#oatflatscribbles

hope you're having a good day 💙

'George I can't, you have to—I can't, I can't—'

Alex is—there's no other word for it—writhing on the sofa, eyes screwed shut and his fingers dug deep into the fleshy parts of his thighs like he's trying to stop them from grabbing something—from grabbing George, apparently, who'd gotten a text from Alex twenty minutes ago that just read need you and made his heart feel like it was going to beat all the way out of his throat.

Of course Alex hadn't meant need you in the way George wanted him to, is in fact out of his mind with some sort of pollen, or curse, something that has him craving George but that is very much not real. Which is—fine, okay, George can deal with it, he can have sex with his best friend to work the curse out of his system and not think about how it will break him apart to do it, feeling the way he feels and knowing Alex will never feel the same.

'No, Georgie,' Alex is saying, as George comes closer to straddle his thighs—then falls silent, still, George watching for the way Alex's eyes fly open, glassy with love magic, looking at George the way he's always wanted Alex to look at him—like there's nothing else in the world worth looking at.

alex albon, "revelation"

It hits Alex somewhere between another two Q1 exits, having to smile for media afterwards and keep on regurgitating the same party line: the car's not where we want it to be, but the team will give everything to get it there. Believe it or not he used to have faith in that spiel, in James' great Williams project, the rebirth of one of Formula 1's most historic racing teams after years of mediocrity. It helped that James believed in it too, and George, and every face he knew in the garage and every one he didn't; last year proved they were getting somewhere, finally, and P5 was just the start of that promised dream.

Now Alex sits in a car more than a second off the pace; attends panicked engineering debriefs he wishes he could tune out with his headphones; lies beside Lily in bed and tries not to shake apart at the realisation, the final revelation, that the car won't get better, at least not in the years Alex has left in F1; that he'll never step onto the podium in a white racing suit let alone chase the even more distant dream of a championship. It hits Alex, and hollows out something inside his chest that he'd been keeping safe and warm for the possibility, for the kind of career George and Lando look set on having, multiple WDCs between them—and it isn't fair to that boy who karted like it was in his blood, for whom racing felt more like breathing, who Lando had a poster of up on his wall—but if Alex has learned anything over the last 30 years it's that nothing in life is ever really fair, and that's not a revelation at all; it's just the way it is.

He’ll look at George the way he’s doing now; eyes heavy, half-lidded, who the fuck cares if he’s giving a guy the once over, he’s Max Verstappen, he’ll survive the nuclear apocalypse along with the cockroaches in George’s flat in Brackley and Helmet fucking Marko.

alex wishes on a shooting star for things to be "better" and wakes up in an alternate universe where he and george are together :) have a pre-wish snippet (which was written pre-japan lol, so will need to update it if i ever want to finish this)

The season wasn’t going how anyone wanted it to, except maybe Merc and Ferrari. After the tail end of last year Alex had really thought it couldn’t get any worse, and then JV had presented them with an overweight tractor of a car. Alex wasn’t too proud to admit he locked himself in a loo stall to cry after his first proper session in it, which was depressing in itself because the loos on the Bahrain circuit are lifeless cubicle things with fluorescents that make Alex’s skin look pallid. To make it worse, Alex should’ve been happy, was engaged to Lily finally and looked to be entering thirty on a high. The car really put a damper on things but Alex had driven worse, probably, and then of course there was the year he hadn’t driven at all. 2026 was nothing compared to that. 2026 Alex was engaged to be married and crying in a Bahrain toilet was just a little blip in the calm radar of his life. Alex told himself this in Melbourne, clawing for a place that wasn’t last. Alex told himself this in Shanghai, boosting himself from the cockpit when it became clear the car was completely fucked this time and actually, he wouldn’t be racing at all. He told himself this when Carlos dragged the car into their first points of the season, like that wasn’t the bitterest pill of them all. He and Lily flew back to Monaco, where Alex had another cry in the tiny plane toilet. They weren’t staying long, were due in England for Alex’s birthday before heading straight to Japan. Lily took him out to dinner, then dancing, and in the pulsing heartbeat of the club Alex had seen George with Carmen. They were at the bar, perched on spindly, uncomfortable stools, drinking from spindly, uncomfortable glasses like any minute now Vogue was going to swoop in on their space for an exclusive. George had that happy glow about him he got when he was winning, like you couldn’t even touch him he was that far out in front of you, even if he wasn’t. It had been few and far between since they’d moved up to F1, but Alex had never forgotten it.

George has to be doing it deliberately, draping himself over the pool table to make a shot he could just as easily take from the other side without needing to stick his arse out. Alex necks his beer so he won't have to see George's hands wrapped around the cue. As it is, George doesn't really need to work to distract Alex, who is already losing abysmally, pool very much not his game—only he'd creamed George at darts earlier, had maybe, maybe played his own version of dirty and licked his lips before taking each shot.

George sinks the ball—his last—and smiles at Alex, propping his cue behind his shoulders like some douchey gym bro, a pose which unfortunately is really, really working for Alex. 'Another game, Albono?' he asks, grinning like he already knows Alex's answer—a grin which only grows wider as Alex manhandles him into the bathroom.

wahh ok!! george just be yapping truly but here's a recent para:

this is a wip i haven't touched in a few days but want to get back to. ostensibly it's gax but eventually it's going to be gax ABOUT galex, yknow?

He and Max don’t do sleepovers, and they certainly don’t do house calls. George can count on one hand the number of times they’ve kissed, maybe, because Max is always too infuriating and George is always too impatient. It stays on the track, in motorhomes and hotel rooms, where George can tell himself every time that this is the last time, except that kind of loses its sting when you’ve said it five times already. He and Max are friendly—well, friendlier—on camera and the only messages in their text chain are room numbers, and George is more than happy never to see Max Verstappen outside of a race weekend, except. Well. Maybe if George was better prepared for this, he’d have some idea what to do when he wakes up naked in Max’s bed with a cat kneading its paws into his chest.

technically this is also only 6 sentences but [shrug emoji]

my sole maxiel wip <3 started it right after suzuka so it's going more and more out of date the longer i leave it. but basically it's daniel texting max after suzuka for the first time in ages and then they start to talk again and things are weird with max and kelly already and. yeah.

But Daniel watched Suzuka. The evidence is here, on Max’s phone. He heart-reacts the message by accident, his thumb hovering too close to the screen and leaving behind an oily fingerprint Max wipes off with his shirt. Then, well, it’s too late to pretend it didn’t happen, even if Daniel probably wouldn’t notice either way if Max removed the react, if he removed it and replaced it with the angry emoji face, if he left the message thread without replying altogether because Daniel’s life is so far beyond F1 now Max wonders if he’s even a blip in the rearview, or if Daniel has sped far enough down the road to leave Max in the dust along with everything else.