poli

None of the Lindblads seem to be home yet, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped Liam before. They shouldn’t have given him a key if they hadn’t been expecting him to use it. He still leaves his trainers on the shoe rack by the back entrance just in case, though. That’s enough of a message. And also he has manners. 

He could realistically make the way to Arvid’s room with his eyes closed for how much he’s done it this past year, but he still takes his time watching the cringey pictures on the walls on his way down because he could never realistically get tired of Arvid’s pimpled preteen face plastered everywhere the three story house. 

The door is open when he gets there, the ‘Keep out’ sign that’s stuck to the wood just above the handle hanging by its dear life with the decade old tape that threatens to fall once and for all as Liam passes it, but ultimately doesn’t. 

That tape alone is stronger than most of Liam’s relationships, that’s for sure. 

The light streaming from the highrise windows is strong enough that he doesn’t bother turning on the lights before he throws himself at Arvid’s bed, getting engulfed by the heavy comforter because neither of the Lindblad's kids ever make their beds as far as he knows. 

Liam doesn’t really mean to fall asleep. He does anyway. 

Next he knows, Arvid’s shaking him awake way harder than what’s called for. He’s also saying something that Liam’s mind can’t comprehend just yet. 

“Mate,” Liam deadpans, feeling up his head just to check and yep, all his hairs are in fact standing up and making a game out of how many directions they can point to at once. 

The blurry silhouette that is Arvid right now has his arms crossed, staring down at Liam like he’s killed the dog Arvid doesn’t even have. “Out the bed. Now,” he says, and yeah maybe Liam can vaguely remember him saying that a couple other times in the past five minutes. Not that it matters.

“Jesus, I get it,” Liam says, hands up in surrender as he makes no move to actually get off the bed, blinking himself awake. 

Arvid scoffs, arms still firmly crossed – except Liam’s vision isn’t as blurry anymore so he can now see the amusement in his friend’s face too. Still, Arvid says: “You know I hate outside clothes on the bed, mate. You could’ve at least taken them out.”

“If you want me naked in your bed you could’ve just said so,” Liam laughs, winking at him until Arvid gives him enough of a bad look that he scoots to the corner of the bed and stands up.

“Sod off, mate,” Arvid rolls his eyes, laughing too now. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Dunno. House was crowded,” Liam shrugs, dropping down to the carpet so he can lay down there instead. The new angle makes Arvid look funny, so he laughs again. 

Arvid kicks at his shins. “You high or somethin’?”

“Nah, I wish. My sister nicked my stash,” Liam kicks him back, only being able to reach the bottom of his shin from the awkward angle. Arvid doesn’t seem to even feel it.

Still, Arvid kicks him again as he walks by, this time to the ribcage, earning himself a grunt out of Liam that he wholly ignores. “Which of them?” he asks behind his back, roaming his closet before he decides on some sweats and t-shirt combo for himself and, yup, for Liam too. 

“Beats me, mate. They’re all always nicking my shit,” Liam grumbles barely coherent as he reaches to grab mid-air the clothes Arvid throws at him. “What matters is that it’s gone, and I can’t just complain about my weed being stolen to my mum, so yeah. I’m avoiding all of them for now.”

“That bad, huh?” Arvid looks behind his back to offer a pitying face, turning back to his closet as he starts changing into his comfortable clothes. “Sorry mate. You can stay over if you want to.”

“I was kind of already planning to anyway,” Liam quips, not really joking even though there’s humor in his tone. 

He hasn’t realized he’d been staring so hard at the way Arvid’s back muscles move while he changes until Arvid looks behind his back again and catches him mid-stare. The way he raises his eyebrow is enough incentive for Liam to look away and bother himself with changing out of his own clothes. 

Arvid doesn’t say anything back, but it’s not like he really needs to. They’ve done this dance enough times by now. 

He doesn’t look at Liam for more than a second when he accidentally catches him mid shirt-swap too, eyes switching to any and every other part of his room until they’re both fully clothed and their ‘outside clothes’ are piled on top of each other in a corner of Arvid’s room that may have more of Liam’s clothes than his own wardrobe does. 

Oh well. 

They don’t talk about it, like they don’t talk about how Liam’s been staying more at his house than on his own, and how his párents haven’t called the home line once even though Arvid’s mom made sure to give Kristy Lawson the number when they met a whole year ago. 

There’s a lot they don’t talk about. 

There’s a lot they maybe should. 

“I’m starving, mate,” is what Liam says, instead. “That’s how you treat house guests?”

