Archive of Our Own

There’s hardly a difference between a season opener in St Petersberg, Florida and one in Melbourne, Australia, George finds, if he closes his eyes.

Can’t drive with his eyes closed, though. Not on these tracks, the ones he doesn’t know like the back of his hands, the ones he could map the turns of in front of Guess the Grid cameras with fingers curled around an invisible steering wheel. The ones bordering the Mediterranean Sea, the ones with the winding climbs of knocked-down and paved-over Ancient European forest terrain. He could catch risky glimpses of the lit-up, towering Marina Bay Sands triad over the concrete barriers and safety fences, once. Now, during qualifying – the Firestone Fast Six, if he’s lucky enough that week – he thinks he spies the nauseating, distinct blue of a Walmart in the far distance.

He opens them, a momentarily bleary view of the underside of a breakfast nook that can turn into spare bed in a pinch that he blinks furiously away, shoulder sockets straining pleasurably as he pushes from downward dog into a plank. Holds it until his forearms shake and his wrists scream, fingertips flexing against the coarse carpet of his motorhome, faintly musty despite the extensive steaming he’d footed the bill for before he’d deign to step inside. The odour will continue until circumstances are accepted.

Motorhome, literal, now. Arr-vee, as his very American race engineer is fond of cheekily correcting. No shinily constructed living quarters erected in every city just for his sake, always his comfort in mind, and a luxury suite in a hotel nearby for respite from even that. He spends race weeks on a glorified bus with an electrical kettle and his very own toilet (a luxury, VeeKay likes to remind him, gratefully, after emerging from it), driven for him from Lexington, Ohio to such exotic locales as Lebanon, Tennessee while he takes brief respite in the Delta business lounge and tries to remember what the champagne tasted like in the paddock club.

He drops to his chest with an undignified grunt and rolls onto his back, the sweaty cotton of his team shirt dragging against the musty carpet, his new cologne. His vision is bleary again when he stares up at the flat of the ceiling, and through the blotting moisture it almost looks as bland as the ceiling of his old Monaco apartment, the one he sold, when the lease became dead weight. He drapes a forearm across his eyes and pretends not to notice when it comes away damp.

“Ridiculous,” he chides himself, the ceiling, the carpet, the breakfast nook that can be turned into a spare bed in a pinch but has never found need to. He’s so unbelievably lucky, isn’t he, to have landed on his feet, after. Lucky to have gotten the call from Andretti at all last year, when he’d been cut loose at the last minute, when he hadn’t been worth the enormous payout of breaking a contract to put him in another seat. Not after his performance, no matter the caveats. If only he’d been dumped and left for dead a year earlier, back when the average YouTube comment followed his name up with underrated, before he’d been so thoroughly rated.

Lucky not to have embarrassed himself that first year in America, third in the standings and a knack for an oval. You always were a natural at going in circles.

“Not luck,” he interjects, to the built-in microwave above the kettle. 10:57, it replies, an unsympathetic reminder that he’s about to be running uncharacteristically late to the first press conference of the season. He buries the reminder in the back of his mind, right next to the reason why he’s dragging his feet, with deep breathing exercises on the floor of his motorhome. Arr-vee.

Frantic knocking on the door snaps him out of his pity-yoga cool down and jerks him to his feet, anxiety and dread curling in his chest, constricting his lungs. Just one more day, he thinks of begging when he unlocks the door for his manager, who’s hair is in windswept disarray from the golf cart trip over from the conference hall to the trailer park. The type of classy sentences that characterize his life, these days. One more day to perfect the old game face. He hardly remembers the tightrope balance of haughty and blank, now.

“Your limo is here,” his manager announces, grandly and very American, meaning the golf cart. The type of classy sentences that didn’t use to be ironic, for him. “We’ll go over strategy on the way.”

George nicks his team jacket from the coat hook, ignoring the despairing why are you sweaty as he pulls the door closed behind him, a bizarre suction seal of a noise that reminds him of the plastic lids on the containers of American peanut butter they stock the team cafeterias with. “I don’t need strategy. It’s fine.”

“Didn’t this guy used to dig at you all the time?” his manager persists, innocently offering up the world’s largest understatement. Well-trod visions of vindictive on-and-off track low blows dance at the forefront of his mind at the summons, but George doesn’t rise to it as he slides into the passenger seat, long legs folded uncomfortably until his knees are near to touching his chest. Looking like a clown is old hat, by now, but even this feels a little too on the nose.

“It’s not personal. It’s just a part of it,” George replies blandly, and there’s the blank portion of the game face, at least. The haughtiness is still on life support. “Competition at the highest level sometimes means going low.”

“Yeah, well, he’s gonna find out fast how far his shit’ll fly around these parts.” George grips the edge of the cart’s roof as his manager jolts them around in a U-turn, the constriction on his lungs working its way up his throat as they cruise toward another one of the many rocks the world won’t stop throwing at him on his way down the side of the cliff. “Personal or not, you don’t let it get to you, you hear me? You were here first. Weird as shit of him to follow, if you ask me.”

George hums, faintly. It’s about all the dread will let his throat do, once the Team Penske banners decorating the side of the grandstands come into view, the blown-up face of their new driver undulating monstrously in the strong, humid breeze.

“It’s even ground, now. He’s not a four-time IndyCar champ, right?”

Lucky, George reminds himself. Unbelievably lucky.

--

The official reupload of the livestream hits nearly half a million views in three days, with the most-rewatched timestamp spiking just after the nine-minute mark: they’d gotten right to the meat of it, the rest of them sitting in neat rows of plastic folding chairs like chopped liver, the vaguely annoyed creases around their mouths just on the right side of plausible deniability.

“It will be interesting,” Max Verstappen is speaking into the mic, Dutch lisp reverberating against the high panelled ceiling of the conference room, his splotchy complexion fighting a losing battle against the Penske red of his team kit. They’ve sat George close enough to be in frame when the cameras close in, of course, and he and Palou seem to have entered a Carefully Neutral Expression competition as he speaks, wide eyes verging on mania to maintain it. “Of course the cars are much different, obviously not as developed but better in some ways.”

George can go frame-by-frame on the tightening of everyone’s expressions. Beside him, Palou’s eye twitches. His own polite smile only grows wider.

“Looking forward to being back to, you know, real racing. Of course people will say Push to Pass is, you know, this and that, but it’s very different compared to the Mario Kart nonsense of what Formula 1 is doing now. Though, maybe,” a little wheeze-laugh into the mic while he presses a palm over the Penske logo on his shirt, lips curving wryly, “I shouldn’t be bringing up Push to Pass the first time I’m wearing this uniform.”

The camera pans over to Newgarden for his response, the good-natured shake of his head betrayed by the bulging vein in his reddened neck. The camera catches on George for a moment on its way back to Max, a gleeful sheen to his eyes at how poorly things are turning out.

“You’re obviously not the first driver of your era to feel that way,” an off-screen reporter begins. The chagrined curve of Max’s smile flattens immediately, brow smoothing blankly out. “Would you say George Russell taking the first major step played a role in making the decision to leap to IndyCar any easier?”

Scratching at the underside of his jaw, as if beset by a sudden terrible boredom visible even as George’s unstable motorhome internet connection dips the resolution into 240p territory, before lurching back into painfully high definition for his reply.

“It’s not something I thought about,” Max answers curtly. “I would say our situations were very different, in terms of choice.”

George snaps his laptop shut, his heart feeling like a still, dead weight in his chest. It feels about how the polite smile on his face had looked, after, in the furious clicks of camera apertures.

--

A tight nod and an alright? was the most he’d gotten out of him once they’d all filtered out through the doors, conference over. Even Ericsson had given him a commiserating thump on the back after the obvious slight in front of the cameras, and their relationship had only just reached stiffly civil after a year of racing on the same team. Grosjean gets the long-lost friend treatment, with a warm hug and a head-thrown-back laugh that George observes from a sulky distance.

Alright, as if they didn’t have a shared Formula 1 career under their belts that stretched long enough to encompass the range of George’s haircut experiments. As if George wasn’t someone he’d once theoretically thrown away a championship for, tossing out winning points just to feed a grudge. Not that George would dare touch that one with a ten-foot pole, lest he find himself ousted from Max’s orbit like an unsuspecting journalist.

Hadn’t even given George the chance to confirm, alright, yeah, before he’d turned his back and walked away, his new assistant pointing him in some important direction. No, not alright, George hadn’t gotten the chance to say. Very fucking not alright.

--

I would say our situations were very different, in terms of choice.

George had triggered the clause in his contract to keep his seat for another year as soon as he’d retaken the second spot in the championship standings from Hamilton, after Austria. He wasn’t an idiot: the way the engineering team clammed up conversation whenever he’d entered a room, the way his own side of the garage wouldn’t look him in the eye half the time, he’d known there’d been a chance of not maintaining it. Every driver thinks he’s the best on the grid, yadda yadda, of course – but there’d been something wrong with the car, and the way their hands had gone stiff on their computer mice as he’d walked by had given him the nauseating idea that they didn’t quite know how to fix it.

That, or – no.

Just to be safe, he’d told his manager. Wouldn’t make sense not to. He’d known Toto wasn’t dropping him, not when he could see the data for himself, numbers and graphs of proof that George hadn’t forgotten how to drive, that he’d not been unadaptable, no matter what Lando insinuated to the press. Drop him for Max? Now? When he was clearly priming Kimi for –

He’d squeezed his eyes shut at the thought, hard, harder, until white, buzzing static replaced darkness behind his lids.

Anyway, he’d triggered the clause, even though it wouldn’t be necessary. They were going to fix the car. The back luck that’d made a home in him couldn’t live there forever, not when he was charging Monaco rent.

--

It was just so heartwarming, Kimi’s championship. You’d have to be soulless to begrudge the kid, the youngest ever, the one never photographed without a full-cheeked grin for everyone on the grid. If George looked soulless in the photo of him congratulating Kimi after the race, it’d only been because he’d been tired from the long walk from the barricade to the garage after his gearbox had failed fourty-seven laps in. Really.

He hadn’t even thought to be worried, then, even though he’d seen the same paparazzi photos taken over summer break as everyone else: Max in that stupid helmet, submerged up to the neck while Toto lounged over him on his jet ski. He’d been secure enough in that triggered clause that he’d even laughed, then, at the idea of a guy who’d looked so much like a turtle thinking he was acting the shark. But he hadn’t been acting. He’d been fucking Jaws.

--

“Tell the girls to take the day off,” his race engineer crows over the radio, Midwest drawl lighting up George’s earbuds as he brings the car home to pit lane, hands near to shaking on the console from the late lift into the last corner that he thought had screwed his time. “’Cuz George Russell’s taking the pole!”

George’s laugh is a shocked bark. “Scooter, blimey!”

He gets another professional, elongated whoop at the censure before Andy “Scooter” Michuck, who George is starting to suspect was aware of his reputation for corny celebration radios when he took the job and handed Michael Andretti his Miller Lite with a hold my beer, gets serious long enough for George to park the car in the right settings. His entire garage crew is on him once he’s parked, thumping the car, his helmet, his shoulders, until he can dislodge himself from the seat for two giddy fist pumps and a clumsy slide off the barge board into the arms of his fuel guy.

When the cameras are on him, microphone shoved close enough to catch his breathless we’ll see what we can turn it into tomorrow, always some surprises around here, he can’t help but crane his neck around to look at the other cars parked in front of their respective garages. His none-too-subtle angling is quashed at every turn by the fucking Firestone bird mascot mugging in his line of sight for the cameras, another indignity of the series they don’t coach you for. He loses the cameras eventually when Mario, making an appearance for the first race of the year, ambles up to squeeze George’s shoulder and let him off the hook, taking over the spotlight.

