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mercrussell · 24 days ago

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paging doctor russell ⛐ 𝐆𝐑𝟔𝟑

across the room, you laugh at something one of the junior nurses says, and george doesn’t look. he just keeps writing. keeps working. keeps pretending he didn’t feel that one laugh like a suture being pulled a little too tight across his ribs.

ꔮ starring: emergency physician!george russell x emergency medical technician!reader. ꔮ word count: 11.2k. ꔮ includes: romance. alternate universe: non-f1, alternate universe: hospital. depictions of blood, injuries; mentions of death, food; profanity. feelings realization, sunshine vs. grumpy trope, medical terms i’m not 100% sure about (all inaccuracies are mine!!!), alex & lando haunt the narrative. ꔮ commentary box: i had webmd open for a vast majority of this fic, but i’m bouncing off the walls because it’s genuinely been a while since i’ve liked something i’ve written the way i enjoyed this!!! was inspired by this instagram reel, which i’ve been thinking of since it first came out *checks smudged handwriting on palm* over fifty weeks ago. bwoah. dedicated to @hello-car-fandom, whom i love from the bottom of my hypothalamus 🫀 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

♫ waiting room, phoebe bridgers. slow dancing in a burning room, john mayer. there she goes, the la's. every breath you take, the police. lovers rock, tv girl. i look in people's windows, taylor swift.

The first sign of your arrival is not the siren. It’s your voice.

“We brought you a gift, doc! Thirty-two, male, witnessed syncope on the football pitch. GCS fifteen but woozy, borderline hypotensive, sweaty enough to make you think he just left the sauna instead of Sunday league.”

George doesn’t look up from the tablet in his hand. He doesn’t have to. He knows that voice. Knows the cadence, the pitch, the infuriating little smile you fold between your words like some sugar packet in a bitter espresso.

He taps through the patient chart in front of him with surgical precision, then finally lifts his gaze.

You’re already halfway through wheeling the gurney in, bright-eyed and annoyingly chipper, like A&E is your own personal stage and George is a very grumpy audience.

“Unresponsive?” George asks, eyes flicking to the patient.

“For about ten seconds, maybe twelve,” you reply, checking the IV line. “Eyes rolled back and everything. Bit dramatic if you ask me.”

George arches a brow. “You say that like you haven’t had three syncopal episodes from dehydration this summer.”

“Oh, darling,” you sigh, feigning affront as you tuck a loose glove into the bin, “I swoon artfully. There’s a difference.”

He doesn’t laugh. He just gestures toward the trauma bay. “Let’s get him on the monitor. Vitals?”

You rattle them off like it’s a grocery list, which it might as well be, given how many patients the two of you have bounced between over the last year and a half. George has memorized the rhythm of your handovers, the sly curve of your mouth when you say something deliberately out-of-pocket, the moments your eyes sharpen beneath all that sunshine.

When you first started at Silverstone Tow Hospital, he thought you were unserious. Too smiley. Too flirtatious. Like you mistook the emergency department for a cocktail party and your gurney was the hors d’oeuvre tray.

But then he watched you intubate a twelve-year-old on the roadside with blood on your boots and no backup for fifteen minutes. He hasn’t underestimated you since.

Not that he’d ever say it aloud. God forbid you get wind of the fact that he actually respects you. You’d never let him live it down.

George pulls on a pair of gloves and begins his primary survey, steady hands and a steadier voice. “Can you squeeze my fingers?” he asks the patient, who blinks groggily and manages a weak grip.

“Good,” George murmurs, then adds with a glance at you, “Better grip than you had last Friday when you tried to carry a loaded stretcher alone.”

“You wound me,” you gasp, dramatically placing a hand over your heart. “I was being efficient.”

“You were being a liability.”

“A sexy liability,” you wink.

George sighs. Loudly. It’s the kind of sigh that could rival the windstorm from a helicopter rotor.

And yet, the corner of his mouth twitches. He hates that it twitches.

You lean against the wall, arms crossed, watching him work. Not interfering. Never that. You know when to back off. When to shut up. It’s another reason he’s grown used to you, despite your penchant for disrupting his carefully cultivated calm.

“He’ll need fluids, maybe a 12-lead to rule out arrhythmia,” George mutters, mostly to himself.

“Already gave him a litre in the rig,” you say. “No meds. He wasn’t brady. Ticked all the boxes for heat syncope.”

George hums in acknowledgment.

Behind the clinical notes and monitors, there’s still a flicker of something between you—like the static hum between radio stations. It never quite lands on a clear frequency, but it’s persistent.

You push off the wall and head for the doors.

“Page me if he codes,” you call, already halfway out, “and Doctor Russell? Try not to miss me too much.”

He doesn’t respond. He’s too busy logging vitals. Too busy being professional. Too busy pretending he wouldn’t miss you if you were gone.

Later that day, George’s break lasts precisely nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

He knows this because he’s timing it. Not out of some obsessive need for control (although Alex might argue otherwise), but because peace in this place is fleeting. A single moment of quiet is like spotting a unicorn in the car park: beautiful, improbable, and probably about to be run over by a trauma alert.

He’s sitting in the staff lounge with his trainers kicked off, scrubs wrinkled at the knees, and a half-warm coffee balanced precariously on his knee. Across from him, Alex Albon is trying to solve a crossword with the same concentration he reserves for stitching up toddlers who think bike helmets are optional.

“What’s a ten-letter word for self-inflicted misery?” Alex mumbles.

“'Healthcare,’” George replies dryly, taking a sip of his terrible coffee.

“Was going to say ‘dating you,’ but yours works too,” Lando Norris says as he slides into the lounge, tossing a bag of crisps onto the table and nearly knocking over George's coffee in the process.

George doesn’t flinch. He's long since accepted that relaxation around Lando is a contact sport.

“‘Dating you’ is only nine letters,” George points out.

Lando lets out a beleaguered sigh. “I’m dyslexic.”

Alex chimes in. “Doesn’t work like that,” he says without looking up from his crossword.

They’ve known each other since medical school, the three of them. Lando, the overgrown golden retriever who accidentally passed his trauma certs with flying colours because he thought the practicals were a game. Alex, the mother hen with a penchant for stuffed animals and neon Crocs. And George, the one with the spreadsheet brain and a carefully laminated five-year plan, now crumpled somewhere beneath the weight of A&E rotations and god complexes.

“Do you mind?” George gestures at his drink. “This is the only hot beverage I’ve had all week that hasn’t been coughed into.”

“You’re welcome for the company,” Lando grins. “Anyway, someone had to check you hadn’t died of having a stick up your arse.”

“I persist. Alive, caffeinated, and annoyed.”

Peace reigns for another thirty-two seconds, then comes the knock.

More accurately, it’s a rhythmic tap-tap, tap-tap-tap on the door that sounds suspiciously like the beginning of a knock-knock joke.

Lando perks up immediately. George just closes his eyes.

“Please be maintenance,” he mumbles like a prayer. “Please be a power outage. Please be literally anyone else.”

The door creaks open.

“Sorry to interrupt your boys’ club,” you chirp, leaning against the frame with all the casual elegance of someone who’s very much not sorry. “Lando, we’ve got a lift request from the transport team. Need your charming muscles.”

“Ooh, are they finally letting me do something fun?” Lando springs up like a Labrador hearing the word ‘walk.’

George exhales through his nose. “Define ‘fun’.”

You beam at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

George opens his mouth, thinks better of it, then takes a long, scalding sip of coffee instead. Alex watches the exchange as if he’s observing a nature documentary.

“By the way,” you add, turning to George with mock sincerity, “I love what you’ve done with your hair today. The angry middle part is very in right now.”

“Thank you,” George deadpans. “I was going for ‘mildly electrocuted.’”

“Nailed it,” you singsong.

Lando slings an arm around your shoulder as you both exit. “We’ll bring you back a souvenir,” he calls to Alex.

George mutters, “Bring back silence.”

As the door swings shut behind you, peace returns. Briefly.

Alex waits exactly three beats. Then, “So, your girlfriend—”

George doesn’t look at him. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“You know that’s not a denial, right? That’s a thesis statement waiting for peer review.”

“Albon.”

“Fine, fine.” A pause. With faux-innocence, he goes on. “But if she were, it would explain why you let her get away with calling you electrocuted and still looked vaguely pleased about it.”

George gives him a look that could curdle milk.

Alex just hums and returns to his crossword for self-inflicted misery. “Still going with ‘healthcare,’ by the way,” he chirps.

The doors to A&E swing open with all the subtlety of a brass band, which can only mean one of two things: an actual emergency. or you.

George glances up from a chart with the wariness of a man who has already seen too much today—and it’s only 3 P.M.

It’s you.

You’re wheeling in a teenage boy holding his arm like it might detach at the elbow. He’s pale, clammy, and muttering something about handlebars and gravity being a scam. Behind him, you wear the kind of grin that usually precedes emotional devastation.

“Delivery for Dr. Russell,” you half-yell. “Fifteen, male, possible dislocation, probable concussion, definite liar. Says he ‘didn’t cry at all.’”

George steps forward, jaw tight. “Bay three,” he says. “Watch the IV line.”

That’s it. No sarcastic quip. No annoyed eye-roll. Just instructions.

He doesn’t even look at you as he starts assessing the patient. You push the gurney into place, watching the mechanical efficiency in how George moves—like he’s running on fumes and caffeine, but hasn’t realised he’s out of both.

He asks the kid to rate his pain. The boy says nine. George grunts to himself like that’s generous.

You wait until vitals are logged and the chart handed off before you say, lightly, “Did I miss the staff memo on replacing your soul with sandpaper today?”

George doesn’t bite. Not really. “Busy shift.”

“It’s always a busy shift.”

“Well, maybe I’m just tired of your running commentary.”

There it is. A little too sharp. A little too true. You tilt your head, all playfulness evaporating in the same way George disappears into his work when he’s had too much.

“Okay,” you say. “What’s actually going on?”

He pulls off his gloves with more force than necessary. “Nothing. Just—a million things. One of the new juniors froze during a code. We’re short a nurse. And I haven’t had a meal that didn’t come out of a vending machine since Thursday.”

Your mouth opens, like you’re about to offer one of those terrible, hopeful reassurances. But then you stop. You nod. “Got it.”

No pep talk. No sunshine-injected optimism. You just back off. It’s unnerving. George watches you leave with the faint guilt of a man who kicked a puppy.

