The not so perfect couple pt.2
Pairing: for this part george Russell x Reader(y/n)
Warnings: pregnancy, angst, mad george, bad words, arguing, mention of abortion (i believe that is a woman’s right)
Summary: Bound by a flawless Monaco romance, you and F1 star George Russell have the perfect life—until a failed birth control test leaves you pregnant with the child of a man whose brutal championship ambition labels a baby his ultimate downfall. Trapped in the high-stakes paddock, you must hide a secret that could destroy his lifelong dream in a single breath.
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The hospitality suite of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team was a masterpiece of temporary architecture. It was a three-story monolith of tinted glass, brushed steel, and soundproofed panels, erected in the heart of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya paddock. Inside, it smelled of expensive leather, freshly pressed team kit, and the sharp, clean scent of high-end catering. Outside, the world was a cacophony of air guns, roaring power units, and the relentless, low-frequency hum of thousands of people moving with singular, frantic purpose.
You sat at the corner table of the private driver’s lounge on the third floor, staring out through the one-way glass at the paddock below.
Down there, the world was simple. Down there, people knew their variables. If a car understeered, you adjusted the front wing flap angle. If the tires overheated, you managed the surface degradation through the diff settings. Everything had a metric. Everything had a dedicated engineer whose sole purpose in life was to find a solution to the problem.
But there was no engineer for the quiet, catastrophic storm brewing inside your own body.
Your hands were tucked between your knees, partly to keep them from shaking and partly because they were ice-cold. The leaden, suffocating weight of the secret had grown heavier over the last twenty-four hours. George had finished the Grand Prix in second place, a brilliant, gritty drive that had brought him within a mere five points of the championship lead. The team had been ecstatic. The garage had been a riot of high-fives, sprayed champagne, and backslapping.
And you had been there, playing your part perfectly. You had smiled for the cameras, hugged Toto, given George a breathless, celebratory kiss when he climbed out of the car, and stood by his side during the endless media loops. You had worn the mask so well that it felt as though it had been stapled to your skin.
But now, the adrenaline of the race weekend was draining away, leaving behind a raw, hollow exhaustion that made your chest ache.
The door to the lounge clicked open, and the silence was instantly broken by the sound of George’s voice. He was talking to his media officer, his tone bright, rapid, and sharp with the post-race high that always lasted for hours after a podium finish.
"Yeah, make sure we emphasize the tire management in the second stint," George was saying, his hand gesturing emphatically as he walked into the room. "The degradation on the softs was much better than we anticipated. If we carry that into Monaco, we’re in a fantastic position."
"Will do, George. Enjoy the post-race dinner," the media officer said, offering a polite nod before closing the door behind her.
George turned to you, his eyes bright, his face still flushed from the heat of the cockpit and the rush of the podium ceremony. He looked entirely alive, vibrating with the kind of absolute certainty that only comes from knowing you are one of the best in the world at what you do.
"God, I'm starving," he sighed, unzipping his team jacket and tossing it onto the leather sofa. He walked over to you, leaning down to press a firm, warm kiss to the top of your head. "The debrief went on forever, but Toto is over the moon. The upgrades worked exactly as the tunnel predicted. We have a genuine championship car, darling. A genuine shot."
"I'm so proud of you, George," you whispered, your voice sounding thin, even to your own ears. You forced your eyes to meet his, trying to project the absolute devotion he expected, the devotion you had always given him so freely.
"I couldn't do it without you," he said, and the terrifying thing was that he meant it. He looked at you with a fierce, possessive love that made your throat tighten. "You're my rock. When everything else out there is complete chaos, I look at you in the garage and I know exactly who I am and what I'm fighting for."
Every word he spoke felt like a beautifully wrapped gift that contained a razor blade. He loved you because you were his anchor, because you kept his world stable, because you didn't create complications in a life that required absolute, razor-sharp focus. You were the perfect partner for a future World Champion because you didn't demand anything that would pull his eyes off the apex.
"Come on," George said, clapping his hands together, his boyish charm radiating through his exhaustion. "The catering team went all out for the post-race celebration. I asked them to set up a private spread for us up here before we head to the airport. Your absolute favorite."
