Chapter Text
The mattress was suspiciously soft.
Like, dangerously soft. The kind of soft that said, “You’ve made it in life, baby, now sleep on clouds.” Except George Russell knew he hadn’t made it. He’d gotten P3 in Miami, and that was basically a win in Mercedes terms these days.
Especially when Red Bull and fucking Verstappen were crying like wet cats trying to get his podium stripped because apparently “he rejoined unsafely” or whatever the FIA’s flavor of bullshit was this week.
But he still got it. Ha. Suck it, Verstappen.
Anyway.
George stirred slightly, groaning because—ow—his entire body felt like it had been curb-stomped by a freight train. Left leg- pain. Right hand- throbbing. Head- cloudy. Mouth- dry like sandpaper. Something smelled like vanilla, baby shampoo and—
Wait.
Where was the moldy scent of his Monaco flat? The pile of laundry he’d promised to do three weeks ago? The half-unpacked race bag he’d dumped in the hallway? WHERE was the aggressively hideous modern art painting he’d bought on a drunken whim?
This room was… wrong.
Like very wrong.
Soft lighting, warm tones, the faint hum of city life too far below the window, George’s eyes flew open.
“Wha—?”
It was not his room. It was a penthouse. A very nice, very un-George penthouse. The room alone looked like half his entire flat's area.
The mattress shifted slightly as he moved. Wait. Was someone—?
George blinked. Turned. Then screamed.
“WHAT. THE. FUCK?!”
Max Verstappen was in his bed. Shirtless. Asleep. Touching him.
Well, not just touching him— he had a whole damn arm looped around George’s waist like this was some twisted honeymoon suite in hell.
George kicked. Hard. Right foot to sternum. Verstappen—Max-fucking-Verstappen—went flying off the bed with a grunt.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!” George scrambled back, ignoring the fire blazing down his leg, heart jackhammering in his chest. “ARE YOU—ARE YOU KIDNAPPING ME?! YOU—ASSAULTER! CREEP! WHAT IS THIS?! WHERE AM I?!”
Max groaned from the floor, somehow not even mad, the fucker. He rubbed his chest, flinched slightly (okay good), and then—
Smiled.
Smiled?!
“Good morning to you too, Mr. Verstappen.”
George froze. His mouth fell open like a broken Pez dispenser. His brain blue-screened.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK—”
One minute silence.
George stared at him.
Just stared.
Max had just called him Mr. Verstappen.
There was no air in the room. Just this surreal vanilla-musk scented fog that felt like a dream stitched together by the Devil himself. His body ached, his mind fogged—but that word—that name—! punched through the haze like lightning in a blackout.
“…Repeat that?” George’s voice came out hoarse, as if someone had run sandpaper down his throat. Still sharp enough to slice. “Repeat. What the fuck you just said.”
Max’s mouth opened slightly, blue eyes—calm, too calm—watching him. “Mr Verstappen—”
George screamed.
Louder than before. If volume alone could kill, Monaco would’ve had a goddamn state funeral this morning.
“FUCK. YOU. You psychotic bastard!” George grabbed the nearest thing on the nightstand—a very expensive-looking ceramic vase—and launched it. “What the FUCK is this?! Some twisted simulation?! DID YOU DRUG ME?!”
The vase shattered spectacularly against the wall inches from Max’s head.
Max didn’t even flinch.
George grabbed a pillow next. Then the water glass. Then something gold and metallic—a fucking award?—and hurled it with equal fury. Max ducked that one.
“Touching me in my sleep like a FUCKING creep?! You have no SHAME—oh my GOD—did you kidnap me?! You kidnap me, you drugged me—what is this, some twisted experiment for Red Bull?! I swear to God—” He jabbed a finger. “I knew you hated losing, Verstappen, but THIS—this is PEAK PSYCHOPATH.”
Max, somehow, managed to speak through the hurricane of George’s nuclear rage.
“You just woke up. You’re in pain. You need to slow down, George.”
George's left leg screamed every time he shifted. His right hand felt like it had been steamrolled. His ribs creaked like old floorboards. But fuck if he was going to give Max the satisfaction of being right.
“I AM NOT IN PAIN.” he barked, nearly breaking another glass. “What I am is fucking confused, traumatized, and assaulted. Where am I?! What year is it?! Why the hell are you in my bed?!”