They don’t always have the stuff to make it over here, Mario remarks, cheekily, flexing his authority on the subject.

Sue him, George blooms a little under the praise, even as his eyes drift back over to the Penske garage where Max is standing by the data screens, an unhappy curl at the corner of his mouth as he squints at the numbers, helmet and balaclava in hand and sweat-soaked hair wilting in the Florida humidity. Scooter’s at him by then, a palm around the back of his neck and a congratulatory shake, good boy.

“Other guy got ninth. Not bad,” he informs him, following his eyeline and putting him out of his misery. “But not pole.”

A brief flicker of Max’s eyes over to the media commotion around George that catches him out on his own shameless staring. George offers a tentative smile across the bustle of mechanics and camera rigs and ethanol fumes. The curl at Max’s mouth flattens as his gaze slides over and past him, like he’s looking at nothing at all.

--

In the end, Max hadn’t been able to resist one last side swipe. His camp had leaked the details of Toto’s offer before anyone could talk to him, all for the extra three million that they’d squeezed out of the counter Red Bull had made in response.

George had been putting in laps at the pool, part of a ceaseless training regimen for the start of the new season, new car, new luck, with Barcelona testing a few weeks away. He’d missed Toto’s call, singular, no second attempt, and the five missed calls from his manager, who’d imparted an urgent don’t give anyone a statement yet over voicemail. He hadn’t known what it’d meant, but he had known, hadn’t he, water dripping from the wet curls of his bangs onto the screen of his phone, blurring the flurry of notifications as they’d come in.

The desperation, after that. The worst bit to look back on: humiliating calls from his manager to Audi, Alpine, Red Bull, Christ, his fee not matching up against his performance from the last year, not his fault, paired with the contract breaking fees it’d entail. Doesn’t make sense for our mission this year, all of them. That’s not no forever.

Your dad’s been at me all morning, his manager had told him carefully at one crisis session, telling you to take the Williams. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, even if it’d been the stupid thing to do – almost as stupid as calling Cadillac, who hadn’t figured out how to stop their brakes from catching fire even at the season closer.

It’d been another not worth it this year, they’d just fast-tracked Herta up to the seat, and worse: Andretti wants to talk to you, though, and fast.

Fucking – IndyCar? Absolutely not. Put him under the tires of Max’s shiny new Mercedes and full throttle before that.

--

He keeps the lead, because he’s a good fucking driver without an algorithm glitch stalling him down to P21. The car feels fantastic under him, they’ve nailed the setup this week. For a hundred laps, it doesn’t matter if there’s a flash of a Walmart beyond the sun-bleached concrete barriers instead of a European castle. He’s too busy flying to look up.

--

It had taken embarrassingly little to change his mind a week later. It had taken this: Max Verstappen, head to toe in Adidas workout gear, in the refrigerated drinks aisle of a Monaco grocery store.

That’s not what he’d told Michael Andretti on the phone that evening, but that’s what it’d been. George had been there to pick up bottles of wine – not like he has anything to train for, now, anyway – and he’d gone right for the pre-chilled, hoodie drawn heavy over his forehead for the illusion of anonymity, no time to waste at home bringing it to temperature. He’d had two bottles balanced precariously in the crook of one arm and had been reaching for the third when he’d spotted Max at the end of the aisle, staring, disassociated, at the fridge with the energy drinks.

He’d been wearing the same hoodie – not Mercedes branded, but the latest from a recent Adidas drop that they’d sent to the drivers before release to the public. George had those shorts, too, the ones with the good pockets that kept your phone in place during a run. The runners, the cap, the socks. He’d know the look of a PR package a million miles away, and a man lazy enough to wear whatever gets sent to him in a box so long as it’s the closest thing to the top of the drawer in the morning. George had felt a wave of nausea wash over him at the sight, and he’d dropped that third bottle of wine onto the shiny linoleum, where it had smashed to pieces, sticky, cold wine splashing onto his ankles.

Max had snapped out of it at the sound and spun towards him, and it had been like looking in a funhouse mirror. You, but your chest and nose a little wider. You, if you lost an inch or two. You, if you had been worth keeping around.

The expression on his face had been the same, though. George’s embarrassment reflected back without distortion, a perfect copy. He’d shoved the surviving bottles back in the fridge and ducked his head as he’d turned and high-tailed it out of the store, mouth dry and eyes stinging.

At the end of the day, my passion is racing, George had told Michael, later, phone tucked against his shoulder and forehead pressed against his fridge door, eyes squeezed shut, missing that wine. My worst case scenario isn’t a year away from Formula 1. It’s a year away from a car.

Worst case scenario was hanging around Monaco all year, unemployed, running into his funhouse reflection at every coffee shop, restaurant, and park. Worst case scenario was it smiling pityingly back at him. He’d faxed his contract over that same night. Faxed.

--

“Look at us,” McLaughlan remarks as they hang backstage for the podium, only mildly dissatisfied coming out P2, hair still sodden from the chilled water bottle shower they’d taken immediately after exiting the cars. “In Max Verstappen’s IndyCar, even.”

George feels like there’s a fire roaring in his ears, and only partly because his cooling system failed halfway through the race. He’s all grins and kicking his feet back behind him, which he’s sure is coming off condescending. “You know, not once was it ever George Russell’s IndyCar, last year.”

“Aw, pity,” McLaughlan drawls, but there’s good humour in the crinkling of his eyes. “I’m crying for you. He’s friggin’ pissed about the pit lane thing, by the way, so thanks for that. I’m the one in the team debrief with him later.”

He can feel his nose scrunching, viciously pleased with himself. It’d gotten his heart rate up more than anything else in the race, Max trying to beat him out of the pits for an overtake, George nearly grazing his front wing cutting the move off. It hadn’t mattered in the end, anyway: Max had overdriven the car on the last stint and had fallen back to twelfth, forced to nurse fuel to make it to the chequered flag. A mistake George had made a handful of times himself, last year. He feels for the guy. His grin is starting to hurt his cheeks.

--

The thing is, George had watched Max’s season, last year.

The constant bitching over the radio, nothing ever running as smoothly as Max would like it, the downshifts, Good Lord, the downshifts. If Marcus had been frustrated by George, he loses what’s left of his hairline with Max. It grates on Toto, but unlike George, Max doesn’t really give a fuck about that, which grates on him even more. Kimi’s no flash in the pan, either, and when the two come to blows on the track – literally, in Canada, Italy, and Turkey – Toto’s more inclined to sympathize with the driver he grew in a petri dish rather than the one calling their pole position car crap and threatening retirement to eleven journalists in the media pen, both in English and Dutch.

The FIA doubles and then triples down on the battery, fans are loving it, and Max hasn’t been a world champ in two years, his demands and threats over the regulations carry less and less weight with every race Kimi yo-yo’s around him to the lead. Kimi, who moons up at him a little less on the podium every race until they’re near-ignoring one another with the champagne spray.

It’d been a close thing, the championship. Max had done better than he had, against Kimi – he can be magnanimous about it, despite what the folks on Reddit think - but the kid takes it on merit with a whiff of team preference that they deny to the very last race. George could feel Max’s rigidness on the podium in Abu Dhabi like a stiffness in his own bones, when he’d watched him from the couch in his new rental in Indianapolis. That wounded pride had been his, once, the only thing keeping his arms strong enough to lift the smaller trophies. It’s still his, really. Max was always just an interloper with it; George has the keys.

The only thing he’s not magnanimous about: the spark of petty glee that sits ugly and comfortable in his chest when Toto’s arrogance in ceding an easy exit clause for Max’s contract blows up in his face. Best car of the regulations, why would he leave? And why the fuck would he leave for IndyCar?

Real racing, Max had asserted in his Instagram announcement. George had said something similar, to save face.

--

“So what’s he think of us so far?” Kirkwood asks, when they’re all lingering in whichever team member’s motorhome had been designated as the pre-practice meeting spot, Ericsson in deep talks with his strategist, George absentmindedly scrolling on his phone while Scooter struggles to get the HDMI to connect for a PowerPoint. “Our little series.”

George looks up, eyebrows knit together in question, clearly having missed a step while reading every comment on the r/Formula1 thread for his cross-posted St Petersberg win.

“Verstappen,” Kirkwood supplies, helpfully.

“Huh,” George starts, gaze wandering thoughtfully upwards as he rolls his phrasing over in his mouth, trying to land on what’ll sound the most normal. “We haven’t talked, actually.”

Going by Kirkwood’s look of disbelief, he’s missed. “Is that weird?”

“It’s not – ” George stops, presses his lips together in consternation. “Well.”

--

If it’s one thing George never gets used to, it’s the folding tables. The folding tables, and the heat.

“I was a big fan of yours in F1,” a young woman wearing a Cardinals hat is telling him from the other side of the table, handing over an eleven by seventeen poster of his own face for him to sign. They’ve gotta be selling them somewhere on site, for the amount of them he’s been handed today. In it, he’s got his hands folded politely in front of him, smile thin-lipped and awkward, the worst take of the bunch, and, frankly, he’s sick of looking at it. He hesitates to ask how much it’s going for. “Never thought I’d be seeing you race in Arizona.”

“It’s a great city,” he offers blandly, sharpie twirling between his fingers, shifting uncomfortably as another bead of sweat trails down the back of his neck. “Great people here. What’s your name?”

“Kayla.” He puts a little flourish on the y, thanks for being a fan, Kayla. “I think it’s pretty fucked up what Toto did to you.”

There’s a choked, amused sound from beside him, where Team Penske’s booth has been stationed. George has been doing a pretty good job of resolutely not looking to his left so far, even as their elbows occasionally knock into one another. He keeps it up even now, the high of his cheeks burning hot.

“Ah,” he replies, airily, then clears his throat. “I don’t know about that.”

“For what it’s worth, some of us know who the real champion should have been in 2026.” She takes back the offered poster, rolling it delicately, then brightens. “Good luck on Sunday!”

Beside him, Max holds out his marker for her. She lowers the brim of her cap, stalking off, instead. Unfortunately, this is infinitely more amusing to him.

“You really found your people here, huh,” Max muses, a smug lilt to his accent. “Americans love conspiracies, right?”

George bristles, but doesn’t get a chance to reply before another fan is being let over. The damn poster, again. He autographs over his too-wide eyes, this time, much to the polite dissatisfaction of the woman he’s signing it for.

“We thought we’d finally get some attention from the ladies, now that Pato’s getting up there in years,” McLaughlin ribs from the other side of Max, pausing briefly for a distant shout of hey! from the McLaren table, “but then this guy showed up. We can’t catch a break.”

“Women love him,” Max agrees, except it doesn’t sound like the compliment McLaughlin meant it as, coming from him. McLaughlin must sense the derision lacing his rasp, or the faint scowl tugging at George’s lips during the brief respite in between fans, because he leans back in his chair, tossing a playful pen lid at George’s head.

“It’s because he’s such a nice guy,” he explains, sweetly. “He’ll go easy on the throttle in qualifying tomorrow, just to be nice. It’s just the kind of guy he is.”

“You know me,” George plays along, weakly.