He walked over to the side sideboard, where a massive, pristine platter had been delivered moments before.
Your stomach did a violent, sickening flip before you even saw it.
It was a masterpiece of high-end Japanese culinary art. A sprawling, ice-chilled black slate covered in the finest bluefin tuna sashimi, delicate rolls of spicy salmon, unagi nigiri glistening with sweet soy glaze, and mounds of fresh, pale-green wasabi. Beside the platter sat a perfectly chilled bottle of vintage Prosecco, condensation tracking down the green glass into a silver bucket of crushed ice.
It was your ultimate meal. For three years, this had been your traditional celebration after a successful race weekend. George would log his macros meticulously, but he would always allow you to indulge, pouring your wine, laughing as you tried to eat a massive roll in a single bite, watching you with an affectionate, relaxed warmth that he only showed when the garage doors were shut.
"Look at that," George said, pouring a pale, bubbling stream of Prosecco into two crystal flutes. The sharp, yeasty, alcoholic scent of the sparkling wine drifted across the small room, hitting your nostrils like a physical blow. "They flew the fish in from Tsukiji this morning. Only the best for the team. Here you go, darling. A toast to second place, and to closing the gap."
He held out the glass to you, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
You stared at the bubbling liquid. Your mouth went completely dry, a metallic, sour taste pooling at the back of your throat. The smell of the raw fish, rich and oceanic, was suddenly suffocating, filling the small lounge until you felt as though you couldn't breathe.
"I... I'm okay for now, George," you said softly, keeping your hands tucked firmly into the pockets of your hoodie so he wouldn't see them shaking. "You go ahead."
George blinked, his hand remaining extended in the air, the crystal flute catching the fluorescent light of the lounge. His brow furrowed in slight confusion. "What do you mean? It's your favorite. You’ve been talking about having a proper glass of wine and sushi all week."
"I'm just not that hungry right now," you lied, the words tasting like ash in your mouth. "My stomach is a bit turned over from the heat in the paddock today. I'll just have some water."
George set his glass down on the table with a soft, distinct clink. The easy, post-race warmth in his demeanor slightly receded, replaced by that keen, analytical look he used when a data trace didn't make sense. He looked at the platter of raw fish, then at the untasted wine, and finally back at your face.
"You've been 'off' for three weeks," he said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its boyish light. He walked closer, stepping into your personal space, his eyes scanning your pale skin, the dark circles you had tried so hard to hide with concealer, the way your posture was hunched, protectively curled inward. "First it was the espresso in Monaco. Then you couldn't finish your dinner on Thursday. Now you’re turning down Tsukiji fish and vintage wine? Darling, what is going on with you? Are you sick? Truly?"
"I told you, George, I'm just tired," you said, your voice rising in a slight pitch of panic. You stood up from the chair, wanting to create distance, but your head swam with a sudden, vicious wave of vertigo. You had to grip the edge of the table to steady yourself.
"You're not just tired," George said, his tone shifting from concern to a strange, defensive sharpness. He didn't move toward you to comfort you; instead, he stood his ground, his shoulders squaring under his team shirt. "You're acting completely detached. You've been asking me these bizarre, hypothetical questions about having a family, about what would happen if things changed... and now you're refusing to eat, you're looking at me like you're terrified of me, and you're avoiding a celebration we've shared since our Williams days."
He stepped closer, his blue eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that felt entirely interrogative.
"What are you not telling me?" he asked, his voice low, clipped, and dangerous. "Are you unhappy? Is there something wrong with us? Because if you're pulling away from me right now, in the middle of the most critical part of my career, I need to know why."
The sheer irony of his words—the absolute, blinding selfishness of his perspective—shattered something fragile inside your chest. He thought you were pulling away from him. He thought your illness, your silence, your profound distress was a threat to his stability, his career, his perfect little ecosystem.
"It's not about us being unhappy, George," you whispered, the first tear spilling over your lower lid, burning hot against your cold skin.
"Then what is it?" he snapped, his impatience finally breaking through the PR-trained exterior. "Spell it out for me, because I am too exhausted to play guessing games after driving sixty-six laps at the limit."
