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Blue’s a weird colour. It’s calm, idyllic, yet sad and bare. Sometimes you look out into burning wildfires, spreading like canker, and just below the blooming orange is that subtle edge of blue. Other times you look over thrashing waves, and each particle reflects just one wavelength- blue.
There’s pale blue, sky blue, navy blue, cyan, lapis. Max didn’t care.
For he’d seen what blue really was.
When he looked into the mirror, his eyes were blue. But when he gazed into George’s iris, the way his pupils contracted as sharp rays of sunlight spilled iridescence in them, he saw for the first time- Blue. Grey. The colour of everything yet nothing. Breathtaking. Enchanting. Everything that wasn’t his, but now he craved.
Blue hasn’t looked the same since.
It was in the way he smiled, that delicate tint of his teeth. In the way bluebells waved when he walked past. In the way ponds shimmered in sunlight. He lived in so much blue, so much of him, and Max despised the fact that he’d never seen it before.
When George laughed, Max weaved the soundwaves into a tapestry of blue, integrated into his soul like the poem it was. So excited, so delighted, it was… beautiful.
When Max saw those tears at the corners of his eyes, all he knew was that they were blue, spilling sapphires on pale skin. How he craved to reach out and wipe them away, feel their beauty on his fingertips. It would be the closest he’ll ever get to George, to have the tiniest piece of him.
Sometimes, Max saw blue in the most mundane of things. Yellow cereal was ultramarine, white clouds blended into the indigo behind them. He started to hate the sunset for infecting blue skies with its warm tones; hated how it took away his beauty.
The world was tinted blue, and he breathed it in like fresh air, like it was his life support. It was everywhere even when it was nowhere. It wasn’t even his favourite colour, but now he couldn’t live without it.
George blinked down at him through thick lashes, face breaking into a soft smile of acknowledgement that Max wished he could steal out of this world and make it for him, just for him. But he would never love him in the same way, even if he’d turned his world into blue.
Everyday, Max lingered and pieced together parts of George- the way his hands moved, the way his teeth showed, the way his demeanour changed with each different person. His brain was completely overtaken by the wave of blue, storing all parts of him- even the imperfect ones- as bewitching. Max wanted to be the one to hold him, wanted the tension to leave George’s shoulders when he saw him, wanted to trace patterns into his skin and remind him how utterly and completely he had fallen in love with blue, with the very essence of him.
Whisper George’s name into his mouth like a reverent prayer.
He could’ve been pink, yellow, green, and Max would’ve still fallen so deeply in love with that colour that it would seep splatters into every corner of his periphery, every inch of sight that he could muster.
These blue-tinted spectacles felt more like glasses for those short of sight, those like Max who didn’t see until now.
He hadn’t felt freedom like this before, revelation like this- so clear, so enchanting. In the mornings, he woke with the taste of George in his mouth, though he had never kissed him beyond dreams. Walking down the street, the cracks in the pavement bent into the angles of his smile; the shop windows blurred with his reflection, though he was not there. Every sound was coloured with George, with blue - the rustle of newspapers reminded him of his careful hands, the clatter of coins in a till the bright, impossible rhythm of his voice.
Max adored him like it was religion, but with a sinful lust intertwined in his desperate love that would’ve sent him kicked out of a Church. But Churches weren’t blue.
That night, he lay awake in the quiet room. Shadows bent against the walls. Max reached out his hand into the dark, knowing George was not there- yet seeing him in the sweep of his arm, in the hush of his breath, in the tremor of his chest as it rose and fell.
He was everywhere: not beside him, not his, and yet inescapable- so blue.
No matter where he was, who he was, Max knew he’d love him. And it hurt so fucking bad that there was no way George could love him back. They simply didn’t exist in a reality where it was possible to love a rival. Not like this. And he couldn’t bear for the blue to shatter once reality sunk its teeth in the delicate glass. For now, he’d live in a world where George loved him back.
