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Compared to the others, Max didn’t mind driving in the rain.
Growing up, the odds of the tracks being wet on any given day were an almost even fifty-fifty split, although on race days, for no particular reason, the odds seemed to tip ever so slightly in favor of rain. Slick tracks weren’t so much a condition to be feared as a variable to consider, and Max, who had grown up with the asphalt as his playground and a kart in lieu of colorful toys, had folded the rain into the baseline condition of his life on the tracks.
Which was all to say that it didn’t matter to him whether or not it was going to rain in Montreal, and when the rain decided to hold for the race—well, nothing was loss or gained, driving in the shitty golf cart he had had all season. Except for McLaren, who had put all their eggs into an inverted umbrella, raised it up for no reason at all, and splattered their chances for a Grand Prix win in the process.
Oscar and Lando still seemed to enjoy themselves at the club that night, singing off-key in a corner with most of the rookies cheering them on. Lewis was nowhere to be found; he had said something about having another obligation, which was code for his girlfriend stealthily visiting, and Max, still slightly impressed from a truly competent wheel-to-wheel battle with neither of them actively trying to kill the other, had waved at him after the podium and not looked for him at the celebration. Kimi—Kimi was having the time of his life, absolutely smashed on shots and high on the adrenaline of a fourth consecutive win. Max allowed himself just a moment of furious self-pity before reminding himself that he had been where Kimi was many times, and it was good, and it wasn’t something he would beat himself up over missing at this point.
This strategy worked only one time out of ten. Today wasn’t one of those times. He hadn’t even looked at his P3 trophy once since handing it off post-parc fermé.
“Max! Hi, Max!” Kimi attempted to push through the crowd toward him, but Max only raised his beer in a toast. There were too many people between them, and they had already talked so much today that Max didn’t know what else there was to say to the kid. He made his way to the other end of the club, people-watching and not paying particularly close attention to where he was going except away.
He wasn’t looking for George. That was something he needed to set straight for the records, not that anyone would ever ask. Max Verstappen had not been looking for George Russell at the club that night, had in fact clocked Alex and Lily making out and thought, And where’s their other boyfriend? with no particular feeling about it and redirected his attention to other people instead. At no point in the night did he search for a tall figure in the crowd or look for the flash of absurd alien-bug eyes in the altered blacklight of the club, and had in fact gotten well and truly drunk early on in the night before sobering up and letting the music wash over him until boredom set in around midnight. He knew George wasn’t there because George would have made his presence known, his laughter so distinctive that Max would have recognized it the way he could name an engine by sound alone.
“He’s at the paddock,” Lando said to Oscar at some point. Max didn’t have to ask who he was. “I texted him earlier. He said he’s not coming.”
“What’s he doing there?” Oscar mused, then forgot about it immediately when Pierre came up on his other side and said something Max didn’t quite catch.
Max had another drink, then decided it was going to be his last. The strobe light made everything slightly surreal, painting silver stripes on everyone’s skin. It had been fun, but he found himself reaching his limits earlier and earlier these days, and thinking of the flight out the day after reminded Max to be responsible in ways he would not have considered even a year prior. And in any case, P3 was nothing to celebrate about, even if everyone thought he should be grateful for the consolation prize at this time in the season.
It pissed Max off in ways that would have come out as violence not too long ago, but the antidepressants had helped, a little. At least now he no longer felt the need to crash the car into Lewis in those final laps.
Saying goodbye would have dragged it out too long; Max practiced the time-honored cultural practice of an Irish goodbye and slipped out when the strobe light began a particularly seizure-inducing sequence. He was too sober by half, actually. Wired, even as Montreal’s cool night air blew away the overhanging stench of alcohol from his nostrils. Just before arriving at the hotel, Max realized that attempting to sleep now was going to be a pointless endeavor, and immediately took a left turn instead.
Towards Gilles Villeneuve, when very few people were likely to be around.
