his breath breaking the silence of the room in short, heavy gasps.
The image of George on the rope seemed burned into his retinas. Every detail was in sharp focus: the sun glinting off his wet brown hair, the strain in the muscles of his back and shoulders, the low groan of effort that had echoed through the air... and those micro cyan trunks. Transparent. Clinging.
Max’s gym shorts were so tight that the seam pressed against his erection with an intensity that was almost painful. He could feel the blood thumping in his veins, heat radiating from his body into the cool room. There was no more room for denial, no more corporate rivalry facade. The private Max, the Emilian who craved shutting people up in unconventional ways, who felt something for William, was in absolute control now.
With a muffled, broken groan, Max reached for the waistband of his shorts. He shoved the wet, restrictive fabric down, freeing himself. The sensation of the cool air hitting his overheated skin was an instant shock, but his cock was rock-hard, throbbing and demanding.
Max squeezed his eyes even tighter. He needed relief. He needed to erase that image. Or, perhaps, he needed to surrender to it.
His thumb and forefinger wrapped around the base, and he began to stroke himself up and down. The pace was fast, desperate, driven by the urgent need to release the tension accumulated from days of provocative texts and the suffocating proximity of the mountains.
The image of George in the archive room resurfaced, but this time, there was no Albon to interrupt them. In Max’s mind, he closed the remaining inches between them. He pinned George’s wrists against the metal shelving, feeling the Brit’s initial resistance give way to a shiver of surrender.
With a sigh that sounded more like a low growl in the empty locker room, Max imagined cupping George’s face with both hands, burying his fingers in that soft, damp hair. He could almost taste the citrus cologne, feel the heat of George’s mouth against his own. Russell’s British restraint unravelling under the aggression of Max’s kiss, Emilian’s words about "shutting him up" becoming a visceral, delicious reality.
The motion of Max’s hand quickened. He was losing himself in the fantasy, every stroke a reflection of the intensity of the desire he had been suppressing. He pictured himself unbuttoning that wet polo shirt, dragging his nails across George’s pale, warm skin, watching his chest heave in fast, ragged symmetry with his own.
His breathing was down to quick, deep gasps now. Sweat beaded on his forehead, the tension in his body building to a breaking point. The scent of cedar and chlorine seemed to intensify, mixing with the raw musk of his own arousal.
With one last hard, decisive stroke and a loud groan that echoed off the tiled walls, Max let go. The orgasm was intense, borderline violent, a sudden explosion of relief and pleasure that left him trembling and spent against the wall.
He stood there for a few long minutes, his arm thrown over his eyes, trying to catch his breath and slow his racing pulse. The fantasy slowly receded, replaced by the reality of the dim locker room. He could still hear the distant sounds of the team out by the pool.
Max cleaned himself up quickly with some paper towels and pulled his gym shorts back into place. The fabric was still damp and uncomfortable, but his erection was no longer throbbing. He could still feel the residual hum of the orgasm in his limbs, a strange cocktail of satisfaction and guilt blooming in his chest.
He walked over to the sink and splashed cold water on his face. He needed his composure back. He couldn't let anyone, especially George, see a single trace of what had just happened in this bathroom.
Max squared his shoulders, took one deep breath, and stepped out of the locker room. The morning sunlight hit him as he walked back toward the pool, where the team was still laughing over the Red Team’s defeat. He spotted George in the water, his hair soaked, his face still flushed from the effort and perhaps, from something else.
Max Verstappen was back. But deep down, he knew the weekend in the mountains had only just begun, and the battle between Max and George was nowhere near over.
[SATURDAY, 13:00]
When Max returned to the outdoor area, the atmosphere from the team-building activity had already dissolved in favor of the company’s collective hunger. Bono had dismissed everyone for a buffet-style lunch served on the large wooden deck surrounding the pool, overlooking the mountain range.
Max felt lighter after the breakdown in the locker room, but the damp training pants still clinging to his body remained a physical and deeply irritating reminder that he had no decent clothes with him. He grabbed a plate of salad and grilled meat and sat at a table farther away, hoping for ten minutes of peace.
Obviously, peace at Grand Prix Corp. was a nonexistent concept.
George Russell was already there. He had changed out of the soaked micro shorts into immaculate beige chino shorts and a white linen button-up shirt, slightly open at the first two buttons. His brown hair was still damp, combed back with his fingers, and he held a glass of white wine while speaking with a few executives.
When George excused himself from the directors and his eyes swept across the deck, they landed directly on Max. The Brit walked over with measured steps toward the Dutchman’s table and, without asking permission, pulled out the wooden chair and sat down across from him.
“You disappeared right after my… fall, Verstappen,” George pointed out, green eyes half-lidded as they analyzed Max’s face with surgical intensity. “You didn’t stay to celebrate your team’s victory? I thought you’d enjoy rubbing the result in my face.”
Max cut into his steak, holding George’s gaze. His heart kicked harder at the memory of exactly what he’d been doing while George fell into the water, but he kept his expression carved from stone.
“I don’t need to celebrate the obvious, Russell. Your team sabotaged itself just fine,” Max replied, his voice perfectly controlled even though the lingering traces of his recent orgasm still left his senses sharper than usual. “And I only went to the restroom to dry off. Unlike you, I came here to work, not to model for a summer fashion catalog.”
George let out a nasal laugh, but his eyes dropped briefly over Max’s wrinkled gray T-shirt and the black training shorts that still showed traces of dampness.
“Clearly,” George jabbed back, leaning slightly farther over the rustic table and closing the distance between them. “But I have to admit, your textile minimalism is attracting attention, Verstappen. Even Bono commented that you look like you came here to rob the place instead of attending a leadership retreat. If you need me to lend you a shirt for tonight’s formal dinner… the offer still stands.”
“I’ll handle it myself, Russell,” Max cut in, his voice dropping an octave. George’s proximity and the scent of that linen-and-lemon cologne were reactivating circuits he had only just tried to shut down in the locker room. “Worry about your reports. I can manage my clothes just fine.”
While the two coordinators traded barbed remarks disguised beneath the clatter of silverware on the deck, three tables behind them, the gossip operation was running at full speed.
Gabriel Bortoleto stared at his phone screen with pure outrage written across his face. The Teams chat had descended into chaos.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Gabriel Bortoleto: I demand an audit on this spreadsheet! Max absolutely lost it at the pool! Did you guys see his face when George fell? He froze like he’d seen a ghost. My bet was surgical!
Lando Norris: Negative, Bortoleto. The addendum rules were clear: the committee needed to witness the actual meltdown or explicit move. Max just quietly disappeared into the locker room and now he’s sitting there at lunch wearing the same miserable expression as always. Nothing happened.
Franco Colapinto: Bortoleto lost the one hundred and fifty dollars, accept it Gabriel! Kkkkkk But look at their table now… George changed clothes and Max is still wearing gym shorts. The tension is insane. They’re barely touching their food.
Alex Albon: Attention, Kimi and Arvid are circling the area. They’re collecting empty buffet plates pretending to help the resort waiters just so they can pass near the two of them.
And indeed, Kimi Antonelli walked past Max and George’s table carrying an empty dessert tray, his ears practically pointed toward the managers. He heard Max say “I’ll handle it myself, Russell” in a tone that made the intern absolutely certain the Dutchman’s lack of luggage would become the checkmate of the night.
Kimi hurried back to the support table where Arvid waited with a notebook hidden behind a pile of napkins.
“Max refused George’s offer to lend him clothes at lunch,” Kimi whispered, eyes shining with pure ambition. “He’s way too proud. But tonight’s dinner requires formal wear. He’s going to have to cave and go after Russell at Cabin 8 before eight PM or Bono will block him at the ballroom entrance. This is our chance, Arvid. The 820-dollar pot is going to be ours.”
“Update our clause in the spreadsheet,” Arvid typed quickly. “Add: Formal Dinner Trigger — Verstappen’s pride breaks at 19:30.”
The rest of Saturday afternoon would continue with a mandatory ecological trail through the resort’s forest, and Max could already predict that hiking between the trees wearing tight training shorts with George Russell beside him would become yet another endurance test for his sanity.
[SATURDAY, 3:30 PM]
If Max had thought the pool challenge had been the peak of his physical and mental exhaustion, the “Ecological Team-Building Hike” proved that the universe always had a special brand of sadistic humor reserved for him.
The afternoon sun was still strong, but the mountain wind made the dense forest considerably cold. Bono led the single-file line of Grand Prix Corp. employees down a dirt trail filled with exposed roots, loose rocks, and steep inclines.
At the very least, in the middle of that entire disaster of poor planning, Max had gotten minimally lucky: his “emergency workout kit” in the backpack included his gym running shoes. They obviously weren’t designed for mud or heavy hiking trails, but they had cushioning and rubber soles infinitely better than the leather dress shoes he had worn all week. He was dressed in black training shorts, the wrinkled gray t-shirt, and his sneakers.
Even so, the hike demanded concentration. With every step, the mental fatigue and sleepless night collected their price.
And beside him, of course, George Russell climbed the trail with the effortless ease of someone who had planned his outfit down to the millimeter. He wore a brand-new pair of designer trekking boots and tailored utility shorts. He stepped over the rocky path with infuriating elegance without breaking a single drop of sweat, carrying one of the wooden hiking staffs provided by the resort like some professional National Geographic explorer.
“A firmer stride would help maintain the team’s pace, Verstappen,” George commented over his shoulder, his voice carrying clearly through the rustling leaves. He stopped on top of a large rock and looked down with a cynical smile. “You’re holding back the entire strategy department line. I thought the new sneakers would make you more agile.”
Max scoffed, stopping two steps below George. Sweat clung the gray shirt to his chest, and the sight of the Brit’s perfectly composed posture made his blood boil. The image of George in the locker room, and in those soaking wet micro shorts, still floated dangerously through his mind, making the irritation ten times worse.
“I’m still moving faster than you could ever handle, Russell,” Max shot back, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand before nodding toward the incline ahead, where a thick tree root crossed the path. “Maybe you should watch where you’re stepping and try not to hurt yourself. I’m really not in the mood to carry you back to the cabins bridal-style like some damsel in distress because you twisted your—”
He never got to finish the word “ankle.”
Murphy’s Law struck with surgical precision.
As Max took the next step, trying to overtake George purely out of spite, his running shoe landed on a slick layer of wet moss hidden beneath dry leaves. The rubber sole, designed for asphalt and treadmills, found absolutely no traction in the mud. His right foot slid sideways. His body lurched left, and all his weight collapsed onto his ankle, which twisted inward with a sharp, muffled crack.
“Fuck!” Max roared in pain, teeth digging into his lower lip as his body crashed directly onto the dirt.
