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There’s a narrow slit between the blackout curtains where the late afternoon light slips through. If even the nicest room in the most expensive hotel can’t be seamless, then why should Max hold himself to so high a standard?
He drags his face, inching, against the pillow, until he can peek with one eye at the sight of George Russell pulling his briefs back on, the band snapping against his small waist. The one Max can wrap his hands around, thumb digging into his abdomen and fingers splaying against the dip in his back. The thread of light bisects him when he turns around to snag his Adidas hoodie from the foot of the bed, a golden line running down the neat shape of his nose, the bow of his lips. Max ducks his face back fully into the pillow, before George can ruin it all by catching him out and saying something painful that he’ll mistake for clever, in his ugly, marble-mouthed accent.
“Hope my stealing your nap doesn’t affect your performance too much tomorrow,” George tries, anyway. “Would hate to see you languish in fourth the whole thing.”
“Nothing you do affects my performance,” Max mutters, muffled, into cotton. A flash of George, the muscles of his lean, naked thighs flexing on either side of Max’s hips with every hitch, his spit in Max’s mouth, has his stomach pooling heat again, stupid and contradictory. “You’ll be in my mirrors after turn one.”
“Nothing, huh?” George muses, that infuriatingly smug lilt that Max hates himself for giving cause. You’re nothing special, he should say, just to bring that angry, embarrassed flush back to the high of George’s cheekbones. A tight hole’s a tight hole.
George is kneeling on the mattress, now, though, inner thighs pressing against the sides of Max’s waist where he straddles him, fingertips drawing a light, ticklish line up his spine that has his muscles tensing underneath. Max can smell the shower bar soap when George leans down to press his face into the crook of his neck, a whiff of cedarwood and lavender before he’s squirming out from under the wet stripe George licks from the base of his neck up the underside of his ear.
“Fucking annoying,” he hisses as he turns and wipes at cold saliva with the back of his hand, shucking George to the side of the bed. He’s got that stupid grin on, the one that crinkles his nose and brings out the lines in his marble face, like he thinks they’re being playful together. He shoves him further for it, until he’s falling gracelessly off, one long leg digging desperately into the mattress and one hand bunching up the fitted sheet to soften his landing. “Do you not have some sponsor bullshit to do instead of bothering me?”
“Ah,” George huffs out, a weak grin to save face as he pulls himself back upright, looking ridiculous in his oversized hoodie and tight underwear. Max wants to ruck up the hem and bite at the flat plain underneath, leave an abdominal ache that George’ll feel when he tenses up for every high downforce turn tomorrow. “I’ll take bothering, if it keeps you in my mirrors.”
“Then it’s a shit strategy, mate. You know what you’re gonna do? Push too hard at the start, overheat your brakes, and be nothing to me. Try actually defending this time, maybe.”
There – what he’d been hoping for, cheeks flushing with humiliation, water lines of his eyes turning red and angry, the smile wiped from his face. Looking really ridiculous now, in his underwear, and he must feel it, too, since he’s striding around the king-size with that long, imperious gait, bending to grab his slacks from where they’re caught on the corner of the nightstand and sticking a socked foot in an inside-out leg with clumsy hurry.
The flare of satisfaction extinguishes frustratingly quickly, and he pushes himself on an elbow over to the side of the bed, reaches out to wrap his fingers around George’s bony wrist, screwing with his hasty efforts to re-button. “Oh, come on.”
George twists away and out of his grasp, brow knit, eyes downcast and preoccupied with his own zipper. Max swings his legs over the edge of the mattress, annoyed and suddenly underdressed.
“If I wanted this girly shit,” he tries again, a reasonable drawl, “I’d fuck a girl.”
“What a Romeo,” George finally snaps, gaze practised and cold underneath damp, loose curls. Max knows it’s probably killing him, letting them air dry. “How lucky am I?”
“You put out, I give you tips. That’s romantic.”
