Work Text:
“Hey.”
George found himself approaching Max without meaning to. He’d only been cutting through the crowded corridor when he saw him for the first time that night.
Max looked at him for a long moment, gave the slightest nod of recognition, then turned his face away.
George could have sworn it would go differently this time. But Max was Max. And even against his better judgment, George understood him.
Hours of empty conversation later, George still couldn’t understand how anyone had thought a birthday party on a yacht at night was a good idea.
Plenty of the guests valued anonymity—extra-marital company, questionable money, the usual—but that didn’t make the whole thing any less ridiculous.
He leaned against the railing and stared at the horizon. Sky melted into water; the only way to tell them apart was the moonlight glittering on distant waves.
The party felt far away, up on the upper deck. Down here it was quieter. George was trying to stay clear-headed, or at least burn off some of the champagne and themed cocktails still circulating in his system.
Footsteps approached. They stopped. George turned.
Max.
Almost-empty glass in hand, expression impossible to read. George guessed it was some mix of childish resentment, pure stubbornness, and residual tension, but he wasn’t a psychologist.
“Max.”
“I wanted to say that… I do blame you for that shitty race but— huh— Yeah. That’s it.”
George almost laughed. It wasn’t a joke.
“Well, I blame you too. Not just the track hazard.”
“I don’t care what you say on camera. It’s all bullshit and it’s my word against yours. But for fuck’s sake, can’t you just shut up? You were irresponsible and you know it.”
George rolled his eyes. Bloody hell.
“Sure, Verstappen. I know it.” He turned back to the water. “But I’m not getting silenced.”
That should have been enough. Say what needed saying, then move on. They were adults. Even with Max’s history of acting like a child, they both knew the only way to keep working together was to talk once and then drop it.
When George turned again, his elbow clipped the glass in Max’s hand. The champagne that was left dumped straight down Max’s front before the glass hit the deck and shattered.
“Fucking shit.”
“Shit—sorry, mate, I—”
“You did that on purpose.”
“No, of course I didn’t. How was I supposed to know that would happen?”
“See? That’s the problem. You’re always pulling these dirty little tricks.”
“Oh, don’t start. You’re the king of dirty tricks.”
“At least I’m a champion. Four-time champion. What about you, George?”
“My God, Verstappen, you act like a child!”
Max stepped forward. The broken glass and the smooth deck betrayed him. His legs hit the low safety rail; his hands weren’t fast enough. The momentum took him over the side in a violent splash.
George’s eyes went wide, searching the black water.
Max could swim… right?
George didn’t wait for an answer. He jumped in after him.
The moon was dimmer now, half-hidden by the yacht’s lights. On the surface George saw nothing. Underwater the light barely reached. He felt around blindly until his foot struck something solid.
His heart slammed. Cold that adrenaline had been holding back crashed through him all at once. What if it isn’t him? What if it is a shark or something like that?
Something grabbed his trousers. For a second George was certain he was about to die.
Then wet blond hair broke the surface in front of him, followed by a face.
George had to be dead.
Because the person looking back at him was Max Verstappen — not the current four-time champion, but the kid he’d known when they were both around ten. Same red cheeks, same pale skin, same mischievous smile, teeth chattering with cold.
George ignored him, swam back to the yacht at his own pace, found the ladder, and climbed out. Too much to drink. Someone must have slipped something into his glass. Or he was dead. Or Max had drowned and this was a ghost.
He sat on the deck, focusing on the cold in his bones. So — probably not dead.
Then he looked down and saw small bare feet in front of him.
His brain short-circuited.
The body in front of him was slight, legs bare, the same shirt Max had been wearing minutes earlier now hanging past his knees and sliding off one shoulder, sleeves swallowing his arms. Same face. Child’s face.
“What the fuck happened to me, Russell?”
George felt the world tilt.
“I’m going crazy,” he said out loud.
“No, you idiot. Something happened to me. Obviously something happened to me.”
“Yeah. You look like you went back in time.”
“What do you mean, Russell?”
George didn’t have an answer. Hallucination, ghost, whatever. It didn't matter. He needed to get back to the party and pretend none of this was real.
“Where do you think you’re going? For fuck’s sake, Russell, help me. How the hell am I supposed to leave looking like this?”
George gave in. Not because Max ordered him to, but because he couldn’t leave a freezing child alone at a party full of questionable adults.
“Fine. Wait here.”
He found a staff member, came back with two towels, and draped one over Max’s shoulders. Max grabbed it like a lifeline.
“Come on. Just act like you don’t look like a kid and I’ll get you out.”
They moved fast, towels over their heads. Guests either stared or ignored them completely, complaining about the wet floor to passing staff. No one recognised them. Good.
They reached George’s car.
“Holy shit, that was close,” Max muttered as he climbed in, not sure whether the feeling of eyes on him had been real or imagined.
George started the engine and drove in silence, still trying to process. Hospital was out. If he was actually losing his mind, the last thing he needed was the story leaking.
A red light forced him to stop. His thoughts were lagging; the colour took a second to register. Almost without thinking he reached toward the passenger seat, half-expecting empty air—
Small hands shoved his away.
“What?” Max asked.
“Nothing.” George finally looked at him.
Green light. He accelerated, then remembered to ask which hotel Max was staying at.
