Archive of Our Own

Verstappen is a Mercedes driver now. Toto made sure of that two days after George took his last win of the season. And now George is moving to Brackley.

The announcement breaks F1 Twitter. Leaving Monaco feels like leaving home, if home had been slowly turning into a prison. The flat in Monte Carlo smells the way it had for three years, the faint metallic tang of anxiety, coffee, Toto’s expensive cologne. George knows the herringbone pattern of the wooden floor by heart, the way the showerhead drips even when you turn it off properly. And now he will never see it again. Never hear Toto’s voice calling him back to the breakfast bar for another run-through of a move he’d already pulled perfectly. Again, Toto would say. Again, again. Not good enough yet. 

That cologne used to cling to his race suit after debriefs. Now, packing the last box, George catches the scent from a discarded jacket and is yanked backwards.

It is 2016, and his shoulders are dropping as Toto strides away to check on Lewis and Rosberg. He hadn’t realised he’d been holding them quite so high. Toto’s eagle-eyed scrutiny was something he still couldn’t get used to, the way he seemed to know exactly what he was doing wrong before he’d even finished the lap, the way he’d step in to correct his posture with hands that had a habit of lingering. He’d learned to tell himself it was the price of being here.

With Toto gone, the pit lane felt larger. He walked a wide, easy loop around the garages, stepped off, and let the familiar ache in his muscles ground him as he bent to lace his trainers. His water bottle was somewhere at the bottom of his backpack, he found it by touch, took a long swallow, and let himself watch.

Verstappen was celebrating, fist raised, having just bested his time once again. He was nigh unbeatable on a clean weekend. George watched the replay in his mind, the start, the lines, the tyre management, and tried not to feel the distance between them. They were nearly the same age. George’s own tyre management was atrocious, as Toto reminded him daily, so he knew he had no business critiquing, but he watched anyway: the tyres were pristine. 

George was reaching for his tissues when a body rushed past, close enough to jostle his shoulder. He stumbled sideways, his arm shooting out to catch the barriers.

“Fuck! Watch it!”

But the driver was already halfway across the pit lane, a streak of navy blue, utterly oblivious. George looked down. There, on the tarmac, sat a glove. 

Must be his, he thought, and bent to pick it up before setting off after him.

He was young. Max Verstappen, the Dutch prodigy, youngest race winner in the history of the sport, the boy he had once raced against already years ahead. George had seen photographs, but photographs hadn’t conveyed how baby fat still clung to his cheeks. He stood with his father, an utterly violent man, both of them watching Lewis. Jos spoke rapidly in Dutch, gesturing towards the track, and though George caught none of the words, he saw how the boy’s posture changed as he listened: his shoulders hunching in, his chin lowering, as though Jos’s words were a strike.

When their conversation ended, George stepped forward. He tapped the boy’s shoulder, then held out the glove when he turned.

“Hey. You dropped this.”

Verstappen stared at him. His eyes were utterly blank. Exhaustion written in every line of his body.

“Your glove,” he tried, gesturing. “You bumped into me. It fell.”

He looked at the glove in George’s hand, then tilted his head, a quick, bird-like movement, and fixed his gaze on his face. He felt, absurdly, as though he were being examined.

“Thank you,” his father said, in heavily accented English. Verstappen reached out, his gloved fingers brushing George’s palm as he took the glove back. His hands were cold. 

“You’re welcome,” George said, and turned before anything else could happen. He had practice to get back to.

But he had not walked ten paces before some impulse made him glance back.

Jos had Verstappen by the arm. Grabbing the bare wrist above the glove, thumb pressing into the soft inner skin. He was speaking low and fast in Dutch, his mouth close to Verstappen’s temple, and Verstappen was utterly still. The blankness was gone. In its place was a hard, compacted something that George had no name for yet.

Then Jos released him, clapped him once on the shoulder as if nothing had happened, and walked away. Max did not move. He was staring at the space his father had vacated, the glove still clutched in his hand, and for a single, suspended second George thought he might hurl it after him.

He didn’t. He pulled it on, slowly, one finger at a time, and walked towards the garage without looking up.

George turned back towards his own pit box. The memory burrowed into him with no immediate consequence, like a splinter.

In the Monaco flat, eleven years later, George tapes shut a box of old race suits. The memory is so sharp he can still feel the glove’s worn leather on his palm. He must be near the factory if he is to retain the upper hand at all. He refuses to have a front-row seat to someone else’s success once again. Antonelli was bad enough. He leaves behind the ruins of his old life, scattered along the streets he’d walked a thousand times. 

There is a new golden boy in town. 

It’s Verstappen.

***

Verstappen is as difficult as he had been all those years ago.

George remembers the cheap salt-and-vinegar dust on his fingers, the rough concrete wall behind the Silverstone garages, and Verstappen’s shoulder pressed against his, two boys in oversized race suits, hiding from their fathers. He remembers how Verstappen had offered him the bag without a word, his eyes already carrying that same flat, assessing look. Back then, silence had felt like a truce.

The first time they sit across from each other as Mercedes teammates, the motorhome smells of fresh paint. January, Brackley, a grey English sky pressing against the windows. Verstappen arrives late, his hair still damp from a shower, and takes the chair opposite George without offering a hand. Just a short, flat nod, then his gaze drops to the table as though the grain of the laminate required his full attention.

George pours himself a glass of water. The jug sweats onto the polished wood. Verstappen doesn’t touch his.

The silence between them thickens while a junior PR officer fumbles with a tablet in the corner. George studies the man opposite him, the faint shadows beneath his eyes, the way his thumb moves restlessly over a worn patch on the cuff of his team polo, and understands, with a clarity that settles cold in his stomach, that the truce of their boyhood is finished. Whatever binds them now isn’t silence as safety. 

***

Bahrain. Pre-season testing.

Both cars approach Turn 4 in terrifying, perfect sync. George has the racing line. It is his corner. But Verstappen has never dealt well with losing, so why start now? A millimetre of steering input, a silent, brutal message transmitted through tyre wall and asphalt: “I am not yielding.” The season hasn’t even begun, and they are already three moves deep in their private game. Neither lifted. The result is a synchronised pirouette into the gravel, a great ochre cloud that swallows carbon fibre and ambition.

But the real detonation comes outside the cars.

Surrounded by a scrum of microphones and the blinding white fury of camera flashes, George is magnetic. He laughs, a bright, careless sound that cuts through the tension like a scalpel while reporters press in on Verstappen, suffocating him.