You looked at him. You looked at the perfect, pristine, untouchable George Russell. The man who had a definitive answer for every strategy call, the man who had told you three nights ago that a child would be a massive distraction and a definitive no.
You closed your eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath that smelled entirely of raw fish and sparkling wine, and let the truth fall into the space between you like a bomb.
The silence that followed was not a normal silence. It was the kind of heavy, pressurized vacuum that occurs right before a massive pressure chamber ruptures.
The low hum of the paddock outside seemed to instantly vanish. The ticking of the small wall clock became deafening. George froze entirely, his body locking into a rigid, unnatural stillness. The color drained from his face so fast it looked as though he had been struck. His eyes, usually so sharp and expressive, became completely blank, wide and unblinking as his brain scrambled to process a piece of data that lay completely outside his calculated matrix.
He stared at you. He looked at your face, your trembling lips, the tears tracking through your makeup, and then his gaze dropped slowly, terrifyingly, to your stomach.
"What?" he whispered. The word didn't sound like him. It was a hollow, breathless rasp.
"I'm pregnant," you repeated, your voice stronger this time, carrying the raw, bleeding weight of the reality you had been carrying alone for days. "The protection failed. In Spa. The night after the podium. I... I took two tests while you were in Brackley last week. They were both positive. I'm about six weeks along."
George didn't move. He stood there, looking at you as if you were a stranger speaking a language he had never heard before. Then, slowly, the shock began to curdle. You could see the exact moment the realization hit him, the exact moment his brain connected your symptoms, your questions, and your tears over the past weeks into a definitive, unavoidable truth.
He didn't take you in his arms. He didn't tell you it was going to be okay.
Instead, he took two steps backward, away from you, his hands rising to grip his own hair, pulling at the short brown strands as a sharp, angry breath hissed through his teeth.
"No," he muttered, his voice shaking with a sudden, volatile current of denial. "No, no, no. That's... that's impossible. We were careful. We're always careful. You told me we were fine."
"The protection failed, George!" you cried out, the frustration and fear that you had suppressed for days finally bursting through your resolve. "It was raining, we were rushed, it was a split second of a mistake! It happens! It happened to us!"
"Right now?" George’s voice cracked, turning into a harsh, defensive roar that echoed off the glass walls of the lounge. He spun around, his back to you, slamming both hands down onto the marble sideboard, making the platter of sushi and the flutes of Prosecco rattle violently. "Right now?! Of all the times, of all the seasons, of all the months in my entire life... now?!"
The raw fury in his voice made you flinch, stepping back until your spine hit the glass window.
He spun back around to face you, and his expression made your heart drop into your stomach. The man you loved, the gentle, protective partner who held you so softly in the dark, was entirely gone. In his place stood a terrified, furious athlete whose entire world had just been derailed by an uncalculated variable. His face was flushed, his jaw clamped so tight the muscles were jumping, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, cornered-animal panic.
"Is this why you were asking me those questions?" he demanded, his voice dropping into a venomous, accusatory register. He stepped toward you, pointing a trembling finger at your face. "In Monaco? On Thursday night? You already knew! You sat there, watching me eat, watching me prepare for a race, knowing this, and you played games with me? You tested me?!"
"I didn't play games!" you sobbed, the tears pouring freely now, your chest heaving as the angst and isolation of the past week completely crushed you. "I was terrified, George! I wanted to know where your head was! I wanted to see if there was any room for me, for us, before I told you something that I knew would scare you!"
"Scare me?!" George shouted, his chest heaving under his team polo shirt, his aristocratic composure entirely shattered. "You haven't just scared me, you’ve completely ruined my focus! You’ve put a bullet in the middle of my championship season! I told you, I literally told you three nights ago, that a child right now would be a definitive no! I told you it would be irresponsible, that it would be a massive distraction, and you stood there knowing you were already carrying it?!"
"Don't call our child a distraction!" you screamed back, the word tearing out of your throat with a raw, primal agony. You had spent three years being the quiet one, the supportive one, the one who stepped into the shadows so he could have the spotlight. But you would not let him reduce the life inside you to a negative metric on a telemetry screen. "It is a baby, George! It is a human life! It is our family! How can you stand there and look at me with so much hatred for something we created together?!"