He doesn’t even remember falling asleep. One minute, he’s sitting in the corner of A&E during the lull between codes, head resting back against the wall, and the next—

He blinks awake to the harsh light overhead and the too-familiar hum of machines.

And a coffee.

It’s sitting next to him on the floor. No note. No name. It’s merely a takeaway cup with condensation beading down the side and a lid that’s slightly ajar like someone checked it before leaving it there.

He frowns at it, sniffs it. Too sweet. He can already smell the sugar from here.

He takes a sip anyway. It tastes like vanilla syrup and a not-so-subtle apology.

He drinks the whole thing.

Two days pass. Not that George is counting. He’s just acutely aware of time lately, that’s all. Of how hours bleed into one another here, fluorescent lighting washing out everything except exhaustion and the persistent buzz of pagers. The A&E moves on, undeterred, chewing through bodies and paperwork with the grace of a woodchipper. George has learned to adapt.

And yet, when you wheel in your next patient, it takes him a second longer than usual to look up.

Maybe because you’re humming. Cheerfully. Like you’re in a baking show intro montage and not pushing a man with a suspected tibial fracture across a blood-stained floor.

“Ankled himself trying to do a backflip off his mate’s shed roof,” you announce, absolutely zero judgment in your tone, which almost makes it worse. “Landing was not ideal.”

“I thought it was gonna be sick,” the patient groans.

George can’t keep the wry tone out of his voice. “And instead you were sick on the lawn. Congratulations.”

You snort. “Be nice, Doctor Doom. He’s suffered enough.”

George leans in to examine the leg. The swelling is impressive. Purple and angry-looking, the kind of injury that practically demands an ice pack and several poor life decisions reconsidered.

You lean in, too, pointing something out on the patient’s shin. And then you pause. A beat. Another.

You shift slightly closer. Just enough.

“You smell like... vanilla,” you say, a little too fast. Then you balk, as if realizing this is not a conversation to have above a suffering patient but it’s too late to back down. “Coffee. I mean—obviously. Not just vanilla, that would be weird. But like. Coffee with vanilla. Like that coffee. From…”

Your voice tapers off like a train derailing in slow motion. George keeps his eyes on the patient’s leg.

“Astounding deduction, Sherlock,” he says to you. “Should we check for a concussion?”

You scowl. The patient laughs, then winces. George finally glances up, just for a second. You’re flushed. Slightly. It’s rare. He catalogues it like a specimen under a microscope.

“It was too sweet,” he says simply.

You cross your arms, recovering. “So you didn’t like it?”

He wraps the ankle expertly, voice steady. “Didn’t say that.”

Another beat. The patient’s eyes flick between the two of you, looking increasingly like he regrets .

George double-knots the bandage, then says, almost casually, “Whoever left me that lifeline probably saved someone from getting yelled at for breathing too loudly, so.”

You smile. Poorly hidden. It creeps in around the edges of your mouth like sun through blinds.

“I’ll pass the message along,” you say.

George stands. “Please don’t. That would be humiliating.”

The patient groans. “Can someone just tell me if my leg’s broken?” he snipes.

“Probably.” George pats his shoulder. “But the emotional trauma will heal first.”

You bite back a laugh, and George, despite everything, doesn’t bother hiding his ghost of a grin.

It’s Lando who brings in the next patient.

Which should not feel strange. Except it does. A little.

Enough for George to register it before burying the thought under a blanket of professionalism and blood pressure readings. Like noticing your favourite mug is missing from the break room and pretending that it doesn’t bother you, even as you drink from a chipped one instead.

Lando barrels into A&E, unfazed and unaware. “We’ve got a special tonight, folks! Fourteen-year-old male, non-verbal, autistic, presented with seizures en route. Vitals stable-ish, parents panicked, and he’s currently very much not a fan of flashing lights.”

“Right,” George breathes, already motioning to a quieter bay. “Let’s dim the overheads and lose the chaos. Lando, you’re not helping.”

“Helping is subjective,” Lando says, grinning. “I bring vibes.”

George doesn’t dignify that with a response. He sets his jaw and gets to work.

The kid is seizing again by the time they get him on the bed. It’s brief, controlled quickly with a low dose of midazolam, but the boy’s mum is crying and George finds himself talking more gently than usual. He guides. He grounds. He keeps his hands steady, like the calm at the eye of a storm.

And still—he thinks of you. Of how you’d have cracked a dumb joke to loosen the tension. Of how you’d crouch low beside the stretcher and make a paper crane out of a vomit bag just to get a scared kid to smile. Of how your voice could find a way to sound like music even in the middle of controlled chaos.

He doesn’t think about you until he does. Once it’s all over, George figures he needs a breather.

The hospital roof is technically off-limits. Which is why George doesn’t go there.

Instead, he steps out the side door to the loading bay. Fresh air, in theory. Reality: a gentle breeze of antiseptic, petrol, and damp pavement. Still better than whatever recycled tragedy is waiting inside. His lungs expand, grateful for anything that isn’t the scent of bleach or stress sweat.

He doesn’t expect to see you there.

You’re crouched low beside one of the ambulances, the metal bulk of it casting a long shadow. Your uniform is rumpled, hair messier than usual. You’re rolling something between your fingers.

For a second, he thinks it’s gauze. Maybe tape. It isn’t, and George can’t help his indignation.

“Seriously?” George says, voice dry. “You’re in healthcare. That’s borderline treason.”

You glance up, unsurprised. “It’s a singular cigarette. I get one per year.”

“Like some sort of self-destructive birthday wish.”

“Exactly.” You don’t light it. Just keep rolling it back and forth between your fingers, thumb pressing along the seam like muscle memory. “Haven’t decided yet if I’m cashing it in.”

George leans against the wall, arms crossed. He should go back in. Someone is probably bleeding or coding or arguing about discharge papers. But you’re unmoving in a way that prickles at him. A warning light blinking in his peripheral vision.

“Rough call?” he asks, aiming for ninety percent of what hits healthcare professionals the hardest.

You don’t answer right away.

“The kid,” you say finally, and some perverse part of George thinks bingo. “Lando brought him in. Reminded me of someone.”

George doesn’t ask who. He just nods once, like he’s flipping a page over in his mind.

You let the silence stretch. A silence with shape, with edges. It feels more honest than talking.

Eventually, you sigh and pocket the cigarette. Your hands linger at your sides, as if unsure what to do now that they’re empty. “Don’t worry, Doctor Morality. Your lungs are safe for another year,” you breathe.

“That makes it sound like you’re doing me a favour.”

You glance at him sideways. “Aren’t I always?”

It’s a joke. Light, flimsy. But your smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes. Your voice wobbles just enough that George clocks it. And your hands—your hands are still shaking, just a little.

He doesn’t press. Doesn’t offer platitudes or pressure or a shoulder to cry on. He just shifts slightly and nudges his shoulder into yours, solid and brief. An anchor.

He doesn’t time being around you.

The two of you walk back into A&E without speaking.

Which is strange, because usually, you speak. Or whistle. Or tap your pen against the side of the gurney like it’s a snare drum and the trauma bay is your stadium.

But now you’re just quiet. Not heavy with it, not brooding. Focused. Composed in a way George hasn’t seen since the one time a patient tried to throw up directly onto his lap and you, ever the opportunist, tried to offer him a bib. (He hadn’t laughed. He’d wanted to. Still bitter about that.)

The same kid Lando brought in is now settled in Observation. There’s a line of vitals on the monitor. You’re checking on the patient’s IV when George catches himself watching.

You crouch to talk to the boy’s mum again, your voice low and steady. You’re good at this. Too good to be reduced to punchlines and irreverent banter, though you seem to enjoy both.

“You’re staring again,” comes Lando’s voice, practically skipping over with delight. He’s balancing a chart, a coffee, and his overgrown ego in both hands. “Kind of romantic, in a broody-Edward-Cullen-meets-urgent-care way.”

George scowls. “Don’t you have vitals to misread?”

“Rude. Accurate. But rude.”

George flips to a page on his notebook and starts writing, refusing to rise to it. This is normal. All of this. Standard. Routine. The chaos of medicine is the constant; what you do with it—the way you carry it—that’s the variable. You’re the variable.

Across the room, you laugh at something one of the junior nurses says, and George doesn’t look, doesn’t look, doesn’t look. He doesn’t have to. The sound slots into the noise of A&E like a missing puzzle piece. Everything’s loud, but it’s not the same kind of loud without you.

He just keeps writing. Keeps working. Keeps pretending he didn’t feel that one laugh like a suture being pulled a little too tight across his ribs.

George barely has time to wash the dried blood off his hands before there’s another shout of, “Incoming!”

You burst through the A&E double doors like you’ve just kicked them down yourself—hair wind-tossed, adrenaline in your eyes, and pushing a stretcher with the determination of a woman who has seen too much.

“Fifty-two-year-old male, syncope with hypotension, responsive to sternal rub but GCS fluctuating,” you rattle off, crisp and sharp. “History of cardiac stents, recent flu-like symptoms, likely dehydration-induced vasovagal—”

“You gave him fluids?” George interrupts, already reaching for the chart you’ve half-filled.

“Yes,” you snap. “He was dry as hell and crashing.”

“If this is cardiogenic, you could've overloaded him.”

You plant your hands on your hips. “And if we waited, he’d be flatlined in the ambulance bay.”

It escalates quickly.

George, always a slow burn until he’s not, bristles. “You don’t get to gamble with a heart like this and hope for the best. You call it in, you wait, and you don’t play doctor.”

You stab a finger into George’s chest. “I called it. You didn’t pick up. And I’m not playing anything, Russell. I made the call. That’s the job.”

The patient groans between you, a breathy whimper escaping his lips like a ghost too tired to haunt. Somewhere across the trauma bay, a heart monitor bleeps with awkward timing, like a laugh track in the wrong scene.

George looks like he’s ready to hurl the nearest clipboard.

“Oi,” Lando’s voice slices through, no grin in sight. “Enough. He’s not dead yet. Maybe stop yelling over him like he’s not here?”

George’s fingers twitch at his sides. You exhale through your nose, sharp and practiced.

You both move as you should.

It’s clinical. Cold. Efficient. You hook up the leads while George places a central line. You call out vitals while he orders labs and adjusts the oxygen flow. No more words. No more fire. Only two people trying to outpace a ticking clock.

Somewhere between blood cultures and a second bolus, George sees it.

The pulmonary edema he feared isn’t there. Lungs are clear. JVP normal. The heart’s pumping sluggishly, sure, but it’s a volume issue. Not pump failure.

You had been right.