“I had the room,” he declares to the lens, a smile playing on his lips that defies both the camera and Verstappen. “What sort of driver doesn’t take an opportunity when he sees one?” he says, letting the deliberate, barbed question hang in the air.

And then winks. Directly at Verstappen. The press pack erupts in a frenzy of admiration and lurid curiosity. They adore him and resent him in equal measure. From where he stands he hears the metallic crunch of a Monster can collapsing in Verstappen’s fist.

The ensuing ’peace’ in the garage is as fragile as a front wing on a kerb. The season is still a spectre on the horizon, and F1 is a PR game too.

The garage cleaves, not along designated lines, but along philosophical fault lines. Around Verstappen’s car, the old guard: GP, who had followed him here, a few grizzled mechanics who’d been there since Michael, men who believe in the purity of speed and the hierarchy of proven success. Their world is built on Verstappen’s feedback, terse, instinctive, often physical (“the rear feels like it’s on a trampoline,” followed by a mimed wobble). They trust what had won championships before.

Around George’s car, a different energy hums. Dudley, his race engineer, now led a younger, data-obsessed cohort. Where Verstappen gives them a feeling, George gives them a dissertation: a precise description of understeer on entry, correlated to a specific millisecond of throttle application, suggesting a subtle tweak to the brake migration. He speaks their language of vectors and algorithms. His faction doesn’t question Verstappen’s speed; they quietly wonder if it is the most efficient path forward.

And so, Verstappen does what George expects him to, what the deep, scarred wiring of his childhood demands. What Jos would have done. 

With a “Fuck!” that silences the whirring of toolboxes and the hiss of pneumatic guns, he snatches his helmet from a nearby stand and hurls it. Not at George, but towards him, a violent, symbolic projectile. At thin, whip-smart, mild-mannered George, who stands surrounded by his engineers.

The garage freezes. The world distills to the sickening, reverberating CRACK-THUD of five-figure carbon fibre hitting the concrete floor, skidding to a halt a whisper from George’s custom-made boots. Mechanics stand as still as mannequins, their tools dangling forgotten. The air grows thick with a familiar dread. Jos Verstappen’s legacy was not just trophies; it was a pedagogy of rage, and in that moment, Verstappen is his father’s most proficient student. From the corner of his eye, George sees GP take half a step forward, his face pale, not with fear for George, but with fear for Verstappen, for the crater he is blasting. Marcus places a steadying hand on a young data engineer’s arm, his expression unreadable but his posture broadcasting a cool, analytical disgust.

To the shock of everyone, the petrified engineers, the horrified PR officers, especially Verstappen, a dark shape whistles back through the charged air. George’s team phone. It connects with Verstappen’s forehead with a precise thwack designed to be more humiliating than painful.

“Christ, Max. Aim’s gone the same way as your pace.” George mocks, his voice cheery. 

And then… he laughs a clear, ringing peal of genuine, unadulterated amusement. With a nimble sidestep that dodges a frozen mechanic holding a torque gun, he simply walks out of the garage. He doesn’t flee, he exits, his eyes shining with amusement, leaving behind a stupefied Verstappen. George had seen the ghost of Jos in that moment, had recognised the violence, and had, in fact, found it funny. He makes it three strides towards the paddock before something, some prickle at the back of his neck, some rogue impulse he will later blame on adrenaline, makes him stop. Turn. Look back.

The garage is a diorama, silent and weirdly beautiful in its suspended chaos. Mechanics still frozen mid-motion. The helmet lying on the concrete. And Verstappen.

Verstappen hasn’t moved.

George expects rage. A fist through a monitor. What he does not expect is the way Verstappen’s shoulders drop, a long, slow exhalation George can almost feel through the glass. The way his hands, still gloved, hang at his sides and then begin, very slightly, to tremble.

George watches, his amusement beginning to curdle at the edges.

GP steps forward, mouth opening, but Verstappen lifts a hand, a small, exhausted gesture, palm out, and GP stops as though he’s walked into a wall. There is no violence in it, only something closer to surrender.

Then Verstappen walks. Slowly. Deliberately. Across the garage floor to where George’s team phone has skidded to a halt. He crouches. Picks it up. Turns it over in his gloved fingers with care. George’s breath catches. He didn’t think, he hadn’t considered that Verstappen might actually look at the thing he’d thrown back at him, might inspect the cracked screen with something that, from this distance, looks horrifyingly like tenderness.

Verstappen straightens. Walks to the nearest worktop. And places the phone down. Not gently, exactly, there is still tension in the line of his back, still something rigid in the set of his jaw, but with precision. He aligns it parallel to the edge, a tiny act of order in the wreckage, and then his hand retreats and hangs at his side.

He doesn’t look at anyone. He turns, walks to his side of the garage, and sits down on a tyre blanket with his back to the room. His head bows. His hands dangle between his knees.

George stands in the paddock, the heat baking him, and feels the laugh he’d been enjoying die in his throat. He tells himself it doesn’t matter. That a moment of stillness doesn’t undo the helmet, doesn’t undo the years, doesn’t undo Abu Dhabi. But as he turns and walks away, the image stays with him: Verstappen’s bowed head, the phone lined up neat on the worktop, and the inconvenient suspicion that he has just watched someone recognise the ghost of his own father… and flinch.

George doesn’t know what to do with that. So he does what he does best. He files it away. Buries it deep. And walks on.

***

It happens on a Monday, a week before Suzuka.

George is one of the last ones off the factory, he’d stayed behind to study their updates package, something Marcus had flagged, just a few more minutes, just until he understood them. The building is quiet now, just the hum of the cooling system and the distant echo of someone’s music.

He’s lacing his trainers when he hears it.

A wheeze. Then another. Then the awful, ragged sound of someone trying to breathe and not quite managing.

George looks up.

Verstappen is hunched over by the door, one hand braced against the plexiglass. His knuckles are bloodless, the tendons standing out in sharp relief, and his other hand fumbles blindly in his backpack. His fingers scrabble past a water bottle, a folded race briefing, the spine of a book, and then close around the phone at the very bottom. When he straightens, George sees his face: pale, drawn, a sheen of sweat at the temples, exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with training.

Their eyes meet.

For a moment, neither moves. The tension of the past months hangs between them. In the flat white light of the simulator corridor, Verstappen’s eyes are glassy. Then Verstappen’s hand slips. His phone skitters across the floor, spinning to a stop against a chair leg.