The impact made him roll onto his side, dust rising and staining the gray shirt. A sharp, burning pain shot up from his ankle straight through his spine, making his vision briefly flicker black.
“Max!” George’s cynical tone vanished instantly, replaced by genuine panic.
The Brit threw the wooden staff aside without a second thought and dropped to his knees beside Max in the damp dirt, not caring in the slightest about staining his pale shorts or dirtying his hands.
“Don’t move, don’t move!” George ordered, his long, steady fingers immediately reaching for the base of Max’s ankle, carefully touching the joint. “Where does it hurt? Can you move your foot?”
Max lay flat on his back, his left forearm covering his eyes as he breathed in short, uneven bursts, trying not to curse the entire resort into oblivion. The humiliation of falling immediately after making that arrogant comment was almost worse than the physical pain shooting through his leg.
“Don’t touch it… fuck,” Max rasped, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles in his face visibly twitched. “I just… stepped wrong. Give me a minute.”
“You twisted it badly, Max. I saw the angle,” George insisted, his voice dropping into that lower, rougher, focused tone, green eyes filled with such dense concern that Max’s stomach flipped violently. George placed a firm hand on Max’s shoulder, keeping him grounded. “Stop being stubborn. Let me look at it.”
Two positions behind them on the trail, Lando Norris and Alex Albon stopped abruptly, frozen in place. Lando frantically searched the pocket of his shorts, yanking out his phone and opening Teams with trembling fingers.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Lando Norris: CODE RED IN THE FOREST! MAX WENT DOWN! Repeat: Max fell and it looks like he broke his foot! George is literally on his knees in the dirt holding him!
Franco Colapinto: NO WAY! So what happened to Gabriel’s “pool factor” theory? Completely dead! LMAOOO
Gabriel Bortoleto: Jesus, Max has the worst luck imaginable. Did the committee lose everything? Nobody bet on an open fracture in the woods!
Kimi Antonelli: WAIT, Max is injured? If he’s hurt, he won’t be able to walk to dinner! He’s gonna need help. Someone will have to take him back to the cabin. THE HELPING TRIGGER IS ACTIVE! Arvid, protect the funds, destiny is literally drawing our victory!
Back on the forest floor, Max tried to push himself up on his elbows, but the second his right foot brushed the ground, a violent stab of pain made him collapse again with a muffled groan.
George glanced toward the top of the trail, where Bono was trying to understand the commotion further back, then looked down again, fixing his green eyes on Max with a serious determination completely devoid of any corporate mockery.
“I told you to be careful, Verstappen,” George murmured, sliding his right arm beneath Max’s shoulders and the left behind his knees, preparing to lift him off the ground in one motion. “Now shut up. Looks like I’m the one carrying the damsel around here.”
[SATURDAY, 4:15 PM]
Max Verstappen had many certainties in life, and the main one was that he would rather get publicly scolded by the board of directors than suffer the humiliation of being carried in George Russell’s arms through the middle of a forest.
Unfortunately, the searing pain in his right ankle left absolutely no room for corporate negotiations.
George simply ignored the loud protests and Dutch swearing, sliding his long, firm arms beneath Max’s body and lifting him with infuriating ease.
The walk back through the trail toward the resort’s infirmary became a psychological endurance test for both of them.
Max, body rigid with tension, had no choice but to loop one arm around George’s neck to keep from falling. The proximity was unbearable. Every step George took while maneuvering around roots and rocks made Max’s chest bump against his, and the warm citrus scent of George’s skin mixed with sweat filled the Dutchman’s senses, clouding his already exhausted mind. Max could hear George’s breathing, steady and controlled despite the effort.
Every time George adjusted his grip and pulled him slightly closer to rebalance the weight, Max’s stomach twisted violently and the memory of the pool locker room reignited a dangerous heat beneath his skin.
Don’t freak out, Verstappen. Focus on the ankle pain, for the love of God, he repeated internally, face burning while forcing himself not to look at George’s lips, which were only inches away from his own.
Behind them, the gossip committee followed in almost reverent silence, keeping their phone cameras hidden purely out of fear of Bono, though their fingers twitched desperately over the Teams chats.
[SATURDAY, 17:00]
The resort’s infirmary was a spotless room with white walls and the sharp scent of antiseptic lingering in the air. Max sat on the edge of the examination bed, his right running shoe already removed, revealing an ankle that was visibly swollen and bruised purple.
George stood by the door with his arms crossed, the knees of his linen trousers stained with dark soil, watching as the hotel doctor finished examining Max’s ankle.
“Well, son, you got lucky,” the Canadian doctor said, adjusting his glasses before giving Max’s knee a light pat. “There’s no fracture. Just a mild grade-one sprain. The ligaments are stretched, but intact.”
Max let out an audible sigh of relief, tipping his head back.
“So that means I can go back to the schedule?” Max asked quickly. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped inside the chalet while the entire company entertained themselves by creating theories about him.
“You can, but with severe restrictions,” the doctor replied, walking over with a bulky black medical boot fitted with rigid plastic supports and velcro straps. “No pool activities, no football, no forest hikes. You’ll wear this stabilizing walking boot for the next five days to keep the ankle supported. And you’ll walk slowly. Understood?”
Max stared at the massive orthopedic boot as the doctor began fastening it around his right leg over his dress sock. He glanced sideways and caught the corner of George Russell’s mouth twitching upward in a restrained, nearly invisible smile.
“An orthopedic boot, Verstappen?” George finally broke the silence, his voice slipping back into that polished, mildly sarcastic tone Max knew far too well. “It seems your mobility logistics may require a rather severe review before tonight’s formal dinner.”
Max tightened the final velcro strap and carefully tested his weight against the floor. The rigid boot dulled the pain, but left him with an unmistakable limp. He looked up at George, blue eyes sparking.
“I’m still faster with one leg than you are in those horse-riding boots of yours, Russell,” Max shot back, carefully pushing himself upright while shifting his weight onto his left leg. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my chalet. Dinner starts at eight, and I still have to solve my... wardrobe situation.”
As Max limped out of the infirmary, he failed to notice Kimi Antonelli strategically seated on a bench in the waiting hallway, typing notes furiously into his phone. The clock read 5:15 PM. The formal-dinner trigger and Verstappen’s complete lack of luggage were about to collide headfirst.
[SATURDAY, 19:15]
Inside Chalet 6, the atmosphere was one of total sartorial defeat.
Max stood in front of the wardrobe mirror, staring at his own reflection with a mixture of hatred and disbelief.
Bono’s mandatory formal smart-casual dinner would begin in exactly forty-five minutes. Carlos Sainz had already left the chalet looking flawless in a tailored navy-blue suit, smelling like expensive cologne and abandoning Max alone with his disaster.
The gigantic black orthopedic boot already destroyed any possible attempt at elegance on his right foot. But the real issue was everything above the waist.
Max still wore his work dress pants, now slightly wrinkled from the trip to the resort and from being folded inside his bag for hours, and paired with the only remaining option he had: the faded gray cotton gym shirt with the nearly-erased fitness-center logo across the chest. He tried tucking the shirt into his pants in an attempt to look “less terrible,” but the final result resembled a strategy coordinator who had just been evicted from his own department.
While he struggled angrily with his belt zipper, the chalet door suddenly opened.
Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad walked in.
The two interns were dressed in perfectly pressed white dress shirts, dark trousers, and spotless shoes. They looked like two professionals about to accept an Employee of the Year award.
They exchanged a brief glance.
Since the gossip committee had never explicitly established a rule forbidding direct interference from the gamblers themselves, the two of them had decided it was finally time to act. They needed those eight hundred and twenty dollars far more than the senior coordinators earning astronomical salaries just to gossip on Teams.
The plan was maquiavellian, surgical, and aimed directly at Max Verstappen’s Achilles’ heel: his ego.
Kimi stepped forward, stopping in the middle of the room. He looked at Max, then slowly lowered his gaze toward the wrinkled gray shirt before letting out a long, theatrical sigh the kind meant to shatter hearts. He placed a hand dramatically over his chest, launching into a performance worthy of a primetime soap opera, though Max was far too stressed and emotionally compromised to notice the boys’ complete lack of acting talent.
“Man… Max…” Kimi began, his voice heavy with fake, soul-crushing disappointment. “Sorry to say this, seriously. But it’s just… painful seeing you like this.”
Max frowned, carefully turning around in the orthopedic boot.
“What the hell are you talking about, Antonelli?”
“It’s Bono’s dinner, Max,” Arvid joined in, crossing his arms with an expression of pure corporate melancholy. “A shirt like that? At the most important leadership event of the quarter? It… it kind of dehydrates the seriousness of everything we’ve built in the department.”
“Even us, Max, we’re just support interns, making a fraction of your bonus, managed to dress appropriately for the occasion,” Kimi continued dramatically, gesturing with his hands like some kind of motivational speaker. “You’ve always been our biggest role model inside Grand Prix Corp. We look at you in logistics and think: ‘That’s where I want to be someday.’ But seeing our spiritual leader of strategy give up on dress code like this… it affects our perception of you. It breaks our focus.”
Max blinked, mouth slightly open.
The Dutchman’s pride took a direct punch to the jaw.
Being criticized by senior management was one thing. But being publicly roasted by his own interns for looking underdressed was a humiliation he had not been emotionally prepared to process.
“I forgot my fucking suitcase!” Max snapped defensively, his face already heating with rage and embarrassment. “This is an exceptional situation!”
“We know, and our respect for you is still incredibly high, but Bono won’t see it that way,” Kimi reasoned with the most manipulative expression imaginable. “Look, we’d offer to lend you one of our spare dress shirts… but honestly, I don’t think any of them would fit your shoulders. You’re much more… robust than we are. It wouldn’t work.”
“Yeah, definitely wouldn’t,” Arvid added, shaking his head before delivering the final bait with surgical precision. “I think the only person at this resort tall and broad enough to have brought extra tailored shirts would be Coordinator Russell. But… well, we know how things are. Since you’ve got that rivalry thing with him, it must be really difficult for you to go ask him yourself. If it feels too humiliating, Max… we can go over to Chalet 8 and do it for you. We’ll ask him for the shirt in your name.”
The room fell silent for a full three seconds.
Arvid’s suggestion was the final trigger.
The idea of George Russell discovering that Max had sent interns to beg for clothes because he was incapable of packing a suitcase properly was the absolute breaking point for Max Verstappen’s ego. He would rather walk naked through the snow than allow Kimi and Arvid to go begging outside George’s chalet.
“You’re not asking anyone for shit,” Max growled, blue eyes blazing with pure indignation as he grabbed his phone off the bedside table. “I solve my own problems. Go back to the hall and stop pissing me off.”
