now this is a fun prompt because you gave me so much freedom! so, i decided to write my very first rule 63...i hope you like it!: fem!russtappen, around 1k words
The problem with George Russell’s hair is that there is too much of it.
Not, like, too much in the way where Max thinks George should cut it. Max is not insane. Well. Max is normal amounts of insane. The point is that it is simply very long, and George wears it very high on her head whenever she is not racing, all pulled up tight in a ponytail that should look stupid and schoolgirlish and impractical but instead makes her neck look longer, which is...Max doesn't even know.
Also when George turns her head, the ponytail moves. The hair whips over George’s shoulder when she laughs at something Alex says, a long brown lash through the air, and Max’s brain goes briefly and completely blank.
She has no idea why this is happening to her.
Hair is hair. Max has hair. She keeps it short because that is how she has always had it. Her father had said, when she was small, that long hair got in the way. Long hair was for girls who wanted to fuss. Long hair would catch under helmets, under collars, in kart seats, in fan belts, probably, if Jos had thought of fan belts at the time. So Max had cut it short and kept it short, and it had become one of those facts about herself she did not inspect. Like her mole on her lip. Like liking orange.
Except sometimes she sees drivers with braids. Little ones tucked under caps, neat ones for heat, pretty ones for press days. And Max thinks, briefly, it would be nice to have hair you could do things with.
George’s ponytail swings again.
Max thinks: I want to pull it.
Then, immediately: What the fuck.
“Maxy!” Alex calls, jogging over the padel court with her racket already in hand, grinning like she has not ruined Max’s day by bringing George Russell with her.
Max had agreed to play padel with Alex. Just Alex. Alex is normal. Alex is messy and funny and if she is wearing something weird it is because she left the house like that by accident.
George, on the other hand, has clearly dressed like this on purpose.
She is wearing some kind of skirt-short situation that Max does not understand and does not want to understand because understanding would require looking longer. It is white. Of course it is white. George probably irons her sports clothes. Above it she has on a dark sports bra, leaving her stomach bare, and George has abs.
This is information Max knew in theory.
She did not need the practical demonstration. George’s legs are also out and long. Stupidly long. Like someone designed her in a wind tunnel and then forgot to make her less irritating.
“Lovely to see you,” George says, bright and false.
“No it isn’t,” Max says.
Alex sighs. “We’ve been here seventeen seconds.”
“Sixteen too many,” George says, and then smiles.
Max hates her.
Max is fairly certain she hates her.
At least, that is the easiest explanation for the sharp hot thing that goes through her when George puts both hands up to tighten her ponytail. Her arms lift, her ribs move, the line of her stomach pulls taut, and Max’s mind supplies, completely uninvited, the image of putting her mouth on the long length of George’s body from the sharp point of her jaw down to—No.
Absolutely not.
Max looks at the court surface very hard.
She is wearing old shorts and a Red Bull shirt because it is padel, not a fashion magazine. She never cares what she wears. Clothes are clothes. You put them on so people do not bother you about being naked.
And now, for some fucking reason, standing next to George in her tiny skirt thing and her high ponytail and her horrible perfect posture, Max feels suddenly like she has shown up to a knife fight with a spoon.
This is ridiculous.
She does not want to be George. That would be terrible. Imagine waking up every day and being George Russell. Nightmare. So what does she want?
Max’s stomach drops.
Alex claps her hands. “Right, girls. We’re playing nice.”
“We always play nice,” George says.
Max snorts.
George turns to her, ponytail snapping over her shoulder. “Something to add?”
“Only, you lie very good.”
“Only when people make it easy.”
“Can we not?” Alex says, already sounding tired in her soul.
They cannot not.
The game starts friendly for perhaps two and a half minutes. Alex is laughing, George is doing her posh little encouraging calls, Max is trying very hard not to notice that every time George lunges, the skirt flares over the shorts and her ponytail lashes behind her.
Then George smashes a ball directly past Max’s shoulder and says, “Unlucky.”
Max turns slowly.
Alex says, “Don’t.”
Max says, “Again.”
After that it is war.
George gets red in the face when she is competitive, which Max has known for years, but somehow today it looks different. Worse. Better. Her cheeks go pink, little wisps of hair escape around her temples, and her mouth gets tight every time Max scores against her. Max wants to make her make that face again.
Max wants to win.
Max wants George to put her hands on her knees and gasp for breath.
These are all normal sporting instincts. Probably.
“You’re crowding the net,” George snaps after Max cuts off one of her shots.
“You’re slow.”
“I am not slow.”
“You were just late.”
“I was anticipating Alex.”
“Badly.”
Alex, from the back of the court, says, “I’m genuinely going to leave you both here.”
George’s ponytail has started coming loose by the final game. Max is sweating through her shirt, irritated, alive all the way under her skin. George serves, Max returns, George volleys, Max stretches and catches it on pure stubbornness, and when George misses the next ball by maybe two centimeters, Max laughs.
George points her racket at her. “That was out.”
“It was in.”
“It was out.”
“Maybe your hair blocked your eyes.”
George’s mouth falls open. “My hair?”
“Yes.”
“My hair is not affecting my eyesight, Max.”
“It is affecting something,” Max mutters.
George’s eyes narrow. Alex looks between them, far too interested. “Okay. I’m calling it. I have seen enough of this weird nonsense for one afternoon.”
“It is not—” Max starts.
George says, at the exact same time, “Don’t be absurd.”
After, Alex says she is going straight home because she is late for something, or because she is a coward. Max goes to the changing room annoyed and overheated and determined to think about brake balance or lunch or literally anything else.
The communal shower is meant to be empty.
Nobody uses it. This is Monaco. The place has private stalls nicer than some hotel bathrooms. People come here, pretend to exercise elegantly, then go home to shower in marble.
So Max stops dead when she sees George.
George has her back half-turned under the spray, hair down now, completely loose and dark with water. It falls nearly to the middle of her back, heavy and shining, no longer swinging, no longer contained. Just there. Too much of it.
George turns. Her eyes go wide.
Max should say something normal. Sorry. Didn’t know you were here.
Instead she stares back.
George does not cover herself. Her small breasts are out and the colour of her nipples are almost pink and she hasn't shaved down there, just like Max. Max can't help but notice.
The room is hot and tiled and loud with running water, steam turning the edges of everything soft. George’s hair clings to her shoulders. Her face is pink from the shower or the match or from Max standing there like an idiot.
“You can use the private one,” George says.
It comes out too sharp.
Max lifts her chin. “So can you.”
George’s throat moves. There is a long, terrible second where Max understands that she is not jealous of George’s hair, or her legs, or the easy way she seems to know what to do with all of herself. She does not want to be George.
She wants George to stop looking at her like that, unless she is going to do something about it. Max pulls her shirt over her head without breaking eye contact. George goes very still.
“Max,” she says, and it is not a warning.
Max steps into the steam.
The water hits the tile between them, loud enough to hide how hard she is breathing.
“Yes,” Max says, though George has not asked a question.
