Chapter Text
Oscar is an extremely self-aware person. It’s one of the things he’s always been praised for, after all. Being level-headed; his ability to keep calm under pressure; his benign disposition; being intelligent and a fast learner; and, last but not least, being self-aware.
He always knows where his car is. When he has a bad race, he doesn’t need his engineer to tell him where he went wrong: he knows. If someone’s mad at him, or displeased with him, he’s able to tell immediately and course correct, or apologize – or ignore it, depending on how he feels about it.
All this to say – Oscar doesn’t need anyone to point out to him that he’s being pathetically obvious about his crush on George.
Trust him, he knows. He knows and cringes about it every time he remembers one of their interactions where he awkwardly flirted and tried to play it off as banter.
He doesn’t even know where to begin with all the offending evidence against him – the banana incident may be the worst one to date, but Oscar think all of his attempts to flirt with George have been equally humiliating and embarrassing, not only because they have been public enough that they’ve reached his sister online, but because it’s George.
Now, George is a good-looking guy, there’s no doubt about it and Oscar would have gladly admitted to it way before this whole crush problem started. He’s tall, with beautiful, long-lashed blue eyes, a lovely smile, razor-sharp cheekbones and ever since he’s grown his curls out he’s looked like an actual menswear model.
So, there’s nothing embarrassing about finding George physically attractive. But – it’s George. Painfully earnest, ridiculously British, no-game, T-posing George. The guy says ‘blimey’ unironically, kicks people off the drivers’ group chat and stumbles over his long, Bambi legs on the daily. GPDA director. ‘Would-an-athlete-snack-on-chocolate’ utterer.
And yet, Oscar finds himself completely besotted with him.
For one, he finds George actually funny, his sense of humor quirky but quick, and sometimes outright cheeky. George is also unfailingly kind, and even if people make fun of his PR persona Oscar knows he’s actually genuinely a caring person, and a loyal friend. If held at gunpoint he’d also admit that the whole feud with Max was kind of hot, almost as much as it was hilarious and over the top. And, of course, George is talented. So talented that when Oscar was winning in F2 he was haunted by the ghost of George Russell at every single race.
Despite his self-awareness, he’s not entirely sure when the whole crush thing started. All he knows is that the started playing padel together in 2024 and then, when they came back for the new season and he first saw George after two months of not seeing him, his stomach was in knots and his heartbeat sped up and he felt – ugh. Butterflies.
He’s currently staring at a picture of himself holding an umbrella over George during the national anthem in Imola.
It was sunny, okay? And everyone knows George can’t handle the heat! Adidas even built him a freezer jacket because of it! Oscar was being a good friend. He was being nice.
Hattie
How gentlemanly of you to give him the princess treatment
Oscar
Where did you even find this
Hattie
I have my sources
Plus, I’ve been laughing about your crush all year
I hope you know it’s provided me with a lot of joy
Well done today, btw
Oscar
Thank you
Hattie
If it makes you feel better, I don’t think anyone else can actually tell
But I definitely can lol
Oscar
I don’t know what you’re talking about
Hattie
*banana emoji*
Oscar
I’m reporting you for cyberbullying
That damn banana. Why did he say that?! It’s like his brain short-circuited for a moment there. At least Max had laughed too, making it seem like they were all in on the joke. Ha ha.
He doesn’t see George at all for the rest of the day: Mercedes had an abysmal race and are probably debriefing to figure out what went wrong. Against his better judgment, Oscar hopes they solve their issues, so that he can share more podiums and interviews with George.
He immediately feels like a high schooler for even thinking that: is this the equivalent of hoping your crush ends up in detention with you? Or that you get assigned the same project?
This is ridiculous. He and George aren’t close friends, but they like each other, and they do hang out. Occasionally. For padel, mostly. George has been wearing increasingly short shorts for padel, by the way. It’s very distracting. Fuck you, Adidas.
***
He’s back in Monaco on Sunday evening, staring at his phone and debating whether or not he should ask George to play padel together.
Logically, he shouldn’t: watching George flail like a newborn deer and fumble with the racket as he says ‘whoops’ and ‘woah!’ is only going to make his crush worse. He knows how it works by now: the more uncool George acts, the harder Oscar falls for him. He’d rather not question what that says about him, thank you very much.
He shouldn’t, but he and George are also kind of friends and it’s only natural to want to hang out with your friend and enjoy your shared hobby together, no? Plus, even if his crush is paining him, he is certain that George doesn’t have a clue. Not only because George is as oblivious as they come when it comes to being flirted with, but also because Hattie is right. Oscar is hard to read for most people and is able to appear unaffected even when he’s freaking out inside.
Still unsure on the course of action to take, he starts aimlessly scrolling on twitter with his burner account. He stumbles over at least twelve pictures of himself as a pizza – yeah, he’s not sure what that was about but he can appreciate the effort – and then gets stuck staring at a picture of George posing with some of Kimi’s classmates.
It would appear that he’s now jealous of a bunch of high school girls.
He groans, throwing his phone as far away as he can on the couch. It bounces dangerously close to the edge before landing face up and lighting up with a notification.
Lando Norris
padel on tues w alex n george
u free?
Oscar
Oh, so Carlos was busy this week
Maybe a touch too salty, but knowing he hadn’t been asked had stung a bit. So what if he’s terrible at padel, he should still be able to enjoy it with his friends.
Lando Norris
awwww osc u still upset about that?
Oscar
Same place as always?
Lando Norris
someone’s eager
yeah, same place, let’s do 5 so we can have dinner after
i’ll offer so u can forgive me for my betrayal last time
Oscar
Yeah, yeah
Sounds good
It sounds too good to be true. He didn’t even have to go through the humiliating ritual of texting George and praying he’d say yes. Bless you, Lando. Not that Lando has a clue about Oscar’s embarrassing predicament – and thank God for that, because he would become insufferable about it and he would spill the beans immediately. Lando cannot keep a secret to save his life and he has absolutely zero poker face on top of that.
Despite how all-encompassing his crush has turned out to be, Oscar doesn’t actually think he’s going to do anything about it – if he got rejected and had to spend the entire year seeing George everywhere he would actually crash out over it. So, like a proper schoolgirl, he’s going to sigh from a distance and treasure the small, casual touches and shared jokes until this terrible, no good, very bad thing passes.
Because it will pass. It simply has to.