George is on his feet before he decides to move. He crosses the distance in four strides, picks up the phone, holds it out. The screen is warm, still lit with a half-typed message.

Verstappen stares at it. At him. His breath comes in shallow, ragged pulls, each one a battle he’s losing. Then his fingers close around the phone, cold, George notes, cold even through the thin fabric of his own team polo sleeve, and trembling so faintly it’s almost a vibration.

“Breathe,” George says.

Not harsh. Just… firm. The way you do to someone who needs to stop being proud. He places his hand over Verstappen’s clammy skin, the bones of his knuckles sharp, the rabbit-fast flutter of his pulse against George’s palm, and presses it flat to his own chest. He watches Max’s face for the flinch, the withdrawal, the tight smile he’d learned to wear himself. It doesn’t come. Max’s fingers curl into his shirt and hold on. Holds it there. Breathes in, slow and deep, his ribcage rising under Verstappen’s cold fingers. Breathes out. In again.

For a long moment, the only sound is the two of them breathing, George’s steady, Verstappen’s catching and stuttering before it finally, reluctantly, begins to ease. The hard line of his back softens by a single degree. He doesn’t say thank you. But his next breath comes easier, and the one after that easier still, and when George finally steps back, Verstappen’s hand falls to his side and stays there, open, not quite a fist.

George turns away. Grabs his bag. Walks out into the Brackley evening, the air sharp and cold, smelling of exhaust, nothing like Monte Carlo, nothing like home.

He doesn’t look back. But the feel of Verstappen’s pulse under his hand follows him all the way to the car park. The memory comes without warning, the way it always does.

The 2017 Mercedes was a beast. It took every shred of concentration he possessed to hold his line, and still he might as well have been driving on fresh tarmac. He lost two positions, two, and the sound of it, that ugly scrape of tyres against rubble, seemed to echo through the track. The race ended. He turned towards his race engineer, blind to everything but the need to keep his face composed, and made his way to the media pen.

Toto’s smile was already in place, plastic and camera-ready. He said nothing as he sat, only waited, and George busied his hands with the two stuffed animals someone had thrown, a cow and a bear, their fur soft beneath his fingers. His hands would not stop shaking.

“Way off axis on the exit of turn sixteen,” Toto said, still smiling. “Kissed the barrier on turn three. Wound up on the rubble on turn ten. Lost speed on the straights, especially at the end.”

He knew all of this. But hearing it laid out, each failure given its own precise name, made his stomach tighten into something hard and cold. Toto’s hand found his waist in a gesture meant to look like comfort. He went rigid beneath it, then forced himself to relax, forced himself to smile. It’s fine. This is normal. This is the price to pay.

“There’ll be other free practices,” Toto said, and squeezed once before letting go.

George waited until he had drifted away to confer with the journalists. Then he found a tyre pile, half-hidden behind Williams garage, and sat down.

The sob came out of him like something torn.

He had not cried in three years. Not since Buckinghamshire, those first awful months when everything had been strange and cold and he had wondered, nightly, whether he had made a terrible mistake. And now here he was, shaking apart.

He was still gasping when he felt the tap on his shoulder.

He stopped mid-sob, mortified, and saw a blue-gloved hand withdrawing. He knew those gloves. He knew the boy standing there, staring at him with those too-blue, too-seeing eyes. He had the ugliest haircut he had ever laid eyes on, something ruffled that looked like it had been designed by a blindfolded committee.

“What do you want?” His voice came out harsh. He didn’t care. He despised being seen like this, despised the way his face must look, swollen and wet and weak.

Verstappen did not flinch. He looked at him for a long moment, and George had the strange sense that he was cataloguing him, the tear-tracks, the shaking hands, the whole humiliating display.

“Too early,” he said.

George blinked. “What?”

His English was slow, careful, each word placed like a stone. “You brake too early on turn sixteen.”

He was right. George had known it the moment he did it, had felt the imbalance cascade through the rest of the lap. Something hot and ugly rose in his chest. “Did you come here to critique me? Is that it?”

He shook his head. He reached into his pocket and produced a pack of tissues. He held it out to him, his arm fully extended, his expression utterly serious.

George looked at the tissues. He looked at his earnest, serious face. And something in him, the hard thing he had been holding together for three years, the thing that had made him into someone who did not cry, cracked.

“No,” he said. His voice came out strange. “No, I don’t—” And then, because he could not explain, because he did not have the words for what he felt, he knocked the pack off his hands.

It hit the floor with a soft, muffled sound. Verstappen’s face crumpled, his mouth turning down, all the composure draining out of him in an instant.

George’s anger evaporated. “Look, I didn’t mean—”

But he was already gone, retreating down the pit lane without looking back. George watched him go, the hunched set of his shoulders, the way his walk was too fast for anger but just right for someone trying to outrun humiliation. At the time, he’d thought it was disgust. Now, years later, walking through a Brackley car park with the ghost of Verstappen’s pulse still fluttering against his palm, he wonders if he’d been wrong.

Years and a world away, George shakes the thought loose. England is not Monaco. Verstappen is not him. And George is not the person who settled for crumbs anymore.

He goes back to his temporary flat, with its temporary furniture and windows that face a parking lot. Back to the life he’s building, one day at a time.

*** 

The panic attack doesn’t change things overnight. Verstappen is still Verstappen the next day, sharp elbows, sharper silences, claiming space like George is invisible. But something has shifted, some small crack in the wall between them. When their eyes meet across the room, Verstappen doesn’t look away first anymore. 

It takes weeks to notice the pattern. Verstappen uses the simulator at the same time every morning, eleven to noon, and if George happens to be at the factory, he gives him space. When Verstappen needs time to himself, head down, breathing hard, talking in rapid Dutch that George will never understand, George learns to stay at the other end. Simple things.

He learns other things too. The particular sound of Verstappen’s voice when he’s about to attempt something dangerous: a split-second hesitation in the entry, like even the tarmac holds its breath. The way he talks to himself during run-throughs, not encouragement but instruction, a constant stream of corrections only he can hear. The way he looks, sometimes, when he thinks no one is watching, not fierce, not competitive, just tired. Young. Human.

George stops flinching every time Verstappen glances his way. Starts noticing instead that Verstappen glances at all.