Truthfully, it was one of his favorite times to visit the tracks. His adolescent years had seen this particular habit through. He had perfected the routine of sneaking out the night before races, walking the track until he could memorize every turn even blindfolded, and sometimes just standing in the middle of the grid as the heat or the cold or whatever the elements had to offer merged him into one with the asphalt.
The garages were mostly empty already. Max had no trouble getting into the paddock, and even as late as some of the mechanics worked, at almost one a.m., the whole area was dark. The difference from the chaos of race day was palpable. Max walked from one end of the pit lane to the other, occasionally glancing towards the shuttered garage doors.
Not everything was closed.
Under the Mercedes garage was a sliver of light, as bright as the opened door of a refrigerator in the middle of a dark kitchen. Max’s feet took him there without conscious awareness. The gap was barely tall enough for a five-year-old child to walk through, and even in his earliest karting days Max would still have had to bend down to see through the gap. Which made it somewhat more ridiculous that at his grown age and grown height, Max squeezed through the dog door without hesitation, knowing almost immediately what he would find on the other side.
George Russell was not happy to see him.
Going by how deep the lines carved into the sides of his mouth and between his brows had gotten, Max ventured that he had worn that expression for a while, with or without Max’s presence to complicate the matter. It was hard to tell, sometimes, where he was with George. Sometimes, he could almost believe they were friends, or at least friendly, only for weeks to pass and the animosity would come roaring back like a seasonal tornado, gone again just as quickly. He had learned to approach George with caution, but sometimes, Max found himself lapsing, a force of habit difficult to break.
Like this morning, when he had done so without a second thought, which was a surprise to everyone watching, most of all himself.
And George—George had smiled back in turn. So they were okay again, supposedly.
It was a touch disconcerting, then, that George didn’t greet him at all upon entering the garage. The expression on George’s face looked as if it had been painted on, a mask that he couldn’t take off even alone. Max didn’t know how to describe it, what emotions it mapped onto, and he had taken great pain to decode George’s many expressions over the years they had known each other. Disappointed was too mild. Angry was too active, too energetic for what seemed to be exhaustion lining his eyes. Desolation was too hopeless, and he did not know George to be that kind of person. And certainly not confused—George Russell was perplexed, at times, in a controlled way, a bemused way, but never the helplessness of confusion.
All to say, Max didn’t know what to do. And so, he said the only thing he could think of: “So that’s the piece of shit, then?”
The car lay flayed between them, a vivisection of engine parts. Max had no doubt the mechanics and engineers had pored over everything they could from the moment the car had returned to the garage almost ten hours ago, and debrief upon debrief had occurred, and a conclusion had been drawn or not drawn, and there were very few reasons left for George to still be standing in the entrails of the car that had failed him, alone, as the paddock slumbered.
George’s greeting was flat. But of course; the cameras weren’t on. “What do you want, Max? Why are you here?”
Max shrugged. “Why are you?”
Still in his team kit, George was at least tired, whatever else he was. On the drive to the club, Max had replayed the post-retirement clips a few times as Charles weaved between traffic; the media had wasted no time in descending upon him, and even in the earliest videos George had been ready for the vultures. He had been graciously discontented, courteously disheartened. It was a different mask than the one he wore now, and Max wondered how many of them George possessed, and what it took to be able to switch so seamlessly into the right one.
Max didn’t have it in him, neither the desire nor the skill, to attempt. Most of the time, he couldn’t stand the way George looked, the disingenuity of it.
George’s shoulders, which had drooped when Max had first entered the garage, drew back up, his arms crossed in the front.
“Battery gave up, huh,” Max offered, grimacing as he walked around the W17. George hovered almost protectively. “Relax. I’m not going to sabotage you—not that I need to at this point. Mercedes engines will always fuck you over. I should know.” He shook his head, snorting at the memory of Nürburgring. “A shame, really. It was a good race, or so they said.”
George’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Yes, well. One does what one can.”
The ground was littered with valve covers and coolant hoses and heat shielding, the larger components likely already taken away for inspection. Max toed the shiny sheet of gold heat shield and said apropos of nothing, “Back in the days they used to tell fortune from looking at the guts.”