“I’m not telling you, and we’re not going there.”
“What? I’m taking you to your hotel.”
“You really think that’ll work? They’re expecting me. Adult me, not a child. I thought you were smarter than that.”
“So what, you’re coming to mine?”
“Exactly. We figure it out from there.”
George braked hard and pulled over to the kerb.
“There is no ‘we.’ I got you out of the party. That’s it.”
“You’re the one who did this to me! This is your fault. If you hadn’t knocked over my fucking glass none of this would’ve happened.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. You’re the one who came looking for me. And for what? We didn’t even settle anything. We never do. We’re not friends. Call Charles. Call anyone else.”
“You’re the one who wished for this, George. You said I was childish— look at me now.”
George let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Me? What do you think I am, Harry Potter?”
“Must be. You got a rational explanation for this?”
“Oh my God.” Colour drained from George’s face. “They’re going to think I killed you. If you don’t change back— if you stay like this— they’ll say I pushed you off the boat, or that you fell and I left you. My exit time will look suspicious and—”
“Shut up, Russell. There is no ‘what if.’ I’m going back to normal. Whatever it takes.”
George stared at the child version of Max Verstappen sitting in his passenger seat like this was a perfectly normal Tuesday. The dashboard lights painted the small face in sharp shadows. Same stubborn jaw. Same unimpressed eyes. Only now they belonged to someone who looked like he should be asking for juice instead of championship points.
“Whatever it takes,” George repeated flatly. “Right. Brilliant plan. Very detailed.”
“Shut up and drive.”
George’s hands tightened on the wheel. “You don’t get to give me orders when you look like you escaped from a primary school.”
“I still have the same brain, idiot.”
“That’s what worries me.”
He pulled back onto the road. The yacht had been docked outside the city; the drive back into their destination felt endless. Taking Max to any hotel under his own name was impossible. Taking him to a hospital was worse. George’s hotel suite was the least catastrophic option left, which was a deeply depressing metric.
By the time they reached the underground entrance of the hotel, Max was still small, still damp under the oversized shirt, and still looking at George like the entire situation was a personal failure on his part.
George killed the engine and didn’t move.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “You are going up first. Alone.”
Max frowned. “Why?”
“Because if anyone sees me walking into my suite with a random child at two in the morning, the tabloids will have a field day and I will never work again. They’ll assume the worst. The absolute worst. Do you understand?”
Max’s expression twisted. “You think people will think you’re a—”
“Yes. Exactly that. So you take my keycard, you go straight to the lift, you go to the fourteenth floor, suite 1408. Do not talk to anyone. Do not make eye contact. Do not look lost. Act like you belong there, as usual.”
He pulled the access card from his wallet and held it out. Max took it with small fingers, still looking unconvinced.
“What if someone stops me?”
“Then you’re my nephew. From… Manchester. Who doesn’t speak English very well. And you are very tired. Got it?”
Max’s mouth flattened. “Your nephew from Manchester who doesn’t speak English. Genius.”
“Have you got a better idea?”
Silence.
“Didn’t think so. Lift is on the left after the glass doors. Fourteenth floor. 1408. I’ll be five minutes behind you.”
Max slid out of the car without another word. The shirt hung past his knees. He looked ridiculously small walking across the garage toward the lift. George watched until the doors closed, then exhaled hard and got out.
Reception was quiet. A tired night clerk looked up when George approached.
“Good evening. I seem to have misplaced my keycard. Russell, suite 1408.”
Five minutes of polite verification later he had a replacement. He took the lift alone, heart beating a little too fast, and only relaxed when the door of 1408 clicked open under the new card.
Max was already inside, standing in the middle of the living area of the suite, dripping faintly on the carpet and looking around with open judgement.
“This is smaller than I expected.”
“It’s a hotel. And you’re currently the size of a garden gnome. Everything looks bigger.”
Max scowled. “I’m not the size of a garden gnome.”
“You are currently.”
George locked the door, deadbolted it, then leaned his forehead against the wood for a second longer than was strictly dignified.
When he turned, Max was still standing there in the soaked adult shirt, bare feet on the rug, looking exactly like a child who had stolen someone’s clothes and somehow still managed to radiate Max Verstappen levels of disdain.
George disappeared into the bedroom and returned with the smallest things he owned that weren’t completely ridiculous: an old team hoodie that reached Max’s knees and a pair of running shorts he had to roll up three times. Max accepted them with the enthusiasm most people reserved for medical procedures.
Once changed, he sat on the edge of the sofa, bare feet dangling, looking ridiculously young and still somehow exactly like himself. The effect was deeply unsettling.
George dropped into the armchair opposite and dragged both hands down his face.
“Right. Talk. What the hell happened in the water?”
Max shrugged one small shoulder. “I fell. You pushed me—”
“I did not—”
“—and then everything went weird. Cold. Pressure. And then I was… this.” He gestured at himself with open disgust. “I still remember everything. The championships. The contracts. The fact that you are still, somehow, the most annoying person I have ever met.”
George ignored the last part. “So your mind is adult. Body is… ten?”
“Something like that.” Max’s voice was smaller than usual, but the irritation was pure Verstappen. “And before you ask — no, I don’t know how to fix it. You’re the one who said I was childish. Congratulations. Wish granted.”