And he’d said things. Horrible things.

You don’t play doctor.

He wants to swallow the words, scoop them off the floor, and shove them back in his mouth like bad medication. But they sit there. Festering.

You don’t look at him as you help wheel the patient toward cardiology. You just walk beside the bed, hands on the rail, back straight, eyes forward.

George follows in silence, wondering when, exactly, he stopped deserving the benefit of your doubt.

He catches sight of you near the locker corridor as he’s leaving Resus. You’re uncharacteristically still, sat halfway on the bench. Half out of your uniform, scrolling through something on your phone with a vague frown. The bright overhead lights make everything look sterile. Skin, fabric, emotion.

He slows. You’re usually gone by the time he ends his shift. Still mid-banter with Lando or one of the nurses, tossing sarcasm like candy. But today, you’re pulled in, civil. George hates how well he recognises that it’s his fault.

“You’re clocking out early,” he says, pretending he’s only mildly interested. “Very unlike you. No second wind? No miraculous five-minute recovery followed by another four-hour shift?”

You look up with a small smile that doesn’t quite land. “Shockingly, I have a life. Plans. You ever heard of those?”

He smirks, but it’s stiff. “I’ve heard rumours of them.”

“Wild concept, I know.”

You shove your phone into your bag and stand, zipping your jacket up. Something about the mechanical precision of the motion makes him wince.

“Listen,” George starts. Then stops. Then tries again. “About earlier—”

You wave him off with a too-bright shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Water under the bridge. Heat of the moment. White coat syndrome. All of it.”

“No.” George’s voice is firmer than even he expects. “I’m not going to let you just file it away like paperwork you don’t want to do. You were right. I was wrong. And I said things that were—”

“Accurate to your character?” you offer dryly.

“Unfair,” he finishes. “Arrogant. Patronizing. I don’t want you to have to assume an apology. You deserve a real one.”

You stare at him. Not mocking. Not disbelieving. Just taking him in.

Then, in the softest tone he’s ever heard from you: “Thanks, Doctor Russell.”

He opens his mouth to say more, something vaguely poetic and wildly inappropriate for a fluorescent-lit hallway.

But you reach out and squeeze his arm gently. “I’m going to be late,” you say, like it’s both a reminder and an escape hatch.

He nods. You pause, just long enough to let a real grin flicker across your face. “Don’t think this means you’re off the hook for being a tosser.”

And then you’re gone, leaving. Jacket swishing behind you. The faint scent of your soap or your shampoo—or maybe your presence—still lingering in the air like static.

George exhales and rubs his hands over his face.

He is, categorically, not off the hook. A part of him is convinced he’s been hooked on you since the day he met you.

It’s Lando again.

George doesn’t sigh, doesn’t frown, doesn’t even blink longer than necessary. That’s growth, frankly. In the beginning, he would’ve asked where the hell you were within three seconds. Now, he simply listens to Lando’s brisk summary—dislocated shoulder, rugby pitch, remarkably foul-mouthed teenager—and goes through the motions.

But George does check the ambulance bay.

Once. Maybe twice.

Purely out of habit, he tells himself, like muscle memory. Like an old injury that still aches when it rains.

You’re not there.

He makes it through the consult and discharge, and then, because he is a grown adult with impeccable time management, he wastes his entire break wandering the hospital like a man with a mission and no idea what the mission is.

The staff lounge is empty. The stairwell is empty. The vending machine near paediatrics is, insultingly, both empty and mocking. He loops around back toward the elevators and debates just going outside for air, when he spots movement near the maintenance corridor.

You.

Sitting on the tile floor, one knee drawn up, sleeves shoved to the elbow. You’re trying to open a packet of sterile wipes with your teeth, which George considers a crime against both medical protocol and common sense.

He rushes in. “What the hell happened?”

You freeze like a schoolkid caught smoking behind the bike sheds. “Hi, Doctor Russell,” you say with a half-hearted wave.

“Don’t deflect.” He crouches down. There’s a gash along your leg, not deep but angry and swollen, like it’s been scrubbed hastily and not dressed at all. “Is this from that seizure case?”

You hesitate just long enough.

“Jesus,” George mutters, already reaching into his coat pocket. His fingers tremble slightly around his penlight, which is unhelpful, since this is not an eye exam.

“It’s fine,” you say quickly. “Just a scratch. I didn’t want to make a thing of it.”

“You work in an actual hospital.”

“Yeah, well,” you shrug, wincing as the motion pulls your skin. “Pride’s a hell of a drug.”

The thing is, he gets it. The stubbornness. The instinct to downplay. The razor-thin line between strength and stupidity that every single person in this godforsaken field has danced along at some point.

But that doesn’t mean he likes seeing you bleed.

George isn’t sure when exactly he starts hovering—but one minute you’re brushing him off with a wince and a half-hearted smile, and the next he’s throwing your arm over his shoulder and grumbling something about how you’re obviously concussed if you think you’re walking back on your own.

You protest, of course. Loudly. Colorfully.

“This is humiliating,” you hiss, clutching at the lapel of his coat like it might drag you underground.

“I warned you not to be reckless,” he says, ignoring the way your weight shifts unevenly against him. “This is me, exercising restraint.”

You mutter something unkind about his bedside manner.

He wills himself not to smile.

Halfway through the hallway, the two of you run into Alex.

Alex, who takes one look at the situation—George with his hair mussed and his hands full of EMT—and has the audacity to whip out his phone.

“Smile!” Alex sings.

George flips him off with a flair only a man at the end of his shift can manage.

His office is technically a converted supply closet with a window the size of a postcard, but it has a clean sink, a worn couch, and a locked cabinet of supplies, so it’ll do.

You settle on the couch with the exaggerated care of someone trying not to swear audibly. George crouches in front of you, glancing at your leg. A shallow gash, nothing dramatic, but it’s bleeding enough to stain the cuff of your trousers.

He cleans it in silence. You watch him.

He’s thorough in that George Russell way: antiseptic, gauze, the gentle press of fingers that aren’t as clinical as they should be. He doesn’t say anything when you flinch. He only works with precision, like the rest of the world can wait its turn.

“You’re being really gentle,” you murmur. “Is this because you feel guilty?”

“No,” he says, deadpan. “This is because I’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath, and unlike some people, I take it seriously.”

You laugh, sudden and sharp, and it loosens something in him.

“That so?”

“Yes. ‘First, do no harm.’ It’s not just a slogan we slap on mugs, you know.”

“I’ve seen you slam back coffee from that very mug you’re judging.”

“And I’ve seen you try to climb into a moving ambulance. Shall we call it even?”

A beat. Then your smile softens. “Thanks,” you say, “for this.”

He tapes the last bit of dressing down and looks up at you, close enough to see the faint lines of fatigue around your eyes.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I don’t want you to assume my gratitude, Doctor Russell.”

He hesitates. Something about the inside joke, the way you look, the cadence of your voice—it undoes him. “You can call me George,” he says, “when it’s just us.”

Your gaze flickers to his, something unspoken shifting in the air between you.

“George,” you amend, and it sounds a lot like the beginning of the end.

That was not the moment where George realized he might be in love with you.

That was just another Tuesday. A very average, paperwork-stuffed, understaffed Tuesday where someone clogged the staff bathroom and a patient tried to name their newborn ‘Matcha.’ Business as usual.

It wasn’t when you brought him coffee the next morning, either. Still too sweet, still not his order, but you’d scribbled a crooked smiley face on the cup like a seven-year-old. He drank it in four sips between patients, barely registering the taste, except to note that the bitterness was more tolerable than usual. Possibly the smiley helped.

It definitely wasn’t when you fell asleep in the ambulance bay on a slow night, curled against the wall like a stray cat who’d finally found a patch of sun. You had your arm draped over your eyes and were snoring softly, one shoe half-off. George stood over you for a full minute before covering you with his jacket. It was clinical, he told himself. Preventing hypothermia. Protecting team morale. You would’ve done the same for him, probably. Maybe. Unless you were feeling particularly annoying, which, in fairness, was half the time.

It wasn’t even when you called him by his first name again, during some offhand moment when it was the only the two of you in a hallway. The way you’d said it—soft, like it was an apology and a dare in one—should’ve knocked something loose in him. Something fundamental. Nada. George, in all his emotionally constipated glory, simply nodded and muttered something about sterile gauze and infection risk.

It was like watching a man dodge a grand piano falling from the sky only to trip over a pebble.

The Moment happens on a Thursday.

It’s loud. Everything always is in the A&E, but today especially. Alarms beeping, a child screaming bloody murder over a scraped knee, someone vomiting in the corridor while a porter yells for backup. There’s a guy swearing loudly about the NHS being a conspiracy and someone else trying to light a cigarette under the fire alarm. George is elbow-deep in an electronic chart, trying to remember whether “elevated troponin” still means what it used to, when he hears your voice.

“Coming through! Trauma, blunt force to the head, suspected internal bleeding!”

It’s your usual pitch. Businesslike, brisk, just this side of shouting. But George looks up—and his heart promptly forgets how to function.

You’re covered in blood.

Not a little. Not a dramatic splatter across the collar. This is full-red, horror movie special. It’s Jackson Pollock’s lesser-known ER period. It’s on your sleeves, your chest, your throat. Your gloves are slick with it. There’s a smear on your cheek, just beneath your eye, and a fleck in your hair.

George is on his feet before he’s aware of it. “Are you—”

He stops himself. He’d sounded too panicked, so he tries again. (He does not sound any less panicked.) “Are you bleeding?”

You roll your eyes like it’s the dumbest question in the world. But there’s a crack in your voice. Just a little one. Like the adrenaline hasn’t quite worn off yet, and the corners of your calm are fraying. “What? No. It’s his.”

You jerk your head to the gurney you’re wheeling in, and only then does George notice the patient. Pale, moaning, a makeshift pressure dressing applied with the kind of brutal efficiency that only EMTs and war veterans can muster. There's a splint fashioned from what looks like a clipboard.

Still, George doesn’t look away from you until he’s sure. Absolutely, undeniably sure. His chest is a vice.

George clears his throat and moves to the patient’s side. “Right. Let’s work, then.”

And you do. He does. Like his brain hasn’t just rewired itself in the span of three heartbeats.

Because it wasn’t the blood, not really. It was the split second before you spoke, when he thought you might be hurt and every single thing inside him tilted wildly off axis. Like someone opened a trapdoor beneath him and he freefell straight through.

That was The Moment.

George Russell, congratulations. You absolute idiot. You’re in love.