It’s a fucking joke, and George is sucking sharp, offended air through his teeth and stomping over to his sneakers, because Max forgets he can’t take one. Not before, and especially not since he made the mistake of taking George up on his embarrassingly transparent come-on what feels, regrettably, like ages ago, when he’d plastered himself warm against Max’s side in a booth at some club in Montreal and told him nice race, freaky doe eyes blinking slow, a soft curve of a dopey smile, and Max had said, yeah, let’s go, just to watch those doe eyes widen with surprise. A hassle-free outlet turned all hassle, God, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I mean, please.
“If you want an apology - ”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” George cuts him off, finger looped into the heel of his shoe as he pulls it on. “Nothing to apologize for.”
Max scowls, absentmindedly rubs the pad of his thumb over a peeling callous on his middle finger. So stupid – they have another hour before they have to be anywhere, and he bets this hotel’s TV gets that British station with the angry chef guy that they like to riff on.
“Right.”
“Just like I won’t be apologizing for what happens in the race tomorrow.”
Max’s eyebrows lifting, unimpressed. “Like for keeping me in your mirrors, huh?”
“Nah, you won’t be in them. I’ll be too far ahead after lap one.”
“You’ll be in the wall after lap one, more like it.”
He’s always marvelling at the ugly expressions George can contort that pretty face into. “Eat shit tomorrow, Verstappen.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Max replies easily, downright bored. It’s a drag of a performance, the shit talk, like he ever has anything to really worry about after qualifying. He collapses back against the sheets, legs still dangling off the side of the bed. Waste of time, when George is just riling himself up to come back over, drop between Max’s knees. He loves a routine, though. “Crash and burn, Russell.”
Except this one time, Max supposes, when he hears the door swinging open in lieu of his typical attempt at what he thinks is a snappy comeback. Just loves to be contradictory, that one.
Can’t even give the door a good old-fashioned slam, God forbid he bring the people down the hall to their peepholes. A soft click as the lock shifts back into place, and Max watches the streak of light from the space between the curtains settle itself across the expensive wood, like it wishes it could follow George out, keep playing across the neat line of his nose, the bow of his lips.
--
It’s almost worse that he doesn’t believe in tempting fate or any of that karmic, manifestation bullshit. If he did, maybe he’d feel something other than stupid. Maybe he’d feel powerful, or something, instead of just useless and shitty and, okay, yeah, fucking –
--
George ends up being right, at first. God, at first.
He’s nowhere close to being in George’s mirrors after the first lap. Kimi gets a little too ambitious beside him going into turn one, nestles too close trying to get the racing line back, nudges the underside of Max’s front-left tire and has him veering off the track to avoid race-ending damage. A proper re-entry on the runoff – such crap, he’s hissing on the radio - has him rejoining the track in seventh. No matter, though. It’s quick work back to fourth. A bit of fun, even.
Five seconds off Russell, GP tells him, on lap three. Then, yellow flag, careful into ten, there’s a car stopped on the line and a car off, and then, even quicker, red flag, red flag.
“The McLarens?” he asks, slowing into six.
“Piastri stopped on the track, yes.”
“Who went off?”
“Russell’s off.”
His hands feel clammy inside his gloves, the Sao Paolo humidity. Crash and burn, George is never going to let him live this one down, like his rookie mistake is Max’s fault. Or maybe he’ll be frigid with humiliation at fulfilling Max’s taunt. Either way, there’s tonight gone.
“Quite a lot of debris. Try not to pick anything up, if you can,” GP’s advising, calm and clinical. “There’s some fire.”
He can see it, though. Licks of scintillating orange and yellow as he rounds into Bico de Pato. Oscar’s car abandoned on track, the marshal’s giving him a hand over the barrier, even as he gestures urgently over to the opposite wall, where what’s left of George Russell’s car is split nearly in two and engulfed in flames.
Max feels his foot heavy on the brakes before his brain can catch up. He shakes himself and releases it, picking up speed. The worst thing he could do right now is create a sixteen-car pile-up behind him.