“Alright, Max. We just wanted to help our leader,” Kimi replied, lowering his head submissively as he stepped backward toward the door.
The second the two of them crossed out of Chalet 6 and the lock clicked shut behind them, the dramatic expressions vanished instantly. Kimi and Arvid exchanged a violent but completely silent high-five in the dark hallway.
Kimi yanked his phone from his pocket, fingers flying across the Teams keyboard as he updated the betting spreadsheet.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Kimi Antonelli: TRIGGER ACTIVATED AT 19:25! Repeating: Verstappen’s pride has officially cracked. The man just grabbed his phone. He’s on his way to Chalet 8. Prepare the cash box, gentlemen. The interns are eating lobster tomorrow.
Inside the room, Max was furious.
He refused to look like a complete failure in front of the entire board of directors and, even worse, swallow the smug pity of the interns.
He pulled his dark jacket over the wrinkled gray shirt to temporarily hide the disaster, took a deep breath, and stormed out of the chalet, dragging the orthopedic boot angrily across the stone pathway.
He was going straight to Chalet 8.
He was going to knock on that door, look George Russell dead in the eye like the grown man he was, demand the stupid shirt loan George had smugly offered at lunch as if he were doing Max a favor by accepting it, and leave as quickly as humanly possible.
As he limped beneath the rustic resort lamps, Max’s phone buzzed inside his jacket pocket. He stopped briefly beneath a tree and pulled it out.
A Grindr notification.
A message from William.
William: My company dinner starts in thirty minutes. I managed to escape my coworker for now, he’s probably in his room. What about you, Emilian? Managed to keep your head straight after all that tension earlier?
Max let out a nasal laugh, chest rising and falling quickly as he typed back, completely unaware that the man behind the screen was, in fact, only a few meters away, finishing buttoning the cuffs of his own dress shirt.
Emilian: Not really, William. My ego just got kicked in the teeth by two disrespectful interns because of my lack of clothes. I’m currently on my way to do something I swore I’d never do. Wish me luck, because if he smirks at me tonight, I’m not responsible for my actions.
Max shoved the phone back into his pocket, adjusted his jacket, and resumed marching toward the enemy chalet, fully prepared for his confrontation with Russell, completely oblivious to the hall-of-mirrors situation he had trapped himself inside.
[SATURDAY, 19:35]
The wooden door of the chalet barely received a civilized knock. Max shoved it open with a closed fist, making the latch rattle before limping inside heavily, dragging the orthopedic boot along with all the fury his wounded ego could channel.
“Russell, I came to get the—”
The words died in Max’s throat.
The chalet was considerably more crowded than he had anticipated. In the center of the triple room, Franco Colapinto sat cross-legged on top of one of the beds, wearing a patterned dress shirt open halfway down his chest, a laptop on his lap and a soda in hand. He stopped typing the exact second Max stormed into the room.
Near the wardrobe, George Russell was finishing adjusting the cuff buttons of a tailored white dress shirt that looked sculpted onto his body. He lifted his green eyes, surprised by the violent entrance, but quickly slipped back into his flawless lord-like posture.
“Verstappen,” George said, his voice carrying that low, measured tone. “I thought you said at lunch that you knew perfectly well how to handle your own clothes.”
“Shut up, Russell,” Max growled, kicking the door shut behind him with the heel of his good leg. He crossed his arms, trying to ignore Colapinto’s presence, even though the intern was staring at both of them wide-eyed, his hands frozen over the keyboard like a courtroom stenographer. “Those two brats wouldn’t stop bothering me. I’m not walking into that hall looking homeless. You said you had extra shirts. I want one. Now.”
George studied Max’s defensive posture. He noticed the dark jacket trying to hide the wrinkled gray gym shirt underneath and finally looked down at the black orthopedic boot on Max’s right foot. The corner of George’s mouth twitched subtly, but it wasn’t mockery. There was something warm and intense there.
“Come in, Max,” George said, his voice softening slightly, the corporate tone disappearing entirely. He opened the drawer of his black leather suitcase. “Actually, looking at the state you’re in… this situation is genuinely tragic. Do you have anything decent besides those pants?”
“I have one spare pair of underwear still in the packaging and a gym outfit, Russell. That’s it,” Max spat out, his face burning.
George let out an audible sigh as he rummaged through the suitcase. He pulled out a perfectly ironed light blue Egyptian cotton dress shirt and a pair of dark tailored trousers. Then he hesitated for a second before reaching into the side compartment and pulling out a sealed package of black designer boxer briefs, completely new.
“Here,” George held the clothes and the package out to Max. “You can use these. They’re new. And you can get changed here. The main hall is too far for you to limp back and forth in that boot.”
Max stared at the designer underwear in George’s hand, then looked at the blue shirt. The humiliation of accepting underwear from his departmental rival should’ve been unbearable, but the tension between them had become so overwhelming, the electricity in that room so thick, that Max’s brain simply stopped caring about pride.
“Thanks,” Max muttered, his voice coming out rougher than intended.
Without thinking, driven purely by urgency and adrenaline, Max grabbed the hem of his dark jacket and pulled it off, tossing it onto the empty bed. Then he grabbed the bottom of his wrinkled gray cotton shirt and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion.
From the corner of the bed, Franco Colapinto held his breath, his fingers flying across Teams at superhuman speed.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Lando Norris: HOLY FUCKING TRINITY OF GOSSIP! Although technically we’re not a trinity, but whatever, Max is taking his shirt off in the middle of our room! Russell froze! REPEATING: RUSSELL IS IN SHOCK!
George Russell truly came undone. He took an involuntary step backward, lightly bumping his back against the side of the wardrobe. His green eyes dropped completely out of control over Max’s broad, toned chest, tracing the line of his tanned abdomen down to where the tight gym shorts began at his waist. The image of Emilian and every explicit fantasy about cornering that man collided violently with the reality of Max Verstappen standing shirtless right in front of him.
George swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply. He felt his own face heating up, his hands suddenly awkward at his sides.
Max, focused on not falling over because of the immobilized foot, lifted his eyes and caught the exact moment George was staring at him with a hunger that had nothing professional about it. George’s gaze was heavy, dark, the exact kind of look Max imagined William would give him. They stared at each other for three endless seconds, the air in Chalet 8 becoming so suffocatingly tense it felt like the room might implode.
They completely ignored Franco Colapinto’s existence. To Max and George, the intern with the laptop on the bed was nothing more than invisible furniture in the background. Their private tension had swallowed the entire room whole.
“I’m gonna… use the bathroom to put the pants on,” Max broke the silence, his voice faltering slightly as he took the clothes from George’s hand, their fingers brushing lightly against the fabric and sending a current of electricity straight down Max’s spine.
“Of course. Make yourself comfortable,” George replied, his voice perfectly destabilized as he cleared his throat and turned his gaze toward the dark chalet window.
Max spun on his heels and disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
From the bed, Franco Colapinto looked at George, who was still staring at the bathroom door as though trying to decipher the meaning of life, his breathing visibly uneven. Franco turned back to the keyboard with the grin of someone who had just witnessed the historical event of the year.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Franco Colapinto: They ignore each other, they ignore ME, they only stare at each other’s mouths! George looked like he was about to faint seeing Max shirtless. Max is changing into Russell’s underwear RIGHT NOW. Forget the old bets, the tension in here shattered the thermometer!
[SATURDAY, 19:42]
While the sound of George’s zipper echoed from inside the chalet bathroom, the Teams chat was operating at a frequency that nearly pushed Grand Prix Corp.’s servers into combustion.
Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad were already strategically positioned at a corner table in the main dinner hall, drinking soda from wine glasses to look sophisticated, their phone screens glowing aggressively beneath the tablecloths.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Kimi Antonelli: ATTENTION, MANAGEMENT BOARD! Colapinto just sent a live police report from Chalet 8. Max didn’t just go get the clothes he’s changing IN THERE wearing RUSSELL’S UNDERWEAR. We warned you. The missing luggage trigger and ego attack worked perfectly at 19:25. SEND THE MONEY NOW!
Arvid Lindblad: We demand full payment of the 820-dollar pot. No whining, no percentage splitting. We nailed the reason, the timing, and the mechanics of the collapse.
Carlos Sainz: Hold on, interns. Technically Max went there because of the twisted ankle too, not just the ego. The infirmary factor altered the laws of physics.
Alex Albon: Don’t start, Carlos. Colapinto said Max kicked the door open talking about how “those annoying little gremlins wouldn’t stop bothering him.” Kimi’s plan was surgical. They earned the pot.
Lando Norris: Holy shit, the interns cleaned out the office fund. I’m gonna have to eat meal prep for the rest of the month.
While the committee mourned the financial loss and Kimi was already mentally calculating how many extra computer parts he could buy with his share, a new account appeared in the chat. An account that, until now, had only existed there as a ghost member who had never typed a single word.
Oscar Piastri: If the old pool is over, I want to open betting for the Final Phase. Three hundred and fifty dollars.
The chat went silent for three entire seconds. Lando Norris, sitting at the back table of the dining hall, nearly choked on his water.
Lando Norris: THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY?! Oscar, have you lost your mind? Where did you even get that amount? And you didn’t even want to participate!
Oscar Piastri: I’m a man of metrics, Lando. And the current metrics say all of you are amateurs. I have a very specific long-term bet. Absolutely nothing is going to happen at this resort. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. Max is limping and George is trapped behind post-infirmary professionalism.
Kimi Antonelli: And what’s your prediction, boss?
Oscar Piastri: One week from now. Tuesday, exactly at 8:45 PM, in the company’s Dead Archives Room, right after the quarterly audit consolidated report is delivered. Max is going to lock the door from the inside, and Russell won’t even try to protest.
Arvid Lindblad: Jesus… that’s insanely specific. But we don’t have 350 dollars to cover it if you lose, Piastri.
Oscar Piastri: I know you don’t, interns. You just won 820. If you accept my offer, I won’t charge your buy-in. But in exchange, you become my assistants, and I’ll cut each of you 15% of the final prize as commission. Deal?
Across the restaurant hall, Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad exchanged a glance. It was the purest form of mafia negotiation Oscar Piastri could’ve pulled off. The Australian was basically buying their loyalty and labor using gossip as currency.
Kimi Antonelli: Deal accepted, Piastri. May fate play in your favor.
[SATURDAY, 21:15]
Inside the resort’s grand hall, the formal dinner was at its peak, but for Max Verstappen, that night was the perfect definition of hell on earth.