Not the Hollywood, Netflix original kind. The kind where you keep checking the back of someone’s neck to make sure they’re still standing. The kind where one smear of blood across a cheek turns you into a man on the verge of cardiac arrest.

It’s inconvenient. It’s absurd. It’s probably going to end in disaster. But it’s true, and it’s there, and George is suddenly no longer the smartest man in the ward.

George is pretty sure there’s a clinical term for what’s happening to him. Some kind of emotional arrhythmia, maybe. A persistent fluttering of the heart followed by full-body embarrassment. Unfortunately, there’s no ICD-10 code for ‘realized-you’re-in-love-with-your-colleague-and-now-you-don’t-know-how-to-function.’

Which is why he finds himself lurking by the vending machines, awkwardly holding a protein bar like it might offer divine insight. Across from him, Alex and Lando are mid-discussion about a guy in Resus who, quote, “tried to vape with a chest tube in.” Normal Thursday things.

“Hypothetically,” George begins, and he already hates himself for it, “if someone—not me, obviously—realized they might have... feelings... for a colleague…”

Alex squints. “What kind of feelings? Like, homicidal or the other kind?”

“The, uh, softer kind.”

Lando looks delighted. “Oh no.”

“Again, not me. Just a friend,” George says, very unconvincingly.

There is a long, weighted silence in which George begins to regret all of his life choices that led him to this point. “Okay,” Alex says slowly, using his talking-to-kids voice. “What does your ‘friend’ want to do about these “feelings’?”

George exhales through his nose. “Well, he might be considering saying something. But only if it wouldn’t jeopardize, you know, the professional relationship. Or make things weird. Or make her stop bringing him coffee, which I—I mean, he—looks forward to more than is probably healthy.”

Lando raises an eyebrow. “So your friend wants advice on how to confess his undying love without losing access to his morning caffeine dealer. Got it.”

“It’s not undying,” George grunts. “Just... persistent.”

Alex, to his credit, tries to stay serious. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen? She says no?”

“Yeah, and then I have to see—he has to see her every day and pretend he doesn’t remember how she looked covered in blood but still cracking a joke about dry-cleaning.”

“Hyper-specific,” Lando notes.

Alex hums in morose agreement. “Unusually vivid.”

Without breaking eye contact, Alex reaches into his pocket and produces a crumpled fiver. Hands it silently to Lando.

“What is that?” George asks, bewildered.

“Bet,” Lando says, grinning. “On how long it would take you to crack. I had ‘blood-related epiphany’ on my bingo card.”

George flips them both off. Simultaneously. Ambidextrous rage.

Alex pats him on the back. “Look, Georgie, just talk to her. Worst case, she mocks you gently and turns it into a punchline. Best case, she likes you back and you die of happiness or something.”

“People don’t die of happiness,” George deadpans.

“You could be the first.”

The vending machine whirs as his protein bar drops. George takes it and contemplates the absurdity of modern romance blooming between bodily fluids and fluorescent lighting. Whatever happened to normal courtship rituals?

George decides he can’t confess. Not yet.

That would require a heart-to-heart, and George is currently operating on a strict no-vulnerability-before-coffee policy. But he can ease into it, maybe. Start with a breadcrumb. An amuse-bouche of affection. Nothing too dramatic. No grand gestures.

It begins when you wheel in a patient like you’re leading a parade—only instead of confetti, there’s vomit and the faint sound of someone retching. The patient looks like they’ve been on the losing end of a pub crawl and an ill-advised kebab. You’re narrating the symptoms with your usual dramatic flair, throwing in theatrical pauses for effect as if you’re presenting at the BAFTAs.

George, mid-chart, looks up, and it’s like the sun breaks through the fluorescent lighting. Which is ridiculous. It’s just you. Covered in bodily fluids again. He stands, lets instinct and professional training take over while his brain yells nonsense like, Tell her she’s competent! And possibly radiant!

The patient has tachycardia, low BP, and an unfortunate tendency to gag every time George says the word ‘appendix.’ You and George work around it, finishing each other’s assessments like some grotesque waltz. You even hand him a clamp before he asks for it.

Once the patient’s stabilized and the chaos has retreated to a low simmer, George clears his throat. Here it is. Time for the breadcrumb.

“You, uh,” he starts, eyes on the floor. Then he looks up, directly at you. “Handled that really well.”

A pause. You turn to him. Slowly.

“Thank you?” It comes out like a question, like you’re suspicious he’s about to follow it with an insult. Fair enough. George’s love language thus far has mostly been sarcasm and passive-aggressive vitals charting.

He waves it off, already backtracking. “I’m just saying. It was... efficient.”

You’re smiling now. It’s soft and a bit uneven, like it surprised even you. You open your mouth to say something else, but a nurse calls your name, and just like that, you’re gone.

George stares at the empty space where you were, wondering how something as basic as a compliment made him feel like he was fifteen again and trying to flirt with the headmaster’s daughter using Latin root words.

He shakes his head and returns to his chart, scribbling down vitals with far too much pressure. Step one complete. Sort of. He’ll call it a win. Or a draw. A medically supervised draw.

George doesn’t think he’s bad at flirting. Not in theory, anyway.

In practice, however, he’s apparently incapable of communicating anything more than “I respect your clinical acumen” and “that pressure dressing was very efficiently done,” which, as it turns out, is not the universally accepted preamble to romantic intrigue.

You’d think it would be easier. God knows he’s trying. He’s been workshopping his tone, casually leaning against things (unsuccessfully), and once, in a truly pitiful moment, tried to smile at you in what he assumed was a rakish fashion and nearly bit the inside of his cheek clean through.

Today, you wheel in a cyclist who’d gone arse over handlebars on an uphill climb. Your voice is animated, already mid-sentence with the nurse as you guide the stretcher in, and George’s heart does the stupid thing again. The thing where it skips like a faulty EKG and then settles back into a rhythm just off enough to make him feel like he’s maybe catching something.

“Helmet took most of the impact,” you say, pulling gloves on. “Some superficial lacerations, possible concussion, vitals holding steady. He’s all yours, Doctor Russell.”

He doesn’t know when Doctor Russell started sounding so good coming from you, but it does today.

George gets to work. Efficient. Focused. Or, you know, pretending to be. You’re watching, as you always do, eyes alert in a way that makes him feel vaguely scrutinized and somewhat flattered. After everything’s stabilized and the cyclist is off for scans, George clears his throat.

“You were good in there,” he says.

Your head tilts, amused. “I’m always good in there.”

Right. Of course you are. He scrambles.

“No, I mean—you’re good. In general. The way you handled the bleed was—clean. And fast. I admire that.”

Slowly, a grin begins to unfurl. “George,” you say, tone mock-gentle, “are you trying to flirt with me using vascular trauma praise?”

He makes a sound. It is not dignified. And so: new plan.

A few days later, another patient. Something mundane, ankle fracture from a stairwell slip. You roll them in with your usual unbothered flair, chatting as if this were a grocery run. George pretends not to notice the way your hair’s come loose from its usual bun, the way your sleeves are pushed to the elbows, exposing your forearms.

He says nothing as you run through your report. Patient is stabilized. Bandaged. Sent for imaging. The moment hangs there, lazy and loose, like a paper lantern.

George breathes in. Then out. Then: “You look really nice today.”

Silence.

This time, you sound more than surprised. You sound disbelieving. “What?” you squeak.

He wants to dissolve into the linoleum.

“I mean—you do. It’s not relevant to the case. Obviously. But it’s true. That’s all.”

You stare at him like he’s just declared himself heir to the throne of France.

“Well,” you say after a moment, a bit breathless. “That’s… very kind. You look nice too. For what it’s worth. The scrubs are doing things. Not bad things.”

Now it’s George’s turn to stare.

You both stand there, blinking at each other, mutual fluster painted across your faces. Lando, passing behind with a chart, mutters, “For fuck's sake,” and keeps walking.

George says nothing. He’s too busy recalibrating the entire universe.

George has it all planned.

It’s not elaborate. This isn’t Grey’s Anatomy. There’s no flash mob, no Post-It notes, no soft indie music playing while he bumbles through a declaration in the rain. But there is a plan. Or, at least, the shaky skeleton of one.

Step one: find you. Step two: say something charming and suave. Or, failing that, something intelligible. Step three: ask you out. Casually. Breezily. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world and not the thing that’s been keeping him up for three consecutive nights.

What actually happens is this:

He finds you, yes. Tick. Step one. You’ve just offloaded a patient and are engrossed in paperwork, hair tied up in that chaotic bun that does things to his blood pressure. You greet him without looking up. “If you’re here to steal my pen again, I’m going to file an HR complaint.”

“No, I—” George clears his throat. “I was wondering if you wanted to, you know. Grab something. Later. To eat. Together. If you're free.”

Your brow furrows. “Oh. Yeah, I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since, like, 7 A.M.”

There’s a hopeful flicker in his chest—

You keep talking. “We could swing by the canteen before it closes. I just need to update the chart first.”

Oh. That’s not—well. Not quite what he meant.

But you’re already slinging your bag over your shoulder, tugging him toward the lifts like this was your idea in the first place. George glances down at his invisible note cards (read: internalized disaster plan) and burns them all in effigy.

You grab a prepackaged sandwich and a sad-looking banana. George gets a tray because he is committed to the bit. When you start heading for the exit, he stops you.

“We could, uh—sit? Just for a minute.”

You arch a brow. “In here?”

“Why not? It’s got… chairs. And tables.”

You laugh, which is both a victory and a curse. George pretends not to hear how stupid he sounds.

You both settle across from each other, a laminate table between you that has seen the worst of humanity in spilt soup and rehydrated lasagna. For a few seconds, it’s awkward. Utterly, blindingly awkward. You unwrap your sandwich too loudly. George stabs at his potatoes with unnecessary focus. It’s so quiet, the flickering of the overhead light becomes a main character.

Then you snort.

“This is ridiculous,” you say. “It feels like detention. Like we’ve been caught doing something bad and now we’re being punished with egg salad.”

George cracks a smile. “To be fair, the egg salad is punishment enough.”

You grin at him across the table. Something in your face softens. “I like this, though. It’s stupid, and weird, and feels like we’ve dropped into a badly written episode of The Good Doctor. But I like it.”

George stares at you, heart doing the jittery thing again. He thinks, wildly, that he’d eat egg salad for the rest of his life if it meant he could have moments like this.

“Me too,” he says, and it’s not smooth or clever, but it’s honest.

