#thank u to kay from 2023 for noting that it rained for monza 2017 really helpful

[onadarklingplain]

flip flop... hairpin turns 🚲✨ (have u seen the latest shirtless alex pic on williams insta. the collarbone scar.....)

thank you for asking for this one anon! it made me reread a bit of hairpin turns for the first time in ages and i actually at the best time. and while we're all here, yes some commotion for beloved✨ collarbone scar ✨ “Oh and your partner is waiting to see you. I can go get him for you if you’re ready? It might be nice to have a bit of familiarity.” The nurse says it as an afterthought, still typing up notes about how much Alex had managed to fuck himself over.

Alex had, in truth, only been half listening as the doctors went through the list of what he had broken and what the NHS proposed to do about it — it feels like the least of what he needs to remember right now; the gaping hole where the last four months of his life are supposed to be is too big to look away from, consuming and endless and empty. They had said, infuriatingly, that he should try to remember on his own, but Alex knows it’s June and that means that the season had already started. If he could just look at the results, he’s sure it would help. He just needs to know, anyone would need to know, except they locked his phone in the pharmacy drawer, and the nurse didn’t want to open it for him, and —

“Sorry, did you say partner?” Alex asks without thinking, pausing his quest to pry open the drawer one handed, the movement making the pain in his shoulder cut through the morphine. His shuts his mouth before he can say anything else, before he can give away that there’s apparently another thing he doesn’t remember. A fucking — boyfriend he guesses, but he can’t even imagine who. He doesn’t know where he’d find the time between training and races. A boyfriend, what the fuck, a stranger maybe, sitting out in reception waiting for Alex to love them back, for Alex to —

“Yes, George isn’t it?” The nurse says, still distracted by whatever she was typing. “He’s been very worried, bless him.”

“Right,” Alex says, his heart beating so hard in his chest that he’s sure he’s on the edge of setting off the blood pressure monitors and making everyone worry more. He feels sick, tries to tell himself it’s just the medication, just the pain. “Okay, yeah. Sure — that would be. Could you get him?”

In the ten minutes it takes for the nurse to leave and come back, Alex tries very hard to think of every George he’s ever met, turning them over one by one until his head aches. There was a George in his primary school class. His dad used to have a friend called George that came around the house sometimes, before. His sister’s friend had a dog called George. None of them stick. He knows before the nurse even leads him into the ward — there’s only one George it could be.

Even as he does his best to repress it, he’s got enough self-awareness to realise that he’s on the edge of a panic attack. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what George would expect. When had they gone from spending their evenings playing bloody FIFA to — to whatever? Obviously Alex had thought about it before, George was fit and nice and always put up with him, but he had thought — no he had known, for years, that George was straight. Had he been George’s gay awakening? Had they kissed, had they fucked? He feels out of control in a way he’s never has before, not even in the middle of his worst crashes, the horror of realising his body had done things he couldn’t remember hitting him with new significance.

“When I heard I had a mysterious boyfriend pining for me in the lobby, I wasn’t expecting it to be you,” Alex says because he has to say something, trying to project a confidence he doesn’t feel. He just needs to get discharged, he just needs his phone. He just needs to call Aleix and make a plan.

George grins, small and sheepish. He’s still wearing his cycling clothes, and there’s mud streaked up the outside of his thigh where he must’ve got splashed during the ride. His eyes are huge and ridiculous and — kind and warm and — it’s George. Out of everyone, Alex realises with sudden clarity, he can trust George. George is always good, always fair, always right. He’ll know how Alex is feeling, he’ll help put everything back together. He might not remember how it happened, but seeing George standing by his bed, the faithfulness of him, the dependability, Alex can understand why.

They let George take him home, thank god, and in the car, it’s easy to get George to catch him on the season in detail. It doesn’t really do anything to jog his memories, but it’s nice to know that he’s not letting Charles absolutely run away with it. He feels like the ground is a little steadier underneath his feet. He starts to recognises the streets as they get closer to his house, starts to feel the world become at least a little familiar again.

George is still squirrely when Alex asks how they got together, but George is like that, embarrassed about the smallest things. Alex will get it out of him, and everything will be fine. He’ll be fine.

He’s done such a good job of convincing himself that when Aleix tells him what he had tried not to hear from the doctors in the hospital, the way the bottom drops out from under him feels all the worse. Surgery probably, and missed races certainly, and a whole bloody season totally fucked. It feels catastrophically unfair after everything, and all for something he can’t even remember, all for nothing. His brain feels like it’s grasping around for something, anything — anything that would change what Aleix says is the truth.

He only realises when he sees George come out of his bedroom. It wasn’t all for nothing. It was all for George, who didn’t have a bike. And if it was all for George, maybe George could help after all, maybe George could see him through to the morning. He reminds himself — George is good. George will help. George has his back.

“Are you going to give me a second first kiss, then?” Alex asks, trying to sound coy instead of needy. “Make me forget about my stupid broken collarbone?”

George just gapes at him for a second, hesitating like Alex is something breakable, and Alex feels a pang of tenderness shoot through him. He was always so careful, so worried, more than he had to be. He tugs George down to the sofa, and when George finally leans in to bring their lips together, Alex tries to put everything into the kiss — tries to say that he knows George isn’t going to hurt him, that George couldn’t hurt him. He knows.