He refused to listen. Refused to let Max speak. The man opened his mouth again and George growled. Like. Full-on, rabid-wolverine energy.
“Don’t. Even. Start. I don’t want your Dutch bullshit right now, Verstappen, I swear on Toto’s life—”
“You really shouldn’t bring Toto into this,” Max said quietly.
George narrowed his eyes. “You killed him, didn’t you. You absolute lunatic—”
“No one is dead.” Max finally exhaled, sitting down gingerly on the edge of the coffee table like he’d been here before. Like this was routine. “George. Listen to me. You… you’ve been in a coma. For fifteen months.”
Silence...
George blinked.
A long, still pause stretched between them. Somewhere outside, a bird chirped. The Monaco sun peeked innocently through floor-length drapes, as if it didn’t just witness the emotional equivalent of Hiroshima.
“What,” George said flatly. “The fuck did you just say?”
“You fell—” Max stopped himself. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. “You… had an accident. You’ve been unconscious. In home therapy. We’ve been taking care of you.”
George’s laugh was ugly. High-pitched. Wild-eyed.
He felt something hot rise up his throat—panic, disbelief, bile. Probably all three.
“Okay, you want to LARP Inception? Fine,” George said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “But you’ve really outdone yourself this time. Fake coma? This elaborate setup? I mean, props for that Eiffel Tower picture—”
Max’s eyes softened. George turned, mid-sarcasm, and pointed at the photo frame.
The photo frame, sleek and silver, sitting innocently on the mantle behind the bed.
Them.
Him and Max.
Smiling. Kissing. Paris at night blinking behind them. He froze. “And that’s… not real,” George muttered. “Photoshop. Deepfake. AI. Whatever the kids are using these days.”
Max stood, quiet and firm. His voice wasn’t soft anymore. It was grounded. Heavy.
“That’s our engagement. Two years ago. Eiffel Tower. You said it was tacky, and then made me wait thirty minutes for the perfect angle because your hair looked weird in the first six shots.”
George looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
Max, standing there like some war veteran, ran a hand down his face and said gently, “It’s 2030, George.”
George couldn’t breathe.
The air left his lungs in one huge, soundless gust. His brain reeled. He staggered back a step, gripping the bedpost like it was the only thing holding him upright.
“No.” His voice was hollow. “That’s not— I do not— It’s 2025. I raced Miami yesterday. I beat you.”
“You were sleeping like a baby.”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve been home for 6 months.”
“No—”
“I’ve taken care of you every day since they discharged you.”
“I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Max flinched. But not from fear. From something else. Something worn, something quiet, something that had clearly cracked a long time ago and was just trying to be whole again.
George backed away like Max was on fire.
“You’re lying,” he whispered. “You’re not like this. You don’t care— You hate me. We’re rivals, we’re not— We’re not married—!”
Max’s voice was quieter than the morning sun when he said:
“We are.”
The weight of those two words knocked the fight out of George. Just for a second. Like gravity had shifted sideways.
He shook his head. “No. No. You’re not the Max I know.”
Max’s jaw clenched. “I’m the Max who stayed.”
George stared at him. Chest rising and falling. Eyes wide, feral, confused, devastated.
“I don’t remember anything,” he said finally. Voice cracking. “Not a damn thing.”
Max’s face broke slightly at that. Just slightly.
“I know,” he whispered.
That didnt stop George. He was still going.
His voice, hoarse and furious, tore through the penthouse like a chainsaw through cashmere.
“You manipulative, cheating, lying, gaslighting piece of SHIT—! I swear to God, Verstappen, I don’t care how rich you are or how many fucking WDCs you’ve got—YOU’RE FUCKING DONE. I will make it my LIFE'S MISSION to sue you into the Stone Age—!”
Max stood there like a damn monk.
Or a man who had already lived this conversation a hundred times in nightmares and had memorized the rhythm of George’s rage like a lullaby.
“I get it,” Max said softly, hands tucked into the pockets of his grey sweatpants. “You’re angry. You’re scared. I would be too. But George—please—you need to sit down before your leg gives out again—”
“SHOVE YOUR CONCERN UP YOUR FLAT DUTCH ASS.”
Max blinked. “That was oddly specific.”