The dinner continues, such as it is. Two overworked professionals hunched over trays of food that only technically qualifies as nourishment, under the flickering lights of the A&E canteen. George is very aware of how tragically not-date this is.

A romance conducted beside a vat of grayish mash and aggressively boiled peas. If this were a film, the director would be fired. Or knighted. Hard to tell these days.

He stabs at another potato halfheartedly. Says, out of nowhere, “What’s your favorite color?”

You pause mid-banana chew. “What?”

“Color. Just—what’s your favorite one?” He tries to sound casual, as though this is something he routinely asks colleagues over beige fish fingers.

You tilt your head, narrowing your eyes. “Are we playing twenty questions now?”

“No. Maybe. Oh, bollocks. Humor me for once.”

A beat. Then, to his complete shock, your face lights up. “Forest green. Like—deep, mossy green. Like enchanted woods, not traffic lights.”

George feels something ridiculous flutter in his chest. He blames the sodium in the canteen soup.

“That’s oddly specific,” he says.

“You asked.”

He clears his throat. Stares at his peas like they’ve personally offended him. “Alright. Favorite animal?”

“This is dangerously close to an icebreaker sheet from Year 7.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t go to many sleepovers.”

You laugh at that, and it hits him square in the sternum. He decides he wants to make you laugh again. Forever, if possible.

“Otters,” you declare. “Because they hold hands when they sleep. You?”

George considers this. “Elephants. Big ears. No notes.”

You laugh again, and he tries to memorize the exact cadence of it.

More questions follow. Book or movie? (You say both.) Sweet or savoury? (Depends on your mood.) Weirdest scar? (You lift your sleeve to show the faint line from a bike accident when you were eight. He squints at it, and somehow that feels like something sacred.)

Your pager goes off mid-sentence. You glance at it, and your mouth twists.

“Damn. GSW coming in.”

George nods. Tries not to look too disappointed. “Right. Go save a life, superhero.”

You rise, tossing your half-eaten dinner in the bin, then glance back at him with a regretful smile. “This was fun. Like, weirdly fun. Thanks for the pop quiz.”

He gives a half-wave, watching you disappear down the corridor.

When the door swings shut behind you, George exhales. He stares at the empty seat across from him, the ghost of your laughter still ringing in the fluorescent air.

He hasn’t let himself want things for a while. Not properly. Not tenderly.

But right now, he wants, wants, wants.

George should have known that not all good things hold.

Really, he should’ve carved it into his desk or tattooed it on the inside of his wrist. Maybe then he wouldn’t be caught so flat-footed by the universe’s penchant for whiplash.

Because it’s the very next shift.

He’s sorting through discharge summaries—his pen running dry halfway through a sentence, because why wouldn’t it—when the doors burst open. You’re pushing a stretcher with one gloved hand and applying compressions with the other. There’s another paramedic shouting vitals, a family member wailing in the background, but George doesn’t register any of it.

He sees you.

You’re not smiling.

You’re not doing that thing where you narrate injuries like a game show prize. No dry jokes. No lifted eyebrows. There’s blood on your chin. You don’t notice.

“Fifty-eight-year-old male, found unresponsive,” you say, eyes not leaving the chest you’re compressing. “Unknown downtime. We got ROSC en route, but he’s bradycardic again. Might be circling the drain.”

George is already moving. The room responds like muscle memory. Crash cart, monitor leads, adrenaline. There’s shouting, counting, paddles.

The heart rhythm flatlines. George calls time of death.

And that’s that. No miracles today.

You stand at the edge of the room afterward like a ghost, gloves bloody and still half-on. George watches you stare blankly at the wall, the pulse line still dancing on the monitor with no heartbeat to trace.

“Come on,” he says quietly.

You don’t ask where. You just follow.

George’s office is too bright and too quiet. He flicks the light off. You sit down on the small, lumpy sofa in the corner like you’re not sure your legs will keep holding you up. George shuts the door and leans against it, unsure of what to do with his hands. Or his guilt. Or his heartbreak.

You sigh. It’s long and low and rattling, like a pressure valve giving up.

“That one got to me,” you confess in a murmur. No bravado, no shields.

George sits down across from you, on the floor. Not too close. Not yet.

“You did everything right,” he offers, knowing full well it’s the most useless sentence in medicine.

You nod. “Doesn’t mean anything today.”

Silence again.

And then you say it—simple, small. “Hurts less, having someone to sit with.”

George can only a manage an equally soft, “Yeah.”

He means to say more. Something about how he gets it, how he’s grateful too, how he doesn’t know when this started mattering so much. He doesn’t. Instead, he just lets the grief spool out between you, a kind of shared vigil.

For the first time, it feels like neither of you is alone in it.

There is no grand epiphany with swelling music and slow-motion glances across the trauma bay. Instead, the truth seeps in like IV fluid through a catheter line. Slow and steady until suddenly everything’s changed and it’s already too late to stop it.

He really is in love with you.

It settles within him sometime after the code, after the paperwork, after the office silence where sadness spooled like spilled saline between you. You wipe your face. Straighten your spine. You bounce back like the shift doesn’t still have its claws buried in your chest. Because you have to. Because you’re only as good as your last patient.

He watches you laugh at a nurse’s joke two bays down. There’s still a smudge of blood near your collarbone, and George wants to both wipe it away and preserve it. Frame it. The absurd, mundane poetry of survival.

He’s in love with the way you still get his coffee order wrong. Religiously. It’s become a thing now. You hand him something caramelized and sweet with foam art resembling roadkill, and he drinks it anyway. Every time. He even looks forward to it. Like some deranged Pavlovian response to artificial vanilla.

He’s in love with the way you blush when his compliments actually land. Not the professional ones. Not “clean intubation” or “efficient tourniquet placement.” No, it’s when he says you look good with your hair up. Or that he likes your laugh. The words often tumble out like they’ve slipped on a wet floor, and you always stare at him like you can’t believe he said it.

Sometimes you say his name like it means something. Soft, like a secret, like a hand brushing over piano keys. Sometimes your touch lingers at the small of his back, brief and deliberate. Sometimes your eyes find his across the chaos of a double trauma call, and it feels like you’re the only two people in the room who know how the world ends.

George can’t help but wonder—hope, maybe—if you love him back.

Just a little. Just enough. Enough for it to survive inside these sterile walls, between bloodied gloves and outdated vending machines. In the lull between codes. In the breath held between one life and the next.

George sneaks up to the rooftop like he’s committing a felony, not just being a bit of a rebel with his badge still dangling from his neck and his trainers sticking faintly to the stairwell landing from someone else’s spilled energy drink. It’s been a shit day—unrelentingly so—made better only by the fact that you were in it.

You, with your crooked grin and that ridiculous laugh that escaped when he joked about the broken CT scanner sounding like a dying whale. He thinks about that now. The way your mouth tilted up in spite of the chaos, how the sound lodged in his chest and reverberated through twelve hours of relentless code blues, admin errors, and one spectacularly misguided intern who stapled their own glove to a chart.

The rooftop is off-limits. The signs say so in bold, threatening font. That doesn’t stop anyone. It’s the worst-kept secret in the building: the unofficial sanctum for overworked medics, chain-smoking porters, night-shift romantics, and whoever else needs to pretend they’re alone for a while. George figures he deserves ten minutes of illicit fresh air and a protein bar with all the emotional nutrition of a soggy cardboard confession.

He pushes the heavy door open with a creak that sounds louder in his head than it probably is. The sky greets him in hues of orange and pink, like someone up there got carried away with a watercolor set. And—

You’re already there.

Of course you are. Perched on a cinderblock like it’s a throne, wind teasing the edges of your hair, hospital fleece draped around your shoulders. A shoddy cape for a reluctant superhero. You’re rolling your unlit cigarette between your fingers with the kind of focus usually reserved for bomb defusal. You look like you’re waiting for an answer that hasn’t arrived yet and probably won’t.

“Oh,” George says, eloquent as ever. A master of language. Shakespeare reincarnated. “Fancy seeing you here.”

You look towards him, surprised for only a half-second, before snorting. “We have got to stop meeting like this, doc.”

He ambles toward the edge, careful not to make it look like he’s following you (he is), and squints at the city skyline, smeared in dusk. Rooftop etiquette dictates at least a full minute of silence. You’re both seasoned enough to observe it.

Then, glancing sideways, he nods at the cigarette. “Your patients weren’t that bad today.”

You shrug, but it’s the kind of shrug that says you’re carrying more than your standard trauma kit. “No one bled out on me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then what’s that for?”

You glance at the cigarette like it just appeared in your hand, as if you’re not sure whether it’s a prop or a ritual. “Habit. Reflex. A bit of both. It’s stupid,” you say, too fast and too blank, which means lie, lie, lie.

The question escapes him before he can think better of himself: “Can I have it?”

You balk. You actually freeze, as if trying to verify that the George Russell—type A, cross-training, vitamin-supplementing, caffeine-policing George—is asking to hold a cigarette.

"What? You?"

“I need to do something with my mouth,” he says, dry as ever, “or else I’ll say something incredibly stupid.”

You raise an eyebrow, eyes flicking with interest now. “Like what?”

And George thinks—well, he’s already here. Emotionally bruised, wind-chilled, heart thrumming like it’s trying to page someone. There are worse places for truth to fall out of your face.

“Like how I’m in love with you, maybe,” he says. “That sort of stupid.”

There’s a beat. A heartbeat. Another. Time hesitates, maybe on purpose.

You stare at him for what feels like several eternities squeezed into a few seconds. Then your lips twitch, and you say, voice low and warm and without a hint of sarcasm, “I have something you could do with your mouth.”

And you kiss him.

George, in typical fashion, had not planned for this.

He planned for stat doses and catheter malfunctions, for awkward consultant encounters and broken vending machines. He planned for blood sugar crashes and night shifts and the exact millisecond he could reasonably abandon his shoes in the locker. But this—your mouth, your words, the way his heart is trying to chest-thump its way to freedom—this wasn’t in the risk assessment.

So, when you kiss him, he doesn’t immediately kiss you back.

Not because he doesn’t want to. Christ, he wants to. No, his body just took a full three-second sabbatical. All systems stunned into a temporary shutdown. His lips stay still, his hands useless at his sides, like he’s running a particularly slow diagnostic.

You pull away.

The shift in pressure is sudden. Your brows are halfway up your forehead, a confused little wrinkle forming between them. “I—I thought—” you’re stammering, and it occurs to George that you think you did something wrong. “God, sorry, I thought you—”

But he doesn’t let you finish.