“Is he out?”
Radio static for a response. There are blue and red flashing lights reflecting off his lefthand mirror, and he makes quick work of getting his Red Bull around the stationary McLaren, his front wing clipping a stray hunk of bargeboard, blue and black. The back of his mind’s gone fuzzy like the radio as he watches the ambulance pull a safe distance away from the wreck.
“We don’t know,” GP finally chimes in, right when Max had been about to snap at him. Calm and clinical again, which is – a driver could be on fire, shouldn’t you fucking know? Max cranes his neck as far as the HANS allows as what’s left of Russell’s car fades into his rearview.
“They’re just fucking standing there,” he barks. “They’re just holding those things – the extinguishers. They aren’t even trying to get him out.”
“I believe they’re waiting on the equipment,” GP soothes. “Focus on getting yourself back, please. They know what they’re doing.”
“Yes, I know, obviously,” he snaps back. That fucking radio rewind will be too preoccupied elsewhere to highlight his disrespectful tone this week, at least. He spares another lingering glance at his mirror, even though the accident is long gone, now. Thinks he can see the plume of black smoke, anyway.
--
The large screen facing the VIP zone above the paddock is showing replays of the start of the race when Max levies himself out of his Red Bull, which is never good. A handful of drivers are clustered together and peering up at it through lifted visors, anyway, waiting for the broadcasters to get the he’s OK to show the accident. Max doesn’t join them in their vacant uselessness. Max jogs over to the McLaren pitwall, ignoring GP’s shouts for his attention.
“What happened?” he’s asking immediately, blunt insensitivity muffled by the helmet. Zak Brown’s got an arm around Oscar, a cloyingly paternalistic patting of his forearm while something akin to shell-shock attempts to break through Oscar’s perpetually blank expression.
"Give him a minute, buddy,” Zak’s huffing, bright and wry and not at all suitable for the mood of the pit lane, while Oscar spills out: the power unit failed, think there was some oil leaking, and, uh, George couldn’t see me until the last second, I think, I was around the corner, had to brake, I dunno if –
“You see him?”
Oscar blinks, brow knitting, like he has to think. “It, uh. There was fire pretty quick, I couldn’t – through the – ”
Max nods, sharp and jerky, and reaches out to clasp his shoulder, squeezing once, before heading back to his own pitwall, the Netflix cameras following him as if on a dolly the entire way, the fucking vultures. No doubt already jerking off at the footage they can mould into some edited narrative, look how Max ran over to check on Oscar, canned orchestra swelling something tense. He slots between GP and Laurent, the latter’s arms crossed iron-tight against his chest, eyes peering anxiously through thick frames at the same avoidant replays everyone else is watching.
“He out?”
“Radio connection was severed on impact, they’re thinking,” GP answers. Max feels bad about his indignance at his calm and clinical over the radio, now that he can see the flat line of his mouth, the pinched forehead. “Just waiting on the marshals.”
“Nobody dies anymore,” Max asserts. Laurent startles at the statement, the blunt d-word spoken aloud, as spiritually banned from the paddock as the name of that one Shakespeare play from a theatre. Hadn’t George been talking about Shakespeare, yesterday? When Max had been acting like an asshole for some reason, God.
Not some reason, he checks himself, the idle thought like a disappointed elbow to the back of his mind. To piss him off, make him get all huffy and blotchy and funny. A reminder of how pathetic he was, to be so pliant and cute about it all, their thing. Seems a bit of a stupid reason, now, as Max taps his fingers listlessly against the back of GP’s seat and allows his gaze to drift back to the drivers clustered together. Alex with his helmet off and his wobbly frown, the rookies murmuring to each other, visibly shaken by their first brush with the mortality of the sport, nothing more than an old folktale, to them.
Don’t be so serious, he should yell at them. It isn’t serious. He’s going to be back here and act like some hero for this. We’re going to have to hear about it at the driver’s meetings for the rest of the season, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, actually. Can’t you picture it, his stupid face once he’s carried back here like a prince by the marshals, all huffy and blotchy and –
Or, maybe not. Gentle parenting, or whatever Kelly’s always on about.