“AND YOU CAN TELL YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING BLOODLINE to go suck it too—”
“Okay, wow,” Max muttered under his breath, “Leave my oma out of this…”
George jabbed a finger at him, panting. “You wish, Verstappen. You think you can throw a few fake memories and bedroom eyes at me and I’ll just forget the fact that I’ve hated you since 2021? Hah! Hah! You have always been the bane of my existence. My CANCER, my—my haemorrhoid, my—”
Max sighed. Deeply. “We were very in love.”
“NO WE WEREN’T!”
“Okay,” Max shrugged. “Then I guess I hallucinated the wedding. And the vows. And the honeymoon in Iceland where you tried to outdrink a group of Viking cosplayers and ended up crying in the snow about baby penguins.”
George choked. “YOU’RE MAKING THAT UP—!”
Max tilted his head. “I have a video.”
“GO TO HELL—”
Click.
The bedroom door opened behind them. Max looked toward it calmly.
George spun around like a paranoid meerkat, ready to throw hands.
And then she entered.
An elegant woman in her mid-50s, dressed in a pale blue blouse and white linen trousers, with the air of someone who had run six marathons and raised seven kids and still somehow managed to bake fresh scones every morning.
She smiled warmly at George.
“Good morning, Liebling. It’s nice to see you up and yelling again.”
George blinked. “Wh—who—?”
Before he could finish, she turned to Max.
“Maximilian, the triplets are awake.”
Max’s face immediately lit up. Lit up. Like Christmas morning, like someone had just announced free pole positions for life. “Already, Frau? They slept longer yesterday.”
“They are asking for you. All three.”
“I’ll be there in a minute, Frau Anne. I just need to—”
The sound that came out of George’s mouth was something between a cough and a scream.
“Did you just—”
Max turned to him. “What?”
“Did she just say triplets—?”
Max blinked. “Uhm... yes?”
George’s soul left his body.
His knees buckled. His hand flew to his chest. He looked at the stranger—this Frau Anne—like she’d just told him aliens had colonized the FIA. “Wh—Triplets?! Who—? When—?! HOW?!”
Max opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, “...They’re yours.”
George fainted.
Just went down like a damn oak tree in a thunderstorm.
Max leapt forward with a practiced motion, catching his husband mid-fall like he’d done it before—because he had. At least three times since the coma recovery.
Frau Anne sighed fondly. “Well, that went better than expected.”
Max grunted, gently easing George onto the couch and checking his pulse with surgeon-like ease.
“He took the Eiffel photo worse.”
----------------------------
George awoke to the sound of… gurgling.
Tiny, wet, bubbly sounds. Like someone had dunked a family of frogs into a bathtub.
His eyes fluttered open, eyelashes sticking together from dried tears and leftover rage, and the soft golden light of late morning dripped in through the tall windows. For a second, he didn’t remember anything.
Then... the ache in his limbs.
The faint echo of Max’s voice saying “We are married.”
His heart plummeted straight into his stomach. Or maybe it was already sitting there like lead.
And then he saw them.
Three.
Three.
Pairs.
Of giant blue eyes.
Staring at him.
Two blond heads—one with little curls like sunshine, the other with hair slightly straighter, darker at the roots snd one tiny little human with chestnut brown wisps, chubbier than the others, a thumb halfway into his mouth, big blue eyes so wide it looked like the kid had seen God.
No older than… a year?
But they weren’t talking.
They weren’t doing anything—
Just sitting there on a plush playmat like a trio of cherubs sent to deliver the final blow to his sanity, blinking at him in soft unison.
The brown-haired one gurgled.
The blonder one cooed.
The third let out a long, wet blblblblblblbl with their mouth.
George shrieked.
Not a scream. Not a yell.
A shriek. A sharp, feral noise that sounded like a violin string snapping in the middle of an opera.
He threw the blanket off and scrambled backward, crawling like a man possessed, his entire spine locking up with panic.
“NOPE. NOPE. Nope, nope, nope—WHAT THE FUCK—WHO—WHAT ARE THOSE?!”
The babies looked intrigued.
One giggled.
The chestnut-haired one tilted their head.
George had never known a heart could beat this fast without exploding. He was hyperventilating. Actually hyperventilating.
His back hit the bedpost and he hissed in pain, his right hand throbbed and his left leg screamed at him again—but it was nothing compared to the hurricane of thoughts inside his skull.