He sat at the directors’ table, right beside Carlos Sainz Jr.. Thanks to the interns’ “rescue operation,” he was at least wearing George’s light blue shirt. The Egyptian cotton fabric felt absurdly soft against his skin, carrying that sophisticated citrus scent of the Brit that seemed to have seeped directly into Max’s pores. To make matters worse for his sanity, George’s dark trousers fit perfectly around his thighs, and the thought that he was wearing brand-new underwear that belonged to his departmental rival made something burn in his stomach in a strangely erotic way he could barely process.
Across the round table, George Russell was politely discussing next quarter’s budget with Bono. But every five minutes, George’s green eyes drifted away, heavy and intense, colliding with Max’s across the crystal glasses. Every time their gazes met, the air seemed to disappear. Nobody said anything. Nobody smiled. It was simply a taut rope moments away from snapping.
Limping, with his right foot trapped inside the massive black orthopedic boot beneath the table, and with his entire body reacting to the presence of the man sitting across from him, Max couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled his phone out beneath the tablecloth, ignoring Bono’s speech about “corporate synergy,” and opened Grindr. He desperately needed his anonymous listener.
Emilian: William, I need to vent or I’m going to flip this dinner table over. My day was a complete disaster. My ego got obliterated, I broke my foot in the middle of a super dangerous forest (I genuinely feel like I could’ve been attacked by bears since I was completely defenseless), and I had to accept help from the last person on earth I wanted anything from.
A few meters away, Max caught from the corner of his eye George Russell placing his wine glass down on the table with a subtle click before pulling his phone from his blazer pocket.
William: I’m sorry, Emilian. My day wasn’t easy either. I had to deal with an awful disappointment at the pool, and my coworker ended up invading my personal space in a way that… well, destabilized my entire system. But tell me, how are you handling all this frustration?
Max stabbed at his food with his fork, letting out a bitter nasal laugh while typing. He needed to expel the truth about how pathetic he felt after what had happened earlier, omitting details to avoid exposing his identity.
Emilian: Badly. The attraction I feel for this guy built up in such a ridiculous way earlier today that I had a complete breakdown. I had to lock myself in the bathroom this afternoon and take care of things alone while thinking about him, William. It was my only desperate attempt not to lose my mind or start a fight with him in front of everyone. But it didn’t help at all. I still feel completely fucked, and now I feel like some hormonal teenager who can’t control himself.
George read the message intently. On his phone screen, Emilian’s words looked like the raw confession of a man battling his own desires somewhere in an anonymous office downtown. George felt his own heart beat harder, a wave of heat creeping up his pale neck at the intensity of the revelation. He swallowed hard, fascinated by the app man’s boldness.
William: You… locked yourself away just to think about him?
Emilian: Yes. And if my boss’s dinner wasn’t happening right now, I’d probably be doing the same thing again. This weekend has been a cruel test, William.
George slipped the phone back into his blazer pocket with slightly tense fingers, picking up his wine glass and taking a long sip to chase away the tingling sensation the conversation had left in his mind. He glanced across the table, his green eyes briefly colliding with Max’s. Max held the gaze with his usual closed-off expression, subtly adjusting the collar of George’s blue shirt around his neck.
Neither of them had the slightest clue that fantasy and reality were sitting at the very same table.
[SATURDAY, 11:00 PM]
The sound of Max’s orthopedic boot echoed in a slow, lonely rhythm along the resort’s stone pathways. Dinner had finally ended. Carlos Sainz had stayed behind at the lobby bar with the other coordinators to drag the night out even longer, but Max had used his sprained ankle as the perfect excuse to escape that corporate simulation and head back early to Cabin 6.
As soon as he locked the door behind him, he let out a deep sigh. The physical exhaustion was real, but the mental agitation was ten times worse. Max sat on the edge of the bed and started undoing the buttons of George’s light-blue shirt. The fabric still carried the warmth of his own body mixed with the subtle trace of his rival’s cologne. It was messing with his head in a dangerous way.
Desperately searching for a safe harbor, for a connection where he didn’t have to wear armor or pretend he had control over everything, Max pulled out his phone and opened Grindr.
Over the past week, William had become much more than a distraction or a faceless profile on an app. He was the only person who knew Max without the deadlines of Grand Prix Corp., without performance pressure, and without the barrier of rivalry. There was something genuinely intimate growing between them, woven together in the dark through late-night confessions. Max felt warmth spread through his chest every time he saw a notification from him.
Emilian: Finally back in my room. Alone in the dark. Are you still awake, William?
The reply came almost instantly. Miles away in Max’s mind, but in reality, only two hills away, George Russell was lying on his back with his laptop shoved aside, staring at his phone screen.
William: I’m here, Emilian. I was waiting to hear from you. How did your boss’s dinner end?
Max rolled onto his side on the bed, resting his phone against the pillow, a genuine and relaxed smile appearing on his lips for the first time all day.
Emilian: Exactly how expected. I survived. But the worst part is that I spent the entire dinner staring at the guy... while wearing his clothes. His scent is on me now, William. It’s insane. Feels like I’m being haunted by him.
George shifted position on the bed, his stomach tightening at the intensity of the message. From George’s perspective, Emilian’s situation felt like the perfect reflection of his own torment involving his infuriating coworker but Emilian’s vulnerability always disarmed him. George liked how raw and direct Emilian was with him.
William: That must be confusing. But tell me... are you angry about being in this situation, or did what happened in the bathroom earlier change things?
Max stared at the wooden ceiling of the cabin, thinking. His fingers hovered over the keyboard before he finally typed, allowing himself to be completely honest with the man from the app.
Emilian: It’s confusing as hell. But honestly? Talking to you is the only thing keeping me grounded. That guy at work... he pulls me into chaos. It’s physical, violent, it drives me insane. But with you, William... it’s different. I feel like I can let my guard down. You understand me without me having to explain myself. What I feel for him is something I can’t control, but what I feel when I talk to you... that’s what keeps me steady.
George held his breath reading the message. His chest burned with a complicated mixture of affection and a faint, irrational jealousy toward the mysterious “coworker” Emilian kept talking about. He ran a hand through his damp hair, feeling the depth of that digital connection. He genuinely cared about Emilian. He missed his messages when workdays at Grand Prix Corp. became unbearable.
William: I’m glad I can be your safe place, Emilian. Really. You do the same for me. My days at the office would’ve been unbearable if I didn’t know I’d have you waiting for me at the end of the night. That coworker of yours might have your body nearby right now... but I like to think I have your mind.
A pleasant shiver ran down Max’s spine, his heart beating harder against his ribs. There was something beautiful and genuine in the connection they were building. He closed his eyes for a second, imagining William’s voice whispering those words into his ear, imagining the sense of safety that anonymous man somehow gave him.
Emilian: You do, William. You definitely do. I wish you were actually here with me in the dark right now. No games, no irritating coworkers. Just us.
William: I wish that too, Emilian. More than you know. Sleep well, alright? Tomorrow starts all over again for both of us.
Emilian: Goodnight, William.
Max pressed the phone against his chest and slowly exhaled. He was torn between the chaotic, infuriating storm that George Russell was during the day and the deep, magnetic calm William brought into his nights.
He rolled onto his side, pulling the resort blanket over his shoulders, completely unaware that the storm and the calm wore the exact same citrus cologne.
[SUNDAY, 09:30]
Sunday morning arrived with that typical end-of-trip sluggishness. The sun was softer behind the mountain clouds, and Bono had officially abolished any leadership lectures or mandatory pool activities. The official schedule now consisted of an extended breakfast, a few free hours to enjoy the resort facilities, and check-out at noon before boarding the company bus back to the city.
Inside Chalet 6, Max woke up feeling that his ankle was considerably better, although the massive black orthopedic boot was still firmly strapped to his right foot. He dressed slowly, once again putting on his dress pants and George’s light blue shirt, which he had carefully folded the night before and which still carried that comforting citrus scent.
Limping a little less than before, Max made his way to the main restaurant for the breakfast buffet. The atmosphere among the employees of Grand Prix Corp. was pure social hangover; almost nobody had the strength to talk about spreadsheets anymore.
While helping himself to coffee and pancakes, Max spotted George Russell sitting at a table on the outdoor deck. George wore a sand-colored textured polo shirt and sunglasses, reading something on his tablet while sipping a cappuccino. He looked like the living embodiment of a luxury resort commercial.
Max walked over, the orthopedic boot making dull thuds against the wooden floorboards.
“Good morning, Russell,” Max said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table without much ceremony. “I came to return your pants from last night. They’re still in my chalet. I’ll give them back with the shirt once they’ve been washed.”
George lifted his gaze over the dark lenses of his sunglasses, watching Max settle into the seat. A flicker of that intensity from Saturday night crossed his face, but he quickly regained his polished Sunday morning composure.
“No rush, Verstappen,” George replied softly, his tone matching the linen pants he was wearing. “I’m glad the fit was satisfactory. How’s the ankle?”
“Surviving. Much better than yesterday.” Max took a sip of coffee, looking out over the mountain view.
For the first time all week, there were no overdue reports between them, no locked archive rooms, no arguments about logistics deadlines at Bono’s table. It was just an ordinary Sunday morning. The violent tension from the previous day had settled into something strangely calm, almost comfortable, where both of them seemed too tired to fight but far too aware of each other’s presence.
“The resort really is beautiful,” George commented, breaking the silence as he watched the mist drift through the valleys. “It’s a shame we spent most of the weekend trying to kill each other during team-building exercises.”
“That’s Bono’s management style.” Max let out a low, relaxed laugh. “At least the food was decent.”
George smiled faintly, a genuine smile that made Max look away for a second, feeling that familiar restlessness return to his stomach.
While the two coordinators shared an almost peaceful moment beneath the morning sun, the gossip committee watched everything unfold from a distance near the juice station, phones already in hand.
Gabriel Bortoleto narrowed his eyes while staring toward the deck table.
“Man, Piastri’s a wizard,” Bortoleto whispered to Kimi Antonelli, who was checking the balance of his digital wallet. “Look at them. Zero physical contact. Zero arguing. They’re… talking like two normal people. Oscar’s bet that nothing would happen at the resort is actually coming true.”
“Piastri reads this company like an algorithm,” Kimi agreed, typing rapidly into Teams. “Sunday’s gonna stay clean. All the tension’s being saved for Tuesday in the Dead Archives Room. I’m already setting aside a hundred bucks to match Oscar’s bet.”
[SUNDAY, 11:45]
The resort lobby was crowded with employees checking out and rolling suitcases toward the executive bus parked at the entrance.
Max stood near the reception desk, handing over the magnetic key card for Chalet 6. His everyday backpack hung over his shoulders, ready for the trip back. George appeared beside him moments later, returning the key for Chalet 8.