"I don't hate you!" George roared, his voice cracking with the sheer volume of his panic, his hands flying through the air as he paced the small room like a trapped beast. "But I hate the timing! I hate that you kept this from me for a week while I was driving a car at 200 miles an hour! Do you have any idea what this does to a driver's head? Do you have any concept of the mental margins required to compete at this level? If I am thinking about nappies, and doctors, and PR disasters while I am trying to out-brake Max Verstappen into Turn 1, I am going to crash the bloody car!"
"Then don't think about it on the track!" you wept, your hands gripping your own elbows, trying to hold yourself together as your world splintered into sharp, un-reconstructible pieces. "I didn't choose the timing, George! Do you think I wanted this right now? Do you think I wanted to spend the last three weeks dry-heaving in hotel bathrooms, hiding tests from the media, and listening to my boyfriend tell me that a family with me would be a 'mistake'?! I have been completely alone in this! I have been drowning, and you didn't even notice because you were too busy looking at your bloody lap times!"
"Because my lap times are our entire life!" George yelled, stepping directly into your space, his face inches from yours, his breath hot against your skin. The proximity was terrifying; he looked so large, so imposing, his lean athletic frame vibrating with a desperate, furious energy. "Everything we have, this apartment in Monaco, this lifestyle, this future, it is all paid for by those lap times! If I drop the ball now, if Mercedes loses faith in my ability to lead this team because I'm distracted by a domestic crisis, it's over! The contract negotiations, the legacy, everything I have sacrificed my entire childhood for... gone!"
He turned away from you, running his hands over his face, his breathing ragged and shallow. He looked at the platter of sushi, the sight of it seemingly making him sick now.
"You should have told me immediately," he muttered, his tone shifting into a cold, transactional bitterness that hurt worse than the shouting. "The moment you suspected. You shouldn't have let me go out there for Free Practice, for Qualifying, for the Race, with this ghost hanging over us. It was incredibly selfish of you."
The word selfish felt like a physical strike to your sternum. It took your breath away, leaving you gasping for air in the air-conditioned cold of the lounge.
"Selfish?" you whispered, your voice trembling so hard it could barely carry the weight of the word. "You are calling me selfish? I protected you, George. I kept it inside so you could have your perfect race weekend. I suffered in silence so you could stand on that podium and smile for your sponsors. And the moment I tell you the truth, the moment I ask for a shred of comfort, a shred of partnership, your only concern is your legacy?"
You looked at him, and for the first time in three years, the illusion of the "dream" relationship completely vanished. You saw the truth. You saw the terrifying, unyielding core of a top-tier racing driver. To win, they had to be sociopathic in their focus. They had to eliminate every variable, every vulnerability, every human emotion that didn't contribute to the pursuit of speed.
And right now, you and your unborn child were a vulnerability. You were an anomaly in the data.
"What do you want to do, George?" you asked, your voice suddenly dropping into a flat, terrifyingly calm register. The tears had stopped falling; your eyes felt dry, hot, and empty. "Tell me. Since you have an answer for everything. What is the team strategy for this? What does Toto suggest we do with a positive pregnancy test?"
George stopped his pacing. He stood in the center of the room, his back to you, his shoulders hunched. The silence crept back into the space, heavy and suffocating.
When he spoke, his voice was low, monotone, and entirely devoid of the warmth that had once defined your life.
"We can't have it," he said.
The air inside the driver’s lounge didn’t just feel cold anymore; it felt sharp, like inhaling powdered glass.
The plate of Tsukiji fish sat beneath the fluorescent lights, its sleek, pink-and-white flesh suddenly looking like a corpse on a slab. The bubbles in the two glasses of Prosecco had died, leaving the liquid flat, stagnant, and amber. He stood with his arms slightly away from his sides, his chest rising and falling in short, violent jerks, his eyes fixed on you with a terrifying blend of absolute panic and a dark, territorial fury.
He wasn't just a man who had received bad news. He looked like an empire builder who had just watched his cornerstone crack in half.