“You are alright?” Laurent asks, palm gentle at the high of his back, snapping him out of it. Max is nodding without feeling it, body on autopilot like the fortieth time he takes a sharp corner.
“’course,” he rasps. On the monitor, the live feed: a quick shot of the Mercedes pitwall before a respectful cutaway, Toto’s face in his hands. “Going back to the garage, then.”
--
They got him, Max registers one of the mechanics coming over to inform him, minutes after he’d slumped into a folding chair. He’d known it, though, seconds before, when the wave of inarticulate, relieved exhalation had passed over the pitlane, when his own exhale had caught in his chest. Belt buckle had fused shut from the heat. Fucking scary.
How bad, he’d asked, and gotten a useless shrug back.
It was back in the car and restart before he could get an answer, but he watches the replays of George half-jogging across the run-off to the ambulance on the big screens as he drives past, an EMT under each arm. Thinks he might lose a tenth of a second every time he catches it. He’ll be unbearable about it, of course, when he learns he affected Max’s performance, after all.
--
Max cants his neck as he passes the open door of the Mercedes garage on his way back to his own, racing boots sticky with champagne on the concrete. He’s not in there, obviously. Max just thought, maybe -
“Max!”
Kimi catching him as he turns away, a near-sprint from where he’d been posted by the monitors with Bono. He’d changed out of his racing suit while Max had been half-heartedly shaking champagne at Lando, now sporting that same Adidas hoodie Max had pulled over George’s head yesterday, the back of his fingers brushing deliberately up his stomach as he’d done it, George writhing at the sensation, snorting laughter, arms lifted obediently to accommodate, except not the same hoodie, of course, just –
“I am so sorry.” Kimi’s brows are pinched together, eyes wide and entreating, a hand hovering beseechingly near Max’s chest. Max’s stomach flips as he drops onto his back foot, pulling away.
“What - is he…”
Those entreating eyes turning confused, neck tilting like he’s lost a beat on the English. “Into turn one, I didn’t mean to. It was stupid.”
Turn – oh. Oh. “Yeah, it happens. It’s fine.”
Kimi nods, worries at his bottom lip, anyway. “Okay, I’m glad. Sorry, again.”
He pats at Max’s chest and makes for his garage, slotting back by the monitors before Max can not ask after George. He heads back his own way, an acute wish for pockets he could stuff his hands into. He has to change, fast, and get to the hotel. George wouldn’t come looking for him in public, wouldn’t be lingering in the Mercedes garage for Max to come seek him out, and he’ll want to be a pain in Max’s ass as soon as he’s cleared from medical.
He’ll never hear the end of it, God, Max will have to stick his tongue down his throat just to shut him up with the endless looks like you got what you wanted as usual, Verstappen or hope you enjoyed the podium, because you wouldn’t have been on it if Oscar hadn’t – if I hadn’t –
--
He’s reheated the water in the electric kettle at least four times.
George has this type of Twinnings he likes, actually carries loose packets of it on him, usually. Once, one of them had fallen out of his pocket when Max had been dragging his jeans down his slim hips, and Max had mistaken it for a condom. An admittedly put-out why start now before he’d realized it was chamomile and nearly doubled over with laughter, George flushed all over with embarrassment as he’d snatched it from Max’s fingers and thrown it behind him. George’s palm clapping over his mouth to stop the laughing, and Max licking at it until it was George laughing, you’re disgusting!, the corners of his eyes crinkled, nose scrunched up.
Anyway, there’s a box of it in the hotel dining area, and Max had grabbed the whole thing, just in case. Good for the shakes, probably, once the adrenaline of the crash wears off.
Except it’s been three hours and George hasn’t come knocking on his door. Worse, he hasn’t even responded to the text Max had stooped low enough to send him, an all-lowercase thanks for the delay to a contact carefully labelled physio in the unlikely event he gets a text at home. He can’t call – not if George is surrounded by Mercedes hanger-on’s and ass-kissers or, he supposes, doctors.
