Chapter Text
There are a hundred reasons George Russell hates his job, but the one that takes top spot, without an inkling of doubt in his mind, is Alexander Albon.
He tells people it’s the early start, which is second place; all through his Classical History course at university he slept in as late as possible, working into the small hours fuelled by a Monster or – if his sister Cara, the sponsored snowboarder, dropped by – a Redbull. Something about the darkness is so focussing, and the caffeine content of an energy drink does wonders for his unmedicated ADHD.
He often jokes that having Year 7 last period on a Friday is his least favourite part, having to try and teach whilst they wriggle and joke and pack up twenty minutes early in their itch to race home and start the weekend. His colleague Doriane, the Maths teacher across the hall, shares this sentiment with him over pastries every Wednesday.
It was the Headmaster for a couple of blissful weeks, until he discovered via unhappy accident that Alexander existed after barging into the man’s Art classroom to print off worksheets when the History printer finally gave out. Headmaster Johnson is a royal prick, but pales in comparison to Alexander’s self-important boasts.
“He’s so arrogant, Dori. He sits on his desk. What kind of ‘professional’ does that?” He puts ‘professional’ in heavy air quotes as his friend bites into her croissant.
“Literally all of us do that, George. You’re the odd one out here.” He flicks a crumb at his just-washes jumper, and he yelps. “Are you calling me arrogant?”
“No, never, he just-” George sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “He really frustrates me.”
“You’ve mentioned.” She adds unhelpfully, tracking his eyes across the hall and landing on the man in question, leant against the wall and talking to the Head of English.
He’s probably chatting her up. George bristles at the thought. So arrogant.
Not that Lily (the aforementioned Head of English) would mind; from the way she’s giggling and twirling her hair, she seems to be hitting on him back. Alexander grins at her, shrugging at a comment she makes with effortless beauty.
George is a man enough to admit that he has always been a little jealous of Alexander. Who wouldn’t be, when he looks like that?
Alexander has brown hair so dark it’s nearly black hair, a little wavy and always messy, like he’s dragged his hands through it a hundred times. He’s exactly one centimetre taller than George, and he doesn’t stop there, also beating him in muscle mass, filling out his suit sleeves with frustrating perfection. He has one tiny tattoo, a Daniel Ricciardo quote, mostly hidden beneath his sleeve, but never beneath his blazer, because George has never seen him wear it, not once.
There’s a sudden, very unwelcome voice, from right in front of him, snapping him from his thoughts. His knuckles have gone white on his coffee mug.
“Alright there? I saw you staring at me, princess.” Comes the smooth voice of the irritating man in question from directly in front of him, a large, calloused hand clicking in front of his zoned-out eyes.
That’s another reason George doesn’t like him; princess. It’s not a nickname that’s specific to Alexander - in fact, George has had it more times than he can count. It’s not even clever, just convenient, because he looks like he was born into royalty.
He takes a little pride in the fact that he is, actually, quite beautiful by classical standards. He has high cheekbones and a strong jaw, porcelain skin from spending all his time indoors, light brunette hair that swoops dramatically away from his face, and blue eyes he’s told to get brown contacts for at least once a week. He’s very, very old-fashioned looking, in his knit jumpers and granddad sweaters.
Alexander is his very antithesis, the embodiment of the modern biker ‘bad-boy’, except minus all of the niceness and adding a whole bunch of actually being a dick.
“Mr Albon.” George grits out, meeting the other man’s eyes, his own blue reflected in the gold-and-hazel. They’re glittering with humour, as if Alexander finds George’s dislike of him funny. “Funny seeing you here.”
“You’ll be shocked to learn that I work here, Georgie.” Alexander shoots back, shifting to sit beside him, stretching lazily.
“I meant, what are you doing over by History? You never come this way.” George snaps, a little annoyed at being called ‘Georgie’ by someone he doesn’t consider a friend.
Alexander shrugs. “Figured I’d say hello to my friends. You’d hardly know what that’s like.” He hops off the table with a jaunty wave, murmurs a greeting to Doriane, who is hiding her laughter behind her croissant, and is gone before George can even retort, vanishing into the fray of their tired colleagues.
“You see what I mean?” George gestures wildly after him, turning to Doriane, who is looking at him, blatantly amused.
“He’s not the kindest to you.” She concedes. “See you at the meeting!”
“What meeting?” George asks, but she’s finishing off her second pastry of the morning to avoid answering any more questions, and practically skips off towards the Maths corridor, golden hair bouncing behind her.
Annoyed, insulted, and alone, George finishes off the last of his coffee, wrinkling his nose at the lukewarm dregs. Some people are beginning to disperse, waving goodbye to their friends and heading off sullenly to their classrooms.
There’ll be an email, George thinks with a sigh, and resigns himself to searching his cluttered inbox for whatever meeting he’s asked to go to. Usually there’d be more talk if this was a meeting for everyone, so as he drags himself up the two flights of stairs to the Maths corridor his classroom is planted in, he concludes he’s done something wrong.
Probably all the bickering with Alexander, he assumes, though it’s not even his fault. Alexander nearly always starts it, and if he didn’t want to be argued with, why does he always make himself so… arguable?