"Say something," he commanded. The boyish lilt that usually softened his Kings Lynn accent was entirely gone, replaced by a low, gravelly rasp that felt like iron dragging over concrete. "Don't just look at me like I’m a monster for stating the bleeding obvious. Say something."
You couldn't. Your tongue felt like a dry weight in your mouth, glued to the roof by the taste of stomach acid and bile. You looked down at your hands, which were clenched so tightly into the fabric of your hoodie that your knuckles were stark, bloodless white points.
"You want me to get rid of it," you whispered. The words didn't even sound human. They came from a dark, hollow cave deep inside your throat.
"I want you to be rational!" George roared. The sheer volume of his voice slammed into the small, glass-walled room, vibrating the cabinet doors behind him. He took three massive, aggressive strides toward you, his taller frame completely blocking out the light from the paddock window, casting you in his shadow. "Do you think I’m enjoying this? Do you think this is what I wanted to handle five minutes after getting off a podium? I am trying to save our lives! I am trying to save everything we have spent three fucking years building!"
"Our lives?" You looked up, and the look in your eyes must have been horrific, because George actually stopped his advance, his jaw twitching violently. "You mean your championship. You mean your clean PR record. You mean your perfect, sterile, untouchable little world where nothing ever goes wrong unless a front wing flap fails."
"Don't you dare minimize what I do!" he barked, his face turning a dangerous, mottled red, a thick vein on his neck pulsing beneath the collar of his Mercedes kit. He slammed his fist onto the leather back of the sofa, the thud heavy and resonant. "Don't you dare sit there and act like this is just a game to me! This is my life’s work! If I lose focus now, if the media gets a hold of this, 'George Russell’s domestic crisis, George Russell’s accidental pregnancy', the vultures will tear me apart before the summer break! The team will look at me and see a liability, not a leader!"
"A liability," you breathed, a tear finally cutting a clean line through the dust and dried sweat on your cheek. "That's all this is to you. A mistake on a data sheet. A track limit violation."
"Yes!" George shouted, his eyes wide, flashing with a manic, cornered anger that you had never seen in him before. He was entirely unspooled, the PR veneer ripped away to reveal the raw, ugly, unyielding selfishness of a top-tier athlete. "In the context of this season? In the context of my career? Yes, it is a catastrophic mistake! And the fact that you’re sitting there, looking at me with those pathetic, accusing eyes like you had nothing to do with it, like you didn’t keep it from me for a week, makes me bloody furious!"
He stepped even closer, his shadow swallowing you whole against the window. He didn't touch you, he looked too angry to touch you, as if his hands would leave bruises if he let them close around your skin, but his proximity was an assault of its own. He smelled of the podium champagne, bitter and stale, and the sharp, hot sweat of a man who had just spent two hours wrestling a carbon-fiber beast at 200 miles an hour.
"Why didn't you tell me last Sunday?" he hissed, his voice dropping into a venomous, quiet register that was somehow worse than the shouting. "When we were in Monaco. Before I flew to Brackley. Why did you let me sit in that simulator for forty hours, looking at telemetry, while you were carrying this... this time bomb around?"
"Because I knew you would react like this!" you screamed back, your voice cracking, the agony finally fracturing your restraint. You stood up, forcing yourself into his space, your small frame trembling with the sheer force of your heartbreak. "Look at yourself, George! Look at the look on your face! You look like you want to kill me! You look like you hate me for having a body that can get pregnant! I was terrified! I wanted to see if there was a single, solitary ounce of the man I loved left inside that team uniform, or if you had completely turned into a machine!"
"And what did you find?" he sneered, his lips curling into a cruel, defensive smirk that made your stomach completely die. "Did you find out that I’m a man who wants to win? Did you find out that I’m not some romantic idiot who thinks a baby solves everything? I am twenty-eight years old, and I am five points off the championship lead. I don't have time for your little loyalty tests! I don't have time for your drama!"
"It's not drama, it's our child!" You reached out, your open palm striking his chest, hard enough to make a wet, smacking sound against the synthetic fabric of his shirt. He didn't even flinch. He stood there like a statue of granite, his eyes drilling into yours with cold, dark contempt. "It’s a living thing inside me, George! And you’re talking about it like it’s a bad set of tires we can just throw into the back of the garage and forget about!"