57 G’s into the wall and ricocheted back across the track into another, they’re saying on the replays that Max loads up on Youtube, now. Car ripped nearly in two, fuel cell punctured in a freak circumstance and ignited. Max watched him walk away, though – watches him walk away, three more times, on his phone. He can’t still be in medical; it can’t be that bad. The fireproofs work. Still, it pisses him off that there’s nobody he can ask, nobody to call him to keep him updated. Not like George can put him down as an emergency contact, even though he’s the one being inconvenienced, having to wait up all night with no clue. Probably they’ve called George’s girlfriend, which is ridiculous, because what would she know about it. Max knows what he needs, has felt it before. Max has the stupid tea.
is it weird that its taking him so long to update, someone on Twitter, or whatever, is asking, when Max refreshes the hashtag. he could post a story at least.
george doesn’t owe you anything, someone else replies, a George-with-sunglasses profile picture. Maybe he doesn’t owe you anything, Max thinks, mouth twisted sour, chewing the inside of his cheek raw. He closes the browser before he can accidentally like anything.
Is it weird? There should be a shirtless hospital bed selfie by now, a weak grin and a thumbs up, heart-rate monitor wrapped underneath his pecs, just below where Max’s mouth had been, yesterday. He’s better suited for the job, should be his lips pressed above his rib, counting the pulse. He knows it well enough by feeling, now, anyway.
That’s – nuts. He shakes his head free of the thought, tosses his phone to the end of the bed. The electric kettle clicks off, water boiled, and he’s not sure when he got up to do that again.
--
At some point, the tossed phone makes its way back to his hand. He drifts off around eleven from sheer boredom, eyes aching from the full brightness of the screen before they finally slip shut against his will. Absolutely ridiculous, when he could have been out celebrating tonight instead of dutifully keeping the plans that George scheduled, his boner-killing anal-retentive calendar app approach to an affair, which, not that this is an affair.
Still, he thinks faintly, half-asleep, he could’ve sent a text. Whatever they’ve been doing merits one of those, at least. The gesture of basic decency probably got lost in the ecstasy of being the centre of attention, because the only other excuse Max can think of is a concussion, and –
“Fuck,” he exhales, heart-rate kicking him back into full consciousness. He’s rolling off the side of the bed and pushing himself up from the carpet, snagging his sweatpants from where they’d been discarded on an armchair. “Pain in my ass.”
--
George winces at the hallway light when he opens the door.
It’s halogen-bright where it spills into the darkness of his room, lights off and blackout curtains drawn. Max slips inside quickly, nudging him back so he can shut it out faster. George goes easily, stumblingly.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, consonants sleepy. Max can see him blinking slow in the lighter, ambient darkness that leaks through the gaps in the curtains, nose still scrunched from the barrage of hallway overhead.
Curls messy where they fall across his forehead, his soft white sleep shirt and loose, pinstripe boxers, the sharp angles of his knobby knees visible when Max’s eyes adjust. His tongue feels heavy and clumsy in his mouth, now that George is visibly and presently alive in front of him. He chucks the box of tea onto the nearest table and sticks his hands into the pockets of his sweats, feeling mostly annoyed, now. George wanders over and runs his finger across the packaging, his mouth screwing up into something.
“You’re the one who booked me for the night,” Max answers, before he can make a thing out of it. “Could have spared me a text.”
Even in the dark, Max would recognize that eye roll anywhere. The pained, pinched brow afterwards is new, though. "I don’t know if you noticed, but I was on fire today.”
“Knew you’d mine that right away.”
“How predictable of me.”
“What hurts?” The question spills, stupidly, from his mouth. He’s sure he had some quip stored up, instead. “Concussion?”
George shuffles back to the bed, and Max can see now that his gait is tight, walking like he does after Max gets a win that involves actual overtaking and George is caught up, enthusiastically, in the celebration. Not now.