“Nonononono. This isn’t real. This is—this is another nightmare—Max drugged me. Max is trying to gaslight me with AI children. This is a simulation. This is—I don’t even—”
One of the babies sneezed.
George shrieked again.
He was shaking. Eyes darting between the tiny creatures in front of him, his hand gripping the post like it would save him from drowning.
How could they be so small?
So quiet?
So… real?
The one with chestnut hair hiccupped.
“NO!” George shouted, half at them, half at the universe. “NO, this—this doesn’t make sense! If I’ve been in a coma, how are there—three babies?!”
He clutched his head.
His breath caught.
His throat burned.
And then the horror crept in like a slow leak under a locked door.
“…How long was I out?” he whispered to no one. “How… old are they?”
Because they didn’t look brand new.
They weren’t newborns.
A little over a year, maybe. Maybe older.
And he remembered Max saying—fifteen months.
Fifteen months in a coma.
Something sick and heavy settled in his gut.
George tried to rise but stumbled again. His whole frame collapsing under its own weight. His body screamed at him, but the emotional panic—the fear—drowned everything out.
“HOW THE FUCK ARE THERE BABIES?” he yelled at the door, the walls, the sky. “HOW COULD—? I WAS IN A FUCKING COMA—WHEN—?”
A quiet voice answered from behind him.
“You were five months along.”
George went completely still.
He turned.
Frau Anne stood in the doorway, holding a small bottle and a folded muslin cloth, with a look on her face that said she’d just watched someone relive hell. She didn’t look surprised. Or shocked. Or even that concerned.
Just… sad.
Like someone who’d known this moment was coming.
“Five…?” George’s voice cracked. “What do you mean five months?”
“You were five months pregnant,” she said gently, “when you… fell.”
George collapsed to the floor like his legs had finally given up.
His vision blurred. His breath turned shallow.
“No. No, no, that’s not real—that’s not me. That’s not my life, that’s not—I didn’t sign up for this!”
The children were still sitting there. Not crying. Not upset. Just staring.
Little blinks. One kicked their foot softly, another played with the edge of a plush bunny.
George stared at them, tears brimming in his eyes.
“I don’t remember anything!”
“I know,” Frau Anne said, stepping forward. “But they know you. Remembers you.”
He flinched.
Max walked in quietly behind her, carrying a folded baby blanket with soft star patterns. He crouched beside George, slowly, giving him space.
“You’ve only been fully awake for a few hours,” he said, voice calm and low, “and I didn’t want to overwhelm you. But I told you. You’ve been home for a few months. You woke up two days ago.”
George was silent.
Tears ran down his face but he didn’t wipe them.
“And t-these… they are…”
Max nodded, eyes softer than George had ever remembered seeing. “They’re ours.”
George finally turned to look at them again.
Three pairs of blue eyes.
Two set with blond locks like Max.
The two pair wide and blinking like a baby deer—so familiar it made his throat close.
And the smallest... brown-haired, rosy cheeked, sleepy-eyed—sucked their thumb and blinked slowly at him like he was the only thing in the room.
“They…” George’s voice cracked. “They came early, didn’t they?”
Max nodded. Slowly. “Seven months. We had to induce. You weren’t—your vitals were crashing. It was the only way to save them.”
“And me?”
Max said nothing.
But the look said enough.
Two months of hell.
Two months of George’s body barely hanging on, his mind unreachable, the machines beeping while the babies breathed, lived.
He could feel the echo of it in his bones now.
The wreckage of what his body went through.
He couldn’t speak. His mouth opened, but no words came.
Then a sound.
The brown-haired one—his mirror—squealed softly, arms raised.
“P-PA!”
George froze.
Max looked like he might cry.
Frau Anne smiled, warm and sad and filled with memory. “They’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
George whispered, “I don’t know them.”
Max said, softly, “They know you.”
And George felt like his entire life had just crashed down, and then someone had come along and hammered the pieces again just to make absolutely sure they were unsalvageable.
He had never begged like that before.
Not in Singapore. Not in karting. Not when Toto had overlooked him. Not even when he crashed in Silverstone and they blamed him for it.
But now?
Now he was on his knees, choking on the thick taste of terror and disbelief.
“Y-you’re lying… please, say you’re lying?” he whispered, voice raw and shaking like a tightrope about to snap. “Please? I—this isn’t funny, Max. If this is some sick p-prank—then you win, okay? You fucking win, just stop—stop it now.”