"Because it has to be handled!" he roared back, grabbing your wrist before you could strike him again. His grip wasn't meant to hurt, but it was unyielding, iron-hard, his fingers locking around your small bones like a pair of handcuffs. "Listen to me! If you think for one second that I am going to let this derail my life, you are completely out of your mind. I will not be the driver who threw away a world title because he couldn't keep his private life under control. Do you understand me? I will not do it."
You stared down at his hand on your wrist. The skin was rough, calloused from the steering wheel, the hand that had held you so gently when you were crying over your grandmother’s death, the hand that had traced your spine in the quiet of the Monaco mornings.
Now, it felt like the hand of a jailer.
"Let go of me," you whispered, the coldness returning to your voice, a dead, gray winter settling over your heart.
George looked down at his own fingers, as if surprised by what he was doing. He released you instantly, taking a step back, his chest heaving as he rubbed his face with both hands, a dry, choked sound escaping his throat. But the anger didn't leave him; it just hardened, turning from a flame into a block of black ice.
"The clinic in Zurich is private," he said, his voice entirely transactional now, his tone flat and administrative. "I’ll have my personal assistant book the appointment under a pseudonym. We’ll take a private charter on Tuesday morning. You’ll be back in the apartment by Wednesday night. No one will ever know."
You looked at him, really looked at him, through the blur of your tears.
This was the man everyone dreamed of having. This was the golden boy of the paddock, the articulate, polite, perfectly styled driver that young girls had posters of on their walls and sponsors poured millions into. This was the man who had knelt on the floor of your kitchen two months ago to help you clean up a broken jar of honey, laughing as he wiped your sticky toes with a paper towel.
He was gone. The cockpit had eaten him alive. The championship had consumed whatever soul he had left, leaving nothing but an empty shell driven by lap times and sector pieces.
The word was small. It didn't have the volume of his shouts, but it had the weight of an anchor dropping into the deepest trench of the ocean.
George’s hands dropped from his face. His brow twitched, his eyes narrowing into two sharp, dangerous slits. "What do you mean, no?"
"I am not going to Switzerland," you said, your voice steady now, iron-clad in its despair. "I am not going to erase this because it's inconvenient for your career. I am going to keep this baby, George. With or without you. But i can now see that it will be without you."
The silence that followed this time was violent.
You could actually hear the air conditioning unit in the ceiling clicking, the distant, muffled sound of a mechanic dropping a wheel gun in the pit lane below. George’s face went through three distinct shifts of color—from the red of his fury, to a sickly, pale yellow of sheer terror, and finally into a dark, purple rage that looked almost lethal.
"You're threatening me," he whispered, his voice trembling so hard the words almost broke apart. "You're trying to destroy me."
"I am trying to survive you," you said, reaching down to grab your bag from the floor. Your body felt like it was made of old wood, creaking and fragile, but you forced your legs to move. "I am trying to protect the only thing in this room that actually matters."
"If you walk out of that door," George said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on your arms stand up, "if you go to the media, if you make a scene out of this-"
"I’m not going to the media, George," you said, stopping at the door, your hand resting on the cold steel handle. You didn't turn back to look at him. You couldn't bear to see the hatred in his face for another second. "I don't want their money, and I don't want your money. I don't want anything from you ever again. You can have your championship. You can have your five points. You can have your empty apartment in Monaco."
"Don't you walk away from me!" he screamed, his voice breaking entirely, turning into a raw, ugly shriek of absolute, impotent rage. "You owe me! We are a team! You don't get to make this decision on your own! You don't get to ruin my life!"
Behind you, there was a loud, shattering crash as George kicked the sideboard, his heavy racing boot splintering the wood, sending the platter of Tsukiji fish and the two crystal glasses of Prosecco flying across the room. The glass shattered against the wall, a sharp, explosive sound that signaled the absolute, irrevocable end of everything you had ever known.
You pulled the door open and stepped out into the bright, noisy corridor of the Mercedes hospitality building, the smell of raw fish and broken glass clinging to your clothes like soot from a fire. You didn't look back as the door clicked shut behind you, sealing the future World Champion inside his own golden, screaming cage.
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