Then, one morning, George arrives early. The simulator room is empty except for Verstappen, already running through Gilles-Villeneuve. George sits on the floor, leans back against the wall, and watches. Verstappen races the circuit. Then again. The third time, he screws up the start and swears in Dutch, the word echoing off the empty boards. He marks something on a notepad with a pen, then does it again.

Toto used to make him do that. Again. Again. Until George’s legs shook and his lungs burned and the race stopped being a race and became just survival. 

Verstappen does it to himself.

George sits there for hours before Verstappen notices him. When he does, he just nods, once, and keeps driving. George doesn’t know what to do with that either, so he watches. Soon he finds himself thinking about Austria. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the way Verstappen pushes through a mistake without flinching, the same stubbornness George remembers from years ago. 

He was lost in thought when a flash of movement caught his eye.

“Bloody hell! Watch it!”

The driver coming towards him was moving too fast, head down, not watching where he was going, Verstappen, George recognised a split second before impact. His racing boots skittered on the floor as he tried to stop. George hissed like an angry cat and threw himself sideways. Verstappen twisted, caught an edge, and went down hard at his feet, a sprawl of limbs and blue race suit. George bent down—

“I’m fine! I’m fine! Okay?” Verstappen scrambled up, already protesting before anyone could ask. He was limping, George noticed, favouring his left leg, but his face was set in an expression of fierce determination, as if refusing to acknowledge pain would make it disappear.

Vettel was there before George could lead him to his garage, his practice session abandoned. He knelt to check Verstappen’s ankle, his voice low and rapid in German. He passed him the cold water bottle he had been carrying. 

George watched, suddenly aware that he was an outsider to whatever was happening here.

“Are you okay?” Vettel asked, glancing up at George. 

“Peachy. He took the worst part.” George pointed at Verstappen, who was now sitting on the floor with the bottle pressed to his ankle, looking deeply unimpressed with the attention he was receiving.

Vettel looked at Verstappen, then back at George. His expression was unreadable. “What do you think of him?”

“What?”

“Verstappen.”

“Oh. Verstappen.” George considered the question. The enigma of Verstappen. A teenager who crashed into people and humiliated his competition. A driver who, on track, became something else entirely. “He’s… something, all right.”

“Something?”

“Yeah, you know.” George searched for the words. “He does things with the car that don’t make sense on the data. I’ll spend an hour on the simulator trying to replicate one of his lines and I can’t.”

“Yes. He trains a lot. More than people know.”

George nodded. He could imagine it, the obsessive repetition, the refusal to leave track until the lap was perfect, the hunger that never quite seemed satisfied. “He seems so focused. So accomplished. I’m his age and I'm still in GP3.” He laughed, but it came out hollow. “God, I’m ancient, aren’t I?”

Vettel didn’t laugh. He watched George with the same careful, measuring look he’d been wearing since he sat down. “He had to grow up fast.”

The words hung in the air. George wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“You like him?” Vettel asked. “Like his driving?”

“Who doesn’t?” George said, and meant it, and also didn’t mean it, and wasn’t sure which was true.

Verstappen chose that moment to intervene. He stood, the bottle forgotten, and exchanged a rapid-fire string of German with Vettel. George caught nothing except the cadence, quick, familiar, the shorthand of people who knew each other well.

When they finished, Verstappen dropped onto the barrier beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off him. He smelled like burnt rubber and exhaust fumes and something faintly sweet.

Verstappen pouted. It was such a childish expression, so at odds with the fierce competitor he met on track, that George felt something in his chest loosen. He was just a twenty-something-year-old. A kid who had to grow up fast, according to Vettel, but still a kid.

George tilted his head, letting his smile sharpen. “Your haircut is prettier this time. Has your driving improved just as much?”

The transformation was instantaneous.

The awkwardness vanished. In his place stood someone with eyes that seemed to cut straight through him. His mouth curved, not a smile, exactly, but a baring of teeth that made something cold run down George’s spine.

“Watch,” he said. “Then tell me.”

Quali arrived like a wave George had been watching form on the horizon, knowing it would eventually reach him.

Verstappen’s lap was pristine. George watched the telemetry with something approaching disbelief: the braking point into Turn 2, impossibly late; the throttle application out of Turn 4, earlier than anyone had dared all weekend. Every line clean, every movement deliberate. When his time appeared, the track buzzed. He was in first, and it would take something extraordinary to unseat him.

When he came back to boxes Verstappen winked.

The fans behind him roared. Someone wolf-whistled. Verstappen grinned, the absolute menace.

The memory thins, pulled apart by the sounds blasting from the simulator’s speakers. George blinks, and he’s back on the floor, his spine stiff against the wall, the present settling around him like cold air. Verstappen is still in the rig, still chasing a perfect lap that never quite comes. George watches him for a while longer, then leaves without a word.

Later, in the buffet, Verstappen speaks without looking at him. “You were early today.”

“So were you.”

Verstappen considers this. Nods again. “Tomorrow, I will be here earlier still.”

George laughs. And says, “It’s not a competition.”

Verstappen looks at him then and there’s something almost like amusement in his eyes. “Everything is.”

He leaves before George can answer. But the next morning, George is earlier still. And Verstappen is already there.

This time, Verstappen nods at him when he walks in. Just a nod. But it’s something.

***

To the outside, they make good teammates. Off track they have fun. Meaningless PR stuff which always comes down to Verstappen annoying George. A lot of that happens behind the scenes, too. George interprets it as a kind if backhanded affection. Verstappen would just leave him alone if he truly did not care.

So they do what the public expects them not to: get along. George thinks they’re all waiting for either one of them to snap. Push the other not to bend but to break. George is waiting for that too.

There’s a photo shoot.

Some sponsor thing for Mercedes, both of them in matching jackets, smiling for cameras that click and flash and ask for more. The photographer wants them to look natural. At ease. Like friends.

Verstappen stands beside him, close enough that their elbows brush. George can feel the warmth of him through the fabric. That clean soap smell, and underneath it, something else. Something that makes his stomach turn over.

“George, put your arm around him,” the photographer calls. “Max, lean in. Yes, like that. Perfect.”

George’s arm settles across Verstappen’s shoulders. It’s light, casual, the kind of gesture he’s done a hundred times with friends. His hand settles on Verstappen’s shoulder, then lifts a fraction, he’s learned to check his own grip, to make sure it doesn’t linger, doesn’t press. But Verstappen leans into him like it’s nothing, like he belongs there, and George’s chest does something complicated.

“Again!” the photographer says.

Verstappen’s smile changes. Softens, just slightly. “Tell me I am prettier than you.”

