Work Text:
SIXTH FORM.
Alex Albon and George Russell are inseparable. It is a truth as easily swallowed and digested as a piece of pineapple - easy to eat until it starts eating at you, right back. Alex and George are inseparable and you ask yourself why.
George is in most of Alex's lessons, English and History, but George does Maths and Further while Alex does Home Ec. It means that there are approximately three teachers who are only aware of George-and-Alex in the vague periphery, as if they are somehow an all consuming thing, a jaw around the school.
If it wasn't for Alex's own interest in English Lit, the staff would have been mightily concerned by the boy's UCAS form - neatly filled out with the exact same courses as George. Alex is a sweet boy, they say, but George doesn't know how much he means to poor Alex. It's a comfortable narrative. What Alex and George have is not comfortable.
It's a writhing, vying thing. It's something that tethers them together, hand in hand and heart on heart, pulling and squirming and altogether entirely knotted together. There is no George without Alex and no Alex without George.
“Alex, dear,” his well-meaning Home Ec teacher says. “Are you certain English is your future?”
“No, ma'am, but George is, and I don't like anything better.” Alex says. He does not dispel the worry of the staff, who see Alex Albon and have never managed to help him. The boys grow closer until they are attached at the hip, knit together by some force beyond humanity.
It's two years of George carrying both of their homeworks to the teacher, of breaktimes spent together even in a group of their friends. It's two years of George and Alex, the partnership, since the day they met.
It's in these years that they have their first and only kiss. Their friends have all been saying that they should just kiss, already, so they do at some point at some party. Alex says, “They always say we should kiss,” and George, drunk off his tits as well, shrugs and leans in. Their lips collide, like Alex and George always do, and they wait a beat for something to happen. Some butterflies to erupt from their stomachs, some sparks to fly, some fireworks to go off overhead. George and Alex have always been each other's world - it feels like this moment should see the world resist turning so that this bit of ground can watch a moment that so many people describe as their everything.
It doesn't happen. They pull apart, too drunk to school their faces and too aware of each other for it to matter. “No offence, Georgie…”
“Yeah, let's not do that again.” George agrees easily, nose scrunched up. Alex nods, and they turn back to their vodka and drink another shot.
They wake up with a pounding headache and a short amount of regret. It fades once George is back by Alex's side, and they start scrunching their noses up at their friends making jokes about their relationship. George spends a week insisting Alex has cooties in joking overtures, and Alex gags whenever they talk about George and Alex. Their friends don't get it.
No one does, except George and Alex.
UNIVERSITY.
Uni is not a difficult prospect for Alex and George to face. They're together at whatever Russell group that George thought had the best course with their matching A Levels and they're diving into life with reckless abandon. Benders and raves become their thing, neatly slotted into George's spreadsheet of activities as they take the exact same modules every semester. Matching schedules for matching souls.
They do their shop together at the Lidl. It's further than Tesco, but it's what they can afford. George's mum sends recipes that are always carefully thought around Alex's preferences and they take turns cooking for each other, the other one perched on the table somewhere. Alex cooks and George reads him poetry, the stuff about friendship and the stuff about depression, Plath one second and an Instagram poet he swears by the next.
Chaucer is a slog. Alex was not a fan of Chaucer. Rhyming couplets should be meaningful and Middle English should be eradicated.
When George cooks, Alex reads the news and the notes and they talk about the world, their experiences, their days. George talks about the cloud he saw as Alex grates cheese. They're house-trained, see?
It takes a while for Alex to want it like George wants it. It takes a year for him to crave the aesthetic of the poets, who stud London streets with sadness and colour and melancholy gray, who speak of open plains and rolling fields. When he starts, though, it is without brakes. He needs it, craves it, needs to be among these stars too. He speaks of nature as it takes on twisted human form - his pastures become painful, his animals usually snarl. It is a hostile world to a boy, but Alex has always found it hostile.