They exchanged one last look before boarding. The weekend retreat in the mountains was officially coming to an end.
“Ready for the ferry traffic back to reality, Verstappen?” George asked, adjusting the strap of his leather suitcase.
“Reality’s easier to deal with than Bono’s team-building activities, Russell,” Max replied, shifting the orthopedic boot against the floor before starting toward the glass doors. “See you Monday. On time.”
“Certainly. Don’t be late for the alignment meeting.”
They walked together toward the bus, blending back into the rest of the team.
Sunday ended under calm waters, but both of them knew the calm was only preparation for the storm Oscar Piastri had already predicted with frightening precision for the coming days at Grand Prix Corp.
[SUNDAY, 13:00]
The Grand Prix Corp. executive bus had finally begun descending the mountain roads back toward the city. The return trip was quiet, most employees asleep or wearing headphones, exhausted from the “team-building” weekend.
Max sat by the window with the orthopedic boot stretched awkwardly into the aisle space. He was still wearing George’s light blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, and the citrus scent trapped in the fabric seemed to toy with his mind every time the air conditioning shifted.
George sat three rows ahead on the opposite side, calmly typing on his tablet. Through the reflection in the bus window, Max could make out George’s aristocratic profile. Every time the bus took a sharper turn and the shirt brushed against his chest, Max remembered the feeling of standing shirtless in George’s chalet, the dark, hungry look George had given his body, and the breakdown he himself had suffered in the pool locker room. It was a violent, infuriating attraction built on challenge and physical proximity, one that constantly left him tense, his nerves completely frayed. George Russell was tangible chaos.
Trying to escape that suffocating orbit, Max exhaled sharply, grabbed his phone, and opened Grindr. He needed William. He needed the calm.
Emilian: On the bus heading back to the city. The weekend’s over, but my head is still a complete mess. How’s your Sunday going, William?
A few seats away, George felt his phone vibrate in the pocket of his blazer. He paused the audit report review and opened the app. The contrast between the “insufferable coworker” sitting at the back of the bus and the vulnerable man he spoke to every night was exactly what kept George glued to that screen.
William: Heading home too, Emilian. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me last night… about me being your safe place. That meant a lot to me.
Max smiled faintly at the screen, relief washing over him alongside a completely different kind of warmth, softer, deeper, comforting.
Emilian: It’s true. The guy from my job… he pulls me toward something dark, you know? It’s pure impulse, completely physical, makes me feel angry and turned on in ways I can barely process. But with you, it’s where I can finally breathe. I feel like I’m developing something real for you, William. Even without seeing you. It’s your mind that keeps me here.
George read the message and felt his chest tighten with overwhelming intensity. He leaned his head back against the leather seat, staring at the ceiling, deeply affected by the confession. He was developing real feelings for Emilian too, something that went far beyond an app.
William: I feel it too, Emilian. And don’t worry about the chaos at your job. Let your coworker keep his sparks during the day… as long as you keep coming back to me at the end of it. What we have here is stronger than any physical distraction you’ve got over there.
Max pressed the phone lightly against his chest, staring out at the highway scenery racing past the window.
He was completely torn apart, trapped in the middle of a brutal psychological tug-of-war. During the day, George Russell’s aggressive magnetism and physical provocation consumed him; at night, William’s deep connection, affection, and safety pulled him back together.
[MONDAY, 08:30]
Returning to Grand Prix Corp. headquarters on Monday morning felt like the beginning of a week-long sentence in shared isolation. The mirrored lobby, the sound of badges beeping through the turnstiles, and the hum of the central air conditioning restored the company to its natural state of pressure and deadlines.
But on the IT support and logistics floor, things were not exactly normal.
Early that morning, Oscar Piastri walked toward the interns’ cubicles holding a cup of black coffee, wearing the kind of unreadable expression that would make a professional poker player cry with envy. Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad immediately straightened in their chairs, remembering the predatory contract they had digitally agreed to over the weekend.
“Good morning, boys,” Oscar said calmly, leaning against the partition wall. “Bono moved the quarterly audit consolidation report ahead of schedule. Official delivery is now in eight days. Tuesday.”
Kimi swallowed hard, eyes widening. In the Teams chat, Oscar had maintained the image of merely being a lucky, analytical bettor, never revealing a single detail about how his prophecy would come true. He wasn’t stupid enough to leave traces of corporate manipulation on the company servers.
“And… what exactly do you want us to do, Piastri?” Arvid asked quietly so the network supervisor wouldn’t overhear.
“I need the workflow involving the dead archives room to enter a systemic bottleneck starting today,” Oscar explained calmly, taking a sip of coffee. “Kimi, you’re going to hold back the physical logistics verification slips at the end of every day. Tell Verstappen the indexing system is experiencing delays and that the paperwork needs to be manually archived in that dungeon.”
Kimi nodded, fascinated by the cold precision of the plan.
“And me?” Arvid asked.
“You’ll do the same with strategy department release orders. When Russell comes asking for the signed supplier contracts, tell him the original copies were mistakenly sent to the security drawers in the Dead Archives Room. But don’t do everything at once. Slow-cook the process. Let the pile build until the last possible moment. I want both of them desperate for space and time by then.”
“Man… you’re an evil genius,” Kimi whispered with a conspiratorial grin. “Those fifteen percent commissions are going to be very well deserved.”
“I’m not an evil genius, Antonelli. I simply manage the ecosystem,” Oscar replied with the faintest smile before turning around and walking back toward his desk, leaving the two interns ready to operate the machine that would slowly crush Max Verstappen’s sanity.
[TUESDAY, 10:15]
The beginning of the week after the resort retreat was marked by an obedient, strategic silence throughout the halls of Grand Prix Corp. But behind the scenes, Oscar Piastri’s machinery had already started turning invisibly.
On Tuesday morning, Max Verstappen decided he needed to put an end to at least one of the loose ends frying his neurons. He was tired of staring at the brown paper laundry bag sitting on top of his desk, containing George’s tailored trousers and light blue dress shirt, perfectly cleaned and pressed. The designer boxer briefs, obviously, had been safely tucked away in a drawer at Max’s apartment. There were limits to corporate courtesy returns.
Taking advantage of the relatively quiet executive corridor, Max walked toward George’s cubicle, dragging the black orthopedic boot with a much subtler, more controlled rhythm than he had on Saturday.
George sat with his back to the entrance, focused on two performance graphs displayed across dual monitors. He wore a charcoal-gray dress shirt with the sleeves elegantly rolled up to his elbows.
Max stopped at the glass divider and knocked twice with his knuckles.
“Russell,” Max called, his deep voice breaking the Brit’s concentration.
George spun his chair around immediately. The moment his green eyes landed on Max, and the paper bag in his hands, a fraction of a second of lost composure flickered across his face before the aristocratic mask snapped back into place.
“Verstappen. Come in,” George said, gesturing toward the empty chair in front of him. “How’s the ankle today?”
“Almost good,” Max answered shortly, stepping inside and carefully placing the bag on the mahogany desk before sliding it toward George. “Came to return your stuff. It’s clean. And… thanks. Seriously.”
George looked down at the bag, then lifted his gaze back to Max. The physical closeness inside the confined cubicle instantly reignited the electrical charge from the chalet. George’s eyes unconsciously drifted toward the collar of Max’s dark polo shirt, vividly remembering the sight of his bare torso under the resort lights.
“You don’t need to thank me, Max,” George murmured, his voice dropping into that lower, heavier register that completely abandoned formality. He pulled the bag closer, though his fingers hesitated against the paper. “I’m glad everything fit. All the pieces?”
Max felt heat rise faintly into his face at the implicit reference to the one item still sitting in his drawer at home. He leaned slightly over the desk, narrowing the distance between them, his jaw tight with a mix of provocation and nerves.
“Almost all of them, Russell. I figured you could sacrifice one piece as compensation for me surviving you the entire weekend,” Max shot back with a crooked smile, blue eyes locked onto George’s.
George let out a quiet nasal laugh, his chest rising slowly as he held Max’s gaze with an intensity that made the air feel too thick to breathe.
“A fair price, Verstappen. But I’ll be collecting that compensation in productivity on the audit report.”
What neither coordinator realized was that, at that exact moment, Alex Albon happened to walk past the corridor carrying a stack of billing folders.
Through the frosted glass of George’s cubicle, the scene Alex witnessed looked incredibly compromising: Max leaning over George’s desk with a knowing half-smile, George staring at him with absurd intimacy, and a suspicious brown paper bag being exchanged between them like contraband. To make matters worse, Max was audibly talking about “keeping one of the pieces as compensation for surviving you all night,” while George replied that it was “a fair price.”
Albon froze mid-step on the gray carpet, eyes wide.
He slowly backed up three steps, slipped into the narrow space beside the coffee machine, and yanked his phone out with adrenaline-shaking fingers.
[TEAMS CHAT: OPERATION CUBICLE 4B]
Alex Albon: ULTRA SECRET CODE ON FLOOR 3! Max just made some kind of smuggling delivery to George’s cubicle. There was a mysterious paper bag involved. Max said he was keeping “one of the pieces as compensation for surviving you the whole >night<” and George ACCEPTED with a voice I’ve never heard him use during business hours!
Lando Norris: WHAT?! They’re exchanging gifts at the office on a Tuesday morning? The resort really broke their barriers?!
Franco Colapinto: I TOLD YOU! Chalet 8 left permanent emotional damage. They’re literally splitting textile assets now.
Kimi Antonelli: Wait, they’re negotiating extra clothes?? @Oscar Piastri what do we do? Does this affect the Tuesday timeline?
Far away from the group chat’s chaos, Oscar Piastri merely read Kimi’s message from his workstation in the back of the data room. He didn’t answer publicly. Instead, he opened a private chat with Kimi and Arvid to ensure the ecosystem continued functioning smoothly.
Oscar Piastri (Private): It changes nothing. Let them waste energy on small interactions now. Kimi, start withholding the first batch of logistics freight reports today at 5 PM. The document pileup needs to begin immediately so they’ll have no escape in two weeks. Stay on schedule.
Kimi Antonelli (Private): Understood, boss. Dead Archive Operation officially underway.
Back inside the cubicle, Max straightened up and cleared his throat, trying to dissipate the electricity filling the room.
“Well… that’s all. See you at the alignment meeting this afternoon, Russell,” Max said, turning toward the exit.
“This afternoon, Max,” George replied, green eyes following Max’s movements until he disappeared down the corridor, while Albon desperately pretended to study the espresso machine control panel.
[TUESDAY, 17:15]
The end of Tuesday’s workday brought with it the first quiet cog in Oscar Piastri’s plan.