George laughs despite himself. It’s real, the laugh, surprised out of him. And Verstappen laughs too, a small genuine thing.

***

The roar of the crowd curdles into a single collective exhale as he crosses the line second. 

0.02 seconds behind Verstappen. 

Fuck.

The taste of bile permeates his mouth. 

He would much rather not think about that.

***

“That,” Alex says, as he reaches him after the podium. George’s redemption after his humiliating second place at Silverstone, “was the best race you have ever driven.”

He didn’t need to see his time to know. But when journalists told him, a new personal best, a lead that would take something extraordinary to overcome, George let himself feel the shock of a win that means he has done what he came to do.

He is still grinning when the cameras cut away. He is still grinning when Alex puts his arm around his shoulders, steady and warm. They stand together in the service alley behind the garages, away from the press, away from the other drivers, and George feels the adrenaline beginning to fade.

“You were having fun," Alex says. It isn’t a question.

He shrugs. “It’s good to know I still have it.”

“It is.” He pauses. “I saw you wink.”

George’s smile flickers. He busies his hands with his race suit zip, pulling it up, pulling it down, anything to avoid looking at him. “He’s fun to fluster.”

“George.”

He stops moving. It’s the voice Alex uses when he wants him to hear something he doesn’t want to hear, the voice that has got him through years of hard work and harder truths.

“I’ve known you your whole life.” Alex pauses. “And I’ve seen the way Verstappen looks at you.”

“He’s not —” He starts, and stops. What could Verstappen want from him? George has liked men easily, and sometimes he has liked them because it is easier than being alone. There is nothing life altering about not wanting to be alone.

Alex waits. He is patient, has always been patient.

“You’re wrong,” he says finally.

“I could be,” he agrees. “I’m not saying you have to do anything. I’m saying you can’t keep pretending you don’t see it.”

Alex looks at him. His face is serious, his eyes kind, and he realises that he is asking as a friend of Verstappen’s, not his. The boy who had become a brother to George all those years ago. A world away from his own parents. Living in a city that never felt quite like home. 

“Be kind to him. You’ve noticed, George. I know.” Alex says. 

The words hang in the air between them. George hasn’t noticed. Not really. He has been running from the whole matter for a decade at least, denying it, hiding from it, and now, standing in a dimly lit service alley behind the Spa’s garages he finds he has nowhere left to run.

“I will,” he says. His voice comes out smaller than he means it to.

Alex nods slowly. He looks, George thinks, like a man who has been expecting this answer.

“Good,” he says. “Thank you.”

He puts his hand on George’s shoulder, the same hand that has steadied him a hundred times, a thousand times, and gives him a small, gentle squeeze. He leaves him there, in the service alley, with his words still burning in his mind. George stands there for a long time, his back against the wall, his hands in his pockets. He thinks about Verstappen in the garage, his face turned towards him, his hands gripping his helmet. He thinks about the way he had looked at him when he winked, all those years ago, the way he had smiled.

He lets himself admit that he doesn’t know the difference anymore between wanting Verstappen and wanting to win. Whether Verstappen felt the same.

***

It is bucketing it down outside. Brackley is empty at this hour. The kind of empty that makes the factory seem larger than it is, that amplifies the sounds, the low rumble of thunder, the heavy pelting of rain, the soft thud of a foot hitting the brakes of the simulator.

George stands at the glass door, his hands in his pockets, and watches Verstappen go at it. Rain lashes the windows in sheets, blurring the car park, the street, the whole outside world. The glass is cold under his palm when he reaches out to steady himself. On the other side, Verstappen moves through Zandvoort like the storm isn’t there. But George can hear it. The low rumble of thunder, somewhere distant. The rattle of water in the drainpipes. The sound of a world that won’t stop even when you need it to.

He had been at it for three hours. George knew because he had been standing here for two of them, and GP had told him, when he arrived, that he had been on the sim since before the sun came up. 

Zandvoort was a month ago. A month since George had taken the win. A month since Verstappen had stood on the second-place podium with his face perfectly composed and his eyes hollow. A month since he had limped off the track, his mouth pressed into a line that was meant to be stoic but was really something closer to devastation.

“Congratulations,” Verstappen had said. His voice was flat, careful, the voice of someone who was holding himself together by the thinnest of threads.

George had wanted to touch him. He had wanted to put his hand on Verstappen’s arm, the way Alex touched him when he needed to be steadied. But he had not known if he was allowed. He had not known if he would want him to. And so George had stood there, frozen, while Verstappen limped away, and he had watched him go, and he had said nothing.

George is still saying nothing. It has been weeks, and he has not said anything that mattered.

“He’s been doing this every day.”

GP’s voice comes from behind him, low and tired, nearly swallowed by another roll of thunder. He steps up to the glass door, stands beside him, watches the figure in the simulator with the particular weariness of someone who has seen this before, who knows there is nothing he can say to make it stop.

“I know,” George says.

He watches Verstappen set up for another start. His takeoff is wrong, he can see it from here, the way his hand shifts too early. A false start. 

Verstappen curses. He is going to try it again. 

“Have you talked to him?” George asks. He does not look at GP. He can’t  take his eyes off the simulator.

“I tried. He says he’s fine. He says he’s working through it. He says he just needs to get his rhythm back.” GP’s jaw tightens. “He’s been saying the same thing for weeks. Every day. For six, seven hours.”

Outside, lightning splits the sky, a quick, white crack that lit the lounge for half a second and was gone. George doesn’t flinch.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks.

GP looks at him for a long moment. His face is unreadable, the face of a man who has spent decades learning when to push and when to wait, when to speak and when to let silence do the work.

“He won’t listen to me,” he says finally. “He won’t listen to anyone who tells him to stop.” He pauses. “But he might listen to you.”

George doesn’t ask why. He knows why. He thinks about Spa, the way Alex had asked him to be kind. He steps into the room cutting a straight line to Verstappen and plants himself by his side.

“What are you doing?” Verstappen’s voice is sharp, frustrated.

“Taking a break.” George sits. Right there, beside him, his legs crossed, his hands in his lap. “You should try it.”

Verstappen stares at him. His face is flushed, his hair plastered to his forehead, his chest heaving. He looks like he has not slept in weeks.

“I need to—” Verstappen stops. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Maybe he does not know how.

“You need to rest.” George keeps his voice even, calm, the voice he used when he was trying not to spook his nephews. “You need to stop punishing yourself.”