He settles stiffly on the edge of the mattress, hands reaching out to take the bulk of his weight as he lowers. “Very light.”
Max takes a jerky step forward, then stops. “I didn’t know – anything.”
“Sorry,” The faint outline of George’s shoulders softens. “I had my social media manager contact everyone important, but I couldn’t let her message you. Could you imagine? Oh, don’t forget to tell Max Verstappen that I’m alive and won’t be making it to his bed this evening. Right after you call my girlfriend, if you please.”
“I knew you were alive,” Max snaps, another awkward, aborted step forward.
“Did you?” George muses, faraway. He leans over, a quiet hiss through clenched teeth, to switch on the bedside lamp. Soft yellow illuminates the dark circles under his wincing eyes, the rest of his skin starkly pale against it. He looks small, somehow, or feels small, despite his sharp angles and impossibly long legs bent in front of him, an ankle rotating in circles, absentmindedly. “I wasn’t quite sure myself for a moment, to be honest.”
“Shut up.” Max crosses what’s left of the space between them, now, hand outstretched to the lamp. “You should have this off, for your eyes.”
“Oh, leave it. I’m fine. I want to see you.”
“You’re wincing.”
“I’m mostly just achy, really,” George insists. Max’s hand falls away, drops uselessly to his side. “Everywhere.”
“57 G’s into a wall will do that to you.”
George’s lips purse, the wobbly one where he’s trying not to smile. “You know the exact number.”
“It’s not a hard number,” Max rebuffs, hands stuffed back into his pockets.
“God, it felt hard. You know, I think I saw you, when it – when I was in the fire.”
Max stills. “What are you talking about?”
“Dunno. Silly, really. I just remember being frozen, and between a break in the flames your big ugly Red Bull driving past. I’d never been so happy to see it, and then it was in my mirrors. Figuratively, of course, since those were lying somewhere in another postcode.” Another slow blink, eyes watery and crinkled at the edges, like his body can’t decide whether to laugh or cry at the stricken look Max can feel contorting his own features. “Suppose you win this one, huh? Some restraint with the bragging, this once, if you’d be so kind.”
Max is on his knees before his brain can catch up with the movement, to soften the sharp impact when the joints hit coarse, hard carpet. He hardly notices, anyway, as he slots himself between George’s legs, as those legs widen hesitantly to make space for him. George’s brow is knit with unease instead of pain, this time, pink lips parting slightly with surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Max rasps – begs, palms covering the nobs of George’s knees and dragging up to the meat of his thighs, spread wider in his seated position, and then back down again, the anxious motion repeated senselessly, urgently. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Okay, you can brag a little,” George huffs, but it’s a sad, wet thing of a sound, to match the wet shine of his eyes. Max looks down at his hands, keeps rubbing them against George’s skin, warming it up, thumbs catching and rubbing gently at every yellowed beginning of a bruise, a useless attempt to soothe away the inevitable tender purple. George sounds congested, when he continues. “It’s funny, the first thing I thought on impact was – well, nothing. You know how blank it all goes, during. The second thing I thought on impact, then, once things started getting really hot, and the seatbelt wasn’t coming off - ”
“Stop,” Max moans, dropping his face into George’s lap, roving hands sliding up until they’re clutching at George’s hips. He feels fingers card through his hair, manicured nails scratching soothingly at his scalp, back and forth, in a rhythm.
“I watched you drive off and I thought, oh, great, just like he said. He’s never going to let me live this one down.”
A choke of a laugh against the soft cotton of George’s boxers, wet nose dragging snot on the skin just below, chest constricting. A sorry match made in priorities, they are, huh. George must be concussed, to not be bucking him off, a whiny cry of you’re disgusting! and a rush to the washroom to wet a fancy hand towel. Those long fingers just keep at his hair, smoothing it back.
“To be honest, it made me feel better,” George goes on, tone soft and easy. Max pets at the sides of his hips, clumsy and heavy. “Knowing you’d feel like shit about it, at least.”
