#sq.fic

“Of course you’d bring him into this. Did you go back to Sardinia for the weekend?”

Max’s grin, inexplicably, disappears. “No, fuck off.”

George looks a little taken aback, hurt, eyes impossibly wider. “What did I say? Now your boat next to his is too personal?”

“Of course not,” Max says, face red either from the heat or something else entirely, “but that is just not what happened last weekend, okay?”

George opens his mouth, then, uncharacteristically, closes it again. Oscar looks between them, a little worried now. He’s pretty sure they were both enjoying this a minute ago. He’s spent enough time in the middle to recognise the difference.

“Guys,” he says, and then when their eyes snap to him, he panics. “Um. D’you think the stewards will say anything about Lando?”

Max’s forehead creases. He’s looking at Oscar like he’s stupid, which is fine, because at least he isn’t looking at George with unhappiness and murder in his eyes anymore. “They didn’t even note it,” he says. “If they have not now they will never change their minds, you know this.”

“Right. Red Bull not appealing it, then?” he asks, because Canada was more fun than murder fuel.  

George purses his lips, just like he does when he’s about to say something reckless on live TV. Oscar tries to keep in his smile. “They’d have to find a way to pass the bribe off as catering.”

“I of course don’t know what you’re talking about,” Max says, flat, and Oscar imagines the Red Bull going up to his lips, hiding his mouth as he stares George down like he’s a reporter. 

“Absolutely not, mate,” he agrees, grinning at George. “Nothing to see here.”

Max laughs like he’s been holding onto it, eyes turning into crinkly moons, and Oscar’s heart does something odd and fluttery. 

“Fuck,” he says, to take the edge off the feeling. “D’you think they’ll ever let us out?” 

“Dunno,” George says succinctly, “but I’m boiling here.” He’s opening the collar and shrugging his shoulders out of his race suit as he speaks, and Max laughs again.

“Of course you are taking your clothes off already,” he says, eyes fixed on the exposed cooling tubes on George’s fireproofs. Once he starts looking, Oscar finds that he’s having the same problem. He tears his eyes away, only to find George frowning at Max.

“I’ve been wearing it done up since quali,” he points out. “You changed.”

Max did. The arms of his race suit are splayed out on the lift floor, his special edition Red Bull shirt clinging damply to his chest. Oscar’s starting to feel hot around the collar.

“Yes, but I am not the one putting my tits out on Instagram.” Max’s cheeks are still stubbornly pink. Oscar can’t imagine he’s doing much better.

“That’s not even—hang on, hang on,” George says, fumbling for his phone. He’s exposing a sliver of his abs. “Ah, sugar. No signal.” 

“Obviously there is no signal, that’s why we’re here,” Max snaps, and Jesus Christ, the blush is creeping down his neck and Oscar’s not strong enough for this. “What are you trying to do, anyway? Post a video of you stripping in this lift?”

“Yes, because you’d like to see that, wouldn’t you.” George drops his phone to the floor, hands neatly on his thighs. 

Max inhales sharply, nostrils flaring. Oscar watches, helplessly fascinated, as he crosses his arms. His biceps bulge. “Yes. I would.”

George’s mouth drops open, eyes bugging out of his head. He stares at Max for one beat, two, three, and then his eyes fly to Oscar. “Um.”

Oscar doesn’t say anything. His heart’s hammering against his ribs, maybe even up in the 60s. He can’t remember if this watch is logged in or not. He won’t be able to explain this to Artturi. 

It feels real. Not real. Oscar can’t tell anymore. He could wake up with a banana in Baku and believe this was all a dream, it’s that weird. The heat feels real, if nothing else, the stuffy air and sweat that hasn’t had a chance to dry.

George swallows. “Fuck. Bit of a jam, huh?” he says, looking somewhere between nervous laughter and taking his top off.

“Well?” Max demands. Oscar swallows, anything he might say suddenly stuck in his throat. 

“No,” George decides, smiling with his teeth. “I beat you, remember? Maybe you should be the one stripping.”

What the fuck, Oscar thinks. 

Max’s hands twitch. Arms crossed like that, Oscar can see it, long fingers gripping the hem of his shirt to pull it over his head. Max shakes his head, stubborn. “No. It’s just pole.”

“It’s two tenths,” George snaps, and then, slowly, their heads turn. Oscar feels time go sideways. 

“Two tenths,” Max breathes.