George pointed a finger at him. “I did not wish. I made an observation. Accurate, as it turns out.”
“Keep talking and I’ll tell the FIA you kidnapped me.”
“You’re not even legally you right now. Who are they going to believe?”
Max opened his mouth, closed it, then looked away with the mutinous expression of a child who had just realised the adult had a point and hated it.
George stood up again, restless. “We need a plan. First priority: no one can know. Not Christian, not Toto, not the media, not your dad—”
Max’s head snapped up. “Especially not my dad.”
“—especially not Jos. Second priority: figure out how this happened so we can reverse it. Third priority—” George stopped, frowned. “Actually there is no third priority. Those two will keep us busy until one of us has a breakdown.”
Max swung his legs. The movement was distractingly childlike. “You think this is because of the champagne?”
“I think this is because the universe has a deeply twisted sense of humour and decided to make my life harder.”
“Or,” Max said, almost thoughtfully, “it’s because you still feel guilty about that race and your subconscious decided the only way to win an argument with me was to shrink me.”
George stared at him.
Max stared back, unblinking.
“…I am going to get some tea,” George announced to the room at large“And then we are going to pretend that sentence never happened.”
He disappeared in a second. Behind him he heard Max’s voice, quiet but perfectly clear:
“You still drive like a dick, by the way.”
George closed his eyes, counted to five, and decided that if the universe wanted him to suffer, the least it could do was provide biscuits.
George was still in the room, phone pressed between his ear and shoulder, trying to sound like a normal adult who had not just smuggled a child version of his rival into a five-star hotel suite.
“Yes— English Breakfast, two cups. And whatever biscuits you’ve got. Thank you.”
He hung up and immediately opened a private browser tab, typing with the focused desperation of a man googling symptoms at 3 a.m.
Behind him, on the sofa, Max had stolen the hotel iPad.
His search history was already a masterpiece of surreal crisis:
I fell in water and turned into a child what do I do
how to reverse age regression real
moonlight curse yacht
can champagne turn you into a ten year old
Max Verstappen shrank help
how to grow up again fast without puberty
Max’s small face was illuminated by the screen, expression dead serious, as if the answer might appear between ads for children’s vitamins and conspiracy forums.
The knock at the door made them both freeze.
George checked the peephole, exhaled, and opened it just wide enough to take the tray. The bellboy tried to look past him. George blocked the view with his entire body, muttered a thank-you, and shut the door with his foot.
He set the tray on the low table, poured two cups, and pushed one toward Max.
“Drink. You’re still freezing.”
Max took the cup with both hands. It looked comically large. He didn’t say thank you.
They sat in silence for a few seconds, the only sound the soft clink of porcelain. Then George sighed, opened his own laptop, and turned it so they could both see the screen.
“Right. We research this properly. No more… whatever the hell you’ve been typing.”
Max didn’t look remotely apologetic.
They started with the obvious.
The yacht. Ownership. Recent charter history. Nothing unusual.
The stretch of water where Max had fallen. Coordinates. Old shipping maps.
The exact date and moon phase. Full moon, of course. Typical.
Local legends. Folklore. Anything involving water, moonlight, and sudden transformation.
The results were mostly tourist nonsense and poorly written blog posts about “haunted Thames tributaries.” They tried witches. Curses. Binding spells. Age-reversal myths. Slavic water spirits. Japanese folklore. Nothing matched closely enough.
An hour passed. The tea went cold. Max had curled deeper into the hoodie, only his eyes and the top of his blond head visible. George’s posture had collapsed into something close to despair.
“This is useless,” George muttered, rubbing his eyes. “We’re not going to find a WikiHow for ‘my rival fell off a yacht and turned into a child.’”
Max didn’t answer. He had taken the iPad again and was scrolling with the grim determination of someone who refused to accept defeat.
Then he stopped.
“…George.”
The way he said it made George look up immediately.
Max turned the screen around.
It was an obscure archive site, the kind that looked like it hadn’t been updated since 2004. Yellowed background. Ugly font. A scanned page from what claimed to be a private diary, dated 1897.
The entry was short and written in the stiff, slightly unhinged style of someone who had seen something they weren’t supposed to.
“…and upon the third night the boy fell from the vessel under the full face of the moon, into the black water at the bend where the current turns back upon itself. When they pulled him out he was no longer the man who had fallen, but a child of ten years, speaking with the same tongue and the same temper. The water had taken his years and left the rest. Some said it was a second chance. Others whispered it was a death of one life and the forced rebirth of another. In the morning the old woman from the village laid out the cards. The one that remained face-up was Death.
Not an ending, she said. A clearing. What follows depends on whether the soul accepts the return or fights it until the moon turns again.”
The scan ended there. No author name. No further pages. Just a faded tarot card illustration of Death at the bottom.
Max and George stared at the screen in silence.
George was the first to speak, voice low.
“…Well. That’s not nothing.”
Max’s voice was quieter than usual. “It’s better than nothing.”
They spent the next forty minutes trying to dig deeper. The website had no contact page, no about section, no archived comments. The domain looked abandoned. Reverse image search on the diary page led nowhere. The name of the supposed author returned zero relevant results. Even the specific stretch of water mentioned in the text only brought up modern sailing forums and a few old maritime reports with nothing supernatural attached.