His hands are on your waist, and then your back, and then he’s kissing you like he just remembered how lungs work. His mouth is warm and certain and a bit clumsy, like he’s making up for lost time and poor reflexes. You laugh into him, your shoulders shaking as his chest bumps yours, and he pulls back a fraction just to smile at you, really smile, teeth and all.

“That was a delayed reaction,” you say, breathless and grinning.

“I panicked,” he says, forehead resting against yours. “My brain bluescreened.”

You giggle again, this time softer, like you’re trying not to wake the sleeping city beneath you. “I love the sound of your life, you know.”

“What does that even bloody mean?”

“Your laugh,” you clarify, eyes dancing. “Your bitching. Your bad jokes. Your rants about surgical notes. It’s stupid, but every time I crashed through those double doors with some poor sod bleeding out, I was hoping I’d get to annoy you. Just to hear you.”

George lets out a huff, overwhelmed by the idea that someone might find his chaos endearing. “If you keep kissing me like that,” he says, lips brushing against yours, “I might even start smiling on purpose.”

“Dangerous territory, doc,” you tease, tracing the edge of his collar. “People might start thinking you’re nice.”

“I’ll always be nice to you,” he replies, and kisses you again, because he can.

It’s not cautious. It’s not gentle. It’s not even neat. It’s two overtired medics smashing timelines together, trying to carve a moment of softness from the jagged edges of the day. The cigarette has fallen from your hand, landing between you with the finality of a dropped scalpel.

George forgets every chart, every protocol, every night he spent wondering if he was imagining it all. Turns out, you were right there with him, too.

The first sign of your arrival isn’t the siren. It never is.

It’s your voice. Bright, theatrical, and a little too loud for seven in the morning, like you’ve mistaken resus for a West End audition.

“Morning, team! Got a present for you. Forty-six-year-old male, syncopal episode on the building site. GCS fifteen now but gave us a scare. BP’s low-ish, but he swore it’s just ‘cause he skipped breakfast.”

George doesn’t look up right away. He’s pretending to finish reading a patient chart, but really, he’s buying time to wipe the smile off his face. He’s trying not to look like someone who spent half the night kissing the woman now wheeling a gurney into his trauma bay.

He finally lifts his head and finds you already halfway through wheeling the patient in, hair slightly wind-tousled, mouth smirking in a way that should be illegal before caffeine. You toss him a look. The kind that says, Guess who’s had three hours of sleep, a protein bar, and still managed to be the highlight of your morning?

“Skipped breakfast?” George says, arching a brow. “So did I. Should I be horizontal and woozy too?”

You tilt your head. “You’d be cuter if you were.”

“You would know, I’m sure.”

You shoot him a grin that’s too practiced to be anything but genuine. It lingers in the air between you two like static. Like a held breath. Like a secret you’re both absolutely rubbish at keeping.

On the surface, nothing’s changed. You’re still infuriatingly cheerful. He’s still emotionally constipated. The emergency department is still a chaotic blend of human frailty, malfunctioning air conditioning, and that one porter who always smells faintly of tuna. But there are cracks in the professional facade now. Glances that last one second too long. Shoulder brushes that aren’t entirely accidental. Conversations held just a decibel lower than necessary. Everything dialed to just under suspicion.

Like when he moves to the trauma bay and you follow, ostensibly to assist, but really just to be near. He doesn’t complain. He’s not stupid.

You rattle off vitals and hand over the case while George begins his survey, his gloves snapping on with practiced efficiency. But your fingers graze his wrist when you pass the chart. Not necessary. Not entirely innocent. Not the first time.

He clears his throat. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” you murmur, a little softer now. “Dinner tonight. Not the canteen. My place.”

George’s heart thuds in a way that has nothing to do with caffeine deficiency or impending cardiac arrest. He doesn’t look at you. He doesn’t need to. That warmth is crawling up the back of his neck again, and if he meets your eyes, the whole department’s going to see the truth written on his face like a neon sign that reads, Completely Gone for Her.

“Text me,” he says below his breath, which is code for yes, obviously yes, and also: if I could, I’d kiss you right here beside the sharps bin.

You wink. It’s obnoxious. He loves it.

Then you’re gone, disappearing through the swinging doors with a rustle of fleece and a final glance thrown over your shoulder. He catches it, because of course he does. He catches everything now.

He finishes assessing the patient, notes the improving vitals, and hands off care to a junior. His hands are steady, his tone neutral, but his brain’s still up on the rooftop, in the echo of your laugh, in the way your mouth curved before you kissed him, in the cigarette that never got lit and never hit the ground.

The ambulance bay’s already teeming again. Another shift, another flood. Somewhere, someone’s yelling for more gauze. Someone else is panicking over a febrile toddler. Life, in all its messy glory, continues its noisy march through the ED.

But George feels lighter. Like something’s been recalibrated. Like he’s found a frequency worth tuning into.

And yeah, it’s complicated. Secret. Probably inadvisable. HR would have a coronary. Maybe even two.

But when you say his name now, even across a crowded trauma bay, it hits different.

Like a promise.

Like something worth breaking the rules for.

EPILOGUE.

The breakroom is a kingdom of expired yogurt and broken dreams. The vending machine hums like a dying animal. Someone’s half-eaten banana loaf has been fossilizing on the counter for three days.

In the middle of this domestic horror scene sit Alex and Lando, two overcaffeinated gossip goblins in scrubs, staring intently at a laminated 3x3 bingo card.

“You can’t count the shoulder touch twice,” Alex says, pointing with the precision of a man who has lost three bets to Lando and refuses a fourth. “That’s one square. One. No multiplying affection like it’s mitosis.”

Lando kicks his feet up on the table, nursing a diet soda with the reckless bravado of someone who absolutely has not read the department email about the rat infestation. “I can if it was the left shoulder and then the right shoulder. That’s a full-body commitment. That’s basically foreplay in George language.”

Alex snorts. “Please. George’s version of foreplay is re-alphabetizing his medication cabinet.”

“And yet,” Lando says, dragging out the words like he’s narrating a wildlife documentary, “there he was. Letting her brush his elbow for a full two seconds yesterday. Right by the central line trolley. I timed it.”

“You timed it?”

“With my watch.”

Alex sighs and jots something in the corner of his clipboard. There are tally marks, a sketch of what might be George’s brooding frown, and a doodle of you wearing a cape.

“Fine,” Alex concedes. “‘Elbow linger’ gets a square. But only because I caught them emerging from the janitor’s closet looking suspiciously winded after ‘restocking gauze.’”

“George still tried to pretend he had a leg cramp,” Lando mutters, eyes rolling skyward. “They’re exhausting.”

“Deliciously exhausting,” Alex corrects. “Like a seven-course meal of denial.”

They both lean over the bingo card.

Top row reads:

George crashes a gurney while distracted

They show up with matching coffees ‘by coincidence’

Prolonged eye contact during a code blue

Middle row:

Overheard giggling behind curtain 3

Shared umbrella in the rain

George refers to her as ‘my paramedic’ and immediately chokes

Bottom row:

She steals his pen and keep it

They get caught kissing in a wardrobe by Q3

George admits he “might be fond” of her while under anaesthetic

“Alright,” Lando says, popping the cap off his highlighter. “What’s the wager? Winner gets the good parking spot or free lunch for a week?”

“Winner gets to officiate the wedding. Loser has to do a night shift with Alonso.”

Lando pauses. Measures the stakes. Nods, sage and serious. “You cruel, glorious bastard. You’re on.”

They shake on it. ⛐

572 notes · View notes

mercrussell · 1 month ago

Text

THIS IS SO GOOD MY HEARTTTTTTT BEATING SO FAST WHILE READING THIS

LET'S (NOT) TALK ABOUT IT

summary: max verstappen never gets too drunk, except the one time he does. and it's your turn, his best-friend, to take care of him! but vodka doesn't mix well with the unsaid and max ends up spilling more than just a drink on his shirt, including the tiny, insignificant little fact that he has been hopelessly in love with you for years.

F1 MASTERLIST | MV33 MASTERLIST

pairing: max verstappen x best friend!reader wordcount: 4.8K content: alcohol, drunk confession, best friends to lovers, angst if you squint, mention of vomiting. note: requested here! lei you sent this AGES ago and i forgot about it..... but here it is! hope you'll enjoy it because it was definitely a very fun bit to write, and you know i always love writing for max ‹𝟹 fun little one before the next bible i'll put out!

KNOWING MAX EMILIAN Verstappen for as long as you had, you were well-acquainted with his irritatingly specific alcohol preference, honed through your blossoming epoch of shared adolescence and reckless partying, when he had the time. You mostly blamed his upbringing: he didn’t like anything too sugary, outright refused crémant while holding an enduring love for champagne, and sporadically drank “casual” alcohol like vodka and tequila but looked down on it when it was pure. Not whiskey, though. Never whiskey.

So, given how ridiculously finicky he was with booze, you genuinely couldn’t figure out how Max had gotten this drunk at a club only serving badly mixed, downright diabetic cocktails.

His arm was slung clumsily around your shoulders, and the full weight of his body leaning into yours made it significantly harder to drag him along the road leading to his apartment. Monaco still breathed the leftover heat of the day; the tiled streets were warm under your bare feet, each step further tattooing the memory of the sun into your skin. Drunk stragglers littered the road, trading laughter for the beating of a heart.

The muffled thump of music spilled from nearby clubs, weaving in with the distant hush of ocean waves. Trees along the French Riviera swayed lazily with the tepid breeze and amid all that balmy, quiet mess, your hand stayed firm against the sweat-slicked fabric of your best friend’s back.

“You’re heavy as fuck, you know that, right?” you huffed, the damp heat of his shirt clinging to your side.

Max mumbled something, low and gravelly, just clear enough to make through his inebriated haze. “You didn’t complain when I carried you out of that party in Miami…”

“You were sober then,” you shot back with amusement. “Now, you’re a glorified sandbag.”

“This sandbag won four championships!” he announced proudly, albeit loudly, stumbling a little as you adjusted your grip to keep him steady— and to avoid the perfidiously placed lamp post in front of him.

You snorted at his antics and at the little stagger in his steps as he walked. No matter how long you’d known each other, or how close you were, it was rare to see Max Verstappen—the Dutch Lion, Mad Max himself—in such a state: vulnerable and unguarded, with his emotions laid bare in the crack of his tone and the gleam in his eyes. “This sandbag,” you said, “is about five seconds away from face-planting into the gutter. Doesn’t exactly scream ‘champion’ to me.”