His voice broke.
Max didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Didn’t even reach for him.
Because he knew.
He knew George needed to spiral. That he needed to scream and break and shatter before anything could begin to settle.
George’s hands trembled as he looked down at the small beings on the playmat—tiny, fragile, blinking things with eyes like his and not his, like oceans and storms and broken skies.
It was the smallest one who cracked him open.
The little boy.
Blue eyes... Max’s eyes.
And a thumb stuck so firmly into his little mouth George thought he might never let go.
George recoiled like he’d been burned.
He shoved the baby blanket away—hands brushing too close to one of the girls’ outstretched arms—and that was what snapped his spine in half.
He stumbled backward, ripped away from Max’s outstretched hand, stormed past Frau Anne who stepped aside with a heartbreakingly understanding nod—
And ran.
Through the hall.
Down the stairs.
His foot screamed, his knee threatened to buckle again, and he hissed through the pain but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t.
He needed air.
He needed to get the fuck out.
The penthouse door slammed open and there—there they were.
Two tall, thickset guards in black, standing on either side of the lift.
George didn’t even think—he shoved the taller one with his good arm. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
“Mr Versta—”
“Don’t!” George snapped, eyes bloodshot and body radiating raw panic. “You think calling me ‘Mr. Verstappen’ is gonna convince me this is real? That I’ve got—what?—babies?! You’ve all lost your minds!”
The guards exchanged a quick glance.
George tried to push past again. “I don’t care what kind of fucking prank this is. This is—this is insane! This is a psychotic breakdown! Where’s the camera?! Where the fuck is Netflix, huh?! You all having fun?! Laughing at the brain-dead Brit who woke up to his nemesis calling him husband?!”
He hit the elevator button four times. It wouldn’t move.
The guards didn’t budge.
George stumbled back against the wall, breathing so heavily his vision blurred.
He didn’t know the year.
He didn’t know this body.
He didn’t know himself.
Everything after 2025 was blank.
Hollow.
Hell even 2025 seemed blank. He only remembers the first few races. Miami to be exact. It was like someone had taken an eraser to the chalkboard of his mind, and all that was left were foggy impressions and broken lines.
He hated it.
He hated it.
He hated himself.
“LET ME GO!” he howled, voice splitting into raw notes of despair. “I don’t CARE if it’s 2030 or 3020 or the fucking apocalypse—none of this is mine!”
And then—
Footsteps.
Heavy. Purposeful.
Max appeared at the top of the stairs, chest rising and falling with quiet tension, but eyes focused entirely on George.
Max didn’t yell.
Didn’t say a word.
Just walked.
George backed up further. “Don’t you dare come closer—don’t you fucking dare!”
Max kept walking.
George’s hands clenched. His knuckles turned white. “You think you can just touch me—you think this is okay?! After all this?! Who the fuck gave you the right—”
He swung.
Sloppy, unbalanced, wild.
But it connected.
Max took the hit to the shoulder without a sound. Just winced.
George stumbled back, panting like a wounded animal.
“Don’t you fucking touch me, Verstappen,” he spat, tears mixing with fury. “You can’t just show up, call me ‘husband’ and drop three kids in front of me like this is a fucking romcom. I don’t know you. I don’t know them. I didn’t ask for this!”
Max said nothing. He just stepped forward.
Wrapped an arm behind George’s legs, another around his back, and lifted him.
“Put me down!” George screamed, thrashing, kicking—his leg gave out from under him and he cried out, but Max held him firmer. “PUT ME DOWN!”
“You’re in pain,” Max said quietly, almost like to himself. “You always did try to hide it.”
George kept hitting.
Kept yelling.
But Max just carried him back up. The guards didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.
The elevator opened this time.
Max didn’t set him down until they were in the bedroom again, and George was too tired to scream anymore. His throat ached, his limbs were dead weight, his head spinning.
“I’ll get you some water,” Max said softly.
George laughed bitterly, curled up against the bed frame like a kicked dog. “Fuck your water.”
But Max was already walking out.
George stared ahead, glassy-eyed.
The triplets were gone.
The room was too quiet.
His breathing slowed, but the panic stayed.
And for a long moment, he just sat there, fists clenched, not knowing who he was anymore.