What kind of boy matches his best friend like Alex does? What kind of child fills their shell with their friend's characteristics? Alex Albon, who never had a mother waiting at home, who patchworked together a self out of other's discarded parts, who speaks of the past in code if he must speak of it at all. He lived in an empty house and commuted to the thing he considered home, which was George's side. Now, uni is just closer to George.
George is signed to Williams before he's out of uni. Alex expects it to change things, but it doesn't - George still lives in the house they share, they still shop together weekly. George insists they get a few things from Tesco rather than Lidl, now he's in the big leagues and has once again embraced his middle class roots. He also always seems to be talking about Alex, still, as he tells Alex the pointers that Claire Williams (?!) had for Alex's poetry.
Alex takes the razor of critique and shapes his poetry again, slicing at it as he removes the waffle. George keeps getting it for him, has definitely told Claire that Alex appreciated it oh so much, and Williams would do anything for their George Russell.
It's not the reaction that the other poets get. Mercedes showers Lewis in praise for being their comeback, Red Bull appeases Max like a father - they gift him all of his whims in return for his wins. Williams loves George like a mother, who knows that her child will become spoiled if they keep gorging on her affection, but gift it anyway. George is a good poet but has not earned what Williams give. It settles something in Alex, who wants everyone to love George as easily as he does.
They graduate with firsts. George has already been signed for a second year at Williams, and Alex begins job hunting.
THE BIG WIDE WORLD
He attends workshops in his free time between bartending and still, his is the name on George's lips. George is getting bigger as more people cotton on - they call him Mr Saturday for all of his best poetry being posted on the Williams Instagram on a weekend. The interviews begin in fervour as George beams at cameras and dotes on Alex.
“Who's your favourite poet?” A journalist asks, and George is immediately smiling.
“Well, no one's published him yet.” George says, “but Alex Albon is fantastic and my best friend in the entire world. His poetry… it is not flashy, it is simply true. Max and Lewis are of course some of the best to be doing it right now. They sell well, but Alex… I hope he is everywhere, one day.”
George's fans gradually increase, and they demand Alex's poetry. Alex starts posting it on his own Instagram, the stuff that's not good enough to keep for his next collection but is too good to waste on the recycling bin. They start coming in droves, in his comments, saying they see exactly what George does and saying they have no idea what George is on about and saying that this poem is about George and that this one cannot be, George isn't that homosexual.
It's not Williams that signs him in the end. Christian Horner calls Alex with an offer for Toro Rosso, and Toro Rosso is a publishing company. That is all the draw of Toro Rosso. It is competing with three poets for the opportunity to write near Max Verstappen, and even when in Red Bull, two poets are always competing to be in your spot. And Max is one of the greatest poets, generational stuff, so they give him the best contract, the best marketing slots and everything he needs. Rumour has it that Max gets a million just to “seek inspiration”, and Max has historically decided that inspiration can be found on a beach in the Bahamas, in the Netherlands with his family, on a yacht that he needed, guys, and in a pub with shots for the whole place. It's bullshit, and impossible to compete with, but Max's shine dulls everyone around him.
Eventually, Red Bull calls Alex up and he cannot say no. He cannot say, but guys, hold on, or, let me settle in, or, will you treat my debut collection as a measure of my humanity?
Inevitably he fails. Inevitably his poetry cannot compete with Max's, and his shitty banner ads don't compete with Max's billboards, and his personhood is eradicated. Helmut Marko takes to weekly calls to shout abuse at Alex, and Alex takes it until they fire him and he is in freefall.
In the meantime, Mercedes calls George and publishes one of his poems. It's 2020, and everyone is inside and miserable and Lewis Hamilton can't turn around a book because he's busy being inside and miserable and Merc have a spot. They choose George. It makes sense, and seeing his book bound in the grey leather, George can't help but gush to Alex. Alex, struggling with his career and the navy blue that binds Alex's soul to a company that try to chew him up into a paste more palatable for shareholders and customers, smiles and tells him that it's great, Georgie. Pineapple contains bromelain, which is an enzyme that digests your tongue and your cheek until you choke it down into your acidic stomach. George and Alex are inseparable, and yet, George lives Alex's dreams while he chokes down any jealousy so that he can enjoy the sweetness of George Russell at his side.