He fumbles with the lock to room 63, as he does every morning, the teeth inside the mechanism gummed up from that time a Year 10 jammed his pen into it after being sent out. He’s reported it to the maintenance staff four times, and they’ve not got around to fixing it yet. One of these days, he’s going to get locked in there.
Inside, his classroom is just how he likes it; quiet, and without anybody in it but himself. He drops his bag, updates his calendar, sends off his materials from his lessons to print, and draws a little cat in the corner of his whiteboard, as always. Today, he makes it anime-angry, with slanted eyes and a shouty mouth.
The cat is called Jimmy, and he refuses to explain why to any of his students. His Year 9 Higher class nicknamed him Subway after someone lobbed their £1.99 Subway cookie at it in anger and it stuck to the sketch; other than that, he’s Jimmy, and it’s a well-kept secret as to why.
He switches on the heating and finally, after much procrastination, opens his overstuffed email and rifles through, looking for anything with the word ‘meeting’. A recent email from Charles, the Director of Drama, jumps out at him.
There are a handful of teachers aside from him listed including Doriane, but he doesn’t bother flicking through them properly, just enough to know that it’s one, occasionally two from each department. He’s the only one from History, but Maths has two, and Music and Drama have all of them listed.
Sure enough, it’s about the play; specifically, the Play That Goes Wrong, the school’s next undertaking for the summer show. Maths is wanted for help with budgeting and finances, Media for help with the posters and promotional stuff, and Textiles and Art for help with props and backdrops.
George is wanted for help with ‘historical accuracy’, which he is heartily confused by until he reads the email properly and deciphers that they want him to do costume and set design with Art.
George pauses for a moment before going back to the sending list and searching through it, stomach twisting with what he’s certain is dread as his eyes land on the one name he didn’t want to see.
Three weeks of help is all we’d like, the email asks, not unreasonably, and George can’t help but groan, because he really wants to help and he’d look like an absolute tosser for declining without good reason. On the other hand, he really, really doesn’t want to work with Alexander.
He can see it now; Alexander, micromanaging everything from shades of colour to the number of stripes on a sleeve. Alexander, talking loudly about how he did basically the whole thing himself. Alexander, leant over him, pointing out everything he’s done wrong, hand brushing George’s as he arrogantly snatches a pencil from him to scratch over his work, holding his arm back easily as George tries to stop him…
George swallows and quickly turns off the heating.
The meeting is at 3:15, so he has all day to suffer through before he can even mention his conundrum to Charles. He resigns himself to a long, dragging day, and his mood is not improved when he checks his card and realises he has no money to buy his lunch. He’ll have to scrounge off of Doriane.
The day saunters by, and to her credit, Doriane doesn’t complain much about George stealing her apple when 12:20 rolls around. She does make sure to tease him about spending the next three weeks cosied up to Alexander, and he tosses a pen at her head, bouncing it off of her perfectly styled curls.
Then his Year 11 class finally filter out, homework shoved hastily into bags, he takes his sweet time packing up. His desire to head to that meeting is dripping away with every step he takes closer to it, so he spends a solid five minutes wiping tables he cleaned already and fiddling with the blinds.
When he eventually locks up and drags himself to the hall, a small handful of other teachers are there, about ten in total, most being Music. He plants himself as far from Alexander as possible, beside a Textiles teacher he’s spoken to a few times before at the Wednesday breakfasts but not really other than that.
The meeting, quite frankly, is unhelpful. It’s just rehashing what the email said, but it’s only twenty minutes long, so George puts on his best ‘listening’ face and scribbles down something in his notebook that he’ll never look at again. When Charles finally claps his hands together and dismisses them, he makes a beeline for the exit.
His little car beeps at him as he unlocks it, hurrying through the April drizzle. He likes his A-Class, the shining Mercedes logo a tiny ‘fuck-you’ to his dad, who always complained about them on the road. It’s all steamed-up on the inside, so he sits for a while with the fan blowing and waits until it’s safe to drive.
He’s about to pull out of the car park when a motorbike roars past, insufferably loud. He rolls his window down to flip off the rider, unthinking, until he pulls up beside them at the traffic lights and Alexander leans back on his bike, crossing his arms, faux-insulted behind his visor.
The leather jacket is doing wonders for his whole annoying-biker vibe, the muscle beneath straining against the dark fabric. George briefly thinks about cutting it up, to see how Alexander would react, see if he would keep riding without his jacket, see how dumb that’d look.
He has to double check that his fan isn’t actually blowing hot air into the car anymore as Alexander speeds off the moment the light turns green, puzzled at how warm it is in the car without the heat of the engine being blasted at him.
When he arrives at home, he kicks his shoes off, feeds his cat, and drops straight into bed. He’ll get up in a few hours when his nearly-empty stomach rouses him, and maybe he’ll reheat last night’s lasagne, or maybe he’ll just order takeout. It feels like he’s earnt it after the day he’s been subjected to.
He falls asleep quickly, thinking vaguely of leather and pine-scented cologne he can’t quite place.