That got something out of George. He blinked, head slightly tilted. “Pardon?”
“Divination. I forgot what culture—something old. I watched something about it on a flight. They would disembowel an animal and poke at the guts—the intestines, whatever else—and read…” He couldn’t think of the word in English and gave up with a shrug. “You know what I mean. The future.”
“Omens,” George said almost mechanically.
“Yes, omens.” Max nodded. “So what omens have you received?”
“That I’m well and truly fucked, aren’t I.” George swallowed, briefly closing his eyes before facing Max fully for the first time. “It’s over. The gods aren’t on my side.”
His eyebrows hit his hairline. “Shit, princess. Don’t be dramatic.”
“Forty-three points behind is not being dramatic. It’s being realistic.”
Max crossed his arms. “We’re five races in, George. When did you become such a—” Language failed him yet again. He could think of one specific word, but it wasn’t a nice one to use, and George already looked like he was reaching the very end of his rope. Max practiced the restraint he possessed in short supply. “Never mind. My point is, it’s not the end of the world.”
This was a strange timeline, Max thought. There was no way he would have found himself comforting George Russell had their relationship continued on the trajectory it had been. In a normal timeline, Max would have had a better car than his own steaming pile of shit, a car that responded rather than resisted, and Montreal would not have been his first podium of the year behind a nineteen-year-old and Sir Lancelot.
The thought stung. His back teeth ached. He felt as if the world had shifted, a convergence of alternate realities that he had not noticed. In a normal timeline, he and George would have little to say to each other today apart from whatever they could yell in monosyllables to be heard above the pounding club bass.
But in this timeline, with the carcass of the car beside them, George turned at him with those eyes like luminescent insects, though considerably dimmed with fatigue, and bit out in his posh accent, “Easy for you to say. You’re not fighting for a title like the rest of us.”
Except whatever George had meant, Max had taken it with more offense than intended, and all of a sudden he remembered what it was like to be around George, the dig of his words, the double-edge Max always had to watch out for. “Because I’ve been sucking up dirty air all season long? Thanks for the reminder.”
“Because you already won four times. It doesn’t matter as much for you,” George snapped back. “You don’t understand. I—” And here, he dragged his hands through his hair, the thick, luscious brown of it, and for a moment Max thought he could see beneath the composure, was sure that George would crack. But George only took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’ve tried as hard as I could. Everything I had. Since the start, and I made it to this year, and I thought—” His voice dropped, but his eyes were dry. “I thought it was finally enough.”
Somehow, the calm admission was worse than a breakdown to hear. Max felt the discomfort deep in his gut.
This wasn’t how they talked to each other. As a matter of fact, this was barely how Max talked to his closest friends. He wasn’t good at doing the comforting—a weakness that his father had made sure was stripped out of him. It was not the stuff that champions were made of.
Max rummaged through his library of things he knew to be true; most of them his father’s lessons, hard-learned and hard-earned. Finding something he thought suitable, Max delivered it with as much good will as he could, and winced when it still came out flatter than he had intended.
“Well, it’s never going to be good enough. Obviously.”
Several things happened at once.
The garage lighting was harsh, the light itself a cold white that did very little favor to the complexion even on someone as sun-kissed as George Russell had always made sure himself to be. What was left of George’s vitality leached out of his face completely, his skin almost gray and bloodless. The stiff way he had held his jaw released, his mouth slightly open. His chest stilled completely, then rose again at an alarming rate, as if he had found himself out of air and could not let the oxygen in fast enough.
And then, a split second later, George charged at him.
Max had fast reflexes; he had to, as part of the life he led. George was taller, but Max was sturdier, and he caught George’s fist before it could make contact with his face. George was panting, the gray skin seeming so thin, the eyes too wide and wild, and Max came to the very belated conclusion that he had said something spectacularly wrong.
He couldn’t take it back now. George was already struggling in his grasp; Max quickly grabbed both of George’s wrists and held them behind George’s back with both of his own hands. They tussled until George was pressed against the body of his car, their breathing labored and uneven.