It is not comfortable. Nothing about Alex's relationship with George is comfortable. However, when he's fired from Red Bull, it is perhaps unsurprising that the first woman on the phone is Claire Williams.
“Al. Look. Merc are making George offers and we cannot keep him. I… I think that if I refuse, or drag my heels any more, he will become the best thing that Williams will never have. We therefore have an opening.” She says. “George has recommended you as his replacement, and George knows poetry. If you wish to remain in this industry I can jam my foot in the door and let you in.”
Williams loves George Russell like a mother - undeserving and unconditional. Williams loves Alex like a nephew. He will never be theirs, even as they dote on him, even as they show him loyalty. He will never look elsewhere when he is with them, but their eyes are firmly somewhere else - on the son that they allowed to stray. It's like they think that when George gets hungry enough, he will return home, the prodigal son with his big Mercedes books and his big Mercedes billboards.
Alex can't compete.
He keeps being put in positions that he believes are unfair. Baby fledgeling poet Alex is next to Max Verstappen, of course the other guy looks taller. Then, Alex is compared to George Russell, who will always be soaring in comparison. George has Mercedes budget and he has Mercedes levels of trauma to fuel his artistry - George gets the shitty dad and George gets the siblings and George gets a hundred things that everyone is okay for him to base his art off of.
Alex has always been unwilling to create off the back of things like his mother being imprisoned for a bit. He will turn over every corner of his own soul if it makes the ink run better, wetter across the page, but he will not use other people’s heartstrings to tie neater bows onto his collections. The greats don’t have the same boundaries. He tries to choke down his jealousy, like his career has been priming him for. And maybe he learns to. He watches George be eroded by Mercedes, watches George’s poetry fragment between a thousand stresses that he cannot publish.
George Russell:
think this poetry might not be what the label wants lmaooooo
[a photo.
Come, poet, write your mind in scraps of paper
dissect your anatomy for us, live!
We won’t love you for it
and we won’t praise you for it
so go, monkey, dance for us!]
[a photo.
Compare yourself to a thousand betters
and ask why you come off worse.
Surround yourself with the greats and query
why you can’t seem to be good
enough for them or enough for yourself.]
Alex Albon:
oh, georgie
They keep up their habits of shopping together, first in the period where they live together, and then when George moves out, they maintain the routine. It’s always less fast than if they did it alone, because George will wax lyrical until they find the right brand of yoghurt and Alex has his own diva-isms, refusing to leave an aisle until they get everything from it even if it means pacing it many more times than it would require to just trek back through the shop at the end. Nevertheless, they do it. Together has always been less daunting than alone, and Alex will always be at home when he is with George.
He retakes to writing in his little coded way, half nature metaphors that mean something unnatural, half unnatural metaphors that mean something natural. He throws himself in with fervour and accepts that Williams will always accept him but will never love him. George got Williams at their unconditional, and Alex got Williams at their retrospective. They will always be mourning the boy that they lost, and Alex will always be just the wrong side of similar.
Alex Albon: Overconsumed
swallow down the bitter things
they will digest you if you let them
chew on the tart flavour of pineapple
and choke it down swiftly.
you never did well with consumption
always wished for more and less
always wanted more from those
who you found your home inside
and always wanted less of the world
that sought to tear you from your
partners’ arms. and you don’t know
how to coexist without the shadow
of another to cast some shade
in which you can finally grow
so swallow your bitterness
and accept this world now.
Alex puts down his pen. He knows that one day, maybe, they will appreciate him, and one day, his name will be entangled with George’s as his inspiration. One day, the world will understand this thing that is Alex-and-George even if they call it George-and-Alex.
Jealousy is a difficult thing to hold onto when the other guy deserves it more. When George gets his first best seller, it’s Alex he goes out for drinks with. When Kimi and Ollie invite George for drinks, later, it’s Alex that George calls. There comes a point when Alex hangs up his jealousy with the rest of his sacrificed things.
One day the world will recall them both, and that will be enough for Alex.