Eventually the trail went completely cold.
George closed the laptop with a soft click.
Max was still staring at the blank screen of the iPad, small fingers resting on the edge.
Neither of them said it out loud, but the same thought sat heavy between them:
A second chance.
Death and rebirth.
And the moon still had time left in the sky.
George woke with a crick in his neck and the distinct feeling that something was deeply wrong with his life.
He was still in the armchair. The laptop had gone to sleep on the table. The second cup of tea sat cold and untouched. Across from him, Max was curled sideways on the sofa, drowning in the oversized hoodie, mouth slightly open, looking for all the world like an actual exhausted child instead of a four-time world champion trapped in the wrong body.
Sunlight was already cutting through the gap in the curtains.
George checked his phone.
08:47.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his face.
“Max.”
No response.
“Max. Wake up.”
A small, irritated noise came from the sofa. Max blinked, frowned at the ceiling, then at George, then at his own small hands as if hoping they might have fixed themselves overnight. They hadn’t.
“…Still like this,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep.
“Astute observation.”
George stood, stretched, and immediately started calculating logistics. They couldn’t stay locked in the suite forever. The legend—if it even counted as one—had pointed back to the water and the moonlight. Moonlight was gone for now, but the location was still there. And doing nothing felt worse than doing something stupid.
“I’m going out,” George said. “Stay here. Do not open the door. Do not order anything. Do not set anything on fire.”
Max squinted at him. “Where are you going?”
“To buy you clothes that don’t make you look like you raided my suitcase. We can’t walk around with you dressed like a hungover golf caddy.”
Max looked down at the hoodie and shorts, then back up with pure disdain. “Hurry up.”
George was gone forty minutes. He returned with a discreet shopping bag from a mid-range children’s store and the expression of a man who had just experienced profound social discomfort. Inside were jeans, a plain long-sleeve shirt, a light jacket, socks, and trainers in approximately the right size. Nothing with cartoon characters. He had standards, even in crisis.
They ate in near silence—room-service toast, eggs, and coffee that Max drank like it offended him by existing. Afterward Max changed without commentary. The clothes fit well enough. With the jacket zipped up and the trainers laced, he looked like any other serious-faced blond kid, as long as no one looked too closely at the eyes.
George crouched in front of him.
“Cover story. If anyone asks, you’re my son. Name is… Arthur. We’re from out of town. You’re shy. You don’t talk much. If they push, you only speak Dutch. Understood?”
Max’s mouth twitched. “Arthur.”
“It was that or Nigel. Choose your battles.”
“Fine.”
They left the hotel the same way they had entered it the night before— separately, carefully. George went first this time. Max followed a few minutes later with the spare keycard in his pocket, head down, hands in the jacket pockets like he’d been coached.
The drive back to the stretch of water where the yacht had been moored felt longer in daylight. The place looked ordinary. Too ordinary. A few early walkers, a couple of people selling coffee and pastries from a small stand near the marina, the water calm and grey under a pale sky.
They parked a short distance away and walked the rest of the way. George kept his hand lightly on Max’s shoulder, the picture of a slightly tense father.
They started with the coffee stand.
George ordered two drinks he didn’t want and asked, casually, if there were any local stories about this particular bend in the water. Old legends. Anything strange. The woman behind the counter laughed and said the only strange thing around here was the price of parking. The man selling maps a little further down shrugged and offered them a brochure about river cruises instead.
No one knew anything.
Max’s patience, already thin, began to fray. He tugged once on George’s sleeve—small hand, deliberate.
George looked down.
Max met his eyes, then glanced at the water, then back again. The message was clear.
George’s stomach dropped, even though they had discussed the possibility. Theory was one thing. Watching it happen in daylight was another.
He gave the smallest nod.
Max stepped closer to the edge, just far enough to look careless. A moment later his foot slipped, convincingly, and he went into the water with a sharp splash.
George’s reaction was instant and theatrical.
“Arthur—!”
He lunged forward, voice pitching into genuine-sounding panic. “Oh my God— someone— he fell in!”
The coffee-stand woman gasped. The map seller started toward them, already pulling his phone out. A dog-walker shouted something unhelpful. George dropped to his knees at the edge, reaching out, heart actually hammering now because part of him wasn’t entirely sure Max would come back up the same way he went in.
Max surfaced a few metres out, blond hair plastered to his forehead, and swam back with short, efficient strokes. When he reached the edge George grabbed him under the arms and hauled him out in one uneven pull. Max landed on the stone, dripping, coughing once for show, still very much the size of a ten-year-old.
George clutched him like a distraught parent, one hand on the back of the wet jacket, the other already peeling it off.
“You’re alright, you’re alright, I’ve got you”
Max’s voice, low enough that only George could hear it, was pure venom.
“Still small. This is bullshit.”
The map seller arrived, out of breath and useless.
“Is he okay? Do you need help? I can call someone—”
“No— no, he’s fine,” George said quickly, already wrapping his own jacket around Max’s shoulders. “Just slipped. He’s a strong swimmer. We’re okay. Really. Thank you.”
The man hovered for another few seconds, clearly wanting to be useful and equally clearly not wanting to get wet. Eventually he retreated, still looking worried.