“George,” he tried to say, wanted to reason and explain, bending over George. Their faces were very close to one another; he could smell the faint, fresh scent of George’s shower gel, and he was sure George could smell the alcohol still on his breath. George’s eyes were impossibly blue, he thought, made all the bluer by the overhead light. They usually held the warmth of the water right off the coast of Monaco, the turquoise of the sandbars beneath the summer sun, but they glowed now like something otherworldly and cold, the sea giving way to glacial ice.
George’s hands were also very cold, Max thought, and tightened his grip on the wrists lest George swing at him again.
“What I meant was,” he started, but didn’t get a chance to finish.
Because before half the words were out of his mouth, George had already lunged forward again to kiss him.
Cold, he thought, the first word that entered his mind. George’s lips felt as if he had been standing in the falling Montreal gloom all day and all night, bitten by the wind so that they were slightly chapped. Teeth scraped against his own lip, a tongue shoving into his mouth, uncouth and unrestrained and everything George Russell had tried his hardest to hide from the public eye, but it didn’t surprise Max one bit.
He knew George, Max thought, and nipped back.
They broke apart only by necessity. George panted, eyes glassy beneath him. Max took in the totality of it, the thin lines under George’s eyes that usually looked more pronounced when he smiled, the exhausted sheen of his skin, the lashes that fluttered almost daintily, as if George couldn’t help how they moved. He had known this face for almost half of his life now, had seen it morphed from the roundness of childhood to its current incarnation, sharp enough to cut.
And George had always reveled in using all of his weapons against Max.
“Again, schat?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” George sneered. “You only ever come for one thing. Don’t pretend like this was something else.” But they were too close, and Max knew what to look for now—the way George’s eyebrows drew together, the downturned corners of his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth. George wasn’t just angry. There was something beyond anger here, quieter and all the more frightening for it.
Max wouldn’t pretend he understood what else it could have been, but he tried to do better, even if he were usually shit at this.
“I came because you were alone,” he said simply and watched as George’s expression flickered, so quick he’d almost missed it.
“Don’t do this, Verstappen.” George turned away, attempting to wriggle out from under Max, but he held firm. “Not tonight, okay? It’s already shit enough. I don’t need you to make it worse.”
“What if I don’t make it worse?”
The silence lasted a beat too long. George directed the full force of his glare on Max, his lips quivering, his shoulders almost vibrating with tension. He wished he knew what went on in George’s beautiful, impenetrable head, beneath the stiff upper lip and the hair products and the perfectly plucked brows. And then, just when Max thought George would shove him off and mean it this time, George bared the side of his neck.
“Then do it well,” George murmured. A certain gleam had entered his gaze, as if he had consciously switched to a different gear. “Make yourself useful, since you’re here.”
Max knew how to be useful. He was a dabbler of a great many things in life and an expert of a few, cars being the most prominent one. But, Max thought as he suckled on the salty skin just under George’s ear, using just the right amount of pressure to elicit a particularly enthusiastic moan, somewhere along the way, he had acquired a degree in the study of George Russell.
Case in point.
“Fuck,” George hissed. Max had swept aside the mess on the ground with his foot, clearing space for them in front of George’s car. He draped George over the side of the chassis, an absurd position given how tall George was and how low the car sat on the ground, which forced George onto his knees with his hands clinging to the rim of the cockpit. Max stripped off the team kit inch by inch, marking the gradually exposed skin until a line of red traced the contour of George’s shoulder and back. He couldn’t see George’s face, which was a shame, but George was loud enough that there was little left to wonder about how he was feeling. “Fuck, Max, get on with it.”
“You don’t actually mean that.” Because he knew George too well. He knew how George liked to be fucked—edged on by a good foreplay until he begged for it, and his begging voice was different from his bossy voice, and they weren’t there yet. George cried when he begged, his whole body trembling with desperate, pathetic need until his greedy hole was stuffed completely, and no matter how many times they had done it, Max still wasn’t over the way his eyes would fill up with breaking waves as every single proper English thought was fucked out of him and the extent of his vocabulary narrowed down to just Max’s name.