Max sat at his desk, closing fleet monitoring tabs on his screen while massaging his ankle over the orthopedic boot. He was already preparing to shut down his computer when Kimi Antonelli approached carrying a considerable stack of brown cardboard folders filled with physical freight slips and carrier weight reports.
Kimi adopted his best expression of an overworked, slightly incompetent intern.
“Max… sorry to bother you right at the end of the shift,” Kimi began, scratching the back of his neck theatrically. “But the digital indexing system on the IT servers got hit with a nasty network delay. Support said these physical cargo release forms won’t be uploaded into the database today.”
Max frowned, eyeing the pile of paperwork.
“And what exactly do you want me to do about it, Antonelli? The trucks already left.”
“Bono’s audit protocol requires all physical copies to be manually archived in the basement if the system stays down for more than two hours,” Kimi explained with an exhausted sigh. “I was gonna take them down myself now, but the supervisor pulled me into network backup duty. Mind if I leave them on your desk for now? Just so they can start piling up, and then next week we can dump everything downstairs at once when the audit pressure hits.”
Max glanced down at the orthopedic boot on his right foot and immediately pictured the nightmare of limping all the way to the basement carrying those boxes.
“Leave them on the corner desk, Kimi. I’ll deal with it next week,” Max relented, exactly as Piastri had predicted.
“Thanks, Max! You’re the best,” Kimi replied with an innocent smile, planting the first seed of logistical chaos onto his boss’s desk before practically floating toward the elevator. Max, obviously, loved being the hero and greatest inspiration of the corporate children around him.
[TUESDAY, 18:30]
Max’s apartment was submerged in the quiet stillness of Tuesday night. He had taken a hot shower, left the orthopedic boot beside the couch, and now wore nothing but a comfortable pair of sweatshorts.
The scene from George’s cubicle that morning kept replaying in flashes inside his head. The way George had looked at the collar of his shirt, the low tone of his voice, the implication about the boxer briefs still sitting in Max’s drawer… all of it created a physical and mental friction that Max spent the entire day trying to suppress. George Russell was work, complication, the man who visually challenged him and made him hold his breath in the middle of the office.
Searching for the only counterbalance capable of calming that storm of impulses, Max grabbed his phone and opened Grindr. He needed William’s sweetness and security.
Emilian: Today was the first official day back at the office. And the tension only got worse, William. I went to return the guy’s clothes… and the way we looked at each other inside that cubicle almost made the entire floor notice. It’s like there’s some stupid magnet pulling my body toward his every time we’re less than a meter apart. It’s exhausting.
Inside George’s luxury apartment downtown, the Brit lay in bed wearing dark silk pajamas, staring at his phone. Emilian’s words brought that familiar, pleasant tightness to his chest. George loved how much Emilian trusted him with his deepest vulnerabilities.
William: Physical magnetism is a difficult force to fight, Emilian. But remember this: the body reacts to what’s close, while the heart and mind choose where they want to stay. He may have your proximity at the office… but I’m the one here with you now, at the end of the day. I’m the one who knows the man behind the armor.
William: Physical magnetism is a difficult force to fight, Emilian. But that’s all it is: physical. The body reacts impulsively to what’s nearby, but control still belongs to your mind. Let him try to provoke you all he wants at the office. At the end of the day, I’m the one setting the rules of the game here with you.
Max reread the message and let out a breath through his nose, a crooked smile forming on his lips. He liked it when William abandoned the overly understanding tone and became more direct, almost possessive. That matched the intensity Max craved. He rolled onto his side, resting the phone against the pillow, finally feeling the agitation of the day begin to settle.
Emilian: I like it when you talk like that, William. No sugarcoating. The guy at work gives me an insane amount of lust and uncontrollable anger… but the mental control we have here is what keeps me grounded. I really wish these next two weeks of audit hell would fly by so I can get this distortion out of my face.
George read the reply and felt his chest tighten, a restrained smile appearing on his lips. He was fascinated by Emilian’s rawness, by the way the Dutchman didn’t try to disguise his impulses and yet still chose to come back to him every single night.
William: Time will pass quickly, sweetheart. Stay strong at the office and don’t give him the satisfaction of winning. Let him waste his tricks during business hours. Sleep well.
Emilian: I’ll try. Goodnight, William.
Max locked the screen and left the phone on the nightstand, closing his eyes. The psychological tug-of-war remained firmly in place, but now the sides were clearly drawn: during the day, George Russell’s provocations and heavy stares inside the cubicle; at night, the claimed territory and magnetic intimacy he shared with William through the app. Max believed he held both reins tightly in his hands, unaware that Piastri’s one-week countdown had already started ticking directly beneath his nose.
[WEDNESDAY, 09:15]
Wednesday morning began with the most satisfying sound Max Verstappen had heard in days: the sharp rip of the orthopedic boot’s velcro finally being undone for good.
Back at the downtown medical clinic, the doctor examined his right ankle, performed a few pressure tests, and delivered the verdict. The ligaments had healed, the swelling was completely gone, and Max was officially cleared to return to wearing his firm black leather dress shoes. Walking without that rigid plastic weight dragging across Grand Prix Corp.’s carpet felt almost euphoric.
Physical freedom, however, did not mean relief from routine. Far from it.
Only six days remained before Bono’s final quarterly audit delivery, and Oscar Piastri’s invisible plan was entering its strangulation phase.
When Max arrived at his workstation, enjoying the clean grip of leather soles against the floor, he found his corner desk practically buried. Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad had operated with surgical precision over the last few days. Under the excuse of “server instability,” the two interns had accumulated four archive boxes stuffed with freight reports, physical release orders, and transportation invoices requiring manual sorting and compliance stamping.
“Verstappen.”
George Russell’s polished, unmistakable voice echoed from directly behind him.
Max turned immediately, now moving with full agility again. George stood in the corridor wearing a light gray tailored suit and a dark tie. His eyes dropped straight to Max’s feet, noticing the absence of the black boot. A flicker of satisfaction crossed the Brit’s green eyes.
“I see you’ve regained your mobility,” George commented, stepping into Max’s space, close enough for the scent of linen and lemon to hit the Dutchman directly. “Excellent news for the department’s workflow.”
“I don’t need a boot to dictate the pace around here, Russell,” Max shot back instantly, holding George’s gaze with the same aggressive corporate energy they both used as armor. “But thank you for the regulatory concern.”
George took another step forward, his eyes briefly tracing Max’s silhouette before settling on the cardboard boxes stacked beside the desk.
“I see IT support, in partnership with the interns, has also blessed you with the physical archive graveyard,” George noted with a provocative half-smile. “My desk looks exactly the same. Seems the basement awaits us next week, Verstappen. If you need help carrying the weight… I promise not to mock your ankle.”
Max leaned forward slightly, jaw tightening. George’s proximity without the barrier of the orthopedic boot felt ten times more intense. The physical urge to shut that arrogant Brit up pulsed violently through his veins again, mixing with the pure rivalry of the office.
“I can handle my own weight, Russell. Worry about not getting lost in the dark basement yourself,” Max replied, his voice dropping into that rough, low register.
George held his gaze for two full seconds longer, the air between them once again turning dangerously thin, before finally stepping back with a subtle nod.
“See you at Tuesday’s audit, Max.”
Three cubicles ahead, hidden behind the main data monitor, Oscar Piastri simply watched George walk away while Max sat back down in his chair with visibly altered energy. Oscar pulled his phone from beneath the desk and opened his private chat with his accomplice.
Oscar Piastri (Private): Verstappen got rid of the boot today. Document flow has reached critical volume. Kimi, hold back the final batch of signed strategy contracts tomorrow afternoon. By Tuesday, the Dead Archive Room will be the only viable place left for the two of them to solve the backlog.
Kimi Antonelli (Private): Understood, boss. Inventory is ready.
[WEDNESDAY, 22:30]
Lying in bed wearing nothing but a pair of light shorts, Max stared up at the ceiling. He was physically free from the boot, but mentally more cornered than ever. George’s presence at the office was becoming a daily test of endurance. The friction was constant, the looks were heavy, and every moment of proximity felt like a countdown.
Searching for the only counterbalance capable of keeping him sane and draining the electricity that seemed to build beneath his skin, Max opened Grindr.
Emilian: I’m finally free from the boot, William. I can actually walk properly again. But the atmosphere at the office is suffocating. The guy stopped by my desk today and the way he was provoking me changed completely. He got too close, looked at me in a way that… fuck. If we’d been anywhere other than the middle of the strategy floor, I would’ve pinned him against the glass divider just to shut him up.
In downtown the city, George received the notification while undoing the first buttons of his sleep shirt. His pulse immediately sped up as he read the message, Emilian’s rawness acting like an instant trigger. He sat on the edge of the bed, fingers flying across the keyboard with dark intensity.
William: Pinned against the glass, Emilian? I like the aggression. But tell me… what would you do after shutting him up? Because if a man pins me down like that, the last thing I’d expect from him is a corporate lecture.
Max shifted position in bed, his sweat shorts suddenly feeling far too tight after William’s direct response. He bit his lower lip, letting himself sink into the fantasy.
Emilian: I wouldn’t say anything, William. I’d grab his hair hard enough to expose his neck and bite him until he lost that king-of-the-world attitude. I’d rip off that perfectly straight tie he wears and tie his wrists to the first metal structure I could find, just to see how much he’d beg once I decided to take all the control away from him.
George swallowed hard in the dark room, his imagination running completely unchecked. Emilian’s boldness and the description of that physical domination collided directly with his own repressed desires.
William: You talk a lot about taking control, but I bet if I were there in his place right now, you wouldn’t last two minutes trying to tie me up. I like men who try to take charge, Emilian… but I like it even more when I flip the game around, pin your arms above your head, and find out how long that attitude of yours survives while I turn you over.
Max let out a heavy breath, a violent shiver running down his spine. The contrast between the comforting William from before and this version of William territorial and visceral left him completely undone.
Emilian: You can try, William. But I don’t make things easy for anyone. If you want to turn me over, you’ll have to force me. And I suggest you use strength, because I bite for real.
Max locked the screen and tossed the phone aside, breathing shallowly, his body hot beneath the sheets. The psychological tug-of-war had reached critical levels: during the day, the simmering tension with George; at night, explicit power fantasies with William. Max believed he was playing on two completely separate boards, utterly unaware that both worlds were about to collide in the exact same setting.
A few intense workdays later…
[TUESDAY, 08:30]
The day of the final quarterly audit reckoning dawned beneath a cloudy sky over the city, perfectly reflecting Max Verstappen’s mood. The moment he passed through the security gates of Grand Prix Corp., he felt the full weight of two weeks of accumulated stress crashing onto his shoulders.
