Chapter Text
He can't explain when he'd started thinking about it, the morbid curiosity. It's as if it had just appeared, or maybe it was always there, evident in the childhood moments of running a finger over a dried up cut, rhythmically feeling against it. Almost soothing. Or pressing down on bruises from the kart, unable to tear his gaze away from the purple across his skin, feeling each shudder of his body when he applied pressure. Head disconnected from the body, that’s how it felt, like the pain was there but distant, like on the other side of some sort of wall that he stared through with a strange wonder.
It's not as if he enjoys pain. He can handle it, that's hardly a question. Being an athlete, even as a child, you learn to cooperate with your body, to roll with the punches so to say. For George it was a constant ache from squeezing his body into a kart, then into the single-seaters, always carrying the burden of pain. A little too big, a little too easily worn down, allowing it all for the sake of his dreams.
The point is, the pain isn't why he does it. In fact, he finds it difficult. It's shameful how he bites his lip, whining into the cracks as he cuts down into the skin. His hands shake and he isn't sure why, like they're in a balancing act between being too much and causing real damage versus not doing enough, making it all for nothing. The tightrope of self-mutilation keeps him on his toes, knowing how easy it would be to slip and fall into some greater abyss.
Nerve damage isn't the aim; a Formula 1 driver needs his hands.
It's shameful how he shakes. It feels stupid to be so anxious about something he... enjoys. Because he has to enjoy it. He wouldn’t be called to it like this if he didn’t, wouldn’t be haunted by the thought of it in team-meetings or in Eau Rouge. The latter is almost worse. When he exits the flow-state and realises the power under his body, how easily it could break him, how much he wants to just test it. Some nights he dreams that he lets the wheel go. Straight into a barrier, lighting up in some burst of flames that’ll end up on the front-page of the Daily Mail Monday morning. He imagines himself not fighting it at all. He imagines himself standing metres away, just staring, like he is two people at once, like he’s nobody real at all. In reality, he takes each corner as he should, he knows there is no place for his actions in the sport. It is only what if’s and waking up at 4am, dripping with sweat, shaking all over.
He finds himself half spaced out, eyes down on the tanned skin of his arms. So privileged, little marks of white higher up, hidden with concealer on race weekends and media days. Years of global travel, a life others would dream of, and he isn’t grateful for it. If he’d stayed in England, hidden amongst rolling green hills and farmer’s land, he’d be like a ghost, so white you could practically reach through him. He wouldn’t be rich, he wouldn’t be an athlete. He has everything a man could possibly want and he isn’t happy. It spawns a self hatred that provokes his actions. It's contradictory and stupid and dumb - what good is hurting himself but adding to the self-pity of a multi-millionaire with everything in his palms - but it's not as if he's thinking logically. He can feel his veins aching. He wants to pull away from the pain, curl up under the covers like he’s 15 again, yet instead he leans into it. He accepts the fear, like he does each time he settles down in the car, lets the needs in the back of his head control him like some puppet on strings.
In his parent’s living room, in the dead of night, he holds a knife to his skin. He wants to see if he can break. He wants to know if he's truly real. He doesn't feel like he's under his own skin, like his body is half cooperating with his mind. It tends to feel like this, his mind running and running and running and he needs it to shut up. When he's staring down at the trickle of blood across the skin, he feels the silence, overthinking replaced by curiosity.
It’s peaceful, like 200 miles an hour down a straight.
It's not something he could ever explain, how this just works for him. It isn't far off his work, though; pushing your body to the limit, even when it hurts. They might think him sick or insane. They being you, watching from the grandstands or behind a TV. They being the team. They being Alex, who had once asked him if he was okay, voice bleeding with concern, and he hadn't known what to even say. It was as if for a moment Alex saw right through him and he hated how it felt, the pity, the Alex of it all. Like he hasn't had bad coping mechanisms. He's not sure if Alex even knew or if he was just asking, it had still been horrifying.
He lets a familiar rhythm take over. A silent hiss falls from his lips each time he drags the blade across, he watches with empty, blue eyes how the blood fills and pours over the skin. It's beautiful, almost. Is he disgusting?
The pressure builds with each movement, as it always does. He's testing himself, split in two, head and body, thoughts and actions. He wants them to connect, views images in his head of digging it right in. Irreversible cuts, he wonders how far he'd possibly have to go.
He presses down, wincing. He wonders what would happen if he just…
When he snaps out of it, blinking into the sight of himself, the sharp edge of a razor held to his vein, he pulls it back in an instant. Shocked, even if he'd been fully in control of it. The wave of awareness is almost more painful than the cuts themselves. He shouldn’t be like this, when he’d wanted it, will find himself in this position again next week or even sooner. He has no right to feel afraid, but he is, can feel it shooting down his skin. Every part of his body feels alive, each vein reminding him that it exists. It hurts, he doesn't like it. He is strong yet his body is weak and he knows it, can't stop the image of an open artery, something that isn't so real yet makes him feel sick.
Stupid and contradictory, he doesn't understand himself anymore. He wonders if he ever did.