The first time was a mistake, early on in George’s career. They had gone out with the rest of the grid, São Paolo, George’s first win. All Max remembered about that race was that it had sucked for him in particular, which clearly was George’s boon. They had been on decent enough terms then, and the celebration had occurred with all its usual aplombs. When it was over, they’d found themselves in the same car back to George’s hotel, and one thing led to another, and they woke up the next day in the same bed, the hotel room turning into the chaos of a working garage and their clothes piles of engine parts, their dignity as good as gone in the face of what they had done together.
Max thought that that was when everything started going to shit in their relationship. Something had changed the moment Max’s cock embedded itself in George Russell; the casual camaraderie of the grid no longer seemed to apply to them, not with the way Max would sometimes remember flashes of George’s skin stretched out like a canvas under his lips, waiting to be painted in red and white both.
The worst thing was that they did it again, and again, through the best and the worst of times. After celebrations. After fights. After—nothing, just the idyll of a summer night in Monaco when neither of them could sleep.
But there was something special about sex when George was angry. The facade broke down, at least partially; his fury came out in claw tracks down Max’s back and bite marks on his chest, in forcing Max to go round three and four when he was not ready, goading him into coming, repeatedly, inside George and sneering when Max ran out of stamina at last even as George couldn’t walk straight the next day from the hubris. And perhaps it said something about Max that George was most often angry because of him. The sex after Qatar in 2024 was the best sex he had ever had in his life, bar none, even if they couldn’t even look at each other again for months afterward. And Max was convinced that there was something incredibly hypnotizing about George Russell, like the venom of certain insects or the heady intoxication of certain plants, because knowing just how George was, Max still could not quit him. George fought like a feral beast, a predator of the highest order—a two-faced snake, as Max had called him, and Max still couldn’t stop from letting it wrap around his limbs and pierce his lips with paralyzing poison.
And if he was honest, he was no saint to George either. In some fucked up way, they were a match—who else could take on Max Verstappen, the ferocious lion of the grid, but for the serpent whose venom could lay waste to even the king of beasts?
“Ah… Max, no, enough, fuck me already,” George whined. The garage floor was freezing under Max’s knees. He had stripped George all the way down, himself with his shirt still on and his pants unzipped, hard cock pressing against George’s puckered entrance, weeping precum that George kept on smearing over his own hole as he squirmed under Max’s ministrations.
He grabbed a fistful of George’s hair, the other hand on the sculpt of his ass, and squeezed both. George’s back curved, taut like a drawn bow, the suspended energy in the moment before the accelerator engaged, driving his ass further back like a heat seeking missile and Max’s cock the target. “What a little slut. Have you earned it yet?”
This wasn’t new. This was actually the norm, the language they slipped into around each other and a closed door, and George played this game just as well as Max did and was most of the time better. Where Max took a more blunt approach, George dug his scalpel in and aimed it at a particular artery and smiled as blood splurted over both their skin. “You stick that thing into anyone who slobbers at your feet and lets you stoically tear up about your daddy issues,” George spat, straining his neck to look back at Max. “Put a condom on, won’t you, before you give me something nasty.”
“Takes one to know one, schat.” But George got what he wanted. Max ripped open a foil packet of medical lubricant that he had stolen from his own garage the day before, which he had stashed in his pocket thoughtlessly, and George laughed and laughed as Max fingered him open faster than was advisable.
“I knew you’d come over just for this,” George said between pants and the squelch of slick fingers pulling him apart. “Fucking—ah—fuck, Max, slow down—”
“You couldn’t wait for me to fuck you.” Instead of slowing down, Max stretched along the rim, methodical and relentless the way he would work a stiff gearbox. The resistance gave. George gasped and frantically reached back for Max’s hand, shoving it in all the way up to the knuckle. “Schat, if you wanted a dildo, just say so. I’ll get you one.”