Verstappen’s face crumples. It is quick, there and gone, a crack in the composure he has been wearing since Zandvoort. But he sees it. He sees the way his mouth turned down, the way his eyes go bright, the way he looks, for a moment, exactly like what he is: thirty years old, injured, exhausted, carrying a weight that is too heavy.

“You don’t understand,” he says. His voice is hoarse. He can’t finish. He never could, when it comes to this. To the thing that drives him, the hunger that has been there, the thing that makes him get up after every fall, after every injury, after every disappointment. 

George reaches out. He takes his hand. Verstappen’s fingers are cold and they tremble slightly against his palm. The rain hammers the roof. 

“You can’t fix it today,” he says. “You can’t fix it tomorrow. You can’t fix it by destroying yourself.” He squeezes his hand. “You’re allowed to stop. You’re allowed to be human.”

Max’s crying. Tears running down his face, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps, his hand clutching George’s like he is the only thing keeping him upright.

“I don’t know how,” he says. The words come out broken, fractured, the way his English gets when he was too tired to hold it together. 

George doesn’t remember deciding to move, but suddenly he is there, his shoulder against Max’s, his hands still tangled, their bodies pressed together. He feels Max shake. He feels the sob that tried to escape and was swallowed back down, the way he has been swallowing everything his whole life.

Max looks at him. His eyes are dark, too dark, and he can’t read what’s in them, can’t tell if he understands what George is trying to show him.

But his hand tightens on his. And he doesn’t let go.

They sit there until the storm exhausts itself, until the thunder rolls away to the east and the rain softens to a drizzle, until GP enters and the midday sun begins to filter through the windows.

Slowly, carefully, they get up. Max leans on him more than he expected, his weight pressing into his shoulder, his hand still holding his. George doesn’t pull away.

***

Singapore is loud even on a Wednesday. The fans still crowd around the track, and the Ferrari hospitality smells of espresso. Seb is waiting for him when he arrives.

“You’re doing well,” Vettel says. They rarely talk about it, and much less in person, but now they have to. It is personal to Seb, who has been where George is. Chewed up and spat out. That means George has to talk about his. About Max. About surviving him. He thinks about Silverstone. About being carved out. About the way Toto looked through him once Antonelli arrived, the way his cologne clung to the flat long after he’d gone. He thinks about the past months: the silences, the sharp elbows, the way Max made him feel small without trying.

And then he thinks about the panic attack. Max’s hand, cold and trembling, brushing his. The way he’d pressed it to his own chest and breathed. The early mornings when they’re the only two in the simulator room, tracing different patterns on the same track, and how that silence doesn’t feel like hostility anymore. 

He’s not doing bad. But that does not mean he is doing brilliantly. He keeps his head up, but that is all. Most days it feels like he is just treading water. Grounded by inertia. He wonders if it felt like that for Seb.

If Seb knew that he could never be great compared to Leclerc. Measured to something impossible. George will not crumble to the pressure of not beating Max, of not living up to his standard, but he starts to tear at the seams at the idea that keeping up will not be enough for him.

He’s set himself up for something impossible. George can beat Max. He knew this, but it was different then. It wasn’t in his head. Max wasn’t everywhere.

“Suppose not,” George tells Seb. 

He is leading the World Championship. The best he can be, given the circumstances. Better than any year he’s ever had.

But it’s easy to be greedy when you’re at the top. To be like Max. Never satisfied. That’s got into him too.

“Better than I’d expected,” Seb admits, in what could be a compliment, but feels like a breath of relief. George feels the same. Better than he expected, yet not good enough.

***

He wins his first World Championship in Brazil. It’s not as great as the commentators make it out to be. George beats Max, that’s all. Max had been fighting an uphill battle since Zandvoort, and everyone knew it.

“It’s fine,” Max assures him. He is angry. It took half a season for George to realise how similar they are. How every part of him corresponds to a part of Max. Congruity in pieces. Not as a whole. He wouldn’t have been if he had won, but he brushes it off. Doesn’t linger on things that don’t need fixing. That is George’s problem. 

They didn’t speak again that day. The podium was a blur, the press conference a circus act. George smiled when he was supposed to smile. Max stood beside him, second place, his jaw tight, and played his part. By the time George returned to his hotel room, the trophy was already somewhere else, packed away, catalogued, someone else’s responsibility.

That night, George’s phone buzzes. He expects more congratulations, perhaps a text from his mother, his nephews, maybe Alex. Instead:

You were good today.

George stares at the message. No name, but he knows the number. He’s seen it for a whole season, ever since Bahrein, though he has never used it for anything but logistical texts.

He types Thanks and deletes it. Types You too and deletes that. Finally:

I know.

***

George’s season ends with a whimper in spite of his title. 

Sometimes he is second. So close, he can almost taste it. Sometimes he isn’t even on the podium. Never is he first. Never does he beat Max after taking the Championship. And Max takes the wins so carelessly, it infuriates George even more.

It’s not fair. This is the only way Max can win, against all odds. Even after he lost. That’s how he wins. Max has to win because there is no other way out and George… George has to settle for second. It’s an unlucky place for the realisation to kick in, but after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, in the car on their way to some fancy celebration dinner, George cracks.

He’d driven clean. That’s the worst part. No stupid mistakes to blame. He’d put out the best quali he’d managed all season, and Max had still beaten him by three tenths. Three. As if there were levels between them that George couldn’t even see.

He stares out the window. The Las Vegas strip scrolls past. He hasn’t said a single word since they got in the car. Max doesn’t mind silence, Max prefers it, but this is different. This is George being short with him, and they both know it.

“It fucking hurts, right?” Max says. It is not even a question. It hurts. There’s no other way to rationalise it. George is beyond a point where empty words and blank praise can console him.

George holds his breath. Thinks about lying. Thinks about the three seconds. He’s been here before. He’ll be here again. That’s the worst part, the certainty that it will keep happening.

“Yes,” he admits. He is well acquainted with the feeling. The bitterness, the disappointment… he remembers it from years ago, back in F3. The fluorescent lights blur past the window, and suddenly he’s fifteen again, fifteen points away from the lead of his own championship, watching Max win.

Verstappen was an F1 race winner. The youngest in history.