“You win this one,” Max murmurs into the damp patch he’s created on George’s boxers with his heavy breathing. George just hums, dissatisfied with the victory.
The room lapses into quiet – not even the white noise machine George packs with him every race weekend, which means it must be medically forbidden. He keeps combing through Max’s hair, alternatingly light and groundingly firm, until Max’s chest loosens and his breathing slows, and he’s ghosting his lips along the thin, soft hair of George’s upper thighs, an occasional too-firm kiss to a bruise on the inside of them, eyes squeezed shut.
George’s fingers finally leave his hair, and Max feels distantly bereft at their absence until a heavy palm settles on the nape of his neck. “I need to lie down, love.”
Max nods, face dragging against George’s lap one last time before he wipes the back of his hand across the snotty underside of his nose, reaching over to switch the lamp off. George sighs in the dark, shoulders going slack with relief.
“Can I?” Max asks, getting to his feet, joints creaking in protest as he dips one knee into the mattress, hands hovering at George’s shoulder, his waist.
George nods, wide eyes starting to droop, the real adrenaline crash of Max Verstappen snotting all over his nice pyjamas finally hitting him, probably. Max cradles him, the oddity of the gentleness of it twisting a knot in his stomach as he lowers George down against the sheets, rubbing at a tensing shoulder muscle as his body works through the stiff ache of the movement. A sharp exhale of a laugh from George when Max adjusts the pillow underneath his head, tugging it further under his neck for support, and Max leans down to kiss the sound from his mouth, an odd gentleness to that, too. George hums into it, pleased, little sighs against Max’s lips whenever he parts his own for air. Max takes them in, thumb pressed into George’s chin to open him wider, to leave him soft and wet and sleepily pliant.
“What’s funny?” he finally asks, once he pulls back, George’s eyes slipped closed and mouth parted, as if holding the space of Max’s bottom lip for safe keeping. It quirks up in one corner at the question, though.
“I was going to say you’re like my homecare nurse,” he explains, “but then you did that.”
“I’m a really good homecare nurse,” Max asserts, flatly. George huffs again, but it’s hardly a sound, already half-asleep. “Hey – do I wake you up every hour, or something?”
“Only if you’re very, very dirty about it.”
Max snorts and drops down onto the other side of the bed, a hand nestling behind his head, underneath the pillow, and the other coming to rest on his chest, rising and falling in the silence. Until the silence is broken up by quiet snoring, beside him.
“Oi,” he tries, an urgent whisper. “You’re on top of the sheets.”
George is far gone, though. Mouth hanging properly open and half-turned into his pillow, arms curling around himself from a lack of warmth. Some nurse, Max thinks, and tugs his side of the blanket out from under himself, throwing it over George haphazardly. He’s not going to tuck the guy in, for Christ’s sake. He’s still got some dignity, here.
He drifts off, eventually, freezing in the overzealous hotel air conditioning, lulled by the white noise of George’s heavy breathing.
--
Max wakes first, curled into George’s side from an unconscious greed for body heat. He pushes himself up onto his forearm, bleary eyes searching George’s face for signs of pain, to assure himself that he didn’t perish from a light concussion in the night on account of his weak, British constitution, or something.
George’s face is slack and peaceful, though, his breathing a soft whistle through his nose. Max should nudge him awake like he’s maybe supposed to have been doing, ask him what year, who the prime minister is, et cetera, but the curtains in his suite are the same kind of faulty as the ones in Max’s. A thin line of early morning light slips through the gap between them, draws a line across the bridge of George’s nose, the top of his pretty lips. Trails down the space between them on the mattress until it reaches Max, stopping at the barrier of his chest, warming it at the centre.
Max is reminded of a thread. The kind that only exists in hotel rooms he’s not meant to share, with shitty curtains. A thread’s a thread, though, he thinks, as he flicks George on the nose to wake him, right where the light hits it just so.