George kept his arm around Max as they walked back toward the car, the picture of paternal concern. The second they were out of earshot, Max spoke again, teeth chattering.
“Nothing. Not even a tingle. Just cold.”
George’s jaw was tight. “I noticed.”
“So the moonlight thing wasn’t optional.”
“Apparently not.”
They reached the car. George opened the passenger door, helped Max in like he weighed nothing, then walked around and got behind the wheel. For a long moment he just sat there with his hands on the steering wheel, staring at nothing.
Max, soaked and furious in the passenger seat, broke the silence first.
“We wait for tonight.”
George closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes,” he said. “We wait for tonight.”
They drove back to the hotel in silence. Max sat wrapped in George’s jacket, still dripping, staring out the window with the kind of focused resentment that looked almost impressive on a ten-year-old face. George kept both hands on the wheel and tried not to think about how many times in the last eighteen hours he had hauled the same person out of the same stretch of water.
Once inside the suite again, George locked the door, tossed Max a fresh towel, and pointed at the bathroom.
“Shower. Hot. Now. You’re turning the same colour as the walls.”
Max didn’t argue. That alone should have been a warning sign.
By the time he came out— hair damp, wearing the second set of child-sized clothes George had bought just in case— he looked marginally less like a drowned kitten and marginally more like a very small, very irritated Dutchman. He sat on the sofa, pulled his knees up, and accepted the mug of tea George handed him without comment.
For a while neither of them spoke. The failed attempt at the river sat between them like a third person.
Then Max, staring into his tea, said quietly, “I am… sometimes too quick. To react. To blame. To go over the edge. Literally, in this case.”
George looked up, surprised.
Max’s mouth twisted. “The race. The things I said on the yacht. Even jumping in again today without a better plan. It’s not always… useful.”
George was quiet for a few seconds. He set his own mug down.
“And I’m not exactly easy,” he said. “I know that. I dig in. I get precise and cold and I don’t leave much room once I’ve decided I’m right. It makes people want to push back harder. Including you.”
Max glanced at him, something almost like acknowledgement in his eyes. Neither of them offered a full apology. Neither of them expected one. But the air in the room shifted, just slightly, like a window had been cracked open.
After that the conversation loosened.
They talked about nothing important for a while. Old karting tracks. A particularly chaotic junior race neither of them had won. The ridiculous price of hotel biscuits. Max admitted, grudgingly, that George’s tea-making had improved since the last time they’d been stuck in the same space for too long. George admitted that Max’s ability to fall into bodies of water with dramatic timing was, if nothing else, consistent. It wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t resolution. But it was the closest thing to easy they had managed in years.
Then Max sneezed.
Once. Sharp. Unexpected.
George paused mid-sentence.
Max wiped his nose on the back of his hand and scowled like the sneeze had personally offended him.
Two minutes later he sneezed again. Then he coughed—small, dry, the kind that sat low in the chest. His cheeks, already pink from the earlier cold water, looked warmer than they should have.
George sat forward.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve been in that water twice in less than twenty-four hours. Of course you’re not fine.”
Max pulled the sleeves of the hoodie over his hands. “It’s just a sneeze.”
By mid-afternoon it was clearly not just a sneeze. Max’s voice had gone rough. He kept rubbing at his eyes. When George touched the back of his hand to Max’s forehead — ignoring the immediate glare — he found it too warm.
“That’s it. Hospital.”
“No.”
“Max—”
“I am not going to a hospital looking like this. They will ask questions. They will want parents. They will want documents. They will want to know why a grown man is checking in a sick child who doesn’t legally exist. Absolutely not.”
George opened his mouth, closed it, and dragged a hand down his face. The logic was infuriatingly sound.
“Fine,” he said tightly. “No hospital. But you are staying on that sofa, you are drinking everything I give you, and if your temperature goes any higher I will sedate you with cough syrup and deal with the consequences later.”
Max looked like he wanted to argue. Then another cough shook through him and he just sank deeper into the cushions, muttering something uncomplimentary in Dutch.
George spent the rest of the day in a state of controlled, low-level panic.
He ordered soup. He made more tea. He found the hotel’s basic first-aid kit and scowled at how useless it was. He wrapped Max in every spare blanket in the suite. He checked his temperature every hour with the back of his hand because they didn’t have a thermometer. He sat on the edge of the coffee table like a man keeping watch over something fragile and deeply annoying.
Max drifted in and out of light sleep, occasionally surfacing to complain about the taste of the medicine George had forced on him or to demand that the room be either warmer or colder, sometimes in the same sentence. Every time he coughed, George’s shoulders tightened.
Night came. The city lights replaced the sun. George didn’t suggest going back to the river. Max was in no state to swim, and George was in no state to watch him try.
He moved a chair next to the sofa and stayed there, laptop open but unread, listening to the uneven rhythm of Max’s breathing. At some point Max’s small hand emerged from the blankets and caught the edge of George’s sleeve, not quite asking for anything, just holding on. George didn’t pull away.
By three in the morning the fever seemed to have levelled off. By five Max was sleeping more deeply, mouth open, one arm thrown across his eyes. George finally let himself lean back in the chair, exhaustion dragging at him.
He stayed awake until the sky began to lighten again.
When Max eventually stirred, voice rough and small, the first thing he said was:
“…Still here?”
