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Winning feels amazing, every single time, even when it isn’t his own victory.
What can George say? He’s a patriot through and through.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” George cackles as he collects his wins. They’re all piled onto Max’s yacht, and Max was not at all thrilled about hosting the watch party, but majority rules. Max does have the largest yacht out of the group, and both Carlos and George had insisted, pulling some GPDA strings. The entertainment room is crowded, filled with bottles of beer and empty glasses of gin and tonic. George has partaken a little, or a lot, and is a little unsteady on his feet, which he blames on the boat. “Pay up, pay up!”
Oscar hands his share over with a tiny lift of his mouth; he has little skin in the game, with Australia having been eliminated early. Franco stares at George in a distinctly uncomfortable way, likely already seeing George as the enemy—there’s little doubt Argentina would advance to the semi-finals after the next game. Lando and Alex giggle between themselves, and in the corner, Ollie is saying something, a smug grin on his face, as Kimi fumes and slaps over a crisp bill, muttering endlessly in Italian to himself.
Wherever Lewis is, George hopes he’s having a good night, too. It’s a wonderful day to be English!
And it’s an extraordinary day to see Max Verstappen, decked out from head to toe in Norwegian gear to support his friend Haaland, looking as if someone had kidnapped all his cats and sank his beloved boat to boot.
“You could be a bit more of a gracious loser,” George chides, motioning for Max to pay up. Max only glowers at him, reminiscent of the very worst period in all their years of knowing each other, circa 2024. Then, finally, Max slowly withdraws a crumpled bill, crushes it some more in his fist, then lets it flutter slowly to the ground before huffing and storming off without a word. “Oh, come on, Verstappen!”
“Oof.” Charles whistles, stretching languidly on the couch, his legs pillowed on Carlos’s lap. “You two could learn a bit from Bellingham and Haaland. See how nice they are to each other even as rivals?”
“That’s too much.” It’s a lot. It’s a hell of a lot, actually, with what he has seen with his own eyeballs tonight, how friendly his very good personal friend Jude Bellingham is with his former teammate. The kick in the back in the tunnel was one thing; then it was the penalty kick with the two of them completely in their own world, as if they were still playing on the same side rather than draped in their national flags on the world’s biggest stage.
And when Jude was upset, it wasn’t a teammate who had comforted him, but Erling Haaland who had drawn him into his arms, cradling his head.
Forgive George if when that happened, he had sat there without breathing for at least five seconds, his heart beating almost out of his chest, at the audacity of their public display of affection.
They could never! He could never!
He didn’t even want something like that. God forbid! He would have to have a conversation with Jude later, as if he has any authority over Jude Bellingham at all but for their passing acquaintanceship. But someone has to be honest with the man. Because what are people supposed to think when they see something like that right in their living room?
“What, should they promise to put each other’s head into the wall instead?” Lando chimes in, finally pulling himself away from Oscar enough to do so. “Because that’s so much more romantic? Or race each other in a way that’s just insanely uncomfortable for the rest of us to watch? No offense, mate, but you are a lot, too, if you haven’t heard that before.”
“I haven’t, thanks very much.” George is not going to share the winnings with Lando, that’s for sure. This money is going straight into the GPDA booze fund. “You shouldn’t even be watching my racing. Focus on your own race, mate!”
“I’m just saying it’s positively pornographic is what it is, mate!” Lando cries. “Alex, back me up here. Charles?”
“I like watching their wheel-to-wheel,” Charles says, smiling. “They remind me of my parents. Right around the divorce. I guess I like to relive past trauma.”
Et tu, Brute?!
“People keep saying Haalingham is like Heated Rivalry,” Alex muses, because he’s a traitor, “But isn’t that whole thing about, you know, a rivalry? At least those guys had to pretend to dislike each other in public, right? Haalingham is more like…” He looks over to Lily for help, who shrugs. “Patrochilles. Or otters floating down a river holding hands.”
“The what?” George isn’t a huge fan of hearing these conjectures about his friend’s personal life, but sometimes Alex is so terminally online it completely astounds him.
“Never mind,” Lily cuts in hastily. “I think Alex’s point is that Heated Rivalry is more your vibe, George?”
“Excuse me?? What does that mean?!”
“The fact that you know what she’s talking about says plenty, mate,” Alex points out.
“You made me watch it with you! What are you talking about now?!”
“I just think the lady doth protest too much,” Lando adds. “Oh, George. Look, you should go after Max, right, mate, he’s clearly upset. Don’t let a game get between you two. Haven’t you been having a good run lately without a big fight?”
“I just don’t like what you’re suggesting.” George feels a little faint. Because he’s quite a sharp person, actually, and is very much attuned to what’s lying underneath what appears to be the still surface of a conversation, no doubt thanks to every fragment of his DNA being shaped like tiny Union Jacks. “We are not Haalingham, or Heated Rivalry. How absurd.”