Arvid laughs, shoulders sagging. Liam hadn’t realized he was holding himself so tight. “Fuck off,” Arvid pushes at him, both of them stumbling as they make their way to the basement stairs. 

Liam shoves him back. They laugh. 

“I’ve never…” Max trails off, the end of his sentence hanging in the air like its particles could fill the oxygen of the entire room. He can feel the words he hasn’t said hanging down on him, pulling and pulling until all he can feel is the weight of his bones. They’re heavy. 

“It’s fine,” Alex responds, like he doesn’t feel how the entire room has shifted too. “Are you sure you’re into men?”

“I’m not a fag if that’s what you’re implying,” Max says, too fast. His hands are sweating. The room is as heavy as his bones. 

Alex scoffs under his breath, breaking eye contact from him for once. He looks around the hotel room around them, Max’s clothes everywhere, and he doesn’t make a remark about how suffocating it feels there. It’s all around him and he doesn’t notice.

“Jesus,” he says after a couple more beats, looking back at Max. “Nothing wrong with being a fag, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Yes, you did,” Alex says pointedly. He doesn’t immediately follow it up with anything, but Max doesn’t know what to say either. The silence hangs around them along with the words Max won’t, can’t say. Then Alex stands up, patting his knees, “Alrighty then. I will be on my wa-”

“No,” Max says, too fast again. Desperate. “I mean, I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. I swear.”

“You’d think so, considering you invited me here to fuck you,” Alex scoffs again, no humor there. Max can feel his face immediately heat up, feverish all of a sudden. “Pretty faggy of you, if you’re asking me.”

“Alex, I-” Max starts, then can’t find more words that he hasn’t already lost to the air. There’s nothing he can really say. He kind of wants to punch Alex in the face. 

Alex just watches him, unmoving and unimpressed. His hands are on his pockets, fingers making indents on his joggers closer to his crotch that Max keeps looking at without meaning to. 

“You know, when I learned I’d be the teammate of the Great Max Verstappen I imagined you’d have more bollocks, mate,” Alex laughs, properly now, still watching him. It’s easy then, for Max to let his hands ball into fists – sweat squished between his digits, pushed under his fingernails the harder he squeezes his hands. “Chill, Max. It’s fine. I’m not trying to push an agenda on you or anything. So you’re curious, big fucking deal. I don’t actually care, mate.”

Max looks up from the carpet. He doesn’t remember when he started looking there in the first place. “You don’t?” 

“Nah. I get it, you found out I’m bi, you’re intrigued, it happens. More frequently than you’d think, really,” Alex shrugs, taking a step closer. There’s still so much room between them. “I still don’t think we should fuck, though-”

“But you said-”

“I know what I said. That was before I learned that you had never been with a guy before. Or that you’d be so freaked about this, no offense.”

“You know saying ‘no offense’ doesn’t make it any less offensive, right?”

“Yeah, but you did call me a fag so-”

“I didn’t call you a fag. I said-”

“I remember what you said. I was there. It happened like 5 minutes ago,” Alex laughs again, not exactly humorless but not far from it. “I am one though. A fag. And you shouldn’t be saying it if you’re not, by the way.”

“I don’t know if I’m not-”

“Exactly. Which is why I won’t be fucking you today,” Alex says, and Max has already opened his mouth to complain, protest, beg, when Alex continues: “but, I will help you figure out if you might be into blokes. Sound good?”

“And by that you mean…” Max lets more of his words hang in the open space, making a novel out of the stilled air of his hotel room. More unfinished sentences and he’ll be leaving a dictionary behind in this suite. 

“Just sit down, will you?” Alex points to the edge of the bed, crossing more of the room. Max watches as Alex dumps some of his clothes to the carpet, the used Red Bull merch finding the rest of Max’s unpacked clothes on the hotel floor. Then Alex positions the now-freed chair in front of where he’d pointed for Max to sit – and Max only does as he was told when he watches Alex do the same ahead of him. 

For a couple beats they just stay like this; seated facing each other, quiet, words hanging around them like a sea of insufficient sentences, weighing them down until they’re on the floor along all of Max’s clothes. 

“What now?” Max asks after another minute has passed and Alex has neither said nor done nothing else. 

“Fuck, okay. I’m really doing this,” Alex half groans half mumbles, barely compressible and seemingly to himself, and then he’s grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head, tossing it to the bed beside where Max sits. 

Max doesn’t think he’s ever seen Alex shirtless before now. 