Today was Bono’s final deadline Tuesday. The strategy and logistics floor looked like a corporate war zone: phones ringing nonstop, directors pacing around with severe expressions, and stacks of paperwork appearing from seemingly nowhere.
By the time Max reached his desk, Kimi Antonelli was already waiting for him with an expression bordering on tears, a flawless performance he had perfected under Oscar Piastri’s mentorship.
“Max, the audit team blocked all digital file uploads in the system until the physical freight compliance records from the past two weeks are validated,” Kimi lied without blinking, handing Max a clipboard loaded with what looked like an endless list of unresolved tasks. “Everything’s being held in the Dead Archives Room downstairs. Strategy’s dealing with the exact same thing. Coordinator Russell stormed through here five minutes ago looking ready to kill someone.”
“What a fucking nightmare,” Max muttered, tossing his backpack onto the chair. “The system crashes on the delivery day itself?”
“Yeah… almost feels like everything was designed to go wrong,” Kimi commented, hiding a glorious internal smile as he walked away.
Max took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. He pulled his phone from his pocket, searching for the only source of sanity he still had before diving into the chaos. He opened Grindr. He needed William.
Emilian: Today’s the day, William. Absolute chaos has officially started. I’m about to spend the entire day buried in audit hell, and apparently I’ll be stuck handling physical paperwork with my department rival for most of it. Thinking about what we talked about last week is the only thing stopping me from losing my mind before lunch.
A few meters away, hidden near the corner of the IT hallway, George Russell felt his phone vibrate. He read Emilian’s message and felt his blood rush faster. The fact that Emilian was about to endure the exact same kind of stress with his own respective “rival” created an intoxicatingly erotic symmetry in George’s mind.
William: Stay focused, Emilian. Remember what I promised you: today your deadline ends. Let your coworker waste all his energy trying to challenge you at the office. Save your breath for later, because once tonight comes, I’m collecting every promise of control you made me. Good luck surviving the workday.
Max read the reply and felt a familiar chill race down his spine, his dress pants suddenly feeling uncomfortably tight. He shoved the phone firmly back into his pocket, chest rising and falling.
“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered to himself.
[TUESDAY, 11:15]
While Max struggled to decipher a printed spreadsheet, on the other side of the floor Oscar Piastri was already operating the second phase of the chokehold. He calmly walked over to Arvid Lindblad’s cubicle carrying a red hanging folder, the official color for the board’s confidential supplier contracts.
“Arvid,” Oscar called in a low, nearly imperceptible tone. “Russell just asked for the original copy of the international logistics contract. Do you have it?”
“It’s right here,” Arvid said, pulling the document out from beneath an old keyboard. “What do I do with it?”
“Take it to the Dead Archives Room right now and lock it inside Security Drawer 4B. Then stop by Russell’s desk and tell him that, due to Bono’s new physical security directives for the audit, every original document signed in blue ink had to be retained downstairs for controller approval stamping.”
“And what if he wants to go downstairs and get it immediately?” Arvid narrowed his eyes.
“He won’t,” Oscar replied after taking a sip of coffee, his expression cold and calculated. “The financial committee meeting starts at 1:00 PM. He’ll be forced to let the issue pile up until the end of the day.”
“Go.”
Ten minutes later, George Russell nearly snapped the pencil in his hand when Arvid delivered the news.
“In the basement?” George questioned, his polished tone slipping for a brief second. “Arvid, I need that signed document for the final report.”
“I’m sorry, Coordinator Russell. Direct orders from Compliance because of the digital system outage. Coordinator Verstappen also has freight receipts stuck down there. You’ll both have to validate everything together in the dead archives later.”
George took a deep breath, rubbing at his temples. Through the glass walls of his cubicle, he spotted Max in the distance typing furiously at his keyboard. The idea of spending the end of the day trapped underground with Verstappen while his mind was still running on the explicit fantasies he had exchanged with Emilian the night before, sounded like a torturous recipe for disaster.
[TUESDAY, 15:30]
At lunchtime, the Grand Prix Corp. cafeteria buzzed with nonstop gossip. Lando Norris and Alex Albon were lingering near the salad station when Oscar Piastri approached with his tray perfectly balanced down to the millimeter.
“Piastri,” Lando hissed, grabbing the Australian by the sleeve. “Albon just saw Max and George exchanging murderous looks by the coffee machine. The tension’s getting ridiculous. Are you seriously still standing by last week’s bet? The deadline’s 8:45 tonight.”
Oscar sat down, carefully aligning his silverware.
“My metrics don’t fail, Lando. Accumulated corporate stress creates a cortisol spike that, when combined with the repressed sexual tension from the resort, produces a saturation environment. They have no escape routes left. Kimi and Arvid already locked down the final exits in the archive system.”
“Wait a second,” Albon’s eyes widened. “You used the interns to trap those two downstairs?”
“I used operational efficiency to my advantage,” Oscar corrected with a microscopic smile. “If any of you want to raise the betting pool, there’s still time. But I suggest you prepare the bank transfers. At exactly 8:45 PM, the Dead Archives Room will be the only traversable place left for the two of them.”
[TUESDAY, 20:30]
The clock struck eight-thirty in the evening when the floor finally cleared out. Beneath the dim, grey emergency lights, Max and George were the only ones left. They gathered the last of the brown cardboard boxes and headed down the concrete stairwell toward the basement, exactly as Oscar Piastri had mapped out in his mental schedule.
The space downstairs was massive, labyrinthine, and silent, bracketed by rows of grey metal shelving units that stretched to the ceiling, packed with old document folders. The smell of aging paper and the low hum of the exhaust fan created an atmosphere of absolute isolation from the rest of the world.
Max dropped his boxes onto the large central metal table with a dull thud. George did the same right beside him. The Brit was without his suit jacket, the sleeves of his dark-grey dress shirt rolled up to his forearms and his collar unbuttoned, his brown hair slightly dishevelled from the exhaustion of a full day of compounding pressures.
“Let’s split these,” Max said, his voice echoing harshly in the enclosed space. “Logistics on the left, strategy on the right. The faster we stamp these, the faster we get out of here.”
“Excellent,” George replied, his voice husky as he stepped closer to the table. He stood so near that Max could feel the heat radiating from his body, catching a draft of the same citrus cologne that had been haunting him since the resort.
They began working in silence, but the proximity was psychological torture. With every movement, their arms brushed lightly against each other. Every time Max leaned over to grab a stamp, he caught George watching him with that same dark hunger from Cabin 3. The physical desire accumulated over weeks of denial felt like it was about to blow the lid off a pressure cooker.
Exhausted and feeling a headache blooming, Max pulled out his phone with his left hand while stamping a voucher with his right. He needed a second of escape. He opened Grindr and fired off a quick message to William, seeking the comfort of the mind that dominated his late-night conversations.
Emilian: I’m locked in the basement archive with him right now. The tension is unbearable, William. He’s without his jacket, standing way too close, and I’m losing my mind. I wish it were you down here in the dark with me so I could forget this damn office and how crazy this guy drives me.
Max hit send and tossed his phone onto the metal table beside the stack of papers, going back to stamping with aggressive force.
Less than a meter away, George’s phone, which was also sitting on the table over a block of invoices, lit up and buzzed with the distinctive chime of a Grindr notification.
Max didn't look over at first, but when George reached out a long arm to grab the device, the screen of the Brit's phone flashed brightly in the basement gloom, displaying a preview of the incoming message:
Grindr • Emilian: I’m locked in the basement archive with him right now. The tension is unbearable, William. He’s without his jacket, standing way too...
Max froze instantly, his stamp suspended mid-air. His blue eyes locked onto the screen of George’s phone. His brain tried to process the information, but the gears were spinning uselessly. William? Emilian? Basement? No jacket? Before Max could even voice a question, or before George could realize what was exposed on his screen, the heavy crash-bar of the archive room's fire door flew open with a violent crack.
Bono stepped into the room, holding a flashlight and an audit clipboard, carrying his usual commanding presence as a senior director. He looked at the two coordinators, his voice booming through the warehouse space:
“George William Russell! Max Emilian Verstappen! I need the consolidated report finalization on my desk in exactly ten minutes or auditing is going to slash your entire quarterly bonus! Move it!”
Bono slammed the fire door shut behind him, plunging the basement back into the quiet drone of the exhaust fan.
But for Max, the world had just stopped spinning.
Bono’s words echoed like bombs in his mind. George William Russell. Max Emilian Verstappen.
William. Emilian.
Every piece of the puzzle from the last two weeks collided with the force of a two-hundred-mile-per-hour crash. The safe haven of his late nights, the man to whom he confessed his darkest desires, the man whose promises of control made him burn in bed... was the exact same arrogant Brit, collar undone and sleeves rolled up, standing right in front of him.
Max slowly lowered the stamp, his blue eyes wide, fixed entirely on George as any shred of doubt simply evaporated.
[TUESDAY, 20:42]
Max didn't say a word. He couldn't. The air in his lungs felt like liquid lead as Bono’s words and the glowing screen of George’s phone fused into a single, overwhelming reality.
George William Russell was William. The arrogant rival from the third floor, the man who tested his patience in every single meeting, was the same man who, just last night, had promised to pin his wrists above his head and break his stubborn streak in the dark.
George slipped his phone into his pocket with a swift movement, turning to Max with a serious expression, ready to make some cynical comment about corporate bonuses.
But he never got the chance.
Max snapped. It wasn't a panic response, but a surge of pure, violent, unadulterated adrenaline. The psychological tug-of-war that had been fracturing his mind for weeks simply snapped. He slammed the stamp onto the metal table with a dull clang, took two blind strides forward, and lunged at George with the force of a predator finally trapping its prey.
He shoved both hands hard into George’s chest. The Brit stumbled back, caught completely off guard, until his back hit the rigid metal framework of the Section 4B filing rack. The old archive folders rattled on the shelves above them.
“Verstappen, what the fuck—”
“Shut up, William,” Max snarled, his voice dropping into a register so low, raspy, and dangerous it made George freeze instantly.
George’s green eyes widened behind the imaginary lenses of his pristine composure. The use of that specific name, down in this basement, stripped away every single corporate mask left. George glanced at the table, saw Max’s phone resting beside his own, and in a single heartbeat, comprehension hit him like a punch to the gut. Emilian.
Before George could process the shock, Max grabbed the collar of his dark-grey dress shirt and yanked, snapping two plastic buttons that went skittering across the concrete floor. Max pressed their bodies together, pinning George’s hips flush against the shelving unit.
“You said you wanted to see if I’d last two minutes,” Max hissed against his lips, his breath hot and ragged. “You said I’d have to force you.”