“I like when my dildo talks back,” George managed, and rutted into Max’s hand until Max held him back. The whine that came out of him went all the way to Max’s groin. His cock couldn’t get any harder without bursting, but around George, he was always pushed to his very limit even as George was the one being split apart.
Without a second thought, Max dropped down, spread George’s cheeks apart, and licked a long stripe from the base of the balls to the lube-slicked hole.
George keened, sobbed, his knees shaking. His arms wrapped tightly on the cockpit rim, hanging on for dear life. “Max!”
“Your night getting better?” Max lingered around the entrance, the tip of his tongue barely grazing the overly sensitive, over-stretched muscle. He could feel it quivering on his lips. His fingers dug into George’s waist, anchoring him. “Just tell me you like me, schat. You waited here for me, didn’t you? You could have just texted me. Why do we keep playing games?”
“I don’t like you,” George cried. “I just like your cock, okay? Fuck me, Max, come on—”
“Beg for it.”
“I am, I am! Goddamnit, please, Max!”
“Properly, George.”
“Fuck me, please, Max, put it in!”
Suddenly, Max pulled his hand out and blew on the hole, the edges fluttering with want and loss. George positively howled. Max held him close, pressed into him and linked their hands over the cold chassis, his breath hot on George’s ear. “Tell me how you want to be fucked.”
“By you,” George gasped. His knuckles had gone white, his fingernails slightly blue from how hard he was gripping Max’s hand. “Fucked by you, by your big cock, filled all the way…”
“A shame I didn’t bring a condom.”
“Fuck the condom, Max, I wasn’t serious.” Max bit down on George’s nape, burying his nose under the brown locks, tasting shampoo and sweat and the distinctive bitterness of a disappointing race day. George let out a high-pitched whine. “Don’t you, ah, dare put on a condom. Max, Max—”
“What if I get you off first? What if I get you off, then feed you your own cum, and then—”
“Max, please, now.” And there it was—the break in the voice, the begging voice in full force, except there was something else too. George sagged against him, shoulders shaking. “Max.”
And Max knew this wasn’t part of their script. George hung limply from the car frame, nearly collapsing onto the ground—his knees were red and raw when Max flipped him over, and Max pressed kisses on them as George stared listlessly at the ceiling with those glassy eyes. “Shit, schat.”
Without waiting for George to respond, he perched on the chassis, feet firmly planted for stability, and dragged George up to his lap, folding George’s legs to wrap around his waist. Inch by inch, he lowered George onto his cock until George snapped out of the trance and sank down the rest of the way so violently that his eyes flew wide from the shock and pain.
“George, slow. Slow. Shh. No rush.” They took it glacially, excruciatingly slow, Max controlling the pace, thrusting upward and carrying most of George’s weight on his lower body. George’s arms were wrapped around his neck, his legs a tight vise on Max’s waist, the absurdity of both of them sweaty in a cold garage on the corpse of the car that had led George to be here at two in the morning alone.
For the first time in all their dalliances, George seemed content to let himself be manhandled. His lashes grazed against his cheeks. Max brushed his mouth over them, the feathery wisps tickling his lips, and thought he tasted a hint of salt.
“You’ve had a day, hadn’t you,” Max murmured. George hid his face unsuccessfully, but Max cupped his cheek and held him close, their clammy foreheads pressed together. The thrusts were long, deep. George cried out from the size and heft, but dragged each movement out as if he was scourging himself from the inside with Max’s cock. Max changed the angle, aiming higher, knowing just where George needed the stimulation. He was rewarded with George’s mouth falling open, his tongue peeking out in a moment of uncomplicated bliss. “Better?”
“I don’t want to think,” George slurred. “I can still think.”
“I’ll do a better job,” Max promised. “Whatever you want, okay?”