He’s tan all over, skinny everywhere he can afford to. His nipples are hard, cold maybe, and dark brown like his lips. He’s not so much defined as he is strong, muscles in full view everywhere Max can see. 

He’s hot. Objectively. Not his type, maybe, but Max doesn’t know what that would be either. He hasn’t seen many naked men – or, he’s seen, but he’s never really stopped to think what he thought about them before, if anything at all. 

Everything is very new. 

“Your turn,” Alex says, voice even. Max looks up to gather a reaction from him and sees that Alex has been watching the way Max’s eyes roamed the entire time. 

Max doesn’t really want to do it – take his shirt off, that is. He doesn’t like looking at himself naked in the mirror, and he hasn’t even seen as many manly chests as Alex has if he’s really bissexual like he says. 

But Alex is watching him, expecting something. 

Max wants to say that he doesn’t feel like it, say that he’s not that great to look at anyway – but can’t, because he’s lost all his words to the air. 

So he just takes the fucking shirt off. 

“Good, that’s good,” Alex nods, and Max doesn’t look at his face because he doesn’t want to find him looking back. He has the urge to hold his body closer and then doesn’t. He has too many urges all the time. “You’re hot, Max. I like your tits,” Max feels the want to punch him again, or maybe run and hide. He does neither. “Do you like how I look?”

That prompts Max to look again, maybe to look for an answer or maybe to run from the one he already has. He has to force his eyes to look back up to Alex’s face to say: “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Alex laughs wholeheartedly now, like Max actually meant to make a joke. His torso spasms with the force of it and it highlights his muscles. It’s hot. 

“You’re such a weird guy sometimes, mate,” Alex says, and Max would take offense to it if he hadn’t said it so lightly, like it was a compliment instead. “Continue bantering with me, I need to get hard-”

“Wow. Wait. What?” Max’s eyes go wide, voice cracking as he tries to speak. He feels his face grow hotter, feverish down to his neck and shoulders. 

“Yeah, well, you’re clearly already there,” Alex nods in the direction of Max’s cock, and just as he looks down his own lap he notices that he’s leaked precum through his jeans. He doesn’t even recall getting hard. 

“I’m not- I didn’t- Fuck. You’re such a perv anyway. I bet you’re just doing this to humiliate me, because I’m younger-”

“No one actually cares that you’re younger, mate. You’re Max Verstappen. I don’t think people even know I’m older than you,” Alex laughs again, entertained. “Now tell me Max, is your name the only thing that’s great or are you-”

“Oh my god,” Max says exasperated, feeling out of air. Alex is taking so much of the room he feels like he’s breathing down his own words, gasping them down his chest like they’ve never left in the first place. “Who says I’m even great anyway?”

“Everyone,” Alex dismisses like it’s obvious. Max looks up at him and Alex’s eyes are everywhere, trailing down Max’s chest and neck and the spot that only grows larger on his trousers. “Is your cock big? I want to see.”

Max wants to tell him to fuck off in all the languages he knows, to grab him and drag him to the balcony and drop him from the 12th floor they’re at.  He wants to call Helmut Marko and tell him he won’t race again if Alex isn’t dropped from the team, even if he technically doesn't need to. 

He wants to go under the bed and hide forever. 

He doesn’t do any of it, maybe because Alex has started palming his own cock, squeezing the base through his joggers, willing the blood to pump through his veins until his size starts getting visible through his clothes. 

It’s easy not to think of anything else, then. 

“Alright, ‘m ready,” Alex says, like Max had asked him anything. He doesn’t announce or ask for permission before he’s dragging his joggers and pants to his mid thigh and exposing his cock, getting a hand around himself that has him relaxing against the office chair, sagging against the arms until the only thing holding him up is his hooded eyes aimed at Max. He doesn’t move his hand yet, waiting. “Do you need to be prompted every time? C’mon. I want to see too, mate.”

Max doesn’t tell him anything back because he can’t think. He can’t bother with opening his jeans, dragging them as far down as they will go while closed, just enough to spring his cock free. 

He lets it hang there, untouched, leaking into the top of his thigh. 

“Fuck, you’re wet as a pussy right now,” Alex says, exasperated for the first time, and then he’s moving his hand. 

Max can only watch him, entranced – watch how Alex’s large hands fold around himself, pulling up from the base until his foreskin is covering his tip and then dragging it back down, slowly and lazily and not at all how Max would do it. 

“Fuck, I-”

“He speaks,” Alex celebrates, mockingly. Hand lazily stroking his cock, up and down. “Didn’t take you for such a sub, you know?”