George, eyes gritty, voice quiet, answered without looking away from the window.
“Yeah. Still here.”
Max was still half-buried under the blankets when he woke properly, but the fever-heat had gone. He felt wrung-out and slightly hollow, the way he always did after a virus burned through him, yet something lighter sat under his ribs. He didn’t notice the small, unguarded smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth until it was already there.
George noticed.
He was sitting in the chair he’d dragged closer during the night, looking exhausted and faintly stunned, and the sight of that tiny, almost shy smile on Max’s face hit him harder than it should have. For a second he wasn’t looking at the current version of Max at all. He was looking at the boy he’d briefly shared a team with years ago— the one who had been only about five percent insufferable, competitive and sharp but not yet fully armoured. They hadn’t been friends. They hadn’t been enemies either. Just two kids occupying the same space for a short while before the years and the pressure and the points made everything sharper and colder. Somewhere along the way that five percent had grown into something much larger. George hadn’t realised how much he missed the earlier version until he saw its ghost in the smile.
Max, for his part, felt strangely unmoored. The suite, the forced proximity, the way George had simply stayed—none of it matched any version of reality he was used to. He was grateful. He hated that he was grateful. He hated even more that the gratitude felt warm instead of humiliating.
He coughed once, small and residual.
George was on his feet instantly.
“Hey— easy.” He sat on the edge of the bed, pressed the back of his hand to Max’s forehead, then his cheek. No heat. Relief flickered across his face, followed immediately by lingering worry. He reached for the glass of water on the side table, guided it into Max’s hands, and tipped it carefully toward his mouth when Max’s grip proved a little unsteady. The whole time his expression stayed soft and intent in a way that did something inconvenient to Max’s chest.
Max felt heat climb into his face for an entirely different reason.
George saw the flush and misread it completely.
“That’s it. Hospital. I don’t care what you say.”
“It’s nothing,” Max rasped. “I swear. Fever’s gone. Just leftover crap. I’m fine.”
George clearly did not believe him, but the protest was firm enough that he hesitated. Instead of arguing further he reached for the remote, flicked the television on, and found a motorsport channel replaying old qualifying sessions. He sat on the bed beside Max, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and for a while they simply watched in silence.
Max’s head eventually tipped sideways onto George’s shoulder. A few minutes later his breathing evened out again. George stayed very still, then carefully shifted so that Max’s head rested on a pillow he’d pulled onto his own lap. It was the least disruptive option. He told himself he would move in a minute. then in five. Then he made the mistake of closing his eyes.
When Max surfaced from the next doze, the world had rearranged itself.
He was no longer on the pillow.
He was draped over George like a koala, arms locked around his middle, one leg thrown across George’s thighs, face buried close enough to George’s throat that he could feel the steady pulse there. For a disorienting second Max simply stared, caught by the clean line of George’s jaw, the faint shadow of stubble, the way sleep had softened every sharp edge. He looked… unfairly good. The thought landed with a jolt of panic.
Max tried to push himself up.
Two things became apparent in rapid succession.
First: he was completely naked.
Second: he was no longer small.
The adult weight of his own body registered all at once. Long limbs, broader shoulders, the familiar pull of muscle. He had changed back. At some point during the nap the curse—or the legend, or whatever the hell it had been—had simply reversed itself, and it had done so without the courtesy of leaving him clothed.
“Shit—”
He tried to scramble free. The duvet, however, was trapped under George’s body. The harder Max pulled, the more it dragged him back down. He overbalanced and collapsed straight onto George again, chest to chest, faces suddenly centimetres apart.
George’s eyes flew open.
Adult Max Verstappen’s face filled his entire field of vision.
“Bloody hell—!”
George shoved on pure reflex. Because the duvet was still tangled around both of them, the push only succeeded in rolling them over George landed half on top of Max in a graceless heap of limbs and cotton.
“Fuck off!” Max barked, voice cracking somewhere between mortification and residual sleep.
They finally managed to disentangle themselves in a flurry of elbows and muttered curses. Max shoved the duvet aside and stood up without thinking.
George’s gaze dropped, then snapped away so fast it was almost audible. Colour flooded his face.
“Put some clothes on, for God’s sake!”
Max looked down at himself, swore again, and grabbed the nearest pile of fabric— George’s clothes from the day before. The shirt pulled tight across his chest and shoulders; the trousers sat a little long at the ankle and clung uncomfortably around the thighs. He yanked them on anyway, face burning.
George was still pointedly examining the opposite wall, one hand covering his eyes.
Max glanced down at the way the borrowed clothes fit, then at George’s lean frame, and the first semi-coherent thought that made it out of his mouth was:
“You’re really skinny.”
George made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh or a prayer for death.
Neither of them mentioned the river, the legend, or the fact that Max had spent the better part of two days as a child. The silence that followed was thick with everything they were not saying— and with the very vivid memory of exactly how they had woken up.
Max went back to his own hotel, finally changed into clothes that actually fit, packed what little he had left, and flew home.
The memories followed him anyway.
They sat in the back of his mind during briefings, during simulator sessions, during the quiet moments when the engine noise faded and there was nothing left to outrun. He wasn’t only thinking about the next race or the next tenth anymore. He kept seeing the suite, the river, the way George had stayed up through the fever without being asked. Something from the version of himself that had been ten years old — competitive, sharp, but still capable of something almost friendly — had slipped back under his skin and refused to leave.
