izzy

He’d just wanted a towel.

After an hour’s increasingly irate tramping about, only to end up in the same bloody fairy glen he started in, George throws up his hands. “Alright!” he tells the suspiciously present air, since nothing else has bothered to show its face. “I’m gay, fine. Big old queer. What, not enough for you? No prizes for self-knowledge? 

The glen is enigmatically silent.  

“Why, exactly, do I have to come out on your schedule, hmm? You don’t think it might be quite a personal decision?”

The glen is still silent, but George detects a hint of shamefacedness. Good. 

“Well, yes, I do admit there’s virtue in being a role model. And I can see the positives. Alright, so, maybe I said I’d do it before I turned thirty but that’s still several years-”

A crow caws his name. It is incredibly disconcerting. George has had a lot of therapy, industrial amounts in fact, but that doesn’t stop him jumping at an old childhood horror coming back to haunt him.

“Pretty bird?” George ventures tentatively. “Nice bird?”

And then the bloody thing comes out of the ancient woodland, sharp of beak and claw, and it’s fucking massive. 

“I am here to teach you the errors of your ways-” the crow caws. It is really horribly large, and George doesn’t like the way it keeps hopping towards him, little skipping steps accompanied by a flap of wings that, fully spread, blot out the landscape either side. More rainbows, too, in the iridescent sheen on its feathers, just to drive the point home. 

Still. This is the closest he’s going to get to addressing a manager. “Yes, yes, I need to Speak My Truth and Own My Story, message received, I’ll get on it. Can I wait until the end of the season at least? Or do I have to come out in Vegas for maximum effect?”

“Er, what?” the crow asks. It’s looking less crow-y, actually, more man-faced, dark beady eyes turning big and brown. 

“You might at least let me get a media strategy prepared, the PR team are going to be absolutely diabolical if I don’t give them at least a month-” 

The crow scratches its head. With its fingers, which it has now, at the end of an arm that seems much less winglike than it had a few seconds ago. Sort of a crow-man. “I’m here about the plastic.”

George blinks. The crow-man is pretty much entirely man when he opens his eyes. The razor beak is replaced by a grin that’s just as sharp. His hair looks a little feathery, maybe. Very soft.

“The plastic. I’m here to get rid of it and you reek of it.”

George sniffs twice. Once at the rudeness – reek, really –  and then again to get a whiff of himself and. Well, yes, he does have to concede, Silverstone has left him fairly pungent. He’d been on his way to the shower before the towel->linen closet->fae realm diversion. But, as in all things, accuracy matters.  “I reek of rubber. Rubber’s not a plastic.”

The crow-man tilts his head, temporarily confounded. “That’s true… but this is tyre rubber with synthetic compounds added, which I’m sure you know contributes highly to microplastics, so. Plastic.” George rolls his eyes, because he did know, actually, but that seems like a pointless technicality. Even if a pointless technicality is usually something he finds quite thrilling. Then the crow-man keeps going. “Pirelli C2 F1 tyre residue, to be precise – wait, why would you go onto the hard at Silverstone in the wet-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Twice?!”

“I don’t want to- look, do you want me to wash or something? Because I was on my way when-”

“And send all that microplastic into the oceans? No, no. It’s the clothes, they’ll have to go.” 

The crow-man is suddenly very close, grin wider than ever. He angles his face this way and that, and George has the sudden impression of his beak, sharp and wicked, nipping at his chin. “Any plastic in there?”

George gives that suggestion the frosty reception it deserves. “No.”

A cheeky shrug of wings, then the beak is back and plucking at his cardigan. 

“That’s cashmere!”

“And I’m not destroying it.”

“You ripped the arm off!”

“I facilitated its removal. But you’re right, I can’t eat this. Take your shirt off.” 

George does, even though it’s 100% cotton and he’s fairly sure they both know that. The crow-man does a little pantomime about it, prancing about on his long and honestly still quite talon-like feet as he tries to peck it up and only succeeds in shredding it apart. 

One of his funny hops later and he’s back in George’s space, leering at his chest. “Those have to be plastic,” he says of George’s pecs, breath hot against them. This time, when he leans in, it’s not a thin hard press of keratin assessing George’s flesh but a mouth, hot and sucking round his nipple and- look. George could get on board with some elements of this realm. 