“Right, you’re Russtappen.” Oscar! Oscar of all people! Oscar the betrayer, Oscar Iscariot really, and George would never have suspected it. When every pair of eyes in the room turns his way, Oscar shrugs. “I read some stuff when I can’t sleep. It’s highly entertaining. George, did you know in this year’s omega ranking—”
“This year’s what?!”
“I don’t know why you do that. We have more fics than them. We’re way more popular,” Lando mutters, but George can’t really care about that now.
“I think I’m going to check on Max,” he says faintly, but takes care to smooth his shirt and trousers, as if this absolutely does not bother him at all, this very strange and provocative conversation. He thinks it’s working. “Anyways. God save the king! Good night and all!”
“Hey, that money was supposed to be split!” Alex calls after him, but George has very long legs, and he’s going to make good use of them now.
The thing with a yacht is that there are very few places for Max to run off to, but plenty he can hide in. George finds the image at least a little funny, that of a grown Max tucked away somewhere delightfully naughty and nautical, like perhaps a hidden compartment beneath a porthole, and allows himself a little chuckle. But it dries up quickly. Max hasn’t run far at all; in fact, he’s right in the most conspicuous spot: the very tip of the bow, looking decidedly like a dejected Rose awaiting her Jack, and appears to be quite upset when she sees whoever was that man she was meant to marry instead.
It’s been a long time since George has watched Titanic. And because he’s a bit of a superstitious bloke, he stomps on the wooden plank a bit, counting that as knocking on wood, because God forbid he actually does sink the yacht and half the grid with it just by a careless thought.
“Moping is quite undignified,” he says in lieu of a greeting. Max glares at him, hair wind-blown in a way he finds far too attractive but does not say so. Glancing around to make sure the others haven’t followed, George comes within scratching distance, carefully, and lets out a relieved sigh when it’s clear Max isn’t actually mad enough to hiss and howl.
He’s just like a cat, sometimes. That’s what lions are. Just big, overgrown cats, with the same claws and soft bellies.
In the course of knowing Max Verstappen, George has grown quite fond of cats, even if Sassy and the others haven’t yet quite warmed up to him. But George has learned a few tricks. See, if you approach slowly and make your intention clear, and absolutely do not make direct eye contact but turn your gaze a little downward with slow blinks, you—
Max slaps his hand aside when it comes close enough. “You’re the worst winner ever. Has anyone told you that?”
“Now what did I say?” George complains. “Come on, mate, it’s football! You should know what it’s like.”
George does have to think about it. He’s said quite a number of things during the match, half of which he can’t even remember because the cameras are off and it’s the sort of thing you yell at the lads while having a Cheeky Nandos. He’s racking his brain about it, and can distinctly recall the following zingers:
“Oh, come on! Does Norway not have a word for offside? Someone call up Ibsen to pen it now!” That was his favorite. That was a gold star of a jab.
“Jude’s got his Viking well marked, doesn’t he?” This one he wasn’t particularly proud of, but it slipped out because just look at them!
“Max, are you sure you don’t want to take off that kit, mate. You should have worn a lion, get it, that would fit so much better and be less embarrassing to boot.”
So he was perhaps a little pointed in his celebration. But George isn’t going to apologize for being a little overly enthusiastic about his country making it to the semi-finals of the World Cup.
To tell the truth, he isn’t even actually that much into football. But he did also say, “It’s called the beautiful game because the English invented it,” which is true, believe it or not, he’s looked it up while on a Wikipedia spiral some years back. Oscar would back him up if asked, he just knows it.
What Max says next falls so far out of the calculation, George doesn’t even know how to handle it.
“You said Bellingham was glowing,” Max says accusingly. And that stops George in his tracks, it really does. It’s well past midnight, he’s stopped keeping time, but he knows it’s late. The marina is still alive not that far behind them; a lot of people had the same bright idea of watching the game in the water and enjoying the pleasant breeze. And the wind is blowing, and the waves are gently licking the boat, which means there are a lot of sounds all around, the din of nature and humanity combined, but all George can hear is a faint ringing in his own ears and Max’s huffs.
“Beg pardon?”
“Earlier, after the second goal.” Max is really a ferocious lion most of the time, but sometimes he also looks like a very sad, pathetic, scrunkly kind of kitten. George has learned a new term recently from Lando, which is cuteness aggression, and he really understands it now.
God, if Max weren’t upset, he would have liked to kiss the pout from that face!
Usually, George is the one who pouts. He understands Max now, the way Max likes to pin him against the wall and kiss him silly for it. Does he look like that? It’s truly too cute for words.
And perhaps he’s also a little drunk, mortifying realization that that is.
George blinks. He’s slowly making his way through the mind palace, connecting the clues one glowing text animation at a time like treasure in a video game.
“Are you jealous of me and Jude?”
“And first name basis, too.”
“I said he was glowing because he was sweaty!”