Max turned his head toward you, and only then did you realize how close he actually was. His nose grazed yours as you looked up at him, his breath, warm and laced faintly of citrus and tequila, ghosted over the indents of your lips. His hair was a tousled, sweaty mess of dirty blonde clinging to his forehead, and his gaze half-lidded, but still intense enough in the way the blue of his irises traveled from your eyes to your lips, sparkling with mischief as his mouth parted in a lazy grin.

Your heart wavered. So did your steps.

Max was a good-looking man; this was never up for debate. But still, he was your Max.

You whipped your gaze forward again as his laugh split through the night air. “And yet, you’re still carrying me.” His tone was dipped in the same bratty, I-told-you-so lilt he used whenever he beat you at trivia games, almost child-like.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re not in the capacity to actually make it home by yourself.”

He gasped. Gasped, with his hand on his chest and everything, and you really, really had to concentrate not to burst out laughing. “You could’ve left me,” he said with mock offense, “if I were too inconvenient. I am… plenty capable.”

Something scrunched up in your face at the notion. You gave him a look. “Max, you’re drunk, not stupid. You know damn well you’re not an inconvenience to me. If you were—” you hoisted him up straighter on your side, pausing at a crosswalk. The red light bathed the pair of you in a soft, hazy glow. “ —I’d have dropped you when we were 18 after you threw up in my kitchen sink, and made me tell my parents it was me.”

“That was an intense party,” he mumbled defensively. “And I didn’t wanna make a bad first impression on your dad.”

You hummed. “It’s true that blaming me for projectile vomiting into our plumbing system is just so much better.”

“Your mom said the sink could handle anything!” Max dared to actually look offended.

“It’s a sink, Max. She meant, like, vegetable scraps. Not whatever diabolic thing you decided to ingest that day.”

Another laugh escaped him, this time soft as silk sliding over bare skin, and you found yourself punctuating his fit with a chuckle of your own. The memory was grotesque, sure, but it was something entirely yours. One of many.

When the laughter faded, the silence left behind was mellow. Without thinking, as some kind of reflex, you murmured. “You know I’d never leave you.”

And even though you can’t see his face, you know the usual sharpness in it has softened by the way his fingers loosen their grip on your shoulder, or how his body leans a little further into yours as the red light finally flickers to green. You’d mapped him out years ago.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he mutters back, and it almost feels like a secret he’s sharing with you, if there was any left to share. Something that said, Hey, I trust you. I know you. I know you wouldn’t leave me behind.

And with Max Verstappen, trust has always been the rarest thing of all.

He exhales, letting his head fall on top of yours— well, more like it bonks it. You hiss in pain, but a laugh bubbles out of your lips before you can stop it.

“God, I love your laugh,” Max whispers, as if to himself. Then, quieter, “I love you.”

Your thoughts all reels to a halt, leaving the words to seep into every crevice of your mind until it reaches your heart. They echo with painful precision: love, love, love, hammering in your chest so hard you could double over with the pain of your ribs breaking, a mantra trying to root itself into the space it left.

I love you.

He stumbles again, like the words cost him balance, and you barely manage to catch him in time. The wind brushes your skin, colder now, hitting you with a reality check: Max was drunk out of his mind. Nothing he could say right now would hold up in a court of law, much less in the court of morning light. Why would it matter?

You try to swallow it down as his apartment finally comes into view. The words you’d longed for years had been said. But they’ve been slurred, not meant.

Such sweet hypocrisy.

“...Right,” you mutter. Your finger flexes on the small of his back, trying to grasp something so desperately out of reach. “Let’s get you home.”

If carrying Max from the club to his home was an arduous task, getting him into bed was something of a Herculean effort.

First, he became physically incapable of taking off his own shoes, preferring to sit inert on the shoe rack, rendered useless by tequila. Obviously, you had to crouch down and untie the shoelaces of the sneakers he refused to let go of. His only contribution was to absentmindedly play with your hair, twirling strands between his fingers with all the grace of a tipsy toddler.

“You have such pretty hair,” he’d mumbled, brushing a piece off your forehead and tucking it behind your ear. The movement was clumsy, somewhat hesitant, but so tender that the heat in your cheeks flared in your entire body, and had nothing to do with the sun that filtered through the open blinds all day.

“I love it,” he continued, with the confidence of someone discovering poetry for the first time. “They’re so soft. It— it… flies. When you walk.”

You blinked up at him. “That’s the wind, Max.”

“No,” he squinted back at you. “You’re the wind.”

Right. Good luck figuring out what the hell that meant.

Then, no matter how sticky he was, he categorically refused to even look at the bathroom. You reminded him multiple times that he was coated in a ridiculous amount of glitter and sweat, and that he reeked like the obscure depths of a frat party, but it fell on deaf ears.

“If I go,” he said solemnly, placing both hands on your shoulders, “Will you go with me?”

Your eyes had shot wide open. “Max. I am not showering with you. Jesus. How many grams of alcohol are you operating on?”

He sighed and collapsed against your shoulder, completely defeated. “Then I don’t want to. I love being with you. I don’t want to leave.”

Classic Max Verstappen. Relentlessly stubborn, whether drunk or sober, so you dropped the issue. Arguing with him in such a state wasn’t a hill you were willing to die on.

Every attempt to get Max to cooperate came with a new confession. You opened the door of his bedroom, something you’d done more times than you can count, and he loved that you always knew your way around his place. You dropped him onto the mattress, and he grinned up at you, told you he loved that you didn’t even need to ask what side he slept on. Apparently, post-drinks Max had an unlimited supply of love to give, as well as no filter. He loved your eyes, he loved your laugh, he loved your presence.

Not the kind of love that truly mattered, though, but you weren’t quite ready to pull that thread apart.

You turned to grab a clean shirt from his closet and, behind you, all sense of gravity seemed to escape Max as he flopped onto his back, limbs starfish-spread. The mattress groaned under him in protest. You had to keep yourself from sighing.

“Max,” you called, holding up the soft white tee, “take off your shirt.”

He pushed himself up onto his elbows with the last of his strength. He tilted his head, a slow smile appeared on his lips, warm and undeniably pleased with what he was about to say.

“You do it.”

It wasn’t crass, nor was it sexual: the smile wasn’t a smirk, and his eyes didn’t dart at the hem of your skirt that rode up higher than necessary due to your efforts. Instead, something almost tender pulled at Max’s tone. All of a sudden, his room felt too intimate for the space taken by the friendship you spent a lifetime not to ruin.

Still, you sat down next to him. He was all obstinate limbs, you thought to yourself. There was no need to argue with him longer than necessary. You wouldn’t win this fight.

The bed recognized you out of muscle memory, sighing under your weight and the covers pooling around you like it memorized your shape from the many times you’d spent your nights next to him. You were close enough so that your knees brushed with the hesitancy of teenagers. In the charged quiet that settled between you, your pulse beat loud enough for two.

You reached out, silent, fumbling slightly with the first button of his shirt. The fabric was warm with the heat emanating from his body, and the soft linen slipped between your trembling fingertips.

Max didn’t move. However, his breath hitched when your nails grazed the skin of his neck, as if you’d burned him. His gaze was locked on your face like you were a shooting star in the middle of his ceiling, reminiscent of the glowing stars on yours when you were a child. His lips parted at your every movement, his intakes of air slowing down to match the motion of your fingers. You were sure he could hear your heart. That he could feel the hesitation shaking in your knuckles every time you brushed over a parcel of skin.

The second button took longer.

Max cocked his head, brows drawn together like he was trying to decipher you. “You’re so pretty,” he whispered. This time, he took his time enunciating it: none of the syllables were slurred, and each of them echoed clear as day in the hollow between your ribs.

You shook your head. “And you’re so drunk.”

His brow furrowed further in sheer incomprehension. You made your way to the last button as he struggled with words, opening and closing his mouth around silent consonants. Frankly, you didn’t want him to speak. You wanted him dressed and gone to sleep, so you could put all this false hope to bed with him.

You slipped the blue button up from his broad shoulders, careful about keeping your eyes away from his bare chest, but a small pressure on your wrist stopped you in your movements.

“You don’t get it,” Max insists. You froze at the intensity of his voice, the unbuttoned shirt slack in your hands. You could feel his frustration mounting—not at you, but at the way the words tangled before leaving his mouth.

“You don’t get it,” he repeated, slower now. “You’re so, so pretty. Like— you’re the wind.”

This time, an audible groan slipped past your lips. “Not this again.”

“Can you just�� listen? For once?” he said, waving a hand as if you were the one interrupting. “I’m trying to tell you something very important right now.”

Knowing him, you knew that restless mind of his wouldn’t shut off until the thought clawing at his throat was out in the open and landed somewhere, preferably with you. With a soft sigh, you tossed the bundled-up linen shirt to the side, folding your arms across your chest as you gave him a single, begrudging nod. “Okay. Go on.”

He sat a little straighter, seemingly preparing for verbal battle. His spine wobbled with the effort. “Okay. So. The wind,” he stated, very seriously, and you had a hard time believing this metaphor was about to change your life.

“You are the wind.” Encouraged by your stunned silence, Max continued. “Like, you move through people. And places. You always belong everywhere and… and you make everything feel lighter, easier.” He waved his hand in a vague circle, trying to manifest the image. “You made me lighter, I think.”

It made some level of sense, albeit stumbly. Still, Max wasn’t done.

“I’m— fuck,” he curses, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been carrying this around since I was seventeen, this feeling. It’s stupid. It’s heavy. You’re just— you’re there, all the time, and it’s a lot—”

“Thanks, Max.”

“No! No, not in a bad way. It’s— God. You’re so pretty,” he murmured, and his voice broke on the word. “And you’re kind, and smart, and you make me laugh, and you make me better, and— tonight, you carried me home and helped me take off my shoes and you’re literally changing my fucking shirt and I’m so in love with you it’s making me useless.”

Max leaned forward, forehead gently pressed to your collarbone. His breath was hot against your neck, his hand lax at his sides. He hadn’t noticed you had frozen still, or maybe he did but just didn’t care, too caught up in his own thoughts.

Slowly, almost sheepishly, his arms wound around your waist. His fingers, rough and calloused, found home brushing your sides and resting against your lower back, palm pressing delicately as if he was afraid you’d break. You couldn’t move: the thing you’ve been trying not to want for years was suddenly happening, it felt bittersweet, and you didn’t know how to breathe around it.