What George wanted was quite simple. He wanted to be held, so Max held him. He wanted to be pressed against the car, then the wall, knees slightly bended so that Max could tower over him and fuck him hard into what Max hoped was Toto’s work station. George wanted Max to pump him full of cum, then plug his sloppy hole up with Max’s fat cock until it hardened again and go for round two, wanted Max to whisper nasty things in his ear until his eyes were screwed shut from the humiliation and pleasure of it. So Max did all that, held George against the wall and took him from the front, from behind. Their skin grew goose bumps in the cold air, then overheated and sheened with sweat, then cold again when it cooled on their bodies. The light flickered, the humming of computers in the background the bass for George’s tenor moans. He pumped George slowly, methodically, taking the perfect corner as his hips aimed for that sweet spot from behind.
George came with a strangled cry, and then a single, broken sob.
When at last they slumped to the floor because their legs could no longer hold them up, their limbs an untidy heap, George finally lolled onto Max’s shoulder, breathing as if they had just pushed through their final lap in qualifying, which, in a way, was what they did.
“Good lad,” Max said, the Britishism of it natural in his mouth because that was what George needed, what George had always wanted to hear. They were two sides of the same daddy-issues coin. “You did good today, schat. So good. Your best battle yet. I can’t believe it wasn’t with me.”
George didn’t respond; he couldn’t, his eyes completely glazed, his mouth only capable of moans and gasps, and the tears, so much tears, falling like a pearl necklace sundered, each droplet a jewel on the flawless planes of George’s face. Max licked up the teardrops like they were nectar, and the gesture somehow made George cry more into the crook of Max’s shoulder. “Oh, Georgie. You’re so good for me. Beautiful, beautiful, simply lovely.”
For a long time, no one spoke. Max cleaned them up with a pile of clean rags that the mechanics would miss come tomorrow, and pulled his shirt to drape loosely over George’s arms like a blanket.
After a while, George began to stir.
“It’s not Kimi’s fault,” George muttered, voice hoarse, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself more than anything else. “It’s not… it’s not anyone’s fault.”
“Maybe it is someone’s fault,” Max suggested. He rested his chin atop George’s head, inhaling the familiar, calming scent of George’s shampoo. He could never place the scent, only knew it to belong to George and George alone. “You could blame Toto. I liked blaming Christian.”
“I wish it was Toto’s fault.” George’s voice was getting lower and lower. Max shifted a little, pulling George completely onto his lap, the warmth of him above and the cold ground below. “I could work it if it was just about Toto. I can fight him—so to speak. I can fight Bono, I can fight Kimi, I can fight you, I can fight everyone of you on the grid. But Maxie…” Max had to strain to hear the next words, and then George laughed, sharp as a cracking window. “How am I suppose to fight luck?”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Then explain how in three races out of five I just—”
He knew George as often unreasonable, but never superstitious, so this wasn’t something in the usual playbook. It was really getting to George this time, the way the year was going. This wasn’t just about Montreal—just the last water droplet overflowing a cup, but George had held this cup for a long enough time now that the slightest oversteer would send him straight into the wall. He didn’t know what to do, and so turned George’s face to his, locked their eyes, and kissed him, deep and messy and entirely too passionate for an afterglow embrace. With their breaths still mingling, Max murmured, “Fuck luck. You just get back in that car and drive the next race and the next. Don’t think about Kimi or Lando or anyone else—”
“I wasn’t thinking about Lando at all.”
“Fuck them all. Just race me, schat.” They sat a long moment without speaking, soaking in the words Max didn’t think he was going to say, but did. It was possible he had said something wrong again, but as always, it was too late to take something back the moment it was out.
He would have taken back a lot of things he had said to George before, and they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in. But then again, George was never just a victim either.
Except today. To luck, which was a thought that Max had to grind his teeth about. The fucking nerve of cosmic entities to touch what Max had deemed to be his territory.
And that was the whole knot, wasn’t it, what they were to each other. The reason they had called it quits, then drifted right back where they started and began again, as steadfast as the changing of the seasons. But they would end up here again in summer, with a storm poised to pour over their heads, holding each other on a cold garage floor among strewn car parts.
Finally, George sniffed, wiped his eyes, and bunted Max’s chest, finding a more comfortable position for his head. “Your car is shit.”