George stood in the noise and the light, a boy who had come to watch someone else win. He thought about his own performances lately, the way his arms had felt heavy from the first minute, the way his lungs had burned too early, the way the voice in his head had whispered you don’t belong here and he had listened. He thought about the fourth-place finish, the one that was close enough to hurt, the one that would follow him for the rest of his career as the one that got away. Fifteen points behind fucking Stroll.

He thought about Verstappen on the podium, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He was crying. George could see it, the way his body was heaving, the way Vettel was holding him upright, the way he could not stop.

He had done what George could not do. 

George could be happy for him. If he tried.

The word ’happy’ was small. It was not large enough to hold everything he felt, the ache, the pride, the tenderness. But it was the truth, and it was his, and for now, that was enough.

The memory releases him. The car is quiet again. The artificial landscape has given way rugged, dry mountain ranges, and Max is still beside him, waiting. George doesn’t know how long he’s been silent.

“It does,” George says finally. “It fucking hurts.”

George grows to tolerate it. And that’s what he keeps doing. 

His phone buzzes that night. Alex.

You okay?

He stares at the message for a long time. Types fine, deletes it. Types surviving, deletes that too. Finally:

Am I out of my mind?

His reply comes fast: 

Some days more than others.

George doesn’t answer.

***

In Qatar, a week later, every part of him feels like a disappointment. The media storm is like pulling teeth. The longer George spends around Max, the more he forgets how to put on a brave face in front of the camera. To wrap things up in delicate PR talk, twist every downfall into something positive, in an opportunity. George who does not fail, only learns.

That George isn’t there anymore. Took him nine seasons. Max only a few months removed from an inevitable fifth title. He can’t do it anymore.

After the race, George sits in his driver’s room alone. His boots are off. His arms hurt. He can hear the distant noise of the grandstands, the crowd still buzzing, but it feels like it’s happening in another country. Sixth place. Sixth. A few races ago he was World Champion.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes until he sees stars.

The door opens. He doesn’t look up.

Max’s voice: “You are still here.”

“Where else would I be?”

Max doesn’t answer. George hears him sit down on the bench across from him. When he finally looks up, Max is just sitting there, watching him with that unreadable expression. He’s still in his team kit. Still has his racing boots on. His hair is damp at the temples. 

“You should go celebrate,” George says. “You won.”

Max shrugs. “There will be others.”

George almost laughs at that. Almost. “Must be nice.”

The silence stretches. George expects Max to leave, he’s said what he came to say, presumably, but he stays. 

“In Silverstone, after you lost, I thought you would leave.”

George looks up then. Max is watching him, expression unreadable.

“Leave where?”

“The team. The sport. Me.” Max’s voice is careful, measured. “You didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

George thinks about it. Really thinks. “Because quitting would’ve been worse.”

Max nods slowly. Then he stands, walks to the door, pauses with his hand on the handle. 

“I forgot to say,” Max starts, then stops. His English fails him sometimes, especially when he’s tired. He tries again. “In Silverstone. When I thought you would leave. I was not… I did not want you to.”

George waits. The hallway hums with fluorescent light.

“When I came to Mercedes,” Max says, each word careful, “I thought I would have no competition.” He looks down at his feet. “You made it better. Even when I was… difficult.”

George waits for the other shoe. The squeeze on the shoulder. The ’but.’ It doesn’t come. Max just stands there, hands at his sides, and the silence stretches into something George doesn’t have a name for.

“Even when you were a piece of work,” he agrees, finally.

Max smiles. Then he turns and walks out, footsteps echoing, and George stands in the hallway for a long time.

That night, alone in his hotel room, George sits on the edge of the bed and feels the emptiness in his chest. He could let it swallow him. He’s done that before, let the losses pile up like stones on his lungs. 

George doesn’t like this. Probably never will. But he can choose it. Choose to stay in the fight, even when staying means losing. Choose to show up tomorrow and the day after, not because he believes he’ll win, but because quitting would be worse. He gets up, walks to the window, watches the Spanish lights blink in the dark. It’s not a victory, but he’ll take it.

The interviews are uncharacteristically short. A few times he tells them he doesn’t want to comment on something, on the repetitive questions. Do you feel the pressure? Do you think you will ever do it? Beat him?

It’s a simple question. It’s a simple answer. Yes. He has done it before.

After all, Max is only a human being. Flesh and blood. George has seen it up close. He knows that Max is not any more or less human than he is. Only mortal. George only needs one clean cut. One exit where it matters. Where it counts.

***

George is P3 after qualifying in Abu Dhabi. It’s unexpected. He is broken, defeated, unlike Max, who is first. Antonelli separates them because George couldn’t keep up. George feels no easier being third, knowing Antonelli is just as brutal and hungry for a win as he is, knowing Max isn’t done simply because he seemingly has his fifth title secured.

He doesn’t really believe in it anymore. Winning, beating Max, it’s only a statistical outcome at this point. Someone has to win this, out of twenty-two competitors, there has to be one that stands on the top step. Add the rest of the data, and you will know it’s Max who takes it.

It happens there. On Sunday. George has the drive of his life. Not a single mistake. The tarmac feels right under his car. His braking points are precise and vibrate up through the chassis, his lines are clean and solid. The crowd’s roar hits him like a wave. By the time he makes it to the last lap, his lungs are burning and his arms are screaming and he doesn’t care. He pushes into every edge, carves every turn deep. When he crosses the chequered flag, chest heaving, the noise is so loud he can’t hear himself think. It’s barely enough for third.

George feels his heartbeat all the way in his fingertips when he stands on the podium. His hands are shaking, knees weak. The air in the circuit is warm and thick, and he can smell the scent of flowers from the bouquets. Tears stream down his face as Antonelli congratulates him, as Max congratulates him. Half-hugs and handshakes. Rushed compliments. Great job, mate. Something like that. George only knows because he rewatches it days later. Right then, none of it registers. None of it feels real. Not standing on the podium, tears streaming down his face, not the photo they take after. 

Verstappen first. And most importantly, Russell third.

He understands it now. Max just wins. Beating George is a bonus. He doesn’t care about that. He does not see George as a person. George is just a teammate. Someone to bruise and leave behind. Someone he reduces to nothing but loss. Someone who will never be what he is. George properly feels it then. Everything he did that season, just to watch Max win.

Max wins another race, and suddenly there’s an ache in George’s chest, born out of greed he’s never known before, an emptiness that Max made inside of him. That Max taught him. Against his will. Max did all of that while George stood and watched. Another bystander to Max’s success. 