“You are not a nice bird,” he gasps, appreciatively. 

But then – George shudders twice, and only the second time in horror – a hand slides into the front pocket of his chinos and finds the sunglasses there. 

It is absolutely not erotic when the crow-man folds them up and slides them down his gullet in one practised movement. He doesn’t even chew. 

George is speechless with- with rage, obviously. 

“Those were prescription!” he manages, eventually, even if technically his blue light guru has a PhD, not an MD. Still, once he’s started it’s easy to keep the indignation going and ignore the clench behind his navel. “That’s your plan for ridding the world of plastic, is it? Kidnap one human at a time, eat their clothes and then send them back? That’s not even their whole wardrobe! What about the microplastics? What about the ocean garbage patch, hmm? Ever thought of-”

He’s not even halfway into a good rant, putting all his thoughtful speech therapy pauses to maximum effect, when the crow-man groans in defeat. 

“Please shut up. It’s a line, it’s a line to get your clothes off, please shut up and take your clothes off, you’re my human and you’re ruining my very romantic kidnapping.”

“Your human?”

“Yes. You’re mine. Have been for ages. I was so good about waiting until you were old enough and you’ve got so annoying, please take your clothes off.”

George fixes the crow-man with a steely look and starts undoing his trousers. “I hope you’re learning a very valuable lesson about honesty here.” He shucks shoes, socks and chinos off in one. 

The crow-man nods fervently and leans in to kiss him, all human-mouthed again. George indulges for a few moments, before easing him away with a single hand on his chest. It feels like skin and downy feathers all at once. Bit odd, but he’s not opposed, really. When in fae Rome and all. But, manners: “What’s your name?”

“That’d be telling,” the crow man says, winking. It has the cadence of a joke. George is nonplussed. “Because… because of the fae rules? About names? And power? From the stories?”

With all the hauteur he can muster, which is not a great deal while mostly naked in a fairy glen and starting to chub up for an avian twunk, George replies: “I don’t read fairy stories. I read improving books.”

“Improving what?”

“Diet, mostly. Sometimes fitness.”

The crow-man’s eyes dip again. “Can’t argue with the results.” He reaches forward and drags his fingers across George’s abs. They feel like feathers; George shivers and barely manages to hold onto his principles. 

“Name first.”

“Why?” comes the cawback. 

“Well, do you want me moaning ‘dangerous crow boy whose job is to destroy plastic’ when you fuck me or do you have something shorter?”

The crow-man hesitates for three tenths of a second, then makes a noise patently impossible for a human throat. George files that thought away for later and focuses on how it sounds exactly the shifts for taking the last corner at Monza, fed through a Ferrari V10.

“But you can call me Alex,” he adds, grinning. 

George complies, at length. 

It is vaguely disconcerting, the way Alex’s form keeps slipping, sometimes both, sometimes neither, even when he’s inside George. But the wings really help him put terrific torque into his thrusts. 

After, he ends up nestled on a soft arm/wing, Alex’s beak combing through his curls. 

“So, what does it mean, the whole your human thing? Or have I just brained myself in a linen closet? Do I have to follow you around as you eat one Asos dress at a time? Do you work regular hours or is it seasonal?” 

“It’s not a job, I don’t have a job,” Alex says, disgusted. “It’s just good karma for me when I eat plastic.”

“Do you digest it?”

“Sort of. I shit oil.”

“You what?”

“Well, less shit- it’s more of a cloaca situation.”

“Oh,” George says faintly. They haven’t gotten around to that configuration yet. He’s confident, however, that he can rise to the occasion. 

“Best not to think about it too hard,” Alex coos. 

“Whatever you say, downshift-downshift-downshift-feather-the-break-foot-down-accelerate.” Underneath him, Alex’s wing tenses. “What, did I screw up the pronunciation?”

“Awfully,” Alex lies. “I don’t have to do anything you say. Deals only.” 

“Can I just give you something shiny and you’ll leave me alone?”

“I am not a magpie!” Alex protests. His hair fluffs up at the back when he’s put out, like a pigeon puffing its neck feathers. George refuses to be endeared by this and fails horribly. “...how shiny?”

George hesitates. “Better deal. I give you something shiny and you don’t leave me alone. But you have to promise not to eat my car. Any of my cars, but especially at the track.” 