Max raised his eyebrows and huffed a laugh. “Then it should be easy, but hopefully not for long. We have upgrades coming.”
“You just want to overtake me like a maniac again, Verstappen. I won’t stand for it.”
“At least I’m not the only one who lashes out with unnecessary anger and borderline violence.” A resounding slap on his chest. “See? What did I say? Your poor headrest. Both of them, actually.” But George was laughing now, a helpless, full-body rumble that reminded Max of his cats’ purrs. He held George through the laughter and joined in with his own, tightening his arms when it devolved into soundless shakes.
George wasn’t crying anymore. It was just the aftermath of it all, the release of tension, the last gasp of adrenaline leaving his body after the weekend and all it had brought. Max understood completely, wanting something so bad that the wanting hooked itself into his soul, and the gnawing need would not abate until he had it in hand.
He held George through the rest of it, waited for him to gather up the discarded shatters of composure, and thought, yes.
Finally, George sank completely onto him, boneless and spent, and heaved a long sigh. Max lifted George’s chin after a while, gently traced along the sharp jaw line, and caressed all the way upward to tuck a strand of George’s curls away. “There you are, princess.”
He wasn’t imagining George leaning into his palm, or the slow drift of long lashes against his cheeks. It almost felt as if he shouldn’t be touching something so delicately made, so fine, with hands that had always played rough with clutch sticks and steering wheels, but Max gladly took what he was offered. George licked his lips, a quick movement, and met his gaze with those ridiculous eyes.
“You know what these omens say to me?” Max asked, gesturing at the unfinished autopsy of George’s W17 around them.
“We already established I’m quite well fucked,” George answered lightly. A good sign. This was his George, all of it, all the faces he wore. And Max liked to think that this one—this softness, this raw, wounded face that wore its vulnerability bare, was reserved for him alone.
“The omens say you led thirty laps in a battle no one can dispute you were winning, and the gods had to cheat to stop you.” George was quiet, leaving Max feeling like the biggest idiot in the world, then suddenly kissed him, a gentle peck. Max blinked twice in succession. “Was that the right thing to say? Should I say that again?”
“You dolt.” But George was smiling, and it was as if the sun had come out at last, and the shore of his eyes glittered under the brightness. Max had missed it, this face, this George. His George. The wind snuck through the partially shuttered garage door, bringing a gust of freezing cold. George shivered; Max rubbed under the shirt at the bare skin of his arms. His voice came out muffled against Max’s chest. “It’s late. You should go.”
“We should go.”
“Taking me home, are you?” But George was looking at him in a way that was slightly more intense than a jest would require, slightly more nervous. Max wasn’t good with faces or people, generally. But George—George was his special interest.
“And what of it?”
George didn’t reply, but he could feel George stiffening slightly.
“This doesn’t—this can’t,” George said, voice low. “Max, I can’t.”
“Don’t freak out, schat. It’s just sleep. It’s a very nice hotel,” Max said, and squeezed George more tightly. “Come on. It’s closer than yours, and very far from Kimi.”
“I told you I’m not mad at Kimi.”
“Sure. He would be extremely hungover at breakfast and try to sit next to you about it.”
George took a moment to consider, then snorted, loosening again. “You sure know how to seduce a man, Verstappen.” But George was playing with his chest, was drawing lazy circles around his nipple, was pressing his cheek to the swell of Max’s pecs, the vixen, and Max thought, something something, pot, kettle.
They couldn’t, and yet they did. Had done, and were doing.
They made it out of the garage around three a.m. The paddock was completely empty, with only the occasional lamp post illuminating their way. On the car ride back, George didn’t pull away when Max’s hand found his over the center console, and when they finally arrived at the hotel, Max looked down to see their fingers had intertwined completely over the course of the short drive. George’s face was flushed with the golden street light, and there was a faint smile at the edges of his lips, reddened from kisses, and unresisting when he asked for more from them.
Max had said he didn’t believe in luck. He had said a lot of things he would later take back, and this seemed no exception.
Because luck existed, and today, he was the lucky one.
Overhead, Montreal began to rain.