Max’s voice came muffled against your collarbone. “Can you stay?” Your heart gave a traitorous lurch. Faced with your silence, he continued, quieter. “Just like this.”

You exhaled a laugh, wet and shaking. The humor was barely present in it. “You’re going to regret this in the morning.”

“No I won’t.” There was the stubbornness you had grown to love, turned childish by the tangy aroma of mixed liqueurs. “Let me have this one.”

His earnest tone did something to your chest. A small stab blooming into a blood-colored rose.

You hesitated a second longer. You let your body move before your mind could catch up: softly, you maneuvered both of your bodies to fit into the middle of the bed. Reaching for the light covers bunched near the end of the bed, you tugged them over both of you with one hand while the other found its place on the slope of his shoulder. Max shifted so his arms swallowed your waist entirely, his face buried in the crook of your neck, and it felt like somewhere you should have been a long time ago.

“Five minutes,” you whispered, more to yourself than to him.

He was already half-asleep when he answered. “Five.”

But neither of you moved again. Not in five minutes, not in ten. Sleep came slowly, and you couldn’t recall which one gave in to the weight of the night first.

Max crossed the threshold of his bedroom door, looking like a man who had narrowly survived war. His hair stuck out at angles defying gravity, his under-eyes bore the haunting hollowness of the dehydrated, and the single second a shard of sunlight brushed his cheekbone, he physically recoiled.

Still, even in his pitiful state, he’d managed to throw on the clean t-shirt you had gotten out for him last night and a pair of sweatpants, presumably after successfully peeling off whatever clothes he’d passed out in. You noted, with quiet amusement, that his shirt was inside-out. Baby steps.

You, on the other hand, had been up for hours.

Waking up in Max’s arms had been… something. The blinds you forgot the shut had lit up the room bright orange too early, and the sudden feel of his arm still slung protectively around your waist had sent you into tachycardia. You’d disentangled yourself as gently as possible, pulled on some of his older clothes from the drawer he kept aside for you, and set about pretending the night before never happened.

You made coffee and laid out the Ibuprofen, waiting for him to wake up like he was a ticking bomb.

Now, Max collapsed onto the couch with a groan, dropping his full weight into the cushions. You approached him quietly with a mug and a pill in hand, wordlessly handing them over, which he accepted without a hint of grace. He swallowed the tablet with a sip so long and grim you thought he might weep.

“I’m never drinking again,” Max muttered hoarsely.

You snorted, easing yourself down next to him on the couch. “You sound like a broken record.”

He lifted the cup halfway to his mouth and, behind the rim, smiled.

You stared at the motion longer than you meant to. Your fingers twisted at the hem of his sleeve you were wearing. “Well,” you said, eyes fixed on the swirling steam of your untouched cup, “you’ll probably forget about that promise, like you forgot everything else about last night.” You offered it with a little shrug and a chuckle like it was nothing, while your heart thudded unevenly in your chest.

You were probing for answers, so you peeked at him.

Max was staring at the floor, his fingers tight around the coffee mug. His brows were pinched, like he was either trying to solve a complicated equation—or simply trying to wrestle down the lingering effects of alcohol amidst the fragments of last night. For a moment, you were sure he didn’t remember.

You braced yourself. It was fine. It was better like this, truly.

“Actually, uh,” he spoke up. “I do.”

Everything went quiet.

“I remember all of it.”

The cup between your fingers almost slipped from your grasp.

The words had the same effect on you as an earthquake would have had. It messed with your balance, breath catching with your throat as you catched Max’s eyes. You searched it, desperately, for a joke, or maybe something akin to regret. Yet, he simply looked back at you, with the same resolution he always seemed to carry.

You laughed, a tight, high-pitched sound that didn’t sound like you in the slightest. Carefully, you placed your coffee mug on the table. It clicked too loudly against the wood.

“Okay, don’t worry,” you began, waving a hand toward him to dismiss… whatever that was. “I know you were drunk and—”

“Y/N—”

“—you don’t have to feel bad or embarrassed, really, like, we all say dumb shit when we drink—”

“Y/N.”

“—I mean, God, remember that one time I told Willem Jansen I wanted to go on a date with him even though I only wanted to ask him the time and I panicked—”

Max’s fingers found your wrist, overly delicate, and all the memories of barely a few hours ago flashed before your eyes, snapping your mouth shut. The world stilled around his touch, anchoring you right in that little pocket of feelings you’d been avoiding. His thumb brushed over your pulse.

His eyes were clear of any haze this time around.

“I meant it,” Max said, voice low. “All of it. Drunk, sober, it makes no difference. I think the same thing.”

Your eyes searched his face, terrified of what you might find and even more terrified of what you wouldn’t. Max just held you like he was afraid you might be the one disappearing next.

And in the face of what you’ve been waiting to hear for years, all you could muster was a downright pathetic, “Oh.”

Max hummed, a small noise of acknowledgement. He probably expected more, or maybe he expected even less. You couldn’t know, but “oh” was all that could leave your lips at the moment. The silence that followed stretched long and tight, just a few seconds shy of turning awkward. Your fingers tapped once against the side of your cup. His did the same against the arm of the couch.

Finally, Max broke the quiet.

“I think I drank more last night because it’s been a while since we went out together,” he recalled. “My schedule and all. And you looked…,” he paused, shaking his head. “Beautiful.”

He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. “And I’ve, you know. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for a while. Years, actually. The feeling had just doubled. I thought if I drank enough, I’d stop thinking about it,” he lets out a sheepish laugh. “And if I stopped thinking, I’d stop wanting to kiss you.”

While your body was as stiff as a rock, your mind was the tornado centered around it. A whiplash of years spun through your head: the late nights, the race weekends, your shoulder against his on hotel couches, the way he always found you first in the crowd, how you’d make fun of all the older drivers scared of a teenager. The times you spent trying not to fall into the delusion that it might not be as unrequited as you made it out to be.

All those emotions, swirling and fighting, slipped out in a fashion unique to you. “You’re a twenty-seven-year-old man,” you blurted, tone more incredulous than scolding. “You’re pushing thirty. Wasn’t there a more mature way to… I don’t know, process that?”

Max barked out a full-bodied laugh, the ones you didn’t see all that often on camera. It was unashamed, not even a tad surprised or bashful, twisting a warm sensation in your stomach just because he looked so at ease.

“Well,” he said, turning his head to face you properly now. His mouth was curving in a way that made him even more stupidly handsome, and soft, just for you. “We met when we were seventeen, and I’ve loved you ever since. So I guess I tend to revert back to that when it comes to you.”

There it was.

Love, love, love. This time, the words thrummed behind your skin, rushing in your bloodstream and mixing with oxygen feeding into the beating of your heart. It got you drunk in a way alcohol never could, and there was the irony of it: it was the clearest confession you had gotten, from the most sober version of him. I love you. The unadulterated truth. It rendered you speechless.

Max mistook it for hesitation. You couldn’t blame him, you’d try to backpedal to save your dignity too if he had pulled the same move on you.

“I’d understand if you don’t feel the same,” he rushed out. “Yesterday must have been a lot for you. It won’t impact our friendship, I just wanted to be upfront with you—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

You launched yourself toward him with a force that made him grunt as you collided, lips meeting with such strength it sent him sprawling back against the couch. His hands instinctively gripped your hips to steady both of you, but the momentum had already taken over. You were practically straddling him now, your hands cupping his jaw, threading into his hair, gripping the fabric of his shirt.

And Max. He kissed you back like a man starved, as if the last ten years had been a long inhale and you were the only thing that could let him breathe out. It wasn’t clean, or practiced. You were both messy and desperate, all tongues and teeth trying to scrape the part of the other that didn’t already reside in you. Max tasted like coffee, and you needed him like an addict.

When you finally pulled apart, both of you were flushed and panting, foreheads pressed together because parting seemed inconceivable.

“Don’t even think about implying I don’t feel the same,” you breathed out.

Max grinned, both smug and dizzy. “Jumping on me like that erased every other possibility. Even though my headache got worse.”

You let out a short laugh with the little air you could gather. You smacked his chest. “Being that hungover was not the perfect setting for a first kiss. You’ve only got yourself to blame.”

“Okay, yeah,” he winced playfully, thumbs rubbing circles into your waist. “Maybe not how I planned it.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You had ten years.”

“Fine, I didn’t exactly plan it,” Max admitted. He had given up all subtlety, his eyes flicking down to your lips. You couldn’t be more grateful for it. “But it’s fine. We can retry.”

He kissed you again, slower, more carefully. You savored the sensation of his lips gliding against yours as if it would be the last time, and quietly cursed him out when he stopped.

But soon enough, his lips found your flushed cheeks. “And retry,” he murmured.

This time, he pressed a kiss to your neck, just beneath your jaw. “And retry.”

You exhaled a shaky breath. Everything felt so much— his lips lingering on your skin, the way you were practically draped across him, your heart pounding. “Damn Max,” you whispered, the corners of your mouth pulling up as your fingers brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. “Take me out on a date first.”

“That’s a yes,” he states.

You huffed out a laugh, unable to help how your cheeks warmed. “It was a yes, just prefaced by human decency. You know, food, a table… clothes, even.”

He groaned in protest. “Max!” you snorted, burying your face in the crook of his neck. You were now fully lying on top of him, his arms wrapped around you. The smell of him grounded you. Warm skin, lingering traces of cologne… it was him, who was yours, now.

You felt his smile pressing against the top of your head. “I’ll take you out, you can name the time and place.”

“Tomorrow,” you said without hesitation. “The restaurant by the beach.”

There was a beat of quiet during which you both cradled the other’s presence like something breakable, as if the wind could break it. You figure you’d outgrow that phase, one day. Just not today.

The wind.

“Though,” you broke the silence. “One of the conditions is that I get some clarification about the wind metaphor.”

Max groaned, and hearing him just like that felt like you had physically wounded him, arms tightening around your shoulders in protest. You laughed, giddy, love stretching across your entire chest and further out, enveloping you both. You pressed a kiss to his neck.

Max could explain it to you later. Maybe over pasta, or wine, or whatever your mind will set upon as you hold his hand next to the menu and salt shakers. There’d be a plethora of other kisses and shared mornings, with no hangovers in sight, with plenty of other metaphors that made more sense waiting to be invented or unraveled.

Maybe he’d explain it to you tomorrow, or even the day after. You had a lifetime to figure it out, now. You were patient to wait for ten years, you could be a patient a little while longer.

#max verstappen

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