McLaughlin sits back up straight as they send a little boy over to him with an outstretched cap, and George sneaks a glance over at Max, who’s offering a tight-lipped smile to the guy getting him to sign some Red Bull merch. They pass a few more quiet minutes interrupted by awkwardly pleasant fan interactions, with each second that ticks by settling heavy on George’s shoulders. Max has deigned to really speak to him for the first time since the start of the season, hostile or not, and it’s killing him to pass up the opportunity to dig in further, Kirkwood’s is that weird? rattling around in his brain so loudly that he has to ask the girl whose bright blue Mercedes hat he’s signing to repeat her name.

He finally breaks when they’re wrapping up, Max standing and tucking his chair back in, George deciding to strike before he can tear off for the motor park. He comes up with, brilliantly: “It beats the games they made us play, huh?”

Max’s step stutters with surprise, but his expression is as closed off as it usually is, lately. “Just another thing that’s not racing.”

“Aw, come on,” George protests, playfully. “Fans are racing.”

“Of course,” he agrees automatically, blankly, like he can’t wait to get away from this conversation. It prickles under George’s skin, sets his teeth on edge. The absolute least this guy could do is be polite, after –

“Nervous for your first oval?” George can’t help himself, an edge to the question. He’s thinking of the rehashed interview from years ago, shared everywhere once Max’s announcement went out. Not a big fan of oval racing, the risk of a big crash is -  big. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

There’s that mean sneer tugging at his upper lip, the one he remembers from Qatar, the one that makes his nose look even wider, somehow. Max nods his acknowledgement, an effective end to the conversation as he turns his back and walks off. George feels the satisfaction high in his throat, to have drawn out something other than blankness.

--

Max brushes the wall in practice. It doesn’t have to be a total loss, but the car goes visibly loose under him, shaky recovery, and the rear swings out and around, back tire slamming harder this time into concrete, nose pointed in the opposite direction as he comes to a stop. George can’t help but feel like he manifested this. He waits to feel smug about it until after Max is up and out of the car, jogging to the pits, because he’s such a nice guy.

George walks by where he’s being interviewed, after. Max is shaking his head, using emotive hand gestures to explain what happened, ceaselessly adjusting his cap with pent-up adrenaline. There’s a gleam in his eyes and a colour in his cheeks, though, that George can interpret easily: once you race an oval, Scooter had cracked at him, after his first time.

And he’s right – the crash doesn’t rattle him; it just teaches him the limit. Max comes back to take P4 in qualifying. A rookie performance so good it’s got the dumb Firestone bird mascot wandering away from George’s pole interview to go mug in front of Max’s. Is there anything he won’t take from him?

--

First place, George decides, two-hundred and thirty laps into the race. He won’t take first place from him.

They’ve controlled the race up until now, George the net leader until he’d taken it properly back from Malukas two laps ago. Lucky with the full course yellows, even, when their timing had been the bane of his existence last year. He’s got Kirkwood behind him and Scooter in his ear, go on and win the damn thing, but nearly oversteers with surprise when he checks the mirrors again seconds later.

Verstappen behind, his spotter chimes in. He’s got more fuel to burn, Scooter adds, helpfully. Shut the door.

Max swings out of his dirty air, and George covers off the lower line, forcing him high, forcing him up near the barriers if he wants a taste of it clean. Max goes in for another attack five laps later, this time going wide, but George can feel it, that slight hesitation. He moves wide himself, just slightly, just enough that Max’d need to nearly kiss the barrier to sling past, and sure enough Max backs down to wait for a better line to open up.

George doesn’t let it. That’s P1, you beautiful bastard, Scooter hollers over George’s own prolonged wooooo as he turns into Victory Lane. It’s another flurry of patting and shaking from his mechanics and a bear hug from Scooter, his own wiry frame cushioned against a beer gut as he’s lifted off his feet and spun in a full circle. He tries to catch his breath from wheezing laughter and thinks fleetingly that a dose of unreserved American boisterousness might not be the worst thing for him, in a team. He catches a flash of Max once he’s back on his feet, watching the display with an inscrutable expression that leans slightly into distaste. Sore loser.

“Beats a stiff upper lip, don’t it?” Scooter asks rhetorically, reading his mind in the way that’s made him quite useful over the past year, before smacking him squarely on the ass to send him on his way backstage, to join Max and Kirkwood. The latter greets him with a slap of a palm and a thump on the back, his own Andretti colours as soaked through as George’s.

“Mega race.”

A twist of Kirkwood’s lips, ehh. It’s still an adjustment for George, the way nobody really seems to give a fuck about the other two podium spots, over here. If you ain’t first, you’re last, Danny Ric used to shout, in a horrible, put-on Southern accent. “Not bad, not bad.”

He turns to Max, then, the buoyancy in his chest making him feel weightless against all former and standing grudges. The magnanimity of P1, something he grew to hate towards the end of 2026. The thing about the magnanimity of P1, it’s completely resistant to self-awareness. “Insane drive, mate. My first oval was nowhere near that smooth.”

“Better than a lap one crash,” Max agrees, blandly, which – of all the things to have remembered from George’s first year. He’d feel annoyance rise hot in his face at the dig, normally, but for the magnanimity of P1. He crinkles his nose in good-humoured embarrassment, instead.

“Better watch out for you at the 500, then, shouldn’t we?”

“Guess you should.”

It’s plainly disinterested, a shutting down of George’s line of conversation, as Max turns to follow Kirkwood out onto the podium, George left to head out last. It would sting, except George can see the feverish sheen colouring the high of Max’s cheekbones, the fight against the pleased upward curl of his lips, to keep the muscles neutral. He doesn’t know why Max is fighting it, fighting him, fighting the innate urge to yap and rehash the mechanics of every lap, but he’s magnanimous enough today to just drop it. It’s the P1, you see.

--

He should head back to his apartment in Indianapolis for the two weeks between races, get to work in the simulator, hang around the office and put pressure on the consultation process for the Arlington setup. Michael gives him a good shake and tells him to take a week off, instead, so he catches a first-class commercial flight to Boston. It’s not Toto’s private jet, but he’s boneless enough with the satisfaction of back-to-back wins to let the complimentary bowl of warm cashews be the tourniquet for that particular wound.

“Boston?” McLaughlin had asked, dumbfounded, when George had told him where he’d leased another apartment, before the end of the last season. “Buddy, you can get acres in North Carolina for pennies. Acres.”

His first instinct was to bristle at the incredulity, but, truthfully, his entire loyalty to the great state of Massachusetts had been rooted in being highly susceptible to his Monaco neighbour’s pitch when experiencing a brief blip of deeply vulnerable gullibility.

“You don’t want to live in New York,” his neighbour, a real estate mogul from California had insisted, once he’d found out George was vacating his unit. He’d trapped him in the hallway, shaking a protein drink through nearly their entire conversation, obvious gear use popping the veins in his reddened neck. The combination of the two had been almost hypnotizing in their ability to get him to agree to anything just to get away from them. “You want city, but you want square footage for your buck. You want waterfront, something closer to that British climate, right?”

“Well,” George had agreed, he thinks.

“Tell you what, I’ve got a luxury building that’d be perfect for you. All my friends get discounts, too.”

They must not have been very good friends, George finds out, later, once he’s talked to his accountant. Still, the harbourfront is nice, even if he’s made everything else more inconvenient for himself, and people generally leave him alone once they suss out that he isn’t a Bruin. There’s a brick fireplace he doesn’t trust himself to personally find out the functionality of and a massive, wood-planked balcony to host all of the friends he doesn’t have in Boston, because why would he know anyone in Boston, and why would he have taken this guy up on this apartment.

His manager had hired someone to outfit it with the basics before he’d moved in, so it’s a stiff, personality-void of a white designer couch that he collapses onto once he’s through the door, suitcase abandoned in the hallway, to be unpacked in a panic the day before he needs to pack them again. Not that he’d have picked out one any better, really. A perk of streamlining into the racing big leagues and their corresponding sponsorships: one never has to develop a couch identity.

The remote for the smart TV is out of reach, so silence settles around him like a suffocating, chilled weighted blanket, dusk casting long shadows of what little furniture he has onto blank, white walls. Top of the line soundproofing, his Monaco neighbour had promised with a wink, and on that at least he’d been truthful. On lonely weeks, like the one he’s in for, full of solo sea-side runs and pre-made, delivery service skinless chicken breast dinners that he posts romanticized photos of with captions preaching recharging and getting back to basics, he’d give anything to hear a neighbour’s sneeze. A reactive and poorly trained Pomeranian in the unit below, even, going off at every heavy footstep. He even misses the driver’s rooms at Mercedes, misses growing irate at Kimi Facetiming his sister without headphones, full volume.

He should get a cat, really, except then he’d have to hire someone to take care of it for most of the year, not to mention the hassle of pet passports and flight accommodations when he needs to move back to –

Eyes squeezed shut until tinnitus gifts him the break in quiet he’s begging for. Cat’s too quiet, anyway. He should get a parrot. Teach it to squawk validating things like it was the car! and fuck Max Verstappen.

A vibration, in the quiet. He slips a hand down into the pocket of his travel sweatpants and pulls out his phone, a notification from Albono lighting the screen, a response to the question George had posed in the taxi on the way over.

took me an hour and some tears to get this thing hooked up to the hotel tv btw so i’m taking it out on you with guns

He grins against the night mode yellow of a phone at half-brightness and drags himself to sitting by his core muscles. He’s loading up Halo when it occurs to him that it must be eight in the morning in Shanghai. Squeezes his eyes shut again, hard, against the thought, before he’s hitting the call button on their chat.

“Watch any races lately?” he asks once Alex picks up on the first ring.

“We don’t get FOX over here.”

“Alright,” he drawls, only a little churlishly, as he feels his shoulders loosen at the sound of Alex’s obnoxious laugh. “I’m blowing you up.”

--

He finds that the giant spider sculpture at Barber that jumpscared him for ninety laps last year is only endearing to him now. Running P2 behind Palou helps with the mood adjustment, somewhat. I’m the second driver to see this insane spider this lap, he thinks every time, instead of, Jesus, fuck, what the hell am I doing here.

Max is somewhere down in P5 or 6 after getting fucked by a caution, so George won’t have to worry about being iced out on the podium this time. He’d gotten his fill of that for the week at the fan meet and greet, when he’d thought it’d be a good idea to jokingly bring one of the new Penske Max driver cards to his booth for an autograph. Max had signed it without looking up, then asked if he’d wanted a picture. It’d been great fun for McLaughlin, at least, even if George had thrown the card in the garbage and slammed the lid shut a few extra times once he’d gotten back to the motorhome.

In Long Beach, their luck is reversed. George stares at the back of Max’s gaudy Verizon livery without the benefit of a net-position for the first time that season after Sting Ray waits to spin into a wall of tires until just after George pits, on the last stint. Max guards like he’s defending a championship in Abu Dhabi, of course, and George gets a taste of the lowest step on the podium for the first time in four races. He feels almost American in his disappointment for what used to be a small triumph. Hell, a Sisyphean one, back in 2026. A year when he’d had cause to learn about things like a myth regarding an unending uphill boulder that someone keeps pushing down again. If Zeus had looked a bit Torger-shaped in his mind back then, well.

“That was – ” Max starts, spinning on George backstage, eyes alight and face flushed fetchingly pink – what, George blinks – before visibly catching himself, his excitement. He drops his shoulders, schools his expression. “Tricky, in the last corner.”

“Yeah, you got lucky,” George teases, just to try and get a rise out of him, get that light back in his eyes. I’m the one who should be – he thinks, sourly, but, no.