He thinks of the knife. The one he’s been sharpening for years, every loss, every silence, every time Max looked through him like he wasn’t there. Every time Alex’s words echoed in his head: Some days more than others.

The knife is in his hands now. Blade thin, edge keen. 

And this is where he strikes. 

George has been carrying this decision for months, turning it over in private, telling no one. Not Alex. Not his mother. Not Marcus. It’s been his alone, this choice, this exit. And in all those months of holding it, he’s imagined telling Max a hundred different ways. In some versions, Max shrugs, says “okay,” and walks away. In some, he doesn’t react at all. In the ones George tries not to think about, the ones that feel too dangerous, Max’s face does something. Cracks, maybe. Shows that George mattered.

He’s never told anyone that. Never even admitted it to himself. But standing here, Max’s hand in his, the trophy ceremony over, the cameras still clicking somewhere in the distance, he knows it’s true. He wants to matter. Wants to have left a mark.

The knife is in his hands. 

Here. This is what you did to me. This is what I became.

He grabs Max’s hand. Squeezes once, a signal. Max looks at him, questioning.

“I’m retiring.”

Max’s hand goes still in his. For a long moment, he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t even seem to breathe. Then, slowly, he turns to look at George. His face is unreadable, that same mask he wears for cameras, for competitors, for everyone. But his eyes. George has learned to read his eyes.

They’re empty.

“When?” Max’s voice is flat.

“Tonight.” George’s own voice sounds distant, like someone else is speaking. “I wanted you to know. Before—” He stops. Before what? Before Max heard it from someone else? Before it became real?

“Okay.” Max presses his face into the crook of George’s neck, grabs George’s shirt, and… cries.

George freezes. He’s seen Max lose, seen him fall, seen him gasp for air after an panic attack, seen him exhausted and empty and human. He’s never seen this. His whole body shakes with it, but he makes almost no sound. Just breath, hitched and uneven, and the occasional small noise that seems to escape against his will. His face is hot against George’s neck, wet, and his grip on George’s shirt is so tight his knuckles must be white. He’s small like this. That’s what gets George. Without the competition face, Max is just a person, crying in a hallway, holding on like he’s afraid of falling. George’s hands hover, uncertain, not sure if he’s allowed to touch, if touch would help or hurt. Then Max’s shoulders shake once, hard, and George stops thinking. His arms come up, wrap around, hold on. Max goes rigid for a second, then collapses into it.

***

His phone won’t stop buzzing. George ignores it for an hour, two hours, lets the notifications pile up. When he finally looks, there are forty-seven messages. He scrolls past most of them, looking for one name.

Alex: 

Fucking hell, mate. You did it.

You chose. I’m proud of you.

Remember when you asked if you were out of your mind?

George stares at the screen for a long time. Then: 

Every day. Still asking. What’s the answer now?

Alex:

Maybe that’s the only way to be. With him.

George saves the thread.

Hours later, George is in his hotel room, staring at the ceiling, when someone knocks.

He knows who it is before he opens the door.

Max stands in the hallway, still in his team jacket, hair disheveled like he’s been running his hands through it. His eyes are different now. Not empty. Something else. Something George can’t name.

“You cannot,” Max says.

“Can’t what?”

“Retire.” The word comes out sharp, a command. “You cannot.”

George leans against the door-frame. Feels strangely calm. “I just did.”

For a second, George thinks he might leave, might turn around and walk away and that will be the end of it. But instead, Max steps forward and kisses him.

In retrospect, this, whatever this is, is beautiful. George will think of it like that, after, when he thinks of this.

Not while he lives it. Not while Max kisses him, hands grabbing at his shirt, shoving him up against the wall with so much force George’s head hurts. There, he barely thinks at all.

He can’t even breathe as Max kisses him, tasting faintly of champagne as he shoves his tongue down George’s throat, hands fighting to keep a grip on George’s shirt, undoing the buttons to pop them open. He tears one right off, clattering against the wall and out over the floor, sound lost underneath their rushed breathing.

It almost doesn’t feel like Max, grabbing at him, pulling him close, swallowing his gasps. It feels like desperation, like lust distilled. Nothing but that. Something feral scratching the surface. Something so mundane. Even Max is not immune to it. To that feeling. 

It fills the space inside his chest with arousal. It still feels like victory. George gets this out of him today. Arousal, the all-consuming kind. 

Somehow they make it to the bed. George is trapped underneath him against the mattress, lets Max hold him down by the back of his neck as he fucks him. For a half-second, George’s body remembers another weight, another set of hands, and he goes rigid. But Max is the one that brought him here, the one who wanted, the one who caved, the one falling apart. George reaches up, pulls him closer, and the memory dissolves. Not that. Not this. 

The feeling runs out. When they’re done, panting in the sheets, George is depleted. There is nothing left inside his chest. And it is fine.

After they have said it all, carved out everything, there are only bones left. A skeletal infrastructure of them, ground down into dust. Stripped of flesh and treacherous appeal, a place where they are finally equal.

Equal. There is nothing inside Max either. Max only knows one type of vulnerability, baring your teeth. He’s done it all season, shown it to George over and over. And it has brought them here again.

Max’s hand finds his in the dark. Fingers slot together, loose, tentative. Not grabbing, not consuming. Just… holding. George’s chest does something complicated. He doesn’t know what this is. Doesn’t think Max knows either. It lasts maybe ten seconds before Max pulls away, rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling.

Neither of them mentions it. Some things are too dangerous.

“I meant it, you know?” Max says. His voice is thin, hoarse. George did it to him. The way Max did the damage to his neck, the fingerprints at his hips. Finally, something they gave each other.

“What?” George asks. He is, too, on his back, breathless, sprawled out next to Max. The bed is a spacious double, but it’s too small for them not to touch in the middle. Sweat-coated skin against skin, George shifts closer to feel more of it.

“Without you,” Max says, “I couldn’t have done it.”

“No?” George breathes. He doesn’t have to say it. Rub it in. This is only salt in his wounds.

Max looks. Reaches out to touch, inching closer to George. His hand is gentle over George’s arm, moves up, over his shoulder, fingers tracing the dip of his clavicle. 

Maybe just to prove he can. Maybe to prove to George that it’s more than blood and sugar. Or prove that it’s not.

George holds still, feels the soft brush of Max’s thumb over his jaw, nudging his chin up. Now Max is looking into his eyes. His gaze is as empty as the space he’s made inside of George. Carved out with force. Caressed with tenderness. He has never ached so sweetly.