“I’m not-” Max starts, offended, and then backs down. “What even is a sub?”

“What you are,” Alex says humorously, like it's obvious. Precum starts leaking from his tip and Max can’t look away from it, can’t stop thinking of how much less there is compared to the pool of it already gathering at his own hip. Then Alex adds: “You’re a submissive little bitch, aren’t you Max?”

It snaps Max right off, anger taking hold of him fast enough that he’s about to stand up and beat Alex up, for real this time, if the moan that escapes his own hadn’t been faster – the sound sudden and completely unprompted, making Max blush even harder, if possible, and prompting Alex to bark yet another laugh.

“Take your fingers and gather some of that precum for me,” Alex nods to where Max’s precum pools, hand squeezing the base of his cock before it moves up his tip again, slow as ever. Max does so, even if he doesn’t really know why. His precum is leaking from his index and middle finger when he looks up at Alex again, meeting his eyes. They’re all pupil. “Now lick it.”

He’s never tasted precum before, but he thought it’d have more of a significant taste. It’s salty, if a little musky, but the taste doesn’t make much of a lasting impression as Max brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks on them, still looking at Alex. 

Alex finally picks up some of his pace. Max still hasn’t touched himself. 

“Are you really not going to have a wank?” Alex teases, almost belittling in the way he says it. “Afraid you’ll cum if you touch yourself?”

Max nods. He hates himself for it and wishes he hadn’t swallowed all his words back, had left some of them hanging in the air so he could find some and conjure them and tell Alex to fuck off and kill himself or something just as called for. 

Instead he leaks more onto his lap, the taste of his precum sticking to his gums while he watches Alex rub one out in front of him. 

“I don’t really care, you know. You should still do it,” Alex says, no, orders. So Max does. 

It’s immediately all so much. He’s too wet, the slide is too slick. It feels too good, too much. He’s curious if cum will taste the same and he’s curious if Alex’s taste is the same and Alex is still so slow with it, and he could never be like that. Max is always fast, it’s no wonder he’s Great and all. 

He’s not so much surprised that he cums as much as he is terrified by how loud he moans at it, vision blacking out as his sperm colors his fist, knowing in his gut that Alex hasn’t taken his eyes off him the entire time. 

He doesn’t let his weight give out as much as he can’t stop it from doing so. 

The ceiling is the first thing Max sees when his vision comes back, distorted as it is. He breathes in through his nose and out his mouth and doesn’t taste all the words he could swear were there before. 

He sits up, as much as he can, because as far as he knows Alex hasn’t finished yet and he doesn’t want to miss that happening, even if he’s scared of how he’ll find Alex looking at him when he does. 

Except when his vision does focus and he can mostly wrap his head around what’s happening again, Alex’s already pulling his pants up, standing and walking towards Max so he can grab the shirt he tossed beside him. 

“Oh shit, did you finish too?” Max says, voice coming off more ragged than he expected it to. 

“Nah, mate,” Alex shrugs, turning his shirts the right side out before he puts it on. “It always takes me a while, it’s fine. You were really hot, though.”

Max suddenly feels very, very awkward. “Oh. Okay. Should I, like… I don’t know? Help?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex brushes it off, palming down his shirt so it doesn’t look too wrinkly on his body. “Look, you were great. This wasn’t really about me, mate. If you’re still into it some other time, I’m open to fucking you. Just let me know,” Alex pats his knee like they’ve just had a conversation that normal people have, and not done what they did. 

Max can’t tell if any of this is really happening as much as he can’t tell if he’s more mortified or aroused by everything that unfolded. 

He’s about to say something, he wants to say something. It’s on the tip of his tongue actually, something like thank you or fuck off and he hasn’t lost the words to the air, not at all, he really will say them.

Except Alex leaves before he can. 

All that’s left is the confusion, guilt, shame and arousal in his gut, in the air. Max considers never leaving this room again, ever in his life. He thinks of how he was stupid enough to let someone in like this, let them see the Great Max Verstappen so weak and so less.

He thinks he’ll have to kill Albon for it, that maybe he really hates him. That Alex will forever have something over him now, and there’s nothing he can do about it. 

That he’ll never be Great again. 

But then again, Alex is leaving Red Bull at the end of the season, even if he doesn’t know that yet.  

But Max does, because Kelmut’s told him. 

So Alex can think all he wants about him; that’s he’s pathetic or a sub or a fucking fag or whatever it was that he said before. A bitch. Whatever. He’s leaving Red Bull anyway.