Max just shrugs, whatever, maddeningly stubborn to rise to the bait. The magnanimity of having nothing to prove, to be able to come into George’s racing series equivalent of a walk of shame and stand above him on the podium by the fourth race. Whatever, George sniffs, mentally shrugging back. He’s still P1 in the championship. And next race, next race is –

--

It’s just as novel as it was last year, hauling a month’s worth of luggage onto the motorhome, his manager carefully stocking boxes of chickpea pasta and just-add-water overnight oats into the tiny kitchen cabinets.

“You’re not my assistant, you know,” George reminds him, sidling past to dump his suitcase into the cramped sleeping quarters, the bulk of the room occupied by a queen-sized mattress it’d taken five people to angle through the door. Worth it just for Indy month, anyway.

His manager painstakingly folds the reusable Whole Foods bags and tucks them underneath the sink, slapping the imaginary dust off his palms on his trousers. “You’re doing me a favour, letting me hover. My favourite race in the world, and now I’ve got an excuse to be a hanger on for the entire thing. May as well make myself useful.”

“Could always fold the kitchen table bed down, for you, you know.”

His manager winces and pretends to crack his back, then goes over to grab the door for the driver, who’s knocking with an arm full of coffee tray. Flat white with oat milk for George, which he takes gratefully when passed over. “I’ll somehow cope with my suite at the Hilton, thanks very much. You sure you don’t want me to find you something? It’s not too late.”

George doesn’t need to mull it over. It’s a driver tradition he’s not keen to ostracize himself from like he’d inadvertently done last year by spending too much time back at the apartment: everyone’s motorhomes parked up against each other for the month of May, driver’s kids running around on little scooters and kicking soccer balls against the side of people’s kitchen walls, rattling cereal boxes off counters. McLaughlin’s in-laws generous with their barbecue set-up and Newgarden and Armstrong teaming up to fill Mick Schumacher’s RV with whatever type of inflated animal balloon they can get their hands on that year. George fears it’s his turn, this time, if he ever pops back to the apartment to do laundry and leaves the thing defenceless.

It’s noisy and restless and full of constant shoulder-bumping.

“You couldn’t pay me,” George replies, shooting the offer down.

--

Perhaps the prank this year isn’t needing to deflate a hundred inflatable sheep before he can make it to his bathroom. Perhaps it’s the planning team parking Max’s motorhome directly beside George’s, the distance between the two so negligible that George can practically touch it if he reaches his arm far enough out his window.

Not that he feels inclined to do Hands Across Motorhomes with Max Verstappen once he’s levelled with his first annoyed curl of the man’s trouty lips, the first time they exit their vehicles at the same time for practice, face-to-face down the little steps. Max peels off in the opposite direction even though they’re headed to the same place, adding an extra fifteen minutes to his commute just to avoid George’s appeals to polite sanity along the way.

Easy enough to ignore him for the first week, anyway, with how busy things are leading up to the Indianapolis Grand Prix, a race that always carries a strange, distracted feeling with it, everyone buzzing with anticipation for the real oval course. It’s not a measure of success for the real thing, but George leaves with a P1 and an electrified and outsized feeling of destiny going into the rest of the month.

They get through the open test, the new Indy 500-specific car feeling strange and loose under him on the first install lap. Early days, Scooter assures him over the radio. It feels better by the time they run in traffic later on, George having a little fun alongside Katherine Legge, trading places back and forth. They cheers non-alcoholic beers at a barbecue with the rest of the grid that evening, to breaking curses.

Except later that night, George is in his queen-sized bed, a pillow pressed over his face and cupped around his ears, desperate to block out the sound of the enthusiastic Dutch yelling coming from the next motorhome over.

“Unbelievable,” he’s muttering into feather-down, sleeplessness a deep ache that he can feel in his sinuses, at this point. “Like we don’t have anything going on tomorrow. Just unbelievably selfish. Childish, even.”

Some of us are trying to sleep, he practices in his head, fantasizing about a confrontation when his breath starts turning the underside of his pillow sodden. Visions of if you don’t mind and I think I can speak for everyone when I ask and then everyone clapping dancing in his head. Eventually he works himself up to kicking his duvet off into the narrow space between the wall and the bed and throwing his pillow after it, legs clad in pinstripe cotton sleep pants thrown over the edge of the mattress and propelling him out the door of his motorhome, straight up to the door of Max’s. Three furious but purposeful knocks, no need to come off insensible.

The shouting cuts off instantly, and George listens for the heavy footsteps padding towards the door before it’s thrown open, Max’s blonde hair pointing in three different directions, an oversized and frayed Red Bull shirt, grey sweatpants slung low over his hips and a raised brow of surprise that scrunches into an annoyed scowl to boot. George hopes the reddening of his ears only contributes to his picture of righteous fury.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah? What in God’s name is going on in here? It’s nearly – ” he checks his sleep watch, where a fairly reasonable eleven flashes back at him. “Well, anyway, we’ve got an early morning tomorrow, and you’re over here shouting your lungs out. You have neighbours, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Shouting my lungs out,” Max repeats incredulously. “You must be joking. I’m allowed to blow off steam with a game at eleven, grandma. I don’t complain about your shower music in the mornings.”

George properly flushes, now. He figured the sound of the water had been drowning out his ritualistic renditions of All I Ever Asked. “What game?”

“What?”

“What game are you playing?”

Max hesitates, visibly thrown. “Halo.”

George opens his mouth, closes it. Fuck it. “Can I play?”

Max visibly works through a million excuses in the five seconds it takes for him to settle on: “Well, you ruined my online game, anyway.”

He disappears back into the motorhome but leaves the door wide open. George takes it for the closest thing to an invitation he’ll get and steps inside, shutting it quietly behind him.

His first glimpse into Max’s life in IndyCar is entirely unsurprising: a recycling bin full of empty energy drinks by the door, race suits thrown over the driver’s seat instead of carefully put away, six different unsealed boxes of cereal going stale on the kitchen counter. His wandering eyes finally settle on the sofa that Max has thrown himself back onto, legs spread to take up enough space for two, controller resting in his hands between them. He arches an annoyed eyebrow under the scrutiny.

“You’re so weird,” he observes. “Sit down already if you’re playing.”

George doesn’t wait to be asked twice. He gingerly grabs the second controller from the television stand and settles himself on the sofa beside Max, legs coming up and then folding neatly underneath himself. Max watches him, a slight pinch of his brow, gaze perceptive. George shifts uncomfortably under it.

“What?”

“Are you really wearing slippers?”

They clatter to the floor as George kicks them off one at a time, bare feet grazing the edge of the sofa. “No. Let me add myself to the game.”

They play at least ten rounds of local player-versus-player, hunting each other down. It’s stiff and strange, at first, George minding his space on the couch, hyperaware of the corner of Max’s outstretched knee, the line of his thigh where it almost brushes his own folded legs. After Max guns him down for the fourth time in a row, he starts to loosen, legs folding pretzel-style so he can lean forward in focus, bony knee bumping viciously into fleshy thigh.

“All you do is throw grenades,” Max complains, jabbing an elbow out when George’s bicep knocks into one of his arms to throw him off. Ow, George overplays it, until he switches to a victorious whoop when one of his grenades goes off, exploding Max. “You’re so bad at this. So, so bad.”

“Then why am I winning?” George retorts, nose scrunched, not above rubbing it in as Max spares him a sharp glance as he respawns.

“I ask myself this every day,” his tone overly ruminating. George knocks himself bodily against Max’s side again, and its returned just as roughly, George’s fingers slipping on the buttons from the force of it, still managing to hit Max’s avatar squarely with a rocket launcher. He bounces in his seat, eyes crinkling, muscles in his cheeks aching from how long he’s been grinning.

“Take that!”

“Now who’s shouting his lungs out,” Max gripes, but he’s losing a battle against his own smile as he takes in George’s boisterousness, an odd glint in his eye. “At twelve-thirty, mind you. People are trying to sleep.”

“If you’re worried people are going to find out how bad you are at Halo…”

“Such a sore winner! You get lucky with your stupid grenades; there’s no skill to it.”

“You can join my team next time,” he offers, an overly generous tone to piss him off, his giddiness outpacing his brain by a millisecond as he speaks. His hands go rigid on the controller when his words catch up to him, tongue feeling heavy and stupid in his mouth. Max’s smile twists into something cautious watching the transformation, watching George freeze up.

“Alright,” he agrees, a nudge of his knee against George’s, surprising him out of his stupor. “Next time. After practice, tomorrow.”

“Alright,” George echoes, airily. He unfolds his legs and stretches them out in front of him before sliding his feet back into his slippers, much to Max’s amusement. “Well, goodnight. I’ll make sure to turn down the volume in the shower in the morning.”

“Nah. I’ve almost learned all the words.”

George flushes, tosses his controller at Max’s stomach. He catches it, smile all teeth.

--

One late-night gaming session turns into another, and then another. George’s sleep app starts sending him angry notifications as his score slips lower and lower, but his nervous system hasn’t felt as relaxed in years as when he’s baiting Max into an indignant outburst over his button mashing and nearly knocking him off the couch for an advantage, his elbow digging into Max’s ribs, Max’s gloating laughter puffing against his ear. So he turns them off.

Late night gaming turns into George and Max lingering in the pit lane, George sipping from the long straw of his water bottle and nodding emphatically while Max describes how the latest set-up feels with even more emphatic hand gestures.

“The draft feels better,” he’s explaining, each hand flattened into an imaginary car, close behind one another, walking backwards out of Gasoline Alley so as to not have to stop his demonstration. “So working the traffic will feel good, I think, but then going into the banking, the balance, I don’t know…”

George nudges him around when he’s about to be flattened by an impatiently honking golf cart, and Max falls into step beside him without missing a beat.

“You’re not giving much away,” he observes, once his Maxsplaining has run out of steam. George shakes the electrolytes in his water bottle around, evasive eyes glued to the Puresport logo that’s been half-rubbed away. “Scared to get shown up by a rookie?”

George’s responding laugh is a humourless bark. “Think I might still qualify as one, here. I’ll give this away for free: don’t try to go three wide into the first turn on the first lap. Won’t make you any friends, either. Daly’ll die before he talks to me again.”

Max chews the inside of his cheek and goes quiet as they jog up the steps to George’s motorhome. Spending time with Max away from the Xbox has made him painfully aware of the fact that the bulk of his Indy 500 month diet revolves around stale cereal and crashing different family barbecues, so he’d altruistically bartered and then lost their last game of Halo on the promise of George making them dinner. Once inside, Max drops himself into the nook, one leg outstretched over long booth leather and the other tucked up against his chest. He absentmindedly drums his fingers on the table as George sticks his head in the fridge, rooting around.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?”

George thinks he’s misheard at first, with his head between the oat milk and glass containers of boiled chicken and brown rice. He grabs two of them with one hand and slams the door shut with the other. “Of the race last year? Take a guess.”

“No,” Max shakes his head, clearly disgruntled about something. George’s shoulders tighten, gait slow and unsure when he walks over to slide one of the containers over to Max before settling in across from him. There are a million possibilities of what Max could find embarrassing about him, and he doesn’t particularly care to have them listed off when they’re already situated in his mobile signifier of a fall from grace. “Of…this.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ve rented the same motorhome, asshole.”

“Cut it out, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Of course I do,” George snaps, stomach flipping uneasily, worrying at his bottom lip. “I mean – no. I don’t – do you think I should be?”