Max memorised George’s coffee order down to the percentage of milk, perfected it in cold mornings, drank it like he was sitting beside him in domesticity. But he wasn’t. He studied the waves of his hair, the swoops across his forehead that he wanted to brush out of his eyes, those ocean eyes. Sometimes, he sat outside the Mercedes motorhomes across multiple paddocks knowing George was in there, heart beating, breathing in the same rhythm, the breath he wanted to steal. And yet couldn’t.
An assortment of random gifts were sometimes delivered to George through Mercedes mechanics- blue notebooks when Max noticed his was filling up, a small folder when he saw perfectly colour coded files George had nowhere to keep.
George didn’t know who sent them, or what they were for. All he knew was that he appreciated whoever this ghost was. Max, who remained so utterly devoted, who refused to outright say it in case his curated reality became fragmented.
At the next Red Bull meeting, Max showed up with a powerpoint presentation on new racing lines and the possibility of the rear suspension being affected by an overheating engine within Singapore’s heat rise.
One attendant must have let it slip, because hushed news spread fast through the paddock about how Max had pulled a ‘George Russell,’ for what was possibly the first time. Max didn’t care- he would show his love in a way that no one might understand, but at least he did.
George found the news amusing.
Everyday, he thought, Why can’t the world let me drown in blue? No one was there beside him to answer.
At kitchen counters, he stirred his coffee until it went cold, the cream swirling into blackness, and saw only the shape of his shoulder turning away. Max drank, and the bitterness scraped his throat raw, as though swallowing the absence of George’s words.
Despite the limitations of such a cruel world, he could not let go. For he thought- no, he knew- if he was in the cracks of the pavement, in the rain’s rhythm, in the hush of silence, then somewhere George must feel him too. And yet, it was only in his reality that this was true.
_
In another side of reality, George observed Max across driver parades, through podiums, walking across garages. It was slow, but eventually he could piece the puzzle together. Stolen glances became more frequent, the anonymous gifts more personal, like they could see his blue soul from one side to the other. He could feel Max even when he wasn’t there: the curve of his smile, the beauty of his steadfast approach.
And it was just on a random day that George knew. Knew exactly what he had to do.
“Max,” George softly called out as he passed through a small corridor. Max turned around, sight immediately softening as his world turned blue once again, like he could breathe fully.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
Max blinked in uncertainty, silence engulfing the pair, yet there was this glint of guilt in his eyes that George could see, in those infuriatingly icy blue ones. Ones he couldn’t stop studying like they were poetry.
George continued, “The gifts. The reason you made a presentation. Why you look so distant everyday.”
Max wanted the earth to swallow him whole. But, something opened in his heart- a new found vulnerability he hadn’t let himself experience in years. What good was blue if it wasn’t real?
He made his decision. No more lying, no more hiding.
“Yes,” he whispered hesitantly.
Beats of silence passed through them like a blanket of confession. The air was thick with tension, thorough with anticipation. Because everything hung on this one desperate thread.
“Would-” George started, fiddling with his fingers. “Would you like to… I don’t know, grab some coffee?”
Max’s eyes widened, reality crashing into him. George had just asked him out- the one he’d yearned for, the one he’d breathed for in the last few months. His chest felt like it was going to collapse- not out of tears, but out of sheer fucking joy.
When he looked up, it wasn’t empty walls and unrequited desire. This time, George was standing there, staring in anticipation, chewing his bottom lip. Real.
_
If someone would’ve told Max that he would be dating George, he would’ve revelled in happiness, but outwardly laughed in dismissal. If someone told him a few weeks later he’d be kissing him, lips softly caressing against each other, he would’ve told them to fuck off.
And yet there he was, nights no longer bare, coffee now shared with another breathing soul.
The world was no longer blue. His world and his cosmos was George, and George was everything.
Blue’s not a weird colour. It was a replacement. That reality of blue that he’d carefully constructed- it was, well… gone. And replaced with every colour, with every emotion.
With him, just him.