“Four tenths.” 

Three point seven six, actually, Oscar wants to snap, but that’s so not the point here, is it. “Sure,” he says, casual, heart in his throat, and drags off the ice vest that stopped keeping him cool long ago. 

“What the fuck, mate,” Max complains, and George just groans. “Not fair.”

Oscar shrugs, holding in a grin. Three can play at that game. “Takes more than that to get my shirt off.”

“Like what?” Max leans in, and if Oscar didn’t know better he’d say Max was interested, not just trying to pass time in a stuck lift or one-up George. “Dinner?”

“No, hang on.” George catches Max’s hand where it was just about to touch Oscar’s knee, what the fuck. “If anyone’s taking Oscar out to dinner, it’s me.” Max opens his mouth to protest. “I know better restaurants.”

“Meal plan?” 

“Negotiable.”

“Monday?”

“If you fly me home.”

“Deal. You book, I’ll pay. Nothing French.” 

George nods, serious, and then deigns to look at Oscar, who’s seriously unsure about what just happened. “Okay?”

“Um… Yeah?” Oscar says tentatively, because on the off-chance that he was just invited out to dinner with both George and Max, he’s definitely not saying no. 

“Great. You’ll be in Monaco on time?” Max does reach his knee this time, squeezing it. Oscar’s barely adjusted to that when George’s hand lands on his trap, a burning brand through his shoulder. “Oscar?”

He blinks at Max. “What?”

“Monday. You have a flight?”

Oscar tries to think about it. Monday. Dinner. Monaco. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” 

Max shrugs. “I have space if you want it.” 

“Great, that’s sorted,” George says in his literal GPDA voice.

Oscar stares between them.

“What the fuck?” he asks, breathless. There’s an awful beat of silence, just long enough for Oscar to contemplate drowning himself in his ice bath, and then the lift echoes with laughter.

“Yeah,” Max agrees.

“Not too sure myself, mate,” George adds between laughs. “If someone dies, blame Max.”

Max scoffs. “He was probably a serial killer in another life, and anyway I would not kill anyone on a first date.”

“You’d just wait for the second?” Oscar feels himself blush when Max laughs, loud and real, and then realises—“Date?”

Max stops laughing. They stare at each other, daring the silence to end, and then Max scrambles closer, knees poking into Oscar’s hips as he straddles him, and says, “Date.”

Actually, George has been feeling like he’s coughing up a lung for a couple of days now, but at this exact moment, he’s really not feeling well.

On a more positive note, he isn’t coughing up a lung anymore! No, he’s coughing up hairballs, because he’s a fucking cat.

He tries to paw at his phone, to do literally anything about this situation, and he can’t, because his phone operates on Face ID and/or a beautifully complex swipe code that his cat paws simply can’t operate. 

Alex’s cats made it look so easy.

Alex. Now there’s a thought. If there’s one person who he can explain his situation to without speaking and blackmail into never mentioning it to anyone else, it’s Alex.

He gets out into the paddock without too much trouble, shaking himself away from all the people saying oh, look, a cat! and here, kitty! and psss, psss, psss. 

It’s surprisingly easy to find the Williams motorhome, and he makes a few rounds, rubbing up against the legs of the people he recognises, the people he built a points-scoring, no-longer-dead-last-in-the-constructors’ car with. 

After that, and after a moment’s thought, he simply plops down inside the door and begins to neatly brush his fur. He ignores that one itch down near his bum. He’s not grooming there in public, thank you very much.

Predictably, Alex appears within minutes, doubtless summoned by one of the many, many mechanics who know his reputation. George deigns to look up at him when he crouches down—he’s bloody tall, is Albono—but decides that there isn’t anything interesting coming his way and returns to his grooming. 

“Aren’t you lovely,” Alex murmurs, and the part of George that’s still 14 and looking up to a 16-year-old Alex Albon preens. 

The part of him that’s unconcerned cat doesn’t react. 

Large, warm hands slide around his belly, and then he’s being lifted high into the air and cradled to a nice-smelling Alex chest. When he looks out, it’s this view that looks odd, rather than the cat’s-eye view he’s been getting used to.

Maybe George doesn’t want to be human again. As a cat, he doesn’t find the idea of being a sick human in a roaring, fiery inferno of metal and carbon fibre particularly appealing. 