“You act like – ” Whatever Max had intended to say evaporates between them once he’s looked down at the container in front of him. He peels off the lid, nose crinkling with disgust. George’s shoulders come up even further. “You should absolutely be embarrassed about whatever this is. Where’s the sauce?”

“Sauce isn’t really in the meal plan.”

“Where’s the flavour?”

“There’s broccoli.”

“Jesus,” Max wheezes, slamming the lid shut. “I get it now.”

George shifts in his seat, pulling the lid off his own meal and digging in, defensively. “Get what? A form of nutrition that doesn’t come in can-form?”

“Why you’re so uptight,” Max answers, a teasing, amused lilt to one corner of his mouth. “If this is the price you pay to look like that, I will keep the burgers, I think.”

He feels the furrowed indent between his eyebrows, voice flat in anticipation of the next clever barb. If he has to suffer through one more insult, he’s taking it out on Max with grenades, later. “Look like what.”

“Hot,” Max shrugs.

George’s fork slips over his shiny, skinless chicken and scrapes painfully against the side of the glass. He searches Max’s expression for any sign of cruelty, but he’s oblivious, picking up the container of George’s painstakingly prepared dinner and investigating the bottom, no doubt in search of a hidden layer of hot Cheetos or well-done steak. Like that’s a normal thing he says, like George didn’t just feel it like a blow to his solar plexus.

“Alright,” Max declares, setting the container down and pushing it further away. He slaps a palm on the table to leverage himself up and out of the nook. “Funny joke, but let’s go get some real food.”

“This is real food.”

“Take a cheat day, George, Christ,” Max entreats, lingering expectantly by the door. “One hot dog won’t ruin your race pace. You don’t even have to put the toppings on.”

George is inclined to be obstinate – never race on food you haven’t trained on – but there’s something about Max waiting for him, hands stuffed in his pockets, sneaker tapping impatiently on George’s motorhome carpet because he never takes his shoes off indoors, when weeks ago George had been making humiliating plays for his attention at fan meet and greets. There’s something intoxicating about Max wanting his attention, now. And he thinks George is hot.

Something in his stomach flips again, and George snaps the lid back onto his dinner with careful fingers before shuffling out of his seat to follow. Max’s victory grin is as blinding as it is irritating.

Late night gaming dinner bets turn into George grabbing a spot on a picnic bench across from Seigel and Malukas while Max insists on getting his food for him – you’re going to come back with some kind of zucchini – and scooching over for him when he gets back, a plain chicken burger and carrot sticks on a paper plate set down in front of him, Max’s leg pressing against his after he settles in.

“Next time I win at Halo,” Max starts, shoulder knocking against George’s as he goes to take a bite of his own loaded burger, then proceeds to finish the thought with his mouth full: “you have to shotgun a beer.”

“You’re dreaming,” George scoffs, taking a bite. It does taste better than his cold brown rice, he must admit. He finishes chewing before he speaks again, at least. “This is all a ploy to beat me at the weigh-in.”

Max huffs, patting the flat plain of his wider waistline through his t-shirt. “Not likely.”

George watches the movement absent-mindedly, the way the fabric clings to his stomach from the humidity once he’s moved both hands back to his burger. He shifts in his seat, the denim on Max’s knee dragging against the bare skin of his own.

“This is so crazy,” Seigel gushes, at the same time that Malukas asks: “which Halo?”

--

He goes to bed early that night, but his sleep score is just as shit all the same.

He wakes up flushed at three in the morning, images from his dream flashing through his mind before they can fade from his consciousness: Max in the soft light of the refrigerated drinks section in that Adidas hoodie and shorts, the nice ones with the good pockets, white crew socks high on the curve of his ankles. The light dusting of blonde hair on the outside of his thighs, the way he’d pushed up the hem of his perspiration-soaked hoodie to press the cold sweat of an energy drink against the exposed skin of his abdomen, the muscles tightening at the sensation before relaxing with relief.

He tosses and turns and punches his pillow for another two hours before he can fall back into another fitful sleep.

--

“You know,” his sister had broached tentatively on the phone, his first year in America, “maybe now that there’s not so much pressure on you, you can - ”

“No,” George had cut her off, immediately, eyes squeezed shut.

--

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the pomp and circumstance of it all: the marching of every individual team on stage for the massively stretched out and packed grandstands to celebrate, the deafening roar of the pump-up music and the three different anthems, the fireworks at a scale that Americans seem to have a knack for conjuring up. Greatest spectacle in racing, and the blood thrumming in his chest and sending his heartbeat into overdrive as he heads to his car must agree.

“Hey,” Max cuts him off, balaclava on but helmet in hand, as he passes where the Penske car is parked up in P4. George lets himself get pulled in for a quick clasp of hands. “See you in my mirrors.”

“Oh, fuck off,” George scoffs, grinning stupidly with nerves, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Remember to go three wide at the first turn,” Max persists. George crinkles his nose at the spark in Max’s eyes as he turns and heads up to the second spot on the grid, where Scooter is waiting with a curious look and a calming pep talk.

He makes it past the first lap, this time.

--

“If it hadn’t been for the timing of that last yellow - ”

“Of course you got lucky on it.”

“Oh, here we go,” Max gripes, nodding his thanks at McLaughlin as he hands him his second Miller Lite. A handful of drivers have gravitated into a casual circle in the motor park, a compulsive need to rehash the details with the Speedway in the background, one last time, before they pack up and leave in the morning. George takes a small sip of his own, sorely missing a glass of red. “You’re gonna chalk it all up to luck, now, just because you didn’t benefit.”

“Didn’t benefit?” George squawks, beer sloshing as he motions over in the direction of the track, as if the offending piece of debris he’d run over is still laying there in a chalk outline, the crime scene that it is. “I didn’t just not benefit, I was a victim of it.”

“Victim,” Max mimics, unflatteringly. He switches back to a grin just as quickly, nudging George’s forearm with his elbow. “Made up five places on the restart, though. My spotter was prepping me the whole time, Malukas behind, Malukas behind, and then suddenly three seconds after the green it was Russell behind, Russell behind.”

“I miss when Malukas was behind,” McLaughlin muses, beside them. “That was a beautiful three seconds.”

The last time George had seen Malukas, he’d been coated with milk, lifted high on the shoulders of his biggest mechanic. It’s probably more uncomfortable than being coated in champagne, George copes. He doesn’t think there’s a single driver standing in the motor park loser’s circle that wouldn’t trade every champagne shower they’d ever gotten for one taste of it, though.

“Is it weird,” Max asks the group, “that I feel like I would have felt the same with a DNF as I do P4?”

“Welcome to the Indy 500,” Grosjean commiserates, cheersing his can against Max’s.

George’s gaze wanders distractedly over to where the sun is dipping low behind the grandstands, a warm orange glow spreading across the tarmac, the parked cars of all the workers still doing tear-down in the garages and sweeping empty cans of beer down rows of bleachers, the surface of the man-made lake in the middle of the track. Across Max Verstappen’s cheekbones, his crinkled, crescent eyes.

“It was alright, though,” he says, privately, to George. George is helpless to smile back, leftover adrenaline coursing through his nervous system that he’s forced to exhaust on playfully shoving Max, like they’re an hour deep into a Halo session. Max kicks out at him, like he does when he’s trying to knock George’s controller out of his hands.

“Are you staying in the city until Detroit, or flying back to Monaco?” Palou asks Max, politely jesting, to diffuse their little display of childish roughhousing. George stops his shoving, if only to level Max with a look of disbelief.

“You’re still staying in Monaco between races?”

Max shifts his weight, awkward. “My sim rig is there.”

“I think we’re meant to pretend we’re carbon-neutral, mate,” George ribs.

“Oh, I suppose you sleep in the RV, right?”

“Almost as weird,” McLaughlin interjects. “George lives in Boston.”

Max turns wide, surprised eyes onto him. “Boston?”

Now it’s George’s turn to shift his weight, awkward, under the scrutiny of Max’s gaze. “A guy got me a good deal. It’s nice.”

Max hums. “I guess I hadn’t seen you around, lately.”

For over a year, more like, but George just shrugs. “If you pack now, maybe you can get a full day in before you have to fly back. You’ll get less shit for it on the private jet tracker.”

Max kicks out at his ankle again, successfully tripping George up and sending his Miller Lite flying onto the pavement. Oi, McLaughlin barks, as George goes after Max’s. Wasteful kids.

--

Malukas takes the top step of the podium in Detroit with George hot on his heels in P2, and he vows not to let the Indy 500 confidence propel him to another race win for the rest of the season.

“Let the kid have the milk,” George tells Max the night after the race, slumped on Max’s motorhome sofa with a controller hanging limply in one hand. “The championship’s mine.”

It takes a solid twenty minutes to calm Max down after that one, let the kid have the milk, he repeats, crying laughter, while George buries his face in a couch cushion and blindly swats his hand in Max’s general direction, holy fuck do you ever listen to yourself.

They get thoroughly drunk that night, too, with George only heading out once he realizes he needs to pack for his early morning flight. Max insistently walks him stumblingly across the motor park to George’s own RV, an arm thrown around his shoulders for played-up support. George half-heartedly shoves at him every other minute, but he only ever gets a few steps before Max is wrapping the same arm around his waist, murmuring but what if I leave you alone and the kid gets the milk, just to make George shove in earnest, fingers tangling in the fabric of Max’s flannel overshirt, puffs of laughter against his ear, you’re so weird.

If the two week breaks between races dragged overlong in George’s apartment before, they’re excruciating now that he knows what’s waiting for him in the Speedway motor parks of Madison, Illinois and Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

“Your only job this week is rest,” Scooter starts in on him over Facetime, the bustle of the engineering office in the background creating an ache in George’s chest compared with the way the drag of his kitchen barstool echoes against the bare walls, here. “And here you are lookin’ worse than I do, regardless of what my wife might say. Why don’t you actually get some, instead of just posting about it on Instagram?”

“I knew you watched my stories,” George grins, but the bags under his eyes are pretty stark once he’s forced to look at them long enough in the other window on the screen. Scooter walks him through the preliminary setup for Illinois and George mostly pays attention. It’s just that he is tired, hasn’t had a solid eight hours in days, because whenever he tries…

Whenever he tries, it’s Max, legs spread wide on his motorhome couch and George pushing his controller away to slip to his knees in between. It’s Max, pressing his bottle of champagne against George’s lips on the podium, tipping it until it spills down into his open mouth, dribbling out the corners and down his chin. It’s not even always heated, like that: in one horrifying dream, George is on a Halo map, and Max is firing a rocket launcher at him, game over.

It’s why when he bumps into Max in the lobby of his building, he doesn’t even question it. He thought it’d been routine and banal, going down to the lobby to pick up his DoorDash from the front desk, but it must be another dream, must have dozed off on the couch after ordering. Here’s Max in blue jeans and a white shirt with cuffs flatteringly tight around his biceps, no doubt about to bend George over the security desk. He places a palm flat on the back of Max’s shoulder and rubs his thumb against the blade of it, to get things rolling.

Max jumps under the touch and lurches around, brow furrowed and a parted, hostile scowl that melts into shock once he gets a look at him. “George?”

George blinks, slow, a mortified heat spreading throughout his entire body as reality shifts around him. “You’re really here.”

“This is your building?”

“Why are you here?”

“I live here,” Max explains, a hand rubbing at the back of his head, the tips of his ears burning red. George blinks, again. One more blink and the world might shift back onto its axis. “Starting yesterday, I guess. This guy in my apartment back home, he told me about this place, gave me a good deal - ”

“Oh, my God.”