People noticed.
He was more relaxed in the garage. He listened longer before answering. He remembered small things about the people around him and acted on them without making a production of it. The speculation started quietly and spread the way it always did.
One afternoon Charles leaned against the wall outside Max’s apartment, arms crossed, expression deceptively mild.
“Why didn’t you come home when you said you would?”
They lived in the same building. Avoiding each other was impossible. Friendship made it worse.
Max frowned. “What?”
“You told me you’d be back Monday before the party. Dinner, catch up. I knocked the next day. No answer.”
Max coughed, buying half a second. “Caught a flu. Stayed an extra day. Resting.”
Charles’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting.”
“What?”
“I went golfing with Carlos and Albon. Albon mentioned George went to the same party. Greece, right? And then George also got sick and couldn’t fly back on schedule. Same party. Same cold.” Charles started laughing. “What are the odds?”
Max forced a laugh that sounded like it hurt. “Someone was definitely spreading the flu around.”
“Did you two finally make peace while you were stuck there?”
Max looked away. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”
He left before Charles could dig further.
The second he was alone the urge hit hard: George needed to know. Charles already had pieces. Albon was apparently handing them out like confetti. They had a secret that could not surface, not even as a joke.
Max opened the chat and started typing.
George didn’t answer.
Not the first message. Not the second. Not the increasingly unhinged ones that followed.
By the time Max reached the Mercedes hospitality the panic was a live wire under his skin. He asked for Russell. Someone pointed him toward the drivers’ room.
He pushed the door open without knocking and walked straight into Albon and Antonelli mid-gossip while George stood in the middle of the room pulling a dry shirt over his head. The other one lay damp on the chair—water, apparently.
Max’s brain short-circuited for one catastrophic second. Adult shoulders, the clean line of George’s back, the brief flash of skin. Colour flooded his face. He yanked the door shut again.
“Shit. Sorry.”
Albon’s voice came through the wood, amused. “No, no, come in, Max. He’s just changing.”
Albon and Kimi filed out past him, both looking far too entertained. The door clicked shut. Max and George were alone.
Max didn’t waste time.
“Your friend Albon is telling everyone we went to the same party and caught the same cold.”
George, still tugging the new shirt into place, blinked. “What?”
“Tell him to stop gossiping. Or it’s going to turn into shit.”
George exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “Relax. No one’s going to connect the dots. But people are going to find it weird that you came looking for me in my room.”
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was busy.”
Max’s eyes flicked to the damp shirt on the chair, then back to George’s chest. “Clearly. Do you just change in front of anyone?”
“It was only a shirt, Max.”
“Hm.” Max’s gaze sharpened. “Where’s your phone?”
George’s expression froze.
“Ah. Shit.”
“What?”
“Albon has it.”
Max’s voice climbed. “Why the fuck did you give him your phone?”
“I was showing him some funny videos.”
The colour drained from Max’s face so fast it was almost comic.
“Holy fucking shit.”
He was out the door before George could finish whatever excuse he was forming.
He found Albon near the coffee machine, phone still in hand, that small, knowing smile already in place. Max snatched the device hard enough that Albon’s fingers went white for a second.
Too late.
Albon’s smile widened a fraction.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” he said mildly. “But damn.”
Max stepped in close, voice low and lethal. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. You stay quiet or I will make your life a living hell.”
Albon raised both hands, still looking far too calm. “It’s fine, Max. I’m not going to say anything.”
“Good.”
“Not because of you,” Albon added. “Because of George.”
Max stared. “What?”
Albon’s expression shifted into something quieter, almost serious. “Just so you know— you have to be careful. And you have to be good to him.”
Then he walked away, leaving Max standing there with George’s phone burning in his hand and the full horror of his own message history finally catching up to him.
He unlocked the screen.
The chat was still open.
Max: Your gossipy friend is telling everyone we didn’t come back when planned
Max: Did you say something to him?
Max: George, if you said anything I swear I’ll deny everything and say he’s going crazy. I’ll make his life hell.
Max: I hope you didn’t take any photos of me
Max: I took photos of you, for safety. So you can’t blackmail me.
Max: Photo of you snoring. And with drool all over your face sleeping too.
Max closed his eyes.
Somewhere behind him he heard George’s voice, approaching, already sounding resigned.
“Max? What did you—”
Max held up the phone like it was evidence of a war crime.
“We have a problem.”
Max held the phone out like it was radioactive.
George took one look at the screen, went very still, then very pale.
“Oh,” he said faintly. “That’s… not ideal.”
“Not ideal?” Max’s voice cracked. “Albon has seen this. He thinks— God knows what he thinks.”
George pinched the bridge of his nose. “He thinks we spent a few days together after the party, got sick, and that you’re now sending me mildly unhinged protective messages while threatening mutual destruction. Which is… technically not entirely inaccurate.”
Max stared at him. “You’re weirdly calm.”
“I’m having a quiet internal crisis. It just looks like calm.” George locked the phone and handed it back. “I’ll talk to him.”
He did.
Ten minutes later Albon found them both near the back of the hospitality unit. He looked between their faces, sighed, and raised both hands.