“Come here, sweetheart,” Alex says, cupping his head and protecting it from the loud noises all around him. George tucks his head into Alex’s chest and gets scritches in return. It’s an excellent deal.

He barely registers being walked away, out of the noise and into a room that’s quiet and smells entirely of Alex. Alex sits down, legs spread out, and deposits George into his lap.

It’s comfortable there. George is going to curl up and have a nap, thanks. 

Turns out he can purr.

“I’ve got to go, sweetheart,” Alex says, and it’s all the warning George gets before he’s lifted and unceremoniously dropped into the warm spot Alex was sitting in.

Well. Alex was very gentle about putting him down, really, but he’s also abandoning George so he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt!

Alex doesn’t react to George’s full-body, open-mouthed hiss, just runs a hand firmly down his whole body, just the way George likes it. 

“I won’t be long, promise.”

He’d better not be. George curls up grumpily, flicking his tail over his body to imply that he is not accepting further pets, and very nearly falls asleep again.

And then he realises that Alex has left his phone behind. 

Score. 

It’s quick work to turn it on, and Alex has a very simple four-digit pin that he changes once every two years if he changes it at all. It’s not hacking if Alex told him it, drunk in Monaco the week after the last change. Even in his cat brain, George knows this.

There isn’t really much he can do right now, like send a message, but Alex has a few iPhone games downloaded. George goes for Subway Surfers, because Alex has everything unlocked after that one incident with Lily. 

Turns out that he is, as a cat, still acceptable at this children’s game.

“I’m back!” Alex announces from the doorway. George doesn’t look up, which turns out to be the wrong decision because oh, what would he have given to see the face that went with that squeak. 

The door bangs shut, and then George has a large, hulking Albono crouched down very close to him and staring. 

“This isn’t normal,” he’s muttering. “It’s not normal for a cat to be on my phone, cats don’t play Subway Surfers, Sushi couldn’t play Subway Surfers, I’m probably delusional, there’s a magnet coming up—now I’m talking to the cat who’s playing Subway Surfers”—

He’s so distracting, actually, that George crashes, ending what was a damn good run, considering that George doesn’t currently have opposable thumbs. 

He meows his frustrations at Alex, who startles. 

“Good kitty?” he says tentatively, reaching out to brush his fingers along George’s head, and oh, that feels good. George throws caution to the winds and headbutts his hand, purrs erupting through his whole chest. “Oh. Good kitty. Very weird, very good kitty. I didn’t realise cats played Subway Surfers, my bad.”

George huffs. It comes out as a sneeze, one that makes him shake his whole body out to get rid of the feeling. At that point, he decides to step back, to look around the room and find a way to explain the situation to Alex.

A-ha! The latest George-poster-in-Williams is him doing his first ever T-pose—not very recent, but he’ll take it. He skids across the room to it, tilting his head to better assess.

He points. Alex laughs. “That’s Georgie,” he says fondly, proudly, and oh. It’s not what George was looking for, but it’s all he can do to stay where he is and not bowl himself straight into Alex’s lap. 

Instead, he lifts himself up as straight as he can go and stretches out his front paws in what he hopes is a passable imitation, given the restrictions of his current anatomy. Alex laughs again, strangled.

“Aren’t you clever,” he says, delighted, and walks over to him, looming like some kind of Thai giraffe. “How would you feel about a trip to England, old boy?”

George would feel amazing about that, but he does have a race to win first. Alex is so thick. 

He does the cat equivalent of a sigh, and then, resigned to his fate, recreates the failed somersault that Alex has never, ever let him forget. 

He’s splayed out on his back, belly exposed, when Alex kneels next to him, eyes wide. “George?” 

George meows.

Alex scoops him up, zero regard for personal space, congratulations, Albono, and drags him back to the couch. 

“George?” he repeats. George fixes him with a singularly unimpressed stare. “Yeah, sure, you’re the paddock cat. Makes sense. Always did know how to cause a stir, didn’t you?” 

George nips, gently, at his thumb. 

“Okay, then. Do you know how this happened?”

George shakes his head.

“Right. Or how to change back?”

That doesn’t even deserve a headshake.

“Yeah, yeah. Think we just have to wait this out, then?” Alex asks, and George is so grateful he has an Alex, because what other friend would immediately make it a we?

He sighs, cat-like, and settles himself more firmly into Alex’s lap, kneading impatiently when Alex doesn’t immediately start stroking him.