 “And, anyway, you made it sound nice. It’s just temporary, so.”

“Right,” George agrees, vacantly, but a disbelieving smile starts to tug at the corners of his mouth, absurdity twisting pleasantly at something in his chest. “What about your sim rig?”

“He said he had a guy who was good with shipping large, fragile things.”

George can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him. Max’s turn to blink, now, then a slight, cautious crinkle to his eyes at George’s mirth. “He probably meant transporting big, illegal hunting game. Your sim’s probably sitting in a cargo plane next to a dead trophy elephant.”

“That’s not true,” Max’s face falls, as if genuinely distressed by the notion. It cracks George up further.

“We’re absolutely just pawns in a series of different tax shelter schemes,” George decides, finally walking over to snag his Poke delivery from a bemused receptionist. “Aside from the usual ones. Come on, show me your apartment before Ocon or Rory McGilroy show up next. I want to see if your balcony has a better view of a nicer boat.”

--

George wins at the oval in Illinois, Max third behind Palou. Standing on the podium together, he can’t help but wonder what Toto thinks when he sees it: two of his former drivers, the one he risked everything for and the one he let keep the seat warm during a bad regulation era, hoisting trophies in the series they left him for.

Doesn’t have to guess the answer to that one, though, and it dampens him more than the champagne spray Max directs down the back of his neck. Toto’s not watching a race in Illinois. He’s on a yacht off the coast of Italy with Kimi, whispering championship-affirming praise in his ear. And besides – George didn’t leave him. George would still gladly be driving a broken car, saving face for Toto to the media after every DNF and solidifying his place as second driver, given the choice.

He doesn’t mean that, he thinks.

Max is at his back as soon as they file off, yapping about the balance of the car being off, always something wrong to stop him from proper risky attacks on ovals. George thinks the nerve factor is still there, but he keeps his mouth shut lest he have his Halo privileges revoked during race weeks.

Which is – maybe starting to become more of a formality, at this point. A bartering tool for different things, things that they need the smokescreen of an excuse to do together. You lose the next game, you have to help me teach padel to Kirkwood and Ericsson. I win, you pay for steaks from that restaurant VeeKay recommended. A smokescreen excuse for something else, for George, maybe, as he digs his elbow into Max’s waist for a cheap-shot advantage during one game, only to stay there after Max’s yelp of indignation, shoulder pressed to shoulder, his knee pressed against the top of Max’s thigh, until Max, flushed from competitiveness, shifts away and pulls that leg out from under him to fold it into his chest, a barrier between them.

He doesn’t mean that. He thinks.

Max seeps slowly into his quiet solitary life back in Boston, too. After they cross paths on an early morning run along the seaport, Max starts texting him to coordinate.

“For pacing purposes,” he explains, as he matches George’s hip-opening lunge for warm-ups.

“It’ll be good for me to train in a lower heartrate,” George agrees, cheekily, which earns him a tugged-undone shoelace and a five second head start from Max.

Sometimes they cut them short, Max gassing himself out more easily than George, and hang around the dock railings, watching the rowing teams and water taxis until the sun’s high enough in the sky to start burning them. Other times they collapse onto the steps of the Contemporary Art Museum and point out the speedboats on the marina, picking out which ones they’d race against the other and who would win.

“You might take me on strategy,” Max cedes, after a half hour of this, “but I’d get you on pure pace.”

“You’d run out of fuel, and I’d have to swing back and pick you up on my victory lap.”

“Please, I would rather sit and wait for the coast guard.”

With his sim rig still in Monaco, Max creates a permanent indent on George’s couch in the evenings, monopolizing his console and his Yerba Mate’s and his save files. For three days, George just sits beside him and watches him play through the entirety of Battlefield 6, ripping into him whenever he dies, legs just outstretched enough for his toes to be grazing the outside of Max’s thigh. Just once, when Max finishes a particularly difficult mission, does he cup one of George’s knees with a heavy, warm palm, shaking him with an enthusiastic grin.

“You look prouder than you did after the Indy 500,” George remarks wryly, which earns him one of Max’s head-thrown-back laughs that George can’t help but bloom proudly at. Max rubs a slow circle into the point just above his knee before he drops it in favour of two hands on the controller. George feels it like a brand long after Max has retreated to his own apartment.

Whatever was going on at the beginning of the season, George thinks he’s got Max figured out, these days.

Which is why when Max shunts George to P3 at the Mid-Ohio race and then acts like he’s in line at the DMV on the podium, it’s a surprise to him, how much it pisses him off. Like even here, George isn’t competition worth celebrating, echoes of 2026 when every post-race interview had seen Max gushing over the fun battles with Hamilton and Kimi, George merely an obstacle wasting his time until being inevitably passed.

“You know, some of us actually give a shit about this,” he snaps as they jog off the podium, before the cameras and their respective teams can swallow them up. Palou shoots them a quick, apprehensive look before he peels off toward his mechanics, and the surprise on Max’s face that shifts easily into boredom only serves to make George feel crazier.

“Sorry, that must be new, for you,” Max volleys back. Then, at the confused, stricken look on George’s face: “I didn’t mean that.”

George can see it, though, past the genuine contriteness. He doesn’t mean it, he thinks.

--

It’s been pouring rain at the Nashville Superspeedway for the last two hours, and George is going stir-crazy in his motorhome.

He’s been passing time opening and closing the weather app every fourty-five seconds, catching the number occasionally tick up to seventy percent chance of showers in the next hour, and then watches it drop back down to fifty not ten minutes later. He’d been rain-lucky last year on ovals, no racing in even a drizzle, which makes the crawling-up-the-walls feeling even worse, now. Like having a dentist appointment in the afternoon and not being able to relax the entire day, if a dentist appointment were a crucial race in his championship climb.

They’re saying postponement maybe, Kirkwood texts him, and he drops onto the couch with a drawn-out groan, head hitting the back of the cushion. His race suit feels heavier on him with every passing second, so he rips the Velcro down to his waist, shrugging out of the sleeves until he’s down to only his fireproofs. He stays like that for either a few minutes or a few hours, with how time feels like its passing, before there’s an insistent knock on his door. Scooter, probably, he thinks resignedly as he pushes himself to his feet with an even more petulant groan.

The first thing he notices when he opens the door is that it’s pissing down. So much for that fifty percent. The second thing he notices is Max Verstappen, rain bouncing off his racing suit while a rain slicker is bundled in his hands, protecting something.

“That better not be a cat you’re bringing here,” George warns, wary.

“Move, please, before the plugs get water in them.”

He steps out of the way, even warier. Max hustles up the steps and George tugs the door closed behind him, shutting out the downpour and leaving them with only the pinging sound of the drops relentlessly pelleting the roof and windows. He watches in a daze as Max unwraps his coat to reveal the Xbox and controllers, cords dropping unceremoniously to the ground.

“You walked an Xbox over in a thunderstorm,” George assuages, flatly. “Why didn’t you just ask me to come over?”

“Everyone’s kids are playing in the puddles outside my RV,” Max answers as he bends to grab the cords, tone bugged, as if George is being unreasonable. “You yell and swear a lot when you play, I didn’t want them to hear. Plus, bringing it to you meant you wouldn’t be able to ignore me, so.”

“I haven’t been ignoring you.”

He has, a little. He’d stayed in Indianapolis between races under the guise of putting in work on the simulator. Which, he had, but it had also come with the admittedly attractive bonus of having an excuse to not respond to Max’s texts or turn him away at the door.

“Sure,” Max agrees, meaning, plainly, bullshit. He holds up the HDMI cable. “Then you can help me hook this up.”

“I don’t even know how to get to the back of this thing,” George objects, but he’s moving, snagging the cord out of Max’s hands and heading over to inspect the flatscreen mounted tightly to the wall bracketing the fridge. “All the cords go through a hole in the particle board.”

“It’ll be on the side,” Max insists, following closely. He dumps the console onto the nook table, the front of his chest pressing against George’s shoulder so he can peer around him. He smells like rainwater and gasoline, this close, and George catches himself leaning slightly back, drawn to it. Max reaches an arm past his nose, fingers running down the side of the television in search of a port, forearm brushing against George’s cheek. Then, softer: “you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not,” George rebuffs. He is, a little. He pushes Max’s arm away to run his own fingers searchingly along the plastic. “It’s not going to be on the side, it’ll be on the bottom.”

“You’re just like a girl when you’re pissy like this, you know.”

George feels his face heat with annoyance, made worse by his lack of finding an HDMI port. “I’m not a girl.”

“Yeah,” Max says, voice a low rasp behind him. “I know.”

George feels it all the way down his spine, resists the impulse to shiver. He turns around with the cord held aloft in vindication. “See, it’s on the back, I told you, and this thing is practically glued to the wall. You should have just left your stupid Xbox in your RV instead of nearly getting struck by lightning for no reason.”

“Struck by lightning,” Max repeats, incredulous, eyes sparking with mirth, with – no. “Didn’t realize I came so close to death. But, then, it would have been your fault, since you were mad at me.”

“You can’t possibly pin that on me,” George scoffs, outraged. “Just because you can’t handle anyone ignoring you for five seconds - ”

“Ah! So you were ignoring me, you admit it.”

George juvenilely throws the cord onto the ground, nose scrunching with frustration. “I’m admitting that you are ridiculous, and infuriating, and who are you to accuse me of ignoring you, really, when that’s all you did to me for, like, months.”

The smile on Max’s face is sending him up the wall. “And that bothered you.”

“I miss it, actually,” George retorts, cooly, as the tips of Max’s wet racing boots nudge against George’s slippers, George’s fingers coming up to clench at the thick fabric around Max’s bicep. “It was peaceful. I slept better.”

“I’m keeping you up at night?”

“There’s the door,” George seethes, his fingers tightening on Max’s suit. “Feel free to hold a very long rod above your head when you go, preferably not made of metal. Something that’ll explode on contact when lightning strikes it.”

“You’re so weird,” Max exhales, and threads his fingers through the curls at the back of George’s head to pull him down into a kiss.

George gasps against Max’s mouth, helpless to do otherwise against the hitch in his breathing, the stuttering in his chest. Max slides the hand at the back of his head around to his cheek, his free hand coming up to palm the other, George’s face cradled firmly as he kisses him again, and again, George’s lips parted and pliable with surprise.

“Breathe, George,” he murmurs into the corner of his mouth, nose brushing against the side of George’s, rubbing there once, twice, stubble dragging against George’s jaw like Max can’t get close enough.

At some point George’s hands had migrated to Max’s waist, fingers tangled into his suit again, and he uses the grip to drag Max even closer, until Max’s abdomen is pressed flush against his own. It’s Max’s turn to have the air knocked out of him when George walks him backward into the edge of the couch and hooks an ankle around his, tripping him out until he’s forced to tumble onto it, bringing George down with him.

He shifts until he gets a leg on either side of Max’s hips, Max inhaling sharply and then groaning when George’s knee brushes the groin of his suit as he climbs onto his lap. George almost doesn’t know what to do with the sight: Max, bottom lip shiny and hanging invitingly, bitingly open, pupils shot black, chest heaving, slowly, to match George’s. Against the blacked-out window, behind Max’s head, the rain tapping lightly on the glass, fading away.

“Holy shit,” Max exhales, fingers drifting up to wind themselves in the Nomex at George’s collarbone, tugging. “I want this off you, now.”

