So @strawberry-daiquiris wrote an incredible F1 Traitors AU (seriously, go read it) and was kind enough to let me paddle around in the Galex end of the pool.
Many thanks to @latecomersprivilege, for whom this is a belated birthday gift, an almost on time Valentine's gift, and ultimately not what she asked for but what she's getting!
It’s a month since the last episode aired and George hasn’t messaged him.
Oh, he’s in the group chat - he’s the admin of the group chat. He’s posting memes, even the ones about himself, nearly every day. Asking very sincerely after people’s partners, their kids. Adding little crying laughing emojis to almost all the jokes. (Almost all - never Alex’s. Not even once. Which. Come on. Checo’s not even that funny.)
So. Yeah, it’d been bad, at the end, at their last round table together, George damp eyed and smiling through it and Alex nearly fumbling his own defence trying to tell him one more time “it’s just a game”.
But. Like. Not so bad as to cancel out everything else. Or at least, Alex had thought so. Hoped so.
It’s been a month.
Hey just wondering if we shd have a coffee or smthg? Clear the air?
Sure. When?
Nxt wk? Peckham?
(George told him all about his little flat in Dulwich, how he properly loved all the twee village-y shit like the wooden sign-posts and bougie cafes, in their murmured conversations in the hotel corridors, heads ducked together and voices low. Alex had taken the piss, but so softly he’d barely recognised his own cadence. That- that had been the first clue, before he’d started noticing how George’s adams apple bobbed when he got loud.
But Dulwich is packed to the brim with Traitors fans, has to be, all middle class mums and families that gather round the telly of an evening to actually spend time together. They’d be spotted in seconds. So Peckham feels safer, crowded and anonymous and too fucking cool to pay attention if Alex has to get on his knees and beg George to- to-)
The cafe’s still a bit posh, which means it’s basically deserted. George is wearing the kind of T-shirt that only fits that well because it’s expensive.
He’s ordered tea already, and Alex wants to remind him to drink up, like he did at breakfast every morning, because George would always get too into their conversation to finish before it got cold. He’d slug it back anyway, wincing, and Alex would pretend to ignore the line of his throat.
“I’m sorry you didn’t win,” George blurts. “I know I- I didn’t help, I know, but after, I did want it to be you. You’d worked so hard.”
Alex stares at him. “I never thought I would. Maybe near the end, a bit, but. Well. I got lucky.”
George pulls a face. “Come on, you were brilliant at it. So convincing. I really thought I’d find out you were, like, an actor or something.”
George smiles at that, small and tight. “Oh, yeah, the office have been so weird about it. Saying they didn't watch, and then making jokes that prove they did. I've stopped paying attention to it.”
Alex tries to laugh, like it’s a joke. Like he hadn’t talked George’s ear off about the practice. How he’d use the money, if they won - as Faithful - to get back to his veterinary degree, properly qualify. “Nah, still at my old place. They’ve, uh, let me take the backroom stuff for a bit, while it dies down.”
Alex nods. Pretends George has got better at lying. “Hope they're not being nasty.”
“Oh, not too bad.” The ‘too’ makes Alex want to snarl, set his teeth in someone's neck. Bastards. And George's blasé tone runs a little thin as he goes on. “Might quit, actually, try the influencer thing for a bit. It's basically the same as sales, just, you know. Different product.”
“You'd be good at that,” Alex tries. “Influential. I'd be, uh, influenced.” In the time it takes George to blink three times, Alex experiences all nine levels of hell and a few more added just for him.
I'd be influenced. Christ.
“How are you doing with that, sponsorships and stuff?” George asks and Alex shrugs. He’s got his fans, the ones who think he was robbed, rather than bottled it. His Insta’s big, now, not millions but, like, decent. Marketable. Problem is, he isn’t.
“Turns out, being known as a really good liar doesn’t get loads of hashtag spon ops,” he says, trying to keep it light. Like money hadn’t been the whole point. George’s face falls, the first unrehearsed expression Alex has seen all morning.
“Oh crikey, I’m sorry, I didn’t- cause it’s been alright, and I was a traitor too, at the end so-”
“Yeah, but I forced you into it, didn’t I? I’m the bad guy.” There’s a decent TikTok edit of him to that Billie Eilish song, all his smiles and laughs and fond looks, set to the beat of sociopathy. It’s very slick; turned his stomach on the second watch. “Plus, you know, you look like that, which probably helps.”
He knows it’s been more than alright for George. He hasn’t liked any of his Instagram posts, too… proud? ashamed? But he’s seen them all, including the Stories, so George must know he’s been there. Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe there’s hundreds of people, and they’re not mutuals, he remembers abruptly. George didn’t follow him back.
He flips his phone in his hands, once, twice; worries at the crack in the screen down by the bottom right corner, just enough to feel the scrape against the pad of his thumb.
George notices, of course. Those big blue eyes, all the better for spotting clues. Terrible at knowing what they meant. “Do you wanna take a picture for insta then? Show people it’s all water under the bridge?”
“Uh, not really? I mean…” it doesn’t feel under the bridge, or air cleared. Alex still feels like he’s choking on it.
That small wrinkle he used to make fun of appears between George’s brows. “Wasn’t that the point of this?”
“Jesus, no, I’m not-” Alex feels sick, properly sick, hot chocolate coming back on him for a second. “I wanted to be friends - I want to be friends. Again.”
“Again,” George repeats, after a beat.
Alex swallows. Presses the tip of his tongue against the edge of his front teeth, where they turn sharp enough to cut, like a bit of pain now will soothe the sucking void where his stomach used to be. “Right, no, of course. Forget it, look, I'll get these and-”
George catches his wrist before he can make a break for it. His thumb lands in the soft spot between the tendons, where Alex’s pulse beats - ha - traitorously fast.
“Wait. You haven't told me how your mum is. And your sisters. And Luca, obviously, and the cats.”
“The cats?”
“Yeah, obviously. Can't go before I hear about the cats, ‘Lex. All of them. So you should probably, um, sit back down.”
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🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 have a bouquet and give us either a bunch of unrelated sentences or a paragraph, dealer's choice
tw for brief descriptions of injuries
They shouldn't say this. They shouldn't, but it hurts, and they hurt, and they know they shouldn't but they want him to, too, "Because I remind you of him?"
(current title: Let Me be Anything Else)
His arm shook as he groped blindly for his Demon Carver, joints stiff and burning with the stone and metal sticking from them, the ice cutting into his bloody hand through torn gloves.
(current title: Not Like This)
“You are injured, Duin,” the Commander’s voice seemed incredulous, perfectly painting the image of his brow rising in disbelief. “Don’t tell me those two managed to do this to you.”
(title: Wind)
It took longer than they would have liked to realize they were no longer upright, a second stinging pain barely registering from the cheek now pressed to the cold floor, left arm twisted where only one of their escorts had seen fit to release them.
(currently untitled)
“I never stopped talking about ‘stupid stone dragons’ when I was doing chores.” They paired it with tapping their fingers quickly at Yeva’s back, out of sync with each other like a half-serious attempt at tickling, and Yeva snorted quietly, twitching barely away from the fingers and closer to them and Jun.