“I already said I won’t talk. And I meant it. Whatever happened in Greece—” he paused, deliberately vague, “—stays there. I’m not interested in blowing up anyone’s season. Or anyone’s head.” His gaze settled on Max for a second longer. “Just don’t make me regret covering for you two idiots”
Then he left them alone.
The silence that followed was heavy but no longer panicky.
George leaned against the wall, arms folded. “So. That’s contained. For now.”
Max nodded once. The adrenaline was draining, leaving something quieter and more complicated in its place. He looked at George—really looked—and for the first time since waking up naked and adult again, the full weight of the last few days settled properly.
“I meant what I said,” Max muttered. “About the impulsiveness. And… the rest.”
George’s mouth twitched. “I know. And I meant what I said too. I don’t make it easy.”
They stood there for a moment, the paddock noise washing around them, two people who had seen each other at their most ridiculous and somehow come out the other side still standing.
Max exhaled. “No one can ever know. About the… water. The rest of it.”
“Agreed.” George’s voice was firm. “It stays between us. Forever.”
“And if Albon ever gets too curious—”
“I’ll handle it.”
Max almost smiled. “You’re still annoying.”
“And you’re still impossible.” George pushed off the wall. “But… thank you. For not leaving me to deal with a child version of you alone. And for the tea. And for not actually dying of a cold in my hotel suite.”
Max rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him. “You’re welcome. I guess.”
They didn’t hug. They didn’t make any grand declarations. They simply stood there a second longer than necessary, the air between them different—lighter, steadier, marked by something that hadn’t existed before the yacht and the moonlight and the fever.
Later, when the season moved on and the speculation about Max’s new demeanour faded into background noise, people would sometimes comment that Verstappen and Russell seemed to tolerate each other better. That the old edge had softened into something almost like respect. A few even claimed they’d once seen them laughing about something private in a quiet corner of the paddock.
No one ever learned the truth.
And on quiet nights, when the moon was high and the water somewhere in the distance looked black and endless, both of them would occasionally remember a soaked child, a shared fever, and the strange second chance that had forced them to see each other clearly for the first time.
It was enough.
It was more than enough.
But honestly—was it really enough?
Max thought that more than once as the season wound down. George did too. The secret stayed buried, the paddock speculation faded, and on the surface they were simply two drivers who had somehow learned to coexist without the old sharp edges. Yet every time their eyes met across the garage, every time one of them almost said something and then didn’t, the unfinished weight of those strange days sat quietly between them.
Then, one evening after the final race, George sent a message that was almost casual.
George: Dinner? We’re friends now. Might as well act like it. No pressure.
Max stared at the screen longer than necessary before answering.
Max: Fine. But I’m choosing.
They met at a quiet place with low lighting and a list of bottles that invited trouble. Conversation came easily—old races, stupid media questions, the peculiar relief of a season ending. Somewhere around the second bottle an unspoken competition began. Empty glass for empty glass. Neither of them acknowledged it, but neither of them slowed down either. By the time the food was gone and the last bottle stood hollow between them, the edges of the world had softened and everything felt warmer, funnier, more possible.
They should have gone home separately. Instead they kept talking on the pavement outside, neither willing to be the first to end it. George, a little flushed, a little bold, suddenly said:
“You talk so much about your cats… It makes me want to meet them.”
Max blinked. “Jimmy and Sassy?”
“Yes. Both of them. I feel like I’ve been robbed of this experience.”
And just like that they were in a taxi heading to Max’s building.
The two Bengal cats regarded George with deep suspicion. Jimmy eventually decided the new human was acceptable enough to ignore; Sassy kept her distance and judged him from the top of a shelf. Max poured water, made more coffee neither of them needed, and the talking continued— sprawling, meandering, honest in the way only late-night conversations can be. They covered everything and nothing: childhood tracks, the pressure that never really left, the strange way the yacht days had rearranged something inside both of them. The sky outside the windows shifted from black to the first thin grey of morning.
At some point the words slowed. Exhaustion settled over them like a blanket.
Max looked at George, who was half-sunk into the sofa, eyes heavy but still bright.
“Want to sleep here?”
George’s mouth curved. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Max led him down the hall to the guest room. It was neat, carefully decorated, shelves lined with detailed model cars from different eras. Max, still loosely warm from the wine and the night, started explaining them— one by one, the history, the liveries, the small modifications that made each replica special. George sat on the edge of the bed and listened, chin propped on his hand.
His gaze never left Max’s face.
It was steady. Intent. Soft in a way Max had rarely seen directed at him. The attention made heat rise under Max’s collar; he felt the flush climb his neck and settle in his cheeks. George noticed, of course. The smile that spread across his face then was small and real and devastating. Max’s heart gave a hard, traitorous thump.
The explanations faltered.
Max stood there in the quiet room, models forgotten, the first pale light of morning touching the edge of the curtains. He met George’s eyes and felt the last of the old armour slip.
“May I kiss you?”
George’s smile deepened just a fraction, fond and certain.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Max crossed the small distance between them. When their mouths met it was unhurried, warm, a little unsure at first, then simply right. The kind of kiss that felt less like a beginning and more like the quiet, inevitable answer to every question the last months had left hanging.