George slips two fingers between the Velcro at Max’s throat and tears his suit open to the waist, instead, thick, heavy red giving way to tight, white fireproofs that he gets a hand underneath immediately, rucking them up to Max’s navel, fingernails scratching lightly against the trail of hair leading down to his waistband before dipping below it and cupping his dick through his briefs, his thumb massaging at the head, fabric damp with precum. Max drops his actual head back against the cushion, throat bobbing, and George leans down to mouth desperately at the underside of his jaw, a sloppy trail up to the corner of his mouth.

“Kiss me,” he asks, rasping, and Max’s head immediately turns to catch George’s top lip between his teeth, a light graze before he’s opening George up, working his tongue along his molars. Arms wrap around him, one of Max’s palms spread and heavy at George’s lower back and the other just under the nape of his neck, so that Max can cradle him into a dip, dropping him back against the sofa and draping himself on top without breaking the kiss. George pulls his hand away and moans against his teeth, muffled and spit-slick, as Max rolls his hips brutishly down into his own, the friction through his race suit like the faint teasing of a sneeze that ebbs and flows in his sinuses, barely there, building, but still enough to have his toes curling with pleasure. Max licks at the drool pooling in the corners of George’s mouth, so George gets a hand back under his fireproofs, fingers trailing up to tweak a nipple as Max rocks them together.

He gets a nip to the bottom lip for his trouble, Max’s palm gripping the underside of George’s thigh and hitching it up for a better angle as he drives down and ruts against him. He’d be mortified at the little broken whimpers coming out of his mouth if Max weren’t there to swallow them, murmuring encouragements, come on, come on, you’re there.

George comes with a cry, spilling into his suit, Max holding his stuttering hips down as he rides it out. He kisses him again, after, messy and panting and wet.

“Holy shit,” he huffs, hot breath against George’s lips, then repeats himself: holy shit. He’s shockingly fetching when George opens heavy lidded eyes to look up at him, blonde hair in disarray from rain and sweat and George’s carding fingers, mouth pink and kiss-bitten.

“I feel like I’m vibrating,” George rasps, weakly.

“You are,” Max tells him, wryly. “I am, too. It’s our phones.”

George blinks, then switches into overdrive, scrambling to push Max off him so he can grab his phone out from under his ass on the couch cushion, where he’d thrown it when Max had knocked on the door. A missed text from Kirkwood, and two from Scooter.

Rain’s done, they’ve got the jet dryers out. Then, a second ago: Garage in fifteen.

“Oh, my god,” George groans. “We have to race, now.”

Max swipes through his own texts before chucking his phone down beside him, hands rubbing over his flushed cheeks before snaking through his hair in a futile attempt to settle it. “I’ve never been so hard in my life. Except maybe for when you’re climbing all over me during a game.”

George snaps to face him in shock, but Max only raises an eyebrow, dead serious. George feels his face heat even more, if possible, which only puts a self-satisfied grin on Max’s.

“Fifteen minutes to pit lane,” George tells him, sliding slowly off the couch with telegraphed intent until his knees hit the ground, shuffling over to Max’s legs. Max’s gaze loses focus as George runs his hands along the inside of his thighs to spread them apart, settle himself between. “How quick can you be?”

“What a question.”

George tugs at the waist of Max’s undone suit until he’s pulled it down past his hips, then cups the bulge of his briefs, leaning down to drag his mouth along damp cotton. “I dreamed about this, you know.”

Max groans at that, and then again when George frees him from his underwear. “Okay, seconds, then.”

--

“You aren’t going back to Indianapolis tonight,” Max tells him, after, wrapping a fist around one of the loose arms of George’s suit to drag him up, so he can lick the taste of himself from George’s mouth. “Don’t brush your teeth before the race, either.”

--

He makes a mental note to send flowers to his old neighbour in Monaco when he’s got Max underneath him, back at his Boston apartment. A dull light breaching through the drawn bedroom curtains, George’s trembling knees bracketed on either side of Max’s waist and Max’s palm splayed flat on his abdomen for leverage, to push George down onto every excruciatingly, teasingly slow thrust.

“My thighs are cramping,” George whines, shifting his weight further into the mattress for relief, a wet slide of his sweat-drenched skin against Max’s.

“Princess,” Max chides, but he wraps both arms tight around him and turns him over without leaving him, George’s back hitting the comforter in the faintly wet outline of where Max had been. He rabbits into him at the new angle, a string of senseless sweet talk as George’s fingernails dig crescents into his shoulders, so good, baby, before slowing, again, to drag it out, bending to lick into George’s slack mouth, a stripe against his own tongue.

They’ve been back in Boston for three days, and they hadn’t had time for slow, the first two. A mutual urgency that’d gotten them as far as the couch, a few minutes after the door had closed behind them and they’d dumped their bags in the hallway, a perfunctory offer of a glass of water or tea that’d been kissed senselessly away. Max had had him on the couch, the first time, on his stomach and rushed and coming embarrassingly fast, huffing laughter into George’s bony shoulder blade while George huffed laughter into the couch cushion. He hadn’t been laughing a few seconds later, though, when Max had licked away the come dripping down his inner thighs in apology, making his way meticulously up, up, up.

Again, two hours later, when George had worked him up during a game, climbing all over him properly, this time. Max had wrapped an arm around his waist and shoved his sweatpants down his hips, spitting into his free palm to slick himself in two quick strokes before lining himself up, George still easy and pliant from earlier. Twice, again, the next day, and George on his knees in the shower, Max’s fingers tight in his curls, guiding himself down George’s throat. He doesn’t know what to do with all this desire, now that he’s looked at it, really looked at it. It leaves him buzzing and restless at night, and greets him like arrhythmia in the mornings, an arm thrown around his stomach and a warm body at his back.

“You know,” he starts, thoughtfully, seated at the kitchen bar top and idly mixing his overnight oats into an unidentifiable, mushy swirl while Max battles with his blender, alternating between swearing at it in Dutch and opening it up to shove a wooden spoon in, trying to get the blades to catch on chunks of freezer-burned mango. "I used to think about getting a parrot, just for some noise around here. Was going to teach it to say fuck Max Verstappen, but I’m afraid that’d sound more like an order, now.”

“You shouldn’t get a parrot,” Max replies without missing a beat, voice low, a serious, entreating pinch between his eyebrows. “It would mistake you for one of those stick bugs and eat you.”

George points a spoon warningly at him, oi!, and Max cackles at his own joke, abandoning the blender in favour of crossing over to him, cupping his scowl between his palms and dropping down for a heated, lingering kiss. Maybe I’ll eat you, he murmurs, slyly. Don’t have to leave for the airport for an hour.

Two races later, in Markham, in George’s motorhome the morning of practice, blackout curtains drawn over every window and George’s manager instructed to let him sleep in. Be good, Max had ordered when George’s hand had wandered to his belt as he’d mouthed along George’s neck, laying him out, anyway. You have to be in the car today. At some point he’d accidentally gotten a knee in at the underside of Max’s jaw and Max had reactively reeled back, rolling off the couch and taking George with him to the carpet. They’d stayed there, Max bitching about George’s gangly coordination and his bony legs until George had thrown one of those bony legs around his back and rocked his hips up.

“We could always do this in a hotel,” Max offers, breathlessly, after. They’re still on the floor, side by side, George’s head angled just so to rest his cheek on Max’s shoulder, the faint must of the carpet mixing with the smell of sweat and come. “Bit classier.”

“Think I’m right where I want to be, to be honest,” George replies. Max just shakes his head against the floor, an affectionate smile, you’re so weird.

--

Palou is hot on his heels in the standings going into the Milwaukee 250, so when George cinches his fifth pole position of the season he all but throws himself at Scooter in the pit lane.

“You win this one, I’ll name my next kid after ya,” Scooter promises, George wheezing at the force of his bear hug.

“I didn’t know Tonya was pregnant!”

“You win this one,” Scooter rephrases, releasing George to hold him steady with a palm on his shoulder, great and serious intent in his eye contact, “I’ll conceive my next child with my wife and name it after you.”

George shoves him away, nose crinkling at Scooter’s deafening guffaw.

Max claps him on the shoulder as he passes him, having the decency to give him a half-smile like George has pulled something mildly impressive off, at least. It’s – weird. George had flattered himself that the outward apathy radiating off of him towards his own performance would stop extending to George’s, considering recent developments, but the reaction he’d gotten from Portland’s P10 screwup and Markham’s win had been nearly identical and equally unenthused, the congratulatory swipe of Max’s tongue along his champagne-sticky collarbone after the latter aside.

It digs under George’s skin but isn’t enough to dampen his energy. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels in the motorhome later that evening, shuffling through pages of strategy print-outs he’d had Scooter make for him, committing them to memory between periodic glances at the door, anticipating –

Max’s knock, which makes George jump even though he’d been waiting for it. Max doesn’t wait for George’s reply before he’s unlatching it and ducking inside, eyebrows raising at the way George shoves the strategy papers into the closest kitchen drawer, the manic glint in his eye.

“Love letters?” Max teases, tossing his cap onto the nook table and carding his fingers through his hair, before crossing past to dig through George’s fridge for the cans of zero sugar organic soda that he’s started keeping as a compromise.

“Kind of,” George replies, cheesy smile at his own private meaning. Max shoots him a wary glance, suddenly concerned as he shuts the fridge and leans against it, arms crossed in a bid to appear overly casual.

“Yeah?” he asks. “Old boyfriend, or?”

“Oh, that bothers you,” George crows, smiling wider, stepping closer to absentmindedly kick at Max’s sneakers, the ones he’s asked Max to take off when inside about a thousand times. “It’s just strategy for tomorrow. Which, if it pans out, will be framed and hung above my bed, so you know.”

Max’s shoulders relax, the faint tension knitting his brow shifting into something more indifferent, even put-off. “That important, huh.”

“Max, what? Of course it’s important. I’m one race win away from being untouchable in the points,” The resentment clearly hadn’t dug its way deep enough under his skin. George feels it in the twitch of his eyelid. “Is this all just a game to you? Because if it’s just a big fuck you to the FIA, you’re doing a bit too much.”

“It’s not a game,” Max refutes, more guarded than measured. “Like I said, I wanted real racing - ”

“If it’s real racing then you’d think you could at least pretend to get my enthusiasm for it.”

“I guess I just don’t understand, then.”

George feels totally lost. It doesn’t help that Max is avoiding his eyes, staring intently down at a fray in the carpet instead, nudging it with the toe of his shoe, like he’s bored.

“What don’t you understand? How this could actually mean something to someone without the cushion of four championships?”

“This is a stupid conversation.”

“No,” George insists, reaching out to jostle Max’s shoulder, to make him pay attention. “If there’s something you don’t understand, I’d love to explain it.”

“I don’t understand how you aren’t embarrassed,” he finally snaps, kicking at the fray and finally looking up, eyes blazing. “Fucking - celebrating everything you do here like you’re proving something, like it isn’t admitting that this is your real level. You think they aren’t laughing at you in the paddock in Italy while you’re lifting a trophy in Milwaukee?”

“Real level,” George repeats, vacantly. His kitchen suddenly feels ridiculous. “Wow, Max. I didn’t take you for an elitist, considering how much you don’t care about any of that. Why not run back, then? Since anyone’d have you.”

“I could,” Max agrees, “and so could’ve you. I talked to Hulk, before the season. He said Audi offered you a contract.”

George winces, his turn to avert his eyes. He steps away from Max until he feels the kitchen counters digging into his back, his fingers coming up to fidget with the drawer handles behind him. “I’d’ve been crawling back to the midfield. Would that have proved something?”