Alex clucks softly against him. “What’s it made of?”

“Carbon fibre.”

“Carbon fibre what?”

George sighs. “Carbon fibre reinforced plastic.” 

Alex’s laugh echoes for miles around, like half a dozen birds are cawing back. “I’ll eat yours last, how’s that?”

George makes a strangled noise, glancing around the back of the truck they’re riding on as part of the drivers’ parade in China. There’s no one close enough to hear. Karun’s at the other end of the truck, interviewing Liam, and the rest of the drivers are clustered a little ways away.

“I was trying to put it a bit more subtly than that,” George mutters. “But yes.”

“No shame in it,” Alex says easily, waving to the fans. The grandstands are mostly packed with Ferrari caps, but he spots a few pieces of Williams merch here and there. “Lando’s had a cunt, what, five times?”

George scoffs.

“What?” Alex asks.

“Nothing, just”—George levels him with an unimpressed look—“cunt?”

Alex snorts. “Something else you’d prefer?”

George wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know, just—bit crude, isn’t it? Not very sexy.”

Alex’s stomach flips at the suggestion that George wants any of this to be sexy. Back in 2022, when Alex had woken up with a cunt on media day in Canada, the sex with George had been perfunctory at best. They’d both had girlfriends, and when George had turned up at Alex’s hotel room, they hadn’t even taken their shirts off, George fucking him from behind still dressed in his Mercedes team kit. 

Objectively, it hadn’t been hot. Alex hadn’t even come. But for weeks after, every time he got himself off, he couldn’t stop replaying the hitched moan George let out when he came, the sense memory of George’s fingers digging into his hips, the throb of George inside him as George pressed in deep, filling the condom.

Eventually, though, Alex had managed to forget about it. Mostly.

He tries to sound normal as he says, “Didn’t realize I was supposed to be aiming for sexy.”

“Well”–-George shrugs—“not sexy necessarily, but—cunt?”

“What?” Alex says, flushing. He’s used it plenty of times with girls, and they’d all seemed to like it well enough. “Never gotten any complaints.”

“Well,” George says, and leaves it at that, smiling and waving at the grandstands like he and Alex haven’t just been discussing George’s cunt, pussy, vagina, fanny, whatever the fuck George wants to call it.

George gets pulled into an interview not long after, and Alex watches him from the side. Alex’s eyes drift down to George’s trousers, almost like he’ll be able to see the evidence of what’s underneath. George’s crotch doesn’t look any different. Alex doesn’t know why he feels disappointed.

“So,” George says after the interview, “you’re up for it?”

Alex thinks about the long, slim lines of George’s body, the sharp planes of his stomach, the lean muscles of his thighs. And, at the center of it all, the soft, twitching heat of him, shiny and new.

Alex swallows, trying to stop picturing the space between George’s thighs. In his mind, it’s glistening and pink, so wet Alex can slide two fingers in straight away, watching himself disappear inside George. He can imagine the taste of him under his tongue, sharp and briny, like sucking the juice out of an oyster.

He doesn’t think he’ll be allowed any of that. He doesn’t know if he even wants it, really. If maybe it’s just the novelty of it, the same way he’d tried to fuck all sorts of different people when he was younger, just because he wanted to know what it was like. All the various ways sex could be. Girls his age and women two, sometimes three, decades older, a few blokes here and there, before he realized the risk if anyone found out.

As far as Alex knows, George doesn’t even like blokes. He’d told Alex to get on his hands and knees when they’d fucked in Montreal, and Alex had figured George didn’t want to see the stubble on his jaw, the sparse chest hairs poking out of his Williams shirt. From behind, it was easy for George to pretend he was nothing more than a cunt.

Alex reckons it’ll be the same with George. Quick, efficient, and then they’ll pretend it never happened until the next time one of them wakes up with a vagina. Which could be never, Alex knows.

The vast majority of people only have a sex swap once or twice in their lives. He’s always pitied Lando a bit for how often it happens to him, but now, he’s surprised to find he sort of envies it. It’s an excuse, at the very least. An excuse to have something none of them are really supposed to want in the first place.

Alex takes a steadying breath, and gives George a grin. “Yeah,” he says, relieved at how casual he sounds. “Reckon I should return the favor and all.”

George’s expression twists, something Alex can’t read flickering across it. Disappointment, maybe.