“Max…” George tried to articulate, but the sound was swallowed whole as Max crashed his mouth against his in a brutal kiss.
There was no subtlety. It was a clash of teeth, tongues, and weeks of built-up frustration. George let out a muffled groan against Max’s mouth, his arms instinctively coming up to grip the Dutchman's shoulders. The explicit fantasy from the app had collided with the hot, real body of Max Verstappen, and the impact obliterated any remaining shred of rationality in George.
Driven by pure animal impulse, George flipped their positions. With a firm, heavy shove, he spun Max’s body around, pinning his back against the metal table, sending the audit sheets flying to the floor like confetti.
“I told you to save your energy,” George dictated, his voice cracking with sheer arousal, his eyes dark with hunger as he pinned Max’s wrists against the cold metal surface, exactly as he had promised in the chat. “Do you really bite, Emilian? Then bite.”
He tried to fight for control for a split second, pushing against Max’s shoulders, but the Dutchman’s strength was relentless. Max overpowered him against the metal, their bodies grinding together in a way that made the fabric of their trousers feel like a torturous barrier.
Dress trousers and leather belts were unbuckled with desperate haste, hands clawing at hot skin, tearing through fabric, ripping away any professional boundaries left. Max spun George around in one fluid, heavy movement, slamming the Brit’s chest flat against the iron shelves of the filing rack. The strategy reports were crushed against the metal beneath the weight of George’s body.
“Max, wait…” George gasped, his voice fracturing from the overwhelming arousal, his green eyes darkening as he felt Max’s firm hands grip his hips from behind with possessive strength, nails digging into his skin.
“You talk too much, William,” Max growled into his ear, his mouth dragging down the tense line of his neck, leaving a trail of hot spit before biting down hard into the flesh there. “You said you wanted to see how far my attitude would go. Look back and face me now.”
Max had no patience for gentleness. The raw heat and the sweat already slicking their skin served as fuel. He reached into the inner pocket of George's discarded suit jacket, pulling out a small bottle of lube, a discreet habit of someone who used the app, and poured the liquid over his hands carelessly, smearing it between his fingers before prepping him quickly.
George let out a ragged gasp, his entire body trembling as he tried to brace himself against the iron shelves. Max pressed his heavy frame against George’s back, aligning their hips with aggressive precision. In a single, blunt, hard thrust, Max buried himself completely inside him.
George threw his head back, his spine arching violently as a sharp, drawn-out cry escaped his throat, echoing through the entire basement warehouse. His hands gripped the metal struts of the shelving unit so hard his knuckles turned white. The initial impact was so deep it made the entire structure of the dead archives shudder.
“Holy fuck, Max…” George swore, his breath hitched, his eyes rolling back in pleasure as Max began to move.
Max was blind with lust. He locked his hands onto George’s waist, leaving angry red marks on the Brit’s pale skin, and began delivering deep, heavy, merciless thrusts. The sound that filled the room was purely obscene: the wet, rhythmic slap of skin against skin, the groaning of the iron shelves, and George’s unraveled gasps with every impact.
The aggressive edge of Emilian that George had read about in the dead of night was now a physical reality filling him up, crushing him against the metal. Max yanked George back by his brown hair with one hand, forcing him to turn his face sideways just to sink his teeth into his jawline, ripping a sharp whine of pure ecstasy out of him.
“Is this how you wanted control?” Max hissed, picking up the pace, his hips hammering against George’s without a single mercy, hitting the exact spot that made the Brit lose his breath and beg for more through gritted teeth.
“More... fuck, Max, more,” George yielded completely, rolling his hips back to take every thrust even deeper, entirely surrendered to the Dutchman’s violent rhythm. Sweat poured down George’s open chest, his dark-grey shirt soaked and ruined.
The friction was perfect, thick and tight. Max could feel George’s inner walls clamping down on him, pulling him over the edge, every twitch acting as a trigger. He pressed his broad chest flat against George’s back, wrapping his arms around him as he continued to fuck him hard, the thrusts becoming fast, loud, and desperate.
Max let out a low, rough growl near George’s ear as the wave of his climax hit his spine. He delivered the last three thrusts with every ounce of strength he had, bottoming out as deep as he could go. George screamed against the metal rack, coming violently from the sheer friction and the Dutchman’s tight grip alone, messing the paperwork on the shelf in front of him. Seconds later, with a final, brutal push, Max undone himself completely inside him, his entire body shaking as he slumped heavy against George’s back, both their hearts hammering erratically against their ribs.
They stayed there for several minutes in the dark, hearing nothing but the sound of their ragged breathing and the steady hum of the exhaust fan. The basement of Grand Prix Corp. had become the stage for the filthiest, most perfect surrender of their lives.
[WEDNESDAY, 08:30]
Wednesday morning at Grand Prix Corp. began with a sepulchral silence that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with pure anticipation. The audit deadline had officially passed at midnight, which meant the quarter’s stress should have evaporated. And yet, the strategy and logistics floor was operating on the frequency of a pirate radio station.
In the data bay, Oscar Piastri sat with his arms crossed, staring at his laptop screen with the same expression of someone analyzing Formula 1 telemetry. Around his desk, Lando Norris, Alex Albon, Carlos Sainz, and the interns Kimi Antonelli and Arvid Lindblad formed a tense circle, barely breathing.
The third-floor elevator lit up, the chime echoed across the gray carpet, and the brushed metal doors slid open.
Max Verstappen and George Russell stepped out together.
The visual contrast from the previous day was staggering. Max wore his dark company jacket zipped all the way up to his chin, an extremely suspicious choice for a warm May morning, clearly a desperate attempt to hide the bite marks and purple bruises decorating the side of his neck. George walked beside him in an immaculate navy-blue suit with a perfectly aligned tie, but his movements were subtly slower, almost stiff, and a visible reddish scratch climbed from the side of his left ear into his hairline.
They weren’t arguing. There was no usual slamming of folders or sighs of disdain. In fact, there was an almost domestic calmness between them, the atmosphere of a shared secret, especially in the way George held the glass hallway door open for Max to walk through first.
The two of them headed toward the notice board to check Bono’s closing memorandum and stopped when they noticed the entire committee gathered around the IT bay, pretending to stare at a technical support screen.
“Good morning,” George said, his voice noticeably rougher and more worn-out than usual before he immediately cleared his throat.
No one answered right away. The entire floor seemed to have forgotten how to speak. Hidden behind Lando’s shoulder, Kimi Antonelli discreetly stretched out an arm, grabbed his phone, and gave Piastri a thumbs-up. The target had been neutralized.
Max frowned, shifting his weight from one leg to the other before crossing his arms over his chest.
“What exactly is going on here?” Max asked, blue eyes sweeping across the group with the same cold intensity that usually made interns clear their browser histories. “Does nobody work at this company anymore?”
Lando Norris, who had spent the last two weeks chewing his nails off while holding onto the biggest secret on the third floor, stepped forward. He looked at Max’s covered neck, then at George’s scratch, and let out a deeply relieved sigh that shattered every rule of corporate etiquette.
“Honestly… congratulations,” Lando began, gesturing wildly with both hands. “George finally accepted the overwhelming desire he’s clearly had for Max this whole time. Anyone with functioning eyes could tell Max is hot as hell, I seriously don’t understand why it took you two so long to hook up and end this nonsense already.”
The entire Grand Prix Corp. floor froze on a molecular level.
Carlos Sainz covered his face with both hands, muttering something in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like a prayer for termination. Alex Albon’s eyes widened so much it looked like his corneas were about to launch themselves out of his skull as he slowly stepped backward like he was anticipating an explosion. Kimi and Arvid bit their own lips so hard trying not to laugh that their faces turned completely red.
Max blinked once, twice, mouth slightly open, processing Lando’s sentence and the horrifying realization that whatever had happened in the basement apparently had all the subtlety of a billboard on the main highway. George Russell immediately felt his face burst into flames, a violent scarlet blush climbing up the collar of his white dress shirt and spreading across his cheeks.
But the real shock was happening at the back table.
Oscar Piastri, a man whose heart rate had likely never exceeded sixty beats per minute in his life, widened his eyes. His lips parted into a perfect O of pure disbelief as he stared at his laptop screen. In the hidden Teams tab, the official system log showed that the consolidated audit report, the file that triggered the final condition of the bet — had been submitted by George at exactly 8:47 PM the night before.
Piastri had predicted 8:45 PM in the secret betting pool.
He had predicted the basement, the date, and the entire setup. But Bono barging into the room with a flashlight had delayed the consummation by exactly two minutes, placing the prophecy mathematically outside his own precision window.
The committee remained silent, frozen in excruciating secondhand embarrassment after Lando’s completely unfiltered announcement. Nobody dared breathe.
Oscar slowly closed the laptop with a dry click, rose from his chair with the dignity of a monarch, and turned toward his two espionage assistants.
“Kimi. Arvid,” Piastri said, his voice almost a trance-like whisper, though still loud enough to carry across the silent floor. “You can start preparing IT indexing reports for the next two months. Your labor contracts are secured. And… begin collecting the three hundred and fifty dollars from everyone on the betting list. We just broke the company bank.”
Max, whose ability to detect patterns bordered on terrifying, narrowed his eyes. He looked from George to the gossip circle, and then his gaze landed on the secondary monitor in Kimi’s bay, where an Excel spreadsheet titled PROJECT_CHALET_FINALS.xlsx sat open through pure carelessness. Their names were there. The numbers were there. The dates were there.
The Dutchman understood everything.
The digital system failure. The accumulation of archive boxes on his desk. The “lost” original contracts Arvid had conveniently sent to the basement… It had all been a coordinated operation designed to lock the two of them in the same room, on the same night, beneath the same metal ceiling.
A rough, sharp, dangerous smirk slowly spread across Max’s lips as he took a step forward and adjusted his jacket.
“Russell,” Max called quietly, never taking his eyes off Lando and Piastri.
“Yes, Verstappen?” George replied, his polished British composure barely holding together as he too began mentally adding two and two after seeing the betting spreadsheet.
“I think we have an entire gossip committee to fire for cause before lunchtime. And the IT department is going to need a very severe human audit.”
“I’ll personally draft the termination paperwork,” George agreed, green eyes flashing with a sharp, possessive complicity the entire floor had never witnessed before.
Lando Norris swallowed hard, his smile disappearing as he realized the catastrophic strategic consequences of his big mouth. Kimi and Arvid instinctively withdrew their hands, looking toward Piastri like employees begging for union protection. Winning the three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bet had turned the Australian into the richest man in the department, but now the entire committee would have to survive the combined fury of the two most ruthless coordinators at Grand Prix Corp.
And, to everyone’s horror, they were now officially playing for the same team.