“It would have proved you could adapt, I don’t know. It would have proved that you weren’t running away because you didn’t have it.”

“Didn’t have it!” George mimics with indignation, voice pitched embarrassingly high in his anger. “That car could hardly finish a race. I didn’t have a garage behind me. I never had a chance.”

“Yes, there it is,” Max asserts, an accusing snap of his fingers. “You let a kid dogwalk you, you couldn’t inspire your garage, okay, that’s tough, but all you did was give limp little woe-is-me excuses every week, oh, its bad luck, it’s not my driving style, it’s the regs, Toto will fix it, I believe in Toto. Limp excuses and then left before you had to prove them. Couldn’t come back in case it all wasn’t true, right?”

George’s careful neutrality feels cold on his face. “Who are we talking about? Are we talking about me, or you?”

Max scoffs, pushing off the fridge to stalk over to the living area, avoidant as ever. “I didn’t have anything to prove. I don’t care.”

“That’s what I thought,” George presses, just as icily. “I thought you were just throwing a tantrum, coming over here to bully another league for an ego boost before the FIA caved to all your demands. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“No, really. Does being here make you feel lesser, Max?” George needles, going over to disrupt the path he’s wearing into the carpet with his pacing, forcing him to stop in front of him by inches. “After getting dogwalked by your teammate? Finding out what kind of weight your championships carry in these cars? Or maybe you just aren’t cut out for ovals, that’s okay, not everybody is. They’ve got a way of showing you what you’re really made of, and you know what? I think I like what I’m made of, to be honest. I’m sorry you don’t.”

Max just glares, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I can race an oval.”

“There’s no shame in it,” George continues, a condescendingly sympathetic twist to his mouth to cover for the traitorous tremble in his fingers. “Some people are just afraid.”

Max shoulders past him, knocking George off his footing as he heads out the door and slams it behind him, the noise of it leaving a suffocating quiet in its wake. George wraps those trembling fingers around his stomach, for a moment.

Just a moment, though, and then he’s striding back into the kitchen and tugging the drawer open, grabbing the strategy papers.

--

It’s not Palou that George ends up needing to be worried about on Sunday.

It’s Max, not Palou, charging up behind George on the last five laps. It’s Max who overtook him in the first five, and George had been clawing it back by a hundredth of a second every lap, until he’d finally snatched an overtake in the pits on a late caution. He’s been capitalizing on every good line since, Max huge in his mirrors, his spotter not helping things with the stream-of-consciousness narration of the closing gap. They’ve played this game before, though, and George has the ace up his sleeve of Max’s limitations. When Max starts taking a look on the outside, George forces him high, and he backs off.

Until he doesn’t. Until he goes to make another move and, this time, when George forces him high, he goes high. A ghost of a kiss against the barriers, but he’s out of George’s dirty air, with a balance set-up that’s clearly been optimized for being at the front. It’s George that has to back off and watch as Max pulls out ahead and then, a lap later, crosses the finish line.

It’s a crazy move, and Max is clearly feeling it when he pulls into Victory Lane, legs shaking as he stands in the car, both fists in the air before they’re coming down to pat the top of his aero screen, head bowed, the crowd losing their minds behind the fences. George can’t even find it in himself to wallow in the gut punch of the championship going down to the last race – alright, he can, a little – because when he gets backstage for the podium, Max is fucking alive. Beaming, flushed, eyes sparking, going over his final move for P1 with his hands for Palou, who nods politely, if a bit withdrawn. His grin wavers when he spots George, lips pressing together into a private, sincere thing that George feels in his chest before they’re announced and led out. Max kisses the trophy, even.

He’s waiting for him outside of his garage after the team meeting - I really liked the name George, too, Scooter commiserates, dramatically maudlin, with a clap on the back before George heads out – and falls into step beside him on the walk to the motor park. He doesn’t say anything along the way, and George doesn’t particularly feel too inclined to fill the silence, either, but he can feel the energy coursing off of Max in waves, almost a bounce to his step that George would be struggling to keep up with if his legs weren’t two-thirds of his height.

Max’s motorhome is closer, and when he hesitates in the doorway, George looks both ways before he crowds Max back against it. He kisses him, teeth knocking against teeth, his nose crushed into the side of Max’s, whose hands come up to grip the fabric at the chest of George’s suit, so tightly George is momentarily afraid he’s ripped something. He feels along a crack in Max’s race-chapped lips, tastes copper on his tongue.

He untangles himself almost as soon as he’d initiated it, glancing around as he pushes off to a safe distance. Max is breathing heavily when he looks back, eyes cautiously hopeful, fingers resting suggestively on the door handle. George pushes off a heel and steps decidedly backward, though, mouth twitching, an unspoken I get it, but fuck off, now.

He needs an early night, anyway. He’s got a championship to prepare for.

--

He stays in Indianapolis the week before the season closer at Laguna Seca to obsessively prepare with the team, spending more time at the office than at his cookie-cutter shoebox apartment. It’s strategic, his decision to skip Boston in favour of a single-minded focus on the car. It just so happens to be strategic avoidance, as well. Two birds.

There’s a barrage of notifications lighting up his phone to keep him busy, anyway. His sister confirming the flight details his team had sent over, a never-ending stream of sponsor negotiation emails that his manager CC’s him on, starting to trend back in the direction of luxury watches and away from regional oil-change businesses, though he’ll stand by Rod’s Friendly Auto Care until the end of his career. There’s the latest in his What’s App exchange with Alex, don’t worry, Oscar found an illegal stream for the race, and even a direct message on Instagram from Hinchcliff, a follow up to the one that’d been sent and ignored by George nearly two years ago, you’re gonna love it. This time, a two word told you.

A barrage of notifications from everyone except one person. Max’s last message from right before practice last weekend in Milwaukee, left my cap at urs pls bring, sits heavier in his phone with every passing hour, lazy abbreviations taking on absurd emotional weight. He should be grateful that Max has the tact to not litigate their fight when George needs the mental space for race prep and, really, to be honest, he is. He’s not so amateur that a lack of an apology from a situationship is a distraction from what really matters, and it’s not like he’d expected one, anyway, so –

“Well, would you look at that,” Scooter says dramatically from his desk on the Wednesday. He’s on break, so George is monopolizing it by sitting in the swivel chair across from him and nibbling on a whole grain turkey sandwich that tastes like ash, gotten from the café downstairs. He leans forward when Scooter sticks his iPhone out for him to inspect, screen bright on an article. “Looks like we have the privilege of another year of Max Verstappen’s IndyCar. My condolences, kid.”

He hadn’t expected an apology, so the news of a contract extension settles pleasant and warm in his stomach in its place, alongside the turkey sandwich that tastes like ash.

He spends the decently long flight to California with one leg outstretched, his other knee bouncing with nervous energy – still cramped, even in Business class, ankles twinging in mournful reminiscence of Toto’s private jet – and an unfocused gaze out the window, idly watching neatly divided square plains fade away through the clouds, his manager’s cheek occasionally dropping onto his shoulder before jerking away into consciousness. At the track, he’s single-minded throughout media and practice, thankfully seated next to the RLL guys at the fan signings and purposefully avoiding a long glance down the pit lane toward Penske’s garage.

A tire lock-up in qualifying dooms him to a P2 spot behind Palou. He’s given a hard, heartening shake by what feels like every mechanic in his garage, unanimous advice rising in a chorus to ignore the data and decompress with the Cubs game. But George can’t – he doesn’t know how to get the TV to work since Max fussed with the cables back in Markham. He settles for a night of tossing and turning, instead, flashes of random battery drops and engine coolant leaks whenever he feels himself mercifully drifting. Thank God he’d turned notifications for his sleep tracker off again, weeks ago. He doesn’t want to know how many hours he’d managed on the most important night of his career when he trudges to the passenger side of his manager’s golf cart that morning.

The team meeting is a blur, and so is the walk to the grid, fans with pit lane passes stopping him for quick photos that he distantly hopes he smiles for and opportunistic fist bumps from guys wearing Red Bull and Penske caps. He keeps his head down until he’s past the parked back markers, but he jerks up at the sound of a cacophony of sudden shouting from the grandstand: blue caps with the logo stitched over, Andretti team kits snug against dad bods, large posterboards with cut-outs of his face, beat Palou and you will be reincarnated as a lotus flower. The numbers are staggering. He’s never seen anything quite like it.

He blinks, eyes stinging. When he looks back down, Max is standing at his shoulder. They’re beside his car, where George seems to have found himself stopped.

“Nice day for it,” Max observes, casually. George blinks again, then feels a smile stretching at the corners of his lips, then an all-out grin, teeth bared. Max bares his back, wicked and promising.

--

“What’s it like,” George cheekily starts, later that night, comforter draped loosely over pleasantly sore hips, finger-shaped bruises already beginning to darken around the dips of his waist. Goosebumps trail up his bare arms in the icy chill of the motorhome’s air conditioning, just the way he likes it. Max less so, beside him, the blanket pulled up to his collarbone like an actress in a PG-13 romance film. “Sleeping with an IndyCar champion?”

“My god, this cannot continue,” Max groans, turning onto his side to face him, propping himself onto an elbow. “All night, what’s it like sticking your tongue down the throat of an IndyCar champion, what’s it like taking an IndyCar champion home. Your ego is too big for this RV. Notice I will not be asking you these questions next year.”

“Yeah, you aren’t going to be asking me these questions next year,” George rebuffs, easily, “because I’m going to be asking you what it’s like to sleep with a two-time IndyCar champion.”

“I must be fucking Will Power next year, then.”

George kicks out at him underneath the comforter, which Max escalates with his own harder kick, and then George is thrashing at him, hiccupping laughter, made exuberant from relief and adrenaline and pride. His callouses still sting from when he’d half-climbed the chain link fence separating Victory Lane from the grandstand, fans smacking flat palms against the metal in celebration, Scooter hoisting him up by the seat of his race suit, confetti sticking to his face.

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with their season, Mario had conferred in him after the podium, a trembling hand on George’s shoulder as he’d pulled him off to the side, away from the cameras. But very promising things happening with the development side of Cadillac. Something to think about over the break.

He might, at that. Their brakes certainly aren’t catching fire in their double points finishes, this year. For now, though, all he can think about is the press conference he’ll be attending next week, where he’ll be sitting at a cheap folding table with a cloth thrown over it, a trophy with his name engraved in front of him.

Then all he can think about is Max, Rookie of the Year, he corrects, grinning wider, who’s caught both of his wrists and pinned them above his head, upper body pressing him down against the mattress and ankles tangling around his to still them.

“Go to sleep,” he orders, ducking down to press a tender kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then a proper one that George yields gladly too, eyelashes fluttering closed and smiling into it, until Max is, too.

“How can I?” he entreats, but Max is already rolling back onto his side of the bed with one last look of fond exasperation, snatching the comforter up and drawing it around his shoulders.

George gives in, lying in the quiet of the moment. Well, not quite quiet. There’s the loud hum of the AC, alternating between a muted fan and the noisy blowing of cold air. There’s the beeping of long-haulers reversing in the distance, loaded with cars to be trucked by bleary-eyed drivers across state lines. There’s Max, huffing and rustling to get comfortable on George’s queen-sized bed, the one it’d taken five people to angle into the motorhome.

“What’s it like,” George stage-whispers, eyes already crinkling in the dark at his own joke, “to hog the duvet of an IndyCar champion?”

There’s Max kicking at him, again, and George laughing bright and ugly, noisy as hell.