“You said glowing and your eyes were glowing!” Max isn’t done. “And then when he scored the second goal, you said, ‘I could kiss him for that!’”
“I mean, I could, as a gesture of brotherly affection—we are friends, or friendly, he did visit the garage—”
That’s perhaps the wrong thing to remind Max of. George winces. Alcohol and football are such a bad combination for keeping his mouth in check, and PR-trained or not, there are things that just come out of his mouth before his mind catches up with the potential consequences of them, at least when it comes to things outside of racing. But Max in the throes of incandescent jealousy is such a sight. The little freckle on his lip trembles as he keeps a very loose rein on his anger, and call George crazy or a glutton for punishment, but he almost wants to push Max even further to see where the night would take them.
Unfortunately, the rest of the grid is sitting just right inside, and George is still sober enough to understand that anger with nowhere to go productively would only fester, and leave them the worse off for it.
And then, Max’s phone rings. Still fuming, Max picks up, and though George can’t see the screen from where he stands, a now-familiar voice fills the space between them, with the light from their video call illuminating Max’s profile.
George wants to bite the bridge of his nose so, so bad.
“Erling?” Max asks. “What’s up, mate? Aren’t you with the team?”
It seems so improbable that of all the things Erling Haaland, the football’s darling du jour, could be doing right after losing a momentous match on an international stage, calling Max Verstappen would figure at the top of the list, but they do live in strange times, and George still finds it strange just where he has arrived in these last few years.
“Yeah, yes, they’re around.” Haaland sounds… happy. It shocks George, how cheerful the man sounds, and he wishes he could see whether the expression matches the voice. If it were him, he would be despondent, but then again, the Nordics are a strange bunch, with their salted fish and their crime noir and the ungodly climate they choose to live under. “It’s incredible, mate! Did you watch the match?”
“Mate, you lost,” Max reminds him, sounding just as confused as George is.
“Yeah, but did you see Jude? He was glowing!” Haaland beams. Max’s face does a complicated twitch. “Of course I wanted to win, but this is just the next best thing. Don’t you feel that way when your boy wins?”
Max’s boy? George’s eyebrows hit his hairline. Who was Max’s boy?! Does Max talk about him that way?
To Haaland, of all people?
Max, to his credit, grows a little pink. “No, not really. Not like that.”
When Max wins, he celebrates by burying himself full throttle into George. And when he loses, he takes it out on George by doing much of the same.
Either way, it’s still in George’s best interest, the way Max Verstappen celebrates and rages, and so George is always winning. But he’ll keep it to himself for now, lest Max thinks he always gets the upperhand.
“You should try it. Listen, I was just calling to let you know we’re probably going to be in town for Hungary, just dropping by, yeah? Think you can get us paddock passes? I gotta go soon, but I wanted to confirm with Jude before we leave—he’s going to be swarmed with the celebration, so figured I would do this for him.”
The domesticity is unbelievable, and George isn’t jealous at all.
“Oh, and another thing.” Haaland brightens. “Jude said to tell your boy, ‘The omega pheromones are real. Use them your next race.’ Not sure what that means, but I’m just the messenger.”
Max shoots George a look. George shrugs helplessly in return. He could ask Lando and Oscar, who seem like they would definitely understand the references, but he’s afraid to find out what it actually means. The call ends, and George faces off against Max again as the Monaco lights dance around them, and the stately yacht lightly tilts with the waves, like the first few idyllic days of the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
Max’s anger seems to have deflated. George is sure of this when he approaches the second time to be met with a possessive hold instead, and he yelps, then immediately bites off the sound so that the others cannot hear from within.
“I should be jealous too, that Haaland is calling you first thing after the match,” George murmurs, looking down at Max’s lips for their height difference. The little freckle is like a beacon in the darkness, and he a beleaguered captain after a month lost at sea. Unable to resist anymore, George leans in and nips at the site. Max deepens their kiss, the grip on his arm tightening, then bites George’s lower lip until it stings and the pain crests on the verge of unbearable.
But this is them. This is why he keeps coming back, why he loves to bait Max, sometimes unwittingly.
“What’s that about the omega pheromones?” Max asks. “Is that some insider joke you share with Bellingham?”
“I honestly have no idea,” George says, and pulls Max in for a kiss again. “Cheer up, now, darling. You can’t still be upset at me. Look, I’ll never say his name again.” Which at least seems to appease Max enough that he drapes them over the railing, doing something that would make Rose and Jack blush for the impropriety.
That omega thing, he’ll have to ask Oscar in the morning. It seems to be of some importance.
But for now, he’s kissing a very sore Max on a yacht, and England has just won the match, and his pocket is full of very well-deserved money, and somewhere, Jude Bellingham is having the celebration of his life, and tomorrow he’ll call Jude to ask about it.
Selfishly, George is determined to have the best time of all. For king and country, and for himself.